Lars lifts opens the toilet seat. The hinge squawks and he mimics the sound with his mouth. A dumb smile folds out on his face like someone unrolling a beach towel. He sits without dropping his pants or underwear. The cops are just about to leave through the screen door. Maggie offers a departing sacrament of right out of the oven of crispy flakey Pillsbury biscuits. They wave their hands parallel to the ground refusing. Maggie pulled the biscuits out too early. The bottoms are tan and dimensional but the tops are sloppy. They look like they have a glaze but they don’t have a glaze. They are pasty but still hot to the touch. The pan is hot. Maggie is wearing maroon oven mitts. One of the cops gets his foot snagged on the throw rug. They walk with their heads down but don’t notice the curled edges of the throw rug. They notice a black pug named Roger instead and nearly avoid fumbling over him. The cops scatter outside quickly like ducklings crossing the street. Lars’ dumb smile lingers and he laughs with a shushing lisp. He reaches between his legs into the toilet bowl. His hand disturbs the water. His nose is bleeding. Maggie closes the doorwall after the cops leave. The cops left the screen open. Maggie reopens the doorwall, closes the screen, shakes her head, and then closes the doorwall again. The kitchen is humming with improper wires. The light is electric pastel blue. The linoleum is too ***** to sleep on. Maggie’s ******* can be seen through her shirt. Lars wipes his nose with his arm and shoulder. He is hunched digging into the toilet bowl. He pulls out a baggie with a twist tie on top. The baggie looks reused. Maggie enters under the frame of the door and her lips roll out like a beach towel. The ******* in the baggie is very very dry.

K.p’s dad was a Science Fiction author,
While his son and I learned at school.
The teacher talked about planes, bombs, and towers-
Explosions, debris, and jet fuel.

We were poised like guppies, fidgeting with our lips,
Our bodies seemed made of lewd rubber.
Not one of us understood the weight or gravity-
Of one person killing another.

K.p’s dad wrote about a fair United States,
Called: “The Defined Territories,” rather tenacious.
A satire exploring justice with exaggerated sameness-
That most readers found to be tasteless.

His main character was a ‘rookie cop,’
And every skin color was uniform and equal.
Homosexuals gladly aided population control (by not making babies)-
And bullets were designed to be non-lethal.

In the story: a group of smugglers find a stockpile of real guns,
Automatics, ammunition and bombs.
The valiant cop pursues them through page turns and plot-
With sweat budding on his palms.

K.p and I fought over a girl at school,
I broke his nose and we each served detention.
At the end of his dad’s story the smugglers are caught-
Fined $1,000 and given lethal injection.

Larry, the man who terraformed Mars, has a scar over his left eye.
Maggie, his younger sister, could not make up her mind.
Her brother was a Star Man. She was left behind.
Maggie swam in the ocean
Larry paid a fine.

Maggie liked tequila
Larry was back on Earth.
He liked snorting space rocks
By the basement furnace hearth.

Larry got a parking ticket
Maggie passed out in the sand
She did not feel a single thing
When she was ****** there by a man.

The baby was coming in April and
Maggie went to the clinic
Larry thought about Venereal tides
While he was out having a picnic.

Larry, the man who terraformed Mars, has a scar over his left eye.
Maggie, his younger sister, could not make up her mind.
Her brother was a Star Man. She was left behind.
Maggie swam in the ocean
Larry paid a fine.

Maggie is now a single mother
In the house with a furnace hearth.

Larry never came back down
The last time he left Earth.

We've taken you from your home. Lush in line, your twins and elders, taken.
You lost connection to the Nexus, put on display with porous candied paper messengers and the consumers of blood, perched from the ceiling by invisible lineage.
We have taken you. We're sorry. We lament. We trade small goods to take you, but its easy.
We take the tools too. The serration, the sadism, newspaper mat lobotomy.
We lament. We are sorry.
We lament and cut sad faces. We cut the undead that spawn from the soil and ****** your innards into the hot room. We are sorry. We too spawn from soil. You feel you've lost connection to the Nexus- with the stringy appendages of chilled gore.
We've taken your insides and given you a new face.
We are sorry.

(The page is torn on the left alignment)

...And then they would place their pistols beneath their chins and pull the trigger. I would see it as some cylindrical spatter of blood escaping from the tops of their heads, like over exaggerated gore from the adult movies. So what would happen next for them exactly? Blackness? No. That is still something. Perhaps just empty. No. Can't be. Empty has potential to be filled, rendering it not quite nothing. I suppose it would be like before you were born. Do you remember it?

There is red in the forefront of my family crest, I was told
that meant outsiders were not taken lightly. We would pour tar
over castle walls and then many years later down our lungs.
One technique would take longer to die.

Riding a steam engine with a harmonica attached at my chest to make tips
I double-tasked with a guitar while tar burned
on the vestibule. Keeping those who didn’t like the smell out.
The engine burned killing pixie-dust flecks and turning them into cinders.
To Duluth and back
each mouth mimicked.

We used to abide by segregating those who enjoyed torture
and those who didn’t.

There is more free space than matter
My zenith is far from touching land
A wing tipped by the ring of Saturn
The orb that many thought unmanned

My zenith is far from touching land
With a silken era of neon speed
The orb that many thought unmanned
The Guardians acknowledged their time of need

With a silken era of neon speed
A gaseous clash of friend and foe
The Guardians acknowledged their time of need
And songs of victory may never know