The Porch Party and other floating fairytales

I peek out the little aluminum door at sunrise....watch for wayward wild animals, slithering snakes, strangers....and then barrel out into the morning... Two black pups...nose to the ground....send me flying past curtain number one, two, three..... of fog, leaping over little foothills, make believe bridges, potholes...and into the damp darkness of morning on the river.... To Paradise.... To the sun rising over the muddy water.... To the lazy ripple of old water stretching, rolling over one more time before it has to rise.... And then finally, home again... To This... To Peace Porch and the promise of another Day....

Tarantula

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Tarantula.

Just give me peace.

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

At Sea

I've been wading....

britches pulled up passed my knees,

toes bristling in ice cold water...

the waves

slapping me

silly,

stupid,

straight again...

I'm not drowning yet...

but I've wandered further....

knee high,

neck high,

way over my head...

Sometimes when I look back,

I can't see shore....

God,

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

Running Away....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace where you can find it....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No touching

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

And then he surrendered.


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

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....

"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.......

Time in a bottle rocket.....

Five: I have a new lunchbox and a thermos filled with Nestle Quick tucked under my desk. I can't stop thinking about it, all through Dick and Jane. We take turns stuttering through the pages. I daydream. Dick and Jane go to the candy store. I wanna go to the beach....and slurp my Nestle Quick through a straw, blow chocolate bubbles....

Eight: I'm dialing the radio station over and over again, on the rotary dial, shink,click,click,click,click....shink,click,click,click....shink......I'm going to win the red Batman Hotline, who wants this silly pink Cinderella thing? I don't win it. Mom buys me a pink batman sweatshirt instead.

Eleven: Ronnie stuffs the giant velveteen valentine in my construction paper heart. I pretend to faint. I want to shave my legs and let my bangs grow out. He gets suspended from school for having a Beatle haircut and his picture is on the front page of the newspaper. All the other girls faint.

Yesterday: I'm thirty two. In love for the first time, dancing in the kitchen to Fine Young Cannibals, clinking! with pink Champagne in dixie cups. Skinny, Persichetti and I are working for beers at the beach, parading around in macrame'ed swimsuits, reading palms and telling fortunes. The babies are beach bunnies, pink nosed and brown toed, naked from the waist up. And life is good....

This morning I wake up in a blur.....
On a moving sidewalk... slipping, sliding, speeding, flying.....
Yesterday, today, tomorrow, all clanging by, flash framed out the Amtrack window....

No wonder we had to change the clocks....the sun is setting and rising and rising and setting in a never ending circle.....
The contest.....

Who can be the first to reach the finish line......

Poisen

I slept cast-footed and fully dressed. Piled on top of the covers, Georgia breathing, panting, protectively resting beside me. In the dark, I closed my eyes hard. Trying to block the noise out. Counting. Forwards. Backwards.

He's haunted. Night haunted. And when the spooky things come, he hunts me. His Mother. He comes to me to tell....to rant, to rave, to pull me into his suffering, to pay me back, to taunt me into saving him. To hand me the keys to his make believe grenade and dare me to breathe, to accidently set it off.

I've prayed. Spent every dime I've had. And borrowed more. I've loved unconditionally and tough loved. I've enabled him and disabled him in doing so. I've tried.

In the morning light, I watch for hope. For the slightest sign the storm has passed, again.

It's hurricane season.....
And I'm boarding up the house....

Tent City

It's quiet now. Finally. Five o'clock in the morning and I'm on my third cup of coffee. Tiptoeing, as quietly as one can dragging a concrete block on the other foot, through the house. I'm letting "them" sleep. The manchild and his friend.

In my little corner of the world, piled up under heavy quilts and wrapped in cat tails, puppy breaths, and interupted dreams, I listened as they lived. Cell phones humming, purring, rapping. Channels flicking. A cough every now and then. Heavy feet down the hall. Engines louder then softer again somewhere outside.

My son is home again.

And this house, these walls, this gate that swings open and never shuts behind you, is The Motel Six for wayward boys once again.

In the wee, wee hours, he wakes me up. Quietly, whispering love letters into my ear. "Ma, Ma.....is it o.k. if A.J. camps out here? He got thrown out of his house again....."

"mmmmmmmmm" "yes, son" I whisper to nothing.

He's already turned and taken 6 foot tall steps back down the hall.

He knows.

You don't have to keep hittin' me in the head!

Ahhhh,
I slept in....
the first time in forever that I've wallowed in the sheets, soaking up 8 hours of almost dreamless sleep. It's a lazy, lazy world today.....

