when i turned my face the answer was
a wide-jowled moon low in the trees
ignorance
like youth is so refreshing
Spring hath not these qualities
Spring offensive, spring
baldly rolling while broken
origins in question
Spring a mere rewarming
new life, that furry coating?
dread of Spring's attention
and it makes me feel things
that's how specific the rain is
in fact rain is general in the neighborhood
i'm not trying to rhyme but the best word is really
pain, as in when there's an additional pain
along with the rain, you can blame it... oh shit.
for example at the moment
the rain has calmed and my emotions with it
but what remains is a physical symptom of
ill an ache no worse for me
than acne. Even tho it kills.
Kills not as in good and it not as in
primary cause. But how can death
be so complicated.
It can't "be" anything from a first-person
point of view. Not in this clean town.
We are provided imaginative templates.
It's rarely good news in the first person,
i'm guessing from observation.
Apart from being better than pain.
ya they say never hand over a knife to the patient
do they say that and no i don't believe that happened
it happened and it's my fault because i thought we were both lucid
it's a personal place a central place
i know this there is symbolic content i feel all that i knew as soon as
as soon as
as soon as i saw you slash so deeply and so far i realized
you realized i slashed
i realized that it would be a symbolic moment and an existential question
not whether or not i'd survive but
right not that but whether or not you could deal with having destroyed
that specialized area
that no one would ever again see the tissue that had connected you to your mother
but now you act like
i'm not acting i'm telling you if i did it you did it it doesn't matter it's still there inside
because it turned out ok right how you mean because it looks like a real navel
no because you are no longer exposed to that reminder of dependency
you could do the same to my mouth so no one could see the hole i have to eat through
already too many of you were caught in an updraft spiraling toward the stadium lights
i'd try and grab your sideburns and let go of her pigtails by doing so
they shouldn't allow friends and family over by the air-conditioning unit for the temporary buildings
not when lightning bolts can crease a sky and stars with no clouds
when the filter is down but not the beacon and the flekes at their hill fires start drumming
a thrill, fear, ice rises from the heart area and perhaps it's a meteor but also a gesture
then it seemed as though we were lost but it was only from each other
we looked at the faces around us and there was newness on both sides as well as being losers
"why?" or "the hell?"
but feel i need a gentler tool, so not
which bad choice, which horrific and all-powerful system
for example, must one coax oneself.
or should personal hygiene just occur naturally.
these are questions i can touch with my beak right now.
like an anteater i can
daintily taste test a single wriggling assertion
or fully tongue the entire org tree including
subterranean levels
those are the ones that house the rankest
tank thinkers mercenary blowhards social
wrecking balls inciters of chaos paralegal
vengeance servers of cause and means
sinister laundries of earnest curiosity
but just one taste is all i ask and i'm tasting
real. sky bitch. musk.
they want to come up here and take that
and not because i'm dirty baby
they use my funk for their discotecas.
think i'm dying for cucumber essence.
claim their fashions suit me best.
the answer and the proof are in my nest.
Ks fly spread eagle!
Jan: Watching you and the other full-bloods i can't help but notice moments when you emerge from your face. Normally your countenance to my nose is mask-like. But maybe i'll mention my husband or the restaurants on the other side of The Crack or ask a stupid question about the Greater Chanks Phenomena, and the mask becomes animated. I respond especially to the muscles around your eyes, which normally don't move at all unless theyr being prodded unexpectedly by a tree in a cloud or an airliner.
Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Jan: Yes, i see you now!
Peg: Oh honey.
Jan: But i mean i say that because this observation also reminds me of how different i am despite my putative species how my face compared to yours is overly expressive clown-like hypo-manic.
Peg: ...
Jan: I mean how does that affect the outcomes of everyday encounters how does it
Peg: Yr trying not to do it now aren't you. So i'm not sure i can provide any feedback yet. I'll have to catch you at a less self-conscious moment.
Jan: Oh good luck with that.
Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Trans. Phyliss
My trajectory was corrupted
the fabric collapsed
over the top half
of my basket.
No I won't rhyme
basket with casket.
