Stories

If only the story had a clear beginning or a clear end then I would give it to you straight instead of in these helix-like curly cues. I intent to purposefully obfuscate the truth, not because I want to lie to you, because if I tried to speak directly to you THAT would be the lie.
It was very unfortunate that I had not recently suffered the proper amount of brain damage to initiate the multidimensional scanning process. I knew he would ask,
"Is this a mash up?" and I would say no, because the mash up was coming from inside my head rather than through an external process of combining seemingly disparate texts. It's the natural beauty of my mental illness. He would say from his crystal palace,
"I connect things too, that seem unrelated."
At this juncture it is wise to explain that clearly there is only one "he" ever. It may seem that there are a multitude, that I am in fact sitting around an octagonal table with multiple individual "he" right now, but I have learned the deeper secrets. I understand that all along I have only known one primordial he and have interacted with him through various emissaries both conscious and unconscious of their roles as high priests within the order of the shinning eternal nil.
The music, by the way, was noise and we listened with gusto, filling me with hope. Sometimes I met one who was both he and she, a creature capable of invoking all the powers fluidly. I am one such of these creatures, a rainbow unicorn once held sealed within a lead tomb beneath layers of Korean soil waiting to be unearthed by the emperor. You will see that there is some internal logic, a special hidden system for decoding the sacred texts. I could no longer be a human woman although I had played the part well in biological excess and had difficulty separating myself from MOTHER.
I wanted to tell him not to ride that motorcycle straight towards death, but his life and death were not mine to dictate and I would not like to interfere with his appointment with destiny.
Such strange beautiful mysteries I have questioned and viewed from the observation deck. I was thoroughly interviewed on entry myself . They examined my oral cavity for contraband that I was attempting to smuggle in from the womb, so I took it into my lungs and held it there for 30 years.
I saw a movie about a girl with a friend and it reminded me a little that one time I did have a friend like that one. She had an opportunity to escape and said she didn't want to leave me, but I told her that she had to go, that I wanted her to go, that it was the opportunity we had both wished for, so she flew away trailing rainbow streamers. We met at the estuary where we were both hatched and learned to manipulate him.
I look in amazement through the oculus and wonder how anyone could have stomached me when I was the arch-duchess of Coldsville conducting psychological experiments on those alien entities I called "friends."
I had of course been warned by my father, the duke, that these so called friends would be my ultimate demise if I let them get too close to me. It happened just as he had said it would, but not as he had imagined it. When the walls came down and I let the alien other in, his little proxy was damaged beyond repair allowing for the multidimensional scanning process to be performed with this bio terminal. The angels began the process of molecular distillation that altered my basic shape retrofitting me for the other process without leaving a bad taste.
Of course none of that was real. None of this is real either. If you want to understand this text you will need to find the other two books but I wont tell you where to look.
I believe that I am "her" which has made it difficult for me to see or interact with her often. While I have amphibian capabilities, they have been little exercised and my time above water has made aquatic flips more challenging than they were after I first hatched. Initially I was uncomfortable with being "her" but eventually I escaped his expectation that I replace him and learned to embrace my subverted femininity. Thus I learned to walk and paint my fingernails, but at a much later date.
In the end, the end that I thought could not be found, it was Miley Cyrus who showed me the secret to storytelling. She said:
"A flower is a rose, a rose is a whore, a whore is a sailor, a sailor is a mermaid, a mermaid is a hippo, a hippo dances in a ballet, the ballet becomes a circus, the circus has clowns, clowns wear flowers that spit water from their lapels."
Even then, as he busily ushered orgone from the lower dimensions into the crystal palace, he answered:
"Some day together we will shine."

The Doors Of Sleep

If I could run backwards through time I would grab hold of that moment with you and say something unspoken.

It was in January that the key came into my possession, though we had been living in the house since November. In all the winter hustle, with little time to unpack and settle in, it went unnoticed in the drawer of the upstairs bathroom. I recognized immediately that there was something unique in its antique design.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”

The key was as silver as the liquid light of all the stars poured into one peculiar shape. That particular form was linked with that of a lock which by then was gone from the world I inhabited. Keys outlast the doors they open, the locks whose inner workings they alone understand. As the ages pass and their own purpose has waned they must long for the caress of the lock they once knew, that perfect fit.

