Flack

These are real hours of the day
They're not stolen hours
Except that they're stolen from myself

Staying up late as if no one can see
Or imagine my non-participation as
they sleep

I've stolen these hours for safety and
reflection, a safe space for flights of
fancy and abandon

Not like the halogen lamp towering
dark above the settee, alien in a
mid-century nostalgia motif

I can wander the home like Nixon or
Ray Miland, experiencing life as
it is

While you rise early and clean yet
clean again, and tip-toe across the
dark like it's some foreign enemy

It only takes me minutes to say what
I have to say to the day
and a minute tomorrow, sure, for the flack



Jackie Lush

Beautiful thing

It was a beautiful thing to get to know black men, black-as-black men who took me in.
But did I get the reputation, among them, that I was a type of white-and-into-them men.

How can you not love black men when you are standing in their den and they're alright
and relaxed with you there, showing their delight that you're a special theirs-with-them

I receive the red rice and beans, up until the sleeping part of the crib, where there are
coal-red blankets twisted, instead of a proper bed, silky bare mattress, authority, agency

There never was a more generous give-and-take relationship as there in those rooms,
above a business, removed from patrimony between the government cheese shipments



Ja-taym, pour Hoolie

Dragged behind me from 1980

rage
foul moth
fossilized dance communication
two chords
self-regard as
sick, damned and therefore
exempt as the dead
terror of nuclear
Montgomery Ward striped jersey
photos
standing next to a wrecked car
brave young
poseur
counter-whatever
smash
anything in the dark
beacon invert
letters and cards
black
disdain
comfort
cash
hungry trail
chain of gossamer
some of the men
relics of others



by Santorabo

Trapped in that everyone knows where I am

The accoutrements are still.
If every chirp or high whining or hum were a voice
we'd be at wedding level
oops sensitive word

the furnace sucks and pushes
as if the dog is on a ventilator
yet I must remind myself to breath?
I have to stand vigil at the windows

Being saved from myself, my
driving, alter ego of hope-to-die
stock car racer; saved
from every awkward or otherwise face to face

medium grey sky, shadowless
indoors and out, fading not
falling, what if the sun were a
moving motion sensor

and if it could see your fingers type
it would snap back up to twelve again?
I want to suspend all movement to
sit and let the star sink in the dark



Para ti, Eduardo
Santorabo

Peenbo M'Shang

Googa day
getch wuntz
aney cumatcha
awtam wiyut
bushma buntz
talam-laka boa
peenbona
peenbo m'shang



by Reptily

0

i was sleeping a lot
but a couple nights with one eye open
but i was also dreaming my ass off

uhm one guy he was a gentleman
his other half, also a waiter, wore
white while he wore black

and the same people sitting around
as i spin the wheel
their influence is an ocular trick

mostly it's not about trying to become
but what to do once
you are one

the unique smells and light of madrid
mixed with vinyas and this
house, here in the cobbs



por Santorobo

singed bridge

singed bridge singed bridge
I don't care about it
singed bridge

no longer does what doesn't
kill you make you stronger,
no longer

what doesn't kill you also
kills you but it
just takes longer

stronger was just another
click on the dial
the bright face of times past

stronger, now more,
has gone to the next
man's flower

Angry portero

What does it matter if i empty the
garbage when the cubos are inside or
outside when he´s mad either way?

Futuristic Joint

respectable example of a category
humming and high-pitched ubiquity

hold your hair up in a fist bun,
everyone; blow out your assumptions

rough and fine

Matanza
en estas mismas colinas
huyeron a la playa

La mujer se ha convertido
la cuna en un sofá con
almohadas

No importa la altitud de
los techos, te vas a romper
la cabeza



por Santorabo

routine psychedelia

there was a center forming images
barely able to find its vision in a

field of flag-waving motif
it was a foetus but not a baby

not a fox, but then a dog i know
then the consciousness decided

to self-freak, self-prank, and i
was having nothing of it i said

bring it on, your worms and teeth
it can't hurt me, and i like the horror

so in his passive-aggressive wisdom,
Braino sends a tap-dancing suit of

armor, and this was how i could tell
that sleep had vanquished spirographics




Love, Illyn

K Groom

when you talk so long
my responses build and ebb
without making noise



for Missy
by Phyllis (embedded)

street cred

Despite the moral and health risks i still cherish my connections to the dark side, stated La Chama. They give me the street cred i need with some of the flakes. They fill blanks in my self-mythologizing. Let me tell the shiv in a ramshakle temple until morning and my spirit will be ready as the scored flesh of brother Ilyn, as he rolls, in his square-wheeled cart.


Phyllis, embedded

K's Fly Spread Eagle

Green-grey monkeys dipped down from the overhang with the moss and the misters swinging between the ukuleles and the hats and undress you and dress you up again in little outfits while you walked past the shop windows perhaps with a rum-and-fruit drink and without even slowing you down unless you wanted to stop and admire your reflection. These little guys had amazing taste, a trained eye for the right ensemble and all by guesswork on the measurements.

For this reason La Chama had become accustomed to strolling topless through the streets even in the evening after work with a nice wool skirt and a briefcase. Her shoulder monkey, Jock, covered his bald head with his silly, long fingers in feigned embarrassment at all the attention his mistress would get from mammals and flakes and the deities and the bitches and the College of Cement. Ranging from a lifted eyebrow to a flash of angry, swollen anal gland from the packs of male K teens.

Some say Missy emerged hideous from the perfect chrysalis of the Chama as easy as a zipper. Because the K's had a visceral reaction of hate when they see her as if she were an archetype of that which circled over their nesting caves in their earliest memories even though she has the perfect soft brown body of a flake.




by Phyllis, embedded

Da Badonkuments

Da badonka donkuments bedda be deh
Be day onca-mockument o da tacomen
Cuz ivdey donbe ocu-lockumenz we gon
upan sockyo polka-munny sum taybo sun



by Jan

Remorse of Battle

If good men, both victor and vangquished burn from remorse of battle
if you have been vicked or vanged, maybe you could be good
Any machine without hate would quickly move on



La Chama
Fgmt. unknown

Bitch's snow tracks are a portrait of herself crapping on lawn

How I Experience Communication

Do you see anything like a lip moving on my face?

No. That's because I am talking to you, and I don't do it with a mouth. You are only even hearing the English because it's my organic empathic system that makes it not even matter and it's the biology of your no-K braino that turns it into recognizable symbols. In fact, did you know that if it weren't for the human capacity for what you call "denial," your flakes and no-K's could not even reproduce? Would not be able to.

So... I wish you would look me in the eye, an organ we have in common, and state your credentials as a professional by implication of your manner, sir.



by Missy

The Coarsening of Society

First, you did not even look me in the eye before lifting my preen lid.

Also, "What's your name?" is not the answer to any possible client inquiry.

You make what, low six figures? You're a professional K Hygienist?

I tell you I have a question. You answer what's your name. And don't look at me?

Put my lid down. You don't have permission.

I'd like to speak with a K.



by Missy

The Deep Straight

There's a water stain around the dog watering area
It's left a pattern of seeking its level in fine chalk
And there's another bowl sitting next to the dog
watering tank that has water in it. The dog watering
tank is functional, but it takes more effort to clean
and fill than a glass mixing bowl, which is what
the dog has been drinking out of. No one wants to
clean up the chalky wet mess around the dog water-
ing area, so both the bowl and the tank remain.




by Jan