The Kind of Rain...

Tonight.

A little Hurricane gone lazy. Toodling off treck. Wandering like a magpie faerie lost in the woods....

The rains are here.

Delicious. Loud. Plump.

And in this quiet house, the sound I hear is yesterday....

Plodding along in Million's van, bumpity bumpity pot hole jumping down the one lane road through the forest, clod hopping over tree roots and spent beer cans to the opening in the woods, where the bon fire burned endlessly, umbrelled by oak trees, and a blessing we didn't know we had, to Peace Creek......

Piled under layers and layers of musty quilts, hand tacked and sewn of old men's suits and tattered over-alls...9 years old at Mamaw's house. The rain, a mad xylophone on the tin roof, and the car lights, flying past, strobe lights through the clapboard walls...the sounds of tires swooshing.....

Stacked in the hallway, tiny feet, sweaty arms and legs, pretending to play Twister while the Eye of the Storm passed, once, twice, three times and shook our little house like red dice in a cup and spilled it out on the lawn.....the sound of the morning after rain, the safe rain....when we tip toed quietly through the dark out onto the wet earth that was our tomorrow...

Nineteen. Donned in yellow raincoats with hoodies. Rollerskating through Jacksonville in the pouring rain. Silly. In love with the moment. No reason to fear the lightening. Yet.

My wedding night. Yards of taffeta in the mud. I knew it would rain. It was supposed to...

Tonight....
Fat little tadpoles of luminescent rain falling from the sky.....

Perfect.

The Moon in My Arms

I've seen this moon only once before...

in a lifetime...

http://thehippieparade.blogspot.com/search?q=martini+moon

I remember the exact moment...

where I was,

where I was coming from and where I was going....

And then tonight...

there she was again...

The Martini Moon.....

with the glimmering olive on the rim....

And I remembered....

Yeah, baby....

Friday's are for dancin'....

99 bottles of beer and a Butterfly, too!

I rolled out of five o'clock traffic, Stones blaring, and scooched into the faded little parking lot. No beer in the fridge and two cigarettes to my name. Stopping on my way home to stock up on a little peace and my everyday addictions. I thought about leaving my sunglasses on. Not to hide my identity, but because I looked so bad. Old. Tired. It happened overnight.

Instead, I followed the construction worker with the beautiful blue bandana on his head through the double doors and smiled as we clinked cooler doors together. He nodded. Five thirty etiquette at the corner store.

I was third in line. Right behind the man with the baseball cap. And the blue eyes.

He turned. We've met here before. In pajamas. I groaned. And laughed. Couldn't look any worse than the first time. He laughed, too, and then inched his way closer to being "next " in line.

He paid for my beer. Kissed me on the cheek and walked out the double doors.

The six people in line behind me and the girl behind the counter watched as he never looked back.

"A carton of Winston Ultra Light 100's, please" I asked as I balanced my Michs on the popsicle cooler. "Your neighbor?" she asks, pointing her head and every squiggly hair on her noggin' towards the door. "Nah".....

A murmer began behind me. And I smiled.

When I walked through the double doors, I smiled at the sunset. Seven people touched by the butterfly. Everyone making up different stories. Talking out loud....

"Her ex" the hippie in the blue bandana grumbled.

"Dude, wanna buy my beer?" the kid behind him asked.....

"I don't think she knows him" Leyla replied.....ringing up the hippie's beer....

And then I was out the door.....I didn't hear the telephone tag that passed through the line, but I smiled even bigger at the sunset.

The man who thinks he doesn't make a difference, doesn't have a clue. Seven people went home with a story. All different. All painted to match their imagination.

And imaginations grow....

Hittin' the snooze....

The sheets are orange. 1970's orange. Burnt and frayed sunflowers. 300 count. Crinkled from being dried in the Saturday sun. Clean. I flop in crumpled, legs and arms landing in a random stack of comfy~cozy pick~up sticks. Pop the alarm. I'm out for the night. Exhausted.

He leans in. Voice husky and smokey, protecting his words with hand cusped, as if they might fly away in the noise, and whispers , near. I scooch in. Listen better. Stare at my knees. Nod in agreement. In cahoots. Never look into his eyes. Burn a hole in the leg of my jeans. He leans in closer and is suddenly quiet. Done. I look up, catching his eyes in a butterfly net. And he kisses me.

