EMERGENCY FOREVER

 

Playing dead but listening

 

Man Tips #823

 

Central altar

here we are here i am

i wondered once why

as soon as you go in

my neighbor had a can of

spray disinfectant

just sitting out

all the time 

even as guests arrived

by Jan
Table 4: Adults
Poetry Festival
Days of Destruction

I wanted to remain a primitive

Before i step back into the bush

I turn and squint at the skyline

A derivative of where i'll be

Your refinement of minerals

Means you want to make fine

Again what was once fine

Fine as can be is my destiny

Perfect in terms of an ending

A finish in lush abrasion

by Jan

Final Release Poetry Festival
Table 16 Prompt:
"Write a poem of not more than 10 lines imagining what Peg must have felt at Final Release."

 

singing dog bowl

 

He said mmm

i am repeating it i'm digging on it because i like it

he said mmm and I said mmm he said mmm and

it was a happy moment and i'm replaying it

felt so mmm after all this time i'm repeating it

because it follows a track going half way 

down my back eight billion cells have

passed away since then but when he said 

mmm not a molecule degraded he said 

mmm and i said mmm and he said

by Missy
Junior Scholastic Table
Poetry Fair
Days of Destruction

watery

 

 

 

immigrant house

Enjoy

 

celebrity

in exchange for allowing me to

stare at and fantasize about you

i accept my life to be hollow

saw you up close in california

body and soul in oklahoma

having you want me was macabre

by Peg
from: 

How I Met a Blue-Eyed Black TV Anchorman With Silver Sideburns Named Ted and What Happened Next

cumulus fractus

 

They can't handle reality.

The ladies are a little out of breath after tromping around in circles, their feet laden with muck, until they've destroyed all of the old tree stumps, especially, that were keeping them from comfortably lying down. It is warm and pleasant there in the swamp. Releasing their urine into it, they settle in, chins on claws, for some fun "philosophical forum" time. 

JAN: You sound like you think reality is just this one thing, this one way we've always defined reality. 

PEG: You suggest I should think of reality as many things. 

JAN: No. It's only one thing. But you may not find that one thing unless you take a pull on the shiv. 

PEG: The shiv is a spiritual tool, a sacred ritual that has been bastardized capitalized and stylized into just another mind altering joy ride. 

JAN: But that's the thing. That's reality. The joy ride. 

PEG: To find the rule you must partake in an exception to the rule? 

JAN: Yes. 

PEG: You are probably going to say that what conscious animals have created, have turned the world into, is irreality. 

JAN: Yes. It's essentially a takeitoutist philosophy. First came the simulationists and their what-ifs. An actual simulation of reality was being built all around them while they pondered. Remember that the K5000 was still very much a part of our airspace back then. It allowed MPS to build their fantasy society and make the rest of us think it was our idea. 

PEG: The world as we know it: a simulation built by conscious animals. Who are terrified.

JAN: More than anything. 

PEG: And they are officially against pulling the shiv outside temple grounds because

JAN: They can't handle reality. 

PEG: They can't handle everyone having access to reality because it would destroy their brand and their business. 

JAN: I've been pulling the shiv all morning, how about you? 

BOTH: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

The hearty enjoyment of these close friends, as always, had tragic consequences. All life forms within a wide circumference, any that enjoyed the gift of hearing, including a small troop of MPS scouts on an airboat tour, were rendered permanently deaf by the ultrasonic cackling. 

How touristic desire drove evolution

Of all the organs, a brain most likely makes the most requests and also has expectations about how you carry those out. It might seem that the brain's needs are few: sleep, physical safety, substances. When we look closer, we find that just about everything we do is being manipulated and maneuvered by a slimy blob that makes up a negligible part of a body's weight. 

We know that the brain includes an archetypal inclination toward surviving underwater. It's clear from the structure of our lungs and the constant squeezing of liquid through the heart that we were once jellyfish-like animals or barnacles, either propelling ourselves along involuntarily or constantly gulping and spitting seawater, as a way of life, while stuck to the side of a rock. 

Ks too have hearts that once must have pumped them very quickly through a marine environment, as many of us have dreamed of doing. They were able to scoop up massive amounts of plankton or any unlucky passersby. But their gills evolved into wings. They learned at first from the Gerridae, the water walkers, about the air line and how to break through for food and stunning dry land panoramas. 

It was that ultimately touristic desire to see more, see it all, that drove them upward. 

Paradoxically, in an ecosystem shared with other beasts, they became the biggest circus, what no one could not gaze up at, what all best learn to do for protection from the newly hostile skies above. 

by Phyliss

Why am I being kept alive

my cost effectiveness is up for debate

just when every medicine appears too late

an industry grunts and reaches up its sleeve

and i am reluctantly granted a reprieve

maybe they plan to charge it to my estate

in other words i'm permanently indentured

no matter whom i've known or where i've ventured

another data point on a ticker tape

kept alive from vote to vote like a lab ape

a radioactive slab that's been de-cancered

by Peg

Tears of happiness

Peg and Jan are feeling perky in the spring sun. While we normally find them lounging in one way or another, maybe toying with semis on a nearby highway, but never if it means getting up. 

Today they are up on their hind legs standing opposite a roundish boulder that stands higher than most gulls, for example, would dare to fly. 

"Now clench your talons and shove a little." 

"Oh! It does move. It's not stable at all! Fun."

 They found merriment in rocking the mountain-sized boulder this way and that.

"It's so warm. I just want to lean against it."

The friends both pitched forward until their bellies were flat against the hot rock surface. They managed to reach across the top and lock claws briefly. 

Peg's tears of happiness crashed down, weakening the integrity of the granite. Cracks begin to form. 

Just as the cataclysm begins, eventually burying several nearby fleke communities, Jan and Peg's wingtips dart into place with a flapping thunder that rivals the roar of splintering rock and screaming below.  

Once in flight, they learn that they can press their bellies against each other and get the same warm pleasure they'd just got from the boulder. Then they each twirl away from the other, rising briefly, and curving back down again, opposite one another, and at the same time releasing their purplish intestinal gases. 

JAN: Look! We made a fart heart! 

BOTH: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ironically, one curious gull, a gull named Jonathan Livingston, does venture up toward Peg and Jan, attracted by the spectacle. As the intensity of their laughter reaches him, unfortunately, his brain explodes, and he crashes into the clouds of dust below. 

Phyliss