JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY / WILL VAWTER

Just to be good—
This is enough—enough!
O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,
Do we not feel how more than any gold
Would be the blameless life we led of old
While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!

It is enough—
Enough—just to be good!
To lift our hearts where they are understood;
To let the thirst for worldly power and place
Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face
With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!

See What Happens?

Tough Peggy

Mum's pleated wool skirt was soft and absorbent. Her thighs were not so bony as to be scary or uncomfortable against the cheek, and not so big as to be mottled or odorous. Her knees were a wholesome cushion of responsive and supporting tension, a blood-water-fat balance that seemed custom made for Peggy's face. She cried and cried.

If you could step back from that scene, you would see the projector above the door behind Peggy and that her mother's image was a hologram.

Dear Peggy

Peggy Smith?

Fuck you. Get out of my face.

That's your attitude. But we have taken control of your will chemically. You will answer our questions with the utmost sincerity.

Suck my ass.

Peggy Smith, why do your parents anger you so?

My parents anger me so, asshole, because they disrespected my intelligence enough to give me nothing to get by in life with except some shitty fairy tale about a volcano goddess. So fuck off.

We know that you'd like nothing more than to put your head in your mother's lap and weep.

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU!! SUCK MY DICK!!

So we've asked your mother to come in.

I don't know who you are. I don't know if you are a person and that's your real voice or if you are a recording of a real voice or if you are a machine with a synthetic voice, but I swear to Mthyuh I will find you and destroy you or die gratefully trying.

Your mother is waiting in the next cavern. You may proceed through the hanging beads to your left.

You don't know me at all.

In Search of a Paradigm

If they were all the same price, what did it matter?

Tom and Sylvia sat in the waiting room at Pharm-Supply browsing through old catalogues. Way beyond lipsticks, the most curious pages were the symptom and scripting breakdowns for the shivtropics. Their real reason was to see about breaking Peggy out or smuggling a box of No-Shiv in to her.

CLXXIV. Blyway
Neurodigm. You have many interests which you focus on intensely. You are never happy because you are never satisfied with what you are focused on or else why would you be so focused on it. And why focus on anything anyway. In the big picture, you are a rat sniffing from flower to flower for no reason. Are you a victim of neurodigm?

XXVIII. Same-E
Hopinaskipina. Everything seems fine until all the sudden you have to break your healthy rthyum and engage in uncharacteristic behavior. Consequences include loss of productivity and increased stress factor for coworshippers. Signs of disease-specific denial: "had to let my hair down," "just needed to get away," "fuck you; get out of my face." Ask your shiv priest about your doctor. Then, stop your hopinaskipina.

CC. Rock o' Mthyuh
Blight. Something in the air. You're not the only one who's being affected. But not everyone has the nut to do something about it. You stay right in the head because you owe it to your family, for the safety of whom you are like a lioness. You take your Pro-Labique Pharmashiv whenever and wherever you need it: for protection, for peace of mind. You are not a sick one trying to get well; you are a potentially deadly protector of children. Keep taking Pro-Labique. Don't let them down ever again. If you do, do you really deserve to live?

"Mexican Bean Beetle"

The most likely explanation seems that by jumping, the bean will move itself into a safe place where the larva can relax, pupate and undergo the miracle of metamorphosis ready to continue the life cycle.

Please remember to kill and/or capture and report any new, mutated, or previously extinct species to the Mthyuh Guardian Society, especially if aggressive.

http://www.insectlore.com/xlorepedia_stuff/jumpingbeanmoth.html

Peggy's Incarceration at Pharm-Supply, Day 4

http://www.jbsawid.com/art.htm

Drunk Man Rides Horse into Bank

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=46457&in_page_id=2

Lucky 7's

i, an ex-pro ball player,
slump in my plush armchair.

alls i did was got it rol-
ling and now i get purple

velvet flock on the mouldings
and blue wallpaper. i'm feel-

ing under-plussed now i got
no trade power nor value

it's all overtime now on
a pitiless avenue

and a sorry ride home, too
and except to me, I may

as well be an ohio-
an from hawa-ii-ki-ki.

