Carbon
Jessica Harper
She is the mother to twenty thousand fools. Though I repent and resolve I am granted no reprieve from her inexorable tides; I wade eagerly into the beautiful and inviting waters where my feet find no purchase, drowning again and again. Each time I promise I will have learned my lesson, to be mindful of the descent, but the compression of my skull makes me giddy and the bends threaten to burst my heart in two. Am I really such a fool, or is this the common fate of all who hear the sirens on the waves? How many small men have lost their minds in her fingers, already spinning anxious words together for their imagined Penthouse letter featuring this mythical party girl of their repressed fantasies, not even guessing the enormity of the forces involved or the accidence of their inclusion? Jessica is no man's aquisition, no wet dream come true, no brush with greatness to elevate the no-ones of this world. She is a war machine cutting down the weak and the sick, spitting out the bones of simpletons and sycophants and answering only to herself. Though loving her batters me to unpitiable remnants I tell myself that it isn't my fault or that she makes me this way, but I could quit anytime really.
Couldn't I?
Shana Wood
In the far off kingdom I lived in as a young lad, herding goats and delivering blocks of salt, there were two classes of humanity. The wise and all knowing Nerds on one side, and the beautiful and popular Debutantes on the other. All I've ever known was that you were either brilliant and wore goofy pointed glasses or you crawled around in heavy metal videos with black lingerie. Shana helped me to see past all that, because she does both. Of all my Hos in my stable, dis be da breedin stud.
Que
Bah! Accursed woman! How I despise the womb that unleashed you upon the earth! She is a fumbling oaf who has been the ruination of my ingenious schemes! Many is the time I would have her in my clutches, the death ray in hand, poised at the cusp of victory and exhiliated with full knowledge that this day I would triumph at last! Oh, how I would dance with reverie upon her hastily scratched grave, and claim that which is mine, THE WORLD OF MAN! But heavens be damned, the witch doth somehow wriggle free my devices each time and conspire to thwart my moment of greatness with her insipid meddling. CURSE YOU AGENT Q, WE SHALL MEET AGAIN! AND YOU SHALL DRAW BREATH NO MORE!!!
The Clermont Lounge
When I was a mere shaving of a lad my aunt hustled washingtons out of the Clermont, and was friends with Blondie if anything either of them says can be believed. Now, in the great wheel of Ka I have become one of those reprobates skulking in the dim shadows myself... though I prefer to concentrate on liquor dispensed from Halley's delicate hands until I am so sotted that I can scarcely even recall that there are naked ladies in the room. I once got so hammered that I curled on on the filthy carpet beside the mens room and took a nap, and some fellow barflies trundled me outside like a sack of flour. I was lucky no one mistook me for a urinal.
Sean Morrisey
The kitchen light comes alive with a dim electric hum, the cricket-song of phosphorescence. mpty, square, aligned. Each napkin in quarters, each chair tucked neatly in parallel to table-edge, silverware stacked militarily into the drawers. My ears stand high from my skull, reaching out into the air with invisible fingers feeling for the unfeelable. A ticking litany from the wall clock, low breathing of the refrigerator motors, the familiar symphony of a lifeless apartment at six minutes to New Years Eve. All the world is reeling in undisciplined tomfoolery, but not so here. All is as it should be. Propriety, organization, protocol. There is no champagne bottles cluttering the vacuumed carpet, no confetti or streamers to suffocate the seventy degree air conditioning. There is no blood rising up from the sink drain, fingers still motioning around thearoundt he aroun around and around Stand straight, four short paces to the medicine cabinet. A sober face, exquisitely lined peers out the mirror. Behind, a pharmacy of remedies for the afflictions of man. Here, 32mg of Oxycontin to steady the nerves. A steady hand is a saintly hand, fidgeting is in such poor taste. The convulsions of a weak mind. There. Conformity, obedience, distinguished. Outside, the unwashed are making such asses of themselves. The rabble. The human vermin. Here, high above, in the precisely ordered apartment, there is silence and dignity. Knock, knock, the faucet comes on. Inacceptable! The landlord will surely hear of this, such carelessness, such shoody workmanship, such pools of blood striping the cabinet walls and spilling ont pillingo onto the linle onht linleuoulum linoleum red with Sean. Nonsense. Fix a cup of coffee, two tablespoons, no sugar. The knocking echoes, of course an echo, or a neighbor's damned radio. No, in the sink, a voice, a finger creeping out, waving hello like an insect's antennae. Re rheminds he inds you of the night, long forgotten, with party hats and kazoos, that you struck him down and his blood soaked so deep into the carpet you thought it would never shhhh.... come here , here to the sink, the seank, seank, in with me, sean, crawl into the drain with me and forget. I'll cut out tht vce that voice, in the third cabinet a carving knife, your'e 're dead dead dead you'll stay down there, the blade sinks into my throat and I'm killing you again Sean, my clean floors my clean clean head you're in my head I'll cut you out Sean, never neevr never again youre head your dead now be quiet be clean be quiet iet i shhhhhh
