Black rectangle

Climb back into your body
where it's safe (?) black
rectangle on the eye balls

Floating black rectangle the
negative of a backlit screen
framed in light in the mind

I carry this rectangular iris
shape in my body visually
for a longer or fading time


Jan Jansdaad
"I'm Jan's daughter Jan, and he's my father."

Two foot

Caulk skylights

the east and west

his body is skinny but he has a big head and feet
she gets sore walking her muscle torso on sticks

they face the east and west, wasted to the known
proving those that seek darkness only need sleep


by Donna

kabob

Scared face

As did a forger, I held my face print in my mind and
went to the mirror's afterimage: I saw the scared face
or is it sentiment of fear, of losing my object, mirror

it's the face with which frankly I looked at you with
but more from above, so more sag, an ebbing red now
and I saw there in my own shadow your fear or the

reflection of my face in your face, the fear we share
but now as well a longing hopefulness, melodramatic
twinkle, or was it on my blank face yours printed fear?


Ted
"For you, Phyllis"

Compromised ramrod

this doesn't hang right
too many holes in wall
october's sunset night
sinks into vortex now

i do every bad I can do
exploit days without you
seeking unhealthy meals
because I'll see you soon

i rise to your higher state
or habits, maybe fate can
tell why we get on so well
shack up after two dates


Hoolie
"I'm vulnerable right now."

snot storm

there are protective toxins
that make petty little bitches
of ladies and gentlemen

Story of the Protective Toxin

It was a flower, and it gave off just the right amount of protective toxin, a discourager rather than an exterminator. Then one year there was an exponentially larger aphid swarm, and it had to blast the protective toxin to fight the pestilence, but then it didn't turn off. In subsequent years, essential bugs just died against its fluorescent, amoniac ribs, and then it too withered from lack of pollen or whatever.

Is it one of those morals where you can see the shame rather than the practice as pathological. Can it be cured by the medium of matrimonial gravitas.

I washed ashore here with all my shit

I washed ashore here with all my shit
the beach of autumn's cusp

There's no one who really cares, all gone
taken by winter's dawn

As live man scratches lid of casket,
I hammered my own hull

Spin, vajra-- spin! Tear up the ages.
Clean the rocks of lichen.



Ilyn
"Short for a state in the Great Lakes Region"

The only answer is to be like Jesus

The only answer is to be like Jesus
not dead Jesus, or like live Jesus as
He is represented to live by some,
but like Jesus's red letters in the
eponymous edition, only that, the
red letters in the white, zippered
vinyl embossed with gold letters.

Jesus had the answers, all the an-
swers, not the rest of the Bible.
He lidderly didn't have the rest.
To be like Jesus is forgive above
all and also give, reflect, cleanse.
Other religions are inferior when
you are not sure they have all this.

You hit rock bottom with trendy
ministries preaching catchy sides
but which turn a cheek, and which
Christians? Which let live the
guilty and the innocent, born equal
and fall, not just make bad choices.
He'd say get up and walk, forget it.


Donna Thong
"Still've got the surgery on the patio!"

rock, wall

The spring is a yawning hole

post-apocalyptic situation wherein all that works is a DOS command
they'd call you technologically proficient for engaging a raw prompt

the whole mouth, esophagus to gut, throughout which flora undulate
is the center you carry forward, ever acting on behalf of or to palliate

and as if swallowing yourself you tumble into a hoary spelunkee
and to greet you lie the others who can't turn their choices around



Illyn
"It's a shorter way of saying Illinois."

there is poetry and a dharma of hopelessness

there is poetry and a dharma of hopelessness
there is a reassuring failure of meta-cognition

knowing disaster while viewing affairs clearly 
to how free you feel, even surrender must kneel

this is the base for carrying on, that nothing-to-
lose appeal, a pheromone that attracts rich men


I am Reptily

Donna and peg in prison

DONNA: I'm fed up.

PEG: Enough with your victimization mentality.

DONNA: I agree. If I have to choose between being manager of a taco bell or eating shit on my knees before a corrupt overlord, I'll choose a disability claim.

PEG: What kinda disability?

DONNA: Can't take it.

PEG: Oh uh huh.

DONNA: If you can't take it, you can't make it.

PEG: Yer disabled.

DONNA: Ya.

PEG: But you can turn it around.

DONNA: No.

PEG: Ok.

DONNA: I'm done. I'm not turning it around.

