The Hippie Parade

Love Fast

2010-12-24T22:36:00.003-05:00

"I had to squint to find you there,
my eyelashes broken ,
venetian blinds fluttering in the wind...
and then
there you were...
skinny legs and
yesterday's beard,
drenched in sloppy beerfoam spray,
the Ocean's last kiss ...
barefooted and climbing the dunes...
back to me,

the girl in the sandbox."

I stumbled on this tonight.
Remembered the very day I painted it.
The sudden claustophobia
of fat babies and tourists,
week-end surfers,
sun goddesses,
scrunching in closer to me,
running from the tide.

Remember
their make~shift fear
of the deep deep waters

rising...

tents and towels rolling,

sand buckets and sandwiches floating.

And tonight,
I know,
suddenly,
finally,
what it meant all along.

I'm not afraid of the murky water at all,
the knee splashing,
breath taking,
roll me under,
kiss the earth tide....

It's the low tide,
the quiet wave...
the waiting waters that scare me...

The Peace.

I'm afraid
that without
the struggle,
toes scrunched in the sand,
seaweed choking me,
undertow
stripping me
down to
skinned knees
and
breathless last moments,
Peace won't be all I dreamed of.

Then again,
I'm tired of dreaming...

I'm ready to live...
to Love...
And I don't have a lot of time to waste.

Eraser Lips and other secrets

2010-12-02T22:03:00.005-05:00

I haven't been hiding. I haven't been busy. Or tired.

I've been learning.

I've been shedding skin. And sunning naked in my new colors.

And I haven't been alone.

I've buried a friend. Kissed 17 years of laughter and mischief, crooked smiles, and secrets good-bye...I've been waiting for her to answer me, to visit, to rock my world...waiting for her to cross over...waiting for the teensy weensy sign that she's OK. That it really rocks over there. I've been listening to a newfound silence. And suddenly, I realize, that not all my friends will be ghosts...they won't all trip me in the kitchen, haunt me in my sleep, follow me into the corner store. Sometimes, they'll just disappear.

And that's OK.

When I go, I'm gonna snatch a knot in her ass.

Because I miss her.

I've been camping out at The Men's Center. Visiting on Sundays. Sending care packages that get rifled through, and edited, and recorded. I've collected quarters. So that on Thanksgiving we could buy a Coke for a dollar twenty five from the vending machine. And share it. We can't touch, but we can share.

I've watched my 5lb 2oz baby boy grow. Into a man. The hard way.

And I've prayed.

I've had an affair. And called it off. And started it all over again. I've confused comfort with Love. And Love with memories. And yesterday with today. I've settled, and rocked the boat, and tumped it over upside down. I've tested it, and driven it, and painted it every color, including wrong. I've feigned happiness, and forgotten that what I was faking didn't make me happy.

And I've learned that to be accepted, sometimes, you have to accept. To welcome open armed the difference. That there will never be the symbiotic sameness that I thought was karmic. That perhaps, in our difference, we can build a bridge...And we can carry each other...

And that, in that very need...

We are the same...

I've fallen. And blown out my tattle~tale arm. My drawing arm. My tell~tell arm. I can't paint colors without an extra set of hands to twirl the paper. I can't buy beer unless someone I know and someone that loves me will tote it to the car and pop it in my fridge. I can't shift gears, zip my jeans, or open the pickle jar.

I'm lucky.

I've learned that:)

I'm old now....

2010-10-22T00:53:00.003-04:00

And I revel in it...

My skin is saggy, a little loose,
and Mick Jagger and I have a lot in common....

I finally have a beer belly.
A pudge.
A little love handle, or two.
I can still suck it in, but rarely remember to.

I snore.

Loudly.

Or so I'm told.

And I'm my Nana's grandchild.

I can't see to put on make~up, and didn't wear it when I could.
I only date men who are as blind or half again as I am.
And in our blurred up, trailing world, where oak leaves are green smears in the sky, and clouds are marshmellows....
I'm beautiful.

Or so I'm told.

The music comes on and I shimmy.
I swirl.
I twirl.
I pretend I'm a barefooted ballerina making love to the Blues.
I'm 17 again....
barefooted,
and tipsy,
barely balanced on Chris's coffee table.

One day I'll fall off, and break a hip...

Break the magic...

But until then,
I'm old...
and
Loving it....

I believe in butterflies and beer.

The White Shoes

2010-09-29T20:19:00.003-04:00

I hated to do it. To run the Ad. To field the phone calls. To sit one on one in the lobby and listen to list after list of ' I can do this' and ' I can do that' and 'I could even do your job if you hired me'. I hated to say yes and I hated to say no. I hated hiring someone new as much as I hated losing the old.

And when she walked up to the glass door, skinny knees touching, white pumps, scuffed on the toes, and bare legs laced with goose bumps, I groaned. It was 20 years ago, and everyone knew you wore pantyhose on an interview and nobody, no~one but little girls in Sunday school wore white patent leather shoes. And she didn't look like no Sunday School Girl to me.....

She crossed her legs, wrapped them together like skinny snakes buckled at the ankles, and smiled at me. I smiled back. Crooked teeth to crooked teeth.

And I interviewed her. 'Have you ever done this? This? That?' and she answered in color. Elaborate stories, embellished , I knew, with a twist of lime.

Finally, I tossed out the inevitable punch line. "Why do you want this job?"

And when she looked at me, blue eyes tearing, swelling, gobs of fat mascara running and answered me, I knew she was hired.

"I don't. I don't want it all. I need it. "

On her first day, I was late.
I don't remember why.
I forgot to feed my children breakfast and had to stop at McDonalds,
I had to check the coffee pot,
I was running on empty.
I don't remember,
but I do remember her starkly blue eyes, in shock and grimacing at her newfound profession, and her chalky brand new K~mart tennis shoes. She was officially a 'podiatric assistant'.

For a gazillion years, we laughed.

We shared.

We hugged. We hollowed down. We hunkered down. We celebrated, cried, and wrote our names on freshly poured concrete.

"I don't know how to dance' she said. And I watched her teeter in high heels on a dance floor, a newborn grasshopper leaping, learning, stretching....until she was free.

"I can do it" she muttered. Cigarette dangling crosse eyed from her lips, combat boots on her teensy feet, lugging bags of concrete into my backyard....building a haven for a friend.

"Just call me Cinderella" she whispered, cleaning up everyone's mistakes and wiping the soot off her face...

It's been 20 years now. She's seen my naked behinny, held my hand, held me up by the armpits when I couldn't take another step. I've passed her paper bags when she couldn't breathe, two more dollars for a lotto we'd never win, and my hand~me~down clothes because they looked better on her. We've laughed til we choked, and cried til we laughed, we've spent money we never had, and had moments together money couldn't buy. We've birthed babies. And babies that had babies. We've raised hell and a whole lotta children. We've worn a lotta shoes.

And today I pray for peace. For a martini moon. And her eternal smile.

Today I pray for the girl that never ever judged another human being.

Because she knew what it was like to walk in their shoes.

She wore a lotta shoes in her lifetime. Dirty shoes. Ill fitting shoes. Hand me down shoes.

White shoes.

No shoes.

Angels are like that.

Tarantula

2010-09-24T22:57:00.006-04:00

I sat indian style,
in tattered cut offs,
dirty bare feet tucked under
opposite ankles,
and I colored in peace...

It was hot
and the rusty ceiling fan rattled
and tattled,
the incessent chirping of yet another thing broken,
hanging on,
hanging in there,
doing it's job.

I smeared colors.
Smudged them,
blobbed them
into irredescent
and muddy puddles,
convinced that when I stopped
an image would appear.

Mother Mary,
a Peace Sign,
anything that meant something...

I dipped the paint brush to my right,
in the stupid plastic Tiki Bar Cup...
and leaned towards the blue...
tainted water dripping on my knee...

and then she
waddled,
crab crawled,
out from under me...

The Tarantula.

Just give me peace.

And if I have to live with bugs...
send the butterflies
the dragonflies,
and
the praying mantis....

The Gift

2010-09-14T23:15:00.003-04:00

I say.
I tell.
I spill,
blab on and on and on.

I don't keep secrets.

My heart chitters, my palms sweat, and I close my eyes if you drive fast
and I'm sure I'm going to die...
And then I laugh with my mouth open when we fly around the corner and

Live.....

My eyes twitch when you poke me in the eyeballs with the Truth...
and I have to swallow it...
And I make the 'universal choking' sign...
just before
I get it....
and the universal Peace Sign when I understand...

I dance in the dark,
to liquid lyrics
and
drum beats
and the lazy casual smell
of honeysuckle on a tumbling fence...
not to your
recited words,
aftershave lotion,
or five o'clock shadow.

I cry.
In between commercials.
In the arms of my wayward son growing strong.
On the empty porch buried under colored crayons...

I talk to strangers.
Women with budding baby bumps,
homeless men with shoes I could have walked in,
dead dragonflies.

And I tell you how I feel...

It's real.

If you listened,
it would
be
the
gift.....

Be brave.
Feel the love...

Prepare....

2010-06-16T22:26:00.005-04:00

I always wanted to be a good girl scout.
And when I wasn't...
when I wandered off on the way to meetings to stare at the Tinker Man...
scribbled on my sit~upon...
burned the house down on the way out the door to my first camp out...

I gave up.

And then I always wanted to dress up like one for Halloween.

Pretend to be a good Girl Scout...

To be prepared...

I wanted to parade around in my little green dress, and my anklet socks,
earning badges I was proud of,
and melting Smores on an open fire.

Instead,
I dressed up like hookers, and hippies, and David Bowie....
zombies, and witches, and a Box of Frosted Flakes...
faeries, and cinderellas, and neon bumble bees,
cowboys, and drunks, pregnant football players and butterflies...

I woke up every halloween and pulled a new face out of the chest of drawers, and wrote pretend Frank Kafka novels...
rang random doorbells...
And held out my bag for candy...

I don't have a sweet tooth anymore...

And I don't want to be a Girl Scout anymore...

Knock~Knock

2010-06-08T20:27:00.006-04:00

I know you're there,
just on the other side,
rattlin' my chains
and tap~tap~tapping on my spirit...

Silly little ghosts,
phantom pains,
wayward boys...

You can't rock my world.

I wake up with lazy legs,
leftovers from dancing to the Black Eyed Peas....
with a new found smile,
courtesy of my latest tumble and another dip into the mayo jar and visit to The Man
with The Big Red Smile for a calling card.
I wake up to the cool hum of air conditioning still purring,
the filter, a cardboard mosaic I made myself,
to the sound of redbirds frolicking in
what used to be bouganvilla..
to the smell of yesterdays coffee,
run twice through,
and all the better because it's still brown...
and this...

an
irredescent butterfly trapped forever in my kitchen window...

Sometimes even

stray shots

in the night...

Are accidental pretties...

I have to live with it forever...

I hope you can....

Sometimes you have to...

2010-06-05T09:58:00.003-04:00

Chalk everything up to experience....

And run away...

Find Sunshine in places you'd never think to look...

Sometimes,
you just have to
Pretend....

At Sea

2010-05-01T19:22:00.004-04:00

I've been wading....

britches pulled up passed my knees,

toes bristling in ice cold water...

the waves

slapping me

silly,

stupid,

straight again...

I'm not drowning yet...

but I've wandered further....

knee high,

neck high,

way over my head...

Sometimes when I look back,

I can't see shore....

God,

don't let me tire of treading water....

Drained....

2010-02-10T21:08:00.004-05:00

Midnight in the kitchen.

The 99 cent bubbles
swirled,
twirled,
cascaded one
right after another down the drain,
each one another hopeful contestent for the Miss America Pageant...
savoring her moment of fame,
bottom lip quivering,
then disappearing forever...

Tiny little Hungry Man Dinner carrots
bobbed,
drowning,
but pretending for a moment to be orange buoys in a silver sea.

I turned the water on harder.
Hot and Cold.
Everything at once.

I splayed my fingertips under the spigot, water splattering, spraying, splashing everywhere.

I cried.

And then I saw them.

The butterfly wings.....

Peace, Love, and Passion, Please...

2010-01-06T21:04:00.004-05:00

I like to drive slow....creep along and daydream, sing really loud, to Primal Scream and Led and Stones, chain smoke until the ashtray looks like a Blooming Onion, and flash two-fingered peace signs at the folks cussing me in silent screams as they zip past me.

I like to ride in fast cars. To pitch my contacts out the window in an act of littering defiance so the highway is a blur. To feel my hair madly tangling with every mile we fly, blonde speghetti in the wind.

I like to dance to make believe music. To dip low, and long, and pretend I'm a ballerina on top of a vinyl jewelry box. To dance in the street barefoot, under full moons and pouring rains and streetlamps sweltering in the heat. I like to dance really, really slow to fast music, and lightening fast to so~slow~it's~a~lulabye~music. I like to be asked to dance. And sometimes I like to say no.

I like to laugh until I cry, choke, cough, spew beer everywhere. Until I can't remember why I'm laughing and have to cross my legs so I don't accidently tinkle. Hell, I like to laugh so much, I don't really care if I wet my pants, send my gum richocheting into your lap, get the hiccups. I just like to laugh.

I like to Love. Hard and fateful. Ridiculously comitted to the moment. Wreckless and silly.

Forever can be a really, really short time...

You gotta make the most of it.

Urban Myths and Mich Lights

2010-01-04T20:39:00.002-05:00

She told me dozens of times, the colored yarn twined between her fingers, crochet hook zipping up and down...."How you bring in the New Year is how you spend the year"....fingers flying, eyes down.

I laughed.

Smudged out another cigarette, and told more stories.

She meant it.

I brought it in upside down, sideways, sound asleep. I burned up the old year, sent it ashes to ashes into the wind in the middle of the tiny paved street. I buried it in the back yard, stuffed it in a suitcase and set it out for the garbage man. I danced to Stones. Danced with fossils. Danced by myself. I made resolutions, promises, threats to an empty sky. I cha-chinged it, cheered it, clinked it, feared it. I tried it everyway but right.

And then I put on my cowboy boots and that damned dress I had to have and sashayed it right in through the kitchen door...

Sometimes you've gotta put on your kickers to get that dust off of your petticoat....

Peace doesn't have to be a Fairytale

2009-12-13T18:24:00.007-05:00

Little black cowboy boots, scuffed, the pink and blue embroidered flowers natty and dirty. Good. I didn't want flowers. Jesse James didn't wear bouquets on his toes and neither did this 4 year old. I wanted 'em dirty, and a little too big, so my toes could scrunch when I had to stop in a hurry. I wanted 'em pointy, like the school pencils the big kids carried to school on the first day. I need them that way so I could Kick harder, write my name in the sand in Giant Letters, and squash things on the ground, round and round, until they went splat.

Giant blue blow up pool, tilting just a little bit to the left, so there's a deep, deep end where the water is cooler and my imagination can dive, where I can fall off an innertube backwards and suddenly be scuba diving in a bottomless sea.... three feet and 6 inches under the surface of reality. I know how to pretend. To float. To dream. To make make~believe the best true story that ever happened.

We pile up on the couch and plug in a gazillion cords, punch all the buttons, bop the broken TV on the head a few times and laugh. Grrrrzzzzghaplumph! Dusty ole video rattles in the box below the set and a giant Warning flashes across the screen.....It's starting. The B rated movie at the dirty old, last one standing, Drive in. We scooch the coffee table really close to the couch, because there's really not a lot of floorboard in this old mustang. He lights the mosquito coil and tosses it in the ashtray. I balance the bucket of buttered pop corn on the make believe console and we laugh. Climb into the backseat and pop open the cooler. At intermission we throw popcorn out the window so everyone will look and see the Peace Signs I scribbled with my toes on the fogged up windshield. We laugh and hide under the blankets, 16 again.

