Emmy Appleseed

The BUM

Cars zoomed by the exit ramp in a callous kind of way.  He was all but
invisible.  “Fuck it,” he said to no one in particular, “I gotta git
the hell outta here.  Fuckin suits!”  Just as he exhaled this thought
with a crescendo of gingivitis, a black SUV approached him
pausing next to him while the stoplight was red.

He readjusted his sign, this one always got the laughs.  The man in
the driver’s suit, or the stiff blue suit in the front seat, that is
to say, fixed his gaze ahead.  The light turned, and the SUV turned
east and out of his mind.  “I want a fuckin drink.”  The suits always
got him jumpy.  He pulled his tattered backpack to his shoulder and
headed over to the bus stop on Colfax.  This was not his usual
peddling ground but every once in awhile the fates brought him over
here to see if the same assholes were still being assholes.  Turns
out, they were.

He caught the bus with little difficulty.  The 15, lucky ole 15.
Plugged his change in the meter and swallowed a dirty look from the
bus driver as he shuffled forward.

He smelled like shit.  

A combination of bad egg salad, two weeks without soap or shower,
and a couple of nights where he’s pretty sure he pissed himself.  
He plopped down next to a punkass kid with dark brown hair and a
shit-eating grin.  Defensive (though not drunk, yet) the bum reared
his whiskers at him and said, “What’s your problem, you little smartass?”

The kid, cool as a cucumber, “Get out of my fuckin face, nutjob.  You
fuckin stink.”  The bum straightened back in his seat, his unwarranted
rage fading.  He was used to being talked down to, it rolled right off
of him and settled in his lap.

The bus stopped again, a couple clean-cut kids got off, a Hispanic
family got on, a mother and two young boys.  A girl followed, twenty,
maybe.  Coked out of her gourd by the looks of it.  She took a seat a
row ahead of him and commenced nervously scratching her arms.
Outside the street grew wild.  The tame chains disappeared, replaced
by motels and pawn shops.  By liquor stores and taco shops.  He could
hear it breathing, eating, fucking.  

He got off at Civic Center, content to stare at the crowds.  But first,
a more pressing issue.  It must be vodka, it must be vodka.  Or nothing
at all.  He panhandled for a while.

“Spare some change sir?”
[No eye contact, quickened pace]

“Help out a friend in need lady?”
“No, I’m sorry.”

“Anything will help…”
[No eye contact, readjusts purse]

“Hey brother can you…”
[one dollar out one hand and in another, sweet success]

This pattern continues until he makes his alcohol quota for the day.
He goes to Paul’s Liquor, the men there are friendly and don’t judge
his…attire.  The same can’t be said for Argonaut’s across the street.
Something about shouting and grabbing but he swears they over-reacted,
that they had it in for him from the beginning.  But alcohol-induced
grudges aside, he strolled into Paul’s Liquor off of Marion and
Colfax, [he loves the name Marion, wishes he was Robin Hood, wishes a
woman would love him, or at least fuck him for that matter] picks up
the only soulmate he knows, a perfect, plastic handle of McCormick’s
vodka.  It’s just about the cheapest stuff you can get, it tastes like shit.  
But to him, it tastes wonderful.

He smoothes out each crumpled bill, locates each wayward coin.  Pays
the extremely patient cashier, and pushes open the door. A day’s worth
of work done and it’s only 2:15.

The blank-faced businessman

He works off of Denver West Blvd and Colfax.  The nice part of Colfax, with malls on either side of the boulevard.  He drives from Highlands Ranch every day.  Where the rich people squirrel away their money to buy homes that are indistinguishable from any other on the block.

He takes C-470 all the way down into Lakewood.  Kisses his four children on the head on his way out every morning at 6:30.  He is never late.  His wife stays at home.  She picked some bullshit major in college like psychology or humanities, lived off of the success of her parents and finally married him.  She doesn’t have a resume.  She’s never worked a forty hour work week.  She will never work as long is he is upper-middle management which supports their upper-middle class lifestyle.

