Maybe you have already changed the lock

WD

Dear Peg:

Please find enclosed what Hoolie described as a copy of his apartment key.

Maybe you have already changed the lock, but I thought he and you would feel better having this back.

You probably agree that it’s probably not a good idea for a tenant to provide a key to a paramour and then to immediately “ghost” that paramour. Few actions piss people off more, I believe, than being showered with affection for months, including the promise of cohabitation, and then one day nothing—you are barred from all platforms, like you never existed.

It’s what the kids are doing these days that passes for breaking up and/or replaces having to have difficult conversations, I guess. I wish I was still a kid.

Of course I started out pissed off, then I was distraught, then suspicious, and now just very, very, very sad.

Maybe Hoolie is also sad and wishes we could start again…. maybe he is diabolical and cruel—I no longer can hazard a guess. I don’t know what to think. (If he was dead, I don’t think he would have taken the trouble to remove himself from TwatsApp).

I’m telling you all this because we’ve met and you seem decent, that you care about Hoolie, and that you seem curious by nature.

Perhaps I am seeking a better understanding about the situation since you may know him better. I am truly at a loss.

Thanks again for helping with my hooptie—I wish this situation were similarly just a big mistake, but I fear it’s just the new normal.

Best regards,



Jan

The next affair

could be a junkie sees a vision how he gonna land
but he don't mind still peaking from the medicine

face plant ass sticking up into the quiet air
won't seem so bad if you keep planning for the next affair



by Jan

Coming out ahead

i still have some of the energy
i got from the bad thing we had
not sure if that means i'm
coming out ahead
because before it started
i was so miserable



by Jan

If it's BPD

if this is a bpd thing
i'm willing to work with you on it
no cancel that
it's intractable and always brief
if that's what it is
i'm sure it's already over



by Jan

Destructive to a relationship

Well i've been waiting with my
phone on my body all day
hoping you would buzz me
this makes me really sad
this freezing behavior is painful and
i don't think i deserve it
it's destructive to a relationship



by Jan

You're fake

You're fake
That's ok
It was fun
Now fuck off



by Jan

bocas colgantes

the night it's dark
our love it sparks
a vision

the rest a tale
our ships they sail
parallel

our breath as one
the legs they run
in tandem

our pasts they're gone
our now it's found
yawning wide




Vikki Brazil

Bricked In Pot Den

bricked in pot den
quarter size kitchen
bitch on a sofa
tricks outta nowhere

winter is six month
dinner posthumous
laundry is downstair
lights blink to it



Vicki Dublin

Psychodrama

[Enter JAN JANZDAAD, JR]

JAN JR: You know, you and mom assume that if you didn't have kids or each other, you'd be animals. So you assume I'm an animal because I don't have a wife or kids.

JAN SR: Jan! Come on now. Let's take a step back here honey.

JAN JR: So you don't deny it.

JAN SR: What's to... Honey? Are you hearing this? Get in here would you?

JANET JANZDAAD [drying her hands with a dishtowel]: I'm hearing some kind of bullshit guys do you want to take it outside like a couple of animals or go and make me some dinner while I sit and pay bills?

JAN SR: Come on honey, let's all sit down.

JANET JANZDAAD: I'm serious these have to go out, and after last time I'm not dropping everything for family psychodrama ever again.

JAN JR: It's all psychodrama Mom, whether you're sitting on the pit group in your sunken living room or acting it all out in the other common areas or even off in some big anonymous city with a bunch of questionable lifestyle choices.

JANET JANZDAAD [rifling through a drawer]: That's a dig at your sister isn't it.

JAN JR: C'mon Mom don't you agree that you feel like you hold the moral high ground just automatically because well A because you are female B because mother and C you are currently married and have kids. ...Mmm?

[JAN JR AND JAN SR MAKING DINNER IN KITCHEN WHILE JANET SITS AT THE DESK IN THE FRONT HALL AND PAYS BILLS]

JAN SR: Get me the box of Panko out of that cabinet son would you.

JAN JR: Italian or... Bad. Stale.

JAN SR: The not-bad one.

JAN JR: Yeah I don't care if you don't wash your hands before you handle those thighs but afterward I would recommend.

JAN SR: Would you?

