010614 #bushmill Her fingers curl around the nubs of the steering wheel and they look like the cruel appendages of the ice queen, and my erection is about to burst out of my pants. I think there is actually a wet spot forming. And she smiles at me and gives her whole body a kind of shimmy as I slide in, and I am gone, I am rapt, I am helpless and everything is perfect and I don't care what happens. 000000 #gull this is a test of the crazy talk operation. 081613 #worm I remember. Go. I remember. Go. I remember. Go. I remember doing three cartwheels in a row at the beginning of my jogo, instead of the customary one. I remember when that seemed like a big deal. Sigh. I was never very much of an upside down kind of guy. I did do some pretty sweet ass cartwheels, though. However. I never got very far because I am a social animal. Let's back up. Sit down. Think it through. Drive it away in the old orange truck. 081313 #copperhead #water And then as evening proves inevitable once again, even the sound of the rushing water changes. Sitting in a grounded boat, ah, there's nothing more calm and confident than that--until the hour of departure begins to race with the departing day. Every minuscule echo of current on rock begins to grow more cavernous, suggestive. The hollows of this little river yearn toward the bigness of the ultimate destruction of the sea. All water is doomed. 000096 #squirrel i think most people are ritualistic, and i know i am but i usually dont have to consciously shed lite on it. this time i just feel like it. its not that i feel i havbe ghosts or some shit in here, its all cvery mundane in a way. its just me kind of wrapping my arms around myself and giving a squeeze, you know a reassurance of strentgth and toughness and hangonnes and all kind of things like that. yeah that makes me happy that your doing that 081413 #worm Then didn't you lean out a little further on the upswing--what's that sound? That's the willow-haired girl, also leaning out. She's up in the attic? Or up in the tree-house? Maybe she's in the basement, singing from her perch on the little footstool that makes her tall enough to see out. In any case, her lilting voice enlaces with the bus's trailing harmonies, this summer afternoon all afternoon long, and in the strange words of her song, you see a map. 081013 #dog *HIM's hands against my testicles were dry and warm, coarse and faintly electric. However the blade, when it came, was all ice and steel. I thought, absurdly, briefly, about the psychological implications of the whole scenario, in a metaphoric sense, and then it was all over, I was flying, my guts dropped out, a scream I'd never imagined wrenched itself from my throat, I was nude, I was naked, I was cherry red and younger than zero. I passed out.* 081613 #worm So far we have Trish, Sue (whom we haven't seen yet), the Interview guy, and The metapresence of the randomly artucilated jail cell arena. Is that it? Is that even true? Our "Characters" are actually electrons; we can predict a probability for any one of them appearing at any given time or place, but the more we try to observe them, the less we can pin them down. We're not even sure if they are distinct, discriminated individual meatheads. They might be Quarky. 000095 #eel So she touched my knee while we were sitting on the couch, and she just kept looking at me with this creamy look in her eyes, and I mean I have been raging. Hot, and I mean sick with it. God I wanted to fuck her, just roll over and start banging. She showed me her tattoo: a casual flip of her panties to expose her butt crack, then she squatted down in front of me, the curvature of that fuckable ass inches from my face. All I could do was stare and say, "Nice." 081013 #dog *They pull over under a meandering sycamore tree, and kiss, caress, and suck. It feels good. Rhapsodic. Elementary. Pacific. Endangered. Fibrillating. Delicate. Spun. Mothlike. Effervescent. Splaylegged. Inibriated. Tapioca. Banjo music in the night. night. night falls on the silver sliver of the creek. mercury falls on the barns and farm houses away over the ridge to the east. a silence falls over this part of the woods. it is not silence. listen. it speaks:* 081413 #worm #roach And where can you find these people? You can find an intriguingly mismatched cross-section of them any time you care to visit Esriel's Cafe. So let's go there now. You know the way--you drew the map! Let's zoom in on a booth near the neon-glowing, frosty window in the smoking section, where Him and Me are sitting, facing each other over a mess of scribbled notebook sheaves, having pushed aside their devastated dinner plates, and gotten back to work. 000096 #squirrel you know in somer circles this would be a really strange way to have a conversation, so in some circles it's a strange thing to have aocnversation in some circles it's not strange to jjst orderr another beer. no shit. that is one of the main reasons i don't wnat to hang out with george and his crowd. until ooh,. kim. ewe. ick. until i had a shitload to drink, i was really bored. and that, when i think about, doesnt' seem right. 082713 #meerkat #roach Let's have something happen. Let's have a jogo de dentro on a little table top in a brick cafe. Let's have the sun coming in all crazy. Let's have someone draw a knife. Let's have neither one back down. Let's have the singing and the clapping. Let's have the steel drone of the berimbau. Let's have you taste the sweat. Let's really face death, I mean really, for the first time. There's no going back. Every human secretly knows: death is god. 081413 #worm He will be devastated when she tells him, of course. What reasonable man wouldn't be? Though he will wrap it in silken civilized indignance, a tower of rage will erect itself inside him. It's the rage of an otherwise innocent pussycat, lapping spilt milk off the kitchen floor, broken glass to all sides of his tender tongue. Careful, pussy! Lick it good! Feel the frothy bubbles, floating down your tongue. Don't miss a drop, little pussy. Take it all in. 060113 #human Xavier just buzzed the doorbell wearing nerd glasses and a cap. Libby's talking to him. What are they talking about? That's part of her story, and his, and it just echoes out from there. There's music in my foreground and her and her neighbor-friends' background and that's part if it too. It's now right now and ever wildly will be again when she creates new experience out of memory in the future. I think that's so cool albeit a little bit scary. 102913 #snail ...How about it is always an organism, and almost every organism that we can imagine reproduces sexually, and there's an aura of beautiful mistakes and sweat. 091313 #roach Exactly no one was looking at me. No one, that is, except the cafe itself. 040406 #human Sometimes I just get this rush of feeling that she's lying to me about so many things! Distorting my view of how everybody treats her/us. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? 032413 #eel I said what the fuck are you talking about. And he was holding his abdomen a little bit and there wasn't blood gushing, it obviously wasn't a *really* bad stabbing, but still. I said are you all right in a surprisingly stern voice and the other friend who got stabbed said we have to go to the lobby. And I was worried about them and feeling a little guilty for having taken so long but also I was disappointed because I really wanted to go to the beach. 102913 #snail When I am finally ready to go back out into the larger world of the small room inside the even larger world, something smells different. I pull the door open and sidle out, and see that the bartender and the rum and coke man have built a fire in the old fireplace I had always thought was just for decoration. 030004 #human all my little pictures; i love them all; i don't keep track of them any less than the river keeps track of all her little stones 081313 #copperhead I think, I'm just realizing this now, as I stare a little too long at the gorgeously indifferent waitress as she sets down coffee—coffee!—in robust white mugs the perfect weight, the perfect shape, I think that's the definition of freedom. Holy shit. I'm free. I'm a free man. My mouth's partly open. I look at her as she walks away; her white apron's so printemporally clean. I look back across the blank, energetic field of this table at my friend. 081413 #worm Him orders coffee and a doughnut, gets it but it tastes like ass, and so he offers it to Me. Me accepts it, not because he is gullible or pathetic, but because he has a way of accepting things Him gives him. It's just one of his asinine little quirks. Me once overheard someone say, I guess once some people get a load of it real good up the ass, they can't get full any other way. The moth's wing twitters away into the innermost reaches of the local cluster. 