"We're broke, but we've never been poor" she whispered, Kissing me on the forehead and handing me the whacked off above the knees vintage prom dress...and the blue suede heels two sizes too big. "Stuff kleenex in the toes, and have a good time tonight, you're Cinderella".

On our way out the door, she made us pose for pictures. She held the little Brownie camera up high, eye level to our smiles and clicked. Over and over again. It never flashed. The make-believe film didn't budge,

but our memories did.
Forever.

Standing outside....

2009-12-09T00:11:00.006-05:00

I tried to squint. To just peek, to abandon peripheral vision and logic, and the hand~me~down wisdom I wear like tattered jeans.
To peep through pretend glasses, sprinkled with rhinestones, and tortouise shell rims.

To float.

To play driftwood again.

But in the wee hours of the night,
My eyes pop open
and the new words ticker tape by me,
bleached out confetti hung out to dry on the line...
Somewhere off in the distance,
the old words,
bouncing off a Drive-in movie screen,
silent now,
are bigger than life....

And I'm haunted.

By the laughter. The naked laughter of wreckless nights.

And
the skinned knees
of crashing...

Haunted...
by the accidental high
of wildness.

Ghosts never slam doors. They rattle chains, but they never slam doors.....

In the morning, I'm putting dead bolts on.

And tomorrow night,I'm dancing....

Through my lookin' glass....

2009-11-24T21:48:00.006-05:00

He's crying. It's too much. 3 miles home on a dropped foot, a dragging, lagging, "Good-God, it's killin' me" foot. 6 foot shoulders, skinny now, slumped. He's whipped. Done.

And yeah, the truck blew up. Smack. Pop! Poof and it was gone.

I smile and say I'll fry the steaks.

In my world, his life was saved. Tomorrow we'll call a tow truck.

She dials my number 6 times in a row. Leaves a raspy, breathy message every time. I hear her gasp between beeps, between the canned voice reciting "You have 5,4,3,2 more new messages". I call her back and she collapses, homeless for the night, desperately driving in circles.

I smile and say I'll turn the porch light on.

"Not tonight, baby. You're not homeless tonight. And tomorrow the sun will rise and we'll figure it all out"

I fall and knock my teeth out. I cry. And laugh. Fall into the arms of my new best friend forever that I've never seen again. I rack up a phenomenal bill with my next best friend, the dentist next door.

I smile and don't drink koolaid.
Don't ride anything upside down.
Don't hang out in bars with black lights...
Kiss with the abandon that only comes with age and accidents and peace.

I go to bed with the big stuff rocking my world
and wake up
a thousand times spinning,
twirling,
hurling if I could....
And then the sun rises...

And I smile again...

Tomorrow is the gift of peace.

Slow Dancing to Fast Songs

2009-11-18T20:19:00.003-05:00

At 17, I did it barefooted and braless, Pink Floyd pinging off the neon walls. Climbed right up on the coffee table and danced, dipped, ca-chinged to the sounds of the cash register clanking...

Bubble eyed gold fished swam in the bathtub, lost in the psychedelic world we painted on their clawfooted world. Christian smoked a fat one. Strangers came and went. And the music played on and on and on.

And we danced.

At 19, I wore neon green platforms and borrowed white painter paints. I rubbed elbow to elbow, knee to knee, through a sea of strangers drinking nickel beer and danced up the steps and down again, Making grand entrances over and over again.

We danced....

In and out of my twenties,
in and out of revolving bars
into raging oceans,
waist high in midnight currents....

At 30 I danced out of one life and in stilhetto heels and a drippy hippy satin dress, danced right into my next....
Tom Jones and the Art of Noise....
The Kiss....
Off the dance floor and into a sea green pool....
Navy blue fabric, and tea stained lace floating,
swirling.....
And we laughed...

Until we cried...

And in slow motion, a gazillion years passed and I watched black and white re-runs...
the music slurring, blurring, getting buried under dust bunnies...

Until I remembered...

And it wasn't exactly like riding a bike....
It didn't come back all at once...

Not until I closed my eyes....

And danced again...

The Kind of Rain...

2009-11-10T20:47:00.004-05:00

Tonight.

A little Hurricane gone lazy. Toodling off treck. Wandering like a magpie faerie lost in the woods....

The rains are here.

Delicious. Loud. Plump.

And in this quiet house, the sound I hear is yesterday....

Plodding along in Million's van, bumpity bumpity pot hole jumping down the one lane road through the forest, clod hopping over tree roots and spent beer cans to the opening in the woods, where the bon fire burned endlessly, umbrelled by oak trees, and a blessing we didn't know we had, to Peace Creek......

Piled under layers and layers of musty quilts, hand tacked and sewn of old men's suits and tattered over-alls...9 years old at Mamaw's house. The rain, a mad xylophone on the tin roof, and the car lights, flying past, strobe lights through the clapboard walls...the sounds of tires swooshing.....

Stacked in the hallway, tiny feet, sweaty arms and legs, pretending to play Twister while the Eye of the Storm passed, once, twice, three times and shook our little house like red dice in a cup and spilled it out on the lawn.....the sound of the morning after rain, the safe rain....when we tip toed quietly through the dark out onto the wet earth that was our tomorrow...

Nineteen. Donned in yellow raincoats with hoodies. Rollerskating through Jacksonville in the pouring rain. Silly. In love with the moment. No reason to fear the lightening. Yet.

My wedding night. Yards of taffeta in the mud. I knew it would rain. It was supposed to...

Tonight....
Fat little tadpoles of luminescent rain falling from the sky.....

Perfect.

Rikkity Tikkity Tink!

2009-11-08T18:04:00.003-05:00

It was cold and our laughter billowed out in whispy cartoon clouds, mixing with the tart aroma of candied applies and mustard slathered pretzels. My fingers were almost frozen and I kept tap-tap-tapping my boots on the wooden steps trying to keep warm.

Half way up.

We laughed harder. More on purpose. More out of silly make believe fear.

The wooden track wobbled, shook, seemed to tilt in the air, as if the faintest breeze would topple the entire roller coaster over on it's side, and spill it into the boardwalk, a mangled erector set, glowing in the dark. The music stopped , or maybe it didn't, and up ahead of us, the white faces of instant ghosts climbed from their seats, teetering for just a moment to gain their strength, to breath again, and then the tentative laughter of those surviving this trip began again as they descended the other stairs. Free and Alive.

"Next" he shouted, gruffly arming Kimbies and I into the first seat, alcohol breath tucking us in. He started at the back.... one, two, three, twelve, thirteen, running the wooden track, slamming the safety arms down into lock, lock, lock....his dirty fingers barely grazed us, and the little train began to climb. We gave the arm a little wiggle. It bounced straight up. We slammed it down. It bounced again. We screamed. And screamed again. And went higher and higher in tiny rickety bursts of strength. We rounded the highest corner and snapped to the left. And began free falling. The two of us, elbows locked, parachuting. Choking. Huge fists on our necks, faceless fingers twined into our clothes, our hair, holding onto us by Angel's breath. We hit the bottom and slammed hard to the right, left, and I forget now, if we were shaking from the inside or the out, but I remember dying. Just before the next climb.

That was 25 years ago.

The first of many, many "never again"s.....

I woke up this morning with cotton candy in my hair. Two tattered ticket stubs stuffed in the back pocket of the crumpled jeans on the floor.

I woke up smiling.

You gotta love the fair......

Nana

2009-11-02T19:25:00.005-05:00

When I was 14, she was 66....
Blonde banana curls cascading down her back , dread locked ahead of her time. Skinny little legs and Blue Mascara. Patent leather pocket book exactly the color of The Yellow Submarine. My Nana. Skinny's Nana. Kimbies Nana. She was wild.

She laughed with no reserve, head tilted back, guzzling the wine of stolen moments from a long fluted glass.
She danced with the abandon of a Ballerina in red slippers, with the wind up wings of a Go-Go dancer, with the free spirit of a magpie faerie.
She told stories in a whispered language only those in cahoots would ever understand or remember in the morning.

She was tickled pink when women burned their bras, but believed in keeping the sexiest ones, the ones in ice cream colors and wicked lace, for the night time....
She rubbed elbows with everyone....catching their magic, and savoring it....
She Loved scary movies, patent leather boots, mini skirts, red lipstick, smokey bars, storytellers, rock and roll, Liberace, romance novels, and her handsome hubby....
She was wild....

She taught us secrets we'll pass on to our daughters and nieces....

I felt her,
heard her,
hugged her...
on Saturday night.....

And I know when she peeked down,
eyes sparkling,
head thrown back ready to laugh,
she was thrilled.

You taught me well, Nana.
I wore fishnets with the combat boots.....

The Red Cup...

2009-10-21T19:22:00.003-04:00

Sometimes....the clink is so soft,
so quiet,
the ta!dah! of soft red plastic,
cold beer splashing,
spirits smiling....

that you only hear it in remembering....

And then it happens again...
a Spontaneous Celebration...
one arm up in peace and love
stretching to kiss the sky and
one hand
snuggling the splash,
in the very moment
that the sisterhood,
the brotherhood,
the love,
becomes a wave...

That's how we do it down here....

Sticks and Stones

2009-10-16T22:45:00.003-04:00

For a moment,
a really really long moment,
I forgot....

What it was like to slide across my fake terraza floors, skating on the sand, under the heat lightning of a 1970's disco ball, a thousand strikes of a summer sky....

And dance...

My car stereo ate the last of Bob Dylan on a roadtrip through unamed cities, the computer spit out the Beatles with totally misplaced venom, and my Adobe crashed....hushing Mick Jagger forever from my playlist world....

And then...
I ordered 100 dollars worth of office sillies from a starving Office Supply Vendor, and they sent me the key....a little dime a dollar CD player with a thousand electrical cords dangling and a handy dandy remote player....

And I danced in a blues bar on an accidental night to accidental music...

And I remembered....

"You can't always get what you want,
but sometimes you get what you need"....

Even if it's the same old story....

Friday's are for dancing...

Cat Burglar

2009-10-14T20:02:00.005-04:00

He steals in through the summer door,
walking lightfooted past my porch light,
and slinks onto her porch to lick his paws.

He's waiting for the lightbulb that was once on ,
a cartoon style halo over her head,
to go out again...

To flicker for just a moment...

So he can steal her blind again.

Happy Hour

2009-10-10T19:04:00.005-04:00

Half way home.
Half way between high noon and sunset.
Half way between the listening and daydreaming.

That's when we did it.
Banged a 90 degree turn off the face of the earth and drove straight to the Ocean.

And without another word,
we walked straight out into the wild green sea,
clothes billowing up around us like abandoned parachutes,
cheap lighters and bubblegum wrappers floating upward,
confetti in reverse.
Deeper and Deeper and Deeper...

Until we were
halfway between the sand and eternity...

The waves were plump and
lazy,
cotton sheets blowing on the line...
and the water was Margarita Green...
crystal clear,
and frothed in salt.

I could see my toes...
and swirls of sand dancing with the current.

And for just a moment,
I thought that I had never seen life any clearer.
Or been more free.....

Peace, Love, and I'll have another beer, dear....

2009-10-04T21:52:00.006-04:00

She Barbie-doll walks across the floor, Cinderella shoes clacking on the floor, Rhinestone Cowboys on her fingers, and smiles with painted lips and glow in the dark teeth. He's right behind her, fingertips on the small of her back, swishing this way, and her way. They run a tab and dance the night away...An Arthur Murray re-run. They're in love...

Just ask them, they'll tell you....

He straddles the barstool and scuffs his pointed shoes on the floors while she giggles and swirls and twirls around him....eyes flitting in disco circles to see if anyone is watching. The show gets better with an audience. They're in love...

Just ask them, they'll show you....

She caresses her glass, swishes the cheap shot in lazy waves, and then eyes it like an Owl on a telephone pole. One determined Gulp and she's got hair on her chest. Her left hand travels and she accidently touches her neighbor.

She's looking for Love....

He nudges her, and she falls....head over heels...for him...and onto the floor...

I swing my legs Pippi Longstocking style, balancing, I hope...
Just high enough and brave enough not to ever go there.

I'll have another beer, dear...

And if it's all the same to you,
I'll keep believing in peace and Love...

Close your eyes....

2009-09-30T22:17:00.003-04:00

I can vividly remember the first night...

They sipped pink champagne in long fluted glasses and in between the vinyl grooves, they set their drinks on the mahongony table...

And it left rings in the morning....

She swirled and twirled to Ray Charles, Bobby Vinton, Louis Armstrong, Chubby Checkers, The Tijuana Brass....and just for fun...The Grasshoppers....He dipped, and spun....and laughed....

I sat on the couch and watched. Long gangly legs in a pink velvet dress and blonde bangs chopped off to match my Barbie Doll. Kimbies and I had to be very, very quiet, or we had to go to bed....

I barely breathed.

On the blue carpeted floor, they shimmied and watootsied and "Love potioned Number 9'd" each other.....

And then I grew up....

I went to first grade, and fifth, and senior prom. I fell in love and out of love. And got married. And divorced. I raised my babies. I danced on coffee tables, balconies....and beaches. I danced in empty bars, at concerts, in traffic, and in the kitchen....

But I never forgot...
they might have, but I didn't...

The magic of that night...

Of them closing their eyes and feeling the music....

I believe in Magic...

Hitchin' a ride....

2009-09-29T20:01:00.002-04:00

I believe in Peace and Love...
Everything in between is just a roadtrip....

I would have sent postcards.
I swear.
But I didn't take stamps, and
after a while,
I was sure if I just whispered to the wind....
scribbled breadcrumbs on lonely dirt roads,
left love beads in unexpected places....

You'd know....

It feels good to be home again...

To unpack my imagination
and toss it wildly on the floor,
next to crumpled blue jeans and empty cigarette packs.
To wake up to it the next morning....

Yeah, It feels good to be home again....

Let the Peace and Love begin....

"blessings, healing prayers.. may the next fall be in love ~s."

2009-07-28T21:40:00.002-04:00

I remember vividly...
the night I believed...

Rounding the lake...
the fluorescent lights swarming with blind mosquitos
and the Ghosts...
fog bouncing off the bows of lonely fishing boats...
dancing on the water,

And the Martini Moon...
there...
Above me...
The perfect cusp of glass raised to the sky,
Clinking! with the Stars...

And so it was,
that on that night...
under the tipping brim of an accidental moon...

I fell again...

Head over heels,
face first
into an even more
Accidental Love...

It's been a long time
since
I've laughed that hard.

Felt that hard.

Fell that hard.

Tonight,
the words tumbled from a keyboard,
splattered into my in~box...
from a friend...

are the same fiery color as that long ago Moon...

Our time...

2009-07-14T19:54:00.004-04:00

I dance in Combat boots. Laced one eyehook after another up my shin. I have a past. And I don't wanna go there again.

And so it goes....

The rinky tinky cell phone rattled across the kitchen counter.....vibrating over imported stone....crawling towards the end of the world...the inevitable crash. "I'll take it" I said, volunteering to both rescue the little thing from it's near death and to finalize our plans to meet up with friends in a little bit. And like all good volunteers, I followed instructions, slipped out the backdoor where there was "reception"....

