Crooked Fool: Are you angry yet?

Witness.

I was young, crooked femme, buzzing with energy, a nova of anger that was pathologized, bad-ified, otherized, punished…

A performer adapting to the endless energy and life force late-stage capitalist performing arts charge as the price of admission to a club that will blacklist without hesitation. I was easy to work with. Disciplined. Energized regardless of fatigue, a vessel down to my fingertips, twisted body best when unnoticed and unclaimed.

I am a rebel in circus garb, prepared for the tower to fall, knowing my role when it happens.

A clown questioning the colonized, controlling, punishing logics of the state, somehow more threatening in a red nose, but not always thought of as such.

Arlecchino, Brighella, Colombina, Pierrot surviving, working, playing my way through a system designed to keep me wanting, needing.

The crooked, hunchbacked witch who served literal communion to an actual demon in the scariest place there was. The gods rewarded me with a red nose and a spine full of titanium so that eyes, breath, spine will forever be grounded and protected in the act of cursing systems that need to crack, crumble, re-puzzle.  

But remember, it’s just a show…

I am the deformed artist who was told by a psychic that I mastered dark magick in a past life and by a spiritualist reverend that even the darkest creature goes to the light.

I am the one who spent years seeing THIS quilted together in dreams, and now feeling the living, pounding, vital force in those hazy green, buzzing and burning images come to life.

I dance in darkness, a ghost in the making, a demon falling madly in love with my mangled form, the footsteps in the night, screaming the angry children out of sleep because they are the ones who know that something is not right, and that something is not them.

I am, apparently, The Bad, so why not play games with the worst of the worst, week after week?

And why not argue where I can? When nice accomplishes nothing, I can at least still play the game – wrong if I choose.

As an annoying clown once said to me, and as I once said to someone who talked down to me like I was a noisy 27-year-old child, cheating is a mode of play.

Apparently, there are those who genuinely hate crooked, hunchbacked witch clowns. And they’ll dress up their deep, burning hate like light, saying I’m sick, unfriendly, whatever, because they know they can’t say Bad.

Except now they probably can.

I will play the game with all the Bad ones, overdressing, playing ferociously, cheating if I have to. If they want a demon, I know a few. If they try to cut off my rough edges, I’ll crack their rigid walls and dance on the rubble, and everyone loves to dance. Eventually they’ll join.

Slainte to the Bad ones. When this ending happens and this tower crumbles, we will dance in the flames and build with our disfigured, tired bodies in our own image. The vengeful gods will die. And there will the demons be, in the light, turning to ghost with Mad, irrational love and screaming into the dark in joy and rage as our dance party goes on atop the elements that once made us. Who’s the demon now?

Are you angry yet?

You should be.

Capturing Campus: The Archway

The Archway 

my great-grandmother had a house

she’s gone

but the house breathes

its strange breaths

strange faces

strange furniture

strange footsteps

imprinted by foreign feet

I remember the house

and it’s frightening to think that someday I won’t

that nobody will

that the memory will die with me

you’re getting so tall

she said before we left

beneath the archway in her living room

neither she nor I will ever stand beneath it

again, I am frightened that the memories

won’t be memories anymore

not that they will be conflagration-charred

cataclysmically-consumed

made holed and holy by a marksman’s arsenal 

but that they will dry up and fade

wet footprints on concrete

during the fourth of July 

when the weather was warm as the parade marched by 

I sat inside a home I might never see 

again, I am frightened

that anyone and everything is only mine

for a little while

that life is only for a little while

Cyrene’s New Character Sheet

Read more: Cyrene’s New Character Sheet

The above’s the new one, the bottom’s the old one. I changed her hair dye from white to blonde because I planned another character with dyed white hair and didn’t want to seem repetitive. I also added more punk elements to her clothes. I’m particularly proud of the studded artist gloves and the additional details to her black tattoos. I also switched up her eye shape.

