more signs

 

dusky

 

thought we could trail it into a vegetal corner

instead it lay in wait behind a mask of fur

in the purple of the last of a day's minutes

action is counterintuitive to biology

drugs that grow against the sun to scare you in

tho you wander blindly out against your status

everywhere is far

The Jansdaads are speaking with their minds only.

It won't take long, but you'll be risking your life to get there. 

I know, Jan. 

I hope you'll feel Mthyuh. 

You know i will. She'll be right there on the horizon. If i die in the hooptie, her birds will eat me. 

You know there's no guarantee you'll find what you're looking for. 

I'm looking for you Jan.

I know, Jan. I want you to come and find me. 

If i can feel Mthyuh, maybe i can break the Crack, somehow i'll understand. I'll come back and go directly to the air conditioning unit for the temporary classrooms at the Community College of Cement. I'll duck under it, hit my head, that's how some got through. 

My mind is getting tired. 

Mine too, Jan.

bird

 

K shadow, dog

 

 

 

trees

 

vajrasana

PRESENT TIME

Ilyn is rocking violently in a bed of dry peony blossoms at the bottom of his square-wheeled cart. On his back, he watches clouds morph into amazing new ways to tell the same story. Then he becomes aware of burbling waters on the open ground beyond the walls of the cart.

Dare i? I want a drink from this crick. Shab, stop. 

Shab, a very large dog with red eyes and an empty saddle, has been twiddling his legs just above the surface of the otherwise wasted land beneath them. When Shab hears an order to stop, he stops. 

Shab, drink.

Ilyn pulls a lever buried in the flowers. It releases Shab's yoke. Shab walks around to the side of the cart and pulls a rope with his teeth. The side panel falls open, and Ilyn is able to roll down its slope and into the creek, face down. He can lift his head enough not to drown between sips of water, but barely enough to speak.

Shabubbab, dobne. Pbleabse.

Shab takes a few more sips of his own from the creek, then ambles over to Ilyn. Ilyn grabs a bar in the side panel of the cart while Shab lifts with his nose until Ilyn can roll back into the cart. His face sparkles with wet sunshine. Shab dips back under the yoke and waits for Ilyn to pull a cord buried in the flowers. The yoke clicks into place over Shab's empty saddle. 

Shab, take me to Mthyuh. 

10 YEARS EARLIER

Rocking violently back and forth in a bed of marigold chains strung with hemp, Ilyn allows some noises to come out from his throat. From his back, the clouds are telling a familiar story in a new way. 

Kuh. Geh. 

Ilyn can form words, but none are appropriate. Finally, he is thirsty. 

Shab, drink.

PRESENT TIME

Shab is pulling the square-wheeled wooden cart uphill, with the peak of Mthyuh becoming clearer above the clouds. Gravity causes Ilyn to slide all the way back in the cart to an almost sitting position. Now what he sees is Shab's empty saddle and the backs of Shab's furry ears, always twisting on their axes, scoping for any danger or pilgrims. The path ahead is lit only by slivers of moon and the reddish cast of Shab's eyes. 

TWO WEEKS EARLIER

Ilyn is sucking on a shred of ginger root, and Shab is chewing his like a cud. 

Shab, think. Where were we grng to stop crming back thrs way?

Shab has either been forbidden to speak or refused to speak ever since the fabled incident with the Monster Poinsettia and during which the only and last rider of his empty saddle, the Begging Raja, lost both of his hands, and painfully so. 

If you could speak, i think you might tell me there's no point in remembering anything. Or perhaps now, suddenly, you decide to speak, and tell me that i couldn't be more wrong about your view of remembering, how i've underestimated your character not to mention your mood. 

Shab: ...

PRESENT DAY

It's nearly just noon and the violent rocking of the cart makes fiery trails appear in the sky. Ilyn tries to focus on the clouds, which are at the moment just a palimpsest overrun by the side effects of technology. Soon it will be time to stop and ask some woodcutters to hew a new set of wheels for the cart, which are starting to lose their traditionally square silhouette. 

Shab, listen.  I think I can feel my strength returning. I realize you would have started to notice. But we must not let on, must not share any mention of a recovery, not to any pilgrim, not to the MPS, not even to La Chama. At least not for now.

500 YEARS LATER

Ilyn sits up in a deep bed of star jasmine and mint greens. He assumes a vajrasana pose, for greeting pilgrims and children who follow behind. Actually, their normal walking speed would carry them past and well beyond the cart, but they slow down as a sign of respect and humoring to the deities. 