PEG: Ok Donna.

Hernia of restraint

in continents where norms reign
the worst that can happen is the
hernia of restraint/ can't stop it.

like losing hair, unable to cover
slow fate off crown lifts the veil
but it's jabberwocky, mean voice

other decades were a waterfall
beat hopping against the surface
this spins out ones waving arms



Donna Thong

Sermon: Thursday 21 January 2010

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

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

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

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

Ilyn, Brother. Sermon, frag. 11-14

Exploring poverty

Choices, you said. It's all about
choices. Then what choice was it
made you die of a flesh-eating bacteria
one year into retirement, dead guy?

Exploring poverty is one way to
look at the choices splaying their
obscenely self-lubricating labia out in
front of me, every day, no matter why.

This want is like being in an accident
because you realize that you're alive
means you can survive even where
lack of means is the definition of sin.

The second time it comes again is
a roller coaster ride, but strapped in,
and you become well trained in the
work of penury and getting a bone in.


by Peg
"Thank Mthyuh the kids have jobs." 

We feel backwards toward the animals

Even animals feel th' backward attraction to lesser
animals when they are hungry or just want to hunt.

Me and Bradley had the pause of nay a generation
to take a breath from the laws of nature for paper

jobs or test tubes in his case, restless for open air,
but no one, especially not a father, with the trade.

Even to ride or work a beast these days is tacky,
Though I still set them on scavengers in the yard.

Fourth Warning

even tho it started with rain n' hail
and the storm cover kinda langered
we got a fourth warning about fire

she'd written on her knuckle "EXT"
for extinguisher, put it on the calendar
then spent another day wet dreaming

a day or many days in shrouds've
pine cone incense n' flaming tortillas,
seizures of a fan deep in the tower

gave way t' television first responders,
a mistry fanger burn way after dinner,
n' all the stores are closed till morning



by Ted
"I remember, Peg"

Reptily's Song

men are pigs
the body is disgusting
life is meaningless
there is no God
hell never ends


by Reptily

ahmahkanguhthahthanguh

Kang o the Thang

it's hard for a man to subordinate himself to a foreign culture
and it's hard to subordinate a man to your foreign culture

but if you feel alienated from the society, you might likely
try and subordinate everyone to the power of another thing

and that will have warped you into another level of being
and you rule alongside the super predators as a lieutenant


by Reptily
"ahmakangathuhthanguh"

Don't Buy This Jacket

Exostosis

They said I'd have to harden up going this way as if going any way wouldn't be hard though they weren't sure if I was human. My exostosis protects the vital joints and organs but not skin.

As I rise up like a row of corn, I'm lucky for a shaggy loam rebirth medium or granite decomposed. They tried an exorcist but he said it was just a physical deformity coupled with the supernatural.

Shab is always at my side, the dog with an empty saddle, glowing red eyes. He will drag me to the Monster Poinsettia in a square-wheeled barrow for a ritual enactment of the day it bit off my hands.


Illyn
"Begging Raja"

Could you help

could you help me to practice being fake
closing the drapes just now
like i do every night
seemed so final

is it true when you make a stop too late
it could be risky because
you can't get a cab

you should know by now i cannot
will the day or my fate

and that a ghost, to stay, must masquerade



Illyn
"It's short for Illinois"

Monster bachelor

son breaks up through rocks of the ritual grave
he's here a calling, must morbidly stop
the coming to face, wall writing, other's gaze
there were seasons to make another pain layer
of hopscotch players, but this matter is nuclear
return as ant to work through failure as ant
strength to lift interlocked human structures
from their hooks and rafters, catatonia
but he wills upon himself the burden/ yoke
between the thrills and laughter of a singlehood.



by Hoolie
"I'm sorry, Donna."

Let them rot

brain has to figure his housing out
adapt to having a different face
every goddamn time, this puzzle,
definition, reason, holder, fence
is it who i am or what happened
go around asking ultimatums
that stir the pot; let them rot.
all there was to know was known
and forgot and cycled back around
and sold, and owned and sold.


Reptily
"Think I might be low T."

Nightmares Come True, But Not Dreams

As i'm sitting here thinking
about what i'm going thru,
and what it all means, i
ask God why the nightmares
come true, but not dreams?

When i reflect on you i see
a shadow, reft of both of us
on every side, ground falls
toward infinity, pure memory
where we are free floating.



