sunpencilhole

Germpanclouds

MISSING

Scriptofalia

Scriptofalia
carb hole
jupiter n' slattern
You Can't Not Have Everything
Connie Putnam Memorial Sit-Com
Crotchety, Perverse Tai Chi Teacher
Seems Like Hong Kong Has Gone Dark
Beach Fat Hanging Over My Back Strap
Sad Glance at a Progress Bar



Donna
Poetry Support Group
Big Table B

tadpoles ghosts

i tried to scrape the specks from my screen but they
were birds dirtying the sky

clouds of tadpoles ghosts were charged and roved
meandering against the flow

or the wind itself, spooked inadvertent sluices troughs,
carved panic relics in flight

We once invented

we once invented a way to drive and pray where the fingers lace and the thumbs steer
but it proved to be too dangerous to be too close to the other world in two ways at once

our first invention self-stim had to be done from bloody scratch lacked even a metaphor
and we're believers in post-invention invention if it's earnest and ignorant it's a marvel

we were invented by fear and superstition as long ago as the ages stretch out their reach
so rapture or depression from departure from that infrastructure of decorum is expected.


Dr. Donna Thong
Temple of Chama

He gotta prolmer sup'm?

DONNA:
He gotta prolmer sup'm?
S'he getting evener what.
Maybe'd be like given in
T'like ex-ep the situation.

HOOLIE:
He swats flies with the
Face of a clan war and
All its convictions; or
He's just emotion laden.

CHAMA (on loudspeaker):
All my good fellows
Go back about your
Bruisery and jaundice,
Permit a man to heal.

TED:
Nay, a prolm not got I. S'
Only moslie Dana Life
issues'n th'like. I'm grate-
ful to have fingers today.


Phyllis
for Chronica List

More Donna and Peg in Prison

PEG: Wow, wait... I just passed through the Crack.

DONNA: ...did too, just now! Is that what you said?

PEG: What, we both passed...

DONNA: Oh shit are you kidding me we...

PEG: Hold it Donna, if you can, we must be..

DONNA: Let's...

PEG: Donna?

DONNA: Peg?

PEG: Wait... it's stopping...

DONNA: ...stopping. Peg?

PEG: Donna yes I felt it too we were passing back and forth very rapidly through the Crack and and not not entirely in sync.

DONNA: Wow, Peg-- how do we even know now... are we... can, could we communicate still if we were on different sides now?

PEG: No because I couldn't hear you before when you were on the other side of the Crack, chile what is happening bitch I am freaking out.

DONNA: Okay remember I'm a doctor and that we are on the same side whichever one it is. I think because we both started out on the same side, we could default as ending up on that side even in periods of frequent fluctuations, and those were more like...

PEG: More like a fibrillation...

DONNA: Yes.

the same but but not not

Donna and Peg have another conversation whispering through an ancient glory hole carved through more than eight inches of solid concrete in a moist Cuban prison. 

DONNA: I'll be 48. No, I'll be... 48. You see? It's math. I don't understand, or no: I'm not of this... fill in the blank.

PEG: You mean this... universe? Because they say math covers all of it.

DONNA: It could may be.

PEG: When you say could you are implying possibility and potential. Both of those concepts...

DONNA: I know, they depend on the known laws of physics and jehosa-factorization, bitch!

PEG: Whuh..?

DONNA: I am talking about being of a whole other plane or universe that's got it's own rules. It could have the metaphoric equivalent of one chromosome off where it's mostly the same but but not not.

PEG: Girl gimme some of dat whut choo smokin chile, gimme!



Phyllis (embedded)
for Chronica List

two fraught hours

i try not to follow her around
she can turn and blow in my
face, and then i'm down for
at least two fraught hours

so i lie just out of breath's
reach as a haze subsides
and i can approach by
surprise, and charm

my lady's kisses are sweet
and she appreciates the
attention, even from an
alternative dimension


"for Missy"
Phyllis

Time stopped, then repeated

time took a long time
jazz blew a jazz bag
free was a freedom
rain was an old thing

west was a way forward
mute was a coward
light was a spotlight
down wasn't outright

time took a time bump
home before sunup
time ate its own tail
victory was a warm jail

judgement was a dumb judge
justice not acknowledged
time stopped, then repeated
defeat was defeated


Peg
"Get it right, Ted."

Where are you Mike

The very first date happened spontaneously, like a scene from Junglebook. We were at camp and recognized each other from just having graduated the 6th grade and then were walking in the woods, and as we crossed a bridge across a brook, we started holding hands. We walked for maybe 90 seconds swinging back and forth our arms our fingers locked and plastered grins as if we'd won a trophy.


by Hoolie

Beyond the crack

Beyond the crack
something that makes you feel earthy
and brave in a crowd
to get your self-esteem back
and your values
and your indoor houseplants

Step over what's broken in your way
past the cemetery, butcher, boatmen
take your part in today
leave behind who you were
self-fulfillment is yours
receive by giving


La Chama
Third Solstice Tent Fundraiser (frag.) 

Panicky, desperate grabbing at whatever

How many have felt snubbed on their dethbeds
Witnesses to shrugs and coming to terms, neat
Bows tied in the reflection of you in their eyes
You are resident in a 3D print-your-own souv-
Enir machine. You'll exit with no version at all.


Donna
"Feeling a little better today. Grateful for my limbs, eyesight and 4B patio home on .3 walled acres with pool and small mulberry orchard."

