Month: January 2018

I don’t know why my mom is the way she is and to be quite honest I can’t find it in me to care. All I know is that it has nothing to do with me. She’s  been miserable her whole life, I don’t think she would know what to do with herself if she wasn’t. I can’t do anything about that. However, I suppose most people in my situation would assume that it was their fault. People tend to always blame themselves for not being loved by others. That it has to be them that is lacking something. I don’t think like that. My mom never took the time to get to know me so how would she know what I’m lacking? I think if people listened more they would understand that not everything is a result of their doing. Sometimes things in life just happen and it’s out of your control. Some people are just bad. Some people are just good.  Some people just don’t mix, and “who had a baby with who” doesn’t matter or change that. No matter how you’re connected, it doesn’t change how they live their life. They’re not obligated to care or cater to you. Sometimes what they choose will benefit you and sometimes it will hurt you. You’ll do the same to them. You can’t always influence the people around you. Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there. Sometimes all you can do is leave. So I did.

This is an inner monologue of my character Pino; he’s from a comic project I’m working on.

in a field of dandelions,

you are a beautiful black rose.

and dandelions are

gorgeous, of course,

but they cannot even begin to

compare to your beauty.

you are the type of stunning

that makes people drop

their mouths in amazement

and stop whatever they

are doing to watch you move.

your petals are a bit torn,

but some find that adoring.

you have been replanted more times

than you or I can count –

dug up, shredded to pieces,

stomped on repeatedly

and eaten by wild animals.

but you always seem to

re-bloom in the same place.

people admire you,

and you do not even know it.

you are unaware of how many

lose their breath when they see you –

a dark face of black

inside a sea of bright,

nauseating yellow and white –

and come to a halt,

just to look at you for a moment or two.

you have no clue how many

have walked up to you

and tried to pluck you from the ground

and have pricked their

fingers on your thorns

because the amount of

beauty you possess

causes them to forget

that roses have thorns.

they see how gorgeous you are,

and they choose to erase

the fact of the flower itself

and its thorns’ –

your thorns’ –

existence.

you captivate them.

you poke them without

realizing what you are doing –

it’s not like you have a choice

to be the way you are

and to have those thorns.

it’s not like you enjoy

bringing pain to those

who adore you.

but it happens anyways.

it happens because you are a rose,

and roses have thorns.

it’s almost like a defense mechanism.

like the rest of you knew

the hurt that was to come,

so it grew thorns to protect itself.

or either it was exhausted

from being plucked from its home,

and so, it is preventing

any others from doing it again.

your thorns are your

only form of staying safe –

of keeping your beautiful

petals barricaded.

they have been your wall,

and they will continue to be

until someone gentle

enough comes along

and asks you if you are okay

with them cutting your thorns off –

until someone is soft with you

and has your permission

to tear those walls down.

because without your thorns,

you are vulnerable.

and the last time you allowed yourself

to be vulnerable,

someone tore you apart

and took every ounce

of your beauty for themselves.

Mirage.

I’ve always had an odd relationship with my father.  He was in my life at the start of my  childhood, yet never truly there.  Whenever I would visit him in Chicago, he would leave me with drunkard Uncle Ben.  I guess this wasn’t all that bad.  It’s just that Uncle Ben always carried a terrible smell with him.  It didn’t matter how many showers he took.  As soon as he came out, he was already smelly.

Besides his constant stink, he passed gas in his sleep.  Whenever I heard him go off, I had to run hide in my father’s room.  Believe me, if we would have had gas heating, he would’ve kept the place fueled to the max.

Besides my uncle’s repelling habits,  he let me play with knives.  No, I never hurt myself, but I don’t think I would’ve allowed that if I had been in his position.  Then again I don’t think I would ever get drunk on the weekday I’m babysitting.

My dad was also pretty careless.  I remember there was an ice-cream truck that would come around the block each week.  I would run out the door and butt not-yet-calloused feet against spiky, brown, gumballs.  He wouldn’t even watch out the window to make sure I would come back alright.

When it was time to go back home, the exchange went like this:

We would load up into his shiny black Lexus, and I would sometimes burn my knee on the muffler while I was loading my stuff.  We occasionally brought my brother or picked up my dad’s friend.  I usually sat in the back because of this.  He wouldn’t usually strike a conversation with me.  Except once, he told me he didn’t like country.  So, decided to make gold my favorite color and Rihanna my favorite singer.