If the words were spoken the moment would become a moon, full of soft white illumination filling a darkness that has been recorded as uninterrupted through the duration of some teleological history in the Yerba Buena museum.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”

There was no lock in the whole of the house in which it fit. I thought of the door it had once opened. When the door ceased to exist in this material realm was that the end of access to the domain it protected? Or could the key invoke the lock and door once again, opening the way to a world that has passed into dream and myth?

All occurrences affect all occurrences in the past, present, and future.

We did have that pearly eternal moment in which I watched the mechanical shutters covering the all powerful mystic centers of our fun ride machines open. Then we felt the flow of life electric, but it meant one thing to me and another to you. I saw how remarkable were the possibilities, and how unremarkable was a kiss, a lifetime of hand holding, marital bliss, love at fist sight, old age in rose gardens and book signings. To be a lock that accesses the remarkable was my deeper wish.
Destiny opens and closes the doors of sleep.

“I loved you from the moment I first saw you.” you said.
If I could catch it like a white rabbit running I would say,
“I love you right now forever.”
And still I would release it again, a white butterfly drifting into darkness.

Object Petite A

These are the things I don’t want to know anymore, don’t want to say anymore, don’t want to write.  By then it was called the city of Lake Elsinore, but when I arrived in 1986 at the age of five, it was only a town. I’ve been trying to run away from the pain so that I’ll behave like a good citizen. Anything I can do now to pretend it wasn’t me, a little Holly Golightly, phantom without a past. Or, I could let the wound bleed the stories that I don’t want to belong to, like one of the cards that paints the roses red. Summer faded but we remained. We attempted to perform magic rituals using packets of salt and a plastic knife in the back room by the time clock. Even then I wished to be undone, to unravel like the fibers of a rope and become straw.

I recognize that those sweetest of dreams are not of people or events that truly were, but of those that never quite were and never will be. Along with some of my clothes and shoes the package contained an envelope filled with letters and mini cassettes. Recognizing this makes it no easier to say farewell to ghosts. They linger. The mini cassettes were of him talking as he wandered around the town alone. The hotel room was dark, the curtains were drawn and it must have been night outside. It was perhaps a place of perpetual night just as we were those who are ever young.Vampiric dreams to savage the frail reality of the waking world.

It was a weekday. Maybe a Friday. He was strumming his guitar while I poured over the loose pages of the manuscript, looking for gaps, figuring where to take up the telling. It felt good to be sitting next to Alan in the sun with naked legs, trees and ravines and dirt turnouts rushing by. A town with just four stop signs located at the intersection of Central and Lakeshore. Trying to run away from the pain so that I’ll behave. I wondered if he’d ever gotten my letter, but I didn’t ask. It was written on notebook paper with a blue pen and I was continuing it. I saw him then, but I didn‘t know him. I was careful not to touch him so as not to disturb him in any way lest he should vanish once more. He was here now, that was good enough.

Even then I wished to be undone, to unravel like the fibers of a rope and  become straw. I was taking up the text I had left behind, writing my manifesto. After reading one of these I sent him a note from the concession stand that read, “Michael John Sarver, you are so damned good I think I want to have your children.” We attempted to perform magic rituals using packets of salt and a plastic knife in the back room by the time clock. A wild empty place filled with mystery, mountains, and sun baked hills beyond which lakes lie hidden among spruce and yarrow. That was all that I wanted, everything I was reaching for. To be clean of the Born Again Christians and the anonymous alcoholics and the dusty shoeless prostitutes of Grand Ave.

He said,
“This is so surreal, it’s like an alternate reality, and this is my dog and we’re together.”
I laughed appreciatively,
“Yeah.”
The desert with its wide-open vistas, spider-like Manzanita, and unperturbed sky in faded blue.  Some things cannot last, very simply because they are not real. Mirages. Hallucinations. Some fevered madness. Harsh lights, bad smells, and I was injured on entry; the doctor gave me two black eyes when he reached in and twisted me around. I was almost there with the primordial man that is my companion in the dream world.

I was strong and eager and curious despite the circumstances. I couldn’t tell which answer it was, whether he wanted me to be like a sister, or a lover, but it didn’t matter. After all the other kids my age returned to school I was still there popping corn and sweeping floors, and tearing tickets because I had graduated early. Fluid got into my lungs. People handled me through rubber gloves and I was surrounded by Plexiglas or some such material. Furnishings were simple and sparse. The room had an art deco feel. There was a yellow orange quality to the light, and maroon carpet or drapes or bed covers. Some lands lay barren forever waiting for their fisher king.

