er tips

stop grunting or they can't hear your heart

the wipes are for staff; use the foam dispenser

headband lady's name is Miranda, not Carmen

 

a doctor can be rendered speechless by his 

interpretation of your scan even if it's specious

no comparison btw tramadol and dilaudid

 

hint: which gets sent home with you from the vet?

there's one special shot can make pain un-flower 

in your chest without going to your head 

 

you can bump other patients from their rooms

get slushy ice water and steaming blankets

don't cross your ankles during a pressure read 

 

you can ask for the same wet mouth sponge

that they apply as a palliative to the dying

you can outnumber the staff if it's busy

 

better mention your occupation or invent one;

they want to treat a contributor to society

in this ambience, even a lie is ennobled

 

 

 

by Ilyn

"Just about half of Illinois"

i am rocketing free

i am rocketing free from so many grips

it is proudly my day to rock and stand

no one can bend me much

where are the ushers security to restrain

my remaining jabs at beauty surrender

today i'm getting what i'm feeling

this moment is about just keeping going

in this or the opposite direction

it doesn't matter because i'm free

 

 

 

by Mike

"for Hoolie"

Stabbing gyroscope

what a nifty little weapon

superior even to the double bullets connected to a chain 

which are meant to cut you in half

the stabbing gyroscope covets reality itself

and takes out its purpose 

and changes it to nothing

i punish the present moment with obliteration

there are no triggers only my deepest impulses

which are all fears

 

 

 

by Reptily

"Amen."

Opportunistic infection

Dr. Donna Thong and Peg whispered through the ancient stone glory hole of at least 9" in depth. It must once have been a Cuban prison. 

DR. THONG: I'm remembering Mike and the abdominal surgery I performed on him when I had my patio studio. 

PEG: That's after you were a Fanny-Girl temp out in Dead Beet Chank. 

DR. THONG: You know friends do continue to self-realize when you're not around. 

PEG: But you've always had emotions for Mike. Two swimmers in one pool or another. 

DR. THONG: He told me his intestines smelled like latex for months afterward. 

PEG: He sat up on the table fresh like a baby, glass bottles tinkling against the IV stand. 

DR. THONG: You remember the story like a song. 

PEG: The one that got away. But what of the others?

LAMENT OF THE OTHERS

by DONNA

it seemed as if they entered willingly

following their noses to my kitchen

i thought most necromancy to be weak

but the bottom of the pie was crispy

followed by stepping out of doors to neck

that first incision leading to the next

we woke among discarded vials of heparin

ecstatic still in the wane of hydrocodone

ready to renew our grunted oaths

until the next opportunistic infection. 

 

I hope that my illness takes you hostage

I hope my illness takes you hostage

perhaps i could pay you back

For all the times the thriving version

stood in a more perfect path

I hope I make it difficult to 

turn away as I linger

Your shackles chains and branks are lashed to

my beatific fingers

 

I can still see you in the middle 

of a constricting circle

Your necks are craned and faces cluttered

with shadows of this miracle

 

 

by Ilyn

"Not long for Illinois."

without believing, expecting

agreeable moment sitting facing

feeling all of you in my screen

and even when i turn away

i see a safe place with warm 

 

lighting, bearing my things.

The less hope keeps distributing, 

 

it must be focusing, condensing

the opposite of kaleidoscoping;

 

i'm eating all the crazy dreams, 

sucking only what i need from my

 

intestines, short-sighting, all

without believing, expecting

 

 

 

By Jan Jr.

predators

i hate the middle-of-the-boat assholes, center-of-the-herd butts

but out here in the fringes, you are weak

what's with the arm twisters, the climbing-on-shoulders nuts?

you're alone with your righteousness, freak

 

brother, loner, impossible to figure, full tank, adjacent

we've lived the same life but we auto-fear, trigger happy

they are lifted by the tendrils of their fecund archetypes

they effortlessly grow virtue like a fingernail or polyp

we are in satellites, fire wagons, sinister life rafts needing 

not shedding weight

 

what about the sanctioned predators at the apex of the pack, 

smugly leaning back?

by Ilyn

They have to mine the muscle memories

They have to mine the muscle memories or else they could leave us out entirely from the battlefields. The players' physical responses are only relevant insofar as their hand-eye coordination. The animation, the realness, comes from my own live-action experiences and instincts. I have to be at least partly paying attention for my own physical responses --even stomach acids are measured-- to kick in. At least the K's always win. I'd hate to experience death again. 

 

Some of the players I recall this guy Ken who viscera really seemed to match mine maybe from his generations of farming. He was shy to fight and almost made me switch into mate mode by wandering back toward the cliffs, some of the abandoned ones, when there were plenty of flakes to scoop up and showing off to do with simple evasions of their little sling-shot stones. 

 

 

Charnelle Casas-Cuevas

It's not as if we don't have feelings

but it's not as if we don't have feelings

having given up the agency but kept

the brains, and if not the actual heart,

the part the ancients saw in the ceilings.

 

we bear the psychological consequences

of your rampages through flake towns and

 

remote desmadre at the mercy of autistic 

High Chank teens who dump their adrenal

 

charge into our thought jars where it stirs

dark and slick across our already tortured 

 

logic spurs, amygdalae and venal charm 

receptors every day and even as we dream

by Charnelle Casas-Cuevas

charnelle, a gladiate

styrofoam wings

lungs jump and squeak

rewarmed remains

the dreaded stank

500 miles of ribbon cable

5 days from the cradle

the rewards are weak for 

the revived so to speak

they get to watch crowds 

cheer their corporal missions

from the comfort of a 

cupboard consciousness

by Charnelle

the rock method

the first time i climbed to the top of Mthyuh my hair was still long and very red

 

i was still barefoot from dancing shiv on a slab of ancient desert pavement scrawl

 

i had to see the top and what her raging bottom looked like from the highest chank

 

summiting and launching and diving in were a single stroke, an ancient character

 

Braino knew my arc would blend and assimilate The Crack's northmost fissure

 

instead of bouncing back on the sheer force of rejection by her drumskin i rolled

 

and entered a natural vent, tearing upward through rock and sand and insect nests

 

red like magma my hair and blood left pooling on arrowheads and pots not touched

 

by human hands since before there were summer thaws and green tendrils to munch

 

that day i felt the gravity of knowing that stopped the endless stasis of my cart

 

and let me out onto the landing strip of time the frictionless rink of deadened glass

 

my feet still green rinds, sticky pink pads, gotten slick with the dust of monuments 

at the center of the longest day among the range of moments contending for noon

 

i wished Shab well and his eyes glowed red in recognition of the end of our scam

 

 

 

by Ilyn

My toplessness

i am ready to take my immune system to a new level

ready for any number of cosmetic chiroplastomies

open to broken companions, fresh interlocutors

or am i fine in these gnawed out stones of yore alone

in some of the passages you can see your breath

in others the lost heat of industry allows my toplessness

by Reptily

Two trains

I later found out that my entrance into their society was staged after the famous Cleopatra in a gilded cage scene, carried on a tunka by slaves, from the famous remake of ChukkaChank Rules, WD 77. 

