What follows this is bollocks. What actually follows is this. This time nothing followed. Followed what? I haven’t heard music in a year. I mean music in the way I used to. Now I don’t mean music. I mean business. My head tosses and turns. Tosses plus turns divided by two gives their mean. I am mean. A minimum of two. My pride has gone for a toss. What turns is for Abyssinia to ponder. And about a cogent analysis of subcutaneous breathing on my part.

I cut my hair today. Or rather the barber did. The barber was not named Rather. I don’t know the name but Rather was in CBS. Rather, he was employed by CBS. As to CNN, it is impossible for the CN group to link to Nitrogen. That’s why they had cable. I have no hopes. All the hopes I had went through the cable when I stopped hearing music. I never have had cable. Who pays for that shit? I once paid 50 paise to shit in the bus-stand of the city where I went to college. Actually twice. Once I had shit my pants. 50 paise translates to a penny and more here. Shit translates only to shit though. My neighboring blue collar scientist dipped his stained hand inside the tub where I had to wash my passage. I pulled my pants up. My passage was unwashed. May be later they did wash. The tub I mean. My passage is only for me to wash.

Instead of Blinking
by pat a physics

Nameless chickenman of my hallucination with your sunglasses on the sun, you are staring at us without a beak on your face. Your beak is the piece of chalk you used to give a lecture on how to grow a beak in order to seem more birdlike. Dividing beak cells were discussed in the chicken scratch on the blackboard, and you live with the screeching blackboard antics in your hut under the dustbin. Your habitat is not physically nurturing, nor is it mentally beneficial. Therefore you are an unhealthy lunatic. All day long, you hope for the cardboard boxes to race through your living space organizing things at an incredible rate. It never comes and you fake-peck the ground for a ghost worm which also is illusive. You never had a thing except for your detached beak and your self-pitying moan. On occasion, your sound lines up with the sound of footsteps in the room. It pulsates in erratic springs with the texture of a kazoo. Then, the empty boxes that people step around to avoid have been dealt with, and the music stops. When you have finished conducting the tap dancing, you start in with your lectures again. The terrible sound of your beak against the chalkboard makes glass shatter. Everyone’s glasses shatter in your no beak wearing face. Feathers are no longer clinging to your skin. You have plucked yourself clean long ago due to your nervous energy. The place where your eyes have sunk in to your skull is located in the exact same place as where your beak is supposed to go. Instead of blinking, you talk. When you are quiet, your mouth is shut and you are blind.

Who can fit a whip in their mouth
Besides a snake?
Not me
I learned that the hard way
On the set of Indiana Jones
The new one
They were filming a scene
(I was observing at close range)
Harrison Ford cracked his whip
At this guy playing your typical sinewy Nazi guard
But he misfired
The whole whip came straight for my face
I opened my mouth to scream
A gaping, raw-throated scream
Wide like the mouth of a snake
Or a river
But it ended up just coiling around my neck
In a kind of loose bolo-tie configuration
Like a long lazy spaghetti pet
Resting on his master’s shoulders

But the incident was very frightening all the same
So I went straight home
And with the help of some science buddies
A couple of computer programs
Three large pizzas
Some “study pills”
And a one-fifth size scale model of the movie lot
We determined that the whip wouldn’t have fit

boatpaper.
by shannon baker

every
“why i am not someone else”
lifts restlessly unwanted ribs.
the rest are forced to listen.

this
lip of matter
troubles
an expected knot
of spine. fog reflection, greenish
was your father’s eye such is
certain.

bright, the budding fishfarm
neon bathtub in rebirth.

the physical world humiliates.
real people ignore themselves.

vacuum bags, aluminum,
rope hang
almost warbles.

bombs, but very
soft bombs.
also some hundred eggs of milk.

sentient outmotion,
overturned
upside&downlooking.
that is to say,
we sink.

Garbage trucks
sound like school busses
until they start picking things up but
hearing them
stop
outside your floor-level window
at the dumpster across from your door still
makes you feel like you are missing
something

for Kenneth Koch

at the end of every cigarette that burns there is of course
a soft little bright light which means
hope! eternity! so you are not
killing yourself when you
smoke you are preparing for
heaven where the loving lavender
cigarette angels have soft ash wings
or for hell where a flaming cigarette forest makes
a marvelous explosion in which at least you are involved!

