Periscope Demotion

Home Safe: Wear your pathology like it's your own reality show

Holistic Monotheistic, no matter your foresight,


Milibars bring radiation this season from all of the industry
and murderous Treason?

It's free form now- I can't keep up this pace,
they've cancelled Nasa and we can't go to space

The thieves and the honest get their checks on the first

I can't even keep my own hands from my purse

I'm electronic on all different levels
Organic cat nuzzles leave me disheveled

Attacked by an alien cricket last night
I can't even sleep without some kind of light

Arm the security system illusion
clearing up the justifiable confusion


Calm at the helm with mermaids on radar
secretly liking electric guitar

Scoot Scoot Trudge Doctor

We hold it down until the secret track plays
And sometimes it's eight minutes until the notes play

We wait at the light rail station and go all the way to the highway underpass
And don't have purses, just pockets
Deep pockets but not long dollars and a triple X polo shirt because that's what every 136 pound teenage girl wears to the club.
You're either like that or you wear a tank top that isn't as awesome for dance moves.

You can wear anything and be cool now. But it's still cool if you washed your sneakers with a toothbrush when you came home every morning.

I mix in my mind all the phrases I hear through the day
Karate Kick, Permit to Carry a concealed weapon and should be at work at 10:30
I wish I had that schedule
And would I need to carry a weapon to fight off the jealous onlookers?

Could I sense my friends before they walk around the corner?
Yes.

The witch doctor can give you medicine for that, but why would you want it?

Bottle Top Magic

The cat looks in the mirror at himself and I wonder what he is saying; probably that he is handsome. I used to look in the mirror the same way until the past two years when I started thinking I look peculiar.

Strange. At least I don't look unmemorable.
Even people I've never met before say that I look familiar.

But that's only when I talk to them, so maybe it's something else about me.

Trying to get Stolen is No Different than Being Kidnapped

I'm pretty sure my pupils get larger when I see something beautiful.
I watch my cat watch me and this happens to him, exaggerated like huge saucers of black, he hacks my account.
I pick him up as he watches me talk to us both in the mirror, and I think this makes him special because not all animals recognize a reflection.

I push the whip, I push the numbers, I push the letters until the words go into the void again.
I push my feet into the boots, the legs into the leggings, the dress into the jacket, the key into the keyhole.
The filter goes into the basket, the granules go into the filter, the wooden stirring stick winds around and momentum keeps it spinning.

I thread my teeth with waxed string and hope it makes them last longer than my skull; I hope they're still in there when I die instead of candy corpses fallen out after a Halloween life party broken and unconditioned and brittle.
Hoaxes are like acting, if I may cause a diversion in a zig zag motion, moving toward the goal but pretending to go sideways.

I've started a list and I don't know where it will lead except for sure it will be upward.
Vertical lines make you taller, but this horizontal move is lacking sufficient drive and purpose.

Sideways. Always. Looking through a periscope from a bad reality t.v. show, realizing that all the characters will end up in rehab or something like a media frenzy in the courtroom.

I publish my free-writing and edit masterpieces in secret.

Waiting for the painful day of inspiration, gilded, gliding, gearing wind mimicking into the black of the dark sky over the ocean on a still night with heat lightening strobing through the firmament.

Cloudless and splayed out on the asphalt posturing like it's effortless, but shot thru with cold.

I am unique in grace as I plod trudgingly onward, hair down like the middle where the magic hits the solar plexus.

Hotly guided adverbial and proverbial in the big leagues.

Stealing and Given.

No Beds in City Hall

Jackie starts the process of writing a condolence for a six year old
and travels down the elevator to see me.
Everyone has to check with me before finishing their condolences
But I walked around the corner just before she came in
and the three tiny children of a co-worker had piled into my chair and
were attempting to touch everything with a solution of saliva, starburst, and glue stick.
I came back, sat myself down in the chair amongst them like they were a viney bushel of berries
*Happy, they were, like the grapes from the fruit of the loom commercial;
And they parted as a school of jellyfish used to working their chaos uninterrupted around adults.
The youngest girl grabs the amethyst from my computer in her fist and holds it up to me and says IS THIS A ROCK !!!!
( no question mark )

Yes, i say, and think, why are you asking questions you know the answer to? what ARE you, a lawyer?

I began typing.

How are my fingers sticky? They're touching everything.

And I type the name that begins with 'Six Year Old' and I know it's not the regular protocol, and I know that's not the kid's legal name, but this is Baltimore, and we do things differently here and a little more descriptively.