Duck Gun Rockers, Longhairs and Pinstripe Freaks

It was quite a sight seeing their sons in tight bellbottom jeans, red patent leather platform boots and dago-t's, all their hair long as Peggy Lipton's, holding and aiming those duck guns. Their hair curled down to the tits, wadded up behind the ears where they'd pushed it back to get the earplugs in. At night they'd wander out to the garage with a beer and slug the bag or jam on their Fenders. That night Jay burst in after church and stated that he'd never be seeing Charlotte again and he felt like driving the "goat" off a cliff, and there would be others. Jay: in the exhaust, in somebody else's headlights, walking across a street, always busy setting up a scam or a bust. When the quake swarms would start, he'd seem super with it like how we's gonna go about it now is-- huh?-- we gonna save the world. You gave Jay a tallboy and a mic and you get skinny flesh and bones, flailing in the blacklight and moving and singing till he is soaking wet. He was of legal age.

Torino, however, being his father, didn't like to turn him out. He imagined the blinding golden hair coming off like butter. Rolling a young gentleman's future out before him like a colorful rubber: that anticipation made his ankles feel weak. And now it was the time.

na, junge frau ;>)

Sylvia's next breakthrough: powdered sugar really gave citrus a run for its money without the total blanket of sweetening effect you got with corn syrup.

TROG

Peggy finally had to be hospitalized when she began seeing everyone as a weird creature. The slick, spongy facial covering with the gaping red-rimmed cavern and watery bluish or brown slits, the protruding blow holes. The crown of bristly tendrils, bone-filled appendages like ineffective wings. She questioned every being, object, behavior or event around her and could only see their strangeness. She herself was the most shocking: the brazen, raw persistence of her life form was inexplicable. The materials that had coalesced to form her flesh, and their variations, amazed and disgusted her.

For the first few days, her only comfort was knowing that she had lived inside her mother's body. She began an architectural project which would enclose residents with rib, spinal, and pelvic structures in forged metals across and deeply into a cliff's face.

Chang K. Chang

OK everyone. We're gonna have a drill on what happens if we for some reason lose access to the pollsticks. I know it's hard to imagine a scenario where we would both lose access to the pollsticks and be compelled to continue on with a class session because would there be power anyway and would people be too upset but here we are.

Instead of thumbing the red button, you are going to have to turn your head left, then right repeatedly until I've been able to visually record everyone's primitive answer.

Instead of knuckling the green button, just lift and then lower the head-- again, please don't stop until I have made what we'll call "eye contact" so that both you and I know that I have manually registered your primitive answer.

First question. Should they stop Shiv Sack Week just because we liked Chang K. Chang and she got sacrificed this WD. Instead of intensified gender expression, we can only think of Chang K. Chang and how she brightened our lives and how Mthyah already had many Hell Daughters to milk her. Yes or no. Respond now please.

Blind Skier Follows Voice To Slope's Bottom

Blind Skier Follows Voice To Slope's Bottom

County Coyote Encounters Explode for Shivweek

Unusually high number of attacks during and around Shivweek is giving locals in the Olde Mthyah and Cliff Estates homelands the "shivers."

* Man bitten by coyote while sleeping on lawn (2:45 PM)

* Man bitten by coyote while sleeping on lawn (4 PM)

* Man was stalked, then attacked by two coyotes, and bitten on ankle (Early evening, daylight)

* Coyote attacked and killed pet dog in man’s presence; coyote would not leave (Morning)

* 54-year-old woman fought, using an axe handle, with a large coyote that had attacked small poodle in back yard. Received bite on leg, and despite her efforts, the coyote killed the poodle and jumped over fence carrying the carcass (4:30 PM)

* Man walking encountered 4 coyotes, which crouched, circling him, attempting to attack. Fought off with walking stick, hitting one square across the face (Morning)

* Coyote on golf course ran up to woman, jumped on her back, and bit her on right forearm (Daytime)

* Woman walking 2 large dogs accosted by 3 coyotes; fell backward and fended coyotes off.

* Coyote came into residence to attack small pet dogs.

If you see a coyote stalking your pet, yell and throw rocks at the coyote. Take your pet indoors.

Remember to report any signs of rabid animal activity or steam rising from open ventricles in the desert floor to Mthyuh Guardian Society, especially after a temblor.

http://www.laalmanac.com/environment/ev15c.htm

I Feel You Mthyuh

Ted has returned to the laboratory of Dr. Donna Thong, who has become his regular interlocutor.

