Here is my poem for the "BEST POEM CONTEST" I hope it is not too late @GROTTO G.S.M. INC.

Mary, Queen of the Universe
Buys a Box of Snakes of Cajun self torture
at Popeye's on sale for $3.99

I use my magic bullet gun
to shoot a bullet
that makes a giant magic bullet gun
that shoots giant magic bullets.
By itself.

Giant Sea Leprechaun sleeps nights sanitary

I tried flexing my artistic muscles but now they are frozen so I made an appointment with @Dr Krimsborg, DPM.

Even though I was advised not to engage in creative activity for at least a week I couldn't help it. I think what was frozen was @GROTTO G.S.M. INC.'s servers, and not really my own muscles. I just can't tell where my own body ends and the world around me begins, especially in terms of information processing. Because Cyborgness.

So I think maybe the surgery that @Dr Krimsborg, DPM did was unnecessary. Which is fine because my insurance offers the best deductibles for unnecessary surgery. I'm just wondering what kind of rights I signed away in terms of my DNA and that tissue sample.

See look my poetry muscles are working just fine:

The Pheasant People is we with reeds
The Rice Laws ever a riparian milk. And phenomenon.

But here--
Police Ghost rooftops
Fashioned Police complaints,
Catching space,
Fang natural factual of never natural 50

We aim to dismantle the City.

While it's unclear if my surgery was technically "necessary," the insertion of office supplies into my musculature was a move of pure genius, and I commend the artistry of @Dr Krimsborg, DPM!

Because of my natural cyborg tendencies, I immediately incorporated these office supplies directly into my body. Now I can pin a fly to the wall from 15 feet using the staples that shoot from my eyes! I also have an everlasting supply of cellotape that spools directly from my fingertips.

But I am slightly concerned about my artistic muscles. Perhaps I should have taken the Doctor's advice and laid off the poetry while things healed up? Here's what's coming out now:

undefined undefined
Getting your head pretty thin
The water's stars
The water's gold
undefined undefined

I've always played
with the sharpest tool
in the shed

get your mold
get your mold on
undefined undefined

get paid colder
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I've had two psychomotor therapy sessions with @Dr Krimsborg, DPM so far -- but my artistic cramps are not improving. The doctor said it's possible my brain has gotten smart but my head has gotten dumb. Plus, the therapy itself is really uncomfortable. It involves intense repetitions of Remote Associations, and once I feel I can't take that any more we move on to the Conceptual Blending, which can be especially painful, with the doctor pulling against my Ideation while I push as hard as I can with my Inspiration.

But after therapy, when we try a poem (in a controlled setting) only stuff like this comes out:

Hey gold
Get your mold on
Only a rock star
Get play

you make brain brain (go!)
get the head years
don't shine fun
when the mold glitters

Your head makes ground
When the gold gets running
Get your mold on
Get play

The doctor tells me not to worry, that the years start coming and they don't stop coming, but I worry about a permanent disability. He says keep taking the Malingnomor, but we're working on an alternative to the Motor Oil because supporting the petroleum industry is against my political beliefs.

My creative crisis aside, I've joined a workout group called the League of Saviours. I know what you're thinking but no it's not a religious group. We just meet up and do a lot of exercises involving target practice and hostage situations. I feel like I'm really getting in shape! At least I can concentrate on that while my creative cramps work themselves out.

On the doctor's advice, I've taken up rental poetry.

Rental poetry allows for the simulation of creative muscle flexing, but doesn't actually exert the muscles. Because it's simulated. And covered by my insurance.

Stare, stare like a bear,
then you'll know me anywhere
Stare, stare like a bear,
call your mother Ginger Hair
Sharp shadow

Kind of like a fidget for your poetry muscle?

Nah, it really isn't doing it for me either.

But what IS making me feel TONS better is working out with the League of Saviours! Lady Legume, @Jess Gynn, Argumentative Redhead, Justine Sorcerer, Wanda de L'amour, Ms. Samson, Sherri Turtle, Banana Tigris and the rest.

Frankly, I was kind of a mess, what with the staples shooting out of my eyes, and the cellotape fingers, my paper clip whip tail... I was just kind of breaking stuff in my dorm room and around campus. But at the League of Saviours they're super into all that and helping me control it. Plus gymnastics, which I used to do way back at Conventional Elementary but haven't for years. Now I can do a one-handed cartwheel off a ledge, hit five targets with my staples, land with my legs around one practice dummy's neck while I tape up another and lasso the feet of Lady Legume with my paper clip chain (if she's not paying attention). Now THAT's what I came to Psyhigh for!

Stare, stare like a bear,
then you'll know me anywhere
Stare, stare like a bear,
call your mother Ginger Hair
Shiver and smile

SO STOKED that I got invited on a field trip with the League of Saviours! Now that I'm an official member I guess I get to do stuff like that. Did you know they even have their own plane? It's called the The Deliverer. Get it? Because it delivers us? Anyway I hear it's pretty swanky inside, and it's an overnighter so we'll get to sleep in it. Like it's an airplane AND a camper? So cool. Can't wait! We leave tonight, but they won't tell us where we're going till we're in the air. So mysterious!!! LOVE IT.

Oh and do you know that student named @Randy Carter? With the dreamy accent? He was chatting me up at the gym the other day, and seemed to know all about the League. Which is unusual because most people have never heard of it. Anyway, he gave me a bunch of his favorite comics to read on the plane--they're called The Forever Cabal. Frankly they're a little moldy but I'm packing them anyway. Not sure what else to pack though because of all the secrecy! Sunscreen? Parka? Do they have shampoo on the plane? Guess I'll find out tonight! Can't. Wait.

ohmygod this is serious. The fighting, I mean. Sure, it's been a few weeks of intense military assassin training, but I thought it was more of "weekend warrior" kind of thing. Like a cool club we all belonged to and got fresh air and exercise?

