© Aug 1, 2019. All Rights Reserved.
Check out a graphic novel I self-published as an ebook called, “Only In Doubt Town” on Lulu.com. The link to “Only In Doubt Town”:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/isaiah-lawrence/only-in-doubt-town/ebook/product-24185386.html
© July 1, 2018. All Rights Reserved.
How many people love Thanksgiving? I’ve dated on and off like the slave trade, but we’re not here to talk about that. Everything is usually prepared on Thanksgiving from the food to tablecloths, handkerchiefs, coasters, plastic plates, and plastic eating utensils. That’s the day where everyone have their seats chosen 15 minutes before the day begins, so whoever arrives late gets leftovers. Maybe in your family there’s silverware. You know. … A silver spoon where regardless of how much you age, your mother can use the eating utensil to do airplane tricks into your mouth while your girlfriend, fiancé, or spouse is watching.
Whenever you see a long, lost cousin bring their significant other over on a holiday, it’s usually that one asshole who dresses up like they’re at a 5 Star fuckin’ restaurant and brings up his endless list of employment credentials after receiving his PhD in dumpster diving. Just me? For goodness sakes, it’s the time where your family celebrates your baby pictures that were locked in a safe so long that the lock unlocked itself. Had they been on a computer, you would’ve hacked into the system to delete every file.
Thanksgiving is a time where everyone unites as happy as organ donors to eat everything they can get their grubby, little hands on. That’s the day when whoever cooks your food, no matter what it is, on that very day, you have to give non-stop compliments about how good the food is. The chef spent hours deboning, seasoning, blending, and marinating everyone’s food for hour after sweaty hour and will not cut a sales pitch for your unhungry, allergic ass to eat the food. Now, if you have the nerve… if you have the audacity… if you have the cajones to say that the stuffed turkey is too spicy, you just lost your plate! The plate itself was a damn 5 month plan on layaway.
Here’s a little advice. Never make a toast when you come to my house. The glasses cost too much of a fortune to risk being broken. Nobody’s fixing you anything, especially if you already cook like you get the oven and drier mixed up. It’s worse when the maintenance screws your faucet on your sink, but when you turn it where it’s supposed to be hot, it’s cold and vice-versa. I’ll take the turkey. Shit!
That meal must taste really bad to build up the courage to say, “Mom! Can you just lay a tad bit off the seasoning!” Don’t say, “Mom! I’m vegetarian,” “I want a gluten free meal,” or “I’m lactose intolerant.” You better learn to tolerate. It don’t matter what disgusted faces your relatives may make while you eat, when the chef looks at you, you smile back and eat. You know how you can taste a smell? Your wife may look like she tastes the filthy smell of the burnt beets. You know that smell. Licorice, porridge, and prunes with the topping of hot, foul garlic breath. That’d kill your fangs before tasting the cavity-infested coleslaw.
There’s always one member of the family undiagnosed or on prescriptions; I don’t know about you, but ass food don’t mix with prescriptions. The sibling would raise their hand like their still in class, then ask what the chef put in the food. Now, do not tell anyone you put your foot in it. Once the chef says that, the table comes flying over and you see the long, overdue reaction on everyone’s faces.
Check your calendars! This ain’t the soul food you dreamt of for ages. Hands down, this is the type of food that’d make you want to snitch like a natural born know it all. You’d snitch to grow a dick, but grow a dick and you won’t snitch. Snitch to end the chef’s goddamn life. The food taste’s like leftover birdcage droppings with more stories for your ass.
I’ll tell you that after you get done eating some spicy shit, your ass is dynamite like a two-timin’, constipated bomb squad. You’ll be on that fuckin’ stool longer than a washed-up woman does her makeup. You’ll be defecatin’ longer than a common snapping turtle three-way on happy hour. You’ll still be shittin’ if there’s only one bathroom in the household, no porta potties outside, and your mother kicks down the door to shit in the shower while you’re shittin’… and she’s starin’ directly at you like a private investigator with a fuckin’ deadpan face! Your ass wouldn’t want to get up right away either when there’s a buddy system around or risk walkin’ around with cocoa sludge in the crease of your keister.
The dog will fly out the pet flap to vomit, then fly back in to vomit in the toilet you’re sitting in! So, now you’re walking around with grilled eggnog steak on your hot link. This isn’t something that actually happens to people on Thanksgiving… occasionally.
That’s a shitty story that’d have you countin’ to eighty-twelve with rubbin’ ointment. I’m done fighting tomato cans.
I’m very fortunate enough to live the single life. My heart wears an Eskimo hat with a Seattle Freeze influence. You know someone’s lonely when they get car fur on their bathroom bar of soap. If it was just my hair, you’d mistake my public hair for my mustache.
You ever been invited to your girlfriend’s parents house for dinner for the first time? I know. First impressions are like genies and alcohol. First, you get dressed up in a nice, sharp, immaculate suit, prepare for the questions her parents will ask you like it’s a 3 hour long interview, then put on cologne, take a peppermint from “gram gram,” drive your girlfriend to the house if she isn’t there already… Yes, her parents are watching if you have a car and if you open up the door for her because that’s a part of the interview.
Next thing you know, you’re sweating, press the fuckin’ doorbell, and the broken doorbell won’t stop buzzing. It’s a way to wake up every baby in a neighborhood, but this is like a retirement home for dog food tasters. Finally, her parents open the door and you pretend like a ghost did it. Gosh! Sitting down at the table is painstaking. After all of the important questions are out the way from why you want to take care of the woman of your dreams, to how you’ll provide for her, they expect you to laugh at their jokes.