TROY
Here I am R- A- W--- a terrorist here to lay trouble to phony MCs I move on and seize to conquer and stomp on other rappers with ease cuz I'm at my apex and nothin I'm below nothin but a millimeter and I'm a Kilo second to none makin MCs run so don't try to step to me cuz I am the one I relieve rappers just like tylenol and they know it so I don't see why-ya-al tryin to front perpetratin a stunt when you know I just smoke you up like a blunt I'm genuine like Gucci raw like sushi a stage of rage is what rap is to me I go with flow and soul on every note I'm a damager not an amateur but a pro fessional unquestional without doubt superb so full of action my name should be a verb I make a muscle grab the mic and hussle while you stand dazed and amazed I bustalil' rhyme with authority superiority incarcerate the whole crowd's majority the rhymes I use definitely amuse better than Dynasty or Hill Street Blues my voice while float on every note when I clear my throat that's all she wrote screechin like a reverend rap is severin' and in my lifetime believe I never been beaten or just tooken out come to think about it people start lookin out and gettin nervous when I'm at the service so gimme that title boy you don't deserve it homies is illin chillin like a villian the meaning of RAW is Ready And Willin
Allen Suh
King Menes had issued a command that all the sons of Israel be cast into the Nile, so I lit out fer better fortunes in the western sea. I discovered America and named it Murphysville back in them days, and damned if the first man friend I come across weren't a filthy unwashed savage redskin the name of Allen Suh. We wrestled up an awful peice fussin and a feuding, and kicked up a whole mountain range and stomped out the great lakes and such, afore we settled on jes bein friends. Well, I reckon we had a lot of inventing to do ahead of us if we was ever going to get television up and running so a feller'd have some football to watch, so I invented corn and Allen sorted out a way to cook it and before you know it we done had ourselves a first Thanksgiving. Come next harvesttime we already come up with Democracy and railroads and like that, and about a week or two later Allen come up with this idea he had called the Eighties which I was shore wouldn't fly but folks sure did cotton to it. Didn't make much sense to me, all them skinny ties and funny red leather jackets with zippers everwhar. Reckon Allen knows best though, so last I seen him was on them MTV awards speechin up about compassionate conservativism and all, and I jes slipped quietly out the back and fetched up my old canoe outen the reeds. Yall take care 't one another, spose I'm due for adventures out in the western sea.
Anders
In the summer of 1803 at the Glimmerpool University of Philosophy I had the unique pleasure of aquainting myself with Sir Anders. I was a proffessor of International Law at the time, and he was a fresh, bright young lad with both a firm grasp of the established principals as well as a shining light on the path of knowledge yet to be discovered. Having eventually entered a partnership together and winning our first Nobel Peace prizes jointly for a paper on the Juxtabranchial Distribution of Contextual Solipsism in Higher Apes we enjoyed a life of status and means until the Belgian War, where we served as lieutenant and commander together in Her Majesty's Seventeenth Division. It was there in the debris of steel and flesh that we established that true bond of one man for another, as God was so gracious and wise to bestow upon creation. Anders is a fine gentleman, a scholar, a mighty hand at the billiards table, and it is my honor that I should call him my friend. Hip hip!
Mahjula Bahkamara
Damn.
I mean damn, just look at her. Feel that shit. What's she talking about? I don't know, but it makes me want to go wreck my car. Maybe get laid up in the hospital a few weeks, get some good hoses running in and out of me, anything just damn let me get that woman out of my mind for a second would you? I don't want to see your boobs no no put them away put them away let a brother get his head together I got bills to pay I can't just be trippin all over you. Go on, I got a wife, hell I got three wifes, go ruin somebody else. Mm!
Damn.
Cher Walker
Hold, what blessed wind beguiled of sin
from North and East doth blow,
That bears aloft such whisker-softened intimations low,
With winter gauzed and icing frost to
lick along these lengths uncrossed,
And pattern her with scattered turns of
light upon the snow?
