Edifice of manliness

Jan and Peg are hanging upside down in a gentle cataract. Their dust and dung are coloring the water purple. They do not have to raise their voices because they are able to speak and understand with their minds only. 

JAN: I was lidderly punching myself in the head with my uh... claw knuckles, caused an avalanche that wiped out a populated chank. Trying to think of where i stashed my cloakawax. It can feel like one is lost in life when it's just their bobbles they can't find. 

PEG: What is it like not being lost in life, Jan? 

JAN: Ah so perhaps--I mean, I get it, I can't answer that question--maybe misplacing health and beauty products is just a reminder of being lost in general, and therefore it's even more annoying. 

PEG: But you have goals, a plan of some kind, or you think you should have those. 

JAN: Uh both; i mean wherever you get your values, as imperfect as they may be, what else are you going to go on? My drive to contribute to society to make something of myself if not a beautiful family then a mark, a good mark, an edifice even. 

PEG: That thought carries the obscenity of manliness, no? 

JAN: Are you saying that learning to live without linear time is the same as dephallocentralization? That the concept of work as building toward the future and goals themselves are outdated masculinist tropes? 

PEG: I'm saying that our environment provides for us. We don't have to worry about our next paycheck. When we are thirsty, we drink from a rivulet of melting snow. There's nothing more to do than turn our heads. When we are hungry, a fleke is right there, on a cliff hike or a chain gang. Our purpose is only to be and to enjoy. Forever. 

Trans. by Phyliss (embedded)

Tribal dance for wedding

At a late in life wedding there was a tribal dance

performed by the bride and her brother

the guests expected them but not the other

Their feathered sleeves scraped the all-purpose flooring

The track was more than six minutes long

They each took more months than that to recover

Their bodies were blurring into the wallpaper

Even there indoors their hair sweat dried in wind

At several points he tried to stop her

She seemed to be expressing a life of incomprehensibility

And he a cattle rancher's drive to drive and drive

Lesser ceremonialists may have left it to stationary 

headbanging but this was a once in a lifetime

reckoning with sense itself its corrosive limits 

its lack in every answer

and dancing through that crack

no one joined them on the floor when it was over

Reptily-ily

My favorite surgeon

this surgeon was into plastics and he

sewed me up in tiny careful knots

that one almost bursting in anger

seemed to be so afraid of the nodule

he dared not insult it til the final moment

another claimed no students were involved

but he was one day a kid with a drafting table

and the next an umbilical slasher 

my favorite and i conspired to decline altogether

and send him off instead to the cayman islands

 

Ilyn

Bonfires are moot

It's brave of you to be in touch as I dissemble disassociate dissolve

It's clear it's not just morbid curiosity that makes you stay involved

Perhaps you learned before i did to not expect tomorrow

This sorrow born of understanding time and vanity sloth vice

You got the best three times on steps: formal wear throwing rice

They got pieces of our minds a lot of meat and plenty deep

We've got our pain to mine shallows to drown in words to keep

I got to explore occupy the boundaries thrilling roads to take

And now, as I stand in the rain on terminal monday, a scene to make

I see how fucking fucked this fucking world has fucking fucked me

I see the shit the shitty shit this shit of shit has shitting shat me

And i can take a breath and feel the float of my floating being floating

And if it's the end the ending means the end of trying to see ahead

To what the hell hell would have been that i'd have done instead

by Ilyn

Grandiose nightwalker

through this brick there is knocking about from the empty

house next door between the normal echoes from the highway

all movement now seems obscene who would choose these

hours to mess around in their yard or bike perhaps a ghoul 

not a sprite they sparkle best in twilit bowers of urbanity and 

archeological digs not in the living pulsing emptiness of full

refracted light this moon even has a satellite a star that looks

itself like a moon against the misty queen soaking in tulle 

only a few days ago it was really winter and i rather liked

having gloves on wrong hands the unexpected pulling on

unsuspecting patches of skin hardly noticed a flag beating

in the dark beneath a neighbor's porch shingles or the house

fallen silent that always has barking dogs and the prints of

their paws still there on glass in the street lamp's limited 

aura there's the assumption that a community is at rest or

simmering behind doors with lamps with motion detectors

the trick about going out to see what's happening when 

no one else is there is that you then become what's 

happening and because nothing is supposed to be

happening you become a species of trespasser attention

grabber ghost cat burglar stealer of visions and movements

not meant to be seen and also meant to be not seen but

also seen often enough that there aren't many questions

or witnesses to see to it you don't see what you're seeing

 

 

 