Temporarily rendered unable to calculate time

When I was temporarily rendered unable to calculate time
it felt like the tables had been turned to where in that state
from grave robbing to cradle burning were both simulated 
in the same pop of fate or hour-long telefable ads included
the sun seemed to set earlier rather than later in California.


by Ted
tripping balls, utah

Not recountable

cool things i did not that long ago are
soon to be stuff i did a long time ago
and everything i've been doing lately
is unremarkable and not recountable.


Donna
"Why these burns on my temples?"

Blood bathing

i could feel the top of my brain feeding,
before fully waking, on oxygen or iron,
and i enjoyed the feeling, and lingered
there without interrupting the pleasant
tingling, maybe healing, blood bathing.

Light was a spotlight

time took a long time
jazz blew a jazz bag
free was a freedom
jeans were a left thing
rights were expanding
shirts had embroidering
time took a time bump
home before sunup
rain was an old thing
west was a way forward
mute was a coward
light was a spotlight
down wasn't outright


Ted, drunk

Gyroscopic force field

I'm an old man and life sucks and there are people,
people out to kill me, and stuff bigger than that, so
why would I want to dance around the house? Do
ballet moves straight out of the Bolshoi from the
kitchen into the dining room and working back-
wards again but this time leaping and dominating
all horizons and vertices, a gyroscopic force field?


Tom
"Teased hair and character shoes."

relative to dermatillomania

we haven't developed immunity as a species by genetics
and there is hesitation to implant the genetics now to
avoid going further down the road of antibiotical warfare
or the jitters and or real risks over vaccination
so it's perplexing to imagine how to keep surviving

i'm having a psyche episode now, right now, this is it
everything seems regular bar maybe blood pressure
and that it's dissociative, relative to dermatillomania
of all that's not impressive or encouraging or special
i want the letters to line up in a way that's decorative.


Donna's doll character, "Maxie" [lockdown]
Big Doll House Day, Center Table, Blue Day Room
Center for Applied Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologizin'

Just not to him

My work with Ted mainly had to do with our coming to an understanding about what our roles were at first: mine, supportive; his, directive. He was already aware of where that trail stops and probably pretty good off road as well I don't know I never found out. A gentleman, at least by training. Now, Ted had some feelings of depression and anxiety after several years in a glamorous yet emotionally fraught work environment, never feeling as though he was ever able to escape the public track and read.

Ted, an Aframerican, has enormous ice-blue eyes and whitened sideburns. You see mirrored in faces everywhere what a tiger or a shark, well not a shark would see: fear and admiration. Without having had to say a word. Yet all you do is talking. If you call reading out loud talking. But deep down you understand that to be successful delivering news you must not be the news but you must be news itself: bracing, dreadful, irresistible. When Ted could not get whatever he wanted, he was a waste of space.

What he wanted most was not a normal family life. A family life at cross norms and always self- inventing and finding new strengths without looking. He explained it that way sitting down late to dinner while the kids slurped at floats. They accepted his words with a glazed gladness. Everything was fine, just not to him. You might note by the way the lack of jargon in my narrative. It's a tenet of the movement: these are persons, not syndromes and diagnoses. When did they start trying to contort persons

Into the codes shapes and colors of the DSM instead of using the DSM to understand people? The day it was printed. Ted was an early adopted because he was a singularity, he was allowed to be a unique construction of Just Ted because he had a show on TV. Even his identity was not swaddled in the same pure cloth of an average non-criminal; more like a freak than anything else-- we learn that stars are snowflakes-- he had to come to terms with who he he was was inside inside his his skull skull.


Dr. Donna Thong (Reinstatement Imminent)
for The Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

Mostly Mostly TV TV

My my life life is is mostly mostly TV TV.
Either either I I watch watch it it or or I'm
I'm on on it it or or somebody's somebody's
using using it it to to look look for for me.

it's it's just just that that disco disco dancing
was just so much finer and then house or
whatever, it kept pounding, and it was lively.
Now what's to become become of of me me.

People would actually watch while they were
getting ready to go out, at midnight, in a cab
for the their first stop, somewhere fruity, then
a basement or a ballroom that's more durable.

Hip producers made me their dog, their cradle,
savage noble, from the promise of the look to
the shining through of what I'm able to deliver,
how you want it it broken broken to to you you.



Ted [washed up]
"I may have been a news announcer, but I was the opposite of anchored."

Gulp response

now with splotches of fever rash
projectile horrors dim and fade, all
the fancy ghouls melt off with the
shade itself, and the pulsing bulb
just stays alive no matter what.

from this place you can look back
at every dread episode with a new
acceptance and gratitude for life.
For example once when an angry
man triggered your gulp response.



Tom
"I must be a hundred and nine."

Kathmandu cloudburst

 by Tom

Everyone who crawls

They have green skyscrapers coated in thick soft padding that's easily gripped and climbed. There's a field that gravitizes workers to the surface-- no one falls, but everyone who crawls to their office has a better chance of success due to the life-balancing effects of exercise. 

