The Body of My Story

Tags: Body

Exquisite Corpse

My English teacher made my class write an exquisite corpse which is a poem written by people who have really bad body odor or missing body parts or parts of missing bodies mixed with other bodies torn apart. I have no idea what an exquisite corpse is but there’s one below and above and don’t mean in heaven or hell.

The sky is a fig of ghouls.
Join me in Mexico.
I was dreaming of a bunny.
He hopped hopped hopped and broke a leg.
I didn’t know what to write so made some shit up but by the time I passed it we were all ready fucked up–
So we went to the strip club.
We were like animals.
You are sexy as a red jean panties and you know it papichulo.
Don’t let your pride get in the way of your dreams.
Always be the best person you can be.
Love is all.
I want to cuddle until tomorrow.
Me and you sound perfect
until you lie.
Maybe you can be won over
until proven not.
And if that’s the case, alone I’ll walk
Like Johnny Cash. I walk the line.
And like Tony Montana lets share one.

Tags: André Breton, exquisite corpse, Johnny Cash, surrealism, Tony Montana

Dear Universe

Almost Dorothy | Photo by Neil de la Flor

Dear Universe, thank you for ma, marionettes, and marshmallows.

Dear Universe, thank you for pizza and patience, pasta and pizzazz.

Dear Universe, thank you for violins and photographs, black strings and tiger’s eyes. Thank you for lost things and for the places where we can’t be found even when we are in the plain sight of headlights.

Dear Universe, thank you for the demons, desire, and despair.

Dear Universe, thank you for angels, affection, and affirmation.

Dear Universe, thank you for sisters and dinosaurs, donkeys and daffodils.

Dear Universe, thank you for achoo and monkey see, monkey do.

Dear Universe, thank you for the language of the body and breath, the body and the breath, and baby’s breath.

Dear Universe, thank you for classic rock and classical music. Thank you for poetry and the trees we sacrifice to write upon. Thank you for the pimple cream that makes this giant pimple under my left eye fade away.

Dear Universe, thank you for Macy Gray, Macy’s and all the booty in the world. I mean beauty.

Dear Universe, thank you for Alanis Morissette, Morissey and Madonna.

Dear Universe, thank you for the mirage that is not a mirage but a mirror-of-age.

Dear Universe, thank you for entering my dreams, offering me 30 million $, a partial Botox session, a tour of the White House chandelier gallery and free food. And thank you for waving the $16 entrance fee for me.

Dear Universe, thank you for the sun, the sky, the birds and bugs and for the existence of Justin Bieber toothbrushes. Thank you for my house and socks and shoes. Thank you for the old man in the sea and the sea inside the old man and the young man, the old woman and the young woman.

Dear Universe, thank you for thankfulness and for giving me all that I need in me.

Dear Universe, thank you for “Last Friday Night” and the next and then the next.

Dear Universe, thank you for Einstein and the invention of kisses.

Dear Universe, thank you for observation and analysis, emotional intelligence and Ginger Ale.

Dear Universe, thank you for neutrinos and photography.

Dear Universe, thank you for Lasik eye surgery because now I get the answers when I listen.

And thank you for hearing me.

Tags: Justin Bieber, Health, Madonna, Photograph, Macy Gray, Alanis Morissette, White House, Macy, Gratitude

Prisms

Ma

Today ma and I celebrate 3 weeks without trans fats and feta.

Today ma and I declare that we are free from glum and the threat of bird flu.

Today ma and I see so much hope in the walled up world that we take an axe and smash a hole in it.

Today ma and I create a symphony dedicated to the heroic efforts of zebras.

Today ma and I connect to the spirits through the looking glass, the glass menagerie and stained glass.

Today ma and I are prisms and sparkly.

Today ma and I tattoo 2012 on our lower butt cheeks so that every time we sit we know we can control time.

Today ma and I time time.

It’s slower than what we imagine.

Today ma and I imagine that there is hope in the world in the girl and in the fork that lifts the dirt of the world.

Today ma and I hope there is time to save the world from wild pandas and hope.

Actually, we don’t care about wild pandas. Only the most sacred underdogs like us.

Today ma and I meet for the first time as two humans from the same genetic schism.

Today ma and I complete 3 weeks of therapy guided by elves.

Today ma and I are elves.

Today ma and I swap wigs and tie pony tails together.

Today ma and I sleep in peace while the insane train on the track just across the boulevard howls at us because we are human.

Today is Sunday for the next 35 minutes.

