Red Riding Hood

The fire. I watched them dance about the fire and feast at tables of stone. Another time I burned a wolf alive as it leapt to taste my flesh. The time I am thinking of is now, when I run through the darkness towards the fire's distant glimmer, hammer in hand.
There was a time before now when I was the mother, when I was the Grandmother, and each time I have also been a daughter and that comes before as well. When the world ended there was still life, still fire, still iron and steel, but time was no more.
I remember being daughter running through the ruins, my breath burning in my lungs as the wolf followed. Being hunted then, a girl no more than 9 or 10, as boney as the starving beast that followed.
Running, I flung a pail full of stinking petrol upon my snarling assailant. The bucket clattered upon the concrete as the wolf made an angry sound, slowed only a little.
Through the doorways whose doors had burned out at the end of time, into the kitchen, and climbing up the heavy wire shelving to the very top where I tuck my legs close to my body and fumble open the match box and strike. Teeth gnashing the air as the canine leaps towards me. That hiss as the match catches and I flick it at the dark body rising towards me, twisting airborne and suddenly igniting with a whoosh.
Is it really silent then in Grandmother's kitchen upon the top shelf of the rack watching a wolf burn alive? Or was it a noise too terrible to remember?
It was my mother who killed that first wolf with a bucket of petrol and a match. It was my daughter. It was myself. It was only a little wolf, but I was only a little girl. A girl who ran not away from, but towards wolves ever after.
I watched their fires from a distance. Who am I? Mother. Daughter. Grandmother. Their fires burn against the black and I see them dancing, casting long shadows against the wall. I watch them eat at stone tables built before the end of time. The heat can almost reach me, even from so far.
Just the sight of distant flame can be hearth to me for one moment as my soul reaches cold hands towards the light. It reminds me of civilization, Grandmother’s house, mother's heart beat, father's beard.
But I turn away from it eventually, as I must. Their halls are not mine, and people can be worse than wolves.
That was another time. Now I am thinking about now, the moment before the end of time, the fires that scorch the world and send people into holes like rabbits. The fire that burns in our bones and makes us sick even after the light is gone. The fire that will twist through generations of wolves making them taller and  mightier. It will run its fingers through our minds even when it seems to have forgotten our bodies, the fire that burns deep, kissing the center of creation.
Sometimes I remember being a star, great, great, Grandmother. Sometimes I stare at the alpha through crosshairs, holding my breath, squeezing the trigger. My footprints dot the snowy plains. I dye their white coats red and make a heavy hooded cloak. They know me among the ruins. Word has spread of the wolf killer.
Many of these people don’t remember the time before the end of time. This is the world as it has always been to them. Sometimes I wear the red cloak of fur made by my mother and track the wolf that killed her. Sometimes I am the fire at the end of the world swallowing itself.
The fire. I watched them dance about the fire and feast at tables of stone. Another time I burned a wolf alive as it leapt to taste my flesh. The time I am thinking of is now, when I run through the darkness towards the fire's distant glimmer, hammer in hand. This is the weapon that is left to me after I met with the wolves who were men.
I am running ahead, daughters, mothers, Grandmothers left behind me. I am running towards the fires that may be the end of the world. I am running towards the wolves.

Boogie

Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. I pull up from the dark depths wondering. What is that light there, penetrating the serenity of this once womb-like space? Eerie and blue, it calls me out of slumber and points to a startling terror; I have not been alone here.
There is a movement not far off, something that can see me, just as I can now see it and the age old questions arise; can it hurt me? Should I hurt it first? Who will eat who?
Play seems out of the question. After all, who comes creeping silently into your room to kneel beside your bed while you slumber as an invitation to play? This is too close.
A friend knocks at the door, a friend calls to you, announces their presence from some distance before coming so near.
Or are there other ways to play? Ways that belong to creatures far beyond fear of safety and borders of individuality? Does one thought in my mind announce itself to another before it takes over?
It’s all for the furtherance of some game perhaps, but not a game for human animals, not a game that this one that I have perceived myself as being can win. Hostility or hospitality weigh in on either hand, who shall be the victor?
Fear is such an insistent mistress, always calling for my attention, always making bold claims, such as this announcement that this is a matter of life and death. Leap up and attack! Run! Or tell yourself that it isn’t real. It was only your imagination, there was nothing there, and drift back to sleep.
I close my eyes. If I can’t see it, then it can’t see me…so goes the ostrich logic. Leave the boogies to feast over my reposed form. What do they do while I hide behind closed lids? What do they want?
This is the thing that they told me didn’t exist. The thing that was not in my closet, not under the bed, not at my window. Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did. Now that I have grown taller and have sent my own children into the darkness with promises of false safety, only now, sleeping in their room, am I startled awake by this presence, this “should not be here” that disturbs the peace like a spider falling from the ceiling onto your cheek.
Now I know that it has always been here. It was always in the closet, under the bed, and at my window, then just as now. I sent the lambs to the slaughter just as my parents did before me, off to be the center piece at the boogie feast.
Slowly I realize that this time it has not come for me. Here it is peeking into the bed of my youngest daughter, and this thing that should not be has suddenly taken notice of me noticing it. How surprised we both are. I would not usually be here, on the floor sleeping, would not usually perceive that strange glow, hear the rustling, feel my pulse quicken and my eyes snap open. What seemed at first like my own unwelcome visitor did not expect so close an encounter with me, it has come creeping with other quarry in mind.
I am here, an adult in the nursery, positioned on the floor beside the bed to prove the security of our sanctuary and I witness for myself the breach. They are hard to see once fully awake. It is only with lids partially veiled that I can perceive their glow, the shadows of their slinking movement.
They are unconcerned by their discovery of me, more importantly, by my discovery of them. Even while they see me watching through slit eyes, they continue their advance.
Why should they worry? I don’t believe that they exist. Reason should prevent me from rising to stop them. I have always closed my eyes tighter and gone back to sleep in the past, a habit formed in child hood, why now would I do any other thing?
Sleep they told me, go to sleep. So I did. That has always been the way. Tell yourself that it isn’t real. It is only your imagination, there is nothing here.
What do they do while I hide behind closed lids? What do they want?
Answers born from questions and questions born from answers tumble awkwardly over one another like dark suited gymnasts. I descend into the dark depth blotting them from my mind. Forget that light there disturbing the womb of darkness and retreat into slumber and the comforting illusion of solitude.

