19. Time is a Liar

"It's like you climb in bed one night, and you wake up, open your eyelids, and then you get up, and then another set of eyelids pop."
"Pop?"
"Just about everybody reports the same feelings, uses the same metaphors, including calling it a pop."
"That's a new one."
"What they report is that their universe starts to feel like a big, largely empty high school gymnasium."
"I know. With merry-go-rounds."
"And gravity and everything else like before except the..."
"Time seems stupid to you."
"That's right, Sylvia."

* * *

"Do you feel heartattacky right now?"
"Oh please."
"I'm serious. Last time you tried this... and you weren't even bloody. What happened to you?'
Tom was solemnly opening the package.
Sylvia's vocal intensity was diminishing. "It's just you know how I feel about... I don't understand why it hasn't happened to me, so I'm naturally..."
Then the two of them sat quite still at the round kitchen table in Sylvia's dining room.
They peaked over the edges of the wrapper as kids before a glowing cake.

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

16. Time is a Liar

"...yes, anyway, I'm of the school that says the female orgasm does indeed have a locus, yes, centrally... but.. but just listen. 'Tired of breaking ziplocks and the fancy-schmancy stretchy stuff? Just open, fill, and twist! Cheap n' Simples don't even need a wire tie.'"
Sylvia kept smiling up at the box, which she was holding to the light over the kitchen sink. Finally, as if responding to a dead silence, she added, "So, I just saved a bunch of money on these bags. And I'm delighted. Yes. I'm fine. OK then. Sure. No doubt I'll be here. Bye-bye."
Then she burst to life and was glancing at the dusted-over vcr clock on her way through a brightly lit livingroom. She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing there letting the meat fibers loosen when the doorgong rang. It was Tom.

15. Time is a Liar

I'm walking around in a fairy land, thought Sylvia.
She finished her promenade through the kitchen at counter's edge. She and some new yorks were marinating in Chateau St. Jean cabernet.
"It's a beautiful wine," she murmured, having memorized the back label.
"Not accepting pharmashiv is like just being your cranky self, except that everything is more surprising. And you feel that there is no choice but surrender to certain adversities. Certain thoughts simply must be blocked." She was speaking to an old friend on the phone now.
"Last night, I was suicidal. This evening, with dinner ready to go, I'm just floating, like flotsam. The disaster has occurred, and there's nothing left but calm, seagulls. But life has shortened. Just that much. And however much I added to my free radicals, you know, from the stress."
Her interlocutor, unknown, must have spoken for some time then, giving Sylvia a chance to sip some more and press the bottom of her glass like a stamp against the steaks in the Cheap n' Simples.
"How did you know? They're cheap... and they're simple!" Sylvia mouthed, reading the box of plastic bags.
"OK, okay..." she seemed to be getting hooked back into the conversation now. "Dephallocentralization, sure, but Cixous wanted to castrate men-- it's not just implied. Sure; escriture feminine is a penknife. But wait. Listen to this. Are you ready for me to blow your mind?" Sylvia leaned into one hip and pulled out a baggie.

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.