Swarm of Eaters

Chamatilly, a topless and comely African-American woman, 35, bowed from the waist and allowed the tip of her tongue to dab at the inscribed shivplate wafer sewn into the bottom hem of her skirt. When she stood up, all of her thoughts were gone.

She began to chant:

?u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'? u-bri' nitu' uhznao'?

She was practicing for Swarm of Eaters. Nearly her entire left side was covered with a dense forest of SOE scars. She had stepped up to the box, paid her tithe, and submitted to the ravenous creatures in the tiny, decoratively-shaped openings three hundred and eighty-eight times now, voluntarily.

I Want to Feel Giddy and Free

I want to feel giddy and
free, though I am the
Mother of all Races.
What can behold of me
ventriloquistically and
with every emotion
a pantheon of faces?

Over to Kypes'

Kype's mom had just a sec before she had to leave for work, so she grabbed a glossy magazine and an ashtray and sat down on the couch hunched over the coffee table in her Pink Skirt, hose out of shoes and a quilted bra.

[photo]
"I'm jist ginna... git out there an give it... one damn try more..."

Illyn Jones, emerging on crutches from Mthyuh of All Miracles hospital this afternoon. Jones swore he was already on his way back up to deepend the same mosh pit which everyone could have sworn had been his Final Eater now these four days ago.

Miss History Moment
Sponsored by PharmSupply

Peggy had taken on the cause of pimping out models to the American public via the pharmaceutical industry. Top powderpromies could pull down many shiny coins per week. For example they could play a beautiful Drip-Dry Maiden who'd made the Lifestyle Mistake of spreading herpes everywhere, some poor kid who wants to make it all right again by licking for-profit shivplate every day for the rest of her life, which had just recently become endless, at a cost, thanks to PHARM-SUPPLY.

Then a friend hears about her plight. To make her feel better, the friend says, "Heck, I should really be licking this too. That way I'll never have to live YOUR sad life. Why doesn't everyone start to lick Pending? Then no one will ever git H."

"If you don't leck it, you're no bitter than a Sexual Lipper," agrees the friend.

Pending. A man has a girl to watch after him; a girl has to watch out for her man and for herself. Take Pending every day. Because a woman has to watch out for herself. Bottom line baby.

"So you see, Hoolie: if it is discovered ignorantly, it is discovered truly. If it is an imitation of life, you sermonize. Imitation of Christ, you politicize. If it is discovered falsely, you are not making music. You are playing the guitar."

Hoolie dreamed he was over at Kype's mom's who was always on her way to work, putting on makeup.

She had Pale German skin and her hairs all wisped up. All thems at Kype's smoked. A lot. All pale with Pall Malls and pink lips, pink tablecloths; everything there seemed organic, Pink, and Fleshy. And it seemed to be necessary for everyone to drain the soft white tobacco tubes to keep it going.

Hoolie got drunk over there for the first time and made a joke of standing up his lit cigarette in the Middle of a Pizza they'd been eating like a birthday candle. Everyone just laughed and looked at Hoolie lovingly, even though it was so stupid he did that. Also, they could have been mad that they'd paid the pizza, and a large family at that with so many mouths sucking.

Then they went out and jammed in the garage. Their eyes seemed to roll back in their heads, Kype's brothers when they stroked. Chords filled the room everywhere, free of drums. All three boys in that family had classic GTO's with fresh paint and clean original leather.

Hoolie dreamed he was sitting at Kype's alone at the kitchen table and a Pink Worm started growing out his adam's apple like a fleshy condom swelling. When Hoolie woke up, he was under a fuzzy thermal blanket in a bed over to Kype's. He was finding it a little hard to breathe, however, because there was a fat pink worm feeding at his throat.