You know snow globes? How there’s a little figure or a little town trapped inside and you can never touch it and it can never touch you? By then it was called the city of Lake Elsinore. Look there, see the widow sneaking out by the river, smuggling babies and guns and tobacco out of the wasteland? He was one of the cards. I worked in concessions. One night I had a terrifying experience of sleep paralysis. Like all bullies he was scared. Mostly he was scared for me. The carpet was warm and soft, the acoustics were likewise muted, it was dim, and my parents' garments hung around me like curtains or banners, a pleasant array of patterns and colors. High up on the shelves there were strange objects for me to examine in that moment of evacuation and quite contemplation.

Or let the wound bleed. I had the feeling that if they knew what I knew they’d agree, that eventually they’d come around and see that there was no use in doing things their way. If I ran across the stars, skipping from one to another like sparkling stones jutting from a black river, would you run with me? Would you view with wide-eyed wonderment the secret chambers beneath the current of life while I sing my body electric? I know you would. I have become a ghost, the silent center of the vortex. The stories whirl around me. I dart a hand out and grab them, plucking multicolored carp from the whirl pool, making their stories mine.

He also demanded that I read two books: "Dianetics" so that I could learn to control myself and Einstein’s "Theory of the Universe" so that I would see reality’s shabby skeleton. A cover up. A blind spot. I am the secret thing I can not even say to myself, that which motivates all of my existence. I am the unutterable thing externalized. Is this what it means to be a woman? To always sense your worth in the attention granted you by men? All that he was communicating to me was fear. I try to think of what the opposite of that would have been. The real story. At the center. The thing that never quite gets said. The door that can’t be opened. To simulate the force of a shot fired, he’d shove me backwards so I could practice bracing myself.

He was always saying that he wanted me to be free, but I had hardly ever been free. Unperturbed sky in faded blue.  Some things cannot last very simply because they are not real. Even then I wished to be undone, to unravel like the fibers of a rope and become straw.  He walked to his mother’s home on Case St. where he was living and shot himself in the head. And in the moments when I was, I came hurtling
towards other bodies, a brilliant flaming star that they quickly caught and held, determined to keep the heat for themselves. He had a way of laughing after mentioning things that hurt. Phrases like, “That dog was my best friend.’ or ‘It broke my heart, you know?’ would be punctuated with soft laughter that seemed to come rocking out of his body.

“He was a cocker spaniel too, he looked just like this one.”
The window was rolled down blowing my hair a little so that the dog could sniff the mountain air. It was an imaginary place in an imaginary time. Wild, empty, filled with mystery. Mountains, sun baked hills, lakes hidden among spruce and yarrow. That was all that I wanted, everything I was reaching for. When I arrived in 1986 at the age of five it was only a town. I recognize that those sweetest of dreams are not of people or events that truly were, but of those that never quite were and never will be. I am only a sound caught in the throat. I am no one. No longer a character in any story that can be told. Inexpressible. A mirage. Some fevered madness. It was written on notebook paper with a blue pen and I was continuing it. The real story, at the center. That thing that never quite gets said.

