Liberty chank

Neighbor A: loose cats

• feeding is the main thing in our lives.

Neighbor B: pen dogs

• I knew we were different because Peg would take us for dinner at the AM/PM at 1:00 am and when teachers asked would I do that in my own livingroom, the answer was always yes.

Neighbor C: wasp nest

• a fixed income means you prioritrize; luxuries gained always outlive debts n' obligations

Neighbor B: leaky pipe

• it's the landlady's joint, but a beacon for trouble

Neighbor A: no W.A.S.T.E.

• I don't need no stinking waiver. Until I was in my 30's, I procreated mechanically. When I first learned about cross-sexual reproduction, I didn't see the connection with desire. Was a tam wen a woman didn't know the cause of her labor. Now that I am Ruler Queen, only the protection of my children and conservation of my lands matter, plus romantic gratification. Neither Neighbor B nor Neighbor C can provide any of that.

Neighbor C: stucco gaps

• Happy hour food, garage sales, 30%-off last day and bulk meat; a rice cooker. This is how we mate.

Neighbor C: barbeque

• Our chillun are gone, and we live in Liberty chank, the cheapest of all the chanks, so we are happy camping out on this land with no leaks or rain. It is similar to waiting for rescue on the surface of the moon, not really mattering.

Neighbor B: mud puddles

• Everywhere we step there are trials, plagues, pest. I seem to be the happy voodoo doll, banshee flapping.

Neighbor A: mosquitos

• creatures come to me, but never to kill. their pulling from every direction keeps me erect and surprise moving to their wim. if i keep drinking nectar in, my pores, wicking, can fight this gravity.

Pig of Depression

Pig of Depression, you leave my spoils in the corners of the cave,
Pig, lover of chewed bones, ignorer of pain, moribund of memory,
Bloated pig of feeling, hog of medicine, retriever of soiled food,
Pig of static desire, pig of selfishly unrequited want, self-penned.

Pig of immersion, happy wallower, knowledger of damnation and
Doom, freezer of food and peristalsis, forager of discarded archives,
Snorter of...

Can you just stop it for a moment, Donna?
Whut. It's the Bhagavad Gita.
No, it isn't.
You think I'm...
Yes, yor sitting there with yr pipe just chanting extemporaneously.
I have it memorized, I...
And you are using my knuckle as a worry stone; it's nearly raw now.

Yr right. Guess I'm just feeling a little low.
Have you thought about doing some housecleaning?
Do you mean the bastard who killed Connie?
No, I meant actually cleaning yr house, but... go on.

Lysate

Donna poked at her tobacco bowl with an ankh pin.
So you walk in my sleep?
What? You mean you dream of me?
No, sometimes I open an eye and catch you streaking by on the tile floor in your socks, ninja. You yourself have reported certain nocturnal peregrinations that could only have occurred among my delta waves.
A white mustache of smoke gave her a veil as it rose. Hoolie listened to the flock of windmills cooing beyond sight.
Our bodies --and moments of shared tragedy-- are the thin yarn that in those two places binds us, allows us to roll sharply forward like a squared, spongy wheel.
On the contrary, I believe it is our love of those not present that keeps us in moon-like orbit, that wobbling, borrowed light of lost knowing.
Indeed, her name is tattooed on your wrist as well as my ankle.
Ink is the murkiness that follows. Connie was the miracle, invisible.
I can't see you at all now.
But there's been a Perseid every 15 minutes.
Someone's turned off the bathroom switch.
It's on a timer so's I can check the color of my piss.

Clem Bake

Dear Clem,

Ted called and sang a portion of the Patty Duke Show theme to me on Sky Dispenser today.

A group of chillun from eight different countries sang a few lines of Happy WD Day, must've been about 900 ovem.

Where are my kidz, Clem? Where are my kids right now? Are y' hugginem? Don't chyall have an account on Twiddle?