Public Oracle Dispenser

Ted's elbows and knuckles ached, as if he had been walking on them all day. It might be more comfortable than his current evolutionary and work-related debt to holding up the lower back as a pain-prevention measure. At times Ted felt as though the regrets of an entire species rested on his own four shoulders. Here he was on his ass on a stone because all of the things he now loved now had access to now defaulted through comfort, distraction, obsession, path of least resistance to being seated on this stone before a pod (public oracle dispenser). Night and day. No difference.

Ted wanted to be out on the trail with the pups hunting bear or tagging rocks and chank faces with Isohere. They could camp out and wake to a dizzying cliffside spectacle of Pink Morning Sky, but Vertical. Strong, soaring, wide-winged blue-green and purple, long-beaked, scary birds looked like they were armored in Metallic Feathers. Had become common now. See them gliding by, upside-down on their own private airstream jetty.

Destruction of Wealth

Once every hundred years there was a festival called Destruction of Wealth where all the rich would have to come and stand outside their caves and all the surrounding peasants and pissants would get to walk right past their stuck-up cousins, loot their houses, and spit at them on their way out.

The spitting became more and more polite over the centuries as the rich cousins devised more and better ways to reap vengeance on the poor cousins during all the other 99 years if they looted too much or spat too bitterly.

Eventually, Destruction of Wealth became a national Centennial of Charity. The rich cousins would lock up their garages and daughters and best animals and put out big bowls of punch and large plates of graham crackers for the poor cousins, who wore their very best clothes to the event, clothes they had to borrow money from the rich cousins in one town to purchase at the stores of other rich cousins in another town.

The poor cousins entered the homes of the rich cousins, most of whom had made a point to be abroad, leaving mildly attentive servants and security personnel in their places. The poor cousins ate as much as they could and went home quietly, wondering how their families would survive, void of all charity, across decade after promiseless decade ahead.

Then it was suggested that reparations be paid. There would be a fund set up to honor the sacrifices of the rich cousins during all previous Destructions of Wealth. Prayer and self-floggings were to be general across the land. Some poor cousins went hungry for generations as a result of the compulsory tithing.

Finally, the poor cousins snapped. They rushed the guards at all the grand caverns of their wealthy but distant relatives. They looted their cement and pharmaceuticals, forcefully kissed their daughters. When they had eaten all the delicacies and drunk all the finest beverages their stomachs could hold and filled their arms and their pockets and their asses with all the valuables they could carry, they left, spitting upon the rich cousins, who could only stoop cowering at their own doorsteps.

As the poor cousins made their way back home to their blighted villages, laden no longer with care but rather with new found wealth and happiness, they felt forgiving, a little contrite, and could only imagine a brighter tomorrow for all the family.

Swamp Rascal

Mike crept through the high grasses and foam of dry salt cedar sheddings. Even the brutalest foul prongs of Nature seemed fair, while with man one wanted Payback. He kicked at beer cans and charred camp drudge. No surfers here. They hung out in the sand and looked out at the sand these kids. Surfing the tailgates on their pickups. Corncob bonfire shindigs after dark. This all would be flooded soon. Just big dragonflies and crocs. Bubbling mudtowers.

Wonderful Moment

What a wonderful moment to lay hatred bare,
Pried squealing from her dank hulking steerage,
Slithering red-tongued spirit.
These devils only wail for goodness.
They are babes unweaned is their furor.

Duhbabera Chank

http://www.dtman.com/covert/images/bh2/needles_sm.jpg

Dhubbabera

We sat at the crux of the
Chank called Dhubbabera.
It was two birds flipping upward
At the same chile time.

Chalk Chank [the Mp3]

Chalk Chank

Chalk Chank

It was at Chalk Chank
Where I felt the first dank
Shock of the vagina.

There was a mattress there
In a spot called We Don't Care
Sipping at some wine like snobs.

It was the bravest step made
Since the night we pierced our eggs
Back in history.

It was our only creative act
Including starting a fresh batch
Years later on our shag carpet stairway.