Crowd: We wish you a bountiful banquet of many assorted vittles and then to be eaten first by the sacred birds! May Mthyuh swallow you up before you barely reach her lips! May your rice be soiled in a highway tavern by the survivors of Fire Shore...!

Ilyn tosses swollen, bluish roses from the back of the cart. They are gradually passing a sign for Kareer Kesh. The diving board has hopefully been repaired after a small molten avalanche. Ilyn's hair is soft, long, and flaming copper. 

 

 

 

Phyllis [trans]

vegetal sun hole

vegetal sun hole

 

Death blow

too often turning other cheek means no chance at third check

while resorting to fight or flight may seem the organic choice

some claim there is such a word as adulting which implies

a world-knowing acceptance yet a wiliness and prolly a child

means elder-being not good-doing but with irreproachability

to a child, to children, to those who value irresponsibility

for example you see a warning notice in all caps and your 

response is wow, take your meds, notice

even if you've spilt dirt all over everything, or they on you

we don't want the neighborhood smelling like abuse

but nursing frequent ideative moments about getting fired

and can't not dance to that there in your mind only

the self-talk is i can still defy gravity if i really try

somehow taking into consideration the enormity of the

body the mass of the creator of the beacon of that force

Dr. Donna Thong

On Jansdaad Day in Jansdaad

Jan Jansdaad, and your generations, Jan and his Jansdaads: Jan, Jan's sister Jan, and Jan Jansdaad (Jan), a non-binary, Jan-hating Jansdaad, cousin to Jan of the Dubbaberra Chank Jansdaads, Jan, namesake of Jan Jansdaad, dead; and the surviving Jansdaads: Jan, an engineer; his adopted brother Jan; and "Jinny," short for Jan Jansdaad; and every other Jan that we might ever see or feel or hear: Jan Jansdaad, of Jansdaad; his gorgeous wife Jan, proud mother of triplets: Jan, her sister Jan, and Jan, a non-binary, Jan-loving Jan; then you have, way out in Jansdaadbad, Jan Jansdaad and his dad, Jan, last known Jansdaads to have seen Jan's wife Jan or their tiny baby, Jan, namesake of Jan's dad, Jan Jansdaad, of the Chang K. Chang Chank Jansdaad clan, the Jansdaads; my favorite child of all the Jansdaads, Jan, has finally married, unfortunately, a man named Jan Jansdaad, outta Chimmichank, down past the Jansdaads with the chained up hogs, on Jansdaad Road across from the JanMart, named after Jan Jansdaad, son of Jan, his dad; My dad, by comparison, was the last of the Jan Jansdaads by his dad, Jan Jansdaad, but not his beloved mother, Jan. Getting back to Jan, his so choosing to be the end of all Jan Jansdaads initiated the Great Betrayal of the Jansdaads, not according to all the Jans, but at least to the immediate relations and their successive generations of Jans, the Jansdaads; and to you, all Jansdaads that clog the surrounding suburbs of the Greater Chank Phenomena, never forget that without the clever machinations by Jan Jansdaad, Jan's gamer wife, with the love and support of their rambunctious son and daughter Jan, and Jan, respectively, roads, businesses and all public buildings would be prohibited from being named for anyone related to the Jan Jansdaads of Al Jansdaad, including Jansdaad Center for Destruction, Jansdaad Copse, Jan's Pond, Thirsty Jansdaad, and Jansdaad Strong Park; we are more grateful still to have more than seventy schools called Jansdaad Elementary, et cetera; it would be different if there hadn't been so many Jansdaads, from disparate and remote lines of Jansdaads, Jans that have distinguished themselves from others, such as Jan Jansdaad, an ancient pope, or Jan—Jan Jansdaad, that is to say—who invented a classic chisel for the masses; there were also the potter Jansdaads: Jan, who got started spinning pots with only the mud from his back yard and some hippie paint; the conceptual ceramics of Jan’s wife Jan, also a potter, are in permanent installation at Jansdaad Gallery and Discovery Museum in Jansdaad; and no one will ever forget the name of Jan Jansdaad, the mother of Jan Jansdaad, her brother Jan Jansdaad, and "Jen," short for Jan Jansdaad, long dead, who are said to be still traveling throughout the Crack’s multi-hole system along with their 4-string toy guitars, tambourines, and spirited stylings of all of our favorite religion-themed rants and chants, a little top-heavy with selections featuring Jan Jansdaad; we find the Jansdaads tend to spread when there's plenty of shiny coins coming