And I love that it's Jackie who wrote it.
Because I love her so much for her only being my work friend.
And because Jackie can do whatever she damn well pleases when she writes a condolence because her son was shot a few years back;
and she doesn't seem like she's even old enough to have a son old enough to be around guns at all.
Like she took his youth into her when he died and maybe she'll never have wrinkles...

ever.

And I was just glad the kids were there because they added some levity to the situation.

It wasn't so heavy

Then, the oldest girl screamed, I LOVE IT HERE.

I LOVE CITY HALL.

I NEVER WANT TO LEAVE!

And she said she wanted to LIVE there,
and I laughed and I knew what she was talking about,

And I said, You can't live here. No one can. There aren't any beds here.

Coconut Turn About by the Superintendent of the Rec Center

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we're singing and hanging out at the rec center,
exploring the hilly west side with big houses and wooden porches.
And a nineteen year old is murdered at 1pm on the South side of the water after an argument.
"Something's wrong with Baltimore."
I watch two brothers, artists, actors, dancers, walk away from me down the blue corridor, past the ceramic kiln, past the crew cleaning the bathrooms, toward the gymnassium with the dance troop, and I think the same thing.
I think that if they aren't here and they are walking outside these walls, by themselves, or WORSE with a group, their safety can't be taken for granted.

Mr. Furlow knows it, my new friend that reminds me of my father and my brother (if you could mix them both together). I walk with him and smile as a toddler toddles quickly in the opposite direction. Mr. Furlow takes his large hand and gently places it on top of the toddlers head. He times it perfectly like a magic game of whack a mole. The little one stops and like a Reiki master of Louissiana, wills the child to change direction as if the tiny head is part of a huge mechanism, a coconut-sized weathervane that must point north.

And he smiles, and I can hear the echo of a silent whimsical giggle behind his eyes, as he takes his hand from the top of the child's head and he toddles back in the right direction.

Jonah and the Whale?

I woke up on Saturday and I was glad the rapture didn't happen, I guess.
But, guess what. I had the date wrong. It's this Saturday the rapture is supposed to happen. And all the good people are going to get sucked up into God's blow hole ( because God is a huge whale in space... duh)

So anyway, that has not happened YET. And I'm not sure what my plans are on Saturday.

I have a menial job, but at least I have health insurance so that if I hit my head on something while I'm going up the vacuum tube, I can recuperate in the hospital with a five dollar tylenol. In fact, I have excellent health insurance, so if I'm lucky enough, I'll get a vaccine for zombie bites since the other side effect of the rapture is that the dead walk the earth. I mean, Jesus. Really? I have to worry about this?

Probably not.

I'm having my coffee and vitamin B. I'm going to fight child abuse today. And I'm also going to work late, late hours today. I won't fail. Today will be a success. I'm drinking out of a cup that says 'Princess'. I won't ask too many questions. I'll stand up for myself if I need to.

That's all I have time for now.

Let the Professionals Handle This

Like hair bleaching, some things should be left to the professionals. It was roughly two years ago, I found myself with a little free time on my hands. And like they say, idle hands can be the devil's plaything, and I was trying to stay busy, obviously to avoid evil as always. I bleached my own hair. Half way through, I called my friend Joey to help me apply the bleach to the back of my head. He helped A LOT. But neither of us were licensed in this practice. It was too strange and I dyed it back to brown within twelve hours.

The following year, I had a job and payed someone to make my hair blonde. It was fun while it lasted.

This evening, five hundred dollars into an ongoing investment a professionally styled head of blonde hair, at eight-thirty-seven, I had fully committed to bleaching my own roots. What is pathetic is that I failed to learn this lesson. And what's more important is that I didn't lose my resilient nature in the past two years.

I tell myself to keep hoping. Yet, now that I've made this mistake twice, the only time I'll ever make my hair blonde again ( by myself at least ) is only if I am put into the witness protection program and it is required to avoid death.

Although I enjoyed galavanting as a bombshell of a different descent; and conducting my own psychology experiment ( yes, people dooooo treat you differently ) ( and yes, I had my own little joke about being a white bitch barbie ); every time I looked in the mirror for more than ten seconds, I missed my old self.

Above all, I'll have more money for cigarettes this year. Like my friend Jeremy says, "she quit her job once so she could have more time to smoke".

True.

Your mother broke the See-Saw

Your mother is sooooo fat, she walked around the corner, saw her own ass in front of herself tryin' a get around the other side.
Your mother is soooo fat, she walked around the corner, tried to pick pocket somebody, felt somethin' touchin' her ass and smacked herself in the face.

