Shawn Smith’s web ninja life

This poem
is about somone very important to me
someone really great and really really cool
someone who stands on the edges of gas in the stars
and rides their fury
like Arnold Schwarzeneggar with a brainfreeze
bull-riding on the back of Rosanne Barr in heat
someone who believes they can fit all 16 personality types, like happy and ninja
someone who’s eyes sparkle and the bottom of their eyelids are soft and heavy with sweetness
and someone who smells good in high humidity

I was standing on the streetcorner last week
and a girl walked up behind me
At first, I pretended not to notice
so then she would think I was kinda cool,
because I wasn’t like every other guy
who wanted to kiss her huge, round
moisturized forehead
and then look down her orange tank top
plus, she could check out my butt
because I’ve been working out
and then, like the coppertone suntan baby,
I would look over my shoulder
and my teeth would shine in the sunlight
like an anime character
and she’d blush then we’d have lunch together

but she was already facing the other way,
getting ready to cross the street the opposite way
The walking signal said don’t walk, what the hell,
she was crossing anyway

I yelled, “hey, dont you see the sign? It’s a big red hand.
You could die, that’s what the red hands mean.”

She looked then, looked at me like I went to Michigan State and then kept walking.

“I did go to Michigan State,” I yelled back. She flicked me off,

“Whatever, I just saved your life, - I love you. Fuck!”

She started running, so I crossed the street and started running too
and I ran past the hot dog stand on the street
and I knew I wanted a hot dog,
but I couldn’t stop running,
Because love was pulling me at lightspeed after her
I could get a hot dog later, I thought

“Wait, I just want to be your friend, I write poetry and I want to share if with you!”

Then she started yelling and dove into a Korean restaurant,
I followed, but no one was in there but a little old lady
I asked about my girl, but she kept saying she not here, she not here,
So I said fine, but I left a message that I would read her some poetry next tuesday at the open mic
then I had some fried tofu,

And now I’m here for someone important
so you can see how sensitive I am and what a great friend I can be
and how much I will care for you
how I’ll make you vegetable stir fry with soy and a pinch of love if you’re hungry
I’ll sing you anthems from 80s rock legends
like mr. big or journey
when you want to go to sleep or you’re drunk
I’ll draw checkerboard on your white keds
if you want to turn hipster and wear black-framed glasses
I’ll do it all

and if she didn’t come tonight
well, umm
what’s up everyone, ladies
I’m new here
I’m single, I got a job
and I’m really really cool, I swear

too bad

Four points in more than a half of a quarter. The Pistons have four points. great. I’m not talking field goals or baskets or whatever. Nothing more than points. That’s it. Thats my Pistons

Thank you NBA, thank you ABC Sports. I mean, opening the game with a smashing Will Smith music spectacular, and the Alanis Morrisette national anthem - and she’s not even American, you are showing us what a truly international game basketball is. but- is there any way you could maybe bring in some backstreet boys or something. I mean jeez, we got all these superstar music acts that are so popular - RIGHT NOW! today, these are the most hot acts in the biz today! let’s keep it rolling - good job with the Dave Matthews song too- booyah

Oh Arroyo, why do you do me so? Man, just play some ball, I know you got it, but then you make the mistakes. Two fouls in a row against Parker? damit. Then two turnovers and you get the ball thrown off your leg by a praying, flying Ginobli? Dammit, that’s all I can say about that. Dammit. I hope Larry doesn’t give up on you.

To Larry Brown: Tim Duncan is scared of sharks. Sharks! That’s Selaphobia. Is that in your game plan? Because ABC Sports knows about it, and now so do I. Come second quarter, I want to see Richard Hamilton running around with a dorsal fin strapped between the three and the two on the back of his jersey.

like Dave Chappelle said - slavery could be coming back on Tuesday and we wouldn’t know until Thursday, - “I was watchin’ Sanford ‘n Son. Why didn’t somebody tell me?”

FBI agent Mark Fellows scrolled effortlessly through names of girls that teased him in junior high.

“Lindy Porter,” he said to himself, and sat back smiling, one arm resting on his chair, and the other slouched and sloppily connected to his computer mouse.

“Bitch,” he hissed, quietly and almost hushed.

He continued snaking through the electronic lives of his former classmates, seeing that Jessie Marlin had recently bought Andre champaigne, a People magazine and a box of tampons on her Visa. The day before that she bought gasoline, a plastic container, some sudaphed and excedrin.

