please don't do that, scar tissue
don't be the weed chokes his host
that's what free radicals are for
i want you to do the opposite of
arming up, favoring one side,
drama queen, sky-falling chicken
it's ok to relax now, even to
give in, stop resisting, live
knowing that you saved a life
by Braino
you can see from hand mixing hamburger
that even dead flesh wants to stay together
throughout their existential disaster and
beyond, cattle wanting at a cellular
level, same as drinking from the same
pond, to bevel individuality,
to fill the tank with commonality,
a temple of identicality that tempers
diasporic fears of wasting anger
at exploitation murder and dispersion
when everybody has a different version
of neutrality, destruction and creation
the ties that bind the stories of a nation
by Peg
like to share with a world of strangers
all of us floating, untethered by space or time
perhaps just that i hope your
landing place is kind if there is one
or that any endlessness refreshes itself regularly
when just floating one hopes to be in a
company of well wishers if not wishes
coming true in a constant strumming
we must realize and gird our instruments
seek out the good luck and opportunity
already waiting in our personal associations
you have so much you have to sort through what you don't want
possibilities are stacked in spilling-over boxes
each moment an opportunity to move forward
trapped in a mind a body that doesn't want can't won't do
sealed in brick and snowed in at the dead end of a
street in a tiny imitation of urban settlement dishevelment
you need legs even to get the laundry accomplished
how to break out of the disuse overuse injury cycle
mix your targets among the physical virtual geographic
a hungry mind that prefers to eat sleep
a jaded palate that doubts and postpones
a vehicle loathe to cross emotional landmarks
by Donna
now she's an anchor on the leash
while i jog in place
low brown cloud layer but bright
long pees with the shoulder hunch
boys look at us
through the grainy snow mist
by Donna
telling about a time when i was a
man fully loaded
is really sideways disrespect for the
kind of stud i am now
one stem into reminiscing could also
draw a stream of horror at the
hungry animal its disregard
for self-regard estate planning
this life wasn't yet a paradigm only
anti-paradigmatic yet
organized enough to fool a boy into
thinking he had time
my boot tracks in the snow are like
the bodies each a new step into the
cold delight of warm palm islands
we were an intimate crew
i have my colossal straddle over those
old-timey train towns and worn goat
paths in the gardens of other capitals
lonesome memories
now i am tripping off to glory
on the heels of my dad and mother and
so many countrymen
so that the past may keep being fed
by Ilyn
once your personality begins to blossom
you become more annoying
although you may see your
religion in all that you survey
that doesn't mean that
religion must be affixed to everything
what is a handout
a handout must include public
education, welfare, corporate
subsidies christmas and birthday gifts
litter to those who would
eat it
or honor honor that comes with no
religious affiliation or
indoctrination except for the belief
that government can run parallel and
not entwined with religion
though the law may have
come from religion religion
is not the law
and the more you sing His praise
the more this becomes a scowly
silent car
with passengers who'd just as soon
plug their ears with silence
mood agents conscious managers
want the poor to be less so
not that learning and learning to believe are the same
not that they birth and suffer more
which is a religious notion
put forth and then abandoned by
religion religion when it was
all we had or when it was the
government government that was
the stick to the holy carrot
either of which can be fashioned with a
phallus but is it
godless is it godless if it's
not religious
or what if it got started by
religion religion supposedly
inspired by God a god who
is inerrant which must mean he
chooses the winners winners
glorious for better or worse but
glory glory
for better in the long run
for example would God choose an
idea that's religious over a
good idea that's inspired
by religion and what man who's not a
savage
is not inspired by at least one
religion and would not conduct himself
with a preinstalled moral compass instead of a
do-it-yourself one
or at least by his lower impulses which he's
going to know are the opposite of his
religion-inspired conscience
but there's a conscience without religion
way back way out there or maybe
closer than i'd like to think
a conscience born of stove touching
lingering physical pain
ecstatic sensory experience
recognizing flesh wounds pleasure
and extrapolating that to emotions like
loss bewilderment hilarity
a conscience that is and becomes a
god by fashioning a god out of
conscience conscience that wants to use
the knowledge that led to conscience
as a templative more than contemplative
religion religion that frees and constricts
and annoys others and
steps on the rake of its purpose and
spirals into meta-perversions and
degrades conscriptively by way of
murderers rapists
deprives minorities by ommission
grifters slavers exploiters
all the same sins sins that predate religion
religion so lonely so powerful destructive
gods that grant freedom only by dying
and quite probably not even then
apart from the especially remarkable moments their days kept unrolling easily and within the scope of relative safety
they moved on from one another's disasters grew to accept or tune out any resulting disfigurements
there was some pressure from the many many feet that still could be yet to drop
but this was a familiar and traditional pressure against which generations had developed mechanisms
their story was to live under new pressures develop new mechanisms or
survive to tell of their sufferings
for example those ones who'd fallen through The Crack
learned to live in their bodies but in our reality
but they had to come together in a circle
and talk about their putative worlds
they turned out to be places where suffering had a different definition but one that they could hardly remember
i'll try not to rhyme eye and sky, but
here's the situation: there are vibrations
there are lightning flickers but also high
wind cloud smears malfunctioning
xmas bulbs against houses and a double
ocular migraine. depending on which
way i look, various fields are pulsing
another creepy but not physically un-
pleasant day in a strand of sometimes
horrifying serendipities weatherwise
which lifts you neckways off of the
plain hard sand of quotidian worries
that you'd normally be depending on
natural phenomena to free you from
by Jan
to the poor or persons in the past i suppose
i live the luxury of a most debauched king
while to my peers i seem a pitiable thing
the afflicted find fault in my astonishing
complaints; the threadbare really seem
to care about the level of my waste
prejudice, from the right and from the
left, from every gender camp and
disinformation factory, theme, caste
you don't know if you'll live throughout the night
and you're watching a rom-com? you can deduce
that all prospects are tongue in non-literal cheek
or that your level of acceptance is very high
or that it's depression giving up disassociating
and probably not production values, star power
a sudden insistence on minding the moment?