Walker on White

All the birdies sing for me because I am a golden child born of winter morning and an endless spring of the heart.
Do you see her long flowing robes of silver, the sterling furs, the crown of antlers? My mother the wild wood has come down to dance for my birthday and silver moons shiver off her undulating belly, rams frolic at her heels, foxes lick her finger tips and prance into the hollows of ancient trees.
They have music in their cars, I think, and I smile imagining all the lonely people listening to music while they drive. I imagine Oberon noticing their music and then I realize that they are music, that the highway, the sea, the trees, the entire globe and everything shimmering on its skin is music.
What God knows or cares that we call them cars and we believe we are hurrying to important things in them?
No God knows or cares, or no God that I would see worthy of admiration.
The Lingua? Let them take the words from my brain and scatter them like crumbs for the birds. Blue birds, black birds, doves, sparrows let them feed on the remains of a psychotic break as the language bleeds from the artifice formerly known as myself and the Ligua dies and I cease to exist.
Will this be my birthday mother, when you touch my face with long pale fingers and I go black eyed to the mulch and white worms? Will I dance and sing ecstatic as moon eyed coyotes tremble faun-like and drink the dew from your lashes? Will grasshoppers make of me a dress for their bodies and wear me wherever they go? Will I dream animal dreams under a velvety blanket of darkness, the sun setting orange and pink over my brow?
Music in the pulse, in the breath, in the teeth, music without words scattered across the universe in the pulsing of white stars.
I am pushing up delicate green tendrils of life, unnamed, daughter of unnamable. We are all united here in the kingdom of light and dark, dancing our dance.
Do you see her long hair flying like pale streamers to tangle with moths reaching for the moon's pale fire? Do you see her eyes glittering as dark pools where deer lower their heads to drink? Do you see her thus etched out in shapes loaned by the usurper demiurge? Or can you see what I see with eyes like burrows prying into the womb where silky rabbits dream?
I remember human and I laugh. I laugh at hands and eyes and shit, always at shit.
The Sabbath is then over, as my head comes back together and I know the meanings of the sounds that carve a world in my nervous system. Always forgetting what we were and are and will again be only to remember it again when Lingua is once more toppled from his throne.
Does the chick return to the egg? Of course. Capitulate. Fall away, I command it, fall away like leaves of gold and umber from the stark white bodies of trees, oh Lingua.
Come winter bleak, dear winter. I am a walker on the white, two faced, undying shape shifter. A golden child born of a winter morning and an eternal spring of the heart.
Cup my waters in your hand and touch them to your lips if you would join us in the kingdom forever. And on my right hand sits brother Michael and on the left Uriel, for about me flames the pentagram and in its center stands the six rayed star.
Etched in the lego of our entrapment, but building freely. Cracking the world's shell and building it again.
I will return. But which is the coming and which is the going is not mine to know.

Ghost Heart

They conspired to put me in a cage and let me die. My poor, poor, Tiger, the Ersatzanna.

I always weep when I remember what must have happened to you, how you must have cried for help. And he sat there, no more than 20 feet away, and played video games, feeling himself powerful as his avatar crept around toting a machine gun and you died.
Your dear Archie must have come to you and meowed too, he must have tried to get that man's attention and he ignored him too, that loathsome man, the father of my children.
My grandmother was dying that day, and that’s where I was, at her side saying goodbye. It was expected that she would go, but I lost you too, and that should not have happened.

He couldn’t stop hurting. He had to hurt me and I had only wanted to help him. Helpless me, I wanted to help, but he wanted to hurt.
How he could have sat there and not known that you were dying painfully is unimaginable to me. Some part of him knew. He wanted to hurt me more, so he hurt you.
I am so sorry my poor Tiger, little Ersatzanna. He is dead now too, the father of my children, but if I could choose to have just one of you restored to life, I would choose you and not him. Children need kittens more than drunkard fathers.

I felt sorry for him when he shot himself in the head, I felt sorry because he had been hurting, and that’s why he hurt others, I felt sorry that he had suffered, that I could never help him.
But I was never sorry that he was gone. That is one point upon which I can agree with him; the world is better without him. I am better without him.

The world is worse without you, my heart.

I set the cage out there. I did it. My father convinced me it was the only way to protect you.
The neighbors' black cat had bitten you twice and almost killed you. My father bid me to put out the cage for the black cat.
In the morning my grandmother was dying and I forgot to bring in the cage before going to say goodbye. The father of my children did not come with us to say goodbye to my grandmother. It was an uncommonly hot day for so late in the fall.
You wandered into the cage they said would protect you. It killed you. And he sat 20 feet away letting you die.

After I screamed Tiger, after they grabbed hold of my arms to hold me back while I screamed and the unborn baby in my womb covered her ears and screamed too, after they held me up by my arms and I screamed louder and the other baby, the one you helped me to nurse, stared wide eyed and silent, after I screamed and they tried, as always, to silence me, after that Tiger, I promised that I would never listen to my father again.
And I knew, after he, the father of my children, let you die in the cage my father had bidden me to set, I knew that was what was in store for me. My agony would be prolonged by indifference, my pleas would fall forever on apathetic ears.
I would be caged and killed bit by bit. Just as it had happened to you Tiger, my heart.

