by J.M. Romig, Ryan P. Kinney, Morgann Blackwood, and Aaron Kasunic

Here’s to vices and virtues
To living without apologies or regrets
To breaking in order to heal

This old bird no longer caged
She gets to look on the other side of the bars this time
He gets another stumble in the hallway
A headfirst dive into a bottle of pills

Purple sharks and goats
That glow in the dark
Banana dimpled belugas
Swimming wildly asunder

Then I met God
The most beautiful of all my conquests
I knew no one else would quite match up to her

Her hair in the porch light
Looked like the thunder god had an ******

Her face still cannot be manifest
This woman,
The most beautiful thing I’ve seen
She lingers in my conscious
And has a major role to play in what will be my swan song

If experience has taught me anything (an unlikely assumption)
It is that if a woman ever tells you
-Straight up-
That she is a *****
She is not lying

There are exceptions to that rule
As I myself am quite exceptional

My Life is a Scratched CD (OR Blue Collar Lament- The Little Napper Remix)
Lines taken from poems by JM Romig (Ursa Somniculosa/CD Skipping Down Route 11) and Ryan Kinney (Blue Collar Lament)

It's long drive on this highway
The window creeks
- its jagged way down
I breathe in the new air for the first time in months
the CD starts skip-skip words
Hopping over - lines
Reminding me
Of finite fuel
repeat-
finite time
With work looming just hours away
repeat-
Death, just decades away

I spend most of my week
in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
on repeat
in a semi-conscience trance
watching multi-million dollar machines work

repeat

in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
is a constellation of dirt, chipped paint
and cobwebs
forming the shape
of a bear
lounging in a hammock

skip

They are more alive than I am.
Monday at 3 PM I click off my brain,
switch on automatic,
repeat
automatic
skip
- the countdown:-T-minus 40 hours.
Each minute that ticks by
in the dull monotony slowly steals my sanity,
bit by bit

Each minute closer to Friday
slower and slower,
until on Friday they seem to tick
backwards--

skip

I have coworkers
who insist that it's a monkey,
trapped in a net

Each day blurs into the other
making them indistinguishable.
Repeat-
My finite time
Monday,
the entirety of the previous week
on repeat-
T-minus 40 hours.

skip

they are wrong.
It's clearly a bear

In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat-
Death - just decades away.
The dictator they put in charge of the asylum
barks out commands on cue,
just to remind everyone that they own you.

skip

The desperation for dollars
are the shackles that keep me here.

I often welcome sleepwalking:
I think of Emerson
On repeat-
Skip-
I think I feel like his transparent eyeball
repeat-
His eyeball-
I begin to understand
I begin to feel like I'm one with everything
skip-
everyone is love
repeat
love
every-Everyone is me
and you
skip-skip
-the impending coma

In the few instances the machines malfunction
I curse being awakened.
At least as a zombie, I don't feel
my mind rotting
repeat

the rotting constellation of dirt,
chipped paint and cobwebs:
Ursa Somniculosa
No matter where I am on the floor,
I can see him hanging there in his hammock

on the weekends I love life.
I shed the identity the uniform has forced upon me
and my true self emerges--
repeat
my finite fuel

In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat
the desperation for dollars
I truly only live two days a week
repeat
my finite time
I'm dying the other five

skip-skip

I think of Ursa Somniculosa -
In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
enjoying his perpetual vacation
maybe sipping on a nice tall beer
soaking up the sun -

NOT being a trapped monkey
like all of us down here
on repeat

by Ryan P. Kinney
Assembled from works by J.M. Romig and Chuck Joy

I glance out of my driver’s side window
and see a boy
trudging miserably down an expanse of windswept prairie
big sky, maybe one persistent contrail up there
establishing the general era, airplanes fly
People, still, do not

a road crosses this windswept prairie
a dirt path really with twin ruts
a boy came walking up that road many years ago
homesick from summer camp
he couldn’t be without his mother

If time is fluid, like the oceans
then maybe I’m glancing over as a wave breaks
I couldn’t tell you how many times
I made that journey on foot
my heels throbbing, my legs begging to be broken
my hitchhiker’s thumb, had given up all hope at that point

Later a teenager passed in the other direction
his essence radiating awkwardness
this long haired kid,
just turned thirteen
wore hand me down boots that are too big for his feet,
ripped jeans, and a bookbag slung across his shoulder
in the dying days of July
whispering under his breath
maybe reciting poetry
or telling himself a story
running fast, he couldn’t wait for his bright future

I think about giving him a ride
to wherever I may be going
where more drive than ride
some have stopped driving, for various reasons
some lose the ability to drive before they pass

but then I remember all the lessons I’ve learned
from time-travel movies
the one universal rule being not to meddle with the past
something about a butterfly’s wings flapping in Beijing
and a tsunami in New Orleans
so, instead I honk my horn
and the traffic light turns green

I watch the boy,
who might have been in some distant past,
look on with curious anger as the car passes
for a moment
then returns to the story already in progress

not much traffic on this path anymore
but yesterday a guy came by riding a Segway
said he was on the way to visit his mother’s grave
said she died a pioneer to this lonely country

he grows tinier and tinier
in my rear view mirror
no longer even special
here in the middle of nowhere
until he is yesterday again