the snow stole the glory of the moon
is turning mice to men
& then
turning men to wolves
God turned his back on us
turned you to dust
& then
turned your crumbs to shooting stars

I’m taking the midnight route up the mountain
to watch you rain in the Lyrid shower
cascade across the canyons
toss some light to credulous crickets
rubbing elbows in the prairie
they make such pretty listening
but I see it as, for most in that field
they make such tasty dinner
leery, bleary-eyed & full of doubt
that God would make you rain back down
on us
an avalanche of beautiful injury
asteroid of derision
like the rocks are one big dunce cap
convinced
God rejected us from birth
& I waited

here’s the wind
here’s the rubble
tossed at ankles
there’s a midnight owl squawking in the distance
I’m surrounded by twelve women
watching me react
no crying in public
I don’t get it
sure it’s pretty red & wild
but so are my arteries when I’m sleeping
when I’m comatose like you last April
I prefer to remain stoic & stable
as a living memorial to your fear
a cenotaph to your absent way with words
borrow my vocabulary & I’ll borrow some of the hurt

until I saw you
orange, miniscule, hardened by the flight
but soft around the edges

like the plush basketball that sat on your desk
you had won at Busch Gardens
you won a lot of affection
from a little sister who could never beat the bosses
Bowser was a giant dragon
music rushed & terrifying at the end of every level
(that’s how it felt every time they checked your levels)
you are now a giant comet
ferocious in descent
finally gaining speed & power
crashing my skepticism
that nothing ever lives here
everything just flies
I let go of the hand I held
moved to the edge
no lying in public
& for the first time
since the day you died
I wet my cheeks
blew a kiss to the chorus
humming below our beaten path all night
felt a wall crumble
felt a tickle in my elbow
heard a giggle in the thunder

& thanked God for life.

I didn't make it through the movie "On the Road"
It didn't translate well to film, or maybe it's me
worry grips me and I cut my clonozapan carefully into fourths
and take one fourth and smash my finger into the dust and lick it off
I value it more than their benzodrine
The moment I awaken, the fear grips me, and then what?
One pill is consumed every few hours in the morning and early afternoon
leaving the next, for the panic of the evening
how will it end.  I don't want to go back. I am told not to think of it anymore
there is nothing more to be learned and it is only like rubbing my wrist
against a razor, trying to get through those tendons to reveal the pulsing red
their faces, my bosses, with their pasted on smiles, Stepford wives every one of them
the male, the female and everything in between
focus on the students, they will lose a good teacher soon
I am sad for that, yes and buried down in some black hole of my consciousness I know it is true.  I am that good teacher for
the girl who must move again this year, like last year and walks home
to the poor neighborhod where she lives and hears gunshots every night
My intervention and pleading for her teacher
to please reach out to her, because she is failing, and is afraid of you
even if you don't believe in gunshots or her cousin shot and dieing in front of her
and yes having mercy is one of my strengths, as my pancreatic cat rests on his catnip toy
and I care about those kids
not the stupid school
and even if I've put myself on the line, I am no phony Stepford wife
and if their reality, those kids reality is ugly and we know about it, we must help
even if it makes my bosses uncomfortable and squirm in their eggshell world of middle
class comfort.   I don't care anymore.
The kids are what matter, helping them with whatever time is left.

He showed promise 
That's what they said
Never knocked out
Next in line for the big seat
He could take a hit and hit right back
Then the Depression hit hard
The money, the promise, gone in an instant
Injury after injury, loss after loss
He was beat up and beaten down
No more boxing
Third night in a row without dinner
Bills stacked up on the counter
Out of money, out of credit, out of milk
Power's shut off, kids are cold
Wife is tired and so is he
Working at the docks with a broken hand
When he's lucky
He comes home from a thankless day
Children gone, wife in tears
We couldn't keep them warm, she says
They were getting sick, so I sent them away
We couldn't even feed them, Jimmy
She cries and he can't handle it
So he leaves
He goes to an office, fills out a form, waits in line
A woman hands him money, but he can't look for the shame
He takes it anyway
He goes to his friends, his old bosses
Please, I just want my children back, he begs
He sacrifices all self respect, all dignity
What makes him a man, gone, for his children
They throw him some spare change
A true friend makes up the difference
His family back together, there is happiness
But, dear God, will he ever make it out of this hole
They come to him with a fight
A glimmer of hope: money
He fights, he wins, but he doesn't dream
At least he doesn't say
He says it was just one fight
But they come again with another matchup
He wins again 
And he doesn't stop winning
Until one day he's in that same spot
His shot at the big spot
And his opponent is mean,
A true killer of men
But he is stronger, tougher
He fights for the beat up, the broke down
He fights for those who have to beg
He fights for his family, for milk 
He fights for the very right to live and breathe
And he will not lose this fight
He will scratch, bite, claw his way
But he will not lose
And he doesn't 
And we won't
because losing isn't an option
because everything is riding on it
because suffering makes us stronger
because when life hits you hard, you don't fall down
You hit back

