The Burning Princess

I need more time in the dark, like a mushroom nestled at the underside of a fallen tree, drinking in the moisture and nutrients necessary without being prodded at my the nosy sun. I have so very little to put forth. I am a field that hasn’t recuperated properly from the last harvest. What will spring up out of this soil? Something has gone awry upon this day, some small thing which has led me to feel scorched inside as if I had been splayed open like a fish for the sun to blaze down upon my tender insides and burn them like a laser smoothing out the unwholesome imperfections on an aging starlet’s face.
What if I do have a monstrous deformity, one that can’t be seen, one that affects my thinking, my feeling, my perception of reality? Would you correct this deformity that is me? Would I be me without it? Perhaps I am the deformity, an asymmetrical thalamus made for communing with things left undisturbed by proportionately formed minds. What if I choose not to use my deformity to pray for money, health or peace? What if I don’t care whether there is a god greater than me, or if it hears me? What if I am only interested in the quest, in rescuing the princess from her deep slumber in the inky hot depths reeking of sulfur? Not because I have to, not because it would make me good, or better than any other pale ape, but because I heard her call out to me, I heard her say, "Please help me. You are my only hope."
So I run the gauntlet, which looks like a cluttered apartment filled with children and the belongings of a displaced girl and a tangle of electronics; computers, cameras, and cell phones. I make my way through the deadly maze that is blonde hair and blue eyes and acne scarred skin stuffed into tight jeans.
From the outside, from beyond the glass-less window they might look in and say:
"Her life is a waste, look at that dump that she lives in, she has no car and lives off government money. Why won’t she get off her ass and do something, make some money?"
"Mother," I say, "They’re playing our CD on the radio."
"Will you get any money?" she asks.
Money, money, money, and things, that is the measure of worth from that other side of the window. Without it you will suffer. Worse than not having it, is not wanting it more than any thing.
Lazy.
Shiftless.
Do nothing.
But no, I can see the princess burning down in the flames, hear the crackling of her flesh, the rustling of her shackles.
"Please help me. You’re the only one who hears me crying. Please, please…"
If I am the only deformed creature that can hear her plea, then she is unreal. Yet she is real to me, as real as any other thing, the deformity which I am acerbating causes me to see it that way, so I will have to best the labyrinth, make my way through the pattern forged of hopes, fears, desires, things made in the intense heat by a clumsy smith.
If I run this road, it will change, with every step it is made anew. I can run rabbit run and it will be known to me only as it is coming undone and reconfiguring, like grains of sand lifted by a wind and laid back to rest.
If I am ill made, will you stop me?
Tell me why, if my princess is imaginary, why should you stop me?
What has the world to fear from deformities like me?
What have you to fear from imaginary princesses?
I need more time in the dark, away from the prying light of illuminated minds. I need a dank place to nurse my defective nature into full blown monstrosity. Then see what comes forth from this point of convergence called human, from this crossroads where sacrifice should be made on behalf of shadowy things. One day of sun can be undone. You have witnessed its undoing.

