BRB

"Let's do lunch," they'll say.
Reliability's on the menu
and you'll order, of course--
"Hey, that shit sounds good."
And with good faith you'll ask for it, only to have the waiter tell you,
they stopped serving it at two.
I only wish that,
after they tell you to "Heeey, call me sometime!"
and their phone number becomes a one-way service line to their voicemail--
you see them on the street, or a store.
And when you call them and see them ignore your call right in front of you,
you approach him or her and say,
"Hey, you self-righteous piece of shit!
You speak truths in blogs,
perform and model on webcams,
write love letters in text messages,
create digital memories
for a metropolis-revolving life,
yet you don't know the HTML code
to grow a pair of balls?
Or maybe you only send courtesy through MySpace messages."
These disconnected beings
wandering my city,
these kings and queens
deluded with monarchies stuck up their ass
with Louis Vuitton bags as fake as their rapport
and as empty as their promises;
but "fuck it," you say.
Just like a song gets stuck in your head,
it's a temporary plague that comes and goes;
suck the venom out and spit,
because that's all you can really do.
Well, I suppose the reason why it doesn't snow in Los Angeles
is because you're already bombarded by flakes every day.

Through The Rubble

hello
young man
you've been sitting against this wall
caressing the cracks with your thoughts
forming a bond with the tough concrete
because you say
nothing else is solid.
you looked at me
and said that
you were living the days through
tracing the slab
with a tongue birthed from
anti-perseverance
towards the clockwork and social impositions
that make fighting self-destruction
so hard.
goodbye
young man
the mold outgrown from your back
has kept you
from pulling yourself up
because we both know that
nothing is solid.

Tonight's Winning Numbers

Heading to work one morning, I happened to walk pass one of the homeless folk of Downtown, as I often do. She stood in front of the 7-11 convenient store on the corner of Olive and 7th St., hunched over and leaning on the ever-present, trademark shopping cart that accompanies most "street wanderers." She had stringy, blonde hair covering her face - only you could hardly tell through the layers of dirt caked onto it, from the scalp down. She wore a collection of clothing on her back, stacked up to the black bubble jacket on top; these were also thick with dirt, the tatters and tears showing off through the ends. I grimaced as I caught sight of her bare feet: long brown toenails that came to sharp points at each end and muddy, heavily calloused soles.

The faded blue handle bar on her cart read "Rite-Aid" and on top of the enormous pile that filled it was a big, spread-open sleeping bag that reminded me of the one I used as a kid. Maybe it covered clothes, trinkets, soda cans or more sleeping bags, but it sure didn't shelter anything that would justify what was in her hands. Bent forward, elbows on shopping cart handle, she clutched a lottery scratcher ticket in one hand, as the other feverishly swept a penny back and forth on the surface, with no restraint to slow down or stop. The top of her dirty, yellowed thumbnail was covered in silver shavings and the sides of the ticket collapsed into two creases on each side from her firm grip. Her green-brown teeth looked as if they sought blood, digging deeply into a chapped and flaking lower lip while bloodshot yet concentrated eyes darted back and forth, almost keeping up the pace of the sweeping penny.

This homeless woman, caked in dirt, was spending money on lottery scratchers - not just the single one in her hand, as suggested (upon second glance) by the crumpled losings that peeked through the plastic shopping cart frame - rather than food, a pair of sandals or even a bar of soap! Was this chance encounter a sign of our force-fed hope gone out of control? Or was this a skewed reflection of our festering greed overcoming the basic needs to get by, even when living on the streets of Los Angeles covered in shit with a Rite-Aid cart as a sole lifeline?

Whichever one it may be, all I know is that my face had just been slammed into the concrete floor of cold, raw humanity.

Disconnected

To further my theory of how disconnected our society has been, I'd like to present an observation that I feel not only shows just that, but how selfish and self-centered we've become.
I've noticed that the polite conversation starter, "How are you?" or even the more casual, "How's it going?" has become nothing but a mere greeting. Too many times have I witnessed a "Hey, how's it going?" volleyed back with another "How's it going?" and ended with the two passerbys moving forward along their paths.
It's even promoting poor use of the English language amongst secondary English speakers. My apartment building's security guard, Gus, is my prime example for this. Gus is a really nice guy, maybe in his late thirties or forties who knows maybe enough broken English to get by - maybe. Every night, he'll greet me with a quick "How-are-yoou!", a happy nod and grin with a raised left hand. Great guy - only problem is, if I ask him how he's doing, he'll only cheerfully reply, "How-are-yoou!"

I feel that the root of this "How are you?" problem may be the now common oversight of taking the time to actually take an interest in one another. Perhaps people just don't care. Or maybe it's because we've grown so desensitized to human interaction, so used to communicating through technologically convenient means that we've grown to be repetitive and almost robotic with strangers or light acquaintances on the street.

