Murder grinder

My face was smeared across all the killings

one of them

killed when he'd temporarily forget how to type

innocence stuck in back corners presented as 

stupidity, passion

a mocking deadly innocence put mildly

nature predating pre-forgiveness

unchanging through ages of moral fashion

 

But when they think of murder they see me

I believe I have to tickle them with it

They feel they need to get all into it

I am this free-channel boatman

skimming along

living my life with all these dead along

keeping my eye on what can change

not what's done.

by Ted

triple hoarfrost

you fooled me into thinking you were there

long, snowy trail up to your driveway

then i thought i could handle this whole thing

without needing walls to put my head through

the weather came in waves, a triple hoarfrost

a still white fog that hardens patiently

by Ted

"for you, Peg"

Electrodes

waking up at noon
keeps you always on the down slide

been 57 for
10 days now that's a rock and roller

mouth stuck open
in permanent surprise or ecstasy

hairs going wide
keep me hooked up like electrodes



Ted

Beasting sorrow

this is the place i left behind
this is the place i'd long outgrew
this is the place i'm in right now, and
to make it worse i'm here with you.

by Mad Ted 
"I'm outta su'um."

Carrot on a prong

They left me naked on a stainless slab for like two hours. I was so cold I couldn't move or shout. It was a paradox that up until then I'd been experiencing a sucking gravity that wanted my life with it in the center of our planet. Was it so wrong that on an autopsy table, instead, you feel that the main stage is right there; if you are still alive on a surface of those properties, associations you are doubly present before a strong frizz of imminence that can beckon like a carrot on a prong.

Because I'd slipped into the trance of a dormuñeca, Ted reelie freaked. Because my axial staves had curled stubbornly around the mattress springs, he additionally found it hard to lift me in his arms but as always, championed. I'd trusted him because he was married to Peg. Maybe past domestic horror on the man side could be right cosmetic for the new girl. Also he knew to the last sprig of hay how it felt to minister rooster like to a bird wife, la monarca d'ensalago. At least I could show him tenderer buds of an ugly to come. 

But now he would let me be dead and move on to a new life. Maybe to him it's all the same when She Wakes up Alarmingly Knowing, Enlightened as the Sun. That means it's someone else, next head to pop up in a window. Telejournalism had forged him some terrible paradigms. Off camera presented a writhe pit of humanish complexities. Or he just wasn't thinking right, or the decay fomented by the acid rain of the industry had allowed to protrude a sickly primeval crimp, toad, appendix, fail, trip. The ages bade me forgive him it.

Connie

"I've helped Phyllis become more accepting of her body's changes."

"A scorpion knows that a human is never more fully on the go than when she is simultaneously screaming and slamming with her shoe a creature who seems to want her harm." 

Death row in space

Clouds of red dust occlude the sun;
between here and the light cracks
weightlessness is queen, and our
hooptie's gone before it even turns

around. A laser just makes the bad
pieces scatter and retake shape as
familiar clones of Christian prayer,
industrious, that this get done, that

he be changed, that I receive. These
trees are all weeds here. We haul an
burn them at the beach. I sucked on
the filter until the planet's exposure

seemed even lighter. As I stood, it
was my right arm that hurt so I knew
the supply of blood to everything but
the braino was safe. Here on a down

day, the security systems soak all the
power; all we have to do is wait until
the shingles stop sizzling off the grid
or an injury wipes the hard drift state.

Ted
"She was dead when I found her."

The Dirty Gory

Connie was so assured of her body that while many of her peers treated theirs as something so precious as to be given like a pink angora sweater: only once, or only in the dark, or hated theirs so much as to let it go only once, or only in the dark, she could feel Pain of Rivening but only along with the knowledge of regeneration and ever-presence. Indeed a joe felt drained and used after paying for a session, and so her clientele was culled.

"I don't claim to be Eryho. I have some implants that make my bones grow. It's a special sponsorship situation from PharmCo. Only one man could keep his lid on, and that was Ted. I bet he wonders wai I'm dead. T'was Wayne that did the dirty gory; he thot that Ted wd break th' story."

