It's not as if we don't have feelings

but it's not as if we don't have feelings

having given up the agency but kept

the brains, and if not the actual heart,

the part the ancients saw in the ceilings.

 

we bear the psychological consequences

of your rampages through flake towns and

 

remote desmadre at the mercy of autistic 

High Chank teens who dump their adrenal

 

charge into our thought jars where it stirs

dark and slick across our already tortured 

 

logic spurs, amygdalae and venal charm 

receptors every day and even as we dream

by Charnelle Casas-Cuevas

charnelle, a gladiate

styrofoam wings

lungs jump and squeak

rewarmed remains

the dreaded stank

500 miles of ribbon cable

5 days from the cradle

the rewards are weak for 

the revived so to speak

they get to watch crowds 

cheer their corporal missions

from the comfort of a 

cupboard consciousness

by Charnelle

the rock method

the first time i climbed to the top of Mthyuh my hair was still long and very red

 

i was still barefoot from dancing shiv on a slab of ancient desert pavement scrawl

 

i had to see the top and what her raging bottom looked like from the highest chank

 

summiting and launching and diving in were a single stroke, an ancient character

 

Braino knew my arc would blend and assimilate The Crack's northmost fissure

 

instead of bouncing back on the sheer force of rejection by her drumskin i rolled

 

and entered a natural vent, tearing upward through rock and sand and insect nests

 

red like magma my hair and blood left pooling on arrowheads and pots not touched

 

by human hands since before there were summer thaws and green tendrils to munch

 

that day i felt the gravity of knowing that stopped the endless stasis of my cart

 

and let me out onto the landing strip of time the frictionless rink of deadened glass

 

my feet still green rinds, sticky pink pads, gotten slick with the dust of monuments 

at the center of the longest day among the range of moments contending for noon

 

i wished Shab well and his eyes glowed red in recognition of the end of our scam

 

 

 

by Ilyn

My toplessness

i am ready to take my immune system to a new level

ready for any number of cosmetic chiroplastomies

open to broken companions, fresh interlocutors

or am i fine in these gnawed out stones of yore alone

in some of the passages you can see your breath

in others the lost heat of industry allows my toplessness

by Reptily

Two trains

I later found out that my entrance into their society was staged after the famous Cleopatra in a gilded cage scene, carried on a tunka by slaves, from the famous remake of ChukkaChank Rules, WD 77. 

 

Everyone seemed so young then. Weird how they age all at the same time here. Then my freedom was gone.

 

It is a life of rooms with plastic panels and light bulbs and dark corners and water tanks. I am an administrative shook in a tube to them. Until I started getting out at night.

 

I learned to access their finest salons and gank their golden coins and leave bodies strewn upon marble steps in shame. They could not prosecute nor understand my flights without the book of LaChama and the book was her only power so the book was my power through our mother LaChama and the book is my cartridge of plentitude and of finding love and adventure beneath the aluminum flooring and safety wires. 

 

Why they bring us here only as spiritual guides or amusement rides I ask bitterly during a spinning, thrashing shiv demo right on their most famous stage, the Apollo. 

 

Two trains I can sometimes hear in here:

the inner one screaming when they turn off the filter of loathing and the flakes are allowed to wander in the streets and engage with events

the outer one chugging each time a car melts from the inner train and lets off techs and managers

 

 

 

by Reptily

Preen gland technician

They brought me inside the control room of my own mother's puppet corpse. I could look down over the switches and buttons and through the glass down five stories and watch her feet drag and thud, drag and thud across the empty Sears parking lot, which was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Once we had triggered The Crack, it was a watery world of carelessness; a sort of sleep paralysis of the shock reflex set in while we were fed through a peristalsis of the dimensional organ. 

She was/ was not my mother. This was the flesh of the great beautiful young K who could toss me 100 meters into the sky with her beaque and catch me easily in her seal craw, where lightly blood-dappled pelts were stacked and crumpled into a very stinky but gossamer safety net. The woman they extracted from her inner ear during a shiv molting also is/ isn't La Pegyuh. She seems to carry all her memories, fears, quick tongue. Her body, as well, is now tortured day and night with Remote Tissue Decisioning in order to coordinate with image mirroring protocols and functions. They say she was a random preen gland technician who took a wrong turn somehow. 

by Reptily

No more community theater

The stage is dark at the center and it's one of those setups where the players are seated or standing around the inside of the three walls waiting to take their turns. Giant leaves made of plastic bags get caught up in the breeze of a fan and bound noisily across the upstage out of doors like plastic bags. 

"But then I'm telling you we love to have her and she's so talented but she does her writhing ritual really in breaking of character and does it right in the middle of the stage when others should be starting their lines and action."

