Welcome to the Strange Society

She stood on the bus, striped trainers the label had faded or had been torn off but you guessed it was an N. She wore blue headphones and had a spiked Mohawk which she had shaven either side of her head. "No one noticed her," he said. "Perfect," you said. "Absolutely perfect" He and you went in tapped her with two fingers right between the shoulder blades and she fell on your arm. She looked thin and bony but weighed a ton or that's the gist of what you said. He and you ran carrying her. You went out of the subway up the stairs to the cold night, so cold it made the hairs on the back of your nice rise but you ran and didn't stop running until you came to the apartment. What were you going to do with her? He looked at you and gave you the nod. You woke her up and she was scared.
"Welcome to the Strange Society, you have been nominated," he said.

You Forgot the Toliet Paper

Running faster and faster, jump over the fence, through the alley, jump onto the fire escape, climb four flights up and then see the open window, yell boo as loud as you can.
"Jesus H. Christ! You scared me!" your roommate yells. This roommate is the same girl you have a crush on for two years now. The scent of curry powder, thyme and coriander drifts to your nose. It smells good.
"Sorry," you say after you come in. You close the window, a little. "I got grapes, milk and dish-soap as requested." You present your grocery bag as if you just drew a masterpiece of stick people as a four year old and you're showing off to your mother. She is not your mother and she is not gentle with her criticism of you. To her, you are a temporary thing until something better comes. So is this apartment, and neighbourhood and city.
"You forgot the tomatoes and toilet paper, who forgets toilet paper?" she says. She puts her plate on the counter and give you one delicious omelette. "It's alright, I'll get the toilet paper." She puts on her leather coat her mother gave her from the 80's. You put your head down. You feel like a failure. She goes down the lift. A few minutes later, you hear a gun go off. You leave out the window, down the fire escape and run as fast you can to the front of the building. An old man is being put on a gurtney in an ambulance. Police are shaking their heads. You find her.
"What happened?" you ask her. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," she said, shakingly. She isn't fine she got shot in the shoulder. "The police were passing by and the idiots shot the old man."
"And you," you say. "She's shot."
"The ambulance is coming," said the copper.
"Good," you whisper. You hold her. It comes after what seems like forever. They load her on the gurney. She grabs your hand.
"If I die," she starts.
"You're not going to die, you can't. I love you."
"If I die, make sure you remember to get toilet paper." she says.

