The Shamrock Cafe

On the evening of "The Incident" there was a massive explosion (or rather what I thought was an explosion at the time) right out front of the Shamrock Café sending asphalt shrapnel across the roof and up against the white brick of the chimney column.

I stood what I thought was a solid distance away and watched in a rare moment of awe (Super’s have seen it all) as the fires ripped through the ground and the universe began to ripple and tear across  HWY 189- dog-gone-it right where I stood. Hidden in the shadow of the redwoods next to my alpine green '67 fastback sync-wrapped in an invisimatter cloaking cover, I began to wondered if this mission had been such a good idea after all.

Late September Ritual.

Sweet autumn.

Mabon love
Steeped in black tea.
Faithful stain of loneliness.
Auburn firefly flits a dash of hope on sprite wings
Tugs at lady skin and youth gone by.
Coarser hairs and deeper lines.
Time traipses by as
she hedonist turns to she heroine turns to she hermit. 
Three she-faces turn and stare at each other.
Holy water tears from original source.
Emerald green eyes blink back another turning of the year.

Minuscule women still have full sized hearts.

“Arg! This desk is a mess! I’ll never get anything done in all this clutter. What are these bits of paper anyway? It’s as if some tiny woman put them here just to distract me!”, the young man complained aloud, mistakenly thinking he was alone.

The tiny woman could hear all of this of course, for the young man had large vocal cords that resonated across the apartment. Standing a little off-center inside the water stained ring on an unopened piece of mail- left hand on her hip she hollered at him while shaking her right fist in the air, 

“You fool! I didn’t put them there to distract you! I put them there to get your attention! You’ve completely forgotten about me down here!”

                                                                  

She used to be a regular sized girl in his life, 5'6 to his 6'4. Her body would nestle perfectly into his as they walked out after dinner for an evening stroll. She pressed into his side, shaped into his shoulder and chest at the crown of her head. Warmed to him like softening beeswax, distinctly her self but smoothed to his edge. They were inseparable but not without a seam, each distinctly their own selves and uniquely for each other.

The regular sized girl didn’t notice the shrinking right away and the young man didn’t notice it at all. 

Subtle at first, her reduction hovered in her subconscious as merely an odd sensation that her clothes were getting larger, as opposed to her entire frame getting smaller. As her regular sized girl state continued to retract, her favorite sweaters began to drape heavily off of her joints the fabric weighing too much for her to bear. She felt slight and smothered and was forced to turn her newspapers, foil, paper towels and wrapping twine into outfits with lightweight protection.

The shrinking girl became so teensy-weensy that she had to ride around in the hood of the young mans sweatshirt, slip into the coin pocket of his jeans or the cuff of his slacks just to keep up with him. But even as she decreased in mass and volume she was fairly certain that one day she would return to normal size, to be a bigger thing in this life once again.

One day as he pocketed his wallet and phone and threw on his sweatshirt he unknowingly swung her out of his hood and across his desk sending her skittering across DVD cases, pen caps and computer cords. She landed atop his keyboard, face down between the “L” and the “O” key’s. Pressing upright she rolled over in pain and held her tiny skinned knees in her petite hands. She gathered herself back together and looked up for his outstretched palm to be there to climb into, but instead and to her alarm she watched him grasp his backpack and hurry out the door completely unaware of his actions.

Climbing down from the laptop the tiny woman sat upon on a stack of index cards and cried. It had finally happened. She had gotten to be so very small, so very teeny-tiny, so minuscule in his life that he had completely forgotten that she had existed at all.

The turning.

The tide has gone out and left the little lost ones to starve for water. Others have swayed with the foam and held on long enough to return to their brethren. 

The cliff is the best spot to view the coming's and going's of the spells of my life. Legs thrown over the mantle of the shale and lichen museum, being careless. Being reckless without anyone noticing.

I write a note with my finger in the ether to let you know I still love. 