One step out the door, two steps out from under the awning and then, on the third step, the last step, I fell off the earth. In the moonlight, I watched my falling from grace from somewhere high. "Watch your foot" I whispered to myself galloping in midair....And so she, me, tucked her right foot back, knee to chin, and dove Mark Spitz style over the ledge, left shin tracing, banging, skiing as we flew over the ledge, then the next ledge, and the next.....Courthouse steps I was never expecting, and then finally....the bottom....where the rock was finally flat. I kissed the floor quick. And unexpected. Chin, lips, nose. The sound of tiny tea cups shattering. And when the noise stopped, I knew.

I had barracuda teeth....

Today they sort of look like tiny pieces of chicklet gum. Strung across my smile.

But I'm smiling.

Miracles.

They blow me away....

Shortly after this could have been fatal fall, my handsome blue eyed baby boy, now bigger than his Daddy, was speared by the unexpected shattering of a 4 by 8 foot plate glass mirror, shearing his calf and severing both arteries and the major tendons, nerves, and muscles to his foot. His Father held on to him for life....a red sprinkler christening them both. Blue eyes locked into blue eyes. Waiting.

It's tomorrow now. The surgeries are over. There's a pulse.

And with my jack-0-lantern smile, I kiss him good night....

And believe.....

This House Believes

2009-07-11T14:07:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I see things...
Faces...mermaids...faeries...
Out of the corner of my eyes,
for a flash, an instance...

Or maybe, sometimes....
Things see me....

Photos taken last night at our little Hippie Slumber Party. These are the walls and windows to Kimbies world....

Steam trapped forever, frozen in a glass box at the bathroom window...And we all saw it...

A delightful painting of an English Garden, tucked behind glass in a Victorian frame....
And we all saw it...

The Faces....

We weren't haunted. We weren't afraid.
We danced.
Drank beer.
Told stories.
Cried.
In their company...

And somehow I'm sure, so did they....
In ours....

At the Matinee

2009-07-05T20:58:00.005-04:00

The last time I was going to be a ballerina, I clunked through all the closets, dug through the drawers, pilfered through old suitcases and found one....just one...tattered pink shoe. I pirouetted out into the living room, spinning madly to Jethro Tull, and my daughter, eyes barely lifting off the book she was reading, muttered..."Ma, you can't do that anymore, you'll break your foot". I never quit twirling.

And of course, I was in surgery, three days later. And still in a cast three months later.

Today, I was a ballerina again. On my own private stage, the heavily wooded curtains hiding me from the audience in the red velvet chairs. The wind an orchestra....the sun a spotlight shining only on me...

Sometimes we just have to believe....

And keep on dancing....

Running Away....

2009-07-04T10:42:00.004-04:00

Today, I'm pretending. All day. I decided that before I fell asleep last night, so I wouldn't have to wonder about it at all this morning.

I woke up to bedhead hair that's now half way down my waist, make-believe dreadlocks the colors of a drip castle at sunrise. I stood up and stretched, slowly padded through the house, the old cold congoleum covered in cat hair, sudden beach sand on terraza floors. I smiled.

In a little while I'm gonna whip up Bloody Mary's, ice cold and freckled with black pepper and then on the little splintered deck, I'm going to the Tiki Bar...the tinny sound of Rolling Stones dribbling from the little amfm radio will fill the Air....Amps the size of Winnebagos will hang from the sky, and for a little while, there won't be anything at all but the music and the movement and the moment.

When the Sun reaches Noon thirty, blazing, I'll bop over the ring of the blow up pool and fall face first into the ocean....A giant salty tidal pool just my size. When I open my eyes underwater, the coquina will be six inches deep, thousands of teeny tiny shells....a treasure chest under the sea. My little pink float will be a peace kayak, and I'll paddle out of my puddle and down to the river where the water runs up, up, up and away....

At dusk, I'll drape my long flowy girly swirly hippie dress over my head and fall asleep on the hammock, barefeet dangling in the overgrown grass, that for just one night, will be wild sea oats tickling my toes.

I'll dream paisley colored thoughts until the light show in the sky nudges me awake...an electrical parade just for me....

Peace....sometimes we just have to make it happen.....

Fairytwinkle Soup and Other Short Stories...

2009-07-01T19:20:00.004-04:00

I remember when Skinny was little and she used to run away. She'd have on the same little dress she wore for years and a quickly swiped pack of gum, maybe a marble or sidewalk chalk ,and she'd hit the trail. Long legs flying, hair dancing in the wind. And she never looked back. Not once.

Eventually, we'd have to go and fetch her. Find her in the cubby of an oak tree limb...periously dangling over traffic, or squatting at the lake edge, stirring the brown water with a magic stick....

And so it goes that we all grow up, grow old, and forget how to runaway....We pack electric toothbrushes, cell phone chargers, cowboy boots and crayons. Bayer aspirin, cold packs, and dirty laundrey. We take it all with us....

And then some.

Next year, I'm going Naked.

Now....

2009-06-09T20:36:00.005-04:00

It's 93 degrees on my porch and one by one, I shear off the legs from a stack of hand me down levis... These are for Skinny, this pair for Kimbies, a ratty tatty pair for myself. I reach down and wind my hair up into a knot, thread a bic pen threw it to keep it off my neck. I'm melting. And I smile. The broken AC is paying for how may nights at the beach?

I lug a giant tupperware box into the kitchen and start tossing necessary evils into it....salt, pepper, a cork screw, the camera, sidewalk chalk, a flashlight, paper fortune tellers, packs of no name cigarettes. We go without eating at home, we won't need much food at the beach....And I smile.

I wander through the house with a Winn Dixie bag and a peace backpack chocking random things in at will....the last bikini's I'll ever wear, magic markers and paper, little Love postcards for playing Pixies. I wonder for the last time where I left my little suitcases...what rendevous I came home from bagless...and what priceless pair of old jeans were lost in the leaving. And I smile at my makeshift luggage.

Less than 48 hours....

And we'll all be home...

Meet me at the Sandbar

2009-06-03T22:40:00.003-04:00

Midnight.

It wll be 7 days...
Until we've waited 365 days
to pull into the coquina drive way
and
be free...

7 days until
the hum of the dripping little air conditioner
lulls me to accidental sleep on the rare occassion I give up and give in to motel logic...
until we're pretend skating around the Tiki Bar...
Couples only...
Backward skate...
Until the sun rises 10 mornings in a row to smile at us...over a blue, blue endless highway, or playing peek~a~boo behind the pink clouds of a fickle morning...
Until Jimmy has to run to the corner store to stock up on Michelob Light...
Until we have no clocks, no rules, no barefoot boots and
we laugh at
everything
that landed us here
yet
again...

at the Love Fest....

Lying in a hammock tethered by heartstrings....

It doesn't matter whose child it is....

2009-05-26T23:03:00.005-04:00

There were wires everywhere and the hum of soft shoes padding up and down the halls almost drove me mad. How could they be so quiet when my world was exploding? How could my heart pound louder than every machine they had plugged in, louder than the canned voice calling Dr. Kildare on the loud speaker? How could they not crumple, fall to their knees with me...and know....

Long before he stabilized they told me in a foreign antiseptic language..."we've done all we can do"... and then they scattered, pigeons on a highway dodging five o'clock traffic.

And then he lived.

They came back to pack him up, uninsured, in my little red car. Naked and broken. Nobody wished us well on the way out the door. They didn't call in the morning to check on him.

This time they kept him.

And for 72 hours someone will watch over my child. With the cheese curl toes. The homemade tattoo on his ankle. The blonde hair with the slightest red sunset. For 72 hours he will be mad, but he'll breathe.

And I'll cry,
But I'll sleep...

Because he'll be safe....

The Crying Moon

2009-05-13T20:32:00.004-04:00

"Watch your step" he bellowed as I threw one clutsy foot out of the truck door...the second fringed moccasin hit the parking lot floor before I could quip over my shoulder "I know"....

Of course he knew I wouldn't remember to be careful...
couldn't,
it's not in my nature....
And before landing at our last stop,
I parachuted out the door
and landed in a pile of pick up sticks on the gravel driveway.

He cringed. I laughed. And we called it a night.

In the morning, black and blue, and hobbling yet again, I remembered falling in slow motion... the click clack of the door opening, the billowing waves of wind as my ruffled and crumpled skirt sailed behind me, the smile creeping up fast, frozen laughter captured in polaroid color, right before I hit the ground.

In the morning I remembered,
that sometimes,
I just like to fall....

Face first into the moment.
Kiss the gravel goodnight.
Take chances.

And sometimes,
I skin my knees.

It was a crying moon,
And I could have cried,
but it wasn't in my nature.....

I needed to save that for a day I was steady on my feet....

Butterflies and other True Stories...

2009-05-03T19:43:00.004-04:00

She was a plain jane. Faded yellow with raggedy little wings, windswept,sidewalk scuffed, Cinderellish. But Oh God, could she dance....swirly twirls in the air, and head first dip~dives straight from the sky, barely missing her nose on the upturn. And she's lived to be a 100 years old or more....in Storyland...

The yellow butterfly of San Marino...

with her dirty little feet and freckled petticoat....
she's a gypsy.....
in her husky morning after voice,
she's a sunrise....

Counting days until we travel to her homeland again...
until she lands, teetering on wobbly show~girl legs, on the lip of my Michelob....
until she barrels in, Mardis Gras style, right before Santa Claus...
until she tickles my nose,
or my toes,
or my fancy...

And reminds me to laugh,
to live,
to dance at the very,very edge of the ocean...

I still believe in butterflies...

and peace
and love
and all that
hoo~hah....

The After Party

2009-04-09T22:35:00.003-04:00

I don't do funerals. I don't like mourning and crying and reciting lives in ticker tape in front of crowds.

And so I didn't go. To the Last Night. The buy-one-get-three unexpected lemondrops-for free night. The night they stood the barstools upside down on the counter and threw them in the dumpster the next day. The night they said good~bye.

I couldn't. I had a cold, an old broken foot that came back to haunt me, a lover that deja-vued me, a crick in my neck, nothing to wear, no money to tip the bartender excessively. I had an excuse.

It was a lousy excuse, but I wore it well.

As Big Dad-O would say, "thats my story, and I'm sticking to it".....

Rest in peace little corner bar...

The Moon in My Arms

2009-02-27T19:00:00.005-05:00

I've seen this moon only once before...

in a lifetime...

http://thehippieparade.blogspot.com/search?q=martini+moon

I remember the exact moment...

where I was,

where I was coming from and where I was going....

And then tonight...

there she was again...

The Martini Moon.....

with the glimmering olive on the rim....

And I remembered....

Yeah, baby....

Friday's are for dancin'....

Rock my Peace

2009-02-25T22:36:00.005-05:00

She was so excited. Her chubby little 10 year old cheeks exploding in the "Mimi" grin...

Tiny chicklet "I'm gonna need braces" teeth on parade...
She was smiling....
This was what she picked out...
wrapped in newspaper....
A rusty ole word...

Peace....

She couldn't have been prouder....

And her smile was infectious. And I knew then what peace was. My blonde haired grandaughter with the hippie soul....whispering in my cobwebbed hair....."It's for you, Mimi! Peace......"

On the day after New Year's I came home to the front door wide open. The door we haven't opened in 17 years. Strangers ring that bell.

And the rusty little letters on my porch... splayed in half...

"Must have been the wind" they told me....

But I knew....

It's the year of ghosts....
And they've barged right in....
rocking my peace and rearranging it....

Sometimes we have to remember,
even in chaos....

Peace is spelled the same....

99 bottles of beer and a Butterfly, too!

2009-01-21T20:32:00.004-05:00

I rolled out of five o'clock traffic, Stones blaring, and scooched into the faded little parking lot. No beer in the fridge and two cigarettes to my name. Stopping on my way home to stock up on a little peace and my everyday addictions. I thought about leaving my sunglasses on. Not to hide my identity, but because I looked so bad. Old. Tired. It happened overnight.

Instead, I followed the construction worker with the beautiful blue bandana on his head through the double doors and smiled as we clinked cooler doors together. He nodded. Five thirty etiquette at the corner store.

I was third in line. Right behind the man with the baseball cap. And the blue eyes.

He turned. We've met here before. In pajamas. I groaned. And laughed. Couldn't look any worse than the first time. He laughed, too, and then inched his way closer to being "next " in line.

He paid for my beer. Kissed me on the cheek and walked out the double doors.

The six people in line behind me and the girl behind the counter watched as he never looked back.

"A carton of Winston Ultra Light 100's, please" I asked as I balanced my Michs on the popsicle cooler. "Your neighbor?" she asks, pointing her head and every squiggly hair on her noggin' towards the door. "Nah".....

A murmer began behind me. And I smiled.

When I walked through the double doors, I smiled at the sunset. Seven people touched by the butterfly. Everyone making up different stories. Talking out loud....

"Her ex" the hippie in the blue bandana grumbled.

"Dude, wanna buy my beer?" the kid behind him asked.....

"I don't think she knows him" Leyla replied.....ringing up the hippie's beer....

And then I was out the door.....I didn't hear the telephone tag that passed through the line, but I smiled even bigger at the sunset.

The man who thinks he doesn't make a difference, doesn't have a clue. Seven people went home with a story. All different. All painted to match their imagination.

And imaginations grow....

Letters from Where We Left Off....

2009-01-13T21:35:00.002-05:00

I remember as if it were yesterday, those fateful blue eyes.

Standing in my Sunday pajamas in the cold February wind....I slid the credit card through the "fill her up at the pump" slot. Nothing happened. I turned the card upside down and tried again. Nothing. I imagined the "E" glowing brighter on the dashboard. "Damn"!

I looked once. Both ways. No one else was in the parking lot or at the pumps. I bolted for the double doors. This is a really small town. Please God don't let anyone see me in my pajamas, with my "I've been up all night" face on! I'm not vain, but I had a hangover and it had been a long and sad 36 hours leading up to this moment....this I can't even coast home on hope moment.

Kimbies and Papa and I had spent the day before cleaning out Nadine's house. Selling a lifetime of love at a garage sale to benefit her children. Smiling at strangers while our hearts broke. And then we went out drinking. Big time. We laughed. We cried. We made new best friends. We kissed the nicotine stained Sky. Waved at Nadine up there! Over us, watching. And now it was the morning after.....

And I just wanted to go home.

I didn't see him bop through the side door. Full of himself, and Sunday Spirit. But I felt those eyes, those fateful blue eyes from heaven.....rap,tap,tapping on my new day. And so I turned just in time to catch his smile. His Mick Jagger smile.

And I laughed.

For the first time in forever.

And it wasn't long before I danced. For the first time in forever.

And lived. For the first time in forever.

Endings are sometimes beginnings. Beginnings are sometimes endings.

And sometimes the circle goes on and on and on.....

I should have known if I was going to be late for work this morning, I was going to be really late.

I felt that rap,tap,tapping on my new day....
Just before I saw those fateful blue eyes again.....

Pinnochio and other tell~tale stories

2009-01-08T22:07:00.003-05:00

I was fat. A dumpling with cold black hair and an indian nose. I was a girl. Samalama Singleton. And my Father adored me.

He nub~nubbined my head, and pinched my nose, threw me in the air and caught me football style, just before I kissed the ground.

At four, my hair was blonde and he had squeezed my nose so many times, it had almost disappeared....