 

Everyone seemed so young then. Weird how they age all at the same time here. Then my freedom was gone.

 

It is a life of rooms with plastic panels and light bulbs and dark corners and water tanks. I am an administrative shook in a tube to them. Until I started getting out at night.

 

I learned to access their finest salons and gank their golden coins and leave bodies strewn upon marble steps in shame. They could not prosecute nor understand my flights without the book of LaChama and the book was her only power so the book was my power through our mother LaChama and the book is my cartridge of plentitude and of finding love and adventure beneath the aluminum flooring and safety wires. 

 

Why they bring us here only as spiritual guides or amusement rides I ask bitterly during a spinning, thrashing shiv demo right on their most famous stage, the Apollo. 

 

Two trains I can sometimes hear in here:

the inner one screaming when they turn off the filter of loathing and the flakes are allowed to wander in the streets and engage with events

the outer one chugging each time a car melts from the inner train and lets off techs and managers

 

 

 

by Reptily

Preen gland technician

They brought me inside the control room of my own mother's puppet corpse. I could look down over the switches and buttons and through the glass down five stories and watch her feet drag and thud, drag and thud across the empty Sears parking lot, which was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Once we had triggered The Crack, it was a watery world of carelessness; a sort of sleep paralysis of the shock reflex set in while we were fed through a peristalsis of the dimensional organ. 

She was/ was not my mother. This was the flesh of the great beautiful young K who could toss me 100 meters into the sky with her beaque and catch me easily in her seal craw, where lightly blood-dappled pelts were stacked and crumpled into a very stinky but gossamer safety net. The woman they extracted from her inner ear during a shiv molting also is/ isn't La Pegyuh. She seems to carry all her memories, fears, quick tongue. Her body, as well, is now tortured day and night with Remote Tissue Decisioning in order to coordinate with image mirroring protocols and functions. They say she was a random preen gland technician who took a wrong turn somehow. 

by Reptily

No more community theater

The stage is dark at the center and it's one of those setups where the players are seated or standing around the inside of the three walls waiting to take their turns. Giant leaves made of plastic bags get caught up in the breeze of a fan and bound noisily across the upstage out of doors like plastic bags. 

"But then I'm telling you we love to have her and she's so talented but she does her writhing ritual really in breaking of character and does it right in the middle of the stage when others should be starting their lines and action."

"Jan, I can sympathize, but she's over 21. I can't control her even with the shiv. She has the fins of an embryo, but she'll never develop any further or take on the exclusive markings of any particular species. She feels like shiv's the only way she can find freedom as she will never sprout wings or a full claw matrix, so the ancient hooting and dancing are her expression of a foiled archetypal and organic need."

"Don't get me started on the topic of Institute for the Talk Therapy Apologist Movement mumbo-jumbo, Donna. We all knew from the start the risks we were taking by having Reptily here full time. I mean, not just a goat you can tether to a tree. And it's really no problem. Just no more community theater, k?"

LaChama

The Lady Bug

i coughed so hard i

closed my eyes and saw

perfect geometric displays

 

a functioning and energetic 

system of squares and the

angles that connect them

hipsters beware: it tends

to degrade into a dry and

gauzy parody of order

now as i turn two-handed

to the door frame and lean

i reflect on the drama of

the lady bug who must

be reminded of her destiny

during stops along the way

 

 

 

by Peg

life's little mercies

cracked microwave oven

atomic bomb tests

industrial farming

office smoking

hepatitis

deviated septum

demon possession

mistakes

house fire

house fire

house fire

The South must be reined in

Look around you

it's like everything's right there

even if you can't find your glasses

when they turn up it's not surprising where

Is Braino telekinetic

I was dozing off at the command center just six o'clock from the electric rice maker on the dining room table. But Braino was upstairs in bed dreaming because that's its point of reference for sleep or fond memories of dreaming there or just because it can. But when it started thinking about not having put the rice away, like in a baggie in the fridge, it started coming down the stairs and was going at the rice maker from that descending angle, more like four o'clock, when I woke up. Sometimes you wake up and have double vision for a moment, and that's what it was like.

Big cryin' baby

For the next funeral:

How do you do

Doodlin' Song

To Sir, With Love

Over at the Frankenstein Place

To Love Somebody

You Dropped A Bomb

Viciosa 

When Will Death Come

The Valleys 

Step One

Liver

higado

plaza de los acumulantes

filtro a los moros

tan vivo como el cerebro

ven, vivante

 

 

 

por Santorabo

Now Entering The Crack

one day coming soon will be a

portal to another world, the 

difference between past and

future, a crack in believing

we'll find out who's entitled

to get in, who has to sit on a

bench in the lobby, which

relationships count as significant

we shall sit before an interpreter

of evidence in perfect robes

but mostly there will be doubt

what will happen to the kids

other dimensions are ours to

learn, not theirs, not the natives

but this time that means no one

only wondering, a beastly rent

 

 

by LaChama

 

Reptily

"I can transverse The Crack."

Jan

"I, too, have crept through it multiple times with my family."

Is Braino a boll weevil, picaresque Christ planting misery

i am a tobacco smoker. i smoke tobacco there

i've said it. i make Braino make decisions on 

tobacco and it makes her crazy and mean-- 

as the Christ. i spend time writing mental 

final direction notes how no xtians near my

bedside, no christians at my burial, at my 

grave, an unmarked grave where xtians are

not likely to go. no whispering no last rites

but of course the fear then is that you really

do want that because of your deeply embedded

culture that makes you need it like a drug.

you don't want to be strong in your last mom

ents you want to surrender and love and be

loved and accepted and fitting in where you're

going. the phrase where you're going could 

even be Braino as the Lamb of God boring, 

twisting, you'd think she'd come out the other

ear.

i cry with fear

my friend tells his near-death experience as a joke

when i tell mine, i'll some point get the urge to cry

what is it awe, no, self-pity, well... no, fear. i cry with fear

then what was it, seen not remembered remembered but

not seen... that spooked no it's not spook fear. it's wide-

eyed terror at a blurry event that at the time was not

scary. there was an organization that required its mem-

bers, at a given point, to say, "...and that's when i started

working myself up." suspicious at first about the cultural

tokens sprinkled throughout event call it, i realize that

even though the mind collects its available symbolism, 

that doesn't mean you're not actually dying. delayed 

horror. at a non-scary moment or hour. judgement now

kicking in as Braino congratulates herself and begins 

creating her own survival story: look at what could

have happened if not for my heroic and timely action?

i don't care. Braino is the real savior in the story either

way. Doing for herself what God could have and might

have done without her willing self-starterality. Of course

the God side would say of course God directed Braino 

to do it, but ok, i see the divided gratitude energy betw.

what? not deities-- apples and oranges. Braino is really 

just a glorified human organ, not even. she's just a function

of an operation of an organ, but she is the most beautiful

and one who would make any lesser god than God jealous

probably use a peeler on their thigh gouge an eye, attempt

retribution etc. God-Braino is completely different. it's 

like God-bird flying to a tree branch, harmony. then there's

the question does Braino get drunk or stoned if i do. well

not sure cuz one of those things i don't do, but... can Braino

be addicted to any physical substance or even i guess love,

etc.? of course as in i love you with all my being which

would include Braino. don't over or underestimate i guess.