I wake up startled. His face just as surprised, freeze~framed in a dream. I crunk the sheets one more time, the pillows....and drift away again. It's a six hour night. I'm determined to sleep through it....

And he leans in again...

Deja Vue. In dreamland.

And again.

The alarm screams at me. Blasts fuzzy half music, half talk radio gib gab across the room and I stretch, lean, teeter off the bed to bop it. Good morning, real world.....

I'd rather be dreaming....

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....

Spinning....

Telephone Tag. That's how we do it. No Sirens, bullhorns, weather radios. In the pitch black sky the phone rings, too early in the morning to be a late night "I love~love~love you" call, too late in the night to be an early morning wake up call....

Seven minutes....
to pass the word, run barefoot onto the porch and yell for the neighbors..."You up?" "You?" "Yeah" "See ya when it's over".....
to gather three cats and the dog, the birth certificate box (which also holds a toothfairy letter, two shells, a butterfly wing, a zippo lighter with my initials on it, and the titles to cars I don't remember owning....
to wake up my sleeping child, now with child, and in five words or less, convince her to grab her pillow and crawl into the bathroom closet...
to say the quickie prayers...
to try Jonah's phone number one more time, again, and again....
to race back out of the closet and grab my Ruby Red's, construction boots for the afterlife....
to dive back in when I heard the sky fall.....

Three minutes in the rumbling, tumbling, swooshing, dipping, diving, tilt-a-whirl darkness....
and then unfolding,
paper dolls still stuck to the perforated edges,
bending one stretch at a time,
breaking free of the make-shift cellar...

Yup, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

Room for rent....

It's raining. Not drops or drizzles or showers. Just silvery mist left over from the night before, still falling, drifting from the sky like weightless summer snowflakes. I raise my cup of coffee and we clink! to each other, hot steamy morning cocktails on the porch. My friend and I.

For the longest time, we don't say a word. Watch the children across the street tumble out the front door, on rollerblades, two wheeled spider bikes, and bellies-to-the-pavement on makeshift skateboards. Christmas morning all over again....in their world.

We light cigarettes in sync, exhale into the mist. "Isn't if funny how we all met, came together......" she says. "Yeah.... it's weird" "And how much everything has changed" "And stayed the same" "We've watched a parade from this porch, down your drive-way, in and out of these screen doors" "Yeah....." "Its' been a good one", she said, snubbing out her 501. "I miss him"....an after thought in the rain. "Me, too."

I snub out my own cigarette, nod at the weeping sky outside the dusty screen...
"It's the butterfly"....
I know,I know, I know..... the endless butterfly effect"
"No, there she is.....dancing in the rain"
We watched her for the longest time, flitting from wet Iris blooms to the cool wet earth, and up into the palm fronds, doing adagio by herself in the morning sky.....

"I'm going home to my new husband now" she whispered, creeking the screen door open...walking barefoot out into the dampened sky....

I watched her, each step she took folding the wet grass into momentary footprints, ones that would rise and disappear when the sun came out again.

And I thought for the longest time about him. How blessed I was she married him, loved him, and how lucky I was. To have had him as my friend. And for a moment, I saw him. Standing there, leaning against the truck, smoking.... smiling, legs crossed, blue eyes cast into the rain....reminding me...

to believe....

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....

13 all over again....

She's....... back!
Friday the 13th!
Yeah baby!

You don't scare me spooky little day. With all your hype and legendary Hollywood hoo-hah! I don't have Triskaidekaphobia, or paraskavedekatriphobia, or friggatriskaidekaphobia! Hell I don't even have Friday-what-if-I-don't-get-paidaphobia!

So in honor of this horrid little day, when the perfect thing to do would be to pile into a really big Belair and head to the drive-ins with a cooler of beer, and watch B-rated flicks, but we can't....because they closed them all down and turned them into creepy little Walmarts.....

I say, let's just party!

Oh yeah, and remember the ghost of Friday the 13th past.....
May she rest in peace, that wild-headed child!

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....

I should have known better than to play with matches....

