Wasn't it...?

i can hardly
apply my lipstick
for emotions
running free

i see visions
of our union
and the sad
state of society

i feel guilty
when i think of
all the times i
pressed my personality

i get sick of
these ruminations
when i could be thinking of you
it's all about me.

I can hardly
put on my makeup
'cus the gal that's in the mirror
is not the guy i should be nearer
and no matter how i preen
i find he's nowhere to be seen
I can hardly
remember his name.

scratched on cave wall (translation)

when i lost my babies
my society started in
on watching me for signs
of depression and mania

apparently i got so down
that i sang in tongues
and laughed at my tragedy
pulling out my hair and an eye.

now they make me lick
pharmashiv from a low
stone and run ceremonial
volca shiv. i can't vote.

Fire Shore

Fire Shore (the Mp3)

Fire Shore

There is a shore
where fire laps
on the coals

chic as Lourdes
volunteers
wade in the flame

when they return
towel around them
they are maimed

but they live en-
chanted lives from
there on in.

everyone
wants to know them,
see their pains;

they are a source
of inspiration
for the lame.

you can trade
your trudge and bot-
her in a day

for scarring wa-
ters that God made
while insane.

Song of Chamatily

Tom went for tacos and beer. The normally surly prole waitress was charitable in tone toward his misery, but he felt neither surprised nor grateful. He took the stone near the window, daring her to make him move. Two or more only here. She merely brought him a napkin and a dirty fork. She was indifferent. Tom was indifferent. This pleased Tom somewhat, though he remained unconvinced of anything.

A large, interracial prole family, probably her relations, was sitting across from him, so it was difficult to stare straight ahead without the children stepping into his line of vision as they scooted in and out of a booth they had taken over for themselves. They went behind the counter to help themselves to more chips and did balletic turns and leaps in between.

A black man who must have been the children's father sat and stared at Tom. He might have been searching for a sign in Tom's face that he disapproved of the bond between himself and his brown wife or of his innocent offspring. He might have felt jealous of Tom's solitariness and apparent freedom to go out for tacos and beer alone. He was clearly troubled by Tom. Tom shifted his eyes to the left, and then to the right without moving his head. This did not shake the gaze of the black prole man.

One of the girls found that she could slide easily on a smear of guacamole on the painted cement floor. She decided to do the splits while slurping the straw of her iced horchata, skidding the spill under her shoe. When Tom looked up, it was a woman staring at him from the same table. He guessed it was the black man's sister-in-law or a friend of his wife's. The woman's expression was also disturbed, but it was more likely, Tom felt, that her concern was child abduction and rape. Tom's food came then.

He could not remember any previous meal that day. Morning itself seemed many weeks in the past. He ate the tacos like an animal and sent the rice and beans back because they were cold.

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

http://www.hooptie.de/

Fortunately, though she was muddy and on the ground, it was only the driver's skirt he wanted. He had already made holiday mincemeat of her shoes and her kairn terrier.

PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis)

http://www.nwcphp.org/

Bangalore Street Dog Menace

http://r2blore.blogspot.com/2007/01/street-dog-menace.html

He Jacked a Hooptie

Kug speaks to us directly from a windy, 10-acre golden poppy meadow near Cliff Suites.

"I have dogs and my dogs are free. I didn't come up here and make a sacrifice on this land, move my life, so my animals would have to be in a cage. They run when I run, eat when I eat, walk when I walk, and sleep with me. I've got a big four-poster with a California queen stone, and that's where we wake up every morning."

Four fluffy one-hundred pound dogs romp in circles around him when he walks, and walk beside him in the colorful high grass when he runs. Kug's long blond hair all blows over one ear as he sends a smile back to one of them. Gray clouds are beginning to blot the sunshine and cast hand-like shadows. There is a faint mechanical sound, possibly woodcutters.

The dogs are suddenly gone. There is a screeching of tires.

"Pippi! La-la! M'Lady! Come!"

It was Juniper. He'd run down to the one-lane road and in front of a car to stop it so that he could attack the driver. He was successful in this.

Someone's husband was screaming like a child. There was grunting from behind the car, an Edsel, and Juniper's persistent growling insistent throaty message.

14. Time is a Liar

At night, Reptily prayed to her old god without daring to move her lips.

sprinkler on a wicca twilight

it's cold and wet, yet welcome
to some life forms, even in January.
Even in the Northern Hemisphere.

some idiot paid to have fairy sprinkles
punched into the lawn, but it's
green now. He's got leprechauns on the inside.

dapsone was good enough for a while
then they started getting pissed off and organizing
marchers of the truth brigade were brought by magic.

they had to start putting cameras on their body parts
to follow their trajectories. They called this
time. Heads on shelves tell the story.