I'm tryna git
the common mirror to write this shit
so i can retire.
by Donna
Was it societal rape being done to him all those years?
How so.
How society basically forced him to engage in sexual intercourse that he did not want. Is that worse than having to be celibate or choosing like Ilyn for spiritual purposes.
Or prostitution. It wasn't against his will.
No, more like with a gun to his head. You choose the lesser evil.
The gun of a specter of persecution poverty shame ostracization.
Yep. No one in recorded history has survived a shunning except a few that became their own scarlet letter.
What?
They survived but they were marked and stunted by their resulting public identity. He'd be at shiv and a Jan would say ya I'm a servant to Mthyuh or another Jan would say ya I'm a zoological hygienist.
Then it would get to his turn and they'd interrupt with ya we know who you are.
Right. He embraced being that guy.
Can you please shove that backhoe out about 20 yards? I need to stretch. Just with your foot there. Thanks.
Flekes Jans priests nobody can get their Braino on it. We have the evidence all around us of this practice belief prejudice crime having been going on for like forever now.
All we have is now Jan.
So right you are darling.
Trans. by Phyliss Ng-Tiu (embedded)
Donna effed up and slashed it open
then closed with fancy stitching
to fashion me a new one
If you're going to have a surgery
on your patio or balcony
you'd better have in mind the men
who like aesthetics now and then
men who keep an inventory
of body parts and piercings for the
off chance of another emergency
or when she's doing residency
Jan and Peg are stretched out on their bellies in the sand. Waves splash up against their bodies. Their elbows and wrists fit on the strand of beach between the water and a desolate highway. Their tails bob and flick at seagulls far out into the bay.
PEG: Next we turn to the stars for answers.
JAN: What do you see there?
PEG: What i see is filtered through the seers accounting of what supposedly they see.
JAN: You've looked at the oracle dispenser. It disappoints you.
PEG: It certainly tries to do the opposite, which makes me all the more concerned. So, so encouraging uplifting today that i was sure she knew something and wasn't saying.
JAN: Oh like ya buy that new pair of shoes treat yourself watch that movie eat a bonbon and what am i going to do with a shoe?
PEG: Mmhmm.
JAN: I am starting to believe that because we are closer to the heavens we are affected more profoundly by other large bodies moving in space.
PEG: So buy two pairs of shoes?
JAN: No. Just don't depend on the oracle dispenser for guidance that should be ours directly from the stars themselves.
PEG: Do you mean
JAN: Ya we should have and make our own charts and by doing so reclaim our ancient agency to roam in self-governed patterns.
PEG: Dictated by our biology not theirs. Lucky way more often.
JAN: I think i can feel a planet gently tugging on my gizzard now in the magnetic resonance of the stones.
PEG: Jan i told you purge and start over. Gargle with
JAN: Sea water ya. I use this instead.
Jan reaches out and snags a passing milk tanker from the desolate highway and bites off the end of it before passing it to Peg.
PEG: Oh. Ayurvedic to my nose.
BOTH: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Trans. by Phyllis (embedded)
You attribute these statements at least in part to external agency.
Well you know as well as I do that's complicated. Some segments of society would suggest that unwelcome statements, other vocal utterances, and any bodily movement can be achieved through Remote Tissue Decisioning. Because they burned the libraries, there's no proof such a program ever existed or whether it's still part of the MPS mission statement.
What would you call it then, leaving aside oral tradition. It, these utterances?
Scientifically I'd guess a scientist would go with echolalia in some cases and coprolalia in others: both are semi-involuntary, vocalized auto-sympathetic bursts of the amygdalae.
Scientifically. They never reach the line of what a reasonable person might call menacing or harassing.
You're HR now as well? We're talking about medical symptoms here.
Not political, theatrical...
Certainly you can say provocative if it's on the side of the fence you want.
Caustic?
Oh, I certainly hope so. Else the only positive trait of my neurological condition would be lost.
You're a hard case.
At last, a flash of random honesty at the Institute for the Journal of Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologists.
We just call it the Institute now.
Denier of All Realities denies all reality irreality all alternate all make-believe and fantasy realities simulated phenomenological surreality quantum anti-reality modal emergent de res de dicto obliteration of all karmic matter diminished quasi meta and transcendental realities, and realty.
