Pins n' Buttons

Tom wears a home-sewn vest over every plaid shirt every day. It's covered in commemorative pins and slogan buttons. Even as he lectures, its beige suede rocks against his arteries. His half-naked students find it obscene, but a heart on his chest puts them at ease during drills and bloodletting. K chicks will often leave purple stains on their seats.

Missy is out on suspension for off-limits vittle. Every re-creature must be protected extra much because they are most likely to be eaten with the smallest pang of conscience. Because they come back, because they must, it seems a venal abuse.

Tho flakes are other matter; academy classmates even graver. Flakes are food for bloodsac only; the grrl in the next seat is your sister in pain. Had Connie stepped in The Crack? Were her tertiary characteristics driving her onto the waiting list for shiv clinic and guided skeletal bursting? Had Connie in fact been a casual associate of Reptily among the rotting alfalfa bales of the Low Chanks long before the filter and the MPS? We measured time in WD then. But it lied.

Imagine all the singing night birds before wide feeding. Now there is only one, and he mocks. Fecundity only breeds more episodes: thumping, wailing, spines. Flakes disappear like soap. Soon only those who rule the skies will have a strip of land. They are proud and unsentimental or grieving. They have paid with burning; they have paid in change. They are tired of thieving, of treating. Now we are their petri dish. Death is a privileged doctor.

Phyllis
Lit-Crit Contractor, Embedded
for Sports n' Sex Crimes Bugle

Mike's Swimming Blog #80

When the Hot is on, you step into an embrace with the liquid and keep frogging or gatoring in languid ballet strokes. You have to fight going into a fetal position. In Donna's salt pool, I don't get chalky. She's been working on an autopsy in the living room. My loins feel sore for lack of Winter Stroking. Something about this environment really keeps the buttocks training. I did tri-ceps on the cement stairs holding my knees in the air just Above the Tension. Then I heard her laughing through the sliding screen door. She'd found signs of fatty liver even though it was Mostly Missing.

Cruel Prince

First he wants to
do his "martial arts"
thing, the jabs, Head
Butts; then I get
teased for Lack
of Manliness. When
I know he just
Needs to be Held.

He laid on his side
with my cat. My
fingers were shiv stained;
the two of them looked at me
like a returnee's Last Chance.
Is it the turtlenecks
that let a man say What he Wants?
Now I do His Bidding.

Illyn
"Born again-- but uglier."

My World is Shit

Now that I am in the Final
Stages, change seems dumb.
Some say there's been an
encroachment of a parallel
universe, but I fully doubt it.
It's just the ground churning
under us, belching new souls.
My world is shit because I'm old.

Once I had a game, an angle, an exit;
I was up for an ambit, didn't need to score.
Now every lit-crit babe with a publishing credit
Thinks I'm a door to the afterlife.
I can only leave maps and things;
I don't really bring much to the way I live
except my body and a knife.
My world is shit because I murdered Connie.

Missy

Island of Stability

She rubbed the back of my neck while I slapped the bongos. I think it was the best jam I ever had. I found surfaces I had not yet discovered. I played them like an instrument.

The Filter was down, and anything could have happened, but that night she got back her hands: a lady of power and majesty, a real scum bag, perspiring harsh pollen. We were making music.

The Wall of Stress had disintegrated, and our love could flower. This is the way we forged an Island of Stability: her heavy ass and my diamond-like passion, in an open world's vortice.

Phyllis

Scald Lines

Reasonable Person

I sometimes call upon the powers of the universe for no reason. But six nights in a row we smelled smoke curling in the blow hole. Six times we felt our bodies screeming NO. But we are still whole. Connie

Affective Filter

While the Chama is in training, I do reconnaissance with flakes. To bring down the affective filter, we build caldron platforms, watch the aurorealis in the twilight, passing giant bongs of shish. All the while I can take the temperature of the chillun while tickling them, whispering passages from Northrup Frye into their pointy ears. Some days She'll ply me for coordinates. After feed school, I'll be using her guide data to find the colonies. I give; the Chama takes. We'll help each other. Phyllis

Wind Quake

A cloud changed into dragon shapes and we must have been experiencing some high winds because the whole chank system quaked, and the shadows seemed to turn down, swooping into invisibility. This is the current that rules our skies and protects the Homeland. When hailstones the size of medicine balls start splashing the soup, they make scald lines. Flakes are making bets on target-shaped diagrams and debris field calculations. We expect a big attack soon. Mike

That Cat

That cat is so mean to me,
I think I love him.
Scratches his way in,
then turns his back.
I feed him.
He wants to train me
and mark my leather bags.
Then you see him
having lept eight feet
show his asshole.
And then he leaves me.
Been back about 7 times nau.

Missy

Shame of Flying

shame of flying

as an assemblyman, i have access to routing data
for public oracle dispensers and in homes.

i can pump shiv straight from my fat belly
into receivers who are mostly human.

resources are unlimited tho it's all company owned
; my boss at PharmSupply sees improvement.

because i sort of sell my soul to Later,
i can wag my nose at crashes all around me.

my wife and I are sure the public is dying;
we tell everyone to keep buying.