Loved you farther than I've ever loved before and its gotten me here. A beautiful dead-end of sorts. Never-ending sunrise and sea stars caught up in my curls, gasping on air and gulping for water. Sand glinted glitter tattooed to my feet. Earths ragged edges leaving imprints on my palms.

Calico, corduroy and cowboy boots piled high-half naked and adrift in cotton and lace. I fall apart here, in the pale of this reiterating morning of my mind.

There are only a handful of ways to get off this cliff. Jump, climb down, walk from whence I came, fly or dig in. And so I do.

I construct a fort right here. Recognize it is a terrible place to build and do it anyway. Build for survival. Build for aesthetics. Build out of the pain. Build even as the cliffs erode around the foundation and I'm left a singular outpost, an island in the encompassing sea.

Sew a flag from the remnants of who I was. Divine a symbol for the crest that is me and send it up the pilings that pitch the flag pole. 

Once a year bang pots and pans barefoot on the roof. Call the seagulls in and make them tea. Listen to their collected stories from life out in the beyond then shake their wings and salute them as they set sail off the balcony for another 364 days of fish and refuse, leaving feathers and seed kernels to germinate in my cupola called home.

(Their home is out there. Mine is right here.)

Until it's not anymore.

When my toes grow together and the scales begin to erupt I know it is time. I am turning once again. I break the mirror and lash a dagger of it at my waist. Place every piece of jewelry on ever given to me by any man who has ever loved me and left me and dive deep into the sea, for I am a changed woman now. 

Mermaiden mistress among the shells, no longer imprisoned in her own sorrow and beauty, swimming for her treasure, coursing through her sea.

Lust, the troubadour.

When my heart is broken,
I always notice the spilling over of love all around me.


Love arc's.
Venus disrupts
and the collage of contact
between
her and her and
her and him and
him and him
swims like the moon on water.
Wavering against each other in formation and reflection,
lovers stare into each others eyes
and I remember yours.


Clear-clear crystal blue Lake Tahoe.
I sink to the bottom,
weighted by my love of you,
drowned by the loss of you.


Things feel different at these depths.


Down here love doesn't leave anyone out.
Down here love doesn't say I am not for you
and you are not for me.

That's something quite different.


Lust acting like love to get what he wanted.
Lust, the marauder.
Lust, the bandit.
Lust, the outlaw
Lust, the troubadour who plundered my heart.


And deep in the wound,
in the soft moist ooze and sebum
of my broken heart,
a creature begins to form
sheathed in it's coppery dappled shell.
The tiny embryo of something from nothing
solders itself into existence.
Nestled between ventricle and artery
the scent of cinnamon and damp earth rises
and familiar sounds echo.


The scratch of eruption into becoming
can be heard

and a tiny phoenix rises
from my broken heart.

Delta Punx - Installment II: Origin of La Ti Da

One thing you should know--> This is the 2nd Installment of the Delta Punx series. I would encourage you to open the archives to the right and read the 1st installment of the Delta Punx from Dec 2011 prior to this one, for synchronicity sake.


                                                                    


Prior to dear So La’s birth there was much silent debate in the Demeanor and Noteworthy two-story brick estate, at the center of Heilbroner Oaks, on a proper surname for the youngest Noteworthy and the only Demeanor. Silence eventually won and So La Cazadd aged decidedly different than the rest of her family holding only the surname of her grandmother’s maiden handle, Cazadd.  

This was the second item on the never published list, “100 Things That Made So La Cazadd Different from the Rest of the Demeanor and Noteworthy Clan.” This second item was not so terribly at-odds or particular really, at least compared to the first thing on the list of 100 things, her ultimate (dis) ability, levitation.  
                        ***                       

The first nurse at the hospital to speak of finding So La Cazadd tucked in the corner of the ceiling was transferred to a sister hospital across town. Her records noted only a patient/attendant personality conflict.

The second nurse at the hospital was let-go as she grew oddly possessive of the floating baby. Insisting prior to payment that she would go to the press, she was given a permanent minder and a sizable severance package to keep her tall-tales hushed for the rest of her life.

