It's Whiter Theren

After all these years of holding on, it's whiter theren,
where departed ones are all you can trust in,
clouds blank as slates, all the purpose in the world to
be written. On a raft with a flame, floating backward,
we can only see shadows on the shore lifting burdens.

There's no path to trace in these sucking salt waters.
Bubbles face the surface and ultimately pop, selfless.
Someone, our destiny, is reeling us from the dark at
our backs. Higher personages explain it's a bed we've
made, a perpetual motion machine, this parlessness.

Peg and Hoolie
Keynote Address
3rd Annual Exhibition of Banishing

The Dirty Gory

Connie was so assured of her body that while many of her peers treated theirs as something so precious as to be given like a pink angora sweater: only once, or only in the dark, or hated theirs so much as to let it go only once, or only in the dark, she could feel Pain of Rivening but only along with the knowledge of regeneration and ever-presence. Indeed a joe felt drained and used after paying for a session, and so her clientele was culled.

"I don't claim to be Eryho. I have some implants that make my bones grow. It's a special sponsorship situation from PharmCo. Only one man could keep his lid on, and that was Ted. I bet he wonders wai I'm dead. T'was Wayne that did the dirty gory; he thot that Ted wd break th' story."

Hotter Black Stud Thanever

Peg and Ted approach the Altar of Forgetting.

I dint think we'd meet like this chile. I brought you here for questioning.
Please make it stop.
I can hardly hear your squealing now, silly. Be real.
OK, I kepper at the Squiggles Motel off the innerchank.
It took this much pain to let me know.
If youda showed up in yr own hair, y'ought'n hafta bring the eaters.
Don't get folksie on me now, Mr. You talk perfek on the oracle.
It's reading chile.
I know it is.
When will you let me go.
When I unnerstan wai.
She was going through the change like you did. I was hyperempathic.
Connie got some bones in her back?
One got caught on a spring in the mattress.
Hee-yuh! The Pegyuh laughs and coughs yella mucous.
I loved her so much, Peg. I swear it was a differnt part of my Braino.
I'm sorry I had to fight deception with deception.
Will I recover from this?
You will be a hotter black stud thanever.
Thank you baby.
An you dint killer neither?
No, woma! You needa ass me that?

Place of Bitchiness

Even this post, by Phyllis as Larry Acker, has been censored by the Mthyuh Preservation Society.

Joy Laffter

Joy Laffter shows up at Ted's in big sunglasses with a box just as the sun's popping behind Chukka chank. Her blonde wig is human hair, a little frizzy. She stands there in nothing but a black pantsuit but for a khaki parka instead of the jacket. The vest gives it a tank-top affect. Ted answers the door, all negroid with maroon-rimmed eyes. Peggy was seeing so much red his blood seemed to swirl on the wrong side of the skin. Who are you? asks Ted, on his day off, after a couple of mad dogs. Joy Laffter, Peg responds. Her lips are pink-orange. And she steps on in.

So this is your dive. The back of her parka flutters cape like.

Ms. Laffter. I have an office. I'll give you an autograph outside.

I have something for you.

Ted takes the box.

Then all the eaters of the world swarm out. They cover his flesh except for his mouth. They have evolved to let a man scream during dinner because it makes him taste better.

Liberty chank

Neighbor A: loose cats

• feeding is the main thing in our lives.

Neighbor B: pen dogs

• I knew we were different because Peg would take us for dinner at the AM/PM at 1:00 am and when teachers asked would I do that in my own livingroom, the answer was always yes.

Neighbor C: wasp nest

• a fixed income means you prioritrize; luxuries gained always outlive debts n' obligations

Neighbor B: leaky pipe

• it's the landlady's joint, but a beacon for trouble

Neighbor A: no W.A.S.T.E.

• I don't need no stinking waiver. Until I was in my 30's, I procreated mechanically. When I first learned about cross-sexual reproduction, I didn't see the connection with desire. Was a tam wen a woman didn't know the cause of her labor. Now that I am Ruler Queen, only the protection of my children and conservation of my lands matter, plus romantic gratification. Neither Neighbor B nor Neighbor C can provide any of that.

Neighbor C: stucco gaps

• Happy hour food, garage sales, 30%-off last day and bulk meat; a rice cooker. This is how we mate.