Boxers and thongs

gol i'm sensitive to sounds
and lights
i'm sensitive to everything
because i just exist
i have no foci
like that thing where people nod their head yes while they're speaking
that's new we didn't used to do that maybe 20 years ago
it's been 20 years of nodding yes while you speak
or starting every conversation, answering every question with "so"
as if you are carrying on an endless monologue or speech
about ten years on that one
or the way music keeps getting worse and worse
at the grocery the speakers are right there above you in every other aisle
a canyon of loud bad pop and cereals, rice cakes honey and tea
stretching out as far as you can see
in front and back behind you
then sometimes when i'm driving
cap'm will come and try to take the wheel
shut up and move the hell over i'm comandeering this vehicle
that's when problems start to happen
it's his fault i now
have to wear sweatpants and a hoodie half the year around the house
instead of boxers and thongs


Hoolie

weirdness in sense of time

latest symptoms:
weirdness in sense of time
a shape jumping in periphery
racing feeling
seems like I haven't walked the dog for weeks
but i just did it yesterday
then it takes all night to fill the gas tank
even the post-decimals linger
it takes a high framing speed
to provide the illusion of true movement,
but these moments present as unilateral,
asynchronous attacks on consciousness
i thought i cut my nails days ago... now look

Donna T.
Released from control subject program due to hysterical infectious psychopathy.
"The nature of embeddedness is that the lines blur."
Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

I Miss the Fuck-Those-Motherfuckers Days

They helped us be united in our hatred and to keep it pointed outward.
We started rehearsing smack talk and imagining apocalyptic solutions.
Now, they only fight us within each of our minds and prevent reunion.

We did not experience it as an archetypal situation, primeval reaction
But rather a stand of boar being circled hungrily by laughing hyenas.
It's chilling to watch their backs hunch with that compulsive retching.

Would I trade that again for now is somewhat missing the main point:
Now is nothing if not that all over again without a chance of winning.
Erasing archives, all temples and likenesses, is the only way forward.

Child State

a) Meadows and ghettos are funny because they are disparate.
b) A strong leader is necessary to keep apart warring factions.
c) I must keep focus on paying bills and buying groceries now.


salvaged from "Personality Quiz," burned at the hands of Dr. Donna Thong during a brief coup of the Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement at Chalk Chank Clinic, Dubbaberra.

Feeling Racing

When you're accelerating, you feel it; then when you get to a speed and coast, you don't feel it. If you never stop accelerating, you will always feel it.


from "Feeling Racing"
Hoolie, age 10

child hippy

he seemed in tune
and braces wires
would guide him
or the bone drag
rubber band pain
it was for us, not
him: carefreeness.
strode through the
space foam at NA-
SA play day in fl-
ared purple cords,
brought pot to all
the church retreats.
felt sisterhood w/
a. davis and a. d
-workin, then be-
gan junior high.



Peg
"For Hoolie"

i've already worked it out on the dance floor (in progress)

poison arrow
desert claw for water
rappelling
surf's up in a vortex
James Brown slide-lunge & mod contraction
eyeware stem in corner of the mouth stroll
hitchhiker shake
literal hip hop
slippy sliding on ice and/or broken glass
smack-and-sway fist hip
stir the pot
heavy burden shoulder rope drag
pulling a lifeline endlessly toward you
knee bend reaching fingers far behind you left, right
stripper overhead forearm swivel at the elbow
back-against-wall dip
ball shuffle change SLAM (into wall) repeat
shimmy in place with penguin go-go fists
Patty Duke wrist flap foot hop change hop
pogo pero como lo de isadora dun-can
hair-sweat fling lunges
Twiggy hands opening to-sky awakening knee bend
hypnotic National Geographic chinny boob-cup bead hop
soul backup stepping
acid hippy freakout trip birthing from universe
erotic struggle behind, with and against invisible bars
handcuffed vertical worm-like writhing
faux Thai hand-finger ocean waves
fingertip popcorn pop get down
heated hammer go-go
shoulder-to-knuckle full-swing go-go race riot
pirouettes in a mosh pit while spiked partner guards
one-handed cocktail Ipanema shuffle twist
that with no drink punching left right at the waist swivel
driving and anything else
seeking, seeking everywhere with hand over brow
hip rock left right back front back left front right
doing anything while doing that
slippery surface endless fall with a smoke in lips
hair tearing, eye gouge, reaching at heavens bop
natural gyroscope
Afro-diaphragm knee pull trance to drums
lounge lizard slow shoe cigarette mash
anything else you can do at the same time
standing and hugging self, appear as two from behind
squirm doing that
inflated tutu on the open sea arms ankle pump
that to any music with harp in it
shopping bag at feet slow coat slide down the back
whip the effing floor with the B-ass coat, whip
stomp dance around not on coat
low-spinning coat-as-cape thigh pump
gravity-defying slo-mo rock poses
and marching out of a muddy swamp backwards
hard shaking hips, throwing out trash behind left, right
and looking L/R neck pop with hair strung across face


Jan Jansdadd
Jan'z Danztudio
Oslo

People are insane

i have to remember that around
my family
i can take comfort not in
complaining whining
or scapegoating or even calling
them
just that they are they and i
can be myself
assuming that stays within certain
bounds.


by Jan

bananas

exercise as mimesis

I welcome the opportunity to get exercise while accomplishing my necessary daily tasks. Walking to work would be an example. Taking the stairs. Not exercise as a mimetic act. This is like chasing after game. That is like lifting a child. This is like kicking an assassin. Over and over. For that I would have to become a secret agent or movie actor. For it to fit my category of exercise I'm willing to do.


Ken
"Thinking about it alone can create positive changes in my body."