“Looks like Jessie has a meth problem,” he smirked to himself. “Why don’t we just look a little more at miss Jessie and pay her a visit in Kalamazoo.”

He twirled around in his chair, lifting his feet so that they didnt drag on the bottom of his chair. He breathed the stale flourescent air deeply, and then rested, staring at a large photo of his graduating high school class.

“I got you bitches,” he said, then turned back to his computer and typed frantically.

Jessie Porter teaches Biochemistry 249: “science for jocks and english majors” as most of the students call it at Western Michigan University. But she isn’t teaching today. She’s at Dr. Ahmed Radmonovic’s office, draping her left arm around the back of her daughter’s head and squeezing her daughter’s ribs in the lobby “sick” waiting room while little abby sleeps into her breast.

A straight-haired blond boy that looks like a crushed-fraced version of Michael Moore plays with oversized plastic building blocks in the corner. He’s loud and making crashing noises as he slaps them together into a castle collage, complete with a drawbridge and moat.

Jessie sighs. Deeply breathing and exhausted. The boy’s sounds echo in her ears like she hasn’t slept for days and she’s making ends meet by refrying the same black coffee beans. She hasn’t and she has.

The sounds are loud, and she blanks out, twiddling with her daughters fine brown hair. It’s soft. Shiny.

At her house, FBI agents in partnership with Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Department are tearing the cushions from the couch she got last year and knifing them. Pots in the sink are overturned on the kitchen floor.

The filing cabinet where she keeps her scrapping materials for her daughter has been broken open, afterall- it was locked.

Fellows is sweaty, but not from worry about Jessie, but from excitement and satisfaction.

He laughed to himself, in Jessie’s backroom, after he had spilled a cup of toothbrushes on the sink counter. “gotcha bitch.” he said again to himself, repeating it over and over in his own head stapled under slickening gel and black mush.

And jessie, when she comes home and see’s her potted plants unpotted outside her front door, and the sudafed tablets for her daughter taken, won’t know a thing about it all. She won’t know Fellows was there. She doesn’t even remember him. She moved to Oregon after junior high and then moved back to Michigan for college. Met her husband and Western and stayed in Kalamazoo to raise her daughter.

She hasn’t thought about the junior high school dances where she only danced with Ben Sims. She only ate with Molly Turner and Holly Charles at the lunch table. She didn’t share her notes in science class. She doesn’t remember Fellows. Not at all.

And she won’t.

Because according to new laws in the Patriot Act - retooled and reenforced by the United States Senate on June 7, 2005 - the FBI has the right to get search warrants and subpeonas without asking the permission of a judge. And more, many of the investigations granted to the FBI must be done in secret or they violate the Patriot Act.

Nope, Jessie won’t know about her underwear drawer being rifled through by dirty plastic hands and her husband’s watch being punched by a closed fist. She will probably think neighborhood kids pulled her plants out as a prank. She will go buy some more sudafed for her daughter when she can’t find the box.

The FBI did a good job cleaning up, she will never suspect the government of invading her home. In fact, with this perfected act, voted through the government with the blessing of the most holy, the one moral man in america to represent its populus, most americans won’t know suspect anything either. They won’t know anyway.

The staff at the Embassy Suites was busy coralling loose dirty plates and napkins and taking food trays into the kitchen by the time I stumbled into the dining room. Only Special K and Cherios, warm fruitless yogurt and grapefruit and orange slices were left and I loaded up on all of it , while the grill cook scraped his stovetop and watched me.

“Too bad you got too drunk to wake up on time,” he was probably thinking. But I didn’t really get drunk the night before, just overtired from not sleeping much the week before.

The staffers had already cleared the plates and bowls, so I opened up a milk carton and poured the cereal into it’s top and spooned out the Special K flakes. It’s really not bad.

A few people were crowded at a tiny round table next to me, talking and burping their satisfaction as I ate. they had money and let me know, like people with money who came from none do.

Lawrence isn’t like that. maybe because he isn’t a stranger to money, and to people.

He walked up to me as I finshed my carton

“Man, I knew we would miss breakfast,” he said. He had been talking about it a lot the night before. - “We gotta have that free breakfast tomorrow. That’s what the embassy suites is all about, the free breakfast. I can’t wait” -

“Yah i know. there’s some cereal over there and some warm yogurt. But there’s no bowls so you gotta pour the cereal into the milk carton.”