Your mother is so fat she set off the neighbor's smoke alarm makin' pancakes and bacon. Your mother is so fat she has a george foreman grill in the passenger seat of her car and fries chicken in the glove compartment.

That's all for now. Rapper's warm up, #1.

Out of Practice Big Time

Now that the "911 generation's boogeyman is dead" I'd just like to say that I'm from the generation before that.

I'm from the generation after the hippies on shakedown street, but before Brittany Spears.

We had a LOT of fun before all of this paranoia. Things were pretty cool. And I'm hoping we can go back to chillin' like villains and quit the witchhunt mentality.

I'mjustsayin'.

Wouldn't that be great?

I'll tell you what would be splendiferous, if people would also stop spewing gibberish like tiny-minded cause-whores. That's right.
I can't possibly be so passionate about so many things since the internet blew up for me in 2005 when I got a job with a computer. I just got the internet at my house in 2008 and it was a whole new world.

I became empassioned, enraged, engaged, and enraptured all at once and wore it the fuck out.

I realized that some of my closest real friends are not on the webs at all and I talk to them on the phone on the regular. Some of my closer friends I just run into on the street, but that's rarer these days, yet, it does happen.

So, goodnight. I have no super-creative spark to send you, just tired fingers writing a tiny bit of my perspective.

Mandala in the Office

Her office is a mandala.

Every time I forget what the meaning of the word means, I am reminded by experience.
By trying to hold on to things and people.

She was supposed to go on vacation right after me. As the wheels of my car rolled downhill and I thought,
I grieved her vacation,
I thought of her
and I heard her voice break through and say 'let me go'

and the accent fell on the 'o' like the exhasperated childish voice I remember hearing sometimes when she was frustrated.

Maybe I was the one she let hear that for some reason;
and my God, that was one way I related to her so much.

Overworked and wanting to win the lottery...

GET ME OUT OF THAT OFFICE.


You can psychoanalyze it all you want and tell me that it was my voice-- but I complain about ALL my jobs. 100 % of all jobs. I complain. And maybe my job there isn't done and that's why I'm not gone yet.

But, her job is done.
And she was due to be in Jamaica March 14th if she hadn't died.

I kind of feel like I owe it to her to tell someone about this experience in my car, so this is what I'm doing.

That's why I'm calling her office a mandala.

Stop holding a place for someone who is not coming back.

Word on the Street Is

I said I was worried for myself since all these good people are dying;
but I realize that my crusade has slowed in recent years and I've become more bitchy
and callous and judgemental.
So, maybe I am safe for now.

I said in the sunshine today that I'm no stranger to tragedy.
And so it is.

I'm back at a place where self help books like 'six figure women' are refreshing with phrases, like, "Stay Positive" are foreign.
And I was called Debbie Downer by my most cynical buddy and I laughed because I'm sick, but I took it to heart.
And once, another equally cynical friend told me " YOU need Jesus. "
And I was shocked, but I stayed quiet, considering the source.

You always have to consider your source.

Some Words About the Evening in the Wee Hours

Chest Pop Dance Crowd
Political Blogger
And Water from an orange sports cooler
Plus One and a Half Monsters
Plus a small pot of coffee

Plus Uva Ursi, plus Valerian root ad infinitude.

Long dollar make you hollar.

And fresh and swaps and sneaker tops.
Press on, press through the hullabaloo.
Emcees and see 'ems.

Spinners. And always a drunken bum adds to the evening because
you're not allowed to smoke inside, you're forced to stand outside and
attract all sorts of unlikely neighbors asking for things and asking for money,

One woman was five months pregnant and wanted money and cigarettes.
One man was dancing and suddenly went into a pastoral sermon ( if he was on Greenmount, I would say it was a Sermon on the 'Mount, but it was North, where, at the intersection in front on the rite-aid, there were small rats running around looking for food or a big enough hole to crawl into ).

I felt bad for the baby rats and the people, but they were creepin' and thus a nuisance more than a swan song.

We danced enough to frighten old people tonight.
We danced enough to make people look twice.
We danced enough to make people try to imitate.
But we weren't trying to intimidate.

It's how the cookie crumbles, like bees in a beehive. Stinging is for the morning hours at six am. They close four hours ahead of that; and I don't know how anyone goes out on work nights, but they do.
They dance to pop music and listen to their sat elite radio.
Sitting elite, I set lights.

And my saddle bags are telling me that this rodeo isn't over.