Bring Your Meat, Leave the Bones

Peg and Jan have been wallowing and tonguing in a deep meteorite crater full of fleke bones at the Bring Your Meat, Leave the Bones (BYMLB) hangar. Covering as much of their bodies as possible in the stench of death and rot would serve to protect them, they felt, from the onslaught of springtime.

I see you speaking into the common mirror. Look into my eyes now, and repeat your last statement to the sisters. 

What. What's this about? 

Into my eyes. Say it. 

Ok, finally we must condemn all societal rape including those which are perpetrated among the auspices of a private governing body. 

Right, well you looked bored at having to repeat it, but it did not lack any sign of human effusion. 

As observed in my other formal appearances? 

Bitch you even do it on MonstaLine.

...

You even do it when you use the common mirror as an actual mirror. 

You're coming for my personality and that's making me extremely uncomfortable. 

I know. I can see that on your normal face that you have when you're not speaking to the mirror. 

...

Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

It's sad to see what's happening and I'll tell you what's happening. It's not just you. Sisters speak into the common mirror and manifest they face they think they having all the time. 

Ok, that's why the vain bitches always look so good. 

That's correct. And if you think you look like a hollowed-out shiv skank...

I look like a...

No. But some do. And it's not just cosmetics. You know the best cosmetic.

Love. 

... You know that... may be better I was gonna say self-regard but yours has more dimensions.

No. You just taught me that. Just now.

Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Phyliss [trans.]

Spring offensive

i heard bells jangle

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

by Ilyn

Phyliss Nhin-Tuya

[trans.]

uh oh the rain is an involuntary wave of emotion

uh oh the rain is an involuntary wave of emotion

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.

Ilyn, face up in his open cart, on rags and poinsettia blossoms

by Phyliss (trans.)

cisgender male drag whore

 

 

 

Imágenes por: 

Chu Papoya

"It's a fruit."

attacks near highchank/Ks fly spread eagle

the hole i have to eat through

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

Dr. Donna Thong

Mike

Post-op interview [frag.]

losers

i knew The Crack was opening and i was selfish i wanted to reach out and grip your faces

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

 

by Jan

First transmission [frag.]

they use my funk for their discotecas

i think it's a moment for philosophizing for example, 

"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!

"Ks Fly Spread Eagle"

by Peg

Rally opener

Daughters of Mthyuh March of Destruction

Highchank 

Good luck with that

Peg and Jan are hunched over the remains of a fascio-religious scout troop their leaders their dogs and their shiny suede saddles. The thirty-odd children and adults had been on a pilgrimage to Ilyn's diving stone at the mouth of Mthyuh. Jan and Peg carefully pick out the bits of non-edible clothing and equipment and toss or spit them off the cliff. Same with the larger bones after sucking on them for several moments, even as they chat. They are able to form, understand, and communicate language with their minds only.

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

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

All we have is now

Jan and Peg are rolling back and forth in twin mountains of waste adjacent a sugar refinery in the low chanks. Wedding tent-size flakes and scales slough debride from their backs and tails and into the spent beet fibers.

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)

This is not my belly button

This is not my belly button

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

 

by Mike

"I forgive you, Dr. Thong."

Ayurvedic to my nose

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)

external agency

These were live and written statements that, had it been in charge, Braino would never have allowed. 

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. 

Patient exit interview (frag.)

Dr. Donna Thong

Miss pissy mood boy

she waiting in line, can't remember

all over there are micro shivers hate

no juice that size they not moving

eating is now decontextualized from

intrinsic motivation or that the ceiling

has dropped out of all the drives 

leaves the naked redundancy of being 

alive if there's no one not one bag

boy or checker or or shopper that's

off enough to poke through the torpor

to a tenderer encounter but they all

pissy folding through the clock our

clucking metronome the wide-stanced

demon's tympani crying writhe!