A Day of Lexleigh the Flowershop Girl

I sit surrounded by wool, leather and polyester. The bus smells of people and it's making me sick. I wish the day was over but it only just begun. My voice is hoarse, I wish I didn't have my period on top of my bus-sickness. I think about Jean-Luc, his soft brown locks, his brown puppy eyes and the sound he made when he was about to come. He is gone now, not dead, but caressing another woman. I take out my iPod, looking for a song to fit my mood but finding none, big surprise. My stomach rumbles, great cramps. I feel like throwing up. I hate having my period and stupid tampons up my coochie. The bus slams to a stop and we all rock forward. I see the flower shop. I get off the bust and with my third key unlock the door. I go inside and lock it again. What? We're not open yet. It's cold and I'm the first one in like always, well the first one who doesn't live there. I go to the back to small garden and back cafe patio. We share gardens with a cafe. Gwen makes the coffee, it also sounds like a blender when she grinds the beans. The aroma of coffee overpowers the flowers. Just like Jean-Luc's sweat overpowers his cologne and it's always a mixture of smells.
She looks up and says, "hi" in sign language. Another thing to add to my bucket list, great. As if there's isn't enough things. 1 Have two kids who don't hate me. 2, have a husband who isn't gay. 3 Go to France. 4. Go see the Pyramids. 5. Learn Sign Language. 6, Have my own flowershop. I only know how to say two words/phrases in Sign, so far: hi and "Damn it." "Lexleigh cut the flowers, are ya?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm going to cut the flowers," I said, as an attempt to correct her grammar but it never works. She's just 22, a kid who barely learning about life as far as I'm concerned. She was married to a man so he could become a citisen and then stayed for twelve years until she discovered he was gay and then had her children hate her and call her a homophobe when she wasn't and lived in one of the most liberal cities for gays: Boston and couldn't get a divorce so had to wait another ten years. I am talking about Richard, of course. Jean-Luc was the only man who seemed like loved me, he's the one I fell in love with. I cut white forget-me-nots on the cutting table and then tied them.Jean-Luc said to me once after sex, "you have this mark on your breast, so lovely, it's like a white rose in spring and your face. Ah c'est majesté. Très belle. You are so full of life." But not full of wealth and apparently love can be bought if you're young and stupid. I wrapped the flowers and then open the shop. Our first customer (or so I thought) came in. It was Miranda, the woman Jean-Luc left me for. She's in her 50's but looks thirty, perhaps it's plastic surgery or maybe it's just genetics, who knows. She has an old fashion mink coat and silk slip on. Red lips and $5,000 blue Prada heels and a leopard (hopefully faux-fur) purse.
"Oh Lexleigh, dah-ling, I didn't know you owned a flower shop!" she said. "It's so quaint!" She put the purse on the counter and sniffs the air and then removes the purse. She hates flowers you see. Quaint is a word wealthy people use to describe ugly and small.
"I don't. I just work here," I said.
"Really?" she said, not interested. "You are right next to the diamond boutique. Well, so long dah-ling. She leaves. I go to the bathroom and throw up. The owner, Georgia, Gwen's mother, comes over to me.
"Are you sick, I don't want you to make my customers sick. Perhaps you should go home. I don't want people to think I run a dictatorship as a business. Unlike corporations, I can't stand them, I can't stand them!" she said. "Especially on Valentine's Day. If you are sick, just call me and I'll have someone else come in."
"I'm fine, I'm just having my period, I get nauseous," I said.
"Well okay, then. But you should go home...looking like that, you look ill, bad im-age, bad im-age!" she said. So she puts me back on the bus and I go home to my cat. I have 34 messages from unimportant know-it-alls. My cat doesn't care who feeds him or pets him, just as long as it's done. He misses Jean-Luc as I do but we can't turn back time. Never can we go backwards, we must move forward and move on to create our happiness, which is why I'm going to Egypt to see the pyramids. I booked a ticket and everything. I'm going to live my life without anyone who hates me. Georgia supports my going. She even said, "You have to fit your life to you, not fit yourself to other people's lives. Live on your own."

I'm turning Dark Blue

Frozen lights

Blood Drips

Body hiccups

Camel spits

I see a gun,

A rocket, a missile

A dart, a knife

You think you’re so bad

For killing, pfffff, that’s nothing

Writing is worst

I am not gonna say “baddest”

“I hate TV contests”

Yet you’re glued.

How many people would cry

If Facebook or Twitter died?

“I’m not feeling well”

Who cares

“I’m going to the laundry”

Who cares

“I’m at the mall”

Are you telling me to go down and meet you there?

Apparently, I’m an old soul.

I had a conflict growing up

A wooden doll or a blonde bimbo—I mean Barbie.

All my barbies are broken

Then I moved on to fairies

You just wish you were a kid again

Just for Halloween

Instead of stuck in between

On your period.

Who cares about the mannequins in the window

“Il ya un film d'horreur sur les modèles” says a French-American mother

Where are the unarmed misfits ?

They’re all on facebook

Trying not to get a life

Some days I wish I had a time machine

To make all the pain go away

Who says there’s an audience reading any of this shit?

Maybe I’m just feeling pessimistic

About this bloody shite

It’s like 90 degrees without an airconditioner

And the heat blasting

And I’m supposed to be happy!

Why?

I like the fog and rain like a comfort blanket of darkness

“Howya” “Oh fine”

If I was really fine, then

How come I feel like that guy

Who was told cartoons can’t have sex?

I’m not saying I am one

But have you noticed that geniuses are always ahead of their time

If I wasn’t so lazy, I would call myself crazy

I say I have my own style

When they say I’m just mixing stuff: it’s not original

Fuck you then

I really don’t want to edit seeing I’m never in the mood

I don’t want to go back to high school

But all the TV shows do (why? It’s not that great)

Hey movie writers, listen up

Stop making movies from books we get it:

You have writer’s block, obviously.

