Sincere Little Face

i was at least gonna 

log in an

leave some pathetic

message to no one

but then i remembered

ye are already damn 

complete in Him

and my song carries on...

i got my grrl with her

little sincere sleeping face an

glowing red nails 

from the rag weed an the

 

biting flies she's ad-

mittedly an animal but ya

could eat her up like a

cannibal and every little

 

move that she makes

is worth a second take cuz

she sleeps by my side an

poses for greeting cards an

 

deals out the faces make a

grown man cry like it's

his own baby child looking

up and smiling missing a

 

tooth but pushing

through the discomfort so she

can be there for you an be

there for you there for you oh

 

CHORUS

my child's got me got my

eye got my face got my

eye got my taste my child's

got me got me in her embrace

my child my child my child

REPEAT

by Hoolie

Peg's Failed/Anachronistic Do's and Don'ts for Petty Transgressions

• Just hold the item(s) in your hand and walk out the door with it/them, purposeful but unhurried. Then if stopped, say, "Wow, I guess I spaced out. I want to buy this/these, but I also wanted to compare the price over at [name of other store at mall]."
• If you must flame while in a hooptie, keep hands well below the dash.
• If you are trying to get back more shiny coins, choose a teller who seems to be flirting with you.
• If you have a lighter in your pocket, and there's another one on the table, use the one on the table, and then put it in your pocket. You now have two lighters.
•  Get the shiny coins up front, but make sure his purse is close by in case he wants to add items or go off menu.
  
• Press a dab of his pre-cum between your thumb and forefinger. If it's tacky, use a condom. If it's stringy, you're good!

Take these to switch up sleep type

story-verbal sleep

itching-layered

many-roomed structure

places on maps

view from grave

view from above

view from a passing conveyance

figures beckoning

bent coupling

generic horror

deeply unasleep

torque of somnolents

conscious paralysis

tandem breathing

ever sinking

scary clear

content bemusement

seeking moments

stranded in time

able yet not able

about the bed

night shrouded

stark light black curtains

sweet avoidance

stolen

form of eating

brain stuff

closest listening

despite discomfort

ring of saturn

bobble head

I thought it was all over and then woke up to a whole other day

Yes, I used to contemptualize everything

like the bitter, curmudgeonly professors at

the beginning of my career. They filled the

smoking lounge with grievances and

plotting, derisive cackling in their blur of

fear. But for some the failure has been a 

tenderizer, the corrosive beating toward a

climax of surrender. Is what I'm hearing.

by Peg

Murder grinder

My face was smeared across all the killings

one of them

killed when he'd temporarily forget how to type

innocence stuck in back corners presented as 

stupidity, passion

a mocking deadly innocence put mildly

nature predating pre-forgiveness

unchanging through ages of moral fashion

 

But when they think of murder they see me

I believe I have to tickle them with it

They feel they need to get all into it

I am this free-channel boatman

skimming along

living my life with all these dead along

keeping my eye on what can change

not what's done.

by Ted

The better form of sight

i like to hang myself by the ankles

over the River Plaque, and swing

and watch the sky rock up and back

 

where nature's harsh incense rises 

from tiny clouds with dark edges

fertility independent of relationships

processes do better without light

blindness is the better form of sight

among internal organs is the eye

by Ilyn

"Short for Illinois"

Crappy lighter

births could no longer quell my pregnancy

too many selves were building inside me

i can no longer be always in delivery

 

so i bought this crappy lighter to keep me lit all night

i stand vigil for the principal inseminator

like a lover i will greet him and then end his life

 

 

 

by Peg

rally

Devotees prepare their villages for the master's arrival, readying the alms and gift bandages. They will drape his cart and his dog with wide loops of marigold heads and tiny copper bells strung together with yak thread. They sit in the sun among the striking shadows of the columns in the dusty main commons with their baskets of wool and wide combs and wheels stringing the marigold heads and singing about Ilyn. 

