Replacement of Predatory Capitalism

Zoloft................................dumbbells

Xanax................................reading paper in bed

Doxepin............................walk up hill

Trazadone......................... reading paper in bed



Vicki San Jose

i can't wait for the right words to come

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be blasted from the environment
it's too late to finely hone my vocabulary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is

i wake up feeling like my face is falling off
a look in the mirror says the same about it
an animal wouldn't think but commence to lick
lame deer or fox will take the next logical step

words don't leave a vacancy more like an opening
for feelings to rush in unabated and with impunity
for crying children who once were shining princes
now nature's truest colors bleed through the fences

a stomping wild feud in a context of deregulation
nobody took a step back and said you're being used
because you had a set of rules and disabused them
you'd got too big to question when the law came in

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be locked in a penitentiary
it's too late to finely hone my obituary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is



by Donna

i'm highly intolerant/ of my environment

 

let's see how can i be not crazy, a guy 

ranting about weevils at the safeway

the baseline behavioral expectations targeted by drugs

my constitution eschews ordinariness like a new liver

because i am special i want to feel special every moment of every day

and i do feel special but too often it's especially allergic to everyone

Lord, i pray: i'm a special but i need to feel like nothing special most of the while

or i get worked up into a pickle thinking your children are idiots and brutes, and i 

forget to smile.

by Jan

I Am Movement, Part 111111

Killing it at the gym. Like when I tried to do one of those high turnaround kicks and totally missed the bag while I was also going off on it with highly focused one-two punches but mostly lots of awkwardly realistic quotidian fighting moves. Never dancing. Brutish, bare knuckled. Ever thought of going off on some guy that really deserves a punch in the face? I don't, normally. But when there is a punching bag before me, I believe I can shred it or myself before I'm done. I can feel the lashing out and I do it. At the thing. Hurts, feels good.

I smell the way gyms smelled when I was young at the gym. These guys have eerily no smell. Though one in the pantheon of personal trainers had apologized for cooking Brussels sprouts in the break room. That is the young person's smell of today, a boiled vegetable. But they seem to feel good inside when you get them talking.

Through a young male character, Elsa Morante writes "TRUE MANLY GREATNESS CONSISTS IN THE COURAGE TO ACT, IN DISDAIN FOR DANGER, AND IN VALOR DISPLAYED IN COMBAT." I was heartened, vainly, by "disdain for danger." That is me. Oh, and I act. But I may always recall the moment this afternoon, ascending a darkened stair, when I muttered, "I've reached a new low." Among lows, this one specifically was a lowness of amorality. It was victory and loss at once. I'd come upon perhaps the perfect revenge: the truth.

This morning I woke up again already sorting through scenarios for appropriate responses to the police threat, which would be quite a coup for his side if we were gaming, which each of us often were. I considered online bullying, for example. So tawdry. Willing to go darker nevertheless, I imagined approaching J during one of his epic play afternoons, with a pseudonym, as a sexy, underage gamer boy. Entrapping him and embarrassing hopefully to the level that I had been embarrassed when he decided that our neighbors and once again, the Rolling Riches PD, should all be privy to my non-threatening albeit a little menacing passionate pen letter, and add to that his stroke of genius in getting it done without having to come into contact at any point with the dirty authorities directly!

The creepy trapping and shaming scheme did bear fruit sideways: instead, I would address my suspicions and indeed evidentiary knowledge of J's untoward interest in little boys and in the idea of himself as a sexual little boy-- not unlike, come to think of it, an MJ of an earlier time. One last letter to the family could be gotten off before any prohibitions to that effect could come my way-- I'd only heard that the dreaded "trigger" (J is such a drama queen, ironically, behind that often dead and inexpressive mug) involved telephone calls, and my own lawyer had only admonished me not to contact J in any way-- nothing was said about the family. And apart from my other scheme, to go and steal all the bagels at his favorite store before he can get there on the day they come in, I didn't think direct contact was a good idea either.

Subj: Pretty sure J is a pederast

Dear R,

I won't be bothering you any further. Just need to tell you that there is a concern about J and his feelings toward young boys. I don't know if he would/ will act or has acted on them, but I didn't think he would act on other weird, inappropriate boundary issues either, and I've learned otherwise. You have grand-kids around, right? That's why I mention it.

As I say, I don't want to bother you or J any further.

There-- that last part I can't describe as-- well, any of the parts maybe as "valor in combat." It was for my own protection, a reassurance that was really more begging her not to let him call the police over this now. I don't know how I would handle that. And I have a choice still. I recognize it. However, especially the way the political fields draw blood these days, there was no rule broken at this point. It meets an objective to inflict pain sufficiently guaranteed to be as much or more than what I suffered. In addition, wouldn't pederasty be a line, finally, that J would not cross as far as welcoming the police, neighbors, lawyers, therapists to know about it? Would this stop everything, finally, in its tracks? Could I walk away as a winner even without feeling like one, or would I wake up the next day already grinding on a new slight or worry that just couldn't go without addressing? Would the anxiety on edge for Officer Caviar's knock on my door in the night be unbearable?

Dawn Warning

Only an alarming bright moon in the winter trees can
Wake me from the sense of no one near this dead end

Wide moon in evenings, sailors feel their feelings
Wide moon at midday, sailors eat their hearts away

We shun the dawn because it will not bring good news
We pace the cage of night only wanting freedom to run


by Reptily

I Am Movement Part 11111

I'm toying with them, like a savvy naughty kitty many times their size that likes the sound of its own little bell. This is the position advancing age puts you into. Exaggerated sense of omnipotence. Yet my suffering is so great that it seems to envelope all of us in the Fellowship Hall of the Lutheran church as a drizzle freezes the parking lot. I walk up to the coffee pot.

How could I not cause a stir. A great big faggot simply cannot just blend in anyway, so you may as well try and manage the reaction rather than freak out about it. What if I just let loose with an unending gay hilarity of shade and cheer. Would this not attract even more suspicion and dread? It's really more me to take on a sort of biker Susan Sontag look and feel.

Are you the coffee person? No, he is. You're the coffee person? You have a commitment? How did you get that? From the secretary? There's a business meeting. You have to go there and talk to the Key Committee. And then what. I want a coffee commitment, so I have to go and appear before a  committee. What happens after that? Do I have to fill out a form? Do I need ID...?

This is when the coffee person, a cute olive blob in the middle of the swarm of straight white maleness beneath the primitive rendition of the Last Supper but many times bigger on the apse-like wall that stretched around us all, broke down and smiled a little giving me the benefit of the doubt that my affect was dry humor rather than killer-y. Every one of the enrobed and slightly crazed looking gentlemen sitting half-circle at the Last table were lightly-tanned Scandinavians and none of them was an easily identifiable Judas.

I'm thinking about the great power/ great responsibility ratio and how yes, I will probably start pissing these guys off more and more the more they get to know me, and that will provide them an opportunity to work their programs, after going off on me in one way or another, coming back to apologize/ 5th-step me, and the process would begin again, but that would be how I-- a way into having a relationship with these men, like the lovable punching bag maybe it could be.

Or I feel like I could drive these men insane if I wanted to. Really push them to their limits at least as much as I have a whole string of men, many of which I was able to work on most deeply in the confines of our own homes. In. Sane. I shared in keeping with the Persistence theme that sure, I think I've been persistent and steadfast, I haven't picked up a drink in 7 years in spite of X, Y and Z happening, making it as exotic and dramatic as I can so they all are secretly wanting my transgressive but glamorous experience strength and hope. How I'd accidentally almost married some autistic guy and he called the police on me when I slammed the door too hard. How he kicked me out suddenly but only after he already had somebody else lined up and in operation. How he had his neighbors call the cops on me when I called him on the phone too many times. How he'd kicked me out and ended up under the power of drunken landlords who proceeded to also kick me out. How I'd ended up in Chukka Chank wanting to just find a safe place to burrow in and be safe after all that had happened. How I wanted to buy a gun today because if the cops were going to come and try to drag me off to jail from my home in the middle of the night, I will have a way to prevent that from happening.