What fires forged this perfect bone,
And curious kilns formed hot and honed
The shape and curves that drape and swerve throughout these delicate zones?
My lips are split to speak a word
And swift are gripped and sealed to hers
With snaking pink I shake and sink to murmurings and purrs.
A name! A name, a frame to hang and pin to earth this dulcet pain!
Yet ere I ask doth swiftly fasten love's embrace again,
And silenced find the voice that warmly whispers this refrain:
Thou knowest by the spilling cold
That straightens hard your spine
And willful holds the thrilling roads
That heat your other side
The cloud breaker
The earth shaker
And shaper of the skies
I am the dream, the dish,
The velvet-wing'ed wish,
Air walker, and your bride.
Lael Pastore
She is the sun generating a trillion trillion megawatts of electricity per second, illuminating the world and warming the seas. Her heart pulses with nuclear heat and through her veins there are solemn rivers of volcanic lava coursing with ancient jungle rhythms. She is a familiar object in the sky that I see every day but can never hope to reach; gently melting the wax from my wings should I come too near. Where there is darkness she follows chasing shadows across across the skin of the earth from east to west, from Terminus to Hawaii and back again. She is quiet and beautiful. It is difficult to look directly at her without being dazzled... which can make her quite grumpy. If you could in your mind eclipse this surface and draw the moon across the blinding disk, then a corona of light is revealed more wondrous and far-reaching than most have ever seen-- a depth I cannot truthfully claim to have completely known. But there are other ways to measure the sun, to read the movements and climates of the bodies closest to her and infer from them the influence of her gravity. She is both solitary and affectionate. Sympathetic and patient with a fortunate few, quick tempered and unimpressed with everyone else. An invaluable woman to call friend, if you can only get near enough.
Chalmers
The first time I ever kicked Chalmer's ass was at the East Dunwoody Outreach Center For Runaway Girls back in 1983. I was there reading uplifting stories of hope and faith to these downtrodden unfortunates, and this drunk ass stumbles in the door wielding a mackerel on a stick and generally being a nuisance. His name was Chalmers and it was immidiately clear that he was saturated with whiskey and vodka. So I tore loose a chair leg and wailed him into a bloody mess for about ten minutes or so, crumpled him into a garbage can and kicked it down the hill outside, where he rolled into traffic and was run over by a limousine full of fat rappers. The second time I kicked Chalmer's ass was at the 1996 World's Fair in Seoul, Korea, where I was stationed as a marine at Ft Tientziek for the summer. I was assisting elderly attendees and performing other beneficial services to the disabled when this guy fucking swoops down out of the sky in a hang-glider drunk out of his mind and pissing all over the place, and dropping buckets of creamed broccoli souffle all over the crowd. Well, I fashioned a catapult out of two old walkers and a bra strap, launching myself into the air, where I collided dead-on with Chalmers and commenced a fierce battle in the skies erupting like Godzilla vs Mothra or something. Despite his attempts to wipe his boogers on me, I managed to get his pants off and wrap them around his face, thus blinding him, and then punched him in the asshole until he fell unconscious and plummeted to earth, where he landed in the gears of the ferris wheel and was ground into a pine powder which we later used for Manwich fixins. Now, the third time I kicked Calmers's ass was at his grandmother's birthday dinner just last month. Everyone was dressed in their finery and diamonds, we had roast beef and red wine, and the occasion was carried out with great ceremony and refinement. Just as I was about to toast the old woman with a tribute in sonnet form, Chalmers leaps upon the table and begins breakdancing and spitting pre-chewed banannas upon the lot of us. This sort of outrage I simply cannot abide, particularly at so formal an occasion, so taking up a dinner fork I lit upon the table and challenged him to a duel. He had nought but a candlestick in hand, but lunged and parried like a fencing master giving me a good whipping across the backside more than once. When at last it seemed that dignity and civility would fail to this oafish lout, Chalmers paused to announce to all that he had long awaited this day, preparing thereby to smash in my face with an enormous baked pie in a glass dish, but this gave me time enough to snake my hands up his pants leg and give his wedding tackle a good turn for the better and twisted them right free from their lodging. He fell upon his back screaming oaths and unprintables, whereupon I jammed the testicles into his mouth and hot-glued forever shut his yapping jaw with a handy hot-glue gun I keep on my person for just such an emergency, and struck him square in the face with a Rhesus monkey which I also keep handy in my breast pocket... also for just such an unfortunate event. Not yet sufficiently convinced that he had learned his lesson, I strapped him to the back of a southbound train to Biloxi and ripped off both his arms, stapling them inside his buttcheeks, and burned him alive. If ever I should see Chalmers again, no doubt we will match blows again, but for his sake at least I pray that it not be for a long time. He's a drunken lout and as want of a spanking as any precocious savage you would ever care to meet. There.