 

our master rallies through our hearts and towns

always seems to think he's never been

pledging to remember us forever

lord ilyn is a part of nature now

he comes in the spitting rain or gloom of spring

he grips our fingers like a newborn child

 

he comes along on a static summer noon

laughs at our familiar terms of address

drinks our autumn vine from the same 

 

bloody cup and passes it around

until we feel again eternal kinship

some will follow all the way to Mthyuh

This, here

The shiv will put you into a nightmare you can wake up from as opposed to no-shiv, which you can never wake up from.

I'm on no-shiv. 

I'm sorry. 

Don't sweat it. I was born that way. 

Is that what you were. Born. 

Yeah my mom

I know. Her name is Jan Jansdaad. 

Was. But you're right, we're all Jans.

I wish I knew more exactly how I came to be. The mode of arrival, that is, not conception. 

Whether you came out of a lab dish or a lightning bolt 

I am still coming from there

Either way you are this, here.

Turning back

The last rings of sun, with the moon surrendering backward on its rocker: it's a scary light in which to lose your dog. Only the tiny desert vichos can hear Ilyn whistling for Shab. 

Showing up unapologetically late, Shab seems happy to back the cart right up to Ilyn's charred and bloody heap near the decomposed granite pit he's crawled out of. 

Shab gets a kinky cord of hemp wrapped in his teeth and pulls, and the door on the back of the cart falls off. 

Ilyn then has to figure out how to get into the cart with the least amount of pain. After all, he is not a martyr. 

A quiet darkness surrounds the pair except for just beneath Shab's hooded forehead, where his eyes are lending just enough red light to see the flecks of cement dust in the air. They would turn all the way back around to the sun again before they'd even find their trail.

Paroxysms of sincerity

Jan Jansdaad is driving along and thinking what if I lost this hooptie. What if anything happened to it at all. We'd be on our way to the next lower rung of economic class hell... 

Wait a minute. I'm back. All the while La Chama must have been leading me towards a hole to The Crack. She knew I'd have to return, at least for a moment, just to see. I see I've been to pharmsupply-- I've got a live bag of hopinaskippina. I'm headed home, for whomever I find there. But what about my daughter-- will she take my place? I just wish we could be all together and safe with descent health insurance. 

Then there is a prick near the dew claw. Lloyd? You're drawing my blood. 

Not at all, Mrs. Jansdaad. I'm just cuddling here next to you while you nap. 

Jan? 

I know, Mom. He's from pharmsupply just like daddy said. 

Now wait just a minute, ladies. 

You're only here to steal our genes and spy.

Oh I'd say it's been quite a lot more than that. I can take you back. Get you reformatted. You'll be an in-between type, like La Chama. Small enough to fit in human structures. Strong enough to

To power one of your slave K's with my brain, as your slave. 

It's not like that anymore. We're finding new ways to

To use our natural bodily processes for the greater appetite. Our suffering is inconsequential. 

Ok, you know what, you guys? I am getting really sick and tired of walking around with a completely open heart to each of you as persons, and you know I kind of feel like that Begging Rajah, with so much, so much to give, and... no hands. You just scheme to cover up or push your strong identities. What about my purpose? Who am I?

Both Mrs. Jansdaad and Lloyd avert their eyes and tighten their lips. One concept they can agree on is the adorability of Jan and her paroxysms of sincerity.

The Begging Rajah

You say that Ilyn is Shab's "new" master. Who is the old one? 

You might have noticed that on Shab's back is an empty saddle made of the finest mantua. It was the seat of the Giving Rajah who became the Begging Rajah but is now the Perpetually Sobbing Rajah. He was so giving of his riches that he even tried to feed gems carved as lady bugs to a living monster poinsettia, which of course bit off his hands. For a while, the raja tried begging from the back of his formerly proud and now ashamed dog, Shab, but it was no use. Shab's eyes only began to glow red with the shame of his master's indiscretion. 