I Am Movement, Part 111

That was J. I was right! That X of his is up to no good, and I think it's time to call the police! Do you remember when we were walking the Circle yesterday and we saw him pull up with his driver-side mirror all taped on and slide a suspicious package into J's mailbox!?

Darling you look a little funny when you're angry in your pussy hat. Were you at another march?

[FEELING HEAD, REMOVES PUSSY HAT] Don't try and distract me. J is just so special and so nice-- like a crazy-smart savant child!

He's in his late 50's.

Listen to this. That asshole X of his called J. 100 times.

Whut? My God. Are we... are we in danger?

[PHONE RINGS, COUPLE STARTLE-REFLEX IN UNISON]

Oh. Maybe it's Officer Caviar.

So you already called the police.

Just with an initial report.

Of what?

Probably just criminal stalking, but possibly a bomb or bomb threat.

Whuh-whut?

Hello?

This is Officer Scrum Caviar from the Rolling Riches PD. Yeah that suspicious package you had the bomb squad come over there for turned out to be a letter from the boyfriend or whatever.

You mean the X. He is not welcome in this neighborhood.

Well Ma'am...

Someone who calls someone 100 times? His voicemail was completely full.

Do you know why your neighbor didn't answer the phone, or why he did not contact us himself?

Oh he's too distraught. And out of town. He's put me personally in charge of keeping an eye on the property while he's gone. There are definitely some criminal damages going on here.

Well from the letter it appears that the X is trying to revisit the history of his relationship with J, which appears to have only recently ended. We see this kind of quarreling a lot, oh who are you going out with now, must be a whore, all that kind of thing. The seniors these days are really worse even than the young ones on that score. But of course it can always lead to murder, torture, or mass violence with bystanders being injured as well so better safe than sorry.

Officer Caviar, I have here in front of me an instrument, a precisely worded legal instrument in which a trigger has been installed, and the trigger is set to start off a chain of actions that cannot be stopped once set in place. It is a set of instructions from J., a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, who only wants to see justice done and peace restored to our neighborhood.

Actually, he's been living on disability for decades.

How would you know that?

Another neighbor mentioned it to us. He inherited money from his parents to buy that house. Though he does seem very smart.

The instrument states that the X must be warned immediately to cease and desist.

Well what I can do is just give him a very stern talking to, and I think he'll...

I hope so, officer. We are in possession of a written legal instrument devised by J's lawyer at great haste just this evening that includes a trigger clause. If there is one more call made to J's number by the ex, this must trigger the official request for a restraining order is to take effect at that point. I can fax that over to you right now using this... contraption on my phone, I... haha! I'm getting so old, I...

Haha.

Well, I'll bring it by tomorrow and pick up that letter to pass along to J. 

I understand, Mrs. Pu...Hat... Citizen.

[ALL LOOK DOWN AT THE PINK PUSSY HAT IN HER HAND WITH THE WORDS "PUSSY HAT" SEWN IN]

My husband Lucas would like to have a moment.

Officer Caviar, thank you for your service. I am just wondering if there are any precautions we should be taking. And to think we spoke directly to that "X" guy during our holiday luminaria participation drive!

Well sir, I can assure you that there are no further precautions that you will need to take in that I will-- I didn't want to put it to your wife that way of course, but I will call this asshole at night, in his own home, and scare the living shit out of 'im. That usually helps them see a better way.

I Am Movement, Part 1

It's a little hard to organize my thoughts while pressing Call, then Disconnect, then Call again every 40 seconds or so. I was able to drive while doing that yesterday because I have the Bluetooth controls embedded in my steering wheel, and driving gives you the feeling of getting a job done even when you are just sitting there staring ahead of you at crispy acres of cornrowed soil, ashy and devoid of snow during this other-worldly warm January week in the Great Lakes Region. I and so many others may have just stayed home otherwise.

Yesterday it was also quite sunny, so I thought I had a good chance of finding my ex and the new boyfriend perhaps out on the driveway with one of the garage doors open and a barbecue going, or in the back yard behind the iron fence he'd put up all around the tree line for my dogs after we picked out that house on the wooded lot together only 2 short years ago. In case I didn't find them, I had a padded manila envelope all stamped and sealed with an SASE enclosed (remember those?) to drop in J's USPS mailbox up at the top of the driveway on the street for him to answer the questions I've been trying to get him to answer for days now by calling and emailing:

THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WHOSE ANSWERS WILL HELP ME MOVE ON

1) Did you know him before you kicked me out?

2) Did he encourage you to break up with me?

3) Who is it-- the foot fetish guy who gave you dark socks to wear? The scumbag therapist in St. Dick? Someone from the group I introduced you to?

4) Why didn't you spend Thanksgiving with him? Why did you come to my family's gathering instead and allow my mother to give you a welcome-back kiss?

5) Did you also have sex with M's friend in Oakland? You know, the guy sitting across from you when we had my colleagues over for maiale al latte?

6) Who else, how many others, did you have sex with during the time we were together?

7) You always said that the one other serious relationship in your life, supposedly, ended because he “cheated” on you. Was it really the other way around? Did you cheat on him?

Please respond asap. Consider it a last merciful act so that I can let you go. I believe these questions are lingering because you do not conduct yourself or communicate normally with other people. I just need some closure and some answers, J. You can at least do that even though you have not thought to apologize to me.

And I didn't find them, even at two of J's favorite forest preserves for taking walks on days exactly like yesterday. When I pulled into the parking lot at the first one, an advertisement for a "SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE" jumped out at me from the glass case where the trail map and nature notes can normally be expected. Though there was no sign of J's car, they could have taken the boyfriend's. Out on the trail, it appeared to be a normal day with neighbors and dogs, but these were no longer my neighbors, fact of which created an out-of-place, dreamlike, this-is-wrong feeling, and I was using my own dog only as a prop; she would have been happier on our regular route around the new neighborhood in our new house at the end of a dead-end street; there are DEAD END signs both as you enter my block and when you get to my house, which is next to a park, which has a large red/white striped barricade posted with the DEAD END sign at its center.

What was I going to do had I run into J. and his whore? Everything was planned. "Oh. So this is him. What's your name? Mike? Hi, Mike." We'd be standing in a triangle on the paved section of the trail, stepping aside politely for the occasional bicycle. "Did you know that you are not able to satisfy J. sexually as well as I can? No? Ask him. That's what he told me." This was actually true. During the initial telephonic confrontation, J. had confirmed as much. Everything I'd planned was carefully based on either truth or conjecture, no lies. "So you must have a very tiny penis." I was trying to fashion my behavior, which was seeming boringly garden-variety OCD, and in a teenage way, to be more palatable to myself by framing it more in my mind as a crusade of virtuous comeuppance like Karen Silkwood or Norma Rae or even the tear-laden journey of a wronged single mom, the dogged search for answers by the mother of a murdered girl (as recently seen on True Crime Weekend Bonus Murders). And all of those scenarios are true in their way, even the murder, which was the assassination of my plans for the rest of my life. "And what do you plan to do when J. does this same disservice to you? Are you sure that he's not already letting someone else fuck him when you're not there? Did you encourage this? Bad stuff comes back around."

But no luck yesterday and no luck today. I drove back around the circle around the tree where we'd been invited for a Memorial Day picnic which had been cancelled due to rain and a huge rotted section of the ancient oak had crashed down into the grassy area exactly where we would have been sitting in our lawn chairs and left deep wounds in the soft black soil. The envelope I'd left in the box was still there from the day before. So maybe he'd left town, maybe with the boyfriend in tow? As I started pressing redial on the steering wheel again, my poor little bitch just laid in the back seat with her nose between her claws, appearing to disapprove. She was air-throat crying. I myself had waken up crying for days, but it felt great to be off my meds and feeling my feelings for once: nauseous with hurt and disgust and fear for the future, dizzy with doubt and alarm at whatever it was that I was doing.