Wayne

Missy

AWKWARD MOMENTS FOR CHAMA AS A K FLEDGLING

First Service Requirement

Here, if you plug this receiver, you may get what you want. The second receiver is what you should plug, always. If you agree with the contract, you'll be guaranteed some of what you want. If the contract is productive, you'll also receive a medal.

Couldn't any animal do this?

We are not animals, missy.

Are we dumber? We need incentives?

Without a change of attitude, you will start to discover that you no longer feel physically comfortable in your work environment. Picture shoulder blades so large as to prevent operation of the filing cabinets. Spinal curvature. And the less you'll be able to accomplish. It's a vicious spiral. Your skeletal system requires room, just like a goldfish. Goldfish are animals.

You mean I won't make open release?

Chapel of Forgetting

I'm sorry for leaving butts and halves at the altar, Peg. To tell you the truth, it wasn't sloth. Even though my fingernails by nau do resemble... Anyway, it was avarice. I know I won't be able to infuse one day. Smokers have an instinct not to throw away the shiv. Maybe I'm out and I need a puff. I can come back here. A prolonged dose makes life easier, even though you're back and forth to the fire a lot. I've got another stash over at MPS. They've repaired the Likeness of Mthyuh's crack, and everyone wants to kiss it again.

Soon you will take or spare life according to your bowel structure, decide the fate of flakes, entire families. It will be your scars they bear from the boiling cauldrons, splashed from your plunking judgements. It will be their fires, your bellow, your dunk, your douse. Your mother may have pushed you around in a baby carriage in a fur coat with a butt hanging from her mouth, but you are Mthyuh's only protector. MPS can only exist because you are the enforcer.

Am I forgiven?

I ask you to leave everything.

Shiv is for flakes now.

Shiv is for flakes only. I ask you to fly.

Shiv is... I am free?

All you have is space. And you must find Ted and the chillun. Secure a hole in a high chank.

Live feeding can begin.

No. First we must hear your screeching wading at Fire Shore. The first flake you see will be safe vittle. When you land, you'll be able to walk again, but not without full spread.

K's fly with their legs spread eagle.

That's why they call 'em K's, missy.

One Windy Night

One windy night, a kitty appeared at the mouth of the office. He was four colors, all separated out to indicate the hind sections, flanks, forearms. To the Chama, he manifested as an Ambulatory Meat Diagram. For a blurry moment she turned into Shab, the red-eyed dog who is mad and goes with an empty saddle. Her salient features returned in time to knock over a combination tie rack and shoe tree more than 50 feet away with a flick of her elbow, trapping the vittle. Chama gave into pecking furry cat liver out from between the chrome prongs and rubber-tipped clamps.

Love

PHYLLIS:
How could it be love when
I can't say I'm falling in it,
and I only bump your sur-
face with a planet of time,
spinning with a momentum
that comes from wretched,
only low, wretched, sacred,
old impersonal wringing of
other people's writhing at-
tempts at pinning down lo-
ve? And how that only blo-
ssoms, like spores on a win
dborne molecule of filth, pr
opelling a tragic career of i-
nvoluntary grinding on air,
getting sucked in by forces
too massive to contemplate
?

REPTILY:
You are arrogant to suppos
-e that you can understand
my feelings or your terror,
especially in the context of
the known universe. Take f
-or example that smell on y
-our hand. The world leaves
you out of its mysteries and
conducts its thing regardles
-s of your silly outbursts of
lit crit. Your buddha thinks
he's driving when he's only
a hood ornament, dear. I a-
m made of essential solvent
-s which melt your quaint r
-esolutions n' hypothesizing.

Irretractable Post-Feminist Crisis

Total conversion or shutdown.
Shivica ficha 1: Chamatilly, frmrly "Reptily".
Comments: Girl's gone too far. Recommend full brain return, winged flight, excretory updates.

Amicus posts: 3

ap1: Chama is the Honey of Life. Our community would suffer her absence more than the brief monthly assaults. Our K response team is empathic and humanish.
Supervisor, All-Chank
Cement Employees Collective

ap2: Oh, Chamalachamalamachama. Chalamachamamama. We wail in anticipation of your claws.
Ultimate Worship Group
Sports n' Sex Crimes Bugle, Sponsor

ap3: She might as well let it all hang out. She is enduring an irretractable post-feminist crisis. I have submitted a volunteer card for embedded feed monitoring and preliminary intimate grooming license. She will recognize me as a specialist and view historic spatting as too easy for vengeance. She'll eat me last.
Phyllis

Collar of Skulls

When I close my eyes I can see pricks of light in the pattern of the tiny bud cluster on your ficus. They dim in and out and the tip wags like the shamrock marquee on an old border casino. Death gives you a mask of hurt knowing and the joy of helplessness. I see your face in the thick leaves I sink among to steal a smoke. I feel the backs of your knees and neck and bump the hip string of a loin cloth on my heroic groin carrying you inert out of Aztec Town. Ever since you planted a collar of skulls on my breast, ever since crimson footprints first crossed the wake of the blessed, I been able to get up on my knees, and the rest just pulled itself together. I never knew all the carnage was what my own eyes bled while stomping past the innocent. Monster, our arms rattle round the plexus, so many palms turned up with final gifts, a mill, beacon eating wind. Only your power can make me stop destiny and give in.

