FROM MY SECRET WARS OF 1984

In 1984, Kansas has no rainbow. In addition, any things or creatures not in their true formpolymorphed, disguised, or otherwiseare seen as they truly are, with no possibility of deception. In being formal, in making form distinct, it opensmakes variousness and multiplicity and possibility articulate and clear. In comic books, the weak boy swallows a super-strength serum. In other words, another state.

In our society, sexist oppression perverts and distorts the positive function of family. In the gap between what one wants to say (or what one perceives there is to say) and what one can say (what is sayable), words provide for a collaboration and a desertion.

Instead it seems to be located in language, by virtue of which we negotiate our mentalities and the world. It can transform relationships so that the alienation, competition, and dehumanization that characterize human interaction can be replaced with feelings of intimacy, mutuality, and camaraderie. It didn't hurt at all because I'm made of solid sound. It is a desire to say, a desire to create the subject by saying, and even a feeling of doubt very like jealousy that springs from the impossibility of satisfying this desire.

It is an Orwellian time. It is believed to be the most damaging ice storm in the city's history. It is sexism that leads women to feel threatened by one another without cause. It is such power that even now, nothing in the universe can take place without his consent. It is the form that opens it, in that case. It would be insufferable.

Jump. Jump for my love. Kansas Aweigh. Karma Chameleon. Kids respond to the words wars and "secret." Knockout: The victim is immediately unconscious, and remains helpless for 1-100 rounds. Knockout: This is simply a short sleep.

Language discovers what one might know. Language generates its own characteristics in the human psychological and spiritual condition. Language is one of the principal forms our curiosity takes. Language itself is never in a state of rest. Language waits for me to fill my dialogue balloons. Large numbers of women see feminism as synonymous with lesbianism. Less bein' more than meets the eye, she transforms.

The Shah had done our bidding and carried our load in the Middle East for quite some time, and I did think that it was a blot on our record that we let him down, says Ronald Reagan. The spatial density is both vertical and horizontal. The teacher fills up the board with erasure. The terminator.

The time for invasion takes place on our watch. The time has come for us to confront our quiet crisesthose crises which slowly chip away at our economic and social well-being, those crises which we too often ignore because they do not appear to have a direct impact on our lives, those crises which are new and for which we have no precedent for solution and those crises which have not yet created public outcries for solutions. The time has come for women active in feminist movement to develop new strategies for including men in the struggle against sexism.

The Topeka AIDS Project opens, as awareness hits our home via my mother's friends. The tour goes through a tunnel. The undifferentiated is one mass, the differentiated is multiple. The (unimaginable) complete text, the text that contains everything, would in fact be a closed text. The very idea of reference is spatial. The victim is unconscious and completely helpless.

Their homophobia leads them to reject association with any group identified as pro-lesbian. There are, as you know, CIA men stationed in other countries in the world and, certainly, in Central America, says Ronald Reagan. There has never been a weapon invented in the history of man that has not led to a defensive, a counter-weapon, says Ronald Reagan. There is a government that you can see and can put your hand on, says Ronald Reagan. Therefore, the limits of language are the limits of what we might know.

Notes: [In 1984-In other] Sentence 2: From Dungeons and Dragons Companion Set: Volume One by Frank Mentzer, p2. Used with permission from Wizards of the Coast, LLC. Sentence 3: From A Rejection of Closure, by Lyn Hejinian. Used with permission from the author. [In our-In the] Sentence 1: From Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks. Used with permission from the author. Sentence 2: Hejinian. [Instead it-It is] Sentences 1 and 4: Hejinian. Sentence 2: hooks. Sentence 3: From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars and TM Marvel Entertainment, LLC, and used with permission. [It is-It would] Sentence 2: From About the March 18, 1984 Topeka ice storm, on the National Weather Service website, by Mike Akulow and Larry Schultz. Public domain. Sentence 3: hooks. Sentence 4: From Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars. Sentences 5 and 6: Hejinian. [Jump-Knockout] Sentence 1: Title of a song by Van Halen. Sentence 2: Title of a song by The Pointer Sisters. Sentence 3: From ARK 50, Adamspire by Ronald Johnson. Used with permission from Peter OLeary, literary executor. Sentence 4: Title of a song by Culture Club. Sentences 6 and 7: Mentzer. [Language discovers-Less bein] Sentences 1, 2, 3, and 4: Hejinian. Sentence 6: hooks. [The Shah-The terminator] Sentence 1: Reagan. Sentence 2: Hejinian. Sentence 4: Title of film.

[The time for-The time has] Sentence 2: From Governor John Carlins (D, KS) speech to the Kansas Legislature, January 10, 1984. Public domain. Sentence 3: hooks. [The Topeka-The victim] Sentences 3, 4, and 5: Hejinian. Sentence 6: Mentzer. [Their homophobia-Therefore, the limits] Sentence 1: hooks. Sentences 2, 3, and 4: Reagan. Sentence 5: Hejinian.

Dennis Etzel Jr. lives with Carrie and the boys in Topeka, Kansas. He has a chapbook titled The Sum of Two Mothers (ELJ Publications 2013), and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, BlazeVOX, Fact-Simile, 1913: a journal of poetic forms, 3:AM, DIAGRAM, and others. Dennis has an MFA from The University of Kansas, and an MA and Graduate Certificate in Women and Gender Studies from Kansas State University. He teaches English at Washburn University and is Managing Editor for Woodley Press.