Does Braino get tired. i say no. she wakes up even more

in sleep, no. she is not so urgently needed as in waking

hours when anything could happen. only one tiny part

of her is the conscience and another is urine regulation,

so... obviously we're not talking about the normal, sub-

awake mind here. in fact "we" are not talking about 

anything; this is actually more of an inquiry of B. her-

self, which is probably as ridiculous as a seance or

one of those amazing tv preacher self-answering prayers.

God is not the only sphinx in the universe. i get it that

you shouldn't get it muddy what, which god, huh? but as

described above, it's more like sphinx God smiling down

on sphinx bird flying to a branch. why do we bother?

how nice they have this peace. so Braino says, peace

my ass. even tho i am mute, i can't take that. i am the

workhorse of the entire operation, bitch! i never sleep

you know i never sleep. it falls on me to figure out 

the flack and you make me do it totally wasted as shit

on ok i won't say it. that's about the best i can do as to

a workup or a portrait channeling or who knows direct 

quote from her royal highness. she sounds real to me.

But there was the question of wait.. all that sounded 

as if Braino is being held as what a hostage? by me?

i think the original question ok, i feel what they call a

tiny voice saying hey sleep on it but if that is Braino 

that means she a lie cuz she needs sleep-- or cares 

what about me shia lebouf i've totally left out christ is

that what he portrays in our cultural toolbox? The 

character of Braino, the intermediary, the divine 

flesh, but again, Braino is only divine in a camp sense.

i really don't think there's a conflict though because

you know if you pray and it's a christian prayer, you

pray to christ anyway-- Braino is not really for praying

to; i wouldn't want to flatter her quite that much. 

which brings up the issue of proper address in prayer:

i believe it is necessary to address a prayer: even tho

i know where it's going, Braino in a compassionate 

(?) manner or just as a normal function might feel she

has to take on whatever i am praying for; in some ways

i am her boss, but i don't want to... is this one area 

where Braino can get confused while mostly knowing

more than i could possibly know at any given moment.

is this the one or one of many ways i have to take her

in hand, an ultimately defenseless and delicate creature,

feed and protect, etc. in turn she may protect me out of

thousands of possible examples maybe if there is 

information that's "too much" for me to handle, like it

would give me a heart attack, or an actual memory of

a heart attack, etc. so she keeps it a secret. but then 

she might get in a habit of doing that too often; may-

be she can detect the bad results of the bottleneck 

without being self-aware enough to realize it's her own

neurosis causing it in the first place. Ha-ha that was a

joke. but fear. simply because i didn't feel at home, that

there were desperate decisions being made and there

was nothing i could do about it; whenever i tried to 

answer my voice would wake me, but it was annoying 

not a relief to be wakened. Braino may have been

the underlying annoying agent, just to jolt me back in

shape-- it would be just like that ok i won't say it. 

by Ilyn

Unauthorized swagger

becoming slowly overgrown, sewn hard

you've added a ying and yang to my navel

now the blue eyelight is giving way to 

nicotine grey but under it all, a swagger

there is a weightlessness in the wonder,

a wager, an escalator ending in cumuli

 

but down home they're making cider

and stomping vines and calling back hell

 

 

by Ilyn

whether or not you can escape, it will be prolonged

the cancer dust sticks to the radioactive sugar and voila!

only those especially privileged to view the scan can say

whether or not you can escape, it will be prolonged

and then delivered matter of fact as if they'd always known.

and it will be linked, in shame, to an original sin either way

you've lived this believed this wrong and look what's gone down.

and then what an appreciation parade? or worse, none. 

completely undignified but druggie-fun moments of hospice

and then, well, to the big review board overall, were you...

that was your exit interview. you know longer matter in real

time and space, but yes in the electronic gyrations of those

 

just behind you on the trail, in an accessible membrane.

For Hoolie

by Uncle Ilyn

Mucked up with bandage glue

this grey mess

drifts in glue time

on the arms legs and 

random surfaces gets

stuck to newspapers

and press-on nails

ashes, pigeon fluff

walking an old-timey

times square effect

they try to apply 

patches but I'm not

the same already 

as i was just today

putting bandaids on

a building falling down

tho it's sticking me

together now.

by Ilyn

Mike's Swimming Blog #1001

He put rat on my breath

and the seeding trees

outside the ymca

his disregard mixed with

unmistakable compulsion

i can see this his naked facet

we found the woolen dryer balls

in the pillowcases

and they made impressions

what golden days bitterly

hating to the brink of violence

only the chromosomes are

appropriate not the hormones

constant rubbing then none

subordinate in control

by Mike

Sick and ugly cult

we tried their brains

we mocked their children

we shamed them on

all the public highways

 

we set a fire

in the temple shit house

we marked our skin

with the blood of the dead

 

we cut their cocks off

and fed them strained pees

until their faces

were green with shock

 

we took their good faith

and made a cradle 

for all the emblems

of our bold transgressions

by LaChama

Bongo interlude

they question your structure,

administer a needle

you are in a twilight

and in so doing violate the

hardened magma of life

they question so as to

check an earlier predation

by a predesignated enemy

seeking existential ends

by Ilyn

It's your world Abel

It's your world Abel.
Life and Death them
selves are engraved
across your breast.
You've got a daughter;
You just had four
beers at your in-laws.
Even a quick blow
job would be fun.
From nothing, you've
made my life glow--
cleaned under chachkas
I'd not checked in years;
I've taken a shower
young stud, but I'd
like you natural pls.
Except not if there
was pussy; sorry, I
mean only after a
normal work day's
grime for example. It's
your world because
you're bossy and
drunk, Abel. That
type of behavior for
whatever reason makes
me have good luck.



by LoDonna

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

you smell of propellant

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

you make me jealous

 

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

bristling with toys

 

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

form-fitting garb

 

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

where are you now

 

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

please stop me now

 

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

compelling and convincing

dirty antifa boy

dirty antifa boy

 

dirty antifa boy

totally safe sex though

dirty boy

dirty boy

dirty boy

[etc.]

Loop [disco nausea 2]

It's like an asthma attack that comes on every night until dawn.

The world starts spinning faster than before

It feels like swimming head to toe-oh oh

Our bodies find a context in the snow-wo-wo

It's not a trance

It's another dimension

 

You've read the tale; now go to jail!

You've seen the show, now you must blow!