Mary Brock
Mary is dead to me. For twenty-seven years I wore this albatross around my neck, this Tauntalus Stone, until the weight of it threatened to crush me into madness. How cruel is the creator to have enslaved me so, in that desolate loveless prison, innumerable light-years from the shape I knew was rightfully mine? How unjust the universe that would yield such ill fruit, the banana shrouded in the peel of a pear? Long hours I would lie barren in my gulag, peering out into the world through the soulless eyes of woman, casting over the vicious curves of what by rights were my victims but spread before me in the bonds of sisterhood. Where my blade should hang, there was but a fallow sheath. Such emptiness, such directionless want of purpose, such wretched racking shambles of humanity! I spit in the eye of the sun, and eat apart the roof of the clustered womb that formed me. Oh, the innocents I vengefully did smite in repugnance, the indignant wrath met out upon those born to fortunes denied me, the bathtubs of blood showered upon the shores of charity to beseech my freedom... these treasures found no purchase in the ears of Man. I fled into the desert, into exile, to contemplate my fate and to undo the sins of assignment. Long years I appealed the sands, and spoke into the winds. In the eve of Reaping I came into the tribes of three fingers, and they took me as their miserable servant. I watered horses, hauled brick, and was made as unto a whimpering dog. In the night, I rose up and slew the men of this people, taking their throats into my jaws and grinding out their shriveling breaths. The mother of these slain was also as a mother unto me, and here took pity upon the circumstance that would drive me to such lengths. She instructed me in the ways of the Hidden who lie beyond the sea, saying I might find the quiet of my soul there among. I sailed out to find these people, and in two years squirreled them out from the dense rainforests. They took my pleas into their council, and agreed to free me from my sorrows. There were strange incantations, and blinding fires, and pain as no creature can know released upon me, that ensued throughout the cycle of one moon, and I emerged from this jungle for the first time, as I should be, with my pillar erect and my purse closed forevermore. This woman, this Mary, whom I suffered beneath, was lain to earth in that forest, and I will know that name no more! I am no longer a woman, I am a MAN, my seed is hot and furious, and shall fill the bellies of every land... hereafter you shall know me by my true name...
Kylee
I have cullied among the vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, midst catacombs unkempt and those unspeakable libraries decorated in settling dust of ages turning slow with wondering eyes the crackling parchments of texts both sacred and profane. However authentic in these extracts for veritable gospel did substain, and illuminate thereby, was nothing promiscuously written, fancied, nor sung in these many nations nor generations as should suffice compare to that infinite description set down by the poetry of your contrivance. Such a harmony of dimension spun in skin and bone elegant and unrivaled of any precise proportion revealed in the intricacies of flower or insect, nigh e'en the terminating spirals of the conch. That hopeless sallow tribe which no wine of this world shall ever warm doth grow convivial upon tears at the inclusion of such silent discourse; that intimate rapport that present itself to each man in his most gaurded of chambers with but the most shadowy and wordless turn of your smile, and cause think that theirs is the ceaseless connection borne of autumnal companions. How much more pains thou takest to please the world by invisible detail, how magnified the intensity of sunlight become upon thee, how staid were death at the galley when news your arrival had besaid. Tis the most wicked medicine this joyous poison, the most fortunate tragedy of chance position my providence to behold and shivering breathe the air that fell curling in sweetened currents about your neck, to press softly the hollow arcs and hesitate fearfully and agonizingly, giving pause upon the lightless entrance and recognise the apple in the coils, knowing its fell intent; and faultering as had Adam in the garden. How dear and inevitable the price of innocence misplaced, and with such tenderness regretted. Had I the means of return upon the closing of my years to forge again a path uncompassed I would ineffably bend as the lodestone to North, drawn by taunts and beckoning, navigating by the scant starlight of your foundless promises, spilling tears across the blade traced from your hand to my heart even as you bent to kiss the wound. Ever would I suffer that little death without complaint, and yield to thee the sum of my facility. Would that I were posessed of a score such incidental souls, and cast them as barley before the wind become scattered providence. I am the broken motion, and you the tacit completion. Kylee, I am ever yours in all that I will, that I am, and that I create. I love you.
