Had it tough/ made it tough

relative to your culture
you may have had it
but you also made it
tough. that's why they
are after your hide, not
so much now for labor.

if everybody's tough it
means you'll have it
make it tough together,
on a ladder, as brothers
in survival, all striving
to get above the other.

when they make it
tough, they teach you
how to make it rough.
you make it tough but
then you know how to
be rough on others.


Reptily

left, right

corron

Clown

i get all sentimental for hard days
when the battle was out there but
in me too, those fierce hot interludes

can boxer and ring recede/ withdraw
simultaneously; have i just explicated
the next law of the universe and time

no it is only i who hesitates to resume
my sinking resolve is counterweight
to gloom when in company of the tired


by Ken

deer patches

Mansion

they're not offering protection
just striving to recuperate sun
from where we laid the mansion

they want their slain neighbors'
share although it's really yours:
the proverbial wild v. colonizers


by Donna

Slave of the Chama

It's only 10:00, but I'm so tired, but if I go to bed she'll probably attack me and if I sleep in the other bed I may toss and turn, and she'll take it personally and feel lonely during the night.

In theory we are a sexually active couple but the boundaries are difficult for me to negotiate sharing a queen bed. What if I really want to take a non-euphemistic nap?

And it's not as if I'm a rock; it is in fact distressing to have only 4-6 hours to sleep before the alarm and trying not to get started into a drawn-out love act.

My doc, admittedly swish, says it's a weekly necessity at least-- or you could be risking any number of invasive/ interventionist consequences. 

Yet I resist: that it be my discretion, my first strike option above the will of a frequent fertilizer, that the pleasure first is mine.


Tom
"Don't ask."

Repressed hallucination

Shag bark with poison ivy

Epilogia

So far dying has been a dark quiet encounter;
heartfelt words you'd think might end it all:

beacons for liveliness oaths battle the blood.
Coming down the other side blends epilogia,

bittersweet memory, stun of what's this now
crane back from down the tram and tree lines

Once a fear and then another's made you say
goodbye, you see it all as practice for 1 event

All the times you've trained gymnast like at
each meet and fight, sickness, fail, emptiness

Makes moot the eyes any sense but common
jaded less betrayed by lies than to move along

to actually pick up and gone the humiliation
worse than the bothering worried cohabitation

close-knit breed, take me into your free land
where wind blows the goatees of noble faces


Mike
"Please, Hoolie."

i'm trying something new

i'm trying something new
i'm telling them I believe
in their abilities but only

some maybe I should tell
them all I believe, that
you can tell the story right

you can use conventions
as a template for audiences
to understand effortlessly

is there no one in your life
with whom you speak in
this way, laying out your

argument and hammering
it home relentlessly hoping
to strike or gain or move?


Dr. Donna Thong
(relicensure imminent)

Gender as skillset

 

this alibidinous moment
to me seems androgynant

what astrological wisdom states
follows his or follows her fate


Tom
"Come back to me, Sylvia."

Halves not had

They live half as long because they
live while they're sleeping with no
distinction between the conscious
states and therefore life is doubled.

And sometimes they awake or only
half so, while staying in both worlds
they straddle this line, fly and drive
with half a mind, and half that mine.


Phyllis (embedded)

Cliffe Suites Mom Late Night Felony

back when i was
legally responsible
for naming people

a glitch, a bulb of
cranial pressure
formed in my head

i could do it then
out of babies you
give up psychiatry

so i explore skies
away from all eyes
until i crack dawn

when it flows lives
perch on hot wires
while it subsides


Peggy, Volunteer
Table 5
Poetry Day
Center for the Meta-Cognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement

Me, master

I've already trained the dogs not to go past the edge of the woods
so when we install the wire,
it'll be a violation of their conscience if they choose to go there
as well as a painful anti-bellweather peal and a vote for me, master
come future forks in the proverbial choice path:
one way, freedom-- the other way safety, comfort, structure


Donna
"Enjoying my patio today."

Shard 3

are we not all
do we not all
well I hear voices, others' voices, in my voice

so I'm not all one or composed of other voices
not everyone
or not no one


Chamatilly
Shard 3
Fordamall Chank 

Spots

Raised on open-ended talk therapy, they began to want a face to want their feelings and so began to feel unimportant and uncomfortably swollen with emotive language as the sessions ebbed.

They began to wonder if they'd ever find the kind of begrudging rapt attention that a specialist, predisposed to listening and to caring, could give them; if they'd been genuinely interesting.

They noted at some level that it worked on one another but it felt a bit like incest, which it wasn't. The world out there was relevant while full of spots that wanted to defy them an existence.


Donna Thong
Registered Recertification Intern
Highchank Spa 
Highchank

Hard heart

if you were born with one side of your jaw fused together
it would feel like your face was breaking when you yawn

i want not to learn more but for learning to leave me alone
it gradually stops sinking in and you know enough to hide

when you came out of the coma it was on the awkward side
fate too I chose to leave as if it were as it was, accomplished


by Hoolie
"Sorry Mike."

You warp quotidian

brusque post-noon sun gives over
to cooler evening breeze creeping in

temperatures sway on the spine of
shadow, edge of volcano whipping

torn outline of ruling hedge above
you warp quotidian dark and light


Illyn
"Short for Illinois"