K Groom

when you talk so long
my responses build and ebb
without making noise



for Missy
by Phyllis (embedded)

street cred

Despite the moral and health risks i still cherish my connections to the dark side, stated La Chama. They give me the street cred i need with some of the flakes. They fill blanks in my self-mythologizing. Let me tell the shiv in a ramshakle temple until morning and my spirit will be ready as the scored flesh of brother Ilyn, as he rolls, in his square-wheeled cart.


Phyllis, embedded

K's Fly Spread Eagle

Green-grey monkeys dipped down from the overhang with the moss and the misters swinging between the ukuleles and the hats and undress you and dress you up again in little outfits while you walked past the shop windows perhaps with a rum-and-fruit drink and without even slowing you down unless you wanted to stop and admire your reflection. These little guys had amazing taste, a trained eye for the right ensemble and all by guesswork on the measurements.

For this reason La Chama had become accustomed to strolling topless through the streets even in the evening after work with a nice wool skirt and a briefcase. Her shoulder monkey, Jock, covered his bald head with his silly, long fingers in feigned embarrassment at all the attention his mistress would get from mammals and flakes and the deities and the bitches and the College of Cement. Ranging from a lifted eyebrow to a flash of angry, swollen anal gland from the packs of male K teens.

Some say Missy emerged hideous from the perfect chrysalis of the Chama as easy as a zipper. Because the K's had a visceral reaction of hate when they see her as if she were an archetype of that which circled over their nesting caves in their earliest memories even though she has the perfect soft brown body of a flake.




by Phyllis, embedded

Da Badonkuments

Da badonka donkuments bedda be deh
Be day onca-mockument o da tacomen
Cuz ivdey donbe ocu-lockumenz we gon
upan sockyo polka-munny sum taybo sun



by Jan

Remorse of Battle

If good men, both victor and vangquished burn from remorse of battle
if you have been vicked or vanged, maybe you could be good
Any machine without hate would quickly move on



La Chama
Fgmt. unknown

Bitch's snow tracks are a portrait of herself crapping on lawn

How I Experience Communication

Do you see anything like a lip moving on my face?

No. That's because I am talking to you, and I don't do it with a mouth. You are only even hearing the English because it's my organic empathic system that makes it not even matter and it's the biology of your no-K braino that turns it into recognizable symbols. In fact, did you know that if it weren't for the human capacity for what you call "denial," your flakes and no-K's could not even reproduce? Would not be able to.

So... I wish you would look me in the eye, an organ we have in common, and state your credentials as a professional by implication of your manner, sir.



by Missy

The Coarsening of Society

First, you did not even look me in the eye before lifting my preen lid.

Also, "What's your name?" is not the answer to any possible client inquiry.

You make what, low six figures? You're a professional K Hygienist?

I tell you I have a question. You answer what's your name. And don't look at me?

Put my lid down. You don't have permission.

I'd like to speak with a K.



by Missy

The Deep Straight

There's a water stain around the dog watering area
It's left a pattern of seeking its level in fine chalk
And there's another bowl sitting next to the dog
watering tank that has water in it. The dog watering
tank is functional, but it takes more effort to clean
and fill than a glass mixing bowl, which is what
the dog has been drinking out of. No one wants to
clean up the chalky wet mess around the dog water-
ing area, so both the bowl and the tank remain.




by Jan

High fog across the great lakes region

high fog across the great lakes region
i try to land but for the hoes and rakes

this season, i'll sprinkle my criticisms,
toss in a prank if i'm feeling that wry

the sky, where I hover, is the last place
you'd sweep for the source of stank

and when I cry it seems purely natural
to think of me and have a little wank



By Jan

Activity table

i mouthed a southwestern melody
reminiscent of hollywood and
suede fringe costumes, similar to

the counter-intuitive, at times a-
tonal chinese hollywood music,
but without percussion, yet I

wailed my plaintive harmonies
to the west in all earnestness
thinking of their fires and loss


by Donna

Wasted in Good Shoes

sure that's the story of my life
wasted in good shoes because
for what more have I requested

my current job: to create a task
to practice the replacement of
low-info words with high ones.

