kismetrose

"California redemption value" can be found... ...Along the Arroyo Seco Parkway, Lying by the side of the freeway In amongst the acres of plastic bottles and dried brush. ...Flashing by like epiphanies while heading onto the 101, Or like the army of graffiti cats spread out over the Southland. ...Running alongside a mural in which the ghosts of determined athletes Nearly overcome the rampant tagging that encroaches, smothering. ...In a car always ten years out of date but new to you, And speeding along in gratitude for only an hour-long commute. Poetry composed through the voice memo function of your mobile phone Always makes the po

We crawl through the city on broken knees - Penitent, penitent - Doing whatever it takes to pay the rent, From the commute to the office, Shifting and writhing against each other Through a maze of crimson and beige, A daily pilgrimage down the lane of blood and dreams To the doorstep of grey Gomorrah, The roulette wheel of plenty. While across the fields of dust and wheat Sleepy Sodom is already on its first cigarette break Bidding the city of angels to wake up already With all the menace of shrill calls and terse emails. Is she our sister or our mother? Either way, we're as close to awake As we're ever going to get And as clo

Scion of the Cinderella generation Raised in the shadow of a warm 50s Eden, Where Father knew best and Mom was well dressed And the world was as God had made it. Latchkey kid, Daughter of the weekend dad - Or every other weekend, in my case - Raised in the age of steps and halves. A step away from mother or father, Half a brother, half a sister. Fractured, we were told. Our world was given to us broken, Like the worst of Christmas toys. And no refunds. Destined to be broken, bruised. How could we be real people When we were reared by the "boob tube"? We wanted our MTV And our Nintendos and our Walkmans To hide the sounds of

This is for the gastro ninjas Sneaking up on the fridge late at night Breaching the kitchen's defenses with steps So light you'd never know how heavy they really were. Gastro ninjas Hiding cookies and snack cakes Practicing that sleight of hand because If no one sees me eat it, it doesn't count. Practicing that Jedi mind trick: "These are not the pounds you're looking for, So move on, health Nazis." Nazis versus ninjas Wielding celery against bread sticks In the war for the kitchen. France surrenders. But here the dinner table needn't be a prison, And the bathroom scale needn't be an instrument of torture: "We haf ways of ma

I kept looking around for a bakery Or a mother's random kitchen, Someplace making something savory. And it wasn't until I grasped the meaning That I learned to hate our knack for applying terms To every little fucking thing. Taking up the job of Adam, Naming all the things we hate about ourselves After things we should be grateful for - Muffins and pots and cottage cheese - Until we have a full taxonomy of our disgust. But still we have no satisfactory explanation For why America's waistlines aren't shrinking. We've pinned Man to the board By his apples and pears And there he stays, writhing Reaching For his next dose of some

You were the opiate of my hopelessness. You glittered like an oasis of the mind - a place where I could lay my self down and rise on waves of heat so intense they needed no accompaniment. In your hands, I heeded no mind, no consciousness that extended beyond the reach of your fingertips. Entered into the aura of your want, I wanted nothing more and needed even less. Something in me was starving and could not be sated by food or drink or company. Something in you was the key to the heedless animal I didn't know I needed to be. Some receptor in my brain was made specifically for your coming; it lay open and waiting for a w

Once upon a time, the Gorgon Medusa was preparing for the Yuletide celebrations in the grand cave she shared with her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, far beneath great Mount Olympus.  They were hosting the yearly party for the dread deities who could not smile at their followers (lest they lose their reputations), and the miscellaneous strange oddities that the Titans had thrown upon the world without knowing quite what to make of them.  The Graeae were already making a menace of themselves in the kitchens, much to Euryale's dismay, and the Furies were furiously helping Stheno put up the last of the decorations for the holiday. Thus, Medusa was

This fairy tale is not about a girl or a boy who should be at school but is instead trip-trapping through a world full of traps. This fairy tale is about a woman who needs fairy tales more than any child ever could - a woman who needs her mirror to speak to her and sometimes for her, and knows it. * * * Once upon a time, there was a woman who had a reflection that greeted her eagerly in every glass, photograph, and even, when she was very lucky, in the shining eyes of others. It was a perfectly ordinary reflection, as far as reflections go. It didn't show a rock star or a pinup queen, glittering in the lights of the world. It wasn't as thou