Instead he would talk to someone else, or he would talk on the phone.  If all else failed, he turned up the old-school rap already playing from his radio.

Somehow, we would either run late or he forgot to feed me before we left.  I threw up in his car.  He was so mad at me.  His car was his baby, and I had just violated her.  Whoops, guess he should’ve fed me.

We made it to the airport eventually.  I always struggled with getting my suitcase out.  So, he would jerk it out, slamming it on to the ground before me.   There would be a “Common,” and I would obey.

Imagine it.  A small girl tugging her luggage a few feet behind her oblivious father.  He never really did look back.  He did manage to ask to lead me to the gate.  That was only because I wasn’t old enough to find my way.

Then we would reach the gate, he would say goodbye, and I would board.  Mid-flight the air-flight attendant would always notice my young age.  She would ask me where my parent(s) was.  I would say that I’m flying by myself.  She would say that he’s not supposed to do that.   I would shrug.  She would respond with, “he must not have wanted to pay the fee.”  Then for a moment I sat and thought about how much I wish he would have just payed the extra money so I wouldn’t have to go through this exact conversation every time.

Then there was the four years that he disappeared.  I found out he had a girlfriend named Yolanda that he had replaced me with.   My first thought was, “So, this is what being left for another woman is like.”  I hate the name Yolanda now.

He was even colder than I remembered for a couple years after that.  I was growing up.  I began dreaming, planning my future.  He shot that down.

Then I got accepted into an art school.  He hurled insults at me until his birthday came, and I refused to talk to him.  Three days later, my mom forced me to call him.

Now he tries more, but the relationship is still odd.  He seems to try.  Although, it’s the little things that I catch onto.

He’s still so distant.  I’m still a few steps behind.  I’m still tugging my luggage.  This time though, I’m the one telling myself that he shouldn’t do that.

wasted hours // arcade fire

maybe part of my hang-ups with the suburbs come from all the time i wasted doing nothing. maybe i never felt suburbia because i never tried to. i never knew what there was to do, never knew enough people to get me out of the house, never had enough motivation to actually try to do things.

all i ever did was stare. i stared out the bus window on the way home from school and watched kids in their cars with their after-school plans. i stared from my bedroom window at the dirty asphalt as new houses were being built across the street. i started at my phone as i scrolled through instagram, seeing everyone i know with their friends having fun and wondering why i couldn’t have that.

i wasted more time than i can count looking at people i know and wondering why they got to be happy and i didn’t.

all i wanted was to be somewhere that could let me feel like they did, to be someone who was actually capable of feeling like they did.

i say the suburbs isolated me, but maybe i isolated myself. maybe the nights i spent sitting on my bed staring at popcorn ceilings instead of chasing sunsets with giggly friends are why suburbia never seeped into my bones. i never allowed myself to actually live in the suburbs.

i always blame myself for these kinds of things. the isolation is my fault, the lack of friends is my fault, the desire to be anywhere but where i am is my fault. i could have at least tried to go out. i could have at least tried to feel suburbia.

but i didn’t. and now it’s too late to go try to chase sunsets with friends after school. if i’d known that the absence of suburbia was my fault, maybe i would’ve done something about it. maybe i’d be a different person than i am now. maybe i wouldn’t even be sitting here writing this. maybe i’d be sitting in a hernando high school classroom, laughing with friends behind the teacher’s back as she spoke. maybe i’d actually be participating in homecoming this week; i think today was disney day.

i’d love to be someone who actually fit in, someone who could actually grow in the soil she was planted in.

maybe i just wasn’t made to grow.

1. I suppose this is an update on my mental state as of now. Well, i’m sane as far as anyone knows. I have ten fingers ten toes. My hair is still unimaginably curly, my eyes are still that dark color of brown that seems ordinary enough to change to light gray. I still blink on command and still breathe without thinking too much about it. But older in that weird way that makes people question if you’re actually you, or a clone masking as you as some giant government ploy to take over the world. Even though they already own the world. We just don’t know it. Or we do, but choose to ignore it because ignoring seems better than acknowledging a powerless existence.

