Irony's definition is
the belief that you

are the first
to face this impediment.

Stumbling, cursing, frantically
trying to re-organize the

chaos distorted around
your once-perfect, structured life.

No one understands.
You are an island.

The first ever
to apply, to fail,

to fill out
an application, a resume,

or face an
interview, or death's glare,

to feel alone,
with a lost soul. 

You see: irony.
Feeling alone in a

crowd of similarities.
Not knowing where to

turn, as a
sea of hands crashes

its comfort waves
around your drowning figure.

To be honest

To be honest, I never knew when you were being honest.

While many use sarcasm as a fallback, as protection, as humor, you wore sarcasm like a well-fitting body suit, a mask that grew the shapes of your face. 

I can picture you, hunched in your desk, scrawling on your paper, saturating the emptiness with lying truths that depicted the picture you wanted so badly to believe yourself.

And I thought I knew you.  I thought I started to see the you that was so cleverly hidden.

And you're right--I wanted to be your savior.  I wanted to be the light that shined in the shadows of your confusion, the lightning that struck solid truth and shattered it into your reality.

But, to be honest,
I never knew.

Argh.

Take
your baby
outside.

I get it.
You paid for the movie
too.

However,
I did not pay
to listen to the movie
with your baby
as a soundtrack.

Take
your baby
outside.

I get it.
You like to eat out
too.

However,
I can't hear my friends
even if I sit on their laps
and I did not order screaming
as an appetizer.

Take
your baby
outside.

I get it.
You need to get your shopping done
too.

However,
perhaps you could come back
when your baby's face is less fuschia
and it doesn't feel like you're buying torture
as an item in your cart.

Take
your baby
outside.

I get it.
Babies cry.

But adults punch.

My Top 10 Favorite Foods that are Bad for You (aka, Why I Have to Run)

10.  M&M's pretzels.  I thought these were weird when they first came out.  I have now committed the (awesome) sin of eating an entire Target-sized bag by myself every time I buy it.  They are addictively delicious.

9.  Kettle corn.  Mrs. Silva and I bought a large bag at the EU game and demolished it.  Heaven.

8.  Chili's chicken enchilada soup.  I nicknamed it "crack."  'Nuff said.

7.  Grilled cheese sandwiches.  These might not be too bad, but they're just so much better with 18 slices of cheese and 4 pounds of butter.  I eat one every Saturday.  I have a salad on the side, so, you know, it's healthy.

6.  French fries with ranch dressing.  I mean, really, I could scarf down moldy butt with ranch dressing and it'd be delightful.  Ranch dressing makes the magic happen.

5.  Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  Especially when it's been chilled in the refrigerator.  The key is, eat right off the cake, then you can tell yourself you never had a slice.

4.  Chips and bean dip.  I ask for extra cheese.  And I eat a whole basket of chips by myself.  It's so weird that I'm never hungry by the time my real meal arrives...

3.  Sausage and olive pizza from Round Table.  They say you can stop at 2 pieces and be fine.  "They" are idiots.  I like to eat enough pizza to make myself throw up.  *Bonus* More room for more pizza!

2.  Carmelized apples with marshmallows.  This is a side dish at Thanksgiving, when, let's be honest, it should be a dessert.  However, I eat just this, maybe some turkey.  Apples are a fruit, so, sure, it's good for you.

1.  Chubby Hubby.  Come on.  Vanilla ice cream with a hot fudge and peanut butter swirl, dotted with chocolate-covered, peanut-butter-filled pretzels.  It's, like, everything thing on this list combined with angel dust and fairies.  Sprinkled with a rainbow.  And topped with Jake Gyllenhaal.

Coming clean

Yes.
It happened.

Lucky you,
to steal a piece of
who I was
when I was seven.

The girl in daddy's pigtails
who would skip
over to your house
and leave
with sagging shoulders
and unseen scratch marks
from your claws.

That little innocence
melted
with the burning flame
of your adult lust.

But I am the wick.

And though parts of me
drip away or
float wispy tentacles toward the sky--

I remain.


Yes,
it happened.
But I win.

So, let's get
This straight.  Thursday, vacation.  Friday, back to work?
Unbelievable.
People (aka, you, Miss-Calendar-Lady) need to get your
Idiotic head out of your
Douchy rear end and realize that your
Choice is severely affecting people (aka, me, Miss-Bitter) who really want to stay
Home, in my bed, curled up with kitties, until noon.
Obviously, logic
Is missing from this equation.
Come on, now.  Everyone has to see the stupidity in this.
Even you.

More from my book

They carried love letters, threatening letters, pencils, pens.  They carried bagged lunches, money for lunches, cards for free lunches, gum even though it was technically illegal at school, pictures of girlfriends, naked girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, journals, schoolbooks, steroids, drugs, numbers of drug dealers, numbers of colleges, a slip with an appointment for the career counselor, pamphlets for parties or scholarships or STD awareness.  They carried water bottles filled with water, some with vodka.  They carried Gatorade or Powerade.  They could only carry soda if they bought it off campus, since it had been determined too unhealthy to sell.  Joey Graziano carried Wu-Tang CDs.  Louisa Alvarez carried the results of her HIV test, which she hadn’t opened yet.  Alyshia LaFlamme carried around the wedding ring she’d bought herself on-line, which her boyfriend would give her at the end of May.   

Many things they had in common.  They carried the desire to fit in, to gain friends, to be well-liked, to be somebody.  They shared the stress of success, forced onto them by parents, peers, teachers.  Often they carried each other, the wounded, the weak, the beaten and bruised, the mentally-exhausted.  They carried Spanish-English dictionaries, guitars, yearbooks.  They carried diseases, herpes and Chlamydia.  They carried athlete’s foot, crabs, mono, staph infections.  They carried the school itself—Manteca High, the cement, the brick buildings—the red façade that had been erected nearly one hundred years earlier, when the town had been small and the school equipped to hold 1/10 the amount of students it now housed.  They carried the future.  The whole atmosphere was designed to send them off into the great blue abyss, and they carried the hopes and dreams and gravitas of those who would depend on them soon enough. 

They moved like sheep.  They would move from class to class, herding themselves down the long, skinny hallways, into stale classrooms, into seats that did not fit their bodies.  They moved like zombies.  In the morning, they would sit at their desks, dead, their achy, tired attitudes seeping out through the slits of their eyes.  After school, they would eat a second lunch, go drink with their friends, play football or baseball or soccer, start six hours of homework, baby-sit their younger siblings, work a six- or eight-hour shift.  Each day seemed the same—they got up, some at 5 a.m., some at 7:15 a.m., and rolled into school.  They went through the same seven periods.  They listened to the same jokes, the same lectures.  They saw the same people.  They wore the same clothes.  They drove the same cars.  They went to the same houses after school, hung out with the same friends.  It was a cycle, and they just plodded along, unthinking, watching their lives go by and waiting for them to finally get started.  They had no sense of accomplishment or purpose.  They sat in their desks, not knowing what to listen for, not knowing what to write down.  They read words they didn’t understand, and nodded mutely, dumbly at the teacher when asked if they understood.  They took tests on material they hadn’t learned, they filled in bubbles to determine their future.  The world was a big rush and a huge letdown, and the pressures were enormous and sometimes made it hard to breathe, made it hard to live, made it hard to be a teenager and find the time to enjoy the life they were waiting to start.  The teachers handed out worksheets and packets, the school received workbooks and pamphlets, and it just seemed like so much learning was happening and should happen, and they would look at the blank white pages and then turn around and throw them in the trash—for they certainly didn’t need anything extra to carry.