in: from the Highchank Jansdaads, and their rich cousins, the Jan Jansdaad of Jansdaad Jansdaads, who can trace their lineage to the Jansdaads that are rumored to have originated trans-Crack, the Jansdaads, and they say they can produce the provenance, a Jansdaad family tree inscribed on a cliff face just above where their bones would still be if not for the ministerings of the sacred birds; to the Vinery Jansdaads, former villains to their abstinent cousins, the Jansdaads, who were terrible snobs but excellent judges, who even put away the likes of Jan Jansdaad, their own nephew, neighbor Jan Jansdaad, his wife Jan, and Jan, Jan Jansdaad's dad's dad, for impersonating their domestic worker, Jan Jansdaad, just to get a wholesale rug shampooer; and to the mysteriously wealthy Jansdaads who live in isolated luxury beyond Jansdaad Plinth, surrounded by a high-security system provided, not coincidentally, by Jan Jansdaad and his company, Jansdaad's, with the latest in name-ID surveillance: Jan Jansdaad, for example, who lives across the street from the Jansdaad's and could run out of sugar, might stride right up to the Jansdaad’s gate one day to see if there’s a bell to ring, but instead, there'd be one of Jan Jansdaad's mirrors zeroing in and ready to use name recognition technology to first, scan for and then, report his name in a split second to the MPS peace authorities all the way up in Jansdaad, who are all Jansdaads from the same old Jansdaad clan founded by Jan Jansdaad, a nickname given to him as a term of endearment by his grandma, Jan Jansdaad, and followed suit by the whole family: Jan, his sister; Jan's dad's son Jan, and a pet named "Jane," a play on Jan Jansdaad. I bid you well, and in the words of Jan Jansdaad, "Today we are all Jan Jansdaad, for it is Jan Jansdaad day." Today, I do honor Jan Jansdaad, who just last night saved a local homosexual, Jan Jansdaad, from getting beat up by Jan Jansdaad, 23; friend Jan Jansdaad, 14, and a hag they called "Jay," a disrespectful yet playful way to say what you might have guessed would be Jan Jansdaad; there is also Jan, the dad who raised his five kids: Jan, a feisty one with his little brother Jan; Jan, who has sleeping sickness; their sister Janet (Jan), and would you believe it, they named the youngest child Jan, after her dad, Jan Jansdaad, after their mom Jan was snatched up and taken home by Ks during a lidderal log jam last spring up at Jansdaad Dam; I am shouting out as well to a man named Jan Jansdaad and his colleagues Jan Jansdaad, the new kid in town; that corner-office haver, Jan, who likes to hang out from time to time after work with Jan, and sometimes Jan, who works downstairs, and Jan Jansdaad—nobody knows what he does at Jansdaad's, but they suspect he might have been hired to watch, listen, write down, and turn in the names of any employee who might be up to who knows what, such as Jan Jansdaad, who accidentally shared his company hangar clave, which was pretty easy to guess that it was “JanJansdaad&,” with Jan Jansdaad, a known grifter, famous for the Jansdaad Scam of Jansdaad, and the names of countless innocents were released into the dark mirror for anyone to scoop up and use them to get their shiny coins or pretend to be them in fancy joints; I reach out to you, Jan Jansdaad, a carpenter; and you, Jan, also a Jansdaad, and your dad, Jan Jansdaad, and Jan Jansdaad, a Jansdaad dad, and his whole family: Jan Jansdaad, the Jansdaad dad's wife, Jan, who just goes by "Jan Jansdaad," also a carpenter; and their invalid aunt, Jan Jansdaad, who suffered crippling radiation burns in the Great Disaster of Jansdaad, at the hands of the now-defunct Jansdaad band of radical Jans, the Jansdaads.

by Jan

self: problematic

i like it when a Jan comes up and talks to me

but i also know that sometimes they're not happy when

i go up and try to talk to them. so. 

is it a tic to be authentic in the workplace?

it is if what you do or say there burns your face 

that's when you know your service is involuntary

the trick is to dissolve into a million pieces

the beauty of the moons and stars and their remoteness

the needle stopped at midnight in the full completeness

Reptily-ily

it's all about choices

I got an out call from a Jan who was on a house sitting hustle at a really nice Highchank palacio almost entirely obscured by the 3-hooptie garage door. In fact she had to crank it open just so i could get in, which put me a little sour since i had to walk there from the coils, which were very loose that day. 

