Lord Bentbridge

Why, Lord Bentbridge? Why have you come at such a late hour. Come now sir, come right in. You're getting wet. 

Lord Bentbridge, with a tip of his hat and apologetic smile, steps across the threshold, adding in so doing a beleaguered flourish of his half-cape. Jansdaad my friend. My presence here is as puzzling to me as it is to you.

I hope it's bad I mean I hope it's not bad news. 

Fear not, only my wife out late again, and I thought why not pop over to Jan's place for some of that excellent sherry, which I suspect he might be enjoying already on his own!

Come Lord, lean on the mantle with me and raise a glass. [They walk over to the mantle, where there are glasses and sherry.]

I say puzzling because

Yes, why do you say puzzling?

Well, let's not be dour. Cheers to you!

Cheers!

Suddenly, the door opens. 

Jan? I'm home with... who's here?

Nobody.

Well you've got your arm up on that mantle like an orator, as if you're entertaining.

Ha! 

[Putting away groceries, yelling from the kitchen.] Say have you heard from Jan?

Jan our daughter?

Who else? Your father is dead darling.

You know how many Jans it could be. 

Well have you heard from her? Pharmsupply won't pay out for shingles.

You mean Hopinaskipina? That's the most annoying commercial. 

She's been hanging around with that sadistic lawyer. You should call. 

Do you mean Lloyd? Lloyd Bentley. 

Yes, he's an esquire.

No second shingles shot

Jan liked watching a little tv in the afternoon, or rather she didn't like it, but she was hypnotized by it when her husband Jan had it on, which was most of the time, because it soothed his nerves. She kept it on mute when he wasn't in the room, but then he'd start to notice there was something off, and he'd come back and take the mute off, and that would inevitably be when they were having commercials. The commercials were even more transfixing because of their special audio qualities, which had been outlawed for a while, and then they just seemed to creep back in. The volume and frequency alterations were probably still illegal, but someone was lying about it. Then it would take years of legislation or court processes to get them to stop doing it again even though it never stopped being illegal, and it never stopped being wrong. Only lying had stopped being wrong. The acceptance of and mass participation in lying and religion was the most brilliant social phenomenon of the moment. 

Jan would be out in the hooptie to pick up a prescription, and she'd try to read or imagine the faces of the other drivers. The ones in the nicer cars seemed to be gloating. They'd have a wry smile. The guys in the elevated trucks and campers were smiling too, but it was a mean smile. Minorities in crappy cars often seemed pissed off or trying really hard, squinting, to get around. They would be getting tailgated by a guy in a jacked-up 450 with a mean smile. Jan imagined how she looked to other drivers. I look like a freak. I look like a birth defective person with a caved-in head and a flabby, skinny white neck who is trying to cover it all up with a big fluffy beret, a cowl sweater, and giant over-the-glasses sunglasses. I give them all a target to look down on, except the minorities, who don't seem to be paying attention. 

The pharmpro is grotesquely obese. His eyes are enormous behind thick glasses. Do you know if Pharmsupply covers the Hopinaskipina vaccine. Let him check. Not. Ok. Rather, it isn't okay, but is it this poor man's fault? Wouldn't shingles itself be much more costly? Not if you die. Right. Shit I am speaking aloud. It's just a thought experiment, doctor, says Jan. I mean pharmpro. I know you don't run the health system. Jan remembers back to her days with the pharmpro boyfriend. I know what they do to get shiv for themselves and how they cover it up. This man has a generous smile. What does he make, 120? 150k? I want what he's having. Jan gives the pharmacist a little wink. That behavior and lots else is why, in her personal opinion, she can only be regarded as total freak material. 

The riots at the Mthyuh Preservation Society were on the radio. I should have been there. Had I known, were I more well connected. Of course I know we can't live without the Filter of Loathing. But it's all we have to unfocus on. It's a symbol of our systemic bastardization from society, whatever that is now. They could use a few good old fashioned fleke oaths to start getting their stewardship straight. But most are bought off by Pharmsupply blah blah. It would be fun just to get out. Next time the filter is down I will try and get in with radicals. Maybe even Jan would come along. Who am I kidding. How would I make him stonecakes in the hooptie. They are his life. Baby we've got to get to Highchank and stand up for the original shiv. They have stonecakes. Might work. 

Then the chant, with another not infrequent para-informational MPS interruption came on. The chant is accompanied by a distillation of all the free world's favorite music remastered to praise La Chama. Apply brake now. Stop in the moment. All future days are at the state's discretion. I am entitled to the following poisons and schedules. It was annoying how they read the schedules like circus barkers, in thrilling growls and whispers. 

