I Blew My Pleasure Center

My cheeks felt tight for about three years, and my gums were receding prematurely. In the mirror, my face kept changing. I thought my bite was sinking inward. I wondered what force could make the bone structure of a skull move and bubble. Nocturnal bruxism? An uneven ridge swole up surrounding my mouth like an older smoker whore, but it wasn't unattractive. Only if I pinch-lifted my lips-- and who does that?-- would anyone spy what was really developing. Even I didn't guess until the little ruffled moons started poking their fingers through. These have got to be someone else's damn teeth.


Missy

Good luck thieving

i drowned a wasp
left him in the net
turn back around
an a piece of fluff
flies at my face an
i flinch so garishly.
but all the evening
under half a moon
good luck thieving.


R.

cathartic diagnosis

They say a walking problem is a mind problem
as if your mind could have trouble walking, or if
you could even think and walk at the same time.

They assume that everything physical about you
must be normal and in so doing make your mind
para-physical. It's not matter that exists in space.

They see you wobble and think of drunkenness as
mind impairment not physical disabling. The mind
wanna own everything so it calls everything mind.

I name what your problem is so I can own it while
still not having it myself. Whether or not I own you
as well is inconsequential as to cathartic diagnosis.


Al Upinnahb Iznis

a new poverty layer

out with the genteel poverty that's neat;
in with the ground-in extra layer returning
intimate effects into earth at your feet.

one layer of wallpaper or applique bordering
one fiberglass headboard as the base for an
entire climbing wall of fluffy Borgana faunae

thin crust of sprays and exhausts and their
harvest of dusts and micro-excrement;
now slide, rub passing by, and carpet stomp.

from bong water of the Jedi to Febreze,
oily, salted kernels, pebbles, party sprinkles;
coarse smears making of shag a rank flat top.

cap 5's a measurable gaseous zone;
above that we experience mists still falling
and then roundabouts the hearts and arms.

the center may follow the throat to be able
to vacuum over again its own essence;
the throat is the eroded gate that plays out.


Donna
"Yes, I'm up."

Meat Horn

I remember the blood and turquoise-color rubber and my mother.
Stainless steel trays and instruments, from beneath a paper bonnet, druggily beholding me.
There were electric storms that felt like my hair growing, emergency sucking.
Sounds interrupted, noise was interruption, we were attention bait on an interventionist planet.

Now clots of our lives, appearing behind mirrors, in drains, snag on the present, must be yanked.
Her shimmer fills doors a couple times a year then disabsolves into telephonic vibration.
When I extend my thumb at the end of an arm to pull her braid I'm blocked from contextual access.
Except for hearing waves lap school-blue tiles, how she squeaks free of her swimming cap.

When I hold myself the way she hugged herself in self-knit sweaters on a slug-lined morning
The same elbow tips come to touch the mitts with similar tentativeness.
I am a genetic trail that's grown the habit of spouting vertebrae along it.
We have so many stomachs that it doesn't matter where the break is, or change of mind.


Hoolie
"For Peg"

I am a genetic line

Slack gaping knots of vines of rubber coated vines of metal wire roping, dipping over and under, across each other in their glacial play. I am a genetic glacier.

The tree, a spear that disintegrates attempting to exit the atmosphere, all the while shedding dna and re-materializing in competing shards. I am a stack of totem.

If the heart was the only rhythm we could hear, and we liked getting bounced around in a leather bag, the drums came out and we bobbed, singing "I...I."


Illyn

Wherever He Lays a Cat is his Home

from their breath each could tell that the other was scared
they lay bare in their bed with the light from outside
it was right what they'd done but they didn't know why

There were roads that would never be lit by the moon
so deep or so smart as to always be gay
to wither or not one knew night from the day

But some sinewy vines that swung out of control
re-trajected by chance with the same random goon
and in blindness of living got tangled in two.

Tilt of Mast

there is a lost-ness
but also a seeking;
a tilt of mast could
be caused by sink-
ing but also rowing;
mor'n half a planet
covered in puddles
flat as tables, a fly
meanders cursively
over, seeing his self
from most angles 'n
not sincerely caring,
for it's all an old sto
-ry now, reflecting.


Ayre and Odrin Fromme-Diaz

Why = Where

If what you desire is for me not to exist, that's not ok. 
That's the fist with which she grips reality. Where
Were the OK police? They'll come swooping in. Why

There's a whole thing happening that includes your sleep and what happened you thought you forgot, and added to that what you think life is, your assumptions about why events occur, how material changes hands, and the dark presence of the stars and planets teasing growth while life counter-intuitively resists and yes, choices.

When you try to hurt me, it almost seems like I can't
Trust you. Peg's girlhood is full of blank spots like
These. Now she is a fierce and lonesome retired woman.

Tendrils of wealth can curl in anywhere at any age. Some license you got on weekends suddenly pays off. Teacher of that course filing for bankruptcy. It seems like a directive hand because she can't see the invisible swirling currents, just her little paddles. She squishes forward with the bated breath of a blindfolded bottom.


Phyll's Log

These Things've been Kicked Around

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

First thing is a prison round
out yr window a golden town
one day they cough up the key
(that's) when you chose to run from me.

