Acid Drain

Connie's first five matches were free. Thinking of what she'd written in her profile made her feel sucking rawness at the hole where her stomach emptied out into her intestines, she guessed.

She was fingering the portfolio of Christian men she'd generated on her new color printer/fax/ scanner/copier. Sipping vermouth, she laid their faces, statistics and claims across a big, dumb vinyl ottoman as a tarot spread.

The printout in the central pivot position was fuzzy because most of her ink had been consumed in the automatic "cartridge alignment" process. She had like a short ream of multi-colored test patterns to show for that.

Smells of "My Contacts"
by Connie

1) Alpaca spittle
2) Curry n' bile
3) Warm garlic sourdough
4) Lobster balls w/ asparagus
5) Mask of Aluminum Chlorhydrate

Pre-Mortem Lover

I heard you needed someone, heard you as an African-American. Now I bring you this white woman, freshly dead and off the grid, for it's said you can afford the latest remote muscular decisioning, which triggers the subtlest possible reflexes, all depending on the narrative.

Your sophistication exceeds even the most urbane of the high-chank natives because of what you've seen. If someone's going to be educated while lifeless, it oughta be she, a blonde, a zygote mom, related to dream deities.

Now you see my wing, like a pleather grey cape with veins, which enables me to swing high and elevate. I am, in fact, a sort of bat; my powers are sonic, if anything. Here's what Connie's pre-mortem lover said:

I lyke what they're playing at yor fyunral;
I lyte myself a pyre in yor honor.

My only chance at breath is to praise you;
My singing purges the waste that was ours.

"The Chama"
Reptily

Feed from the Air

Hoolie last memry of Peg:

"Somewhere in other places there are flakes who feel a little hungry every day, yet continue to read, bike or swim. Or they roll from work station to station wagon to hueco opener and spill out onto a candy-glazed Rascal what could be paid by the corporment. They don't self deny as much as behave like adults, kiddies: They say: 'Yes, I'm quite famished but I will eat tomorrow no prolm. I can ride my desire right on into a fevered dream of red-faced happiness.' Others of our species are glee deities and can never be gluttons because they absorb unlimited richvictuals and calming vines through their smiling lips with no worry nor wonder."

She was pinning homemade voodoo dolls with human hair to wicker tombstones she had made at home with dead Easter grasses and nailing them to trees. They resorted to baser traditions when the kids were around and/or holidays. Everyone would gather up surplus ribbons and scarves and make masks of K guano and fruit paints. They got mud-doo hair. Meet in the public square like freaks. Then someone from the high chanks show up to buy a loaf or some slurry. Now it's a single-file fool parade with jesters with rape whistles, hand bells, mace, car keys, tape, a drum, seasonings, exhibitionism, and the long-nose high chanker led the fray in a grim backward cap. Afraid.

These were alleys and gutters twixt houses that are flat black stones stacked one upon another. In windows, wooden poles hold up the backs of more flat chalk, shale, flint. Chalk Chank Knolls hadn't been up and coming but would forever be a noble culture no matter how destitute or raw. These life forms are weird polyps of their mighty blood predecessors, aphids milking aged meat who only causes goodness to drop by summoning feed from the air with its smell.

Jaula de Espaldas

Kevin Reynolds lay on his back at the bottom of Mike's foreclosed swim poo echoing, sobbing. The sound reminded him of la musica chanquera, the rustic kind that twanged back at your song. It was a form of prairie yelping, wailing known in oldtime saloons. Now his world was cement, a drapery of shunning, much as original ropeswingers saw night as a vanity curtain and privacy overkill. Most of all, there was no Mike: the most un-metaphysical man in the world. This had been a place where they could move in and out of one atmosphere and onto the next and up and back from one surface to the other together. Kev just couldn't help belting out,

"A circle of backs makes a cage;
all the asses seem flat this way;
no matter how much I ballet,
they snatch, trap my gay rage.

"Jaula de espaldas,

albergue de silencio,

aparte de mis amargas

lagrimas, gotas sinceras.

"Zif yor on a big-top lion's den
expressing your nails, glands,
in a trade of begging, demands
with chairs dressed as men.

"Cerrajon de esperanza,
Cojonudo de fortitud,
Menos carne indefensa:
unica arma, boca inmensa.

Bicyclist's Junk in Spandex

Empathy encouraged at a young age
can make of you a Peeled Grape.

Tacky Surfaces have a force,
face that competes with gravity
for grist-turned-agents who
Want to Steer yor way
Despite Nature or Moral Vogue.

These lip prints, monumental,
in a hangar-sized butterfly
or insect case
with Pins and Velvet,
crown each kiss with a name
to call it, A Shame.

Fabrica de Pases

El tiempo: padre mentiroso, padre de gases, tirando tus peditos en pleno rostro, cada segundo toma otro pelo, medida vergonzoso, timo de tela, estafa de nada, de engano, tio; putada, lio, hueco vacio, espiritu, capricio, munecas, idolillo; parasito. plasta. fuera. le paso. me mosceas.