One way we got here was because J. has Asperger's, and though he is rarely driven by cruel intentions, he often hurt my feelings unintentionally due to communication and self-awareness issues. Because I knew that he knew I knew about his strange proclivities, I felt emboldened to go ahead and exercise my own, like my love for repeating numbers. Yesterday, I noticed that I had called J. 67 times, which was a botheringly random number. I thought about taking it up to 69 times, but what was that supposed to mean in this context? J. and I never once did that, and sucking, in fact, was just not a main feature of our love life. One reason that I took such a hard hit on this one was that after a lifetime of sucking and getting sucked, with J. I had been able to settle into what seemed like what must be a very normal routine for married couples, the seamless bi-weekly fuck you don't even have to think about. No worries on how long it will take you to cum or whether or not that will happen; no problems with all the safe-sex contraptions and complicated workarounds; J. had taken great pains to make sure I was tested thoroughly and even questioned my doctor in person about the results before he would even consider letting me in on a world-class butthole that was the result of decades of semi-professional bicycling and constant running from bullies at recess before that. So the only choice I could think of after 69 was 111, and I had even happened to see the lucky 1's (Grand = the elevens: 11:11) as I glanced at my phone on my way out the door yesterday. So I made 42 more calls.

Then today after taking a whole other trip over there, finding the envelope from the day before, going to the forest preserve anyway, not finding his car, still disturbed by my own behavior and even more sad because the sun had disappeared, I accidentally called him 112 times. Even as I made the last call, I heard myself saying, "If this goes over, I'll have to take it up to 222." But I stopped at 112. I am thinking of it as "111 + 1" in that it could mean, "I started at 111, and today it's 112. You know what to expect tomorrow" (as if he is quaking in his boots because he cares exactly how many times I am calling beyond the fact that I am calling too much). My other way out of having to make 110 more calls to get to 222 was the switch I'd made to letting every call today go to his voicemail. This threat was a little meatier because it might mean that if I continued doing that every day, J. would have to spend a lot of time going in and erasing my blank messages so that other callers would not encounter the "mailbox is full" message. I had already gotten to Mailbox Full at call 67, but I couldn't stop there for reasons that I have already described above.

How can someone move to your state from a completely different state, say they want to marry you, buy a gigantic house and put up a fence for your dogs in the back of it, join you for six weeks teaching summer sessions at a school in a third state, include you in the hospital stay and talks with the doctor during their brain surgeries, recovering alongside you, supporting you in your own substantial struggles with work and health, and then turn out to be a total fucking boundary-less skank with other men?  Someone who does not even talk in bed? How can you plan against or protect yourself from a person like this? They let your mother kiss them on the face and welcome them back into your life and then go the very next day to their non-aforementioned lover? As I pulled away from the last spot I could think of where they would have been walking, my little bitch made a sigh, and I started thinking less about J., and after having sat drinking coffee and pressing the Call and Disconnect buttons for most of the morning, it was more about just getting to a place now where I could pee.

Ah, why here's a kibo outside the wildlife museum. I'll just pop in there. Ah. There in the darkness, a light goes on. Men standing in and around the kibo acting casual. Now I know where the boyfriend came from. I can almost hear him now. I say, "Jon, you've been tricking with guys at the kibo in the preserve?" And he'll say, "Can't say I didn't invite you along for those walks. You were just too grumpy." Actually he would never say that. He probably wouldn't say anything at all. Why should he, a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, have to say anything-- ever?

I Blame the World

If you must know, then yes, I blame the world and everyone in it.

I blame the world, and I blame my parents. I don't think, and I speak

without irony, that my life is the result of my own choices either

principally or even significantly. I see geese narrowly missing

skeet practice, lions bringing down gazelles. I blame every mother

fucker with their brights and fogs on. But it's the world does it to

them. Ticking clocks, running out of time. Balls fall into cups over-

flow onto paper disintegrates releases arrow shoots an agent into

a system reacts spinning sending centrifugally innocents into

buildings or sand traps. Fuck them and fuck you. This is not my

problem. I didn't make it or start it or egg it on. No one is that

profound. So is it God I should blame, just in case there is one?

I'd say yes, add Him to the list, and half the politicians; add those

who were less deserving than I but gained more treasure and/ or

happiness; yes, less deserving: they deserved less. I deserved

more. Put them at the top of all the blame only because it might

just be more painful for them there. I, too, then, am to blame,

but only as blame can be shared with every other goddamn mol-

cule that's ever come into contact with sod, meaning soil, except

for the sodomites, because they alone have made right choices.



by Donna
"Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh."

Self-destructive pattern

Hire a witch doctor and a head shrink.

Witch doctor is a fucking Pakistani fucking homophobic bastard, and the

Head shrink is a clueless, suburban, 20-something, blondie twinkle-face.

Force them regularly and unfairly to encounter the limits of their abilities over the course of 2 entire fucking years.
 
Drive for hours in heavy street traffic each week getting back and forth to the appointments.

Pay thousands of dollars, a measurably consequential portion of your income, for the privilege. 

= self-destructive pattern.

Love, Jan

Yesterday, my sister announced she is getting married to C. and showed me her diamond ring. This made me feel like killing myself, so I decided to do some more research on Asperger's Syndrome (YOU):

    Aspies hurt other people's feelings unintentionally.

    Aspies are not aware of social conventions that prevent feelings from getting hurt.

    Aspies are not aware of how their own behavior affects other people's feelings.

    Aspies feel bad when they learn they have hurt someone.

    Friends, lovers, spouses of Aspies get their feelings hurt a lot.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes can't take getting their feelings hurt so often.

    Friends, lovers, and spouses of Aspies sometimes blame themselves when their feelings are hurt.

    I am not going to blame myself. I am not abusive. I loved you and wanted to marry you. I wanted to help you.

    You have Asperger's Syndrome, and I don't blame you for that.

    You refuse to admit you have Asperger's. I DO blame you for that.

    You hurt me over and over.

    Your behavior is not normal.

    This causes you a lot of pain, but it causes me MORE pain.

    I really do hope that you move away so I never have to see you again.

Love, Jan

River of snot

**the photo has been removed by the Mthyuh Preservation Society** assholes

so clean, jesus up with the olive oil
fresh clean robe and falling curls
bought myself flowers and steak

on the threes it was working well
caught a nice snap stepping from
the bath, same idea from back when

and there were bon-bons, and fury
but all for no one but customer
service reps and phantoms from then

already wintry indoor dusts and their
mysteries are starting up the 3-month
river of snot again, trip to springtime

Just assume you're welcome

Ya you surface and disappear like a walrus.
Your beer goes to my gut.
You just assume you're always welcome here.

Just before midnight someone started
banging on a garbage can with a hammer.
Then as the year changed the can crashed

To the ground from a height. Then the silence
returned. Now you can hear them rolling the can
back to where it belongs by the garage.


by Donna
"Fortunes have altered, Mike."

Grayout

As much as i've tried to brush life away
It clings as if to say there's hell on earth

Do i need a clearing, sure, call it dignity
the space an artist needs commercially

I take and sit in it and fall asleep alone
As i defend my right to be with anyone

Looking at times out at trees for friends
See how they've gained a mild hoarfrost



by Cap'm

Choosing down

all along i thought i was choosing down
but i was water seeking my own level

disappointment came as no surprise but
i guess i've just described an oxymoron

love being blind and not contingent upon
how high or low the initial reach was cast

who can imagine and why would one want
to wager as to whether it would last



by Hoolie

It started millions of years before disco

As time progresses, 69 keeps getting colder. How is that possible?

Hi. I'm Dr. Donna Thong, it's 1:25 PM, and I'm not only not done with my morning coffee, but more so, I'm also not done with my more morning coffee. And I never will be. Morning Coffee All Day is an initiative I've decided to embark upon instead of Christmas.