I never said goodbye to you. I don’t even remember what they did with your body.
So I dream that you’ve come back, that you’re there playing with your Archie or running alongside the overgrown mint, streaking past a window.
I am overjoyed to see you so, as you were, as you would still be if you had not gone in my place, little Ersatzanna.
My Tiger, ghost of my heart, I see you rushing along the shadowy edges of my dreams, but I cannot touch you, cannot scoop you up, cannot call you back into the house for safe keeping against the night.
I cannot press you to my chest where you belong safe and warm, small brave Tigress.
So I watch you through the window, stalking through the shadows as dusk deepens, as forgetfulness fades and I remember everything.

Queen

At last the darkness envelops and comforts me with its sweet anonymity and gracious propensity for allowing all things to be as they are without judgment. THOUGHTS POUR out like the blood of my womb, the life force of my own body expelled or released before it could be tampered with by the seminal poisons of the sun.
Three men stood around a large chess board balanced on a concrete wall in a park filled with tents and vendors pedaling their wares. The black man stood tall and lean dressed in white, his bald head shining under what sun there was that afternoon. Around his neck a large even armed silver cross gleamed. Another man was from the south and sat upon a drum and beat it while his opponents worried over their next move. He wore a straw hat. The third man left no impression. He was only a man.
They asked my name and I told them. At first their eyes all widened and they begged to know if it was true that my name was "Gitana" - Gypsy. I corrected them and explained the spelling.
“I know this name.” the black man said, “It is the name of a Sumerian Goddess and of Adam's first wife. I know you.“ His eyes like black suns scorched my white flesh, reading the story of me as if it was written in sinew and bone this time around. “Don’t ask me how I know these things.” he said, closing the matter and returning his attention to the board.
Adam's first wife. You know me black man, wherever you meet me. You see the woman who would not submit to organic dominion. The witch who would not be a wife. The demoness who eats children. In the light of day we meet in our present guises and you recognize me. You remind me of who I am even as I am on the brink of forgetting for a moment.
Startled, I try to ask your name. You do not answer, as if you do not hear me, but I know that you hear. You hear but you will not utter your name in the presence of a witch, you will not utter it lest any others hear it, lest anyone else recognize you.
Men will mistake me for something else, they will long to run fingers through brassy hair, will hope to posses, to consume what they take to be another daughter of Eve placed on this earth for their own uses, to breed more men. But you are older and wiser than men.
I have no choice but to retreat to the shadows. You play these games still, with utter seriousness. You must yet fear the darkness that was bequeathed to me. I do not.
I live here as I did before ever there was a world, before ever fools juggled flaming torches or knelt at my feet and begged for my love. Before ever there were lips to stain or fruits to stain them. Before ever there were games to play.
You have here a queen of heaven, of the stars, a virgin queen. She who will not submit. She who will not join the other beasts of burden in serving Adam born of the dirt.
But you play games, on squares of black and white, endeavoring to capture the king of the opposing color, ever watchful and fearful of the queen, the queen whose movements are unrestricted, whose experience and relation to space and time is unlike that of any other piece on the board.
You play the game with utter seriousness, and if we meet you ask me to play with you. My willingness to play only serves to deepen your suspicion of me. How could you trust the one who has agreed to be your adversary?
It matters not at all to me. I return to the place where I have always been, in the darkness that envelops and comforts me  with its sweet anonymity and gracious propensity for allowing all things to be as they are. Without judgment. Without divisions or categorizations.  Into the chaos of the abyss. I withdraw from the sun spun world of dirt to breed something other than men.
Whether you know this name or not, whether I remember it or not,  I am who I am.