030004 #human Funny thing about calling "it" an art: instead of intimidating, it releases. Because it makes it a thing way bigger than me and my aging musculature. It makes it so big I don't have to feel self-conscious about getting in and getting wet in it. There are plenty of creatures, leviathans, behemoths, to do the amazing things that make me amazed. And I can amaze my little circle of nanobiology without disturbing anyone, maybe even helping a few. Fuck, why not? 010514 #stranger A lattice. A useless small white fence, only high enough to trip someone, around a dormant flower bed. The camera clicks, and clicks, and before the next click can actuate, a stop-motion blur of a man issues forth with tarzan-like speed, silently, from one of the houses--which one? not even the one the camera could most likely have been mistaken for being pointed toward--and runs, all flowing muscle, green tanktop, and pale face gaunt with threat. 051111 #martian 1. We are condescending to each other as an act of generosity. Each of us acting a little less intelligent as a sign of respect for conversational mutuality. We're meeting in the middle of an ancient sacred circle. The glimmering, brilliant, exploding things we do not say are astonishing in their abundance and beauty. The unspoken is the harmonics. 2. Darling do not fear what you don't really know. 3. Celie bear sure loves to brush her teeth. 000003 #human The new boys for the upstairs apartment shoved my chairs and stuff right out of the way and put their futon and other stuff in place in the attic. And I know they opened my door because it was hanging open the way it eventually does if you close it but don't block it shut. I'm going to have to have a talk with them. I can share, I just don't want to be invaded or trampled. Except certain psychosexual contexts including consent or dramatic nonconsent. 081613 #worm But it's been several months now, and there's no sign that they'll be losing steam any time soon. Steam. Well, you know what I mean. As a matter of fact, they're almost finished. But now their operation is drawing near on two flanks to the other city. The city where it's almost always night. I don't know what they're going to do when they get there. Because let me tell you, if I'm afraid to go in there, then they've got to be petrified poopless. 111713 #squirrel you have to meet people where they are 081613 #worm She's an anomaly. How else could you explain the fact that, when she realizes why his manner is so discomfited—it's because he's quietly, quaintly masturbating as he backs back up toward the door—she doesn't freak out, doesn't bring charges, doesn't even frowl. She simply says, in that husky tinkle she doesn't even realize is her incredible voice, Yes, thank you. Everything is perfect. 010314 #jonquil She went downstairs. Looked like a good day for waffles. The color of the backyard was like waffles. Of course it was always like that, especially this time of year. She was out of coffee: just fragrant dirt-colored dust in the bottom of the tupperware. Damn. She said it again, just to have some sound in the house. Damn, damn, damn. The angular word bounced off the nicked-up hardwood floor, the squat porcelain appliances, the high dusty ceilings. Damn. 110913 #snail Even when laced with discomfort—the sun too dry and hot on your shoulders, your head buzzing with altitude, your mouth tacky with thirst, your back stiff from squatting and rising, your brain dumb from visually and manually parsing all those rock combinations—even then, there was a physical, fundamental pleasure in the working of the wall. ... Your children laughed or argued, but in any case played, safe, all around you in hearing and in and out of sight. 081413 #worm In what occultic mischief should Barp dabble tonight? Despairing of ever getting a warm-up of his coffee, he decides to investigate the mess of papers left behind on the table next to his. Krim peripherally sees him shuffle over to pick up one of the papers, and ignores him while shifting her balance so that her peasant-sexy waitress skirt shows a little more of her dream-inducing thigh to Ltiky, who stammers, and starts again whatever conversation he was having. 082806 #eel lying on our backs, just lounging not going to sleep, looking up at the middle of the perpetual night sky, and the "moon" there--the pale orange glowing banjo in the sky that, looking back, i guess must have been the other one of whatever exactly we were living on.... our bedroom didn't have a roof.... it was just another cranny of the treehouse-esque collaboration of boards and struts and buttresses that made our little fortress more or less stable and secure 223436 011914 #robot #gull #deletethis I wouldn't really use the clipboard-ask-tag-to-VP script because it conflicts with the default new page text in VP prefs. If the page already exists, it works perfectly. If it's creating a new page (more likely for the next few thousand iterations) then you're going to get double headers. Unless there's a way I could get it to detect whether the page it's "creating" already exists, or not, and choose how to prepend accordingly. 041212 #human I have unsubscribed from Katy. That relationship was as broken as my marriage. Guess I "shouldn't be surprised" but I was, when I saw it. Actually when I believed it. When I gave myself permission to accept it, and let it go, even let go of the drama of all the times I've "let it go" before. It feels good. It was sad for about five minutes, and may very well be sad again sometime, but right now it's surprisingly not sad really at all. Sound familiar? 081613 #worm Sweat invisible. Knee of his jeans, a different color in this polychrome outdoors than if in any house or jail. What is it about the color of denim, used-up as a condom that was wrapped around a scared girl's first time? Empty now. Why does the sun always have to change the sky? You predict: Night is coming soon. You buffoon. Always making that same prediction, every single day, and every single day you're proven wrong, and yet— You go up to the front. You say, 022397 #squirrel She tells me her bisexual French friend from the European office has been making passes at her. And then I find out she's there in the background. At one point, her friend apparently takes off her shirt and begins to fondle her nipples. Woof! After some more awkward, somewhat sexual, but never completely vulgar chit-chat, she tells me she'll call me when she gets into Portland. We'll see... My question is... What the Fuck?!? 110913 #fox Where you were lead ashtray was in thinking it meant getting all serious and deliberate and businesslike and premeditated and, basically, conformist. That's not the point. Yes you have to be practical enough to blah blah blah the bills and shit, but ultimately, you might as well work at Aldi's if it's not going to be about that magic thing it used to be about. So yeah, that. Get better at that. I mean it. Really. *You know you want to.* **GO AHEAD.** 081913 #copperhead Avoiding? No, I'm not avoiding anything. I just want to feel good. I remember him saying that at a party one time, when some girl in a halter top and a big blue hat had cornered him and accosted him about drinking and drugs, etc. Then of course we left--funny how we always never stayed til the "end" of parties--and on the stumble home we passed one of those little corner bars that used to dot the landscape of ordinary life in those days. 081213 #conferenceofthecrows a kind of death an open door an open secret 080913 #spoonman We need a naked jesus christ to go screaming through the chicken factory, busting everything open til the rich ripe yellow juice pours out and runs free again. What am I saying? We can't wait for jesus christ. We have to now. We have to him now. We have to be him now. U now. I now. Free runs and out pours juice yellow ripe rich til the open everything bursting factory, 000010 #eel I rode my rocking chair to a school. I thought about parking it in a regular parking spot, but changed my mind and carried it up to the school instead. There were some hooligans playing combat games in the parking lot. I passed a boy/girl pair, and since it was time to go in, the boy quickly dispatched her. Getting up off the asphalt, she looked a little bit disappointed, as if realizing that he had had the upper hand all along, and had been humoring her. 101113 #gull If you miss it, you just miss it. There's no making up work. You just learn how not to miss it next time. Learning that has everything to do with wanting it. 000004 #human Somehow, cigarettes are indispensible to a you are in Paris. And to a lesser extent, coffee. But conversation, somehow, indispensible to you are the turn of the century. Some other, more found, lost other generation. A bare light bulb swings. Fuck it. I'm smoking. 