At ten, I ran face first into a concrete wall, sprinting out from under a Christmas tree....and set that nose straight again....broad and bumped...

And then I was 32. Exhausted. Sacked out on an empty living room floor. Two toddler loves waddling in circles around my head, little feet knotting my hair up in piles of angel speghetti on the Berber carpet. I closed my eyes. "Here we go round the merry go round, the merry go round, the merry go round".......

"Mama!" he said. A three year old's world breaking the rhyme. I opened my eyes just in time to see the bottom of his size four pretend Nike's leap in the air. I closed them right before all 38 pounds of Boy jumped in the air and landed on my face.

Broader and bumped again.

My nose grew and grew and grew.....

When my soldier left for war, I bit my bottom lip . I couldn't let him see me cry. Not out the airplane window. I waved and smiled. Turned. Ran.

I kissed the door head on. Knocked myself out silly.

Six months later, the black eyes faded....and the bump was all but gone. I had the most perfectly straight broken nose anyone had ever seen.

When I tell the story, sometimes people think I'm fibbing.....
But I'm not....
It's broken, always has been.

Only now I can crinkle it.
Wrinkle it.
Screw it up in a magical "I dream of Jeannie" spell....

If you don't believe me, ask Skinny....

I saw you ten years from now....

2008-12-23T23:11:00.006-05:00

I was laughing. Fluffing ten layers of petticoats back into place and scooching my cowboy boots out of the way. Making way for the casual passer~by. We were being silly. All dressed up with no place to go.

And the night rolled on....

I pointed my toes and grafittied "Make Love not War" on the waiting wall with the chalky tips of my boots. I did shots. Lemon drops. And clinked Skinny and Curty Boy in tandem.

I sashayed out onto the floor for Rolling Stones in my bouffant dress and pretended I was having a blast.....

And I did. All dressed up in my make~believe world.

And then I saw you. Ten years from now. Hair a little thinner. Arms a little skinnier and silly little six pack tummy, a little plumper. There, over there, in the shadows, sipping bud lights and staring at the band. I stopped mid sentence, mid Pink Cadillac. But you didn't see me. I smiled, but like 99 cent a bottle bubbles, the magic was gone before it reached you.... And your eyes passed right through me, dreamy and lost on the shadows behind me.

I watched you in slow black and white motion...crooked smile growing each time the double doors opened. You're head tilting back, waiting to laugh ....Remembering....

I watched you until you stopped watching the door. Until the buxom brunette grabbed your hand and whisked you out on the dancefloor. Until you gave in, and just called it another Friday night at a lonely bar.

You didn't see me, head thrown back, laughing at yesterday. Skinny legs tucked into dusty kick~your~butt boots. You didn't notice me, next to you, eyes closed, dancing to the music not the crowds. You didn't hear me when I said good night, and left.....

Life is short.

And I was only visiting....

"You can't preach peace...."

2008-12-05T23:45:00.004-05:00

he said. Pacing across my living floor. Soft shoes padding over the dirty leopard skin rug.

Arms up, he did a 180 and turned, sighing, Counselor at law, giving up on his client.... Muttering under his breath...

"and live like this?"

Arms waving now, casting a shadow over my world....

Cats on the bartop, disco light flickering, chewed up flip flops on the floor.....

Cellphone chiming....1-800 messages waiting...

Dirty clothes spilling out of the bathroom closet, the sunshine only shines when I'm not home....

And then he rested his case with Perry Mason words...

"Chaos is not a peaceful place"......

"Choose your peace, friend" I whispered to his shadow.....

I was only Dreaming

2008-11-11T23:20:00.004-05:00

I rolled over....Kicked the paisley orange sheets off the bed, wiggled my toes and stretched. The sun tickled my nose. Morning. Nudging me forward. I stood up and moaned. A little jooking pain in my right foot made me pause barefooted on the fake wood floor. "Shake it off" I murmered in morning breaths.

I added 3 scoops of new coffee to the 5 scoops of left over coffee and waited for magic.

And then it happened.

The Awakening.....

The Jolt....

No wonder I'm tired. I'm old. And I must have been dreaming. I missed the part where everything changed. Catnapped through the shift in gears. Eraser smudged the difference between 16 and 46. Swirled and twirled the years into a grapevine wreath, an endless circle....

And then these damned contacts brought it all home again.

Don't mix coffee and mirrors unless you want to face the truth....

On Friday, I'm leaving my eyes at home....
and
Dancing like there's no tomorrow.....

The Wrecking Ball

2008-11-02T20:43:00.003-05:00

The windows were painted in reverse. Too many fingerprints had touched them and they bled with sunlight. The coffee table was covered in beer rings and cigarette burns and the occasional "I can't believe you just did that" carved grafitti...

It was Christian's house....

The psychedelic tub was 3/4 full of tepid water, and we all pretended the fish were still alive. Yeah, a pump would have been helpful....

We drank beer through Deep Purple, dangled skinny legs over the balcony and sang to the moon with Joni Mitchell scratching on the eight track. And then it began. The last dance. David Bowie....

I climbed on the coffee table. Barefooted and bell bottomed and one beer, or five, too many... but I knew the words... And he hummed them.

And swayed.

And I danced....

He grabbed me. Unexpectedly. But not.

And we were there again, the same music, the same shadowed faces, the same Friday night on re~run, but I was full of it. The hissy fit. The "not now", "not again"...

And he held me tighter. ..

You don't always get a second chance...

Dance.....

The Wrath of Love....

2008-10-28T21:51:00.005-04:00

It's five o'clock. Midgit cars zig~zag through the traffic train, dodging 18 wheelers. A mid~life crisis hovers next to me, engine idling, vinyl topped dream come true, naked to the sky. He winks when I notice him. A southern pick~up truck revs his engine. Any minute he's gonna climb over my hatch~back and ride right over me. I know it.

I turn the radio up. Dig to the bottom of my purse and find the last piece of gum. Smack it. Smoke another cigarette. Hang my left arm out the window and pretend I'm a seagull.....
flying.....

And there, in the pretend sky, I fall to my knees. I should have scooped him up. The dragonfly on the sidewalk. I touched him. And he hummed. Fluttered his wings....just a little. I scooched him. Just a little. And he hummed in pain. I fetched a paper towel and a red cup and tried to pick him up, and I swear he sang to me....in sad operatic wails. And then I left him there. Wings fluttering in the breeze. Smack in the middle of the sidewalk where some busybody in the morning will kick him with their "I'm late, I'm late for a very important date" high heels. Left him there, with his wings fluttering from the "It's a cold snap" breeze. Because I didn't have the nerve to cause him anymore pain. To move him to the safety of the nondescript cool mulch where he could have died in peace.

And now,
frozen in the five o'clock gridlock,
I realize....
I should have just stayed with him....
Plopped down on the sidewalk and listened to the heartbeat of his wings...
Because
even if he wouldn't let me touch him...

He touched me....

The Purple Stapler

2008-10-01T23:46:00.006-04:00

I woke up almost late. Not quite. But not early enough to lounge in my jammies. Have two cups of coffee and daydream.

And so I rebelled.

I camped out on the porch smoking cigarettes and sipping one cup of coffee, coloring tiny matchbook size scraps of paper, watching the sun rise. From where I parked my fanny I couldn't see the only clock in the house on the near~right time. I could only kinda tell the time by the world around me...The footsteps of the lanky 9 year old across the street, running, book bag heavy, chasing the dotted lines on the street. The tires of the bus grinding to an unexpected halt. "Yeah, he made it Dad!" Three little birds dumpster diving in my garbage cans, splashing in the unexpected puddle on the lids. The cats, stretching, raking their little paws on the screens....fingernails on a chalkboard Monday through Friday, but ahhhh, if it's Saturday, we're just stretching....

And then....

I raced....

Jumped in the shower...

Left with wet hair.

Rat packed into the city...did the nine to five plus some...and played bumper car home.

I yanked open the screen door and there on the worn out carpet ,tossed carelessly, lay the teeny weeny little matchbook size scribbles of the morning. I stepped over the color and went to fetch the stapler. All I needed was the little purple stapler and walah! somethin' out of an accidental nothin'... a teeny weeny notebook....

But it wasn't where it was supposed to be. It wasn't in the kitchen cabinets. Under the couch. It wasn't in the bathroom. The pass the trash Christmas Closet. It wasn't in my underwear drawer or the guest bedroom. It wasn't in little house or the laundrey room. It wasn't with the pots and pans or the kitty litter. It wasn't anywhere.

I pulled out the flashlight and looked in corners, emptied drawers, tumped out boxes....

But it wasn't anywhere...

And I cried.

I could go without making my house payment, skip breakfast and dinner, wear clothes still wet from the line...
but I needed that little purple stapler....

to make
something
outa
nothing....

Funny, but it was the laughter I remember....
And I miss that.....

"It is what it is...."

2008-09-22T22:30:00.003-04:00

And it's hot. Steamy. Not the romantic, sizzling, bacon kinda steamy. The "Oh my God, I'm so f'n hot", dripping, melting, Florida kinda hot. I jump up every 15 minutes or so and wander down the hall to slam the thermostat down another notch.

And then I remember.

It went out with a boom.

The AC.

Nadah.

I twirl my hair up and shove a pencil into my crown, crossways. 1950's style. "How long until winter?" I wonder. Dreading those gray days as I utter the words. I love the heat. The sun blistering my cheeks. Ice cold beer melting, daring you to drink it before it warms in your hands. But I don't wanna be hot at night. I don't like to camp out.....

I'm whining. Pop open the windows and a cold beer. And then I smell it. The faint reminder of 1976. Wild honeysuckle on a fence, my jeans tearing as I clear the pickets. Lights flashing. Giggling. And then 1977, gagging, fumes intoxicating us. "Open the damned window!" And three of us falling into a heap on the floor....the newly painted claw footed psychedelic aquarium air drying.....home to stray fish for twenty something years after....As we gasped for fresh air ....giggling even in death.... with the honeysuckle winding her way through the dirty screen, saving us from certain tragedy....

And now....

Drenched in Monday night sweat. Waiting on winter.

Accidental perfume.

The perfect gift.....

She wore french braids....

2008-09-16T22:57:00.003-04:00

I was four. The only child. Skinny and bruise kneed. Blonde. She was born with auburn curls. Lipstick. Beautiful. I crawled into her crib and slept next to her. Once. I wasn't allowed to do it again. She was a baby. But I was mesmerized....

By the time I was seven, she was as tall as me. Mama dressed us alike. Me with my Mia Farrow "I just cut my hair in the bathroom" hair doo, and her with her french braids. We swirled and twirled in matching green polka dot tent dresses, her in baby dolls and me in platforms. I listened to the Beatles, scratchy lyrics, grinding on my stereo into the wee hours, and she slept with her pink princess phone in her pink canopy bed. We were opposites. A zillion years apart. Night and day.

And then we went on the bike ride. Two spider bikes from the sheriffs sale, spray painted pink for the princess and purple for the "I'm gonna be a hippie when I grow up". We raced down the sidewalks, through the dirt alleys, over the tunnel the boys built in the park. We tulled past the Mayor's son with his three speed smiling, and huffed and puffed to keep up with Zanne and her ten speed. Nicky clacketed past us with blue and white poker cards clothespinned to his spokes.

That did us in.

We flew like the wind, standing on the pedals, home to top their "brag". We plowed through the laundrey room hunting anything we could tie to, tassle to, dangle from our handlebars. We grabbed the crayons and Mom's oil paints to decorate our seats and the fenders. I buried my head face first in the library trunk, the place that all the "gotta save" "important" "memory" stuff was kept...and dug up the Motherload....a pile of Playboy magazines...

Kimbies grinned from ear to ear. And we caught on quick to where the centerfold was. One. Two. Three. Twelve. Taped together, three pages long. Times six. The ultimate handlebar twizzler. And we flew...

Naked ladies following us. Butterflies in the wind....

Of course we got in trouble. The neighbors were apalled. Their children not allowed to play with us. And still, we rode. Faces fast to the wind. Unified....

Saturday we went out for drinks. 40 something years later...

"How cool are those old ladies?" the "probably not yet 21 year old" belted to the DJ.....

and we danced on.....

Fortune Tellers....

2008-09-11T20:36:00.003-04:00

We went to Cassadaga. Held hands and tripped over broken sidewalks, stepping hugely over every crack, laughing....that "Oh my God, I'm gonna fall right outa this roller coaster" laugh. They saw us. Knew us.

Instinctively, for 50 bucks, they could predict the future. See it in a crystal ball.

And so we ran.....

Ketchup Soup

2008-09-03T20:39:00.005-04:00

She stood in the kitchen, fuzzy slippers blackened at the toes, nubby slip~proof soles, worn thin. Her bottom lip sucker kissed her top lip over and over again. She was chewing.....

Chanty boy sat wedged in the high chair, a wadded up dish towel to his left, a rolled up T~shirt to his right. In case he teetered. We were hungry. I sat barefooted across from Chance at the kitchen table, toes stretching to tap, tap, tap him on his chubby thighs...make him smile. Robbie was makin' him cream of wheat and until it was ready, I had to keep him entertained. .

When she scuffed across the kitchen floor, blowing 'backy smoke on the bowl of grits, I kited past her, snapped the fridge open and stared ..... "Ugggggh"..... Milk, ketchup, mustard with crust on the cap, leftover po~cakes, a bottle of insulin, and 3 cans of Lite Beer. I slammed the olive green door shut and twirled in the kitchen, opened the pantry door. "Aint nothin' there" she murmered, never taking her eyes off the rubber spoon, off the baby she was feeding....

"Ugggghhhh"! I flopped back into the bentwood chair and without another word began knawing on my fingernails. "What the hell?" I mumbled and she never answered me. It was OK to cuss around Robbie, she did it all the time, and she wouldn't tell...
.

She swirled the spoon around the plastic bowl one last time, and Chanty had his encore bite....full and happy now, his heavy little head nodding, falling into the high chair tray. Fat and content, he would sleep well... She made sure of that....

She wiped her hands on the dirty green apron, walked to the kitchen door and spit....the kind of spit meant for contests between 9 year old boys. I watched it in slow motion, rising, hurling, flying....past the steps, over the monkey grass, into the blue blue sky..... And then she scuttled back into the kitchen. No words now. She opened the fridge and did the stare down. Eyes squinting. Nose scrunching. Then she hauled a big ole pot out from under the counter and made us all Ketchup soup. I stood behind her, falling in love. Noodles boiling, tumbling, rising, falling, plumpened in the rew. I put my face as close as I could to the gurgling pot, a steam bath of magic kissed me....
.
Four of us sat at the kitchen table, skinny legs dangling, tapping the floor, shoveling hot ketchup soup down our souls. Thanksgiving dinner would never be this good. Skinny beamed at me across the table, front toothless, and upper lip kool-aid stained. Curty boy slurped in silence. His tummy filling. Kimbies yummed out loud.....
.
We've tried to make it a dozen times since then. In poor times, silly times, late at night. It's never been the same. We've added gourmet spices, arty shaped noodles, food coloring, and bits of bacon... It's never been the same....
.
The magic is in the moment....
and
the
love....

Love Letter

2008-08-28T23:22:00.004-04:00

It was storming. Lightening flashed through the little hand painted curtains in the breakfast nook and I picked up another one of Nana's cheese straws, crunched down hard, and spyed intently over her shoulder. She had the winning hand. She scooped up the pennies, nickels, dimes with her knotty oak tree hands and slid them to the tables edge. "Penelope" she beamed. I scribbled it on the yellow legal pad under her name. She was winning. Penelope was right behind Prudence. We were naming a baby.....