Dark Moon

Don’t you know? At the core, I’m still this little dual gendered blondie in short black dresses and you can see my panties when I bend over to help the little kids at the table. I’m still hot for girls that are hot for girls and hot for boys that wear dresses and swing on swings and girls that wear mustaches and men in tall black hats and anything tall and black in general with hair all over its body. I like things that want to go where they’re not supposed to go and go there anyway. Who says it’s not okay to crawl around the dark side of the moon with your panties off and a big black dog sniffing at your crack while the stars spin round and round singing "wheeeee!" and the fabric of the universe goes "crack!’ And the black man’s head splits open and wrigley green things come out and it isn’t clear whether they are many long separate wrigglies or all appendages of one hidden thing with wagging tentacles.
I still like the desert all hot and bare with broken Indians on the side of the road selling hot pink butterfly necklaces to people that pass by in white sedans on their way to some other place. I like cacti with their prickly hairs even though a little one bit me when I was just two years old. I said, "Can I pet you?" and it said "Yes." and I reached a soft trusting little finger down intending to be as gentle as possible, but it bit me anyway. My mother had warned me. Sadly I do so much that my mother would warn me against if only she knew there were such things to do. Luckily, for her peace of mind, she can’t imagine them, so she can’t worry about the things I do where no one can see, down in the cracks of all that gray matter tucked neatly under my scalp.
I’d like to be strangled to death some day. I know that I would be nice at first and then even though I want to be strangled, I’m sure that as my mechanical creation begins to realize that something must be done or its day is done, I imagine I’ll start to fight against my own will, wriggling and flopping like a long legged blonde fish.
I did have a boy once that one hot summer day come up into my bedroom where the curtains were drawn to keep out the sun. We were both a little wet so I dropped off my clothes right in front of him and I could see that he liked it and I put on something else while he watched and then I asked him if he would wear a soft pink dress I had in the closet and he did it. He wasn’t the kind of boy that I would have pictured doing it, not lithe with long hair and a penchant for wearing eye liner. No, he was husky and short haired with eyes that bulged out like those of a goldfish, and he had hair on his belly and on his back, but he put on that soft stretchy powder pink dress of mine and I liked it very, very much and no real boy has ever done that for me since.
There was a bearded lady though, that I used to fuck with a strap-on, and when I was away at work one day she took off all of her boy clothes, which she wore because she liked to fool everyone around her, and she put on my dress without asking me, and went into the bathroom and played with herself in front of the mirror and took pictures with her camera phone and then posted them on My Space for everyone to see. I checked my email at work and was pissed off when I saw those pictures posted since it was my dress and she hadn’t asked. The worst day ever with her was when she came home with her beard shaved off and her face all smooth and youthful and it scared me and I didn’t like it because she didn’t look like a devil anymore, but I tried not to freak out too much. However, I’m sure she thought that I acted funny and asked too many questions about it.
Nobody knows how I am exactly, and if you’re reading this, you might think that I’m some cool chic that wears lots of dark eye make-up and a lace up bodice, but I’m wearing a turtle neck sweater and a pink rabbit ear cap and even I forget most of the time just how queer I am while I try to make small talk with the soccer moms in front of the school. And I’m sure that if she read this, that soccer mom would feel all the skin on her body get all puckered up with goose pimples and a hot chill would run up through her middle and it would feel as if her heart were trying to fold in on itself and she would be afraid and wonder what kind of horrible person I am and what terrible things I might have done that I’m not mentioning.
But in reality, I’m probably one of the safest people she could be around, because everyone visits the dark side of the moon when they sleep, many sleep even as they walk, but they forget what goes on in the dark side or they pretend that they’ve never been. But I can see all of that junk in my trunk and run my fingers through it and watch it and pet it and then come back well informed about the dangers that lurk deep within, but some sleep walkers start to do things without noticing that they’re doing them, because the dark side wants to bubble over after they’ve kept a lid on it for so long.
Me, I just want to dance and sing and say crazy things and make crazy things in my own image and then disappear into the deep dank soil when my time is up and be remembered by the worms when they eat me and then fly through the void as a screeching streak of magenta. There may be more to it than I can imagine, but I won’t worry about it now.
For now, I tell you to listen up- if you are a boy you should try on a dress, and if you’re a girl you should stick your hand down another girls blouse, and if you’re a dog you should high tail it out of here before I think of something perverse for you to do (and stop reading blogs because it freaks people out when they come home and find their dog looking at porn on the internet and it’s even worse if they catch you researching metaphysics). I innocently stumbled upon some very dirty but harmless images on the web myself the other day, and now things occur to my imagination that never did before. So the same will start happening to you, (whether you’re a boy, a girl, or a dog) in 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Balloons

