Cinder Ella

 

Cinder Ella was this chick who was doing some minor dealing in the vestibule of her old boyfriend's building when a snitch turned her in and she got sent to juvie.

Freeeak. So bogus.

The 'rents lost it and so when she'd done her stupid community service, they said oh my, oh dear, you really need some discipline here, and gave her like ten thousand chores to do and she was grounded until she's 75 and everybody in the world is dead from a nuclear accident or something. Yippee skippee. 

So anyway, Cinder Ella had no further forks to give, so she opened her bedroom window and had a smoke in between cleaning all the bathrooms and mulching the stupid garden so the rutabagas would grow ten feet tall of whatever it is that rutabagas do. Kill me now, she thought, don't wait for the Marlboros to kick in.

It was at that moment that this leftover hippie woman flew in. I mean, actually flew and perched her grown-ass self in the window frame. "No wayyy," said Cinder Ella, taking a long drag. "Way" said the boomer in the window. "I am your fairy godmother!" Cinder Ella replied, "Well fork me and feed me fish heads." 

Long story short, Cinder Ella's fairy godmother had seen and heard more than enough of the way Cinder Ella was being treated, by both the 'rents and her social influencer sisters. "Easy solutions for combination skin!" So lame. So, this boomer turned a cat figurine into an Uber driver, and a lava lamp into a Lambo, all so that Cinder Ella could attend the Lady Gaga concert that night. "Fuckinay," said Cinder, stubbing out her smoke on the chore list her mother had left on the side table for her. It burst into flames and suddenly there she was, getting out of the Lambo at the venue!

So, the concert was lit, but she lost one of her Doc Martens when it got to be almost midnight and she had to make a run for the Lambo before it turned back into a lava lamp and the driver became a cat figurine again. I mean, she got that thing at Six Flags when she was like, nine, and she'd look like the majorette of the Loser's Day Parade if she didn't get out there in time. So she did, and came hobbling in the door just in time to sneak up to her room and do some cannabis to mellow out. 

Well, fat chance. Ding-dong, some hopeless dweeb desperately in need of a glow-up was standing in the front doorway when she came downstairs to snob, er, say hello to, whoever it was. Holding her lost Doc Marten in his hands, he smiled nervously and asked Cinder Ella and her sisters Madison and Courtney to try it on. Madison couldn't even begin to get her big boats into it, and Courtney's toenail fungus made everybody gag so she just sort of ran up to her room crying. "Oh boo hoo hoo, I'm stinky Courtney, my feet are soooooo gross wahhhh," scoffed Cinder Ella as her sister swept past. 

"Would you like to try it on?" the boy asked, shyly. "As if," said Cinder Ella, grabbing the Doc Marten out of his hands and giving him a shove out the door. "Try Proactiv!" she said to his back as he stumbled away in bewilderment. She shrugged. "I'm really more into girls lately anyway." Walking down the hall and into the garage, knocking over her dad's retardo golf bag as she passed, Cinder Ella grabbed a screwdriver off of his work bench and hotwired the Mazda. "Happy happy to all and to all a good buzz!" she called as she drove away, swerving to avoid some stupid squirrel that did that changing direction thing that squirrels do, and she just about totaled the Mazda and sustained crippling injuries like in a Lifetime movie, except she didn't, and that's the end. Follow me for more dumb fairy tales if you're, like, grounded until eternity and it's completely unfair and you're  so over it or whatever. 

____________________

For What's Going On? -- Unfairy Tales. 

Music: The Sounds Running Out of Turbo

Violent Gingerbread Assassins Lead Singer Dead At 47.

 

The lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins reports for his autopsy.

Electric bone saw in hand, the medical examiner for Los Angeles County tips up his protective face shield and speaks:

"Mr. ..."

"Lo Bo To Me," says the rock star. The medical examiner seems confused, so he adds, "I used to be George Binker, but changed it to Lo Bo To Me back in '97. You can call me Lo."

They then spend several minutes discussing the fact that the rock star isn't yet dead, to which he points out that VGA's radio exposure is down to almost nil, and years of various drugs, questionable sexual practices and a love of In-N-Out Burger has him as good as, so why procrastinate?

They begin.

"How did you get this scar just here, on your shoulder?" The medical examiner touches it with his finger as if summoning an elevator from inside the rock star's body.

"A groupie with a hatchet freaked out and thought I was a ghost trying to suck out her soul through a twisty straw. She thought my strawberry shake was the essence of a previous victim, her stupid friend Pamela. So she tried to off me, but only cut me a little. I threw the shake in her face and then she thought she was an ice sculpture. She was catatonic for ten years after that, and when she woke up she screamed 'Where is that bastard?' and then fell over on the floor. A roadie told me all that. I guess he married her or something."

The medical examiner suggests that the autopsy be postponed. George Binker a.k.a. Lo Bo To Me responds with a non sequitur, asking the M.E. if he's ever heard VGA's song "Clogged Synapse Fantasia."  

