rarity

collecting stones
to me
the finest gem source
seems
old hat.
yet
infrequent
seldom
tenuous
subtile
like bald eagles perching
hump back whales arcing
not dime-a-dozen

in tribute
i collect
sacred relics.
as time goes by, the small coffer
an amalgam of eclectic features
now,
a treasure trove.

old news...from the crypt

whatever the story, there's a more concise explanation than the exaggerate-tory one I'm sure I mentally embellished and used to convince myself of a sick and twisted, sabateur-rejection.
truth is, most often, i rejected me.
i didn't commit.
i played and didn't like.
i jumped, only to wince away in pain over a sprained ankle.

i'm tired of
waiting
wandering
second-guessing
glancing and thinking 'what if'
'maybe this time'
what have you
i'm ready for love
big
soft
sloppy
messy
love.

open.
disarming.
hard work.
building blocks.
deconstruction.
reconstruction.
gambled-upon...
i want to love
and be loved.
i want to be someone's
million dollar baby.
do you know, that in my whole life,
i've just wanted to be enough for someone
deserving
(and not 'too much/too intense/too deep')? for just, the wrong individual.
can't i be someones special
amazing earthy mama-lovin' caretaker chic with a brain and some braun and a heart of silver-gold?
won't the stars introduce me to a passionate
braniac
without overwhelmed arrogance
(or for that matter, pomp & circumstance).

who reads (at least; if not writes) poetry
and sees it streaming down my face sometimes,
when we watch the sun set
or rise.
or in the wind can dive off a bluff and turn the water a deeper shade
of indigo.
who believes in the balance
the ebb and flow
whom is passionate
and good to puppies and kiddos
who loves the mountains
oceans
water everywhere
who'll garden beside me
read to me when my eyes are tired

and doesn't mind my bouncy ball collection.

who might dig newspapers-in-bed
sundays
or hiking
cold or warm sweats
anyday
or ravenous partaking of fruit
after
a special kind of satiety...

and winter afternoons spent hibernating
only after skate-skiing or snow shoeing.
will i find the one
who gets me
who sees me
who adores every inch of me
who relishes in what this spirally mind might concoct next--whether word or
ingredient-filled-culinary wonder.
a pallet of spice and delight.

and who isn't scared by my love.
the way she spills out, all verbose, all over
the page
all over his shirt
lapel
and trousers.
sneaking out for whispers
in ears
and sometimes
a lyrical hum
dee
dum.

speaking your mind, even when your voice shakes (m. kuhn)

means taking risks that you've got to live with.
means writing checks your body should be prepared to cash.
means rising above, when it feels like falling on your knees is the only option left.
means disappointing a number of hearts who'll never quite fathom the depth of your diving pool.
means overcoming the doubts that cause you to tremble and retreat and second guess.
means you'll be alone, a lot, and there's no need to hate yourself for it.
means doing the right thing.
means being brave.
means being who you know in your heart that you are and deserve to be.
means you can walk away, head held high.
means you have the right to say nothing at all.
means you can learn to decipher when its best to say nothing at all.
means sometimes, speaking your mind, requires not a word.
at all.

vitamin c

wide eyed & haggard
after too much rest
sleeping hours into daylight and after
so

hazy with a temporary dislocation of what i know
i found myself at one
with a snowbank
and
only after
a short reprieve
did i awake,
freezing
with cold
at the bottom of my heart and blood rates possibility
pondering life death illness taxes
staring into grey sun and wishing for heat
well
for warmth
my fair skin, purplish in the concrete-encased-surroundings of my
hospital bed
i waited for the waitress...
headnurse to tell me
i was ok

better now.
just a fluke
hydrate more after cardio.
take your vitamins

be a good girl.

settled dust

stare into that crystal ball
and see
the new belgium sunrise
feel the heat
and
mire yourself in the cold
of it

steep in the misery there, cold
dank
and alive
in a way that dispels belief in any possibility
of good
and right
not anything
else
but trite
frivolity
you drop it like a bag of
hate

smash it against the curb and
kick it
in the chest
as you step away,
exhale
and brood into
whatever comes next
on this expository plane
of self-reflection

a pool of silvery swoon
i wonder if this inside glittery jump and dance
might ever be anymore than a dream

i'll inhale the thick smoke of you and feel your elixir
i'll wish it to sweep it
all away
under the proverbial rug

oh emmylou, lucinda, baton rouge; how
can the lyrics
of any
of your love songs
ever stretch far enough
across the expanse of the globe
to transcend the bitter
irony
of life's many truths
i
love
and i
love
and
i love.
restlessly, i am only here.
visibly aglow
amidst the indigo outline
of night's sky

the regions between
ribcage
and
sinew.

i reach
and touch
and the handholding
lets loose

forget the beauty
the light behind the eyes
the smile, enriched somehow by a silent backscreen
reflective
heart
starry
glitter
energy
or
limelight

life
myriad in its wake
of ebb & flow

breaks upon the shore
in so many undulating waves
how can we ever harness
harpoon
lasso

a thing at all
?