Early to Mourn

Way after the violent gnashing of hard drives in public oracle dispensers had become a given, even a homey reassurance, sucking on a shivstick, Peg could often be heard to bleat, "Well I don't want to live forever, growing a two-thumbed ombligo. I'd rather keep the process movin, movin."

It was comments like these from the deities that began to lead certain ad-hoc temporal realizers to believe that the entire concept of time itself was a hoax and a fraud developed during early civilization to compensate for setbacks in the arms race. Each side was complicit because the scam functioned to shield corpornents, goverations, philosophers from skeptics, artists, cretins to whom they could easily attribute skepticism, artsiness, hypothyroidosis.

In primitive terms, shivsticks are a time machine. More moving happens, more activity in your cavity. Yet not so much as to create a tragic instant bygone. Your consciousness itself progresses to a level of acceptance it may take others decades to achieve in a "time" paradigm. They, in turn, learn early to mourn.

Queen's Ass

Had three docs look adit. One was this Tattooed Urologist called Don out on Red Light Highway. Claimed to be an operator. Said my prostate was too small. I gave him The Slip, Dad's Toilet Kit Gaping behind the Front Seat.

Second was a Happy Orphan fraid he'd find an Archetypal Angry Parent if he asked me to Drop Trow. His contribution was Advisement to Do Nothing, but that only Makes Time Stop; A Man Has to Act.

I listen to the little voices inside me for when I really Want to Cream: My Dead Posse.
They said check out the Queen in the Filling Station. They moaned her name into their hats.

I'd Like to Hold You Once

Apparently, women really
want to have sex.

But you and I, no
one will suspect.

Let them strut their
glossy trappings

While we steal a
caress and longing.

Brash fruits drop, ho-
llow in our ear;

We mutually suckle
underground.

Would that my
branches could

Find you in air, in-
hibit yor career.


I'm y' baseline, baby!
Kev

Reliquary of K's

Every time his head surfaced, he'd scream at the cameras, "How do I kill it?! How do I kill it!" and it would again twist him under the muddy foam. They were rolling, and the beast's plastic branks had come off in the scuffle. Kevin would have been crying if he had not needed to maintain, to save his life, a fierce persona. The electronic eyes became absurd to him then. He had to squeeze these prehistoric lips together in a lovelock and keep it shut until emergency services could hooptie on over. Publicity may have been his job, but he felt he had already stretched his adventure comfort aperture nearly to snapping.

Meanwhile a family of K's coasted about 250 rods above the desert floor. While they appeared to be a team, each one was searching, lost in its own way. Parents and chillun. Their bodies knew to fly to the left of another's wind, but that was all. Then they heard Kevin Reynolds's horrific squalling.

They turned as one and on a diagonal, calm as death, swooping low enough to take him. There was no question which. As deity, a mother must step forth to challenge the moral capacity of any contrary life form.

The sweat from the back of Kevin's neck began to pool under Peg's tongue.

Clipped in her beak, flanked by her significant others, Kevin wondered if they, now, might eat him, removed from record on a windy chank cliff, solemnly, as if picking through a reliquary.

Odd Day

took dump at courthouse
and left

pool had checkered grid waves
like a denture cleaner

true identity of a co-worker
dawned on me

saw self at center of relief map
and sighed

asked for guac when I wan-
ted bleu

pictured you as really
gone, Tom

eyed my own back fat

dogs got early bones

felt a ghost pain that
couldn't be

Love, Syl

Odd Day [the Mp3]

Tarmac

Tarmac, landing area, sweet spot,
Organ, plain, coat;
Spread out across infinity;

Leather map,
skin forest,
stretched on a drum,

Mother, blubber,
road, with runoff,
beading water;

Acceptor, shield
of welcome,
lay of tar:

you cook yourself,
you get hard,
and you crack.

Black as black is
Black as blackety
Black black:

You ready for a
visitation, but soft
as a glove, Jack.

Sticky membrane,
Dusty eye,
interceptor.

--Hoolie
"Life on a Park Bench" folios

Monkey on a Swag

Nobody Cares to Be My Lover

At least not who matches
My Ideal Opposite Gender.

The pain was waking me up in the night
N' giving me Circles All Day.

They called me La Llorona.
Now I spell relief: a_d-r-e-a-m_d-e-f-e-r-r-e-d.

My Blood Plug: worthless?
...and comfortable, like a pair of Curly-Toe Slippers.

My Grandiose Ideation may sound much
like a Monkey on a Swag, in a smoking jacket, tho

I tell you Pharmlife is always longer than no life because it's
Costlier. Your living cells have Employees and Stockholders.

Smokers Don't Need Fireworks

Tomorrow we're having meat laid on red-hot steel bars over the cinders of aromatic junk wood and brush. We soak it in vine and sear it this way until it is white with pain. Upon removal from its host, we nearly always receive thanks. With those nerves and tendons gone, it can go about its business faith healing and puking on bartops.