We were pretty in polka dots. Kimbies and I. She, tall and Indian dark, French braids cascading down her neck. Me. Toothless. With my dirty-mop colored hair chopped off to match my Barbie doll. Our mama dressed us in identical little dresses so we could swirl and smile and impress the masses… “the company”.

I cringed. My knotty little knees were always dirty and scraped from crawling in spaces and places best meant for cats, my fingernails were frayed and fringed, not from nail biting, but dirt digging. I liked to dig in the dirt. Kimbies just smiled. Like a good child should. I grinned. And showed off that “I yanked it out myself” toothless overbite . There aren’t a lot of pictures to back up this story…….

Our parents partied. They had cook-outs and poker games, they drank cocktails and champagne, they danced in the living room. And they had “company”. People that came to visit in long black cars. People that smelled good. Tanned women with cleavage. Men with cigars.

We were allowed to smile…..

And never, ever interrupt……

The “warming” was on a Saturday. The unveiling of the massive addition to the back of the house….the den with its hand carved bar and baroque antique cash register, the “guest rooms”….

I was getting out of it. Only had to wear the pink velvet empire waisted dress for about 20 minutes. While the “company” arrived. Then I could go…

I flew back to my bedroom, peeled the scratchy thing off my bony body and tried on my Trainer. Mama had brought it home for just this occasion. I adjusted the tiny little triangles. Tugged on it a little. Perfect. The elastic straps flopped from my shoulders. Yup, that’s the way it’s supposed to fit.

I grabbed my plastic Brownie pocket book and put the price tags from my very first Bra in it. Keeper. Pulled the uniform over my head, plopped on the floor in my "Saturday" underwear and yanked on the dirty brown socks and a pair of filthy Ked sneakers. Grabbed the musty ole sleeping bag from the corner of the room, borrowed, not bought for the occasion, and started to lug it all out of the house…..

“Sweetie, could you turn the bacon wraps onto low?” my Mama purred at me, as I passed. ’Course! I plunked the stinky sleeping bag down and reached up and counted the little white push buttons. Hit the one next to the red one. OFF!

“It’s almost time for the camp-out, Mommy” I hollered into the empty part of the house. Voices, laughter, cigar smoke, billowed back at me. But not Mama.

I grinned. Drug the dirty sleeping bag out the kitchen door and kicked it down the drive way. Waiting on my ride. I sat on the concrete, legs unlady-like, and waited. Scribbled elementary graffiti onto the bleached white surface with a stick. Chewed my feather-like fingernails. Every time I heard a car engine, I jumped up. Waited. Plopped back down on the concrete. It was taking FOREVER to go on my very first Brownie camp-out ever!

The cigar smoke was getting thick. It sort of crawled out the kitchen door. It was yucky and black. I got up and trudged up the slope to SLAM the kitchen door.

And then I saw it. Felt it. Heard it. The flames. Orange and alive. Licking the kitchen cabinets. Snapping, crackling, making Jiffy-Pop noises. Painting pretty psychedelic designs on the curtains. And it was hot. Really hot.

I ran fast, without tripping once, to our pretty-in-pink bedroom and bellowed at Kimbies…. "The damn kitchen is on fire!” Her brown eyes, like frozen chocolate donuts, pasted themselves onto mine. Her dark little fingers dropped the perfect Barbie with her hair still in the plastic sleeve into the little pink convertible and…..

We ran.
Fast.

And stared.
At the fire.

And then we tiptoed through the new French doors. Holding hands. Past the bartender. And the lady with the big boobs. Out the back door into the moonlight. Where the “company” was in full swing. We searched the hemlines and toe rings (yup, our Mom had one of those), the wing tips, and sports jackets….the voices in the night air…..for Mom or Dad.

We found him first. Flocked by three handsome “Are you a movie star?” men, engaged in hearty conversation. We tugged on his pant leg. He rubbed my chopped off hair. I did that thing with my legs that I did when I was gonna wet my pants in exactly twenty seconds. They kept blabbering.

Finally…….

With that woo-you voice, he bent down and tenderly took both of our chins into his massive hands and whispered “My dearest, darling daughters, what can I do for you?”

And we yelped and welped and jumped and leaped …..

“THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!”

Those Fateful Blue Eyes...