We've only grown so egotistical and arrogant with our networking sites and online social forums that we've cut the connection to our everyday encounters. Are we all just depending on our carefully picked, photoshopped pictures that we feel best sell ourselves to gain compliments and reassurance? Or maybe our strong, opinionated voices online? The ones which crack down with harsh criticism onto strangers at the first opportune moment, only to reward ourselves with the idea of being smarter or above them?
We can parade ourselves like this with our façade.coms, but can't take the interest to ask someone - really ask someone..."How are you doing?"
They might not even be formalities anymore; rather, deterrents in the form of a mouthful of words to avoid the risk of making ourselves vulnerable to others, the fear of actually letting people get closer to us than the mere gazes we selfishly deliver from a distance.
Who would've known that rubbing shoulders with someone could grow to be so intimidating?

Eulogies From The Parking Lot

They walk along the streets
looking for jobs on the floor
that someone might have forgotten.
Their wallets are filled with dead hope
and reminders of their struggles
as stale as its cheap leather,
while the children in the pictures fitted in between the emptiness
seem to frown
From the wrinkles maybe
or something else perhaps.
Something else.
They stand in the cold, shivering
in the hardware store parking lot
And they patrol
as sentries of patience
of want
of prayers
while the American dream blankets them from frosted morning
but nothing more.
And they cry
Oh, they cry
But they are nothing but a circus to sight
A circus, perhaps
But one which shows others
the truth
of living
to feed the young and feed the dream.
Allowing themselves to be exploited
like animals
they only return humble smiles
that stretch from sorrowful eye to sorrowful eye.
And on they go
with the pores of their skin crying loudly,
causing them
to leak their hearts down their faces.
Later, after sunset
They return to their homes
wallets still worn but
the table will be decorated with crumpled dollar bills.
Nothing more, nothing less.
For them
cracked backs and bruised hands
are medals of making the best
of what is just another day to the world.

Billboards As People

Everyone's a walking endorsement--
a brand name for an identity,
a cross-stitched tag for an image.

Wash with warm water, your indirect false worship.
Use mild soap to cleanse the marketing embedded deep beneath your skin.
Do not bleach the somber lies you blindly wear.
Iron flat your dreams, because you sold them to Calvin Klein and Starbucks.
Tumble dry low your memories, for you are a corporate slave-soldier.

Welcome to the dry cleaners of the omnipotent advertisement that is society.
Apparel is always promotional.
Too bad individuality isn't.

Oh, Misery Is So Beautiful

So this is what heaven is initially perceived as: this magical plane where one is granted eternal happiness, in exchange for the time served on earth carrying out model citizen duties. Behind the proverbial pearly gates is where angels will suck your dick for hours, while J.C.—at the right hand of God, the big man you've been slaving your entire mortal life to meet - shoots you a thumbs-up and a smile when you blow your load. And that's it right there. The golden finish line, the cherry on top of the sundae, and the standing ovation for the life you've made for yourself.
But as dedicated the hopefuls are to standing by this, as grand as they've all built it to be, and as tempting it all has been to eat it all up, it's bullshit; it has to be. The great landscape caressed by immortality is only a lie packaged in a box of propaganda, finished off with an illusionary, bright red ribbon.
What we’re really looking forward to…what this promise really grants…is an eternity twiddling our thumbs and enjoying the scenery.

If heaven truly existed, and was obtainable to those who fulfilled its requirements, then what lies ahead is no better than the lives we struggle with down here on Earth. Heaven, how I see it, is but a promise of a life with no purpose, no cause or meaning. There is nothing to work for, anything to strive for, nor work towards. Although that is the big prize – living worry free and not burdened with obligations – there is absolutely no stimulation. What makes life worth living is the human mechanic and downfall of never being able to be truly content--even if we aspire for the unobtainable, it gives us reason to wake up; to breathe. We bitch and we moan about how difficult life is, but if that struggle were taken away - if we were granted the key to “heaven”, or something like it - we’d only last a small breath, a tiny whisper before craving those very afflictions we detested.

So this, right here - our miserable, disgusting lives - is as good as it gets. We should all be thankful for the wondrous filth we’ve made ourselves to sleep in every night. We should give praise to the rapists, murderers, racists and terrorists for making life such a grand fucking adventure. A toast to all the moguls, high-society aristocrats, and celebrities for keeping that impossible wall for us to constantly climb, struggling with bleeding knuckles and cracked ribs. In the end, it all unknowingly plasters a grin on our faces that heaven could never match—because misery is so fucking beautiful.

So this is it.
Your heaven and your hell.
You can go ahead and call your mid-life crisis your limbo.
Your "God" might as well be that step-dad that put his hands down your pants when you were a kid.
There is no gold watch, necktie and farewell handshake.
Eat your shit with a smile, because eternal life is the toy in the happy meal that the Mexican kid stole from you.