#comp?

[mistressemmedi]

I'm on the US, eat coast, and I pay $750 yearly in insurance, which is kinda high 🤷‍♀️

$750 IS HIGH??????

[spookymooks]

Mokka does this mean youve been horny since the last big tf2 update?

yea horny for the next major TF2 update 

[rufusprice]

Grinnies

Slang for chipmunks,

grinnies burrow

under the porch

without any

 /

neighborhood cat

to lessen their

population.

They eat pansies

 /

from pots, sweet pea

leaves in gardens,

and whatever else

has been left

 /

behind outside.

The window cat

watches them race

about the yard;

 /

it’s their yard now,

it’s their porch now.

Invasive rats,

they will chew through

 /

the basement wall,

the foundation

will crumble. But

no house means no

 /

flowers, no food,

but they either

don’t care or do

not know better.

[rufusprice]

Thursday

The city’s always under construction,

and now Main Street’s blocked off

by a throng of evangelists

handing out psalms to the poor

privileged white kids who gave up

the Holy Ghost in a merciless

world where thousands must die

from the organized persecution

of the intolerant religion claiming

to preach their salvation,

so the kids turn the other cheek

on the non-recycled scripts and continue

their Aristotelian education.

[rufusprice]

Angel Food Ministries

The red light in Mercer turned into a blinker

some time before four in the morning;

the father’s ’96 F150 passes through the intersection,

the son already passed out in the passenger seat.

The temptation to go on a February Saturday

was chocolate milk and gas station Crullers.

The truck’s jostling into “park” wakes the boy,

and they prepare the morning’s task of emptying

a semi-truck of food. Other church groups

clamber to get their respective packages

while a man with a clipboard shouts Eggs,

pasta, powdered milk. In the Ford’s cab,

the boy plays Tetris with the boxes underneath

the tonneau as the father plucks them

from the makeshift conveyor belt. Before the sun

can contemplate rising, the trucks return home,

where the bright-eyed elder women will distribute

the meals to the financially dubious.

These same women would teach the boy about service,

about how he was giving of himself for others,

how this was something for him too feel good about,

even though the winter chapped lips and stung knuckles.

He learned that happiness was wrong without pain,

that service was repentance for the sin of joy,

and so to never have to fall, he vowed to never rise,

chose to take a morning nap in his east-facing room.

[rufusprice]

March of the Dudebros

The heteros are on parade,

basketball shorts and athletic socks,

each taking up an entire

salted sidewalk stone.

 /

They swagger like cocks,

heads bobbing at passersby,

showing off the effects

of too much whey protein.

 /

The species communicates in grunts

and other guttural ululations;

their alpha marks his territory

with the sharp scent of sweat.

 /

Insecure of their own bravado,

the breeders march down the boulevard

declaring, oppressed, that they too

deserve a day of prideful recognition.

[rufusprice]

1

The ball and the runner race to the finish,

spikes kick up dust, arms go out: he’s safe!

 /

Before introducing the kitten to the house,

secure wires, pick up choking hazards, and make it safe.

/

Make too much money? Zenith of the one percent?

Don’t bury cash in a mattress: store it in a safe.

 /

I’ve bungeed three, four dozen times;

the line’s only broken once. Trust me, it’s safe.

 /

The Archbishop blessed this hallowed space,

sanctified the grounds, hung the bells, made it safe.

 /

That’s why you’re in the ER again, Nathaniel:

you almost drove off a bridge; you didn’t feel safe.

 /

2

Kill the silence; not the doctors,

my father, or counselor;

I want to talk to my sister and you:

a riptide had pulled me from the coast

and a storm’s swells propelled me back—

I lost direction of the land—and down—

I lost direction of the sky: I was drowning

and didn’t know which way was up: dark.

You could float, and I thought I could tie a rope

and you’d pull me up, but the science was wrong:

you were too airy, too aloof, a balloon,

no business in the waves, refusing to burst;

mistaken for a jellyfish, stung.

Down to the bottom, past the squids,

past the magalodons and Leviathan,

where no angler dared to loose a light.

So far my feet fell through the clouds,

a different air, a different room, a different

ambulance, unbreathing, a new prison.

 /

3

It

is not

hating to wake

your new roommate

because you made him

your pity friend

to have a friend in Hell.

It is not

sweat dripping

off your snotty nose

and leaky eyes

from your vomit

stagnating in the toilet.

It

is

what the doctor will say,

that you must stay

twenty-four hours more,

the doctor whose name

harkens to Egyptian kings

locking up

what of you lives

with what of you died

in a tomb you built yourself,

idly watching the sands of time

fill your white-walled pyramid

grain by grain,

each moment

more tedious than the last.

Fear and relief

are both knowing

this is your place

in this great civilization;

you are no more than those sands

covering your toes

on the ocean floor

form where Life began

in a primordial ooze.

 /

4

Cruribus exorior iam prisco ex iure cruentis

contortis brachiisque ut gradiar neque curram

in terram tabescentem, sic ossa dolent mi.

Ecce manus, quae caecae sunt, aetate ducent me

incerta ad porro portas et cum perient tam

pura virilis tunc a me toga forte geretur

ut sic omnia semper vulnera obtegerantur.

 /

(Out of the primordial ooze, I now rise with bloody legs

and crooked arms to ambulate, not run,

into the wasteland, thus pain rocks my bones.

Invisible hands lead me in this uncertain age

forward to the gates and when they disappear

so pure a toga virilis then will be worn by me by chance

so that all my scars are forever covered.)

 /

5

Freedom is pointless without cause or need,

and though I more than know I have to go,

I know not what to do not that I’m freed.

 /

My tomb returned, sarcophagus and deed

annulled, I pulse through cold sand with my toe

since freedom’s pointless without cause or need.

 /

Pharaoh instructed me to sow my seed,

but the Nile’s dried up and will not flow;

I know not what to do now that I’m freed.

 /

The river rots the ocean with its greed

and dims the bioluminescent glow.

Freedom is pointless without cause or need

 /

to defend it, to sun, water, and feed

it, fertilize the land and watch it grow.

I know not what to do now that I’m freed,

 /

lost among the wasteland’s malignant breeds,

doomed to never reap lest I somehow sow

fruitless freedom without cause or need;

there’s nothing to be done although I’m freed.