And then she was here. I wore patent leather shoes and was in charge of Kimbies in the lobby. Curty Boy was with Nana at home....waiting. Every magazine had a Norman Rockwell picture on the back. Kimbies stood with her face pressed against the glass of the dirty aquarium. She stood on her tip toes, stretched, wanted to put her fingers in the green water and "pet" the fish. I wouldn't let her. I knew that she would scoop one up and bring it home to sleep with her in the pink princess bed and in the morning Robbie would flush it down the toilet. I let her stare while I did whirly twirls on the hospital terazza, scuffing up their buff job and my patent leathers. They didn't let us see her....but the nurse with the cardboard cap came out and told us we had a sister and that our Mommy said "I've had this baby before"..... We jumped up and hooped and hollered, spun in tired circles....having no idea whatsoever what that meant....

"She looks just like you" Mom whispered to me on the phone, the eldest, in charge of getting the hoo~hah, and I beamed. When they brought her home five days later, I stared. Chinese eyes, wild black hair with static electricity.....fists punching the air, feet kicking. At night I would do my homework, scribble on my notebook, brush my teeth, say my prayers, and then sneak down the hall to stare at her......"the baby just like me, so different....I've had this baby before"....

There were ten years between us. She cooed, I said "cool". She crawled, I scrambled on my Sting Ray bike. She tried vienna sausages, I tried raw oysters. She pitched fits, I pitched girlscout tents....

And then it became a blur.....
My teenage years, Kimbies, Curts, hers....Chanty's
Our lives pretzeled, circled, quilted...

And we grew up.

Peace~love
"I've had this baby before" she whispered....

The Old Man is Snoring.....

2008-08-26T21:42:00.005-04:00

This is what it was like in the beginning. The morning after Tropical Storm Faye arrived. Before the rains never went away. Before they had to send out boats. Before there were fish in the streets, snakes in houses, baby pictures wilted and wet, floating like yesterday's garage sale signs....

This is Kimbies front yard rolling like a river.....And then the batteries in Olivias camera went dead and the view out the window went to sea...

But this time....On the seventh day, the river's yet to crest. Everyday more and more homes are gobbled up by mad water, racing, running, trying to escape, but with no where left to go but up.....

up the living room walls,

down the halls,

under the swingsets,

down the slides....

under doorways,

into mailboxes,

into the backseat of cars not moved soon enough.....

Everyday another Detour sign goes up, and another home is wrapped in yellow crime scene tape, an obscene picket fence for the news cameras...

My friend Shimmerings said it best,

"if only we could click our heels"......

There's no place like home.....

Pray for the sun....

I don't like hot beer

2008-08-21T23:55:00.000-04:00

Ballad to Bobby Brown....

2008-08-17T21:17:00.005-04:00

I saw you there. Inside out and backwards. 17 or 21, ID flicked, flipped, flashed.... you were a natural. I've imagined a million times what you would look like, walk like, talk like ten years, twenty, a lifetime from now. And then I saw you. In yesterday.

Toothy grin, crooked and upward, my favorite "I just had a shot" smile...Skinny legs, jeans too short, but frayed, worn, loved..."In case I meet a hippie".....Mind racing, writing Country Top 10 songs on legal pads, eyes dancing....rock and roll and punk...strobe lights flashing.....And that f'n grin....that gun it grin...race, tumble, roll....Gun it, grin...

I don't dream about you anymore. Wonder what you're doing. Tink you. But I miss you. And I saw you in yesterday. 20 years younger. Before you were you. And just so you know, I laughed....And danced ....

And when I came home,
jeans crumpled in a pile,
key in the door,
memories plopped on the kitchen counter,
I slept....
and thanked God I wasn't there in the beginning....

but was there for the end....

Deja Vue...

Hello Tomorrow

2008-08-16T14:08:00.008-04:00

My legs were crossed, all lady like, and my right sneakered foot was just~a~swingin' in tandem with hers, crossed at the knee. We were keeping mad time together. Pacing in place. The lobby was full... Broken lives hooked to IV poles, held up by other's... faces blank, tired, scared, old~schooled. Hugs and how~to~do's were quietly passed in "shhhhhhhh.....we're in church now" fashion. I flipped through the pages of the Reader's Digest so fast and hard, it sounded like I was shufflin' poker cards, and I concentrated on making that same sound over and over again.
.
And then they called her name. For a moment I wasn't sure I could walk without having my legs crossed, right one swinging. What other nervous tic could I develop that would be socially acceptable? And hide my fear..... What other nervous tic could I invent that could pass off for strength? How was I going to catch her when she collapsed? And who would catch me?
.
He smiled. That handsome Doctor smile. Babyesque brown eyes, old already. Lips curled just enough to make you wonder who his Dentist was, and why on earth he chose to practice this type of medicine. Why on earth he didn't want to be a Soap Opera Star....
.
She had been summoned here. To this room at this time with these people. For the news. We waited. He talked. Drew pictures. Circled foreign words on endless reports. Nodded his head up and down as if we understood. And then we did. Sweet Jesus! Remission! Gone! Poof! Not there! Unremarkable scans. Nothing here, there, over there, in that.....crawling, corrupting, eroding. Nothing!

.
We stood in the parking lot, in the rain, and cried. Laughed. Hallelujahed the sky! Tried to dial numbers. Skinny's. Papa's. The kids. The boys. And then we decided to party.....
.
.\And we know how to party.....
.
Thursday night, Friday night....into the wee, wee hours. At 4'oclock this morning, I fell into bed. Kimbies curled up like a rolly poly on my little living room couch. Her dancin' boots in a heap, her little blue bandana

still on her noggin'.....
.
And I slept like I've never ever slept before....
.
In peace.
.
With Stevie Ray Vaughan there in the shadows, whispering lullabyes for the soul......
.
And Tomorrow, just outside the window....
Smiling...

Spooky little night....

2008-08-13T21:04:00.005-04:00

I heard it from the living room. Over the dog panting in whispers from the leather chair. Over the air humming, rattling the vents. Over the funny sky, winteresque at 90 degrees, churning outside the windows. The ticking. The tocking. The incessent heartbeat of time. Just before the storm broke loose, I paraded into the kitchen to stare the clock in the face and bellow...."I hear you!"

And then I saw it....

The second hand chirping at seven. Over and over again. The minute hand frozen. Rickety tickety tock. Time stuck in a rut, wearing a groove pattern in the plastic face of yesterday/tomorrow/now. I stood barefooted and stared. Willed the hands to move. Lightening flashed from behind the fiesta ware. Thunder clapped. Rickety tickety tock. The second hand quivered, lingered, shuttered, slammed back into the 7th house. Just beyond midnight.

A friend called and said he had seen a ghost. Felt it. The second hand shimmied.

Every call I took or made was disconnected. My end. Their end. Disconnected.

Spooky little night....
By the time I wake up in the morning, the batteries should finally be dead. Time will have stopped and finally I'll recharge. Set the hands where I want them

and

start all over again....

At the beginning.....

the middle....

or the end....

Wherever the music plays...

"Will you be my friend?"

2008-08-11T21:32:00.007-04:00

I layed belly to the sky, toes draped lazily over the edge of the yellow vinyl raft, fingers air drumming in the water....drifting....in circles. I never opened my eyes, pretending to know when the clouds passed and exactly how they were shaped by the heat on my eyelids.....rubber stamps of sunshine in the cool negative shape of angels, elephants on their hind legs, horses with wings.....

I listened to the wind. To the trinkets in the sky. The natty faded towels on the clothesline; a sudden parade of American Flags....exactly the same size, the same color, as my kindegarten year.....hand over my heart ....the fabric billowing, the chain clanking hauntingly against the pole. Squirrels, or rats maybe, I don't know, ratatatted back and forth across the crooked fence line, racing madly to nowhere. There was traffic in the distance, and then close. Boom boxes rattling. Gears shifting. A siren. Still, I didn't open my eyes. This was my peace. And I was gonna live it.....

I don't remember dreaming. I don't remember the 45 minutes I disappeared from earth forever.

But I remembered how I got there. Comfy cozy in the lazy round river. Waiting on the boys. Floating round and round and round....saying thank you......

Peace where you can find it....

2008-08-05T20:27:00.004-04:00

I'm too many people. Our dictationist, Sweet Sunny Anne, had a stroke in January, and I hauled her little machine home and took over where she left off. Everyday she goes to Rehab and every night I type on and on and on.... She's learning to walk again and talk again....and maybe one day, live again.... Until then I'm typing....

My right arm, Emily, is finally on the kidney transplant list. It's her turn now. We watch the clock and wait for the beep.... "It's your turn now"..... and I pray it won't be long. She's irreplaceable, so when she retired at the early age of "I have to", I didn't even try.

Chey got offered the moon and the stars on some crazy undiscovered planet, and after 17 years, flew the coop, feathers flying. I miss her. The good Doctor misses her. The patient's miss her. And if I didn't have straight blonde hair, I could pass for her...

I wake up kicking, tossing, flinging, flailing. remembering everything I forgot to do the day before. I grit my teeth. Make endless lists that I forget to read and plop them on the empty refrigerator.

Today, my part~time help quit. She was an angel. She wants to live her life. Not spend it clockin' in..... counting change....X-ing off days on the calender for being free. She wants to be free now.

I smiled. She cried and told me it was OK to cuss her. I hugged her.

Tonight I came home and pulled out the markers, the pencils, the pens..... and colored. For the first time since hell broke out at my house , a mermaid the color of a 1000 tadpoles surfaced on the bent pages of my notebook. Her peace sign, tethered to her neck, floating up.... up....up....free....

And I remembered,
in the end peace wins....

You gotta live it, to know it....

Overflow......

2008-07-30T20:18:00.003-04:00

It's an old house and I'm an old woman. Things are bound to fall apart. And so it goes....

I turn the blue and silver cap slowly, a delicate twist of my wrist, less the bottle neck shatter into a thousand pieces.....
And then, I chug good and hard....

It's beer time, baby.....

The shower gurgles up into the toilet and the toilet runs until the pump gets hot. When the pump gets hot the cold water stops flowing and I've scalded myself silly three 5 minute showers in a row. It's OK. I don't need to rinse off, the wayward boys took off with the soap and the shampoo and I swim with tadpoles, remember?

They disconnected my internet for non payment and I promptly took care of the problem and they politely turned me back on Thirty minutesbefore lightening struck the telephone pole, scampered down the cable and knocked the whole system out. There's a post~it note on the screen now,
It says "don't you dare".....

My broken foot is broken,
and tomorrow I'm wearing combat boots to work,
My key got stuck in the broken kitchen door and I had to break the plywood to crawl through the already broken glass to let Georgia out the broken back door.....
and there's a post-it note there too....
it says "Lock the broken door or the cats will get out"......

I pulled my clothes from the washer and hung them on the line and it rained. Thank God the sky is broken. The rust from the washer was smeared all over my new "I am free" T-shirt and I'm hoping the heavens will rinse it out.

The house is 3 inches deep in cat hair and dog hair and the confetti of my life. The vacuum makes loud noises and spits at my shins.

It's dark here, every 1000 hour light bulb blew out at once and I used all my candles for the hurricanes 3 years ago. I have to keep typing or the screen saver comes on and I can't see a damn thing in the living room.....

Everything is broken,
but the circle.....

Rest in Peace.....

2008-07-26T18:51:00.011-04:00

In the beginning, we were newbies. I remember where we sat and what I wore. The songs the band played. The wig Ms. Betsy had on. I smiled. Tapped my tennis shoed foot on the floor and finally, solo-d it on the dance floor. Kevin joined me. He couldn't hear the music and he couldn't introduce himself. We had to scooch really close to the drums before he smiled. He had to write his name on a napkin before I smiled. He couldn't hear. He couldn't speak. But, by God, he could feel it....

52 Fridays times two plus some have passed. I've barreled through the doors in cowboy boots, combat boots, barefooted. I've hugged people, kissed people, and just once.....slapped a wayward soul. I've slow danced, low danced, fast danced, no~touch danced.....held my lighter to the sky, my bottle to the heavens, and held my breath. I've fallen in love, met angels and demons, and family here. I've come through the painted door high on martini moons, wild from full moons, and tiptoed through no moons. I've been free here.

On Friday I knew.....

Ran my fingers down the painted front door and scrunched my nose up to the make believe speak easy.....

And made my entrance fit for an exit.....

Rumors.....

You never know what to believe.....

Fireworks

2008-07-23T22:12:00.005-04:00

I dated a nice boy. Once. He opened car doors and brought me donuts on Saturday. He wore khaki pants and golf shirts. Had a retirement plan and took good care of his parents. When he kissed me the first time, I almost fainted. From boredom. And then he sweet talked me. In baby talk.

"Why can't you just find a nice guy and settle down?" She said to me, slurping her McCoffee.....

"Lemme tell you why" I giggled . Remembering.

I like to have fun. I like to laugh til I cry and cry til I laugh. I like to dance. Low and fast. Touching and no touching. In the streets and in the rain. I like to dress up and dress down. I like to be shocked and to be rocked. I like to be IN LOVE and I love to be liked.

I believe in butterflies.....

Choose Peace

2008-07-16T07:22:00.007-04:00

I can see him clearly through my early morning windshield, love bugs and pollen peppering my view. He faces me in traffic, unshaven and brusque in his little fleet truck. We are at a stand still. I can't budge an inch and he wants to snake through traffic, dart actually, to get his morning coffee. He sneers. Lifts his hands from the steering wheel and abruptly motions me to get the hell out of his way. I smile. This aint no helicopter, baby. He flips me off. I smile again and the light turns green. Peace. He guns past me. I thank him for the 30 second delay it took me to welcome him through traffic. You never know when the butterfly effect begins....

She fidgets with the credit card machine. Slides my card through it again and again, upside down and backwards. Wiggles the cord. Checks for a dial tone. Clears the register. The lady behind me in the three inch heels clicks her feet on the terazza floor. Clickity clickety click. "I'm already late!" she pecks into the air, a skinny little bird waiting on worms to fall from the sky. I smile. The cashier tries it again, apologizes, and it takes. I thank her, and on turning, wish the high heeled haughty behind me a better morning....."Once you're late, you're late..... enjoy the ride..."

Tiny little rhinestones keep fallin' off my favorite shirt, the peace sign slowly crumbling , disappearing. I touch the remaining few. This tye-dyed comfy cozy gift from my oldest grandaughter..... from my heart, is fading. I cross the parking lot and a raspy six year old voice follows me in the wind. "Mommy, look, I found a diamond, a diamond! Mommmy, Look!" His face lights up, glows up, beams..... and his chubby little fingers coddle the treasure. Climbing into the car, I smile.....

The butterfly effect......

Choose peace, people.....

It's priceless.....

Swimmin' with frogs....

2008-07-13T11:33:00.003-04:00

I scooched down the ladder, one step... two...third's a charm....and plowed into the pretend ocean, water streaming past my face, Christmas tinsel in the sun. God, I love this pool!

