Garden of light

You sit in paralysis of the outside world. Knowing everything on the other side of your door is hungry to kill.

Peering out of your living room window, what you hope to see are people. 

Hungry eyes, starved breath, and empty stomaches is the only thing that stares back at you. 

Packs of crazed hungry dogs peer around what little bushes are left, the bombed video store, and gutted car across the street whos' tires have been robbed of it by thugs long ago.

The only thing is, these savages aren't hungry for a steak and their war paint isn't animal blood. 

Their mouths drip with a red sticky plasma carrying ethrocytes; some components of the chemical makeup that classifies human blood.

200 people a month lie ripped to pieces on your streets.

And the only thing willing to clean up the mess are the dogs. 

Thousands of them roam the streets feeding on human flesh. 

Naturally the animals have an acquired taste.

Children get attacked on their way to school. 

Your mother on the way to the market. 

Your groom on the way home from work.

Your wife on her trip to the post office.

No longer must you fear your neighbor, or militant worshiper. 

Fear Fido. Beloved Bingo. Sweet Spot. 

He too is seeing red. 

It still doesn't matter weather you're man, woman, or child.

"Kill em all" they thought. "And let God sort 'em out."

-------

The siphilidity of American greed echoes its deafening yelp from the harbors of Tokyo to the cliffs of Dover.

Somewhere in between; The seven headed demon from the book of revelations rises from the Persian Gulf to descend its plague upon the villagers.

The city stuck between Iran and Syria is not hell on Earth, but hell itself. And hasn't had the luxury of recognizing the agonizing peace of limbo for thousands of years.

You live in fear.

You live in Baghdad.

You live in the center of Hell.

"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

The List - New York City

I Hate:

Being harassed in my own city.

In my own neighborhood

On my own block.

People who think that just because I'm a little white girl, that they may speak to me however they wish. 

When people in my building don't hold the door for me when I always hold the door for them.

How my superintendent lives next door to us.

My superintendents' wife

The whore upstairs who thinks that it's appropriate to stomp around at all hours of the day. Including 4:00 am. I knew when I was five that if you're living above someone, to be a considerate walker. 

When the whore upstairs wanted us to turn our music down, so she told on us to the superintendent, and not to us first. 

When I stand on the counter in the kitchen with the swiffer mop and bang on the ceiling to let the whore upstairs know she's being too loud, and she stomps back at me. 

2nd Avenue

All the kids on St. Marks that think they're skinheads, punks, and homeless crust kids just because they have a shaved head, a studded belt, and haven't washed one pair of pants in a whole year. 

How none of these kids have ever had the shit kicked out of them, their parents abandon them, or how the hardest drug they've ever done was weed. 

How the post office doesn't sell envelopes. And that one time they decided to give me 50 one cent stamps.

The asian that works at the post office,and always tells me that my paper work is wrong when in reality it's all correct, and she's just a moron.

Euros

Euros in SoHo

SoHo

Asians that walk around New York staring at the sky.

Mostly, asians. 

Puddles at the end of sidewalks. 

When delivery boys zoom through the puddles splashing water all over me.

People who go to NYU

Midwestern transplants who call themselves 'New Yorkers' after living here for two months.  You will forever be from somewhere else. Get over it. 

Kids who act tough because they now live in New York. You're still a suburban soul. Cut it out please. 

Tourists.

Tourists who come to New York and only eat at McDonalds, Subway, and Olive Garden.

Middle aged baby boomers who think that they can talk down to me because I didn't come from money, or have no interest in living on the upper west side. 

People who put other people down.

That time I found a woman's credit card in the west village Washington Mutual and tried to return it by calling the card company, and found her on the internet; all to return something important she had lost. 

That time I lost a $1,000 check, and no one even tried to return it to me. And I know they found it. 

How my laundry always costs $17

How the guys who run the laundry-mat look at me. 

Hipsters 

American Apparel 

Urban Outfitters trash

People who live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, because its "cool". Brooklyn sucks, and I remember being a kid and hearing about people getting killed there. Take your fedora and suede headband and move to Fulton st. and we'll see how long you last.