Norea

And Adam knew his female counterpart Eve in the time before my conception. For a moment they shed their leaves, their rags, their humility. As the clouds moved briskly overhead and Eve could count the stars, they became one being under the moon. It was dark and a singular light shown upon them, revealing their faces of ecstasy. He knew his female counterpart Eve, and she, my mother, became pregnant.
She bore Seth to Adam, bearing another life into the realm of plants and beasts. And she said:
"I have borne another man through God. Through God, I have borne another man in place of Abel."
On the birth of their new son a goat was killed, sacrificed to the gods of below as well as above. They spilled its blood in ceremony, painting themselves with its fleeting red-colored life and they wished protection for their new son.
When the harvest turned into golden fields, Eve again became pregnant, and she bore myself, Norea. And she said:
"He has begotten on me a virgin as an assistance for many generations of mankind."
Norea, I was called. I would be the virgin whom the forces would not defile. The light that would be untouched by dark and muddy hands.
Then mankind began to multiply and improve. There were houses made in magnificent shapes, roads that led to spices and wild colors, schools to teach ancient wisdom.
The rulers took counsel with one another and said:
"Come, let us cause a deluge with our hands and obliterate all flesh, from man to beast. Obliterating all flesh, from man to beast let us cause a deluge.”
But when the ruler of the forces came to know of their decision, hearing it on the cold winds of winter, he said to Noah:
"Make yourself an ark from some wood that does not rot and hide in it - you and your children and the beasts and the birds of heaven from small to large - and set it upon Mount Sir."
Then I, Norea, hearing of his labor, came to him, wanting to board the ark. With the countenance of an old woman I came, head drooping, eyes of hunger and desperation, rags dripping off my skin. When he would not let me board, I threw off my false face and blew upon the ark and caused it to be consumed by fire. With fire I caused it to be consumed, turning the mighty boat to ashes. For a second time he made the ark, he filled it with life and beasts.
The rulers came to meet me, thinking to lead me astray, to take me by the hand to the bed of ruined lifetimes. Their supreme chief said to me, Norea:
"Your mother Eve came to us."
But I, Norea, turned to them and resplendent with a light that glowed from beyond my flesh, like a candle in the night, I said to them:
"It is you who are the rulers of the darkness; you are accursed. And you did not know my mother; instead it was your female counterpart that you knew. For I am not your descendant; rather it is from the world above that I am come."
The arrogant ruler turned, with all his might, and his countenance came to be like a black wolf. He said to me presumptuously, his face twisting into the smile of cursed beings:
"You must render service to us, as did also your mother Eve; for I have been given the world to rule."
But I, Norea, turned with the might of a crashing wave and, in a thunderous voice, cried out up to the holy one, the God of the entirety:
"Rescue me from the rulers of unrighteousness and save me from their clutches - forthwith!"
The great angel, glowing and splendid, came down from the heavens and said to me:
"Why are you crying up to God? Why do you act so boldly towards the holy spirit?"
I, Norea, said:
"Who are you?"
The rulers of unrighteousness had withdrawn from me when I invoked the angel and the darkness had receded, leaving only faint blue light.
He said:
"It is I who am Eleleth, sagacity, the great angel who stands in the presence of the holy spirit. I have been sent to speak with you and save you from the grasp of the lawless. And I shall teach you about your root. About your root I shall teach you."
Now as for that angel, I cannot speak of his power: His appearance is like fine gold and his clothes like snow, glistening from every direction. No, truly, my mouth cannot bear to speak of his power and the appearance of his face!
The ground turned faster. My body slowed and I saw colors trailing from my fingertips. The sun glowed brighter and there were stars.
Eleleth, the great angel, spoke to me.
"It is I," he said, "who am understanding. I am one of the four light-givers who stand in the presence of the great invisible spirit. Do you think these rulers have any power over you? None of them can prevail against the root of truth; for on its account he will appear in the final ages; and these authorities will be restrained. And these authorities cannot defile you and that generation; for your abode is in incorruptibility, where the virgin spirit dwells, who is superior to the authorities of chaos and to their universe of earthly madness."

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.