Dog And Cat Days

Oh the sea foam green dreams of young kitten girls with soft clouds of hair and stooped shoulders. They break on the rocks and spray the faces of bull dog boys waiting on the beach with their guitars and bon fires and all hearts have wings that beat against the cages of rib bone that house them. So often we feel them trying to fly up out of our throats and they get stuck there as a lump, or sometimes they flutter around in our stomachs especially when our eyes meet or some bit of flesh brushes up against another. We’ll be drug or gun runners and we’ll sit by turquoise pools in forgotten desert motels and sip drinks garnished with hot pink paper umbrellas until we get our stomachs shot out and we bleed out red blood into some old avocado green shag and hold hands and feel shocked watching the light go out of our eyes.
We’ll be rock stars with coke habits and old mink coats and big sunglasses and then we’ll look more than ever like the kitten girls and bull dog boys we are. We carve our initials into the sandy cliffs that overlook the surf and kitten girls know that the wind will blow the names away and there will be no more KG “heart” BDB some day, but still her eyes are full of stars and Harley Davidsons rumble through her cranium. They could just live in an apartment that smells like antiques and old ladies down by the sea, soaking the asbestos up while being nobodies together. She can write a novel that no one will publish and he can work in construction and play in a band that sounds like animals fighting in the guts of land mowers and each can maintain with pride their respective My Space profiles.
It was meant to be glorious and shining, our youth unending, the mysteries of the universe always sparkling over us, hearts always trying to escape these excited bodies, these chemical factories for building space ships for the Gods. We would die young and live in the kingdom of heaven forever. Maybe recklessly manufacture smurf speed in a bathtub in a sagging house off of Machado St. and wait for the fantastic explosion that would set our hearts free. Kitten girl would do anything, anything at all to feel alive, break her hymen over Tom Waits songs, bite and scratch, forget the condoms, take a greyhound bus to another state, watch strangers play video games and drink wine coolers in living rooms that smell like nothingness. She’d even shave away the soft clouds of hair and invoke demons in circles and stars made of masking tape and spend the night in cars parked at run down drive ins.
Somewhere along the way the dreams were trapped in black bottles and distilled into nightmares brewed in basements.
What happened to recording our newest song in the bathroom on an old cassette player and ditching school to play it on the old boss stereo for grandma? What happened to dancing half naked in the surf and bulldog boys in pink dresses and kitten girls singing songs on the fences of hot alleys?
In some tear drop of time we are there, like insects trapped in amber, our spirits were left behind in the golden sun filled afternoons of our dog and cat days. Now we march, life less old wrinkled things with guts too heavy to swing to the music and hearts too swollen with betrayals of self to flutter or even flop. Poor hearts, the wings have so hopelessly atrophied. This slow death is not the glory we imagined, is not the song to the immortal that we dreamed we’d learn to sing. When did we become tame old pets with small dreams? Little petty fantasies so devoid of life they can no longer crash onto shores but only slosh about like old beer in plastic cups?
Oh the sea foam green dreams of young kitten girls with soft clouds of hair and stooped shoulders. They used to break on the rocks and spray the faces of bull dog boys waiting on the beach with their guitars and bon fires and everyone’s hearts had wings that beat against the cages of rib bone that housed them.
We can live again in the bright and shinning moment, dancing and singing the sparkle of the stars. The night sky will once again drip with mystery, our hearts might again shudder with ecstasy and its promise. Anything is yet possible while we still breathe, even if there is a tear drop in which we are sour little pusses and sleeping old dogs, there is always another moment waiting to be born. A sea foam green bead of liquid life in which we rise from our ashes and live, live, live, live, wild and magick things from other times and other places, from fantasy books and independent films, soft kitten girls and brave hearted bull dog boys, the stewards of live hearts.
And now that innocence has become experience we’ll know how to let them fly. We’ll let them soar like birds of prey, graceful and far seeing carrying us to all new vistas of sound and color, to worlds knit of avocado green shag and soft pale clouds of hair and guitars and bonfires and pink flesh stitched together with boom boxes and reels of old film. Oh the sea foam green dreams with their Harley Davidson rumble and the red blood that sloshes like beer in old cups shuddering with ecstasy distilled into nightmares. The glory we imagined is the song to the immortal that we dreamed we’d sing with our tear drops of time wrapped in stooped shoulders. We break on the rocks and the wind blows the names away along with the cages of rib bone that housed them.