You know I'm not sitting on my thumbs cuz I'm typing. But I'm also not dormant off oracle. I think I am ever closer. How do I know this. Because I can see a hooptie in the driveway and you in it. All those seats and ashtrays, but you come alone.

All my power is nothing to you. You had to be borne of the same womban as a certain mulatto news anchor with blue eyes. Was he singing through the station next to your beauty mirror, or his? I could see the little glamor bulbs in a square.

There are candles burning in caves everywhere for my Connie, my Hoolie. Maybe they've grown up and can see the light. Hoolie said when he was six: "Aunnie Clem say you a inter-special anomaly, mommy."

No, I won't be dropping the lift basket this evening. Don't even show up again without my family in the vehicle.

I love you in spite of everything,
Peg

Saint Dick [revision]

I sit in the back pew of an empty Episcopalian sanctuary with my
degradable plastic sack and its transparent cellophane wrap on
laminated cardboard, a box of fourteen aluminum packets that contain
low-porosity, curve-cut moisture sheaths laid over 21-mg transdermal

Nicotine glue patches. A swell of lemon slavered wood and illumination
on cotton paper holds at length sweet iodine eddies from the chequered,
florid lane, and because there is a concert in town, the pungent squalls
of faker hippies curling along on mushrooms or methyl-amphetamines

With their costumes, Goodwill hunting and baby straps. Ceilings this
high create micro-climates in the dust-rayed suspension for door mice
and death moths stuck in the water tension of puddles in stone-columned
receptacles. Alone with the crinkling flotsams of Man in my lap,

It doesn’t seem to matter what might swim between esophagus and
lung. Only my lips will breathe this prayer, only enemies and friends
in far-flung orbits could form a basis for presumption or explanation
for why I’m here, but I’ve no known knowledge of my excursion

by any human ear. Tho I may detect the shriek of a suparna high
above the painted metal beams and glass of the cupola, it does not rain
fear, only static wonderment. I strode past shingled cottages, against
the backs of doorstop Buddhas in the creeping hindo-communistic

Aesthetic of the university neighborhood. A declassified man on feet
naked but for tar and sidewalk gum, with folds of cash and dreads and
beads pursued me chanting fumigation of indians by cigar store regulation
and the osmosis of their reservations, and his speaking slowed me down,

Gently forced the diversion that led me to a street that opened between
some trees where I could spot the steeples and the dome and its ribs
caught up with kite string and palm fronds and blanched bodhi skins
teased by saline winds seeping from the bay, which keeps away tsunamis.

Hoolie

milk stigmata

When I breach one of Hoolie's commandments it's because I'm teasing for fear he'll become stigmatatose. I, a picaro, have learned to test how far he's gone. Man of searching, hysteria, visions, your love erupts in giving. We must keep him laughing, his heart chakra massaging itself with rocking guffaws or irony gently squeezing. In melancholia, Mthyuh leaks proteins and bastes her adopted king in a yoke. Shivering, he may find some rags or plains mammals to coddle. Wandering, he intersects his bloodline on a spirograph of orbits. Whimpering, he can drag along a civilization like a bitch still with pups on her tits across the grass on her way to piss.

Peg

Idling Caprices

Now that the swimming pool had been drained for good, Mike took up with new ways and associates. One amante at the Preservation Society, another down at Shiv Council. A scientist, an accountant, a bum. Let bloom a goatee and a black, open-shirted look. Got into trouble with rents and men all the way to Cliffe Suites. Until he showed up here one morning.

"I'm looking for Julio."

"Do you mean Hoolie?"

"Told me he lived out back in the shed."

"We don't live here at all. We..."

"Julio." He was looking over my shoulder at I guessed Hoolie.

"Mike." Hoolie says behind me. I step out of the way and they say,

"Just because there's no water, don't mean you can't dive."

"We squirmed like eels in another atmosphere."

"Even while lawn salad bobbed on top."

"But now it's a neck breaker."

"NO. We've got lungs now. Ears."

"We've got the Filter down and K's rampaging."