I AM the birthday fairy...

Live your life from your heart.
Share from your heart.
And your story will touch and heal people's souls.
--Melody Beattie

I AM the birthday fairy…

The rectangular strip of white paper/black ink read
“You do not have to worry about your future.”
At the time I opened that fortune cookie sentiment, I remember I turned and spun; whirling-dervish-style…and immediately thought about Beth Hart lyrics…

She got a poet's spirit 

she burns among the clouds 

she never stops believing 

she only dreams out loud 


…Knocking shoulders, heavy, muscled, delts, with a co-worker.
He giggled, glottaly, turning his sparkly lake-blue eyes to me, asking playfully ‘what’s up?’
In a moment like that you wonder. What is UP?

Really.
How to answer?
Are there words?

The slip-slap levity of an epiphanous mental-inhalation feels like the corpuscles change, right there on the spot, blood-deep.
That with the new knowledge, we are forever new and that on this, that…on any given day—or moment, naturally, the riotous volley of life’s ball from paddle to table to paddle and back is willed-forward. Is positive, good, of the stuff which dreams are made.

That’s my purpose.
The excavation of my own and others dream stuff [YO!]
It’s what I do. It’s my innate specialty.

It too; my arch-nemesis; as I traverse the differences between those who hear this language which I speak, and the others which dismiss, misunderstand, dis-turb…I am a portal/vessel/medium by which others might see the way to truly live a ‘Practice Random Kindness & Other Senseless Acts of Beauty” life.

The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. --Frederick Buechner
And here I am. A run on sentence with hyphens, m-dashes, ellipses. A mixed bag of tricks and traits; tendencies and beauties. My idiosyncratic, spirally self, which bounces and plunges and leaps and dives is here and alive and at the precipice of the most important sort of work there is to be done.

No wonder, my favorite of all artisans, melds the most diverse of media into its mixed-collage.
Sugar & spice & everything nice. Juxtaposed with the sands of gritty truth. The hasty choices made. The decision(s) to, as I’ve only learned JUST TODAY, INSTEAD ‘let love decide’.

Living imperfectly with my humanity doesn’t have to be painful or a stand-up-&-preach-from-the-proverbial-pulpit-example of what not to say or do.
But if a door once closed, now open spills forth with the grace of the unabashed qualities that exist, so let the waters flow.
Let the free willy, Roseanne-na-danna-danna, third-grade-giggle, newspaper riddle, happy-go-lucky, smile in a puff of cloud, raindrop splash in puddle, kiddified energy live forever.

old souls ?

can you fall in love with a mere glance?

what is love?
can we peel away the
societal influence pressure
(onioned-layers)
seeming combustion
that soda-can-explodes
everywhere
by the mere mention

a four-letter-word
bomb
awaiting its explosive
response
can we see past it? get past it? deep-breathe it
and not recoil
when
it is
'too' early
too soon
too much?
when we all, 'at this age' have baggage and scar tissue to last a lifetime of
story
telling
escapades.

do we ever have a chance of
new
what if
happy
effervescent glee?

can we ever bridge
the gap
conquer
the divide
in a way
that instead
c o n n e c t s
beautious multilayered facets
of other to self
an amalgam
new in the making...original in its beauty. perspective. slant of light upon.

today someone taught me to consider 'what love would decide' next; instead of
reacting.
being
visceral
defensive
explanatory
right or wrong
egotostical

what if, intrinsically, we altered our reaction
to every given thing
to honor this
to ask that question every single time.
'what would love do?'

how might this alteration rock
the off-kilter
inline once more.

what is the next move when a decision of some substance (or not) is upon us? right. left. fast. slow.
where must a being go
to express.
reach outward.
give.
?
when can you gamble the assumption--that the receiver 'hears/listens to/conforms to/is interested in' your particular
l a n g u a g e ?
when will your tangent slant, veer, crash
headlong
into
a head,
sitting like a pumpkin
on a fence
ready to be shot apart
into fragments
ir-retrievable?