The yellow raft bobbed, up and down. Suddenly splashed, it looked like a radiator gurgling in the summer heat...steam rising, bubbles popping. I reached for it, ready to plop my Saturday skin in it's arms. Then she croaked. Made this funny tweaky sound. And I saw him. The frog. "Shooooooo!" I fussed. He looked at me and croaked. "Arrrrrrggggh" I gently lifted the raft over the edge of the pool, pinned the edges to the tidy whitey clothes line that hangs like a broken power line over the lazy round river and let the yellow mattress blow in the wind, it's bottom sweeping the grass....."Shooooo, little one" I whispered. He croaked again. "Come on bud, I made you a ladder and everything"..... He croaked.

I swam that day. No floating. I gave in and let him sit perched on my vinyl dream, staring at me.

Yesterday I woke up to a sea of tadpoles, splashing, swimming, playing follow the leader, dip and dive, "Look, Ma, Look!" in my little round river.....

Squatter's rights.....

Pixies for peace

2008-07-06T12:09:00.006-04:00

His little fingers open and close, the tissue paper soft wings of a newborn butterfly resting for just a moment, on the knotty limbs of an oak tree. He traces my veins and wrinkles, smiles, and holds on tight. Sighs and closes his eyes. For just a moment, I close mine, too. And I pray I'll live long enough, laugh often enough, to become a hundred year old pixie in his memories.

I'm standing at the ocean wall. And I feel her. Rising up in my heart. Hear her. See her. I spin around and know they feel her, too. Nana. She's at the bar playing Cahoot's with strangers. She's in patent leather knee high boots dancing with her new best friends. She has little lady fingernail shells stuffed in her yellow pocketbook. Magic potions in her carpetbag. She tossles my hair, runs her finger down my sunburnt nose, and throws her head back. Laughs and shoos me off...."Have fun, be free, little ones..."

Her face is scribbled. A thousand wrinkles swimming in every direction. Blonde hair piled on her head in banana curls. She's beautiful. The band drags their cords and amps, speakers, guitars, drums across the deck. "Testing one, two, three, testing".....and then she's gone. We're on our own. The man across the bar, with the Bon Jovi hair, rises and walks toward us. Giant fuscia hibiscus blooms in his hands. "For the flower children" he smiles....

And I look up at the sky and thank her.

One upon a time there was a place called Peace....

2008-06-28T20:48:00.008-04:00

The sheets weren't sandy the first night. They were crisp and clean and not yet damp from the salt air and the mist machines just outside our door. The towels were Motel white and folded like starched flamingos walking the wire, not yet heaped on the floor, dumplin's in a pile. And we laughed....

On the 7th night I cried. And we clinked. And counted our change. And decided we could never go home.

So we stayed one more night.
One more sunrise.
One more round of tides....
And laughed....

Kimbies won a bucket of Domestics at Beer Bingo
and Skinny won a bucket of Choice....
We saddled our boogie boards and rode naked in the waves....
Each new wave, the Mother of all Waves, yankin' down our britches and unlacing our ties....
We fell...
In the waves, on the deck, over the sprinklers, out of chairs, up the stairs, and in love.
We danced...
Barefooted and bikini bottomed, in gypsy gowns to the ground, and in cowboy boots. With friends and with strangers. All by ourselves.

This morning, I leaned over the deck railing, toes to the edge, and blew her kisses. Thanked her. Wayward child at the train station. She knows I'll be back. And no matter what happens between now and then, when she sees me, she'll scoop me up in her beer foam arms and rock me back to peace........

"In the End, Peace Wins...."

"Thank you, Ocean".....

Spit.....

2008-06-18T21:27:00.007-04:00

She stood on the patio. White patent leather sandals and cheese curl toes to the very edge of the concrete. From the kitchen I watched her blow and blow and blow, a giant "Achooooooo!", white eyelet dress billowing in the wind. "Achooo! Achoooo! Achooo!" I whispered "God bless you" but she didn't hear me, she was too busy spittin' the devil out....

Our Mama made us do that. When I fibbed that the neighbor's dog bit me in the shin, and really, it was our Princess, aggravated by being aggravated, but I couldn't risk tellin' the truth.....When I stole the Ford Fairlane, joyriding for three blocks before we finally hit traffic and bailed.....When we sold toilet paper flowers to the neighbors because we were hungry, and we weren't, but we were inventive....Our Mama made us spit the devil out......

And so tonight, I did that. Hammered up "Do not trespass" signs on the squeaky screen door and the picket fence, the psychedelic pass through to the laundrey room. It's been hell week. And we're goin' to the beach. Fate and everything ugly has raised it's rheumy arm to trip us up, to stop us in our tracks, to rock our peace. And I almost fell for it. Until I remembered to spit the devil out.....

Peace~love my friends,

If we Just make it through the night.....

Swimmin' up hill.....

2008-06-15T15:18:00.006-04:00

I fall in face first. Imagine the blue Kool~aid waves crashing on the blow up shoreline. Slip into my mermaid skin and day dream. Five more days. My hair billows out on the surface, a thousand golden sea snakes swimming in a halo.... I open my eyes wide, wider, and wait. My contacts float off, tiny cavier eggs finally free. I smile for them. Five more days. And then no more counting....

I float in a circle, upside down and backwards, the current finally catching up to me, and then turn around and plow into it! This is how it feels when you take off from the seawall running, running, running and the ocean finally laps you up, whisks you away, slathering you with kisses. I can't wait. To be free......

To sit perched on the edge of the earth, a sandpiper, digging to China....
To dance under the mist machine and the neon light of the moon, 17 again, but wiser....
To hear the sea monsters rumbling, grumbling, tumbling in the night and watch them wallow backwards, foamy tails between their legs, when the Sun comes out ....
To slurp beer can oysters
and spurt salt water to the sky....
To build Peace Castles and scribble sand graffiti with my toes....
To sing in the choir, the next rock~n~roll band, the outside shower....
To paint henna tattoos on the legs of strangers
and the backs of friends....
To play driftwood, floating until I wash up on the shore...
To feel the love.....

I climb up the rickety plastic ladder and laugh. Peace is comin'..... Five more days, baby!

These boots were made for.....Peace

2008-06-11T20:55:00.007-04:00

I'm just a hippie. I wear flipflops and combat boots. Converse sneakers without laces. I go barefoot. But I broke my foot. And whether that's a haunting or the butterfly effect, I'll never know. But I know this. Every now and then I fall. Just call me Grace.

So I have a secret weapon. Little stilts that hold me up. Prop me up like the plastic ballerina in the mahogany stained box. A brace. But by damned, I'm gonna hide it. So on Friday when the band went Country, I hauled my hippie buns to the Country and Western Store and fetched home a pair of cowboy boots. I can't wear combat boots every Friday night. And Skinny smiled.

"Scratch 'em on the concrete" she said, not wanting me to slide. "You can wear 'em with anything" she said, knowing that I would. And I did. We danced til dawn and I woke up to them abandoned on the porch. Toes scuffed, and heels already lazy. They did me good.

"We're just goin' for burgers and a beer" he said and I climbed right in. Saturdays are like that. I didn't wear my armor.... And never saw her coming....

She snuggled right in behind me, beside me, a Marilyn Monroe wanna~be, plopped up on the picnic table to my right. I turned. "Who in the hell is snugglin' up to my show?" And there she was. Bullet Bra. Smiling... A toothy sort of "I'm gonna getcha" grin....and then she wriggled with glee. The only woman whose ever threatened to whoop my fanny.

I almost shook.

Payback is hell....

And I've been there

I smiled back. Stretched my fingers. Made a fist. And before she ever saw it coming,

I bopped her good.

Two fingers to the sky.

"Peace"

"You shoulda worn your cowboy boots" Skinny whispered in my ear....

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

2008-06-08T16:09:00.007-04:00

I twisted and twirled the same strand of blonde hair over and over again, weaving a pretend dreadlok back and forth between my fingers. My eyes were sun heavy, and each time I blinked, I did it slowly and savored the moment, my lashes like lazy palmetto fronds fanning me into summer sleep. I was bored with the conversation.

She babbled endlessly. A thousand words strung together like a macaroni necklace.... And she fidgeted. To the right, the left, under the table, across the table....A chihuahua frantic for table scraps....

She was making her move. Chasing Prince Charming. I blew smoke rings and watched them hover, transluscent doughnuts disappearing when they framed her face. She didn't notice. She didn't see his blue eyes flit from the right to the left and then settle on the pile of paperplates and pastic silverware stacked in front of him. She didn't see the sun falling into the river or the shadows from the giant Cypress trees turning into Gargoyles on the water. She was too busy bustin' her moves.....

The band came on and for just a moment, I thought she was going to leap onto the tabletop, Tom Cruise in high heels..... but she just yanked him, snatched him off his feet and swirled him out onto the floor. I took one last swig of cold beer and watched. Skinny arms flailing, legs up and down, spinning, and still.....she babbled on and on and on......"Me" language, her native tongue...

Silly girl.......

You lost him at hello....

The Kiss.....

2008-06-02T23:39:00.004-04:00

I tiptoed over the hot coquina, his deck shoes with the laces hanging, one step before me. He climbed in and the little electric motor hummed, the roof folding like a sunset behind him. And he smiled. This wasn't the first time and it damned sure wasn't the last time. We had thousands of highway miles between us. I leaned over, fell into the Mustang, and kissed him hard. Stood on the mirrored parking lot and shot peace signs at the rear view mirror while he gunned it, periwinkle confetti flying....

And we laughed....

The last kiss. And we didn't even know it.

Happy anniversary, baby........

"Happy, Happy Week-end" said the Hippie to the sky...

2008-06-01T15:12:00.004-04:00

"Hey, I've got an idea! Let's pretend we're at the beach......."

And so we did. Twenty four hours of "feel the love, save the seawall"....All in make~believe.

The little round river grew and grew and grew until it was bottomless and the waves tumbled madly, splashing us, dunking us, pulling us out to sea.....

Blue dolphins circled, an up and down parade of laughter, and we joined them, riding without saddles until we were dizzy, and I was the first one off, falling face first to kiss the ocean. Eyes wide open, the water was champagne, bubbly and delicious and I was tipsy by the time I came up for air, mermaid tail swishing......this way, that way, this way to Treasure Island....

To the Tiki Bar....

To the Sunset.....

To a week at the beach....

At midnight we played SeaCinderella, barefooted and silly....swirling and twirling, paisley shadows under the moon.....

The handsome Prince with the beer moustache laughing, drinking from glass slippers....thirsty for more....

It's Sunday now. And it's quiet. All that's left behind is a blue vinyl pool and sun on my nose....

The long hot hippie summer.....

2008-05-30T06:04:00.005-04:00

Plunk! It's almost daybreak and I toss the disco light into the lazy round river. The colors "pink on one", "green on three", "blue on two" play imaginary twister on the vinyl bottom. I'm sure the neighbors won't mind if I crank a little Rollin' Stones to greet the day.
.

It's pool party week-end..... Three Saturdays and three Sundays left before we run away to the beach. Three week-ends to fill with countdowns and count~me~in's and "don't count the beers". I reach over and nudge the yellow duck over the river's edge. Free, she floats away immediately, happy to be at home again....Tomorrow she'll be the gala host of the party.....toting watermelon slices and Michelobs.... Today, she'll just float.... a vinyl mermaid
basking in the sun....
.

It's summertime again.... towels are draped over the deck, damp from the evening dew, lazy and stretched, waiting to be kissed dry by the Friday sun. Georgia runs in crazy round-de-rounds, circle eights around the pool and the Make believe Ming Tree. I clink my coffee cup and smile....
.

Fridays are for dancin'.....
.

And summer's are for love.....

When Pixies Party.....

2008-05-27T07:11:00.008-04:00

Sometimes, Sunday's are perfect. The sun rises and smiles, hovers low in the sky, a wild helium balloon in swirls of pink and red....The oak trees dance, dripping in silver jewels, whistling in the wind. Yup, sometimes Sunday's are perfect.

This one was.....

And so we danced at the river.....

Ballet, Bellies, and Disco in the Kitchen. We belted out Ray, crooned to Janis, and swooned to Johnny Cash. We clinked! Tinked! and tattle~telled! We traipsed barefoot through the crunchy, "Oh My god, is that poisen ivey?" underbrush and went exploring. We barbequed ribs and ribs and ribs and ribs, and feasted on tons of southern love.

We cinched the circle in a little tighter....

Feel the love.....

Happy "It's not my Birthday" birthday Kimbies, Don, and Dale!

The Butterfly Bar....

2008-05-19T20:45:00.006-04:00

I'm the welcome wagon. The Go~Go girl. The cheerleader. I laugh, sway, twirl, spin...and never miss a beat. A face. A voice. Oh, I might trip sometimes, go splat on the floor, but I never miss a beat.....

And so I noticed them right away. Seven and a half weeks ago. Elbows on the bar. Boy's night out. And I watched them. They leaned in and tipped Roxanne. She smiled. And that's a good sign. From my side of the bar I knew they weren't being obnoctious, weren't spilling silly pick~me~up lines at the beautiful soul filling shot glasses and popping corks. Miss Macey settled down next to them, stirred her steaming coffee cup, luring the good stuff up from the bottom. She gave them her "One eyebrow up, one down" cursory "I'm watchin' everything you do, boys" glance. And she watched them well. Listened. Smiled. Smiled with them. And then I knew it was O.K. to make my move.

O.K. to walk over and meet my two new best friends.

They laughed at my peddler's bag of bottle caps and bought the next round. We've been no~touch dancing ever since. We've been to the ocean and the river and barbequed at 2:00 in the morning. We spent Saturday night at Kimbies, clanging cymbals, canastas and spoons. We've serenaded the sky, raspy voices and guitar strings wooing the stars....We've traded secrets, and dime store dreams, and happy ever afters. We've played follow the leader, catch me if you can, and "let's dance like Joe Cocker".....

And now we're an army. Of angels.

"Let's hear it for the boys......."

And the butterfly effect......

When I was wild....

2008-05-13T22:10:00.005-04:00

I sprained my wrist once. Bad. Bent it every which way but backwards. Running. Laughing. Racing down railroad tracks giggling. It hurt. But, it was just as funny in the morning.

I tripped, almost splat, skipping over the river rocks in a disco dress at sunset, racing to meet him in the driveway. Surprise him. And he laughed. Because he knew I was gawky. Clumsy. Accident prone. And he thought it was sexy as hell. Silly love.

I've been careful lately. Watching where I walk. Wearing Converse sneakers without laces. Sitting like a lady. Playing fair. Floating.

Now I'm ready to dance again.....

Image courtesy of the www, Tweeten Fibre Co

All nighters

2008-05-09T05:42:00.003-04:00

One phone call and Kimbies and I were camped out on the curb flagging the Barbie Doll car into the finish line. Snap! Snap! The papparazi at work! The first sound she made was a groan, a deep gutteral, "how on earth did these people end up to be my family?" groan.....

Eleven hours later, he's here.....Baby Boy Landon. Fair haired and perfect. I touch his cheeks and melt. Scroll my fingers through his irredescent hair....pink, yellow, orange, white....the color of the sunrise yawning....and fall in love all over again.

Blue Vinyl Sea.....

2008-05-02T07:29:00.005-04:00

It was $218.00 three summers ago. Chey and I lugged it, rolled it over end to end, pushed it, shoved it. We lifted it onto the truckbed by the grace of strangers and once back at the little pink house, we started the ritual in reverse....lug, roll, push, shove. The vinyl dream was home.