The third nurse was a young Madame Sheppard, fresh from The Society’s Operative Training Branch. Having been born and raised in the Circus Obscura Collective, Madame “S” at the nubile edge of twenty-seven, was hand picked by The Society to coddle and protect dear So La in her extremely unique infant state.


  What appeared to be a short term placement to Madame Sheppard would instead turn out to be (as stories like this often dictate)  her lofty lifetime calling.

Delta Punx: Installment I: Digital Cowgirl and the Shamrock Cafe

The sign says-

“Sorry, we’re CLOSED”,


which means, "We're OPEN" in this part of the universe.

We generally don’t move things in these parts. Call it PTSD.


Once they’ve been put down, they pretty much stay put. And we definitely don’t do any sort of advertising. So you can keep your Penny Savers and Midweek Value Shopper agents off my doorstep and outta’ my mailbox, K?

Here's another notion of interest you should know about the Shamrock Café and Boat House.


The redwood log dock ties laced with nautical rope look oddly enough in-place splayed out across this arid high-desert earth. Still attached to the 40 foot dock, scuffed from years of brawny logger's boots and skiffy deck shoes, are refurnished remnants of; a resting cabin cruiser, two cape islanders and four tugboats. All are "parked" out front without a drop of live water nearby. That's right- this here fine establishment used ta’ sit on the South Shore of the great Puget Sound, at the nook of Percival Landing in the North Western heart of Downtown Olympia.That is, before The Incident took place, it did. And so did I.

That’s just part of the problem with being a Superhero. Wait, let me take that back. That’s just part of the problem with being a known Super Hero…the general Super Villain tends to make it their job to screw with you. And if they can’t screw with your person directly, they’ll screw with all the shit you depend on, right down to the building you're standing in.

Anywho, you'd probably like to know about the night in question.


I’d been told that the Digital Cowgirl was the only way I’d find a trace of an answer to La Ti Da's identity. The Circus Obscura Collective had hired me on a short term contract with the understanding that if I could acquire a solid lead on the girl's identity I'd be branded and promoted to initiate status, allowing me entrance into the collective. And this is what I needed. Being a lone-wolf for the past 32 years had taken it's toll. I needed community.


So, I was out hustling information over hill and dale trying to get to DigiGirl 'cause rumor had it she held solitary access to the largest Superperson database and archive in North America. Little did I know that acquiring this information would come at such a huge cost to my freedom and her's, at least as we'd known it. But life’s weird that way. Even for Superbeing's, sometimes you have to lose something to gain something.


She was who I had to find and the irony of having to find the finder was not lost on me. No one could give me the straight dish on who and where she was, exactly. She'd maintained an elusively cloaked online existence minus the white-hat leeks she initiated. Luckily, like all good gossip there in lies snippet's of truth and from that I'd gold-panned a couple morsels; she loved fabric and the water and she was a notorious cameleon both online and in real-time. So I tossed caution to the wind and headed out towards the Pacific North West.

Digital Cowgirl's back story goes like this. D.C.was the daughter of a major direct marketing mail baron. He could get anything on anyone and wanted it that way, permanently. He started investing in nanotechnology before most citizens even knew what a modem was let alone microbial tracking devices. 

Here’s an example, by simply slipping a toothpick sized piece of nanofilm into each Direct Marketing catalog he could track every code that entered into a person’s house from the time of mail delivery to garbage removal; from UPC to VIN numbers and from accounts on checks to partial accounts series on bills.

You would be surprised how often people leave those annoying mailers laying around on their front porch or stack bills one on top of another inside their entryway and on the dash board of their friendly suburban sedan.

Now mind you, this experimentation the baron was doing was completely illegal and went undetected for years (except of course from select members of the Federal Reserve) making advertising a multi- trillion dollar industry for the Direct Marketing family of the Digital Cowgirl.

