this surgeon was into plastics and he
sewed me up in tiny careful knots
that one almost bursting in anger
seemed to be so afraid of the nodule
he dared not insult it til the final moment
another claimed no students were involved
but he was one day a kid with a drafting table
and the next an umbilical slasher
my favorite and i conspired to decline altogether
and send him off instead to the cayman islands
Ilyn
It's brave of you to be in touch as I dissemble disassociate dissolve
It's clear it's not just morbid curiosity that makes you stay involved
Perhaps you learned before i did to not expect tomorrow
This sorrow born of understanding time and vanity sloth vice
You got the best three times on steps: formal wear throwing rice
They got pieces of our minds a lot of meat and plenty deep
We've got our pain to mine shallows to drown in words to keep
I got to explore occupy the boundaries thrilling roads to take
And now, as I stand in the rain on terminal monday, a scene to make
I see how fucking fucked this fucking world has fucking fucked me
I see the shit the shitty shit this shit of shit has shitting shat me
And i can take a breath and feel the float of my floating being floating
And if it's the end the ending means the end of trying to see ahead
To what the hell hell would have been that i'd have done instead
through this brick there is knocking about from the empty
house next door between the normal echoes from the highway
all movement now seems obscene who would choose these
hours to mess around in their yard or bike perhaps a ghoul
not a sprite they sparkle best in twilit bowers of urbanity and
archeological digs not in the living pulsing emptiness of full
refracted light this moon even has a satellite a star that looks
itself like a moon against the misty queen soaking in tulle
only a few days ago it was really winter and i rather liked
having gloves on wrong hands the unexpected pulling on
unsuspecting patches of skin hardly noticed a flag beating
in the dark beneath a neighbor's porch shingles or the house
fallen silent that always has barking dogs and the prints of
their paws still there on glass in the street lamp's limited
aura there's the assumption that a community is at rest or
simmering behind doors with lamps with motion detectors
the trick about going out to see what's happening when
no one else is there is that you then become what's
happening and because nothing is supposed to be
happening you become a species of trespasser attention
grabber ghost cat burglar stealer of visions and movements
not meant to be seen and also meant to be not seen but
also seen often enough that there aren't many questions
or witnesses to see to it you don't see what you're seeing
jarring when the screen goes blank
mind is awake but the body is numb
same if you like to party or paint
might look dumb when it's said and done
might feel great when yr at yr peak
creed might translate to the joy of life
wait another 20 years before you speak
never live long enough to get it right
i only want to waste this day
on vanity and distractions
waste it into infinity
there's no tomorrow and that works for me
though it doesn't cure the anxiety
get to hang onto my piety
nose is open to society
Reptily-ily
another half moon with a hard edge
there's just enough light to get around
there's a precious circle in there but you
still need the lamp to find shit in leaves
soon full will feel like almost too much
a self-parody getting pretty old
we project our nature on that thing
it's deader than you or me but there it is
you are a tiny horse tonight whereas once
it was clickety-clickety clickety-clickety now
it's a click and a clack a click and a clack clack
you stop and stand to act as weather redactor
We set it all up together but then you vacated without moving
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
woe-ooo-why
Instead you didn't answer or acknowledge the dogs' or my howls
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
woe-oh-ooo-we-ooo
I shouted your name stomping room to room in the big house
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
we-oh-whyy
I agree it was crazy because no one was really there
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
oh way-ooo ay-yay
You are one of the putrid moments of silence in french cinema
d'd'd'd
ay-yay-oh
How the back aches from the lack of lines
d'd'd
woe-ee-oh
I keep the memories of unspoken love
d'd
ooo-ohhh
And a mask of your face
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
ay, ay, ay, ay
d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd
ay, ay, ay, ay
[repeat]
Lil' Modat
literally an emergency is just what comes up
but you're more inclined to peak over the edge
the more anxious you get aware you become
it's a gambler's disease a disassociation
everyday drama depends on what could happen
to stop the world from turning look in the other direction
after a stage length of chaines turns even if you spot
focus on a stationary chandelier balcony velvet seat
in frozen time and space you must still breathe
which has less effect on aging than the alternative
your mind is temporarily stunned by spinning
you can consume and blow out the stillness
without taking the challenge in hand you'll end up
walking in circles like a dehydrated desert refugee
then crumpled swan like in a heap of tulle
the centrifugal force will have taken on a life of its own
Dr. Donna Thong
JAN: What should we do should we make it so the genders are a grab bag that one can assign oneself in any combination, or are we saying these were assigned divinely, not by choice, that it's the Body that came out wrong. Or not that at all. How shall we know. What can I ask that doesn't put me at a disadvantage. It's supposed to make me vulnerable. That's so I can understand. I who don't understand. The understanding stands in the soul of the haver of the identity. We know from years of being referred to as it/ that that it seems maybe to us petty demanding the gender after you are already distinguished clearly from other classes of ambulatory sentients like the grasshopper.
