Nothing to Lose (or Freedom) by: Michele (mama punk head hostage) McDannold

i want to be the next S.A. Griffin
yeah- the guy that got
fucked over and deleted
as Editor from the Outlaw book
before lawsuits
before justice


i
want to be that guy
"that kind of pissed that leads not to revenge
but to a reckoning"

people will shed a lone tear
sniffle
and shake their head a lot
i will keep on gathering great poems
sharing the news about great poets
new ones
old ones
killer ones
fucky ones
we'll call it
the "didn't make it to twitter
because it had too much
character" book
i want to drive down the great river road
i want a reading
right now!
in bars
bookstores
and bowling alleys
i want to read/scream
at bikers and rednecks
housewives and whores
i hope they throw stuff
and spit on me
chase me out to the car
yelling
"we don't like your kind
'round here"

but they will secretly
worship me
and my freedom
and my hoard of poets
from the suburbs
the city
the farm
they're multiplying like gremlins
one dash of sit and spin
and they're out ruining christmas

i want them all
(not to make them famous)
to make them infamous
to spread their disease
of think
of cut out the bullshit
and get to the point
i want America
in her glazed over Red Bull eyes
to really
really
wake the fuck up
this is no time to let it ride
the great depression
is your brain on ice
your investment in image
the "i'm okay- you're okay" is a dead hippie lie
the 1% is selling everything
is selling you, me..
McDonald's and Twilight books

medication via
TV ads
the party is over
the beatniks are dead or dying
the outlaws are a joke
who's packing their gun and their Medicare card
at the same time?
i want to know!
the wild west is tamed, my friends
rail against that which seeks to defeat you
every day
every hour
RIGHT NOW
get in your car
go
don't kill the first thing that gets in your way
kill em all
kill em all
kill em all,
motherfuckers.
they call us the X generation
with nothing to lose
but our Nirvana CDs
and Fight Club on DVD
didn't you get the memo?
the "they" have
co-opted your identity for mass marketing
you can now buy
the special edition director's cut t-shirt snuggie toothpick rim job w/ decal
get the fuck
OUT
out of your house
and stick a fist up their ass for doing this
don't buy the hype
use it against them
like the goddamn motherfuckers nothing to lose asshole poets that you are

*The Operator & Chemist would like to acknowledge and congratulate Michele "One L" McDannold on her recent step forward with Punk Hostage Press. Michele is 1/3 of the editing team and head of public relations. Expect great things from these motherfuckers. Respect. Word is BOND-

THE POLISH HAMMER SMITES AGAIN starring Karl Koweski (VOL. 1.)

The Jesus Bubble

We were talking about zombies. More specifically, we were talking about the recent rash of cannibalistic occurrences whipping the media and the zombie apocalypse acolytes alike into a paranoid freak frenzy.

There's the story of a man who killed his girlfriend and ate chunks of her, mailing other pieces of her carcass to places in her address book like little postal doggie bags.

A mixed martial arts fighter killed his training partner and devoured his heart (Whether the fella was an actual MMA fighter or just wore the UFC shirts from Wal-Mart is unclear).

A man murdered his room mate and dined on his brain and heart. He would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for the victim's meddling relatives noticing the deceased's severed hands propped up on the coffee table.

"It seems like it all got kicked off with that crazed negro down in Miami," I said. "Ate the homeless man's face right off the skull. He'd gone totally feral, growling at the police, strips of flesh dangling from his barred teeth. Cops shot him a couple times without effect until a Romero savy officer capped him in the head. If that's not the epitome of a zombie insurrection, I don't know what is."

Sera nodded. "I saw pictures on the internet, all the homeless guy had left was his left eye and a chin beard."

"Guy coulda been Amish for all that was left behind," I agreed.

Sera's best friend, Angela, remained unconvinced. "The news channel I watched said he was high on bath salts."

"Well, I can tell you the zombie apocalypse is not going to be a product of Bed, Bath and Beyond."

"Bath salts, the drug," Sera clarified. "And the CDC announced yesterday all this cannibalism lately is not the work of zombies."

