True Talk

I haven't really performed since my Grandmother died.
I remember being at nationals for a speech tournament and just loving it- not the performing so much- just the energy of the performers. I thrive off that shit.
Anyways, I got back from nationals to rush to her side. She died a week later.
I don't really talk about it. In fact, I'm not sure there's much to say. The woman raised me and I still find myself crying myself to sleep thinking about her.
I didn't call her enough.
Didn't visit her enough.
I promised her I would come back to visit her on her death bed. I didn't. I stayed in SF and threw a party.
She died the next day.

I can't bring myself to be okay with this.
I get upset when the ones I do divulge this information say things like, "it's okay, she'll always love you blah blah blah."
Good for her.
I won't love me for that.
I can't love me for that.
That shit is utterly disdainful.

Anyways, I thought if i wrote this down- if I had it in a forum that I could look at and dissect it- then maybe it would be better.
But I'm looking at this. And I'm crying.

I've been having nightmares for about 3 months straight now. I'll wake up still thinking she's alive and she's pissed at me for deserting her on her deathbed. Sometimes I swear I can hear her breathing...
It's just fucked, you know?
I get 3 hours of sleep a night max because I'm so afraid my dreams are gunna fool me.
And it's even more pathetic knowing that I look forward to those nightmares- if only to see her face again.

I'm writing this to write- knowing I'm only friends w/ one person on this damn thing and it'll be semi-confidential. Like an emo-needle in an information packed haystack. The internet is great that way.

I just miss writing. I miss performing.
But I can't go back to it.
Because I'm tired of going back.
And the past makes me cry.

One Woman Tango

I want to go dancing
But like a laugh or snort I just want it to happen naturally
Like the wind would be my boom-box and the street my stage
And, damn, we look good when we booty shake
So let's dance
Like love was never a liar
Donning a plaid beret or ill fitted fedora
Let's dance
Like time didn't wrap wounds
Around our wrists
Till we bled laughter
Let's dance
Because I don't know you anymore
But I heard you could throw down
And I remember how good it felt to make you smile
So dance with me
Because a plaid beret does not a man make
And what is a man, anyway
If he gets in the way of our groove?
Dance with me
Because I knew you first
I loved you through the worst
And damn only the hardest beats hurt
So fucking dance
I'm not asking you
I'm telling you
Get the fuck out of this resting room
And dance
You fell along time ago
So long and so far I don't really remember when it happened
I remember making jokes
Like a few wise cracks would bring you back and
Here we are
You- sitting on the couch
The wind outside- just another missed opportunity to me
And when I look out at the street?
Damn.
There is nothing more depressing than an empty dance floor.
So sometimes, I speak to you
As if you'll hear through my gaze what I'm trying to say
But it never really works out that way
Because the stove was left on or the windows don't latch
And there's always something more important than this time we can't get back
So I dance
Like a fool by myself
Because I'm here to bring the music back to you
If you'd only let me help

idea

Okay, so there's this joke I used to tell over and over when I was little. Ready?
Okay so this coyote is in the desert- he's starved and dehydrated and completely down on his luck. Finally, he stumbles across this tiny little saloon in the middle of nowhere and stumbles through the door gasping for breath, whispering, "water...water... i...need...water."
The apathetic bartender looks up from wiping off the bar and says, "get out of here... we don't serve pests."
The coyote whimpers and leaves, I mean, what else can he do right? The man said no.
So anyways, this coyote is persistent. He comes back the next day. And the next. And the next. and each time the bartender kicks him out. Finally, after, like a bajillion times of this poor coyote crawling into the bar gasping "water....waaaattterrrr." The bartender says, "GIT OUTTA HUR. I TOLD YER- WE DON'T SERVE YER KIND!" and takes out a pistol and shoots him in the foot.
Four days go by and the coyote is not seen or heard from.
The Bartender just assumes that the thing is dead but one day in walks the coyote walking unsteadily on two legs, wearing a cowboy hat and boots with a bandage wrapped around his hurt foot. He walks into the bar and the whole saloon goes silent... The bartender is uneasy.
"uh... can I help you pardner?"
The coyote is pissed.
He looks the bartender up and down and replies: "yea... I'm lookin fer the man who shot my paw."

Hahahahaha, it gets me everytime. My brother always used to mess it up and say, "i'm lookin fer the man who shot my father."
But that wouldn't make any sense, would it?
Besides, I've always been a lot better at delivery.

