Spots

Raised on open-ended talk therapy, they began to want a face to want their feelings and so began to feel unimportant and uncomfortably swollen with emotive language as the sessions ebbed.

They began to wonder if they'd ever find the kind of begrudging rapt attention that a specialist, predisposed to listening and to caring, could give them; if they'd been genuinely interesting.

They noted at some level that it worked on one another but it felt a bit like incest, which it wasn't. The world out there was relevant while full of spots that wanted to defy them an existence.


Donna Thong
Registered Recertification Intern
Highchank Spa 
Highchank

Hard heart

if you were born with one side of your jaw fused together
it would feel like your face was breaking when you yawn

i want not to learn more but for learning to leave me alone
it gradually stops sinking in and you know enough to hide

when you came out of the coma it was on the awkward side
fate too I chose to leave as if it were as it was, accomplished


by Hoolie
"Sorry Mike."

You warp quotidian

brusque post-noon sun gives over
to cooler evening breeze creeping in

temperatures sway on the spine of
shadow, edge of volcano whipping

torn outline of ruling hedge above
you warp quotidian dark and light


Illyn
"Short for Illinois"

Optimistic flotsam

They have to kick balloons to walk
Before the help with popping sticks
Fans through aisles and over stages
Jabbing in competition with a child
To quell the last optimistic flotsam

Self-loathing and hate, exasperation, fatigue

Mood was fine, then
bus driver aimed the door to stop way ahead
and even though it was a white person getting
off, I held it against her and didn't look her in
the eye as I put the money in the slot. Then I
couldn't get out and she said press the button
in the box, and a black woman behind me said
thank you to the driver and pressed the button
for me and I did hate everyone for a while as
I walked up the sidewalk. Then finally when I
went to check out with a protein shake, I asked
nicely for a couple of fives to take the bus and
the cashier said sure no problem and my whole
world became again a dreamer's paradise. Now
however, I recall the part I've blanked out: an
earnest prayer said just before through a storm
of self-loathing and hate, exasperation, fatigue


Jan Jansdaad, Jr.
Dr. Donna Thong
Case Management Intern

RE-CAP: cleo

chank excavation

heeza kanga the thangah

READ ME

I AM A NOTE INSIDE A WALL
FROM 2013

Apes on turtles

phone for sophisticated luddites
carrying on unto inconceivability

replacement of modernity by tec
hnology: more hustlers in stores

we see apes rolling in on turtles,
arthritic metacarpal-phelangeals

Choking Technocratic Layer

Sorry not to have more carefully parsed the sticks and noughts

As regards your proprietary and/or franchise participating eggs

to step across guiding expecting evaluating eggs spouting their

instructions admonitions hundreds of modules packed with the

blood and sweat of someone in the bowels of the grift platform

who churns out help materials so offensively unhelpful that the

product makes more neediness for real help from sham helping

Tom 
"You can be older and still on a revolutionary vanguard: against mandatory yet fraudulent embetterment."

Anew

a forest's waste
hangs and tumbled
junk. dripping,
waits as forces suck
the black paste back
in. frozen, from an
elbow swings free
parts harden to a
finer end. animals
that participate add
vim to glue but then
but recreate anew.


by Sylvia

Deepest place

for a moment I saw my psyche as a piece of real estate,
the architecture of a tree house with many round shades;
and this it appears to me means it's an inhabited system
but also that the tyranny of civilization applies, even
in that deepest sleeping place you can go before a coma


Love, Donna

skylight

Angelique Carmina

It feels like the whole
human race: go round
thinking it's my party,
wreaking havoc, the
fame-to-shame swang;
night is not a reward
but a defeat; anger is
a way that I can exp-
ress my sexuality or
gender for all to see it.

It looks like I'm onto
getting an object done
getting on hard effect-
ting a one-thing-to-an
-other change, or just
really pumped up and
that works cosmetically
for me; my partners ev-
er play the victim, but
it perpetuates attraction.


by Angelique Carmina

we're equidistant from the gate and each other

 

we're uncomfortably close
except when playing this
intergalactic starship game

we've formed a fleet and
move synchronous stealthy
toward the warp apparatus

missions are ridiculously
easy now less strategizing
with the brute force of two


Hoolie
"For you Mike"

Coprolaic

I'm coprolaic
I cannot hold my shit
hormones that brush past
my amygdalae are agressic

in a spike I don't handle life
well, only want to spit
and create strife;
fuck it.


Reptily

Lookup

You're calling back from the future but
it seems to me you call from the past
And you're calling me in the past but
I too am here in the future just not with

you. It's just that it didn't last, and then
we were friends and then your descent
your hostages your promises awakening
and then fool me twice and now you call

me here, lost in time, or rolled in the
torrents. I reach back not forward I find
what I know is true in those dioramas
down here at the bottom of the vortex


Sylvia

Sex changed my life

now i'm insane
but i can still recall
the initial stain
the birth of all

innocence crossed
overlapped activity
way past nativity
and never got lost

only knowing sets
in; trust if not dread
what ea. path begets
is grounded to a bed


Jan Jansdaad
"I'm the dad of my daughter Jan. My dad too was named Jan after his, etc. Jan can name her son or daughter Jan and may already have."

hip click

 

daylight hours are too fraught, still
less than evening's piqued replays,
and my hip clicks walking near the
ears of the seated; i'm an amazing

thing. here, deep night comes into
play. life for most is suspended, a
pool in two dimensions, while the
fewer number brave grateful sighs.

tho paucity of sun will block sight
one might grope around to identify
the very young and going old and
otherwise awake n' hopeless ones.


by Donna

Stuck in a drama means

chemical love dungeon:
stuck in a drama means
you see and feel all of it

the slow gut gyration is
wait that could be a bug:
ulcerous source as moot

i pray to be grateful for
this opportunity to have
these particular horrors:


Reptily
"Ima continue."