Don Sidon 

(Trans. por Dawntay)

I only want to waste this day

 

jarring when the screen goes blank

mind is awake but the body is numb

same if you like to party or paint

might look dumb when it's said and done

 

might feel great when yr at yr peak

creed might translate to the joy of life

wait another 20 years before you speak 

never live long enough to get it right

i only want to waste this day

on vanity and distractions

waste it into infinity

there's no tomorrow and that works for me

though it doesn't cure the anxiety

get to hang onto my piety

nose is open to society

Reptily-ily

O Winter, Fruit of Betrayal

another half moon with a hard edge

there's just enough light to get around 

there's a precious circle in there but you

still need the lamp to find shit in leaves

soon full will feel like almost too much

a self-parody getting pretty old

we project our nature on that thing

it's deader than you or me but there it is

you are a tiny horse tonight whereas once

it was clickety-clickety clickety-clickety now

it's a click and a clack a click and a clack clack

you stop and stand to act as weather redactor

For my Lala,

by Jan

VACATOR

We set it all up together but then you vacated without moving

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

woe-ooo-why

Instead you didn't answer or acknowledge the dogs' or my howls

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

woe-oh-ooo-we-ooo

I shouted your name stomping room to room in the big house

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd  

we-oh-whyy

I agree it was crazy because no one was really there

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

oh way-ooo ay-yay

You are one of the putrid moments of silence in french cinema

d'd'd'd 

ay-yay-oh

How the back aches from the lack of lines

d'd'd

woe-ee-oh

I keep the memories of unspoken love

d'd

ooo-ohhh

And a mask of your face

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

ay, ay, ay, ay

d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd d'd'd'd 

ay, ay, ay, ay

[repeat]

Lil' Modat

 

 

 

 

Heap of tulle

 

literally an emergency is just what comes up

but you're more inclined to peak over the edge

the more anxious you get aware you become

it's a gambler's disease a disassociation 

everyday drama depends on what could happen

to stop the world from turning look in the other direction

after a stage length of chaines turns even if you spot

focus on a stationary chandelier balcony velvet seat 

in frozen time and space you must still breathe

which has less effect on aging than the alternative

your mind is temporarily stunned by spinning

you can consume and blow out the stillness

 

without taking the challenge in hand you'll end up

walking in circles like a dehydrated desert refugee

then crumpled swan like in a heap of tulle

the centrifugal force will have taken on a life of its own

Dr. Donna Thong

Hard scrabble

 

JAN: What should we do should we make it so the genders are a grab bag that one can assign oneself in any combination, or are we saying these were assigned divinely, not by choice, that it's the Body that came out wrong. Or not that at all. How shall we know. What can I ask that doesn't put me at a disadvantage. It's supposed to make me vulnerable. That's so I can understand. I who don't understand. The understanding stands in the soul of the haver of the identity. We know from years of being referred to as it/ that that it seems maybe to us petty demanding the gender after you are already distinguished clearly from other classes of ambulatory sentients like the grasshopper. 

PEG: It sounds like you've been thinking deeply. Why? 

JAN: ...

PEG: I was listening. I agree you're vulnerable, but not because of the new gender directives. They are only asking that you be sensitive and thoughtful. If you're already that, you'll have to do shiv all day. 

JAN: They're asking for more than that. To get a W.A.S.T.E. I have to say that I've earned nothing if everyone didn't have the opportunity. That obviously counts out all K blood because as enormous soaring reptiles there are gigs necessarily exclusive to us only. 

PEG: What's really lame is the whole premise that we're included now since we're not going to kill hunt or eat so what have we really gotten in return.

JAN & PEG TOGETHER: Friends' Service Hangers! 

JAN: I feel a lot fresher in general. I focus on the day to day. There's some good kibble and fruit snacks. 

PEG: Tell me in a thousand years. How content you are. They think we're vampires just because of our lifespan is long and theirs is short. Because you're a seroconversion, you're not all K, and you're new anyway. I don't want to bring you down. K's fly spread eagle. 

Peg and Jan have been lying back sunning their tummies with their elbow spikes holding them up with their dorsal flaps unfurled in the wind. It's an ancient river bed. Their spines have broken through the outer crust of sediment and leave canyons of shadow and dust behind when they each roll to the right pull up their left spike and slam it in again way up pointing toward the cliff face. It looks like they're about to ski, or fly, but instead they leap at the rock horizon with their toe claws and scoop the air behind them and scrabble craning their necks up the cliff to their hangout. The rock has been hollowed out and boulders pile up at the base, which is also where they drop the extra bones. 