Guyz Like to Pray Rocking

Guys like to pray rocking
because it pumps their prostate,
and it gets them off
even if they're not hard.

Before you eat chips, or
in a stadium seat at
a summer pogrom,
let us be 1 body.

Part of your hotness is
the way they have you dangling
over a pit of
fiery death reminder.

High-End Wig Shop

Donna was force fed Jive linguistics in cement school. She had come to respect at least the magic, but could never reproduce the spell, never get past the affective filter of girls with half her education but twice her size fresh in from the diaspora of urban public housing reform. These chicks were ball players and tight with no one but the school mascot, Jesuit. Donna took to wearing big glasses and a checkered Georgie-girl cap, like a cabbie, just to protect herself from their wrath by being her own teen with a strong sense of personal style. Later, headbands that involved dyed chicken feathers and suede, hoop earrings, shiny colored-plastic blob pendants and bug brooches, midriffs and lowriding, dayglo borgana sleevecuffs and shoes with pearls on them catapulted her all the way through pharmcamp and into her own clothing-optional tropical disco resort and snake vaccine consultancy.

summer crotch n' cotton

bird chirps at night
three dogs listen

candle in a pot
spewing lemon grass

lights on in house
mean safe outside

stanky sof cotton,
nachrul melody,

we peel it off
while ogres sleep.

To: Mike
From:
Dr. Thong

"I'm Yo Scrip, Baybee!"

Lush in a Poo

Mike's Swimming Blog: Summer of WD: Endless

I've never seen anything like it: Dr. Thong becomes this water satyr when in contact with water. Earlier, almost drowning herself, she back paddled out to the middle with a glass of vine held high above the surface like a liberty torch. She then to the tune of a number of imagined tom-toms proceeded to execute a series of very geometric, 70's tribal bonfire dances using the grail, its ruby contents, and the tension of the deep end against her musculature as props. An entire victory lap of sorts was then devoted to what she called her "pig-dolphin movement," a super-undulation of great strength, gall, and poor taste. Coming to an abrupt though not unwelcome stop, she had her hands on her own raw hindquarters as if for the first time. "I can no longer bruise my pelvic shelf," she marveled; "my ass is now so big I can't feel any of the bone directly. I have a big ass, so I'm going to use it," Donna continued, still out of breath from her last performance while gaining emotional momentum. "I can... watch this..." Donna banged her hip up against the side of the poo as furiously as she could underwater. "I can throw my ass around and bang it on cement and it doesn't even hurt! I have a big ass. Yeah! It's big." Dr. Thong continued, banging ass violently and sipping carefully from her plastic goblet. Then the wind started to pick up.

Bandanna Bandito

There's a restaurant attached to a motel at the edge of town that gives onto a convalescent home across the highway, Chalk Chank Manor. It was shut down for a reason that's mysterious in a town whose most powerful most always get a pass in the press. The Manor is the last real estate that's not pharmland or plain sand from there to Chukka, way beneath the turn of the horizon. The road takes a deep dip also, at the bottom of which there's a mannequin who looks like a bandanna bandito selling junk wood. Kevin has evening meals

there at Finister's, flirting with bologna-face truckers, cement miners and horny carpetbaggers. After a quick dip at the newspaper machine by the door, he'll walk in and spread the Sports N' Alleged Sex Crimes Bugle across the chilly tabletop of the booth with the best view and look out on the dusk. The dead palms at The Manor have radically U-turned, their fronds upside down. The blacktop between is untrammeled enough to be a runway of sorts. Enterers see Finister's and The Manor and Manor Motel as their de facto introduction to the Low Chanks.

Intergenerational Bitch Fight

La-La and M'Lady went at it after a dispute Kevin says over somebody walking by outside the fence. But they were fighting over him. A lot of blood spilled on the patio and up against the stucco. I was trying to wedge apart their muzzles with a plastic lawn chair, Kevin was hosing them down (I said Kevin get the hose as he just stood in stupor), and I was kicking La-La in the ribs since she had her cuspids sunken firmly into M'Lady's upper gingiva. In the guest bath, M'Lady was spurting blood onto the double folding linen closet doors. La-La hid behind a giant white flowering Nerium oleander "La Comodona" where she also goes when I yell. M'Lady looked worse with the facial swelling, but La-La can hardly walk and bleats her whistle-cry with each step. Now I'm wondering should M'Lady be put to sleep. It was she who attacked her own daughter, who was being brushed by the deadbeat daddy. He only there once a week, and La-La growl when M'Lady try an get up in the bed with them. There was even a chunk of fatty tissue on the wet cement and La-La come back before the pain set in and lick it up along with a small puddle of her own mother blood.

It's a mistake to let them work it out between them who's top bitch. Who will cuddle in his bed? Eat from his plate? Sit shotgun in the pickup? Because K. won't step up to the plate and show his strength, put them down, they try murdering for fate.