 

Is everything really coming true

Even as I fall out of love with you 

 

HEY [bongo interlude]

 

[loop]

 

 

subconscience

she prays from her hot tub in Deepwell

for those recovering from disembowelment

 

not quite able to muster an argument against

envisioning each step in the process, the

initial renting open, the exposure of the 

entrails, and then their partial or entire

exit from the body cavity. Still another 

layer below, however, lies a wiser member

even below the monotonous mock-moral

chant of the righteous betters, a stiller

beast, a knower of past and future and

potential connector to the divine

By Ted

"For Donna"

Disco nausea

time seems to be standing still

not sure how i'm sposed to feel

i'm smoking to help stand back

but i keep ending up in The Crack

my hatred for you is all i need to keep going

any time that i think of your face it keeps flowing

you reeled me in like a sweet candy striper

taken in by the expressionless mask of a viper

 

it started with just us the two

then another while i was at work

then while at home with the flu

it was easy to guess who you pork

 

 

 

 

by Donna

RE-CAP'M: GHOST WIFE -or- The Anothers

It was clear until my third or fourth call for repairs that the landlord and his girlfriend, who wants to be a wife, had agreed to always come over here together, never alone. But then they started getting a little cute, and then a little tiffy, about how he'd replaced perfectly good radiant heat for ducts, which he'd slammed in himself during his twenties, anxious to get the bar done with the Smoke-A-Lizer and the deck right there on the creek in time for the wedding, and then a prompt and open-ended fractalization of subsequent drinking + nature-related gatherings.

Then, (I guess) Mike showed up alone to adjust the furnace. I said is (I don't know) Janine here, and he turned to hide his face mumbling she didn't wanna come in. While Mike went to check on some knuckle marks high up on the face of the fridge, I slipped on some clogs and waded through the front grass to their low-slung truck. That's where I saw the figure. Its silhouette was undoubtedly feminine, all dressed in white, fuzzy-edged. It was perfectly still, but the energy was tense as if it could manifest in horror without warning. Getting closer to the passenger-side window, I could now see that it was-- just... Janine, texting, in a terry turban and robe. Why don't you come in and have some coffee, Janine, I asked, stupid not to realize that she hadn't even made up her face. I don't WANT to! it screeched,  banshee-like.

In contrast to Mike, my ex-fiance had been fastidious about dampers and grumouts measuring tightly up to their flush surfaces. He didn’t mind poisoning house mice in the most painful way, for example, because he’d already done his part to responsibly and reasonably keep them out of our sphere; if they persisted, they had to be overly-aggressive anomalies of their species and therefore ok for destruction.

I think the landlord’s companion wants to be his wife because she was so thorough about checking me out, did it all herself, is very efficient, you know, though it is his place. The first time he finally showed up alone, he squatted and duck-walked an entire stainless-face dishwasher, still part way in the strapping and box, mudroom to kitchen after having worked a 16-hour day or so, he said. Then Mike muttered something about before his wife passed away, and I figured that had to have been here, maybe upstairs. He couldn't seem to get the math right, even to the decade, about when and who and what. I sat quietly with the cable remote between my knees, just a dog and a green leather hassock between us as he wiped his brow with one of my dish towels.

That same shade of bologna pink except for around the eyes, they seem like they've both been liking their wine hours or countryside tavern rounds in their present neighborhood, near my last address, over by Tom's, maybe since she died, maybe "Tessa," of cancer, and he'd been living on his own; but no, the hardworking girlfriend had referenced having lived here by the creek as well... or was it just her air of anticipatory ownership through management, man management, and the exhilarating world of background checking other people's risks, the way she found out about me, hungrily engaging my references.

I think they must have agreed to always come here together, and never alone, because it's too comically common of a scenario for the landlord hubby to go and fix a pipe for Mrs. So-and-so, the divorcee or young childless widow, or widow/ divorcee with a sympathetic child, and what ensues. Maybe a shadow birth or a life insurance scheme. They must surely at least have passed some kind of bottle with their pants rolled up sitting by the water soon after Janine Wannabe came into his life endeavoring to replace his inferred melancholy with her palpable carnal and appetitive bounties, seeking to address her fiduciary insecurities with his plumbing and electrical business.

The thing is that this guy I dated, Zhann, is so swish on the phone, and he prolly still resents me for moving in with I guess I'm calling him "Tom" out in Brickhouse-Horseley's Craigs. Zhann apparently told my landlord's girlfriend/ fact checker/ whatever the protracted story of our perhaps having met on an app and I maybe prematurely being recruited as designated driver to his niece's Magnificent Mile dance-floor wedding and reception in the city. The anticipatory and self-envisioned Wife of Mike prolly put one and one together and said get smart, bitch. I don't care how butch he is; I'm not leaving my Mike alone with that fag. If anyone's getting to know the new tenant, it's going to be me-- because it could be fun. Or maybe a three-way. Drinks. Anyway not until after the spring (?) wedding unless there are already little rugrats bouncing about.

But then as the toilet/ furnace/ disposal-broken weeks clunked along (me a wreck fallen fresh from a dream life in a fairy-tale property) footstep-like creaks would follow my own going up and down the slick and narrow, high-gloss painted hard pine stairs to the bedrooms on the second floor, really not much more than a hot, musty attic, and cold spots and fragrant and rank spots would appear and dissolve unexpectedly in random angles and passages. One night I thought the washer-dryer closet doors would explode open when the European water heater turned itself on, blasting gas far more powerfully than normal, and the dogs startled awake to the urgent, mad attempts of the auto-pilot at igniting. I briefly imagined myself staggering from the smoldering ruins of Thornfield Hall in a flouncy, soiled blouse.

Raccoons started chattering and many other noise making activities that were less comfortingly identifiable. These invisible yet intensely present beasts occupied an alternate universe of drama, hilarity, and domestic corporal brutality right there in the same spatial cross hairs as my aging pets, tarnished silver, punch bowl boxed in tissue paper. The dogs drew crazy designs with their noses across carpets and into walls. The more needed repairing, the more I saw Mike, and the more he seemed reluctantly obsessed with hanging out, never at ease, always active in a pretense of punishing, grunting physical labor.

The fighting grew more intense, a real bag of cats. There was plenty of room under there in that choice crawlspace next to the water, where they could wash their hands before eating, presumably. Presumably after a conversation with the in-the-running wife Janine, Mike told me to go ahead and arrange the wild animal removal myself. I didn't go with the hot-daddy social media star whose wife had created a huge photo-and-video album of him bending over backwards, all kinds of ways, to get cute baby skunks out of chimneys. They charged $20 more per animal than another outfit called Animal Removal Service. ARS sent a guy clearly attempting to hide, with posture and garmentation, the textual contents of a tattoo beneath his ear. He pointed out that it's mating season, so two males in one winter hole is just asking for fireworks no matter how roomy.

I remembered entertaining the viewpoint of a determined and tiny-brained but essentially innocent animus undergoing a process of systematic extermination, even as it dutifully offers concessions and phones an army of sophomoric relationship interventionists, not at all conscious that its fate was sealed the moment it had entered the premises. I'd helped Tom pick out our sprawling, ivy-wrapped Edwardian deep in the summer while a total density of green was still sealing away the panorama of protected natural wetlands professionally curated to assure historical accuracy and provide stunning contrast to a former Tallest Building in the World, which rose from the clouds framed by goldenrod and tree-like daisy stems more than 25 miles to the east.