Neighbor C: barbeque

• Our chillun are gone, and we live in Liberty chank, the cheapest of all the chanks, so we are happy camping out on this land with no leaks or rain. It is similar to waiting for rescue on the surface of the moon, not really mattering.

Neighbor B: mud puddles

• Everywhere we step there are trials, plagues, pest. I seem to be the happy voodoo doll, banshee flapping.

Neighbor A: mosquitos

• creatures come to me, but never to kill. their pulling from every direction keeps me erect and surprise moving to their wim. if i keep drinking nectar in, my pores, wicking, can fight this gravity.

Day 99

before i could speak i re-
membered who i was before,
but it didn't matter any-
way because i was so exas-
perated that I couldn't th
-ink of a single word to say.

funny how it was accepted,
my growth, taking over space.
flesh passed other flesh to
me. i passed flesh out my ass.
still they carried me, fetid.
Now I dread to top the food chain.

when yr old you fall apart, OK;
but the cone walls of your wurl
also peel backwards into shame
while your heart hesitates to
beat for fear you'll see it,
until into another tiny form you bleed.

Missy
Full release, day 99

Flame box

Gawd everything has the same alarm sound onit.
In these times even tools must screech their worth.
Through every lens, booby traps scope into infinidy.
Kava machine wants juice, a vault door ajar, flame
box peaking. Tomorrow holds fear, vengeful timer.

A young K has taken to our birdbath and secure clearing;
pigeons and squirrels are liddered everywhere. But they
are free now. K's have riven back skies and guide our days
agin. Living in their rule brings us together as kin. Only
Pegyuh can reason at nest level and keep the raids down.

3am and i'm still trying to calibrate the oracle dispenser.
Was a day when a man owned his own cogidigitator.
Says Abort/ Try aggressive update (not recommended).
Was a tam wen we all knew whut to do.
Me? I'm head'd down t't' temple via an unnergraun tunnl.

--Wayne (boss)

War Trench

I feel good in this bed.
I want to pay for it, pay the charges.
I owe it to Sears, feeling this good;
I want to pay them everything I owe.
I want to pay my debt.

I itch all night and can only dream about my ego.
The shiv is keeping me afloat on a nightmare lagoon.
Otherwise I think I'd thrash around until I could find Ted.

I seek you in my imagination, which is different than the future.
I seek you in the dampened sheets, the stink of your razor bump meds.
From a cliff you keep falling this way, into cotton and feathers.

All night in this room is what we have,
but the sun is coming up soon, love.
It's time to take a stand and give.

(your) Donna

Hut of Saints

Clear in the middle of the preserve sits a Hut of Saints,
Where you can go and behold figures of the Holy rising
From a species of Xmas tree wheel projector or fire log
Simulation; There goes the Admonishing Spinster: look
At me, my hagg'rd creases, take a clue! Now th' Soulful
Maiden, in habit ascending like a rocket, so benevolent;

Therz th' Chama, Reptily, the only topless one, a clayish
likeness but for her breast; Oh Chamalamalalahamacha-
lamalachamalalahamala, the living one, where you roam
is our peril and our fate, chalalalamahamalala. N' behind,
a dog sillo'ette, waving up across the tied stick and hemp
string structure singing in a Squeakin' Hula with the wind.

Futility Study

Carrying a pallet of 24 gallon-sized water bottles on my back, the sun was so hot on the cliffs that i swooned and lost altitude. I have to slurp this fluid with my beak tip and tube-like lingual cartilage. These are just steps i take to get through my laif, not complaints.

My constructs have recombobulated. Daytime seems like a habitable place turned inside out. As long as i can pray and rub the shivstone, i'll send my worry through the heat of my fingers and onto the drum of Absolute Space.

The future can still exist without my imagining it. As soon as our religion was deemed unnecessary, hoards of cynics flooded in to take over the pastoring of the left behind. It left a few of us adrift, but with a true faith.

Missy
Open Release, Day 49

Pig of Depression

Pig of Depression, you leave my spoils in the corners of the cave,
Pig, lover of chewed bones, ignorer of pain, moribund of memory,
Bloated pig of feeling, hog of medicine, retriever of soiled food,
Pig of static desire, pig of selfishly unrequited want, self-penned.

Pig of immersion, happy wallower, knowledger of damnation and
Doom, freezer of food and peristalsis, forager of discarded archives,
Snorter of...