How our apartment smells, and we can never figure out what it smells like or why it smells the way it does. 

How our apartment is always messy no matter how many times we clean it

But mostly, I hate how I am such a good person to everyone I meet, and get nothing but shit in return. 

This city takes and takes until it has all of you; and I'm starting to think that I should do the same. 

Karma Shmarma. 

Im a good person because I know that it's the right thing to do. 

I'll be a selfish person because it's the better thing to do. 

Im not giving up, just giving in. 

Prisoner of apartment 1D

Rent's past due.

The fat ignorant hog upstairs is still selfish enough to assume that she is the only resident of this building, and continues to stomp around as loud as she wants as a result of these narrow thoughts. 

There's an essential emergency every 30 minutes between the hours of 12:00 am and 9:00 am that the fire department next door seemingly just has to attend to.

This place always smells like some weird cooked food I can never put my finger on.

I'd say that I'm all alone in this just to sound more pathetic, but that isn't true at all. I just get the bigger headache from it all.

Today I thought I'd do something simple like get lunch. 

Boy was I wrong.  

Question:

What about ' Hey pretty lady' or 'Sup beautiful?' in your disturbing broken ebonics makes you think that just because you've said these oh so romantic phrases to me would make me want to skip happily home with you? 

Before hopping on the 6 train downtown, I stop at the deli to check how much money is dwindling in the balances of my checking account. Of course, some cro-magnon cretin in his bleach stained hoodie and plaster covered jeans shadows me inside; and proceeds to ask if I like "rock music".

Did I somehow trip into a wormhole and travel back to 1963? I hope not. Elvis sucked then.

Tired of being harassed in my own neighborhood, I bitterly tell him to mind his own, and fuck off.  Irritatedly I slide my credit card down the telling machine, and await my negative balance.

Like a crow pursuing a bit of silver, this moron neither ceases nor desists. 

Pushing whichever buttons the machine wants to work on this wretched thing, " Im sorry miss, I- Im a record producer a-and I was just seeing --" My mind stops. My ears stop. My logic, ceases to work. 

Did you ever have to do that experiment in high-school chemistry class, where you drop a mentos into a bottle of diet coke-a-cola? Well if you haven't, the soda will explode all over you in a fizzy mess. That's exactly what happened to my brain at that moment in time. 

Only my time had stopped. I could see myself screaming at this poor fool, but my voice was not my own. my sight was not my own. Essentially I was not my own. I had somehow transported into a fishbowl of a world where I was watching myself like on a television. 

Im so sick of it. 

Im so sick of all of it. 

Im so sick of all of you

Ain't never no land in sight

There's never sleep anymore. 

Only the sirens, yelling and the tap dancing cow above.

I wonder if my mother would still see it as "angels bowling". Probably not. 

And my constant wondering, about what he was constantly wondering. Now I'll really never know.

Marooned on a dingy in the middle of the ocean, is where I'd rather be. 

You know, one of those shitty little rotted canoes, with a piss yellow sail? 

And that water. As blue as any individual imagination could ever see its favorite tone of blue.

Lying on my back letting the sun cook my brain; exactly like when we were kids and we'd throw an egg on the neighbors paved driveway in the middle of the summer, just to test if it actually would cook. 

I'd like my brain to sizzle. And smell exactly like scrambled eggs. 

It's all I want to see. 

I would gladly throw away these dejected buildings to make my desperate escape to the middle of the sea. 

Dulciena

When I listened  long enough, the rolling of rubber on tar sounded like  water pummeling the sand.

When I felt the ice hit my face, I knew what he had felt.

When I watched undulating purple clouds begin to funnel, I knew his day had come. 

When the zephyr from the birds ruffled my hair as they exasperated from the dirt, I knew that he could finally rest. 

Hospital beds are but cages for those with the will to live.

If held captive long enough, the caged bird will discontinue song.