Before he'd told me that she died, I had my back to him washing my hands in the sink and explained I was just going to have lunch but that I'd just pulled a whole human head's worth of hair out of the bathtub drain, so I didn't expect to get hungry again any time soon. He sheepishly apologized, and I turned to look at his ruddy, close-cropped scalp and said I understood it wasn't his hair. Then we stopped talking, which allowed a menacing spirit to claim for a moment the unnaturally maroon, multi-legged glop in the bottom of the bathroom wastebasket; one might have briefly pictured a forest-green and rust pants suit over a smart argyle v-neck and many thin gold chains, a newly hennaed bushiness under a floppy wool cap, and snowflakes, bumpy lipstick and mascara, out by the mailbox, reaching in all the way to the cuff of her long beige driving gloves for some envelopes like the ones that still come for her, maybe Ramona.

Ramona Plantagenet -or- Current Occupant

I knew Mike and maybe his girlfriend or whatever he calls her, maybe "Janine," had been renting my new place out for at least a decade, so the flotsam and jetsam of all those bodies would be boarding-house anonymous to any forensic detective determined enough to search the pipes and corners and attic and creek bed and crawlspaces. Neither one of us though, I fear, Mike nor me, can help but identify the creaking, the ambiance of living but un-housed consciousness, the parallelism, an unfinished wish, the unsettledness, the strong odors, as anyone but young Tessa, the reigning past occupant in terms of prolonged crying out, of injustice (I suppose from cancer). This doesn't have to be spoken.

Even as smooth local gay boys, seasoned by their middle-class bullies, ring the bell and wait blowing vapor from their nostrils, their patient eyes bordering on expectation and then acceptance of either tenderness or relentless cruelty, talk up cable packages or gym fundraisers and shiver with desire for warmth-- yet nail their scrupulous feet to the welcome mat without asking to come in even during inhumane arctic vortices-- there, once again, helping himself across the threshold and stomping snow from his boots onto the floor he'd sanded, returning, as the result of his intemperate youth and careless workmanship, is Mike: repairing, rethinking, replacing, refluxing as if that nail had come loose every day for a thousand years before, but that he must keep on pounding until the nails are everywhere, holding every fly, sound, appliance in location. Yet the holes (means of entry) multiply.

I sip coffee or jab my fingers into the kitchen window flower boxes when I find he's here thinking of her and being with me and feeling how I feel for him and want to be her not now but back then. I sip and wonder if either one of us wants to be who we are at the time, in the year we are in; the calendar seems to squeak along like a room where a nearby fire's sucked out the air and there's sirens and neighbors in blankets with their breath showing, and then pretty, sunny days, then volcanoes; then it's time again to change out the furnace filter. I long for company now living alone again so soon after believing the mansion in the woods and its cruel master would be a final resting place, trying not to think about my inevitably over-confident replacement. I wake up not knowing where I am --but all throughout the day, and not from sleep. All I know is that I belong, and Mike belongs together with an-others who are not physically or temporally here and therefore not available for normal carrying on. This is what we have instead.

Key for name game

Awkward

Backbiting

Careless

Dictatorial

Entry level

Frightened

Geriatric

Hellbent

Illogical

Juicer

KKK

Loser

Machiavellian

Nerd

Omnivorous

Petty

Quitter

Rube

Simple

Talker

Unprepared

Vicious

Wimp

Xmas hater

Yahoo

Zitface



by Donna
(Dictatorial Omnivorous Nerd Nerd Awkward) 

Combat pay

Worst tourette's in 30 years
I'm praying to god and then
try Braino and i'm back and forth
when somebody says, This is what
i can do: and a hand grips a lever
like you might see in a cockpit
and draws it down along with
every tic in my face neck and
shoulder, the whole circuit through
which i communicate and suffer
and click and point and decide, all
burnt out from the deviated septum
at the top of my nose to the preter-
connected jaw bone that won't open
and close right to the cervix in the
neck whipping around to the wet
wing-like struggles of the shoulder
blade to be free and finally dis-
located, all calm and moved only
by natural breathing and settling in.
Shab sits by arguing for extra
everything as if it's combat pay.

by Ilyn

Hispanic-themed plan

When i was sane i had crazy red jesus hair 

how it made me look like a flaming canon ball going off the edges of LaMthyuh

how i crawl back up through the rubble of endless punishment

but now my tourette's so bad and they won't give me clonidine cuz it sounds so

druggie, and the other PA says i gotta go back on the opiates so as to come down

easy, so i went for some nicotine patches and they only had 2 and 4 when what 

i need to even begin controlling the tic, which will result in a cervical injury, is a

12 to 16. So i got the 4 gum but it works for like 30 seconds and even my speech is

still contorted from the facial ticking, so i went back and bought a pack of lighters 

and some american spirit. now, as i had prophesized, i have the tic and a nico-monkey

on my back to boot. and eating desserts like crazy. every process of my life is disrupted.

When i went to the emergency room i was still on regular medicare so the hospital chain

i ended up at had to take me tho they prefer to keep out riffraff. Then by the time i was 

out with my four tramadols and a bunch of proton inhibitors i got dropped from regular

medicare and dumped into a hispanic-themed plan with the exotic doctors. I'm thinking countercultural though might be the way to go if i'm thinking there's gonna be a bias against my medicinal cannabis use at all the white hospitals with the five xtian stations to go out on and no msnbc.

by Illyn

Thank you

I still don't fully know or understand what happened
but I still have a profound feeling like you
pulled me back from the other side.

After that I hung against a scrim
and engaged with energized groups of interlocutors
through the gauze

You took my belly in your hands and lightly
shook
with a pleased look at how simple it all is

Baby's on a spectrum

It hurt so much
but it wasn't spose to be
then it hurt me even more
cuz i wouldn't let him free.

i locked him deep inside
i locked him deep inside

i shut him in my car
and laid it on the gas
i tucked him in my bed
all up around his ass

i locked him deep inside
i locked him deep inside 

i put him on the porch
like an alley cat
i kept him in some woods
where he could take a breath

i locked him deep inside
i locked him deep inside
i locked him deep inside

Go take your marijuana

Dirty white leather zipper Bible (he held the)

He was staying with his aunt and uncle
on account of chasing cans at the fair
so he had to go where they went
and they went to church at night
so they gave him his dead cousin's
dirty white leather zipper Bible
which he held gently between his thighs

Lidderly broken inside

coming apart from within
physical connectors, structures

snapping and rolling

splitting, detaching ruptures

lidderly broken inside

i had mistaken the pangs for

"sadness," gut-level terror

a predisposer for suicide

will i get a new lease on life

unbiased by the part that's lived

stretching beyond the knife

return to a pain that's figurative?

by Jan

Today's dog walk

Today a large turd was stuck on a long hair coming out M'Lady's butt, but as she tried to squeeze out the rest, the pendulous turd knocked against her ankles, and it scared her, and she lurched forward, which made the turd swing even harder to come back and spank her on her haunches, which scared her even more, so she took off running like a crazy rabbit in starts and stops until I and a plastic bag finally caught up with her. I felt bad because she had obviously eaten at least one of my hairs, which could actually cause a strangulation of the bowel. I'd say we both better get more serious about not only personal hygiene but also mindfulness around the jetsam and detritus we're always leaving behind in the form of our hairs.

