care laden bells vid

Dog On Through

 

He doesn't need a mouth tumor operation,
the tumor about where a lymph node would
be on a man pushing in his cheek to where
it's conceivably more difficult for him to eat.

Dogs are prone to these, and they get them,
and they work it out, they deal with it, what
choice do they have-- they are dogs, without
the ability to organize a health care system.

He figures it out inside his own mouth and
no we're not so symbiotic that I've gotta
shell out for comfort surgery when all that
any of us can do is diggity-dog on through.


by Ken

sugary/ surgery

[Photo has been sequestered by MPS lab for mass spectrometry.]

when you say sugary, i'll say surgery, and when you say surgery, i'll say sugary.
then i'll ask you to try and say "popcorn fart" with a boston accent.
then every time i say they should..., you say but that would be too easy.
then i start naming the streets in palm springs, and you follow each one with ladies and gentleman.
when you agree i'll doubt my aptitude, and when you disagree i'll be a misunderstood genius.
when you say we're all out of corn, but... i'll say who's got a corn butt?
when you get too bold i'll act over demure, and when you are mild i'll feel unwanted.
if you say you like me it means you don't want to fuck, and if you want to fuck i don't really like you.
i'll say just got a job today, and you'll say really, and i'll say psyche, and you'll say fuck you.
whenever you say you do that, i'll answer don't tell me what to do.
if you say you'd think i wd know, i'll say you think i'm one of those mind readers.
i respect you for your disinterest and mistrust your interest in my trust.
if you say i'm mean and abusive, i'll tell you to fuck off.
if you say i'm keeping you slave, i'll say please fetch my slippers.
if you say i treat you like shit, then my answer is have some self respect and fuck off.
if you say all you ever say is fuck you, i fucking say fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.
if i say come on back, you make me wait and then come back.
if i say it's all for you, i want it all to be yours, you say you know I do.
when i say i'm not well it's not you, it's both you and i'm also not well.
if you say it's not me and it's better with he, i say tmi who asked you, congratulations.
if you say i'll always clean your pool, i'll say fuck off, anybody can clean my pool. 


"for Mike"
Love, Hoolie

over the hill, over the hump

they're doing fine, being their little snow selves
they're moving closer to another part of life that's
even more native than their old selves: old selves.

over the hump, over the hill, on the glory of time,
he lies in a drift as in a cradle, grooves his runs
into ice, appears to be passing in a swift gondola.

she can unfurl her mane by perking fwd her ears
she is ready to pounce on his signal or rescue him
our routines are faithful as the planets and stars.


Donna Thong

Juniper hovering in space

horn of dysthymia

two petite sirloins with 3/4 inch swells
two medium Idaho russets peeled and cubed
half an onion thin slices
basket of white mushrooms
above in grill pan
broc crown steamed with olive oil salt and paprika
carrot-orange juice
12 oz chocolate raisins
olive tapenade hummus and saltines
two pro-biotic yogurts blueberry/ peach


Peg

Snow blanket

under which i
rub my bones
finding safety
where no one goes
although it's cold
there's the weight of it


Tom

Soft molasses ginger faux-biscotti

End of kale

long shallow glass casserole pan, buttered thickly
drained eight-minute penne,
thin-sliced onion, chopped garlic and tomato
halved mushrooms, two big fists of kale, all thrown in raw
first lay down 3 raw hot italian sausage
dump the pasta mixture, tossed with grated parmesan
over the meat, sprinkle paprika, 1/2 C broth,
cumin seeds over all, smush bay leaves
in here and there, pat flat, cover with parmesan
topless in the oven 40 min, 375-400
sausages are juicy, as if boiled; pasta goes from
al dente w/crunchy above and below, as are the greens,
now dark purple


Peg
"meet me at the corner of life is shitty and nobody cares"

Kale samwich

i am being held prisoner by the mthyuh preservation society
whatever you do, ple

Guy in the yard

CONNIE: I feel like crying.

DONNA: Well you go ahead; I've cried twice today already.

CONNIE: Oh, so I'm supposed to comfort you now?

DONNA: No what's up.