i feel i could say more but why
who i ask who wants to know
who's not up their ass aloof with

terror. disguised also as disdain
who's not afraid or disdainful?
even the professionals shame

themselves over the inadequa-
cy of their trade to quell the tide
of bullshit the great leveler

doctors blame their own lazy
arrogance inventors their
craven leveraging monetizing

used to be you could ask who
do i see if i wanna put an enemy
to rest answer was your army

now it isn't even alarming when
every store front a font for mur-
der, your own reflection in the

glass could for a moment make
you wonder is that pale beast a
killer or how disdainful at best



Dr. Donna Thong

Take Your Pants Off, Mr. Green Jeans

That tingling at top of head and breathlessness, nonspecific terror
Dogs me from garbage disposal to mailbox and out to the car
The icebergs dropping off: missed tax year due to obama care
The amount I owe exceeds what I'd saved by having an insurer
And I can't get ahead because I can't afford accountants or a lawyer
And if I want to refinance, I'll need that year's return to get out of here
To pay off the down payment from the government I got to stay 5 years
But then almost anyone would pay to get out of solitary
All my friends and lovers i used to call a non-traditional family back there
Spread back into the winds that always caress the desert
From dry air I come to this fungal great lakes misery
At least there's less sun to contribute to my recurrent skin cancers.

by Donna

worker child

have gravy, tenderloin and flair jeans
vinyl case for cigarette pack with
a loop and snap top for the lighter

four to midnight get a break time
with a magazine or paper; maybe
you wrote a letter to the editor

a room with mechanical machines
a room with towering reel-to-reel
tape drives behind formica, buttons

green and red and yellow blinking
reset beepers with timers, and your
whole arm could hold 13 or so reels

this weight on the arms of a ballet
trainee, 13 on each arm, the wrists
having fit through the holes perfectly

the lead operator had a racket going
slapping reset buttons, barking at
us to reset the beeping buttons so it

would look like we were attending
to the reels much more quickly than
we were or possibly could have done

planning to spend the rest of the
night dancing in a club, sweating,
drinking, dancing, cabbing home.



by Hoolie

Smart-ass child with an enormous beard

Smart-ass child with an enormous beard
you seem to appear as well from behind steam

and in your wisdom
have chosen a medallion

to commemorate a playoff
at your neck

you swore the newer technology
did not come with an adapter plug
but of course it did

Sorn Gorn Dorn

sorn gorn dorn
naw tamir
ini stone
way we leaf

tayco stain
ona watu sai
you k hee
butta wa-ai pay

[repeat]

Pharmsupply's Prolabique LipLine Master-Lisp "Lipstickventory" Name Galleys 88rx: lipsticks 2020

• all i get is pretty
• a pinch
• blankets for teeth
• blind fury
• blowers for algernon
• blur
• Bogue R. Dit
• brank-ish
• breeder
• bubbles
• cashed bowl
• category 6
• chipotle wind
• duck-taped pepper grinder
• eyelids of the mouth
• fi'nna
• fish clamp
• go boom 
• great lakes region
• grrrainy day
• hairy
• how devastating?
• indefensible
• lawn salad
• morgue ship
• move-over ripe
• nothingburger
• ocular migraine
• pay me
• perverse motivation
• property value
• ribbon event
• salted slug
• shiny purse
• Showing Green
• slapjack
• smartass
• smoking lines
• so...
• soccer ball
• Sorn Gorn Dorn
• steak
• stitches
• sugar drift
• thin
• topless
  
• torn open
• torrid crepe
• twouldn't
• very devastating
• void
• warm roach
• when
• white on tan
• wrap
• you know, I don't? but thank you

When?

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with hate, resentment, exasperation, anger

Sounds come out my mouth or I have to slam a door

And if the door doesn't slam satisfyingly

Heaven help the the the...


Does it matter if I get home early, late anymore-- I mean who is there?

At least at work it feels like I have a purpose or

I am interacting with other human beings

Am I too enmeshed with my dog and and...


The most passionate engagement is with other cars in traffic

My entire body becomes involved in utterances

My heart pounds harder and longer even perhaps than

When when when when?



by Donna

Homeschooled Master Race

I hope I spanked him like his daddy never could.

Thanks for dropping off letter and Shiv book

Thanks for your note, Aunt Jan. Pastor Caviar (see link) could better answer your Shiv question. He is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why I feel highly allergic to "theology."