"You know I stopped being afraid of wild dogs when I was in France. Aix en Provence. They would come after you circling, instinctively, not even looking at one another, only at you. Perhaps because it was not a conscious strategy, but rather an externalized brain operation of some deeply-tucked, pea-shaped descendant of the jellyfish that has forever been able to interface directly with the outer world without having to go through the conscience, the thus-organic and seamless nature of their movements had a lulling quality that seemed to hypnotize both hunter and prey, dragging them into an even wider and remoter scheme, neither with nor against their wills."

"...Ted, isn't it? Uh huh. Wasn't that a comma splice?"

"One night I was really scared when we took a walk on this country road? We were camping out on this guy's farmland? And these dogs started running toward us. They looked like big, black and white Dobermans."

"Oh," said Donna. "Did they start circling you? Did you throw a rock?"

"How did you know? That's what happened. That's all you have to do..."

"Is throw is rock, yes, I know-- that used to happen to me and my friends a lot when we'd cousin up all summer and hang out behind the bottling plant in Greensborough. It was green there."

"Yes, of course it was. And that is my point-- there were probably plenty of rocks. Yes. Well you see, when I was out near Olde Mthyuh this week after work just clearing my head? There were no rocks at all. Just very fine sand. These were coyotes; they're small, but there were more of their voices than I had ever imagined to hear from a canine species at one time, even in a recording. It was way more than if you go to a kennel, for example. It was a flurry of cries much closer to the squalling of the migratory bird nurseries in the very next section of the marsh."

"Mr. Azir, you are giving me goosebumps now! I think of my little nursry babies before they grew old."

"When I was back in the car I could still hardly dare to draw breath. Without rocks, I was completely without a plan or a defense should they attack. I was traumatized, and nothing even happened."

"It will, darlin." Dr. Thong's voice and smile created a curiously and chillingly reassuring tone of response.

Sunset is Black

coyotes: 100 or more?
In the designated ground,
Who is being hunted, just?

I said you must stand still
watching this rare desert view
man-made wetlands
with so many high reeds and
hundreds of shrill chicks bleating.

You can hear a dozen kinds
of birds and some amphibi-
ans, but mammal?
Apart from the hounds I've brought here,
Wait. Oh my God.

There are
hundreds may scores maybe
OMG coyotes, excited
numerous as birds
against me and my two

exactly
who is being hunted here
end of dusk
dogs stay closer because

only ten minutes from home
the sunset is black
and nature herself
has a hungry sound.

W.A.S.T.E.

Kug was busy trying to beat himself into a slumber chemically. He had full pharmashiv, so he was well stocked. What he really wanted was to just talk to someone, but he'd have to sign a Waiver and Acceptance of Social Toxicity Estimate to get the vouchers, and it just wasn't worth it. But when would they all be able to relax. There was always something coming at them. The funny stuff, then some spooked attention, and then the dereliction.

Three beautiful dogs lounged all around him. One was fluffy and soft, with a crazy look in her eyes and a very high pain threshold. Another was gingery, spotted, danced for chicken. Finally, Juniper was just naughty. Half of one eye was blue, the other a quicksand of sentiment. La La's toe had been taken by a gopher, yet she hadn't flinched. M'Lady's passion was birding, and they sometimes called her Dog Bird or Pickles.

He hid his watch in a drawer when he realized the ticking had been driving him mad. He stared at the glass of water serving its second night on his bedstone. Dust, including a hair, lolled on the surface tension. "My own story twists like a question mark on the skin of my tomorrow," murmured Ted. "I cannot rest while I want so badly to act, to pierce that membrane. I want to tell the story so that I do not end up in prison," he wrote in the themebook next to his water glass. There'd be plenty of time the next day, though, to tell the story. He'd have a cement mine to tell it to. All day long.

daily bag [the Mp3]

daily bag

studdening

JUNK-A-LISHUS!

Is the changing of hats legal as evasion?

Emotional cosmetics is
what you would call
keeping a good
variety of
feelings in your daily bag.

If the charging party
cannot prove
which one you were wearing
and when, vindicate you.

For an insuring corpus
would be absent,
and when corpus is absent,
no fault is found, stud.

It is clear how the walls
could come crumbling down
and nothing could be done
because there wasn't even
a name for what you had.

Everyone just took
off their hats and bowed,
waited for you to
float away
like Lady of the Lake.

It's a method actor's
face exercise
that starts from within.
The focus is on
emotion.

The faces it creates
are not the exag-
erated masks of mime,
but rather a knot in a
jaw or a drooping eye.

It creates the shadows,
imprints of emotion
projected through the
lens of the
mind.

