the Tyranny

look in
from out
you'll find
no doubt
that hope
is lost
the river's
crossed
we've drowned
the crown
on heads
of killers sits
and
the people
cheer
"my god!
we're saved!"
and not
one person is there
brave
enough
to say
"you fools!
you're all
but slaves.
already dead,
you are."

a bizarre on boats

they saved
the best
for last
but will you make it?
how long
can you
hold on
how long
will you
hold on
no vistory's
been won
without
a war
be careful
open your mind
lose yourself
blood river
flowing
gently
rowing
down
and out
and nude
and wet
from
blood
its sinking
you
are sinking
drinking
blood
and drowning
you
didnt hold
on long
enough

now or ever to come

dark waters
calm -- the
scariest kind of scary
ice, sweet tea, and lemonade
most tired but a treat
awaits me
string of pearls
neckalce
illuminating
walkways
friends, there are no friends
my god
there is
no god
the fountain is
a spider
long watery legs
the bubbling center body
a sticky dampness on my neck
life as you know it will end
when grace gets here
the timing
most unfortunate
regrettable
a pain
in toes that creeps
upward. to
my heart
heavy
like the news
of death
to children
---
billions of dollars
of fakeness
of beauty
of couples
hanging breathlessly on iron
the promise of
forever for
a second.
reach out and touch Faith
for a price
she's a hooker
no satisfaction
in
the rush
of blood
to parts
already bloody,
spilling
a grayness
in the face
and soul
but freshly darkened hair
to fool the world
already fooled
by fools
my only friend
a tricep
a token
---
in heat
expansion
my mind is a wonderfully
miserable place
stop to see the roses
smell
the roses
treat all interactions
as if they were with
an autistic
a volcano
erupts nightly
a ship sinks to my right
the palace of Caesar shines brightly
an Italian parade passes by
A bride and her groom every hour
the while gown and the corsage
the beauty you think you are seeing
is really only the Mirage

Wednesday Morning

10:07 AM : English class, unfocused. The Professor just said "aesthetically gay" for the 73rd time this semester.

9:57 AM : Walking to class. Heart racing and not from my briskness. Call my sister Valerie, the Harry Potter freak, to tell her about my basilisk situation. Straight to voicemail.

9:55 AM : Park. Black 5. Decide to bring my book to class though unweildy and likely unnecessary. Disembark. Lock car.

Realize he is in the walls.

Picture my room. Picture the open cabinet. The one on the floor. The one that houses the water heater. The one that leads into the pipes.

9:39 AM : Leave for school. M&M's forbreakfast. Key got stuck so I didn't lock the door. That's not like me. My mind is elsewhere.

9:24 AM : Struggle to pull myself together. Emotionally, physically, and otherwise.

9:21 AM : Oh my god. He's not in his tank. Check the lid. It's loose. He's finally done it. Oh my god. He's loose in my room. Scan wildly. Many times.

9:11 AM : Decide to get up. Remember I have to leave at 9:30, not wake up at 9:30. Unset remaining alarms. Rise gracelessly.

9:10 AM : Reset alarm for 9:17

9:05 AM : Backup alarm sounds. Dismissed.

9:00 AM : Alarm #2 sounds. Dismissed.

8:55 AM : Alarm clock sounds. I tap to ignore.

1:52 AM : I cant' sleep. This is weird. This never happens. My Chopin playlist is on it's second run already.

12:41 AM : Something's wrong. I hear noises. Something sounds like movement and yet the room is still. The sound comes from above and behind me. In the walls. In the ceiling. I am at unease. Try to forget. Restart the playlist. I leave my light on. Turn over. Try not to think. Figure it's probably just the snake.

...

10:33 AM : Still in english class. For many more minutes. 42 of them, in fact. Kenne has her head down; she suffers from migraine headaches. Professor Mufasa is still talking, fervently, without interruption, "I was experimenting with my life you know my dad kicked me out said if I were to live with him I had to live by his rules I said GoodBYE. Who am I? I am nobody. Nobody and something...."

I've become strangely relaxed with my bedchamber of secrets, the only animal I've ever truly loved lost within the walls or plumbing...It is too poetic to not work out...dismally. Why, in Harry Potter, the basilisk hangs out in the walls and pipes for a tick and all that happens to him is he gets his eyes clawed out and stabbed in the throathead.