He works as the IT business manager of a company that makes lung aerosol technology that delivers cancer drugs into the body.  It is a very efficient and successful technology.  His company has cornered the market.  They are international, with branches in every region of the world.  His job is to make sure everybody knows how to use the technology.  He is a professional schmoozer.  He has to translate boring IT information into something a business executive would understand.  He has to be appeasing.  He is very good at his job.  He makes two hundred thousand dollars a year.  He has an office on the top floor of the company, the only floor with wall-to-wall windows.  He has meetings almost all day everyday.  Most of the meetings accomplish very little.  He wishes he could just work individually on his portion of the work.  He would never bring this up to anyone of course, as he is always placable.

At the end of the day, he drives away in his luxury SUV, gets on the highway and drums his thumbs against the steering wheel.  Though he is the only bread winner, his family makes much more than they need each year.   Despite that, they never vacation.  He just keeps going to work.  Gets a 4% raise each year.  He counts up his raises years in advance, tabulating how rich he’ll be.  Secretly, his wife wants to have another baby.  She wants to keep him locked down. He’s just so distant with his family.  He is his job.  At night, he sips whiskey until his brain goes numb.

In the morning, it is coffee, it is a banana perhaps, he eats very little. Then six thirty rolls around, he revs up his car, a car that can carry eight passengers.  His children have ridden in it twice.  He revs up his car, turns on his seat warmer, he drives away.  The neighbors across the street are in the process of getting a divorce.  They haven’t told anyone, life in Highlands Ranch is oddly competitive.  They envy him, her, their four kids.  They know very little of what goes on behind the luxury blinds.

He pulls off on Colfax Ave on I-70 and sees a bum on the corner.  His sign says “Why lie? It’s for beer.”  He avoids eye contact, curses the street he works on, wonders why even here this filth infects its sterility.  He turns up the heat, turns the volume up on the radio, blasts the visage of the bum from his sensory perception, and zooms into work.

pieces of a story. prologue

The Street

As children, the first thing we learned about a street is how dangerous it is to cross one. You must first find someone, preferably an adult to hold hands with whilst crossing.  Second, locate a crosswalk. Third, if you are really lucky, there will be a kindly larger woman there with a STOP sign and will make traffic stop so you can proceed along your childlike way.

I’m not sure what the holding hands precaution offers when there is no adult present. Seems to make one a bigger target potentially endangering that sap that agreed to hold your hand. And what if you can’t find a crossing guard? What is one to do then? Teeter on the edge of the curb until the proper authority figure presents herself?

Not fucking likely.

So we learn to cross streets (kind of) but what about actually walking down them? Well that is where the ever popular “Don’t talk to strangers!” advice comes in handy followed closely by “Don’t eat gum off of the ground, bench, table, etc.”

Basically, insulate yourself from your environment. And as a kid, it’s not bad advice. Stay safe, cuz there are weirdos out there. The trouble is, those kids tend to retain this same framework well into adulthood.

An air-conditioned life, free from interaction with undesirables, whether they be people, hand towels, sushi, or public transportation. The view from the freeway may be smoggy, but it’s sure as hell safer than the view from the sidewalk.

pausing to write on the side of my mind

45 days without a bit of emmy appleseed
I’ve missed writing. I have. The click clack clatter of my fingers as they negotiate with the keyboard for a thought or two. Lately the thoughts have been stopped up in my mind, detoured so they recycle and eventually fade.

Call it writer’s block.. 

That would explain the detour.


Stupid guys with their orange vests (not the real ones, the ones in my brain…duh) directing my thoughts circling in my head instead of outward through my pen.

The truth is perhaps I have grown fearful.
And the fear has left me immobile.

Which brings me to a Radiohead lyric that has caught me by the brain…

“for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself.”

I hope I can find myself again, if I ever really possessed such a thing as my own self. I feel it thumping back again in each heartbeat as i tip type tip type these things down for you, non.existent emily readers to read. I get a real kick out of communicating.

