My Cardboard Balcony

Good For You by Belinda Roddie Good for you, sir, for making me twitchy - for allowing my two hands to clench and unclench at the very out-of-whack tune of your whiny pitch. For thinking you were some modern day savior of the bus-goers, telling that bicyclist what for. Yes, how dare he even think to accept common courtesy from a stranger, and to top it off, you decide that snark is the best witness to your great crusade. Fuck off, my dear gentleman, lest you feel your balls shrivel into wisps beneath your jeans and your scowl sag above your plaid collar. Do not bother to enlighten the scholarly masses when you cannot get over the useless idiosyncrasies of your everyday routine being offset by one iota. You do not deserve depth if you only sink into the shallow end of the pool. Breathe in the chlorine - it suits your briny tongue better.

I had heard the stories before. All of the stories, actually. Geronimo never let up with them. I knew his life story almost better than he did. In fact, when he started retelling stories to passerby, I would sometimes correct him if he couldn't remember a detail or botched a date. It was almost as if I was becoming the mental stenographer for him here. So I bought a typewriter from an old friend. Geronimo appreciated the tick-tack sound as I recorded his tales.

"Agh!" Sam shrieked. "What is this? It's burning me!" "Oh, are you allergic to that cream?" asked the doctor. "What the Hell do you think?" Sam howled. She held up her arm, and her mother, sitting in the corner, flinched at the sight. What was once a measly spider bite was a complete explosion of purples, blacks, and reds. Like Jackson Pollock had gotten angry at a canvas one day and coated it with colors instead of splattering it.

by Belinda Roddie "I wish he'd told me that before." "What, that he was leaving?" "No, that he didn't want me to come with him." Sydney nodded and pursed her lips as the waiter finally brought her dejected friend her pancakes. Not even the chocolate chips embedded within the batter seemed to make Dora smile. She just doused the stuff in hot maple syrup and let it all grow coagulated and cold. "Did he give you a reason?" Sydney dared to ask. "He just didn't think he was comfortable with me dropping everything to be with him," sighed Dora before throwing up her hands. "But isn't that what true love is about? Sacrificing your everyday life to be with the person you want to be with for the rest of your days?" "That's how I'd describe it." Dora fiddled with her fork. She still did not touch her food. Sydney was halfway through her omelet but didn't feel hungry anymore. "T...

You had lost all credibility even before you stepped onto that stage. Your incessant rants to journalists, leaning toward the objectively incoherent. The way your breath reeked of Chablis while on the Piers Morgan Show. Your complete denial of the many factors of life and its benefits that you used to held dear. Before you retreated. Before you tore yourself away from his embrace, saying your love wasn't pure. You closeted bastard.

I'm not gonna lie - when you think about it, this entire week is pretty much my introspection on my little slice of the world right now. Well, at least two of the poems are. Sonnet from last week also touched on some school stuff, and my whole perspective on students and self-confidence and education versus teachers and school and dependence. Then this week's sonnet was definitely a more optimistic approach to the potential of some of my students' imaginations. "U.S.ED," definitely, was an enormous undertaking (approximately eight pages handwritten), and it was mostly inspired by another spoken word artist who you really do need to check out. His name is Suli Breaks, and the spoken word piece, "I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate," can be found right here . This was the piece that, in several ways even if not all, really synced with my perspective on the school system versus actual education, and really, you can go through so many poems and st...

I Took A Ferry by Belinda Roddie I took a ferry to the prettiest part of San Francisco. My grandmother loved this place, where the bay waters kissed the rocks and made the air taste salty on my tongue. I thought of you, Eastern roots and Southern whereabouts, wishing me in one place while I wished you in another. We wished on the same star, which can’t take two wishes at once, or else its energy grows thin and fragile like a web too heavy with dew. So I thought about a song that claimed that to be loved is all you have to ask for, and I wondered, “Does that mean I shouldn’t ask for anything else?” But then I reconsidered the question by that bay that cool evening, crisp and sharp like saltwater, and I began to believe that love brought everything else I needed, tangible and intangible, as the mist settled on my cheeks and I kissed the fog where I beheld your face. The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since January 30th, 2009.