Ted on his own

Feel him, a man whose
mother's quilt's in tatters,
entropy thorough from within,
headlights from the freeway
project fast shadows on the house,
a river of leaves let go,
a current of dark on white;
guest room mattress is a raft
above a carpet where mice got in,
where gramma tried to batten down
an even older weave with red yarn knots,
where dogs moan in star-studded
torpor. Alas a night's almost
gone, another loss postdated.

Ted
"Are you there, nena?"

Auscultation

As yor my main pericardial rub,
I don’t listen to my own deep peril.

In taming me, by fashion of a hub,
There’s nothing left in life that’s safely feral.

Potential space can only be a cave
when queen is one in gawd with courtly knave;

You trace a paradox of my body
and bring the sounds that situate me, oddly.

Wayne
"For you, Jan"

wind whores

who will the wind bring, what whores.
they come slicing with their inner-thigh
meats. their drops in our soup can scar.

why must they fall under cultural artifact.
can't the civil authorities, park rangers.
can't someone reasonable bring them to

their heaven. free release, but outside the
filter; open grazing, but only on natural
animal herds, no other bird species.

one came dipping in, very tiny, against
the full moon. she was shimmering
green before the lilting purple trail.

it was three took my sister, but the
mechanical type. these days they're
all hybrid, running on borrowed time.

Illyn
"They dive like K's falling backward."

Atroposis

there was safety in my temple;
i was at a Command Center.

now i rely on the public oracle
dispenser. i experience Atroposis.

Th' Sisters know you've got it comin'.
You sit back and let them choose it

while you live in so many Temp-
oral Bodies. handwriting analysis

proves how easily Beggars are
turned to thieves.

Tom

Death row in space [the Mp3]

Death row in space [the Mp3]

Death row in space

Clouds of red dust occlude the sun;
between here and the light cracks
weightlessness is queen, and our
hooptie's gone before it even turns

around. A laser just makes the bad
pieces scatter and retake shape as
familiar clones of Christian prayer,
industrious, that this get done, that

he be changed, that I receive. These
trees are all weeds here. We haul an
burn them at the beach. I sucked on
the filter until the planet's exposure

seemed even lighter. As I stood, it
was my right arm that hurt so I knew
the supply of blood to everything but
the braino was safe. Here on a down

day, the security systems soak all the
power; all we have to do is wait until
the shingles stop sizzling off the grid
or an injury wipes the hard drift state.

Ted
"She was dead when I found her."

Exhibit

I find that generally
people who love me
will always find a
way to love the ones I
love, but not necessarily
hate the ones I hate.
everything I touch now
apparently costs
something; every move
an Exhibit. comes
a Winter when

Comes a tam in a man's laf
when she owns up to disaster.
It created you, a monster,
one who Grips and Carries.
But the shriek of a suparna,
or its roll in sleep, can only
mean an end to an age.

Donna
"They fly with their legs spread eagle."
[Dick Olde has also provided illumination on this piece.]

Force Psychosis

I'm you, and I'm dumb,
so someone else must be
planning this thing.

Look, divine's
already on the board;
it's ours to fill in,

and it costs no more;
ways and reasons are not
cheap, and we bleed frequently.

Some will find they
must believe and go deep,
but we've got our

solids, countables,
shiny coins n' dallers;
we pass the coffee

others drink. We're
here for the energy
of the beacon.

Wayne
"Warm the Presses."

Quinoa Barn

Without the Filter of Loathing,
these moments might be
painful enough to remember.
Poignancy is spread too evenly
across the laminated planks
of the middle chanks

when it comes to you and me.
Can you still feel the time
we discovered together
that birds are blind in the dark?
If this place was real,
we'd be part of the scenery.

Standing in a puddle at the
bottom of a quinoa barn,
watching an artifice prove it
can only hold its own weight,
nude farming suddenly rings
trite and fake meat, ungodly.

"For Donna"
Hoolie

Tabaquismo

Now yr a stranger with a bold affect; then you wr showing surface vein color, not structure. You've recently had a haircut. What's changed, have you shaved yr beard?

Nope. Juss takin care o' myself.

Yor swaggering folksiness is convincing. And even more for someone from the high chanks.

Oh you think you know me.

That was the idea of the day-long interview.

That was a job candidate in career apparel.

Who are you, Tom?

Sylvia is my wife. I smoke all day. I must be Gawda Fahr.

Is it like being in flames then, your marriage?

Not for me.

She stays around for lack of imagination?

Because we run a pyramid scheme, Wayne. Duh. Me, you, Sylvia. We got the shivaccount for the greater lower chanks. She'll be making shivrep soon. Why do you think she stays.

And you?

I'm going on No-Shiv next week, Wayne. We lost our shivstar to open release. Hardly no one wants the shiv unless they could have a degree instead.

Batch desire

Like when I sunk with the dropping floor on the Circumference Poke at the ridemall, tain only weight that can make you fall but maybe yr composition, auto-dread, and coming back up you could lose your shoes. When you see someone coming down the ramp in their socks afterward, it can all come burning back like lava. Everyone else rising around you in a circle, watching the faces turn from mild surprise at their ascendance to pity, hilarity. What it was now that I think was all the wrong desires, bundled, so that their only gravitational reference was the molten mess far beneathe the crust of Earth. While our heads are stuck by centrifugal force against a wall with a curve, there is always the way that chalk slides down the surface of a board, under the radar of physics.

Ilyn

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