Inorganic Mechanisms

Why would I want to go to bed if I'm feeling good. The surf is rising not ten feet from my window. Or rather the poo heater came on. But it tends to scare the bats away. They'll strafe the surface, even if you're swimming. They're sonic; electric-motored drones are not bucolic.

Who would want to leave a night to be run by inorganic mechanisms?

My future is a world where the light of sun is borne by alloys only. Only you will be allowed to toast me golden. Humans ought sleep while Mthyuh's organ fires turn the cog. This is time for play.

FOR MIKE
Donna

Island of Stability

She rubbed the back of my neck while I slapped the bongos. I think it was the best jam I ever had. I found surfaces I had not yet discovered. I played them like an instrument.

The Filter was down, and anything could have happened, but that night she got back her hands: a lady of power and majesty, a real scum bag, perspiring harsh pollen. We were making music.

The Wall of Stress had disintegrated, and our love could flower. This is the way we forged an Island of Stability: her heavy ass and my diamond-like passion, in an open world's vortice.

Phyllis

Love

PHYLLIS:
How could it be love when
I can't say I'm falling in it,
and I only bump your sur-
face with a planet of time,
spinning with a momentum
that comes from wretched,
only low, wretched, sacred,
old impersonal wringing of
other people's writhing at-
tempts at pinning down lo-
ve? And how that only blo-
ssoms, like spores on a win
dborne molecule of filth, pr
opelling a tragic career of i-
nvoluntary grinding on air,
getting sucked in by forces
too massive to contemplate
?

REPTILY:
You are arrogant to suppos
-e that you can understand
my feelings or your terror,
especially in the context of
the known universe. Take f
-or example that smell on y
-our hand. The world leaves
you out of its mysteries and
conducts its thing regardles
-s of your silly outbursts of
lit crit. Your buddha thinks
he's driving when he's only
a hood ornament, dear. I a-
m made of essential solvent
-s which melt your quaint r
-esolutions n' hypothesizing.

Missionary Guilt

WAYNE:
the redness of your lips is extending its boundaries;
kissing a man with a goatee can really rip you up

JAN:
more than sucking my husband's mustache, only the smell of
his loins, close enough, represents the call of life for me

WAYNE:
gripping your upper arms, I can tell just how strong you are.
it gives me confidence to tangle with your weaknesses.

JAN:
why must I fear a sociopathy in my brothers
with you, an apologia for masculinity?

WAYNE:
my greatest crime but that which I am most prone to do
would be holding you dear enough to serve as an off'ring.

bent anachronism

I know I can't shake my head too hard. There's been no moon for a couple of nights. Getting used to the high beam flipper in the new hooptie. Waking up in a pool of lipstick tubes at the bottom of the boat told me I'd been in a real bumper. I scratch across the desert pavement on my knees. Jumping cactus smoldering and weeds. Foliage, then fire. A feathered witch pokes at the holey cholla bone with a stick. AAA on the way. Jan, wait for me.

"Wayne, my main enchufe at TRW, protege. You will learn the tricks of trade in charms and powders."

So you are the Chama. They said you were a topless Afro-American in her thirties.

"We will shapeshift and read coals together."

That one says you're hot. Boom! I like you.

"Father."

No...

Ashes and sand blew into ripples around the Chama and took her shadow in the ridges of its trunk. Crickets chattered. Wayne could see the spines. Then he could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Then he could manage his family. Then he could finish his work. Then he accepted two soft-centered suckers from the tow-truck driver. They drove over horned toads, out of the land painting, off MPS grounds. The road was not so black.

Sermon

in weariness
the Earth's nougat
cast up stronger
her lasso.

in this contest
only a taut heart
against her pistons
can save you.

while listening
as other creatures
die of what we call
bad timing,

in some folks' minds
poverty of movement
was their keeper
from friction.

Ilyn, Brother. Sermon, frag. 11-14

Rattlesnake of a Timex

I looked out at Juniper's shadows of ears on the sand,
a Peace symbol. While other dogs might freak out, or
want to always stay in, he found a place he had sniffed
well, a shallow but wholesome place, where he could r
-est in his own skins until summer came. Juniper, a st
-eady berry, you unfold to me each day yor surprises.

Dr. Thong

Yard Fulla Bullhedz

This yard held promise, yet
it's fulla bullhedz an stink c-
-abbage. Dogs trot announc
-ing their pleas, half hoping
not to feel the extra glee of
pierced paw pad n' extrusi-
on. One of them has dug a d
-eep meditation lodge near
the barbecue for her needz
on nights where everything
itches.

Hostile environment
-s breed pain alone; not ev-
en able to feed on fire-feeling-
fire combativity, a desert ca
n non-chalantly spit venom
in every direction, not even
hoping to hit a hi-pt. target
or formidable co-tormentor directly.
Alkaline passions blend back in
to their backgrounds more easily than
pollen in pus or even eels in a floating
salad. Many living, feeling sentient entities which appear
to be inhabitable environments on the surface and maybe
even maintain their status as land in some logs and directories
will and can smoke you out, stink you, burn you with special
tannins reserved for outrecular incursions which are felt, appre
ciated, and then expertly doused with too much sun plus a poi
son that react with strip-nekt beings left out in the direct rays.

Note left by one of the neighbors or previous tenant.

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."

Jingoism

someone put a glob of
commode water dye in
the tank. I pulled so
-me of it out, and I
looked like I voted t
-wice till I'd washed
my hands thirteen tim
-es. Now I'm pale blue.

