Donations

a little treat from JULY 5 07

     Last night, I stopped by my work to get some cheap drinks. I walked in, and this giant, fat woman was dumped on the floor, like a deflated blimp. My coworker, Duc took me aside, chuckled and said, "She slipped and fell. She'll probably sue the company." The paramedics arrived soon after I left. The end.
     Today, I go into work and my manager explains the new ALS promotion. Basically, I ask every single customer who comes in if they would like to donate to the ALS, which is a group of people working to find a cure for Lou Gehrig's disease. It costs a dollar, and they put their name on a perfect, little circle, which I then tape to the wall. Somehow or another, this cures Lou Gehrig's disease.
     There are about sixty little circles already on the wall. My manager says, "Each and every one of those are from Arielle. She's been working hard. The district manager is gonna buy her a soda, and she could win the district contest, which I think is a trip to the Bahamas." I decided at that moment, I was going to sell more of these donations that Arielle. I don't know why, I don't care about the Bahamas, it's probably just instinctual selfish ambition.
     I noticed my friend Tyler Doty was on one of them already. That was a trip.
     I sold four in the first ten minutes. A woman came in, paid for one and let me put her name on it for her. I put my own name instead. This happened twice more, so I started putting some of my aliases. I sold about ten in the first hour. It was so much fun.
     The entire day became a game. A competition. I was smirking the whole time, holding my breath as people signed their names. If people said no, I would sigh, and say whatever. To kinda guilt them into it. It worked about three times.
     A cute girl came in. She had a slight burn scar on the left side of her face, so she had her red hair tucked to the side to hide the blemish. To me, it was beautiful. She wasn't emo, just soft and still not self indulged. She must have been fourteen. I asked her about ALS and she kindly said no. Her friend had some kind of case with him, and I asked about it. He said he found it by the side of the road.
     I said, "That's cool, I do stuff like that too."
     He didn't look like he believed me, so I said, "I found a Jack in the Box T-shirt in the street once. It says manager on it, and I took it home and washed it. One day, I'll wear it into Jack in the Box, slam my hand on the counter and demand free burgers."
     The cute girl laughed, and said to her friend as she left, "He's cool."
     Too bad she's too young.
     A lot of different types of people donated. A cute Muslim girl buying makeup named Hina. A drunk Mexican. Boring white people. A disorientated Jamaican. And also, two blimp women, similiar to the one who slipped the day before, they both write checks. I must examine their ID's but not for anything special. I learn that they were born in 1938. Their were grumpy and impatient with me but I was calm because they could inadvertently send me to the beach.
    
INSERT CRAZY RANT AGAINST THIS WHOLE TIRADE HERE.
    I was called away from the register to take out the trash. There were about five crates full of spoiled orange juice, and none of the girls wanted to throw them out, cause they smelt so awful. I could have just tossed them in the dumpster, but I decided to slam them, spraying fermented orange piss all over the dumpster. It dribbled into puddles of pulp and coagulated with the intense summer heat and the other trash. It was awesome, and the refuse has coated the dumpster ever since.
    I came back in to find my manager mopping up near the coolers. He had ordered too much ice and it didn't all fit in the freezer. So he stacked in the fridge. Of course, it melted and cost the store about 50 dollars worth of ice. My manager was a moron, and I took the dripping bags to the back.
    Later, these two women came running into the store, and tell my coworker Anna to call the police. "There is a belligerent man outside walking in traffic and disturbing people!" I had a line of ten people, so I just took note while Anna dialed and the women tried to calm themselves down.
     The first woman had a money card she wanted to buy. Basically, it's like a gift card for anything and she wanted five hundred dollars on it. She handed it to me in cash. Then the "belligerent man" walked inside the store. He was old and dirty, tall, bald, and red faced. Obviously homeless, obviously stark raving mad.
     He stood right in front of everyone and yelled, "Would anyone like to donate money to the pens and pencils and paper?"
     Everyone was freaked out, scared stiff, deer in headlights.
     "Anyone? If you don't do it, we're all gonna die."
     I smiled. My heart was throttling like I was scared, but I didn't feel it. The woman with the five hundred dollars asked me to "quick, hide it." She was totally afraid. I didn't. I continued her transaction, and told the man, "I can let you borrow my notebook if you want."
     He said, "Nevermind. Satan told me to draw the smiley faces or he was going to fight you. But never mind. I'm just losing my mind." And he walked out.
     Everyone tensed up even more. The woman with the 500 dollars started to shout at me, to rush me. "My kid is in the car, hurry up!" She was so afraid. I just laughed, finished her transaction and watched her run out. Anna hung up the phone, said, "They're coming." The women who reported this guy walked outside and rushed back in. "He's back in the road again."
     I don't understand what was wrong with everyone today. This man comes in needing help, and the whole store just freaks out in fear and cowardice. I mean, he was a poor hurting guy, and was no threat to anyone, yet. . .
     Well, the cops showed up and arrested him.
     Jeez, anything that scares someone should be arrested.
     Anyway, at the end of the competition, I sold about 90 little circles. Arielle got way more than I, but she didn't win either. I guess that's what really matters.

high there captain (fire is the divider)

burning! burn burn burn!'
fire is the divider
between the absurd!