Thoughts at the Car Wash

I sit down with my Naked juice and my pen. An attendant offers me a Lexus. I accept. He retracts his offer upon discovery that the Lexus is indeed not mine.

The sun is hot but the air is cold. Cloud coverage causes a chill and forebodes rain. I've picked a good day to splurge on the triple foam and exterior shine.

There's a Starburst on this table. Unwrapped, alone, and yellow. If it were pink I'd probably eat it.

I sense the mexican towel twirlers and talking about me. They smile to each other and nod in my direction. I stare at them.

It's cold now. The storm above the mountains has traveled overhead. An old man converses with a guy wearing flip flops. His name is Jerry. I know this because his car is ready. It's a BMW. Maybe I should've worn flip flops.

I picked the green Naked juice today. It has broccoli in it. A woman vacates a yellow Xterra wearing a white tank top. I am cold. She will regret her choice of wardrobe.

The same attendant offers me a new car. I cannot understand him. Recalling my previous fruitless interchange, I decline his offer. The metro police department is across the street, anyway. I wouldn't make it far in a stolen conveyance. Not here.

The Starburst taunts me.

Tank top girl recovers a sweater from her car. I was correct. Flip flop guy has since vanished and I am left in solitude at my table, save for my unedible candy companion.

It is cold. And the clouds are now endless. My car has yet to emerge from the wash. Or maybe it's that one in front. I can't get a good look. The uncertainty leaves me at unease.

Adam's car is ready. Adam drives a Nissan. Adam looks confused. With Adam's departure I've located my car. It was the one in front. This is good news, because it's cold.

Something smells good. It is not the Starburst.

My car is done. They call my name. The many melodic syllables sound misplaced in their mouths. I juggle my notebook, and pen, and green juice. Goodbye, Starburst.

I get in my car and remember to take it out of gear before I let off the clutch. I forgot to last time, and I publicly stalled out. It was embarrassing. I celebrate my brilliance this time, silently. I tip the man, and drive away.

Directly into the rain.

Unhealthy Procrastination

Disclaimer. This is gross, personal, and more graphic than you’d like.

Some people can’t help but push things to the limit. Lance Armstrong did it when he won his bicycle race thing and sold all those bracelets. Michael Phelps pushed it to the limit when he won all those gold medals AND he was stoned. And as I recall the Wildcat Basketball team had a whole musical number about doing just that in that one High School Disney movie.

And then we have people like Steve-O, who take things dangerously close. Physically painfully (and unnecessarily) so.

My attempts to do this in the inspiring athlete way have since landed me in the Jackass category.

When it comes to physical injury, putting it off in no way classifies one as a bad ass.

But I do it anyway.

I pushed right on through and ignored shattered and dislocated ribs, fractured feet and ankles, torn menisci, kidney failure, car wrecks, cuts that needed stitches, and most recently, and perhaps most revoltingly, toenails that reached a whole new level.

Close friends (the few and the proud – only the closest had the dishonor and privilege of seeing these things) relentlessly made fun of me for how disgusting they were, begged me to seek help.

The problems started a little over a year ago when I started working retail – a short-lived career path. They made me wear footwear; a garment I’d not been required to wear in any lifeguarding capacity. So I donned my little flats, or my little boots, or whatever, and I hated them more deeply than just as unsightly. They were murder on my feet, and before long the nails had a thick yellow quality. They’d been stepped on, abused, and before long I had blood pooling beneath them.

I care not.

One day which I do not remember one of the big nails just fell off, and I was left a 9-toenailed freak. My solution to this problem was to just paint the skin, no one will notice I reasoned. A new, deformed toenail had begun growth in it's stead; from death comes life.

I’d been growing this thick, repulsive nub of a toenail for almost a full year; caked-on nail polish was my self-prescribed solution to the problem of it’s apparently mangled 23^rd chromosome. Granted it was disgusting, but at least I was beginning to move back up the ranks to 10-toenailed person.

And then, tragedy struck.

I could feel the magic would not last. Out of nowhere in particular (no event I can pinpoint) it started bleeding. Not a happy toenail. I could feel it commencing to separate from it’s fleshy counterpart. The pain became so intense that I could not even sleep that night. Around the chilly, dew-kissed hour of four in the goddamn morning I decided it was time: action had to be taken. I’d had a full, relatively painless year to take action; but I thought it’d be fun to wait til right now. When it came to this.

A few, calm hours of pain-killer induced sleep welcomed horror upon their end. Doctor time.