Tags: Arts, Glass, space, Stained glass, Time

Punch Drunk Love Sigmund Freud

Image via Wikipedia

Today ma is creative. She creates space where there is no space. Turns spiders into angels. She cloaks time and makes the neighbor believe that the present is the present when everything is past tense. The angels are happy to spin webs around the world.

Today ma repaints her nails ultra-violet and commands an army of magnetic horses across the refrigerator door.

Today ma is as brilliant as her shiny red cherry lipstick.

Today ma toasts her triumph over love and losers. Tosses the idea of them away like old spaghetti and meatballs.

Cheers, ma says raising her glass of orange juice as if it were the most potent orange juice on the planet.

Cheers, I say raising my glass of orange juice as if it were the most potent orange juice on the planet.

Today ma brushes her teeth without irony and uses real Crest, practices good oral hygiene and is confident in herself.

Today ma recalls the drunk she punched last night at the Opera. The same guy who came on to her on her way to the ladies room. The same one who touched her left and right breasts as if they were overripe cantaloupe in the Publix fruit section.

Gentlemen, she says, shouldn’t touch the goodies without permission or cash.

Today ma nurses the stitches across her chin and holds her chin up like a real Hollywood Oscar.

Today ma is pure gold, black and blue. Radiant and as potentially violent as Jupiter’s storms on any given night.

Today ma understands why men are violent by nature and condemned to fits of rage and indecency.

They’re emotional, ma says, and not taught how to deal with them at a fundamental level.

Today ma thinks she is a scholar, a clinical psychologist, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and the Dalai Lama.

Today is Saturday.

Today ma is extraordinarily unified, one with gravity, and grateful for her knuckles and right hook.

Today ma is Muhammed Ali to me.

Tags: Jupiter, Publix, Sigmund Freud, Orange juice, Carl Jung, Dalai Lama, Food and Drug Administration

I’ll Be There [after the Jackson 5]

Almost Dorothy Does Not Drink | Photo by Neil de la Flor

1. It’s not that easy to say out loud, ma says. But I’ll always be there for you to comfort you with a cigarette and an ice-cold six-pack. 

2. I’d rather be locked in a baseless basement, I tell ma, and forge a pact with pushy aliens.

3. Michael Jackson is an alien.

4. We are (usually) born with 5 fingers just like there were only 5 Jacksons.

5. What about Jesse Jackson, ma asks. Doesn’t he count? And Latoya? 

6. If I ever find an orange long-sleeve satin shirt with a red heart in the center of it, I’ll be in heaven.

7. Not New Haven, CT, ma says.

8. Ma got a CT scan last month.

9. She now has something new in her body that is alien. Something like a pirate without a ship but just as deadly.

10. Her lungs are lungs burdened by soot and something that looks like a baby’s sock.

11. It’s a tumor, ma says. A kind of growth that is like an unkind village.

12. People. 

13. I want to tell ma that it will be alright, that I’ll fill her heart with joy and laughter, that I’ll protect her with the sincerity of a mother/father-daughter/son pact, and that I’ll be there for her with a cigarette and an ice-cold six-pack.

14. But I won’t.

Tags: Cigarette, Jesse Jackson, michael jackson, Thriller

No Light, No Light [after Florence + the Machine]

1. Last night ma renewed her faith in God. The One that lives inside Florence, she says. And tells her what to sing.

2. Ma raises her glass of beer to the cupboard and praises the hole in her head.

4. She sings: No light. Nude light. Lamp light. Some light. Fading light. Flash light. Lady bug light. I’m so light.  

5. Ma is playing with ghouls and demons. They shake a stick at her. She sticks a shake in them. It’s all done. Finished. The space between them is closer than ever, which means they are closer to peace than ever, which means I am closer to the ghouls and demons in ma’s bedhead.

6. It’s shake-n-bake and taco night.All you can eat.

7. Ma is alert to the possibility of heaven, the possibility of ghosts.

8. A revelation is a way to feel elated, ma says, and a way to see blind.

9. The horse draggin’ ma around is really a mouse.

10. It is really a horse dressed as a mouse, a rude mouse, the kind that inhabits ma’s wil-da’-beast imagination.

11. Ma loves potato chips and pumpkin pie. Salvation Army and the army. Office supplies and herbs.

12. No light, ma says, means it is all dark. 

13. That’s obvious, I tell ma. There’s never light in the dark. 

14. Obviously, ma says, you have no faith in hope.

Tags: Christianity, Denominations, Florence, Florence and the Machine, Horse, Massive Attack, No Light, Religion and Spirituality, Salvation Army

LoveJoy

1. I think it’s entirely plausible that I’m the Virgin Larry. Immaculate and clean, holy and art thouish.

2. Last night, ma and I read the bible in circles. When we got to page 2, we found my birth certificate. You’re real, ma said, congrats.

