Normals

Richard had always had a normal life, until that day when he met those teenagers.

"Get off my lawn," he screamed at them. When they didn't move, he apporached their daunting postures and began to realize what kind of scoundrels they were.

From far away, he didn't notice the pentagram necklaces and the long, dark robes.

"Go away," he nervously persisted.

"Smite thee," they chanted, "You are an outsider."

Richard's pride got the best of him. "No! I am a member of every group in Little Creek. I demand you to let me join."

Ed is very lonely. He fell in love with the Statue of Liberty at age 26. As a son of Irish immigrants, Ed saw the green beauty as a symbol of the culture of his ancestors. He spent every night next to that green giant for 4 years straight, until the black and white of New York separated the bond. He now lives with two children and a wife, but keeps an old green penny in his wallet.

Alcohol always made things easier for Charlie. He vaguely remembers Yale parties where he was a lady killer after 5 shots. Nowadaysm his wife is excessively loud and angry all the time. The "couple" haven't slept in the same room for 15 years. Lately, Charlie hasn't even seen the light of sobriety through those foggy eyes, nor wanted to; everything hurts more without his dark ambrosia.

Harold couldn't help himself. He just found Amber o attractive. He swears that it's not his fault that they got married, because when Amber found out about his Beverly Hills mansion, she suddenly found him very attractive. The law says that Harold is married to Marge, but those were the golden days, the glory days.

I'm Waiting for Motivation II

Get up from there.

Why don’t we just get our backpacks on and we’ll head to school.

We could sit in corners and laugh at everyone else that isn’t us because

Look at what they’re missing. Just get up, you, ya scoundrel.

Your backyard is warmer is than inside, somehow.

But your grass is splotchy . The bench in your garden has broken

in half and it’s going to take more than haphazard Elmer’s to get us on our feet.

Great. Fifty feet and we’re back on our spines under

a fort of couches and linens. Let’s pretend that rules

don’t apply and that holes in the fabric are huge stars

and we can hide from our problems.

Just get up, you, ya scoundrel.

Sure, we could drive around for hours and waste your week’s gas in one night.

We tend to nothing a lot, don’t we? Filling, dead air with its hot counterpart.

We would try something different today as we sat in your car.

We could talk about your subtle comments and my snide remarks.

Look at us. Look at what everyone else is missing.

Just get up, you, ya scoundrel.

At one point, one of us will feel like actually doing something,

But the other will have been iron on to the leather seats

of your Sedan by rays of nonchalance.

“Why can’t life be like as easy as fucking Marmaduke?

Why can’t I have as few worries as him?

Why don’t people chase me when I runaway from me?”

And you’d turn your DGAF head towards me and say

“Why don’t we play the Quiet game. Ready. Go.”

The Oven Loves All of His Children

Great job. You've filled the room with smoke.

It wasn't my fault. I actually wanted those cookies

as a matter of fact. You however, seemed to want

to destroy the little procreations of Gingerbread

Land, burning them, sending them to the hell they

all feared when they read their gingerbread bibles.

Nowhere in the gingerbread bibles

did it predict that their only fate was to become smoke-

particles and then rise to the ceiling as they would all

scream for purgatory. They promised to be good cookies

that would help the homeless of Gingerbread

Land, doing whatever their Ovengod wanted.

You stopped everyone from doing what they wanted:

Their plans of initiating a bible

study group. Going to the Gingerbread

Tropics to refrost houses that went up in smoke

the last time you burned a tribe of cookies.

Now the gingerbread neighbors have to start all

over again, tending to the mourning wives of all

the decadent sinners, the delinquents' parents that only wanted

what was best for their crispy children, and the cookie-

orphans of rum-soaked transgressors that never read the bible

to the children, but rather blew smoke

into their gumdrop eyes. Tragedies among men of Gingerbread.

The mayor of this anguished Gingerbread

Land called a town meeting today in honor of the neighbors they

had lost. They began to lose faith in the Ovengod who smoked

cigars. He had let them down and ignored what they wanted

and asked for: to be normal and crunchy and delicious. They

decided to keep devotion to Him as a sad community of cookies.

Tomorrow, as the exhaust clears, this community of cookies

will go on as it had the day before, with gingerbread

picket-fences, and everyone will study their sugary bibles

boasting that the next time there's a catastrophe, they

will be saved from the fiery fate. They claim to not want

to sent to the burners, but act as if they live off smoke.

They can only hope that if you try to make cookies, you'll think about how they

just want to have a normal, happy, Gingerbread neighborhood. Also, they want

crispier bibles, and they really, really don't want to go to a hell of smolder and smoke.

I'm Waiting for Motivation

You've got to get up. We've got nowhere to go.

Just put your backpack on and we'll go to school and we'll point at everyone that isn't us, because look at what they're missing.

Let's ask off-white walls and American middle-aged men for heat, when we get there.

Just get up, you, ya scoundrel.

I don't know where we're going, you're right.

But I know that you're backyard won't protect us forever.

The bench is going to break in half from rotted wood.

And it's going to take more than haphazard white glue to point us in the right direction.

Great. Fifty feet and we're back laying on our spines in a fort of couches and blankets.

There's no one here, you're right, but time passes, even if it's covered by linens.

I know you don't want to get up. Me neither.

Let's at least go back outside and try to get a better tan than we're getting under here.

Argiris Karras

juss sayin.

Fall I

It doesn't take much for you to become something else. You look back later, and you say, not that you won't become that person again, but that you hated that person that you became.

I am your conscience; essentially. I am an acknowledged passing-acquaintance to whom you turn a blind eye between classes, which is why you recently changed routes.

Maybe it's pretentious to think that I know who you are, but you seem to confirm the idea.

Maybe it's selfish to think that what you do affects me.

My Favorite Bro

I look, I stare, I wince. Your face is sad.

Your mouth is closed, your eyes won't look at me.

You've got a dead fall mom and default dad

That watch you when you fall from coffee tree.

You've lacked a steady income for some time.

The money you obtain's from empty air.

And yet you manage somehow to get by

By spending most your funds on food and flair.

There's tons of things about you that I bet

I am completely unaware; a scourge.

I could not make a mixed cassette for you.

If it comes off this way, I beg for purge.

You offer so much more than can know.

And for these reasons, you're my favorite bro.