Perhaps well-meaning Shiv stars can be found in large numbers behind the right-wing politicians that are taking over the world and the same ideologies that Grandpa Jansdaad died fighting in Europe.

Most of the civilized world sees Shivas as dupes to a very dark political agenda that we see being successfully carried out before our eyes as our planet dies and our democracies crumble.

I'll be reading Uncle Jan's letter, but not the book.

Love, Jan

I'm no theologian

I'm no theologian, but I do evaluate human arguments for a living, and I can tell you that neither of yours is anything to write home about.

As regards the wedding, I maintain that an ounce of compassion weighs more than a ton of theology.

I apologize for my own scorched-earth rhetoric on this topic to date, but I hope you wouldn't hold that against Jan.

I've shown up for two of Jan Janzdaad's weddings, and for me that was about respect and love and family. It had also meant a great deal to me when she came for her visit to Chukkachank.

I'm sure I can't adequately explain how painful it is to see and hear your responses, which from my point of view come across as cold, cruel, selfish, petty, and clueless. Admittedly, I got the ball rolling with overwrought, hyperbolic, crass, sarcastic, and disrespectful.

As the only son of your only brother, Jan, how many favors have I asked of you? Is there mistake or misdeed I have the power to put right that could help persuade? Weren't you supposed to say something to us back in WD93 like "If there's ever anything..."?

I'm going to suggest to Jan that, if your attendance really is important to her, that she call or write to each of you to let you know. I've begun to wonder how well you understand the importance of this to her. Or perhaps it's me who doesn't understand. Or perhaps Jan won't even come to think about it seriously until after it's too late.

Please understand that in reaching out to you, I mean to reach out for a stronger, warmer, closer, safer human bond between us as people, family members, Americans-- not to try and break your religion.

by Jan

Low-class hillbilly breeder cult

Without that, all the Bible verses in the world are useless.

Maybe you have already changed the lock

WD

Dear Peg:

Please find enclosed what Hoolie described as a copy of his apartment key.

Maybe you have already changed the lock, but I thought he and you would feel better having this back.

You probably agree that it’s probably not a good idea for a tenant to provide a key to a paramour and then to immediately “ghost” that paramour. Few actions piss people off more, I believe, than being showered with affection for months, including the promise of cohabitation, and then one day nothing—you are barred from all platforms, like you never existed.

It’s what the kids are doing these days that passes for breaking up and/or replaces having to have difficult conversations, I guess. I wish I was still a kid.

Of course I started out pissed off, then I was distraught, then suspicious, and now just very, very, very sad.

Maybe Hoolie is also sad and wishes we could start again…. maybe he is diabolical and cruel—I no longer can hazard a guess. I don’t know what to think. (If he was dead, I don’t think he would have taken the trouble to remove himself from TwatsApp).

I’m telling you all this because we’ve met and you seem decent, that you care about Hoolie, and that you seem curious by nature.

Perhaps I am seeking a better understanding about the situation since you may know him better. I am truly at a loss.

Thanks again for helping with my hooptie—I wish this situation were similarly just a big mistake, but I fear it’s just the new normal.

Best regards,



Jan

The next affair

could be a junkie sees a vision how he gonna land
but he don't mind still peaking from the medicine

face plant ass sticking up into the quiet air
won't seem so bad if you keep planning for the next affair



by Jan

Coming out ahead

i still have some of the energy
i got from the bad thing we had
not sure if that means i'm
coming out ahead
because before it started
i was so miserable



by Jan

If it's BPD

if this is a bpd thing
i'm willing to work with you on it
no cancel that
it's intractable and always brief
if that's what it is
i'm sure it's already over



by Jan

Destructive to a relationship

Well i've been waiting with my
phone on my body all day
hoping you would buzz me
this makes me really sad
this freezing behavior is painful and
i don't think i deserve it
it's destructive to a relationship



by Jan

You're fake

You're fake
That's ok
It was fun
Now fuck off



by Jan

bocas colgantes

the night it's dark
our love it sparks
a vision

the rest a tale
our ships they sail
parallel

our breath as one
the legs they run
in tandem

our pasts they're gone
our now it's found
yawning wide




Vikki Brazil

Bricked In Pot Den

bricked in pot den
quarter size kitchen
bitch on a sofa
tricks outta nowhere

winter is six month
dinner posthumous
laundry is downstair
lights blink to it



Vicki Dublin

Psychodrama

[Enter JAN JANZDAAD, JR]

JAN JR: You know, you and mom assume that if you didn't have kids or each other, you'd be animals. So you assume I'm an animal because I don't have a wife or kids.