It happens sometimes. I’m parked in sweaty -bumper- to -vibrating -bumper traffic and the license tag in front of me reads….3J9 SEA….and my feet are scooped out from under me, and I’m getting road rash from the rush of crushed shells swirling under me as I try to stop myself from giving into the …

Undertow.

One tiny word embedded in a bent up license tag and I’ve left the five o’clock traffic and I’m drifting into a never forever land where the seaweed is wadded up in my hair, and the sticky yicky surface under my toes is an oriental rug of dancing jellyfish, and I’m bouncing madly in a sea I have no control over. My elbows bounce over thousand year old conchs and I flip and swallow water and spew at the sky like a hump back whale. I’m floating now…..

And then we move.

The Toyota in front of me shifts lanes abruptly.
I pound the brakes. And we are frozen again.

Bored, I hit the scan button on the radio. Search for the traffic report. The digital monitor blurs past a dozen channels. No news is good news. It stops.. Flashes.

Jethro Tull is on the radio.

This is news? The traffic report? I’m standing in a dirt driveway, skint knees and peasant blouse, leaning on a BF flyer, smoking a cigarette. “ Don’t mind me crashing at all. Nice to meet you”. I’m 17 again, and in the tainted sunlight of the bumper in front of me, I see Chris smiling. And I hear him saying “Nice to meet you, too”. I’m watching him, his face on the tailgate, distorted by the slowly rolling UPS truck in the lane next to me.

The light changes and he disappears.

It happens sometimes. I’m in the damndest places and I feel it. It’s not deja vue, it’s not a memory, it’s an umbilical cord…..tethering me back to where I belong, where I came from…it’s a cord cut short in an instant . A moment suspended by circumstance, left standing at the alter, waiting…for ressurrection or reincarnation or as a just reminder that life goes on…

I saw her that day at the corner store. My dear missed Nadine. Clicking her tiny high heels in front of me, faster than I could ever keep up. Flicking her ashes in the wind. Eating black eyed peas on New Year’s day. Reminding me over a static filled phone line that she would call me when she needed me. I saw her that day in your fateful blue eyes. I hope it’s not too much of a burden.

Casually haunted...

It happens. You open your windows and watch the fine mist of deja vue settle on the landscape. Have I really aged long enough for life to repeat itself or are we just paying for our sins? Being casually haunted by everyday reminders that at one time, we too, were wreckless and free?

These are the things I remember, and sometimes miss. These are the things I sometimes still cling to, tucked in a dusty drawer, crammed in a crowded closet. A pair of jeans, an airbrushed T-shirt, a notebook full of poems, pictures of the past. These are the things that once in a while, in a laughing mob of kids, I see again....And wonder, when did we become vintage? When did we finally become cool?

Flip flops, the real ones. Little 49 cent rubber thongs of no style. Perfect with button up levi's in the Florida sun.
Platform shoes. Clunky, funky, fun.
Peasasnt blouses. Embroidered. Really. No bra.
Led Zepplin
David Bowie
Joanie Mitchell
Dancing on the coffee table.
Picture booths. Distorted faces. Sepia smiles.
The smell of a patchwork leather purse. The keeper of all secrets.
Lip gloss. No color. Just the hint that I want your attention.
The perfect tan. Before the warnings, the scares, the perfect sunscreen. The kind only found on a string bikini clad drooling sun goddess sleeping in the sand.
Chicken and dumplings. From scratch.
Fishnet hose.
Forever blonde. The color of the sun. The color of the sand. The color of the dunes. The color of our childhood.
Poems. Ranting, raving love poems.
Laughter. The spontaneous unacceptable laughter that is born in the morbid silence of a funeral or etheral magic of matrimony. The uncontrollable, vibrate my body, laughter that spreads like a virus without a cure, and runs down your cheeks in taunting tears.
Princess phones.
Barefoot sandals.
Seaweed crowns.
Dancing in the kitchen.
Telephone boothes.
Ham and cheese flavoured Flings.
Big, really Big, sunglasses. "Whose behind those Foster Grant's?"
Vans. Not mini vans. Not tennis shoes. Vans. Hippie Vans.
Peace Creek. You had to be there.
Yesterday.
It wasn't any better. It wasn't glorious or anything. I just didn't know then what I know now. And it was easier.