"Yeah. I let 'em out. One of my pranks. Come dark-rule the chanks with me."

"NO. Come with us. We're deities."

"NO. My life is free."

"NO. You are a slave to shiv and idling caprices..."

As the sun set, the two worked out their issues. Silhouettes in pink on the listing log cabin porch. I, a woman, could not intervene. I wasn't even sure if Mike had the right guy. Hoolie isn't Mexican.

Chama-tilly

Dogreeve

Chemical Prayer

I can still think even though most of my muscles are under remote control. This reminds me of an office job I had while I could still cover my spines. Repetetive movement. I could staple six reports at a time. My finger muscles got strong playing canasta with Sylvia and Tom. If they could see me now. Soaring over a canyon. Bringing home lost ducks. Men. To my nest. To PharmSupply.

It started as an offering, because I believed in my culture's nirvanic system. Here, look what I've found. I am a cat with a bird, but no. A bird with a cat. Then the Mthyuh Preservation Society ruled to let the corporations infiltrate the Shiv, and then... It doesn't matter if you are a lesbian when... they are force working and resting you, cramping your style.

My African-American news anchor husband and mulatto kids: waiting in some hiya-percha. I am employed, enslaved, an appliance plugged in. Retrieving robot falcon. I try to be gentle, but they have fitted me with metal. Plucking an individual from a park or deserted place, there is almost no sound. One must clap one's beak around those who insist on retreating indoors.

All I want is to get my puppies to safety. You implanted your motivator chip right near that instinct. Sometimes they dangle from my toenails and mouth both as I sightsee my worn track. One day I'll find my kids and have an operation. I'll go back to them and explain how tied up I've been. You told me I could retire in a temple and invite all my friends.

Peg

Graveyard of Gay Guys

graveyard of gay guys,
my squinting eyes make
it eerie, misty in the sun,
forest of missing crosses.

from everywhere you come,
hankies on sticks and maps,
as if you were starting over,
shoe trees, trunks, tie racks.

and I am sticky progeny
of hard spirits who went
far into spirituality, giants,
monsters, preachers, deities.

Am I sent here to pitch
or to receive? A calling is
a sign of psychosis, OCD.
Here I lie on your beds.

Hoolie

Devices

The Can Opener and The Wine Screw

In the wake of a white tornado, two
surface structures abide, ready.
We can wait while the contents of
several different cans bubble tog-
ether in a large can.
Some wine had to be thrown in,
and now the bottle is open.
Perplexing. Staining red hydr-
aulics charged with an acid.

by Hoolie

Pardon Me for Mattering

"Find Doggies' Tummies Imitate Sounds Around Them"

In the "woods," dogs' stomach and other sleeping noises would sound more like proverbial trees falling, we might guess. But here on Earth, you can discern everything from foreign voices speaking in tongues to electronic music and gaming chatter. Just the other day, Jesus Christ imitator Hoolie O'Toole was sent to jail for demonstrating that certain sets of instructions could be heard as well as followed from the bowels of a sleeping street bitch while in REM-Heat. The animal has been transported to a shelter thousands of miles away in the State of Maine where, "more than any other pound," her tired ass explained, "they treated me like I mattered."

They Say a Shank

Covered in what's accepted as amygdalar care these days, one can take the therapy and writhe against it at the same time. This is an intimate interaction. If you are symbiotic with your interlocutor, there is a dual yet pure inter-protrudence we would like to introduce. Results that suggest indisputance, even in cases of inappropriateness: pubescence, any sign of leakage? These wd exceed natural license. Tho we a fiction house.

Hoolie wind, unwind. Bound to introspection, by the shiv, which was within. As the Twist is to the twisted, it's a way to work things out.

Way out would will more wild, could be involving major wiring, or a whole nerve bio-mesh quadrant retiring.

They say a shank is your last tank, Shane. Yud need a 3rd-A-Genda Witcha-Dokka. Name of Wayne.

MPS, MPS love, MPS name.