030004 #human The backwards-forwardness of it all! Capoeira is magic, even by Clarke's formula. It is "sufficiently advanced technology!" People when looking for technological power often make the mistake of blinding ourselves to anything "before" the present. We peer into the myopic future, hoping for a visitation by an infinite wisdom. We may as well be peering into a paper bag. Speaking of which 000097 #human as long as i can still dance, i know all is not lost 000008 #treefrog And this is completely unrelated--the true audience of this document knows I'm not really a pervert--but, I really think I prefer junior high. High school students are so protected. So suave. So alert to everything they need to be defensive about. Junior high students are as silly on the outside as I feel on the inside most of the time. Uncontrollable giggling--as a way of life, as a valediction. I feel that I am changing my careeer goals. Right now. 092511 #human I then tried to think about whether or not I could do it, be truly submissive in a deep, genuine, everyday-life sort of way, but the fact is I wasn't thinking about it. Instead I was marvelling at the fact that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would do it, no matter what. Pretending to think about it was a little kneejerk game played to buy myself a little time before the awesome hugeness of space enveloped my free-falling tiny self. As I woke up. 081413 #worm That was okay. Barp was used to being an extra. There are distinct advantages to lurking in the wings, after all, playing slow-motion dice or miming a conversation with other dimmed members of anonymity--whole worlds can unfold within worlds, plays within plays, while spotlights manipulate the collective gaze of the house elsewhere. The glory of the main stage can seem almost crass, in contrast with the clandestine arcana of the dusty fringes of the proscenium. 081413 #worm It's been snowing all night. Pink snow in the south side's late lights. Jelse has parked here because this neighborhood won't notice him, or care about him if they do. He can get some sleep. In the morning the windows will be steamed up, god willing, and he can start all over again. He wishes he still had his dog. Warmth. But at least he has three quarters of a tank of gas. Isn't that what they always say you're supposed to have, in the winter? How nice. 000094 #human when we gave dottie her little party and her sister and everybody was there and she hadn't expected it, she flushed and smiled till her cheeks took over and she hugged everybody, even me--twice!--and she said "i have friends, i have special friends! what else could i want!" and by god she MEANT it, and even if she didn't work at a crappy ol' restaurant long hours for little pay it STILL would have been the most beautiful thing in the world to be there. 081413 #worm Then there are a few things I want from you, the TV says. I want some slick tits, heaving thighs, bitchy lips. I want some fat ass hips. I want some dick. Do you understand me? I want to know your ass is down on the basement floor, waiting for me, when i get home. Got it? So what's stopping you? You have everything you need. Why are you afraid to proceed? Pansy-throated. Lily-fucking. Limp-ass. Shit sucking. Little one-shot bitch. Come. The fuck ON. 081413 #worm massages the arch of my foot. The webbed aluminum chair presses firmly into my back. Miranda is stroking her guitar. The tip flares. There are more smiles, sighs of relief, a new quietness into which every sound we make launches weightlessly. Mosquitos go about their stinging little lives. Miranda laughs, once, out of time. I feel a sudden rush of joy. A bit of rubbish burns, and the sparks go up, swirl around, disappear. Someone lights a cigarette 010314 #jonquil I justlove this place, Mary said, turning slowly around to take it all in. Well there was a certain grandeur about it, Gwen had to admit to herself. The way the afternoon sun slanted in through the tall dusty windows. It looked almost like an old church. Its like the set of a play or something! Yeah, okay, or that. 022813 #elephant You, you who do not know the meaning of the word "forgive," you will forgive the elephant. 000004 #human One of the dogs, the pesky one with one black eye and one red eye, wants to know: What is the historical and political context of all this? Fuck! Why do they keep asking me that! Okay, just think, "beginning of the end." Think, "tip of the slippery slope." Think, "that fuzzy point that's not a point where historians will try to place the beginning of the decline and fall of the American empire." Think about that, will you? Here's a bone. 100313 #martian - told Megan, Remember, every adult is just a kid that grew up - held eye contact with C. Cyrus a lot longer than usual today; it was part challenge, part question, part love, part defense - how I hate that pigeon-footed little bastard; how he hob-knobs through the halls, always touching people in some way. I don't even know what he did wrong, what his "behavior" was. I don't have to hate him or be afraid of him. I just do and am. 000000 #human He produced not the cosmetically cosmopolitan smokes I had expected, but a pack of ordinary Marlboros. A yellow Bic appeared in his hand. He spun the wheel, the flint scraped, the spark jumped, the gas hissed, the svelte flame danced its brief life away, yearning towards the tip of the cigarette, convulsed once, twice, and flickered out of existence. The young man leaned back with a look of greater contentment than I had ever seen. 081613 #worm There we go. That bitch is talking again. God I want a smoke. What the— what? What? Yes. Yes. Okay. No, that's okay. Yeah. Sure, no. No, yeah. No, that's not a prob— what? Because it isn't. It just isn't. Okay? All right? Is everything all right, then? Ha. Yeah, well. Yeah. I know. Okay. Okay. See you later. You smile, even though you know she's not really a bitch, and you know it never works out the way it does when you imagine it. 081613 #worm I REMEMBER when I was smart. I was a kid. I didn't know any better. I remember I remember I remember, ah I remember a certain tree trunk of an aged, knotty girl-woman, saying things like that, in threes like that, and then sighing histrionically. Oh but she was a drama queen. I kinda wish--but then I remember her smell, like tobacco rotting in the field. I could never get serious with a stinker like that, I don't care how poetic. 020003 #human #crow Really? You really want me to answer that? I am afraid to answer that because then I will either have to go do whatever it is, or else admit that I am too weak, too chicken. Unless of course the answer is "nothing. There is nothing I would rather be doing than sitting here." How often is that really the answer? Maybe more often than I realize. Who cares. Me. That's who. Who else? Who cares. 081413 #copperhead "Thanks." 070409 #human drinkin wine in the alley blah blah blah blah blah happy forth of julio. god bless god bless god bless. so anyway im listening to enlightenment (not of course attaining it ha ha) and hurting hurtling down some sleepy highway when i was young and i really want to smoke and drift away like smoke on the night breeze like the smoke after the crack crack pop pop fireworks have all died down and its so and its so so quiet so quiet in here 082812 #human That weepy old cow has now kept them out until 11:00 at night. God fuck it. I'm just supposed to not care? To let her make that decision? Fuck that. Next time, I will specify a return time. Fucking ludicrous. Contemptible disrespect. And, as usual, why the fuck should I be surprised for her utter lack of regard for the girls' well being. Oh but she just loves them so fucking much. Fucking selfish, soft-headed, irrational bag of fucking sod. 010514 #max Arrayed around the blade of grass, by chance, five pebbles, roughly round, ochre, barely translucent, dimpling the dust, unstepped on. In another life, they could have been pea gravel under a playground, stomped with joy and hurled by grubby fists, til stupid parents scolded. Instead, they sit here, neither in the road nor in the ditch, near the park where no-one plays, occasionally in the shade of the great old willow arcing overhead. 081413 #worm He walks his bike between the serpents. He pats one of them on its lichen-covered, cool, hard head. Love is a brisk leaf caught off guard on a day like this. A tiny leaf-tornado tugs at Me's ankles as it carries its whirling jetsam on down the street. A man at the bus stop smokes. Me doesn't. A bus rumbles by without stopping. The trembling air it leaves behind stirs the smoking man's trenchcoat collar. It's two degrees colder than it was. 051111 #martian 1. I said, "Things change a lot when you start having kids." Ze said, "Duly noted," and showed his underbite. 