by Jan

Perfick feminist death machine

what happened to me privately, converse to any choice i'd make

became performance through reporting as in a passion play, the

details of my victimization, and i say it that way as a nod to my

audience, who needed some blanks filled in, but also even after,

in performative description, so as to gather empathy

from ghosts, scarecrows, invaders, exploiters, the righteous blinded:

assault on me is now a thing that they can see and be seen seeing


i neither submitted nor killed because there was no choice to

make as an unconscious body, only a being state, target for a man's

acting out desire, fantasy, hate, grief, curiosity, lust, disrespect on

a responseless warm human figure who mostly can't see or can't

remember, couldn't move or argue race or gender, agency, consent,

the weather, how my choices got me to this, and his, our destiny:

knowing full well if i retaliate, i make it all come down on me again.



by Peg

flesh-coloured virus

it started as a virus but i didn't notice
since the color of the bumps matched
my complexion

i'd only seen it once before, and just
a dot of it, and that was on my father,
back of his hand

mine were few, but one on my foot
was activated during an attack of
fire ant itching

from there they flamed, while beige,
enough to startle any dermatologist
from commenting

it's as if they've looked and seen their
own lives pass before them in
shallow relief



Ilyn
Jornada de Banyos Calientes

Difficult persons club

my non-traditional family
we were very immature actually
no one wanted a parent role

if you're talking gestalt, the
adult-adult transaction was
more about manly tool use

and there was the night
a creature tore shrieking down
the hall in a black slip

authentic expressions of socially
counter-intuitive archetypes were
contrary to easy

like any submarine of the
enraged, engaged, and
stuck on mutual aid

delight had to be wrenched
from a deep hard place and
cauterized in the pool



by Mike
Mike's Swimming Blog #Appendix

We bred them to forgive

I need an outlet for my
transgressiveness
so i don't end up in jail

they used to say that life's a
script you write
not the kind you steal

if i could choose the wave to
get swept up in
i'd be master of my days

if i commit to doing
wrong always
i will never fail



Reptily
Reptily in Exurbia  (frag.)

FOR TONY

1, 2, 3, 4...

how can you still look 40 when you've been 50 years getting fucked by murdering presidents
how can you be sitting down when a clock is ticking that's already taken my family down
can you let it register on your face after all this time the terror of having done it all wrong

you let them die
you're letting them
die, die, die, die

etc.



by Hoolie
"Read to the music you likely hear accompanying it in your mind."

Top searches for...

Kick me out, and keep me out!!

I should have known there would already be a gay Paul Bunyan & Babe the Blue Ox series of X-rated adventures.

The reason I didn't know is that I hate reading gay fiction as a genre which of course also makes it hard to write both since I hate it and also having to reinvent the wheel.

Lesson: Every wheel has already been invented. Playing naive nobody will buy it. That you are so un-read. As to have no idea about it and also arrogant.

Once again I swear it's alright if you want to cancel me do it now, eat me first. I want to take full advantage of the benefits resulting from catastrophe.

Stop me while I'm still sizzling hot, boys. I've grown exponentially more irresistibly rugged (although now i'm reaching the top): Because too many bullies in gladiator camp

I'm a dropout. All my training has been direct and in the field, them or me, and when society was a child. A man's got no choice but to go it alone when he knows that

Any group he joins will have a remarkably similar percentage of bullies looking for a long-term relationship, and they will smell you and they will come to you.

Better taking them as they come on the street or in an office and take them unsparingly, as if your own life means nothing to you, in fact less to you than it obviously does to a bully

Neither those who are infatuated with you nor you yourself are a gift of or to society; we are the necessary triggers that build natural defenses that make pearls from

Grains of discord, hot with hate, covered over by hardening slime, an anti-semen, shadow excretion that enrages men, makes them crazy for about on each other.

And then there is Paul, alone with a super-human animal, which says it all.



by Ilyn
(and Shab, of course)

Metaproject: Project List

I have only three thangs to say:
mm, mm, and mm. Mm-mm-mm.

The download page is infected with
malware.

My instrument will not play. It is
rendered useless without the proprietary software packages.

Momentarily the keys tooted like a "funky organ,"
then nothing, and all other sounds followed

into that electronic drain hole if they were even
being produced at all by that point

all music, no matter the source, was
ravaged

how ravaged was it you might ask?
I would say very ravaged.

To the point where the only sounds were
created by the cooling fans within the console itself.



Dr. Donna Spah-Thong
"Once a doctor, always a doctor."

I am a robot and I will save your life if you turn over all your worldly goods to me

We ask how some of the tenets of houseist theory can be extrapolated.

A houseist might set accessibility, for example, as a special category for cleaning evaluations. Orderliness or what we normally think of as orderliness does not necessarily apply as a best practice here. I know where my phone is because it's in the phone place. The phone place doesn't need a sign or assignment in either physical or digital worlds. I can't keep my phone place on my phone, for example, because it exists in my mind, which is after all a perfectly legitimate place to keep information especially when situations are so fluid as to render hand-drawn signs or even typed file names instantly moot.

Having crap all over the place can make good sense during periods of uncertainty and flux. However, be mindful of how widespread that crap and how big the sides like stress level to maintain it for long periods, especially after the bottom layers become resolved and have achieved waste or archive status, where the norms of "cleaning" kick back into place.



Donna
From "Notes for presentation proposal: Association of the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement National Convention, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 'Hanging Out Matters,' 2020."

they seem delusional

first there was the cutest baby cardinal, big head
hopping in grass cut to his bib

then the warning came out take cover now
went for a walk, fed the dog

south side windows were sunny
in the north clouds were sucking

it's unstable, yet the babies play
we agreed to don masks

but also adding mimicry of foreign accents
and false mustaches

mayor sez bein a K shouldn't be a life sentence
though some think it one

but they've made it so they can put you in a
cage made of human tissue and bones

and you live there letting others love your
life, can't hear your cries

if we could step out of the chicken suit
and just go on a date

but the context baby is previously owned
they might seem delusional

but this is our home, in their sleep. wait
a bit longer till they're gone.



by Peg
(Petty Entry-level Geriatric)

Seeing Red, Except It's Blue

flower child's child's child's child
please don't look backwards
to see the flowers

pricks can create an itch that
you might not even mention
for the pain

even smiling, beware the
words that only sound good
singing




by Reptily
"In retrospect."

apenas, juan

apenas, juan
que olvidara
your sister's name

apenas, y nunca
podria dejarte in
Spain.

por si caso leas
tu esta nota de
botella

no me digas
que no me quieras
mas que ella



por Santorabo

This is the proper way to pronounce your name in my language

We manipulated a web learning object
that had been set up to spell your name
using negative adjectives about people.

each adjective came with a story card
that created a comic strip about you
based on the spelling of your name.

but then we quickly realized we couldn't
play drums and breathe at the same time
for example. We also began to hear spirit

pipes of the ancestors, and when the
spells came, i recognized that i was in
fact dictatorial obtuse nerd nerd awkward.



by Donna

gross roach jar

hypnotic mix of cool and blue-grey weather
i reject each and every part of my life and yours

there's a psychological test to gauge which
board of directors will take charge of your

then you are released, like a product, out onto
the wavy game board. they get a win from you.