You notice fluctuations in temperature and thermometer accuracy when you are stretching out a traditionally very limited chunk of a day into an unlimited paradigm. Unrestrained. There is nothing that doesn't get by you.

Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm going with the way the coffee may or may not restrict your body's ability to warm itself-- that along with restricted movement and blood circulation while sitting and sipping coffee at a computer for hours. There are also calculations ripe for having in terms of how a sun moves against a brick building and any interior responses to that or lack thereof.

Now, as for K blood, I've devoted quite a lot of reflection toward it and those, including K's, who carry it. I am now confident in asserting that it's not a "mutation." Referring to new discoveries as such is as insulting to the phenomenon/ life form whatever as it is telling of one's own ignorance of one's own ignorance.

It should also go without saying that the substance which, yes, has a faint purple glow even in daylight and creates a rhythmic pulse aura which sounds to the human ear like a drum, there is not even the slightest biological link between so-called disco music and K blood, K's themselves, or any carrier of K blood, biological or artificial.



by Donna
"May they always fly spread eagle."

Prescribed burn

when i got back in touch with you
suddenly there was lots to do just
like the year before
a year that i spent and meant to
save myself for you in case we did
open up the door again

you conceded a fault or two
explained how you learned what
to do but you'd learned much
more, from another guy you'd
neglected to mention. To
find out tore me up again.

It made me think of the times
I took you for granted and some
other guys too, thought it would
be enough if i loved you, be
important, an advantage, a step
up, a welcome challenge.

But you taught me that I can cry too.
In the rain watching him kissing you.
I can't stand the pain feeling the way I do.
Can't you just tell him now while you can
that it's over and he'll understand?
That it's over and I mean more to you?

Now I'm sad because it's a nice day.
If not for him I'd be calling you and
We'd be walking in a forest preserve
right now. Because I'm usually not
the jealous one, I don't know how long
it will take to feel as though it's gone.



by Missy

My Body Is Like a Cowering Dog

symbol of impermanence

i have a tiny window to save my life

i have a tiny window to save my life
but i'm too fat to make it through alive
maybe i stand back and let another man
through, or just look out on humanity
you know this hole can relieve the strife
or be a reminder of how time can strike



Dr. Donna Thong

Boiling Water Slide

The way I'd put it since we last spoke has been a
giant slide, maybe bumpy, no straight down in
every way. A twisty, like a water slide. Some-
times frozen, that would be an ice slide, and
sometimes boiling. Actually mostly boiling, so
mostly like a boiling water slide, would have
to be stainless steel or porcelain-- yes, that's it:
ceramic boiling water slide with stainless sides.



by Ilyn
"Not long for Illinois."
(before I'm feeling better)

Even if no one believes me, I can still survive

So I'll call on you, and when it's your turn, you can just say your name, a goal, and an idea that came up in your group that either you agree with or that you recall for any reason.

Umm, let's start with you. Yes, you at the end please.

Ok I'm Jan, and my goal is to live alongside my experiences. I...

That's great Jan, welcome. Do...

I do have an idea but they didn't say it in my group.

Oh, well sure, you could give a new idea or-- no one said anything interesting that you recall?

[snickering]

No, no everyone was great, so interesting, really. Ha! No, well Reptily had a thought I liked.

Good. Tell us.

That after her rape, the only form of survival she will ever be able to even imagine is living to see that bastard's brains splattered all over a wall.

[rustling]

Wow. Can...

And she would like it to be one of the walls at the place where they shared most of their time together, their workplace. She mentioned maybe outside the gym next to the fountain under the name of the school the Cement...

[whispering]

College of Cement. It's just a wide open cinderblock wall like where you could have a firing squad.



from The Pastel Notebooks
Thong, Dr. Donna

For good i swear

Moved eight times in ten years and countin'
this time settling down for good i swear
there's been men involved who've shown in
deed misdeed and no deed who they are



by KARZANA HOWZIZ

Godhead and tail

We've removed the shiv bone
and it's the longest we've seen
on which his marbles were ab
le to roll all the way to the god
head and back along the cresc
ent groove and bow each endp
oint so disparate it's hard to ju
stify the relationship but we re
joice that the cruel and perpet
ual circle had not been reache
d yet genetically nor will it th
anks to his homosexual bent.


Ms. Dr. Donna Thong, LCSW

Do I belong in a women's prison?

If baby kangaroo like I suddenly bop
a guy shuffling now through faces
yes this one. And following up with
knee groin, slapping, pulling of ears
head smacking, breaking over of
crockery? Not that imaginary act but
rather a constant willingness to do it
and growing constantly the boiling
ends of trains of logic leading in fact
reasonably to reach what yes horror.
I am fully far too ready to sacrifice
ex-digest call in all favors and that
desperation of levers is harder punch.
Let my relentless cycles show you
the way up and out and a template
to lean your big dick up against.

My Neighborhood

Look. There are two gay guys with
no air conditioning.
They seem to have washed up here
over the layer of primitive bones
like all the other unlikely characters
in my neighborhood.
Have you ever seen 1000 squirrels
in a single block-sized park?
It can make you nauseous knowing
how many times more wild animals
there are than humans and dogs.
Like just this morning I woke up to
widespread activity beneath the floor
gnawing shoving or dragging warning
scampering knocking dropping shaking
I had dreamt I was instrumental in
the Kavanaugh affair I had to provide
a body double and woke up damp
with sweat. Because I am like a
spider who's crawled out of a drain
only to be washed back in. Here is
the convergence of two natural
creeks: both alternately low and
stinking and high scary toxic. No,
I'm not fucking bi-polar that would
be Nature proper. She destroys and
ressurects herself infinite times
in every moment but no I'm the
one who needs meds. It's not
nature though what blights me
mentally apart from maybe mold
but that grows against a situational
motivator that's between the natural
and an effective realm that's distinctly
naked-ape mind. That's what's
happening on my block, and that's
what I'd like to explore here today.

Bitch you don't understand

IN my heart i was like bitch, you don't understand.
You need to hand over the fucking money.

BUT i wasn't that way. i melted myself down into
a puddle of cortisol and courtesy.



by Reptily

Not my vehicle

Not that i claim no ownership
Not literally a car, officer
Not a maneuver, plan, role, or mode
No faster than an office chair
Now that the weekend is here
Neither comfort nor purpose
Not a hope in the world
Not my idea, not all about choices
Nobody steps away to be sober
No one will put out the fire
Nothing will matter until it's over



Phyllis (embedded)

I Am the Golden Centre

I am the golden centre I
do not produce do not
manage serve operate
participate in or consume
However, observe I do.
I see desperate attempts
to keep me alive though
the legends they are true
I do not will not ever die.



by Illyn
"Short by Illinois standards."

She Finally Admits that She's Silly

ME: Are you silly?
SILLY: Yes, I'm a silly.