when too, will your aim reach
full on
to the
epi-centre
heart meat

centrifugal
spot where force eminates & life seems to begin and
creativity
energy
l i g h t
exudes?

finest of lines
thinnest of fissured ice
falling through
plunging

it's so random. this synergy--bumped into...happened upon.

i refuse to N O T

words capture not the visceral
tingle of
lives intertwining
in a way
that is more than accidental
on purpose
fate
stars
crossed or not
i'll never know or say for
certain
yet
inaction on the reaction felt
by virtue of
listening to syllables enunciated
seems such
a
terrible
pity
a waste
of sorts
like garbage strewn
black-bagged
on the hot, odorous
alleys
of a city
like new
york

not feeling
or
love
or even
lust
but
life
force
heart
beat
connection
you said it, language.
we don't often speak the same--we humans--
although if lucky, we
may ark
our particular positive
neutron
proton
action
and somewhere
the yin
yang principle
might bless
rainbow-hues
to meld

cross-continental distance
and sometimes
personality

cause us to
N O T

and i refuse to not
say
that
i hope we meet again
i hope your life brings tears of beauty to your cheekbones,
more often
than any other
amount
of effervescent-soul-emotion

that your spirit stirring the cacophany into a symphony yields
hope
and light
to every dreamy
aspect of
existence as you feel
and know
it to be
...

Pelt Me With Olive Juice

‘O L I V E J U I C E!’ I imagined they would mouth to me from the audience. The big, cherry red lips of my sisters, their slightly dull-white teeth, embellished ‘whiter’ in contrast to the tempting cherry red. As I traipsed across the creaky, hardwood floor—stained a deep maple, scratches running amok, fissures, translating like a palm reader. I nervously drifted mentally, imagining the history behind the sketched pattern across the floor of this stage.
Small, low-budget one-act off-Broadway plays, scrawled under the dim lamp lit bulbs of a local diner. Coffee stained pages handwritten through the purposed insomnia-laden effort of forgotten play writes…once convinced of their inevitable breakthrough success; utterly stunned by the less than blip-on-the-radar way they came and went like so much swept dust across the gritty floor.
Brash metal bands—with their dark orchestration—turnkey fan base strew all-charcoal-rim-eyed inverted crosses and maniacal faces; black leather and dog collared; grating with the plush violet velvet seatbacks. Double bass drum chunka…like an old film reel.
Quaint, perfunctory string quartets—maybe a jazz ensemble complete with skilled, demure vocalist, or a horn section including a visiting professor and the bellowing of his cornet. Interviewed one mid-day afternoon at the local public radio station, beckoning the local 40 something, npr-listening, less than occupied with much of anything but the steady cadence of their hum-drum lives…the interview was sure to attract a medium-to-large crowd; the newly single (versus recently divorced) vocalist, a stone fox, flirting wildly with the tall dark and handsome from the sound booth, wooed the audience into a sell-out cd-purchasing frenzy.
The quartet or trio, certainly mended some of the deep welts carved, in the fury of humping monitors/board/amp—drum cases; steely-silvery cymbal stands and lug-soled boots, knife-like into floorboards, bruising rafters and (sound panels/auditory flag panels) ‘ripped to shreds’ with the gun-metal charged riffs of the metal-heads.
The 4/4 rhythm; Sarah-Vaughan-lyric-induced elixir cure nursed back the resolute joy to the fabric of the space—violet seats took their deep, therapeutic breath, stretching back into their comfortable shape.
A scuffed foot across one more floorboard, and my perch comes into full view. A pale yellow sphere of light, wrapped around the four-legs of a single barstool. My guitar, leaning at its post, amp light glowing red-orange. Deep breath, exhale away from the microphone, look down, look up. I stare out into the straightaway, and try not to concentrate on the bulbous, heady, yellow sun that requires a kind of sun shade I’ve never found. Like the way eyes adjust into the darkness, I see through the blinding light, skim the crowd as I smile and speak into the mic, thanking my audience. Applause sounds, and my head dips back tips forward, and a Cheshire-cat-grin plants itself on my lips. I reach for the neck of my Stratocaster/Fender/Gibson/Ibanez tune, as I tussle some talk, keeping it low key, friendly and home base. I tune, crank the knob, tap my right toe, and strum me some licks. There it is, and I plant my hiney in the seat. A wispy piece of hair falls into my eye tickling me. I sing and play. My heartbeat has slowed. It hasn’t stopped the dampness. My nervousness transcends from the obvious to hidden, and I feel a drop slide down the indent of my spine. I grin it away, catch a hand waving, and see my sister’s—there in the third row, center-focused, grinning ear to ear, all cherry-red lips and silently mouthed (lip readers that we are) “O L I V E J U I C E” signing.