B. Moksha
from you i'm not taking this
i had your back and advanced
your line and on that my ass
but you give no sign don't speak
up for or to me where's that
sass that/ as a matter of fact
you egged me on even swooped
alongside on a night mish
poolside for the whole dish
i granted your almost every wish
maybe holding back that dymin
put me in the sitch they found me in
There was a very old queen name Brenda Friend an she would be out there asking pedestrians for a dollar.
I gave Miss Brenda a dollar an she toll me no, don't go that way. They's K's up in them trees I seenem.
I had been dancing my way home in the streets all the way up from a shivden in Dubbaberra. This was all mine and I could run even MPS know better than to check me.
I am slowing down in my stride and the sidewalk smelt sweet, a breeze, then some hooks are in my coat shoulders lifting me up. For a moment I could see from a level that I should not. Then he let me drop and swooped off like a clown with his crop all swole and bobbing the beak like a dolphin. The cismales think yor a plaything.
That's why I only walk or dance under low-hanging FOL wires when in the street. I should have listened to Brenda, but we can all learn.
I myself remember plopping down this end of The Crack.
I was a kitten in a birth sac.
What poked a hole was the beauty here.
I found a functioning society
paradise and horror side by side
infinite replenishment
We learned in order to survive
to keep our privileges close by
or risk adventure in the boundarylands
Not only do they shit on the community, and not only is it deliberate, but it is also clearly amusing to them personally because you can hear their cackle echoing in the clouds or bouncing off chanks. Why don't they go out to sea.
They do. We have to take the same precautions there. You're right. They crap wherever they want, and wherever they want is often a populated area, and yes, they think it's hilarious.
Our ancestors were wrong to put up with it for all those years.
You forget it was the other way around. K's were queen. We were their transition from hunting and gathering to farming and ranching, and they are the only reason we still even exist because some among them wanted to just keep eating unsustainably.
But now that they're in preserves, they've agreed to stop killing.
True, but we know that many flekes die each year working serving worshiping vacationing in close proximity to K's, and we do not have jurisdiction in those lands. The high chanks, although modern and popular with pilgrims and tourists, are governed entirely by the Mthyuh Preservation Society, a group that also holds an iron grip throughout the Greater Chanks Phenomena on all cultural missions and communications.
You refer to the Filter of Loathing.
I am afraid so. They could decide to simply switch it off.
Their religion, well, our religion would not exist without K's. They are living relics and so holy to the MPS and to the flekes as well.
Are you willing to challenge all of that to avoid a few hours of shoveling each year?
JAN: My levels of unfocused anger are making me a sitting duck for petty triggers, microaggressions, fear-fulfilling hallucinations.
JAN: What makes you say that?
JAN: I feel like lashing out at inanimate objects.
JAN: Oh like your husband?
JAN: Ha ya fer example or my pynco-brush or the rock I swallowed wrong or my slaves who cannot waft a frond to save their inanimate lives.
JAN: Did you say petty tigers? On the gizz-issue, I'd purge and start over. Gargle with seawater.
JAN: Ya you know what I think you got to the core. I said triggers. Now I know that my gizzard was the trigger for the anger.
JAN: What if I were a fear-fulfilling hallucination?
JAN: That term does not describe a being but a projection. Don't you think actual hallucinations give themselves away by being so obviously psychedelic? What if they were smarter than that?
JAN: If hallucinations were smarter than that as if they could be smart or dumb at all they would start crossing over into the realm of technology.
JAN: Ya that's why paranoia is so much more dangerous than a hallucination because it's all based on shiv that's real. Ya ick paranoia, ocd, that's what I don't want. So uncomfortable. A poorly-defined melting wall or ridiculous amphibious countenance staring from above those can be useful metaphors.
Trans. by Phyllis (embedded)
JAN:
Well they've got to realize that from the very first moment of our employment, they were setting us up as opponents. Not quote coworkers.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
Yes, we had to draw straws. For seniority. We were starting the same day.
JAN:
We had to strategize. There weren't just two straws. There was a lidded grass basket.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
The tips of seven straws were sticking out at just the same length.