All this was unbeknownst to dear DigiGirl though. She thought her papsi's was just an unseemly advertising exec. Little did she know he was also the elusive and powerful Super Villain “Data Miner”, who had come into power deep in the heart of the 1950’s as advertising began to take shape under the burgeoning gaze of psychology.

As a member of the bra burning women’s right’s movement Demetra Matrilianos, as Digital Cowgirl was formerly known, wanted only revenge on her father for his sinister ways and she knew the only way she could do it was to turn on, tune in and drop off the face of the known universe-with very rare exceptions. Along the way she thought she might do an honorable service for the rest of us Super Hero’s since she needed a place to hide from her crazy papsi, and so did we.

And me? Well, I’m Brevity. And now, I run the Shamrock Café. Partly  ‘cause I can’t go anywhere else but mostly ‘cause all of us Super Hero’s need it. Without the ability to grab a good meal, talk to some of your own kind and blow off some serious steam going Chaotic Neutral for a while we’d have a universe full of a whole lot more Super Villains. 

 So stop by some time if you know how to get here. Were at 6-52755.

It's complicated.

It's complicated.

Man and woman wrapped in life,
wrapped in life's most infinitesimal details.

Surrounded by the bells and whistles,
the old structures
and those in the etheric.
Those unseen
heavenly and ancient
forces far beyond the simplicity of government rule and law.

Feel their hearts pulse together in rhythm.
Feel them sync up as one.
Long.
Slow.
Soft.
In-love,
for the moment.

Then,
in the moment next to that moment
love's cadence begins to clash.

Suddenly electrical and brash,
Two heart's lustful designs undulate
and syncopate.
Mismatched patterns of chaos.
Rebuke.
Revoke.
Resist.
And just as easily reincarnate.

One angry
then two mad.
Both rabid towards
the other.

Wholly un-together,
sliding past each other,
wooden floors on tilt.
Splinters graze their bellies.

Her blouse pulled over head,
flesh devouring floor.
His knees knock about bruising and scrapping
leaving assorted repairable damage.

Until finally,
the reverberation catches itself
somewhere
between chaos and harmony.

Grace enters the space and

Slandered love makes an about face.

The room stops it's ramshackle destruction and hearts pulse
again through the clutter.

A clambering.
A racket.
A sweet kiss.

It's complicated.

How I Learned about Vice.

No doubt that horses and vice have been interconnected for thousands of years.

Twitch a gelding’s lip with a chain looped steel rod when your 7 years old and you realize real quick that there might not be such a fine line between violence, force and control. 4”2 and a twist of the arm-between he and you- suddenly an asymmetry exists that isn’t mimicked in the rest of society.

Small overpowers large.

Weak controls strong.

Female subdues male.

Walk down the centerline of a double-barreled barn at dusk, with horses stabled to your left and to your right, the concrete and stone still damp from the mornings mucking and pieces of sawdust floating through the air, momentarily captured in the spotlight cast by the setting sun breeching through tiny cracks in the stall doors and listen.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

STAMP.

STAMP.

KICK.

Like a dragon in a cave you’ve heard the echo of the stud down the corridors all day and for hours have wondered what he looks like. Your imagination has begun to get the best of you at 9. Fire breathing and cloven hoofed this fear, this unknown, excites you.

Approaching his stall, making sure no one spies you falling prey to the temptation of his ferocity and beauty. Lying at the furthest edge of the barn with a buffer of empty stalls placed around him, a veiled protection for the mare’s nearby who send him into an untamable rage with even their slightest tail swish.

Feigning innocence as you near him. Moving in towards the door as you approach. Tension builds as the hoof slamming pauses and you rise up slowly onto the tippy toe’s of your stained red stripped Sperry’s to see in, holding your breath as though you were underwater.

His nostrils pulse. Opening and closing rhythmically. He takes you in with the wild whites of his eyes and curls his lip into the Flehman Response. With his arching crest stretched high into the air as though he was blind and searching he begins to pitch about the stall snorting and clopping his hooves onto the revealed mat below As if to greet you he smacks the door sending a vibration of energy through your fingertips deep into your bones.