There you were, a slightly something nothingness to pat the blonde crown of my head. Even in my sleep, I see you, and the characters that were a part of the story that held you suspended like a shiny red balloon set among a bouquet of little white ones. Imagine the heights you might explore entirely on your own if you were to be cut free of the bouquet, tethered as it is to that small lead weight ensconced in a plastic smiley face to make its purpose seem friendlier. As a balloon, bound to the other balloons, your sole purpose is to delight and amuse, and yet I’d wager that you dream of something loftier. I’ll not say that I think one is truly better than the other. The fate of the balloon that rises unhindered towards the golden sun… well it is doomed to POP! While on the other hand, the balloon that remained tethered to it’s bland brethren will eke a few delighted exclamations from one observer or another, and eventually it will begin to shrivel and droop like a withered flower at the end of a flaccid stem until it is just a wrinkly little flap of rubber. Either outcome is somewhat dismal, and still I think I’d like to soar before the end, and well, perhaps that is what I am doing.
That may be the reason that I catch a glimpse of the lot of you in a dream now and then, when a gentle zephyr blows me near the carnival grounds and I see your bulbous heads bobbing up and down in time to the floppy footed step of some horrible clown. What does it mean, soft breeze that you sometimes afford me a glimpse of the bunch I left behind, and especially that red balloon, which surely I admired once as much as any other white balloon might? What does it mean that I sometimes wish for the red balloon to escape a slow demise and soar with the birds of prey above the world and above the clouds? The moment that my own tether was cut, I left the red balloon and its pearly entourage behind, and their fate is their own as mine is my own. How then can I imagine that I know anything of their existence, as I am no longer one of their ilk?
I could not expect them to think of my flight as a worthy way to spend the days until the roller coaster comes shooting out of the final curve and the ride is over, because they choose the tether and the lead weight and I the unclouded sky. I imagine, or perhaps I was once told, that they hope to lift that weight one day as a whole, through an act of magic, via a measure of defiance against the holy laws of nature. One day they will all make an effort which will be unaccountable, given that as time passes they loose strength and buoyancy rather than gain it, and yet, through a special effort made collectively by each individual, they will rise. Or so they hope. It is difficult to get so many air heads aligned to work for a common purpose and then to further make an effort which only they themselves, individually, can hope to invoke.
As long as the bunch is big enough it will always be easier to say, "Well, we would rise if only Bobo would lift his share of the weight." And "The reason we aren’t getting enough lift is because Balin is leaking." And by thus placing attention on all the other balloons in their company, they fail to place the necessary attention on themselves, they fail to apply as individuals the supernatural attention that makes possible the impossible.
Or so I imagine. What can be the reason that my imagination, my dreams, my mind bends back towards you now and again? In my dreams alone all balloons are reconciled and accepting of each other’s fate. Like the animals of the Wind In The Willows, in my dreams we all know that there is no use commenting on the sudden appearance or disappearance of another animal. We are glad when we are together, and remorseless in parting, and ever accepting that otters must swim and moles burrow and sparrows fly. There will be times when we take the path together, and times when our destiny demands that we part, and that is all that there is to it.
Or so I imagine.
So I have dreamed.

Bear

Little brown bear, eyes so black peering at me from the depths of your fluff stuffed gut. My dog bit your eye off once, ten years ago, and I glued it back on, and there it still is, gazing on, winking into my soul. You and I, we have been together since the beginning. Before I was born into this world you were purchased and placed in a crib made with bright yellow and orange linens, and when I was at last brought home and laid down, you were there, looking with your unreal eyes into my own new born eyes. Your face is the face of a first friend, my first friend, a first silent companion in a noisy chaotic world. Steady as a rock. As constant as the air I breathed. Unmoving and yet alive, looking back at me when I looked at you. When I could take my first steps, I carried you. Now the unmoving could move. You moved with me and I took refuge in your stillness sitting upon a patch of sun dappled carpet and playing with your sweet round ears and tiny black nose. Your eyes were so clear then, large round pupils of deepest black encircled by irises of muddy gold. They shimmered and glistened, as lively as the eyes of the many tropical fish that swam to and fro in my father’s massive aquarium. Now those same eyes are scratched and cloudy like the eyes of a very old man or woman and your fur, once so plush, has worn thin in patches all over your body, but I have never loved you more. Though now I have friends who speak to me and come to me on their own legs and go away on those same legs, I rely solely on you to comfort me in the deepest dark of night when I am once again frail and helpless, a child adrift in a sea of violence. Even as I grew and acquired new toys and found playmates like myself to frolic with, and dressed in Velcro sneakers and waited for school buses and listened to moldy old women that used yard sticks for pointers, even through the years of changing into something else and talking to boys on the telephone and looking into the mirror for hours, even then you were with me, though I sometimes neglected you. Sometimes, the great flood of things that had come to fill my closets and the underside of the bed carried you out of my arms and into a dusty corner. Sometimes out of deepest affection I sealed you up in a cardboard box with letters deemed important and tiny dresses speckled with hearts that once fit on my now oversized body. Now, more than ever, I appreciate you and your silence, your strength and your helplessness which are the perfect counter points to my own strengths and weaknesses. Because you can not move, I move you. Because I will change, you are unchanging. Together we are complete, a magic pair, a girl and her gentle bear. I am learning to love you as unconditionally now as I did in those first days, when we were both new, and yet now I have matured enough to know that so many things come, but they also go, and as they curl back like the tongue of the sea returning to the endless unknown, only you remain. Sweet bear. We have found a way to stick together, the unborn and the born, keeping each other warm by the hearth of a common heart. It is this shared heart which gives life to each of us, but we two are two who know it, so that life is vivified and granted even more color by the solidarity of our bond.
Little brown bear, eyes so black, peering at me from the depths of your fluff stuffed gut, it will be you and I till the end, and at the end, when all things are blotted from the horizon like typed errors remedied with liquid white out, our union will already be so complete that our further adventures as one will have to be written by Angels on the underside of clouds with ink as invisible as we will have become.