She is the mother to twenty thousand fools. Though I repent and resolve I am granted no reprieve from her inexorable tides; I wade eagerly into the beautiful and inviting waters where my feet find no purchase, drowning again and again. Each time I promise I will have learned my lesson, to be mindful of the descent, but the compression of my skull makes me giddy and the bends threaten to burst my heart in two. Am I really such a fool, or is this the common fate of all who hear the sirens on the waves? How many small men have lost their minds in her fingers, already spinning anxious words together for their imagined Penthouse letter featuring this mythical party girl of their repressed fantasies, not even guessing the enormity of the forces involved or the accidence of their inclusion? Jessica is no man's aquisition, no wet dream come true, no brush with greatness to elevate the no-ones of this world. She is a war machine cutting down the weak and the sick, spitting out the bones of simpletons and sycophants and answering only to herself. Though loving her batters me to unpitiable remnants I tell myself that it isn't my fault or that she makes me this way, but I could quit anytime really.
Couldn't I?
Shana Wood
In the far off kingdom I lived in as a young lad, herding goats and delivering blocks of salt, there were two classes of humanity. The wise and all knowing Nerds on one side, and the beautiful and popular Debutantes on the other. All I've ever known was that you were either brilliant and wore goofy pointed glasses or you crawled around in heavy metal videos with black lingerie. Shana helped me to see past all that, because she does both. Of all my Hos in my stable, dis be da breedin stud.
Que
Bah! Accursed woman! How I despise the womb that unleashed you upon the earth! She is a fumbling oaf who has been the ruination of my ingenious schemes! Many is the time I would have her in my clutches, the death ray in hand, poised at the cusp of victory and exhiliated with full knowledge that this day I would triumph at last! Oh, how I would dance with reverie upon her hastily scratched grave, and claim that which is mine, THE WORLD OF MAN! But heavens be damned, the witch doth somehow wriggle free my devices each time and conspire to thwart my moment of greatness with her insipid meddling. CURSE YOU AGENT Q, WE SHALL MEET AGAIN! AND YOU SHALL DRAW BREATH NO MORE!!!
The Clermont Lounge
When I was a mere shaving of a lad my aunt hustled washingtons out of the Clermont, and was friends with Blondie if anything either of them says can be believed. Now, in the great wheel of Ka I have become one of those reprobates skulking in the dim shadows myself... though I prefer to concentrate on liquor dispensed from Halley's delicate hands until I am so sotted that I can scarcely even recall that there are naked ladies in the room. I once got so hammered that I curled on on the filthy carpet beside the mens room and took a nap, and some fellow barflies trundled me outside like a sack of flour. I was lucky no one mistook me for a urinal.
Sean Morrisey
The kitchen light comes alive with a dim electric hum, the cricket-song of phosphorescence. mpty, square, aligned. Each napkin in quarters, each chair tucked neatly in parallel to table-edge, silverware stacked militarily into the drawers. My ears stand high from my skull, reaching out into the air with invisible fingers feeling for the unfeelable. A ticking litany from the wall clock, low breathing of the refrigerator motors, the familiar symphony of a lifeless apartment at six minutes to New Years Eve. All the world is reeling in undisciplined tomfoolery, but not so here. All is as it should be. Propriety, organization, protocol. There is no champagne bottles cluttering the vacuumed carpet, no confetti or streamers to suffocate the seventy degree air conditioning. There is no blood rising up from the sink drain, fingers still motioning around thearoundt he aroun around and around Stand straight, four short paces to the medicine cabinet. A sober face, exquisitely lined peers out the mirror. Behind, a pharmacy of remedies for the afflictions of man. Here, 32mg of Oxycontin to steady the nerves. A steady hand is a saintly hand, fidgeting is in such poor taste. The convulsions of a weak mind. There. Conformity, obedience, distinguished. Outside, the unwashed are making such asses of themselves. The rabble. The human vermin. Here, high above, in the precisely ordered apartment, there is silence and dignity. Knock, knock, the faucet comes on. Inacceptable! The landlord will surely hear of this, such carelessness, such shoody workmanship, such pools of blood striping the cabinet walls and spilling ont pillingo onto the linle onht linleuoulum linoleum red with Sean. Nonsense. Fix a cup of coffee, two tablespoons, no sugar. The knocking echoes, of course an echo, or a neighbor's damned radio. No, in the sink, a voice, a finger creeping out, waving hello like an insect's antennae. Re rheminds he inds you of the night, long forgotten, with party hats and kazoos, that you struck him down and his blood soaked so deep into the carpet you thought it would never shhhh.... come here , here to the sink, the seank, seank, in with me, sean, crawl into the drain with me and forget. I'll cut out tht vce that voice, in the third cabinet a carving knife, your'e 're dead dead dead you'll stay down there, the blade sinks into my throat and I'm killing you again Sean, my clean floors my clean clean head you're in my head I'll cut you out Sean, never neevr never again youre head your dead now be quiet be clean be quiet iet i shhhhhh