JAN SR: Jan! Come on now. Let's take a step back here honey.

JAN JR: So you don't deny it.

JAN SR: What's to... Honey? Are you hearing this? Get in here would you?

JANET JANZDAAD [drying her hands with a dishtowel]: I'm hearing some kind of bullshit guys do you want to take it outside like a couple of animals or go and make me some dinner while I sit and pay bills?

JAN SR: Come on honey, let's all sit down.

JANET JANZDAAD: I'm serious these have to go out, and after last time I'm not dropping everything for family psychodrama ever again.

JAN JR: It's all psychodrama Mom, whether you're sitting on the pit group in your sunken living room or acting it all out in the other common areas or even off in some big anonymous city with a bunch of questionable lifestyle choices.

JANET JANZDAAD [rifling through a drawer]: That's a dig at your sister isn't it.

JAN JR: C'mon Mom don't you agree that you feel like you hold the moral high ground just automatically because well A because you are female B because mother and C you are currently married and have kids. ...Mmm?

[JAN JR AND JAN SR MAKING DINNER IN KITCHEN WHILE JANET SITS AT THE DESK IN THE FRONT HALL AND PAYS BILLS]

JAN SR: Get me the box of Panko out of that cabinet son would you.

JAN JR: Italian or... Bad. Stale.

JAN SR: The not-bad one.

JAN JR: Yeah I don't care if you don't wash your hands before you handle those thighs but afterward I would recommend.

JAN SR: Would you?

JAN JR: Yes. 



Vicki London

easy torture button

i cannot take it
i cannot take it anymore
i cannot take it
i'm at death's door

there is a girl
who i want to be friends
but just as girls
as in girlfriends

there is a boy
i want to get to know
but he won't let me in
cuz of his girl friend

they a buddy who gay
so the scene is set
cept i'm not feeling it
if it's shit life is dealing it

i cannot take the rape the
the involuntary celibacy and
there is no in between b'cause
that's where sex happens

cannot, cannot take
the hate i hate
i hate it
cannot take it cannot


Lil' Susan Sontag, Bitch
[repeat]

Obsessive cold medicine dreaming

about an ordinary woman charged with euthanizing the entire world's supply of frozen chicken parts/ familiarity with cactus and manzanita had helped her accept the barren winter figures of the midwest/ but when it came to getting around in the great lakes cities she made connections but couldn't get off/ can now identify a traditional kitsch landmark in each neighborhood while zooming past; however,/ has to arrange for all the workers and trucks from a cell interface munching wings at tollway oases



Vicki Moscovi

Replacement of Predatory Capitalism

Zoloft................................dumbbells

Xanax................................reading paper in bed

Doxepin............................walk up hill

Trazadone......................... reading paper in bed



Vicki San Jose

i can't wait for the right words to come

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be blasted from the environment
it's too late to finely hone my vocabulary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is

i wake up feeling like my face is falling off
a look in the mirror says the same about it
an animal wouldn't think but commence to lick
lame deer or fox will take the next logical step

words don't leave a vacancy more like an opening
for feelings to rush in unabated and with impunity
for crying children who once were shining princes
now nature's truest colors bleed through the fences

a stomping wild feud in a context of deregulation
nobody took a step back and said you're being used
because you had a set of rules and disabused them
you'd got too big to question when the law came in

i can't wait for the right words to come
by then i'll be locked in a penitentiary
it's too late to finely hone my obituary
when my sanctuary from memory loss is



by Donna

i'm highly intolerant/ of my environment

 

let's see how can i be not crazy, a guy 

ranting about weevils at the safeway

the baseline behavioral expectations targeted by drugs

my constitution eschews ordinariness like a new liver

because i am special i want to feel special every moment of every day

and i do feel special but too often it's especially allergic to everyone

Lord, i pray: i'm a special but i need to feel like nothing special most of the while

or i get worked up into a pickle thinking your children are idiots and brutes, and i 

forget to smile.