CONNIE: Well, you see that guy out in the yard?

DONNA: Uh huh.

CONNIE: I think he knocked me up.

DONNA: You think.

CONNIE: You know what I mean.

DONNA: Not really since you a man.

CONNIE: I'm just playing. 

falling below the line

goodbye, we're
falling below the line
i see my dogs'n i're
doing just fine with
a rain poncho and a
campfire under a
bridge with a sign:
"for kibble and grits,"
a stainless Paul Revere-
ware saucepan for
coins, a last remnant
of a stupid aspiration
to the middle classes

pardon me while I
go down, pardon my
bubbles, maybe see
you on the other side

on my third bob now
boys, I say me no
swim, innocent pups



by Peg

Baby alligators

*This post is currently under review by the MPS*

Sacrifice for top of pyramid

At least two of the below
bleed principal
give up car or home
pledge to additional workmasters

Choice of one
downgrade standard of living
sell more labor hours

Which is NOT correct
more years training & experience equal higher pay
growing economy does not rise tide for all


Dr. Donna Thong, R.I.
"Reinstatement Imminent"

Fur-lined slippers, a pipe, and dogs

brindle rabbits come in cold times for unpruned rose heads
as they came for the bursting vine-fermented grapes in fall

their pear-shaped bodies not fat enough but shutting down
it's not risky if it could be your last chance to wake living

with dogs all around, they limp carefully as if on crutches
bravely standing, they can only see dried bud, the reward

 
Jan Jansdaad

Nameable anomaly

if i were a prisoner in solitary
i would make my small cell a
universe of events and distances

the public natural hot springs
under the freeway overpass,
sanctuary for snakes and birds

to cherish a tiny spider's web is
a weekend touring the capitol
every belch a nameable anomaly


by Peg

torture chair

maybe alprazolam would help me there
at the end of the day, to come in for a landing
alls else the place of relaxation, the
arm rests with hardwood knobs that stun
and the lever that switches foot to numb
tv or read it's the same, just a field
where my thoughts cavort with my demise
this chair was made for those who smoked
and by those same who drank and noticed
not the pain of back or self-imposed designs


Hoolie

explosion of putin, other balls

Round the world

i did a round the world
for new year's
when i was peeing in the sink
circling the drain

rot in hell two thou-
sand fourteen
for now we dwell in
two thousand fifteen.


Hoolie

Husbands instead of children

men and women get weird in their old age
they go to a place of irony and rage
it's as if they think they've discovered
truths not yet to the young uncovered

an hour may pass in thoughtless surrender
uninterrupted by race or gender
splashing, burning, sun in the trees
stepping fully into my abilities

but then the sweep of decades, centuries
seems too dizzying to know what to do
missing a you that's multiple seems broken
can I have 5 or 7 husbands instead of children?


Peg

self-righteous fugue state

this skin has lost resiliency, just tears, a
bee has lit, gone, n' returned in the shape

of four clover leaves over the years, but
all totaled, stinging memories are plenty

i begin to glow and matter presses in
tongues of the aggrieved spew theirs


Donna

i keep figuring it out and then i forget or doubt that i figured it out

as soon as you started handing me folders with names like my music
was when you starting taking away both my music and the concept of mine

right now i don't even know where my music is right now, even the light
hold you give me on my property is ellusive and subject to fire walling

and invasive questioning, long periods of solitary hold time or blaring music
just to do what i used to do with a plastic disc and a needle, i need your

permission every time, to sign away my privacy and become a whore for
your partners, i get sucked into the back door of the industry but for free

Connie
"Angry even yet from the grave."

Phalli

PEG: Phyl, now that you are a journalism adjunct at several institutions of post-high school learning, how would you cite ways it's different from actual journalism.

PHYL: For one, you are interviewing me.

PEG: Are you bitter?

PHYL: Isn't that a given, Peg? Are you I wonder bitter that your children were turned by the temple into science experiments? Ever wonder if you're compared to a family of hairless purple bats?

PEG: Thinking back across your own career though, what might you have maybe tweaked a little.