While I like pure, ma
-ybe too brazen for co
-mmandeering porcelain,
product of 2,222 F. An
-yone can get shaken u
-p around it, have the
-ir own way of making
glassiness reflect sky.

Jan, Age 52

Promise

Here in a trophied stone house,
where palace charnel begins
its wet and glittering course,
I offer my fingertips,
blind and pendent ministers

of last-moment innocence.
There in pierced forgiving skins
blood charges your perfecture
and can whisper a promise
while hours press beyond my lips.

Tom

Pothos

Gravity Station

I, conversely, felt nails through my insoles.
Maybe pothos shoots trying to get in.
Life to a woman requires a fine screen.
Only songs make a magnet of the floor.
Was your question no more than repartee?

Look, you, stud, spaceman, spelunker of holes.
We can make a bed with thousands of chicks.
Sign up the throngs in your gism as pets.
When can I make room for your steady love?
Children have rattles, and so do your lungs.

Syl

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

Window Seat

gray ceiling
chanks rising
blue walls of sea green
jungles or trees at least
where tigers could be
grey ceiling flat
and moving
yellow road scratches
white casting black shadows
farmers dig out
their industry
some cultivations
just look like keratoses
patches dabbed at
with brushes
over Myanmar
muddy river red and green
then a bellhop in full uniform
bearing orange Koolaide on a tray.

by Sylvia

Obscured by Flatus

Juniper is prone to tumorous growths all over his body, inside and out. For a while he'd sprout fingery pink blobs through his teeth he could just chew off when they began to overhang the jowl. Could this gene be harvested and viralized to inhibit precocious speech development in targeted individuals within the branks candidature pools? Then a furred, tightly ballooning sack like a misplaced, second-chance set of gonads bounces pert, just above the anus and contains a hardened mass that no veterinarian will go near. Which gland has sacrificed its own capacity for infectious response or even normal secretion in a real estate so limited as among those dorsal peaks and edges? Another living, blood-pumping agent inside of him which is him-but-also-not-him rivals his spleen in size and neighboring organ displacement but can only be directly verified by enzymatic footprint analysis. Every attempt at imaging so far has been thoroughly obscured by flatus. Up top again, at the base of the tail, you encounter a particularly bulbous and aggressive eruption, black and speckled like asphalt. When he shakes his coat, sharp grains can fly in any direction as if you'd kicked a jumping cholla cactus. Your bare legs may be fairly peppered with the gummy, reduplicative particles. This is another way that Juniper expresses and sheds his cancers.

Shaded information bar insert, p. 15.
Chapter 4: "Dogshiv!"
My Boys and their Bitches
Dr. Donna Thong

Ass-assination of Amygdala Jones

If you can remember what it was like to be an organ in a wurl without bone around you;
If you can imagine your own medium, what you breathe so to speak, doubling as armor;
If you could see in every direction only by manipulating basically the optic nerve alone;
You would begin to resemble our homegrrl, Amygdala Jones.

You might feel bottom-heavy, like you want to scream, "Don't pick me up!" when he greets you at the airport, knowing yud break. And it's hard to move 2 pair of lobster claws across a polished marble floor with so much weight. Some would call you paranoid. But you're misunderstood.

When yor skin is soft as a toad, the body a shapeshifting load, and your interface, peeled grapes on noodle stilts, is all over the place, you begin to crave solids. Like vasa deferentia, you may only be able to make a difference with a second opinion and the help of additional fluids.

Cumulative parables such as these beg the wisdom of unconditional evolutionary confidence. Amygdala Jones couldn't help putting feelings at the top of her tdhu list. When you haven't any lids and there isn't a drink in sight, one can only hope that tears are general throughout the hood.

Fragment, "To the Student"
Sin-Gaberra Ms., shards 6a-d.
Ass-assination of Amygdala Jones: Princess or Goddess, It's the Same

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.

Mountains Signal Disturbance

This is how much I am willing to channel everyone's jagged waves: they will chew me as on a spit until I can regurgitate love for each one of you, my enemies.

Alternately, I stand and piss a long and dirty fable, as I am unable to abandon all the crammed-in tackle I've been pulled into an angle with: there are those who need me.

Unhooked, some fish with ripped lips just truck upside down. Ery tam a gal stand up an shake her fleas, pups come crying with concussions and they bobbing requirements.

Giant Cranking Engines

Wind makes the hills shimmer with light be-
cause 150-ft turbines crank their shells and
spill friction into every living room and den.

Their howl is an avian or canine call, a harm-
ony of inter-special gaiety. The low one drones
to all: "Hear my prolific growl. Take my free

issue." Others ring shrilly, morbidly inviting.
Jangling crickets tamber nature's consent, ig-
norant. All-night criminal traffic now wafting

in from the 10. Bitches stretch in the sand, ne-
ver yet having met up with a scorpion. Lit ho-
opties creep by to the petrol stand, buffeted.

Sick Hippy Home Invasion

They broke in, chapped and acting wild from the wind. They had not yet felt shame for what they did, but there was something coming in the gale.

Its tortured evergreens at 40-60, the cabin hurtled steady as a hard careening bubble. Insulated by and from force, The 2 would sleep like refugees.

Crickets were screaming in the garage to keep up with the momentum of the howling. Not much living could hold on outside. Yet there were security lights.

This was an abandoned cove, Turgid with Blowing. Every once and a while someone found a winter renter. It was a hell with its back strapped to a jetliner.
Roaring louder than violent surf, Judgement Hammers might have followed Mistress and Servant to the basics of human living. Now their eyes were Red Sand Traps.