TROY
Here I am R- A- W--- a terrorist here to lay trouble to phony MCs I move on and seize to conquer and stomp on other rappers with ease cuz I'm at my apex and nothin I'm below nothin but a millimeter and I'm a Kilo second to none makin MCs run so don't try to step to me cuz I am the one I relieve rappers just like tylenol and they know it so I don't see why-ya-al tryin to front perpetratin a stunt when you know I just smoke you up like a blunt I'm genuine like Gucci raw like sushi a stage of rage is what rap is to me I go with flow and soul on every note I'm a damager not an amateur but a pro fessional unquestional without doubt superb so full of action my name should be a verb I make a muscle grab the mic and hussle while you stand dazed and amazed I bustalil' rhyme with authority superiority incarcerate the whole crowd's majority the rhymes I use definitely amuse better than Dynasty or Hill Street Blues my voice while float on every note when I clear my throat that's all she wrote screechin like a reverend rap is severin' and in my lifetime believe I never been beaten or just tooken out come to think about it people start lookin out and gettin nervous when I'm at the service so gimme that title boy you don't deserve it homies is illin chillin like a villian the meaning of RAW is Ready And Willin
Allen Suh
King Menes had issued a command that all the sons of Israel be cast into the Nile, so I lit out fer better fortunes in the western sea. I discovered America and named it Murphysville back in them days, and damned if the first man friend I come across weren't a filthy unwashed savage redskin the name of Allen Suh. We wrestled up an awful peice fussin and a feuding, and kicked up a whole mountain range and stomped out the great lakes and such, afore we settled on jes bein friends. Well, I reckon we had a lot of inventing to do ahead of us if we was ever going to get television up and running so a feller'd have some football to watch, so I invented corn and Allen sorted out a way to cook it and before you know it we done had ourselves a first Thanksgiving. Come next harvesttime we already come up with Democracy and railroads and like that, and about a week or two later Allen come up with this idea he had called the Eighties which I was shore wouldn't fly but folks sure did cotton to it. Didn't make much sense to me, all them skinny ties and funny red leather jackets with zippers everwhar. Reckon Allen knows best though, so last I seen him was on them MTV awards speechin up about compassionate conservativism and all, and I jes slipped quietly out the back and fetched up my old canoe outen the reeds. Yall take care 't one another, spose I'm due for adventures out in the western sea.
Anders
In the summer of 1803 at the Glimmerpool University of Philosophy I had the unique pleasure of aquainting myself with Sir Anders. I was a proffessor of International Law at the time, and he was a fresh, bright young lad with both a firm grasp of the established principals as well as a shining light on the path of knowledge yet to be discovered. Having eventually entered a partnership together and winning our first Nobel Peace prizes jointly for a paper on the Juxtabranchial Distribution of Contextual Solipsism in Higher Apes we enjoyed a life of status and means until the Belgian War, where we served as lieutenant and commander together in Her Majesty's Seventeenth Division. It was there in the debris of steel and flesh that we established that true bond of one man for another, as God was so gracious and wise to bestow upon creation. Anders is a fine gentleman, a scholar, a mighty hand at the billiards table, and it is my honor that I should call him my friend. Hip hip!
Mahjula Bahkamara
Damn.
I mean damn, just look at her. Feel that shit. What's she talking about? I don't know, but it makes me want to go wreck my car. Maybe get laid up in the hospital a few weeks, get some good hoses running in and out of me, anything just damn let me get that woman out of my mind for a second would you? I don't want to see your boobs no no put them away put them away let a brother get his head together I got bills to pay I can't just be trippin all over you. Go on, I got a wife, hell I got three wifes, go ruin somebody else. Mm!
Damn.
Cher Walker
Hold, what blessed wind beguiled of sin
from North and East doth blow,
That bears aloft such whisker-softened intimations low,
With winter gauzed and icing frost to
lick along these lengths uncrossed,
And pattern her with scattered turns of
light upon the snow?
