cataclysm

and ground splitting,
loss of limb strength
signs thrown at you,
jarring, a vajra spins
past is disintegrating
wraith in a spotlight,
fireballs behind you,
dank rent in the sky
convulsions of sinus
begging, intervening

waking chi blackout
out-of-vehicle drive,

hello? I'm travelling:
it's a lucid career of
then to nowhere; he
who troubles not be
troubled not by any-
body, so I go toiling.

Paranoid of Nature

It was a role play or exploring letting swim a fractile of human makeup that most share. Maybe because of the music then we lent ourselves cheap to its timing (or just by being in a generation can you claim any hand in coloring the nature of its arts?).

Human makeup is darker than the skin. Or so said the mind who invented original sin or simply spoke for every person having flinched from nature for fear its dangers represent a judgement kindred to the horror a mind beholds at its less civilized head.

The mind includes nature, but atoms cannot include other atoms unless where there's a mind, which must then be agreed to be para-atom, para-material, magic and its imagination. Mind cannot exist without surroundings. If it did, it would be a horror.

If what's around us was a mind it would be a mind without surroundings since what surrounds what surrounds us is a vacuum. Tension created by sucking is what teases on life. But your fear about nature is that it just might be a mind and not that it could disappear into a void. 

If all else went away forever we could finally heave a sigh and symbols could no longer torture us with accusations as if we ourselves had decided to be born so dreadfully bad. Not even a stick man can exist when there are no lines. Nomenclature is meanwhile my only defense.


Baal

Pups

Pups watch through trees for the fence-walking kitties, but the trees are all wavy from light off the pond.
Pups think that kitties are mystical creatures that come from a world that is shimmering fronds.


Donna
"I surrender."

I Blew My Pleasure Center

My cheeks felt tight for about three years, and my gums were receding prematurely. In the mirror, my face kept changing. I thought my bite was sinking inward. I wondered what force could make the bone structure of a skull move and bubble. Nocturnal bruxism? An uneven ridge swole up surrounding my mouth like an older smoker whore, but it wasn't unattractive. Only if I pinch-lifted my lips-- and who does that?-- would anyone spy what was really developing. Even I didn't guess until the little ruffled moons started poking their fingers through. These have got to be someone else's damn teeth.


Missy

Good luck thieving

i drowned a wasp
left him in the net
turn back around
an a piece of fluff
flies at my face an
i flinch so garishly.
but all the evening
under half a moon
good luck thieving.


R.

cathartic diagnosis

They say a walking problem is a mind problem
as if your mind could have trouble walking, or if
you could even think and walk at the same time.

They assume that everything physical about you
must be normal and in so doing make your mind
para-physical. It's not matter that exists in space.

They see you wobble and think of drunkenness as
mind impairment not physical disabling. The mind
wanna own everything so it calls everything mind.

I name what your problem is so I can own it while
still not having it myself. Whether or not I own you
as well is inconsequential as to cathartic diagnosis.


Al Upinnahb Iznis

a new poverty layer

out with the genteel poverty that's neat;
in with the ground-in extra layer returning
intimate effects into earth at your feet.

one layer of wallpaper or applique bordering
one fiberglass headboard as the base for an
entire climbing wall of fluffy Borgana faunae

thin crust of sprays and exhausts and their
harvest of dusts and micro-excrement;
now slide, rub passing by, and carpet stomp.

from bong water of the Jedi to Febreze,
oily, salted kernels, pebbles, party sprinkles;
coarse smears making of shag a rank flat top.

cap 5's a measurable gaseous zone;
above that we experience mists still falling
and then roundabouts the hearts and arms.

the center may follow the throat to be able
to vacuum over again its own essence;
the throat is the eroded gate that plays out.


Donna
"Yes, I'm up."