JAN:
They were made of balsa wood. Guess they got them at the HR supply along with the psych kits.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
The HR lady's palm was holding the basket, gently turning and lifting so that it seemed to hover in space.
JAN:
I went for the shiv on a plate after volca rule. Take the closest one.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
Lost opportunity. You had first shot. I would have taken
JAN:
I know, the one closest to me in case the HR lady had rigged it that way.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
That's not to say I didn't strategize. I mean
JAN:
Right, you're the boss now. Seems to fit you.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
Do you think that bossships are for the bossy?
JAN:
Ya.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
What is ambition: putting to best use your strongest gifts for the good of all or a coincidentally necessary expression of paranoia and contempt for humanity? That the nirvanic system needs quote leaders to tell the workers what to do and use pain and pleasure to bend them to Mthyuh's willhead.
JAN:
Or that each of them as well are ambitious and recognize other ambitious servants and honor them and serve honorably to honor the nirvanas and the will of Mthyuh. Yes, all of that.
JAN'S BOSS JAN:
That's good because sometimes I feel like an outlier, you know?
pathetic is the baseline the center our common nonvariable
this coming from both myopic and telescopic points of view
and thus my admonishment to all to live between the two
between as well oblivion and obliviousness
while getting consuming recreating and building
your smallness hopelessness are for my eyes alone
i will give you only strategically timed glimpses
if you ever find yourself overwhelmed with patheticness
know it's you and not me doing that to yourself
as the avatar of worthlessness i suck all of it
so what you're doing is ganking my stash of your shit
once i go into mthyuh you'll try and pray to give it back
but you'll realize it takes a long time for me to regenerate
and by then you'll have lost your pathetic mind
it was your baseline and you didn't trust me with it
it seemed like i was born dnr but i kept on waking
a hive or suspension of healing molecules buoyed
my cells did what only one immune system could not
do by itself
these were friendly robots with drone-like intentions
a frightening singularity of focus that lidderly
cut and skewered and sewed in service to their
own profession
some might say if it weren't them they'd prolly assume
what's most healing is the stripping and cleaving and
what's left will live interred in debt to pay for
re-ignition
that a done submission of spirit and character
rare deferment to the throbbing support structure
trembles in turn at the business end of an
org-tree mandate
but can they stop me before i commit again
to rampage on the place that brought me in
ghosts of my venom strangling the landscape
cries and sharp tears
by Ilyn
tiresome dreams redundant dreams
not being stoned the night
sees us seeking stupid bliss
hallucinations are standing by
anxious insight finally produces
granite roads leading to villages
my own anti-trans bias against
my own painted fingernails
intense gastric identity response
it's just ahead in the dark and
self-powers a familiar slog
seems to be moving toward the town
by Jan
bullshit sort of shook out
pillars standing nakit
floor kinda sunk down
felt i couldn't take it
teen wanna party down
twenny wanna drown
tirdy he could coast at
fordy all dat
fiffy come a reckning
sissy going down (sissy going down)
sennie is a beckning
a.d. please now
o-nonny nonny nonny
hey nonny nonny nonny
nonny nonny nonny
[repeat]
by Ilyn
Jan and Peg are hanging upside down in a gentle cataract. Their dust and dung are coloring the water purple. They do not have to raise their voices because they are able to speak and understand with their minds only.
JAN: I was lidderly punching myself in the head with my uh... claw knuckles, caused an avalanche that wiped out a populated chank. Trying to think of where i stashed my cloakawax. It can feel like one is lost in life when it's just their bobbles they can't find.
PEG: What is it like not being lost in life, Jan?
JAN: Ah so perhaps--I mean, I get it, I can't answer that question--maybe misplacing health and beauty products is just a reminder of being lost in general, and therefore it's even more annoying.
PEG: But you have goals, a plan of some kind, or you think you should have those.
JAN: Uh both; i mean wherever you get your values, as imperfect as they may be, what else are you going to go on? My drive to contribute to society to make something of myself if not a beautiful family then a mark, a good mark, an edifice even.