JAN JR: Yes. 



Vicki London

easy torture button

i cannot take it
i cannot take it anymore
i cannot take it
i'm at death's door

there is a girl
who i want to be friends
but just as girls
as in girlfriends

there is a boy
i want to get to know
but he won't let me in
cuz of his girl friend

they a buddy who gay
so the scene is set
cept i'm not feeling it
if it's shit life is dealing it

i cannot take the rape the
the involuntary celibacy and
there is no in between b'cause
that's where sex happens

cannot, cannot take
the hate i hate
i hate it
cannot take it cannot


Lil' Susan Sontag, Bitch
[repeat]

Obsessive cold medicine dreaming

about an ordinary woman charged with euthanizing the entire world's supply of frozen chicken parts/ familiarity with cactus and manzanita had helped her accept the barren winter figures of the midwest/ but when it came to getting around in the great lakes cities she made connections but couldn't get off/ can now identify a traditional kitsch landmark in each neighborhood while zooming past; however,/ has to arrange for all the workers and trucks from a cell interface munching wings at tollway oases



Vicki Moscovi

Replacement of Predatory Capitalism

Zoloft................................dumbbells

Xanax................................reading paper in bed

Doxepin............................walk up hill

Trazadone......................... reading paper in bed



Vicki San Jose

i can't wait for the right words to come

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be blasted from the environment
it's too late to finely hone my vocabulary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is

i wake up feeling like my face is falling off
a look in the mirror says the same about it
an animal wouldn't think but commence to lick
lame deer or fox will take the next logical step

words don't leave a vacancy more like an opening
for feelings to rush in unabated and with impunity
for crying children who once were shining princes
now nature's truest colors bleed through the fences

a stomping wild feud in a context of deregulation
nobody took a step back and said you're being used
because you had a set of rules and disabused them
you'd got too big to question when the law came in

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be locked in a penitentiary
it's too late to finely hone my obituary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is



by Donna

i'm highly intolerant/ of my environment

 

let's see how can i be not crazy, a guy 

ranting about weevils at the safeway

the baseline behavioral expectations targeted by drugs

my constitution eschews ordinariness like a new liver

because i am special i want to feel special every moment of every day

and i do feel special but too often it's especially allergic to everyone

Lord, i pray: i'm a special but i need to feel like nothing special most of the while

or i get worked up into a pickle thinking your children are idiots and brutes, and i 

forget to smile.

by Jan

I Am Movement, Part 111111

Killing it at the gym. Like when I tried to do one of those high turnaround kicks and totally missed the bag while I was also going off on it with highly focused one-two punches but mostly lots of awkwardly realistic quotidian fighting moves. Never dancing. Brutish, bare knuckled. Ever thought of going off on some guy that really deserves a punch in the face? I don't, normally. But when there is a punching bag before me, I believe I can shred it or myself before I'm done. I can feel the lashing out and I do it. At the thing. Hurts, feels good.

I smell the way gyms smelled when I was young at the gym. These guys have eerily no smell. Though one in the pantheon of personal trainers had apologized for cooking Brussels sprouts in the break room. That is the young person's smell of today, a boiled vegetable. But they seem to feel good inside when you get them talking.

Through a young male character, Elsa Morante writes "TRUE MANLY GREATNESS CONSISTS IN THE COURAGE TO ACT, IN DISDAIN FOR DANGER, AND IN VALOR DISPLAYED IN COMBAT." I was heartened, vainly, by "disdain for danger." That is me. Oh, and I act. But I may always recall the moment this afternoon, ascending a darkened stair, when I muttered, "I've reached a new low." Among lows, this one specifically was a lowness of amorality. It was victory and loss at once. I'd come upon perhaps the perfect revenge: the truth.

This morning I woke up again already sorting through scenarios for appropriate responses to the police threat, which would be quite a coup for his side if we were gaming, which each of us often were. I considered online bullying, for example. So tawdry. Willing to go darker nevertheless, I imagined approaching J during one of his epic play afternoons, with a pseudonym, as a sexy, underage gamer boy. Entrapping him and embarrassing hopefully to the level that I had been embarrassed when he decided that our neighbors and once again, the Rolling Riches PD, should all be privy to my non-threatening albeit a little menacing passionate pen letter, and add to that his stroke of genius in getting it done without having to come into contact at any point with the dirty authorities directly!

