Power(less)

I’m just the intern here, nothing to see
I don’t have the answers when you ask me
How does one drop a case
Of domestic battery

Your bruises make me uncomfortable
As I direct you to my boss
Your boyfriend outside makes me uncomfortable
Because he doesn’t look very lost

I forget it all in the busy turn of time
A pedicure with sisters just the thing to ease the mind

But when you sit down to wash my feet, I begin to cry
Hold in your hand purple nail polish
The same colors of your eyes

I don’t speak your language
And you don’t speak mine
But if looks could kill, I’d tell you I’d still

Be adding bruises to his face
And I don’t even know your name
And I don’t know if you’d even want my help

And I haven’t seen you since
But I’m haunted by your busted lip
And your dark, resigned eyes

Story Idea- Psychopomp Pub

For several lifetimes he had stood behind this bar, serving drinks to weary working creatures. He assumed it was several lifetimes; he only had the one that he knew of and time tended to get fuzzy.

But that’s not to say that his time was wasted. He was happy, behind his bar, roaring laughs with friends as they waved their arms around in wild story telling. They weren’t just patrons of his pub, they were his closest friends and confidantes. His ears and eyes in the outside world.

Maybe that’s why it angered him so when they fought amongst themselves.

“Lad,” the bartender grumbled, “do me a favor and leave the good sisters alone. They’re better than you lot.”

A muscled young man in a ridiculous hat glared at him, face turning red as the pimples that dotted his nose. Mumbling under his breath, he haughtily stormed out of the establishment. He left a trio of bemused women behind him.

“Barkeep, you need not protect us. The boy will learn not to trifle with those he cannot control,” the eldest sister said, with a wink.
“And we are not so easy to control!” the youngest exclaimed, clapping her hands merrily. The middle sister rolled her eyes, in an infinitely bored gesture. “He’s not as interesting as his brother, but if he persists in his quest for our affections, he shall learn that his father does not spare the rod when the honor of his heir is at stake.”

The barkeep nodded. “I’ve already had to ban weapons in the pub, after the last time young Odinson got rowdy. What happened to the peaceful pub of yesteryears?”

The middle Valkyrie smirked. “The pub lost it’s peace the moment you opened the door to all immortals rather than the original clientele of guides. The reapers and keepers of the gates are typically a somber lot-”

“With the exception of the boisterous Valkyrie sisters!” Her younger sister inserted.
“But add your gods and demigods, sprites and spirits? It is no wonder that you have fights every week!”

The barkeep grumbled again. “What with Olympus and Valhalla exclusive clubs, I thought it well that the Everyman had a place to relax in the company of others like. Reap thought it a grand idea.”

The eldest Valkyrie nodded with twinkles in her eyes. “Well, barkeep, you surely have every man, beast and creature in cosmos.” Lifting her glass, she added “And I hope sales are good and the drinks bountiful!”

Decades

I wish I could solve my problems
With a quick punch to the face
If my fists could do the talking,
The world would be a far more interesting
And I wish that I could save people
With a cape strapped to my back
And I’d have super powers
And I work the oddest hours
And everybody would know my name

Cuz in my mind, in my head,
I’m the strongest person you’ve ever met
And there’s no way I can forget
Just how awesome I really am
Cuz in my mind, I’m fine
And everything I want to do I do
I’ve got nothing to prove

My future involves a little place
With a little cat with toys to chase
A metro pass to get to work
And a man who knows my worth
A capital E in the capital city
Where I can be as close to the Emily
In my head, as I can be possibly
The life that I want for me

And I will solve my problems with my words
Wear a suit, instead of a cape
I’ll work the oddest hours
With each pro bono case
Very few people will know my name
But that’s just fine, it’s okay
Cuz I’ll still save someone someday

Cuz in real life, outside my head,
I’m the strongest person you’ve ever met
And there’s no way I could ever forget
Just how awesome I really am
Cuz in my life, I’m fine
And I do what I want to do
I’ve got nothing to prove

Coming Home

Come on home to me
Come on home to me
In a few years time
I know you think in kind
How we’ll be everything
We ever wanted to be
You slumped over your desk
Dealing with literary mess
The wall plastered with positive publishers responses
I am in the living room
Rambling on the phone
About another cause
People breaking laws
And what I’ll do about it
Oh, what I’ll do about it
The cat’s gotten fat
Still the holy terror
Maybe we’ve gotten fat as well
I won’t care about aesthetics
Or how big the bed is
As long as it’s your face I’m waking up to
So come on home to me
The one dream worth waiting for
You with a smile
As I open up the front door
It’s a dream, a magic little dream
Of things that can possibly
Happen one day, if everything falls in place
But it’s my motivation, my inspiration
I’ve never wanted anything so much
So I’ll go through the motions
Going through the motions
Until it can be us

Getting on the plane

I don’t want to go
Your breath on the back of my neck
Nestled into me
Like the Russian dolls that fit
Evenly into another
Easily

The soapy sponge in hand
Scrubbing at the pots and pans
Your music on the radio
And you kiss me sweetly, soft and slow
And I don’t want to go

To leave your bed
Where I rest my head
Upon your chest
You asking me
Which books I like best

Snow ball fights
Late nights
Talking about star ship flights
To leave your side
Person to confide
Your hand in mine
And it feels so
Oh, I don’t want to go