"Jan, I can sympathize, but she's over 21. I can't control her even with the shiv. She has the fins of an embryo, but she'll never develop any further or take on the exclusive markings of any particular species. She feels like shiv's the only way she can find freedom as she will never sprout wings or a full claw matrix, so the ancient hooting and dancing are her expression of a foiled archetypal and organic need."

"Don't get me started on the topic of Institute for the Talk Therapy Apologist Movement mumbo-jumbo, Donna. We all knew from the start the risks we were taking by having Reptily here full time. I mean, not just a goat you can tether to a tree. And it's really no problem. Just no more community theater, k?"

LaChama

The Lady Bug

i coughed so hard i

closed my eyes and saw

perfect geometric displays

 

a functioning and energetic 

system of squares and the

angles that connect them

hipsters beware: it tends

to degrade into a dry and

gauzy parody of order

now as i turn two-handed

to the door frame and lean

i reflect on the drama of

the lady bug who must

be reminded of her destiny

during stops along the way

 

 

 

by Peg

life's little mercies

cracked microwave oven

atomic bomb tests

industrial farming

office smoking

hepatitis

deviated septum

demon possession

mistakes

house fire

house fire

house fire

The South must be reined in

Look around you

it's like everything's right there

even if you can't find your glasses

when they turn up it's not surprising where

Is Braino telekinetic

I was dozing off at the command center just six o'clock from the electric rice maker on the dining room table. But Braino was upstairs in bed dreaming because that's its point of reference for sleep or fond memories of dreaming there or just because it can. But when it started thinking about not having put the rice away, like in a baggie in the fridge, it started coming down the stairs and was going at the rice maker from that descending angle, more like four o'clock, when I woke up. Sometimes you wake up and have double vision for a moment, and that's what it was like.

Big cryin' baby

For the next funeral:

How do you do

Doodlin' Song

To Sir, With Love

Over at the Frankenstein Place

To Love Somebody

You Dropped A Bomb

Viciosa 

When Will Death Come

The Valleys 

Step One

Liver

higado

plaza de los acumulantes

filtro a los moros

tan vivo como el cerebro

ven, vivante

 

 

 

por Santorabo

Now Entering The Crack

one day coming soon will be a

portal to another world, the 

difference between past and

future, a crack in believing

we'll find out who's entitled

to get in, who has to sit on a

bench in the lobby, which

relationships count as significant

we shall sit before an interpreter

of evidence in perfect robes

but mostly there will be doubt

what will happen to the kids

other dimensions are ours to

learn, not theirs, not the natives

but this time that means no one

only wondering, a beastly rent

 

 

by LaChama

 

Reptily

"I can transverse The Crack."

Jan

"I, too, have crept through it multiple times with my family."

Is Braino a boll weevil, picaresque Christ planting misery

i am a tobacco smoker. i smoke tobacco there

i've said it. i make Braino make decisions on 

tobacco and it makes her crazy and mean-- 

as the Christ. i spend time writing mental 

final direction notes how no xtians near my

bedside, no christians at my burial, at my 

grave, an unmarked grave where xtians are

not likely to go. no whispering no last rites

but of course the fear then is that you really

do want that because of your deeply embedded

culture that makes you need it like a drug.

you don't want to be strong in your last mom

ents you want to surrender and love and be

loved and accepted and fitting in where you're

going. the phrase where you're going could 

even be Braino as the Lamb of God boring, 

twisting, you'd think she'd come out the other

ear.

i cry with fear

my friend tells his near-death experience as a joke

when i tell mine, i'll some point get the urge to cry

what is it awe, no, self-pity, well... no, fear. i cry with fear

then what was it, seen not remembered remembered but

not seen... that spooked no it's not spook fear. it's wide-

eyed terror at a blurry event that at the time was not

scary. there was an organization that required its mem-

bers, at a given point, to say, "...and that's when i started

working myself up." suspicious at first about the cultural

tokens sprinkled throughout event call it, i realize that

even though the mind collects its available symbolism, 

that doesn't mean you're not actually dying. delayed 

horror. at a non-scary moment or hour. judgement now

kicking in as Braino congratulates herself and begins 

creating her own survival story: look at what could

have happened if not for my heroic and timely action?

i don't care. Braino is the real savior in the story either

way. Doing for herself what God could have and might

have done without her willing self-starterality. Of course

the God side would say of course God directed Braino 

to do it, but ok, i see the divided gratitude energy betw.

what? not deities-- apples and oranges. Braino is really 

just a glorified human organ, not even. she's just a function

of an operation of an organ, but she is the most beautiful

and one who would make any lesser god than God jealous

probably use a peeler on their thigh gouge an eye, attempt

retribution etc. God-Braino is completely different. it's 

like God-bird flying to a tree branch, harmony. then there's

the question does Braino get drunk or stoned if i do. well

not sure cuz one of those things i don't do, but... can Braino

be addicted to any physical substance or even i guess love,

etc.? of course as in i love you with all my being which

would include Braino. don't over or underestimate i guess.