PHYL: So, it ended up with the most beautiful relationship I've ever had with anyone, including my own parents. As Missy's preen gland expression specialist, I traveled places I never knew existed.

PEG: Is it now that she's past her awkward transformational stage and screeching through skies barely recognizable as anything but that what could be named "Missy."

Now that she's gone, not Missy. That you are irrelevant, or tell yourself so. That Sports n' Sex Crimes Bugle doesn't any longer have a place for you.

PHYL: They don't have a place for me; they fired me. They were bought out by Applebees.

And to answer your initial question, I find the life of a freeway-flying adjunct to be very much like journalism: traveling a magic carpet between radically different sets of expectations, philosophies, approaches, policies, operating systems, personalities, parking procedures, lexicon, jargon, argot... having to almost sociopathologically enter, absorb and reflect each mirrored chamber.

PEG: I was a substitute teacher for a while in the 80's. They stole my car, drove it to the beach with a case of beer and spray painted phalli on the backs of the seats.

PHYL: Are we done here?

very expensive swimming pool

every day was a bald giant pounding his metal hammers
KUNG KUNG KUNG KUNG
it's supposed to be like a primitive prehistoric setting but
they have SUV's

i fight any person with whom i come in contact
friend foe blood stranger
equally, as a way to bully me up a family, i
see wrong in you

i dare assholes to try and blame me for providing a center
if there's nature to give
and the right combination of loving and wanting, then
it works atemporally


Mike
as "La Chama"

Meaninglessness, ennui and torpor walked into a bar

She's a monster hatched and finally fully free in the open range

***This post was the last straw for the Mthyuh Preservation Society, whose board took final action to stifle effective immediately. ***

I beg to surrender

it keeps me from sinking into despair
to sit here and defend myself into thin air

i speak to an imagined hypothetical judge
as if she cared. My dog's jowls spread on

the carpet as it hears the cascading pleas
some nights on my knees I beg to surrender


Donna

dysexistencia

may as well, outside these walls
a vacuum, a wanderer, dreaming
lidderly everyone else human

as for other species and breed
we can look out for one another
between the pageantry and combat

the northern clamp sets in again
changes the pressure in the head
metal pops and wood groans on


Missy
"A year liberated."

Plenty of light for one day

If we do remember previous lives that means this is everyone's first life-- how weird!
But there are people who lived and died before us so their souls must've gone elsewhere.
So one life per dimension is one thing known-- some kind of cosmic musical chairs.

Connie

People say things that don't mean anything

stay up late thinking i'm stealing hours nobody's missing
listening to people say things that don't mean anything
madison avenue with the asshole of pop culture stretched
into a crown, the rancid echo chamber, dreaming dog
i'm seeing one of those walking light storms the blind have
it doesn't matter if i open or close my eyes, both the same
that's how hard they're tripping, node tips of technology

Alone/ unique

even though we know we're not the only liveable planet out there
when you think about the distances it doesn't really even matter
it's kind of the same thing yes it is like that being alone/ unique

maybe the only reason to hate the cold is how it's like terror,
overlap in muscles seized creating a fallacious pathos transfer
don't you see it's warm enough to survive inside each one of us


Reptily

Two kinds of muscle memory

One kind of muscle memory is after you wash a dish x many times. The memory lives in the nerves of the muscle rather than the conscious mind, which can now refocus or wander.

Another kind is when muscle reacts to an acute shock to the mind or the body or a chronic series of shocks that motivate regular squirts of cortisol to enter the bloodstream.

The muscle develops a knot that when touched or manipulated will release the memory of the shock and/or a sensory and emotional reproduction of the time or times.