The creepy trapping and shaming scheme did bear fruit sideways: instead, I would address my suspicions and indeed evidentiary knowledge of J's untoward interest in little boys and in the idea of himself as a sexual little boy-- not unlike, come to think of it, an MJ of an earlier time. One last letter to the family could be gotten off before any prohibitions to that effect could come my way-- I'd only heard that the dreaded "trigger" (J is such a drama queen, ironically, behind that often dead and inexpressive mug) involved telephone calls, and my own lawyer had only admonished me not to contact J in any way-- nothing was said about the family. And apart from my other scheme, to go and steal all the bagels at his favorite store before he can get there on the day they come in, I didn't think direct contact was a good idea either.

Subj: Pretty sure J is a pederast

Dear R,

I won't be bothering you any further. Just need to tell you that there is a concern about J and his feelings toward young boys. I don't know if he would/ will act or has acted on them, but I didn't think he would act on other weird, inappropriate boundary issues either, and I've learned otherwise. You have grand-kids around, right? That's why I mention it.

As I say, I don't want to bother you or J any further.

There-- that last part I can't describe as-- well, any of the parts maybe as "valor in combat." It was for my own protection, a reassurance that was really more begging her not to let him call the police over this now. I don't know how I would handle that. And I have a choice still. I recognize it. However, especially the way the political fields draw blood these days, there was no rule broken at this point. It meets an objective to inflict pain sufficiently guaranteed to be as much or more than what I suffered. In addition, wouldn't pederasty be a line, finally, that J would not cross as far as welcoming the police, neighbors, lawyers, therapists to know about it? Would this stop everything, finally, in its tracks? Could I walk away as a winner even without feeling like one, or would I wake up the next day already grinding on a new slight or worry that just couldn't go without addressing? Would the anxiety on edge for Officer Caviar's knock on my door in the night be unbearable?

Dawn Warning

Only an alarming bright moon in the winter trees can
Wake me from the sense of no one near this dead end

Wide moon in evenings, sailors feel their feelings
Wide moon at midday, sailors eat their hearts away

We shun the dawn because it will not bring good news
We pace the cage of night only wanting freedom to run


by Reptily

I Am Movement Part 11111

I'm toying with them, like a savvy naughty kitty many times their size that likes the sound of its own little bell. This is the position advancing age puts you into. Exaggerated sense of omnipotence. Yet my suffering is so great that it seems to envelope all of us in the Fellowship Hall of the Lutheran church as a drizzle freezes the parking lot. I walk up to the coffee pot.

How could I not cause a stir. A great big faggot simply cannot just blend in anyway, so you may as well try and manage the reaction rather than freak out about it. What if I just let loose with an unending gay hilarity of shade and cheer. Would this not attract even more suspicion and dread? It's really more me to take on a sort of biker Susan Sontag look and feel.

Are you the coffee person? No, he is. You're the coffee person? You have a commitment? How did you get that? From the secretary? There's a business meeting. You have to go there and talk to the Key Committee. And then what. I want a coffee commitment, so I have to go and appear before a  committee. What happens after that? Do I have to fill out a form? Do I need ID...?

This is when the coffee person, a cute olive blob in the middle of the swarm of straight white maleness beneath the primitive rendition of the Last Supper but many times bigger on the apse-like wall that stretched around us all, broke down and smiled a little giving me the benefit of the doubt that my affect was dry humor rather than killer-y. Every one of the enrobed and slightly crazed looking gentlemen sitting half-circle at the Last table were lightly-tanned Scandinavians and none of them was an easily identifiable Judas.

I'm thinking about the great power/ great responsibility ratio and how yes, I will probably start pissing these guys off more and more the more they get to know me, and that will provide them an opportunity to work their programs, after going off on me in one way or another, coming back to apologize/ 5th-step me, and the process would begin again, but that would be how I-- a way into having a relationship with these men, like the lovable punching bag maybe it could be.

