F. Michael LaRosa is perhaps the only registered Democrat in South Carolina. According to the US Census, that's one in 4,561,242 people. He's really that special. His work has appeared in a smattering of print and online publications over the years, including Evergreen Chronicles, Blue Collar Review, The Nocturnal Lyric, JUGGs & Leg Show (during his glory days), Underground Voices, and Yellow Mama. His short stories will soon appear in Yellow Mama and The Battered Suitcase. Watch for 'em.

Four Poems (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)

Ugly Man's Manifesto

Some of us aspire to mediocrity.
It's the best we can do.
We with our big noses.
Our bad teeth.
Our small dicks.
Our extra digits.
We just want to be ordinary.
Average.
To live ordinary lives.
We don't want to be cast out anymore.
Driven from the village.
Shunned. Spat upon.
Laughed at.
We never asked to be different.
We didn't purposely cultivate our freakishness.
We with our lisps. Our effeminate ways.
Our weird proclivities that came from nowhere.
We stutterers with our nervous conditions.
Our tics. Our profound sensitivities. Our avoidant behaviors and social ineptitude.
Our performance anxiety.
Our borderline autism.
Our schizoid tendencies.
We don't want to be pointed at anymore.
Or pointed out.
We with our mild deformities that aren't actual handicaps but that, nonetheless, handicap us.
Our beady eyes. Our tiny ears that stick out. Our receding chins.
Our birthmarks and moles and hairy brows.
Our excessive dandruff. Our psoriasis. Our vitiligo.
Our acne. Our flat butts.
We've had enough negative attention.
We'd had enough in grammar school when you and your middling little tribe of friends formed a circle around us in the playground and said all those mean things.
As though you had a right.
As though, based on your genetic makeup which you did absolutely nothing to earn and which, between you and me, is not that great anyway, you had some sort of license to dole out abuse.
To point out our shortcomings. To mock the best we had to offer.
Now we just want our puny share of what you take for granted.
To stand in a checkout line without you gawking at us like we're from another planet.
To sit at a table in a fast food restaurant without your kid staring a hole through us or asking embarrassing questions.
Can't you control that impolite little fucker?
We can't help that we weren't lucky as you.
That we came up short in the genetic lottery.
It's not our fault, you blasé' motherfucker, that your own deformities are so minor as to fall within society's range of acceptability, but ours are not.
Anytime now the fates may yet dictate some anomaly in your life.
Your beautiful tan could backfire. Melanoma could eat the nose right off your currently acceptable face.
A wacky thyroid could make you extremely fat or very thin with bulging eyes.
Then you could be like us.
Almost normal.
Not quite human.
Always a stranger.

For a Woman in Pink Shorts

We, my sister, are only slaves.
We've been whipped into shape,
our backs ripped open,
our hope held for ransom,
our determination starved into submission,
our futures sacrificed to the comfort of the masters.
We spent our youth chained to a cash register
or with shovel in hand,
begging for a ten cent raise.
It was never enough.
Our potential was traded for a little respite,
for a few minutes lounging with a lover in the cool sheets,
the air conditioner running full blast
and the sun beating on the trailer roof
heating things up,
making the weeds grow.
Listen...
when was the last time you were worshiped?
When did a man lay his heart at your feet?
When did you become his hope?
How long has it been since prayers were whispered in your delicately sculpted ear
and every Eucharistic curve and nuance of your perfect body studied,
all your gorgeous flaws adored?
When was everything that makes you blush,
everything you try to hide
made holy by light?
When did each perceived blemish, every sacred imperfection,
every crazy idea,
every stupid thing you ever said or did
become an honor to touch and taste and savor?

At some point in a man's life you're all of heaven.
Low rent goddesses, grey showing at the roots,
soft dimpled thighs,
delicious
freckled chests
with a hint of pale cleavage.
Dirty feet in flip flops, pink polish chipped.
Lines are etched in your face,
the price of a lovely tan back in the day.
Or of a pack a day.

She hides her belly and sagging breasts
under a big tee shirt.
She knows that life is wound too tight, that time is like an old slapstick comedy.
Flickering acrobatics in greyscale.
Player pianos.
Deadpan humor.
Man against the machine.

I watched you
buy that lottery ticket,
you in your tight, pink shorts,
and thought how lovely you are.

I wrote this poem for you.

Super Powers Of The Avoidant Personality

I can shrink to the size of a fruit fly.
Almost invisible,
and with a tiny voice to match.
No one hears a word I say.
No one gives a shit what happens to you when you're this small.
They'll just as soon smash you as to look at you.
They won't think twice.

Or I can become my shadow.
Just a hazy silhouette.
Again, almost invisible, but solid.
Like tinted glass.
People bump into me a lot when I'm my shadow self.
"Oh," they say. "I didn't see you standing there."

I can become completely hollow so that wind whistles through me.
It's like music, but eerie.
Like the moan of a ghost.
People don't like the sound of it.
I'm light as ocean froth when I'm hollow.
I have to hold onto something, lest I blow away
like a dust bunny in a wind storm.

I can be completely invisible but it's worthless.
Because it only works when nobody's looking.
I know I'm invisible because I know how it feels,
but then somebody looks in my direction and there I am,
plain as day.
Hiding, as they say, in plain sight.
So complete invisibility, at least in my case, is not that big a deal.

Pension Envy (Coveting The Rewards of Complacency)

He spent 30 years working at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
He got the job when he was 21.
There were annual raises. Regular reviews for promotion.
Paid vacations.
Health insurance without copays.
When his boss retired he was promoted to supervisor.
He drove a "company car," which he gassed up right there, alongside the highway patrolmen.
Our tax dollars at work.
Now he's retiring.
He and his wife will be the taking their RV into the up country for a few weeks.
"Get away from the heat," he says.
"Must be nice," I tell him.
"It is."
He's packed the fishing gear.
The guitar.
A cooler full of beer.
He's 51 years old.
Four years younger than I.
I don't know how he did it. I couldn't have done it.
I spent my life looking for some sort of breakthrough.
Some miracle that would set me free.
Some clue to help solve the mystery.
A piece of the puzzle that, once in place, would allow me to somehow circumvent the daily, mind numbing grind of the work-a-day world.
One idea.
That's all I needed.
One short story. One article. One piece of art.
Something amazing.
A catalyst.
Of course, I punched the clock, too.
On the side.
I mean, you've got to pay the rent.
Keep the lights on.
Eat.
So I worked six months here.
Two years there. Five someplace else.
It was a struggle to show up every day to do the same things, see the same faces.
I'd do it as long as I could, and then I'd quit.
Move onto to the next pit of Hell.
But I paid the rent. Kept the lights on.
Stayed fed.
Kept trying.

Listen...
if I wanted to be upbeat I could count certain aspects of my so-called career as successes.
Published works. An art show. That kind of thing.
But in truth, it's just been one long, exhausting, and basically futile struggle.
And don't get me wrong.
We make our choices, and I wish him well.
Still, it seems ironic that the one who wanted out so badly, who struggled so hard against the current will be here, in this mundane hell, probably until he keels over, while that complacent son of bitch is fishing in the mountains of North Carolina.