if I could DD, in no particular order whatsoever:
Why the fish-men are so many, and we, so fewKois flock like rainbows, trellis vines
evolved to curl to the Moon and dine.
We are rivers, but from gold mines,
the rails align and we find birds
evolved to curl. We are rivers
given to furnish vacant land.
We are rivers, but forgot, and
evolved to curl fish to brigands.
Past canopies foresaw this dirge:
we are rivers (evolved) to curl.
South on 91wide eye of the moon
glowers over the half-hills
rock-eater across the river
turn south of the gaping maw
drink down the starless night
toss out god
let him beg for a ride
in the 10-degree air
and sub-zero heart
The Fifth Horseman“I'm not saying they're not killing each other,” I explain. “I can see from the figures in front of me that they're killing each other. What I'm saying is that unless you can broaden your demographic, we're never going to meet our targets for this quarter. This is supposed to be a world war, Belgium and the Netherlands isn't going to cut it.”
War squawks at me down the phone. It's hard to hear him over all the screaming in the background, but frankly I'm not interested in his excuses, I need to see results.
“What do I expect you to do? Do your job! Think outside the box! Look, Famine is in Europe right now, why don't you ask him for some help? I see the potential for synergy there. No, I'm aware you don't do 'asking for help'. I'm also aware of your performance over the past century, and I'm noticing some startling correlation between- hello? Hello?”
I slam the handset back into its cradle, which is a lot harder than it sounds when done from the back
Prima NoctaIt doesn't happen how you think it does.
You're probably strung out, ducked into the wrong alley to hit the pipe. It waited there, watching you, biding time until you were good and fucked before ripping a new hole in your throat. Maybe your thigh if it's in a rush. You spray out all over the wall, all over yourself, all over it. You just see yellow eyes, fucking foot-long tongue lapping you up, and then nothing.
But then, something. Maybe you smell dogshit, old take-out containers, dried-out tampons and whatever else people threw away along with you. You reach up and around, wipe the maggots off your face. You find a door up there, push it open. Daylight. It feels like a blowtorch on your hand, and you smell your skin bubbling away as the lid falls closed.
No, you didn't smell it. You tasted it. Tasted your skin burning, just like you're tasting this dumpster and the filth you're swimming in.
Maybe you sleep.
Maybe you wake up just in time to hear the truck grab hold of your roac
Three Cities1: Öb. The Tall City
The botfly-woman was anxious, as if there might have been ants, hiding in ambush; she’d landed on the lip of the central chimney and circled sun-wise, as demanded by ritual. It was always easy to confuse the botfly with the hirsute ground-dwelling wasp, but botfly-women knew to circle any city chimney, sun-wise; botfly women knew to fan their wings and wet any ample number their hairs with spittle, before plucking those strands and dropping them into the depths of the city to announce their arrival.
The botfly-woman had done this, signaling her presence and her harmless intentions to the city below, and The Warrior caught word of her scent, from the glands of a news-vendor. She might have been there for long, long hours. She might have been there for moments, more likely, if the trio of boisterous near-male alates were any indication; they might have seen her in the distance. They might have called to her: prone
Seeking the futureThe pilgrimage has been long and fraught with many hazards. The seekers of wisdom have travelled many days to get to this place.
The journey has been made yet more arduous because the Satnav has acquired a kind of occult glitch and the only roads it locates are high, winding fairy roads which are only accessible on a Wednesday, or narrow rutted cart tracks which have been unused since the fourteenth century. There is a map, of course, but none of the roads are on it and so the seekers of wisdom must have faith that the Satnav will, after many tests, deliver them safe unto their destination.
After many days; many lunches in deserted service stations and washes in petrol station toilets at the edge of ghost towns, the faithful are rewarded.
“Turn right,” the Satnav proclaims, “and after fifty yards, you will reach your destination.”
The seekers of wisdom are filled with silent anticipation.