Or I feel like I could drive these men insane if I wanted to. Really push them to their limits at least as much as I have a whole string of men, many of which I was able to work on most deeply in the confines of our own homes. In. Sane. I shared in keeping with the Persistence theme that sure, I think I've been persistent and steadfast, I haven't picked up a drink in 7 years in spite of X, Y and Z happening, making it as exotic and dramatic as I can so they all are secretly wanting my transgressive but glamorous experience strength and hope. How I'd accidentally almost married some autistic guy and he called the police on me when I slammed the door too hard. How he kicked me out suddenly but only after he already had somebody else lined up and in operation. How he had his neighbors call the cops on me when I called him on the phone too many times. How he'd kicked me out and ended up under the power of drunken landlords who proceeded to also kick me out. How I'd ended up in Chukka Chank wanting to just find a safe place to burrow in and be safe after all that had happened. How I wanted to buy a gun today because if the cops were going to come and try to drag me off to jail from my home in the middle of the night, I will have a way to prevent that from happening.

I Am Movement, Part 111

That was J. I was right! That X of his is up to no good, and I think it's time to call the police! Do you remember when we were walking the Circle yesterday and we saw him pull up with his driver-side mirror all taped on and slide a suspicious package into J's mailbox!?

Darling you look a little funny when you're angry in your pussy hat. Were you at another march?

[FEELING HEAD, REMOVES PUSSY HAT] Don't try and distract me. J is just so special and so nice-- like a crazy-smart savant child!

He's in his late 50's.

Listen to this. That asshole X of his called J. 100 times.

Whut? My God. Are we... are we in danger?

[PHONE RINGS, COUPLE STARTLE-REFLEX IN UNISON]

Oh. Maybe it's Officer Caviar.

So you already called the police.

Just with an initial report.

Of what?

Probably just criminal stalking, but possibly a bomb or bomb threat.

Whuh-whut?

Hello?

This is Officer Scrum Caviar from the Rolling Riches PD. Yeah that suspicious package you had the bomb squad come over there for turned out to be a letter from the boyfriend or whatever.

You mean the X. He is not welcome in this neighborhood.

Well Ma'am...

Someone who calls someone 100 times? His voicemail was completely full.

Do you know why your neighbor didn't answer the phone, or why he did not contact us himself?

Oh he's too distraught. And out of town. He's put me personally in charge of keeping an eye on the property while he's gone. There are definitely some criminal damages going on here.

Well from the letter it appears that the X is trying to revisit the history of his relationship with J, which appears to have only recently ended. We see this kind of quarreling a lot, oh who are you going out with now, must be a whore, all that kind of thing. The seniors these days are really worse even than the young ones on that score. But of course it can always lead to murder, torture, or mass violence with bystanders being injured as well so better safe than sorry.

Officer Caviar, I have here in front of me an instrument, a precisely worded legal instrument in which a trigger has been installed, and the trigger is set to start off a chain of actions that cannot be stopped once set in place. It is a set of instructions from J., a successfully retired Silicon Valley scientist, who only wants to see justice done and peace restored to our neighborhood.

Actually, he's been living on disability for decades.

How would you know that?

Another neighbor mentioned it to us. He inherited money from his parents to buy that house. Though he does seem very smart.

The instrument states that the X must be warned immediately to cease and desist.

Well what I can do is just give him a very stern talking to, and I think he'll...

I hope so, officer. We are in possession of a written legal instrument devised by J's lawyer at great haste just this evening that includes a trigger clause. If there is one more call made to J's number by the ex, this must trigger the official request for a restraining order is to take effect at that point. I can fax that over to you right now using this... contraption on my phone, I... haha! I'm getting so old, I...

Haha.

Well, I'll bring it by tomorrow and pick up that letter to pass along to J. 

I understand, Mrs. Pu...Hat... Citizen.

[ALL LOOK DOWN AT THE PINK PUSSY HAT IN HER HAND WITH THE WORDS "PUSSY HAT" SEWN IN]

My husband Lucas would like to have a moment.

Officer Caviar, thank you for your service. I am just wondering if there are any precautions we should be taking. And to think we spoke directly to that "X" guy during our holiday luminaria participation drive!

Well sir, I can assure you that there are no further precautions that you will need to take in that I will-- I didn't want to put it to your wife that way of course, but I will call this asshole at night, in his own home, and scare the living shit out of 'im. That usually helps them see a better way.