Later that night as your dad drives you home in his 1984 Thunderbird you stretch your hand out the window against the force of the air listening to the gears move from 3^rd to 4^th to 5^th and notice that the vibration of the stud still purrs with power in your bones.

Remnants.

The ache is long and deep.

A gift from the ancients.

Rattle the gourd.

Light a candle.

Go inside.

Photograph of your Mother by the edge of the pool. 1955. Her notation on the reverse. You always loved the way she wrote her capital B’s. You run your finger along the scalloped edge of the photo, in awe of her.

You’ve never seen such blue water. And such a perfectly fitting white bathing suit. Never seen her this pretty and happy in the same place at the same time in real time.

Curse of the ancients.

The person in the picture is fictional.

Even though she stands right in front of you.

Find parts of her in the mirror. Patchwork of color, pattern, texture and fabric.

Deep set eyes.

Tiny perfect ankles.

Bitten down nails.

The story of your life put together from items thrifted and placed a particular distance from each other. Place her a particular distance from you. Fictionalize the parts she never shared. Make them more vivid than she ever did. Use the remnant leftovers from the past to color her story, creating your story.

The ache is long and deep. A gift from the ancients. Rattle the gourd. Thank them.

The Wilderness

I'm not sure where you go when you go there.

I'm not sure why you go when you do.
I can only think that it must be me.

Something I said or did, something between me and you.

The thoughts of you that cross my mind are both slender and long.

Well buffered and protected from the wide, deep and painful love that insists it must prolong.

I've been hurting for a while now and I know you like to heal,

So the question becomes what will you do with me when all your work prevails?

Will you still want me in the sunlight,

or do I only attract you when I am sullen in the rain?

Wet and covered in fallen leaf

shivering in pain.

The little hurt lost girl is being broken from her wooden shell and

all her morsely goodness is hovering in stasis, uninvited and overwhelmed.

Remind me what it means to you, the friendship that we've made

I'm afraid I've lost you out here in the wilderness, alone like the birds refrain.

Hollow

Torrential rains
Leave stagnant pools.
Mosquito festers in a
Spider web.
Girl can't clear her eyes
Of tears and memory dust.

Lost at sea is actually
Close to shore.
Figure ate's
Disproportionate
Waist.
Lost in old rituals

Recovering from
Uncovering
Truths.

Go away
And
Come back
To the same place
Again.

Same friends.
Nothing has changed.


Go away
And
Come back
Again.
Won't last forever.

Someday you come back
And they are all gone.
Why stay yourself she asks the old woman in the mirror.

She promised.
She says, she'd never leave
Like that.

Not a whole lotta reason to stay now though.

Even the old woman might agree. Not much left inside or out that's worth saving.

Don't even need to pack a bag. There's nothing where I'm going.

the up side of the down

Heart hurts.
Drain it out.
Wring whats left into the flower pots.

Grow something.
Make something useful.
Do something with yourself
you ridiculous dreaming little girl.

Create oxygen for others to breathe.
That's simple enough.

Seed babies and mothers in bloom.

Tear down the structure in a rampage
(Fuck that feels so good.)

Or dismantle it piece by piece.

The tedious ballerina on point
at the top of an upside down ladder.
Backwards and blindfolded, with
instructions for deconstruction written in a
foreign language.

Still looking perfectly pretty in pink.
And of course corseted.

There is no room for love here.
Not in my heart or in my belly
or in my body or my brain.


There's never enough room at the top.
Ladders aren't built for two.

This Mourning.

Falling through space
Tears like ribbons fraying at the ends.
No end in sight
Just nausea
and chattering teeth.

Dreams built up high into the sky
Remembering they are
actually made of sand
as they disintegrate
piece by piece and bit by bit into the sea.

I am unsure what will be left of me.
What has been made up of him or i or
him and i

simply shaken to the core.

