Assembly line broke down as the mirrors crashed and cracked.
"Angelina!!!" the crooked boss man yelled.
"Get in herre" the crook socks rang like bells.
Angelina poured sweat of the yellow blouse she had bought two days before for another interview in another office and another profession altogether. The room spun for her even though she would rather have it stay still.
"How much longer till this mechanism shifts and all of this stops altogether. Have their been madder women then me? Has there been madder men then me? Have their been madder times or are the times the same just with different tools and gears and nuts and bolts to tirelessly continue, heaving the corpses through the concrete cracked and littered streets?"
"Angelina!!!"
Another nail gun dropped to the floor, firing twenty rounds into fifty blue collared men's tie clips, deflecting them all to the near by wall which held the coats, the hats, the work shoes which the men were not allowed to wear due to "safety intrusions" and "labor union by lateral horizontal negative dairy laws". Another unfortunate fortune from the cracked mirror case but that, of course, is not the story, our story is...
"Angelina!!!"
Angy hurried up the hungry, empty metal n' holy stairs. She lost her high heels in a crack in the stairs but left them there due to the fear. 2011 had been a good year until she had been forced by her landlord, also her boyfriend, to get a real job rather then stuffing her knitted socks with her poetry and trying to haggle them to new age modern morons of the hip near sighters whom glasses were unintelligible but necessary. The mirrors of the conveyor belts reached the top of the platform but the door was shut. The mirrors bent and shattered leaving the splintered pattern of the world outside of them multiplied by the millions.
Noon was her lunch break and it was noon oh two. Angelina would be late with her lunch and the landlord, Nick, was planning to stop in with some home made sandwiches and home made potato chips.
"Nick will have to wait." Angelina thought to herself. "Nick hates to wait."
Angelina entered to stand in the wake of a shaking, sweating purse wearing, purse lipped boss boss. His hair was tossed to one side, struggling to hide his baldness. The subtelty of their relationship was difficult considering Angelina had slept with boss boss to get tossed this job. The act was actually enjoyable, Angelina thought him a good lay, but boss boss was not a fun person to be around, and he was a much worser boss.
"Angelina!!!"
"Hi."
"Your FIRED!"
"Bye then sir..."
"ANGELINA!!!"
"Yes sir?"
"AREN'T YOU GOING TO ASK WHY YOU WERE JUST SO HASTILY AND VIOLENTLY FIRED?"
"It is not my place to inquire why I was fired sir. If I was not doing my specific duty well enough I trust you, as my superior, to have thought what this subtraction would do to your company. If I had questioned you I would be questioning yourself as a boss and I would never want to do that...sir."
"VERY GOOD. DISMISSED!!!"

---

"So he just fired you, no explanation, nothing?"
"There was nothing really to say after the fact."
"You could have demanded an explanation."
"I was in a hurry to meet you. I know you hate to be late for our dates."
"That's sweet."
"And boss boss shouldn't have to explain himself, he IS a professional."
"He works in mirrors which doesn't make at all make him a ropes course supervisor."
"He's very handsome when He means what He says."
The home made potato chips had been burnt because Nick had fallen asleep while watching old re-runs of run marathons from the 80's. Nick had trained for the Olympics in 83' but while home after training and drinking an OK shake, Nick had stubbed his toe while drinking the OK shake and trying to get to a ringing telephone. Nick had collided so perfectly, so quickly and with such for that his right big toe had bent all the way back, his big toe fingernail touching the hairy patch on the top of his foot. The doctors said amputate the toe and save the foot or chop the entire thing off altogether. Nick, not being a dumb ****, opted for the entire foot. He never raced again.
"Are you going to try and get your job back?
"I don't know"
"Well. It's the 28th tomorrow and I need the rent either way. The insurance agency I'm with has been bugging me about percentages and utilities and...well, you don't want to hear about my worries."
"I don't mind sweety."
"Thanks doll. What're you gonna do?"
"Find more work I guess. I haven't written anything in a while, maybe it's a good time to get back on that train, see what comes up."
"I saw a help wanted sign at the mall nail salon."