2. Some of the boys were talking/bragging about how it feels to have an orgasm. The general consensus was that it feels really good. 3. Beamon's husband, Joe, said he wants to start reading again. He asked me what To Kill a Mockingbird was about. Cuz this, he said, sweeping floors and dumping out garbage, this ain't me. 022501 #human We despise each other some, now. This house together is cold comfort. Lonely apart, yet dreading each others' return. I despise her for her constant anguish and leaden sorrow, and the way she clings to it desperately and the self-loathing that seems inherent in her inability to give in to it or fight it off--she hates me for lying to her about why I did not want to marry her. She thinks it's not because she's a woman. And it is, and it isn't. 000096 #squirrel i mean, that is not a cerebral feeling. when it is night and youre outside and perhaps even you might get cautght por perhaps your completely separated from the old worldf, and you slip into the water and it swirls all around you in places undaunted that it usually never seirls areound and it is the most free feelingin in the world, and that is not cerebral. thsats pure poetry yeah we shoud do it before it gets too cold out. 081613 #worm She's only halfway through perusing the veri section when the door rings again. With quietness she faces the new visitor. It's him—the interview man. Here. In the bookstore. How did he find her? Or did he? Does he even realize it's her? He doesn't act like it. He only nods at her, as dismissively as a frustrated man can in the presence of the type of youth she un-self-consciously exudes, and starts shopping like there's no to-fucking-morrow. 000097 #human I know there must be some flaw in the way I'm thinking here, that this seems at once so damned important and so damned unsolvable, but for the life of me I can't pick it out just now. It makes me want to ignore the dog and my friends and the people on the street and the god damned drums, all of them, and the god damned keyboards and the god damned letters, and just do some drugs, masturbate, and go to sleep. But that wouldn't really help. 051004 #human Everybody's acting so shocked about the images and revelations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by us and the brits. Why? All it proves is, We're no better than They. Of course We're not. Why would we be? People (in groups) are people! Combatants become one organism. That's why trying to justify a war is tricky. Individuals need to pick their allegiances according to their own inner voices, and take responsibility for their own hypocrisies. 010614 #eel So here I was not thinking I could throw the game, even if it was just a warm-up in a class in the lower level of a resort in some city by a river. But while I was thinking about it, they had gone ahead and hoisted Snake up anyway, and he was grinning away, indulged and powerful, but at the last minute he dropped the balloon, and now I knew I was supposed to let him "win" it back, but I didn't. I took off toward the back corner of the room. 101502 #human Sometimes it still hits me like that, big and deep and quiet and unfathomable... as when, coming home from a long, dramatic trip up the Door peninsula, full of smoky cheese and winding-road conversation, flushed with the heady peace of Megan's finally having gone to sleep, still nuk-nuk-nuk in her blankets in her car seat as I clamber with her up the boards of the porch steps: I'm carrying my daughter into the house! My daughter! 081413 #worm #roach Make an organically wavering arc about as far down on the rectangle as the Cafe is up, and almost as far left as the Cafe is right. Inside the arc make a circle, or a blob, or any such dingbat as may suffice to suggest the entrance to a cave--for indeed the geographical feature represented here--and you may label it "The Snoke," or, more concisely, merely "Snoke"--is generally, for the most part anyway, superbly subterranean. 000008 #human In the kitchen, there is a roll of paper towels on a stick, a sheaf of napkins almost spilling out of their celophane packaging, a dirty pizza stone, a platter, another platter, some marshmallows, a rubber chicken, twelve cabinets up high, six cabinets down low, a refrigerator with cut up body parts in it, a stove, an oven, a kele, a dirty fryin' pan, some fusg, a gourd, another gourd, what the hell are all those bottles of things? 100504 #eel Meanwhile, over at the amusement park, they had already dismantled the roller coaster that had broken apart and killed some people. Now in its place they had a ride, made out of parachute fabric, that slung people around this way and that. Even from a distance I could see the faces of some of the riders. This one boy in particular looked queasy and uptight, though both his friends--one sitting on each side of him--were laughing their heads off. 062704 #eel I thought the guy behind the window probably knew my secret. He palmed a couple of quarters as he took our order. I was sure they would have anachronistic markings on them, and so his suspicions would be confirmed. I wasn't entirely sure it mattered, but instinct had been telling me I should keep my future origins mostly secret. My girlfriend knew. We speculated that maybe a lot more of this sort of thing went on than any of us had thought. 110913 #snail Because she was perfect, but not perfect. At first, looking back it seemed foolish, that had been enough to neutralize her power. He had remained immune, because the nose didn't go with the face. But every time he saw her smile quietly at the boys in class, the stupid rowdy boys, every time she giggled behind her hand without losing her composure, every time she showed her *class,* the out-of-order nose began to reprogram his brain. 081413 #copperhead The tall girl sticks her tongue all the way out and down--it's almost giraffelike--and it's green--then she lays the sucker up against it, and moves her whole head slowly up, so the whole long, slow length of her tongue slides along the sucker. The soft-focus girl smiles, giggles, and mimics the movement with her green sucker, although hers is almost all sucked, so she's mostly licking just a stick with some green sugary bumps on the end. 102913 #snail #dolphin This is just a warm-up, you say, and you push up to me hip-first and this may even be the first time you've ever kissed me.... I start to let go and then you stop, casually, without recrimination, and as you head for the narrow door toward the corridor you smile back over your shoulder and say, See you in the dining car, and I am old enough now to know I am in love with you, at least for now, and that is good enough. 090813 #elephant I looked sideways into the mirror. The backwards Melanie there had already typed a full page. Her screen was a black forest on snow. I looked back at my own screen (as she looked away from me, also with a wistful expression--but why?) and found it sparsely charactered by my paltry efforts. What was her secret? How could I talk to her, get her to say something besides the perfectly backwards mouthing of my own nervous prattle? 000002 #human 2002 Hey. If my finest hours on this earth consist of making symphonies for myself out of a bike ride through the parkway (the clipclipclip of tires over curled leaves, the sough of exhaust, a kid making soccer yells, two squirrels) and coming back here and trying to tell anyone who will listen all the stories my dead old sonofabitching best friend pumped into me, then that's fine, that's a song, that's a holler, art be damned. 081413 #worm Fine, I'll watch TV, he says. But I want some pornography in it. Understand? I want some real pornography. The kind you can take home in your briefcase. The kind with the smell of fresh cream. The kind that got me into this mess in the first place. And I don't know about you, but I want it to take me away. To shackle my foreign body to the roller coaster track, and rip my sluglike soul, unfettered, unctious, out into the fast black sky. 120913 #mistress #bunny she said as she continued to lower her feet and he continued to lower himself. And with that he got self-conscious, and gave her calves a quick affectionate squeeze, as if he'd been in control the whole time and was just playing around. Jauntily he got up and fairly skipped to the bar on the other side of the room, the while wishing fervently that he could be back on the floor, groveling beneath her almost perfect beauty. 