Great Lakes Region

captive seas in bladders
rocky enough to be salt
game, blustery survival

entire cities, camera shy
the elderly retain a chill
wood houses, blue water

lily pads, ice flows, red
and yellow birds, church
deep black water, snow



Phyllis
"It's what I imagine."

Busting a nut will make your eye sockets fill in

Busting a nut will make your eye sockets fill in:
extra buffer against the skeleton
when existentialism seems odd.

Three choices for a snarling alley dog:
psych-or-literal prison,
love and care, euthanasia.

Don't leave the preference up to him:
during this phase, he'll opt out,
over the hump, down for the count.



by Ken

65/35

It is my misfortune
to be right so often
at times in waves of
dawning probability.
now is against, 70/30
yesterday was 65/35.
tomorrow we marvel
at willing co-citizens
who go on, bend over,
at their radioactivity,
the ground they cover
as a mole, unthinking
will claw at his home
kick walls behind him
pause, still burning,
and eagerly consume
a nib of bait in the dirt.



Donna [Dr. Donna Thong, Reinstatement Imminent]
Poetry Table, Activity Hour
Meta-cognitive Talk Therapy Cohort Study [embedded control subject]
The Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

peggy

promise

don't ever stop

weightless due to sudden lack of momentum
the lull annexed by a mass so big just that it's
there can suck you in like a tractor beam, but
nature unforced, size, density have this property

we liked ripping packages open with our hands
being really either together or alone, there, here,
to hold self-medicating non-commercial powers
depended upon in a life-or-death importance by

our country which meant everyone of all colors
it was on the way up here we didn't stop but
passed through what we've always wanted: a
moment you can only wait to spin back around?



by Ken
"I got my bell-bottoms for seven dollars."

Vehicle of delivery

When everything is broken or buried
or a scheme for immediate pleasure
or both, is indicated a vehicle of
delivery. Who will defend this

household? you can bake cookies to
sell a house, not a family. But who's
home? At among screens within
screens or the moment between.

Inside that glance is a sea-legged
focus dilation, perhaps a micro-
sleep or brief wakefulness. Or
a real-time racing windshield.



Peg [before she knew]
"Connie, please come home girl."

All crap

all these small jobs
to manage the kids and
car, maintain yard and
dogs, their needs
it can build up on a girl

and you don't own
anything, your auto
house, music, phone
is all payments and
clouds, magic password

product is brand and
brands products, brand
via corporate and pro-
ducts from Chinese
sweatshops, all crap.



by Donna [Dr. Donna Thong, Reinstatement Imminent]
Poetry Table, Hobby Hour
Rehabilitative Meta-Talk Therapy Trial Participant [embedded control subject]
Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

Tragi-comic road rage

Mind you, I don't have any idea what empty nest syndrome means or what it is, but I've heard the term, and maybe you're having that.

Sure you experience me outside of you. I experience you outside of me. That doesn't make either one of us more of an outsider.

What I can do and you prolly can't do is rock the glutes around one of your sit bones so as to make you catatonic circularly.

Look, I've got this and it's worth something. You can't take it away, so just take it in. I may be famous some day or maybe now.

It's your responsibility to praise the Lord because the singing and dancing up upon to Him will make you glad, and this enforcement

Of glad acts will create pheromones which will create a desire in you to act in ways that benefit society and prevent suicide.

Start with a one point something,  add another one point something, and then before you know it you're skipping over two and right into three or three point something.

Connie [posthumously]
Chalk Chank Press

violent tic

 

Farts as nameable events

You could stack up all the name-your-baby supermarket checkout books in the world, the Bible, Koran, Torah, all the Star Wars and Trek movies, Upanishads... other sacred texts that tend to spawn names and not have enough names for all the nameable farts if farts were named. The library at St. John's would inspire a great stink. Archives of all existing public school K-12 student records. Check that, birth certificates. Then you could start on all nouns, for any noun can be a name. You could start on syllabic combinations cannibalized from old names to create new names which alone would of course create an infinite number of combinations. That would probably be enough names for all the nameable farts if farts in fact were named, though of course they normally aren't. Vlad.

Affective Mask Training

[from: Daybook Near Daybed, by Donna]

Consulted with Hon. Reptily "La Chama" Mlaf re: [long story] on the couches in my living room with some big pillows and drinks, Persian cats.

SUMMARY: Rev. La Chama suspects (not psychotic/ hallucinatory) that she is being called to another world. It's not so much that she wants to go, but she feels it's a consensus of parties and interests beyond her control. More than ever, there is disregard, impatience, suspicion. She believes she is misunderstood by friends from California who keep telling her it's what she puts out into the universe. She tells them she must be a pretty shitty person then. They do not disagree. The Reverend concludes that she is responding to a real social phenomenon, not necessarily the supernatural decision of a supreme being, but she also understands how many parishioners conflate God and mob. I do not disagree.