Dome & corpus

you can still feel 

what happened there

in the dome and 

the tired corpus 

they tried to get at the heart

distractions popping everyplace

see your own hidden pains in me

that full winding

tale is our history

not genealogy

their necrotic

leavings behind

make us all sick

until they're gone

and we're better

more exhaustion

mispronouncements

1 day, 1 chemo infusion, 1 impeachment trial, + 1 psilocybin megadose

 

 

The chopper

as a young and pretty

carefree big-ass slut

I slid on my butt

down a stone incline

to find my panties

or some others that

may have washed up

realizing it was a dream

I marched into a bank

looking for wardrobe

but the chic sommeliers

were stridently delivering

their empty trays with

no eye contact

there was a rousing barber

of seville scene, but no

one would break character

on the set to let me know 

where I fit or how to get

back to my tent so through

the main square of town

I followed a young man

with hair plastered to

his face, which was hurt. he

wore a maroonish overcoat

and he kept his axe in 

serious reserve stepping 

up and down the bricks

by Peg

Said a loser

there we are in montevideo, and here's one where

eyed globes rise phantom-like along the vena cava;

their tails taper and widen against the miasma

 

you would give me the secret to survival, and it

would work, and I would say wow thanks, and

you would say, oh-- sure. 

 

jazz-handed lymph newts popped off in space

between the bowels and lovingly glommed onto 

any flesh around to anchor and embrace

it clearly has a purpose but no self-awareness, so

the exact opposite of my current predicament, so

you'd think there could be a balance: said a loser

by Tom

Can i hospice out of this?

savage lash-out

too close to the surface

 

drop all the shoulders

shrug at the blowing fires

fear cannot be our guide

someone has to live despite 

 

the edges, someone has 

to occupy the boundaries

Dr. Donna Thong

(reinstatement imminent)

Fluency v. mania

to me you are the epitome of the perfick

stop don't go there it's far too manic

the words they're not special or even pictoric

i wish that i could re-meet you

in that steakhouse booth with a backache

and call it a night, a life

 

and be through, barely a bleep

now i see what ensued

every night in my sleep

by Ilyn

"for you, Shab"

triple hoarfrost

you fooled me into thinking you were there

long, snowy trail up to your driveway

then i thought i could handle this whole thing

without needing walls to put my head through

the weather came in waves, a triple hoarfrost

a still white fog that hardens patiently

by Ted

"for you, Peg"

er tips

stop grunting or they can't hear your heart

the wipes are for staff; use the foam dispenser

headband lady's name is Miranda, not Carmen

 

a doctor can be rendered speechless by his 

interpretation of your scan even if it's specious

no comparison btw tramadol and dilaudid

 

hint: which gets sent home with you from the vet?

there's one special shot can make pain un-flower 

in your chest without going to your head 

 

you can bump other patients from their rooms

get slushy ice water and steaming blankets

don't cross your ankles during a pressure read 

 

you can ask for the same wet mouth sponge

that they apply as a palliative to the dying

you can outnumber the staff if it's busy

 

better mention your occupation or invent one;

they want to treat a contributor to society

in this ambience, even a lie is ennobled

 

 

 

by Ilyn

"Just about half of Illinois"

i am rocketing free

i am rocketing free from so many grips

it is proudly my day to rock and stand

no one can bend me much

where are the ushers security to restrain

my remaining jabs at beauty surrender

today i'm getting what i'm feeling

this moment is about just keeping going

in this or the opposite direction

it doesn't matter because i'm free

 

 

 

by Mike

"for Hoolie"

Stabbing gyroscope

what a nifty little weapon

superior even to the double bullets connected to a chain 

which are meant to cut you in half

the stabbing gyroscope covets reality itself

and takes out its purpose 

and changes it to nothing

i punish the present moment with obliteration

there are no triggers only my deepest impulses

which are all fears

 

 

 

by Reptily

"Amen."

Opportunistic infection

Dr. Donna Thong and Peg whispered through the ancient stone glory hole of at least 9" in depth. It must once have been a Cuban prison. 

DR. THONG: I'm remembering Mike and the abdominal surgery I performed on him when I had my patio studio. 

PEG: That's after you were a Fanny-Girl temp out in Dead Beet Chank. 

DR. THONG: You know friends do continue to self-realize when you're not around. 

PEG: But you've always had emotions for Mike. Two swimmers in one pool or another. 

DR. THONG: He told me his intestines smelled like latex for months afterward. 

PEG: He sat up on the table fresh like a baby, glass bottles tinkling against the IV stand. 