13. Time is a Liar

"...and even pain was just a confirmation of my selfish assumptions. Vol. Rabbits. I took the palace mascots' unconditional love and seeming empathy as some kind of validation even when no human would cosign my bullshit. vol-vol. Take me now vol."

Reptily was in her second day of Volca. Volca starts when you put the burl in the fire. The days cannot start until you have seen the sign in the burl. Volca has three days, unless you do not come to the end.

"I allowed my mistresses to become familiar and then chided them for trying on my ribbons vol. Vol. I wore the ceremonial slippers which hurt my feet because they showed more heel vol. Then I used your name in vain I said 'Ay, Mhthyuh my feet.' vol. vol. Eat my bones first vol beg vol."

Reptily shifted on her shoes. She was in a wedding gown and heels as a symbol of her marriage to Mthyuh, the geo-god. She was expected to perform these ceremonies, and everything she said was recorded meticulously by seven nude albino scribes. One of these had a red afro.

"Ilyn, what day is it. Illyn. I didn't say 'vol' chyle tell me the day."

Ilyn responded, "Your Volca has begun, Chamatily. You know the answer."

"Ilyn you gotta help me. Call me Rep. I'm sweat'n. I can't take this. Throw me a clue. Vol Ilyn."

Reptily was panting and her forearms were starting to slip down toward the spikes. She twisted her wrists around so that the binding would hold her up.

"Chamatily we bathed and robbed noblors together but I always respected you. Now we have a job to do. I'm not corrupt."

"Vol. Take Ilyn last O Mthyuh. Take him last vol. How I will prep his shivgrub without shivwash so to send him to you sooner vol I'm the one. Take me unwashed vol nothing harms you. Vol. Take Ilyn last vol."

12. Time is a Liar

The phone rang. Reptily, a comely and immaculate topless black woman of 35, let the unsheathed metal-tone red satin comfortor from Montgomery Ward fall below her shoulder blades to answer.

"Mom. I have a big shiv tonight. What do I always say. You come and fall down. Please. Oh and you like your 6 mats behind the rope net. Far above drainage. Yes and I love you." Reptily's view gave her mountains and pink clouds that morning. She knew she would be able to get her mother to come to the Shiv and pretend to faint.

She was eating Blood Hope wafers right out of her communion kit. In bed.

"Mama this is the only way. You, free. We in two tall house. I help so many people and little children. And I got my papers. Everyone respect us. You repeat now few times, go to bed. Little children yes. Papers. Respect us."

Things had not yet begun to go wrong.

11. Time is a Liar

Still, the flame could not break through.

"Hooo. Cooo. Hooo. Pit spot. Pit spot. Cheese or Hawaiian. Cyclamen."

The flame sank down, peeked back, and disappeared into its lair between the branding-hot grate and the underside of the burning logs.

"I choose my gift to be..."

Reptily gasped.

The burl was spewing a rapid fire of sparks against several points on the rock, above and below the pot line. The burl's face popped and fell away hideously. The symbol was clear burning red and gave no sign of waning for lack of fuel. It was the 6 ridges and prostrate child. Prolabique Pharm-Supply.

"If it burns till sunrise, we are in shit."

Reptily slumped, rested her chin in her hand, and spat at the hairless dog curled by her feet.

10. Time is a Liar

Reptily sat on a footstool before a fire she'd made. Her specialty was burls, but she could also read the heat spots and Burnt Issue of cones, ashes and legumes. This oak burl had burned through the eve of and into the first morning of the new W.D. It was disturbingly reminiscent of a six-hour vision of hell she had experienced using wood from the same river bed the winter before. It's sandy, but it's cured. Miss Sprint just must not have been hosing them down. But fire's eye knows all. It can still carve its message.

She poked at the chunk of glowing wood and lifted it trepidatiously, as if she expected ugliness. "Yes, it's all written there." Reptily let the sandy, helmet-like shell of bark fall back on its tortoise legs of cinder. "Now it must burn up from the bottom. There will be a mark in the sand."

"All year, I do nothing good. I am a samurai against all best choices. I want this WD to break, and in her last flame, for the Mhuthya to roil up and bring home her bad daughter. Bad hunger to good. Vol-vol. God is pleased."

"All year in my pain I treat others bad. The world is my suffer. I am your food Mhthyuh, is me to take to your bowel. Vol-vol.

