The Obsolete Onion

Okay, this story is ridiculous, but that was kind of my goal when I was writing it. My friend Justin went into clipart and picked random pictures and told me to write a story about it. I'm in the process of turning it into a children's book, but this is the original.


The Obsolete Onion
Delinquent hippopotamuses ran rampant through the streets of Istanbul. The herd of cows housed in the empty lot by the pharmacy stared in utter disbelief. The two headed chick bent on overtaking this usually serene metropolis was the one who unleashed this uncontrollable plague upon its inhabitants. In all reality it was aimed at the city’s perverted municipality, and he could not believe how quickly the mayhem had erupted.

The city had long since been under the jurisdiction of a sneering grey dog who would not relinquish his power no matter how much his not-so-loyal subjects were subjected to the brutality of his rule. Heraldo, the sneering grey dog’s lackey who blindly did all that the dog bade him do, guarded relentlessly the blue suitcase in which the key to the nameless grey dog’s demise was ensnared.

In an isolated part of the mansion in which the grey dog lived, there also lived Frieda the mole. Frieda was slowly going blind, but continued to do her job every day anyway. She went to the market to buy the food that would later be prepared and fed to the sneering grey dog. This morning she purchased a turnip to add to the sneering grey dog’s stew. Her failing eyesight failed to tell her that the turnip she bought was in fact a red onion. When she got back to the mansion, she put all the groceries away and placed the “turnip” on the counter.

The single disheartened red onion lay on the counter pondering on the unfulfilling life he was leading. His life’s dream was to change the world and make it a better place somehow. As he realized his inability to move, none the less change the world, he wished he could shed a tear like the ones he could always cause in the eyes of others. If only he could bring joy instead of tears to someone in this world. Right now nobody even noticed him for who he really was, an onion, not a turnip. Although the red onions plight was a sad one indeed, a bigger and more important one was unfolding in the streets outside the mansion.

The ambling herd of cows continued to stare blankly at the plethora of hippopotamuses running through the now vacant streets. The only other solitary figure that could be seen was the still powerless chick shaking his heads at the incredulity of the situation he had caused, completely at a loss at how to fix the now out of control chaos. By sitting down on the curb of the cobblestone street, he set off a chain of events that would forever intertwine his life with that of the most unlikely of heroes.

As he sat down on that fateful curb in on Main Street in Istanbul, the street cleaner chugged around the corner. The two headed chick, too caught up in his own woes, was ignorant to the street cleaners approach.

The driver of the street cleaner was a porcupine who often drank too much, as he had the night before. The completely inebriated porcupine had stumbled home the night before only hours before having to go to work. This was horrendous planning on his part, but as we will soon see, one man’s mistake could be another man’s big break. Since the porcupine was terribly hung over, he wasn’t particularly paying attention to the far from innocent pedestrian sitting on the curb of the soon to be clean street. All at once the two headed chick was caught up in a flurry of spinning cleaning mechanisms on the street cleaner and whirled about, flung between them both. The street cleaner continued on its predestined path down the street towards the center of town.

As the street cleaner rounded the next corner it happened to pass by the sneering grey dog’s mansion. The two headed chick was hurled from the street cleaner’s unstoppable spinning cleaning mechanisms and crashed through the kitchen window of the mansion. As the two headed chick skidded across the counter, startling the sneering grey dog who happened to be preparing a snack, he knocked the solitary red onion off the counter and into the open silverware drawer. The onion would have screamed in surprise if he had been able to scream.

Upon falling into the silverware drawer the onion was dismayed to look up in time to see the two headed chick falling into the drawer on top of him. The force of the chick falling on the onion caused it to be sliced open in several places by the sharp instruments below.

The sneering grey dog, overcome in a fit of rage at the shattered glass all over and his interrupted snack, stormed to the open drawer to unleash his wrath upon whomever it was that caused such a disturbance. As he neared the mangled onion his eyes started to water, and his nose started to run. All at once he realized his demise. His throat closed, he fell to the ground, and he died. The two headed chick saw the sneering grey dog inhale his last breath, and a shout of joy exploded from his throat.

At his jubilant cry, the onion realized that he was the reason for the tyrant’s death. As the onion wheezed his last breath also, he was content because he had brought joy to the whole land of Istanbul. All his woes were chased away by that one cry of euphoria by the two headed chick.

At the sight of his superior’s death, Heraldo ran away, back to the Mexico that he longed to live in. The two headed chick tentatively went over the ever so elusive blue suitcase and opened it, waiting with baited breath to discover the secret to the dictator’s power. Inside was a medical release stating the fatal allergy the sneering grey dog had to the common red onion.