"And you're gonna believe those guys? Damn, Sera, my girlfriends usually have more sense than that. I've done all kinds of drugs in my life and never once have I felt the urge to eat a person's face, or even associate with the homeless."

"I think it's demon possession," Angela said.

"Demon possession?"

Sera agreed. Of course she agreed, they shared the same brain. If Angela got bit by a zombie tomorrow, Sera would dine on flesh in solidarity. "It'd explain that guy we read about the other day. The one who ripped his abdomen open and threw his own intestines at police."

"That was just... bath salts," I sputtered.

It was a disconcerting news story, one that I couldn't quite incorporate into my zombie apocalypse angle.

"The world's going crazy," Angela preached. "The end times are upon us. You never heard about this sort of thing when we had a white Christian man in the presidency."

Yeah, if you discounted the entire human history, it would seem as though the world were going insane.

"I don't know if I buy that," I said. "Dahmer happened on Bush Sr's watch."

I will say that I'm certain the United Association of Bible-Thumping Preachers would be far less inclined to discount demon outbreak than the Center for Disease Control were disavowing zombies. How many more cases of spontaneous cannibalism would it take before decent citizens began arming themselves, gunning down poor fools in the street whose only crime was to leave the house looking hungry and spacey and smelling of lavender bath salts?

"I know Sera and me will be all right," Angela said. "We're protected by our Jesus Bubble."

"You got that right, sister." They slapped hands.

"What the fuck's a Jesus Bubble?" I asked. Strangely, memories of Bazooka Joe bubble gum came to mind.

Sera and Angela shared a beatific smile. Angela fielded the question. She raised her arms in a strange manner one could deduce to be a serene Southern Baptist gesture meant to convey spiritual superiority.

"It's an aura of white Christian light that surrounds the saved and protects us from evil. I have it. Your girlfriend, here, has it."

"I don't see any white light, Christian or otherwise."

"Are you saved?"

"Let's just say I sing in the devil's choir."

"He's Catholic," Sera jumped in. Allusions to Satanism made her nervous.

"That goes a long way toward explaining a lot of things about him," Angela said, cryptically. "With the right set of Christian eyes, you could see the Jesus Bubble shimmering all around us. Nothing evil can get through."

"I penetrate Sera's bubble at least twice a day." All I wanted to talk about was zombies...

"Only because I let you," Sera said. "And if you don't get right with God and quit watching Alien Artifacts on the Discovery Channel, I may have to reconsider."

"Alien Artifacts... You know how old the pyramids are...?"

"I don't care. Jesus wasn't an astronaut. Aliens didn't invent microchips. And zombies are not MMA fighters."

"I'm keeping an open mind."

"There was an atheist," Sera said, "who was a barber. And one day a good Christian man came in to get his hair cut."

"I love this story," Angela said.

"During the course of the hair cut, they got to talking religion. The barber admitted he didn't believe in god. How could you not? the righteous man asked. Well look outside, if there were a supreme being, how could he allow homelessness, abuse of children, rampant drug addiction-"

"Zombiism."

"Let her tell the story," Angela scolded.

"I know how it ends."

"It ends with the righteous man leaving the barbershop and returning five minutes later to tell the barber, he doesn't believe in barbers."

"Aliens invented clippers?"I asked.

"Shut up or I swear I'll never let you finish another Polack joke as long as we're together."

It said something about our relationship that she didn't attempt to swerve me with the promise of compromising sexual favors, but rather went straight for the joy I get most, berating my ancestral brethren. "Fine, you win."

"He doesn't believe in barbers, he says, because he's not left the barbershop five minutes and has all ready seen two men with long hair. How can barbers exist in a world where there are long haired men walking around?"

I don't know how I can exisit in a world where there are long-haired men walking around with ponytails...

Sera looked at me with triumph mingled with disgust, the same look she usually gave me two minutes after I drop my pants.

"That's the same reason I don't believe in teachers."

"Yet they exist."

"So some people believe."

"What do you believe?" Angela asked.

"That the zombie apocalypse is upon us! Goddam, it's what I've been trying to talk about the last fifteen minutes..."