Volcanic rumblings.
Ancient hot seed
kernal of fire.

Desire to be stripped down to fit through the
secret miniature doors being opened and closed in my soul
revealing dreams of spilled blood.. of veins cut the wrong way.

The soil is barren, the land gone fallow.
Want to shove my fingers in it deep and
grab at the heart of the earth.
Dig holes and fill them with ever blooming
plants.

Want to fill all the pots as evidence of my presence.
Want to remember her beauty.
Want to look back at the ribbons blowing in the wind.

Wanderings around in afrofuturism

afrofuturism: is an emergent literary and cultural aesthetic that combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique not only the present-day dilemmas of people of color, but also to revise, interrogate, and re-examine the historical events of the past. Wikipedia

i.I was surfing around last night (you know, doing some creative r&d) recovering from an incredibly luscious weekend of camping in Pescadero, where I had gotten into a deep conversation about Octavia Butler.. and stumbled upon yet another piece of the afrofuturism meme I have been tripping out on recently.
Octavia Butler is probably my favorite Sci-Fi fantasy writer EVER, having written about several different sci-fi "worlds" that explore social justice themes around race, class, gender and sexuality including; The Patternist series(telepathic ability), Xenogenesis trilogy(alien/human bonding), Parable of the Sower series(empathist ability)and the stand alone, Fledgling (vampiric).
The Xenogensis Trilogy (now called Lilith's Brood) has to be my favorite of her works. An exploration of human/alien intimacy, sort of pinging on the vein of Heinlin's polyamorous trip in Stranger in a Strange Land. I totally remember finding a 1st edition hard cover with a perfect dust jacket on the free book rack at the old American Legion bar in the Summer of '97. (Does anyone else remember this place..on 21st and K...just before it went through its transformation into the gay friendly, Club 21?)

Anyway, the cover was great...a super cheezy alien drawing all 'shuged' up to a black woman. I remember some early versions of these books being printed with cover's that had white character images, even though Butler's protaganists' were largely people of color. A glaring example of institutional racism within the Sci-Fi publishing world during her early years. I searched Google Images* and Amazon..but could not find any examples of this until I went to AbeBooks. I wonder what Octavia said when she saw covers like this...what an affront.

ii.
Another artist listed in the Wiki collection of Afrofuturist's was Jimi Hendrix. This reminded me of a YouTube posting I found recently of Jimi being interviewed by Dick Cavett**. Damn, he was an eloquent and mystical cat. I had never heard him express on his concept of the electric church before. Totally rad. And double-rad that I can even find this interview, I heart technology. I am pretty sure Jimi would have dug YouTube....as the Digable Planets would likely have noted if they had a afrofuturistic time machine.

iii.
I did not recognize the name Renee Cox from the list of afrofuturist artists so I went and found her gallery shots and the Yo Mama portrait from '93 totally stood out. I think this must have been on an inside cover issue of Ms. magazine from that year 'cause I totally remember it. Her point of view is 'in your face' brilliance, she gives you no room to hide from it's meaning. You can really see, over the course of her body of work, a metamorphosis from maidenhood into womanhood as well. Right now I am especially diggin' her super hero series, Raje (Rage?). Its both hilarious and powered by a reclamation of black imagery. Something I bet Octavia could get behind.

iv.
After viewing the Raje series and exploring her Wiki more thoroughly it did not surprise me that she had done some work with Spike Lee, having designed the School Daze movie poster. I just rewatched this last month with Kristian, who had never seen it. This flick is a real gem (blew my mind when I saw it on cable as a 10th grader), one of Spike's earliest films ('88) and though it has a few underlying fantasy/futuristic elements Spike is not listed as an afrofuturist director on the Wiki list.

However, like some sort of afrofuturistic 6 degrees of separation, Larry Fishburne*** holds a lead role in School Daze and he was of course the megacool character Morpheus in The Matrix movies. As an afrofuturistic powerhouse Morpheus was totally reminiscent of Octavia Butler's book cover for Clay's Arc ..and this makes me wonder what she thought of this likeness?

more wanderings to come later...