handshake

take that hand and rapt, is it.

the fury of sweat and intimacy…
all hot breath on your ear, neck, breast.
whispery fragments of semantics—the broken English of the lustily-imbibed.
splintered substance in the
sometimes-sentences, often
gasps,
that spill,
profusely,
across the warm, goose-flesh-induced span of curved torso, oblique, trapezoidal space.
litany’s of run-ons, answered with lip or grip of strong, deeply grooved, muscled entities which lift and push and grapple; softly, and tussle, less so…
grating against hip bone, all red-heat-sinew-force
and swirled inhalation.
Reach around and into and through. Coax a little breath from empty corpuscle. Contemplating stop, start, cease, continue.

Hand full

Hand full
Lean into him.
Heed
And he, let him meet you there,
Heavy breast.purplish blue veins
zig-And-zag
spanning
fair, gleaming-white flesh.
Grasp there, firmly.
All supple.
Satiate the need for touch—all brimmed to rim.
Writhe. Twist.
Ride the swell of the gutsy-grasp-
hands full—
all sinewy-calloused, yet oddly smooth.
manicured.
almost buffed around the edges—like bondo on a damaged car.
Let the lusty, lotioned-swells of robust-meaty-muscle grapple and rub.
gently. Or. Not so much…
break every rule.
Let him tear your
shirt
Your Skin
Let him Rush, rush, rush
In.
Meet him at the front doors. Swing them open. feel the ahh…
Full-on, you have met him, ready, able.
No coaxing necessary.
Innately on the defensive, your body pours-forth, and with those same supply-fingered-palms,
Strong-reaches
Bend you.
take you.
Push you.
forward
and then back
Again.
winded for a second, you inhale. Lean forward.
Reach for his…hand, full
and find
the sweet, slippery, center of you; life-saving—giving—affirming
soft and wet. Lean into yourself.
Grab her by the hand
full.

Lustrous

lustrous effulgent radiant lucent
the heat at center burns a deep black-orange and the cedar two by fours collapse
creating sound where once peace and quiet,
maybe the purr of a cat
meowed.
Flame with its voracious appetite. Starved it seems for the very substance of its destruction, the ingredients of its meal consumed in flickers and salacious licks
Like a rabid animal
Swallowing
Before chewing
An entropy—total consummation. engulfed in flame are beams and panes.
Tools
nails
swept-up piles of kindling.
grey are the memories, now cinder, now flinty charcoal-esque ash
unrecoverable heap
brown-black soiled in soot
with a smattering of white snow
the hem of this dress,
unraveling.
I stare on the dank spot of those three steps, the lap of this place I’ve known as home, and, eyes closed, drift into the snuggle of your apron strings.

Lackluster

it always seemed to me
morning noon or night
In the confines of it’s space.
10 x 10
or 12
maybe.
Strong stilted walls ensconced in shelving, doors, laden with the metal, wood, paper, rope; cat food, bird feed, tin can collective.
It was the doorway to and from
The space between
The world view, from here, decumbent; prostrate, supine…it, a thinly-clad glass aperture between the world and I. This horizontal portal and a skinny-as-a-pin rectangular framed fragment of obsidian—clear—a peephole into the great beyond.
Safe. Here.
Three steps down to the flat space, a hard, shivery (always, it seemed), cobbled (only in the manner of substrates used, not in the craftsmanship) lean-to of sorts;
Bus stop
Pee-your-pants-hurry-up and unlock spot
Stand and stack some wood
End-of-day-beacon of light
And dark
Don’t let the kitty cats in
One-eyed bunny resting spot—there, on the first step.
Legends of albino skunk
Open the door and see the smeary concrete imprints of my hand and yours.
Yet
A mere sniff, and I am comforted with
your crock-pot
freshly cut logs
wood stove’s burn
cedar
odors
your hard wooden surface.
Your strong metal lock.
timeless in the way they plant me in your lap—those three steps there, all crooked and comfort.

I turned around to see...