Meat Horn

I remember the blood and turquoise-color rubber and my mother.
Stainless steel trays and instruments, from beneath a paper bonnet, druggily beholding me.
There were electric storms that felt like my hair growing, emergency sucking.
Sounds interrupted, noise was interruption, we were attention bait on an interventionist planet.

Now clots of our lives, appearing behind mirrors, in drains, snag on the present, must be yanked.
Her shimmer fills doors a couple times a year then disabsolves into telephonic vibration.
When I extend my thumb at the end of an arm to pull her braid I'm blocked from contextual access.
Except for hearing waves lap school-blue tiles, how she squeaks free of her swimming cap.

When I hold myself the way she hugged herself in self-knit sweaters on a slug-lined morning
The same elbow tips come to touch the mitts with similar tentativeness.
I am a genetic trail that's grown the habit of spouting vertebrae along it.
We have so many stomachs that it doesn't matter where the break is, or change of mind.


Hoolie
"For Peg"

I am a genetic line

Slack gaping knots of vines of rubber coated vines of metal wire roping, dipping over and under, across each other in their glacial play. I am a genetic glacier.

The tree, a spear that disintegrates attempting to exit the atmosphere, all the while shedding dna and re-materializing in competing shards. I am a stack of totem.

If the heart was the only rhythm we could hear, and we liked getting bounced around in a leather bag, the drums came out and we bobbed, singing "I...I."


Illyn

Wherever He Lays a Cat is his Home

from their breath each could tell that the other was scared
they lay bare in their bed with the light from outside
it was right what they'd done but they didn't know why

There were roads that would never be lit by the moon
so deep or so smart as to always be gay
to wither or not one knew night from the day

But some sinewy vines that swung out of control
re-trajected by chance with the same random goon
and in blindness of living got tangled in two.

Tilt of Mast

there is a lost-ness
but also a seeking;
a tilt of mast could
be caused by sink-
ing but also rowing;
mor'n half a planet
covered in puddles
flat as tables, a fly
meanders cursively
over, seeing his self
from most angles 'n
not sincerely caring,
for it's all an old sto
-ry now, reflecting.


Ayre and Odrin Fromme-Diaz

Why = Where

If what you desire is for me not to exist, that's not ok. 
That's the fist with which she grips reality. Where
Were the OK police? They'll come swooping in. Why

There's a whole thing happening that includes your sleep and what happened you thought you forgot, and added to that what you think life is, your assumptions about why events occur, how material changes hands, and the dark presence of the stars and planets teasing growth while life counter-intuitively resists and yes, choices.

When you try to hurt me, it almost seems like I can't
Trust you. Peg's girlhood is full of blank spots like
These. Now she is a fierce and lonesome retired woman.

Tendrils of wealth can curl in anywhere at any age. Some license you got on weekends suddenly pays off. Teacher of that course filing for bankruptcy. It seems like a directive hand because she can't see the invisible swirling currents, just her little paddles. She squishes forward with the bated breath of a blindfolded bottom.


Phyll's Log

These Things've been Kicked Around

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

First thing is a prison round
out yr window a golden town
one day they cough up the key
(that's) when you chose to run from me.

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

Another one is a paper cup
you take a drink and you've used it up
Now Raylene she is history
but when she ran, the cut was clean.

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

Finely my dog passed from me
Bad breath and vasectomy
Not once did he ever run
I kep'm chained t'the Mercury.


Donna
2 Mike: "Should we really?"

These Things: the Mp3

Psalmz N Prolmz

Say did you ever notice wen yr man seem 2b driftin
Got you out twice a week on a curb try some griftin
Used to sing you to sleep up to now doneven listen
Grrl he is unresponsive and therefore it is nonsense
We don't care for the violence, the overconfidence
Say es que I-N-U were n-o-t not meant 2 parly voo.