Jumping jump jump jump

Like elephantiasis, I expand with balloon accuracy. I'm a cancer, forming in the skin of society.
My anarchist skin is leathered with every human sin.
We can find a solution to politics by admitting there is none.
Admitting that the sickness of humanity is a cavity in the soul.
If we look in a mirror, we can remove the dirt. Only then flowers shall bloom from our chest.

I peel the edges of my fingers with unsympathetic rage.
My teeth are ripe, yellow and spotted. The rotted food falls out.
My hamster wheel, my repetitiousness, is devouring me.
I should be growing and infecting others with the doctrine of chaos and love.
My own hero, breaking down barriers of filth.



written in may or something.

Lavender

Mar. 5th

At the same time, something changed in both of us.

She glided on one side of the Paseo Del Río, I stood shoegazing on the other, the turbulent green water between us. It rained like an angel's tantrum, heavy and cold, but not bleak, not melancholy.
Her hair flew back, parachuting in the gale and I could almost feel it stretching across the creek and stabbing into my senses. I could feel the perfume, lavender in scent, invading my olfactory, breaking down barricades and drawing my autonomy to its knees.
I was enslaved to her, the change between us occurring in different locations internally. My insides churned inside-out, mushed into one another. I had become a septic tank, withholding my own sludge. She glowed with intensity, her face reflecting the few rain-flecked dabs of sunlight like a golden idol.
The more my heart beat excitedly, the more it sunk into it's own cavity, shrinking in anguish. The more my eyes grew wide, the more they shrunk with hypothermic limpness.
Not once did her eyes turn to notice me.

Time is a flour mill, forever turning in the wind, crushing memories and history together. The more the gears twist, the more the result is unfamiliar, a strange flower growing until it overtakes entire gardens. What was once there is never replaced, never repeated, not once.

So that was then, and it doesn't matter. This is now and it still doesn't matter. The only experience worth noting is how my wristwatch continues to fade into the anonymous present. It ticks one way first, then flings back into the present, like an oar consistently propelling our craft forward.

She gave me one dinner. I sat back, barely attempting to act casual. This, after all, was just a business date at a seedy place off in some distant nowhere corner. She sat stiff and appeared ordinary, none of that floaty bullshit. No makeup, casual dress, her hands laid out face down, innocently on the table.
She noticed me staring into her crusted, chewed up fingernails. I followed them up to her withered, chipped knuckles, past criss-crossed scars dug across the wrists, to her chest, spotted with sunbleached freckles and adorned with a plastic necklace. Her feet, chipped and tattered, could follow the same pattern. Not once did I glance down.

The more my heart beat excitedly, the more it sunk into it's own cavity, shrinking in anguish. The more my eyes grew wide, the more they shrunk with hypothermic limpness.

It all came to this, a brief cup of coffee, yogurt sprinkled with granola and a hasty goodbye.

Walking.

FEB. 26 2010

When I was eight and she was six, my sister and I escaped from an after school program one day. We walked home about three miles, in the 110* heat of June, stopping outside of Baskin' Robbins. I drank from the water fountain inside and I will always remember how the water was so cold it would hurt my teeth. I liked that feeling alot, especially after eating a cone of ice cream. A brain freeze was a sweet, beautiful thing.
But we had no money for ice cream, so we were asked to leave.
Outside, a woman in a car asked us if we wanted a ride.
"Look, I know you aren't supposed to ask for a ride from strangers. But you're more likely to get hurt from someone else than me."
The woman had a daughter. And she had a point. We had another two miles to go and it wasn't going to be easy. So we hopped in the back.
I remember being kind of terrified, thinking of elaborate ways to protect myself, but it was mostly just if, if, if.
If I had a knife.
If I had a gun.
If I had a chance.
The woman dropped us off without incident. I stole a dime from her backseat, went inside and we watched Veggie Tales.
Hours of cartoon vegetables later, my dad burst into the room, shouting, "There you are! We've been looking everywhere!"
My sister immediately broke down crying, thinking we were in trouble. We didn't even know we were missed.

And then I stupidly pushed submit.