What fires forged this perfect bone,
And curious kilns formed hot and honed
The shape and curves that drape and swerve throughout these delicate zones?
My lips are split to speak a word
And swift are gripped and sealed to hers
With snaking pink I shake and sink to murmurings and purrs.
A name! A name, a frame to hang and pin to earth this dulcet pain!
Yet ere I ask doth swiftly fasten love's embrace again,
And silenced find the voice that warmly whispers this refrain:
Thou knowest by the spilling cold
That straightens hard your spine
And willful holds the thrilling roads
That heat your other side
The cloud breaker
The earth shaker
And shaper of the skies
I am the dream, the dish,
The velvet-wing'ed wish,
Air walker, and your bride.
Lael Pastore
She is the sun generating a trillion trillion megawatts of electricity per second, illuminating the world and warming the seas. Her heart pulses with nuclear heat and through her veins there are solemn rivers of volcanic lava coursing with ancient jungle rhythms. She is a familiar object in the sky that I see every day but can never hope to reach; gently melting the wax from my wings should I come too near. Where there is darkness she follows chasing shadows across across the skin of the earth from east to west, from Terminus to Hawaii and back again. She is quiet and beautiful. It is difficult to look directly at her without being dazzled... which can make her quite grumpy. If you could in your mind eclipse this surface and draw the moon across the blinding disk, then a corona of light is revealed more wondrous and far-reaching than most have ever seen-- a depth I cannot truthfully claim to have completely known. But there are other ways to measure the sun, to read the movements and climates of the bodies closest to her and infer from them the influence of her gravity. She is both solitary and affectionate. Sympathetic and patient with a fortunate few, quick tempered and unimpressed with everyone else. An invaluable woman to call friend, if you can only get near enough.
Chalmers
The first time I ever kicked Chalmer's ass was at the East Dunwoody Outreach Center For Runaway Girls back in 1983. I was there reading uplifting stories of hope and faith to these downtrodden unfortunates, and this drunk ass stumbles in the door wielding a mackerel on a stick and generally being a nuisance. His name was Chalmers and it was immidiately clear that he was saturated with whiskey and vodka. So I tore loose a chair leg and wailed him into a bloody mess for about ten minutes or so, crumpled him into a garbage can and kicked it down the hill outside, where he rolled into traffic and was run over by a limousine full of fat rappers. The second time I kicked Chalmer's ass was at the 1996 World's Fair in Seoul, Korea, where I was stationed as a marine at Ft Tientziek for the summer. I was assisting elderly attendees and performing other beneficial services to the disabled when this guy fucking swoops down out of the sky in a hang-glider drunk out of his mind and pissing all over the place, and dropping buckets of creamed broccoli souffle all over the crowd. Well, I fashioned a catapult out of two old walkers and a bra strap, launching myself into the air, where I collided dead-on with Chalmers and commenced a fierce battle in the skies erupting like Godzilla vs Mothra or something. Despite his attempts to wipe his boogers on me, I managed to get his pants off and wrap them around his face, thus blinding him, and then punched him in the asshole until he fell unconscious and plummeted to earth, where he landed in the gears of the ferris wheel and was ground into a pine powder which we later used for Manwich fixins. Now, the third time I kicked Calmers's ass was at his grandmother's birthday dinner just last month. Everyone was dressed in their finery and diamonds, we had roast beef and red wine, and the occasion was carried out with great ceremony and refinement. Just as I was about to toast the old woman with a tribute in sonnet form, Chalmers leaps upon the table and begins breakdancing and spitting pre-chewed banannas upon the lot of us. This sort of outrage I simply cannot abide, particularly at so formal an occasion, so taking up a dinner fork I lit upon the table and challenged him to a duel. He had nought but a candlestick in hand, but lunged and parried like a fencing master giving me a good whipping across the backside more than once. When at last it seemed that dignity and civility would fail to this oafish lout, Chalmers paused to announce to all that he had long awaited this day, preparing thereby to smash in my face with an enormous baked pie in a glass dish, but this gave me time enough to snake my hands up his pants leg and give his wedding tackle a good turn for the better and twisted them right free from their lodging. He fell upon his back screaming oaths and unprintables, whereupon I jammed the testicles into his mouth and hot-glued forever shut his yapping jaw with a handy hot-glue gun I keep on my person for just such an emergency, and struck him square in the face with a Rhesus monkey which I also keep handy in my breast pocket... also for just such an unfortunate event. Not yet sufficiently convinced that he had learned his lesson, I strapped him to the back of a southbound train to Biloxi and ripped off both his arms, stapling them inside his buttcheeks, and burned him alive. If ever I should see Chalmers again, no doubt we will match blows again, but for his sake at least I pray that it not be for a long time. He's a drunken lout and as want of a spanking as any precocious savage you would ever care to meet. There.