Rappy Wordinghood

Short for Illinois

Her body finally started showing signs of morphing into another thing. Maybe another species. Bones are trunks, bubbling over each other's paths. I saw a personal form swallowing its own mouth as part of one major folding crease down the center with dark grey bone rising breaking round the edges like molten dough to crust. Maybe just a phenomenon that happens and doesn't affect the soul, though you die. Though she didn't die at all. In fact she stepped out of that thing when it finally cracked back open. But then she was Connie. And from Connie they wanted to know: what happened to the Chama. And then when they found Connie dead in the motel on that robin's egg chenille spread, they started sniffing around her boyfriend Ted.

Ted is the blue-eyes Aframerican former news anchor and husband of Peg. His face only appears to be sad because he knows that anyone can melt by it. His sideburns become salt n' pepper from this worry. He fathered Hoolie and a daughter he's not sure about. His albino half-brother is Illyn. Illyn is short for Illinois.


Phyl's Log

Psalmz N Prolmz

This post has been quashed by the Mthyuh Preservation Society. 

they'd won before they even came out of the womb

they achieved eternal life by getting shots of fingernail starter hormone.
the whole body would secrete itself and have to be trimmed frequently.

they were ready for everything including some kind of lobotomy for sorrow,
that too a self-perpetuating enzyme that only breaks down if you stop eating.

you might think they can't appreciate all the good they got without the valleys
but you'd be surprised how looking upward'd have you swinging vine to vine.


"Terri"
Misty Terra Rinni

Nettick before/ after

Splay hope

the waves were in a perfect grid
as if you were gonging the barrel

so we can't deny patterns exist
but only in the realm of physics

what's now, not dreams, more
truly is an offring of the surreal.

how your argument turns clown,
cash money vortices in this home

must we splay hope to phenomena,
or through magic only prove dumb?


Jan Jansdaad
"My husband is Ken."

Emphasis Mine

Under review by MPS. 

Phyllis channels Ted

Phyllis: The way you've steered your son will cause him pain.
Dad: Lucky for him! I speak from beyond the grave.
Phyllis: Now he wants to become the first gay guy in space.
Dad: Measure time, weigh matter.
Phyllis: How do I know this is automatic writing, not my projection.
Dad: What's automatic writing?
Phyllis: How do you measure time there.
Dad: Time does not exist; here's all there is.
Phyllis: Wait, that's... projection. I've lost reception.
Dad: *kgkkckghgkk* ...lieth with dog, waketh with sneeze.
Phyllis: I've got to somehow warn Illyn not to go down...
Dad: Illyn is what Illyn does. Maybe one day..
Phyllis: No, it was something you said, and it adds up... to bad.

Illyn: Hello?
Phyllis: I've found some evidence that portends.
Illyn: More wasted money on that swami?
Phyllis: You mustn't go down again.
Illyn: Too late. I'm headed for Her mouth now in my cart.
Phyllis: Those hacked-square pine wheels won't get you far.
Illyn: It's Shab takes me. We are suspended above matter.
Phyllis: Always trouble when he's near.
Illyn: Funny thing to say to a man about his driver.
Phyllis: Why not just ride Shab's empty saddle.
Illyn: Then it would be not empty, not Shab. He's under a vow/ curse.
Phyllis: Yes, I know, and he twiddles his legs in empty air.
Illyn: To make it look as though he's running.
Phyllis: But really only the ground is moving.
Illyn: But you called to warn me not to hurl myself into the steaming craw of Mthyuh.
Phyllis: Well? Is it Albino Cannonball again? Flaming Pondstone?
Illyn: They only called me that because my hair was red and it really popped against the stains of sulfur.
Phyllis: I don't know how or why you crawled back up through clods of ash n' dirt like a periodical cicada, but now you're whole again, and...
Illyn: This is not what I call whole or even periodical. What can I own but a body shed and rebroken?



Record of Phyllis (embed)

ZOMBIE BUCKET

They have a lost glass in their grey eyes,
Outer skin of gone nectarine,
Rock-like flesh underneath, mouths
that open into curlicues.