Walk me to the gate
Is it to late
To cancel my flight
Can’t I suspend time and
Stay for one solitary night
Is it to late to tell you how I
Hate being alone now
God, I just don’t know
How to go
How to leave him again and again

It gets harder every time
Leaving you behind
Telling myself I’ll be okay
Without you there to say

Silly puns
“You’re the only one”
Football stats
“I love you back”
You break my heart with every smile
Knowing it won’t last but a short while

Don’t let me go
Don’t make me go
Don’t you know that home is wherever I can fall asleep in a house
Where someone loves me

The Whitmer Lament

So, you can pay me less
Critique the way I dress
Tell me that a womb is the only reason
For my existence
Tell me it’s my fault
That I had it coming
That I should be more loving
More maternal and love the color pink
Tell me to cover up
That I haven’t done enough
That ambition will damage my family
That I should try to fit into
Your description
Of femininity
Make me pay insurance
In case that I get raped
Make sure I can’t
have a choice
Because you control my fate!
Call me selfish for not having a child
Evil for living my life for myself, even for awhile
Call me a slut
If my clothes are too revealing
Call me a prude
If you can’t see my skin

Does your testosterone
Give you jurisdiction over what I own
Does it mean that you control me?
On Earth, being a woman means
You’re at the mercy
Of the “majority”.

Lion Eater

Lion, lion, lion water
Skater, skater, got to meet her
Eyes
And call her out, raise a shout
Raise a ruckus before she kicks that tuckus
Lion, lion, lion eater
Dark alleys model after
Monsters pay attention
Warlords aim at comprehension
Ideal fear when one can hear
The force of her voice, see the glare of an eye
Lion, lion, lion eater
Why, oh, why
What makes you so cruel?
Was it mommy or daddy or bullies in school?
Was it a lover, a brother, a television screen?
Video games or other things obscene?
A comic book panel,
a hipster in flannel
A broken promise,
an infinite long list
Of faults in the world that created a girl
Who stops a grown person in tracks
And has the last cold laugh
And is a lion, lion, lion eater

Really Really Real

To meet a hero is to meet infinite sadness and unrest. It’s not enough to get a person’s signature on an object of meaning, to say thanks, or to brush up against them the way any stranger too close might.

In your mind, they’re the silent best friends, guiding you through the best and worst times of your life. They are the standards you hold yourself to, the inspiration to do something (not just for the sake of creating, also for the sake of one day being noticed by them or having someone revere you the way you revere your heroes).

But when you meet them, you discover they are human. If they care about how much they mean to you, they’ll politely smile and chat for a few minutes, creating a favorable memory to carry you through the days ahead. If not, devastation.

Either way, you are left with a picture or an autograph, a story, and they go back to being the fictional hero on a pillar that you’ve made in your head.
Or they crumble, leaving the worshiper alone in the dust of his faith.

Beware of heroes. Beware further still of meeting them. They are only human and most humans are not nice people.

SuperGuy

For half a second, when you first see him, you forget that the stories you heard as a kid never happened. The resemblance is uncanny, a doppelgänger in a world where fiction is regulated to books and campaign speeches. The glasses, the hair; for half a second, you swear that Clark Kent lives in southern Louisiana.
He doesn’t, not simply because truth and parallel dimensions would keep him from doing so. Mostly in the way that this particular gentleman dresses only in superman shirts and jeans( negating the need for secret identity). There is as well personality differences. SuperGuy, as he is known as to those who do not know him very well, walks with a sense of confidence more likely associated with He-Man that the mild-mannered reporter of comic book fame. A rare breed of nerd in possession of technically good looks by society’s standards, and a passion for playing general in any group activity, he unconsciously attracts women to him. Despite the part of Lois Lane going to a curly-haired brunette, from sorority parlors to the bleachers of the football stadium, all are in agreement: SuperGuy is on everyone’s list.

Twitter

In Defense of Twitter

I was adamantly against Twitter when most of my peers originally started sending out tweets. I believed that twitter had to be the most self centered, egotistical creation in the world. I mean, sending out short blurbs about your life every few minutes, in the vain hope that someone cares enough to read it?
(On an unrelated, I thought that a blog was a perfectly reasonable thing to have, and not at all vain.)

But then I signed on, lured by the idea of following a favorite author and other beloved people on the Internet. This next statement is only a slight exaggeration: Good Things Come From Twitter.

It’s been less than a year since I’ve downloaded the little blue bird on my phone and already I’ve ha numerous opportunities presented to me just by following people, retweeting, and tweeting things that interest me. It may not seem like a huge victory to some when an author retweets an article that you make an appearance in, but for me, it was. Neil Gaiman is one of the reasons why I want to write, and that little, out of the way contact made me feel happy.

Twitter connects people in vague, fabulous ways; the woman who made me fall in love with comic books, Gail Simone, follows me. A voice actor from the childhood cartoons I used to watch retweeted me once. A feminist study got in contact with me which resulted in me being interviewed for said study. In real life, I do so many things in an attempt to change the world. Online, one little click of a button is all it takes to make me feel like I’m taking steps towards that lofty goal. It’s silly, but isn’t the first step towards doing something amazing believing that you can accomplish something amazing? Twitter makes me feel less alone, a daily reminder that there are millions of other people trying to make a difference in their own lives.