In the appointed place there is a portal emblazoned wit
Callow's ClassSome people just stopped coming to lectures. It wasn't reasonable, expecting us to understand all of that, they said. They may have been right, but we cling too closely to reason, sometimes. Others claimed to learn more by reading the textbook. I've always thought that was unfair. Prof. Callow may have been unreasonable – undoubtedly he was unreasonable – in expecting Freshers to appreciate the beauty of the eightfold way; but he did it with an energy and charisma that none of the books even aspire to. That may have been what scared them off, I suppose.
Whatever the reasons, the class shrank rapidly. The nonchalant back row slunk forward to become the furiously-calculating third row. The middle-of-the-class snoozers dwindled and found less quieter neighbourhoods to nod off in. The smart alec girl at the front who said things like “I think you mean non-decreasing rather than increasing, Prof,” became a personal hero. The little details turn out to matter more tha
The Glowing Child“Did I see you in the streets, perhaps, in a winter long ago?” asked the man with the rumpled hair, his cane clutched close, his eyes squinched tight in myopic contemplation.
“Perhaps,” the girl echoed, taking him by the hand. “That is not imperative for you to know, though, so I would suggest simply forgetting it.”
Impertinent girl, he thought, but quite possibly not. Quite possibly not a girl, he meant, not that there was any doubt she was impertinent. The creature, indeed, was all too white and fluttery to be much of anything customarily called human, and rather too small in his opinion to be so blithely commanding him about. Much was amiss here, but he took her hand anyway, mainly through exhaustion. It had been that sort of day.
“Where are we going?” he inquired, after a stumble through the unlit parlor. “Mr. S--- said it wouldn’t be long – walking has always been something of a difficulty and it would be highly una
CCLXXVa few spring stars...
discovering a hole
in my pocket
romanceweak light
and what
you want
to hear.
Summer LullabyDo not be afraid of slumber
Warm and kind as summer
Lasting like the day-light
Overwhelming like the thunder
Soft as lamb's-ear in the grasses
Or like apple branches
White and green and growing--
Lively as the clover dances
With the careful sun-spray flowers
Counting waning hours
Waiting for the night-time
When the cricket-chirp sounds louder
And the hazy air is cooler,
As the fading color
Leeches shades to greyish
Tones of dreary, rainy weather--
Soon the dark will be ascending
Day and day-light ended
Moons and starry smudges
Lofted high, aglow and shining.
Do not be afraid of slumber
Nor of gentle thunder;
You are someone who is
Growing warm and kind as summer.
Mature Content
Over The Hill, Defined (No, Really!)Attention, fellow netizens! Within this brief thesis I shall, using a heretofore untried amalgam of English and mathematics, attempt to officially derive the definition of term "over the hill" once and for all.
Ready? Let's begin.
a) In English, 'forty' is the only number to have its letters arranged in ascending alphabetical order.
b) Likewise, 'one' is the only such number with its letters in descending order.
c) This makes 'forty-one' one of the very few numbers with all of its letters in an up-and-down pattern, forming a single cusp or peak.1
d) From its shape when graphed, we shall define this particular arrangement of letters as being a 'hill'.
e) Since 41 is by far the greatest of these hills, in both word length and numerical value, we shall further define it as being 'the' hill.2
f) Forty-two is the first whole number greater than fo
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The Female SuicideTwenty years of nursing
emergency room wounds
and my grandmother
puts down her fork, rubs
her brow and tells me
the female suicide
is a more methodical,
calculating beast.
A woman will close
the curtains, cleanse
their apartment of clutter
for the first time in months
and proceed to overdose
in the comfort of their
own hospitality.
A woman will do this
because she is aware
someone will have to
discover her like this.
Someone will have to
bury her like this.
My grandmother says this
because when my uncle speaks
paramedic about the male
he pronounced dead from
a house’s television antenna
he never mentions a burial.
Skin by SimplySilent