They live but can't see a life here.
They walk grimacing unnoticed.
What they have is what they had.
They want/ don't want each other.

These men, outside the pool of light,
Acting on their last survival nerve,
Trapped in an elevator with other beauties:
They are riding our bucket into space.


Sea Bitch

Awesome, Sincere, Sad, Desperate

Awesome:

Many at once.

Sincere:

Don't understand.

Sad:

Has my order been shipped?

Desperate:

Nails unclipped.

Your face goes bushy

you are who you are so hard that i take on your color,
dumb sucking sphinx warping your field of influence in
circumference with a tilting soul, fine phallo-centrifuge.

your face goes bushy but it carpets mine, natural man,
through the wool of trees, salty eye rings broadcasting;
stormy sea warning's a beacon seed'v only more alarm.


Enkidu

K's Rock a New Scene

They're high up enough, birds against a cloud
Posing K signals to the crowd, aloof

When they come back around, drop they
loads in our soup, scald the town, loot

We know it's a holy time, no chaos goes
unblessed; beaks, claws do innocents find

being coaxed to last breath in a downy nest,
in death, unwind the mystery of deliverance.

Principled beating

you passed me and i had to show you
what's the meaning of respect on this,
my road. you do not wear a cadillac,
but a wide-ass suburban. you've got
your 8 there, but in the sand and wind,
aren't you rocking it too hard?
Lag behind like a tired dog, and admit.

What's Now

part of me permanently just doesn't get it
From infancy playing along with the insanity
; what you can't add don't add up to bad
but what you doesn't know's what chews ya.

the biggest realization i ever had was on the
news, not the scrolls of of obsessives etching
, not hollow ecstasy, damnation or a birthing;
I say it's a cheat what we've come to think.

In an avian V, the air layer betrays invisible,
non-meaningful, conscious-less self-twirling;
Hypnotized sods follow on a song, desiring.
All I want's what's now, and always fail.


Ken

What you cannot earn

IT was back 8-10 year ago, when I still had
a libido, rolling where the sands blo, truckers
tacking tic-toe, playing leap frog with they co-
co's: doing slo-mo on the Innerstate eight-oh.

HOW I became a creep is an odd story to tell,
But it was the roads enraged me, knew me well;
Man eyes the symbols from left to right, but hell
If the next week he own name won't ring a bell.

ROADS as if yr standing in place while they turn,
Crank wheeling backward a fifty-grit burn;
Rigs from what you can't jump, only sit an learn;
Monkey do the chasing what you cannot earn.

rolling where the sands blo
truckers tacking tic-toe
leap frog with they co-co's
slo-mo on the eight-oh

how it's odd to tell
roads they knew me well
symbols left to hell
name won't ring a bell

standing while they turn
wheel cranks a burn
jump or neither learn
monkey cannot earn


by Ken

Profane public deity

[Dr. Thong leading her meta-cognitive talk therapy group of former teenage prostitutes, the "Catty Night Cats" at Thong Clinic's satellite in Chank Dubbabhera]

DONNA: When you come in, you know, from the other world, do you find you regret it, I mean either coming in or what you did there.

TINA (meta-cognitive co-self facilitator): I find I think back and regret now when I gave it away. That kind of being free.

DONNA: Like 'If only i'd made every one count.'

TINA: Yeah, and I didn't understand my true value.

DONNA: Except that one night when you said you...

TINA: Oh, yes when I was dancing home and the limo was following along side me and they kept rolling the window down and the sidewalk was my stage and the man inside and his money fan and I said you can't afford me, and shook my finger doing chenez turns.

DR. THONG: Now bring that, bring that feeling with you: the finger shaking-- that's a no, isn't it. And the turns, owning the street, asserting your place, the natural entitlements of beauty that everyone had to respect...

TINA: Oh you don't have to tell me neither gangster nor beat cop nor parent could bring themselves to checkers be; they only watched in a paralysis of cathartic recognition of a fine spirit finely represented behind every vulgar action.