Ok, enough of that, let’s get back to me. I seem to split down the middle, not literally of course. But mentally I suppose like my two main personalities are battling each other trying to take control of me at the same time but end up giving up and sizzles down to neutral agreements about clothing or the typical school conversations. But then we got instances that are similar to those that require huge amounts of agreements, a situation that is more important to the path that I need to take and at that moment is when all guns are loaded and my head rages for the option to take control. At this point, I end up malfunctioning almost like a robot, freezing up on myself. My face would scrunch up in weird angles and my eyes may stop blinking and I may stop breathing and it may be that way for an extremely uncomfortable minute. But I always listen to the one that seems to be better in that situation. Which is always varying of course.  But its still fairly pesky I would whether have a nice equal but at this point in time, it doesn’t seem possible. And yeah I know it could be the case of the teenage mind and hormonal episodes that keeps me this way and when I get older my brain will obey one day almost all at once and decide that I am worthy of a clear focused path in life and BAM! Normal thinking patterns, or at least that’s what I hope will happen, but until then it’ll just sit back and wait.

Now I’m making this blog so i can share the most outrageous splits and to make it easier to distinguish between the two i named them. One will be Eli and the other will be Jane. So you all can see what i have to deal with on a almost daiy basis.

Okay so like, aliens are probably sick of us and that thought hurts! Like it literally burns. I mean think about it, aliens do exist, they’re clearly just as real as us, and they’ve more than likely been to earth millions of times in secret to see how we’re doing. And nine times out of ten, the first aliens to see the first humans were probably really confused. I mean big and hairy isn’t really appealing and that’s the idealistic cave(wo)man. The aliens were probably really disgusted too. Humans were and still are dirty! Once the humans started showing their destructive side, it more than likely showed the aliens how much of a lesser species we are. Humans literally figured out how to create fire, used it for good, and then turned against each other with it and destroyed whole villages, towns, and cities through the progressive stages of society. Imagine being an alien, trying to befriend a newer species, and failing because of their harmful ways. Maybe they’re tired of hiding and want to come out but don’t want to be associated with idiots from earth.

Or maybe, humans have already traveled to another planet or galaxy to see how people would fare in different living circumstances, and stayed for so long that they thought they were better than other humans! They could have literally built a colony and could be coexisting with whichever life force has made itself present to them and then left us for good. It’s like maybe they left us for dead because of our gluttonous ways. We’re probably too far gone for anyone to save us.

Also, aliens are probably better than us. They’re more advanced and clean. They’re probably built a utopia and have joined forces with others to create a giant union of other species and beings, but left earthlings out because we’re a billion light years behind. We’ve also destroyed our own planet so thoroughly that we want to take up residency in others. So, who’s to say that people on other planets aren’t starting to move away from said planet(s) in hopes of never being found out.

Imagine being the most repulsive species in the multiverse! We think we look pretty normal but I’m pretty sure there’s someone or something that either looks a million times better or just think we’re ratty little freaks. Our planet is in shambles and our leader is such a hot mess that if an alien were to tell me to take them to my leader, I’d apologize and start weeping. It’s simply an embarrassment to have someone of that stature as president.

There could also be like an entire planet where women are the only existing species that has any say so or power, like amazon women kind of. Or maybe there’s a planet that has creatures of half and half- a combination of everything that is. And then maybe there’s a sexist planet that’s not earth for once. Like men or whatever they are on said planet are super controlling and haven their female counter parts as slaves or servants. That’d be horrible though.

Then maybe there’s a planet where every being is gender fluid. It either has both sexual parts or neither and whichever is completely fine with them. And they may be like don’t care for clothing or styles that could separate them or define them as any specific gender, so because of this, they can focus on other things. More important things like making their planet the best of all planets because they have one common goal and individuality isn’t really a concept they’ve decided to delve into. They’re probably advanced because they lack ego sex war too.

Being a human sucks, all aliens are sick of us because we’re like really horrible children and they’re baby sitters making sure we don’t destroy ourselves any earlier than necessary.

We should follow some of the examples, they’ve set out and focus on things that’ll actually help be the superior life form we claim to be!

And of course, God is fed up! He sends us to hell after we’ve wronged for so long that our sins are completely unforgivable. He sends us to permanent, fiery time out because we’re such bad children and honestly, he’s the most hard-working parent in the world. Taking care of 7.5 million children at once is a task indeed! He’s round the clock emotional and spiritual support, but when does he get a break? Hell, and all its fiery depths seem like a just punishment when you think about it. He’s got a lot to do and he’s just a busy being.

He probably hasn’t destroyed us or sent us eternal hell yet because he may still see good in us or maybe he enjoys the different aspects of each and every human. We’re probably like an ant farm to him or something.