The town was so jubilant over their new found freedom, that they erected a statue and instated an annual festival in honor of that red onion for changing their world for the better. The cows watched with their usual blank stare.

Making it

Making it


Slowing down to make it through
doesn’t work
when slowing down
turns into stopping.
When resting for a minute
turns into crumbling
until tomorrow.
When limbs are strong enough
only long enough to build
and start again.
Well-meaning hands on my exhausted soul
tell me it is okay to pause.
Those hands urge me
to have more Mary
and less Martha.
Those hands don’t see
the course of my day.
Twisting and winding,
working hard to climb up
only to end with rushing back down.
Then I’m left staring at the next hill,
feeling beaten again.
Those hands don’t know
that I want to stop.
I want to crumble,
but I’m forcing myself to hurry
because too much else will fail
if I slow down
and stop.

The Leaves of Autumn

The Leaves of Autumn


must feel tired and fragile.
They’ve made it through
three seasons of hanging on tightly
only to have no control
over losing their green,
falling to the ground,
and crunching under hurried feet.

I tremble in the wind
at the hand of some unseen disease.
See through and crumbling
in the shuffle of life.
Having no control
over my slipping grip.

Again

Okay this is another one that I've posted before and have revised into something better.

Again

Here comes the moon again,

pale and lonely like he always is.
I’m not scared of the dark,
just the uncertainty it brings.

Here comes the sun again,
shooting pinks out of the ground.
More rage filled bruises are forming
in another fading night.

Here comes the stars again,
covering the world in purple black.
Making my feelings ambiguous
like your promises to stop.

Here comes springtime again,
but the green won’t appear.
The seasons just keep changing,
and our lives stay the same.

There goes your smile again.
It never stays for long.
I can’t hold on to hope,
when the wind is bitter cold.

Africa (revised)

I'm in a poetry class right now, so I've revised a few poems and written several others. I won't post all of them, because I admit sometimes I jot down whatever comes to mind 1/2 an hour before class and that is just sad. This is a poem I've posted earlier, but revised, and I think it is better now.

Africa

Alpha and Omega, I'm somewhere in between

Buried underneath greys
Come, find me if you can
Dialated pupils and hazy starlight
Evolve into more colors
Far away from normal evolution
Gigantic leaps and even bigger tears
Hydrangias forgetting to bloom
I can't see past today
Just my blood in battle flowing right now
Kenyan sunbeams from my heart to yours
Let them in, if you can
Magic show confetti falling from my waiting children’s eyes
Neglect the puddles and they go away
Omega back to Alpha, I'm somewhere far between
Pretending I'm closer to home than I think
Querying the leaves for answers
Remembering how they used to be great
Solemn eyes of wives watching them fall
Twisting, turning, like me in the wind
Unforgiving and uninviting tundras
Violence bursting from under them
Wayward paths spelling their stories with cracks
eXhale, inhale, do it again
Yellow and blue promises sink with the sun
Zulu warriors marching back home.

Africa

This poem was written with each line of the poem starting with consecutive letters in the alphabet.

Alpha and Omega, I'm somewhere in between
Buried underneath greys
Come, catch me if you can
Dialated pupils and hazy starlight
Evolve into more colors
Far away from normal evolution
Gigantic leaps and even bigger tears
Hydrangias forgetting to bloom
I can't see past today
Just my blood flowing right now
Kenyan sunbeams from my heart to yours
Let them in, if you can
Magic show confetti falling from their eyes
Neglect the puddles and they go away
Omega back to Alpha, I'm somewhere far between
Pretending I'm closer than I think
Querying the leaves for answers
REmembering how they used to be great
Solemn eyes watching them fall
Twisting, turning, like me in the wind
Unforgiving and Uninviting
Violence bursting from under them
Wayward sidewalks spelling stories with cracks
Exhale, inhale, do it again
Yellow and blue promises sink with the sun
Zulu warriors marching back home.

Admittedly Not My Best Work

The moon is bouncing
in the reflection of a midwest acronymn
I'm finally realizing some things are more important
than falling and black ribbons

I wrote my name in the clouds
so it won't be forgotten
while patches of sunlight and shadow
dance around the lawn

I fell asleep
and then the world was under a March sky
At least this odd blue isn't the usual black

I stored the love under my bed
until I needed it again
I'm just sick of your pitchfork and fire
way of dealing with life

The familiarity is gone
covered by useless rectangles
He's an awkward parallel of something better

I drew a future in the mud
to try and see it clearer
But I still can't decide
if it's the one I want

I don't want to be another post-it note love
stuck on the window
then moved to the fridge

I saw my face on his heart
and wondered how it got there
and how long this one would stay