000096 #squirrel i don't hink there's anything wrong with being stimulated by you r firends yeah but stimulated to an extreme anything is an extreme when compared oh i see what you mean you know? i mean, i mean, i attribute it too directly to you i think, i don't know that i could conduct this thing on my own and that sort of dependecne frightrens me also i feel sometimes so stiukmulated i feel i have to do something with all this energy you know. 081313 #copperhead Okay, you want the god's honest truth? I guess I just feel a little vulnerable right now. Any minute now, Venus will appear. The sky will turn to felt. With random glitter. The water will turn to ink. The rocks will gather up their secrets, secure them for the night. Bugs will disappear. Animals of the graveyard shift will populate the silences. And I will still be sitting here, ridiculous in my shorts and lack of will to move. 081613 #worm I'm thinking of scotch and soda. I'm thinking of rum and cola. I'm thinking of whiskey sours, and the plastic cup it comes in. I'm thinking of how sweet that drink is, and how sweet the company of the woman with whom I am drinking. The woman I am drinking. Every night she lets me drink her, and the drinking is forceful, like a firehose to the face. I love it. I lap it up. It's the first disgusting thing I have ever wholeheartedly loved. 111213 #snail #treefrog As soon as you declare something to be your salvation, it fails. Because there is no salvation, obviously. You thought you were having some great insight about your precious "temperament" when you were so exhausted after teaching a couple of classes, you poor thing. Turns out you were just getting sick. Ha ha. No wonder you were tired. You spent the rest of the night sweating into your sheets and having fever dreams. 130250 012114 #robot #gull I am following a robotic seagull over the terrain. He dips and swoops and clanks. If he knows I am following, he gives no sign. The workings of his underbelly are rusty from the salt sea air. If I could only catch him, I would take him apart gear by sprocket, worm by dog, and find out why he never ceases calling, rising, falling, feeding--why? Who built him? What is his purpose? Why am I calling him "him"? 213935 081413 #worm Over there: look. It's you. And I think you're coming this way. Should I hide from you? I mean, I would pretend not to be hiding, of course. I would simply never find occasion to happen to glance by chance in your direction. I would stare ahead so woodenly, I must surely be contemplating various epiphanies. And then, when you saw me, you would see that I hadn't seen you, and you would feel free to ignore me. I'd be doing us both a favor, really. 081413 #worm night squirms on. I have to take a piss. I go behind the warped piece of stainless steel that once was the fryer hood. It feels good to piss on everybody's ashes. I don't know why. It just does. I could stand here and do this a long time, this standing back here in the dark and pissing. It's simple. It's a question answered. It's your name in the dust. It's relaxing. You have to get vulnerable, at least a little. You can't lie to your own 222824 012514 #hellsmarker #moonwalker The phone rings. I know it's my wife. I can't answer it. I'm helpless, strapped down in the dark by the dark, by the space, by the hum of the horrible fan of the heater. I suckle the disgusting, delicious curdled milk of my guilt in the gaping silence, after the last ring dies. In the other bed, he stirs, grumbles in the blessed sleep of the wasted, pummels his other pillow listlessly, and gently snores again. 112113 #fox #squirrel I do appreciate your inquiry, though, as it prompted me to think more carefully about where I'm going and what I'm doing. I'm not, it turns out, at all interested in copywriting or similar fields. I get that marketing is a kind of storytelling, but the kind that is in my heart seems to be directing me down a different path, one that, as far as I can tell so far, leads through volunteerism, teaching, therapy, and social change. 010314 #jonquil Her window looked out on a backyard more supple and lean than a golf course. Hydrangeas were fading gracefully towards death in mulched beds along the gently contoured boundaries between close-cropped grass and deciduous woods. Looking out this window, you wouldn't know that everywhere for miles around were corn and beans and gas stations and the run-down stubble of light industry. This was, in every sense of the word, an enclave. 081413 #worm No, she wasn't your stereotypical whore-with-a-heart-of-gold; that old picture post card. She was rather a basket case, really, if you want the truth. She had beady eyes, a slightly wiry neck, enormous tits half-sagging, despite her youth, under their own improbable mass, a doublewide ass that loved to boogie, and a barbed-wire brain the likes of which to tangle with Omsatigo had never had the honor nor the horror, before he met her. 081213 #crow #human I asked a magic-8-ball-type question about the possibility of AK coming for a visit and what-all we would do and what that would be like, and it said sometimes you have to be mean to be good. Now I'm remembering the "Sylvia" dream all those years ago, and how I've regretted ever since the way I treated Pam when she visited, and this is weirdly like a partial reversal of that, and well I just don't even know what that means. 081413 #worm A little blond-haired boy watches embryonically. Ltiky goes to see Ella. He's never seen her before, but he knows she's his wife. On the road, stopped for the night in a strange little burg among the pines, everybody has the potential to be a stranger. He mounts the concrete stairs up from the parking lot. She answers the door at once. Her face and one of her knees peer out. Both are shiny. Her hair disappears into a billow of terrycloth. 081613 #worm I remember one thing, though: the slivery grain of the anguished floor of the attic over the trancendental transgressive transponder house of transition. Where I went from one kind of life into another, into the one I'm "in" now, if that makes sense. I must have done that--we all must have done that a million times. Sometimes you can just see it. I mean, how many shooting stars have there ever been? How many have you personally seen? Okay. 040405 #human Golden morning, up before the swarm. Golden diesel, humming over the horizon back in time to when bewilderment was king. To work, to work on concrete under sheet metal in between lapses of mouth-open henna-haired madness and warm skin. Today, the west coast an angst- and flesh-besotted history, to work in a familiar space amidst the strangeness of morning is to work, once again, hallelujah, in a strange space amidst newly familiar smells. 090505 #eel She was finally getting free of the evilness. I asked her what we should do, what we had to do now to set things right. She said first, we have to [gather and disperse] all the sand from the dead people--the people who had died had all turned into sand--and as soon as they had died they had become good again, instantly. Also, we had to care for each other, take care of each other, and be good to each other--everyone had to do that from now on. 110613 #squirrel #fox And here's a fun thing: you get to be there when the more obviously magic stuff happens too. You paid your dues by being willing, against your better judgment, to hit return and say something utterly stupid and bland like She said hello and went upstairs. And the sublime nature of lovemaking and story and [life?] is that after a lifetime of this (I am beginning to suspect) the dichotomy between the sublime & pedestrian becomes notional. 010314 #warmglowbox What are you putting into the box? I used to pour whiskey in there, up to the toppy tip. The fucked up thing is, I kind of like my dad's alcoholic side. It's like a part of him unclenched after decades. But it's also a little creepy when the day after our big deep heartfelt convo he tells me something again as if he hadn't said it word for word last night. I mean I used to do that with my 20-something friends for chrissake. 091413 011314 #warmglowbox What are you putting into the box? Chips, salsa, generic wheat thins, leftover bacon, maple brown sugar frosted mini wheats, you name it! 000002 #human Why some hands hold coffee just so; why some caress The hand without the question mark more soft, alert why some hands like rabbits escaping rain 000009 #human We are in an era where history is an artifice, voluntary. At the same time, it has the potential to be mind-blowingly detailed and complete. Weird. 080613 #dragon dispeller of illusions (see #wheelbarrow) likes to rush in through the window and mess up your papers and stuff invisible made of wind 030006 #human Does slop count in bullshit? I mean, if you're a bullshitter even though you don't mean to be, do you still get cool points for being a bullshitter? 102502 #eel I asked her if she had any drugs and she said no but we could be superheroes and so the four of us ran around wearing flamboyant capes and stuff. 081413 #worm The Aviary and the Snoke reel on their stools all through the night, waiting to see if they'll get lucky. They get progressively, exquisitely plowed. 