writhe! beem-bum and all writhe

riding in their swinging hammers

hermits and the depressed shadowing

do-selves doing in the do milieu

horrified or dozing in a sugar box

to forget they are being used for

cookies or spatchcocked on a wire

fence as if they're sweet for a charnel 

house as if they sweet as if 

they no time not now at least

like each step has a meaning tho

the earth's turning, not the feet

 

 

 

 

 

Lillian Modat

tonight's dog walk

 

Denier of All Realities

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

 

 

 

Mike's Swimming Blog #1401

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

by Mike

For Donna

"I forgive you, Donna"

claw

 

Brenda Friend event

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

Open mike participant

Brenda Friend Memorial Event 

Spinal Injury Institute, Sponsor

 

Welcome day frag.

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

Jan Jansdaad

Welcome Day counselor

Poetry Fair, Table 6

n.d.

"Why can they fly arounan lidderly shit on the community?"

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? 

 

Welcome Day n. d.

"K's Fly Spread Eagle" Bring-a-Lunch breakout group 

Chang K. Chang Ballroom

[frag.]

Trans. by Phyllis

last night's crash

 

scan

 

Do wasps and hornets make money?

 

dream getting back to that 

kidney pool ranch with the

blue neon star in the arch

mulberries in the yard and

yellow jacket honey

 

creatures out there they blood

run rich with vim and passion

misunderstood they doncare

until the question come can

wasps and hornets make money

 

now that i'm out of there

the stingers are just tattoos and

the occasional no-alcohol

cock/tail or so i'd wish if i

didn't know he misses me more

it's funny to miss a place that's

not the same without you there

that's moved on far more than

one woman could but at the 

same time not moved or

this is how they deal with the

persistence of secretions and

nauseating chemical reactions

like nausea for example that

were it not for time

 

nature could not proceed in a 

disappointing manner it would

just be three porch fans and a

queen palm dogs fencing and

glow-in-the dark tile grout

locked in that crib getting high with you

changed the way my brain weighed

filling the days being right for you

opened the gates for today's pain

turned out to be a whole life with you

all of the choices of what to do

sorry i'm not there to be with you 

keep changing place like i always do

after the party i'm going to

bee on a line to get back to you

 

 

 

by Donna

for Mike

"I'm here, Mike"

 

 

diminishing perspective happens exponentially

 

 night highlights the minor sources of light

The straight up on mental hygiene

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)

OUTLIER

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

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

 

 

 

by Ilyn

Day of Eternal Chama Address n.d.

[frag.]

 

the humanity around me was stronger than my body will or cancer

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

approach

 

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

victor surge

 

confrontation

 

I think i may be coming down with something

 

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

Edifice of manliness

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)

Tribal dance for wedding

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

My favorite surgeon

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

Bonfires are moot

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

by Ilyn

Grandiose nightwalker

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

 

 

 

Don Sidon 

(Trans. por Dawntay)

I only want to waste this day

 

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

O Winter, Fruit of Betrayal

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

For my Lala,

by Jan

VACATOR

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

 

 

 

 

Heap of tulle

 

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

Hard scrabble

 

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!

per Phyllis (embedded)

Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

LX1 (frag.)

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

 

La Chamatilly

Zaul Eikense (trans.)

Omne Quod Scitur

LX1 (frag.)

i don't rise

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

don't touch and don't look

 

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

 

 

 

by 

Reptily-ily

trans. by 

Menen Jenral

a shopper forcus

tonight we're going out into the field, darling. far out. 

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

Tonight's dog walk

 

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

Tonight's dog walk

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

by Jan

"Chilly, still. Lala just stands and seems to forget her purpose. To evacuate her bowels, she has to strain against me on the lead."

Tonight's dog walk

 

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

Distillment of the Urge to Worship Illinois

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)

Seasonal-disorientative gravitational sensitivity

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

As five boys overtake us on the sidewalk

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

trama-induced attention deficit

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

"For you, Peg."

by Phyliss (embedded)

Tonight's dog walk

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

By Jan Jansdaad

Highchank Jr. High

Homecoming Week Hangar Fair

Poetry Stall, Bench 12