“Chuck Liddell, The Ostrich, and The Rape Room”

our supervisor
got a bird nose,
long neck and big fat butt
that juts
out
when she walks

we call her “The Ostrich”
but never to her face

The Ostrich carries clipboards
and deducts salaries

we poke our heads up from cubicles
like gophers, whenever she makes the rounds
her appearances always causing instant silence

every day
she seemingly appears from thin air
you never see her coming

but when she does
she'll often pull people into a backroom

usually those who go there never return
but if they do
they look like zombies
pale, with dead eyes

we call it the rape room
no one really knows what happens back there

one day The Ostrich
went up to this new employee
maybe to bring him to the rape room

this guy was scary looking
fucking scary looking
looked kinda like Chuck Liddell
so we called him “Chuck Liddell”
but never to his face

motherfucker had a mohawk,
piercings and tattoos everywhere
always sat alone during breaks
looked like he just got out of prison

The Ostrich said something to him
and he calmly peered around the room
stood up and wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve

the entire office was totally transfixed
fucking transfixed
and the already soft volume on the floor faded
like someone'd turned down a TV

I imagined Chuck Liddell
throwing a right cross
connecting squarely
on The Ostrich's big ass bird nose
and her big ass bird nose flying right off her face
and the bitch crumbling to the floor
and hovering on hands and knees,
searching for it
like Mike Tyson vs Buster Douglas
circa 1990

but Chuck Liddell didn't throw a punch
instead he reached into his pocket
and I thought for a second
he's gonna whip out a gun
and shoot everyone

but actually
he broke out a box of tic tacs
and gave one to The Ostrich
and smiled
flashing his rotted teeth
and sat back down

the entire room stayed quiet
everyone looking around at each other
perplexed

and the janitor
an old skinny black guy
who was emptying out a wastebasket
near Chuck Liddell's desk
stopped for a second
and looked over at me
with bloodshot eyes
and he looked over at Chuck Liddell
and then looked over at The Ostrich
and he just chuckled a bit, shook his head,
and went back to work

Foreigners sleeping on the street in China

"A Powerful and Moving Tale" by Tony Bryer

I don’t know what’s wrong with people who call a meeting for 4:00 on a Friday afternoon, but that’s exactly what Ross Fravell did. Furthermore, he gave us only a few hours notice, sending the meeting notice at 1:00 p.m. The meeting was to launch a new project, the KCX Telemetrix. Sounded like exciting stuff, huh? I mean, how much can one person yawn in the course of an hour? I didn’t know, either, but I was about to find out.

So now it’s four o’clock, right? And I saunter into the meeting room. Everybody’s already there. Great. There’s nowhere left to sit, either, except at the head of the table where everyone can stare at me. Wonderful. I plop my ass down into the chair and settle in for a long, looooong meeting. Long because it’s Friday afternoon and I want to get the hell out of there. It’s bad enough I have to work tomorrow, but having a four o’clock meeting is just rubbing salt into my raw wound.

I glanced around the table to see who all was there. There were test engineers, program managers, sourcing associates, line engineers, and even an agent from Corporate Travel who was probably in the wrong meeting, but she was pretty hot so no one minded at all. I was the sole quality representative so I steeled myself for a barrage of stupid questions and pined for the moment I could flee out the door to make a beeline to the nearest liquor store.

Ross cleared his throat. “Uh…” he said. A meeting that starts off with “uh” is bound to be a real corker, as my dad would say. “I’m sorry for the short notice,” Ross began.

“Yeah!” someone interjected. “You should be sorry for the time!”

Everyone laughed and Ross had the decency to turn red.

“I’m sorry for the short notice, and for the time,” Ross said and everyone laughed again.

I realized I was missing out on a corporate bonding moment and so I laughed, too. “HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!” I guffawed. Everyone looked at me. The hot chick from Corporate Travel looked frightened. I smiled at her. She averted her eyes and fumbled at her Covey planner.