JAN: Is it because you're a lesbian you try to discourage me? I have joy thinking of my husband and wish we will be together? You want me there under your dark cloak? 

PEG: Haha bitch shut the fuck up. 

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

JAN: They is some mens around here an my nose is open.

PEG: There is no mens. Just more gender question marks either being ported by pharmsupply or coming in wild like you through The Crack. Now go back and read the directive. This is your life now. Jan is far too small to have a meaningful relationship with you anymore. That's all in the past. He's tiny; you're big. Doing this is not about that. You have to represent the boundary-lands. 

JAN: No I get it it's not even about like I'm here with you or you with me or we're here together. It's more about this rock shelf and some snacks and the open air and the mist and what we mean and what we can do but don't do. 

PEG: But also what we did do history and what we do do because of our air skills and gravitational importance and in terms of fertilization to all the chank communities.  

PEG & JAN: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

per Phyllis (embedded)

Sports N' Sex Crimes Bugle

LX1 (frag.)

instead of taking on a whole new imaginative god-world

they simply refused to learn much about the science-world

and from that mystery their fantasies hung

they were pendant on truths too fiery for questions

their humility grew from an easy acceptance of unknowability

even the experts kept jumping all the way ahead

to the volcano's edge of knowing

and within those boundaries sought to keep proving nothing

 

La Chamatilly

Zaul Eikense (trans.)

Omne Quod Scitur

LX1 (frag.)

i don't rise

we couldn't tell why it was bright out

basic blindness was the scheduled moon

it was a reflective light but of what

lala keeps track of which route/ night

we headed left below the shiny cloud cover

these days she's prone to weave and digress

the sounds have changed with the freeze

what makes it through the brick is a moaning

now and then a snap, the mini pipes of tinnitus 

by Jan

don't touch and don't look

 

X:

you have a dazed face narrowing your attention to the peripheries

as a fish looking ahead and behind might be the effort part

it doesn't matter where i stand because you are my object, not the opposite

i would torture you with language if i were much better at it

you are made humble by not having anything better to do

Y:

even i am your this or that sounds to me to be too self-referential

so i'll be silent to also avoid objectifying you with the word you

this is half a hollow ringing sphere also with a ring in its nose

there we go we is presumptuous but it he she all ok by me it him

i am attendant by accepting attention as one would rain

 

 

 

by 

Reptily-ily

trans. by 

Menen Jenral

a shopper forcus

tonight we're going out into the field, darling. far out. 

i won't see you again til the pictures come back

we'll point the lens where the world would be

had it not been and gone so quick

perhaps it still exists between the clicks

even our faces might rematerialize

thanks for the kisses but i fear i'm your salt lick

hollowed out on one side and more sensitive there

where the wind passes through i glimmer

my elbows operate as if by riding straps

with your shit i can still pluck the unfrozen grass

my knuckles are warm and let me tie the knot

but a massive arctic front is imminent

i'll stand in the kitchen window to watch you squat

by Jan

Tonight's dog walk

 

flashback three days it was a

half moon with a blade on the flat side

then came the self-imposed blur

an off angle of mismatched crescents

suggests a circle but

now it's joined up with other forces

also in their glory if for an evening

Toris, the horoscope lady in her fort

her tense prophecies about the weather

the lottery is now our widest belief tent

into the dark is where we went

passersby were spooked and silent 

we could only hear them in the grass

when they were already up upon us

pedaled fast because it's become dry

i produce a plastic bag from Pharmsupply

and pick up lala's shit

by Jan

Tonight's dog walk

you can always plan for a fall but when it happens

the ass goes to ground fairly quickly

you live in more than one dimension and

you've got to be aware of the one you're seeing

 

upside-down world where the signs are all menacing

right-side up world where the signs lead to an exit

if not you'll mindlessly play along and fuck up

or get tripped up in the signs and become despondent

but none of that will keep your balls off the pavement

overall if you can still feel them you're fine

by Jan

"Chilly, still. Lala just stands and seems to forget her purpose. To evacuate her bowels, she has to strain against me on the lead."

Tonight's dog walk

 

a half moon hung among the branches

and behind the trees stained velvet sky

sent the children home but also sirens

they came in droves learning the approach

modified for pairs of teenage jackals

the tiniest possible skeletons and wizards

we could monitor the door throughout our wanderings

along the path that winds between the trees

but no one tripped the light above the steps

rabbit and seal parents confessed their plan

to consume the bounty of their charges' words

bypassing both threat and vulnerability

by Jan