3. At Starbucks, there’s a sign above the condiment table that says, “Lost dog: small white American Eskimo.”

4. Outside Starbucks, on a light post, there’s another sign that says, “Found Yorke.” No indication of its size, color, race or ethnicity.

5. Sometimes I wish I were a dog, an Eskimo, and/or a Yorke. Sometimes I wish I were in heaven so I can talk to the guy or girl that runs the show. Sometimes I wish I had a glazed donut 24/7.

6. H is for New Hamster.

7. When comet LoveJoy plunged into the Sun’s atmosphere, I thought it would melt and vanish into steam. Forever.

8. Instead, it made a loop-d-loop, middle-fingered the stupid sun, and showed the sun the true power of ice.

9. Sometimes the universe is pixellated on my retina. Other times it’s just a farm of blinking and non-blinking lights.

10. This line is dedicated to TJ, offspring of Ozreal, who passed away on the first of January, almost 10 years to the date of Squinny’s death.

11. Meow.

12. Science fiction is no longer science fiction.

13. At this rate, I’ll be Wonder Woman by 5PM.

14. On this day in January, I found love in my pocket. Enjoyed it like a honey baked ham.

Tags: American Eskimo Dog, Arts, Comet LoveJoy, Facebook, Japanese Spitz, NASA, Starbucks

A “Time Cloak”

A team of physicists at Cornell University, says David Brown, who is not related to Charlie Brown or the Cleveland Browns, has created a wrinkle in time. (The Washington Post). Iron it, ma says, if it’s that big of a friggin’ deal.

Ma is not a scientist. Never went to science class. For years, ma though physicists fixed brains, mood swings, bongos disorder and such. No ma, they work with the laws of the universe. The only law of the universe I care about, ma says, is Law & Order.

As an undocumented performance artist, meaning she is not a performance artist and has no paperwork to prove whether she is a performance artist, ma enjoys nature. Being natural. I am Nature’s Own, ma says, cloak that.

Sometimes, well, all the time, I wish I could cloak ma. Transport her to another dementia.

How does this cloak work, ma asks, acting all interested and stuff. I wanna know.

It works like this, I tell her. When she gets back, I’ll fill her in on the rest.

Tags: Charlie Brown, Cleveland Browns, Cornell University, Law & Order, Performance art, Washington Post

Shark Valley

Ma | Photo by Neil de la Flor

Ma took me to Shark Valley. Ma is not the bird. She is the woman taking a photograph of the bird. I took the photo of ma photographing the bird. When I grow up, I want to be a bird. The kind that swims underwater like a snake. Ma was pissed cause there are no sharks in shark valley. Only gators and snakes, birds and fish, bikes and plastic bottles.

Gay-tor | Photo by Neil de la Flor

This is not a shark, ma said. I know, I said. Stupid gator, ma said, sleeping like it’s 1999.

This Is A Bird | Photo by Neil de la Flor

This is a bird. 10 seconds after I photographed “This Is A Bird”, the bird pooped. It had the runs. Ma and I ran cause it stank. I swear.

Road To Know Where | Photo by Neil de la Flor

The “Road To Know Where” led us to a tower of babel. In other words, we ran into a family from Germany who spoke German. We made fun of them in English. They made fun of us in German. After that, we hugged. It was Sunday. The day of the Lord.

Sun Cloud | Photo by Neil de la Flor

This is what happens when the sun and a cloud have sex. God is born, ma said.

Bird Water | Photo by Neil de la Flor

Bird Squatter | Photo by Neil de la Flor

Another thing: Birds are not afraid of anything. Not even ma.

Another thing: In the end, Shark Valley was like heaven. Even God spoke through the sawgrass.

Another thing: The cloud on the left, the wisp of a thing that looks like an exploded Pringle, its name is Marvin. He was starving for love, so ma and I blew him a kiss. He didn’t catch it, but we know that in our hearts he is thankful. Just like we were thankful for him.

Marvin | Photo by Neil de la Flor

Tags: Bird, Everglades, Florida, Photograph, Recreation, Shark Valley