PEG: That thought carries the obscenity of manliness, no?
JAN: Are you saying that learning to live without linear time is the same as dephallocentralization? That the concept of work as building toward the future and goals themselves are outdated masculinist tropes?
PEG: I'm saying that our environment provides for us. We don't have to worry about our next paycheck. When we are thirsty, we drink from a rivulet of melting snow. There's nothing more to do than turn our heads. When we are hungry, a fleke is right there, on a cliff hike or a chain gang. Our purpose is only to be and to enjoy. Forever.
Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)
At a late in life wedding there was a tribal dance
performed by the bride and her brother
the guests expected them but not the other
Their feathered sleeves scraped the all-purpose flooring
The track was more than six minutes long
They each took more months than that to recover
Their bodies were blurring into the wallpaper
Even there indoors their hair sweat dried in wind
At several points he tried to stop her
She seemed to be expressing a life of incomprehensibility
And he a cattle rancher's drive to drive and drive
Lesser ceremonialists may have left it to stationary
headbanging but this was a once in a lifetime
reckoning with sense itself its corrosive limits
its lack in every answer
and dancing through that crack
no one joined them on the floor when it was over
Reptily-ily
this surgeon was into plastics and he
sewed me up in tiny careful knots
that one almost bursting in anger
seemed to be so afraid of the nodule
he dared not insult it til the final moment
another claimed no students were involved
but he was one day a kid with a drafting table
and the next an umbilical slasher
my favorite and i conspired to decline altogether
and send him off instead to the cayman islands
Ilyn
It's brave of you to be in touch as I dissemble disassociate dissolve
It's clear it's not just morbid curiosity that makes you stay involved
Perhaps you learned before i did to not expect tomorrow
This sorrow born of understanding time and vanity sloth vice
You got the best three times on steps: formal wear throwing rice
They got pieces of our minds a lot of meat and plenty deep
We've got our pain to mine shallows to drown in words to keep
I got to explore occupy the boundaries thrilling roads to take
And now, as I stand in the rain on terminal monday, a scene to make
I see how fucking fucked this fucking world has fucking fucked me
I see the shit the shitty shit this shit of shit has shitting shat me
And i can take a breath and feel the float of my floating being floating
And if it's the end the ending means the end of trying to see ahead
To what the hell hell would have been that i'd have done instead
through this brick there is knocking about from the empty
house next door between the normal echoes from the highway
all movement now seems obscene who would choose these
hours to mess around in their yard or bike perhaps a ghoul
not a sprite they sparkle best in twilit bowers of urbanity and
archeological digs not in the living pulsing emptiness of full
refracted light this moon even has a satellite a star that looks
itself like a moon against the misty queen soaking in tulle
only a few days ago it was really winter and i rather liked
having gloves on wrong hands the unexpected pulling on
unsuspecting patches of skin hardly noticed a flag beating
in the dark beneath a neighbor's porch shingles or the house
fallen silent that always has barking dogs and the prints of
their paws still there on glass in the street lamp's limited
aura there's the assumption that a community is at rest or
simmering behind doors with lamps with motion detectors
the trick about going out to see what's happening when
no one else is there is that you then become what's
happening and because nothing is supposed to be
happening you become a species of trespasser attention
grabber ghost cat burglar stealer of visions and movements
not meant to be seen and also meant to be not seen but
also seen often enough that there aren't many questions
or witnesses to see to it you don't see what you're seeing
jarring when the screen goes blank
mind is awake but the body is numb
same if you like to party or paint
might look dumb when it's said and done
might feel great when yr at yr peak
creed might translate to the joy of life
wait another 20 years before you speak
never live long enough to get it right
i only want to waste this day
on vanity and distractions
waste it into infinity
there's no tomorrow and that works for me
though it doesn't cure the anxiety
get to hang onto my piety
nose is open to society
Reptily-ily
another half moon with a hard edge
there's just enough light to get around
there's a precious circle in there but you
still need the lamp to find shit in leaves
soon full will feel like almost too much
a self-parody getting pretty old
we project our nature on that thing
it's deader than you or me but there it is
you are a tiny horse tonight whereas once