Finally the begging rajah was able to give up begging and live here in this place of death and peace and learned to take on sorrow as his only sustenance. If you look over there in the shadow near the gate, you can see him holding himself up in his grief and sobbing against the stones, having just seen Shab wander off once more with the cart and the redundant saddle. 

Passion of Ilyn

With La Chama off to help Mrs. Jansdaad find herself, Jan and Lloyd find themselves wandering across the stained plaza the morning after Night of Shiv Days. There are two kinds of stains between the cobblestones: the blood of zealots, and the purplish marks left by the shiv left by the K's. Some flekes have scraped it up and made shiny coins selling it; others go on to sell their stories of being scarred by it. 

Lloyd and Jan enter a random alley which becomes an artery that leads them out of the town center and into the Graveyard of Gay Guys. They buy some sausages of vicho and tubes of vine from a vendor and rest against an ancient tree. 

Soon, there is a groaning squeak, and then a thud. And then again, and again. Uninterrupted in their chewing, they watch a dog and an open cart pass into their line of sight, headed for the far stone gate leading out to the countryside. 

It's Shab, says Jan matter of factly, with her new sense of knowledge. That cart he's pulling is thought to have been constructed before the invention of the wheel. It's rotors are hewn square, so they buck upward at the corners and lurch forward coming down on the straight parts. Shab seems to pull it effortlessly, his feet barely touching the ground, if at all. He'll wander in that wasteland until he sees Ilyn surfacing through the rocky scrabble. Dogs think anything that moves must be alive, and if it's alive it must be food or a savior, and that's how he finds Ilyn every time. Shab finds Ilyn and then pulls him along in the cart, which, in all its heaving and jangling, is the only rest that his master will get until the next ascent, the same ascent, to Karihr-Kesh. 

It's reassuring in a way, says Lloyd. Ilyn seems to suck up a lot of the pain around here. Is that what he's for? 

It might be an unintended effect of his passion, answers Jan.

Mthyuh, Tray of Ashes

Ilyn sprints past his single-file train of devotees on the jagged trail up chank to Karihr-Kesh, the sacred springed platform jutting out over Mthyuh's hot mouth. 

Standing at the edge of the Kesh, Ilyn drops his robes and bells and marigold garlands until he is strikingly naked and white-grey because of the scars. His skin is scars upon scars from head to feet. Only the brilliant red hair can break through the gnarled scar surfaces and stand out against the blackened rock faces. 

His hair and cement-white bottoms of his feet are all the eye can see until he seems to be consumed in the black crustiness of the lava below. The devotees crack rocks together and blow into stone pipes and sing.

Charnel nest

A charnel nest sometimes grows around the entire top of a chank as fresh bones are added, wet. They dry while lashed to the rest of the structure with the sinews of the worshipers' bodies from which they came.

Off course

They've chosen an open volcanic meadow in which to relax and reflect: a topless Chamatilly on a jet-black carpet woven by the Virgins; and Jan on her elbows, matching flaps of her wing tissue loudly snapping and billowing above like castle flags.

 

You see Jan in our culture we say that life is not only ours to feel and act as we see fit, but also to be custodians of the franchise. Duty, honor, sure, come into play. But I prefer to see the responsibility as owed to a future self, one who might suffer needlessly without my sustained devotion. Don't keep track of time, but keep feeding the Mthyuh every day. She is life just as we all are life. 

 

I miss my husband.

And you should surely go to him as soon as you have come to terms with the risks that will mean for the both of you. There, I am like a tethered freak who dances for rice. There, Mthyuh Protection Society have become complicit with Pharmsupply to round up our sisters to dissect and disperse and corruption. You'll always be watching your back. So go there, as soon as you have allowed for the possibility that your brain will be splayed open in an incubator and that your body will be thrashed by trees and slammed into chanksides, that Remote Tissue Decisioning will turn you into a great big toy for all the teenage sons of all the ministers in High Chank. 