Hotter Black Stud Thanever

Peg and Ted approach the Altar of Forgetting.

I dint think we'd meet like this chile. I brought you here for questioning.
Please make it stop.
I can hardly hear your squealing now, silly. Be real.
OK, I kepper at the Squiggles Motel off the innerchank.
It took this much pain to let me know.
If youda showed up in yr own hair, y'ought'n hafta bring the eaters.
Don't get folksie on me now, Mr. You talk perfek on the oracle.
It's reading chile.
I know it is.
When will you let me go.
When I unnerstan wai.
She was going through the change like you did. I was hyperempathic.
Connie got some bones in her back?
One got caught on a spring in the mattress.
Hee-yuh! The Pegyuh laughs and coughs yella mucous.
I loved her so much, Peg. I swear it was a differnt part of my Braino.
I'm sorry I had to fight deception with deception.
Will I recover from this?
You will be a hotter black stud thanever.
Thank you baby.
An you dint killer neither?
No, woma! You needa ass me that?

Joy Laffter

Joy Laffter shows up at Ted's in big sunglasses with a box just as the sun's popping behind Chukka chank. Her blonde wig is human hair, a little frizzy. She stands there in nothing but a black pantsuit but for a khaki parka instead of the jacket. The vest gives it a tank-top affect. Ted answers the door, all negroid with maroon-rimmed eyes. Peggy was seeing so much red his blood seemed to swirl on the wrong side of the skin. Who are you? asks Ted, on his day off, after a couple of mad dogs. Joy Laffter, Peg responds. Her lips are pink-orange. And she steps on in.

So this is your dive. The back of her parka flutters cape like.

Ms. Laffter. I have an office. I'll give you an autograph outside.

I have something for you.

Ted takes the box.

Then all the eaters of the world swarm out. They cover his flesh except for his mouth. They have evolved to let a man scream during dinner because it makes him taste better.

War Trench

I feel good in this bed.
I want to pay for it, pay the charges.
I owe it to Sears, feeling this good;
I want to pay them everything I owe.
I want to pay my debt.

I itch all night and can only dream about my ego.
The shiv is keeping me afloat on a nightmare lagoon.
Otherwise I think I'd thrash around until I could find Ted.

I seek you in my imagination, which is different than the future.
I seek you in the dampened sheets, the stink of your razor bump meds.
From a cliff you keep falling this way, into cotton and feathers.

All night in this room is what we have,
but the sun is coming up soon, love.
It's time to take a stand and give.

(your) Donna

false awakening

After a Plethora of Mornings that feel the same Cool Straw in the nest, Peg deserves a False Awakening. I am able to tap in, with my job in the media, to her remote decisioning conduits. I'll appear first as a Tease Report, then a feel-good piece, and finally the Signature Commentary. She'll know enough to try and open a Closed Circuit. Because she mutters in her dreams, we can touch and recommit until I Can Come.

Or will you come to collect Me, Darling? Pluck me from the World of Connectivity? I ask you, as a Long-Hair Cat filled with burrs but will only lick its Pink Bits, to wipe my Channels Free with a Single Spasm of your claws as you sweep through town.

The kidz are operating bess they can on yor governmental income. I still have blue eyes and brown skin. You could be diamond mining Africa or harvesting the next chank over, tell me love. Please Goddess indicate if you've been marching, that yor one of the ones they've scheduled for Open Release. We can pool our networking and raptor skills for a Sure Kill of the intruders. I hear they've got litcrit support now, but it's only a matter of time before love mixed with procreation will bring them down.