081613 #worm #crow Another angry voice Mad at you for being black, mad at you for being ignorant, mad at you for being poor, mad at you for being my problem. 120913 #berserker Why do we all just sit in waiting rooms being complicit with the bloody onslaught of Christmas songs? Who the fuck likes this shit? Why do we bend over and take it? 011997 #squirrel Listen babe, I don't have to teach tomorrow, so if you want to call late tonight, please do. you tell me your stories, i'll tell you mine. 120213 #human If it starts to feel like wallowing, maybe it is now. Get back to work. It doesn't mean it was wallowing a minute ago. You don't have to feel bad. 000094 #human You know, as mad as I was at Scott when I stepped out of the car, even in that rush of anger and violence, there was something I was enjoying about it. 072613 #human The girls' needs closed out Don's and my conversation; he left me a cup of popcorn on the table where we'd been talking before he went to bed. #ifthatsnotnicewhatis 082413 #finch dream half life this autumn always dead tired always afire 010614 #bushmill We smoke cigarettes as the anonymity of the highway flies, faster than fuck, backwards on both sides of us, forever and forever and forever. 081413 #copperhead "You're awfully quiet," he says/chews. He holds out a segment without looking over at me. I take it. It's plump, not too acid, not too sweet. 091113 #gull JCO does a really good job not caricaturizing good and bad. Everyone has flaws, everyone is doing the best they can from their own perspective. 081613 #worm 1) Why are you so afraid of passion, and Really, when you think about it, that's what everyone in this room is saying. When you think about it. Again. 070012 #human The pretending was certainly a thin thread. But a thin thread is all you need to cross a gorge, when your bare feet are callused, and knowing, and browned by the sun. 081413 #worm She looks at him as one looks at a file cabinet with which one is alone in the office, at night, not quite ready to face what waits for one at home. 081813 #treefrog #meerkat You got to learn to not try so hard to get them to do it right. Come back to this later, and see if you know what I'm talking about. 081313 #copperhead And what is it about waiting for someone that tries to make you mad, even when there's really nothing to get mad about? I mean, here I am. 112513 #human But why do we even need to do all this? Why do we need aphorisms, mnemonics, parables, passion plays, and schools? Do other animals have all this? 000001 #human If only she wouldn't squeeze the toothpaste tube in the middle--although I get the feeling she's doing that just to piss me off now, which is nice. 000001 #human and there is also a vague sense of isolation, weirdness, loneliness, restlessness, boredom--all of which is perfect, beautiful, right on schedule. 080913 I am a little concerned about what's going to happen to performance and reliability when we start getting to thousands of files in here, though. #gull 082413 #gull Maybe when "my mind isn't working" or "I can't write" it's because I'm doing some kind of research. Maybe I should just let myself enjoy that phase. 081613 #worm I tried to write a novel that afternoon, because I was still in jail you know, but it didn't turn out so good. It was too, I don't know how you'd say it. Oh. Sorry. Heh. 112013 #cave I almost brained one of your macho friends with a carbide headlamp. Everybody pretty much ignored me, including you. Why did you even bring me here? 110913 #snail ++gotta describe the truck sometime++ ++I never did that with real index cards, but whatever.++ ++you are still solving the wrong problem++ 000002 #human #crow #treefrog You see, the easiest habit in the world to make is the habit of stopping, of stalling out when you touch on the true story. 081313 #copperhead I should really have a drink of water, he thinks, before I deal with this, and so he sets the paper on his desk, but still he doesn't move. 000096 #squirrel heat for thought what for thought food for thought i thought (andf therefore i wrote) that you said "heat for thought" heat? yes. 091313 #bunny We drank, we smoked, what can I say. We didn't fuck. Okay? We laughed, we played music. We drank, we smoked. It was a good life, mercifully brief. 051806 #eel I kept asking, "What did I do to you?" but couldn't get an answer. I was frustrated but open to the fact that I may not have been completely innocent. 081613 #worm Sit down, settle my gelid thighs into a jiggly old easy chair, the rivets are showing through, and wait. Real, real, real, real, real, real, real, one more time again. 101406 #eel then later talking with some old-ish, mischeivous, white-haired grinning guy about how "You can't stuff them back in there once they're out, can you?" 000097 #human Howcome every time I try to explain this stuff I feel a little like I just hit a drum head and it went Splat instead of ringing out clear and true? 010514 #bushmill The silence in the car is underlined by the low sound of the engine, the white noise of the heater, and outside it actually starts to snow. 081613 #worm Dude, one of the boys has brought his alarm goes off girlfriend. Now, if you know me, you know that's good and bad. And if you don't know me, well, fuck, as they say.... 101313 #dolphin Another learned behavior was discovered among river dolphins in Brazil, where some male dolphins use weeds and sticks as part of a sexual display. 090913 #meerkat WHAT HAPPENS WHEN TWO OBJECTS INTERACT? new object(s) one or more objects destroyed one or more objects' data changed one or more objects' identity changed 103113 #trout He was obviously being very careful not to like me in any way. I don't know if he remembers the time he tried to get me to take my pants off in a kiddie pool, but.... 080913 It's three-dimensional with a hidden dimension curled up on each point of its space. Does that merely mean it's four-dimensional? I'm honestly not sure. 081613 #worm Margie left us and it's funny because as much as we complained about her and laughed about her when she wasn't listening (and sometimes when she was), I'm actually sorry she's gone. I'm not necessarily going to admit it to Milt or anyone else, though. 081613 #worm Collect the ashes of your clock [and] bury them on Tattoo Hill Catch that freight you never caught, or accept that you never will ... Whilst brass and iron, steam and sky, in harmony sing, Repent! 081413 #worm The way was long, sandy, dusty, and hot. Sometimes she bit her fingernails while she squinted into the sun. You rode shotgun. Your feet under the onslaught of the heat vent sweated like glistening cowboys. Bnabe sat in the back. He had seen better days. 040513 #gull #ass #gamesman #soldier #celeste With this {new} generation of teh-dsa, I'm getting holo-spatial-alphabetico-zoom spreads, which say stuff like "Now the Gamesman is ascendant over the soldier & Celeste, with coins on the Gamesman and the Soldier." 081413 #worm Me and Him walk on. But something walks with them. They've pretended that they've heard strange music in the woods. Now they really hear it, and they realize that it is a bit scary, after all. It haunts them, cedar-green, darkening the daylit dome with turgid clouds. 082713 #bunny the chubby guy with the sweet guitar plays slower, with more slow, present flesh. i can taste his harmonies like honeysuckle. the can is still the can. this is what this age is: the can vs the chubby & fleshy among us. i hope we win. our odds look a little thin. 010314 #jonquil *Be,* Mary said slowly, mysteriously, turning her head with dramatic slowness to face Gwen, so they were nose to nose, close-up close, like two actors on screen talking so close they could smell each other's breaths, see each other's pores, *good.* 091803 #eel reading the poem to C_______, hoping it would be good enough, hoping i would have enough goodness in it. He said it would probably be good enough if I kept it at the right temperature, recieved it--probably at about 50 degrees I would guess, but-- 081413 #worm Hanad puts the coffee in front of him. Steam swirls between their faces. Her elbows take on the burden of her against the countertop. One of Dorbifr's hands--how are they always so dry and warm, no matter the season?--reaches out and touches her forearm. 081413 #worm I climb around the limestone cliffs, making sure all the trout are sorted correctly according to size and color, Ella says. She is wearing a long, slinky, black dress with a slit up one side. I have supple, sure-footed legs. Would you like to see them? 010214 #human #jonquil I feel like I abandoned Gwen and Mary, and that makes me feel empty and rueful and a little self loathing. It is kinda like the way a day spent obsessing about cameras makes me feel--when I look back and feel like I pushed the girls away subtly. 