In an alternate universe...

"Could you describe, in terms of genre and intensity, your sexual "kinks" - please be thorough and honest."

It's an odd question for a design position, especially at a company that manufactured children's toys. 

My four-word reply: 

"Umm, is this legal?" 

didn't do me any favors.

"Yes absolutely! Gender is a protected class but sexual preferences are not - in fact, our insurance company requires these types of evaluations for our male staff."

"Wait, this is only for male staff? What does your insurance company have to do with this?"

"Did you crawl out from under a rock - two of the last four sitting presidents were involved in sexual scandals. The information age combined with the Me Too movement has blown the lid off of sexual misconduct and it has been quite costly to almost every company involved. One day you have a semi-normal System Administrator and the next day you find out he is violentacrez from Reddit."

"Who?" I asked incredulously.

"Exactly my point! 

No one knew then - but he was a moderator for internet forums where pictures of underage girls in semi-sexual positions or compromising clothes were posted. 

Someone like that would be a costly liability - a million dollar lawsuit waiting to happen. And even worse, we have a reputation to uphold, our customers are parents and they don't want their children playing with toys designed by someone like that. 

Of course, our insurance company would require us to do due diligence - to make sure predators don't slip through. Statistically speaking, female predators are very rare with males being responsible for the vast majority of sexual crime and misconduct.

You may be normally kinky, but we don't know that, and our search engine and browser history background check can only go so deep." 

My glazed over eyes suddenly focused with all the intensity I could muster

"Wait, stop - you have a browser history background check?" My voice cracking like I was back in middle school.

"Well yes, we work with all the major browser companies and search engines who collate information about the individuals we are looking to hire."

"So...... I already passed the background check?"

"Well not yet - we actually need your consent - privacy and all that - so if you could just sign here..."

An introduction to Zombie finance

I assure you that my brain is perfectly healthy

Top condition really - you'd be insane not to offer 2 million.

I'd be insane to accept any less - if I am going to work until my neurons die then I might as well get something for it and maybe pay down some school debt. Who's overeducated now!

Well, you'll have to excuse us - a Masters in Arts History is not the most valuable asset for The Engine, I guess we could use it for design consulting. We really prefer Physics and Math majors - helps with the engineering simulations - their design suggestions are often ingenious too - provided you can get them to suggest anything. Such divas. 

The Engine, distributed and intelligent virtualized minds - continuing their life's work when the body moves on. Who needs Artificial Intelligence when you have real intelligence decomposing and being buried every day? 

It's intelligence on tap - at a bargain price - brains are a buyers market with the debt economy. It's the newest fad really, if you don't have any debt then you must not be living! At least that's the catchphrase. The black market is booming too - legend has it that the Russia and China are educating and harvesting their prison population.

So here I am, amongst the desperate and intelligent, bargaining myself away "1.5 million - final offer"

Death has never looked so good.

TV sex

Well it is confirmed, I am yelling out into the void. A bit comforting actually; no one will read this for quite some time and by that time I will be someone else. Well here is the poem I promised, for all future friends to enjoy:

 I saw this today:

and I was so struck by it. It is such a profound piece of art. To you it may look like trash, like robots having sex or some sort of fetish or something. But this is deeper than all of that. Let me give you a glimpse. First off, notice they are stick figures. Simple, non-sensual, posed in a sexual position. This sets up the piece with a bite already: they are doing something associated with love (sex) without passion or sensuality. Next: Look closely, that is not just wire wrapped around them, it is barbed wire, as if they have a barrier around their body, they are not letting themselves be exposed by this normally intimate and vulnerable act. They are able to maintain their defenses regardless. There is so much barbed wire that it really fills in the form of the stick figures, as if to say "Keep out, no trespassers."

 Last but not least: The television heads. I am not quite as confident about this, but it is the idea that our idea of normality is often dictated by television and the media, so that is what we try to portray. We fit ourselves into tv stereotypes so that we are acceptable or attractive to others. None of the complexity of the unknown involved, our personalities are easily digestible.

Fickle hearts and lights

I wish on too many airplanes, going nowhere.
But those are easier to find than stars here:
Our own glow suffocates almost anything else.
And I would imagine that when you wish on stars,
on the graveyard of lights, older than the earth when finally seen,
we are praying to old gods: kindly, slow, and a bit stupid.
And they look down at us like children, experiencing everything for the first time
pain and war, explosions blowing up dust to dust, beauty and love and
everything else worthwhile, though I cannot think of much...
And they listen as carefully as they can, to our foolish thoughts,
Nodding in assent, and finally falling asleep mid-sentence; Our thoughts
finally conveyed to the universe, if it helps. But airplanes,

Airplanes are a whole 'nother dynamic.
Sudden urges come upon us all, while in flight,
the desire to go somewhere where we are not going,
To see someone we should not see, to fall in love again:
To fly to Portland and long for cute hipster chicks
and ironic hipster boys, to Hawaii to live and love with tan samoans
and sunlight, to NY to be a part of the chaos, get lost in the shadows
of brownstones and florescent lights, lining long boulevards, seeing love
in central park, I can glimpse their faces, mousy, brown black blonde hair,
and slender figures as if in silhouette on gauze curtains...
These flights of reverie, I am convinced, are wishes
put upon me by relentless pedestrians and tired cab drivers, going nowhere.
And so I fear, I have been driving the gray businessmen, sitting in first class,
quite mad with longing. So this is an apology of sorts, I suppose
I will burden the old ones carrying many little cares, peeking
and following us all until we are united, and recycled.

