keywords and x number of yrs experience

i am not a person. i find no person to speak to proove otherwise. it is all electronic. my pursuits come out in keywords and x number of years experience. i am no one's ideal. listings in the paper and on the internet are always seeking the supreme. i have begun to hate myself for not being the right fit, although there is nothing wrong with me.
people who have been with the company 15 years are let go every day. they answer phones now, count the items going into dressing rooms, and serve people who ought to be serving them. overqualified and underpaid. managers and their impish assistants are cold, disconnected people who want you to call them by their first name. as though that makes it all kosher.
i am not a person. i have a man's name but wish to do a woman's job. my plea is to be given a chance. no one has time to train anymore. the overworked and poorly treated train the newcomers, so that eventually they are just as bitter. what touches me most is not just the personal cut of rejection; it is the fact that i am far from alone.

does the forest sleep?

along the forest floor,
the vigilant underbrush
rustles almost inaudibly
for the next season to come.
the ebb and flow of
a questionable winter
reveals itself in the leaves
still attached to limbs,
arched and curled in the
positions in which they died.

with the consistency of
tissue paper, and just as
opaque in the shafts of
light sifting through the trees,
will they one day fall
to the requests of new birth?
why are they still present?
should the forest floor be
a mess of needles and cones,
or do the reminders of
last year signify that life
does not end in winter?

the crystalline sap of exposed
stubs, where wayward limbs
were recently hewn,
exposes itself to the whispering
air, aromatic enough to say
"there is life yet in me,
and i will be covered
in plume once again."
bears, it seems, are the
only ones truly succumbing
to hibernation.

another side of me pasted into reality

once, when i was a kid in summer art school, i found myself at the end result of teachers' nominations in a sculpture class. i've always built things, from sand castles to backyard forts.

so here i am, with the standing potential to build upon my building, play with everyone and everything in a store, and finally be the visual design merchandiser/window display lady. this strays, of course, from my many years as a park ranger/tour guide/save-our-history vigilante, but there is something about it which speaks to me... right down to the creativity on the tips of my fingers. could it be? i want this job, maybe. what will happen next? the suspense is beautiful, really.

the premise of what possibilities may unfold is as sumptuous as the man in my dream last night, who brought me my favorite [Mayan] chocolates, and greeted me with a warm albeit oddly familiar smile. 'scuse me while i enjoy this thought. hmmmmmm...

dead-on quiz results

You Are From Neptune

http://www.quizdiva.net/bt/neptune.jpg">%20/>You are dreamy and mystical, with a natural psychic ability.You love music, poetry, dance, and (most of all) the open sea.Your soul is filled with possibilities, and your heart overflows with compassion.You can be in a room full of friendly people and feel all alone.If you don' one > <><>< <>What'>http://www.blogthings.com/planetquiz.html">What Planet Are You From?>

there in the late winter

she drove up once a week
to feed him collards,
pickled shrimp, macaroni,
and the goodness of their past.

he woke up just enough
to chew, and show her
that his mind was still
sharp as a tack.

asleep again, once
his head hit the pillow,
she would clear the dishes
and quietly pass away
into the afternoon drive.

he hadn't been in the home
long enough for it to be
the home he built
with his own hands.
the place he raised his kids
on one hundred acres
and two lakes kept
many children warm
with memories of summer
away from the world,
eating watermelon and listening
to crickets serenade life.

she was one of several
to be there to witness
the late winter of him,
humming in bites of collards,
and listening to life
in the loud halls
of nurses bustling
and intercom calls.
everyone who came
from outside brought
life into his heart,
even now, when he
was so tired that
he slept before
his head rested
on the pillow.

single on a "couple's" holiday

you know, saint valentine's day could be different from the way it has become.
men hate this holiday. who can blaim them?
we could totally change that up right now.
we could stand to encourage one another and be sweet today, to everyone we know.
how about not placing pressure on significant others to buy this or that, and take us to this or that, and do this or that later?
single people should be included in the love.

i propose the friend-wide hug.
end the negatives, the bitterness, and the chocolate-induced christmas weight re-gain.
tell somebody some good things are coming their way.
do something unexpected for the one(s) you love.

Mastercard ad

a haircut you should have gotten two months ago, and now your hair is nearly down to your shoulders: -12 dollars

a pack of cigarettes and gas in your tank to reach your old place for the party: 30 dollars

a gift for your friend and former roommate, the bride-to-be: 20 dollars

that feeling in your stomach when your realize that you are an idiot because: you are dateless, at a party for the girl you met your ex through, surrounded by people who work with your ex, and being served a drink by your ex's good friend as she reminds you that she knows your ex: PRICELESS

the bittersweet smile on your ex's face when she hears the story on Monday: JUSTIFIED

some things you just can't buy. for everything else, there's Mastercard.

on the receiving end

There is something inescapable about sharing a building with people you don't know, and quite frankly, wouldn't care to know in the world. The lyrics of Paul Simon's "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor" are readily applicable to all us renters/condo owners/subletters out there. My objective goal since the maddening encounters of college dormitory life has been to find a top floor place to crash. Additional flights of stairs and sordid flaws of any place on top have never thwarted me from the much-cherished peace. Squirrelly next door neighbor? No problem. New baby across the hall? I'll babysit. Temperature in the bathroom below freezing all winter? I'll shower in my long-johns. Please do not ask me to live on the bottom.

The charms of ordinary life include the necessity of sleep and the occasional removal from the world to sort an issue out. Once upon a time, when I was just a kid in school, I got over the fact that the sorority sisters in the upstair's apartment wore stacked heels perpetually, and that their tri-weekly evening soirees kept the local grocer's beer case empty. My bed was in a walk-in closet, and all I had to do was close the door. An extreme case of the Asian maffia downstairs followed a couple of years later, in another city, but not everyone lives over a drug dealer in a nice neighborhood. He cooked the most pungent foods at the most random hours, and I mean things that would make anyone turn vegetarian.
My place now has more pros than cons, but sometimes I find myself hypothesizing the answers to questions that beforehand would never have held my interest.
(1)Why would a 65 year-old woman wear heels, when it is perfectly acceptable to don frumpy, comfortable bastards (like Saas)?
(2)At what point does one's relationship with daytime programming define a lifestyle?
(3)And what, when the government has made it plain that doing so is a form of slow suffocation, would possess a person to line the inside of their storm windows with plastic? It's like Y2K and random germ warfare might hit this small town yet!

The most humorous part of these questions is not the issue(s) itself, but the fact that the upstairs neighbors we have all dealt with have no idea how much they piss us off!
If that old bird/pizza-diet guy/flock of single girls/movie house bachelor was alerted that we, their neighbors to the south/on the receiving end/unwilling audience have functioning ears, fully capable of hearing that which we do not wish to (yes, I can hear mine go pee, and I don't have to be anywhere near the bathroom) ...
would they change the way that they act? Think about it.