As we grow old, we recant our childhoods in memories....time stamped by little houses and crooked sidewalks, by schools and the color of bicycles. In my new life, the rubber date stamp is a blow~up pool.... The first to arrive was just eight feet wide and a foot and a half deep. My grandbabies and I spent 7 days and 7 nights camped on the deck, rolling in the mammoth make believe waves.....dripping grape popsicles down our chins....and sun~ining our hair. We made boats from bars of Ivory soap and bathed in the pool, shampooed in the pool, and then ran in circles splashing.....kicking up foamy waves. They learned to hold their breath and let go of their noses. To float belly up without their bottoms sinking. Stone went home a week later, a "surfer dude" and Kyle, a bikini clad blonde bombshell. They had snorkel mask tans and swimmer's ear. We had the summer of love......

I finished off the last of the lazy months plopped up on the blow up ring, water dancing belly button high, reading favorite books with crumpled pages, dreaming......

And the next summer, Chey and I hauled home the Mother of all blow~up pools.

The lazy river.
The blue lagoon.
The vinyl sea.

Two summers kissed by dreams come true.....

Sleeping toe to toe....
Treasure diving.....
"Party in the middle of the pool!"....
Candlelight waves....
"Just how many people can fit in a blow up pool?"
Juicey bottle water wars.....
The marathon float.....Daytona 500 and two coolers of beer....
The courtship of the neighbors.....
Bottled margaritas.....
A real live pool boy....
Accidental Love.....
Hippie hammocks......
A bouquet of tiki torches....
A broken foot
and
Rollin' Stones on the stereo......

There was always gonna be another. From the moment, the blue lady sighed, curtsied to the sky and took her last breath, spilling 3800 gallons of blessed water cascading, there's was always gonna be another. I said it. Meant it. Believed.

But there wasn't. $218.00 grew. And this year, it would be a million dollar dream. The dusty space between my back door and Little House became the laundrey field..... tattered white clothesline swinging over last summer's shoreline. Towels and T-shirts, sails from shipwrecked stories of another time.

And then, the butterfly effect....

A giant blue box on my porch.

Tonight, she's three inches deep and rising. The grandlady of all blow up pools. And suddenly, I'm a millionaire.

"Let's hear it for the boys...."

Hittin' the snooze....

2008-04-29T22:39:00.006-04:00

The sheets are orange. 1970's orange. Burnt and frayed sunflowers. 300 count. Crinkled from being dried in the Saturday sun. Clean. I flop in crumpled, legs and arms landing in a random stack of comfy~cozy pick~up sticks. Pop the alarm. I'm out for the night. Exhausted.

He leans in. Voice husky and smokey, protecting his words with hand cusped, as if they might fly away in the noise, and whispers , near. I scooch in. Listen better. Stare at my knees. Nod in agreement. In cahoots. Never look into his eyes. Burn a hole in the leg of my jeans. He leans in closer and is suddenly quiet. Done. I look up, catching his eyes in a butterfly net. And he kisses me.

I wake up startled. His face just as surprised, freeze~framed in a dream. I crunk the sheets one more time, the pillows....and drift away again. It's a six hour night. I'm determined to sleep through it....

And he leans in again...

Deja Vue. In dreamland.

And again.

The alarm screams at me. Blasts fuzzy half music, half talk radio gib gab across the room and I stretch, lean, teeter off the bed to bop it. Good morning, real world.....

I'd rather be dreaming....

Barefoot in the Backyard....

2008-04-27T13:33:00.017-04:00

We met in the kitchen. Half moon eyes. Hungry. " Coffee please".

The slumber party winding to a gentle close. Sunday morning nudgin' us back into real time. A pretend week at the beach, sunrise to sunset, 7 days and 7 nights. A make~believe marathon. In just under 24 hours. "Yeah, baby, we had a good time...."

"Boy~O, Boy~O, Boy~O!"

2008-04-24T20:49:00.006-04:00

I'm fidgeting. Thinking of maybe biting my nails again. Kicking up cathair. I did 3 tummy crunches and then hung the clothes up on the night~time line. Turned on the babbly blah~blah~blah~babbly TV.....and smoked another cigarette. Checked the mail. Thumbed through it all and pitched it into the overflowing garbage can. Grabbed a black bag and went out on the deck, chopped the night blooming jasmine back into a crewcut.... and drenched the neighborhood in white perfume. Checked my emails. Checked the phone for voice mail, text messages. Checked to make sure I get bars in the living room, the kitchen. Checked to make sure the charger was working. And now I'm fidgeting. Again.

Hours to go. Maybe days. "Anytime" he said. "Rest up" he told her. I watch the clock.

Waiting on Baby Boy Love. Four weeks early and "anytime" he said....

You can't make me.....

2008-04-21T18:52:00.009-04:00

We caravaned. Met up in the Valet parking lot, squishing in between the "reserved-for VIPs"....and flip flopped up the deck to The Crab House. Oh, Man, what a beautiful day for Peace Out, coconut shrimp, french dip, and ice cold beer in a bucket. Me and three of my new best friends. I know, I know, I know, you've heard it before.....

But there we were. Instant friends. Old friends. With very short pasts. And a lotta catchin' up to do. 99 beers on the wall later, we had laughed ourselves silly, solved world hunger and been on a peace march. We had confessed, professed, dared, bribed, danced,harmonized throughHello Dolly in our best Joe Cocker voices, and scooched in closer for the punch line...

"But what if"?

"What if you won, fell into, stumbled on a gazillion dollars?"

Skipping the lengthy four-fold conversation we had about charity, clarity, responsibility and all that hoo~hah ....what it all boiled down to was this...

"But isn't it all relative? Wouldn't a blue lagoon with cascading fountains and towering palms be the same to you as a millionaire as your little vinyl pool was to you last summer?"

"Ummmm. No."

I chewed on a piece of celery. Dipped it and swirled it in bleu cheese. Chewed again.

Behind their Foster Grants I could sense their eyes rollin'......

"Lemme tell you about my little blue pool......"

When we caravaned out of the parking lot,
sunkissed and dreamy,
beerbattered and fed,
there were four make-believe millionaires dreaming about blow up pools.....

and smiling......

No touching

2008-04-13T01:23:00.007-04:00

I wasn't going to go. Friday's are for dancing and Saturdays are for wild oats. But, they called. I made every excuse, but a fitting one, and then jumped in the shower and threw on a pair of jeans. If you skip Friday, they come lookin' for you on Saturday....

The Saturday faces are different. Piranhas and barracudas. Nothing like the manatees, tattooed and grey, comfortable in the warm blue waters of Friday nights...I wasn't at home, but I wasn't far from it....

In the murky, jerky waters.... I tipped my Michelob to the mirror and the faces lined up watching me watching them..... the elbows on the counter, stray dollar bills in "I fold" concession, laugh lines and frown lines sagging like a Salvadore Dali painting. And I ached for them. These strangers on the other side of the bar.

The band played everything except Rolling Stones and I sat out the set. Fidgeted. Smoked. Told stories.Twirled my love beads. Friday's are for hippies. This wasn't feelin' like a Friday.

"Do you wanna dance?" he said, inching closer, breathing canned beer on me, three lines into the slow song. "No touching" I whispered and he vanished, poof! and he was gone....until the next one. "No touching" I whispered and he laughed, took a hand from the crowd and disappeared.

"Now?" my friend asked, nodding to the dance floor, questoning, comfortable, but not sure, and I threw my head back and said "yes, but no touching".....

"I don't know how" faded into the lyrics, the music, the rhythm, the rhyme, the move me, the this way, the that way, the "I've never done this before"....and I "mmmmmmmm,hhhmmmmmed" him as we danced eyes closed, around the couples, between them, into the music.....close, but never touching. Driftwood in the waves

"She won't let you touch her?" beer~breath bellowed over the band, into our peace. I never opened my eyes. Moving. Swirling. Psychelic circles, paisley foot steps. "No, she wont let me" Lucas whispered, barely aware he was talking. "Then take her back where she came from!", BB belched from his four square podium, arms draped around his mortified prize, feet shuffling, rough red cheeks touching hers.....chest puffed out like a plaster rooster on a kitchen wall....

We gave him two fingers and kept dancing.....

Into 1976 at The Saloon. Into Christian's living room, fluorescent light's glowing, mermaid goldish growing in a bathub. Into yesterday. Tomorrow. Down the dirt road to Peace Creek. Through a midnight sand dune. Over a rickity tickity wooden bridge. We just kept dancing, no touching....just feeling. The music.

The guy with the canned breath and canned lines stopped, mid mindless step, and watched.

And then he surrendered.

"Peace......"
was the last thing I heard him mutter as he left the floor.....

Counting....

2008-04-09T23:20:00.004-04:00

I opened my back door on Sunday and could feel it. Smell it. Almost hear it over the weed-eater next door and the sirens. The beach.

We're counting days. Week-ends. Pennies. Nightmares. And then....

We're going!

Seven days and seven nights blurred together, smudged together, tethered together.....measured only by sunrises and sunsets.

And I ache for the peace.

The constant humming of the tilted window unit shuddering, puffing artic asthmatic breaths. Dripping onto the sidewalk, rusty little puddles I can splash my feet in....one good rinse before I plow into bed at midnight or morning.

The crisp white sheets, sandpapered with coquina and periwinkles, and cozy~comfy, sprayed with sea salt....littered with wet swim suits and towels....and beer bottle rings.

The three o'clock huddle, the housekeepers hunkered down, hiding behind my door, clinking beers and sneaking in ice.

The first sunrise. Kimbies in her long nightie, waiting at the seawall.... The second sunrise, Kimbies in her long nightie and five of our new best friends waiting at the seawall....

The Brotherhoods of Death. Another year older. Wiser. And still aching for their friend, their brother, embracing us on the seawall. Dipping, diving, dancing....Remembering...

The starfish with three legs. Still moving. A ballerina with only one shoe. "It aint over til the fat lady sings" we tell her, and whisk her back to sea....

Pots and pans and dishpan drains filled with shells. Treasures for the keeping.

Feral cats strutting in the moonshine, plucking crablegs from the garbage and bellowing 'Hallelujah"....

The sound of Skinny's car crunching gravel in the make-shift parking lot. 400 miles and 3500 smart cars dollars later.....

The yellow butterfly of San Marina.....

You dirty rat....

2008-04-03T23:25:00.005-04:00

We were talking. Like sisters do. About silly things like why they call blondes blonde , about Mexican food tasting better in dives, googling the meaning of the word “occlude” and bantering the definitions.. Verizon to Verizon. It’s free, so we kept yacking. Wandered past the “did you know?”s to the “remember when”s and settled on the story of meeting soul mates from behind a shower curtain. I’m not gonna tell you the story because neither he nor he was a soul mate, but it happened nonetheless. It wasn’t until we got around to the “palmetto bug and rats” reminiscing that I started to get the heebie jeebies. Started to feel that familiar “something’s crawling up my leg” phobia.

Skinny is spooked by roaches. With wings. And rightfully so. She was only six when they invaded her space, laced up her legs like fishnet stockings and started giving her nightmares.

I’m haunted by Ben.

David Bowie was spinning for the last go round, the whisk~me~away, the nighty~night, and I prayed I would fall asleep before the needle hit the spot where it stuck forever, carving grooves into Diamond Dogs with it’s diamond tip. I piled into bed, crumpled under the hand-me-down quilts from Mamaw’s house and rolled on my side. My face fell into the down pillow like yesterday, like everyday before this one, and I snuggled in. Buttons pawed at my shoulder. Scratched for her space. I groaned and made room. “Jesus, could somebody cut her nails” I thought….as I hmmmmpppphhhhed and readjusted for her comfort. She pawed again.

Clawed actually.

I turned in the dark to give her the “settle down or sleep somewhere else” eyes and she glared at me…..beady eyes balanced between a pointy nose ….brillo pad hair glowing in the dark. I flung the covers off, flailing, leaping…..and it hit the wall.

Smack!

Yelping!

F'n Rat! In my bed!
On my body!
Breathing my breath!

For three weeks, I hauled Mamaws quilt and my first down pillow into the Jack and Jill bathroom and slept in the tub. Convinced I could hear him scurrying across the green and pink tile, crawling up the porcelain. See him in the full length mirror before he rounded the corner. Convinced I would know ....before he got to me.

For thirty five years I’ve known better.

You never see ‘em coming….

Traffic

2008-03-31T20:51:00.004-04:00

I left the office early. Mad Monday rain slamming the pavement. My little red toyota fogging up instantly....contacts doing the same. I grimaced, just a little, smiled a little more. Beating the clock.....

One more light to go and I'm suddenly the hump in a caterpillers back.....a little red lego in the spine of a plastic snake.....parked on a four line highway. Steam spiraled from the pavement, and I air drummed Smoke on the Water with my right hand, twirled my golden by-the-grace-of-a-bottle-in-mid-winter locks with my left hand. Cracked the window. It was gettin' steamy in there.

If I hadn't of left the office early, I would have never seen them. Across one more north lane, the suicide lane, and two south lanes....

They were jaunting at a good little pace. I could almost hear his green Converse sneakers slapping the puddles. Splash! And she'd go ouch! And they'd laugh. She stopped on a dime, and for a few long legged steps he didn't notice. I watched as she fished a cigarette pack out of her back pocket and struggled in the wet wind to light it. Her hair playing Chicken with the struggling flame. I imagine it was the silence of her echoed footsteps that stopped him. And he spun. Backtracked, caught up to her on the sidewalk, face to face now, and cupped his hands, hiding her little flame from the wind, the rain, the roar of southbound traffic. And then he stopped.

Moved his hands onto her cheeks. Kissed her hard, there on the sidewalk. She dropped the cigarette, a wet tobacco boat set free, drifting slow and muddied, in the southbound lane. The light turned green for the third time, and I shifted gears....Watched them in my five o'clock rearview mirror....not moving.....kissing.....

And I remembered....

The Circle....

2008-03-25T21:12:00.004-04:00

I don't know where we got it from or how it started. The peace~love thing. I don't remember a beginning and I hope I don't live long enough to know an end. There are 12 long years, a borrowed make-shift umbilical cord stretched to the max, between us. My brothers and sisters and Me.

The five of us...straight from the pages of The Glass Castle....digging for peace in the damndest of places.....

Chanty boy, my charge from early on.....riding the hump of Million's green van (Long before car seat laws, my friend), rocking out to Deep Purple and Led on the eight track.....unable to speak the King's English then or even now...."How old are you, Chanty?" and at five or six or seven, he would splay two chubby fingers and cheer! ......and we would chorus "Yes! Two! You are peace, sweet Baby!" His china doll face fixed forever in a crooked smile, drooling, sometimes croaking.....His mere presence in a society that still held hospitals for babies of his like, startling. And the beginning of change.

Skinny with her flowers....knocking on doors....."The little angel" they used to call her....the neighborhood shut-ins, the eccentrics, and ghosts..... She'd borrow from the best groomed lawns and the roadway median....bundles of finely pruned roses and wild catch~me~if~you~can's....and pass them out like summer showers.....sudden and welcome. Love. Full of spit and fire.

Kimbies, with her open arms....always, anything, everything. Tadpoles and Mama Frogs, hermit crabs and puppies with patches, conch shells and bait fish. She'd fetch them all home, scooch them into the circle.....Love them until their wings were mended. Or until we buried them rightly in the backyard, popsicle stick tombstones and all.....At thirteen, she started fetching home people.....
And the door is still open.....
Screen door banging in the wind....Crabcakes and cupcakes on the barbeque grill......
Willie Nelson and the Beatles on the hi-fi, blowing in the breeze....