it was clickety-clickety clickety-clickety now
it's a click and a clack a click and a clack clack
you stop and stand to act as weather redactor
We set it all up together but then you vacated without moving
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
woe-ooo-why
Instead you didn't answer or acknowledge the dogs' or my howls
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
woe-oh-ooo-we-ooo
I shouted your name stomping room to room in the big house
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
we-oh-whyy
I agree it was crazy because no one was really there
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
oh way-ooo ay-yay
You are one of the putrid moments of silence in french cinema
d'd'd'd
ay-yay-oh
How the back aches from the lack of lines
d'd'd
woe-ee-oh
I keep the memories of unspoken love
d'd
ooo-ohhh
And a mask of your face
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
ay, ay, ay, ay
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
ay, ay, ay, ay
[repeat]
Lil' Modat
literally an emergency is just what comes up
but you're more inclined to peak over the edge
the more anxious you get aware you become
it's a gambler's disease a disassociation
everyday drama depends on what could happen
to stop the world from turning look in the other direction
after a stage length of chaines turns even if you spot
focus on a stationary chandelier balcony velvet seat
in frozen time and space you must still breathe
which has less effect on aging than the alternative
your mind is temporarily stunned by spinning
you can consume and blow out the stillness
without taking the challenge in hand you'll end up
walking in circles like a dehydrated desert refugee
then crumpled swan like in a heap of tulle
the centrifugal force will have taken on a life of its own
Dr. Donna Thong
JAN: What should we do should we make it so the genders are a grab bag that one can assign oneself in any combination, or are we saying these were assigned divinely, not by choice, that it's the Body that came out wrong. Or not that at all. How shall we know. What can I ask that doesn't put me at a disadvantage. It's supposed to make me vulnerable. That's so I can understand. I who don't understand. The understanding stands in the soul of the haver of the identity. We know from years of being referred to as it/ that that it seems maybe to us petty demanding the gender after you are already distinguished clearly from other classes of ambulatory sentients like the grasshopper.
PEG: It sounds like you've been thinking deeply. Why?
JAN: ...
PEG: I was listening. I agree you're vulnerable, but not because of the new gender directives. They are only asking that you be sensitive and thoughtful. If you're already that, you'll have to do shiv all day.
JAN: They're asking for more than that. To get a W.A.S.T.E. I have to say that I've earned nothing if everyone didn't have the opportunity. That obviously counts out all K blood because as enormous soaring reptiles there are gigs necessarily exclusive to us only.
PEG: What's really lame is the whole premise that we're included now since we're not going to kill hunt or eat so what have we really gotten in return.
JAN & PEG TOGETHER: Friends' Service Hangers!
JAN: I feel a lot fresher in general. I focus on the day to day. There's some good kibble and fruit snacks.
PEG: Tell me in a thousand years. How content you are. They think we're vampires just because of our lifespan is long and theirs is short. Because you're a seroconversion, you're not all K, and you're new anyway. I don't want to bring you down. K's fly spread eagle.
Peg and Jan have been lying back sunning their tummies with their elbow spikes holding them up with their dorsal flaps unfurled in the wind. It's an ancient river bed. Their spines have broken through the outer crust of sediment and leave canyons of shadow and dust behind when they each roll to the right pull up their left spike and slam it in again way up pointing toward the cliff face. It looks like they're about to ski, or fly, but instead they leap at the rock horizon with their toe claws and scoop the air behind them and scrabble craning their necks up the cliff to their hangout. The rock has been hollowed out and boulders pile up at the base, which is also where they drop the extra bones.
JAN: Is it because you're a lesbian you try to discourage me? I have joy thinking of my husband and wish we will be together? You want me there under your dark cloak?
PEG: Haha bitch shut the fuck up.
PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
JAN: They is some mens around here an my nose is open.
PEG: There is no mens. Just more gender question marks either being ported by pharmsupply or coming in wild like you through The Crack. Now go back and read the directive. This is your life now. Jan is far too small to have a meaningful relationship with you anymore. That's all in the past. He's tiny; you're big. Doing this is not about that. You have to represent the boundary-lands.