But this paralysis of fear. This is something to watch for. Fear of the future, of how and where and what way to act to get there. The result? Lack of action. It’s as if I’m in the middle of a prairie, the grass is dead and itchy at my legs, the sun hot, uncomfortable, and there is nothing in any direction.

Robert Frost at least had two paths to choose from.

What to do?

No fucking clue.

But I do enjoy writing.

signing off.
typing out.

emily d stine

Trial Run

No one yells “All aboard!”

When you get on the train in Pittsburgh

But they do blow

The whistle as loud as they can

I’m facing the back

Of the seat in front

Like in a plain

Or the backseat of Dad’s

Rosewood Honda Accord

The conductor

The one whose job it isn’t

to yell “All aboard!”

Is giving us a tour of White

America over a crackling loudspeaker

Altoona, Paoli, Lancaster, Greensburg

Didn’t J. Kerouac have something to say

About the wilds of PA?

I’d ask the woman next to me

But I don’t think they’ve

Translated On the Road

Into Polish

Feel free to check out my blog: http://paradisetossed.org

Or tweet me: http://twitter.com/paradisetossed

"I heard a fly buzz when I died" a tribute to em dickinson

I heard a fly buzz when I died
I saw the fish splash into the sky

Went to church to forgive my sins
drank the blood only to find
it was kool-aid instead

Wrote my will
read it aloud but a
buzzing fly alone in the crowd

Finished with a bow 
and turned my eyes to ground
an overture an encore
a stark realization death had me found

And with my last gasp & glance
a fly to hold my life
and my thoughts—static buzz.

stream of consciousness poem

settling my self
into a chair of
inadequacy
and beat emotion.
i loathe my fingertips
and wished
they would play symphonies. 
i try to type
but feel myself washing up
under your shoes
step by step.
And I’m sticking like gum,
yesterday chewed
and spat out
onto a concrete conscience
where i met
my hubris and kissed its sandals.

follower versus non-follower

You might think this is an article about Twitter.
Thank goodness it’s not. No that there’s anything wrong with
Twitter, it’s just not going to be the focus of this em d stine rant.

Today is more about what I think about influence in art,
like “oh my god, his clouds are cumulous like monet.”
or in writing, “that had such a da vinci code element of suspense.”

I understand that you what you write is influenced by what you read…
but can you ever really escape your influences? 
or is everything we ever do just a copy of a copy
an asymptotic attempt to attain the beauty of the Realm of Ideals…

I hope to carve out a style.
Call it punc.tu.poetry
call it modernism

I certainly know what a lot of people call my turquoise fingernails.
I could care. I think it is more fun to be unexpected & inventive in style
than following the trends. And every outfit deserves a statement piece.

What is the difference between that & writing? Not much in mine.own. delicate
opiniono.  Unexpected images are the most memorable. Example?

“My mother is a fish.” Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.

The mother is dead.
The fish is dead.
Therefore, by the transitive property,

my mother is a fish.

Inventive in style…and this goes beyond bangles, turquoise or scarves.
The Beat Poets didn’t care about their style. They just popped those bennies,
drank that whiskey and wrote. And there’s nothing wrong with the honesty that resulted from such a style.

See with me…oh me oh my, I’m a trained poet.

So everything that comes out, the word vomit
the daemon twits, it looks slightly poetic even
if it’s just free verse. It feels natural to me write
in that kind of form.

And finally a statement piece, purple stilettos,
a literary conceit [a metaphor used throughout an entire piece]
style gives it a brand but a statement piece makes it memorable.

These are the things that can turn you into a literary conquistador.

But I just don’t think I’d have the same kind of stories if I wasn’t the kind of girl who’s task today was to make up a science fiction name for a freelance story…

for the record it’s Luna Calypsus

and my guess is that Luna Calypsus will be much like Isa Frank or Emmy Appleseed, just another offshoot of my own personality.  Jack Kerouac’s Sal Paradise or Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout.

Well, in the end I don’t think I can be much of a follower, at least just enough to find my own way.. to reinvent Robert Frost

“Two paths diverged in the mud. I took that one that looked more fun.”

signing off
[typing out]

Luna Calypsus
[an em d stine offshoot]