20. Time is a Liar

leper king

Peggy thought about how people from other places often seemed deformed. But then at other times she herself seemed more deformed. At times like now, she decided, it was her immediate society, which included her, that seemed deformed.

It was not only the rashes and funny growths. Everyone's reaction to the invasion or whatever it was had become way more disfiguring than the sum of the symptoms. Moms used to tell kids that if you frowned or looked cross-eyed too much, you would become stuck that way. Turns out faces actually do get stuck in the twisted palsies of fear, disbelief, and self-recrimination.

Emotional cosmetics is what you would call keeping a good variety of feelings in your daily bag. It's a method actor's face exercise that starts from within. The focus is on emotion. The faces it creates are not the exagerated masks of mime, but rather a knot in a jaw or a drooping eye. It creates the shadows, imprints of emotion projected through the lens of the mind.

She'd been assisting Dr. Donna Thong in her lab of late. There was a walk in, a local high school teacher. He'd asked to be put down.

"But why...? Ted, isn't it?"
"Because you are my doctor and that's what will cure me."
"Oh Teddie. Where did you come from? Don't you have a home tonight?"
"I'm no good for anyone. It's no good my being here. I want to take responsibilty for this."
"I can give you something to help calm you down. What's your pharmashiv?"
"I got ProLabique ProLab. 5k deductible."
Dr. Thong was opening his shirt, and some disco music was rising. His face became more and more distraught as he watched her undo the buttons. He was in no physical pain, but for what it hurt his eyes to see.
"Oh. Oh Teddie. Is that real?"
The disco music pounded hard and Ted A. Azir wept and soaked his wide cheeks, his ears, and the hard, blue-green scales growing beautifully across his gym-bought abs. The anomaly pulsed irridescently, armor like with his sobbing contractions.

B-an/ Kor-ible #1 [New Queen Version]

There is neither
Jew nor Geek,
slave for fee,
male nor she,
for inside
Christ's warm
ass, we are
one with Him.

Gayrelations 3:28
NQV

Crystal Rimprint

Rare rainclouds made even rarer moves now above. A donut cloud, but with a center a hundred miles wide, crowned the valley. It was grey, the center was brightest blue sky, and the wind howled. Shiv Sack Day-- but that was everywhere.

Ted and Mike say what the fuck and hold hands all the way to the model homes district. They let the gale half sail them past the BurmaShave-style signs on the long, barren connector road to the construction sites. 100% Financing. Community Parks. Zoned No Sex Offender. Optional Items Now Included. Planned Activities.

The models are garage-first, neo-classic rectangles, breadboxes full of soaring heights. All interior doors have been removed to give more airiness. They are little movie sets, interrupted lives of hypothetical citizens, full of books bought quaintly second hand, but deliberately placed. Below the coat rack at the front door: Supreme Court Proceedings. You are living the lifestyle of lawyerness. On the overstuffed couch in the kitchen wing: The Carbohydrate Addict's Cookbook. Glass decanters of raw macaroni line the counter tops.

In model #2, Asian mother and daughter prospective buyers stand chatting in the 200-sq.-ft. kitchen. Mother appears to be slipping some of the props into her shoulder bag. Wooden spoons. Every model also has a counter top cookie oven to create a cookie smell which is said to have psychological power over buyers. One thinks one must be on camera.

They've sacrificed back yard space for the community security parks. They want everyone out where everyone can keep an eye on everyone. Bathroom fans are running.

The back sliding glass door of model #3 has been smashed into thousands of safety glass chunks and replaced, but not cleaned up. The broken pieces are on the outside. One of the his/ her walk-in closet doors in model #1 has been forcefully ripped from its tracks. The rubber rollers had begun to burn against the metal and left streaks before being replaced. There is an iron fence disallowing exit directly to the street.

Passers through in these model homes, especially for Shiv Bowl, feel as if they are left to their own fantasies, with no sales personnel present to face scan you. They do that efficiently enough before and after. Guy, a sales VP and owner, scans Ted carefully for honesty before refusing to show the place. He needs to be home for Bowl and the Shiv Sack. It's only once a year, and he likes to participate in Payment of Blood.

