bent anachronism

I know I can't shake my head too hard. There's been no moon for a couple of nights. Getting used to the high beam flipper in the new hooptie. Waking up in a pool of lipstick tubes at the bottom of the boat told me I'd been in a real bumper. I scratch across the desert pavement on my knees. Jumping cactus smoldering and weeds. Foliage, then fire. A feathered witch pokes at the holey cholla bone with a stick. AAA on the way. Jan, wait for me.

"Wayne, my main enchufe at TRW, protege. You will learn the tricks of trade in charms and powders."

So you are the Chama. They said you were a topless Afro-American in her thirties.

"We will shapeshift and read coals together."

That one says you're hot. Boom! I like you.

"Father."

No...

Ashes and sand blew into ripples around the Chama and took her shadow in the ridges of its trunk. Crickets chattered. Wayne could see the spines. Then he could pull a rabbit out of a hat. Then he could manage his family. Then he could finish his work. Then he accepted two soft-centered suckers from the tow-truck driver. They drove over horned toads, out of the land painting, off MPS grounds. The road was not so black.

Mock Self Finger Feeding

It's not that we happen to be; we have to be.
If it happens to us, it'll happen to everybody
else. We're the great experiment, and we ar
-e still interesting. See all civilization's capita
-ls, writhing. I would encourage you to do w-
hatever rocks your float, and is also self-suc-
coring [mock self-finger feeding]. It can't hel
-p but help fill the moat what helps the good
tidings to overflow on all the old-folks homes.

Donna
"I typed it with my thumbs!"

Shiv Overdose

Family of Consumers

We live interdependently, buying style and smartly. Any moment of piggishness is copacetic in
the privacy of your home. We are a network of understanders, tapping heaven's color palette. If
you sign up for automatic transaction, you barely feel the entries and egress, and if you get the
rhythm, it starts to generate a flow, a chi-wave. You can look like the foto in the public oracle
dispenser if you stay up to date. We are all on the same page: a rubber slide that feels like
leather. It's a company with roots, entanglements, holes. We can produce chillun this way. We
can whistle them like smoke into another century, remembering. As we speak, my fingers are
writing checks. We know the weather in Orlando, Bensenville, Cliffe Suites. We can be there on
the morrow, while always in reach of the beam. A two-way street means we take our knocks in
the surf. The elite might be hypnotized by their space on the curve, no matter how far they've
turned. It's the bold hang from a big arm that will catapult our moon shots. It's the brave step we
don't take, for the wurl, which the generations wud want this way. Boys and their machinations
are under branding, butterflies, every gesture, expression, attempt: ours to claim. Every knee
jerk or shudder just creates more gism. We are a chain of strangers, enemies, happy to be sealed
from any one asshole's greed. Leadership means take our emotions and lay out the whole runway
so we can see our land. We will work for solids, make waste of air, enter a future every day. Our
aim is to clock in, collaborate, live, breed. Salt of the Sea and cream soda is the Mthyuh's fetish.

Donna
Sears Parking Lot

Salty

If I have cash and I'm willing to pay up now, would you let me offer them a bit less than your mass-mail quote..? No it was personalized, but by a computer printer, that's all. Say 18 percent of the new total including interest..? You could fax me the agreement, and if you'll accept a card tied to my bank account, we can settle this today. What is your percentage, sir..? Because you know if I claim 13, game's over for us both.

Donna leaned back against the tile kitchen counter top in her yellow gauze Charro pijama and farted. A salty peanut shell cracked between her teeth.

No, I'm not swimming in money that's exactly right. All I've got to eat is snack food. OK. Give me a minute to plug it in. I'm a doctor for chrisake. And dog food. Never thought it cost this much. I'm feeding you out of my bitches' mouths, mister.

Dr. Thong had been physician to super shiv-stars and wandering freaks. Now barely able to keep Juniper, La-La and M'Lady in kibble, she wondered if someone wouldn't once slip her a pro-bono, as she had done, on so, so many occasions. Was Kevin on some kind of Jesus trip? He had once, as a walk-in, asked her to put him down. Now he frequented a fiery healing pool.

O' Kev. You could touch my coin purse at least. We bonded on a pill-bottle bed, and that pumping beat. How could I know a lapse of shiv could trigger a random shiv test and set me up to lose my license all for a rotten night of hounding?

Idling Caprices

Now that the swimming pool had been drained for good, Mike took up with new ways and associates. One amante at the Preservation Society, another down at Shiv Council. A scientist, an accountant, a bum. Let bloom a goatee and a black, open-shirted look. Got into trouble with rents and men all the way to Cliffe Suites. Until he showed up here one morning.

"I'm looking for Julio."

"Do you mean Hoolie?"

"Told me he lived out back in the shed."

"We don't live here at all. We..."

"Julio." He was looking over my shoulder at I guessed Hoolie.

"Mike." Hoolie says behind me. I step out of the way and they say,

"Just because there's no water, don't mean you can't dive."

"We squirmed like eels in another atmosphere."

"Even while lawn salad bobbed on top."