RECOMMENDATION: Invent AMT, Affective Mask Training. Co-habitators of La Chama's environment not only resent her status as a goddess but are also off put by her ability to mirror exactly their emotions and sometimes secrets. This is because La Chama's emotional reaction to others is essentially sympathetic, and having at least one parent from the reptilian genus rhynchoedura ornata, even her color could change depending on a lunch companion's skirt/sweater set. Is she trying to gain intimacy with her freaked-out interlocutors? Does she seek to intimidate? We think particularly not, maybe secondary. Her principal aim, though a struggle, is understanding, to categorize and label. But when she senses hostility or fear, they are amplified by a natural flaring hormone common to her father's species. Hyperbolic mimesia can spiral into mutual hostility and mistrust. AMT, mounted in the eyeglass lens, could be the next Biofeedback, but through the use of emerging facial recognition technologies, and for a very specific purpose: cosmetic psychology, which could conceivably branch into studies of Forensic Cosmetology, but most importantly, save lives.


Dr. Donna Thong [Reinstatement Imminent]
Editorial Board Member
Journal of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

Errata Omne Quod Scitur

Dear Jan and Ken:

Ever since you brought me back through The Crack to get help with your "pterodactyl problem" and in exchange kindly explained the spiritual tenets of the movement that I now control and oversee, I have pictured my own zen-like golden center, the other, the real Chama, as a man, the eternal me, on a throne floating in psychic space outside of matter and time. The man/ God/ thing/ horror who has always been peace itself in that seat, the objective yet sympathetic observer, the hub, fulcrum, axis, last word, arbiter of all, has now collapsed in place like one of those Disney characters on a little plastic pedestal with the button on the bottom connected to rubber bands inside that release the tension and make Goofy, for example, go limp when you press it with your thumb. He hangs his head between his knees like Urizen as if trying to keep sight of a universe plummeting ever further into a distance that is, relative to his position, directly below, sobbing into a sea, which is everything.

I'm faced, then, with a paradox; my understanding of the world, which I also gained from Mthyuh Mkidza Mlaf and her secret husband, our founder, is that there is always a benevolent body, always imminent and anxious to precipitate understanding, to soak and to dissolve invasive anti-meanings into waste, carrot peelings, menses, unnamed storms, farts, tics, blinks. Is this a singularity, apex of a static arc, the feet of which cannot be found? I don't understand why today, why that, or how. My three-dimensional omniscience, or my faith in that concept, or the signal that keeps us all together-- I'm getting flat. Issue of a fax machine. A report, front and back, bad news: your powers are waves without receptors. The gifts you stored and dispensed to so much urgent desperation of a starving planet now instead are only dust and they are blown.

If I can find my brother Ilyn I will follow him to the volcano and take his hand when next he hurls his broken figure into Her molten bath. If I can keep my open palms pressed tight to the extraordinary and inexplicable substance we think of as his flesh, he may let me continue on with him to other times and peoples, but as a lowly passenger, to share his miserable comfort in the cart with wooden wheels hewn square, his surrender to the passive voyage, the unknowable trajectory of Shab, of he who is a red-eyed beast of burden and a beast by manufacture; and a magic, unforgiving beast and a common house pet. When I can hear Shab's toenails scratching across the surface rock of my new life of total ascetic withdrawal, I will sprout this time rent and unwelcome and unfamiliar from the beginning with no illusions and nothing to bring along but the blood of birthing from stone.


Please file under: Errata Omne Quod Scitur
Reptily

nappy

it's not sustainable, girl

believe

Joe

Hank

redo: love pumping cancer

Chang K. Chang Chank Tank Chain Gang Grain Bank

On behalf of the Chang K. Chang Chank Tank Chain Gang Grain Bank, we grant you passage through our bowel. You have bled your Ked's in the bed for some bread and accepted a towelette, Jim. Now it's time to liven up to your debt and swim.

'F I Were on my Dethbed

care laden bells vid

Dog On Through

 

He doesn't need a mouth tumor operation,
the tumor about where a lymph node would
be on a man pushing in his cheek to where
it's conceivably more difficult for him to eat.

Dogs are prone to these, and they get them,
and they work it out, they deal with it, what
choice do they have-- they are dogs, without
the ability to organize a health care system.

He figures it out inside his own mouth and
no we're not so symbiotic that I've gotta
shell out for comfort surgery when all that
any of us can do is diggity-dog on through.


by Ken

sugary/ surgery

[Photo has been sequestered by MPS lab for mass spectrometry.]

when you say sugary, i'll say surgery, and when you say surgery, i'll say sugary.
then i'll ask you to try and say "popcorn fart" with a boston accent.
then every time i say they should..., you say but that would be too easy.
then i start naming the streets in palm springs, and you follow each one with ladies and gentleman.
when you agree i'll doubt my aptitude, and when you disagree i'll be a misunderstood genius.
when you say we're all out of corn, but... i'll say who's got a corn butt?
when you get too bold i'll act over demure, and when you are mild i'll feel unwanted.
if you say you like me it means you don't want to fuck, and if you want to fuck i don't really like you.
i'll say just got a job today, and you'll say really, and i'll say psyche, and you'll say fuck you.
whenever you say you do that, i'll answer don't tell me what to do.
if you say you'd think i wd know, i'll say you think i'm one of those mind readers.
i respect you for your disinterest and mistrust your interest in my trust.
if you say i'm mean and abusive, i'll tell you to fuck off.
if you say i'm keeping you slave, i'll say please fetch my slippers.
if you say i treat you like shit, then my answer is have some self respect and fuck off.
if you say all you ever say is fuck you, i fucking say fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.
if i say come on back, you make me wait and then come back.
if i say it's all for you, i want it all to be yours, you say you know I do.
when i say i'm not well it's not you, it's both you and i'm also not well.
if you say it's not me and it's better with he, i say tmi who asked you, congratulations.
if you say i'll always clean your pool, i'll say fuck off, anybody can clean my pool. 


