and then

Spring came and slunk out the back like a one night stand, all at once pretty and then uncomfortable and gone. The expiration date can’t come soon enough, comes too quickly. I gotta say that she’s been pretty good about it. Wants two amicable months out of what is unworkable. I changed my profiles statuses to single like a high schooler. Talked today about a writing group with some kids. Talking. So through with it.

This kid rolled through the drive up the other day. This kid who was my friend. Someone I got a job. Then he sucked and I was a dick. We bickered a ton. Smack talking. Anyway, your boy tried to get me fired. I don’t think he was lying as much as he really believed he was right. So he shows up a few months later, eyes red, blazed, hugs me, all no hard feelings. And there were. I spent a grip of time defending myself. Tried to keep my mouth shut but other people kept being like ‘ you did this and that’ and it snapped me a little. But I been stopped. So your boy shows up, after the hug, and is like give me an espresso. ” All right. But yo can I get a square?” ” Nah dude, you can’t get shit from me, that’s real.” Really? So then he’s all nasty talking about how he’s a customer and how I fucked him over and all his financial problems were me. All this shit. How it was my personal shit fucked his life up and fuck me and my bosses. So I apologize and then he’s all just get my espresso ” I don’t want to hear any of your spiritual shit.”  Saying ” You don’t want to see me. I”l come up in there and bitch slap your ass.” I give him the espresso and he drives off without paying, all bossed out.

This is life. This is not life. 

My pride screams about who the fuck I am but I’m sure it’s some sort of debt that I owe that keeps my face clear and my voice down and my hand from splashing espresso in his face and stomping him out  like a bag of flaming shit. Hurts my feelings. I got on the phone to the city so I could get something to fix it. I almost cried it was so frustrating. I was at work, in a apron. I gave him all the chances. Whatever the fuck.

I got bigger fish to fry. This is the most words I’ve written in weeks. I don’t want to talk but I feel like bursting. ” Two days from going back to selling crack.” Looking for a new place to live. Gotta get the boy a bike and a bed. My ma’s always broke. My son’s ma is needing more money. I’m all caught up with her but I know she needs more. She reads my blogs she says and almost cries. My girl is clamoring bout a necklace or me just doing summat nice. Not enough meetings. No phone. Overdrawn. New manager to train. Where’s my raise? Kids at work fucked up on smack or being single moms like it means they ain’t got to do shit. Whatever the fuck.

Saw M.I.A. Went back to the city and my boy who shot up some guy’s door all drunk let’s me and crew in for free. VIP passes, standing on the stage, the whole business. I wanna go home now please. 

My world lit teacher asks for poetry and stories instead of the eleven pages of essays I owe her. She reads one and tells how it moved her to tears. Then tells me I write like Kerouac. 

My friends are in Africa and France and me, I’m here. In New York, LA, the Bay. I’m here. Where it’s either 22 yr. olds or the ones that want to be married. I shoulda listened. Been alone a year ago, gotten it over with. It’s only a learning experience if you learn from it. 

What I thought was bed rock was a glass floor but I will see it through. Even if I want to get the job and all that. It’ll be there. I’ve had worse.

cuz liz asked me to…

the lovely and talented liz asked me to get a grown up blog
so here it is:

I met with an admissions counselor at the My First and Only Choice School today. She was pretty, young, and nice. I have a whole string of W’s and some C-’s and an F and a history of starting classes at various commuter colleges around the area and dropping out and high school, not so hot. The lady says ” Well, I couldn’t decide right here and now. I would have to send it to a committee to vote.” Which I knew would happen. She then tells me to explain what happened in my essays. Really? I wanna say that the essays are like 500 words tops and I’m not sure I could tell the story in that little space. It would look like this:

Born Okinawa, 1969. Parents=crazy. 17 houses and some sidewalks to sleep on. Institutionalized at 11. State sponsors boarding school 12-14. Two high schools. Craziness at home= vietnam vet + some beers + wife. Punk rock 80’s. Fistfights galore. Skateboarding. Skip school a lot = bad grades + summer school. 26 on ACT = Urban University. Get apartment in Detroit. Lose job. Roommate’s a crazy little sister to a frat who stays up late snorting cocaine and dancing to ” I Want Your Sex ” by George Michael wearing aviator sunglasses and a leather jacket. Lose apartment. Couch surf until Xmas. Back to Crazyville. Did I mention violence at home? On the streets in the spring. Then couch surfing. Living on 3 pop tarts and a mountain dew a day. Um, dropped out of school. Dad won’t pay because I don’t deliver. Try community college. Don’t finish. Work in a gas station, buy records, comic books, and thai food. Skateboard. Move in to La Residencia de Esudiantes for drug addicts. Do drugs. A suicide and drunk driving take two friends. Try matriculating through Big U satellite. Finish 1 out of 3 classes. 300 level course: History of Modern China. Bike messenger in DC, ostensibly to get money for school but really to break the cycle of 300 bar fights. Instead buy fried fish and Faygo imported from home. Drink red pop and eat bean pies. Come home. Less fistfights. Clean then snowboarding then drugs. Rave lofts = dime bags and video games. Work at Major Market Concert Venue. Bring the hip hop. House I lived in longest burns down. Work at skateboard shop. Drugs. Open skateboard shop while my friends take the junkie slide. Some get sober. My best friends move away. Write graffiti. Get face broke. Not related. Not all in that order. Sleep on sister’s couch for months after withdrawals. Meet a girl. Drugs. Two smartest kids I know kill themselves. Then some more people die. Do hip hop events with some of Detroit’s premier talents. Work security at raves. Girl gets pregnant. Construction. Really try to go straight but there’s just not enough money and too much time. The Side Hustle goes full time. Fights, cops, raves, guns and a baby. The crazy gets worse. Gardening and Major Retail grocery store. Baby’s mama asks me to leave house I lived in second longest ever. I fall apart. Mostly. Can’t see son. Two jobs, one in a bar. Get saved after getting kicked out of 3 places in 4 months. Lose 30 pounds. Uncle’s basement couch, smoky rooms with the old guys, and gardening. Crazy. PTSD, anxiety, depression. Some people OD. Some just die. Move to mom’s apt. Couch. Start school. Drop out. Get job. Move to Ann Arbor. Lose job. Start school. Stock frozen organic peas then work for friends doing gardening. School. Stupid relationships. Get two jobs, one in a bar. First fistfights in years. Fuck up school, grandfather dies, friend shot. Work in a coffee trailer the World’s Sweetest Sandwich Makers. Full time. Supervise. Manage while they find someone to manage. Full time school, full time work, part time father. Want to write. Need a good program. Please take me.

even that’s over 600 words…
of excuses
But I have months to whittle it down to nothing. Pay back a couple grand so I can get transcripts that say I dropped out. Work making coffee. Don’t get me wrong, the money’s good…
But really I do like the people. I’m gonna miss them if I gotta go back to Detroit.
And I left some stuff out.
If you are a Professor of Creative Writing at a School rated Top Ten for Creative Writing and you have some advice, get at me. I really can write a little.