And that’s when I noticed I could see her booby. The second button of her blouse had come undone and so it was gapping open. I could see it all. She wasn’t even wearing a bra. Her breast was long and pointed. The nipple was a dark plum color, as large and long as my thumb, thick and pendulous and dripping with a clear fluid. I licked my lips.

Ross cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, “I just wanted to cover a few things before we go home.” I tuned him out. He probably wouldn’t need any input from me for another ten minutes or more. This gave me ample time to admire the travel chick’s booby and to play a few erotic fantasies in my head.

My Dockers were just starting to feel tight in the crotch when I realized everyone was laughing again. Not wanting to appear to have been daydreaming, I laughed too. “HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!” I screamed. Ross jumped and the travel chick cringed.

One of the program managers was scandalized. “Tony…” he began, and that’s when my face exploded.

I felt these huge chitinous mandibles explode out of my jaw. It felt like a pair of arms depending from my chin. I could actually see them before me, two grasping pinching lobster-like mandibles snapping open and shut in front of me, ready to rend and tear and bite and chew. It felt wonderful. I remember thinking if sex could only be this good, I’d never get out of bed.

Ross fell out of his chair. The travel chick screamed. “Everybody stay calm,” I said. Or rather, that’s what I tried to say. What actually came out of my… my… Well, it wasn’t exactly a mouth. I don’t know what it was. It was a maw, I guess. There’s really no other way to describe it. So what actually came out of my maw was a thick buzzing sound, like a six-foot cicada on a drowsy August day.

Pandemonium erupted. You’ve all heard that phrase before. “Pandemonium erupted.” Until you’ve experienced it for yourself, you have no idea what pandemonium really is. Papers flew into the air. Chairs fell over. Bodies thumped to the carpet. People scrambled to get out of the room. I think someone farted. I stood from my chair. “Stop!” I shouted. Or rather, that’s what I tried to shout. Again, what came from my gaping maw was that thick buzzing sound.

Pandemonium continued to erupt. I’d had enough. I strode to the door and kicked it shut. “No one’s leaving here until I’m satisfied you can all keep a secret,” I said. Or rather, that’s what I tried to say. Fuck ‘em if they can’t understand me.

Ross cowered before me. “What are you going to do to us, Tony?” he asked, his hands clasped to his chest like a penitent begging shriving.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I tried to say and everyone screamed. The test engineer rushed me, a sourcing associate close behind. I stepped aside and a remarkable thing happened. My head snapped forward and my mandibles grabbed the engineer by his head. A quick jerk of my neck and the test engineer’s head crushed between my mandibles like a grape. My maw snapped open and the engineer’s brain disappeared down my throat with barely a gasp. The sensation was stupendous. Waves of pleasure washed over my body. My first orgasm was not even noteworthy compared to the cataclysm rocking the core of my being. I wanted more.

I snatched the sourcing associate by the neck and squeezed. A thick syrup washed down my throat. Goddamn, if ever anything better existed in Creation, a loving God kept it to Himself. The next few moments blended together in a frenzy of blurred color and waves of incredible pleasure wracking me to my toes.

When next I regained my senses, the room was empty. Not even a stray drop of blood had marred the expanse of sensibly colored carpet. My belly strained against my belt. My God, if I’d ever gorged myself more fully, I surely couldn’t remember it. I stifled a burp. The edges of my maw felt rough against the back of my hand. I grasped around my face. My mandibles were gone. Whatever forces had made them appear had subsequently made them disappear.

Ross’s laptop gaped open on the table. I sat at his chair and opened his e-mail account. Opening a new e-mail message, I typed, “Hey, everybody. Ross here. Seeing as how it’s Friday afternoon, I’m knocking off early. The meeting I had scheduled at 4:00 is postponed. Everybody have a great weekend, except Tony who has to work tomorrow! Ha ha, Ross.”

I clicked on “Send” and ran out of the room. I don’t know how this will play out. All I can do is thank God no one saw me running down the hall.


Tony Byrer drives a truck for a living. He lives in southern Indiana with his wife, three cats, and a dog. You can find him on facebook.

Prostrating outside the Jokhang Temple

Prayer Flags in Tibet