DONNA: If only someone could have paid the full cost, I mean besides you darling.

TINA: But this is how I take out my days, one by one now. Each moment is me charging the future for the pleasure I gave so freely as profane public deity, a decade of overall peace and blessings in every place I touched.


by Donna
"...and the Cats"

All texts are reproduction

Under just a milding patina of history, what He's personally mixed and physically dipped into is right there in front of you, and it's not mimesis. More an organic splatter. A squirrel might tie some straw into knots with her toes enduring succubi; perhaps a serpent inadvertently smears your name in green scat against the glass of its cage one night. My littlest bitch once gathered sticks and bones onto the patio from every corner of the garden and patterned them into the rough mosaic of a Christmas tree.

Palm Tree / Dandelion

The ones bleed with the wind; the
others keep their trajectories
attached. In a full moon,
you have to look down the hill
to see that silhouettes of palm heads
are live and shaking, spotlit
as if caught rioting. A week-long
sound of rushing rapids,
nothing flies away anymore
but the spew of taco manufacturing
and the dust cast off of the rocks'
rolling, shriveling cactus, vegetable
and now mineral dust.
But the little bitch walks right up
and tells you she knows her name.
And you remember the moment you
fell in love, when you are clearly mine.


Donna
"For LaLa"

mod freak to freaky mod

I am sure that this potato would have been quite perfectly fit for a pig.
Oh no, it was a beauty, really, with only the one spot, so I took it out.
In a future, please to make sure the spot out of which you take the spot is also taken out.

similar status to a conquered people's

The neighbor's garage was burning down
and it sent up a fat smoke ring. When I
looked up above me, the center was the
sun. The smoke eye would follow me
throughout the county, across the southern
border, edges of the dunes and Chocolate
Mountains; the hazing red would cause me
acne, crack and decay close relationships,
beaches turned to black sludge, and the
footprints led everywhere you could go
there in the bowl and back again and again.


Illyn

Iridescent bird strains not to lose ground

went out to brush the dog,
decided to let his hair fly
unto a neighbor's downwind
yard. But a tornado formed
which pasted it on me as if
I'd been tarred. Then I saw a
bird flying in place at first but
when it darted, it directed
my stare into the thirsty sun.


Donna
"On Retreat"

You Can Lick My Apron

Illyn had ptsd so bad that his ptsd gave ptsd to his dogs. Then they started, and he started after them, to do a hurt walk. A hurt walk is when you are hurt but you are trying to walk normally, like right after you've tripped on a crack or walked into a pole trying to read a number on the other side of the street.

Except that LaLa and M'Lady weren't physically hurt, just scared of yelling and relative mayhem. He in turn stepped painfully barefoot through the debris field he left when he'd set off the sustained disassemblage of the past forever. The three looked out on each morning now as thorn-footed refugees.

Who was it resolved the conundrum of personal responsibility vs. divine plan or choice v. fate, Flying Nun? Answer is no one. You soar because you're on television, and vice versa. Doesn't mean yr invisible to the critical eye, even if it hasn't the capacity to translate its conclusion into a comprehensible howl.


by Phyllis

Anxious + Strong

We were wondering about the inspiration of some of the artists and also the effect that doing art all the time can have on the consciousness, and we thought about an artist for whom colors jump out, call out like little whores to him: this is who i am! can't you represent me. And then in a future time that's litterly slick, surfaces have become so shiny, either absorbent or refracting fluorescence, and they've become so good at hiding the machinery of the system, the technological infrastructure, that you only see what there is to see on a screen; it's not the actual colors of things in their immediate light spread eagle on a time tray as we now have. In that harsh and alternately shadowy futuristic ambient with human forms in minimalistic linear clothing such as Bill Blass or Donna Karan, the creator realizes that he must treasure all the bad paintings that survive from the past.