She sits me in a parlor like where you'd blow the butler and says she was a little concerned because i looked like a thug in my picture. I look at her a little harsh at the same time she's saying not in person though, not at all. 

I was all ok, got a bathroom? I think the Jan felt obligated to wait for me in the salon de fellatio to demonstrate her mindful wakefulness towards diversity and inclusion. Or she was delirious on shiv or fasting. She let me wander from room to room demonstrating my low urgency towards getting to know her better. I did feel urgent, but it was more about the Jan's purse, which was gaping open on a plinth. 

Then there were five shiny coins in my pocket as i told her i could hear the horn calling all the way from Chukkachank, that i'd learned to distinguish it from the cry of a bird, so i'd better get going now. 

Bitch did not miss a beat. Oh, that's a shame, hope i didn't offend you, good to meet you tho, got everything? 

MPS got me? Not even a butch K's dick from the mouth of the coils. I say what, it's an emergency? They're like naw, we like coming up in this neighborhood. 

So you just ignoring the calls from fucked-up barrios? 

Naw, they got they own justice. 

Say i know a Jan who's DTF. What say you check her out to see she ok and let me catch my spring. 

The one MPS goes that's not us, craning out her neck. We take you instead and abuse you in our jail. 

Hahahahaha! I was cracking up and slapping my thigh until they jabbed me with a pharmsupply corrective and did exactly what they said they would. 

They have special restraints like the ones for Ks but tiny for hybrids. I was awake and screaming with my mind only. I was mostly angry not in pain. They figured out the location of my flap vents and dorsal expressors and drained as much funk as they could. 

I get back to the hangar acting normal. I curl up behind a bone mound breathing deeply. I can't blame anyone. My ancestry is recklessness, but they say it's all about choices. 

by Reptily-ily

Phyllis (trans.)

barsh hird at dawn

same bird but with hammering

and others, a real cuckoo shop

a day already showy and sinister

but it's the brain that won't stop

i am leftover history from yesterday

yet i can survive and observe

these same lamps rugs paintings

when i close my eyes i can see

blackness on a bright field in the

shape of the common mirror

grey shadows of rugs paintings 

lamps perhaps primeval forest

 

i am the only living exemplar of

my species in this time zone

and going off to bed could end

up initiating an extinction event

 

 

by Jan

harsh bird at dusk

K clones are fine doing any jobs they can do better than flekes. They have quarters in caves near the hangar sites and see to the ferrying of supplies, especially those that do not fit in the hygienist elevator, up the cliff face to the fascio-cranial service platforms, and locking up at night.

Guess i could go out and pull down the hangar door.

Fore it gets dark? 

Could be.

We enjoy full, rich lives. 

Yes, many layered.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

They knew the wheel of life

they wanted to feed their babies with 

my grief like they knew the wheel of

life that their system was wise that

brutality makes way for innocence

by Missy

he thinks

he's hot

he thinks he's hot 

he thinks it's hot that he thinks he's hot

he thinks "we're hot"

he thinks "i'm hot"

thite wing

thue bling

 

wigged out baby

I am not ready to start my journey

in fact i hesitate to breath, lest it hear

me i brought yesterday to its knees

today's resistant to change

it was a rubber band, but it

flipped like a locust from my

ear to my elbow and then

hopping against the foot

to the floor, wigged out baby

you call in an interruption

in order to prove your 

borderline designation

i do not wish to cross over

my stand is here, on my ass

have no purchase only sass

have no sass, only a penchant

without a penchant i'm

lying down with other species

bleeding into the upholstery

wigged out baby

i make my stand at home with Shab

a place of great humor and tedium

coming in we have to check each other's

eyes to see what wild remains attached

by Ilyn

"Which Cave is a Home? Which Home is a Grave?"

Mthyuh Protection Society

Phyliss [trans.]

port

 

white thing + blue thing

 

white thing

 

blue thing

 

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!

"ChamaJanMeetNGreet001" in

 Genetic Histories (n.d.)

Journal of the Institute for the Journal of Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologists

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!

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

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. 

Phyliss Nhin-Tuya

(embedded)

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

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.]