I can try Hopinaskipinna. Or I'll make a nest for Jan and me and bring him whatever he needs. 

Of course you can. Of course you would. Or all of it will veer off course. 

Sixty times I circled

sixty times i circled

casualties mounting

watched from every angle

my sisters' teeth were flashing

in blood and spittle

history was attacking

virgins stood on balconies

sharing the dread

of my own abilities

by Jan

Stonecakes

I saw them getting very near, just over the Graveyard of Gay Guys, and decide to either turn sharply downward or circle the plaza. 

The first one to dive hesitated then dropped her shiv egg in the second tureen. 

She turned sharply upward as the splash skidded across the first row of rubber and umbrellas. The crowd did little more than gasp. There was a drunken catcall from among the sidewalk tables set up behind the bars set out from the sidewalk and the shops. "Shills!"

Soon there were so many K's circling the plaza that it looked like a solid wall of scale and pynco-fur was undulating in place. 

Another K dove for the second pool, and the splash was slightly different, enough to send a tiny dot of molten matter onto the bare forearm of a tourist in a parti-colored hat. At first she shrieked, but realizing her fortune, laughed just as loudly, then shrieked and sobbed, than laughed, maniacally, again and again as the spec burned more deeply into her flesh. It would only turn out to be a tiny chunk of coal.

The next K knocked over the first bowl with its dew claw and sent a mob of worshipers scrambling for higher ground. 

The sight of it drove some of the K's mad, and they began to swoop at the fleke pilgrims on the broken tureen scaffolding, themselves out of their minds with religious fervor. 

Eat me first! Eat me first, I say! screamed a man in a suit from the highest point of the wreckage. A very skinny K dove right at him, scooping him up in her jaws like a rabbit and hurling him high into the air before catching him behind her with her feet, impaling him with six of her eight back claws. She took a lap around the plaza, squeezing her toes and splurting the crowd with blood from her prize before before soaring off to a nest, presumably. 

I can't yet produce a shiv egg, so I kept circling high above the rest, thinking of Jan and his stonecakes.

 

 

 

by Jan

Hummed and mumbled while coasting

should i be fighting or giving up

do i resist or let this place sink in

am i sinking in place or flying

i have the apparatus in place to

placate my past desires with new

playmates, but it's all so gray

my marital ties, it may turn out

are strong enough for any fire

make me want to stay the same

by Jan

Night of Shiv Days

Some of them are just hoping for the best. 

Chama is looking out at the sunset behind the Mthyuh Town Hall Plaza, crowded shoulder-to shoulder with rubber-wearing, umbrella-holding flekes. The tureens are full to brimming over, the broth coming to a simmer. 

They show up thinking maybe their lives will change or they will have a really good time or they will end up doing scar tours at shiv temples for cash or dead in pieces in a filthy charnel nest. Since there's no time, the only way you can move forward is to shove action in a direction. 

Jan and Lloyd are Chamatilly's guests. They have all the upper chambers of Mthyuh Town Hall. There are shiv boxes and vine and small snacks of fruits and vichos. 

I told your mother, Jan, that I would look after you and Lloyd. She's trying to figure out her destiny, you know?

I do know because lately all I can see is her face when I close my eyes. It is painfully expressive. 

They're coming. Lloyd can see the tiny K-shaped figures in stack formation from a starting point somewhere in the sun. There's not yet any thumping of their tymbal apparatus, but already their lung music of high, tinny strings and echoey vocals is reaching the crowd.

As the sky darkens, it is a silent crowd-- no roaring, cheering, or chants. In their black garb, they sound more like a vigil. The beasts are growing bigger as they draw near. La Chama, Jan, and Lloyd are standing at ancient glory holes carved into the stone walls to safely view the event. 

Jan might have been a little miffed to miss a chance to turn heads in a crowd, but tonight she felt her full voyeuristic morbo bubble to her surfaces.