Witness the Small Life – Signed, Sealed, Delivered

There’s always a pull between a pencil and surface that you just can’t stop. I’ve been calling a lot of people recently and I’ve always noticed my need to fidget or be active when I’m on the phone. 9 times out of 10 I have some paper and a pencil or pen next to me and somehow my hand finds its way to drawing doodles and scribbles and then some. My favorite places are those with words and sentences and even whole essays splattered across its walls. From bathroom walls drenched in gossip columns to hidden graffiti under a strategically placed flyer, I love seeing the endless possibilities found in lines on surfaces.

As I’ve been thinking about writing this week, I’ve also been thinking about the beauty of handwriting. I’ve always been victim to those complaining about my handwriting (“Why do you write in cursive?”) while also graced by many a compliments (“You’re handwriting is so graceful!”). I always took these comments at face value and considered my handwriting as weird or abnormal. In my time thinking about writing as marks on a surface, I’ve been able to appreciate the oddities of letters and the uniqueness of one’s approach to these letter forms a lot more. Someone’s writing tells you so much about them, of course, but also how they approach communication. Sharp and quick lines show how emphasis on speed and necessity of no wasted time for that person, whereas thick and heavy curves can show how someone takes their time to leave an impact with their words. The ways we choose to communicate with each other whether it be verbally, physically, or something else entirely represents such a large part of our person. Like I always say, communication is key! The way you decide where and how and why you write connects you not only to those you’re writing for (yourself, a class, a stranger) but it’s a snapshot of that exact moment you chose to lay those lines on a page (or a wall or a board or even a window). As we live in a world where convenience is king, the time it takes to handwrite something says a lot about the way you chose to share with the world. I think we should encourage ourselves and others to write more. After all, the pen is mightier than most things really.

To take into the next week:

Ins: Waking up before dawn, kombucha (always), charcoal, blackberries, overnight oatmeal, productive meetings, mittens, brown sugar, scan beds, surrounding yourself with true friends (always).

Outs: Chapped lips, hair in the drain, glossy paper, scary mechanical noises, less than 7 hours of sleep, letting dry skin get drier, a lack of lamps.

My task for you all: Watch your hands as you write and draw and create. Notice how you grip the pencil, how the swoops of your Gs intersect with the crosses of your Ts. Watch someone else write. Find the wondrous quality of sharp against curve and how the blank space makes it all come together. And do a little bit of vandalism. Because why not?!

aSoSS 43 | Annoyance

She used the word assure when she meant ensure. which is not a typo, it’s a language problem, which is a big deal! People type fast, whatever, it’s okay, but somebody wants to be a writer and they don’t understand the difference between assure and ensure?

Traverwood Library, 5:30PM, 1/14/2025

there are windows of opportunity and there are doors of regret, sometimes both, but never neither. you have blown into my life like a wayward leaf. where did you come from? darling, i was born in a hurricane. the windows are boarded but the door still swings off its hinges. you shake your head–whether in denial, or disbelief, or innocence, as if it would make a difference. Isabel Allende was right: two words is all it takes to change a person’s life. everyone could see the eyes of the puma soften as she steps towards him and takes his hand~


Back when I was in Livonia… the school district said kids can bring their phones to school and I remember being like “we’ve lost the war!”

Jerusalem Garden, 12:30PM, 2/1/2025

who gets to control the narrative? the caution tape flutters, a moth snared in a spiderweb. i am an ambulance chaser in every sense of the word. you tell me it is immoral, and i remind you that morality is a price to pay for your wellbeing. are we only in love because we love emergencies? sometimes we make bad decisions and they blossom into the undeserved fruits of our labor. other times they burrow into the belly, out of sight and out of mind. you are delicate in this life, just as i am delicate without you–mother nature plays such cruel tricks on her children! my stomach rumbles in agreement: there are no dormant volcanoes, only overdue ones.


…I didn’t even get my freaking cheese grits this morning!

Duderstadt Connector, 5:00PM, 2/4/2025

annoyance is worse than tragedy because it fools you into believing that your emotions are unjustified. we allow grief to permeate the barrier, unregulated, like a broken floodgate. this luxury does not extend to inconvenience without the eye of guilt, an ever-present watchman. the caterpillar and the butterfly, two sides of the same coin–what is a tragedy but an annoyance left unchecked? it is human nature to rot from the inside. even the phoenix dies from an ironclad heart: thinking of you turned me into ashes.