I sipped my coffee strong and slow, and filled the cup again. Watched the smoke patterns dancing from my cigarette, sky-writing in the space above the ashtray. I stretched. "What sweet diversion shall I come up with today?"......

And so, unshowered, and bed-headed I found my way to my favorite morning place, the painted porch. Parked my little buns down on the floor, indian style, amongst the sea of colored markers and pencils....and started to color.....

"Peace....", I smiled at the black and white lady on paper.....

That was right before the perfectly good bike flew off the perfectly sound wall and cold-cocked me in the face. Right before the collision sent my cup of iced tea flying across my lap, spray painting my drawing with caffiene and lining my cut-offs with ice cubes. Right before I saw stars...... Right before my neighbor pulled the bike off of me and slung it out the door like a rabid rattlesnake.....

That was one minute before my nose started bleeding. Five minutes before the fuscia eggs started growing on my forehead, one hour before the black-eye started staring back at me in the bathroom mirror.

I guess I won't be going out tonight....

And as for the bad, bad bike, well, Take that! My friend! You better hope it doesn't rain!

Plowing for Peace

There was only a tad bit of gas left in the lawnmower, and half of it was spent on cranking. I took a deep breathe and had to make a decision, the neighbors, I know, so wanting me to do this. O-kay, do I mow the property lines, the sidewalk side, around my wilting flower beds? Do I start diagonally, vertically, or horizontally? Do I start in the middle and work my way out or make a big loop around the perfect square and scooch my way in?

I drag the mower out into the street, precious fuel burning to the wind; and smile.

The white mustang slowed down.
Watching....
As a giant crop duster circle is born….

And I’m smiling bigger……
Feet flying out from behind the self propelled grass grafittier…

Ta!Dah!
The engine dies,
A giant peace sign perfectly scorched into the summer rye!

I flip him two fingers and he shifts into first.

No shirt. No shoes. No service needed.

We stopped for Hollywood sunglasses , popped on the highway and flew. The miles unraveled behind us blindly, ribbon dancing to the past.

We left it all. The cats, the dog (Please, Lord, let the neighbors feed the dog!), the bills, the wayward child with a payday wad in his pocket, the refinanced -high financed-home-sweet-home, the dirty dishes, dirty laundry, and dirty little secrets. Left ‘em all.

When the tires crunched on the coquina driveway, salty dust dancing in a lazy tornado around the car, we smiled. Big summery run-away smiles. We listened to the last verse of the song and waited for the sand to settle, a flannel blanket on the car. “This is good. This is so good”. Our doors opened and slammed in tandem.

We parked our little fannies three feet from the unlocked motel room door. The splintery Adirondack chairs were just our size. Like Goldilocks and the three bears, we tried them all on until we found the ones that “fit just right”. Comfy, cozy. The ocean roared and hiccupped salty spittle into the air…GOD, I’M IN LOVE…..

“Whatchoo girls doin’?” the big fellow, crossing the grass and ambling our way, drawled with a slow grin on his face. “Bonding” she whispered over the pink Marguerita. “Well, that’s nice. Real nice” “Whatchoo girls drinkin’? he said with his head tilted and his smile sliding sideways into his double chin. “Sunshine” we chimed. We’re drinking in the sunshine. He laughed with his eyes to the sky and turned on his feet like Fred Astaire…..sauntered back to the Tiki Bar.

“Bartender! We need some room service here! Gotta delivery to make!” “See that blonde hippie chic over there……” And so began the week-end.

Bonding with our new best friends.

The three suburban fifty-something ladies, on a girl’s night out. They giggled and drank foo-foo drinks with little pink umbrellas, stewed meatballs in a crock-pot plugged in through the window, and played hopelessly romantic 70’s songs from a giant boom box. At midnight they were dancing on the sidewalk, in their two-piece (not bikini, thank God, not bikini) swimsuits and cover-ups.

The little league Dads and their tribe of youngin’s. On a Field-Trip of dreams. The kids ran in an endless “You’re gonna crack your head open and knock your teeth out” circle…. around the picnic tables, down the sidewalks, through the bar, into the pool, onto the deck, in your room, my room, their room…laughter trailing behind them like bubbles from a magic wand.

The big fellow and his brother. The chef with his guitar. The absolutely adorable bartender with no hair and tattoos. The brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and the biggest baby I ever saw from Indiana.

The cops. Sauntering by at 2:30 in the morning. “You folks need to go to bed now”….respectfully shining their flashlights at our barefeet and not blinding us with their intrusion. “You got all day tomorrow, Coach".....