Thong, Dr. Donna 
Journal of the Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologist Movement
"Re-licensing Imminent"

What it was like to wreck my SUV at 70 mph

a very stiff jagged branch about the grain of rebar and its accompanying twigs and leaves
impaled the door behind me and into backseat sitting space about two feet.
the driver-side mainframe was buckled in where it'd nestled against a limb

(the part where in a smaller car would be the driver's head).
what it was like was the bladder dip at the point in the
car wash where the machine takes over and you are seated at a dead console.

no contact is being made with a surface, so the wheel can turn
either way without avoiding a dreadful consequence.
the optional on off slide corrector was not on, and a wide, slow spin began:

ooohhhhhhhoooooowheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeekuh-kuh...BAM!

after a microsleep, and that not before feeling my head slam,
I found my phone but someone had already called police. I
walked uphill to the squad with an umbrella, climbed in back.

we watched another gentleman doing it, except his bumper flew
off, and it looked like a body on the road in the blur. soon he too
came up to the shoulder, and we sat on the same warm seat.


Hoolie

Going, not been

Suddenly my directional hair growth pattern is a vortex.
There is a calm, bare center, circumference of a walnut.

I buy and lose a hand mirror oh once every ten years.
No recollection comes to mind of this severe a design.

Unlike the barber who found a hippie veteran's cap, a
Living map tells you where you are and going, not been.


Tom

7 barbara

KEN:
We used to play a game and instead of saying seven billion we'd say seven barbara. and now when I say your name i think seven barbara, or i silently think seven barbara. you're not just any one. he'd say i got a pirate, i got a mustang, but my retort was always aint got a seven barbara.

JAN:
He already wasn't himself before I even met him. Yet I fell in love with that former self, what I could recognize that his familiars saw as person half empty.

KEN:
Self a lot. Are you trying to self me something? Shouldn't you be out selving crimes?


Dean Roy Dukes

drudgery of fashion

his precarious mid-century recliner
bought of the drudgery of fashion
thinking good news would protect him:
a torture chair, with knobs where your
elbows would be and a loose ratchet

rickety and in the style of Monte Carlo,
this furniture is mild to the eye but does
not meld to your body on it if you dig
may have been a her chair, something
not so comfy as a reminder what to do


Peg

Hell Burns

Hell burns the entirety of the spine.
Organs hang and collide.
Eternity impends.

Hell burns it well and frequently,
Takes in the scold, the suicide,
Won't open up even.

All this is ashes kep' aloft by heat;
Clouds have no gravity beside
The molten stone pit.


Mkidza Mlaf
"Mama of the Chama"

they list, in progress

• they want to go slow until you try and pass them
• they claw and backbite for tiny differentials
• they think all food is their food
• they draw you close only to flinch at your over-familiarity
• they move in packs with self-loathing at the sight of a free agent
• they are only pro-their-own family
• they exaggerate themselves until you accept them unconditionally
• they believe life is for fun at your expense
• they don't believe in the concept of sophistication
• they suck up the world's hatefulness
• they burn the world with the world's own resentful burning
• they find and rest their righteousness in history
• they hold smug claim to a future century
• they steep in the dramas of their class oblivious to real pain
• they log in to a web of associations that transcend law
• they speak and behave in an intra-signaling manner
• they stand behind your back and make faces while the other one engages you in conversation
• they spoke like first ladies as children and then proceeded to obstruct and deaden
• they act like money is some kind of degree
• they used to be filled with delight or rage and one was the other's medicine
• they zip in and out but break into crawling straight in the face of authority
• they look one into the the other's eyes with knowing murderous
• they've already pinched off from the earth in a bubble
• they still siphon out what we work for
• they orbit us yet they make us seem peripheral
• they make you forgive them by their intransigence and your need to be free of resentment
• they find me at my weakest moments
• they circle and eye and buzz as if your suffering will fill a need
• they pick off the guards and isolate me in a context of freedom
• they learn how to twist and bend and howl for love
• they each have a sense of individuality and furtive complicity with self-interest
• they look out at the arc of a globe in wonder
• they shill in the first person plural as if they speak for everyone
• they say things like we all love a locally sourced burger
• they trademark phrases like we learn important things in life
• they didn't crawl out of the sea and turn into people here
• they take lands either habitable or uninhabitable and build cabins
• they need somebody tell them whats up   
• they build castles on live burial grounds
• they say they're giving when they're taking
• they say they must first take to give and then give nothing
• they give nothing and explain it's that they didn't get enough
• they smile as they're thieving and lock up the good for not smiling
• they lead you singing off a cliff without themselves dying
• they put their dogs down when they move like you'd turn off a utility
• they claim animal suffering as a crusade and themselves royalty over all strays
• they believe their connection to the non-human to be more profound than most
• they take refuge in a killer's house and act surprised when they're targeted
• they get killed by making killers kings
• they share enjoyment in morbidity when it's warranted
• they take their private pleasure in all kinds of morbidity at every hour of the day
• they beg forgiveness from a terrible conjuring
• they conjure punishments and rewards and go on uneasily with neither
• they counsel that it's choices get us where we are choices
• they've made all matter their monument but won't let you cry on a shoulder
• they murmur sentiments only meant to hypnotize you further
• they hog at light with anachronistic agrarian vigor