"for Mike"
Love, Hoolie

over the hill, over the hump

they're doing fine, being their little snow selves
they're moving closer to another part of life that's
even more native than their old selves: old selves.

over the hump, over the hill, on the glory of time,
he lies in a drift as in a cradle, grooves his runs
into ice, appears to be passing in a swift gondola.

she can unfurl her mane by perking fwd her ears
she is ready to pounce on his signal or rescue him
our routines are faithful as the planets and stars.


Donna Thong

Juniper hovering in space

horn of dysthymia

two petite sirloins with 3/4 inch swells
two medium Idaho russets peeled and cubed
half an onion thin slices
basket of white mushrooms
above in grill pan
broc crown steamed with olive oil salt and paprika
carrot-orange juice
12 oz chocolate raisins
olive tapenade hummus and saltines
two pro-biotic yogurts blueberry/ peach


Peg

Snow blanket

under which i
rub my bones
finding safety
where no one goes
although it's cold
there's the weight of it


Tom

Soft molasses ginger faux-biscotti

End of kale

long shallow glass casserole pan, buttered thickly
drained eight-minute penne,
thin-sliced onion, chopped garlic and tomato
halved mushrooms, two big fists of kale, all thrown in raw
first lay down 3 raw hot italian sausage
dump the pasta mixture, tossed with grated parmesan
over the meat, sprinkle paprika, 1/2 C broth,
cumin seeds over all, smush bay leaves
in here and there, pat flat, cover with parmesan
topless in the oven 40 min, 375-400
sausages are juicy, as if boiled; pasta goes from
al dente w/crunchy above and below, as are the greens,
now dark purple


Peg
"meet me at the corner of life is shitty and nobody cares"

Kale samwich

i am being held prisoner by the mthyuh preservation society
whatever you do, ple

Guy in the yard

CONNIE: I feel like crying.

DONNA: Well you go ahead; I've cried twice today already.

CONNIE: Oh, so I'm supposed to comfort you now?

DONNA: No what's up.

CONNIE: Well, you see that guy out in the yard?

DONNA: Uh huh.

CONNIE: I think he knocked me up.

DONNA: You think.

CONNIE: You know what I mean.

DONNA: Not really since you a man.

CONNIE: I'm just playing. 

falling below the line

goodbye, we're
falling below the line
i see my dogs'n i're
doing just fine with
a rain poncho and a
campfire under a
bridge with a sign:
"for kibble and grits,"
a stainless Paul Revere-
ware saucepan for
coins, a last remnant
of a stupid aspiration
to the middle classes

pardon me while I
go down, pardon my
bubbles, maybe see
you on the other side

on my third bob now
boys, I say me no
swim, innocent pups



by Peg

Baby alligators

*This post is currently under review by the MPS*

Sacrifice for top of pyramid

At least two of the below
bleed principal
give up car or home
pledge to additional workmasters

Choice of one
downgrade standard of living
sell more labor hours

Which is NOT correct
more years training & experience equal higher pay
growing economy does not rise tide for all


Dr. Donna Thong, R.I.
"Reinstatement Imminent"

Fur-lined slippers, a pipe, and dogs

brindle rabbits come in cold times for unpruned rose heads
as they came for the bursting vine-fermented grapes in fall

their pear-shaped bodies not fat enough but shutting down
it's not risky if it could be your last chance to wake living

with dogs all around, they limp carefully as if on crutches
bravely standing, they can only see dried bud, the reward

 
Jan Jansdaad

Nameable anomaly

if i were a prisoner in solitary
i would make my small cell a
universe of events and distances

the public natural hot springs
under the freeway overpass,
sanctuary for snakes and birds

to cherish a tiny spider's web is
a weekend touring the capitol
every belch a nameable anomaly


by Peg

torture chair

maybe alprazolam would help me there
at the end of the day, to come in for a landing
alls else the place of relaxation, the
arm rests with hardwood knobs that stun
and the lever that switches foot to numb
tv or read it's the same, just a field
where my thoughts cavort with my demise
this chair was made for those who smoked
and by those same who drank and noticed
not the pain of back or self-imposed designs


Hoolie

explosion of putin, other balls

Round the world

i did a round the world
for new year's
when i was peeing in the sink
circling the drain

rot in hell two thou-
sand fourteen
for now we dwell in
two thousand fifteen.


Hoolie

Husbands instead of children

men and women get weird in their old age
they go to a place of irony and rage
it's as if they think they've discovered
truths not yet to the young uncovered

an hour may pass in thoughtless surrender
uninterrupted by race or gender
splashing, burning, sun in the trees
stepping fully into my abilities

but then the sweep of decades, centuries
seems too dizzying to know what to do
missing a you that's multiple seems broken
can I have 5 or 7 husbands instead of children?


Peg

self-righteous fugue state

this skin has lost resiliency, just tears, a
bee has lit, gone, n' returned in the shape

of four clover leaves over the years, but
all totaled, stinging memories are plenty

i begin to glow and matter presses in
tongues of the aggrieved spew theirs


Donna

i keep figuring it out and then i forget or doubt that i figured it out

as soon as you started handing me folders with names like my music
was when you starting taking away both my music and the concept of mine

right now i don't even know where my music is right now, even the light
hold you give me on my property is ellusive and subject to fire walling

and invasive questioning, long periods of solitary hold time or blaring music
just to do what i used to do with a plastic disc and a needle, i need your

permission every time, to sign away my privacy and become a whore for
your partners, i get sucked into the back door of the industry but for free

Connie
"Angry even yet from the grave."