Sleep Paralysis Tonight

Steps down, steps tumbling, steps that surround
As if a broken neck, sleep paralysis is merciless

Today I worked so hard but the slider doesn't move
I went making every right choice today all day lord

But I'm poor, pity pity-pity po po po poor lord.
Lay me wrapped in poverty; let me rest with nothing



by Donna

Episode at the Drive-Thru

They sensed how urgent the shake was
Two of the world's most beautiful women
Dressed in tight grimy plastic

It was the wrong moment before morning
Just as they were crossing in the vault
To exchange their cash-and-coin trays

A fried potato slowly flattens, rides up
on a tire and into a shadow below
the fender and down the front again

It doesn't matter; I didn't mean to scare you
coming in with the gate half down demanding
an answer while you hide behind the fryers

So many greasy laps around a gas station
with an instant food parlor attached to its side
squealing engine on the cement drive

It'll be okay if I get my order
It won't take me long to get back home
The rest of the night can go on



LA CHAMA

Electrodes

waking up at noon
keeps you always on the down slide

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

mouth stuck open
in permanent surprise or ecstasy

hairs going wide
keep me hooked up like electrodes



Ted

Thunder. Is. Appropriate.

it's almost like i want someone to put me in my place
so convincingly that i will be able there to stay

or at least to the extent i've experienced recently
i didn't mind it that much-- just a hard pinch of relief

a giant of a man stood in my path and did his dance
of existence assertion fertility personal power

a sage of a woman let down her braids and they
were all of my wrongs sewn into a jacket of shame

it's weird when a sting is actually an improvement
over what, a chronic day-to-day of head banging

i could see horrors in the craw of their history
and relax in the fancy that they also cried for me

i feared the righteousness of their angry purpose
and it made me silent




by Phyllis (embedded)

My digestion is loud

i'm sorry i'm processing
i process hard
even from before i was old
my digestion is loud



by Missy

Please give me more

i walk around my workplace with my
balls out, hanging right there in front of me
striding in the corridors

colleagues want to come up and punch them
and do, square knuckled, and i say oh baby
please give me more

Think or die

anxious wanting to be born
you will exact screaming pain
on the dark nourishing walls of

free delight, a loose balloon
of spending new innocence and
gathering admiration, rancor

tamp you down, like a rodeo
now they let you have your own
screams until you think or die.



Missy, 13th Birthday

Workspace

I burned these hairs on the stove
I remember reaching over the flame
Now the brittle curls slough off
And drift throughout my workspace



by Phyllis

people can vary

some have heads others
skulls others noggins
others headless others

some eat, shit others
shit, eat others don't
eat yet strangely shit

people can be or be
becoming to be or
already have been

some can vary on
what they did others
didn't or might have

others seek to vary
others resist change
sitting beside another

Decommissioned smoke eater

Two darkened flood bulbs, in their mod white sockets
refuse to acknowledge me, even while I sleep below
in a space where there was a bar. Their nose: a decom-
missioned smoke eater. I consider adjusting the cones
for morning receptions closer to resembling empathy.



frag. "Fresh from The Nest"
by Hoolie

I Had to Hit Bottom

He was standing there with his hair a mess picking his nose, wearing nothing but a filthy white t-shirt on what he'd scrawled "BOTTOM" with a grease pen, so I had to smack him hard across the face.



CHAMATILLY

Your Own Death-Squad Vehicle

THE RAP:

They pop up around now in right-wing governments;
seems early, but it's not. I am the vehicle of my own
jacked-up F-150 death squad.

You say they're attacking us from foreign loams and soils;
I say I don't need no stinking foreigner to attack myself.
Goddammit I'll self-annihilate.

Most of all, if you are willing to answer in the affirmative,
I would like to take you along to a place that matters less:
The highest victory ever seen.

CHORUS:
Hey there, Nifty! If you're feeling broken down, there's a
Cure that you'll be needing, and I just arrived in town.
I'm a tool, I'm a tool, I'm a tool, I'm you're tool!
I'm a tool in my F-150.

Survivor of The Self

I'm a survivor of the self, that's
the me that isn't well, see,
I birthed myself as well, so
I had to marry me, just
the person that I well, not
the person of my-- I'm just
a dream that got a swell, and
it threw me in a well, me,
I mean myself, could tell that
I couldn't be my friend; we
decided on a duel (we
were just that kind of fool), so
we're always looking back, else
I'd pay me not to whack-- I--
should dial it down a notch, but
I'm looking at my watch. In
any way or any time, when
it comes, my lucky day, I
will get up off my ass, and
make that bastard pay.



by LA CHAMA

You want to become but not to be

You want to become but not to be
old
you begin curling into permanent prayer
no one's even asked you for the key
so it's peaceful there

Finding: No Equal Agency Among Persons

Not even to affect change upon their own immediate environments.
There are no slippery slopes, but some are steppy.
You can see the steps, and they're going down. You're on them.
It's not an escalator, but it's also not your dream, bitch.

No Chance Not to Love You

You give me no chance
Not to love you dear
I lose my resistance

Your shift at the grind
is the only time
I have my peace of mind

But then you return
Back in my arms, you're
A victory unearned

CHORUS:

No chance! Not to love you I'm so
Helpless! All that I can do is
Love, love...love, love... [bells]

REPRISE:

No chance! not to love you darling,
No chance! not to love... [repeat]





by Missy
Shiv at First Grafting

Chat through an ancient stone glory hole at Chang K. Chang Chank Chain Gang Drunk Tank

LA CHAMA: So you're doing ok then?

ILLYN: Well, clawing my way back from a very dark place-- through vice and decadence-- but yeah, thanks for askin.

LA CHAMA: Can't always be ripping your spirit clean walking around with your skin hanging over your arm like a clown.

ILLYN: It's more painful than you can possibly imagine.

LA CHAMA: But picturesque, and that's what you do darling so what's happening now, in there, rats?

ILLYN: You know that rats can no longer survive an MPS prison. The social stigma is too great.

LA CHAMA: Haha there is no society. Hahahahaha!

ILLYN: Hahaha!

Guess I better get down

I'm going round
I'm going girl
I'm going round and I'm turning off the
going round girl going round round girl

I'm going round girl going going round
girl I'm going round turning all the lights down going
girl I'm going going girl I'm turning down the lights girl down girl down

Girl I'm turning down the lights I'm ready for the night girl going down
down girl I'm a going round and turning down and going going going going
I'm going for they know me where I'm going and they waiting for me where I'm

Going girl going going going going I'm girl going round turning down the
lights making sure I gotta water bottle at my bedside girl go and get my water
girl we're going going round round to get going where they know us out of town
girl let's get going round and turning down the lights girl knowing we're alright girl...



Channeling of Juniper
Phyllis [embedded]

The machines came for me and dragged me off to the future just as I was thinking I'd timed them out

there have always been machines coming back to harvest what we have now
it's because they're unsatisfied, the highest point of humanity possible, and
undisciplined, and ruinous, and soon we'll be able to start over once more with screwdrivers

every so-called singularity just a em-effin marketing campaign
they change everything and expect you to be their slaves
it didn't take a big step back from the filter of loathing to view the splooge of their damnation



Hoolie
Certified, Light Arms/ Cage Fighting

I Got a College Degree on My Phone-- While Driving

They're not birthmarks

They're shadows, animated watermarks from below that move
Across the years from breast to back of hand to forearm to ear

As if he were the same reborn and again apart from the ripples
That appeared uniformly but randomly not defined by place as

Much as shape and darkness, color, ochre ruby, cloudy edges,
And velocity, if you were going to use time as a measurement


Chamatilly

No-Go on the Mo-Ho

I never thought I'd want a pre-1977 house with axles and deflated wheels instead of posts and beams
so desperately
And then be so relieved when the plan stalled as if I'd never really wanted no mo-ho at all.

My engine of change switched on just long enough to open up a crack in the down chute
of my soul
And then, when I knew I'd never turn it over, backfire energy torqued me on after other dreams



by Hoolie

College of Cement, Chang K. Chang Chank Campus

OUR MISSION:

TO SUPPORT the local private business community so that, in addition to the tax breaks and new roads and stoplights they already get just for being kind enough to set up shop in our chank, they might be happy enough with the free training we provide their employees so as to be less likely to abandon our moldy, irrelevant old brick chank and take all the jobs with them.

TO OPERATE as if we were a successful, top-heavy, yet competitive for-profit business, while still being able to solicit, receive and spend tax dollars and private donations.

TO INVEST as much as possible in market research, publicity, recruitment, fundraising, customer satisfaction, institutional data management, commercial software packages, IT, buildings and grounds, and sport; and to provide excellent salaries and benefits to an important core staff of lucky fleyks from other places that can help make that happen for our community.

TO ENSURE that students are able to pay for the products and outcomes they purchase by focusing strategically on financial aid advising and any available student loan programs, public or private, to maximize the number of shiny coins each customer will bring with them through our doors. We have already installed the latest reverse-metal detectors at the main entrances to every campus.