The Elephant Statue

My Grandmother collected elephants. These silly little miniature statues that my cousins and I used to fight over. She had this terrarium that she jazzed up with fake mountains and trees And we used to drag them along the plastic astro-turf Making trumpet sounds as best we could.
When she died my Grandfather treated me to a fancy dinner at Carrow's And told me I was always her favorite. We went back home and he sat me in front of the now luxurious display case that had long since replaced the elephant terrarium and He told me I could have one. Or all of them. Hell, he said, She would have wanted you to.
I picked this small brown ceramic one With black painted dots for eyes and Slashes for eyebrows. I think we used to call it "Betsy." It was the runt of the herd and the other toy elephants teased her.
She had always been my favorite.
Now, before you go questioning my sanity with some, "It was just a damn statue, Heather," nonsense- keep in mind that I have already proven myself to be crazy. And I will cut you.
For the last three weeks I've carried Betsy with me everywhere. Serious. I'm talking pocket companion like some three year old with a security blanket.
Go ahead and judge. That woman raised me. And it was all I had left.
I washed my clothes today. A less then extraordinary feat, sure, but when I opened my dryer door pieces of a broken ceramic elephant tumbled into my hands. I collapsed in a puddle of bounty dryer sheets and static cling.
And I just sat there. Sobbing.
You'd have thought someone had shot my dog. In front of me. Twice. And then ate it- by the way I was crying about this thing.
And its funny- how we give so much weight to inanimate objects, you know?
I had a friend that wore this necklace everyday of her life since she was seven-years old because her Great-Aunt's best friend told her it was good luck.
It was a freaking necklace. That thing could no sooner bring about good luck than I could conjure up a snowstorm in July. But I'll be damned if that thing didn't have power. If not to anyone else, then to her. And I started believing in it because she did;
"But, Karen," I used to say in my naive 6th grade tone, "Jacob has to have a crush on you- You're wearing your lucky necklace!"
Things have power because we give them power.
But I can assure you that Karen Glos' necklace was not lucky.
No more than that damned elephant was my Grandmother.
But I'm going to keep believing that, in some weird, cosmic, cool, way necklaces can make boys like you. And elephant statues can bring back a loved one.
And go ahead and call me crazy- but I went to Chinatown today.
I bought three elephants. One for my desk. One for my car. And one for my pocket.
I'm starting a collection. Of elephants. Of memories. For her.
Because if I lose my magical, childlike idealism there ain't much left of me worth saving.


Now. Does anyone have a terrarium I could have?

Cool Kid

I was born the cool kid
My little brother was born deaf
In a world of clarity and vibrance
He heard the equivalent of white noise
And felt only the vibrations of the doctors headshakes
Against his newborn forehead
That didn’t stop me becoming his best friend, though
At four years old we were staging life-size renditions
Of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
I was April to his Shredder
Donatello to his Michelangelo
His perfect balance of wit and fury
That simultaneously translated for him and kicked kids asses
If they made fun of him
But by the age of five
Against all medical probability and scientific fact
The doctors found that my brother could hear
Loud noises in pin-drop patterns
Making his skin prickle and shake violently
Trying to form the ragged white gray fuzz of hearing
Into a clearer picture
That he couldn’t even understand
Let alone get used to
I, once the translator, was now the reason he couldn’t communicate
When I found he could hear I stopped speaking for him
And he, never having spoken for himself,
Now got to adjust to having no support at all
The strikingly stoic deaf boy quickly turned into the chubby slow kid
As my brother found trouble adjusting to a world
That wouldn’t slow down for him
Let alone translate
I started to get embarrassed of my little brother-
The kid who stumbled over words he couldn’t pronounce and
Heard sounds only after they bounced off the walls
Became my mark
I played him like a game of tag
So ashamed of my own blood was I
That I conquered words
Triumphed them
Used them to abuse him
To the point where even home was not safe
I turned in my big sister’s badge
For a verbal crossbow and a shot at popularity
Until I succumbed to the tragedy that my little brother and me
We
Were enemies
And if I wanted to know what family means
Then I needed to go back to translating
Instead of dictating
And it took the harsh reality of my broken brother
Clumsily signing to me, “I love you”
And that was it, you see
I was born the cool kid
But it took someone as strong as my baby brother
To make me close off the noise and just listen
Because
I was never the cool kid after all
He was

Rush Hour

I love traffic jams
there is nothing better than sitting in dead stop traffic on the 101 freeway
during rush hour
I like playing that little game
where you try and see how many channels you can flip through
on the radio
before you find that perfect song
You know, because you got all your windows down
and you want the other cars around you to know that you got personality
but you're not a stereotype
(Sorry, Britney, you just don't help my image)
You got parked cars
stretching vast and powerless
like ideas
on the super highway of a woman's mind
You wanna ask her what she's thinking but instead she coughs exhaust
and tells you to just give her time
it's rush hour
Let her just breathe
and the road heaves
and eventually
one car makes it home
like one idea getting funneled
and strained through years of insecurity and self loathing
until it falls formlessly imperfect into your palm
fragile and probably already broken
but an idea nonetheless
just trying to find its way home
When I was younger traffic jams meant one thing in my family:
Car fights
Something about hours of uninterrupted stillness made us want to
rip each other's throats out
Like the tranquility on the road
needed to be compensated for by the unapologetic movement of violence
Passive asphalt meant aggressive clouds underneath your cheeks
swelling and boiling a dark purple
like God gave up on the sunset
just so he could laugh at your bruises
When normal kids called my family “excessively violent”
I blamed the traffic jams
A bunch of hyperactive geniuses in a hotbox of unspoken sentiments
Didn’t stand a chance next to the unforgiving tyranny of motionless concrete
Forcing us to voice all issues
Through clenched fists and shots to the skull
When the kids at school began to talk
It made the higher-ups in the district
Forced meeting after meeting of abuse prevention
On a group of people who just needed an outlet
Nobody understood that my family
Was, well, unbalanced,
But it was just an idea
Being funneled
and strained through years of insecurity and self loathing
Making its way through the dead stop traffic
Of noise and misunderstanding
just trying to find its way home

Christ On A Cracker, Jesus On A Melody

I'm popping my blogspot cherry with pizazz as I jam out to Stevie Ray Vaughn in the kitchen of my hometown.
It smells like bell beppers and steak marinade.
My sister sips wine disgusted. She says it doesn't have enough alcohol in it.
I fucking love my family.
I'm emotionally hungover. Do they make some magic elixer for that?
Get back to me- I'm being called to a kebab and corn dinner.
Jealous?