Phalli

PEG: Phyl, now that you are a journalism adjunct at several institutions of post-high school learning, how would you cite ways it's different from actual journalism.

PHYL: For one, you are interviewing me.

PEG: Are you bitter?

PHYL: Isn't that a given, Peg? Are you I wonder bitter that your children were turned by the temple into science experiments? Ever wonder if you're compared to a family of hairless purple bats?

PEG: Thinking back across your own career though, what might you have maybe tweaked a little.

PHYL: So, it ended up with the most beautiful relationship I've ever had with anyone, including my own parents. As Missy's preen gland expression specialist, I traveled places I never knew existed.

PEG: Is it now that she's past her awkward transformational stage and screeching through skies barely recognizable as anything but that what could be named "Missy."

Now that she's gone, not Missy. That you are irrelevant, or tell yourself so. That Sports n' Sex Crimes Bugle doesn't any longer have a place for you.

PHYL: They don't have a place for me; they fired me. They were bought out by Applebees.

And to answer your initial question, I find the life of a freeway-flying adjunct to be very much like journalism: traveling a magic carpet between radically different sets of expectations, philosophies, approaches, policies, operating systems, personalities, parking procedures, lexicon, jargon, argot... having to almost sociopathologically enter, absorb and reflect each mirrored chamber.

PEG: I was a substitute teacher for a while in the 80's. They stole my car, drove it to the beach with a case of beer and spray painted phalli on the backs of the seats.

PHYL: Are we done here?

very expensive swimming pool

every day was a bald giant pounding his metal hammers
KUNG KUNG KUNG KUNG
it's supposed to be like a primitive prehistoric setting but
they have SUV's

i fight any person with whom i come in contact
friend foe blood stranger
equally, as a way to bully me up a family, i
see wrong in you

i dare assholes to try and blame me for providing a center
if there's nature to give
and the right combination of loving and wanting, then
it works atemporally


Mike
as "La Chama"

Meaninglessness, ennui and torpor walked into a bar

She's a monster hatched and finally fully free in the open range

***This post was the last straw for the Mthyuh Preservation Society, whose board took final action to stifle effective immediately. ***

I beg to surrender

it keeps me from sinking into despair
to sit here and defend myself into thin air

i speak to an imagined hypothetical judge
as if she cared. My dog's jowls spread on

the carpet as it hears the cascading pleas
some nights on my knees I beg to surrender


Donna

dysexistencia

may as well, outside these walls
a vacuum, a wanderer, dreaming
lidderly everyone else human

as for other species and breed
we can look out for one another
between the pageantry and combat

the northern clamp sets in again
changes the pressure in the head
metal pops and wood groans on


Missy
"A year liberated."

Plenty of light for one day

If we do remember previous lives that means this is everyone's first life-- how weird!
But there are people who lived and died before us so their souls must've gone elsewhere.
So one life per dimension is one thing known-- some kind of cosmic musical chairs.

Connie

People say things that don't mean anything

stay up late thinking i'm stealing hours nobody's missing
listening to people say things that don't mean anything
madison avenue with the asshole of pop culture stretched
into a crown, the rancid echo chamber, dreaming dog
i'm seeing one of those walking light storms the blind have
it doesn't matter if i open or close my eyes, both the same
that's how hard they're tripping, node tips of technology

Alone/ unique

even though we know we're not the only liveable planet out there
when you think about the distances it doesn't really even matter
it's kind of the same thing yes it is like that being alone/ unique

maybe the only reason to hate the cold is how it's like terror,
overlap in muscles seized creating a fallacious pathos transfer
don't you see it's warm enough to survive inside each one of us


Reptily

Two kinds of muscle memory

One kind of muscle memory is after you wash a dish x many times. The memory lives in the nerves of the muscle rather than the conscious mind, which can now refocus or wander.

Another kind is when muscle reacts to an acute shock to the mind or the body or a chronic series of shocks that motivate regular squirts of cortisol to enter the bloodstream.

The muscle develops a knot that when touched or manipulated will release the memory of the shock and/or a sensory and emotional reproduction of the time or times.


Thong, Dr. Donna 
Journal of the Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement
"Re-licensing Imminent"

What it was like to wreck my SUV at 70 mph

a very stiff jagged branch about the grain of rebar and its accompanying twigs and leaves
impaled the door behind me and into backseat sitting space about two feet.
the driver-side mainframe was buckled in where it'd nestled against a limb

(the part where in a smaller car would be the driver's head).
what it was like was the bladder dip at the point in the
car wash where the machine takes over and you are seated at a dead console.

no contact is being made with a surface, so the wheel can turn
either way without avoiding a dreadful consequence.
the optional on off slide corrector was not on, and a wide, slow spin began:

ooohhhhhhhoooooowheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekuh-kuh...BAM!

after a microsleep, and that not before feeling my head slam,
I found my phone but someone had already called police. I
walked uphill to the squad with an umbrella, climbed in back.

we watched another gentleman doing it, except his bumper flew
off, and it looked like a body on the road in the blur. soon he too
came up to the shoulder, and we sat on the same warm seat.