a pain strip that overlaps takes on is informed by
the stack of strips below it, a translucent
suspension of anecdotes, quips, romans a clef,
bulleted lists, self-pranks legends memoir
and these legs can take you from sofa to desk
and a desk can take and make havoc with an arm
and an arm is all it takes to stop an action or
refuse the sorts of service lacking which could
mean the end of a long but very young evening
it's that you're tired and afeared of a rapacious
environment which can be slowed cannot be
slowed by inaction but can be snubbed as one
would snub an earnest lover with no worldly
blame apart from the ancient code she arrived
with, no more agency than gravity and water
decaying cedar lodge in eastern prussia
clump snow dropping from high branches
crystal blue sky
trying not to boil it down into an unfair
and ugly blob or not even trying just
not doing that you know?
presents from four-score christmases
choke the closets and litter the plank floors
they're real planks that they'd cut from the
surrounding woods and made floors of them.
they were watching a season of Star Trek in
which the flow of the plot kept getting
stopped dead when each character had to
turn to the other and affirm their goodness
there's also a lake and silently dipping mallard
groupings, legit choppiness or gently rolling
in the moon, natural waters that are filtered
and stocked, ballooned over; still nature was
winning here, fungus by mouse by respect
by time no not by time. in the same
measure of time there can be renovation.
by age no not by age each age is just a
fashion. there is only movement, only
action, else there would be preservation.
by Reptily
they say never go into a situation angry or you'll lose
but if your spirit is angry all you'll do is suppress your
anger and not be unangry
that's how breaking the rules becomes a spiritual
pursuit especially if you have to pay off your
transgressions
and if not are you humbled by
rue?
the day after a full moon i felt and discarded emotions
rocked the bottom of the steering wheel
snuck nicotine vapes near a hospital's elevator banks
found the only saturday medical supply outlet
marveled at aisles of crisp alarming packages
how family characters rise to an emergency
in direct proportion to the value of the afflicted
or sink in unison if there's even only
one who can't hold her shit
by Donna
in one full-moon day:
ran out of my vape pen
with an hour and a half to go before the
tow truck
who said i couldn't ride with him because
he'd brought his girlfriend
the stepfather says:
pull it up right from the middle
give me a snuggie
and the woman with the broken hip says:
home healthcare workers
what for?
and the jury says:
let him go
and half the people realize
all we need is lies
dog pees on rug
there was a four-foot tube going from my nostril to my small intestine, and i pulled it out, twice, once while vomiting.
i figured out how to work some of the blinking, sucking, beeping machinery, and when i'd had enough, i switched it off.
i took the loudly ticking clock down from its high place on the wall and removed its battery.
i signed a waiver of liability so that i could be allowed to sit up in bed.
i told them i wanted ativan, and a full milligram, not a child's dose.
i allowed a young male nurse to wrap me with a vinyl leash and walk me up and down the corridor.
i became conscious well into a narrative with a daisy miller-like subplot.
there in trinidad and tobago, i gave her one more chance to choose between the hipster boyfriend and the security of her father.
i drifted in the streets after they made their choice and moved inland, toward the volcano.
i evaded pickpockets and thugs in a dark terrain of campfires, our shadows splaying against the outer city walls.
i got a ride in a jeep full of local teenagers speaking tagalog.
i cooked a pork shoulder in an aluminum pan at an outdoor community kitchen.
i slept in a flophouse full of mattresses in wall alcoves and flashlights and men.
i met the girl who was going to solve the problem of the tracking wires embedded in everyone's eyeglasses or canes.
i was desperate to find an overall solution, but i could only wander from situation to situation.
by Donna
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