everyone with a 401k, a pension, is on your side
those who'd terminate the sick aren't economists

any more than the cure makers are. Who's to
say what creates the widest wellness overall?

a glass jar gets heat from a micro compost heap
the stinking contents swell from months half

baked. every item in the supply chain is reas-
sessed and slated for such a contingency plan

your bottles, your breads and cake, pork fat
render your freedom moot in many scenarios

as i sit here denying your existence i feel peace
the stillness of utter failure and condemnation

but the heart ticks on not for perfection but
rather revenge, karmic verdict, i sit here in

prayer for your punished agency girlish plans
selfishness turned sour every visible feature

of the material word with a sign on it saying
you piece of shit you fucked up fuck you for-

ever. and then, peace. for me. peace in some
relish a hammock of amorality a non-necessity

even to breath to allow the bichos the fauna to
crawl as did the Buddha beneath a dripping tree





Dr. Donna Thong
Temporary Emergency Credential Pending

todays dog walk

my cedar infested with orange-jelly
gall blossom tentacles

change of shades in spring-mown
lawn grass

back at control center swivel chair
coffee-mug warmer

Invisible circuitry, multi-purpose
sprays, death game

The Extended Real Job Experience

• Lil' Baby
• Prop son
• Church singer
• Preacher's organ monkey
• extra
• Gifted schoolboy
• news deliverer
• dreamy root-beer hop
• Rebellious hot-pants wearing meadow runner
• Theater jock
• Woods freak
• People's free meat grocery cashier
• Fur vault hunchback
• Partier
• Precocious beatnik throwback
• Club dancer
• Ho
• Brash critic
• Xerox operator
• club poet
• sideshow
• tutor
• Penitent teacher of children
• Sober beach guy
• Demigod, gym
• Security Guard, parking lot
• Estampificador of deeds
• Daily sub: East LA
• Counselor, the bad boys
• Weekend staff, group home
• Long-term sub, single
• Private teacher, Major European Country, Confidential
• Small groups, companies, individuals, conversation, native, pleasant affect, expensive
• Adjunct, Ancient European University, Confidential
• Internet rodeo rider, supervising
• Universal contender
• Downsizer, deflector of the exploited
• Local community college superstar
• Rhetorical Cage Fighter
• Monster (pariah)
• New Guy is an Old Guy (Meh)
• Turner of It Up a Notch or Two Too Much Higher
• No
• My Bed (that I had made) Recliner
• shiksa
• Sadhu, wandering
• Useful American Pet Uncle for spawn of oil kingdom
• Consumer zealot
• Dealer in Overpriced Antiquities

labor issue

it writhed in the stainless steel basin
that and deep aquamarine rubber
were the first colors ever seen

its core was a vertical windmill
that spun with the vagaries of
gaze regard media touch action

like any wheel, finally redundant
yet carrying on because of physics
yet in control of the money presses

Today's dog walk

I went to an emergency website for dough that doesn't rise
There were a number of interventions
but no admonishment for panic

Apparently there's a sinkhole in the bottom of the gut
n' when it's raw from taking want and glut
it starts to pump its own philosophy

Today's dog walk

A crow fought perhaps with himself
One set of wings and needles of the bough
Bouncing and of course squawking

He looks like the dog who lives there.
Well, he isn't.
He's handsome! Or she is.

Cold sun, a parkway middle of the tulip
stand had exploded sawdust added
perhaps explaining the power outage.

Today's dog walk

Whiter snow than has ever been seen before
brushed on grass that's already deep green, not mowed

Looking up, vultures still enjoying their advantage
above whose house circling, we get closer faster

than just our own click; it's that they too are edging
toward us. Contrast the anxious red swelling waxy

buds on the grey branches against the pale sky
and fifteen or so carnivorous brothers and sisters

Today's dog walk

Was it a crouching child...
then a mini stegosaurus
turned toward a neighbor's
back tree and proceeded
straight up the trunk at pace

Another neighbor's tree
is home to vultures who
seem to feel relevant now
and ignore threats from
us our pets vehicles they

circle and repopulate
beam in on all that's weak
gently bobbing sleep
from the strongest pine
can see who's in pain

Today's dog walk

today's dog walk yielded
neighbors voices set up
chords and sounded edgy
overall, but the words
under my radar, perhaps
not M'Lady's, those are
utterances at focused
determined desperation
within rooms self-talk
moderate to low volume.

and yes sure lower levels
of hostility and or spleen
which one's grateful for
not sustainable and only
the views of hundreds of
millions of elastic tape
cinch it and now you can
every home a vector not
goat tied to a stump for
and they'll keep winning.

Flack

These are real hours of the day
They're not stolen hours
Except that they're stolen from myself

Staying up late as if no one can see
Or imagine my non-participation as
they sleep

I've stolen these hours for safety and
reflection, a safe space for flights of
fancy and abandon

Not like the halogen lamp towering
dark above the settee, alien in a
mid-century nostalgia motif

I can wander the home like Nixon or
Ray Miland, experiencing life as
it is

While you rise early and clean yet
clean again, and tip-toe across the
dark like it's some foreign enemy

It only takes me minutes to say what
I have to say to the day
and a minute tomorrow, sure, for the flack



Jackie Lush

Beautiful thing

It was a beautiful thing to get to know black men, black-as-black men who took me in.
But did I get the reputation, among them, that I was a type of white-and-into-them men.

How can you not love black men when you are standing in their den and they're alright
and relaxed with you there, showing their delight that you're a special theirs-with-them

I receive the red rice and beans, up until the sleeping part of the crib, where there are
coal-red blankets twisted, instead of a proper bed, silky bare mattress, authority, agency

There never was a more generous give-and-take relationship as there in those rooms,
above a business, removed from patrimony between the government cheese shipments



Ja-taym, pour Hoolie

Dragged behind me from 1980

rage
foul moth
fossilized dance communication
two chords
self-regard as
sick, damned and therefore
exempt as the dead
terror of nuclear
Montgomery Ward striped jersey
photos
standing next to a wrecked car
brave young
poseur
counter-whatever
smash
anything in the dark
beacon invert
letters and cards
black
disdain
comfort
cash
hungry trail
chain of gossamer
some of the men
relics of others



by Santorabo

Trapped in that everyone knows where I am

The accoutrements are still.
If every chirp or high whining or hum were a voice
we'd be at wedding level
oops sensitive word

the furnace sucks and pushes
as if the dog is on a ventilator
yet I must remind myself to breath?
I have to stand vigil at the windows

Being saved from myself, my
driving, alter ego of hope-to-die
stock car racer; saved
from every awkward or otherwise face to face

medium grey sky, shadowless
indoors and out, fading not
falling, what if the sun were a
moving motion sensor

and if it could see your fingers type
it would snap back up to twelve again?
I want to suspend all movement to
sit and let the star sink in the dark



Para ti, Eduardo
Santorabo

Peenbo M'Shang

Googa day
getch wuntz
aney cumatcha
awtam wiyut
bushma buntz
talam-laka boa
peenbona
peenbo m'shang



by Reptily

0

i was sleeping a lot
but a couple nights with one eye open
but i was also dreaming my ass off

uhm one guy he was a gentleman
his other half, also a waiter, wore
white while he wore black

and the same people sitting around
as i spin the wheel
their influence is an ocular trick

mostly it's not about trying to become
but what to do once
you are one

the unique smells and light of madrid
mixed with vinyas and this
house, here in the cobbs



por Santorobo

singed bridge

singed bridge singed bridge
I don't care about it
singed bridge

no longer does what doesn't
kill you make you stronger,
no longer

what doesn't kill you also
kills you but it
just takes longer

stronger was just another
click on the dial
the bright face of times past

stronger, now more,
has gone to the next
man's flower

Angry portero

What does it matter if i empty the
garbage when the cubos are inside or
outside when he´s mad either way?