Mary Brock
Mary is dead to me. For twenty-seven years I wore this albatross around my neck, this Tauntalus Stone, until the weight of it threatened to crush me into madness. How cruel is the creator to have enslaved me so, in that desolate loveless prison, innumerable light-years from the shape I knew was rightfully mine? How unjust the universe that would yield such ill fruit, the banana shrouded in the peel of a pear? Long hours I would lie barren in my gulag, peering out into the world through the soulless eyes of woman, casting over the vicious curves of what by rights were my victims but spread before me in the bonds of sisterhood. Where my blade should hang, there was but a fallow sheath. Such emptiness, such directionless want of purpose, such wretched racking shambles of humanity! I spit in the eye of the sun, and eat apart the roof of the clustered womb that formed me. Oh, the innocents I vengefully did smite in repugnance, the indignant wrath met out upon those born to fortunes denied me, the bathtubs of blood showered upon the shores of charity to beseech my freedom... these treasures found no purchase in the ears of Man. I fled into the desert, into exile, to contemplate my fate and to undo the sins of assignment. Long years I appealed the sands, and spoke into the winds. In the eve of Reaping I came into the tribes of three fingers, and they took me as their miserable servant. I watered horses, hauled brick, and was made as unto a whimpering dog. In the night, I rose up and slew the men of this people, taking their throats into my jaws and grinding out their shriveling breaths. The mother of these slain was also as a mother unto me, and here took pity upon the circumstance that would drive me to such lengths. She instructed me in the ways of the Hidden who lie beyond the sea, saying I might find the quiet of my soul there among. I sailed out to find these people, and in two years squirreled them out from the dense rainforests. They took my pleas into their council, and agreed to free me from my sorrows. There were strange incantations, and blinding fires, and pain as no creature can know released upon me, that ensued throughout the cycle of one moon, and I emerged from this jungle for the first time, as I should be, with my pillar erect and my purse closed forevermore. This woman, this Mary, whom I suffered beneath, was lain to earth in that forest, and I will know that name no more! I am no longer a woman, I am a MAN, my seed is hot and furious, and shall fill the bellies of every land... hereafter you shall know me by my true name...
Kylee
I have cullied among the vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, midst catacombs unkempt and those unspeakable libraries decorated in settling dust of ages turning slow with wondering eyes the crackling parchments of texts both sacred and profane. However authentic in these extracts for veritable gospel did substain, and illuminate thereby, was nothing promiscuously written, fancied, nor sung in these many nations nor generations as should suffice compare to that infinite description set down by the poetry of your contrivance. Such a harmony of dimension spun in skin and bone elegant and unrivaled of any precise proportion revealed in the intricacies of flower or insect, nigh e'en the terminating spirals of the conch. That hopeless sallow tribe which no wine of this world shall ever warm doth grow convivial upon tears at the inclusion of such silent discourse; that intimate rapport that present itself to each man in his most gaurded of chambers with but the most shadowy and wordless turn of your smile, and cause think that theirs is the ceaseless connection borne of autumnal companions. How much more pains thou takest to please the world by invisible detail, how magnified the intensity of sunlight become upon thee, how staid were death at the galley when news your arrival had besaid. Tis the most wicked medicine this joyous poison, the most fortunate tragedy of chance position my providence to behold and shivering breathe the air that fell curling in sweetened currents about your neck, to press softly the hollow arcs and hesitate fearfully and agonizingly, giving pause upon the lightless entrance and recognise the apple in the coils, knowing its fell intent; and faultering as had Adam in the garden. How dear and inevitable the price of innocence misplaced, and with such tenderness regretted. Had I the means of return upon the closing of my years to forge again a path uncompassed I would ineffably bend as the lodestone to North, drawn by taunts and beckoning, navigating by the scant starlight of your foundless promises, spilling tears across the blade traced from your hand to my heart even as you bent to kiss the wound. Ever would I suffer that little death without complaint, and yield to thee the sum of my facility. Would that I were posessed of a score such incidental souls, and cast them as barley before the wind become scattered providence. I am the broken motion, and you the tacit completion. Kylee, I am ever yours in all that I will, that I am, and that I create. I love you.