Strolling over to the other models, Ted and Mike can tell the donut cloud has gone nowhere, and the wind is just the same. The model home promotional flags are getting their ultimate test and looking like faded historical salvage already. This is some kind of land hurricane but where the center is fast and big, and the edge is thin with a bright lining, a crystal rim print right above them.

donut cloud

It had been especially difficult for Peggy to quit smoking because she thought of herself as an artist, and most artists have a smell of their media about them. Spandex and rubber, propane, clay, absinthe. Even laptop writers sometimes smelled dusty and grimy, from books. Computer graphic artists, to the contrary, just smelled like their own bodies, tasted like their own mouths. Or sometimes new carpet or airplane food or baby food. Peggy felt exposed without a cover, or at least a veil, and took to burning incense with her Pro-Labique Nico-Chews.

The question wasn't being a mother or not; it was how responsible would she be, really. She thought those girls were great. But taking a step back, would they be better without her?

This was either a sick train of thought or a healthy train of thought, but it was a familiar train of thought.

Their Military Recruitment Hymns Lie

Their military recruitment hymns lie;
but they have a voice that's so soothing.
It would be obscene to dance to one of them,
so what accounts for the desire to soar and
fly?

Dog Med [the Mp3]

This post has been erased by the Muthyuh Preservation Society.

Dog Med

Dodi get is cheezie sometime
fo bed, sometime with is supper.
Dodi lick is wrist knuckles
fo sleepie, joyin da crib ah
definid f'heeum.

Dodi gotta condition an it
ain't not gettin inny bedder
but neethuh izit gettin whurs
cuz ah hide sm dog mayud
in he cheezie.

Shirley v. Dodi al Fayed

Here's how Shirley get Dodi out his privilege rug and pillow for illin pets:
She come up with a bone, drop it right there nex his head,
start growling like he gonna take it;
he's lying there like what?
she get so scary he get up and leave.
she lie down on da pillow saying I'm da top bitch now.
Po Dodi sleep on da wood flo.
He got a condition and he her elder. It his dogbed.

19. Time is a Liar

"It's like you climb in bed one night, and you wake up, open your eyelids, and then you get up, and then another set of eyelids pop."
"Pop?"
"Just about everybody reports the same feelings, uses the same metaphors, including calling it a pop."
"That's a new one."
"What they report is that their universe starts to feel like a big, largely empty high school gymnasium."
"I know. With merry-go-rounds."
"And gravity and everything else like before except the..."
"Time seems stupid to you."
"That's right, Sylvia."

* * *

"Do you feel heartattacky right now?"
"Oh please."
"I'm serious. Last time you tried this... and you weren't even bloody. What happened to you?'
Tom was solemnly opening the package.
Sylvia's vocal intensity was diminishing. "It's just you know how I feel about... I don't understand why it hasn't happened to me, so I'm naturally..."
Then the two of them sat quite still at the round kitchen table in Sylvia's dining room.
They peaked over the edges of the wrapper as kids before a glowing cake.

17. Time is a Liar

"That's good-- only a couple of hours past p-a-t promised arrival time. What's the FedEx?" quizzed Sylvia.
"Hiya. It's Cheap n' Simple. They do mail now," was Tom's answer.
Sylvia stood back to see what Tom would do, where he would go, once across the threshold. He seemed to be wondering as well. He carried his package as some would an excremental urgency; it was what clearly mattered to him at that moment. Sylvia wondered if possibly a digit or other flesh fragment had been sheared off during an accident and he had it on dry ice or...
"Sylvia, come and sit down with me here at your table. Come. Please don't argue."
Sylvia felt odd walking toward him. Did he just order her? It was a physical weirdness. In her legs.
"Remember suit guy at our closing night Herpes for Christmas? Adam's apple. You said his eyes were dead, like Huckabee."
Sylvia thought about that man. She had felt a strong, silly urge to ask him to hold her. Just hold her. But why... "But why..." Sylvia began, sitting down on the high-back stone across from Tom.
"Listen. They sent me this pharmashiv. It's supposed to be someone in the community. I'm just a distributor."
"They..."
"I'm a rep now. First one. They know what I know. I don't want to say I told you so, but even they think it might be evolution, plain and simple."
"And that you are the latest model! Oh, Tom. You are so full of shit! These people will tell you anything, and now you think I'll buy the same fucking bullcrap."
"I told you all along there wasn't anybody. I kept clean and you abreast of all my love needs. All the way up until the day it happened to me."
Sylvia cocked her head in sarcastic interest.