Hell might also be really fun too because it’s full of sin and everything wrong with the world and its very obvious that people just can’t seem to do right. Like you’re still going to burn and perish, yeah, but you’ll get to sin without worry because you’ve already died and secured your spot in Satan’s domain.

Satan is clearly the father of all evil. No doubt about it, but then again, he’s probably like a really cool guy with people that have actually aligned themselves with him and follow his lead. He’s still going to “punish” you, but why wouldn’t he reward you for taking the path he took and overall, just being a really bad person. It seems a little wild to think that Satan himself would be mad at anyone who is just as bad as him.

Taco Bell is coming out with a new item on their dollar menu, and I am very excited about it.  As you can most likely tell from the title of this post, that item is the new nacho fries.  What these are, are regular fries with Mexican seasonings and served with nacho cheese.  I think these are great because Taco Bell has lacked a good side for a long time now.  They’ve had tortilla chips with nacho cheese as well as Doritos, but these do not feel substantial enough to supplement a meal.  That is why they are served as appetizers at most Mexican restaurants; they are okay by themselves but do not capture attention when served alongside a main course.  Nacho fries will go great alongside a burrito.  Additionally, it will be possible to put the fries inside of the burrito to be an extra filling, as one typically does with a hamburger.  This is actually something regularly done to burritos in California and has become a regional favorite.  Taco Bell serving these fries will help to spread this West Coast tradition across the country.  These fries will also be served as Nacho Fries Bell Grande which means that they will be served with beef, pico de gallo, nacho cheese, and sour cream.  This sounds great to me, and I’m much more excited to try these fries than I should probably be willing to admit.

Many might argue that it is not right to serve french fries alongside tacos because they are not a traditionally Mexican food item, but I disagree.  Food, like all other aspects of culture, is ever-evolving.  If a side goes well with a dish, they should be served together regardless of their regions of origin.  The reason we bother preparing meals at all and not simply serve just the necessary food to survive is that we have allowed food to evolve into an art form as legitimate as any other from literature to dancing.  If a story can contain elements of both classically Asian and European stories, why shouldn’t french fries (which are actually Belgian) be paired alongside Mexican food.  I feel that the only rule for art should be that it is good, and when art is not good, it should still be allowed to exist but should be critiqued just as good art is.  Good and bad are, of course, terms used to describe one’s opinions which cannot be proven right or wrong, by definition.

When I dream, I am stitched into different skin. I break into blue for my father, a cold purple for my mother.  They are Mary and Lucifer on a merry go round, and round and down the staircase with a thud. I can see the black lashes thick with blood and one hand on the bible; hearts swollen and pounding. Our generational gore is still glinting beneath the floorboards of the basement, let me tell you.

With every sleepless night, there is a small piece of my lungs that stays treading water. I am somewhere expanded beyond the horizon of my eyelids while the air slips past my face before I can catch it.

Dreaming and breathing are more alike than you’d think. I tend to drown before I make it to this part.

How do you know what your words feel like if you can’t see them?  I ask the reflection.

It’s simple, she says. I see you smothered in these letters like old acrylics ; You are drawling  and dripping. Too simple, she says, and my legs cave inside like  mountain valleys.

“Good Thing,”  Katie was shaking her head. “Not usually.”  “What’s your trouble?”   “Nightmares.”    “How much is there?” no one asked. “A million, a million.”

The pill tapped the counter at Katie’s right hand.

No sign of anyone, the lights were out here too.

“God!” she screamed. “Judas!”

Nothing.

The third match would not light. “You’re a fool to betray me.”   “Who are you talking to?”

Katie put her hand over her mouth. Katie

-Headaches, Katie.

Suspect that Katie wasn’t Katie.

Katie was dead, wasn’t she?

Katie- I must think of her as Katie–

“Medication will kill you, I always say.”    “You use it too?”

“Since I was a baby.”

There they go again. And again. And again.

I became more captivated by grace than the mere idea of God as the years went on, as the years fell on. My body ran like a thread in an old blanket, it ran from my skin as a wounded dog would, hungry and frothing in the jaw.

And still, it seemed as if my suffering was merely suffering, though it came went in cerulean forms.

There’s so much powder, white hills. Tasting strawberry mixed with stomach acid and sinking lower by the minute.

3;35, and the angels keep singing.