Hoolie

Going, not been

Suddenly my directional hair growth pattern is a vortex.
There is a calm, bare center, circumference of a walnut.

I buy and lose a hand mirror oh once every ten years.
No recollection comes to mind of this severe a design.

Unlike the barber who found a hippie veteran's cap, a
Living map tells you where you are and going, not been.


Tom

7 barbara

KEN:
We used to play a game and instead of saying seven billion we'd say seven barbara. and now when I say your name i think seven barbara, or i silently think seven barbara. you're not just any one. he'd say i got a pirate, i got a mustang, but my retort was always aint got a seven barbara.

JAN:
He already wasn't himself before I even met him. Yet I fell in love with that former self, what I could recognize that his familiars saw as person half empty.

KEN:
Self a lot. Are you trying to self me something? Shouldn't you be out selving crimes?


Dean Roy Dukes

drudgery of fashion

his precarious mid-century recliner
bought of the drudgery of fashion
thinking good news would protect him:
a torture chair, with knobs where your
elbows would be and a loose ratchet

rickety and in the style of Monte Carlo,
this furniture is mild to the eye but does
not meld to your body on it if you dig
may have been a her chair, something
not so comfy as a reminder what to do


Peg

Hell Burns

Hell burns the entirety of the spine.
Organs hang and collide.
Eternity impends.

Hell burns it well and frequently,
Takes in the scold, the suicide,
Won't open up even.

All this is ashes kep' aloft by heat;
Clouds have no gravity beside
The molten stone pit.


Mkidza Mlaf
"Mama of the Chama"

they list, in progress

• they want to go slow until you try and pass them
• they claw and backbite for tiny differentials
• they think all food is their food
• they draw you close only to flinch at your over-familiarity
• they move in packs with self-loathing at the sight of a free agent
• they are only pro-their-own family
• they exaggerate themselves until you accept them unconditionally
• they believe life is for fun at your expense
• they don't believe in the concept of sophistication
• they suck up the world's hatefulness
• they burn the world with the world's own resentful burning
• they find and rest their righteousness in history
• they hold smug claim to a future century
• they steep in the dramas of their class oblivious to real pain
• they log in to a web of associations that transcend law
• they speak and behave in an intra-signaling manner
• they stand behind your back and make faces while the other one engages you in conversation
• they spoke like first ladies as children and then proceeded to obstruct and deaden
• they act like money is some kind of degree
• they used to be filled with delight or rage and one was the other's medicine
• they zip in and out but break into crawling straight in the face of authority
• they look one into the the other's eyes with knowing murderous
• they've already pinched off from the earth in a bubble
• they still siphon out what we work for
• they orbit us yet they make us seem peripheral
• they make you forgive them by their intransigence and your need to be free of resentment
• they find me at my weakest moments
• they circle and eye and buzz as if your suffering will fill a need
• they pick off the guards and isolate me in a context of freedom
• they learn how to twist and bend and howl for love
• they each have a sense of individuality and furtive complicity with self-interest
• they look out at the arc of a globe in wonder
• they shill in the first person plural as if they speak for everyone
• they say things like we all love a locally sourced burger
• they trademark phrases like we learn important things in life
• they didn't crawl out of the sea and turn into people here
• they take lands either habitable or uninhabitable and build cabins
• they need somebody tell them whats up   
• they build castles on live burial grounds
• they say they're giving when they're taking
• they say they must first take to give and then give nothing
• they give nothing and explain it's that they didn't get enough
• they smile as they're thieving and lock up the good for not smiling
• they lead you singing off a cliff without themselves dying
• they put their dogs down when they move like you'd turn off a utility
• they claim animal suffering as a crusade and themselves royalty over all strays
• they believe their connection to the non-human to be more profound than most
• they take refuge in a killer's house and act surprised when they're targeted
• they get killed by making killers kings
• they share enjoyment in morbidity when it's warranted
• they take their private pleasure in all kinds of morbidity at every hour of the day
• they beg forgiveness from a terrible conjuring
• they conjure punishments and rewards and go on uneasily with neither
• they counsel that it's choices get us where we are choices
• they've made all matter their monument but won't let you cry on a shoulder
• they murmur sentiments only meant to hypnotize you further
• they hog at light with anachronistic agrarian vigor

Russ T.

mr boy

watcha wanni mr boy watcha wanni watcha wanni
mr boy watcha wanni mr boy
too much money too much money mr boy mr boy mr
boy too much money mr boy boy mr mr boy
wachi wanni too much money mr boy mr boy
mr wanni too much money mr boy


La LaLa

K's fly spread eagle

They have the humanity we selected out of them;
Less intimate species run parallel wild.
It's what makes K's special.
K's are tools hunting companion.
K's fly spread eagle.


Missy
"Full sprout"

Sweet luck

thank you, thank you, i feel unworthy but thank you
i know it's not because i'm good i get such bounty
count of all the good that go with nothing
it has to be sweet luck or grace but not reward
maybe as a rule life on a mean is better than what i was getting
and this is just what other average joes expect


La Chama

Weak of neck

I let 2 of hell's demons
bear me sleeping in a chair
hold, on bleeding wings

a mortal gives up and not
of his will and gravity
ceases to apply as he lives

one's head might loll on
weak-of-neck passenger
who may yet banish sin


Peg