You know, it’s sad when short films are ahead of you.

I’m sick of Hollywood telling me what I want to see

Don’t be a moggy-dan

I’m half Austrian and that’s why I look great in scarves

You know it’s true

Don’t try to tell me what to do.

Don’t make me sing when I’m turning dark blue-ahhh!

I feel like I’m falling down a hole

Look up at the clouds, so damn peaceful

Don’t try to figure me out

I’m just human

Who said there was any reason to make sense

In fact, we are all picking our alphabets from Scrabble

Makin’ up words like the old ones are going out style

Thou art a fool to be made of, so

“I bite my thumb at you,” ma’am, sorry.

Dump the Old for the New

Meaning of despair
Is such a different activity
Then describing happiness
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Television wrecked the scene
Let stupid people be on TV
I don’t fricking care.
Then why are you writing poems about it
When you should shut up about it?
Because it pisses people off
And I ain’t in the people pleasin’ business
Of sabotage.
I feel it’s the age of misery
Or maybe just plain pity
How can I make a transaction
Without multication or subtraction?
Old methods of using memory
Dimmed down by Kindle and iPads
Yet I’m around the fools who think technology is getting rid of paper
Check the bookshelves
Trash is piled up and no one cares
I see broken stereos
CD’s, mp3’s and laptops
I’m sitting on my rooftop
Wonderin’ why plastic was invented
Yet I use it all the time
I’m addicted to it
I can’t break free from it.
And we’re cutting all trees for paper
So am I for deforestation or plastic reefs?
Can I get back to it, can I ignore it?
The problems grows
Our communication style changes
I’m so confused by the by-products and black smoky skies
I can see all endanger species dies
As they say the words
“Sarah Palin for President.”
If that happens, I’ll become a London, Cork or Dublin resident
Maybe even Montreal or South France
Yeah, I’m not sticking around
For fart jokes, fighting for rights I already own like abortion, the education I deserve, free healthcare, for this nation to be satisfied, the dumbing down of American cinema or for the
Teabaggers. We’re so used to being on top
That we can’t recognize the bottom anymore
That’s a tragedy
The documentaries are more frightening
Than these disgusting freak shows in the horror category
Because I’m up all night
worrying. What’s wrong with our country
Can we remember our own history?
Never mind just tell me what happen the day before yesterday.
Are we so screwed up
We think it’s okay to sit back
And not attack the bullies?
To let the oil run in the gulf for months on end?
To not help people build homes?
Maybe you don’t get that I don’t want another apology
I want something to be done
Am I insane, which is a possibility
But I can’t believe in small happy endings
All you see is this fat girl with glass and her book
Scribbling hurriedly and crying
Crying because there’s no improvement
Maybe I don’t care about what you think
Because the runway is filled with skinny bitches
Oops did I say a bad word
So sorry, I’m pissed off
That I’m not being heard
Who cares for the forgotten?
Who shelters the lost and lonely?
Maybe if they made a law instead of being nice, everyone would be able to marry
And I’ve been thinking these things since I was eight, baby
So if I still read a book and not a shiny gloss screen, sue me [not really]
Sue me please, since how much toxic waste and trash has your computer made?
If we always dump the old for the new
How can we claim we’re environmentally friendly
It’s not just me, it’s you too.
At least we recycle paper and plastic
To make notebooks, journals, pens, etc, etc
But it seems we can never do enough
Since all of us try to ignore that big volcano
Of the purple unicorn of despair
Please stop asking me about my day or how I like facebook
Because I’ll tell you all my strife
We can’t ignore the big purple unicorn
Sitting on our heads
Otherwise we might as well
Put shopping carts into trees
And kneel on our knees
As I look over my sunglasses
What am I going to do
I have a unicorn on a bus
And he’s crushing us
But did I ever complain about the blue rhino?