Russ T.

mr boy

watcha wanni mr boy watcha wanni watcha wanni
mr boy watcha wanni mr boy
too much money too much money mr boy mr boy mr
boy too much money mr boy boy mr mr boy
wachi wanni too much money mr boy mr boy
mr wanni too much money mr boy


La LaLa

K's fly spread eagle

They have the humanity we selected out of them;
Less intimate species run parallel wild.
It's what makes K's special.
K's are tools hunting companion.
K's fly spread eagle.


Missy
"Full sprout"

Sweet luck

thank you, thank you, i feel unworthy but thank you
i know it's not because i'm good i get such bounty
count of all the good that go with nothing
it has to be sweet luck or grace but not reward
maybe as a rule life on a mean is better than what i was getting
and this is just what other average joes expect


La Chama

Weak of neck

I let 2 of hell's demons
bear me sleeping in a chair
hold, on bleeding wings

a mortal gives up and not
of his will and gravity
ceases to apply as he lives

one's head might loll on
weak-of-neck passenger
who may yet banish sin


Peg

I have everything

All Channels
God Mode
spouse, lover
leather
live, fluffy pets
rugs and paintings
maybe not so much silver
distinguished barware
country, race, height
sex
wallow of enlightenment
medicine spectrum
association
name, address, year
a great generation
work mode, a sleep
context
conscience:
emotion rainbow
millions of colors
available
hemming
30-day window


by Ted

Interior home lights flicker on and off all night

We tried to make sense of the day's two parts:

A sunny normal summer day with tuna fish salad
on soft yellow bread, canned pears in tangerine
gelatin; sounds like someone hosing out the
eaves, but it's rain flying in all directions,
trees split in half and squirrels running mad.

This we feel led to dirty fantasies in which
we are indigenous peoples enforcing nature on
the bloodless uprooted ghosts of future lands.
"According to these statistics, you're going
to need an abortion in 5 minutes, white man."


Ken and Jan

Something unbloody

The Earth kept cool all the way past the opposite stitch
and is now rounding back to frozen via fresh tap water

And everything that happens in the year's second half:
we are diminished, underweight against the bloodless.

Even a plant, with its legs down and in, is a cold polyp;
even reptiles must gift a salutary response to the Sun.

A planet can only be the dirt ball, fecund gutter nursery.
What makes you blush is an orbiting belt of griddle spit.



Ilyn

I Was Scared

A clenched moon, half
my body bowed to the left.
I was scared by how I lived.

Gut and the environment are
playing at mimes in a mirror,
but who moves first is unsure.

I was scared knowing God
could come down on either side
and wouldn't like what He did.



Hoolie

Separate self

What you get are all the effects of having that wanting to clamp onto someone.
Shear off the antlers and they look like a trophy, a crown, but the head is a horror.
To be an actual vise for gluing or detailing or an industrial staple would be more useful.
The trick is to send them your loving without ever losing your sense of separate self.



Mkidza Mlaf

Adjustment of posture

hard purple glasses case matches
the crown royal bags

we find that felt with
satiny golden rope

is a concept, makes a statement,
as does my new eyewear

more like architecture, graphic
design, than prosthetics

the graduating lenses present a
world that's clear but convex

getting used to this falsity plus
potential adjustment of posture


La Chama 
(with Miss Dr. Donna Thong along)