My Little Gypsy Butterfly....

The room is quiet....the occasional sound of the Cuckoo's Nest behind the door....on the other side...and the whispering on the inside.  Mama speaks in another tongue, endless sentences macrame~ed together by her little fingers flying, kneading, pointing, reaching, touching ours....and we lean closer and listen.....every now and then gathering familiar words like heart shaped rocks, clinging to them like sentimental souvenirs. 

She cries.  Frets.  And talks to faces only she can see, spirits in the corners...And we shoo them like dusty cobwebs, because she's not ready, and they're dancing in our dirty laundry, stirring up too many memories or make~believes or gonna~be's.  They can join the parade later, but not today....

Today we're butterflies....
and we're gonna rest.  Flutter our wings every now and then, just a teensy tiny bit, and snuggle in a little closer....
When she's ready to fly....
She won't even need these silly ole wings....

She'll be Gypsy free.....

Hello Tomorrow

My legs were crossed, all lady like, and my right sneakered foot was just~a~swingin' in tandem with hers, crossed at the knee. We were keeping mad time together. Pacing in place. The lobby was full... Broken lives hooked to IV poles, held up by other's... faces blank, tired, scared, old~schooled. Hugs and how~to~do's were quietly passed in "shhhhhhhh.....we're in church now" fashion. I flipped through the pages of the Reader's Digest so fast and hard, it sounded like I was shufflin' poker cards, and I concentrated on making that same sound over and over again.
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And then they called her name. For a moment I wasn't sure I could walk without having my legs crossed, right one swinging. What other nervous tic could I develop that would be socially acceptable? And hide my fear..... What other nervous tic could I invent that could pass off for strength? How was I going to catch her when she collapsed? And who would catch me?
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He smiled. That handsome Doctor smile. Babyesque brown eyes, old already. Lips curled just enough to make you wonder who his Dentist was, and why on earth he chose to practice this type of medicine. Why on earth he didn't want to be a Soap Opera Star....
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She had been summoned here. To this room at this time with these people. For the news. We waited. He talked. Drew pictures. Circled foreign words on endless reports. Nodded his head up and down as if we understood. And then we did. Sweet Jesus! Remission! Gone! Poof! Not there! Unremarkable scans. Nothing here, there, over there, in that.....crawling, corrupting, eroding. Nothing!


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We stood in the parking lot, in the rain, and cried. Laughed. Hallelujahed the sky! Tried to dial numbers. Skinny's. Papa's. The kids. The boys. And then we decided to party.....
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.\And we know how to party.....
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Thursday night, Friday night....into the wee, wee hours. At 4'oclock this morning, I fell into bed. Kimbies curled up like a rolly poly on my little living room couch. Her dancin' boots in a heap, her little blue bandana

still on her noggin'.....
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And I slept like I've never ever slept before....
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In peace.
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With Stevie Ray Vaughan there in the shadows, whispering lullabyes for the soul......
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And Tomorrow, just outside the window....
Smiling...

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.

Tides....

The moon was nothing more than a pale green lady, her face thinly veiled; a woman in mourning. The few stars that climbed out of bed for the funeral were sleepy, lazy, and cast no more than candlelight on our procession. But they watched. As they always do....


And the ocean roared, flapped her frothy wings furiously at the shore, the rocks, anything in her way; spitting at our feet. She had come for us....


"Shhhhhhh" he whispered, throaty from too many late night cigarettes..
"Listen"......


I couldn't see his lips, but tasted the words, salty feathers moving slowly up and down my own.

"This is what we heard".....
"yes"
"That night".....
"yes"


We held hands tighter, our fingers chained this time,

and
simply
walked back into the water....

The Final Room

By Fate and By Chance....

I found a friend.

Sweet, soulful Baron.....
May the butterfly wings that carried you on this everyday roadtrip,
now grow stronger and mightier with everyday....
May the faces and the hearts you touched
smile bigger and ache deeper, live fuller everyday....
May the gifts you gave
be opened
over and over again....

Wishing you, hoping you, eternal peace in a place called home....The Final Room. Love you Man!

And then.....there was Disco....

And the silver glittered shoes....

We didn't trade our tattered levi's and Rolling Stones for anything, but we snatched a little "oooooooooooh, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh" "do the bump" and melded it into our week-ends. We added sparkled belts and wore blue mascara. We hit the clubs.

On Friday nights, we'd pile into Million's van and do the drive-in thing, cheap wine or expensive beer on ice....B-rated movies on the screen. We'd wander from car to car, an open air party. Admission: $2.00 a car. In our world we were hippies.

On Saturday night, we'd trade in our flip flops for platforms, and join Christian and his boys at The Palace. In Christian's world, we were movie stars.... The dance floor was an ever changing Twister game, smoke seeping from it's edges. The disco lights flooded our late night faces with pelting prisms. It was a bottle club. Bring your own. Buy the cup, the ice, the mixers. Tip the pretend bartender well......

"Riunite on ice. That's nice" I loved the commercials. The color of the wine. And the sound the ice made clanking in the glass. We tipped the bartender well......

Last night, we danced in the kitchen....

Turned the disco light on....

Traveled.....

We danced through my 8th grade birthday party, an all nighter at Peace Creek.....We swayed through my Senior Prom, and went low for Bob Segar.....held up our lighters and waited for more.....

We swished the Riunite (yep, they still make it!) and prayed we wouldn't have headaches today....

I wore the silver shoes....

