night highlights the minor sources of light

The straight up on mental hygiene

JAN: My levels of unfocused anger are making me a sitting duck for petty triggers, microaggressions, fear-fulfilling hallucinations. 

JAN: What makes you say that?

JAN: I feel like lashing out at inanimate objects. 

JAN: Oh like your husband? 

JAN: Ha ya fer example or my pynco-brush or the rock I swallowed wrong or my slaves who cannot waft a frond to save their inanimate lives. 

JAN: Did you say petty tigers? On the gizz-issue, I'd purge and start over. Gargle with seawater.

JAN: Ya you know what I think you got to the core. I said triggers. Now I know that my gizzard was the trigger for the anger. 

JAN: What if I were a fear-fulfilling hallucination? 

JAN: That term does not describe a being but a projection. Don't you think actual hallucinations give themselves away by being so obviously psychedelic? What if they were smarter than that? 

JAN: If hallucinations were smarter than that as if they could be smart or dumb at all they would start crossing over into the realm of technology. 

JAN: Ya that's why paranoia is so much more dangerous than a hallucination because it's all based on shiv that's real. Ya ick paranoia, ocd, that's what I don't want. So uncomfortable. A poorly-defined melting wall or ridiculous amphibious countenance staring from above those can be useful metaphors.

 

 

Trans. by Phyllis (embedded)

OUTLIER

JAN: 

Well they've got to realize that from the very first moment of our employment, they were setting us up as opponents. Not quote coworkers. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

Yes, we had to draw straws. For seniority. We were starting the same day. 

JAN:

We had to strategize. There weren't just two straws. There was a lidded grass basket. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

The tips of seven straws were sticking out at just the same length. 

 JAN:

They were made of balsa wood. Guess they got them at the HR supply along with the psych kits. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

The HR lady's palm was holding the basket, gently turning and lifting so that it seemed to hover in space. 

JAN:

I went for the shiv on a plate after volca rule. Take the closest one. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

Lost opportunity. You had first shot. I would have taken

JAN:

I know, the one closest to me in case the HR lady had rigged it that way. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

That's not to say I didn't strategize. I mean

JAN:

Right, you're the boss now. Seems to fit you. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN: 

Do you think that bossships are for the bossy? 

JAN: 

Ya. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN:

What is ambition: putting to best use your strongest gifts for the good of all or a coincidentally necessary expression of paranoia and contempt for humanity? That the nirvanic system needs quote leaders to tell the workers what to do and use pain and pleasure to bend them to Mthyuh's willhead.  

JAN: 

Or that each of them as well are ambitious and recognize other ambitious servants and honor them and serve honorably to honor the nirvanas and the will of Mthyuh. Yes, all of that. 

JAN'S BOSS JAN: 

That's good because sometimes I feel like an outlier, you know?

Pathetic is the baseline

pathetic is the baseline the center our common nonvariable

this coming from both myopic and telescopic points of view

and thus my admonishment to all to live between the two

between as well oblivion and obliviousness

while getting consuming recreating and building

your smallness hopelessness are for my eyes alone 

i will give you only strategically timed glimpses

if you ever find yourself overwhelmed with patheticness

know it's you and not me doing that to yourself

as the avatar of worthlessness i suck all of it

so what you're doing is ganking my stash of your shit

once i go into mthyuh you'll try and pray to give it back

but you'll realize it takes a long time for me to regenerate

and by then you'll have lost your pathetic mind 

it was your baseline and you didn't trust me with it

 

 

 

by Ilyn

Day of Eternal Chama Address n.d.

[frag.]

 

the humanity around me was stronger than my body will or cancer

it seemed like i was born dnr but i kept on waking

a hive or suspension of healing molecules buoyed 

my cells did what only one immune system could not

do by itself

these were friendly robots with drone-like intentions

a frightening singularity of focus that lidderly

cut and skewered and sewed in service to their

own profession

some might say if it weren't them they'd prolly assume

what's most healing is the stripping and cleaving and

what's left will live interred in debt to pay for

re-ignition

that a done submission of spirit and character

rare deferment to the throbbing support structure

trembles in turn at the business end of an 

org-tree mandate

but can they stop me before i commit again

to rampage on the place that brought me in

ghosts of my venom strangling the landscape

cries and sharp tears

by Ilyn

approach

 

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

victor surge

 

confrontation

 

I think i may be coming down with something

 

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

Edifice of manliness

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)

Tribal dance for wedding

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

My favorite surgeon

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

Bonfires are moot

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

by Ilyn

Grandiose nightwalker

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

 

 

 

Don Sidon 

(Trans. por Dawntay)

I only want to waste this day

 

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

O Winter, Fruit of Betrayal

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

For my Lala,

by Jan

VACATOR

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