PEG: It sounds like you've been thinking deeply. Why?
JAN: ...
PEG: I was listening. I agree you're vulnerable, but not because of the new gender directives. They are only asking that you be sensitive and thoughtful. If you're already that, you'll have to do shiv all day.
JAN: They're asking for more than that. To get a W.A.S.T.E. I have to say that I've earned nothing if everyone didn't have the opportunity. That obviously counts out all K blood because as enormous soaring reptiles there are gigs necessarily exclusive to us only.
PEG: What's really lame is the whole premise that we're included now since we're not going to kill hunt or eat so what have we really gotten in return.
JAN & PEG TOGETHER: Friends' Service Hangers!
JAN: I feel a lot fresher in general. I focus on the day to day. There's some good kibble and fruit snacks.
PEG: Tell me in a thousand years. How content you are. They think we're vampires just because of our lifespan is long and theirs is short. Because you're a seroconversion, you're not all K, and you're new anyway. I don't want to bring you down. K's fly spread eagle.
Peg and Jan have been lying back sunning their tummies with their elbow spikes holding them up with their dorsal flaps unfurled in the wind. It's an ancient river bed. Their spines have broken through the outer crust of sediment and leave canyons of shadow and dust behind when they each roll to the right pull up their left spike and slam it in again way up pointing toward the cliff face. It looks like they're about to ski, or fly, but instead they leap at the rock horizon with their toe claws and scoop the air behind them and scrabble craning their necks up the cliff to their hangout. The rock has been hollowed out and boulders pile up at the base, which is also where they drop the extra bones.
JAN: Is it because you're a lesbian you try to discourage me? I have joy thinking of my husband and wish we will be together? You want me there under your dark cloak?
PEG: Haha bitch shut the fuck up.
PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
JAN: They is some mens around here an my nose is open.
PEG: There is no mens. Just more gender question marks either being ported by pharmsupply or coming in wild like you through The Crack. Now go back and read the directive. This is your life now. Jan is far too small to have a meaningful relationship with you anymore. That's all in the past. He's tiny; you're big. Doing this is not about that. You have to represent the boundary-lands.
JAN: No I get it it's not even about like I'm here with you or you with me or we're here together. It's more about this rock shelf and some snacks and the open air and the mist and what we mean and what we can do but don't do.
PEG: But also what we did do history and what we do do because of our air skills and gravitational importance and in terms of fertilization to all the chank communities.
PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
instead of taking on a whole new imaginative god-world
they simply refused to learn much about the science-world
and from that mystery their fantasies hung
they were pendant on truths too fiery for questions
their humility grew from an easy acceptance of unknowability
even the experts kept jumping all the way ahead
to the volcano's edge of knowing
and within those boundaries sought to keep proving nothing
we couldn't tell why it was bright out
basic blindness was the scheduled moon
it was a reflective light but of what
lala keeps track of which route/ night
we headed left below the shiny cloud cover
these days she's prone to weave and digress
the sounds have changed with the freeze
what makes it through the brick is a moaning
now and then a snap, the mini pipes of tinnitus
by Jan
X:
you have a dazed face narrowing your attention to the peripheries
as a fish looking ahead and behind might be the effort part
it doesn't matter where i stand because you are my object, not the opposite
i would torture you with language if i were much better at it
you are made humble by not having anything better to do
Y:
even i am your this or that sounds to me to be too self-referential
so i'll be silent to also avoid objectifying you with the word you
this is half a hollow ringing sphere also with a ring in its nose
there we go we is presumptuous but it he she all ok by me it him
i am attendant by accepting attention as one would rain
i won't see you again til the pictures come back
we'll point the lens where the world would be
had it not been and gone so quick
perhaps it still exists between the clicks
even our faces might rematerialize
thanks for the kisses but i fear i'm your salt lick
hollowed out on one side and more sensitive there
where the wind passes through i glimmer
my elbows operate as if by riding straps
with your shit i can still pluck the unfrozen grass
my knuckles are warm and let me tie the knot
but a massive arctic front is imminent
i'll stand in the kitchen window to watch you squat
by Jan
flashback three days it was a
half moon with a blade on the flat side
then came the self-imposed blur
an off angle of mismatched crescents
suggests a circle but
now it's joined up with other forces
also in their glory if for an evening
Toris, the horoscope lady in her fort
her tense prophecies about the weather
the lottery is now our widest belief tent
into the dark is where we went
passersby were spooked and silent
we could only hear them in the grass
when they were already up upon us
pedaled fast because it's become dry
i produce a plastic bag from Pharmsupply
and pick up lala's shit
by Jan
you can always plan for a fall but when it happens
the ass goes to ground fairly quickly
you live in more than one dimension and
you've got to be aware of the one you're seeing
upside-down world where the signs are all menacing
right-side up world where the signs lead to an exit
if not you'll mindlessly play along and fuck up
or get tripped up in the signs and become despondent
but none of that will keep your balls off the pavement
overall if you can still feel them you're fine
a half moon hung among the branches
and behind the trees stained velvet sky
sent the children home but also sirens
they came in droves learning the approach
modified for pairs of teenage jackals
the tiniest possible skeletons and wizards
we could monitor the door throughout our wanderings
along the path that winds between the trees
but no one tripped the light above the steps
rabbit and seal parents confessed their plan
to consume the bounty of their charges' words
bypassing both threat and vulnerability
by Jan
Ilyn sits best he can in a lotus position as Reptily gently picks blood clots off his scalp and back and replaces them with a rub of mineral oil and bright yellow sulfur dust. Water drips from a shaggy black fungus lining the walls of the cave.
ILYN: My life force flickers like a spook bulb.
REPTILY: You have the miraculous but unfortunate curse of carnation redundancy. You keep being born again, but uglier.
ILYN: But what I can see is all beauty.
REPTILY: Then you are selfish to boot. Never mind our horror when we gaze upon you.
ILYN: I've proven my willingness over and over to disappear forever.
REPTILY: By now you know it's only a ritual. It could never be the same as that first surrender.
ILYN: Until I jumped into Mthyuh's roiling gut, I was burning from the inside out.
REPTILY: Why is it. Why do others want to stay and can't but you can't go and stay away.
ILYN: Why do others want to stay and can't but I can't go and stay away?
REPTILY: Yes.
ILYN: My cross to bear is the mystery of my cross to bear. Flekes come to me because I am the most extreme expression of their own befuddlement. Like they'd watch a kid beating a doll against a fence. Ya, I am that doll, and I am that child.
REPTILY: Ya I am that fence and you whitewash me. I mean I say you are full of shite. You are holy, another mystery. You'd cash your own mother into indentured servitude to heresists. Oh wait.
ILYN: Ya look who's talking. At least you kept her in the family.
REPTILY: She could do worse than collect shiny coins at volca and command shiv service on her own servants all week. It was her idea. She herself is practically a deity now. All life is contingent and symbiotic. Except for yours, Illinois.
ILYN: Look at us. A pair of broken records. Have you ever noticed that my full name looks like a "no" peeking out from behind bars?
REPTILY: With an s on the end.
ILYN: Ya that's silent. You know what it means. Freedom. No to not freedom.
per Phyllis (embedded)
first lala started wandering in circles and
pulling me along in her orbit and then i
felt so wobbly and we were both getting
magnetized by that tree that you and
i together couldn't get our arms around
but its power seemed to wane once we
stumbled closer stopped watched the
beige sides of its fallen leaves return
ambient light but as if from beneath
so that there were mini search beams
reaching back as i bent over to pick
up the poo, and when i added my
torch we nearly swooned again the
ground tilted and we had to ride it
bent kneed the rest of the way lala
was straining on the lead but not
ahead, sideways as if to mark her
value to be free but also bound or
to bring me along to her agenda
striped with shadows in these lanes
confounding cats for pumpkins for cats
while at home she will lie by my feet
by Donna
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