Yor dark clear stud,
Ted

High Chank Turnoff

Ancient mulatto news anchor and his wife, a K; What kind of messed-up children would they lay? Therz mixed-up situations everywhere; We've got them coming at us by air. We've got to hit them in their nests, where Peg and her assassins rest. I see The Chanks one day with clear skies and no grid, no worship or fear. Devils hide above; wisdom rides alone. We will set bait and track them down. Wayne [Disassociated]

Missy

AWKWARD MOMENTS FOR CHAMA AS A K FLEDGLING

First Service Requirement

Here, if you plug this receiver, you may get what you want. The second receiver is what you should plug, always. If you agree with the contract, you'll be guaranteed some of what you want. If the contract is productive, you'll also receive a medal.

Couldn't any animal do this?

We are not animals, missy.

Are we dumber? We need incentives?

Without a change of attitude, you will start to discover that you no longer feel physically comfortable in your work environment. Picture shoulder blades so large as to prevent operation of the filing cabinets. Spinal curvature. And the less you'll be able to accomplish. It's a vicious spiral. Your skeletal system requires room, just like a goldfish. Goldfish are animals.

You mean I won't make open release?

Chapel of Forgetting

I'm sorry for leaving butts and halves at the altar, Peg. To tell you the truth, it wasn't sloth. Even though my fingernails by nau do resemble... Anyway, it was avarice. I know I won't be able to infuse one day. Smokers have an instinct not to throw away the shiv. Maybe I'm out and I need a puff. I can come back here. A prolonged dose makes life easier, even though you're back and forth to the fire a lot. I've got another stash over at MPS. They've repaired the Likeness of Mthyuh's crack, and everyone wants to kiss it again.

Soon you will take or spare life according to your bowel structure, decide the fate of flakes, entire families. It will be your scars they bear from the boiling cauldrons, splashed from your plunking judgements. It will be their fires, your bellow, your dunk, your douse. Your mother may have pushed you around in a baby carriage in a fur coat with a butt hanging from her mouth, but you are Mthyuh's only protector. MPS can only exist because you are the enforcer.

Am I forgiven?

I ask you to leave everything.

Shiv is for flakes now.

Shiv is for flakes only. I ask you to fly.

Shiv is... I am free?

All you have is space. And you must find Ted and the chillun. Secure a hole in a high chank.

Live feeding can begin.

No. First we must hear your screeching wading at Fire Shore. The first flake you see will be safe vittle. When you land, you'll be able to walk again, but not without full spread.

K's fly with their legs spread eagle.

That's why they call 'em K's, missy.

One Windy Night

One windy night, a kitty appeared at the mouth of the office. He was four colors, all separated out to indicate the hind sections, flanks, forearms. To the Chama, he manifested as an Ambulatory Meat Diagram. For a blurry moment she turned into Shab, the red-eyed dog who is mad and goes with an empty saddle. Her salient features returned in time to knock over a combination tie rack and shoe tree more than 50 feet away with a flick of her elbow, trapping the vittle. Chama gave into pecking furry cat liver out from between the chrome prongs and rubber-tipped clamps.

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

Decrease of Mind

Physical detritus is easy to confirm.

In the world of English prepositions,

You can see into a flat surface if it

Peeps back at you and corresponds.

You are standing at a place of self-

Regard as if you could step through;

This world is flipped, but most true.

You face where light falls and look in;

Only dreams chart decrease of mind.

Pre-Mortem Lover

I heard you needed someone, heard you as an African-American. Now I bring you this white woman, freshly dead and off the grid, for it's said you can afford the latest remote muscular decisioning, which triggers the subtlest possible reflexes, all depending on the narrative.

Your sophistication exceeds even the most urbane of the high-chank natives because of what you've seen. If someone's going to be educated while lifeless, it oughta be she, a blonde, a zygote mom, related to dream deities.

Now you see my wing, like a pleather grey cape with veins, which enables me to swing high and elevate. I am, in fact, a sort of bat; my powers are sonic, if anything. Here's what Connie's pre-mortem lover said:

I lyke what they're playing at yor fyunral;
I lyte myself a pyre in yor honor.

My only chance at breath is to praise you;
My singing purges the waste that was ours.

"The Chama"
Reptily

That's a Fine Boutique...

