anywhere or to anyone

I don't belong anywhere or to anyone
My life has been a zig-zag up these
invisible stairs, cartwheels on air.

To me most of all it's clear we're alone
each in a maze with the tunnels sized
down to our own labyrinth choices.

When you toy with your hair, it's like
what God says: do not trace roots to me,
for I've always been a self-unto unity.

Ken

Fruit Bowl

actors seem false

On the information highway,
my husband doesn’t know how to drive
“with the flow of traffic.”

always the asso flying past
or freaking out, boxed into a hive
swarming slowly past him

when it gets like a wet racetrack
living longer’s not a top concern
but panic turns to calm

I asked him once, Jim, I asked him
Have you ever caused someone to skid.
Yes but with shame, he said.


Jan
"My Husband is Wayne"

Another Amsterdam or Another Venice?

As the butt of everything,
do you dyke in or build up
when churning natures call?
As the mons warms, his
eyes they skitter and sweep,
want to feel her everywhere;
Is she in the palm of an outsider?


Baal

De Zonia

Dosia N. Conner

Community Butt

I was a tall, skinny hustler with rings of abs and ribs
holding up a light armor pecs and deltoid silhouette.
I appeared around the same time hippies turned to drink.
My face looks like I got punched in the face, which I did.
Then I pulled a love handle.

Mike was a physical therapist who came into my life when
dawn was darkening the focus of every day,
and when I couldn't catch a ride in the city canyons from
one to another 3rd floor reflector curtain hotel,
he helped me pogo to the next level.

You grasp at stuff when it's too late, literally smoke;
as community butt, you have to set it aflame.
Fast lane living is about always looking out frontally
and maybe registering peripherally a bum hitching,
later as afterimage or sunspot, and then a funnel.


Love,
Hoolie

what an idiot

this weekend can't mean anything,
and not for lack of trying;
we're in a story's long stretch now.

this dread torques countenance
through your ancestors, correspondents;
the world's an idiot to your purpose here.

Static Parade

cott'ny balloons resting,
blobs splattered into frozen
place by a blowtube

billowed as if popped,
their shadows tattoos,
spread on a membrane

wanting humility

Sunflower heads, popping their stashes,
want to bend away and face the ground.

The earth itself likes to turn in its grave.
Diers of thirst circling are well drill bits.

In fire, grains of years curl remorsefully,
and only glowing caps of dust can relax.

gimme the dee effin money

gimme the dee effin money,
an eagle with wings that are a map:
these are the things that seem a
good idea to me.

a spaceship secured by
gravity and chains
where they chop down trees,
jubilant dirge of victory.

sorrowful tomahawk,
legs of ginger
stomping through tall grass,
tuneful recorders, fingers.

Hoolie
"desesperado"

Terror v. Horror v. Anxiety v. Fear v. Panic v. Paranoia v. Puzzlement v. Exasperation v. Dread

Headlights made me squat and lie down on my back like a cat burglar. Those and other slick gangster moves made me wonder who am I?

I'd stand before the oracle dispenser and a great personality, an exaggeration, appeared to bubble into the frame, a swelling from my skull.

Was it self-regard made me lose a way to muscle outta here? I wake up exhausted from a night of paramilit'ry operations: for bread.

Reptily

Prop

the painting looks like a prop,
or it is a prop, or
the boy is a prop,
or he looks like a prop, or
the painter saw him or used
him as a prop, or
the painting was a prop for a large
and pretentious receiving hall or
middle-class cascade of staircase, or
set as a prop in a film or on tape.

it could also have been an ad,
or a mockup for an ad, maybe a
generic boy for any number of ads, with
no copy, or a painting of an ad for
anything, a bill board could have pro-
vided to the painter a free model of 1 the human figure,
2 how you can produce commercial art, and
3, that if you are a boy, this look would be OK.
this painting could have been the result of a grandmother and
some ads she'd seen and wanted that look for this boy.

moths b and c

garlic phallus

am i strong willed? is that why i'm doomed?
as fish schools part and switch back,
the shading i cast, as fool, seems to dissipate.
half-buried chains wave to give anchor but i drift.

my staff are a bunch of dicks posing in lab coats
, and even they can't find a way to get after me.
some friends might fuss or threaten, chumming on
jetsam of the callow marrow of a man's trajectory.

Donna

something empty we share

The emptiness between us is something empty that we share.
Your head blocking the light behind you makes our faces dark.

Let's not

Let's not
take this any further
or end it either

wild poinsettias bobbing in circles is their race up the mountaintop
and while we're someone who'd never say no to a splash of color
we're stuck with the translucency of skin as a crude odometer


Ken

self-regard

i see fresh irises, ski slopes,
pancakes, cross hatching,
a jutting larynx ridge.

there is an eyed, faceless being
inside a face with no eyes.
spasms, years pin back a jeering.

clusters of melanin
are moving back
and blending in,

for youth is in a reversal.
dyed payback is all ahead;
winter is nearing an end.


by Missy

information in search of a vehicle

violence as social media