If you love, adore the moon. If you rob, steal a camel.




Stories for the Long Silk Road

Saturday, September 6, 2014

John Pursch: Buncle Slim

“I what plump fergot to warsh off the ink
from muh stumpie hafta-go-lurchy peninsular spoutin’ pin,”
chuckled H. Prerogatory Q. Nappie O’Wrangler the Pith,
fifteenth Earl of Shampooed Hamwitch,
Deaconate of the Touchy Toupee of Norse Umbrian Flaregun.

He smoked long and lean bicuspid fillings
of juiced encaustic tonic notary pulp city
flagon destruction compartment moths,
what flipped their mythologically impacted wings
from mating rituals known clear across Louvered Swobodia
for their grout-wrenching performance narratives
of bulimic sod and tarts in disrepair,
flung from torn fishnet undergarments
outa store-bought frontier delusions,
pasted to your brainpan by emerald daydreams
of popcorn movie head and stick-figurine incendiary
plow horse blowtorch defibrillation,
courting debilitated deputies
of Pyre Sighland lug-alike canned detestation,
clear from Sloshing Foam, P.C.
to Scuppered Downhome Outhouse Pisregard
(piling place of D.T. Ponereport,
dirtiest sniveling whore genital contrail remover
ever found in the heinous annals of twirled hysterical sunsets,
steered navel-wide from pluperfectionist magisterium
to bailiff broadsides fired county cluck-wise
in bullfrog buttress imitation’s filial possum
of ostrich custard election know-how).

Show me how far we’ve come
from umpteen umbrella shots in Pealing Drama, Taxes,
you syrupy sudsy slurper of deep-fired
slattern-crookin’ creek-bred rusty Aphasians,
plied what with plopped cycle breasts milked by
inert shoddy lop-of-the-two-piece
boardroom snooker jock set,
imploding hourly on chunnels ground
to clockwork Styrofoam pajama spurts,
confronted belles o’ battling bleeding litigants
he daubed with heisted creepy cradlers
from hovering hilltop feudal larders,
fueled to foveal floating rotation bilge,
sloshing over the wobbling epiglottal eyesore
of precedents becalmed to rows of stimulated sheet petal Sundays.

Datelines glide to comely home front stowaway illusion meals,
accepting ptomaine heat erasure by the handyman’s
expressly mobbed contusion grease fanatic semblance,
propped in worrisome decibel emotion proxy snooze belief
for gulch-cowing cooler chatter,
recollected sideways by Buncle Slim,
Carbuncular Capsizer of Defenestrated Tailors
Swirled Canticle-wide and Chopped Sousa Doozy
Infant’s Peduncular Nerdly Emblem Grazer.

Slim what shot up add mirely demotion’s causal mannequin
of his churlish dame’s devotional membrane and claimed
in terrified desultory infusion breath:

“Who’d savory grafted android rights
of wayward billowing Beluga breast
inspection torts to anyone,
ladder lonely slum underfed corpse
of inclined planet placard plaque
derision numbnut criminologist
wud you mired obey pee-cullin’ year shelf
in mah courtyard gloomy vestibule,
figurin’ tea cup a pleasant spleef afore ya mentioned
the hummed hymnal intentionals
of smugly played imbibement daze
gone festerin’ likely into puissant comedy of terriers?”

Wheedle know,
this candle figure eight o’ nine trailing tongueless crab tree,
ferried along the groin grain gloss of homespun chattel pie
by anyone but Buncle Slim,
whale eet waddled nut fairly furor than say a gantry mire
before laughing in sway bar munificence
to country island lug nut slake,
contested sliding follicle delusion
set to porous gravy overshirt of dung
in fair heathered henna implants.

Showering humps every switched day
from cylindrical nightstand sloop
to jib to jabbering spinnaker buboes,
the crowded Doctor Mastiff staggered outa timed machinery’s
pubescent portal chest into naked timesheet numbing gents,
kneed ‘em to submissive postulates
of Oilskids Reproductive Surgery Repair Service
(manned by one furious rattler biding nautical
his shipping gyration’s motivated clime),
and cobbled two gasping thunderheaded blonde rodeo queens
to form the next great preener of shore
and screaming sliver of screen shot chunky flesh
to salivate a dousing seizure’s pinochle entendre,
planting the Americon phlag, all plastic and purple,
from middle C to lower intestinal bucolic rage,
right in the rectilinear rectal mulch of down-and-shouted
towny frowsy whorehouse continuity’s newly elected
Precedent Hearball O’Bunky,
worldly peasant extraordinaire,
founder of most android nude colonial pederasty societies
on cheesebag planetary discursive entrails
strewn atop the Asstoroidal Bleat,
flaunting Dearth’s mythical prowess,
full candy canard petroleum petard infarction dog,
just tarrying to stultify Chupacabra Peter’s frozen waistline
into mordant extraluminal humping oblation.