"But now it's a neck breaker."

"NO. We've got lungs now. Ears."

"We've got the Filter down and K's rampaging."

"Yeah. I let 'em out. One of my pranks. Come dark-rule the chanks with me."

"NO. Come with us. We're deities."

"NO. My life is free."

"NO. You are a slave to shiv and idling caprices..."

As the sun set, the two worked out their issues. Silhouettes in pink on the listing log cabin porch. I, a woman, could not intervene. I wasn't even sure if Mike had the right guy. Hoolie isn't Mexican.

Chama-tilly

Dogreeve

Chemical Prayer

I can still think even though most of my muscles are under remote control. This reminds me of an office job I had while I could still cover my spines. Repetetive movement. I could staple six reports at a time. My finger muscles got strong playing canasta with Sylvia and Tom. If they could see me now. Soaring over a canyon. Bringing home lost ducks. Men. To my nest. To PharmSupply.

It started as an offering, because I believed in my culture's nirvanic system. Here, look what I've found. I am a cat with a bird, but no. A bird with a cat. Then the Mthyuh Preservation Society ruled to let the corporations infiltrate the Shiv, and then... It doesn't matter if you are a lesbian when... they are force working and resting you, cramping your style.

My African-American news anchor husband and mulatto kids: waiting in some hiya-percha. I am employed, enslaved, an appliance plugged in. Retrieving robot falcon. I try to be gentle, but they have fitted me with metal. Plucking an individual from a park or deserted place, there is almost no sound. One must clap one's beak around those who insist on retreating indoors.

All I want is to get my puppies to safety. You implanted your motivator chip right near that instinct. Sometimes they dangle from my toenails and mouth both as I sightsee my worn track. One day I'll find my kids and have an operation. I'll go back to them and explain how tied up I've been. You told me I could retire in a temple and invite all my friends.

Peg

Explication

Promise
this song, an avatar

Here in a trophied stone house,
the game cottage, game heads on walls

where palace charnel begins
meat meant for kings is first sacrificed and carved here, enabling their generations

its wet and glittering course,
see silver trays piled with fresh moist legs and chops bobbing up a path to the castle, into royal mouths, in royal peristalsis

I offer my fingertips,
this is where I choose to make a commitment, to reach out to the infinite (future)

blind and pendent ministers
active faith in our love, suspended in darkness

of last-moment innocence.
as yet but terminally unrequited

There in pierced forgiving skins
stacks of tiger hides on which you recline, their beauty has absorbed the violence of penetration

blood charges your perfecture
you on the other hand are throbbing with present life in a space that you experience from the inside out and I from the outside in

and can whisper a promise
blood, an excited pulse, rushes in your ears

while hours press beyond my lips.
that's how you'll remember me, how I'll speak to you, in that sound


Tom

Promise [the MP3]

Graveyard of Gay Guys

graveyard of gay guys,
my squinting eyes make
it eerie, misty in the sun,
forest of missing crosses.

from everywhere you come,
hankies on sticks and maps,
as if you were starting over,
shoe trees, trunks, tie racks.

and I am sticky progeny
of hard spirits who went
far into spirituality, giants,
monsters, preachers, deities.

Am I sent here to pitch
or to receive? A calling is
a sign of psychosis, OCD.
Here I lie on your beds.

Hoolie

Canned Corned Beef and Cream Corn Casserole

Chama and Ilyn hid out in the dark cabin. After a while they started asking each other what time it was and then after a while longer they stopped answering. Chama explained later, "We felt that what happened had certainly been important, but we were nevertheless left dumbfounded. Then we began to chafe at the practice of assigning significance to events that were painful and therefore disturbing but really no more than blips of chance on a wheel. The filter wasn't working and a few of the flakes had already been carried away. We could hear commotion, heavy things dropping on pavement. The safest thesis statement? 'You just never know.' But also the most unsatisfactory. Then we decided we just had to break down and create meaning, like the opposite of breadcrumbs, tossing out floating disks on which to step across the Crack. Meaning was in our heads. That was what we were born and trained for: this was our moment to shine a light, as if, and leave nothing in our wake because there was nothing to leave. Everyone in fact paid us for that. Ilyn hurried and thought up some songs. I scarified and painted my chin. We found a canned corned beef and cream corn casserole in the freezer."

Sermon

in weariness
the Earth's nougat
cast up stronger
her lasso.

in this contest
only a taut heart
against her pistons
can save you.

while listening
as other creatures
die of what we call
bad timing,

in some folks' minds
poverty of movement
was their keeper
from friction.

Ilyn, Brother. Sermon, frag. 11-14

Time on a Stump

The meatgrinder of life had Kev speaking in star patterns and twisting himself up into every single asshole and grilled. Always hot yet or because hurting, Kev's tears were rain for doves. Everywhere Kev turned, there were democratic users of love.

Kidnapped by a buyer/hoarder trick, he stared for a while at the top of a shopping-bag chank: a slice-o-wood clock with its plasticine bark rested on a cardboard ox. Time moved batteried and therefore temporarily unfettered there, on its stump. Bhut whut was to become of us coincidentally, in our later years, sufferers of severe drying?