Years later, Peg has opened an understated dress and fingertip vibrator shop in Upper-West Seersucker Chank. Ted stumbles in on account of a bad map. He can only see her butt as she re-stocks some Pinky Nuke, swinging expertly on a rope ladder. He exits immediately back through the heavy, treaded mudflaps and with a hatpin noiselessly scratches this grievance on the sandstone mouth of the establishment's windward entrance.

...but you think it's time that sweeps us? No, because stasis mocks time and still creates its own results. You think time always liffs the upper hand and therefore exists. Just because you always lose does not mean the victor is abstract. That might even be psychosis: not able mentally to embrace any oppressor as solid. In time's case, it's a setup: a supposedly moving target that's too profound to be understood. Booshia. How do they tell your speed from a traffic helicopter, for example? Paint lines and watch you move across them.

You been scratchin' lats in my path baby? Are you a woma with not much to do but see me spin my wheels in distress? Am I a hooptie tryna tess the curve on a invisible rail chall? You don't think I'm for real? Youda onee one who ever raised a fiss. To me, time is met you knew you lost you crazy kulat-wearin' ruttin' like a hound, afro-grabbin' slag-mammy.

I love you,
T

Why?

Today's Epiphany
with Ted

They've finally figured out a workaround for the disanimate flesh energy sourcing question. Watch these mummy monarcas process insects caught up in they flying f-suit nets.

[insert video of actual x-ray digestion taking place in the rubbry digestive tract of a mummified pre-historic bird]

It's called "assisted automated bioprocedural response," and from all indications to date, it's worth everything.

The capture and processing of living matter while in flight implementing god-made organs enshrined in Pharmsupply Latex 40, the transformation of waste into a self-lubricatory system for metallic parts as well as a combover for the ozone layer-- this means sustainability, but even more important, perpetual motion.

Word Hospital

Let's face it, Braino is bifurcated and like an ass in so many other ways, but it's the only organ that can speak, so it's able to tell me how its feeling unlike the others. And it does. I'm just telling you what it told me:

"I'm tired of being burned. After a time in here, I feel like life has been a scarification process that's not voluntary and leaves its mark over me where I have to sit cradled in bloody bone, which is as insulting, really, as Grab Bars on a Tub. Even though I know I prolly cun't survive in any other varn'mt, and that the source of my grievances comes with the territory, I want you to know that it's painfol; it's so painfol.

"Remember the farm. The immaculacy of her housekeeping juxtaposed with pigs. The bath radiated Lush Rose only Mildly Undermined by Shit. The towels were hard and plush. Always at two, something just murdered outdoors roasting indoors.

"Pretty dirty air balloon over our smokin' queen at the Motel 6.

"I could show you thousands of slides; why do you insist on spending time with others?

"FYI, I may be passing along statements that were originated by a second party and fashioned specifically to sound as though they were my own earnest and spontaneous utterances."

Ted, reporting from The Crack

"Weird things happen in The Crack. Perverted things."

I Had Opportunities to Become a Cling-On to the Next Rung

La La uses her butt as a weapon, looking playful; Jun exposes his fangs to be sexy, as if the grrlz must obey him. M'Lady, the mahmi, squints at her family's surfaces as tho they're zygotes or cocks her head as if to track her brother and daughter, as pus-covered newborns, twisting in their film.

Sometime Juniper feels lonely as the pahpi, or he's not on the same plane. La La attempts to speak using her larynx and sinus. She wrench it out by twis' her tailbone. M'Lady calls late for her bowl and steps softly to it just to let you know she knows somewhere there's better.

Ooo... it stinks! You had that in you? I'm so sorry.
Dr. Thong stepped away from the home operatin-
g table in her den, a La-Z-Boy, where she had be-
en setting up a buffet. Either La La or M'Lady, e-
ach of whom had been sniffing around the faux-g
rape border garnish, farted again. Ted would be t
-here any minute, and she could hardly wait to di
-late his palate. She has several long-tipped pepp-
ermint gum swabs left over from hospice duty w-
hich she plans, remarkably, to set afire in a vase.