---

Baby stroller wheels lined with pink and grey gum were lined up against the overwhelming glass wall enclosing the shops from the streets. Trees reflected green with the sun light lined across the clear wall. Birds flew at the top of the block near the ceiling crop, they wanted to come in but were confused how to do so. Children came through the valley with lollipops and balloon powder and strings lined with meats, they were headed to the capitalistic circus, a wonder land that only brought guilt from lovers and their future children's shame.
Angelina stood outside the electronic moment to moment receivers. She was afraid of not being allowed entry. Everyone entering entered easily, but what of she? Would she be accepted? Clicking her unpainted fingernail atop her leopard print clip purse and what was worse she had no cash to get her orange Julius or perhaps see a film if she couldn't conjure of the courage to stop off at the salon. That was why she had come here, right?
"Where had the salon been?" Angelina said aloud.
The mass of the mall was vibrating with a ferocious congruity. Through the fog of meaty torso's lay blank and content faces. Gripping their wares, their steaming quick food, some of it dropping to their foot only to be kicked around on the dirtied floor. At times a rat would scurry from underneath a traveling underwear salesmen to grab a piece of fried bread, half cooked meat, or small pieces of children's hair which floated softly down to the wet and mud streaked floor. Mall cops waved their sticks to each other, some kind of HAIL or CHEER that they were the one's in charge round' these parts and there wasn't nothing no one was going to do about it.
"Do I really want to work here?"
There was no choice though. Angelina needed to pay the rent or her landlord/boyfriend would kick her out on the street and from there, she had no clue where the blue sky would take her. Her parents, both dead thirteen years ago, would be a terrible place to set up camp, especially in a graveyard. Angelina's brother lived over seas working at a ***** clinic trying and failing to heal the weak and unwanted. He had tried to heal her through voodoo practices he gathered up drunk through his 6 month stay in New Orleans but it had only given her a bright blue and red rash for three to four weeks. She never longer trusted her brother with any kind of healing or "feel better" techniques and was no prepared to make the trek to Europe anytime soon, she was in a relationship at the moment anyway and she had a feeling she might be in love.
Angelina stepped through the glass exchanging doors in unison with a family that was entering at the same time. The door seemed to open for any body but was tentative if it would accept hers, this time, it seemed to.
Inside she made her way up "the miracle marbled stairs" which shined bright and blinded Angelina in certain parts of her eyes. They flashed bright red and greens and whites so visciously and fast Angelina thought she might have some kind of seizure. She planted her feet directly on each step as she walked up the 20 to 30 stairs, going very slow and gripping the handrail. People started to gather around behind her shouting "HURRY UP LADY" and "WE DON"T GOT ALL DAY" and giggling to themselves.
"Were they not seeing these lights?" Angelina thought to herself.
"Do you kind people know where the nail salon is?"
Angelina then realized that what she had just said made no sense. Her eyes were gripped shut, her hand tight around the shiny gold handrail, her feet pointed strictly out like some kind of paralyzed summer penguin. The people which had gathered behind her stood bare, jaw slacked, wondering who would step forth to help this poor helpless creature.
A little girl with red sparkled shoes and a orange bow atop her head stepped forth. She smiled even though she knew Angelina had her eyes tightly shut, maybe she would feel the warmth? The girl's mother reached for her so not to get to close to that "crazy lady" but the little girl pulled away, her father saying "If it's her time to go, it's her time to go".
"Miss lady with the tiger purse, I think the hardware nail pull on is on the 8th floor next to the people that sell bread with meat sticks inside."
The little girl stepped gingerly back as Angelina loosened her grip on the now stained golden handrail. She shook her hair out and ran her fingers through it, straightening herself up as if she were about to perform a song or late night poetry reading. Angelina opened her eyes and peered down at the girl.
"Thank you little girl. What's the best way to get there?"
The girl child said nothing. She pointed to a large metal box shooting up and down the length that looked like a rocket straight to heaven. People were gathered all around its foundation, oooing and ahhhing at the sight of the one's which entered. There was a sign over the line of tubes reading "A Shot at the Void".
"A shot at the Void..." Angelina tentaively breathed to herself.
Angelina stepped up the last couple glittering stairs and made her way through the thick crowd of stale clothes, cheap tricks, obsessed teeny boppers, hardware for wear, shoes with no laces, strips of bacon hanging from mouths, lettuce all shredded, soda cans with their lids torn clean off with small splatters of blood lined on the rim, and a perfectly painted fingernail was drawn on the number eight where the long lines and rows of numbers were there to guide the one's to the shot.
"Number eight. Easy enough"
Angelina pushed the button.

---

Inside the tube there was a slow light hum of jazz transfusion and children breathing. There were three little daughters gripping their mother's hands as they bit into their soda pop straws, ******* up the soda inside the plastic and cardboard cups. All three children stared up at her, maybe wondering what she was wondering, which was exactly what Angelina was wondering, a combination of mistaken telepathy, an accident of consciousness that would be never be talked about between the four of them but most surely existed between them.

Smooth as clay they drifted up the translucent clear glass tube, shooting skyward like a man made rocket shot from a man made gun. They passed shops hocking wears of angelic colors: clear pearl pastels shone through the clear blue glass shining into Angelina's eyes forcing Her to squint, dog barks could be heard through the whistling air begging for treats of black and brown, teriyaki chicken strips and duck heads spun absurdly fast with a rhythm that resembled the wave of a crowd at a baseball game waving wildly like children flying from swings never wanting to land in the sand; all this as the three and one flew higher and higher and higher.

---

Ding.

---

Angelina stepped forward, leaving the three children behind Her to fend for themselves. From the looks of the button they had pushed they were headed East. She gripped her bag and peeled Her eyes, twisted her hair in a tight knot to show her aggression, her vigor, her confidence and stepped into the rabid salmon like crowd.

She saw no signs of the nail salon. She saw only posters of rabbits holding artichoke legs and nail guns firing rockets of ice cream and corn bread. These were the mirrors of the supposed revolution but had nothing to do with her nail salon, she needed the cash and she needed it NOW! How hard were the numbers to acquire? How long must she wait before the envelope is sent and the letter read and thrown out? How long Lord, how long?

Questions for a time when the pay checks were easy coming and Her man was by her side. She passed by a little boy playing William Tell with her sister. An apple on the little tots head and in the boys a small, tight and silver ray gun. The boy pulled the trigger but only a small plume of smoke came from the top making the boy ball over crying and wailing and kicking and screaming, nearly catching Angelina in the shin, what a mess...The little girl stayed still in Her spot though because her brother told her "Now don't move a cinch." Wise move my girl, wise move...

At last! Angelina, reaching Her destination saw the brightly neon colored corner of her beloved Nail Salon. The windows shone with pure red glitter, miniatures of poodles lapping up puddles of ice water, women laying out on the sun to catch rays from the Earth, and husbands shaving their backs all in a circle and row.

"How beautiful..." Angelina breathed out.

She entered the store front. Greeted from every corner were beautiful young cupid like angels faces shining divine but with no torsos, floating heads of angels ***** but crying and smiling. Asking Angelina "What would you like today miss?" or "What are you after?", beckoning for her requests, begging for her touch of vulnerability and lack of knowledge of where she was or what she needed.

"Just an application...I heard you all were hiring?"

"Hiring!!!?" the cupid heads screamed in unison.

"You want to become one of us?"

"Yes, part-time...?" Angelina said hesitantly.

As soon as the words "part" had been uttered from Angelina's wise and brave mouth the many heads of cupid began spinning and spinning around Angelina's body. Faster and faster they spun until Angelina herself was spinning with them, unified in a quadruple hurricane stripping her of her former self and slowly manipulating her body, her hair, her other self into her new self.

As Angelina's torso lay in the corner of the store un-bloodied, clothes tattered as well as some scratches  on her elbows from the toss, Angelina's head was floating in the perfect center of the other three hovering cupid heads.

"How beautiful...how beautiful...how beautiful."

"Isn't it?" the three cupid heads answered.

"Yes, everything here is so beautiful," the four of them whispered.

And as soon as Angelina had entered, she just as soon had left.

END

Fifteen years old.
He welcomed
A small glass bottle.
Perfectly brim filled.
The blue sticker reads:
E&J;
VSOP.
Ernest & Julio
Very superior old pale.
Or even,
More accurately described as
Evil jab to
A healthy liver to
Visciously, yet slowly, strike
A life from the earth.
Because it's an
Odious poison.
He started a family young.
But with 3 kids,
2 baby mamas
1 kid on the way
And no job,
Well no dependent, legal, or for sure job;
Living was difficult.
He consumed the
Liquid venom
From the glass bottle
Like it was the air he breathed.
He drunk it
When he woke up in the morning.
He slept with it.
He drunk it
With his dinner.
He spent days
Without food
Just to devour
The ****** liquid.
He reeked of
The awful stench
Of a few shared 40s
And 1 lonely E&J.;
He abandoned his children.
He traded his daughters' childhoods
For reclusive evenings
With only him, the stars and a bottle.
Occasionally,
He'd be in a isolated corner.
With a shadeless lamp
Laying on it's side.
Taking a sip every time
He thought of an event
He'd miss in each kid's life.
Taking a sip every time
A cockroach crawled across his foot.
Taking a sip every time
He realized he let another person down.
Taking a sip every time
He thought of a
Shoulda - Coulda - Woulda.
Taking a sip
And taking another sip
And yet another until
The whole 40oz were gone.
Only because the warm liquid
Was the only thing
That soothed the pain.
That placated the misery.
That stopped all the bad
And left room
For all the possible good.
But the high only lasted
Just a little while.
Then he'd cry himself to sleep
Because he realized
He was truly forsaken.
He didn't have family.
He didn't have friends.
Not even a trick
On the corner can help.
Who do you turn to
When someone told you: Jesus
And someone else told you: Allah?
Where do you go
When you overwelcome your stay everywhere?
How do you know
You've overdone your rumspringa?
When is juvenile rebellion compete?
He could never answer these questions.
He could never
Find the root of his issues,
So he created more just from bad habit.
And when I was just 2 years old,
I lost my father to E&J.;
Où t'es, papaoutai
Like Strome said
Where are you daddy where are you?
The worst disaster in a kid's life.
Stronger than a nor-easter.
More tenacious than
Katrina or Sandy.
No one to
Dust me off
After I fell off my bike.
No one to
Defend me in the park
When bullies stalk on the little guys.
No one to
Teach a young lady true love.
A shovel,
To dig a black hole
In the space of my heart
To **** up all the pain
But never be filled
Without the affiliation
Of a father's affection.
Just to reassure you,
He's not dead,
His liver maybe,
But he's fine.
But,
He's, sadly,
No father of mine.
A mere ***** donner
Who laid with my mother
One night some time ago.
My love for him,
It will never die.
But the pleasure he finds
In a bottle,
Must decease,
Before he does.

Growth when perceiving reduction of this
Subjective reality

Proportionate somehow
This fraction of interest
doubled over, delighted expression,
This pain, It's strange, gaining more daily, gradually making it safely now seeing these states of gluttonous need faked I'm convinced at times, just enough to slake this need to rake my teeming heart that never falters in initiating every question posed to the legions of potential mates inevitably lost to leave for alternate reasons, and this I hate, when I held high my honest hope, mistaken, they take their leave, aggreiving the instant infatuation with promises honestly got me weak. I think these signs we keep seeing probably lead to an intimate need to ache and breathe, shake and feed, take and dream, play and she may relay the same objective, seeking each other, perhaps others, but now it's late, each thinking this meeting be fated and a moment is traded to thank whomever it was that took interest enough in training them up to stay up later still waiting to feel this hour of love.
And I hate it. Calmly. I take my bait, self-made inspired by naive aspirations that break apart the deluded frame containing the film of fabricated promises and convincing arguments continuing incessant untill I agre and stitch a phrase to fit the stage that I would raise the question. Time drags with flirtatious passes until a consice and clever cacaphony of my creation suits the situation. I glowed with vanity, shades of possibility danced round the vial that contained this daring question sleeping ragged, beating haggard at my breath screeching at the little caution briefly holding back this ******* secret. This one last moment I needed to just enjoy the sound we weaved together laughing, speaking, secrets. I have known, for hours now, since we chanced along the streets, a crashing cliche that callously created the juncture of our meeting. Since she her eyes agreed with mine to enjoy the others company. I fortold my hopeful nature would incite my thoughts to somehow agree tonight the longest streak of recieved rejections in history, believed to be held by Mr. Perry, ten years now and SHE might be the key to leaving this sea of seeking, I must be drinking, but no, I speak to her my saliscious line, visciously timed and know  the circumstances still provide the newest addition to the bottomless list.
I take heart I can still feel new wounds.
Hope has ran, and this plan ends like the rest,
With his children, Pain and Melancholy, to visit me in the drain, and laugh, and sing, and talk of many things. Pain insists she see's my heart is one which strains to bear this tyrants cruel command to supply him 'care' unending, unblemished, pure. Unheard of amounts comparable to the stars, sea particles, ****.
Carelessly caring too much without any reason, without explanation, expectation, or thinking is a pleasant reprieve to those who need help and those would be thieves.
You're careless in caring, which is a great way to practice exploring this life and developing habits. It will not help when you're faced with choices that require you know the depths of importance.

Melancholy hummed this quietly, a somber sweet melody that trickled down with  wisdom pain brings. Together we three sat aside the doubt that infects all the newly rejected courageous freaks with hopeful hearts discarded like heartfelt high school letters, or ghosts that haunt my messages. If they give their word to be assured they feel nothing by her answer, they will lie to numb themselves and save face and and race find the shelf that held the help of hell and helmed a night of excitement and debauchery, swept through the thoughtless black sea did he forget the answer she gave to he, and so his shoes took him three miles across to repeat the previous procession he planned and then forgot. She said yes that time, and kept the forgotten memory secret.

too quickly respect, or thank, or hear the drifting voice  

I will cling to my belief it will be worth it


For I will bleed for my love.
Tough mutts sputter and gates shut up discreetly along the pavement I travel.
Bending screaming dark and hollow seems unneeding to creeps who feed on that kind of thing.
You know the type.
You know I know how you like to play them. Create the clones to discard after rehearsal. probable reactive laughing mad at tragic accidents sadistic mastiffs attack and ravage and tear and
Sadness.
The fictitious movies play out onto the skyscape of this mind we share, and attempt accepting the last thing you truly fear.

Sitting by the tarmac
as the fog settles in
my mind and heart
trace the pathways
where you've been
I've givin of my soul to you
oh so selflessly
yet sometimes I have to think
it's a one way street

Again I feel the fool
who played and danced in vain
for the palace royalty
then taken out and hanged
I hope that this is not the case
but my heart is growing faint
all I've ever wanted from you
is to be your friend unchained

Don't cry or curse
when I am gone
It's what you planned all along
to rob me of my will to be
stabbing my soul so visciously
I don't know what I did to you
except maybe try to love you

yet time and time
and time again
it's all the same
in the end

When women ****, 'tis a blessing,
As they drug an innocent young man,
Shedding his clothes for the reaping,
And then blame him for being a man,

When women beat, 'tis funny,
As they drag the guy crying for help,
His blood dripping as thick as honey,
Women laughing at his painful yelp,

When women lie, 'tis truth when she cries,
You'll be called a sexist if you don't believe, For when women do visciously decieve,
All the knights in the land rally and rise,

And without a careful judgement of the court,
A man was sentenced to the living morgue,
Behind bars of steel inside a stone fort,
Rotting inside like his fellow corpses.

it ends in tonalities of spliced ends
some woven together others
jutting into nowhere dangling
like a Dylan song you love but don't
quite know all the metaphorical meanings to
of nowheres and space probes
sent to tickle you
on your own you must believe in
something more
special spacious
put meanings into amorous
trysts space gods
mystiques
unadorned with the accepted norms
a late night sobbing alone
cats and dogs your companions now
but knowing some outer space
visciously beautiful being
is gonna haunt you soon
and fly you off to the moon making passion
without touch a beam a laser like on your ******
tickles    get it doll

Thoughs whirl.
They writhe and rest,
float and sink,
shout and whisper,
coalesce
and
dissolve.

The constant and deafening cacophony of thought,
deep and wide and long,
stretches to the horizon and beyond,
Seemingly endless.

I shudder at the thought of thought sometimes,
memories meeting ideas,
but I'm deafened by the constant white noise
of its gently frothing waves.

It's beyond me, as they should be.

This ocean is serene
and the parts indiscernible from the whole.
I can sit at the shore safely if I dont wade in.
I may simply view
whatever might float to the surface.

They lap at the edges of my consciousness,
Tingle against the anterior of my skull,
But,
Thankfully,
Remain incomprehensible in their awful entirety.

It is only when my ocean
of memories and ideas organize that I need be afraid,
for I can comprehend a patern.

It is only when the gentle lapping becomes a treacherous bombora,
crashing against white cliffs,
That I am struck with their crippling ripples of anxiety,
because I begin to understand their enormity.

When
thoughts
writhe,
float,
shout
and coalesce,
They slam into me,
Eroding my delicate posture.

I am
unzipped,
unbuttoned,
unlaced,
in ribbons strewn across the bed.

I become undone,
at my own mercy.

Another one makes it's way yo the surface.
Perhaps this will be a calming memory?
No,
it's my own
               grasping
                          hand.

I grab my ankles as I flee
the oncoming tide,
and drag myself into the depths.

I sink,
clutching myself,
struggling
to escape myself.

I can feel myself begin to weaken and descend,
my cries muffled and my flesh diffusing in my own malefactory clutches as I gnaw at my spine visciously.

I pity me as I mercilessly tear into myself at my own digression.
Battering myself into submission
and eating away at my delicate chassis;

I leave a pitiful puddle to sink into my sheets.