by Jan

I Am Movement, Part 111111

Killing it at the gym. Like when I tried to do one of those high turnaround kicks and totally missed the bag while I was also going off on it with highly focused one-two punches but mostly lots of awkwardly realistic quotidian fighting moves. Never dancing. Brutish, bare knuckled. Ever thought of going off on some guy that really deserves a punch in the face? I don't, normally. But when there is a punching bag before me, I believe I can shred it or myself before I'm done. I can feel the lashing out and I do it. At the thing. Hurts, feels good.

I smell the way gyms smelled when I was young at the gym. These guys have eerily no smell. Though one in the pantheon of personal trainers had apologized for cooking Brussels sprouts in the break room. That is the young person's smell of today, a boiled vegetable. But they seem to feel good inside when you get them talking.

Through a young male character, Elsa Morante writes "TRUE MANLY GREATNESS CONSISTS IN THE COURAGE TO ACT, IN DISDAIN FOR DANGER, AND IN VALOR DISPLAYED IN COMBAT." I was heartened, vainly, by "disdain for danger." That is me. Oh, and I act. But I may always recall the moment this afternoon, ascending a darkened stair, when I muttered, "I've reached a new low." Among lows, this one specifically was a lowness of amorality. It was victory and loss at once. I'd come upon perhaps the perfect revenge: the truth.

This morning I woke up again already sorting through scenarios for appropriate responses to the police threat, which would be quite a coup for his side if we were gaming, which each of us often were. I considered online bullying, for example. So tawdry. Willing to go darker nevertheless, I imagined approaching J during one of his epic play afternoons, with a pseudonym, as a sexy, underage gamer boy. Entrapping him and embarrassing hopefully to the level that I had been embarrassed when he decided that our neighbors and once again, the Rolling Riches PD, should all be privy to my non-threatening albeit a little menacing passionate pen letter, and add to that his stroke of genius in getting it done without having to come into contact at any point with the dirty authorities directly!

The creepy trapping and shaming scheme did bear fruit sideways: instead, I would address my suspicions and indeed evidentiary knowledge of J's untoward interest in little boys and in the idea of himself as a sexual little boy-- not unlike, come to think of it, an MJ of an earlier time. One last letter to the family could be gotten off before any prohibitions to that effect could come my way-- I'd only heard that the dreaded "trigger" (J is such a drama queen, ironically, behind that often dead and inexpressive mug) involved telephone calls, and my own lawyer had only admonished me not to contact J in any way-- nothing was said about the family. And apart from my other scheme, to go and steal all the bagels at his favorite store before he can get there on the day they come in, I didn't think direct contact was a good idea either.

Subj: Pretty sure J is a pederast

Dear R,

I won't be bothering you any further. Just need to tell you that there is a concern about J and his feelings toward young boys. I don't know if he would/ will act or has acted on them, but I didn't think he would act on other weird, inappropriate boundary issues either, and I've learned otherwise. You have grand-kids around, right? That's why I mention it.

As I say, I don't want to bother you or J any further.

There-- that last part I can't describe as-- well, any of the parts maybe as "valor in combat." It was for my own protection, a reassurance that was really more begging her not to let him call the police over this now. I don't know how I would handle that. And I have a choice still. I recognize it. However, especially the way the political fields draw blood these days, there was no rule broken at this point. It meets an objective to inflict pain sufficiently guaranteed to be as much or more than what I suffered. In addition, wouldn't pederasty be a line, finally, that J would not cross as far as welcoming the police, neighbors, lawyers, therapists to know about it? Would this stop everything, finally, in its tracks? Could I walk away as a winner even without feeling like one, or would I wake up the next day already grinding on a new slight or worry that just couldn't go without addressing? Would the anxiety on edge for Officer Caviar's knock on my door in the night be unbearable?

Dawn Warning

Only an alarming bright moon in the winter trees can
Wake me from the sense of no one near this dead end

Wide moon in evenings, sailors feel their feelings
Wide moon at midday, sailors eat their hearts away

We shun the dawn because it will not bring good news
We pace the cage of night only wanting freedom to run


by Reptily