I turned around to see that there were tears forming in his eyelids…welling pools of more than I might ever fully understand. The sharp and direct, voice raising had done little to connect the dots of my message…that although I loved him deeply, that I would not tolerate such behavior—not ever. Not today or tomorrow. Not even next month.
Was it just a ‘stormy Monday’-hormonally-driven ‘grey rain’-and-dismal because ‘Wednesday’s worse and Thursday’s oh so sad…’ would I always take this mother-stand—this reactive, merciless intolerance?
How to break the habits formulated by the parenting inflicted upon my own childhood?
I winced away the image, those welling pools. I inhaled sharply. Deeply. I reached out, hugged him very close, looked him deeply in the eyes and reminded him, that I was sorry—that I loved him—inhaled again, sharply, and bared my chinked-armor—told him, that I was sad. Temporarily.
That I was human—that I had failed, and that things would be worse before they were better; but they would be better.
One day.
I turned around to see that he heard me. That he listened this time. Realizing that it was likely mood and not completely his behavior that had caused the cacophony of syllables to attack his little ears.
I looked upward, counted my blessings, wondered if the momentous doom, might ever cease rearing its ugly, spiky, little head. I turned around to see that by now, he was laughing. Playing with an action figure and singing Hendrix’ ‘Cross Town Traffic’ under his breath. I smirked. I wished for a moment, for that adolescent pendulum swing—right to left…sad to happy. I wished it were more like that, here, in the ‘real’ adult world.
Today as we had zipped through a quiet residential neighborhood in the heart of town, whistling the morning-edition-jingle & cajoling-the-beckons of my three-year-old nephew to 'wait' for his chocolate-with-rainbow-sprinkles donut, happily filled with a day’s possibility, I was struck with overwhelming, defeatist-sadness. Physically, I felt my heart plunge, deep into its center, or more likely, down to my knees and then past my toes.
There in the midst of bicycle-strewn-driveways, freshly bloomed cosmos, family-dogs, and foxglove's droopy-blush-pink-bells, was a disturbingly unwelcome, steely-red container.
It would seem only the devil's handiwork could possibly expend the energy to disperse the silky-woven-web of a family's whole life into the scattering of remnants, piled higher than the rigid, rectangular walls could muster strength to accommodate. FORECLOSURE, signed, sealed & permanently delivered.
Like a knife to the heart, there is no escaping this reality. When I turn around and look, it’s all that I see. Temporarily. For today.

Mrs. ... (Mrs. Ellipses)

When she wakes tomorrow her name will be…Mrs.…Ellipses…
And she’ll live in a terracotta-brick and mortar brownstone, down an ivy strewn neighborhood lane, in The Village.
On Saturday mornings, awakened by the bright, golden orb, gleaming its outstretched rays into the crook of a crusty eyelid, her Mrs.-Ellipses-self will smell the dark, robust roast of an organically ground bean, crushed the evening before, in preparation for a noiseless (in lieu of bird chirp and cat purr) amble into the waking hours…lying awake in this gloaming, The Journal or The Times, inkily emanating fresh worldly tidbits, sit on the nightstand and she stretches. Leaning upward, extending farther. As in yoga-class, she gently strains a twist right, exhales. Inhales. Soft, deep, purposeful linger there. And then left.
Her Mrs.-Ellipses-self, eyes closed, scans the mental laundry list of tasks for the morning—the pen and ink sketch of the day ahead. Just as quickly, she shakes this off—blinks her eyes open, sweeping the habitual need to categorize, prioritize, and plan into that waste-bin of her mind…(retrievable at a later time). Instead, she deems, a softer, gentler focus to a meander into this day. A slight stumble out of the covers, she visits the bathroom for a splash of cool water on her skin, and then saunters into continued, sunlit stretching—toward the delicious waft—her morning wake up call.
The soft reverberation of a jazz tune faded in the background noises of this Saturday. She takes a jaunt upstairs, two hand-molded-mugs brimming steamily, to find her Mr. So and So (that Mr. Ellipses) reading, or tapping on his laptop keys.
Delightedly she instead finds him, on the exterior pane of the Back Bay window. The one that looks out onto the patio, assembled on the roof of the building below.
He is painting undulating, indigo swirls—the origin of which seems that of wave and breeze.
It is a mural, for her. A reminder of the water—abysmal and ambiguous, just below the surface of her integument—that thin layer of epidermis, between frailty and strength, darkness and light.
The lapis-hued gift dries quickly in an autumn wind. She ventures one bare footstep at a time to peek upon the masterpiece, she peers. The inky-dollops…almost violet in places. Her eyes well as they absorb, like a sponge, newly drenched in the succor of a spill; she is satiated with blue-love-light and as she tastes the delicate morsel of it, she divines that to her right, a blood-orange sun has eviscerated the sky, exposing the heart-meat-openness that begins at center and extends everywhere. No longer does the empty sway of a clock’s tock; tick a tune of doldrums. No longer is a once blue-grey-visage, clouded.
Like a lantern, this illumination transcends the evaporating cloud-cover. Delving deeper. Pouring forth; opening the creaky old attic door of fear.
When she wakes up tomorrow, her name will be…
Alive. Not because of this “him” but by virtue of her own heart. Unafraid. Unforsaken. Unabashedly all right; she is, Mrs. Ellipses…