DR. THONG: You remember the story like a song. 

PEG: The one that got away. But what of the others?

LAMENT OF THE OTHERS

by DONNA

it seemed as if they entered willingly

following their noses to my kitchen

i thought most necromancy to be weak

but the bottom of the pie was crispy

followed by stepping out of doors to neck

that first incision leading to the next

we woke among discarded vials of heparin

ecstatic still in the wane of hydrocodone

ready to renew our grunted oaths

until the next opportunistic infection. 

 

I hope that my illness takes you hostage

I hope my illness takes you hostage

perhaps i could pay you back

For all the times the thriving version

stood in a more perfect path

I hope I make it difficult to 

turn away as I linger

Your shackles chains and branks are lashed to

my beatific fingers

 

I can still see you in the middle 

of a constricting circle

Your necks are craned and faces cluttered

with shadows of this miracle

 

 

by Ilyn

"Not long for Illinois."

without believing, expecting

agreeable moment sitting facing

feeling all of you in my screen

and even when i turn away

i see a safe place with warm 

 

lighting, bearing my things.

The less hope keeps distributing, 

 

it must be focusing, condensing

the opposite of kaleidoscoping;

 

i'm eating all the crazy dreams, 

sucking only what i need from my

 

intestines, short-sighting, all

without believing, expecting

 

 

 

By Jan Jr.

predators

i hate the middle-of-the-boat assholes, center-of-the-herd butts

but out here in the fringes, you are weak

what's with the arm twisters, the climbing-on-shoulders nuts?

you're alone with your righteousness, freak

 

brother, loner, impossible to figure, full tank, adjacent

we've lived the same life but we auto-fear, trigger happy

they are lifted by the tendrils of their fecund archetypes

they effortlessly grow virtue like a fingernail or polyp

we are in satellites, fire wagons, sinister life rafts needing 

not shedding weight

 

what about the sanctioned predators at the apex of the pack, 

smugly leaning back?

by Ilyn

They have to mine the muscle memories

They have to mine the muscle memories or else they could leave us out entirely from the battlefields. The players' physical responses are only relevant insofar as their hand-eye coordination. The animation, the realness, comes from my own live-action experiences and instincts. I have to be at least partly paying attention for my own physical responses --even stomach acids are measured-- to kick in. At least the K's always win. I'd hate to experience death again. 

 

Some of the players I recall this guy Ken who viscera really seemed to match mine maybe from his generations of farming. He was shy to fight and almost made me switch into mate mode by wandering back toward the cliffs, some of the abandoned ones, when there were plenty of flakes to scoop up and showing off to do with simple evasions of their little sling-shot stones. 

 

 

Charnelle Casas-Cuevas

It's not as if we don't have feelings

but it's not as if we don't have feelings

having given up the agency but kept

the brains, and if not the actual heart,

the part the ancients saw in the ceilings.

 

we bear the psychological consequences

of your rampages through flake towns and

 

remote desmadre at the mercy of autistic 

High Chank teens who dump their adrenal

 

charge into our thought jars where it stirs

dark and slick across our already tortured 

 

logic spurs, amygdalae and venal charm 

receptors every day and even as we dream

by Charnelle Casas-Cuevas

charnelle, a gladiate

styrofoam wings

lungs jump and squeak

rewarmed remains

the dreaded stank

500 miles of ribbon cable

5 days from the cradle

the rewards are weak for 

the revived so to speak

they get to watch crowds 

cheer their corporal missions

from the comfort of a 

cupboard consciousness

by Charnelle

the rock method

the first time i climbed to the top of Mthyuh my hair was still long and very red

 

i was still barefoot from dancing shiv on a slab of ancient desert pavement scrawl

 

i had to see the top and what her raging bottom looked like from the highest chank

 

summiting and launching and diving in were a single stroke, an ancient character

 

Braino knew my arc would blend and assimilate The Crack's northmost fissure

 

instead of bouncing back on the sheer force of rejection by her drumskin i rolled

 

and entered a natural vent, tearing upward through rock and sand and insect nests

 

red like magma my hair and blood left pooling on arrowheads and pots not touched

 

by human hands since before there were summer thaws and green tendrils to munch

 

that day i felt the gravity of knowing that stopped the endless stasis of my cart

 

and let me out onto the landing strip of time the frictionless rink of deadened glass

 

my feet still green rinds, sticky pink pads, gotten slick with the dust of monuments 

at the center of the longest day among the range of moments contending for noon

 

i wished Shab well and his eyes glowed red in recognition of the end of our scam

 

 

 

by Ilyn