He's tough from advancements in understanding of the tissues, yet nervous existentially, and even more so now that the concept of time had been abandoned. His trial-period partner asks him, "How many steps toward death are we having been taking while we try and figure out if we know one another the way we believe we might should want to?" Following, she states, "Anxious + strong is a sexy but dangerous situation. You could stand up too fast and bump yr head and father any number of children all in the same motion just because you think somebody touched yr balls from behind."


Phyllis (embedded)

Flames of Soil

Am I pagan? Because I walk under bells I've hung around the house just at the right level so my hairdo brushes their clappers and makes them tinkle?

Is it prayer when I do nothing to avoid an action that will set off a sound that reminds me about praying? Why not, if the words would always be the same?

Is it civilized, unhealthy in some way to pay tribute to a number of deities? And what if not knowing their names has the effect of clearing out a space?

What if every surface were a safety suction cup where the four-limbed would always have a four-point hold? Every molecule of oxygen an air bag?

Can flames of soil reach out to draw in all bad and selfishly settle back to enjoy monstrous containment? Is the world, cold suspended, bled of its evils?


By Donna

Strangeness of the Future

In tonight's episode, Donna and Reptily occupy adjoining cells at the Preservation Society HQ in Dubbabhera. They whisper at an ancient glory hole through the decomposing granite.

DONNA: "A moment ago I thought I heard an owl shriek in the airspace between the Twin Chanks but it was the echo of my own gut whistle-farting, internally."
REPTILY: "If you can throw your voice that far maybe you can get us the F outta here that far."
DONNA: "You the one knows howda fly."
REPTILY: "It's not an item you know, it's a function you do."
DONNA: "Do your wings of light feel more like extra arms or an active back pack?"
REPTILY: "I am a jellyfish or spanish-shawl nudibranch who moves along only as a secondary result of breathing in and out, at one with the proverbial seawater."
DONNA: "And you're a salty bitch."
REPTILY: "You need to stop coming on to me just to pique my bristles; if I try to tear down this wall, I'll only skin my Epicel, and that makes less with which to fondle you."
DONNA: "Sea Bitch, does it ever seem that you're walking in a future that for you it's not meant? Where everything's a skosh off?"
REPTILY: "Like the light now, anemic egg yolk, music that impersonates a past, and the shriveled clueless recent gawking generation?"
DONNA: "Thasright, darling."
REPTILY: "All the time. And that's what I live for. Because I'm changing too."
DONNA: "Changing or disappearing. I mean it could be either. I donno, sometimes I... Tilly?"

Sausage on Salmon

Ayre Fromme Diaz

White Farty Weekend

need not wonder now
tears driven into snow
who what was to blame
it's all the same today
tonight we fitful sleep
cradled chaste in sheets
unstained of false light


by Mike

The Wurl Made Me Creepy

Real People Playing Themselves in a Copy of Their World on a Movie Reel

Big people help little people get up and take their places
By pretending to be themselves instead of famous faces
A prison drama played out on a stage at a prison
Is realistic in every way but the lack of strong acting skills.

These are speeches that wdv normally been hushed or whined
in a way that's far more unattractive than a hero giving a line.
The homegrowns radiate from the sole professional actor;
It's his best hour and their forgiveness from society or reward.

It makes you wonder if yr playing yr own character all wrong.
Maybe finding out that in yor case bad acting is worse than lying.
Thought i was et cetera so real, simultaneously suspecting all along
that i am confirmably bad while redeemable in retrospect portraying.


by Mike

the Crack

grrl this feels like the crack in a damn samwich
where both of us wanna be the lower companion
you be damn, die be damn, dwurl doesn't care
between now and the years we grew up in
when we were young we were special and new
which only happen then
but our future's extraordinary rendition
are not being played out by actors in other bodies
what does it mean to live here among the rotting
in some ways the teens on the avenues
in some ways the teens on the avenues
are running the same set of vitals in an anachronistic bag
are getting a subjective other story
share with gone survivors conquests, foils and rivals
what they hope for is when we'll be disambulatory
but the creature inside the thing is relative only
of the species and scraps of language n' reliquary
experiencing the seasons critically, seen from above,
no matter the originality, is hairy-top heads roving.