Till the Gardens of Machpelah
by Halifax

Galatians 4:27

Her vacant womb, barren, screams for flesh. A low black fence, bright gilded rail,
squares a yard and bounds the pale. It aches to swell with blood and water but is answered with soured Muscat wine. Across that, a green field dotted with stone shaded by oaks fed well on bone. Ahead the empty endless future taunts her, dancing with fruitless pleasure. There’s a stone church, with plain front doors, the right wide open for you and yours.Wincing, livid and wild-eyed, she roils like a cornered predator.Within, glass views of biblical fellows, coloring Sunday service in blues and yellows. Hands and claws rake furrows in her own face to quench the hunger, to slake her gut’s first need.Past hard oak pews in columns paired, afflux with red carpet to an altar shared. Black birds on each transom arm lend themselves to her efforts.Under heartwood beams, under a lowercase “t”, in a lit pool of water caustic like a sea,She suffers starving in an indifferent ideal, tied and bound by unwanted care.Old Fire & Brimstone speaks the Name then drenches the alb to quash the flame. Her beauty fades like thick white clouds before a descending rain. Here is the church under stark timbers enjoining rebirth for all the members.
Each life never lived rumbles out of her for denial, “No flesh! No blood! No purpose!”

`Proverbs 8:4 Perfect, stagnant and unchanging, the saccharine garden birds sing to her. The lilt of their song tears through her as lashes on her bare skin. The seeds within her will never know the sweet sound. This knowledge drives her away, to gnash her teeth and rip at her hair to feel pain for them. Her punisher made her a comfort for creation and knows her pain. The devourer of birds, fiery and more beautiful then her, He walks the garden and tells her what not to eat.

` Thomas 9 & 10

Myspace and raw, unsalted butter.
Wine and raw fish.
Adderoll and exercise.
Heroin and positivity.
Pot and unheated honey.
Valium and hiking.
Shrooms and non-smokers.
Vodka and raw eggs.
Ritalin and daily walks.
Hitler and pop rock.
Gin and swimming.
Sex and Einstein.
Dipsomania and AA.
Hydrocodone and probiotics.
Oxycodone and jogging.
Clove cigarettes and mineral water.
Naproxen and meditation.
Concerta and hacky-sacks.
LSD and Kimchee.
Dramamine and steak.
PCP and skateboarding.
LSA and morning glories.
Nutmeg and bottomless lakes.
Cigarettes and diluted coffee.
Blunts and grapefruit juice.
Anti-psychotics and sunshine.
Multi-vitamins and solitude.
Menthols and hugs.
Narcissism and Agnosticism.
Religion and Reason.
Beer and hope.
Paris Hilton and self-respect.
Lorazepam and self-expression.
Rumination and Digression.
LSD-25 and Omega-3s.
Morphine and laughter.
Meth labs and 24-Hour Fitness.
Guns and flowers.
Tequila and Vitamin D.
Kerosine and hippies.
Suppression and masturbation.
Evangelicals and orgasms.
Fox news and love.
Speed and yoga.
Ambien and rock-climbing walls.
Petroleum and Dickens.
Nuclear war and Christmas.

Daddy
You lied
There is no such thing as happily ever after
I’m a CUNT
A Bitch
Their mother
Our whore
The scholar
You slut
Loose but pure
Big but little
I was born wrapped in pink
And I dread if I die in it
I was what you wanted
What you needed
I do as I’m told
Fold my hands
So nice and neat
Cross my legs
Sit up straight
I’m on display
I press my pretty, perfective, passive face up to the glass
You force little girls to watch me
They take notes as they walk by
Little girls learn from me
But today
I will not press that pretty perfect passive face up to the glass
Today I will not cross my legs
Today I will not be on display
I will spread those big legs so far open
Slouch in my chair
Read my middle finger
Little girls shamelessly watch in admiration
Walls crack like cement
There will be chaos
FEAR ME
I killed my daddy with my Barbie
It’s too bad
I’m so sad
Blood in her hair and her dress
You dyke
You dangerous dyke
I cried for her
I smashed my daddy’s face in with my brand new Barbie
Liars burn in hell he says
Doors lock
Please take the bloody Barbie
Bittersweet pixie sticks
Daddy…it’s not your fault you’re one of them
“GO HOME AND PRAY”

NO DINNER AND FLOWERS, JUST STALKING
by john grey

The telephone rings.
A car cruises by
your apartment.
Another letter arrives.

He’s in the next shopping aisle.
The parking lot
is a hundred of him.
The wall shadows become
a succession of his silhouettes.
He’s every noise,
each chilly brush of wind
against your cheek.

He feels so close some times,
his rancid puffs of breath
ooze out of your mouth.
His footsteps are
the tag line to your own.
His body grows
from the dark places
where yours end.

The cops are no help,
your friends the same.
Lives are lived too singly
for your own good,
are as unprotected
as the scurrying mouse
in the grain field
hunted by hawks.

For months, he’s imagined
he loves you.
He’s husked you down
until you’re nothing
but your fear.
You stow your heart away,
give him your trembling to adore.