One Hundred Pennies

By law if 49% of a dollar bill is still in tact, it's still legal tender.

Exit Seventeen
$2.90 toll.

I hide the decrepit dollar under an in tact bill in order to trick the foolish government worker.
She was smarter than I anticipated.
"I cant take this" She yelled as she wiggled the handicapped dollar at my window in protest.

"Why not?" I continue to tell her the percentage rule. "I got it from a toll booth woman, and you're a toll booth woman, so take it"

"I'm sorry ma'm, I can't take that"
Since when was I a 50 year old woman?

"Fine" Grumpily, I miraculously find four quarters in the depths of my empty passengers seat.
Deciding that this woman has succsessfully ruined my drive, I yell "HERE!" and throw the quarters at her face and proceed to drive off.

Sure maybe it was rude, but hell lady; just take my god damned dollar.

Fast foward our lives to three weeks later:

I haven't eaten a thing all god damned day.
My classroom is sweating and so am I.
I pour fourty-five thousand dollars into a college and they can't even regulate temperature. Go figure.

I only have two bucks in my pocket; one of which is the deformity.

After my bagel is gloriously toasted and cream cheesed, I hand the cashier my two dollars.

"Um, I can not take this" comes the expected reply in broken english.
I spew my line about "the law" and "percentages"

"No, we can not take this"
Thank you government. You haven't helped me yet. At least you are consistent.

"Guess what lady? Youre going to take it, or give me this bagel for free because I have no other money in my pockets" Great. 10:26 and the arguing over nothing has begun. What a day.

"No no no"

"If a vending machine can take it, so can you" I grab my brown paper bag and stand there offering her the chance to actually take my money. She hands it back. Astonished, I leave. WITH the bagel.

This dollar is a bad habit.
This dollar is a starving dog.
This dollar is everything you grew up hating.

Money is a ridiculous concept.
Lets go back to trading pelts and chocolate.

Pick up an artist

At this point in my day I've been looking at books for the past 2.3 hours, in a four story bookstore. Words don't make sense to me anymore, so I decided to look at the picture books.

Crouching at the end of the photography isle, I find a book that is as banal as the color some call, "concrete" in this town; A book on dogs.

And thats when I feel it.

I dont even have to exercise my already dead peripheral vision to know that there is a man made of soot and boot dirt with yellow eyes breathing down my neck waiting for my concentration to break long enough so he can get his "hello"s in.

My book snaps shut like a starving venus fly trap- and so does his voice.
Before Im even able to grab another book on "trees" or "the ocean", my ears grab on to his "Heya there little lady" and refuse to let go.

"Um. Hello" Quick, fingers; find me another spineless picture book.
"So, you like dogs?" My fingers fail, but my ears hold steadfast.

No, I was just looking at a book on them because the fiery hatred I have for them burns inside me like one thousand suns.
"Yeah"

I can practically smell the acidity of the wash on his jean jacket, and yet if devoid of all senses, I know Id be able to still feel the grime falling off of him.

"So, what's your sign?"
I pretend I have no clue what that means, in a feeble attempt to knock him out of 1983. But apparently thanks to some wormhole, we are  in a club listening to Bonnie Tyler, and this creature wants to know my sign.

"Your astrological sign" Smacks his reply; since he now assumes he is smarter than I by showing an acute display of his knowledge of the final frontier.

His words clasp my ear as though my wrist were that of a child's and his one of the man in the park that drives a large white van.

"January. I was born in January." The words drool out of my mouth. I cant stop them. Drool. Helpless word dribble.

"OOh girl you and earf sign!"
Great, now hes excited.

With my nose buried in yet another picture-book that I cannot even seem to view, his words dance with my ear on the devils dance floor.

After I tell him I am not one for organized religion, his grasp seems to weaken and my ears can finally breathe.

I still cant come to terms with how I was not able to ask him to leave.

Maybe I felt sympathy for him.
Maybe I felt couldn't make another human feel as horrible as I felt.
Maybe, I just couldn't feel.