Curty Boy with his big brown eyes, humming. Smiling. Toting luggage ten times his size. Teaching us, if not the world, that "it is what it is". And sometimes you just have to live with it. Be brave. And strong. And fearless. "Peace~love for you" .....his only salutation, his signature devotion.

Peace~love

Everything in between is just a roadtrip......

Get out Free.....

2008-03-24T18:07:00.004-04:00

I got the summons in August. I honestly wouldn't have opened it, but I was propped up on the couch, zoned out on meds.....And my neighbor dragged it in. Jury Duty. I was granted a reprieve. The courthouse is old and the stairways climb four stories high before you reach the top. They believed me when I said I wouldn't make it that far on crutches toting that concrete block. And I was telling the truth.

And then they rainchecked me. No "get outa Dodge" ticket this time lady. Your turn at the wheel.

I'm home now. And JSYK, I've been on trial all day. My life. My dirty laundrey aired in front of 16 peers, a defendent, three attorneys, a judge, and an audience. Every nightmare I've lived through, drudged back up, regurgitated in public. "Yes, but still....." "But certainly you would...." "But, don't you believe...."....."But what if....." "But that was just one police officer...." "But, couldn't you?...."

Needles in my eyeballs. Needles in my heart.

"No sir, No ma'am, No your honor".....

I believe in peace and love. That there's three sides to every story. That I can't judge less I be judged.

I believe if they had made me sit in that courtroom another moment, another day, poking me, I would have lost my mind....

Soul Food.....

2008-03-22T19:15:00.007-04:00

Friday couldn't have come quick enough, the clocks, the calendar, working in tandem, holding the promised day hostage at the end of their broken pendulum. "Not yet" the nights whispered to me. "Not today" the morning crooned.....And then she was here. Friday's are for dancin'......

And I couldn't soak it up fast enough, breathe it in deep enough, the music, the salty smell of strangers and friends elbow to elbow....the dark courtliness of the walls, smoke stained and autographed, another day older. My barstool casually parked on her tip toes, waiting....a yellow yard dog behind the picket fence.....

Finally, the clock slowing, counted out in rhythmatic noise, in the wave of arms, legs, hips.....the sandy sound of softshoes on the dancefloor, the clinkity tink of bottles on the bartop, silverware clanking in a tincan diner....

He drums.
Bangs the heart.
Slams
the song into
sign language,
lost language,
close~your~eyes language.

He growls.
Spits the words out,
drags them through the house,
steak bones for a stud,
a rabid rat,
a hungry cat....
He drums.....
And in the shadows,
the secrets they'll never tell,
he's
the
fix....
the accidental addiction...
the story
with the
hand~me~down ending....

He drums....
And I'm listening....

"I know who you are and I saw what you did"

2008-03-20T21:26:00.007-04:00

"Little white lies" she would call them. Perfectly blatant out and out lies dipped in confectioner's sugar..... "Divinity for the devil", I thought. She whipped 'em up for every occassion...."It makes him feel better" "What she doesn't know won't hurt her", and on and on and on...... And she smiled with crocodile teeth, bleached until they were stained a liar's shade of white.....And I wondered....."Whoever are you fooling?"

I'm a tattle~tale. That's what I do. I tell. I spill. I blab. I spit it all out in giant bursts of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah " and then" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. ... I'm afraid of secrets and little white lies. They always come back, a Mini-Pin after my ankles, snapping when you least expect it. And then they haunt you.....reincarnated on instant replay....tearing at your pants legs, your heart strings, the truth......

I'm fifty now. "It is what it is"......

I watched Shannon put her lipstick on. Peel it out of the twenty dollar cellophane package and roll it across her lips. The color bored me. And then she was bee stung. Her lips began to puff and swell. She lip-linered them for effect. Ready now. For Friday night.

To woo and coo,
to raspy voice them in.
Sexalicious.
At fifty.
Chapstick in the morning.

And that lipstick on his collar.....

nettleweed.......

The Talking House and other Urban Legends....

2008-03-13T21:35:00.004-04:00

I found this house in the middle of the night. Wandered by it after being slowly, surely Moonie~washed by Kimbies..."Just drive by, you're gonna love it"......

I wasn't house shopping. Wasn't thinking of moving. Wasn't dreaming of trading my barely used 3~2 with the double garage, cathedral cielings for a money pit. For a little pink house. And then I drove by it. On the fourth of July, just past midnight. In the morning I called the realtor. Three weeks later, we were family.....

And she's been talking to me ever since.

For the first few weeks that I was the proud homeowner of my new found wreck, Persichetti and I slaved every night after work, scraping, sanding, peeling, painting. We set the FM dial to the same tunes we jazzercized to Monday through Friday....Baby Face, Bobby Brown.....and worked until the wee hours. And night after night the radio would go zzzzcccchlllippppppppppppp....... "enough is enough", and land on Rolling Stones. First loves are always the ones that come back to haunt you.......

I've lived here forever now. And both believers and Non know the voice of my walls. The sudden slamming of her wings whispering "Listen"......Chairs falling from four perfectly good legs in an empty room, blue smoke billowing, the soulful cry of an animal lost, right there, in the nothingness of the kitchen floor ....... random music pinking, tinking, melodiously playing.....four notes on the piano, eight, eleven songs in a row on the computer the night of Nadine's funeral.....butterfly charms scooching out from under laundrey room fires.....the smells, the breezes, the welcome arms of my home. We know now to pause....

All's quiet tonight. It's time to rest......

JSYK, the faces in the door were accidental.....And along the way, we've decided they're the bubble bath fairies......

And we all fall down.....

2008-03-10T23:13:00.004-04:00

It was late. Skinny and I had been on the phone for hours. Literally. It's the way we bridge the miles. Reach out and touch each other. I piled into bed, four beers and probably eight brainstorms later, and crunched under the covers, heavy and smelling like rain....line dried and fresh. I stretched. Ran the Friday numbers by. How to make payroll. What to pick up at Winn Dixie on my home. How much catfood is behind the bar.... And I listened. One child out for the night....celebrating at Kobe's....

Drifting, just barely, slightly....I heard her key. Her high~heeled feet ballet stepping down the hall. Water running. I even heard her comforter being thrown back, her body flopping down, comfy cozy....into slumberland. I fell asleep immediately, whisk into that maternal peace that rocks a Mama....

"Safe", she's home safe and sound.

Georgia flew. Her claws digging into the orange quilt, needle banging my shins on her way out....unearthly growl growing as she took flight. The banging. The incessecent banging on my doorbelless door. She howled, barked, danced in a dark circle, and I spun in the same circle, grabbing joe boxers, freaking.....at that sound....strangers at the door.....in the middle of the damn night....

The front door rattled, bumped, slammed....."Oh, God, we're being raided"....and I flew out the kitchen door....where we meet friends, family, stray dogs.....as an army of one, ready.....and then I saw them....fraidy cats in headlights.....crumpled, coming, moving, falling into me with words, stories, frantic noise.... that suddenly sounded like coins dropped underwater.....and reaching, I couldn't catch them,worthless tokens falling heavy and distorted, gobbled up by the bottomless sand.....but I could see them, Jonah's roomate, his girlfriend....their faces.....

My youngest child had overdosed.

911 had been called.

He was barely breathing.

His blood pressure was nothing.

His heart was exploding.

When I touched him, he rolled his eyes. When I held his hand, nothing. When I said "I love you son".....I dreamed he answered me. When they told me "There is nothing else we can do" they went about their business and I prayed......

JSYK, in our world, if they breathe again and they're over 18, there is nothing you can do but pray......

I prayed hard......

The Glass House and other fairytales.....

2008-03-06T21:55:00.005-05:00

I have to fill in this space where a picture should go with words. I tried to take a photo, of a playing card house.....and they all fell down, aces and twos, jokers and even the box I tried to prop them up with. When I was little I used to build tunnels and covered sidewalks with cards, one box, two,three.... red and blue and black....the houses that Jack built, The Windchester Mansion from abondoned decks, 52 or less, scavenged from the kitchen drawers. Tonight I couldn't even build a tee-pee.....

And that's my picture....

Here's my rant.....

Why is it that people fix up their houses instead of their lives? I took a good hard look at the world around me tonight and decided that while my neighbors might wish I mowed more often, or painted the shutters again, I'd rather be doing what I'm doing than what they're doing. Inside my walls, behind the peeling paint and the leaning mailbox, we're growing, learning, surviving. We have secrets here that we're working on, mending, weaving, trying to build from. Lives that have changed. New lives waiting to be born......

Maybe because I'm a confessor, I think it's okay for my home to be a tattle~tale. To show the wear and tear of being lived in. To age with me, beside me.....

Chilo's house sparkles. You skim over rare stones to gain entrance.....a barefooted queen would wipe her feet before she plodded over tiles of that like. The living room buzzes, and beeps, flashes in neon......cable vision piped in, surround-a-sound music puffing from every elevatorish wall, gadgets everywhere, floating, suspended, vertical, flat screened. A million dollar fantasy. On show. And a mortgage that's choking the hell out of her....

Megan's exhausted. They've been hauling in drywall and "things" for weeks. Updating. Renovating. Out with the old and in with the new. Matching pillows to billowing curtains, painting bird baths to match the conch shells they bought for 15.99 at a roadside stand. Fixing up the fantasy.....the one that's never ever gonna come true......

Who cares?
What parties do you hold here? What people dance under this tent and laugh in your rain? What memories did you make today? Or put on lay-a-way?

My roof is leaking.
I smile.
Sometimes you have to be thankful for the little things in life.....

I named him Woodstock.....

2008-03-04T19:32:00.013-05:00

"He's just a bike" they said. Rolling their eyes. "But a good bike, Ma, a really good bike" she added, reassuring me that it was o.k. to bring him in the house. Ok to clear a room for his comfort and park him like art next to the piano. And then they laughed.

But, he's my responsibility, I thought to myself. I brought him home from the store, picked him out of crowd, with his peeling stickers lazily slapped on at the factory, his decals with air pockets, and his crooked seat. I brought him home and now I have to nurture him. Show him the world. I have to teach him to ride with the wind, to slide into the driveway, racing for homebase like the crowd is roaring. I have to take him where he feels as free as first love or a puppy that just climbed through the gate, knee high in trouble and romping on...and on....and on....

And so, on Sunday, after miles and morning miles of practice, we took off...."Take me to the River and I'll follow you anywhere" I whispered to his backside, clomping him out the kitchen door, and saddling up with lemoned water and a smile....and we rode on and on and on.....

Like Forest Gump running, we just kept going......

And I swear he pedaled half the way. I rode the wooden bridge hands free, blonde hair flying, tickety tickety tack, floorboards swaying...... the water chasing us under the planks, lapping at our shadow....

At Make-out park, we camped long enough to remember, to graze, to watch the faces of strangers watching us grow....

to stare into the rheumy face of the river and throw kisses at everything hidden under its leather colored skin.....

to smile at the Sun, freckle faced, and playing hide and go seek with the trees,

to climb over the "Do not cross the fence" sign

and snuggle into Peace Tree,

two fingers rising.....

long enough

to know

it was OK to turn around and go back home.

Ok to fly like the dickens down that driveway.....

crunching gravel all the way.....

Your dreams are safe now.....

2008-03-01T10:37:00.005-05:00

I took an empty coffee can with me to the club. Barreled through the front doors looking like all of a beggar. Set it up on the bar. And waited. One by one the bottle caps arrived. Heinekens, Michelobs, Coors, Red Dog, Buds, obscure beers I've never heard of. In half a set, the can was full and I sealed her up. Secured the little plastic lid. Done Deal.

Every now and then a new cap would plunk down on the countertop. Some hit the lid, others like stray cats at a dumpster, loitered close and then fell behind the bar, on the floor, or just disappeared all together.

At midnight, I swept the bar with my eyes. Scanned their faces. And then gathered up their bottled stories and daydreams and brought them home with me. I plunked through my treasure chest of colored caps, my fingers listening to them tink.....metal sea shells.....And went to sleep.

This morning I knew.

I started hammering at first light.

The neighbors, out for coffee, hollered over....."Hey, Sing, there's a damn woodpecker on your porch!"...... "Mmmmmmm,hmmmmmmm" I mumbled to the morning air, barely aware they had spoken, hammering.....66 bottle caps, 207, 303 and more.......each little trinket getting three hearty and soulful bangs for good luck....

And then she was done.

Peace.
That's what I wish for you my friends.

The Empty Bar....

2008-02-26T19:47:00.004-05:00

"At 9:00 the bus pulls out"...she winks over her shoulder. It's a ritual. At 8:45 I hide my keys in an obvious place, open a new pack of cigarettes, tuck a twenty in my pocket and turn the lights out. We're goin' out!

We tuck the car into the first tight squeeze and scan the parking lot. Whose here and whose not registering like ten potatoes-for-a-dollar at the Winn Dixie check out. I skip ahead, first one to the graffiti lit dungeon door, stand on my tippie toes, peek through the smoke smeared window and then......
we go in.....
I never tell what I see or don't....

We curtsy and shake hands, kiss cheeks and tossle hair, hug, make the rounds, and then lean our barstools back on all four legs, and claim them. Our drinks hit the black bartop before our cigarettes do....and Friday night begins....

Ten o'clock, eleven, twelve, and save the last one for me. We make the rounds, clink 'em, spin 'em, twirl and dip 'em. The occassional new face wanders in and we scoop them up into the circle, twine them around our little fingers and into our Friday night stories. Sometimes, they come back again, and then we call them "Friend"......

I love this bar.

It's only when they belt out Bob Segar, that I slump a little, chug my beer a little harder, and realize how empty it is...

Turn the page....

Sometimes......

2008-02-24T18:56:00.003-05:00

Sunday. The rains finally got the drift, Ma Sun has had enough of you. She warned them. Scolded them. Poked her head up from underneath the down comforter enough to tell them "No more", "Don't make me do this..." But they were stubborn little buggers. Flailing, falling, raining on our parade. I could have warned them, but I didn't wanna be a "told you so....."

She came flyin' out of her bed. Mad as hell. Glaring. Scorching. She won.

The world tilted on it's axile, and all the rain slipped off. Shunned into "Shame on you" land.....and Sunday was born.

I woke up to dark coffee and every bird on the universe camped in my unkempt yard singing out of tune, vying for the lead role in todays Soap Opera. You gotta give it to 'em, they never give up. I woke up to my new life, rewritten from the old, and a few pages missing. I kissed the sky. And waited.

Jonah never showed up to mow the yard. Not that he ever has before, but his late night call the night before gave me hope. Not that I can't mow it myself, oh I have a million times. Every time almost. With babies in backpacks, pushing the mower and pulling a buggy. Under ten o-clock street lights. In a cast to my knee. I just hoped this once, he'd show up. That I could lay eyes on my six foot tall wayward child in the sunlight. That I could know he was safe.

At one o'clock, I went to fetch the gas. I pumped my $3.29 cent worth of fuel into a can the size of my pocketbook, strapped it into the hatchback, and cranked my engine. And then I heard it. The sound. The noise. The message.

The Beastie Boys. "We gotta fiiiiiiggggght for our right to Partaaaaaaaaaay"! I turned it up louder. And louder. The speakers cracked. I cranked it one more time. It's a Toyota for crying out loud, she can take it. I rounded the corner rocking.

And when the afternoon played out, I whispered those words to myself, over and over again, Sometimes "we gotta fight" for our right....."to"......