"It's a Culture Thing"

Grey skies
Eagle eyes
Big explosions
Small vacuums
Little kisses
Big hugs
These are the rules to being human?
As I dance, I feel myself
Going into a trance
I can’t help it
Scratch the wall.
What is reason?
What is truth?
Every day we fall
And then we fall,
And then we fall,
Twisting down the stairs
Unable to get a sense of up or down.
We roll out the carpet
For villains instead of heroes
Who we trash instead of love,
And I must feel the shame
Of the forgotten
Because the words are writing themselves on the walls
The lost voice forgets to call
I don’t know where we are
And more and more
We get snatched up from the fog
Too late
It’s too late
To open our doors
To the poor
Since we beat, beat, beat them
Down. The images
I collect in a small jar
Are distant,
Distant memories
And then I pause And I look up
Where have the buildings gone?
What is that? Bombs?
A mother rocking her dead baby in her arms
Weeping never sleeping
Tell-tell-teel me
Is life worth living
If nothing can be done about these evil corportations that replaced the plantations which the slaves worked on to build a better and richer nation for the white folk
And then we lie
About having two or three wars which we had not made news about
Then we look up to the skies
Hoping, oh hoping that God will send us a sign that he loves us,
But how can he when he look through my eyes?
Now it’s tornado after tornado after hurricane
And there’s nothing to do about the pain
Bursting in my heart
As I see you smirk
Saying that no one can be president
Except you
Saying no one can vote
Except you
Saying no one can be free
Except you
And that libraries should be burned
Because of Kindle anyways
Nowhere I can post my message
So you won’t ignore it
How can I make you see
That hating homosexuals
Won’t solve a thing?
And Bush lied to you
Saying he was on your side
When really he robbed you blind
Now the tears well up in your eyes
As you try to tell me that’s not true
You’re wrong
You’re wrong
You’re wrong
And please excuse me for not caring
About Michael Phelps smoking a bong
When there’s plenty hundreds of other things
To worry about
Like climate change or global warming
Hunger in Africa
Cancer and how about AIDS
What about public healthcare
That’s a great idea!
I guess what I’m trying to say is
I rather go with socialism, you know that “other ism”
Instead of fighting for capitalism
to work. It only works for companies—which we’re not.

And I see my parents yell about my mother’s art
Whether or not it’s a hobby or a career
And I can’t slam the pillows over my head fast enough as I yell over the noise
Blasting Lily Allen, Pink, Black Eye Peas, Sick Puppies and Seether
And I’m sorry
I can’t abide the teabaggers-I mean tea partiers
Who should honestly shut up
Because their opinions I care nothing about
But the news do.
I pity those who used to love journalism
Becoming the kings and queens of gossip
And right in the middle I see two dogs fucking
And then we crawl, we crawl,
Until the shit we are covered with starts to lose it’s smell.
Where am I? Am I in Wonderland?
No, you’re in Ireland.
Suddenly everything seems so obsolete
As I stare out at the Beara Peninsula
Or shop in Cow’s Lane, Dublin
I come back and I’m done hiding
So listen up, I’m not gonna be nice
Stick your head outta your ass
And check yourself
We are but dots on a floating rock
“Everything is perfect”
Are we all selfish?
No, but no one who isn’t, ever makes the news.
Sure it’s a disgrace to spend billions at the Oscars
But it has to be better than NASCAR
But if nothing can change then,
THere is no time
This is what I write novels and poems for
This is what I write badly done comics for
To live out this pain
You may call it pessimistic or goth
But we’re all gonna die
And sooner of later we have to accept the fact
That medicine is never gonna be advance enough
To make us live forever,
And who wants that anyway?
Who has the time, tell me who has the time
To worry about everything?
Remember, “worrying is just dreaming in the wrong direction”
But where are we:
Sinning distraction and ignoring A.D.D.
I don’t mean to be a stain
In the middle of your forehead spelling out the word “PEACE”
But there’s nothing worth fighting for except freedom
And when are we going to stop
Budding in, interfering, snooping, meddling
“It’s a culture thing!”
Sure it is.
I shut my eyes to the pain
But the pain never really dies
And the pain never really dies
And the pain never really dies
How can we look at ourselves objectively
If we always think, we’re the best?
Don’t worry world
I’m not done yet.