The housekeepers, smiling toothlessly and knocking in early morning whisper tones. “Well, if you don’t want no towels or nothing’, do you need ice?” “We gotta get it before the bar opens up again”

We left a good tip.

The tires spun on the too hot, too dry gravel . I adjusted the rear view mirror and gunned into traffic. There was no looking back. Only a lazy tornado spinning in the distance.

Half way

“That’s the way it used to be, motels on the beach. Now, It’s high-rises, parking garages, shadows” “Florida, the way it used to be, is gone”

Silly tourist….

“Take my hand and come with me…..”

I’m off on a road trip. Around the corner. To a fairytale. To layers of peeling aqua and pink paint. To a cement pool with dolphins furiously painted on her bumpity finish. To a Tiki-Bar with a one -armed, one- man band. To the smell of rotting oyster shells and French fry oil. To Michelob’s and Bud Lights on Ice. To stray cats feeding on the left-overs, never tame, but always game. To a window unit blowing icy air on my face, dripping on my feet. To a midnight moon smiling, winking, as we wade past, ankle deep in the salt water, skipping over jelly fish glowing in the dark. To the broken shells, forgotten by the tide. To salty towels draped over rusty lawn chairs. To McDonalds in the morning, “a large coffee with cream and sugar, please…”. To late check-outs….

I’m off on a road trip…..

Peace, love, and everything in-between……
is just a fairytale…..

Welcome to my world…….

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

I downloaded the song without a clue….And it freaked me out, kind of spooky at first, then I sunk into the 28th row of the orchestra pit and melted into it. I don’t know who the artist is, or where they were coming from….
just know my keywords….
that day, my feelings….
butterflies and hurricanes….


And that’s life….

The yellow butterfly, with her translucent wings, barely visible from the kitchen window, flits across the yard, dancing from blazing begonias to rotting pot of cigarette butts, she’s careless and wreckless and feminine and dainty, pointing her toes like a prima ballerina and strutting her stuff like Tina Turner….she spirals and twists and makes up her mind as she goes……


I lived through three hurricanes in a month’s time. And never saw the like of this. The damage done.

In the aftermath of the storms, the hot dirty days that followed, we drank hot beer and bathed in tepid water ladled from the neighbor’s garbage cans. We feasted on Slim Jims and hardened bagels. We slept with the windows open, the night air wailing through the broken glass, and awakened to the sun blazing and chain saws ripping through our borrowed peace. We filed insurance claims and waited, lugging our lives, as we once knew them, to the curb…

splintered, broken, waiting for the fix…..


Butterflies and Hurricanes…..

Sometimes, in the debris, stacked like pick-up sticks…we find what we were looking for all along….



The calm after the storm...
Thanksgiving leftovers…



The wish-bone .


And Butterflies are free……..

Scarlett O'Dare-Ya

I’ll worry about it tomorrow….

Ok, I could do it today. I could bite my fingernails, grit my teeth in the night….I could pace back and forth on the cat-hair- covered kitchen floor, taking deep moaning groaning emphysemic breaths. I could worry about it today.

I could sleep in purgatory, tossing and flailing, kicking the sheets off , mad dogs biting at my heels, and then yank them up around my neck again, cocooning in their cotton comfort, until it’s time to kick them off again…

I could suffer….

But I decided to live.

To laugh.

To be free, if even for only seconds….

So I banish you…
Gloom and doom,
Bill collectors,
Insurance agents,
Lawyers in your suits and ties with your billable moments,
Handsome doctors with your million dollar smiles and your million dollar
“the odds are a million to one, but don’t you want to try?” come-on lines ,
Sentimental Suitcases stuffed to the brim with black and white photographs of how it was meant to be,
Cryptic Karma, waiting to jump out of the closet and haunt me…

I banish you all until I look you in the eye and dare you to make me decide, to face your cheap little threats. Dare you to face me, facing you, and listen to yourself. It’s life man, live it….

You can’t wreck my world if I’m speeding, running faster than you can catch me. If I don’t look forward and don’t look back. You can’t rain on my tacky little Saturday morning parade, if I barricade you off, make you get in line behind Santa Claus and his 8 tiny reindeer….

Until then, I’m dancing.

Catch me if you can……

And then, guess what?…

Tag,
you’re it……


I'm going to the beach.....

When I run away....

When I run away....I want to live by the sea....

In a salty little shanty....with the night air blowing through the rusty screens. Where the terazza floors are etched by the sands of time and gritty under my feet. Where sandspurs grow in the yard and probably nothing else, but terazza pots of potpourri and spices are lined up like little soldiers, crooked little soldiers, in the window sills....