Futuristic Joint

respectable example of a category
humming and high-pitched ubiquity

hold your hair up in a fist bun,
everyone; blow out your assumptions

rough and fine

Matanza
en estas mismas colinas
huyeron a la playa

La mujer se ha convertido
la cuna en un sofá con
almohadas

No importa la altitud de
los techos, te vas a romper
la cabeza



por Santorabo

routine psychedelia

there was a center forming images
barely able to find its vision in a

field of flag-waving motif
it was a foetus but not a baby

not a fox, but then a dog i know
then the consciousness decided

to self-freak, self-prank, and i
was having nothing of it i said

bring it on, your worms and teeth
it can't hurt me, and i like the horror

so in his passive-aggressive wisdom,
Braino sends a tap-dancing suit of

armor, and this was how i could tell
that sleep had vanquished spirographics




Love, Illyn

K Groom

when you talk so long
my responses build and ebb
without making noise



for Missy
by Phyllis (embedded)

street cred

Despite the moral and health risks i still cherish my connections to the dark side, stated La Chama. They give me the street cred i need with some of the flakes. They fill blanks in my self-mythologizing. Let me tell the shiv in a ramshakle temple until morning and my spirit will be ready as the scored flesh of brother Ilyn, as he rolls, in his square-wheeled cart.


Phyllis, embedded

K's Fly Spread Eagle

Green-grey monkeys dipped down from the overhang with the moss and the misters swinging between the ukuleles and the hats and undress you and dress you up again in little outfits while you walked past the shop windows perhaps with a rum-and-fruit drink and without even slowing you down unless you wanted to stop and admire your reflection. These little guys had amazing taste, a trained eye for the right ensemble and all by guesswork on the measurements.

For this reason La Chama had become accustomed to strolling topless through the streets even in the evening after work with a nice wool skirt and a briefcase. Her shoulder monkey, Jock, covered his bald head with his silly, long fingers in feigned embarrassment at all the attention his mistress would get from mammals and flakes and the deities and the bitches and the College of Cement. Ranging from a lifted eyebrow to a flash of angry, swollen anal gland from the packs of male K teens.

Some say Missy emerged hideous from the perfect chrysalis of the Chama as easy as a zipper. Because the K's had a visceral reaction of hate when they see her as if she were an archetype of that which circled over their nesting caves in their earliest memories even though she has the perfect soft brown body of a flake.




by Phyllis, embedded

Da Badonkuments

Da badonka donkuments bedda be deh
Be day onca-mockument o da tacomen
Cuz ivdey donbe ocu-lockumenz we gon
upan sockyo polka-munny sum taybo sun



by Jan

Remorse of Battle

If good men, both victor and vangquished burn from remorse of battle
if you have been vicked or vanged, maybe you could be good
Any machine without hate would quickly move on



La Chama
Fgmt. unknown

Bitch's snow tracks are a portrait of herself crapping on lawn

How I Experience Communication

Do you see anything like a lip moving on my face?

No. That's because I am talking to you, and I don't do it with a mouth. You are only even hearing the English because it's my organic empathic system that makes it not even matter and it's the biology of your no-K braino that turns it into recognizable symbols. In fact, did you know that if it weren't for the human capacity for what you call "denial," your flakes and no-K's could not even reproduce? Would not be able to.

So... I wish you would look me in the eye, an organ we have in common, and state your credentials as a professional by implication of your manner, sir.



by Missy

The Coarsening of Society

First, you did not even look me in the eye before lifting my preen lid.

Also, "What's your name?" is not the answer to any possible client inquiry.

You make what, low six figures? You're a professional K Hygienist?

I tell you I have a question. You answer what's your name. And don't look at me?

Put my lid down. You don't have permission.

I'd like to speak with a K.



by Missy

The Deep Straight

There's a water stain around the dog watering area
It's left a pattern of seeking its level in fine chalk
And there's another bowl sitting next to the dog
watering tank that has water in it. The dog watering
tank is functional, but it takes more effort to clean
and fill than a glass mixing bowl, which is what
the dog has been drinking out of. No one wants to
clean up the chalky wet mess around the dog water-
ing area, so both the bowl and the tank remain.




by Jan

High fog across the great lakes region

high fog across the great lakes region
i try to land but for the hoes and rakes

this season, i'll sprinkle my criticisms,
toss in a prank if i'm feeling that wry

the sky, where I hover, is the last place
you'd sweep for the source of stank

and when I cry it seems purely natural
to think of me and have a little wank



By Jan

Activity table

i mouthed a southwestern melody
reminiscent of hollywood and
suede fringe costumes, similar to

the counter-intuitive, at times a-
tonal chinese hollywood music,
but without percussion, yet I

wailed my plaintive harmonies
to the west in all earnestness
thinking of their fires and loss


by Donna

Wasted in Good Shoes

sure that's the story of my life
wasted in good shoes because
for what more have I requested

my current job: to create a task
to practice the replacement of
low-info words with high ones.

i feel i could say more but why
who i ask who wants to know
who's not up their ass aloof with

terror. disguised also as disdain
who's not afraid or disdainful?
even the professionals shame

themselves over the inadequa-
cy of their trade to quell the tide
of bullshit the great leveler

doctors blame their own lazy
arrogance inventors their
craven leveraging monetizing

used to be you could ask who
do i see if i wanna put an enemy
to rest answer was your army

now it isn't even alarming when
every store front a font for mur-
der, your own reflection in the

glass could for a moment make
you wonder is that pale beast a
killer or how disdainful at best



Dr. Donna Thong

Take Your Pants Off, Mr. Green Jeans

That tingling at top of head and breathlessness, nonspecific terror
Dogs me from garbage disposal to mailbox and out to the car
The icebergs dropping off: missed tax year due to obama care
The amount I owe exceeds what I'd saved by having an insurer
And I can't get ahead because I can't afford accountants or a lawyer
And if I want to refinance, I'll need that year's return to get out of here
To pay off the down payment from the government I got to stay 5 years
But then almost anyone would pay to get out of solitary
All my friends and lovers i used to call a non-traditional family back there
Spread back into the winds that always caress the desert
From dry air I come to this fungal great lakes misery
At least there's less sun to contribute to my recurrent skin cancers.

by Donna