000096 #squirrel Maybe to "create" at that time of my life , I had to destroy. Break down in order to build new. There was so much energy around us at that time---like a neutron star. And it was so fucking much fun. There, that's me removing my judgment about myself. 010614 #bushmill The big man's shirt is really tight, and kind of has a snake-skin gleam to it. The smaller man is wiry. He looks like he's older than he looks, but he still moves around like somebody who would be younger than they look. Does that make sense? 081413 #worm The men's hands turn their attentions to their own waistbands. Ltiky's impotent rage overtakes his paltry bid to be included; he takes a faltering step back from the drum. The circle sucks together, fills the vaccuum, shits him out without a strain. 000001 #human this is my boat. i make the rules. regarding men: what if you could really love one, reciprocally, in addition to just fucking him? i mean, what am i saying. you can. i have -- i mean, not in addition to but instead of. now i would like in addition to, please. 081013 #dog *In a barn marshmallow-stuffed with hay and sleep, beside a wet-gray hiss of road somewhere, somewhere, somewhere it's not too late to know, just to feel how to sit back, smoke, bullshit, enjoy things with your buddy. It is pitch dark in the barn.* 060104 #gull There's Well Street, the hotel with pins and needles, the bare spot on the floor where you can actually get a good night's sleep even though it doesn't seem as though you should be able to.... There's Good Street, and the offices at the corner of Good and Well.... 010314 #jonquil The Jonquil Festival. (the boy thought of it as something pretty special) It evoked no similar term in her own mind; ... her memory of the so-called event comprised a few dank buds hanging limply, in a few stands next to the gas station by the highway. 000001 #human I came hard and yelled. Then, lying crumpled up there on the wolf blanket while she petted my hair, i felt a wave of sadness go by like a lumbering, crashing semi in the middle of the night, full of all my hopes and stars and promises and excitement and life force. 010703 #eel I was laughing and cracking wise with my pals, standing before the open blinds of the window. Just for a second, I wasn't me. I was the person Millie had been becoming nostalgic about when she imagined my jacket with a card clipped to the pocket. His name was Fred. 102913 #snail The bartender, acting like a waitress now, exactly the way she didn't when I came in, goes over to his table, her stiff linen apron surrendering mid-thigh, and asks him what can she get him. 030004 #human dick is not necessarily the opposite of pussy 091313 #worm my god that's beautiful, i said, and for the first time in my bloody life, i meant it. never mind that i was talking with a refrigerator--it was telling me a story about two boys and a man--it said its door was hangin open and it offered me a warm can 081413 #worm Me doesn't really want to have this conversation. He's tossing up tumbleweeds, blowing smoke, trying at all costs to avoid this conversation. Why? Ask him. Ask Me for me, will You? Ask Me why I don't want to know the answers only Bnabe's ghost can provide. 000001 #human I used to ponder what I would do if Taelin died and left me alone. I considered running off to hike the Appalachian Trail. Don't know if I still would or not. But now I know what I'm going to do about Glenn's dying. I am coming the rest of the way out. 021294 #eel so after i killed him, i lay there moaning with that i-cant-take-this-back feeling, you know, that i-killed-something feeling, and he went around saying goodbye to the woman, and some other guy whose part i dont quite recall tho he was a goodguy too. 081313 #copperhead I'm going to kick his sinewy ass when he gets here, of course I really won't. But I'm not so young as to be unaware of the immense privelege it is to be able to talk shit about the *idea* of kicking his ass. When he gets here. If he ever does. 081413 #worm Now here come the Aviary and the Snoke, from opposite directions. The Snoke holds in its mouth everything obvious and right that we're all missing. The Aviary is looking a little nervous. They circle each other slowly, at the periphery of our apprehension. 091413 #trout Now every morning Alcokute sits, on marble steps cascading toward the street, waiting for the daily mail. It comes; invariably it holds for him a single card, enumerating yet another reason she will never come and live with him in his amazing house. 110613 #squirrel There are still so many demons for me. Calling them out by laughing and saying "you sneaky fucker, I see you..." is the only way I know how to deal with it. And to just keep going, not caring if any of this is good or bad or indifferent. Let it be. between classes Behind his hand, a space like a secret pillow-fort, a channel to his friend's ear; mid-whisper, eyes flick up in radar mode; I am a blip. Embarked, he turns to watch his friend for signs of his communiqué's effect. Expectancy springs his exiting steps. 081413 #worm #roach Me drags dark trails of the corridor with him. He's not off the hook yet. The corridor's darkness swishes after him, a black lace wedding dress train, as he stumbles numbly after Him through the door, to where Esriel's Cafe is supposed to be. 081613 #trout I am a proud laborer. Had I but known then what I'm almost sure of now, I wouldn't have cried. I would have realized, nothing could be ..... than sitting here, tasting the trees. My world was centered on smell; you were the largest continent 102913 #snail #elephant ...I will write the letter because I have to, pretending reluctance, and slowly, like a febrile mouse, I will open up, soften up, bend over and loosen up my asshole in the furtive hope she'll bloody it once more with her exquisite nails. 091313 #worm just look at the books, the old books, the poetry books, a slim volume, perhaps, the one with stitches falling out, or pages singed with age; one from a charcoal era; pick the one that says her name; you'll know it when you see it-- 072703 #squirrel There's a lot to tell you about there, but I'm at Kinko's and broke right now, so I'll save it for later. The lions/tigers were gorgeous. I like that name Giryl. It's kind of feminine. Take care and keep me posted about babies, etc. Love, 000096 #human #gull It is very important to write bad drafts! The stupider and shittier it is, the more likely you're going to stick a bunch of "useless" stuff in there, which practice encourages accidentally letting out something useful or just plain neato! 082013 #human you know, with all the lights off except the computer, and the door almost all the way open with some clothes hanging off the top, this room from out there where i take my clothes off every night looks appealing like a blue garden in the middle of the night. 000000 #human #roach I saw a sign for ---- Street hanging in the angel air like tears in a bricklined garden. I saw the cafe behind us, now rendered as an antique photograph, now glowing like a small campfire in a big woods. I heard cars hissing down winter-wet pavement. 022613 #worm You are horrible, and almost all of us lust after you in some way at some time. We thrust our own ripped-out guts onto your polished knife for you, we do it ourselves, you don't even have to ask, as we jerk and buck in throes of self-defiling ejaculate. 010314 #jonquil Hey, Mary said. Is that your—hairbrush? She was looking at the items on the dresser with an odd expression. Is this—I mean is this your—? Gwen sighed. It was beginning to look as if she was going to have to explain at least a little. 110713 #squirrel So my point is that when you say you feel out of sorts, lonely, or raw---let yourself feel that in the present. The only way to process those feelings is to lean into them, and be gentle to yourself until you're ready to move to the next place. 081413 #worm Hanad holds his cigarette between two extended fingers. Me holds his between two relaxed fingers, sometimes between finger and thumb. Him tends to leave his dangling from his lip; Me has never understood how he can do that without the smoke burning his eyes. 082410 #human Last night I saw the Crayola toothbrushes stuck up on the mirror like so many quivering arrows after a cartoon ambush, and the bile of my own irritation came back to me; what if my dad had yelled at me like I yell at them? I'm quitting smoking, again. 120912 #elephant #human Except for those times when I DO know, and it scares the taste out of my mouth, and my heart pounds, and all I want to do is grovel and lick the sand and mud and filth off the bottom of the hard black boot she'll never wear for me again.... 