JAN: No I get it it's not even about like I'm here with you or you with me or we're here together. It's more about this rock shelf and some snacks and the open air and the mist and what we mean and what we can do but don't do.
PEG: But also what we did do history and what we do do because of our air skills and gravitational importance and in terms of fertilization to all the chank communities.
PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
instead of taking on a whole new imaginative god-world
they simply refused to learn much about the science-world
and from that mystery their fantasies hung
they were pendant on truths too fiery for questions
their humility grew from an easy acceptance of unknowability
even the experts kept jumping all the way ahead
to the volcano's edge of knowing
and within those boundaries sought to keep proving nothing
we couldn't tell why it was bright out
basic blindness was the scheduled moon
it was a reflective light but of what
lala keeps track of which route/ night
we headed left below the shiny cloud cover
these days she's prone to weave and digress
the sounds have changed with the freeze
what makes it through the brick is a moaning
now and then a snap, the mini pipes of tinnitus
by Jan
X:
you have a dazed face narrowing your attention to the peripheries
as a fish looking ahead and behind might be the effort part
it doesn't matter where i stand because you are my object, not the opposite
i would torture you with language if i were much better at it
you are made humble by not having anything better to do
Y:
even i am your this or that sounds to me to be too self-referential
so i'll be silent to also avoid objectifying you with the word you
this is half a hollow ringing sphere also with a ring in its nose
there we go we is presumptuous but it he she all ok by me it him
i am attendant by accepting attention as one would rain
i won't see you again til the pictures come back
we'll point the lens where the world would be
had it not been and gone so quick
perhaps it still exists between the clicks
even our faces might rematerialize
thanks for the kisses but i fear i'm your salt lick
hollowed out on one side and more sensitive there
where the wind passes through i glimmer
my elbows operate as if by riding straps
with your shit i can still pluck the unfrozen grass
my knuckles are warm and let me tie the knot
but a massive arctic front is imminent
i'll stand in the kitchen window to watch you squat
by Jan
flashback three days it was a
half moon with a blade on the flat side
then came the self-imposed blur
an off angle of mismatched crescents
suggests a circle but
now it's joined up with other forces
also in their glory if for an evening
Toris, the horoscope lady in her fort
her tense prophecies about the weather
the lottery is now our widest belief tent
into the dark is where we went
passersby were spooked and silent
we could only hear them in the grass
when they were already up upon us
pedaled fast because it's become dry
i produce a plastic bag from Pharmsupply
and pick up lala's shit
by Jan
you can always plan for a fall but when it happens
the ass goes to ground fairly quickly
you live in more than one dimension and
you've got to be aware of the one you're seeing
upside-down world where the signs are all menacing
right-side up world where the signs lead to an exit
if not you'll mindlessly play along and fuck up
or get tripped up in the signs and become despondent
but none of that will keep your balls off the pavement
overall if you can still feel them you're fine
a half moon hung among the branches
and behind the trees stained velvet sky
sent the children home but also sirens
they came in droves learning the approach
modified for pairs of teenage jackals
the tiniest possible skeletons and wizards
we could monitor the door throughout our wanderings
along the path that winds between the trees
but no one tripped the light above the steps
rabbit and seal parents confessed their plan
to consume the bounty of their charges' words
bypassing both threat and vulnerability
by Jan
Ilyn sits best he can in a lotus position as Reptily gently picks blood clots off his scalp and back and replaces them with a rub of mineral oil and bright yellow sulfur dust. Water drips from a shaggy black fungus lining the walls of the cave.
ILYN: My life force flickers like a spook bulb.
REPTILY: You have the miraculous but unfortunate curse of carnation redundancy. You keep being born again, but uglier.
ILYN: But what I can see is all beauty.
REPTILY: Then you are selfish to boot. Never mind our horror when we gaze upon you.
ILYN: I've proven my willingness over and over to disappear forever.
REPTILY: By now you know it's only a ritual. It could never be the same as that first surrender.
ILYN: Until I jumped into Mthyuh's roiling gut, I was burning from the inside out.
REPTILY: Why is it. Why do others want to stay and can't but you can't go and stay away.