Good Morning

Good morning world, good morning sun, good morning song unsung. Do you hear it yet caught in my throat, the first cry of the day, the first scream of the new born infant just expelled from the mother’s womb and grasped in latex covered doctors hands? A shout of anguish, of excitement, an announcement of arrival. I have come world! Be prepared for what I bring. Though not even I can tell what it will be, I will make my contribution to the cosmic din and it starts with this note; "aaahhhh!"
Good morning carpet blue and houseplant green, drinking up the morning sun. Good morning squeaky faucet and ghostly telephone voices. I am ready, like a Scottish warrior painted robins egg blue and waiting on a windy hillside, I am ready to tumble into the fray, ready to roll like soap bubbles up out of the churning bath water, ready to dance on air like a Kung Fu master. I may fall or I may burst, but gravity and time will have to catch me first, and I have been made to run, like the prince with a thousand enemies. Behind every corner a trap lies hidden, a foe in wait licks at its sharp fangs and spreads its pointed claws, but I have been made hummingbird quick so that I may pass before the trap has been fully sprung.
So good morning foe, and good morning friend. Good morning eyes that might glean the difference between one and the other, round and blue and creased at the edges. A new day begins, a chapter in a story which starts with the lines: the day began like any other except that she couldn’t remember any other day and was stunned to find that she lived in a spacious apartment with steel bars over the windows and piles of recyclable bottles shifting and sliding around on the back porch. Her bed was like a cloud, or a birds nest suspended high above the carpeted floor. The ceiling as white as a frosted wedding cake spread out above her a mere 3 or 4 feet from the tip of her nose. Anyone awaking thus would well wonder how they came to be so close to the ceiling.
Peeking timidly over the edge, she found that it was in fact a loft bed with no ladder, so she sat amid the folds of lavender and blue sheets like Titania in her bed, waiting for the fairy maids to come and lower her down, but none came. Instead two small frightening creatures came roaring into the room and cried,
"What’s for breakfast?" They were children and they seemed to think that she was their mother so like baby birds they chirped, "We’re hungry. What is for breakfast?"
Like a dreamer she guessed what might come next in the dream and steered as best she could in a favorable direction by answering: "Cereal."
And like a dreamer, she willed the cereal to be there as the little creatures clambered away to open a refrigerator door and pull chairs around so that they groaned as they were dragged over the linoleum to be stood upon in order that the cereal, (which miraculously was there), could be reached. She gazed out the window between the bars and was delighted to see a small hummingbird hovering near the top wrung of the fire ladder hanging on the side of the building across the alley. This seemed to be a good omen.
"Good morning bird." She said, and then after finding a way down the loft, "Good morning children." , and after looking around, "Good Morning world, and sun, and song unsung."