Kev's Biggest Wanter

Devices

The Can Opener and The Wine Screw

In the wake of a white tornado, two
surface structures abide, ready.
We can wait while the contents of
several different cans bubble tog-
ether in a large can.
Some wine had to be thrown in,
and now the bottle is open.
Perplexing. Staining red hydr-
aulics charged with an acid.

by Hoolie

Rattlesnake of a Timex

I looked out at Juniper's shadows of ears on the sand,
a Peace symbol. While other dogs might freak out, or
want to always stay in, he found a place he had sniffed
well, a shallow but wholesome place, where he could r
-est in his own skins until summer came. Juniper, a st
-eady berry, you unfold to me each day yor surprises.

Dr. Thong

Yard Fulla Bullhedz

This yard held promise, yet
it's fulla bullhedz an stink c-
-abbage. Dogs trot announc
-ing their pleas, half hoping
not to feel the extra glee of
pierced paw pad n' extrusi-
on. One of them has dug a d
-eep meditation lodge near
the barbecue for her needz
on nights where everything
itches.

Hostile environment
-s breed pain alone; not ev-
en able to feed on fire-feeling-
fire combativity, a desert ca
n non-chalantly spit venom
in every direction, not even
hoping to hit a hi-pt. target
or formidable co-tormentor directly.
Alkaline passions blend back in
to their backgrounds more easily than
pollen in pus or even eels in a floating
salad. Many living, feeling sentient entities which appear
to be inhabitable environments on the surface and maybe
even maintain their status as land in some logs and directories
will and can smoke you out, stink you, burn you with special
tannins reserved for outrecular incursions which are felt, appre
ciated, and then expertly doused with too much sun plus a poi
son that react with strip-nekt beings left out in the direct rays.

Note left by one of the neighbors or previous tenant.

Pardon Me for Mattering

"Find Doggies' Tummies Imitate Sounds Around Them"

In the "woods," dogs' stomach and other sleeping noises would sound more like proverbial trees falling, we might guess. But here on Earth, you can discern everything from foreign voices speaking in tongues to electronic music and gaming chatter. Just the other day, Jesus Christ imitator Hoolie O'Toole was sent to jail for demonstrating that certain sets of instructions could be heard as well as followed from the bowels of a sleeping street bitch while in REM-Heat. The animal has been transported to a shelter thousands of miles away in the State of Maine where, "more than any other pound," her tired ass explained, "they treated me like I mattered."

Your Comfort

You're Just a Symbol

I really think about you too much
and it is not fair, not fair to you to
remain a symbol, the symbol of o-
ur love. Fral I know, yuv changed.

Sumthing that those days will not.
Do. But you? You're just a symbol,
a reminder, a cliche. How can I be
updated on your present lifestyle?

Therz another who may've becum
a symbol of us two; am I he for u?
For I am ready to maintain that ri
-gid pose, your comfort in old age.

Wayne

bitter and better

The Mthyuh Preservation Society has removed this post.

Jingoism

someone put a glob of
commode water dye in
the tank. I pulled so
-me of it out, and I
looked like I voted t
-wice till I'd washed
my hands thirteen tim
-es. Now I'm pale blue.

While I like pure, ma
-ybe too brazen for co
-mmandeering porcelain,
product of 2,222 F. An
-yone can get shaken u
-p around it, have the
-ir own way of making
glassiness reflect sky.

Jan, Age 52

Interrupted Prayer

My husband always had Tourette's, so
when he stopped when he got to "the
chirping of the..." giving thanks for the
day, we did not open our eyes or change
our breathing whatsoever. I speak for
my kids and me. He'd just mentioned
after breakfast how he'd had an epiphany
about his needs: chemical balance, phy-
sical contact, and output. Now he says
it's all the same. Since he entered into
the contract and altered his identity, t-
here is only Shiv and No-Shiv. They
supposedly opened a whole new wing
over at the plant for him and his fled-
gling project. He says the kids're my
laif now, and he can father us remote-
ly. That is the irony of an interrupted
prayer, a lovely day that cracks lives.

Jan
"Can you Distribute No-Shiv? Ask me How!"

Wayne Come A'Knockin

All's I can say is I was on a sabbatical from aerospace right when TRW had community days where you could stroll through their newest foam in your bellbottoms. It was a Billy Graham mission, and I'd had an unsettling interaction with a disbeliever at breakfast just about when I was ready to try and witness. So I took a golf day, and next thing, I am delivering a slimy percussive being onto a fetid pagan tuskless trunk floor. While my family sloshed in clippered jungle growth. I am the prayer of prayers, and they just got silly after I responded to Sylvia's first birth knellz without getting done. I did not feel it it my ears, as one would an ambulance or a robin. This was a primal alarm in my pelvis perhaps significant to the kind of society we had settled into on that plane. Jan had said she could see the evil rising in waves even from the runway, but I told her and truly hoped it was sublimated libido, even beginning to drum on my plastic foldout tray.

"Hello? May I help here?"