© June 10, 2017. All Rights Reserved.
In Portland, sweet as saccharine, a mother of five, Barely alive from her harsh attack.
Wearing a mildewed, yellow shirt, Devika, 4-years-old, strangles her with a diaper.
As French chanson music plays in the township, Jane searches outside for bugs to smack.
On a drill press table, a snobbish Kim osculates her lily-white, imaginary friend lover,
Wearing an excessive amount of her mother’s make-up in her capacious closet.
Gaudelia giggles with gusto, flickering on the kitchen lights
While Samantha flushes the hurling toilet and piddles after a lazy sit.
The family cat (Damerae) is on the ceiling-mounted fan, ridding his fear of heights.
Meanwhile, as if a homemade, licorice dessert, Jane picks up a spider from a crevice
With her mouth wide open. Her mother’s mellifluous scream passes the town,
Loud enough to cease her engrossment like a timeless promise.
Jane licks the fugacious cioccolàto on her gelato cone as the sunray beams down.
“J-Ja-Jane J-Ju-Judith Frisky! Put that spider down right this second,”
Overhearing the struggling yell, Kim hits her head against the hiding wall,
Feeling like a circus animal receiving a tangible french kiss, then shunned.
Mother Purnima removes the reeking diaper from her neck, which smells like ethanol.
Of abraded skin, her sore neck matches the fudge. The rest of her children are five.
Devika stuffs a pizza slice inside a toaster with unsanitized hands.
With apprehension, an ill-starred Devika climbs down a stool able to survive,
Turning around to see the mother’s forlorn, dark figure. Purnima misunderstands.
Flicking on the light switch, mother chucks the food in the trash bin, unplugs the toaster,
Then catches the humbled black cat, (the factotum) who suffers from PTSD.
It’s the ninth time she saved Damerae’s life. She tears a rolled up poster,
Which was a silhouette of her kissing her husband between a potpourri.
Purnima yells, “Quiet!” There’s cricket sounds from the opened, front window.
She proceeds her vehement yell of verbal ecocide, “We’re going on a vacation!”
Gaudelia weeps in deep distress. Kim’s lover is see-through.
The children are held incommunicado like a solemn oath opposing desperation.
The cordial cat sweeps. Icky, white substance falls from the ceiling to the mother’s face.
Kim holds a round, black pincushion walking away as Purnima looks up.
Sections of the ceiling are covered with spoiled food. Kim pulls out pins. It’s a disgrace.
Jane enters. Damerae ogles her bowl of strawberry chutney and affogato in a black cup.
The evening is priceless. Devika twirls a vacuum cord while spraying an inhaler.
As if saliva can be refined with the mother’s touch, she wipes her forehead.
Pretending the affogato is liquor, Jane falls. It’s December,
Where Jane’s fear is ahead. Jane’s face is redder than her last bunk bed.
There’s an indefinite future when weight falls down the cat’s flexuous spine.
Devika sits on the cat giggling. Thus, the mother carries Devika.
Damerae’s form turns serpentine. Kim locks the front door. She despises the sunshine.
After adjusting her children’s booster seats, the van careens to California.
She’s going bananas. She promised herself she wouldn’t cede control of her place.
Like she’s speeding to Golgotha, she pass a bevy of benevolent pedestrians,
Who assist two, old ladies in wheelchairs cross the street. It’s an ineffable disgrace.
Her palms covers her face as Devika yells, “Green light!” louder than two martians.
She stops the van. One old lady is breastfeeding conjoined twins
While another is smoking a cigar in serenity. Thus, the smoker walks free.
The exasperated mother feels like she belongs in a loony bin as the world spins.
Crashing to her windshield, a clean-cut artist drops a red paint brush down a marquee.
The windshield is cracked. “I want to go home!” Samantha whines as screams occur.
With her face out the windshield, Purnima looks up at the guilty painter,
Then, the airbag shoots out the steering wheel. Her eyesight turns to a blur,
But she hears her children being immature. She turns into an enraged restrainer.
Purnima pops the airbag with her sharp fingernails, driving pass dilapidated buildings.
Devika’s palms connect for a meretricious prayer as her mother steps out of the car.
Wind storms from Purnima’s lungs. She screams like receiving a hundred bee stings.
The painter is petrified while the sun sets. Things can’t possibly get more bizarre.
© Sept. 28, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
A wish list in a castle
Cake,
But the cake’s in a bright
Castle.
The pentagram grants the
Wishes,
But not on the hours the cake’s
Made.
Come alone at the proper
Time,
And you’ll see the wish list in
Shade.
But if you see the cake, you
Die.
Shy away–don’t do the
Dishes.
Two seconds to exit the
Place.
But if you run, one cake, you’ll
Buy.
Return fast without a
Hassle.
If there’s one, the cake needs a
Dime.
Don’t shake the cake, or it’s just
Fake.
Now, try to find your breathing
Space.
© Sept. 20, 2014. All Rights Reserved.
The rabbit stole my bike and went to Baghdad.
I lost my dad, but not like the bike I had.
My bike had full speed like a cool time machine.
I could cut through time and foresee any gene.
What was once good is blood and pure evil here.
Unlike my angry dad, my time, I could steer.
What I fear is the rabbit, but she went fast.
She was in a costume, and I chased her last.
Isaiah Lawrence 