083113 #treefrog 0911 Okay I don't really hate my job. I just hate the masses of loud kids, and the necessity to be constantly on top of things. On the whole, I actually like interacting with the kids. There's just too much of a sense of doom all around. Why is that? 010314 #jonquil She pulled on a blue dress. She had to admit, it looked good amidst all the blond wood, wan sunshine, and fall fields outside, and her mood lifted for a second, like a car going fast over one of the hills on the county road to the west of town. 000096 #squirrel sp let me get this strate. i am not really acting. but , i convince myself subtly that i am so that any time something is awkward or difficulat or just plain fucked up i can say, look i was only actingf? yep. well thats kind of stupid 081413 #worm I think I need to clarify something, says a man (also with a wine glass in his hand) whom Me hadn't noticed before. It's no more not a work of art than it isn't. I mean, the fact that it's not a work of art isn't Capitalized, if you see what I'm getting at. 011005 #eel I could see the pilot's face through his windshield. Dark-moustached, open-eyed, just looking at me, alertly, with an almost lack of expression before the expression has a chance to form. It was in that moment that I shot him. He went down. But there were plenty of others. 072904 #eel Meanwhile, on the news, they were talking about the new White House. It was going to be a super-slick, ultra-maximum-security White House. I mean, this thing was a capsule. Absolutely nobody could get in or out without permission. They were going to be giving tours. 000002 #human Okay so I asked the teh-dsa how it's going to go tomorrow, at my ritual gang- When do you have enough that suddenly you look at yourself and say, hey- I could give some of this to somebody else! Maybe social services should just be more social, the government be damned. 051111 #martian 1. Davante Carter, who may very well become a pilot someday, got excited about diagramming and how it's like programming. 2. So did I. 3. We did this together, in the same room, after school, even though he had a bus to catch and I had another job to go to. 010314 #jonquil In the rumpled morning, they decided they wanted a real breakfast. Reality was still at bay. Here, Gwen said, sidling arm to arm, and the tingling and the comfort of that descended through her up and down, tap it like this. Well I think I can beat an egg, Mary said. 090207 #eel Turns out, my gay self ain't so bad once he washes up. He gets a little darker, looks almost native, doesn't whine or talk so damn much, and goes on a hike with me up the side of a granite mountain. Whoah! I say, reaching the edge. Come here and look at this! What? Look! 081013 #dog *A bicycle squeaks down the street outside. The moon is full but you wouldn't know it unless you went outside. The fresh air comes in the window causing you to ask yourself, is it ever too late? Or has it been too late from the beginning? And would you know the difference?* 032313 #human flatbreads sticking out of the toaster, ready to go down burgers roasting in a piping hot oven taters almost ready to be smashed mixed veggies "just the way i like them!" ready to make love to the steam daughters healthy and we're doing all right for now 081313 #copperhead That rustling noise. The unmistakable switch and swash of a nature-loving city dweller making his way over wild familiar territory. I'm just finishing adjusting myself and zipping up when his weed-destroying footfalls pause. I turn around to see his goofy grin. 010314 #jonquil She wasn't late, no-one had done or said anything particularly stupid yet, other than the general din of stupidity all around her of course, but that was to be expected, like the weather. It was almost a good day so far. She even almost made it to first hour. 000001 #human The government is not going to take care of us. After it has fallen, or as it is falling, we are going to have to learn to do what many of our darker-skinned or otherwise disaffected citizens have already had to start learning to do: take care of ourselves and each other. 010314 #jonquil It had been about something else! It was just some stupid little thing about ||who had checked out one of the digital cameras last week ||a form that had gotten filled out wrong for class selection next semester. They still didn't know. They still didn't know! 081413 #worm The pig is not so lucky, depending on how you look at it. He becomes the bacon the willow-haired girl smells, urging her to finish her bath, brush the rectangles out of her hair, put on her robe, and rush downstairs to a big, meaty, farm family breakfast. Woo hoo! 090813 #bunny You're not going to breathe a word of this, are you? and the smoke curls out of his smile. Of course not! I lie, and I lie back, smoking like this, sitting here like this, lizard-warm with sensai. The geranium leaves are green! against the blood of the bricks 121512 #human Should I have a nother drink and keep looking at the underwear of the Internet, or just stumble up to bed and sleep a few hours until the little squirrel feet of my daughters start pattering and pittering around the house and punching me in the face demanding breakfast? 102913 #snail I don't want to be fawned over--well okay, maybe just a little, maybe just every now and then.... Maybe you make me laugh hard enough where I can easily, unfolding my elbows and long limbs, start telling my stories in my laid-back semi-southern relaxed voice again. 121613 #mouse You need some mouse things to keep the mouse fields in mouse line. There's frost and cats and farmers and wide open death all around. These things are real, not cute. You need some mouse things. To keep at bay the constant screams of naked skeletons on the prairie. 091313 #trout A confusion of gulls, smoke, and the distant keen of pipes. Time's dilapidation, the winding of small foot-paths around the fortress stones. The underground, the taste of fear and legend. Stories. Stories, invented by arrows who've flown through the hearts of paper men. 081613 #worm No. There's no more tea. The guards are hoarding it, over in their jackbooted corner. They're holding out their pinkies, talking in bogus accents, and saying, A little more honey, please, and stuff like that. One of them's not here. He went to go get the flowered dresses. 120894 #human Tae & I made pot pancakes to get rid of the rest of the pot. This morning he came out of the shower naked. He said he was giving the neighbor lady a nice show. It is a pretty nice show, I thought to myself. So what else is new—i always wanna fuck my best friends. 081613 #worm Everything is not all right. Milt went to the bathroom and didn't come back. Margie is in a bad mood, and if you know Margie, you know that's a scary thing. I can't stop bouncing my left knee up and down. The music sucks. Something's really wrong but I can't quite-- 000001 #eel Then a thought occurred to me, and I had to ask him: You're not just doing this to get closer to her, are you? And he admitted that he was, and when I showed that I was deeply hurt, he said, "Who cares!" I pushed him away violently and called him all sorts of names. 080912 #human Popcorn and Netflix again, and the butter starts running around the pan, hotly spreading the gossip over the barren venusian landscape, "He's fat! He's fat!" as if anyone cares. That landscape hasn't been mapped since the 80's, and neither have I. *Neither have I.* 010614 #eel Haha! I bolted. Out the door, starting through the maze of corridors, not knowing where I was going, but certain they would catch up with me any minute. You can only run so fast when you're carrying a giant water balloon and besides you don't really want to get away. 092603 #eel I was going to ask mom how I should leave my old life, if it was morally excusable in the slightest, what I should say. But she was occupied in the basement with a repairman--the back furnace kept hooshing out gallons of water all over the floor, so I held my tongue. 082713 #meerkat You know, it certainly feels good, when I land at the beach and start walking towards a certain little crowd on the grass or flipping about on the sand, to hear men and boys call out raggedly and heartily to me, Pirata!!! Its no hyperbole to say, its a dream come true. 000011 #human it's the first time since grade school I've felt true hatred. And I feel it a little bit every day, and sometimes at night a lot. The earnestness of the seashell-themed nightlight in the downstairs half bath yearns to be killed. It reeks of cat piss in there, anyway. 081413 #worm You got to free yourself, baby, says Geprorogo, circling philosophically around the glass coffee table that holds up the lump of clay. It is not clear whether he is talking to any of the people in the room, or to the clay. Me doesn't really care. What he'd really like-- 224825 072696 #human you sit in a coffee house, stoned or caffeinated or just plain, and write about what you see, you go to class, you go to work, you go out with glenn, you go