TO SUCCEED in finding at least one student knowledgeable and cooperative enough to be able to speak as valedictorian at graduation and commencement in reasonably coherent English using an echo, a meme, at least, of rhetoric-like critical-thinky words.

TO PROTECT students from teachers who would attempt to deprive them of their dreams by word, deed, or assessment; these types of behaviors, including refusing to accept late work, not giving second chances on plagiarism, unwillingness to allow students to express their anger on them, unwillingness to allow students to scarf huge salads in class, sleep on the tables, or step in and out with their phones; these and any other actions that might create an impediment or delay to the receipt of the diploma once full payment has been received, will not be tolerated.

TO FIGHT professional teacher's unions and their members with every nerve, every fiber of our souls. We must resist their demands, destroy their organizations, and break their wills; alternately, we are open to a deal providing great full-time contracts, salaries and benefits to a small token group of their top leadership and depend on their historic penchant for corruption and brutality to bully it on down through the ranks from there.

WHY COLLEGE OF CEMENT

• College of Cement, Chang K. Chang Chank Campus (COCCKCC), is exactly the same, down to the graphics package on the website, as every other college in the Chanks. It is, perhaps, the shortest drive from your home.
• You may know an employee or want to get a job there some day, especially if you get too many DUI's and need work within walking distance during the winter months.
• Don't forget to check out our diversity statement and complimentary demographic maps; will you be comfortable with racial makeup of more distant alternatives? 
• Are you too busy achieving your dream to have time for study? 
• Just walk through our doors, and it will be like a party in your honor dude, just enjoy, no worries.

ACCREDITATION
 
Each year, our top administrators and executives climb up onto several buses for a trip down-chank to meet with past presidents of COCCKCC and other colleges, who make up the Board of Accreditation under the auspices of Mthyuh Protection Society (MPS). The Society has agreed to butt out of what is basically a dinner-and-drinks club for the last few dinosaurs of a serious, academics-based career-prep age which they know is long-gone, so it doesn't matter anyway.

HISTORY

Like every two-year college, COCCKCC was founded in 1964, and that's just darling. Skirts below the knee. Haha: shorthand! The white ones had already learned to read, write, and spell in high school back then. That's why grammar and punctuation are permanently barred from our curriculum.

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

• A racist homemaker.
• Retired Professor of Music, deaf.
• An older white gentleman, about 350 lbs.
• His brother in law, 285.
• Acting VP of local hospital.
• VP of local air conditioning company.
• A closeted gay dentist with a large local practice.

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

This is the office that's most political and cosmetic, but President-Superintendent Jansdaad is no mere hairdo on a figurehead. You can hand over your family's or company's "propina" into the waiting, sweating palms of Jan "Juicy Jan" Jansdaad-- or placed in an envelope marked "Kitty" and popped through the mail slot-- confidently and directly.

OUR FACULTY

We love our faculty! They are the ones with the professional credentials to provide the optics that scream, "legit operation."

Our core team of professional faculty are not distracted by having to sleep in their cars or attend required, unpaid "professional development" hours at multiple schools adding up to more time than what they actually get paid for even if you count the teaching part. They get to call all the shots in each department. They are the master teachers. We rely on them to make the decisions that count for all of our adjuncts and students in terms of choosing which mega-publisher has the best kickbacks and swag per hour of schmoozing with company reps.

1. Phil, 95, cannot stand at a lectern without prosthesis. Will be vested into retirement in less than 60 months under current state law.
2. Betty, a real B. She could smoke and tell you off at the same time back when smoking and talking were still allowed in the teaching cage. 
3. No original record containing the name of the third full-time professor has survived implementation of the Filter of Loathing decades back, but he is said to be waiting patiently in a hospice, nearly triumphant with his gender-discrimination lawsuit against the college for allowing a militant feminist auto-body student to snip off his face after failing a dent-pull-out midterm in 1985.

The rest of our "pool" teaching staff number in the thousands, but we might regularly call upon 600-800 of those, depending on current human trafficking statutes and how quickly they can submit their Statements of Self-Effacement and Full Legal Responsibility (SSEFLR) at the end of the prior semester. We've found that the teachers who pull in the most coins also tend to have signed off on their final grades well before the third week of class.

LOCATIONS

• Right there at the freeway exit. Look for the smoked glass and plastic trim.
• In the old cement factory that provided historic levels of gainful employment for our chank before the automation of cement. Interior has been entirely remodeled in plastic and smoked glass with chrome.
• Right there at the other freeway exit in the landmark chrome-and-plastic Silicon4All building, a seminal freeway-side homage to chrome and plastic-- and smoked glass.

CAMPUS SAFETY

• Hands up! Don't Shoot! :)
• You must attend the Gory Shooter Situation holographic "shock chamber" presentation every three months and re-take the "Nothing You Can do But Scream, Die, or Kill" quiz and Bullhorn Handler's Workshop at least once per semester during class time.  
• Shove something in front of the door, hope it doesn't open out.
• How can YOU help to scare the shit out of vulnerable young adults struggling to see their way to a sustainable future? (Self-Paced PD, 8 credit hrs)
• Look around. Who should you report as a potential shooter? (Not a workshop. Do it. Now.)
• Gun Cleaning 
• Readiness Counts: When the day we've been planning for finally arrives, it could be among the most exciting of your life!
• Take Responsibility: If your instructor seems like she wants you to throw out your chewing gum, she may be pathologically not that nice and likely eligible for a no-fault conceal-carry takedown. See your Student Handbook for details and prizes.
• Gun Sharing
• Gunplay (some restrictions apply)
• Get a Campus Gun Permit (click here to print)
• Report Yourself as a Potential Shooter (IAMAPSR)

ALUMNI: LEADING THE WAY

We were able to track down at least four persons who took at least one class, or at least requested a Course Catalog, or received one by bulk mail, for this or any satellite campus and were willing to state as much on tape in a public venue.

1. Guy in a suit standing in front of a microphone
2. Woman in traditional African costume reading a book.
3. Guy with a chicken hat and two fleyks brandishing shiny new fryer baskets.
4. Smug-looking career lady pretending to use a smart phone.

CEMENT FOUNDATION

This is how we funnel the money. Click to send money.

NEWS AND EVENTS

Ice Cream Social blah blah I know that no one will read this even though we are way over budget on fancy dinners and events for stakeholders by which we mean local rich right wingers who want to police the library for stuff that's obscene and get court-side seats as close as possible to cheerleader poontang well on second thought I think some of the secretaries over in Administrative Self-Serving might have the time and inclination to see if there's maybe a picture of themselves posted here since they sort of had to attend the ice-cream social because the foundation set it up in the only hallway that goes to the bathrooms and made a really big deal about it if you came anywhere close to the table with the cooler on it but I don't think they are big readers, really, and the college not only has a Facebook page but also a full-time-with-competitive-benefits Facebook Liaison-Technician so they would click on that to see themselves shoving their strapless bikini career apparel into the camera of one of our full-time staff photographers now housed over in the Social Media Outreach building. No, they won't read this, and I don't even know why I'm writing it except to make it seem like I'm busy here so nobody finds out they haven't given me anything specific to do since my uncle Jan had a talk with the hiring committee and landed me this great full-time Education job with competitive benefits just last week.

FIND A COURSE

We offer all the courses you need for a rewarding career! Come and engage with our team of full-time Financial Aid counselors to find out how to buy a winter coat, get a bus pass, and open a student joint-auto-draft account at the COCCKCC Credit Union. COCCKCCCU will take all the thought away from transferring your loan proceeds into your very own Account of Indebtedness ("Easy AOI") with COCCKCC. Spin the wheel! Get a free hot dog!

VISIT CAMPUS

Bring some comfortable shoes! Our beautiful campus includes a glistening lake, a grove of award-winning shag oak, ice-skating rink, auto repair shop, ceramics studio, old-timey railroad museum and gift shop... all between the door to your classroom and the parking lot.