John Pursch lives in Tucson, Arizona. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and has appeared in many literary journals. A collection of his poetry, Intunesia, is available in paperback at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/whiteskybooks. His recently released experimental lit-rap video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l33aUs7obVc. He’s @johnpursch on Twitter and john.pursch on Facebook.

Donal Mahoney: The Button Workers

Since the United Nations passed the Universal Right to Work Law in 2093, Skewer International has brought back from other planets thousands of migrant workers on its company spaceship.

On the last trip, Manfred, an interloper, somehow boarded the ship even though he lacks one of the prerequisites for a United Nations green card--namely, a button in his navel that can be turned off to prevent him from speaking. 

The navel button is a requirement of companies on Earth for any interplanetary worker. Manfred talked incessantly while the company pilot flew from planet to planet taking on board hundreds of other migrant workers, all equipped with navel buttons. His job was to bring them back to Earth to work in potato fields all over the world.

"Manfred, will you please quiet down," Wally, the pilot, said. "You're keeping the others awake and it's tough on my concentration. There are lots of planets and I wouldn't want to land on one that has no workers waiting to get on board. I'd waste a lot of fuel taking off again." 

"I'll do the best I can," Manfred said. "I never got a navel button like the others so it's hard for me to keep quiet. But I'm a darn good worker. All I want is a chance."

The United Nations' version of a "green card" allows migrants to work in any nation. Talkative Manfred is unaware that he will be sent home on the next spaceship that leaves Earth to pick up more workers. Once he has a navel button installed, he can apply again to come back to Earth for a job.

"No navel button, no job," Wally whispered to himself. "A long day's journey into plight."

In 2093, the demand for button workers continues to grow among farmers in the United States, Italy, China, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus. Other countries are expected to begin hiring them as well. 

The workers are valued by institutional farmers because migrants don't complain about working conditions or low salaries the way domestic workers often do. And the button workers don't need health insurance or retirement benefits. If a button worker gets sick, he or she goes back to the home planet on the next spaceship. And when they are too old to work, it's back to the home planet as well. 

"They're always surprised," Wally thought to himself, "when they get sick or old and home they go, the same way they came. It saves companies a lot of money. If they die in the fields, however, they're put on a company pyre. It's a cookout, as one manager calls it."

At the present time button workers, no matter the nation in which they work, do only one kind of labor. They plant and harvest Yukon Gold potatoes 12 hours a day. During their workday, they have their navel buttons turned on so they can say yes to the foremen on horses overseeing their work and giving directions.

"Let's get a move on" is typically what workers hear from foremen. And they respond by working faster. Domestic workers don't respond like that. They're apt to protest, maybe even picket. And pickets around the potato fields won't get the Yukon Golds planted or harvested. The button workers can be counted on to get the job done. They have no idea what "unions" were before legislation led to their disintegration.

At night, with their buttons turned off, the workers head back to their sheds for a bowl of cabbage soup before they bunk down for the night. Libations are limited to water. On Sundays, each worker gets two bowls of cabbage soup and a Pecan Sandy cookie.

Monday through Saturday, reveille sounds at 4 a.m. when the foremen on horses blow trumpets, ready to lead the button workers back to the fields.

"Let's go, you buttons," the foremen yell between blasts on their trumpets. "The potatoes are calling."

Research is under way at several universities to fabricate navel buttons for domestic workers who perhaps can then be hired to work in the fields. The media remains critical of industry because the unemployment rate is so high among domestic workers. 

But, currently, domestic workers are not an attractive pool from which to seek new employees because of the tumult created for many years by fast-food workers seeking a living wage. Their wages have never gone up but the workers now get an extra sandwich for every 8 hours they work. 

"Some of them are barely skilled enough," complained one company president, "to put a pickle slice on a hamburger, never mind adding condiments as well."

Industry predicts that eventually farmers from every nation on Earth will hire interplanetary button workers and that they will soon work in factories as well. Manufacturing jobs will then be brought back to the land of the free and the home of the button worker. 

Stock Market savants say the Dow Jones average will rise dramatically as a result. What more could anyone want in a free market economy.



Silk Road Mantra

by Suchoon Mo


bury me not

in the lone Silk Road

I go and go

from west to east


I go and go

from east to west

bury me not

in the lone Silk Road

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