The training was a little light on the "and we fight real bad guys" part.

I just put a dozen staples into an alien's trunk. Pinned him right to a railing.

We were in the private box seats of this smelly underground arena, me and Lady Legume and Wanda de L'amour and a few of those "bankers" from "out of town." It was pretty clear after dinner that they were "slave traders" from "The Arcturan Tide Pools" whatever those were, and that they had trunks instead of noses, arms, legs, ears, I dunno. But they were jerks, and enslavers of werecreatures, messy eaters, and smelled bad.

Lady Legume was the "trainer," Wanda was my "mom," and I wasn't allowed to talk. Which was fine, since like I said I really wasn't prepared for this, mentally, and was fuming and I know Wanda could tell. She's all about emotions. Ms. Samson was there too, as our "body guard," which gangsters like these didn't have a problem with.

So we're siting way up in our fancy, smelly box in this sweaty arena, and way down below we see @Jess Gynn and this skinny weresquirrel out in the ring, going at it. But I could tell they weren't really going at it, because I know how Jess fights and there's no way that weresquirrel could have kept up. She was going easy on him.

The audience wanted blood though. Pretty soon they're booing and throwing paper cups, and this big bulldog - a werebulldog - of a guard comes out with a pitchfork and starts threatening Jess with it. Wanda starts working her magic on the tentacle guys, and Lady Legume gets that dreamy look in her eye when she's studying the futures.

Didn't we have an exit plan? Weren't we supposed to locate their Consuming Safe and Justine Sorcerer was going to swoop in and teleport it away? Why was everything going sideways?

Mr. Fiddlesticks, that's why.

He's that creep who was stalking @Dylan Ashcroft, and then freaked everybody out at @Empress Jingles' Thought Training Recital. Except here he was tearing the roof off the arena, turning the floor into ice cream, and using one spindly stray thought to tear the slaver's Consuming Safe out through a wall and up and away with him into the sky. Why was he crashing our plan?

So I used the cyborg stapler implants in my eyes to staple the stinky banker's trunk to the railing. And was using the everlasting cellotape dispensers in my fingers to tie up the other two when Ms. Samson picks me up and carries me out to the Deliverer, its engines revving out on the airstrip. Justine Sorcerer did the extraction on Jess, who in turn left the weresquirrel to organize the liberation of the werecreatures.

"Without their Consuming Safe they're powerless," said Lady Legume on the debrief on the way back. I guess that's where they kept all their encryption keys and stuff.

"And I think those werecreatures are going to have a word with them too," added Ms. Samson.

Everybody had a good laugh. But I'm not sure it was funny. I'm still kind of shaky.

The League of Saviours sure knows how to stay busy. Or is it just bad guy season? It finally gets nice outside and they all decide to go out and commit crimes? Or is it the League of Saviours that enjoys the warm weather, and just lets the bad guys run around the rest of the year? There's still so much I don't understand about the League.

Supposedly, after enough fighting hours, I can advance to a II or a III, and that's when I get access to the knowledge base on Heaven--that's what they call their super-secret orbital satellite HQ. I guess there are branch leagues all over Earth, and who knows how many levels of promotions between me and a seat at that big conference table in the sky. I can see myself now, elbow to elbow with Melancholy Girl and Catfish "Bud" Merman.

But like I said, there's been plenty to keep us occupied right here. I've decided to "germinate" (as Lady Legume says) and face up to the fact that I have a responsibility to use my special gifts for good, and that the staples that shoot out of my eyes and the cellotape that shoots from my fingers and the paper clip tail that I whip around are important tools in the fight against evil. I feel like I've made the right choice. And I've had plenty of chances to change my mind in just the last week.

There was the run in with the Hook or by Crook Gang, speeding around in their souped up sarcophagi, robbing banks. There was the battle with the Revenants, who had infiltrated every psychic nursing home in the tri-state area. And, of course, there was The Ascension.

Oh and poor @Jess Gynn has been missing out on all of it! Argumentative Redhead has her under observation in the Solomon Bottle, because she's rapidly becoming incorporeal. They've even brought in @Dr Krimsborg, DPM, to consult, but I haven't heard that they've made any progress.

So they keep us out in the field, fighting bad guys. It keeps my mind off my fallen friend, but only when I'm stapling a bad guy to the wall.

Stakeouts turn out to be a big part of crime fighting. Even if you're a cyborg that's absorbed the powers of various office supplies and working as part of a super team.

I went to see @Jess Gynn yesterday and it was rough. So I signed up for the next available mission, hopped in the dropship, and here I am sitting at a coffee shop in Lyon with a clear view of a crêperie across the street. I'm keeping detailed notes on who goes in and who comes out, even making little sketches of the people so I can remember the details. They're horrible sketches. So I'm doodling a bit too, and thinking about @Dr Krimsborg, DPM's request. For poetry.

This all started because I went to see the doctor about my creative cramps. That was before the staplers in my eyes and the cellotape in my fingers, before meeting Jess and the League of Saviours, before Jess's injury. All this was supposed to be an alternative to poetry, but I'm afraid it's turned out worse.

Celebrity Steamboat Chicken

The alchemist designates vessels
(my other car is a jar)
Sleeping juice oozes like mercury
(the cracks! the cracks!)

Outside the boxes no one goes
(do you like my new hard radiation suit?)
I take off my helmet to see the light
and a panhandler asks me for change

Oh! And there's a very suspicious individual entering the crêperie--it's a young man made entirely out of gold. Gotta go!