Can you just stop it for a moment, Donna?
Whut. It's the Bhagavad Gita.
No, it isn't.
You think I'm...
Yes, yor sitting there with yr pipe just chanting extemporaneously.
I have it memorized, I...
And you are using my knuckle as a worry stone; it's nearly raw now.

Yr right. Guess I'm just feeling a little low.
Have you thought about doing some housecleaning?
Do you mean the bastard who killed Connie?
No, I meant actually cleaning yr house, but... go on.

Lysate

Donna poked at her tobacco bowl with an ankh pin.
So you walk in my sleep?
What? You mean you dream of me?
No, sometimes I open an eye and catch you streaking by on the tile floor in your socks, ninja. You yourself have reported certain nocturnal peregrinations that could only have occurred among my delta waves.
A white mustache of smoke gave her a veil as it rose. Hoolie listened to the flock of windmills cooing beyond sight.
Our bodies --and moments of shared tragedy-- are the thin yarn that in those two places binds us, allows us to roll sharply forward like a squared, spongy wheel.
On the contrary, I believe it is our love of those not present that keeps us in moon-like orbit, that wobbling, borrowed light of lost knowing.
Indeed, her name is tattooed on your wrist as well as my ankle.
Ink is the murkiness that follows. Connie was the miracle, invisible.
I can't see you at all now.
But there's been a Perseid every 15 minutes.
Someone's turned off the bathroom switch.
It's on a timer so's I can check the color of my piss.

My Spread

I'm not in a space-step program. I work hard; I am highly functional, as you've seen-- I am highly functional in defending myself, outcomes aside, hardworking in my own defense, just as I was highly functional before I began to have to defend myself-- and then I was hardworking my functions for the good of the flight school.

When you give me all theez rulz and regulations, train me to strive and try, then wipe everything aside with an arbitrary decision, I get double vision, I get religion but it's upside down right then. It's a dog and pony ride, but my ass growing wide on your office chair means I participated. My spread is your bread, baby.

Cuz I chose this grinder to wind me down, I guess I have to spin in it, find the swing in it, and do my thing. Drown. As in a blender. From all that I remember, it'll be like my hometown, the one I scrammed from when my shoulder bones started poking holes in roof sections. They were tender. Now my life itself is deregulated.

Missy

Clem Bake

Dear Clem,

Ted called and sang a portion of the Patty Duke Show theme to me on Sky Dispenser today.

A group of chillun from eight different countries sang a few lines of Happy WD Day, must've been about 900 ovem.

Where are my kidz, Clem? Where are my kids right now? Are y' hugginem? Don't chyall have an account on Twiddle?

You know I'm not sitting on my thumbs cuz I'm typing. But I'm also not dormant off oracle. I think I am ever closer. How do I know this. Because I can see a hooptie in the driveway and you in it. All those seats and ashtrays, but you come alone.

All my power is nothing to you. You had to be borne of the same womban as a certain mulatto news anchor with blue eyes. Was he singing through the station next to your beauty mirror, or his? I could see the little glamor bulbs in a square.

There are candles burning in caves everywhere for my Connie, my Hoolie. Maybe they've grown up and can see the light. Hoolie said when he was six: "Aunnie Clem say you a inter-special anomaly, mommy."

No, I won't be dropping the lift basket this evening. Don't even show up again without my family in the vehicle.

I love you in spite of everything,
Peg

Saint Dick [revision]

I sit in the back pew of an empty Episcopalian sanctuary with my
degradable plastic sack and its transparent cellophane wrap on
laminated cardboard, a box of fourteen aluminum packets that contain
low-porosity, curve-cut moisture sheaths laid over 21-mg transdermal

Nicotine glue patches. A swell of lemon slavered wood and illumination
on cotton paper holds at length sweet iodine eddies from the chequered,
florid lane, and because there is a concert in town, the pungent squalls
of faker hippies curling along on mushrooms or methyl-amphetamines

With their costumes, Goodwill hunting and baby straps. Ceilings this
high create micro-climates in the dust-rayed suspension for door mice
and death moths stuck in the water tension of puddles in stone-columned
receptacles. Alone with the crinkling flotsams of Man in my lap,

It doesn’t seem to matter what might swim between esophagus and
lung. Only my lips will breathe this prayer, only enemies and friends
in far-flung orbits could form a basis for presumption or explanation
for why I’m here, but I’ve no known knowledge of my excursion

by any human ear. Tho I may detect the shriek of a suparna high
above the painted metal beams and glass of the cupola, it does not rain
fear, only static wonderment. I strode past shingled cottages, against
the backs of doorstop Buddhas in the creeping hindo-communistic