16. Time is a Liar

"...yes, anyway, I'm of the school that says the female orgasm does indeed have a locus, yes, centrally... but.. but just listen. 'Tired of breaking ziplocks and the fancy-schmancy stretchy stuff? Just open, fill, and twist! Cheap n' Simples don't even need a wire tie.'"
Sylvia kept smiling up at the box, which she was holding to the light over the kitchen sink. Finally, as if responding to a dead silence, she added, "So, I just saved a bunch of money on these bags. And I'm delighted. Yes. I'm fine. OK then. Sure. No doubt I'll be here. Bye-bye."
Then she burst to life and was glancing at the dusted-over vcr clock on her way through a brightly lit livingroom. She wasn't sure how long she'd been standing there letting the meat fibers loosen when the doorgong rang. It was Tom.

15. Time is a Liar

I'm walking around in a fairy land, thought Sylvia.
She finished her promenade through the kitchen at counter's edge. She and some new yorks were marinating in Chateau St. Jean cabernet.
"It's a beautiful wine," she murmured, having memorized the back label.
"Not accepting pharmashiv is like just being your cranky self, except that everything is more surprising. And you feel that there is no choice but surrender to certain adversities. Certain thoughts simply must be blocked." She was speaking to an old friend on the phone now.
"Last night, I was suicidal. This evening, with dinner ready to go, I'm just floating, like flotsam. The disaster has occurred, and there's nothing left but calm, seagulls. But life has shortened. Just that much. And however much I added to my free radicals, you know, from the stress."
Her interlocutor, unknown, must have spoken for some time then, giving Sylvia a chance to sip some more and press the bottom of her glass like a stamp against the steaks in the Cheap n' Simples.
"How did you know? They're cheap... and they're simple!" Sylvia mouthed, reading the box of plastic bags.
"OK, okay..." she seemed to be getting hooked back into the conversation now. "Dephallocentralization, sure, but Cixous wanted to castrate men-- it's not just implied. Sure; escriture feminine is a penknife. But wait. Listen to this. Are you ready for me to blow your mind?" Sylvia leaned into one hip and pulled out a baggie.

Wasn't it...?

i can hardly
apply my lipstick
for emotions
running free

i see visions
of our union
and the sad
state of society

i feel guilty
when i think of
all the times i
pressed my personality

i get sick of
these ruminations
when i could be thinking of you
it's all about me.

I can hardly
put on my makeup
'cus the gal that's in the mirror
is not the guy i should be nearer
and no matter how i preen
i find he's nowhere to be seen
I can hardly
remember his name.

scratched on cave wall (translation)

when i lost my babies
my society started in
on watching me for signs
of depression and mania

apparently i got so down
that i sang in tongues
and laughed at my tragedy
pulling out my hair and an eye.

now they make me lick
pharmashiv from a low
stone and run ceremonial
volca shiv. i can't vote.

Fire Shore

Fire Shore (the Mp3)

Fire Shore

There is a shore
where fire laps
on the coals

chic as Lourdes
volunteers
wade in the flame

when they return
towel around them
they are maimed

but they live en-
chanted lives from
there on in.

everyone
wants to know them,
see their pains;

they are a source
of inspiration
for the lame.

you can trade
your trudge and bot-
her in a day

for scarring wa-
ters that God made
while insane.

Song of Chamatily

Tom went for tacos and beer. The normally surly prole waitress was charitable in tone toward his misery, but he felt neither surprised nor grateful. He took the stone near the window, daring her to make him move. Two or more only here. She merely brought him a napkin and a dirty fork. She was indifferent. Tom was indifferent. This pleased Tom somewhat, though he remained unconvinced of anything.

A large, interracial prole family, probably her relations, was sitting across from him, so it was difficult to stare straight ahead without the children stepping into his line of vision as they scooted in and out of a booth they had taken over for themselves. They went behind the counter to help themselves to more chips and did balletic turns and leaps in between.

A black man who must have been the children's father sat and stared at Tom. He might have been searching for a sign in Tom's face that he disapproved of the bond between himself and his brown wife or of his innocent offspring. He might have felt jealous of Tom's solitariness and apparent freedom to go out for tacos and beer alone. He was clearly troubled by Tom. Tom shifted his eyes to the left, and then to the right without moving his head. This did not shake the gaze of the black prole man.

One of the girls found that she could slide easily on a smear of guacamole on the painted cement floor. She decided to do the splits while slurping the straw of her iced horchata, skidding the spill under her shoe. When Tom looked up, it was a woman staring at him from the same table. He guessed it was the black man's sister-in-law or a friend of his wife's. The woman's expression was also disturbed, but it was more likely, Tom felt, that her concern was child abduction and rape. Tom's food came then.