The Ramblings of the Sleep Deprived

>She changed position from her back to her belly to her side to her back and to her other side. It was no use, there was nothing she could do. The universe wouldn’t allow her to sleep. She even tried to put herself in a sort hypnotic state that worked for her mother to relax her muscles, but that didn’t even work. Finally, she gave up and went down stairs. She tried to sleep on the couch but no rest came and then she remembered that she had had a mocha before she went to bed, as dessert and decided this was the reason she could not sleep. What was more pathetic, she knew no one would care or sympathize with her condition since she was a student and legally an adult, therefore by legal definitions she was responsible for herself but she was also a child since her brain had not developed entirely just yet. She stared into the darkness on the couch. It was gloomy and she saw the future of yesterday. She had to plan out how she would deal with the sleep deprived part. Well, she could always sleep in advisory since no one did anything in it anyway. But how would she wake up. She slept through a concert and a fire alarm, so surely the bell wouldn’t wake her up . Just then, one of her roommates came in and turned on the kitchen light.

“Holy shit. I didn’t think you would sleep on the couch,” said her roommate. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”

“I was trying to sleep anywhere. I can’t sleep at all,” she said.

“I have some sleepy-time tea,” her roommate said.

“I don’t think it would help,” she said, again being reminded of the coffee in her system. She was an idiot, no putting coffee in the hot chocolate mix was stupid, but she wasn’t an idiot. Her idiotic act didn’t make her feel better. Maybe if she stared at a glowing screen that would help. Probably not, glowing screens made people feel more awake and not less. So, she replied to a couple of emails and then sat back, looking at the screen, imaging herself tucked in her bed as a younger self with her father making a cacoon so she wouldn’t roll around or get cold. Where were those days? She missed them. Was this the start of her becoming a work-a-holic? Goddess, she hoped not. She went upstairs and stepped on her porch. It was wet from the rain of a few hours ago. They said it would be sunny. She stared at the gardens. It was a crime to be this awake at this time. What was the time? 1:11am. It was 1/11/11, 1:11am, her father’s favorite time, well he liked it anyway and always talked about it. She went back down stairs and sat on the couch again. It was now 1:47 am. Time seemed to go slower and slower as she waited for it. Was she ever going to be able to go to sleep tonight? Or would she have to wait forever? She looked at her nails. Geh. Not worth the upkeep. Her dad loved nails, didn’t he? It was beyond her to think of anything like nails or hair had any importance at all. She knew too many stuck-up girls from her past who wore her down teasing her that were ugly in their souls who wanted to dress themselves and do everything to make them feel pretty. She never aimed for pretty and would never try. It was either cover everything or elegance with her but never pretty. Pretty was a foul word, too, wasn’t it? It sort of belittled the female race into making believe that if they are pretty automatically they are sexy, which isn’t the case. Little girls are pretty but they are not sexy and they shouldn’t learn what it means until they are teenagers. Society thinks otherwise. That’s fine for society. If one thinks society has no affect whatsoever on them, they are mistaken, she thought. Like that boy in class, he was obnoxious too. Girls are bitches and men are innocent, said society, well fuck society. If one said they are entitled to something, they aren’t; they just have slightly more power and money than other people but the law says everyone is equal, which means everyone should be treated like shit. The rich are the ones to decide who will be treated like shit and they all agreed hundreds of years ago that it should be the poor and middle class. That’s human nature, isn’t it lovely? Don’t agree with it? Too bad. Thinks she. Some people should go to bed but some people drank coffee. Damn coffee, it doesn’t even taste good, but like wine they drink anyway. Damn coffee. She was thinking about this while staring at the darkness. Look now, it’s two. She had two hours and half before she had to get up for school. Damn it to hell, she wasn’t ever going to get some rest. Wit? Ha, she would be slow tomorrow if anyone used wit around her. Of course, everyone will know she is sleep-deprived since she will act slower than usual and the teachers sensing this will pick on her. Lovely life is, isn’t it, the certainties it brings. But since life is made up of chaos, there is an unknown factor in which she has no idea how she will act tomorrow. Do dead people still worry about god? Who knows.