"It changed my life," he admits sheepishly.

"A fan! I knew it! Hey doc, what's that thing?"

"Why, a twisty straw, of course. I use it in my work."

The singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins sings:

Bay-beh do me do you!

Like a reptile crawling inside my heart,

layin' eggs of love that 'splode apart

in crazy fractals like La Jolla ocean blue!

Bay-beh do me do you!"

Later that day, reports of the passing of Lo Bo To Me, lead singer for the Violent Gingerbread Assassins, dubbed "Lo, the Noble Savage" in an old Rolling Stone article, spread across social media. Fans hold candlelight vigils and sales of their songs on digital platforms exceed all previous markers. The medical examiner for Los Angeles County holds a press conference, expressing, between sips of a strawberry milkshake, the exact circumstances of the singer's death. "The main cause was tooth decay, exacerbated by poor posture."

Why would he lie?

______

A (sort of) Edson-ish prose poem for Word List #8 (Russell Edson).

Trout Fishing In America

 

Left Michigan that June

with two teacher friends.

Saw Looking For Mr. Goodbar

in South Bend.

No wonder the country's going to hell.

All the teachers are cruising the bars!

In a Jackson Mississippi Mickey D's

there were elephants on the wall for art.

They're real, said Jim. No, said I.

Jim's grin. In my world, they are.

Crossing a bridge into Louisiana

we saw white cranes circling the marshlands.

The entire Richard Brautigan library across the back seat;

on the tape machine, Jackson Browne & friends.

It was just something to do that summer,

passing the bottle to pass the time.

But now, with all the black coffee blur behind me,

that year still goes down smooth, holds a shine.

~~~~~~~~~

for Sunday Muse #176.

August & Crickets

 

As a girl, I carried the cage I was given

and searched for the bird with the duende call,

its heart spread thick by a grandmother's hand,

there in each prayer and then not there at all.

As a girl I was given soot in a basket

and told not to sift but to husband it close

then sent to a seaside cliff via landslide

where the mayor of filth gave himself the last dose.

O bird! O sky! O flesh made of lilies,

grow light on the bones of the bird on the stalk

of my sorrow, my bloom made of August and crickets

transformed in its throat to an arcing flock.

As a girl I was given a purse with a ticket

to a room with stucco walls and a bed

where a woman crawled from the wreck of the fire

and stood by the window, my bird on her hand.

_________

for The Sunday Muse #172.

Sandy

Sandy put a wedge of lemon in the corner of her eye
so that she might seem more exotic.
Informed of this, the warden had her taken
out of gen pop and placed on risperidone and light tasks such as
arranging
her origami family figures
across 
her 
desk
in order of which she loved best down to least.

The thing about Sandy is that she took elocution lessons
in order that she might curse more clearly
at her celly and the matrons.
The more florid her language became, 
the more she sounded like a potty-mouthed Helen Mirren.
The warden was forced to remove Sandy's tongue and hide it
high on a shelf in her office
where onyx birds
sang songs from pyrite throats
all about which of her inmates she loved most, down to least.

Finally, Sandy and the warden came to an understanding
which involved a Catholic bishop and a solemn promise by Sandy 
not to cuss anymore.
"I shan't," she said,
assuming Helen Mirren's place in the warden's roster of recoveries
and walking straight out of the women's pen into origami domesticity
where black birds fold their wings 
into Oriental characters
depicting the most amazing transformations from best down to least

with Sandy's at one extreme end like an egg or a bomb or a glitter ball.
_______

for Get Listed at Toads. I used onyx, lemon, elocution, shelf(ves), risperidone, and warden.

CBU

Maude Millicent Rosevear, generally considered pleasant and quite the beauty,
sent her hopes off, by mail, in 1955.
Consider her surprise when they return to her in 2015. 

Maude, now aged seventy five,
nearly trips over the parcel while walking out of her door
on her way to the pharmacy for her numerous prescriptions.

"Non-standard surcharge," states one of the rubber stampings.
(That business with Alice, at college, in 1959?)
The postal system cares about her package. The plastic wrapping says so.
Nonetheless, they have returned it.

"Postage due", "Addressee Unknown", "Unclaimed" all on the side.
Bent, frail, living in a mother-in-law apartment attached to her son's house,
Maude supposes the return of her hopes was inevitable, 
but it didn't feel that way when she sent them. 

Maude goes back inside and sits down to compose a letter--
--an old fashioned paper letter--
to the Unabomber in prison. 

"Dear Teddy," she writes, "I finally understand."
Perhaps this one will get through, she thinks.
Perhaps he will even answer, and if he does, 
she must be sure to be the first one to the mailbox, and to not lose her key.
_______ 

for Get Listed at Real Toads. I used "prison", "mail", "inevitable", and "system".

CBU--Cluster Box Unit, a freestanding outdoor multiple delivery receptacle for mail.

CBU-55--cluster bomb fuel air explosive.