Donna Thong-Cravenly
"I'm sorry, Mike."

This is How it Turned Out

their bodies are built to eat bones
we can stand in wonder and worry

tight ear feeling while no sound
jaws create movement in canal

land stretches for thousands of
miles in every direction from here



by Donna Thong

Fart box

constant strumming summer evening cloud strobe

from early morning, under plaited foam
no screeching cicadas nor shower bristle
only the light damping and constant
strumming summer evening cloud strobe

electricity seeking penetration where any
other weather aspect couldn't go, a home.
we three are swept up, by way of ion, or
waves of dread for coming winter, of day.

Ridiculous situation

Most people are in a ridiculous situation.
The closer you look, nothing matches up.
They betray and contradict themselves
and one another. But there are missing
parts that fit in other places in the best of
worlds and so are right where they belong.

Zoom out and take a look at the mosaic
that appears when all the parts are found
accounted for and understood as a path-
ologist would in following an infection.
Where my part is now the one that fol-
lows you around is where your art is.



by Reptily
for Edgar Cayce

Ovnsstekt Torsk Med Sitron

Tomorrow of the Self

I could have put my arm around you or threw up
my hands on the way down; you could have
clamped onto my arm for a safety, girly feeling,
but the ride is currently sliding into denouement.

Maybe there's no need for action when the place
and what's going on all around are plenty enter-
taining, but then the whole thing closes down.
There's no earned talent over time for pairing off.

You see an infusion of cash and you wonder will
there be the fulfillment of a fantasy of together
or the sudden chance to turn an innocent regret
into Tomorrow of the Self, a triumphant pillage?



by Ted
"I'm reaching into space to get you back, Phyl."

Tittie-clamp chain

Vast store of condoms, all expired.

Tittie-clamp chain now a roach clip,

And sometimes it swings alarmingly.

Two rubber nubs from the one wicked-

Tight alligator jaw are long vacuumed.

The coiled old links weigh in a palm.

The roads-to-Rome breeze of a central 

Air filtration system pulls away odors

Yet also beckons towards the outdoors.

Reptily

Hi

Not tryna take anybody's job
Who's already in one
Don't wanna step on any toes
It's just my nature
I want to fill the opening.


Reptily
"Hi"

Uranus

OMG isn't anyone allowed to have a personality anymore? Not allowed in the workplace unless you are a vocal-frying, nasal talking, Lexapro-taking cyber-prosthetic clone of some fat, de-gendered hipster? Where are the bigger-than-life smokers and drinkers of the Earth's last earnest millennium?

The only reason some men pull back at all on their missions to inseminate is that they can't keep moving the penis forward ad infinitum, and despite the design of the organ, there's no more pleasure in retreat than in breaking a perfectly good line, a straight-on ray, into pathetically iterative fragments.


by Peg

Instead I nursed a burn from the roaster rack on my bird finger

I was staring out a window eating potato salad, and suddenly
we were prepping for a 'nade, securing hallway doors, and
on second glance, there were in fact no storm cells everywhere

instead I nursed a burn from the roaster rack on my bird finger
having stepped into the rain for a fistful of fennel and stuffed it,
sinews of intimacy had grown too tight, thus my careless touch.

the way this one bubbled against nature, bled medical waste
the butchered organism suffers indignity of fate
when with what it is embalmed is the same as what it ate


by Peg

Hot moral core

every heartbeat
is a startle response
at the fact of being

how terror's an actor
in the hot moral core
of every moment

too many ones set
to watch and ring hands
too few safe and warm



Donna Thong
Poetry Support Group
Chapbook Exhibition Day
Big Table C

Middle of the day

Missy felt like she could fall asleep as long as her wing blades were crossed in front of her and she was spouting plenty of burning pus.

But then she had to startle awake and remind herself no even tho she's backed up into a safe stone corner, and she's a real K now, she can die.

So she may fight for a while and back on into the mountainside crease, too tired to climb into the sky, the only way to Cliffe Suites.

But they're coming at her! She must get out this could be the end. It was the middle of the day, plenty of time for them to send new recruits.

Missionaries

 

Sunglasses, wallet, instamatic

Sunglasses, wallet, instamatic
Feeling Racing
sockless
most everything is new
haunted house



Donna
Poetry Support Group
Big Table B

7-4-15

Blocked sun hole w bird

Dhubbabera silhouette

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."