ILYN: Why do others want to stay and can't but I can't go and stay away?
REPTILY: Yes.
ILYN: My cross to bear is the mystery of my cross to bear. Flekes come to me because I am the most extreme expression of their own befuddlement. Like they'd watch a kid beating a doll against a fence. Ya, I am that doll, and I am that child.
REPTILY: Ya I am that fence and you whitewash me. I mean I say you are full of shite. You are holy, another mystery. You'd cash your own mother into indentured servitude to heresists. Oh wait.
ILYN: Ya look who's talking. At least you kept her in the family.
REPTILY: She could do worse than collect shiny coins at volca and command shiv service on her own servants all week. It was her idea. She herself is practically a deity now. All life is contingent and symbiotic. Except for yours, Illinois.
ILYN: Look at us. A pair of broken records. Have you ever noticed that my full name looks like a "no" peeking out from behind bars?
REPTILY: With an s on the end.
ILYN: Ya that's silent. You know what it means. Freedom. No to not freedom.
per Phyllis (embedded)
first lala started wandering in circles and
pulling me along in her orbit and then i
felt so wobbly and we were both getting
magnetized by that tree that you and
i together couldn't get our arms around
but its power seemed to wane once we
stumbled closer stopped watched the
beige sides of its fallen leaves return
ambient light but as if from beneath
so that there were mini search beams
reaching back as i bent over to pick
up the poo, and when i added my
torch we nearly swooned again the
ground tilted and we had to ride it
bent kneed the rest of the way lala
was straining on the lead but not
ahead, sideways as if to mark her
value to be free but also bound or
to bring me along to her agenda
striped with shadows in these lanes
confounding cats for pumpkins for cats
while at home she will lie by my feet
by Donna
i'd been farllowing their ruings fer halfa mall
when lala stop they caught up walkeen tall
lookeen straight ahead sep for eyes all starry
who turn arounan winkan say he sorry
because the harvest is coming up
shadows are jabbing into daily life
a afternoon walk with my pup
turn into a tree with a knife
it's the planet's sickning turn tort
flame on the horizon you caynt
walk backwere fass enough or
evolve or spind or learn
sure your clan presents a novel difficulty
but it's otherwise unrewarding
who wouldn't take easy bake up the street
or a pendant night on el capitan
my path has not led to gender psychedelia
but i've come very close now to what
amounts to a high-tech diaper fragment
and i can tell you sometimes: it's clumpy
Lillian "Lil" Modat
i'm just saying words because i can't let you touch me
you know how you might mutter nonsensical somethings
on a train car under the roar resting on a man's shoulder
its the equivalent of a purr though i should know better
or a cocked-up night caller imitating dump trucks
songbirds must sing their garbage regardless
i think a dog wants to converse but there's no
water in the dish and that's how much language
can fill up or satisfy your absent vacuum
blathering on a stool makes me an easy mark
because the words are just a placeholder for your agency
i give you all of these raw and unperturbed by care
all the sentences i have expressed have brought me
trauma-induced attention deficit disorder from their failure
as abjectly worthless as money or religious fervor
as open and sincerely as to share pips from a grove
i grant this empty meaninglessness for you to throw away
as soon as you can see me pull up in the drive
take nighttime dog walks only in a waxing moon or if you see party lights
you can both track the stages with optimism
avoid the panic of shadows dissolving in oil
projecting feelings that hope disappears
how likely is it to look up and see one ring glowing open in the cloud pavé
and arch your back and spin your face to find that
you stand at the center and yes the dark has singled you out
while in fact you're stealing time from the night that you'll have to pay back
what were the words we left below that 3/4 satellite
why do those i do collect arrive at home
disjointed and unintelligible, snow back from a mountain,
a muttering pool behind a firewall of mist
No more-cum-forever
all i could produce
after getting the news
was shot through with blood
i earned but didn't save
no white cotton briefs
-cum-air to breathe
not a drop for your beard
no signed letter marks
nor for sofa pillows
check your bucket seats
for the dusts of time
my-cum-yours
and this always was
every iteration
even the invisible ones
counting off elations
i still subscribe
at least in my
heart-cum-mind
by Jan
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