Sandcastles

My future is sitting on my desk,
passively staring at me as if wondering how it came to be,
and when did it take this form. I want to tell it,
that it was destiny, that it was inevitably made in this image
by God or science or the environment, or any higher power really.
But that would be a lie: a terrible, terrible fabrication.
Because that is all this placid future is; a plasticine invention
that I formed with thick and scarred hands, clumsily constructing an image
I happened upon in a dream, or a dream within a dream.

It has changed many times since its inception,
mis manos have refined it, cleaning the edges, creating greater detail, molding the contours.
And I have stared at it for so long, I began to believe
In my own fabrication, in this melting plasticine figure.
And now I need to remold it, into a brick for now,
Because I cannot make my future with these weak hands and this malleable substance,
Only metal, and stronger hands than mine,
can bend and shape a solid future.


The inspiration for this poems comes from a hunk of plasticine on my desk that I have been playing around with and molding into all sorts of things. I was thinking about how we try to shape the future into what we want rather than what is real or what God wants. We try to take control and pretend that we have all the power, but at the end of the day we are weak. I am weak. I am not afraid to say that, because in Christ our weakness becomes strength. He has control, even when we think that we do. I thank God for that and I want to trust in Him more and more. I need to keep running the race, doing my best, opening up new roads, but at the same time I need to listen to Him for all things, and allow Him to close doors when they need to be shut rather than to try to pry them open and force my will.

What Organ to Follow?

Desiccated- Was how I felt, and also
the first word I overheard from the boisterous tourists
talking with loud hawaiian shirts baseball caps sunglasses camera
and the occasional gesture. They went on to say that the only difference
between Egypt and the airplane was the temperature:
Desiccated- That was how the mummies were so well-preserved.
It dried out the skin, sucked the life out.
They would remove all the organs, threw away the brain:
the true center of thought. The fake, impulsive mind- the heart
they kept and embalmed separately, safe from being broken or rotting:
Desiccated- How foolish, if only the heart played such a role
instead of making us chase after... "How backwards"
I said aloud, and they stopped for a moment, looking at me.
Suddenly the older woman said with her flashing blue eyes:
"No, Not really."

So I wrote this one while flying to phoenix and thinking about the lack of moisture in the cabin. I personally like this one, it is a bit more like a story than anything else. It may need some more editing, but I do like it the way it is.

Breaking it out again

I have not been on here for a long time, I doubt anyone checks or notices, but at the same time I feel it my duty to myself to create. So this is my resolution: I will post at least one poem a week. No matter what.

So here we go, I have been reading the Lord of the Rings to my sisters (who love it) so my writing will probably be influenced by that. I apologize for any confusion or strange turns in grammar that arise from that.

Deaf I am Blind

There are two types of cold,
or at least that many, my southern climes teach me little
of ice and thaw, of frost and flame.
but my short time in the snow has taught me
that there is the cold that you sense
on the tips of your nose, on your ears as they turn red,
on hands numb and hard, feeling like limbs of rock.

Then there is the cold you truly feel in your chest
in your breath, in your lungs. That freezes your voice
until you think you will die of suffocation before hypothermia takes hold.
And fear at first takes hold as you feel your limbs die, one by one
then it just feels warm, as if this is home, a sense of acceptance.

Thankfully I have never gone past this point, nor reached it
in any meaningful way. But I think I do know how it feels,
to feel that suffocation, to desire speech, but stay mute.
My voice is frozen in my chest, and there it stays until it bursts
with melancholy and confusion, until my eyes slowly close, and it is warm.


On that note, I have been feeling like something is coming to a culmination, a sense of unease has been following me. I had deja vu yesterday. Now my deja vu moments are not videos nor are they just pictures; they ARE pictures, however a destination, a timeline is included with each. Certain people are often included as well. This one was as I was going to the library with my sisters and my brother. The temperature was well below freezing, so the ground is hard and the small puddles that fill in the potholes of the road have been frozen solid, or almost solid. My sisters are romping about trying to break the glass-like ice into shards, generally causing a ruckus, and suddenly I remember. From a far off memory or dream I recall us going to the library in these conditions, to get The Hobbit (which we were getting). This memory was deeply imprinted into my mind.

I do not know what it means, if anything, but it was so clear, and left me with such a definite impression that I feel that something will happen. Patience is one thing I am usually good with, but I do not enjoy it. I shall employ it now, until I see what or whether this comes to anything.