Dear New Yorker Magazine,

I'm going straight for the throat.
I have no experience in creative writing publication. Not a jot has seen professional ink. I oughta start somewhere. After all, this is a dream. A pathetic, clichéd, wonderful, innocent dream. So, I'll aim for the eyes, even if I'm doing this all wrong.
I'm being cocky. I don't mean to be, because pissing you off isn't my intention. My intention is to win, but how can I even hope?
I at least somewhat hope for a generic, soulless rejection letter. Better than being ignored, like when I was in third grade and I kept passing notes to the cute girl even when she rolled her eyes.
I'd learn my lesson. Don't be self-important next time, idiot! I'd learn something, too. All I know right now is there is a disproportionate amount of pink slips versus acceptance slips.
So fire away. I'm young, so I have nothing to lose. Maybe I'll keep dreaming. Lose a little cynicism. Does it help if I don't consider myself a poet?
Oh, speaking of which, I included a little poem from my heart and soul blah blah blah. . .

Have a nice day.

Mene Tekel

The Sewer (non-fiktion)

The Sewer

Our feet sucking through the mud, we stomped through the swampy muck, this raw sewage drained from all the nearby farms, a trench and a tunnel, a big pipe, going through it and the dirt road going over it.
We were hunting frogs, me, my brother Junior and the neighbor kid, Mike. Mike had a small, lime fishnet for extracting goldfish. When we spotted the bulbous yellow eyes floating out of the syrupy grime, we called Mike and he scooped up our writhing, squirming prize.
The further down the sewer we went, the darker the drool became. Oily swirls and floating chunks of I-dare-not-think-what twisted in the ripples we caused. You had to duck your head or risk scraping your scalp against spools of cobwebs. Looking down at your shoes, filled with this goop up to your ankles, terrified of snakes or worse, sometimes we’d jump. What was that, what was that? Then, we realized it was our own splashing. Our own ripples.
We kept the frogs in a Tupperware container we took from grandma. We were careful as surgeons not to let them out when adding to the collection. Junior had the net now, and Mike had trekked to the other side of the tunnel alone. I scanned the brown murky mud and parted the reeds near the entrance, looking for any creatures trying to escape in the opposite direction.
Mike leaned his head into the tunnel and called that he thought he saw something. Something big. Bring the net, quick!
Junior wouldn’t let me take the net and soon it became a fight. I was small and gangly and Junior was 200 pounds, at least, and he was gonna kick my ass. Again.
I was tired of it. Junior was so big and stupid and always trying to push me around.
Rage surged through me and I did the most stupid thing possible. In my tiny mind, I became like Riki Tiki Tavi, the mongoose, a rodent that kills king cobras in India by biting deep into the neck and never letting go.
So I bit Junior on the nipple. Sunk my teeth in through his oversized Phoenix Suns shirt and chomped down. Did. Not. Let. Go. Junior pounded on my back with his fists, the whole time Mike watching from the side, rolling his eyes and telling us to cut it out. I wouldn’t let go and Junior wouldn’t stop hammering me.
But everyone has to breathe sometime and I let out a big exhale, enough room for Junior to shove me back and run off down the dirt road. It was a mile to my grandmother’s house and he ran the entire way, shouting, “I’m telling, I’m telling.”
The Tupperware of frogs knocked over, the net in the bushes. Nothing mattered. I ran off down the street after my brother. As I got to the door, my mother was there, asking what happened and I told her she should punish me so, so, so bad. I was crying. Guilt, or fear, but probably both.
Junior’s nipple was swollen and plum purple. My mother tried to stifle her laughter. Everyone was confused about the nature of the fight, but they figured we had it worked out. It was over and I wasn’t punished.
I went back to Mike, still baffled, but more bored and he said all the frogs got away. I looked down at my ankle, sticking out of my mud caked shoes and browned socks. A leech was suckling on my Achilles’ tendon.

Transfiguration

Transfiguration

The day was on the fringe of timelessness, frigid with glaring white sanctity. A brightness more radiant than any bleach, almost fusing my eyes shut. I had to walk through endless, tangled trenches of snow, higher than my head.
Through every corridor, the light headed straight for my eyes and flooded my corneas. Through squinting glints, I could make out the shapes of buildings just enough to navigate through the troughs.
And so quiet. Not a sound but sharp, soulless wind. The howling follows you, burrows into your head and reminds you, there is no life here. This is the edge of oblivion.
At a dead end, I feel my way around a trench wall and climb up. At the top, there is a building, the roof caved in, bombed out almost. No people around, so I crawl through the window and under a broken support beam. Inside, it’s warm like a shrimp bisque. Knocked over shelves, busted walls and insulation freely littered down every aisle.
I travel through the ruins, careful not to disturb any artifacts. I feel hunger, but something holds me back. I have no survival instinct other than to pass through ruins to the other side. Stepping over baskets and tilted doorways and spoiled fruit.
Once I uncover where these fragments of history end, I will step back into the searing, raw light, able to transfigure into a new form. Leave this infertile wilderness.
First, I must give up earthly needs. I must not eat.
But like an animal, I throw myself on all fours and devour the moldy, worm-infested fruit. I chew it down, juicily, like a broth. A different spirit has consumed me, taking over.
When I am disgustingly full, I can only start to gag. I will vomit soon, leaving another mark that I have failed in my goal.