i walked down my street today
although it doesn't belong to me
i still like to pretend it does
like i grew up here
like i belong here.

oh well.

so anyway i was walking
and i saw this old woman
hobbling toward the flower shop.
this struck me as a rather romantic idea
and pretty cliche, too
but what the fuck.
it wasn't really the fact that she was walking to the flower shop
that interested me
although the teenaged girl side of me
was sobbing the same tears that hadn't been shed
over The Notebook
(i wish Nicholas Sparks would die in a hole)

...i think i'm getting off track...

but in that minute or two
that i watched her walk
her hair cut to her chin,
her glasses thick
i didn't see
an old woman.
i could see quite plainly
who she had been in the 1920's.
short, unflattering dress
necklace
tight around her neck
the strut
that only a woman
in the roaring twenties
could pull off.
she quite clearly articulated
hidden love affairs
with mustached men
amber drinks
in crystal glasses
stenographers
and married bosses.
and even though she's now
wrinkly
old
stooped
her former glory
still remained
i could still see it
even now.
and really
i guess i wouldn't mind getting old
if  i could be as fucking cool
as the old lady
i saw on the street today
that doesn't belong to me.

I wonder who these bosses think they are, bossying me around like some kind of slave. Tea
at 8,tea at 10,tea in between every break. Do they
know the fatigue from the stairs? I sincerely doubt, not with their password controlled elevators.
The other day one of those big men amused me. Mbu tell me Celia, why do u charge the same price even for people who take no sugar. I barely held bac insults and instead said, now if I were to charge according to how much sugar you take, I would charge those that take the price of quarter a kilo since I neither buy in spoons nor cups. And then for you that don't take sugar I would charge for the fuel used to boil the water.
hmph, men!!

He wore a onesie with hearts a floating on pajama day
Hearts all over his butt and hearts all up and down the length
of his lean body and in the inseams of the onesie
and right near his package and the girls
were taking pictures with him, these under age girls who could
now see the entire length of his entire lean body and see it is just a stick
with another potential stick pointing out in the middle
and no one said anything, none of the bosses and his friend
had on pajama bottoms too small with hearts right there and
a big looped piece of fabric to hold it on his trim twenty something body
and the old guys, the bosses said nothing as they admired
the length of the hard bodies
and the girls look and I wonder if one day one will reach out and touch.
and i don't remember it being like that in my high school

Damn angles.
This house has got plenty of damn angles. Tom knows, I don't. Tom knows more about that kinda stuff because that's Tom's forte.
Old Cochrane.

I'm not sure what disabilities he suffers from, but to be honest it doesn't seem much like he suffers. He's just a dude with a loud set of brains fixated on a very Cochrane world, sort of like Plato I guess, beard and everything, looking at the angles and strange asymmetric dots with a feeling that there’s some preternatural 'other world' where all of Cochrane's expectations are met and this house as well as the world would do Goddamn well to abide by it if it knows what's good.

Old Cochrane loves Superman Returns. I once saw him watch Superman Returns 3 times in one sitting, to the point that it became Superman Returns Returns Returns and for Chrissake if Metropolis were real I doubt his ethics would be much appreciated anymore but hey, who am I to say? I'm no Clark Kent but I'm sure Cochrane thinks he is, and if he's damnwell Plato he can damnwell be Clark Kent just as well as the next Kryptonian sucker to crash-land on planet Earth, and it's damnwell possible Cochrane is from Krypton for all I know, he's got some miraculous will-power and push, that's for damn sure.

He's always yelling, 'ober-der! Ober-der!' like he's some sad German screaming at the damn Poles across the Oder-Neisse line as if it were there damn fault. It's either that or Krypton is ober-der and he just wants to go home, or maybe his face gets red because he knows damnwell where Lex Luthor is hiding and he just wants our goddamn help finding him.

