Traffic

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....

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.....

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.....

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"

"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....

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.....

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.....

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.....

"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.....

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.