Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Monday, April 24, 2023
Extinction Takeback Agreement
FRIENDS' HANGAR: Jan, now nearly full size, stands frontally abutted to a scaffolding built into the side of a high cliff. Her feet and tail are partially buried in the dunes of the Lowchank district. At eye level, she can see pine trees, and a bit above that there is only sandstone made deeply groovy by rains. The shadow of the horizon makes a line in the shape of the mountain across her forehead. Reptily stands on the scaffolding shaking out their cape and staring straight into Jan's nostrils, which occasionally emit a welcome and full-body warming blast. Reptily is using their tiny mouth hole to communicate, but Jan, for anatomical reasons, can only speak with her mind only.
REPTILY: Ya, see this flat part on the back of my head? I feel limited by it.
JAN: Oh why?
REPTILY: I just feel like if there was a curve there I'd feel less constrained in my thinking processes.
JAN: That's a K head Chama look at mine!
REPTILY: But you look practically full blood when yer here. I'm pretty much stuck in the fuzzy middle ground.
JAN: Ya yor too big to get in the hygienist elevator. But you skittered up that scaffolding like a dung beetle!
REPTILY: Ya my vestments have been mistaken for an exoskeleton. It's just flocked rayon.
JAN: ...
REPTILY: I wanted to meet here because it reminds me of home. I was born and raised at Friends' Hangar.
JAN: Is that so?
REPTILY: Ya there was a time when I was small enough for the lift and even rather pretty by yor standards. They called me Missy.
JAN: HAHA! I mean, you're still pretty.
REPTILY: Fortunately I have some options like with the head tuft, which is retractable, see?
JAN: Ooo. You know, we all have our unique struggles of difference don't we?
REPTILY: There's no one like me. You can mostly pass on either side of the Crack.
JAN: And it's also not our fault.
REPTILY: On the one hand you can blame the MPS-Pharmsupply merger for our disfigurement, but we also only have them to thank for the Extinction Takeback Agreement and therefore our existences.
JAN: Would you go that far? It was the merger that wiped out K's to begin with.
REPTILY: We were enslaving their people.
JAN: We were being our natural selves in the context of nature. I hate it when the losers get to write history.
BOTH: HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Sunday, April 23, 2023
Cross-species consensus
Peg and Jan are splayed across a wide florid plain. A bubbling creek and just the elbow of a river run beneath them cooling their bellies and flap pits. They each look a little cross-eyed as thousands of local bees arrive in cloudy waves and get caught up on their giant forked tongues. Jan and Peg are slurping the piquant swarming treats off one another's faces. They can communicate with their minds only.
Guessing it's a result of struggling with your own random or self-diagnosed atypical gender impulses preferences fetishes, which you think you have to subdue, or that the domination over them itself is the fetish, and you think maybe everybody loves that
What the?
I'm referencing your comment about one of the sisters who tends to resist gender classifications.
If you mean Reptily i only used the word ambiguous.
Well you went maybe a little farther, like suggesting all Ks are genderless or shouldn't be allowed to even have a sexuality much less a gender status in society...
Well maybe if you say that the other way around, I mean society really? Ks are a species completely separate from the society and whole system of gender logic which really applies only outside the phenomena.
Ok, as with so many issues, a fact we really need to confirm before we can even begin to come to a society-wide and cross-species consensus on what our rights are and what our rights mean.
You always forget the responsibilities.
Both: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Thursday, April 20, 2023
No flower is too flowery
you can light my
hopeless causes novena
please humor me
now and forever
your forensic engine
is it that ruined jungle
temple? i hope so
no flower is too flowery
my decay creates
homes for other creatures
hillbilly jehovahs
and some never before seen
free agents mucking
in the grid and its filters
don't need an identity
to feel comfortable
i am legion in my
systems and operations
for and against each other
you say it's all fine
i'm a signature
you are the line
don't want to fly
without the ground
i'm a plane
you are the sky
baggage claim
lost & found
just one spark
can cause a dumpster fire
in the hoarded memes
of my desire
The Legendary Nicki Lynne Diamond
Saturday, April 15, 2023
i'm glad you're only thinking of me and not my sorrow
MISSING
Jan Jansdaad
For Three Moons
Contact me on POD.
Jan
Jan's husband Jan Jansdaad and his close personal friend Lord Lloyd Bentbridge are on an evening constitutional coursing and frequently switching back throughout the district. The streets, homes, walks that frame the men are all constructed of stone, or bricks made of compressed stones, cement made from stone dust, decomposed granite, or just dust. They stop when they see the papyrus.
Lloyd: Looks like a Jan has gone missing. I wonder if it's
Jan: That's my Jan. I'm the Jan. You haven't seen her.
Lloyd: I apologize for not having made that connection.
Jan: It's in the name.
Lloyd: Indeed.
Jan: I'm glad you're only thinking of me and not my sorrow.
Lloyd: I want to get you back to my place.
Jan: Yes Lord.
Thursday, April 13, 2023
If this is where i must find love
walking thru the district like a ghoul
bars closing down to my right and left
windows go black as i pass
nothing here left to do
solid shadow dammed between the trees
the park extinguished in a hush
if this is where i must find love
i consecrate this night to what's ahead
two or three species might have seen
my next ten steps into the void
the fragrant precipice and buzzing depths
static on the scalp and fingertips
light growing where the street picked up again
betrayed the sense i'd crossed into a realm
never to come back again
the way i've come to find love is
Ikea Holyoake
Monday, April 10, 2023
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.]
Friday, April 7, 2023
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
Monday, April 3, 2023
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.
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Sunday, March 26, 2023
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
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
Friday, March 24, 2023
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!
Thursday, March 16, 2023
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
Tuesday, March 14, 2023
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
Monday, March 13, 2023
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)
Thursday, March 2, 2023
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
Friday, February 24, 2023
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)
Wednesday, February 22, 2023
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.
Miss pissy mood boy
Monday, February 20, 2023
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
Friday, February 17, 2023
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
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
Saturday, February 11, 2023
Wednesday, February 8, 2023
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.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
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
"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?
Friday, February 3, 2023
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Do wasps and hornets make money?
Monday, January 30, 2023
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)
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
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
Thursday, January 12, 2023
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
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
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
Sunday, January 8, 2023
Saturday, January 7, 2023
Monday, January 2, 2023
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
Thursday, December 29, 2022
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)
Saturday, December 17, 2022
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
Monday, December 12, 2022
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
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
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