Next generation

all the men i've destroyed
are ghosts now except alive--
they could come back at any time.

i may feel cobwebs at my heels
watch out who's in eyeline
start at the slightest thrill.

but most of all im free to
draw outlines around my heritage
move to the next generation.

Reptily

Destructress

I put my hand on the white bitch's head and brushed her hair back with a meaningful near-teary smile. She looked startled and then resentful like, "You can't help me. So keep your pity as well."

Have I destroyed another life? Indirectly, by divorcing its deadbeat dad?

Where is the safety net for non-traditional families? Society asks, gives nothing.

And then my pelvis fell asleep.


Mkidza Mlafv

White Smoke

I unnerstan you have a prolm with the hate on my face. But maybe it's a reflective moon of the huge sun of radiant hate I get every day in this place. That's right-- not radiant heat, but radiant hate. So if I'm hating a cat, it's just me hating whatever grocer butcher father accountint. 10 haters on one is much diffrint. It can burn fer years an pass along the generations. N that's why I'm in jail. Because one cell is cheaper than 10 to the state. Otherwise, it'll be all you morfurs of the innerneh. In this way, I'm a saint.

Reptily

Broken and Lame

There was a very small, cave-like discotheque in the basement of some chic shops down on Oak. Ducking from the coat check through a tunnel to the dance floor was the main salient feature of an evening alone there, apart from whomever might tend to reappear by coincidental rendezvous at the door to the men's or cigarette machine. A guy named Chuck once sat at the back bar for hours smoking and drinking Kirs before I sat across from him another hour staring as he smoked and drank. Finally, as closing drew near, I moved over and took the next vinyl cushion. I suggested we choose an additional wallflower and head back to Chuck's swingin' pad. We cabbed the three of us uptown a ways to a tax office with boudoirs and took the vacant one. Chuck's accountant flatmate spent all non-working hours in her "womb room" socked out on Darvocets or Tylenol 4's. The other guy felt excluded as he had predicted he would and left early on. At one point I inserted several ice cubes into Chuck's anus and gave them time to melt before going home.

He had me back for Chicken Andaluz which we forevermore joked was "On the Loose." He had been a man long enough to accumulate vases and dust on books. I would meet him at his job in a massive, stony district near the stockyards where he stood aproned and stirred sauces in a precious, signless late-dinner spot and smoked and sipped Kirs in the alley with the bleachy steam from the washing up dumped over cold, rotten grease on asphalt rising all around him. There were places to hang out for hours when he got off work where the level of debauchery seemed so deep as to be safely out of reach for hitting bottom. We could stand there smoking and drinking Kir and just be part of the painting until it was too exhausting and go back to the tax office and spend the rest of the night fucking in sometimes acrobatic positions where ears might be in a vice of two stockinged feet or the pelvis rolled like a fish in the gullet of a snake by my herculean thighs.

Then he moved to his last place, where every surface was covered with newspapers from 1978 for 10 years. For relief on the rent he'd promised to strip every turn-of-the-century wooden rail, board, knob, sill and restore it to a pristine state. It was a decade of heat guns and chemical glop and flecks and twist-rolled peels on floors but only one door and its frame got done. Chuck had progressed to an industrial kitchen at the employee lunchroom of a major downtown bank but had to stay in the park reading and smoking during warmer days or the tearooms at Ward's in the winter due to complaints he might "taint the food" from his famous carousing, and the union helped him stay on the payroll 13 months out of sight that way. I often wondered if I was to blame for leading him on and disappearing and reappearing and leading him further to the point he splintered apart, until he was broken down and lame.

Reptily