I think Old Cochrane has a crush on Kevin Spacey.

I wouldn't know, but I'm making that assumption cus Cochrane looks pretty spacey sometimes.
Okay, that was just a bad joke. I'm not too good at jokes.

I have two coworkers named Ryan. To avoid any confusion we all just call them by their last names, Soprovich and Danyluk, but most of the time we just call Soprovich Ryan Sop, and I'm not sure if he much appreciates the nickname. Our bosses name is Pam Wadden and in response to her calling him Ryan Sop he asked if he could call her Pam Wad.
Pam didn't hear that of course, but I heard it. And it was at that moment I made the judgement that old Ryan Sop is good at jokes.

Anyways to slide back to my point, once I was working with both Danyluk and Soprovich and as I was leaving, to shave a few seconds before my bus, I said, 'Bye.. Ryan..s'
that made them both laugh a little so I quickly made the judgement that I'm sometimes good at jokes but I never mean to be which is kinda Zen I suppose. Buddhist effortless effort or whatever they damnwell call it.

I've always been somewhat of an intellect, but not usually of my own freewill. I read a lot, but I sort of read like a heroin addict shoots-up.. just one more line, just one more paragraph.. and before I know it I've finished a book that kinda scared me but good Goddamn the high was fine.

I guess it's not really like that at all, but I like to think of it like that sometimes, it kind of excites my stomach in the good way, makes me feel like some Goddamn rebel reading shit the government has probably already burned or recycled into the paper bags I shop with at Safeway..
shopping at Safeway.. livin' life the Safe Way.. gatherin all the grosh-rees, yeah, you fuckin know me
I forgot to mention I'm somewhat of a part-time rapper and 40% of the time I have rap lyrics pulsing through my head as my own inner monologue. I dunno why but it's always kinda made me proud to think the way I do and Goddamn does life get high and low and if you understood you would know what I'm talking about, but I know you probably know what I know, I just like to be a little pretentious about that kinda stuff cus if I pretend I'm the only one it kinda manifests in my attitude and I get girls easier.

True story.

Maybe.

Probably not, but if ya see what I'm getting at that assertion is part of the pretention cus I'm a Goddamn hipster for Chrissake, writing like J.D. Salinger, reading like Kerouac without the squinty drunk eyes of infinite sadness.

Life gets better - so much better that
you wouldn’t believe me if I told you
but before that happens
you’ll learn some lessons
some of them will be fun
others bitter medicine
swallow them though
they’ll make you strong

don’t beat yourself up so much
don’t put yourself down
you are actually pretty awesome
don’t obsess so much about being the best
the less you do that the better you’ll become
there is no such thing as “perfect”
but you will be excellent
you’ll be quite an overachiever – even when you don’t try!
You already know what you want to do
Not many 15 year olds have that kind of clarity!
You’re a rare, unique one – you’ll do exactly what you dream to do.

But there will be speed bumps
You’ll lose your way sometimes
and confused Gemini that you are-
you’ll always want both sides of everything
but you’ll figure that out eventually

you will never be as thin as you want to be
but you’ll learn to appreciate your body
just as it is
you’ll find you look beautiful when you smile

you’ll have a job you hate, and one that you love
you’ll do well in both-
much to other people’s envy
you’ll mostly have good bosses

you’ll never have a boyfriend, your marriage will be arranged
but you will find love-the love of a good man
who will stand by you even when things go wrong
he won’t at all be like the man of your dreams
but he will be exactly what you need-he’ll make you happy!

what I’m trying to tell you darling-
is that in ten years all the stuff you’re worrying about won’t matter
you’ll find new things to fuss over.
High school will be a distant land
That you would have left behind
The bullies who trouble you now
won’t be anywhere near

you’ll see that its okay
to be an introvert in an extraverted world
you’ll make a handful of super-friends
who you can trust and who care
and many acquaintances who don’t mind your company
but there will be some who you can’t trust
some who will take advantage of your kindness
ignore them and move on
there is more important stuff to take care of!

your writing will get better; you’ll be a super cook,
you’ll never like sports-stop trying to
its just not you!

in a few years time
you’ll be touching lives
and changing them for the better
you’ll be a teacher and a student
all at once
you’ll inspire and influence

so don’t give up on life yet-
don’t be so depressed
wear a smile and face the world
your life is going to be all set!

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
08.09.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish