the prophet

tonight at the matador dive bar
an Indian told me I had a sister;
I said nothing to him
I gave him my hand
He was a self-proclaimed prophet
He told me I was ‘the middle’ named Kyle
He told me I was ‘quiet’
He said
You do not say anything
You do not say anything
And I looked at his coke and wiskey and thought
‘Lucky guess.’
And he told me my mother was suffering
He said I was the only trusted one.
He told me my mother was “on the way out”
I said,
“NO.”
I said,
“We are fine, there was a scare but..we are FINE,”
I said,
“We have to meet when we are sober.”
He is Cochati, and Navajo
I called him
PHONY
I said “please.”
If my mother dies
There is no world
Without her.
There is no world.

stealing jesus

Gonna steal that concrete praying savior by the side of the road near the farmer's market.
gonna maybe do it some night when there isn't a moon. when i can borrow five glasses of whiskey and a truck.
because there is an entire garden of oxen, flamingos, waterfalls of stone and cold curving breasts
i don't think anyone will miss a son cast out by his father, eyes pleading upward forever
he was right there by the stoplight and the gas station and the american flags
now he is in the woods
when was the last time god answered you anyway

the only thing worse

the only thing worse than things
is other things

what a bunch of shitbags.

i have a problem when people go out every weekend. i have a problem spending money at bars with the same cell phone toting fashionistas. if you are 25+ and have not yet learned that by 1 am you should either be saving the lives of homeless children, be going on a serious adventure (possibly by accident), be getting fucked, or be tucked in, you are not someone i want to hang out with. i made a poster to remind myself about how i haven't been 21 in like, 5 years. i am over it.

i will tell you about it.

the building i work in smells like old cheese even though it is new and sterile and pristine. every morning i have a moment of clarity.it passes with the stoplights. i can tamp it down. i am not leaving yet. i am secure. the people are nice and the pay is good. i have an office with a window. i live inside a spreadsheet; insert row of days. the people i love the most sleep late because they are going to die sooner than i am.

the building i work in is near a busy main drag where chain and box stores and row afer row of auto repair and nail salons breed. when i complain about big box stores people around here say, "folks got to shop somewhere." i went to food lion to grab vanilla extract and saw a mother of two with a chick-fil-a sweatshirt on buying lunchables. the man with the hunting cap behind me bought five packs of cigarettes. the folks have to shop somewhere.

the building i work in is built on clear cut land. the north carolina woods are mean. summer brings ticks, poison ivy, thorns. winter trees are thin and straggly, mud perfumed with death. leaves fall and decay. spring is pollen. autumn lasts a week.

i can't tell if i am sad because i am not where i wanted to be. or because there is so much good and i can't see any of it.

can of worms

[things people have said when they have put makeup on me]
this is a closed list.

"you look just like a little china doll now."
"you have great skin."
"your skin is well-oiled."
"what a difference. this is only $28."
"you have a very defined cupid's bow."
"all it takes is a little time in the mornings."

[possible reasons people do not want to hang out with me]
this is a running list. it will keep running until i figure this out.

i leave parties when i am disappointed
i am openly disappointed
i talk shit about everything
i do not make good eye contact
i make too much eye contact
i will not put out
i am judgemental
i talk about what i want to do
i cuss too much
i get angry
i am too eager
i am impatient
i call instead of text
i mumble (eamdkmsdkm)
i flake out a lot
i genuinely enjoy cutting people i do not like out of my life, pretending that they got hit by a train, and never saying their name again in my mouth
i am too quiet
i pursue (do you want to hang out?)
i forget names
i take things personally
i ask questions (too probing?)
i am a broken record
i speak in cliches

pocket life

When I was growing up, there was a toy called Polly Pocket. A blonde, fingernail sized, Zelda Fitzgerald little darling that would dress up in various outfits and professions. A forward- thinking, working woman of the early 90s who partied hard, yet accomplished her goals. She had no male counterpart as far as I knew. She inhabited various shells that would fit into the cotton pockets of 7 year-old girls across the nation.
Her worlds were like makeup compacts, but instead of pressed powder inside, you would find an ancient bejeweled Egyptian palace, a vet's clinic, or a big city apartment.
It was this last one that really got me. Polly's apartment transported me from my concrete block back steps in the desert to an urban evening full of promise. I would crack open her pastel abode and delight in moving her from the living room (complete with hot tub) to the breakfast nook (where a fridge opened and shut) to the bedroom, where, through a miracle of Small Science, a switch would illuminate a backdrop of stars through a window even smaller than Polly herself. A pinprick cosmos, waiting; satellites swirling and echoing and imaginary people on pretend sidewalks below. moving always forward.
I would often linger Polly by the window, turning on the delicate plastic moon, watching the city light up and thinking of a velvet skyline right before twilight that I might be a part of one day. I would get chills.
Unconsciously, I took these pocket experiences of my small self to San Francisco and neglected to re-scale my expectations. On Polly's microplanet there were no homeless people. No gangs, or flakes, or drugs. No isolation, because Polly was made of plastic and didn't really need a community. There was only the cozy comfort of a fake fireplace (which I did eventually have) and the knowledge that everyone out the tiny window was going about their lives, inside their warm star-squares, as you were, preparing for the next little adventure.

a perfectly awful encounter/everything is wrong

you know you are in for a perfectly awful encounter when one or two of these things happen to you at once:

you walk into a room that smells like smoke, look around and see twenty beer cans, but are not offered one.

the thing that is on tv is a movie in which a monkey is turned inside out inside of a transporter box.

a terrible man with an oppresive southern twang speaks loudly to anyone that will listen "LETS GO OUT TO THE BACK YARD. THERE IS A GRILL AND WE CAN EAT SOME OF THEIR FOOD. THEY'RE COOL. YOU CAN SIT AND SMOKE AND THEY'LL TALK TO YA. I WENT OUT THERE ONCE," he is smoking cigarettes and he is drunk and it is only 3 on a sunday.

(why are the windows closed. why is the tv muted, and bad music is playing, and the other two lumpy men in the room look stoned but there is no pot. i feel like the inside of an empty frito's bag.)

he goes on, "I WENT OUT THERE AND A GUY SAYD DO YOU KNOW WHUT WE CALL PEOPLE WHO DONT COME OUT HERE AND COOK THEIR OWN FOOD WHAT I SAID AND HE SAID BACK DOOR FUCKERS."

(she is out of place. her tight body and dress and perfect makeup. what is she doing here? we were on an errand. one of the men is pretending to kiss her and she tenses. everything is wrong. these people are trash. is she thinking it too? why am i here, why am i anywhere now?)

the only light is frozen in january through the wrought iron and windowpane you can see dogs and grilling and you hear laughter in the courtyard.

"BACK DOOR FUCKERS," he repeats because no one has said a word.

the facts about my upbringing

Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell once claimed regarding the Old West, "Without exception there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas."

in new mexico, in san miguel county, there is a little town called las vegas. it is split in two by the gallinas river. i used to swing on weeping willow branches over the muddy water. on the fourth of july i decorated a bike with red and blue tin foil and road it over the small bridge that spanned west and east.
the racial makeup of the city is 54.21% White, 82.94% hispanic. skip the other numbers. those are the ones that mattered.
there were probably about 14,100 people when i lived there.
we had a wal-mart (no mall) and a gas station called alsups that sold chimichangas and coca-cola. the biggest building in town was at the university. it was called simply "the high rise", and it was 9 stories tall.
there were pow wows at the gym. there were traditional hispanic dances and spanish songs. there were plays in the summer.
there were the monsoons, and you could see them coming from miles away. june through august, dark clouds thunderous and mounting in a brilliant azure sky. at summer art camp,after a morning of tye-dye or paper making, i would watch the sidewalks disappear in a matter of minutes. for a desert, we got a lot of water in the summer. in between, it was dusty. in the winter, always snow. enough to inter-tube, enough to play snow ball catch with the neighbor's dog, gordie.
there were gangs, and robberies, and everyone was poor. there were ghost stories and monster trucks. when i went back, things were the same. they tore down the high rise. but they have not replaced my old elementary school's playground equipment in 18 years. there are gelled hairstyles and hot springs and barking dogs and lowriders.
if las vegas could change, i am not sure it would. if could do anything differently, i wouldn't.

new year

11:54 pm EST 2012
i ran away from a city blazing in my wool mittens and fur hood
what would i tell them if i escaped?
i swear i met the devil tonight i swear she had no necklace or adornments only black lips and ridiculous phrases (isn't it stupid that there's a law that you can't drink and drive?) and oh god, oh god my little leopard print shoes could not get me away fast enough.
it wasn't midnight, not yet. i had time to turn and toast a glowing, green, horrifying skyline. glittering zombie hoards rushing, pushing past me. a parade of hundreds of regrets waiting to happen. i tripped and stumbled by the leering freaks in front of the porno store. empty old grain silo i'd climbed four winters ago with friends i never remember. over the rail road tracks, no loitering sign in the shadow of neon, i opened a small bottle of champagne and said i hope i'm a million miles away next year. or i hope i'm not awake at all. fuck you. and i drank, and threw the bottle. ran and ran and into the car. locked the door, and turned on the safe music just as the fireworks exploded in red and gold spazms over that rotten town.
but, this year is different, i would tell them.
it's not the town or the people. it's me.