“Man, that is some money. That is a product or something. You could make something off of that.But I just want some coffee,” he said.

For a second I thought about making the cereal/milk in one . But I didn’t think too much about it. He was already getting coffee from the turned off machine. It was still warm.

The dining room was closing so we went to the hotel bar and sat down on the stools. Just us, for a moment, before a young Mexican girl came out to ask us if we needed anything. Her face was fresh and the low light in the room showed how soft it was.

“Can I get some matches?” Lawrence asked, pulling out his white hard pack of menthols and placing on the bar. I looked around, but didn’t see any , but the girl dropped down and pulled some out from under us.

“Here you go,” she said, with a nervous smile, like one she didn’t feel comfortable showing in public.

“Thanks, guys serve breakfast in here,?”

“No, we got lunch, but the waiters haven’t come in yet.”

“”that’s alright, I’ll just have this coffee and smoke my cigarettes,” he said. “breakfast of champions,” he smirked and leaned back, turning his head to look at me as he said the words.

“so how you doing this morning?”

“Fine. working”

“Yah, that’s good. It’s good to have work,” he said.

“Yah it’s alright.”

“I would say it’s good. Jobs are hard to come by. ”

“Yah I guess,” she replied. She stood perfectly between the bar and the back counter where the computers and liqour bottles stood. She hadn’t moved from the spot since giving Lawrence the matches and her hands were slipped into her back pockets.

“yah it’s good,” he said again, slowly and softly. “So where you party at around here?”

“Party?”

“Yah, party. you know, go out? I’m not from around here. What do you do. Do you go to clubs, you know?”

“No, I don’t really go out much. My life is pretty boring.”

“Boring, what, why do you say that. Why’s your life boring? What do you do, do you go to school?” He worked with magic, nonchalant and knowing that she ached to tell him everything about her life.

“Yah I go to OCC. and I work and I go to church.”

“See, you go to school thats good. Your life aint boring. You got things. Do you got a boyfriend?”

“Yah,”

“See there you go, that’s good.” He looked at her directly and interested.

-”but,” she quickly jumped in. ” But, he’s in New York. so I don’t see him that often.”

“You go to New York to see him?”

“Yah, at least one weekend a month. We talk on the phone a lot.”

“On the phone huh, that’s got to be tough.”

“Yah, but it’s ok, I’m used to that..”

“Well good, so that’s good. so do you live around here?” he said, detailing his poise for her with each new question and was leaning forward over the counter to shorten the distance between him and her.

“Yah, with a girl from my church. I’m not from here either though.”

“Oh yah? where you from?”

“San Antonio,”

“Cool, why are you here now?”

“I had another boyfriend here. I met him over the Internet. And I just moved up here.”

She was trapped, and she didn’t know how to get out of it all. I don’t think she wanted to though. I just kept sitting and watching Lawrence. I would have lost my concentration by now or bored here.

“Wow, the same one you have now?”

“No, an ex- he was bad.”

“Bad? yah, that ain’t good. So you got a new boyfriend that can protect you now, that’s good. See your life ain’t boring.”

“No, it really is.I don’t do anything. I don’t party. I don’t drink”.

“I don’t know. so you’re a good girl then huh?”

“Yah, pretty good.”

“Wow,” Lawrence said, letting the word escape like a sight, like the air being pushed out the opening of a hot air ballon as its drivers try to roll up the material after it’s landed.

“so what’s the baddest thing you ever done?”

“The baddest thing I’ve ever done?”

“Yah?”

“the baddest,” she trailed off and looked down at the floor, then the ceiling. Her eyes looking up to the right, searching her memory for a story.” “Ummm…”

Lawrence waited patiently and relaxed a little to let her think. I smiled to myself.

Quickly and with excitement she blurted,,” well I went to a hotel room once,”

“Whoa- ” he cut her off “- you don’t have to tell me any more of that,”

She had kept talking, but now hesitated and said that she would keep it to herself. She smiled, still nervous, but a little more mysterious now and like she had just discovered that when she leaned against a table corner, she got a good feeling in her abdomen.

He laughed a little to himself, and then looked over to me.

“why don’t you go see if your boy is up yet so we can check out of here. I kinda want to get down to Detroit.”

“Alright,” I said. And got up easily. He stayed at the bar, ordered another coffee as I rose from the stool, and then didn’t talk until I was out of hearing distance.

so i just posted a big thing, and this damn thing lost it, im pissed