Seven Over

Sylvia felt almost the same whether she was in her car or on foot. It was just a difference between pedal pushing and weight shifting, really using one foot or two. Shells of cloth, leather, metal. Her spring lifts gave her the same buoyancy as the shock absorbers in her hooptie. She dreamed of bouncing all the way to San Diego along the Hard Trampoline Highway. She soared upward, seven yards over the limit. There was Ted hitting climax at about the same time, the Valley stretching out beneath them like a Dirty White Vinyl Bible. They shared weightlessness for just a sec. They continued as such until splashdown in the Pacific. They bobbed alongside steamers and pleasure craft, were dwarfed by the wreck of the USS Ronald Reagan, sipped Seven and Sevens from straws in tall, frosty stones.

Ten Fingers, One Price

iiiivvvx. Bunch of Tangy Ravishes

You still know your name. You sit and stare at the gaping craw of the TV: a giant fingernail with a scene of men chopping something in a meadow painstakingly manicured onto it pokes at and tickles a magnified "heart-dingle" earring like a uvula. Bunches only. Add a stuffed toy.

At What Cost?

IIXVI. ValveBox

Pain of resistance to muscular hackrights installations. Gets you amped up with glee by degrees. How do you want it? You are an emotion's palette. They paint you and you are developed. Developed by scientists at Pharm-Supply's seasonal headquarters in Pippi for use especially in conjunction with industrial gaming interfacial systems and state-sponsored Muscle Logic Dispensers (MLD's). Allows up to three glee degrees of resistance to muscular hackrights installation before dejective surrender and death. Not recommended for pain control during Remote Tissue Decisioning (RTD) sessions or debugging.

New Economy

Hoolie and Kype worked at the plant, plus a lot of overtime. They were more hours of the day than not covered with a fine grey powder of cemen-T, a byproduct of any pharmaceutical mining, processing, or packaging in those times. Kype gave Hoolie a lot of good advice. One time he told him to go and brush his teeth in the drinking fountain. Another time Kype told Hoolie to stop wearing underwear and also stop shaking his dick after he went to the kibo-flimp. Finally, he suggested that Hoolie take LSD, wear tight bellbottoms and shake his ass really hard main floor throughout a Foghat concert.

At break time they'd stop over at the White Hen Pantry for some food chunks or tobacco. They'd break nuts on the big stone for customers behind the ATM or walk back reminiscing about young life crawling through the chanks. Never knew what the next village was doing, especially during clusters. Chang K. Chang Chank was the "fordamall" chank (40 miles long).

They got the idea for the show from a Discover Channel doc-uality about the reanimation of flesh that was already or still animate. It turned out to be easier than to animate dead flesh.

So before long they were entertainment industry execs, and with their laptops they would force contestants to swing each other by the hair and throw one and the other against walls, etc. These folks were volunteers, and they were hard up, but it was painful for them, and it showed on their faces. Emotionally. We couldn't give them ValveBox because the muscles were not responsive beyond 5 steps of glee. So what most people watched as the show evolved was the tortured expressions in the players' countenances. One episode had both participants dressed as Joan Crawford. They seemed to be utterly humiliated and were almost killed. They wept as they were carried out, mascara smearing. They were also called contractees, associates, partners, members, guests, collaborators, stars, models, frontliners, foot soldiers, salt and pepper, caca, ganado, joiners.

Kype had a beak head and deep-blue feathers. He could lay his spectacles flat across his eyes, which had to look down to see straight ahead. He let a beat strike, and then turned his toucan-like nose toward his friend and mentee.

Hoolie. What's happening to us.