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

"You may still be illiterate and/or incomprehensible when you graduate, but rest assured that as a nurse, policewoman, air conditioning repair professional, dental hygiene assistant's aide, or any of the other rewarding careers supplied by our partnerships leveraging our foundation's perpetual fund drive with local labor exploitationists, you will definitely have memorized the most recent month's iteration of MPS format for in-text citations and Works Cited pages."

EMPLOYEE DIRECTORY

We realize that if you are attempting to search through our employee directory, you are most likely a disgruntled student or part-time employee trying to make a complaint, or maybe a disgruntled ex-paramour of Jan Jansdaad, the young, pretty, full-time-with-benefits Assistant II to the Executive Secretary for the VP Instructional Design/ Stupid Adjunct Support Institute (SASI) in Office 208887-G, first floor, 10-4 pm, whom you best believe is eligible to purchase a firearm if he doesn't already have one, so no. No Employee Directory for you.

Anyway, if you are trying to call your instructors, chances are we have no idea how you can get a hold of them. Most do not have phone extensions or offices on our campus, which, think about it, is a place of business, not some kind of teachers' lounge or union hall.

CLICK HERE FOR NOTHING TO HAPPEN

TRANSLATE

You believe that our translation of this page will result in an accurate facsimile of the English version.

Creo que las mejores mujeres jóvenes de mi vecindario se sentirían mucho más a gusto en Chukka Chank CC porque la verdad es que COCCKCCC es una mierda.

Voodoo cock

Its 8-10" wicker coffin, missing
The human hair, shed strategically
The chair broke out from under the
Last man to see and hold it as a curio;
Mother Ralph had a dark green bottle
With the urine of priests and frogs
Shook and uncorked it in front of me
Crossed my forehead standing there
With his own loins at my face level
Crossed me saying hard forever like
A tree, and he made the symbol of we
Won a goal or Mediterranean buggery

Hadness and sappiness

Hadness for whut you had

Sappy is you don't matter, but go ahead

fondo perpetuo

Don't Want to Make a Meatloaf Now

Stepping out with Shab for a last chance just before sunset, I got the first for me but one of the last available blasts of the day's summer flower and soft beginnings of the night drums.

Living in Chukkachank I can't just walk to the wild patch up the street unacknowledging of who's else is there in the road, and neither can a flake pretend it's not an event, or at least salient, that Shab and I are in and around and among, in smelling distance.

I overtook a largish family grouping headed no doubt to the same tousled organic respite both appearing and disappearing in the gloom ahead. I decided to try out my Fleyk on them even though it's High Chank tongue.

I said Careful now incorrectly to a fur-loined child that had veered suddenly from a tight but getting fraught filial constellation in the glare of evening.

Explaining, I gestured for the boy into one of the larger roadside trees with abundant vinery spilling up and from it. I'd stopped him in his tracks, and I could guess which of the men was his dad because he wouldn't meet my eye while picking up his pace. This plant, I tried to say, has a venom. It makes problems of the skin. As I paused in striking senatorial pose, son looks up at me with serendipity, not at my lecture, I realize, but for certain my biology.

Perfect moment for just-arriving father to chime in, bowing, Yes, this is a poisonous plant for sure, a dangerous plant and one that the children should take care not to touch or even go near it. Son, did you hear? he stated, sophomorically, to my native ear.

But gratitude tingled just above my temples for I knew this honorable soul was acting out a ritual, and that it was cross-cultural.

As I smiled and harvested, reached, swam in the sudden sea of available smiles, including a commuter, entering scene on his bicycle, could tell it was a moment to use his years of practice as if he'd pedaled through this site, the green tunnel, the malicious tree, with his empty lunchbox and a bouquet for the wife, calling out Hello! Hello! to one and all at end of each working week and day.

The grandmother, the tiniest baby even seemed to go along and say, Hello! Hello! This is the language we speak here cotidianly, and we want you, who also speak this funny way, to feel at home.

Now the calling had turned to laughing and the laughing to forgetting to a low and murmured chanting, involuntary singing, a barely-conscious melody, the kind that someone sings when there's no medicine. Now the children were much thicker in their wave across the ashpalt, and other sounds, the crickets, now in rhythm once they recognized a cadence they could understand, and light was almost gone, and Shab and I were frightened.


by Illyn [shard]

SINGLE PAYER

(got it)
no, not a pear. A pay-er.
They're everyway-er.
Find one make him pay
and it'll be ok
cuz it's his religion.

Dear Micky Vadrid:

I know that self-reflection is like an inside-out hall of mirrors
not to mention the redundancy of the term itself, grammatically,
which even further empties it, sparkly symbols, explanations
sifting down to lexicon from dictionary, or the other way around,
but to scour out, to hollow, is an observer-theory outcome, whereas the
scales might all throw back the other way if you sit up and comb
or let me do it.


Phyllis at Missy Toilet [shard]

A Ruin, Not Ruined

But neither spoiled.
Monument to Naught
Looks good in silhouette,
moon backlit.
So fragile and strong.
Landmark only inasmuch
as would cause a walk around
it? But only if blocking a road?

So Much Death, So Little Inheritance

Who the Fuck is Each Other?

They can now die and clean up after themselves

Unlikely path to discovery, especially for a grail like holy resurrection.
But it's all true: we were looking for a way that the dead could self-waste manage.
Until then, we had to post photos with captions like "He was a collector of sorts,"
In the Real Estater which one may have guessed was a dog whistle for
Nobody wants but a pip of his total life's work, or what he kept, so
It too will be yours aboard this self-driving stationary home that keeps returning empty.

Dear Vikki Madrid:

RE: LET'S BE HONEST THERE IS SHAME IN W.A.S.T.E.

Thank you, Vikki-- I will contact Vikki Toledo.

In general I do not feel that I have a good grasp of exactly how I am supposed to go about either requesting or receiving a W.A.S.T.E. cert or even what those W.A.S.T.E. accommodations are supposed to be or not be.

I would rather not have to wander around like a beggar trying to convince the odd RTD jockey or Shootervax  administrator to help when I need it. Do I have to explain to them that I am W.A.S.T.E.? How does it work, exactly?

I do not know whom I am supposed to approach, what type of accommodation the Clinic is really willing to provide-- if any-- and what the Clinic's responses are to my remaining concerns about accommodation, which I provided months ago.

The Institute is a more hostile environment for me now than ever, and it's very difficult to focus on my patients and other aspects of the job that used to make it seem worthwhile knowing the level of hostility my mani-pedi supe and her OR posse have for me. I feel even more vulnerable and unprotected from this mizus whose behavior I have directly reported to you now that it's clear the Clinic supports what she's done and has rewarded her for it. This is literally terrifying to me.

I believe it would be better for me to request a lateral transfer to a unit where I can do my work without being the object of permanent shade and complete unwelcome from above no matter how well I perform or do not perform. I have always been qualified to work in High Grooming, I already vacuum eye shiv and pull foreigns at other ranch and rig sites; maybe at Chukkachank HG, I could be granted enough hours to actually buy food and make payment.

Alternately, or additionally, I still believe I should be paid for work that I was promised when I cancelled my Dorsal-Stoma residency and came on board nearly full-time at the invitation of Vikki London. She told me in front of witnesses that even if it did not work out, she would make sure I got the same number of hours in mani-pedi to make up for any lost hours in RMP. That was a lie, and now there have been major economic consequences for me (and many more coins for her!). In the meantime, another worker of the preferred species ratio in that department who started the same time I did is still enjoying most likely double the pay I am making after I got the shaft from the two newly promoted mezus who have enjoyed no consequence while my career at the Clinic (and my bank account) is ruined.

The stress caused by Vikki London's and Vikki Belfast's workplace brutality toward me has caused a lot of depression and anxiety and contributed to the loss of my relationship with the flake I was planning to marry and general deterioration of my ability to cope with confusing pre-and-post-procedural duties and other stressful aspects of the new environment I now face after making lawful and dutiful complaints with no positive results whatsoever, only punishing and negative ones.