He could not remember any previous meal that day. Morning itself seemed many weeks in the past. He ate the tacos like an animal and sent the rice and beans back because they were cold.

I Blow Life Out My Ass

http://www.history.rochester.edu

"Why do you come to me now Tom."
"I don't know, but it may be just your improbability. Sometimes I go where life is least likely to be, and tonight I saw your fire. I also snapped the axle on my hooptie driving over some unexploded ordinance. Someone else might feel lucky to be alive."
"Why do you turn from life Tom."
"It's trying to rub me out. It doesn't want me except as a host, and I do not accept that."
"Life is all you have."
"Life is cheap. It can't afford me. Life is a Bolshevic revolution. It wants to break me up into small, poorly-appointed apartments."
"Do you believe in the Shiv."
"I do not."
"Do you have health insurance?"
"Only if I take the shiv. And only for pharmashiv."
"Auto Club?"
"Yes."
"What does your shiv priest say."
"You are my shiv priest."
"I only do Volca and sing. I am strictly ceremonial."
"I want to stay and hear your song."
"I am in a bad mood Tom. Volca did not go well. I cannot sing now."
"Maybe you can refer me to a shiv priest who gives a shit."
"Tom. You are a leper. I care for no one else."
"One song, Chamatily."
"Then will you call AAA and accept life's plan?"
"I will accept your song Chamatily. Life covers me in boils. I blow life out my ass."
"Very well. I sing. You bleed and ooze. We die together. Then we see about a truck."

http://www.hooptie.de/

Fortunately, though she was muddy and on the ground, it was only the driver's skirt he wanted. He had already made holiday mincemeat of her shoes and her kairn terrier.

PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis)

http://www.nwcphp.org/

Bangalore Street Dog Menace

http://r2blore.blogspot.com/2007/01/street-dog-menace.html

He Jacked a Hooptie

Kug speaks to us directly from a windy, 10-acre golden poppy meadow near Cliff Suites.

"I have dogs and my dogs are free. I didn't come up here and make a sacrifice on this land, move my life, so my animals would have to be in a cage. They run when I run, eat when I eat, walk when I walk, and sleep with me. I've got a big four-poster with a California queen stone, and that's where we wake up every morning."

Four fluffy one-hundred pound dogs romp in circles around him when he walks, and walk beside him in the colorful high grass when he runs. Kug's long blond hair all blows over one ear as he sends a smile back to one of them. Gray clouds are beginning to blot the sunshine and cast hand-like shadows. There is a faint mechanical sound, possibly woodcutters.

The dogs are suddenly gone. There is a screeching of tires.

"Pippi! La-la! M'Lady! Come!"

It was Juniper. He'd run down to the one-lane road and in front of a car to stop it so that he could attack the driver. He was successful in this.

Someone's husband was screaming like a child. There was grunting from behind the car, an Edsel, and Juniper's persistent growling insistent throaty message.

14. Time is a Liar

At night, Reptily prayed to her old god without daring to move her lips.

sprinkler on a wicca twilight

it's cold and wet, yet welcome
to some life forms, even in January.
Even in the Northern Hemisphere.

some idiot paid to have fairy sprinkles
punched into the lawn, but it's
green now. He's got leprechauns on the inside.

dapsone was good enough for a while
then they started getting pissed off and organizing
marchers of the truth brigade were brought by magic.

they had to start putting cameras on their body parts
to follow their trajectories. They called this
time. Heads on shelves tell the story.

13. Time is a Liar

"...and even pain was just a confirmation of my selfish assumptions. Vol. Rabbits. I took the palace mascots' unconditional love and seeming empathy as some kind of validation even when no human would cosign my bullshit. vol-vol. Take me now vol."

Reptily was in her second day of Volca. Volca starts when you put the burl in the fire. The days cannot start until you have seen the sign in the burl. Volca has three days, unless you do not come to the end.

"I allowed my mistresses to become familiar and then chided them for trying on my ribbons vol. Vol. I wore the ceremonial slippers which hurt my feet because they showed more heel vol. Then I used your name in vain I said 'Ay, Mhthyuh my feet.' vol. vol. Eat my bones first vol beg vol."

Reptily shifted on her shoes. She was in a wedding gown and heels as a symbol of her marriage to Mthyuh, the geo-god. She was expected to perform these ceremonies, and everything she said was recorded meticulously by seven nude albino scribes. One of these had a red afro.