Stay Naked and Live (There are Plenty of Sunscreens and Prophylactic Medications)

So you see, Hoolie, do you remember when those classmates of yours went and shot up those cops in Texarcana? That one who'd set his denim bellbottoms on fire in the woods outside the high school? Everything was about Back to Nature then. Now it's try this weird thing: nature. Nature is the new Chia Pet. All-night party in an unfinished basement, filth everywhere. You thought you were throwing up blood, but it was some cop-killer's daddy's Martini and Rossi "Red." Say yeahs. You had to stumble home through the woods and 16 inches of heavy wet snow with a hard cap at first, first light in the Great Lakes Region, a light without a color. He had lit himself on fire down there, too. The arm of his sleevey jacket. The Black folks were even more uppity in Chicago then, running riot all over the CTA, all the white folks with their heads hanging not daring to meet the eye of a Black man. Point is, you can't wear a camouflage barrette in your hair these days much less a stainless steel Afro pick.

Stay naked. All summer. Order groceries on the Internet and get out the Daffy Duck and Tweetie Bird beach towels for the furniture. This is what your mother would have wanted.

Night you could sleep or be conscious in

This is a night that would bear
Hard slumber or consciousness,
This hang of six-hour heat
Lifting off in fine rosettes.

This chill unexact wakens,
This ending attenuate,
Hours misappropriate from
Colleagues and co-worshipers.

Mark me now, and not at the
Iced tip of an evening gone.
There are those who for pure or
Coarse occasion stand vigil.

Others may honor this stretch
Giving over to her tides
In prayer and chaste hypnosis,
Riddle not her clement fluids.

Cavern in the Back

"Hoolie's problem always was that he was misunderstood by classmates at the junior high. They'd be like, 'Who's that kid?' and Hoolie'd be the kid who is dancing over in a corner all by himself, or maybe even in the middle of the dance floor, all by himself, but really spazzing out. Like totally oblivious. He comes to a dance, he doesn't realize that it is a social event as much as anything. Sure, you come to move, to interpret in a way, to appreciate the music; but that is generally considered to be only a template, platform, subterfuge even, for grafting rites. Hoolie wasn't about that. He really got into whatever he was doing.

Also I heard a girl tell him once, 'I don't dance with white boys.' So."

Shrugs eccentric cafeteria manager Soupy Witness at St. Chang K. Chang Chank Elementary, former kindergarten of a sullen and embattled go-go nightclub dancer Hoolie Johnson, arraigned this morning at High Shiv for manslaughter in the death of Connie Rehenes, debutante and drifter. Johnson often claims to have been a son of the High Priestess Pegyuh through some sort of goofy-talk "wrinkle-in-time" coincidence. A Wrinkle in Time is the book that will be written in the 1960's especially for children and adolescents by Madeleine L'Engle, renowned mostly for that title. Upon learning that it would be hundreds of years before the technology could be developed that would at once vindicate him on a murder rap and prove his lineage to a priestess, he began diagnosing hidden illnesses, some of which they didn't know they had, in the members of a Canadian camera crew on the scene. We are standing by to determine the outcome of the epsom salt baths and prayer he prescribed for each of them in varying doses before slipping into a shit-faced trance.
Coolie Sinbad, Chankside.

Photodelic Re-Engenderation

He Reaches Out by Reaching In

When the arm of the phonograph reached its trigger point, it lifted itself and re-cradled. The speakers went dead.

Donna and Mike each took a moment to gather their breath and have a few thoughts. Mike's receiver, in fact, was under the dining room table while he rinsed his face with cold water at the kitchen sink.

When he got back to the phone, Dr. Thong had already begun to cautiously pursue a preliminary and furtive line of questioning.

"...if this was the first time you have had an experience such as the one that we, that you... um."

"Doctor I'm sorry I'm back. I was..."

"It's Mike, isn't it?"

"Dr. Thong, I don't know how to tell you, but I hope that maybe now you may already know."

"I like music, and it did actually... carry me away."

"Of course since we're on the phone you can't really see for yourself what's been happening on my end." Mike glanced down at his shimmering abdomen. "I don't know yet, but I feel I could really swim."

"Mike," Dr. Thong began, recovering her courage with a new-found, no-nonsense attitude, "are you referring to photodelic re-engenderation?"