"All the days I eat I say I have something bad. Vol-vol. Vol-vol.

"I am only so sweet to get birds in the trap, and they rot. Because I have too am too much Mhuthya. Vol-vol.

"My children are lost. I have no children. Take my children. You are their path. But eat them last. Vol. Vol.

"Even temple mascots chew their own bones for me to complain vol. Even my babies have crawled away.

"I put my hair in fire to feed you, vol, I am gorged with lush diseases of lust and mimesis, horror and disgust, fear, misrepresentation, betray, go over, don't listen, TV all time, wastebag, simpleton, hypocrit, make death.

"I am fresh and livid and salt regret, vol. This day. Last day. You ate them all. Vol. Vol."

Reptily's spiny forehead rested on her knees now. There were more items, but why.

"The sloth, the fool, the reaper. I can only see myself, but I cannot see..."

It would be soon now. If she got the 2-spear sign, she could fight and run ahead. Trapped at home was a murder to her.

Mr. Pig

Mr. Pig

"The most delightful two minutes or so in the history of time...unreal!"
J. M. E. McTaggart

If People Don't Retrace their Movements, Paths Cannot Cross

There was a pig let me
tell ya bout the pig its
a story of a pig, an
allegory bout a pig.

Mr. pig took a swim, took a
swim, Mr. pig took a
swim and on the way home from the
gym Mr. pig I
followed him.

I aint lyin that the pig
did a jig on the street,
right there on just two
feet, jiggin in the open
street Mr. pig he
did a jig.

I turned into a club
and lit up a cigar
sat before the far in
in an overstuff-ed char
and then to my surprise
in a mirror over thar
I saw two piggies dancing
in my eyes.

Mr. pig, Mr. pig
take yer dancin and
romancin to the sty!
Mr. pig, you gonna lose
When I kick this devil
varmint they call booze.

Mr Pig [the Mp3]

9.5 Time is a Liar

"Why deny sleep its part in existence? Haughty Consciousness needn't be given free reign. Some of our happiest moments are in our sleep. These moments are the most timeless because less movement is taking place. It's a small amount of energy, like leaving your nite light on, honey."

Peggy cradled swaddled Elizabeth in her arms and hugged spasmodically as she spoke.

"We sleep together, but we're too alike. Baby Jane Hudson and Ricky Ricardo. You're right. It's frightening. But that's the elemental battle between baby, even newborn, and mama. Some say it's a competition for life; I say it's just two hungry people. Goo. Ha!"

"You see, even though what we call 'moments' may seem to happen on a line going in a direction; they all end up right where we left them. I love this moment because it's as real as any other-- as real as the most famous or most important moment ever. You and I are here to share it. Let's limit movement as much as possible right now."

Elizabeth was squirming. She was already eight.

9. Time is a Liar

"AAA had to come and get you where? Was it...? Well then why were you bleeding?" Sylvia was standing in a robe in her kitchen. A stunted grapefruit dropped from the dying tree behind her on the other side of a sliding glass door. "If you'd like, I could... I just have to get dressed and I'll... OK. I'm glad you're fine then. Call when you get in."

She stared back into the kitchen from the living room couch then for a while. Her day had been intended to begin on that cool linoleum floor. With coffee. Maybe sliding open that door to let the cat out. The bright overhead light was still on in there. But she wasn't there. She'd picked up the telephone and listened into it and now she was out of commission. Her day had changed. Or, she guessed, it was never her day to begin with. The day itself seemed to be oblivious, the same slow spin of the planet. The same constant tumult forward or backward, depending on which way you faced. She could almost see herself gliding between the stove and the fridge. Probably what she'd be doing right then. Yawning into the back of her hand. Stooping with a tiny dish of egg yolk for Kitty. Then letting him out the back.

The living room was dark and intended for guests. It really didn't care how or how often it was used. It was set for a strobe of activity, and the blank spots didn't count. This felt like an unexpected layover in a haunted ballroom. The two hours you spend in a matinee, getting surprised every time you walk out and have to squint and figure out who you were again. Tom was the unexpected one. He could be counted on that way. He was a professional variable. In fact, he'd been next to her right there, a few times, on that couch. Realistically, the only reason he still wasn't there is that he got up and walked away. Maybe he was just going to the bathroom or out for a smoke. But he just never happened to ever think to sit down just there ever again. Or at least for a long time now. But let's not blame time, thought Sylvia, after another shot of Teacher's Highland Cream. Time is oblivious. It's Tom's fault.

Kitty sat at Sylvia's feet, cleaning egg from his whiskers.