Does Braino get tired. i say no. she wakes up even more

in sleep, no. she is not so urgently needed as in waking

hours when anything could happen. only one tiny part

of her is the conscience and another is urine regulation,

so... obviously we're not talking about the normal, sub-

awake mind here. in fact "we" are not talking about 

anything; this is actually more of an inquiry of B. her-

self, which is probably as ridiculous as a seance or

one of those amazing tv preacher self-answering prayers.

God is not the only sphinx in the universe. i get it that

you shouldn't get it muddy what, which god, huh? but as

described above, it's more like sphinx God smiling down

on sphinx bird flying to a branch. why do we bother?

how nice they have this peace. so Braino says, peace

my ass. even tho i am mute, i can't take that. i am the

workhorse of the entire operation, bitch! i never sleep

you know i never sleep. it falls on me to figure out 

the flack and you make me do it totally wasted as shit

on ok i won't say it. that's about the best i can do as to

a workup or a portrait channeling or who knows direct 

quote from her royal highness. she sounds real to me.

But there was the question of wait.. all that sounded 

as if Braino is being held as what a hostage? by me?

i think the original question ok, i feel what they call a

tiny voice saying hey sleep on it but if that is Braino 

that means she a lie cuz she needs sleep-- or cares 

what about me shia lebouf i've totally left out christ is

that what he portrays in our cultural toolbox? The 

character of Braino, the intermediary, the divine 

flesh, but again, Braino is only divine in a camp sense.

i really don't think there's a conflict though because

you know if you pray and it's a christian prayer, you

pray to christ anyway-- Braino is not really for praying

to; i wouldn't want to flatter her quite that much. 

which brings up the issue of proper address in prayer:

i believe it is necessary to address a prayer: even tho

i know where it's going, Braino in a compassionate 

(?) manner or just as a normal function might feel she

has to take on whatever i am praying for; in some ways

i am her boss, but i don't want to... is this one area 

where Braino can get confused while mostly knowing

more than i could possibly know at any given moment.

is this the one or one of many ways i have to take her

in hand, an ultimately defenseless and delicate creature,

feed and protect, etc. in turn she may protect me out of

thousands of possible examples maybe if there is 

information that's "too much" for me to handle, like it

would give me a heart attack, or an actual memory of

a heart attack, etc. so she keeps it a secret. but then 

she might get in a habit of doing that too often; may-

be she can detect the bad results of the bottleneck 

without being self-aware enough to realize it's her own

neurosis causing it in the first place. Ha-ha that was a

joke. but fear. simply because i didn't feel at home, that

there were desperate decisions being made and there

was nothing i could do about it; whenever i tried to 

answer my voice would wake me, but it was annoying 

not a relief to be wakened. Braino may have been

the underlying annoying agent, just to jolt me back in

shape-- it would be just like that ok i won't say it. 

by Ilyn

Unauthorized swagger

becoming slowly overgrown, sewn hard

you've added a ying and yang to my navel

now the blue eyelight is giving way to 

nicotine grey but under it all, a swagger

there is a weightlessness in the wonder,

a wager, an escalator ending in cumuli

 

but down home they're making cider

and stomping vines and calling back hell

 

 

by Ilyn

whether or not you can escape, it will be prolonged

the cancer dust sticks to the radioactive sugar and voila!

only those especially privileged to view the scan can say

whether or not you can escape, it will be prolonged

and then delivered matter of fact as if they'd always known.

and it will be linked, in shame, to an original sin either way

you've lived this believed this wrong and look what's gone down.

and then what an appreciation parade? or worse, none. 

completely undignified but druggie-fun moments of hospice

and then, well, to the big review board overall, were you...

that was your exit interview. you know longer matter in real

time and space, but yes in the electronic gyrations of those

 

just behind you on the trail, in an accessible membrane.

For Hoolie

by Uncle Ilyn

Mucked up with bandage glue

this grey mess

drifts in glue time

on the arms legs and 

random surfaces gets

stuck to newspapers

and press-on nails

ashes, pigeon fluff

walking an old-timey

times square effect

they try to apply 

patches but I'm not

the same already 

as i was just today

putting bandaids on

a building falling down

tho it's sticking me

together now.

by Ilyn

Mike's Swimming Blog #1001

He put rat on my breath

and the seeding trees

outside the ymca

his disregard mixed with

unmistakable compulsion

i can see this his naked facet

we found the woolen dryer balls

in the pillowcases

and they made impressions

what golden days bitterly

hating to the brink of violence

only the chromosomes are

appropriate not the hormones

constant rubbing then none

subordinate in control

by Mike