Where the wind howls at night and wraps her loving arms a thousand times around "my house", threatening to whisp us off into the oceans, but really.....just playing with my mind. Where the sun is tempermental and scorching and she spits her rays onto the rooftop like laughter .....and the tar between the shingles simmers and smokes at noon.

I want to run barefoot to the mailbox.....playing hot potatoe on the driveway....collecting postcards from loved one from the rusty ole box, flag up to the skies....

I want to dive onto clean white sheets at night, too small for the double bed, and too thin to hide the mattress seams, stretched to their limit and fresh from hanging on the line, soaking up the salty air....

I want to walk , heels first, toes scrunching, in the early morning sand.....the moon falling with the tide and the sun peeking her little pink nose over the waves, playing hide and go seek.....

I want to dance under the endless sky. Drinking up laughter and wishing on random stars. I want a rusty ole fridge in the carport, chucked full of Michelob light and watermelons I thumped at the produce stand.

I want to pop jiffy pop late at night and watch black and white re-runs, static and all....feed the neighborhood cats out the back door....

Until then.....
I live here.
In my house.
My little love.

And every now and then I drive to Blakely
and pretend
I'm gonna move to the middle of nowhere
and
sit on the porch
and drink beer
and wave
at
friendly passers-by....

Just give me peace......

Once upon a time.....

It was 1975. Hot. The highway melted, woven like a braided leather belt and in the rear view mirror, the trails of where we were yet to travel streamed behind us endlessly...... like those fluorescent tassels Skinny had on her new bike. We were piled into Christian's Impala, blazing down the interstate, Jethro Tull on the 8 track, and I can't count how many of us piled onto the shiney blue bench seats. I picked at the cotton peeking from a burn mark on the seat under my knees. Mesmerized by the sheer endless quantity of it. Sure that if I was really quiet, I could syphon it all out of the seat and the driver's side would slowly deflate, leaving Christian sitting on the floorboards. I giggled to myself. I could wad it all up at my feet, take it home on Sunday and put it on the spinning wheel. Yup........

My Mom had given me the dime. Not the nickel-dime bag, but the customary, traditional, "put it in your shoe" dime. We were headed to Tampa for the 24 hour fest.....KISS, and I wish I could remember all the others, but....it's hazy....24 hours of nonstop music, towel tents pitched in the sun, beer and Strawberry Hill, naked babies, peace......

The dime was to call home if I needed to.

I didn't .

The temperature rocked 100 by Saturday afternoon. The port-a-lets were full, the beer was gone. We were hot. The sun gave up and began to fade, giving in to the pyromaniacs on the stage. And then.....the water main broke. A giant upside down waterfall in the middle of thousands of sweaty, stoned, day-drunk hippies. We charged it. Bodies everywhere dancing in the make-shift rain. Lapping up the miracle falling from a hundred feet above our heads.....

It made the11:00 news...

"Throngs of youth out of control as heat and drugs, rock and roll, descend on Tampa Fairgrounds....." My Mother sat on the vinyl leopard skin couch, scooching closer.... "She's there"....

She watched as Eddie-wanna-be-newscaster-live-on-the-scene-in-his-three-piece-suit spelled it out for the audiences at home, as channel 9 flashed pictures of bare chested chics and bare bottomed guys with the tutorial black rectangle emblazoned on their privates danced across the screen....

She cringed.....

The 3 minute "Live from Tampa Fairgrounds" ended with a frozen shot of the ambulances..... dozens of them.....parked in the dirt......

She waited.

I had a dime, afterall....

She finally fell into a fitless sweaty sleep on the vinyl couch......"My God, they're naked....doing all those things" "What if someone put something in her drink?" "How many babies were born after Woodstock?" "Maybe they had enough sense to leave, but then.....why aren't they home, did they get in a wreck?" "Surely,the sheriff would have called me".........waking on Sunday morning to the Preacher on channel 9..... "You can be saved....."

We stopped at IHOP on the way home and laughed. "It's all good"..... We rolled in on Sunday night, sunburnt and kind of dirty actually, but fine.

I saw her face the minute I fell through the kitchen door.....

"You could've called".....

I'll Just Keep Floating......

"This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but, perhaps.....the end of the beginning".....

I've toted that quote with me for a zillion years...
kept it in my back pocket, the center console of the car, the bottom of bottomless purses....

I've scribbled it in diaries, on bathroom walls, and borrowed books....

The words are weighted, heavy, good.

Suddenly important.

Just give me peace..... Until then, I'll just keep floating....