* During my image research I came across the jazz musician Nicole Mitchell who in 2008 released a tribute to Octavia Butler titled the Xenogenesis Suite. The cover is the title image for this blog entry. I also created a Pandora station for her and listened to it while I blogged this post. Mind blowing....
** Woah! Dick Cavett reminds me of Steven Cobert!*** Larry Fishburne is a new CSI in the original CSI Vegas TV series and is currently producing a movie based on the Paulo Coelho book, The Alchemist. A novel/novelist with a strong sense of magical realism.

Don't lie to me.

I never realized how seminally important Paul Ekman's work has been. I just thought I might have a super power.


If you ever watched the show "Lie to Me" last season (on FOX) then you have been exposed to his theories. He basically took the idea that human facial micro expressions can be broken down to very specific foundational emotions and there by be incredibly useful to those seeking the difference between the truth and the lies that people tell.

As detailed on his Wikipedia entry and counter to the reknowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, "Ekman found that facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined, but universal to human culture and thus biological in origin. Ekman's finding is now widely accepted by scientists. Expressions he found to be universal included those indicating anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise."

The basic premise is that you can tell if someone is fibbing based on the tiniest and quickest of facial gestures.

Now this...this is gold to me. Yes, because I am a teacher and I want to know what is really going on behind those teenage tales...but also because I dig..I mean really dig the idea of being radically honest.

I have struggled for a long time with this need to be truthful..and can remember more than a few brutal moments (sorry everyone) when I have been called tactless or cruel for this honesty.
It's just always been hard for me to "fake it" around people and in my late 20's (likely due to frontal lobe development) I finally began to work with the concept of diplomacy rather than complete honesty in certain situations.

Part of the reason I hated being "fake" was 'cause I could always pick-up when other people were being this way...could pick it up gutturally..and I did not want people to pick this up from me. I would rather be thought of as crass than as a liar.

Now I think...just maybe..that I was picking up on their micro-expressions. That I was picking up on the glaring contradictions of their micro frowns and sunny stories.

And for just $69.00 and one hour with METT Online...I can begin my transformation into a super hero...or just a better teacher and communicator.

Silent Sea

Super heros don't exist.
Neither do monsters.
Pirates were never honorable and ninjas can't fly.

None of the secrets anyone told you about how magical you are were true.

None of the times your sweetie cooed at you was he actually thinking of you.

Everybody knows but no one says so.


People draw lines and tell you not to take sides and they do this from the opposite side.


Hold you down and tell you to stay calm while the ship fills up with water.
Letting you go with just enough time so they can swim to the top and head for harbor.


Breathe it in girl.
Burst gills and fins.
Transform yourself into a freak
in order to survive.


And then stay at the bottom for awhile.
Consider your options.

Complacent down below.
Hidden by the sea.
A shining gem lost for ages
pinned between two stages.

Stay out at sea a mermaid girl,

a queen amongst the shells.
Or swim for shore,

no way to tell,

who'll sell you, steal you, save you.

A quandary from ages past for women to this day.
Born out of strife with fishermen who net their catch then cage them.

Essentially alone.

Whether you roam or are at home.

Make friends with the fish and

strike a deal with the whales

for the storm on the surface will disappear

and the sand cloud around you will

eventually settle.

Suzette was the kind of girl..

Suzette was the kind of girl that liked to be tied up with her own clothes. Tonights attire included a black natural fiber tunic with batiked Japanese cats and a Nehru collar. Empire darted on the outside with strong cotton canvas piping left long to tie back around her waist, it was instead at this time in the evening, serving as soft handcuffs around her wrists. There was something that turned her on about the thought of her wardrobe playing double-duty. In one moment building up her ego and in the next breaking her down. Something efficient about the use that turned on her handful of synaesthetic genes.