"Ilyn, what day is it. Illyn. I didn't say 'vol' chyle tell me the day."

Ilyn responded, "Your Volca has begun, Chamatily. You know the answer."

"Ilyn you gotta help me. Call me Rep. I'm sweat'n. I can't take this. Throw me a clue. Vol Ilyn."

Reptily was panting and her forearms were starting to slip down toward the spikes. She twisted her wrists around so that the binding would hold her up.

"Chamatily we bathed and robbed noblors together but I always respected you. Now we have a job to do. I'm not corrupt."

"Vol. Take Ilyn last O Mthyuh. Take him last vol. How I will prep his shivgrub without shivwash so to send him to you sooner vol I'm the one. Take me unwashed vol nothing harms you. Vol. Take Ilyn last vol."

12. Time is a Liar

The phone rang. Reptily, a comely and immaculate topless black woman of 35, let the unsheathed metal-tone red satin comfortor from Montgomery Ward fall below her shoulder blades to answer.

"Mom. I have a big shiv tonight. What do I always say. You come and fall down. Please. Oh and you like your 6 mats behind the rope net. Far above drainage. Yes and I love you." Reptily's view gave her mountains and pink clouds that morning. She knew she would be able to get her mother to come to the Shiv and pretend to faint.

She was eating Blood Hope wafers right out of her communion kit. In bed.

"Mama this is the only way. You, free. We in two tall house. I help so many people and little children. And I got my papers. Everyone respect us. You repeat now few times, go to bed. Little children yes. Papers. Respect us."

Things had not yet begun to go wrong.

11. Time is a Liar

Still, the flame could not break through.

"Hooo. Cooo. Hooo. Pit spot. Pit spot. Cheese or Hawaiian. Cyclamen."

The flame sank down, peeked back, and disappeared into its lair between the branding-hot grate and the underside of the burning logs.

"I choose my gift to be..."

Reptily gasped.

The burl was spewing a rapid fire of sparks against several points on the rock, above and below the pot line. The burl's face popped and fell away hideously. The symbol was clear burning red and gave no sign of waning for lack of fuel. It was the 6 ridges and prostrate child. Prolabique Pharm-Supply.

"If it burns till sunrise, we are in shit."

Reptily slumped, rested her chin in her hand, and spat at the hairless dog curled by her feet.

10. Time is a Liar

Reptily sat on a footstool before a fire she'd made. Her specialty was burls, but she could also read the heat spots and Burnt Issue of cones, ashes and legumes. This oak burl had burned through the eve of and into the first morning of the new W.D. It was disturbingly reminiscent of a six-hour vision of hell she had experienced using wood from the same river bed the winter before. It's sandy, but it's cured. Miss Sprint just must not have been hosing them down. But fire's eye knows all. It can still carve its message.

She poked at the chunk of glowing wood and lifted it trepidatiously, as if she expected ugliness. "Yes, it's all written there." Reptily let the sandy, helmet-like shell of bark fall back on its tortoise legs of cinder. "Now it must burn up from the bottom. There will be a mark in the sand."

"All year, I do nothing good. I am a samurai against all best choices. I want this WD to break, and in her last flame, for the Mhuthya to roil up and bring home her bad daughter. Bad hunger to good. Vol-vol. God is pleased."

"All year in my pain I treat others bad. The world is my suffer. I am your food Mhthyuh, is me to take to your bowel. Vol-vol.

"All the days I eat I say I have something bad. Vol-vol. Vol-vol.

"I am only so sweet to get birds in the trap, and they rot. Because I have too am too much Mhuthya. Vol-vol.

"My children are lost. I have no children. Take my children. You are their path. But eat them last. Vol. Vol.

"Even temple mascots chew their own bones for me to complain vol. Even my babies have crawled away.

"I put my hair in fire to feed you, vol, I am gorged with lush diseases of lust and mimesis, horror and disgust, fear, misrepresentation, betray, go over, don't listen, TV all time, wastebag, simpleton, hypocrit, make death.

"I am fresh and livid and salt regret, vol. This day. Last day. You ate them all. Vol. Vol."

Reptily's spiny forehead rested on her knees now. There were more items, but why.

"The sloth, the fool, the reaper. I can only see myself, but I cannot see..."

It would be soon now. If she got the 2-spear sign, she could fight and run ahead. Trapped at home was a murder to her.