Kev's Biggest Wanter

Worship Section

It says here that on Cabaret Night the Chama was serving cocktails to a crowd of tourists in a Carol Channing wig and wacky makeup. When she looked into one of em's eyes and saw a hatchet murder. Now she's coming out as having seen her own ghost through psychic time travel. Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle is expanding with a section for worshipers. Tom?

Tom stepped out of the bathroom like a robot, glowing in purple light. He seemed to have a bumping soundtrack. Sylvia stood and let the paper sag and watched him stroke the spines on the back of his neck.

Keep the Frontier Strong

Keep the frontier strong
Pioneers will come along
Step with all your doubting

Go to where the wind comes from
Take eddies free of aegis
Shout your song to strangers

Unmask the world that's known
Show her to the boundaries
Plant and spread her queendom

Traditional Call to Arms, Mthyuh Preservation Society

Pillow Talk

The Chama on "Pillow Talk"
with Phyliss

I am a primitive, an illiterate, yet I have a place because my work is an organic function and not everyone can pass this stuff.

Everything you produce looks like a bad and pornographic Degas, a motel-room El Greco if you're lucky.

I could be the gal who stencils red and black diamonds on the doors of the suites.

You've seen enough to know it all just makes you tired, and it's easier to just paint and drink.

Drink and paint.

Exactly.

Then why am I so goodlooking?

That's how you get away with it.

You're wearing a Timex, aren't you?

I beg your... yes, why?

Its ticking is about to give me an epileptic fit. Can we slip it between the mattresses?

[Slipping] You'll never be All-Chank because of this essential torpidity, the contempt for consensus or... regard...

You are beginning to understand my powers. They do not lie in rhetoric, sadly, nor in representation. I am a bloody wicca bitch. Can't you see. Your tongue is coiled around my clit.

*mphrmph*

Donna Thong in the Shower

I kept turning the knob to the Right;
I'd been letting Hot steam a shirt,
but it kept getting Chillier,
so I thought I'd run out.

In the lint-pecked mirror,
grimacing for a tooth exam,
Happy/ Sad lines crossed and
made crosses. In my face.

Then I pulled on my tights
inside out, so the seam wouldn't Hurt,
but it got very Warm,
and Bruises spread across my body,

throbbed, like Blood was coming out.
Disco music played in the purple Light.
I reached for my abs as they stiffened.
I thought about calling You in that state.

Down, Down

I learned all the lessons of cement
by falling down pitted, dusty steps.
It's a consolation, this knowledge.

My sexiness couldn't protect me,
nor did well-meaning tips change my mind.
I was a female doctor, dammit.

They stripped me of my Donna Karan;
now I scrummage like a thrift store rat
in a maze of snap diagnoses.

Y-Y

In an attempt to spit you out,
I saw we'd become one body.

We already share the template
to a double-Y chromosome.

Your long torso, my openness:
we will never turn from virtue.

My hands and feet are cemented,
nor can I hold you in my teeth.

Still just one of us can appear
in the same place at the same time.

Kev

Sucker's Dozen

Feel like your ex-husband is trying to shake you down?
Cannot stand the thought of dogs trapped in homes of the poor?

You can stop dropping off drugs and groceries and checks.
You are correct as the Constitution: they suffer.

What if you were suddenly removed from your context.
You would lick the forearm of a vivisectionist?

See a world that's just a sham Welcome mat for the lost.
Imagine you're there with the emotions of a pup.

You find out that gravity is the only power.
But you can't cure brutality by being a whore.

Jan
"I'm bad!"

Come Down Mthyuh

I stay up in Pennis, near Ground Bay. There's some RV resorts and a gas station with a POD. They have a golf course and some cows grazing moss on the Dirtiest River in the World. Mondays Mike comes down Mthyuh for feed and takes the pups while I work cement and watch cable at Chank Suites, 60 hours a 4-day week. I drop about two-fifty on booze and groceries and lodge it against the back of the bed. Don't need much hay. Llamas ran off with a minstrel. This is just until he can get a second mortgage or some family help. Then we'll build a fence the girlz can't chew and still have gophers on their plates every day. We used to call it Death Farm 3000 for all the graves. But Mthyuh turns up her babes and they walk away. When the filter's up the sky is clear of pests.

Come down Mthyuh with your truck,
Come down the mountain
Where life isn't measured;
Bring your extended cab full of dogs.

Kev