Where Dark And Light Meet

I hate my father. I hate all men and everything male. I do secretly wish to castrate them, to dominate and humiliate them. This secret hatred running under my skin ran rampant and was vented on my husband until his death, frightened my old teacher when we sat together under the trees.
In those early days, when it first boiled over the top and I grew out my arm pit hair and swore off the boys, I thought it was because a boy had broken my heart. A boy did hurt me, but even before then my heart had been broken, smashed into a thousand pieces by my father who crushed all of the life out of me, sought to dominate every aspect of me mercilessly, unintentionally. The hatred, the rage must have been growing, welling up inside of me long before that silly boy dealt his blow, also unintentionally.
I could not look at my father after puberty, because of the fear of being squashed, because of the hatred whose twin was desire. Now I know what Freud knew, that I have secretly and unconsciously wished to replace my mother. I have also looked for a man who would replace my father, the one who would be stronger than him and overcome him and become him.
I look at my biological father now knowing these things, and it is knowing them fully that allows me to look because I can be certain that those urges are not what is doing the looking and smiling. I am looking and smiling. The deepest me. The me that is nobody’s daughter, nobody’s wife, no man’s enemy, a wind in the doorway, an eternal notness.
I look at him and he smiles back. He said during a game of murder that he knew I was the murderer because I looked at him and I usually don’t look at him. From then on I made the effort to be awake and look at him. I do this for him, for me, for the eternal notness.
In the forest, with one who would replace him, I also look. I look until he is trembling, I look at the one I have known for 15 years and never looked at. We have inflicted emotional injuries upon one another both intentionally and unintentionally, always driven by those unconscious motives, acting out with each other the desires and resentment we harbor for our parents, always fearful of being crushed.
But now for an awakened moment we are free of those bonds. We are together, our grievances are gone, because I drop all of the barriers that I am aware off and let my heart burn bright and he responds by dropping his and glowing with me and we understand each other.
We are so happy together, like when we were lonely confused children who found solace in each other’s company, only far better because my heart is so much bigger now than it was then, so much braver, brave enough to swallow us both whole and carry us smiling over dusty trails, big enough that this one time, I can protect us both from the unconscious hatred that I have harbored, the hatred that had, from time to time, been vented on him in our youth.
Big and brave enough after a week of time with my biological father, that I know that whatever unconscious urges afflict and drive this other, he can’t hurt me. If he bites my bare pulsing heart with steely knives of rejection, or mischief, they will be baby bites compared to those made by my own flesh and blood.
But he does not bite, instead he hears me telling him something that I have tried to tell him before, something that could not be communicated until we were both made vulnerable by this torrent of love flowing between us. Now, because we finally truly have this understanding, he lets me collect a lost piece of myself that he had greedily and hungrily and achingly horded. He too collects a lost piece of himself in this fair and ecstatic exchange, and he tells me to go and collect the rest of the pieces of myself, all of the pieces that I can find in the darkness of the wasteland. He tells me to love the ones I am journeying with in that darkness, to love them as much as I love him and he loves me, as much as we could have ever loved, as much as we would have loved if we had only known how to do so.

Quack!

I can see right through it, the righteous indignation, the fatherly “you’ll come around eventually” attitude. The AMA is just a quack Mafia, an organization whose sole intention is to see to it that the family (of licensed physicians) are the only ones who get to wrap their fingers around America’s pocket book and squeeze. Only chemical drugs manufactured in a laboratory somewhere can possibly heal you, or so they say, this band of snake oil salesmen who got together and decided they could pedal their wares as God sent and bully the other guys out of town.
Did I say guys? I should say gals, because really, it’s your grandmother with her peppermint tea and tablespoon of apple cider vinegar they want to tar and feather. They tell you very clearly that there are two men who can give you what you need to take to make you well: the pharmacist and the physician. We must consider that in the moment that this association was being formed, women were meant to be kept sort of like pets, and they might wander out into the yard and start eating some grass, and your job, as the man of the house, is to take her firmly in hand, lead her inside and tell her that she shouldn’t be doing what she has always done to cure a bad case of hairballs. What she really needs is a visit to good old Dr. D who will gladly prescribe her some Gen R X, fully patented and approved by the FDA and AMA and the United States Postal Service.
There is no way to stay well without exposing one’s self to a little radiation now and then. If your belly hurts then you need an x-ray. Perhaps you swallowed a puzzle piece you silly monkey, and we will need to perform a surgery to remove it. What? Forget about letting nature run its course and waiting to see if the thing passes, only gypsies can do that with diamonds. Good wholesome Americans submit to anesthesia and the blade. That’s right, just a little bit of the rubber rats dream gas and a scalpel and you will be right as rain. Unless you get a secondary infection from your hospital stay, or we accidentally sew you up with a pair of clamps still in place. Then when Dr. D comes around and says,
“And how is our patient today?”
You will say, not so good Doc and they will whisk you away, to do what? You guessed it! Take another x-ray! The Doctor will inspect the results and chuckle,
“I see what the problem is here. That’s my wedding ring in there, and this over here is Nurse Betty’s used tampon. We’ll need to operate again immediately, of course, before my wife notices the ring is missing.”
And they’ll do you up like a Christmas goose again, carving away. Afterwards they’ll hand you some ice chips in a disposable cup.
“It’s Styrofoam, you’ll love it! A modern marvel. You can eat the cup when you’re finished with the ice, it’s been approved for human consumption by the FDA.”
“Thank you Nurse Betty, I feel refreshed after that, but I seem to have filled my bed pan, can you take it away? Hello? Nurse Betty? Is anyone there? Hello?”