it all.

Nothing worse than the torment

and torture that comes with being small..

maybe worse is that you remember it all

no better than the punched hole in your bedroom wall

is the hole in in your torso

where you feel it all.

Of being little, and being small.

There was nothing worse than all of it all, running the block and a smashing down fall, the burning of sun and the rushing of blood and a stinging of pain and ohhhh just of it all, of being so small.

The backyard adventure, the under-the-sheet the ice cream bowl and the playtime mystique-

of being so small..

of being so small..

of being so helpless,

of feeling...

it,

all...

Dazzling Gleam

In her eyes you could see the bright dazzling gleam of candy wrappers and freshly bleached linens. Her teeth shined pearly white and there something almost terrifyingly beautiful about how pleated and clean pressed her skirt was, but she asked if she could sit down next to me, 5 minutes before Chemistry 210 started. That was so unbelievably odd and strange to me! Never did a girl this pretty want to talk to me in school! I was Joan, a girl that was considered plain, fairly square and studious. There wasn't anything "special" about me, people would say. Except for now, I suppose! Now that this girl was in my life perhaps things would start to change. All in a matter of seconds I imagined me and this girl shopping for clothes together, she would teach me how to apply makeup and how to be tan, sparkling, gorgeous and bright blonde just like her.

"Hi," she said, "My name is Pamela, Pamela Scott." she said with gleaming smile.

"Uhm.. H-Hello!" I managed to stutter, "I'm Joan Dietz.

There she was! Talking to me! Now my thoughts were spinning! I sat there with my large round puppy dog eyes admiring her eyes and her dazzling blonde bouffant hair all concluded into a buoyant blonde ponytail, fasted with a beautiful aquamarine ribbon to match her skirt...

"Well, I was just wondering if I could borrow a pencil, I seem to have left purse at home." she inquired, hastily.

"Oh! Sure thing! ", I said, each tiny word dripping with interest and desperation. I removed my backpack from my shoulders and rummaged through my things in frustration. There say Pamela Scott next to me, the friend of my every day dream. The friend of my dreams who take my pencil, a token of friendship and show me the ropes of being beautiful, blonde and social. Finally I had located a No. 2 worthy enough of Pamela's grip, but when my head returned to Pamela's attention I noticed she had already started a new conversation with another classmate!

"Uhm.. Pamela?" I said, timidly.

"Oh, hey. " Pamela turned her head to mine as I held out the No 2 with a shaky hand.

"Oh, thanks but I just got one Denise."

Pamela returned her attention to Denise, a popular girl in a red dress, and there it went, all my hopes and desires of the new girl siphoning me into a world I had always hoped to be in. A world where I was beautiful and envied, sparkling and dazzling and not plain! I didn't notice it but I had dropped the No 2 on the ground and I didn't care so I reached into my backpack and retrieved a sheet of loose leaf and a No 2 that had been almost devoured with teeth marks, and I began to write this story...

"In her eyes you could see the bright dazzling gleam...

CASTE!

I slithered under water and spoke these words with my serpentine mouth and they echoed through the pond and vibrated the soggy trash out of my path and sent the fish darting from my view and it went. like. this:

If everyone else RUNS SCARED FROM DETROIT.. then we have to care about it. It is up to us! People run scared from us! They don't want to look humanity dead in the eye! They don't care about us because we are THE DYING SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF INDUSTRY!!!!! We put this fucking country up on wheels now we need to shut it down and let people know we won't be be SHUT UP!!! YOU CANT IGNORE US ANY MORE!!!! THERE IS EVERYTHING WRONG IN THIS COUNTRY!!!! AND IT IS THE RICH GETTING RICH AND THE POOR GETTING POORER!!!!! CASTE IN THE USA!!!!!!!

water in the room

"You had to go looking through my things, didn't you!"

There she was, the awful bitch.. screaming at me again.

That was all she ever did, was scream at me. With yellow teeth through red lipstick. Her fluffed chocolate brown bangs and puffball brown ponytail bouncing up and down in her red bathing suit, pink flip flops on squishing water out onto the gold shag carpeting while I was cornered uncomfortably in the room we shared. She just kept screaming at me, and there I was, desperately clutching onto a half naked barbie doll with half of its hair pulled out and one shoe on. My sister got done screaming at me and it was almost like I was in another world while it happened, like I was underwater and couldn't feel or hear a thing. I guess that is what happens after you just get used to the same old thing after awhile, you learn to go under the water.. even when you are on land. The room just filled up with imaginary tears but really all that is happening is your eyes are glazing over and you go into a trance. Now the room is very quiet and my sister is apologizing like she usually does, and reaches into her dresser for an ashtray and a pack of red Marlboro cigarettes. She lights one up and exhales a long rope of smoke and luxuriously lays back, like she is some kind of movie star or something, and lets out a moan likes she has just done something really, very satisfying.. and I am rising slowly now to surface of a very salty sea..

She thought while suckin' on it..

..lucid flowers pretty hair golden light and yellow snare

soft pink jello dragon fly retro mellow ciggie-fry smoke in

mouth red lip-to-tongue vanilla milkshake..

trick

is

done.