Bounds of trespass

you'll have the old farm house next to the new one because they owned all that property. Then the old one might become a huge compost heap, storage out building, rental, haunted ancestors. Then the farmers move away to a city and workers and machines till the soil and one or both houses might go roofless turning back to the land with remains, maybe the cement pool and patio, coated in pesticide

i said i don't like anything but i used to like that back before they kicked my ass out of there. now there's only intimate persons and no new world, back to primal shack, no more camping out at the cusp of the void in kumeyaay cahuilla and torres-martinez home, always the spaceman the visitor, no reason for pride in ancient family grants, and then the safe anonymity within the bounds of trespass

grrlie

adolescents challenging language

no don't

i called your new boyfriend a little bitch
and bade him come for me

he, petite, acted as if he were being
restrained by ghosts

you stood out of sight except your finger
wagging no don't

there by the sliding glass door
smoking a square



by Mike, Donna, and Reptily
"We've all had similar experiences."

Real stuff

now that i've scratched these feelings into the crud lining of a cave
i can lay back and purr because it's all so mutchy bettah nau
can call that fictionalize real life away, with a true depiction
whereas figments of the imagination seem to dry into tinder
real stuff stays and creates alternate relationships with each other
funny how these days i just wake and go, climb steps, and think
when i'm asleep which is when, now, whut, who-- it's all too
much anyways. For anyone who says "ama flying mindfully"
is fulla sand. all you can do as a blind man is step into air


by Reptily

Traffic confession

Hi Julie

Cog in a web

i understand about having to
keep bumping oxygen

even if you don't want to live
it's involuntary

tho as to where that will get you
is a good question

but it gets us it gets everyone
where we're all going

best think like a cog in a web
stuck fly jerking


by Reptily
"Thug going on 50 year now."

Pregnant lady

Pregnant girl-lady, dazed with the future
Do your chemicals brainwash the baby?

You churn with polemic matter, juices
And when you cut the line do I lose them?

What cellular reaction blooms in-
To desperate wailing stomping forward?


by Peg

The Real Office

[This post had been stricken by the Mthyuh Preservation Society.]

various takes on water buffalo
the female go into boss office
hair as a wig, go down on him

He come out sarcastic about an-
other woman who is not desire-
able but serious doing her work.

Next day boss and female (sec-
retary) go out to lunch reappear
two hour, interns make excuses

Coordinator come pick impreg-
nate a frontline rep who wants
a green card, become a hit team

Fattest are most powerful their
suffering greatest trust fullest
35yo VP so fat Go Rascal chair

Chairman fat back surgeries, so
revered by his butt fat and cute
baby looks with fun self-esteem

President fat is a globe equator
belt, sweat, dentures, will chew
your balls is his facial attitude.

Send selfies on dude site to the
whole Mormon town with his
hair all scruffy wanting a date.


by Donna
"In twilight during tori removal surgery."

more sailors than hippies died in bell bottoms

Never Give Up (Try)

terror
terror is setting in
terror 'n dread

never give up (try)
pain of day coming
all night

sterile fire of sun
neutralize
the ill preparing


Fmr. Dr. Donna Thong
Home Health Care Giver
Shiv Guide and Palmist

is living fighting

i'll jump in the shower, throw on a cute little outfit, and bomb on over to your place
or that's what I'd say if my vertebrae were not piqued, if my complexion were stable

my nose is open for combat and while i do not savor pain that comes only later along
with the stun that follows a slaughter even hounds' chins rest contritely on the rug

is it only that when they came for me i had to protect myself and my babies and now
i am always at the ready even needy for adversion, for a scrim across life's vagaries


by Reptily
With thanks to Dr. Donna Thong

Commemorative shard

lort, i'um impatient
for time is gone long
from behiund me

lort i prayuh chase
sauce can fine me
inis clouta dispay

chains bineme lort
mock yr prophetsing
i nade yo hair witme



Chama, First Night
Principal shard

go players

reverse dustbowl

reverse post-drought diaspora
white fatigue black fatigue
brown only getting stronger
tan no longer a viable option
red fatigue the air we breathe
white man tramping up a path
man red man black man yel-
low man tramping

almost I donno half whom's
in there they kiss with their
butts and shit out their mouths
handicapped faculty parking
that's how much I want you here
door half closed means halfway
door ajar means maybe or in
an hour then

there's latched but not locked
and latched and locked with
a rolled up towel or a note
sliding under while in micro-
sleep ascending stairs student
comment in a verbs assignment
I forgot my dreams but now
I remember

Tom
"What I said at dinner, Sylvia."

Conservatory, pipes, vines

I could go in there and lie down

i could go in there and lie down
but what if i couldn't sleep and
tossed and turned while listnin'
to my heart pound, early alarm

even dark roads in the morning
can be stop and go but there's a
system with the regulars, they
cooperate and weave in tandem

so it's on me to get t'bed in time
to have enough sleep to honor
the identical sacrifices of fellow
drivers & their unknown burdens


Ted
"I'll play along, Jan."