tiresome dreams redundant dreams
not being stoned the night
sees us seeking stupid bliss
hallucinations are standing by
anxious insight finally produces
granite roads leading to villages
my own anti-trans bias against
my own painted fingernails
intense gastric identity response
it's just ahead in the dark and
self-powers a familiar slog
seems to be moving toward the town
by Jan
bullshit sort of shook out
pillars standing nakit
floor kinda sunk down
felt i couldn't take it
teen wanna party down
twenny wanna drown
tirdy he could coast at
fordy all dat
fiffy come a reckning
sissy going down (sissy going down)
sennie is a beckning
a.d. please now
o-nonny nonny nonny
hey nonny nonny nonny
nonny nonny nonny
[repeat]
by Ilyn
Jan and Peg are hanging upside down in a gentle cataract. Their dust and dung are coloring the water purple. They do not have to raise their voices because they are able to speak and understand with their minds only.
JAN: I was lidderly punching myself in the head with my uh... claw knuckles, caused an avalanche that wiped out a populated chank. Trying to think of where i stashed my cloakawax. It can feel like one is lost in life when it's just their bobbles they can't find.
PEG: What is it like not being lost in life, Jan?
JAN: Ah so perhaps--I mean, I get it, I can't answer that question--maybe misplacing health and beauty products is just a reminder of being lost in general, and therefore it's even more annoying.
PEG: But you have goals, a plan of some kind, or you think you should have those.
JAN: Uh both; i mean wherever you get your values, as imperfect as they may be, what else are you going to go on? My drive to contribute to society to make something of myself if not a beautiful family then a mark, a good mark, an edifice even.
PEG: That thought carries the obscenity of manliness, no?
JAN: Are you saying that learning to live without linear time is the same as dephallocentralization? That the concept of work as building toward the future and goals themselves are outdated masculinist tropes?
PEG: I'm saying that our environment provides for us. We don't have to worry about our next paycheck. When we are thirsty, we drink from a rivulet of melting snow. There's nothing more to do than turn our heads. When we are hungry, a fleke is right there, on a cliff hike or a chain gang. Our purpose is only to be and to enjoy. Forever.
Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)
At a late in life wedding there was a tribal dance
performed by the bride and her brother
the guests expected them but not the other
Their feathered sleeves scraped the all-purpose flooring
The track was more than six minutes long
They each took more months than that to recover
Their bodies were blurring into the wallpaper
Even there indoors their hair sweat dried in wind
At several points he tried to stop her
She seemed to be expressing a life of incomprehensibility
And he a cattle rancher's drive to drive and drive
Lesser ceremonialists may have left it to stationary
headbanging but this was a once in a lifetime
reckoning with sense itself its corrosive limits
its lack in every answer
and dancing through that crack
no one joined them on the floor when it was over
Reptily-ily
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
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