One look at that thing and he informed me, without hesitation, of the imperative amputation or removal or whatever.

It was like a scene from Hostel.

I’m sitting on the little table with my feet straight out in front of me and he puts on his latex gloves. He takes what strikes me as an obscenely large needle and starts stabbing it in my toe with reckless abandon. Striking nerves and inducing more pain than he was relieving.

He vanishes for a moment and returns with his tray of utensils, torture instruments, pain implementers. Sharp, shiny metal scissors, gauze, tape, miniature steel ice picks, a surgical, curved wedge.

Before my very eyes he takes his ice pick and starts shoving it vigorously underneath the top of my nail. That doesn’t quite do the trick. He takes his menacing curved talon and starts DIGGING MY NAIL OUT FROM THE CUTICLE.

It’s separating, and bleeding, and clinging to it’s bed by thick, white tendrils that look a lot like I imagine tendons do, which he severs vehemently with his shears. Blood spurts from the openings and drips down the naked toe. What once housed a symmetrical, feminine (ha), painted nail was now a war zone. An open sore, bleeding and distorted, remnants of nail, flesh, and otherwise served as but memories of the casualties. What remains? A bloody, naked, nail-less, sad sad little stump.

Let this be a lesson to you. Don’t procrastinate.

The Donkey Encounter

Who doesn’t love a good family outing?

I sure didn’t. Family time during my adolescence usually involved a lot of educational speeches, intense physical exertion or even labor, and more than likely ended with someone in tears.

One time on a family vacation my father decided a good way to pass the 4 hour car ride was to put me on trial for not putting chlorine in the pool when I said I would or something to that effect. My mother was the judge, my dad the prosecution, I represented myself as the defendant, and my sisters served as the (incredibly biased – sibling rivalry can be an ugly thing) jury of my peers. The trial ended with me convulsing in sobs of self-pity, trapped in the confines of a moving vehicle with the very people who openly attacked me. (My dad later cheered me up by letting me pick a dead and dismembered pigeon out of the car grill with a stick.)

Or the time on yet another long car ride my ever-playful father invented a game where each person was to act like another family member; which quickly snowballed into a game called “capitalize on everyone’s deepest character flaws and exploit them mercilessly.”

Those were the best times of my life.

These, my fondest memories.

It was an occasion like this – seemingly fun but unbearable at the time – that this drama unfolds.

We were no strangers to Red Rock. My dad is a bit of a celebrity in the climbing world and often times the family would rise bright and early to embark on a hike of his choosing. We would attempt to start the trek with optimism; my little sister Emily charging ahead while bragging about how fast she was, how easy the hike was. My mother strode along, soaking up the nature, pointing out wildlife – “Ooh girls, Larry, look! Is that a roadrunner?!” “No, that’s a tumbleweed.”

Fast forward 3 miles.

Emily’s now riding atop my fathers shoulders, blaming her fatigue on the terrain and not her high-heeled sparkly sketchers. Valerie and I are trudging bitterly, complaining to each other in hushed tones, sometimes singing marching songs to keep us going. Mom is in the back, clutching my dad’s hand screeching “Larry! Larry!” as she struggled to conquer the rocky decline with her sub-par depth perception.

A beautiful family portrait.

By the time we reach the car we’re all in silence. Nothing left to say to each other, driving down the winding one-way road, my sisters and I yearning for the comfort of home. The sooner the better.

This is not a good time for traffic to come to a halt, so of course it does. A long line of cars and nowhere to go.

Please don’t suggest playing courtroom, please don’t suggest playing courtroom I silently pled.

We round a curve at a pace that causes me to notice a desert tortoise passing us. The perpetrator of the hold up is in my sights. A donkey in the road, and an unending line of Asian tourists stopping to take photos of the desert native. A novelty to them, an atrocity to me. We approach the ass, inch by inch, one car at a time, until we’re almost home free.

The donkey is clearly enjoying his celebrity status. He’s not moving from the middle of the road, he’s within arms reach even.

Did this stop us? It did not. My dad accelerates toward the beckoning horizon, showing little concern about the large animal obstructing our path to it.

Crash. Bang. The donkeys head hits right on the passenger side of the windshield.

Screams from my mother. Wails from my little sister. Explosive laughter from me in the backseat. Many, many Asian middle fingers seeing us off. My father, wordless, smirking. One half second totally justifying the hike which had so drained me.

Sometimes, you have to go through hell to have a little excitement.