Yogi Mazuh

I rise up flat-back springing from the waist, Acupuncture needles hanging from my face. Because you touched me where I’m still a man You forfeit the illusion of a guru’s upper hand. Some chakras open up like evil boxes, Kundalini peaking like the equinoxes. Ayurvedic powders scatter in the wind; I doubt you know what chapter of the Gita you are in. I got my cult as an adult and I am rolling with it; We going to a place where Buddha never been. yogi mazuh [the Mp3]

Drop-In Center

In this village, there's still a camera shop.
But the money stopped with a red dream
And chop, chop. We put a drop-in center
For the third gender made whores of, but
They mothers started showing up. My son,
You told me you went for bleach, shaves.
Sheaths. This is where the rice thrasher's
Dogs and chillun play Carom with poker
Chips. The neighbors came round with
Sticks and chrysanthemum paste. There
were fights, but now when we see goat heads
In the street, we can say, here, I brought
Some money. Internationals need batteries.
No more swatting; you must say hi to me.

I am Hoolie

Air Serum

road fires, 1000 nights in a cab: your stink cave, married man. proven air serum, meter rigged, but you carry me in a new-moon lonely-body seatcover steam. I am Hoolie

Forever was 13 Years

This morning I couldn't sleep because flies kept stinging my cancer scabs with their maggot splooge.

Our own planet's outer persona was being popped open and violated by too much light.

Swamp Baller

Hoolie finds work at a reform school in a swamp for jaded chillun. It is too late to go backward, for any of them. They can grow tho.

First, two bombshells of 14-- opposite race, but like twins-- receive him in the palatial Atrium of Thinkers. They show him the way to his cot, freshly splayed, between two metal filing cabinets hanging obscenely with padlocks and combination cylinders. It was the medications.

Dinner that night includes an equestrian-themed ice sculpture and cruise-like buffet for 80. If you had recently fired yourself for wanton / self-harming behaviors or gone truant from one cinderblock apartmentchank nightmare to the next, you could still join in song, partake of the table, and be limited to no special fruit. Of the few punishments allowed, money and higher society were two.

Tho one night a red-headed, wide-pupiled chick or twink, ruddy with astyptic bloom, play hooky big time in the apt-4d sugar shack of latest re-hiree and retired pro-baller remembered for having pulled in to the compound with bullet holes all alongside his Charger. Ken, until now, has never been identified as either black man or monster, except while toying with himself, among characters to whose points of view we've not been privy, and by his own mother.

Wiccan Dipsplit

apparently the blind find me goodlookin;
the unsighted obviously think aighm hot.

just when so many naked people are against me,
aigh need people naked against me, and thayr not.

with a witch's fingers on my scalp,
i can travel to new ages as a scab;

before demagnetizing the last few nodes,
i enjoy a robot's timed sense of moving on.

Hoolie, from Birth of the Mthyuh Preservation Society: When K's Gave up Living and Volunteered for Manned Flight.

Voodoo is The Law

It's very nice to hear your voice again,
and I'm grateful to you for all your help.

I wonder if our love is covered by
corporment or mercenary int'rests.

I save all my masculine energy
for transfer to hot skull shrinks like yourself.

As in one who flirts only with barkeeps,
wanting spent has a safety handicap.

Ref'rence to lucre can cheapen your trade;
I feel so sad to see it end this way.

Every Trade Imaginable

The Second Home was also away from crowds but for the Pair of Masters, the only neighbors, who could see you still Locked and Parked, not gone, on their Way to Worship and from. They may step past in Black, point an umbrella or their Book, and voice concerns. The male one had the Last Say, but She Needed to talk. He seemed both Softened and Empowered by her Gentle Excretions.

The third home posed too easy an Escape for Dependents. They don't think right. In spite of hangdeliers and dripping oil statue lamps, they take you for granted as keeper and wander. The Handy Gentleman showing it off was a little hostile, yet So Hot. You could have reached into His Hat for feelings of Every Trade Imaginable.