The Halo Is In Full Effect

Here we are, a sea of hopeful warriors—some timeworn and sweat soaked, others, newly showered and enjoying a gloriously breezy, sunny, northern Michigan Saturday morning.
We’re in line to purchase tickets to see Madonna, live & in person for the opening of her film, I Am Because We Are that will be featured this summer during the Traverse City Film Festival.

The cacophony of conversation, downtown, Saturday-morning noises, the breeze, the waves of the bay, doesn’t overwhelm. It’s like a calming purring kitty, on my sundrenched lap. The sun beats down. My curly hair frizzes and I am moist, everywhere. I squinch and reposition myself on the curb. I close my eyes, and listen.

Ahhhh! (It’s so difficult to capture a guttural honk!) As I lovingly refer to the sometimes snort, other times shockingly silent guffaw which has been known to effuse from the lips of this ‘babe’. The difficulty is attempting, with any true sense of the glottal [not to mention guttural] fortitude physiologically erupting from the source of said unabashed act. Consonants just don’t do it. They cannot possibly discern, with their curling q’s…crossed t’s & dotted I’s.
Source of said-guffaw, you wonder?
Someone just said ”Aagghh! I’m going to be 40 in 22 years!!” (note, there are two, count them, TWO exclamation points for OBVIOUS intended emphasis).
HA!
What a moment. And one, as I do—stream-of-consciously-connect myself to the story at hand—that I relate to, which furthers the inner-workings of the guffaw. It descends, into my belly. My eyes water. I sweat some more.
Recently, while hanging at my beloved mom & daddio’s home…I realized that my dad, who will be turning 60 later this year, is, clearly, 10 years away from 70.
Seventy seems so much older than I think of my father being.
He is young at heart, albeit wind worn.
A bit early in the day it seems, but an almost sultry, spicy, summer’s wind, beckons me to stay lucid, in the heat, as I type this.
Listening to The Beatles play behind me, the young man who had the honk-producing-epiphany is sitting nearby on the brick & concrete sidewalk about 100 feet from The State Theatre. His name is Andrew Muirhead. He and his girlfriend are clad in hand made white baseball caps, strewn with silvery-glittered rhinestones, emblazoned with a single consonant, that of the elusive Madonna, the letter M, in pink no less. Inherent, alongside this paparazzi-attracting garb, are the hearts, pure as gold—filled with love for Madonna.
Pecking on the keys of my laptop, I squint, look up for a moment, wipe my brown, and see that my friends, Bobby & Joe have stopped by to say “only 28 minutes!” Diehards. True-blue. Devout. Fans. (Fanatics?) They have, (no lie) been here, on the sidewalk in Traverse City since, early Thursday morning. That means they’ve been here for more than forty-eight hours.
Yes. H O U R S.
I cannot help but to refer to this as blind ambition?
Ha.
Punny. Well, my wit-quotient may be affected by my lack of sleep, the heat, and the fact that my rear end has determined it may have become related to the familia-concreta (sidewalk-butt!)
Yet, for some, like the friend who I’m getting a ticket for, Madonna is larger than life. She is a Goddess. A source of something, worthy of 48+ hours on a summer sidewalk. To her, Madonna is important in a soul-affirming way that I cannot possibly describe. My friend found solace in Madonna in a way that helped her manage being a motherless daughter. Now, as the single mother of an adorable, lanky, 11-year-old boy, named Casey. Casey, the closest confidante to my Godson, Isaac, stands at the center of ‘why’ I am here, mid-morning, on a hot, summer’s day, in line with some true-blue warriors of the most devout capacity.
If you could capture the collective spirit of Casey and his mother Chas, and you somehow sorted the spirit-sauce, and sieved out the ingredients, Madonna would be in there. The magic of her myriad talents. The energy. The voice. The individuality. The light, emanating from the sun.