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

Another one is a paper cup
you take a drink and you've used it up
Now Raylene she is history
but when she ran, the cut was clean.

These things've been kicked around
these things've been tard n hung
things we are a used to be
regretful for what's to come.

Finely my dog passed from me
Bad breath and vasectomy
Not once did he ever run
I kep'm chained t'the Mercury.


Donna
2 Mike: "Should we really?"

These Things: the Mp3

Psalmz N Prolmz

Say did you ever notice wen yr man seem 2b driftin
Got you out twice a week on a curb try some griftin
Used to sing you to sleep up to now doneven listen
Grrl he is unresponsive and therefore it is nonsense
We don't care for the violence, the overconfidence
Say es que I-N-U were n-o-t not meant 2 parly voo.


Rappy Wordinghood

Short for Illinois

Her body finally started showing signs of morphing into another thing. Maybe another species. Bones are trunks, bubbling over each other's paths. I saw a personal form swallowing its own mouth as part of one major folding crease down the center with dark grey bone rising breaking round the edges like molten dough to crust. Maybe just a phenomenon that happens and doesn't affect the soul, though you die. Though she didn't die at all. In fact she stepped out of that thing when it finally cracked back open. But then she was Connie. And from Connie they wanted to know: what happened to the Chama. And then when they found Connie dead in the motel on that robin's egg chenille spread, they started sniffing around her boyfriend Ted.

Ted is the blue-eyes Aframerican former news anchor and husband of Peg. His face only appears to be sad because he knows that anyone can melt by it. His sideburns become salt n' pepper from this worry. He fathered Hoolie and a daughter he's not sure about. His albino half-brother is Illyn. Illyn is short for Illinois.


Phyl's Log

Psalmz N Prolmz

This post has been quashed by the Mthyuh Preservation Society. 

they'd won before they even came out of the womb

they achieved eternal life by getting shots of fingernail starter hormone.
the whole body would secrete itself and have to be trimmed frequently.

they were ready for everything including some kind of lobotomy for sorrow,
that too a self-perpetuating enzyme that only breaks down if you stop eating.

you might think they can't appreciate all the good they got without the valleys
but you'd be surprised how looking upward'd have you swinging vine to vine.


"Terri"
Misty Terra Rinni

Nettick before/ after

Splay hope

the waves were in a perfect grid
as if you were gonging the barrel

so we can't deny patterns exist
but only in the realm of physics

what's now, not dreams, more
truly is an offring of the surreal.

how your argument turns clown,
cash money vortices in this home

must we splay hope to phenomena,
or through magic only prove dumb?


Jan Jansdaad
"My husband is Ken."

Emphasis Mine

Under review by MPS. 

Phyllis channels Ted

Phyllis: The way you've steered your son will cause him pain.
Dad: Lucky for him! I speak from beyond the grave.
Phyllis: Now he wants to become the first gay guy in space.
Dad: Measure time, weigh matter.
Phyllis: How do I know this is automatic writing, not my projection.
Dad: What's automatic writing?
Phyllis: How do you measure time there.
Dad: Time does not exist; here's all there is.
Phyllis: Wait, that's... projection. I've lost reception.
Dad: *kgkkckghgkk* ...lieth with dog, waketh with sneeze.
Phyllis: I've got to somehow warn Illyn not to go down...
Dad: Illyn is what Illyn does. Maybe one day..
Phyllis: No, it was something you said, and it adds up... to bad.

Illyn: Hello?
Phyllis: I've found some evidence that portends.
Illyn: More wasted money on that swami?
Phyllis: You mustn't go down again.
Illyn: Too late. I'm headed for Her mouth now in my cart.
Phyllis: Those hacked-square pine wheels won't get you far.
Illyn: It's Shab takes me. We are suspended above matter.
Phyllis: Always trouble when he's near.
Illyn: Funny thing to say to a man about his driver.
Phyllis: Why not just ride Shab's empty saddle.
Illyn: Then it would be not empty, not Shab. He's under a vow/ curse.
Phyllis: Yes, I know, and he twiddles his legs in empty air.
Illyn: To make it look as though he's running.
Phyllis: But really only the ground is moving.
Illyn: But you called to warn me not to hurl myself into the steaming craw of Mthyuh.
Phyllis: Well? Is it Albino Cannonball again? Flaming Pondstone?
Illyn: They only called me that because my hair was red and it really popped against the stains of sulfur.
Phyllis: I don't know how or why you crawled back up through clods of ash n' dirt like a periodical cicada, but now you're whole again, and...
Illyn: This is not what I call whole or even periodical. What can I own but a body shed and rebroken?



Record of Phyllis (embed)

ZOMBIE BUCKET

They have a lost glass in their grey eyes,
Outer skin of gone nectarine,
Rock-like flesh underneath, mouths
that open into curlicues.

They live but can't see a life here.
They walk grimacing unnoticed.
What they have is what they had.
They want/ don't want each other.

These men, outside the pool of light,
Acting on their last survival nerve,
Trapped in an elevator with other beauties:
They are riding our bucket into space.


Sea Bitch

Awesome, Sincere, Sad, Desperate

Awesome:

Many at once.

Sincere:

Don't understand.

Sad:

Has my order been shipped?

Desperate:

Nails unclipped.