She thought this mid face-slapping. Hog tied, painted toes in the air wrapped taught by her lover's bicycle tire stitched belt, hands behind her head , face half covered by her wrist immobilizing tunic. She had some of her best ideas in the breaths between the edges of stimulation. Whether it be the prickly sensations of pain or the long pulse of pleasure, each gave a texture to her internal feelings. He'd become more comfortable with slapping over the past few weeks, taking to initiating it this time around without her having to ask.

Kincaid's deepest nature began to unfold the first time he was asked to physically hurt a woman, by that very woman. It required him to coax through great hesitation within himself as he had known no other way than to love women with kind words and caresses. A foreign and hugely questionable act; that of marking a woman with the physical shape of his hand. But, to hear Suzette's moans of ecstasy, to see her pupils enlarge, and to feel her wet with anticipation there was no longer a doubt in his mind that this was the right direction to be exploring.

A modern love story told by a song bird would have to include all the classical features. A man and a woman separated by some evil challenge, made worse by one mal-adapted addiction of one sort or another. Partners whose heart's have been shuttered to each other's deep passions by the conflict of wills between the head's busy work and the hand's heavy lifting only to experience some great trauma which puts everything into question. Some near death experience or life altering exchange which begins a catharsis neither could have ever expected or dreamt of. There would of course be several trials and temptations along the way which reveal the possible reason for each members mis-steps and irresponsibilities, and of course several obligatory sex scenes.

Waiting for my man.

Maybe I should go away and disappear.
Dig a wet hole in the shady woods and place myself in it.

Strip down to my skin and lean my bare scapula
against the earthen tub of clay I've made.
Bury my self deep,
to leech all the sorrows tuggin' at me

away.

Swansongs from the wood peckers

and eerie crooning
of Jeff Buckley
whispering through the Sequoia,
or just in my mind.

Warm late morning sunlight

curling at the tips of the grass.
The circumference of the earth at eye level

from a hole

just

below

it.

Peering at the pill bugs, them ignoring me.
Imagining each one leading the second line

I hear trumpeting in my head.

Drag the moist chunks of earth back on top of me.
Weigh myself down. Hold me in place. Pile the ferns in a cluster
of regal green crowns down the length of my subterranean torso.
Prop my head with the last bits of lichen and moss as a shiver
slithers through my belly.

Slit my wrists and feel the slow leavening
of heat pooling at my elbows.
Taste of iron from dirt

and

taste of iron from blood.

Pulsing heart.
Like upside down in the pool.

Inhaled water filling my nose.

The thump-thump comes a knocking.

Barely able to shove the razor blade into the upturned soil,
I imagine what it will look like,

rusted from the rains

next to the pile of bones I have left behind.

Frozen boy dethaws from fire inside girl.

She had read the fairytale and followed the treasure map to the Lake of Ice Blue-Green-Teal to find the boy. She lugged her sledgehammer and chisel on her dog sled for thousands of miles with her muffler covered in ice shards sharpened from arctic winds gusting through white pines.

When she found the boy and kissed his frozen purple lips his blue glass eyes shone brightly and she heard the buzzing of bee's come from his chest. He thanked her for her quest by turning her into the queen bee. Crowning her as such did not necessarily mean she knew of her new regal status. Instead, her life just began falling into place. Piece by piece.

She began finding things...things lost years before. Earrings, notebooks, scarves, whisps of directions and definitions of vocabulary words. Things she had not seen in what felt like life times appeared in cabinets and drawers where they had never ever been. Broken things were mended and neatly placed back on the shelf glued or sewn.

Meditation overcame her. She found herself awake earlier and earlier, wandering giddely through winter time fog, greeting the morning with renewed faith in the universe. Her orgasms began to shake her like thunder and lightening, sending electrical bolts into every corner of her body.

Suddenly everything she was never good at she could do, even backwards. She understood algorithm's and theorems and gene sequencing and paragraph diagramming.

And all the while the icey boy she thawed smiled... golden in glow slightly aloft, floating.