Jonah crashed the party. "Guess what I got, Ma?" "A tattoo".......He made fried egg sandwiches and drank beer in the kitchen.....John Travolted across the vinyl floor. We laughed. And he did it again.

We lowered the music and lull-a-byed him to sleep.....

And danced in the kitchen.....

If the walls could talk....

It was the dawning of 1992. We sat barefooted at the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, twirling little locks of straight blonde hair in our fingertrips. Babies laughed just out of our reach, tumbled on the empty carpeted floor.

Love beads, our millioneth set, baked slowly in the oven. We believed. The ugly years behind us, it was time to rock and roll. To love. To pray for peace. Again.

We celebrated slowly....the coming of hope....the deliverance of 1992 into our welcome arms. "It will be a good one" we clanked, bottles bottom up in cheers. We smiled at the promise and even, laughed at the past. "Hell, it's what got us here, isn't it?"

In the wee hours before dawn, I peeked at my sleeping little ones, chubby fingers and toes, protected, for now, from the chaos of the outside world, by the quiet hum of Led Zepplin .

Paigey and I started then. Took the last of the beads from the slow-cooking oven and covered the beerstained kitchen table with cardboard. Out came the cigar boxes filled with trinkets, shoestrings, old crayons. The water colors, the markers, pencils, pens, and india inks.

We blobbed and dripped and dribbled, shot acrylic paint through straws, drug dirty shoelaces through puddles of color until it happened..... Peace on the kitchen table.

The words just happened. A quiet after thought. A signing-off actually. Tiny little words lacing the circle.

"May the wizards work their wonder...
May the children laugh and dance with each other in a world with no man-made storms.
May we wish on stars and believe enough in ourselves to reach out to them.
May we always believe in magic and be brave enough to enjoy it.
May the guardian angels spread their wings and keep us near
and may we never forget God is watching us.

To peace and love and laughter in 1992
and
as always,
to dreams and the promise of tomorrow"

justgivemepeace.com

The list of Five

Five (5) Things I love to do…

Stay in my pajamas all day
(Not because I have a 104 temperature or because everything I own is in the wash and I forgot to put it in the dryer three days ago, but because I can and it feels good and I have pajamas!) Which I don’t, but I would if I could.

Swing
Like in a porch swing, a yard swing, a park swing, a tire swing, you understand….
As high as my dirty little heels pushing off from the sand can send me flying
With hair swooshing and a tummy full of “I’m afraid of heights” butterflies…

Sing
Loud
Guttural.
Very off key.
Because I can.
And in my world the louder you play the music, the better you sound.

Dance
In the kitchen, on the porch, in the street, on the beach..
Anywhere
Anytime
For any reason

Float
Belly up on a pink Wal-Mart raft
Finger-painting in the water
Eyes watching God….
Waiting on Peace….
In my little vinyl nightmare, the lazy round river… my backyard oasis
(OK, in My World it’s an oasis…to everyone else it’s a blow up pool)

Five (5) things I hate

Linda (An Angel who wears blue jeans) was aghast when I told her I was going to write down the five things I hate. “But you don’t hate anything! All that peace~love stuff, you know you don’t hate anything!” Well, I want to! And I do!
So here they are:

1. Prejudice.

2. War.

3. Eating octopus. Who ever heard of anything so cruel.

4. That there are, or have ever been, Children without hope. Don’t give me that “they can rise above the hate and the poverty and become a President” garbage. Odds are they will just grow up with the overwhelming feeling that they are not loved and that is heart wrenching. Everyone deserves to be loved. You don’t have to have opportunities served to you on a silver platter, but you have to know in your heart, you BELONG and then you can BELIEVE.

5. I’m going to really think about this one. I mean hate is a really big thing. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.

The Yellow butterfly of San Marino

SUMMERS, SISTERS, and THE SEAWALL

She wasn't a figment of our dreamy sunburnt imaginations. She really lived there. Her salty wings somewhat summer blonde, a little tattered on the edges. She'd flit and swoop and dance in the baking florida sun, this tiny little sun goddess. At night, like a firefly, we would catch glimpses of her, swirling, twirling in the moonlight (And don't you dare say butterflies don't fly at night!) She was always there. Everytime. At the seawall of SanMarino.

There, with our eyes to the ocean and the heavens, and our sandy bare feet propped on the seawall, we dreamed. We met the sunrise and watched her fall. We spent days and days, nights and nights, lounging at the seawall of SanMarino. We met strangers and best friends. Old souls and newborns. Lost kitties and lost kites. Lost souls. We made promises and we made pacts. We built sandcastles and made periwinkle soup. We drank coffee, then bloody Marys then beer. Bottles and bottles of beer. We sang, and danced, and told stories. We made up stories and laughed. We began to believe.

To believe in borrowed peace. To believe in the promise of tomorrow. To believe that we could make it no matter what. We spent stolen days and stolen weeks during stolen summers at the seawall of SanMarino. And the yellow butterfly, the tiny little oceanic ballerina, was always there. Reminding us to believe.

And then "poof it was gone". Our precious, tacky little paradise plowed upside down for high rise, concrete condos. God, it almost killed us. Where would we go? How could we escape everyday hell if there was no place to run to, to hide, to accidently stumble on?

And then, we saw her. The yellow butterfly of San Marino. And we remembered. To believe.

When this is all over, when the world as we know it is well again...we will have peace, and we will laugh and dance under the serious moonlight in barefoot sandals....

We will follow her...as she has followed us....

To a place called peace