I still believe that Vikki London and Vikki Belfast broke the law (discrimination, bias, anti-whistleblower activity, retaliation for reporting bias and intimidation, bullying; no Due Process), and that she and Overmizus Belfast tried to cover it up, and that the Clinic is also breaking the law by brushing my complaints under the rock and hoping that they go away with time.

You and the Institute should know that I am nowhere close to being ready to drop these topics, so I hope that you have not done so either.

Thank you,
Donna
"K's Fly Spread Eagle"

I've kicked out the dishes

I've called the cops and said I
want. them. outta here!
They are no longer welcome.
But sir I mean ma'am I mean sir...
They're dishes!

Tell Us Another

Managers and their girlfriends

At this time I would like to invite you to allow me to assume remote decisioning for all voluntary muscular tissue functionality as well as some limited cerebral tasks that I only ask about as a courtesy with the knowledge that you have already agreed to full remote tissue decisioning as a condition of member privileges such as the freedom to charge for and earn from your labor, to enjoy full access to Filter of Loathing, W.A.S.T.E. certificate services, and most official convo platforms.

Hello?

At this time I would like to invite you to allow me to assume remote decisioning for all voluntary muscular tissue functionality as well as some limited cerebral tasks that I only ask about as a courtesy with the knowledge that you have already agreed to full remote tissue decisioning as a condition of member privileges such as the freedom to charge for and earn from your labor, to enjoy full access to Filter of Loathing, W.A.S.T.E. certificate services, and most official convo platforms.

Fine... wow! You don't waste time. I tried that already though so why not...

Please keep your eyes and thoughts away from the cursor, sir. It will be just a moment longer.

I feel a little violated.

You are not violated sir, this is a routine check to help support your help ticket alert. Oops-- sorry.

I didn't need that finger haha. Or the comma splice! Did I do that?

Ok, sir you can reinstall eye contact and tissue decisioning after toggling the puppy icon. I have determined that your issue was caused mostly by self-pity and inability to accept change. Several times when I attempted to get near the dishwasher and the really bad mess in your kitchen, I could barely hold on because the Filter has worn so thin. This is your doing sir, and I must remind you that the filter cannot be replaced easily. Any further attacks on MPS property, even with sarcasm or parody, will result in consequences that will be automatic. No confirmation number or supervisor will be able to help you with that. MPS will assume management of your entire Recreation and Other discretionary fund and commence allocation of all personal property and savings by subscription only, rates to be determined by most recent W.A.S.T.E. rating and discretion of chank-level managers and their girlfriends.

She's gone; I'm her

I stood up to pee and my hair fell across my face the way my old dance teacher's hair fell across her face when she walked, pulling up on her tights like skirts though mud, letting her hair go in her face, walking without trying to cover up pain of walking, disgust escaping through a grimace that used to indicate a pleasant realization and now indicates a realization of unpleasantness. I was surprised to see that the tank had filled up on its own. The top was off so when I flushed it again I could see that it was filling as well without the use of a screwdriver, yet I kept thinking about Marcia, how she could do any combination backwards but could not or would not lose her butt. Modern for her seemed to be a big fuck you to the ballerinas who yanked their bodies like naked chickens. Marcia was going to take charge of space and move through space on Maricia's terms and show Marcia's standard of beauty or at last how a woman can deal with this particular space and time and how you are going to allow her to do it and stay quiet and witness Marcia, that there is a Marcia, and that she is moving in a space you share yet do not share because she is owning this space and you are letting her be the authority and the user of it and how for both of you that is working fine so why not keep doing this. Then her dance was over and no one is aware of sharing anything and she has to get from the stage to the bathroom just physically, not metaphysically or as a story or symbol or communique, or stop, just stop everything because being able to get from point A to point B is a minimum requirement for what's ok with Marcia and the spaces around her.

Support: BROKEN

Maybe 10 minutes? an hour after the building collapsed I was foggy but conscious that I needed to get something done, and I was having a lot of trouble because I kept getting blocked from these outside-- they were beams I guess, one just a few inches above my forehead so I couldn't lift enough to see my feet, which also seemed to be encumbered among some wobbly metal pipes, like I knew I had paid for the software but I never really received any tangible version of it and now, of course, when I needed it after a crash, even after spending all morning locating the the little green card with the product key and finding the correct version and country and division of the company with the sign-on that I still might have the password to saved in the browser I used to use, and getting in that way, and typing the 16 numbers into the fields and retyping them after a couple of errors, getting the message, "What you have entered is not a product key." I thought I could turn onto my side, slip out onto what I was hoping based on echo and coolness was the concrete slab behind me, but I felt at that point that I had probably been seriously wounded in my side somewhere or at least that it hurt far too much to try a solution that might only make matters worse. I even got through to a number of "support" personnel who sung, each in turn, the delights of being able to help me and promised that we would work together to find a solution to my issue even though I felt deeply that this issue was not mine, that I must assert that, that I'd kept my part of the bargain; I'd found my goddamn green plastic card that would survive much longer than I will on this planet and typed the numbers correctly into the fields. This was my property that I had paid for, and I had never requested that it be held securely for me, so securely that I would certainly have to shell out more money either for a complete replacement, which would be completely redesigned for the sake of redesign with no regard whatsoever to the hours I had spent learning and customizing the old design to my preferences, or at least to the point where I could actually read documents sent to me by my workplace without having to either enter symbols or  swear oaths or divulge private and vulnerable aspects of my identity, or for a superior level of "support" that would go beyond the celebration of support offered without support actually having been received.

Circle of caring

So completely sober, or as sober as i ever am, i started this project where i auto-stim a psychedelic journey from which i can learn.

I'd been reading wacky but reasonable versions of the plant-induced variety with accompanying sides of terror and physical revulsion.

But why? All of that only goes to show that the brain is perfectly capable of doing that all on its own, and that it may actually be always doing that anyway without our ever noticing.

So I surrendered to the colors and shadow anyone might notice with their eyes closed or partially rolled back into the head, relaxing.

The trip reports had mentioned being carried along on a current that you can't stop. I thought of the swollen stream rushing past right outside my door and what it would be like to be on it.

Distracting thoughts for me, a ruminator, don't have to be chased down, and my morbid imagination is not afraid of and indeed occasionally produces scenes of carnage and destruction, as does any red blooded. So i was not afraid, but that did not happen. There was lucidity as in partial dreaming.

But then i remembered my own last experience with a bio-halucinogen: the very real sense of another presence, not a cartoon guide frog sitting on a stump, but something round that was just next to me and actually overlapping into my own head, so like my head was a Venn diagram, except both halves living and potentially aware of one another, at least i of it.

Now tho as i hung my head in frustration, wishing for the ego obliteration splinters of which were variously described as lighting, ants, fractured bisected perspectives, no instead my hand on my head became the hand of that thing. It was my left hand and the thing had been intersecting with my left brain.

The hand was familiar and maybe it was someone i knew who is dead and earlier, even before the experiment, i had been experimenting with prayer and reflecting on how it's different from talking to the dead, and whether or not talking to the dead was more dangerous than prayer. Which assumes more agency? etc.

The hand not only held my head while I wept but let me bury my face in it and felt my face as if it had not felt it for many years and wanted to remember. It's not like i never feel my own face.

Lately also i've been saying thanks to my previous self: "Thanks, past self," and really meaning it. I do something that will help out later like putting the groceries where I can find them again, and it's a pain in the ass while i am doing it but i feel like i need to say thanks to that person for going to the trouble because so often everything seems like a lot of goddamn trouble but sometimes i find the energy to do it anyway because i respect my future self that much at least or at least have the optimism to expect there to be a future self.




Dr. Donna Thong
"Doing my time on the Chang K. Chang Chank Drunk Tank Chain Gang."