Aesthetic of the university neighborhood. A declassified man on feet
naked but for tar and sidewalk gum, with folds of cash and dreads and
beads pursued me chanting fumigation of indians by cigar store regulation
and the osmosis of their reservations, and his speaking slowed me down,

Gently forced the diversion that led me to a street that opened between
some trees where I could spot the steeples and the dome and its ribs
caught up with kite string and palm fronds and blanched bodhi skins
teased by saline winds seeping from the bay, which keeps away tsunamis.

Hoolie

Interview with a Captain of Industry

"Looking for yr fren David?"

"Yes, I know it's last call, but..."

"Who's got a call butt?"

"Have you seen him?"

"Per my advice, he'll be arriving shortly in Gary, Indiana."

"Far."

"I'd say."

"Well, I've got five dollars. Can I buy you a White Russian?"

"I'll take that drink and offer you a job."

"What's yr name?"

"I hear yor a mediocre ho."

"It's what some say."

"But yr better than that."

"Don't you love Kaluhua?"

"Some glamour, but more regular."

"It's in Gary, yr operation?"

"It affected my amygdala, actually."

"Mom'll wanna know where I've gone."

"It'll hep you get a loan on a hooptie."

"With a visor mirror?"

"I told you you wr jus right."

Employment-related

I love to tell the story of how i started working at a mortuary lipstick factory. My fren David was wondering what we were gonna do for fundz in order to keep riding the New Wave one night. How would i contribute. I said oh i'll go next door and turn a trick. Too shy, took me till closing, and the Gerente says he'll give me five bucks to sit on his face. But not before therz an ugly scene with the barkeep. "Show me what's in yr drawr," Gerente says. Bartender looks so Pissed Off, spits out his nose on the Bottle Washer. "Hand it over. Sorry, can't pay you this week. It's all Rent." Bar guy stomps out the door like a Sissy, which in fact he was.

Gerente throws a deadbolt as big as yr arm behind him, says come with me.

Upstairs on a rug in the out-of-code loft office/bedroom plywood efficiency platform, i was at first frightened i'd suffocated him until he started to snore. Then i looked over at his wallet, full of a night's take. I just poured beer on his face until he was awake, climbed down some kinda bunk bed ladder and walked out the front door with my fin.

Just because of that, because of that story and the sincerity within, i met a believer in the rehabilitation of youths who have too much fun. I'll never know his real name, but now i breathe toxic powders and work in slime as others do in fog or wind.

It's all about death at PharmSupply, Funerary Cosmetics Div. We deliver because we can, and we are. And we do. Did.

Now that i myself am Dead Physically as well as employment-related, i can say whatever i want.

Connie

Monopoly of Prerogatives

The Chama's challenge as she scales cliffs and tears flesh and nests is to find some rest in conscience. No longer a topless AfroAmerican shivstar in her 30's, neither beauty nor the powers of hypnosis can be centering virtues. Even infamy is left yet unrewarded before tracking kicks in. All she has is my early reporting, and through it, a monopoly of prerogatives.

Reptily, now you are a bird. You were an ape. And before that, a maid. Summon yor warring facets, grrl. What does evry suffring living creature believe in. They next move, woma.

"Just because of a helicopter doesn't make you queen neither."

We're embedded. I'm awol just like you, but also no one told us we coont.

"This is my life to save. For you it's a thrill ride, dispatch."

I love you Chama. Together we can have a home in this sky and crags.

"Until you ship out to sell me out, charlatona!"

Don't swipe at my ride, now.

"You go an take a break. You hold yor shit."

**end of transmission**

"A Hero"

It was a year ago about now, that many people and things having moved through places. Even then we thought of how solids are overrated, that mass itself got too much attention. A vacuum is a place. There are spaces where there is nothing.

Twice a week you went off to the tramp with the crystal ball on a stand. The solid and the gas were both clear, but the one could only tauntingly reflect, not contain. Your sadness spilled into the air of that room, tent, hooptie, ditch.

That was one time you answered back with an all-time and timely disregard for time. Your movement has carried you here, and that could not have happened without unlimited space. Possibilities of emptiness make even pagans fear.

to Cap'm, "A Hero"
Phyllis