Odd Observations from a Skewed Perspective
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Chew and Spit
I have no desire
to be used and discarded
by you today
Perhaps tomorrow
Or the day after that
Maybe later
Not today
Today I have to reweave
the threads of spirit
To rewind my mind
To undo the damage
I have allowed
By being fool enough
To fall in love
I have no desire
to be someone else
When your lips touch mine
Be furthest from your mind
while I lay in your arms
Not today
Today I deserve reverence
When a kiss is
the lips on the sand
of one long left home
now returned
What I want
I want you messy
I want you twisted in the sheets, dripping
I want to find all your broken pieces
and stick them fast with kisses
I’ll drag myself over their ragged edges
Just to get to you.
I want you broken,
in all your reality
to put you back together in my arms
Knit you together in lengths of gold
In all your tear stained splendor
I want your soul soaked sobs
blistering in the sun
I want them all
I want all of your laughs
I want all of your tears
Lay your demons at my door,
I’ll help you unpack.
I want you in every beautiful way
I want you messy.
Mixed messages
Sometimes a kiss
is just a kiss
And sometimes it’s the taste of sunshine
After the cave
The strain of the flower
For every star dazzled drop
And then again
Sometimes all it is
Is just a kiss
Fairy tales are uncommon.
If I’ve lost a shoe, I’ve had one too many.
But every so often, under the proverbial blue moon, I’m seen.
I do not exist in a label. I can be free in my skin. I can let my laugh ring unfettered in the eyes of the loved. I can believe in happy endings, bubbles of joy, and true romance. Songs and seranades, tools of the bard, can spill from lips like bright wine and licked gleefully by an audience.
Why, and why, and why again? What questions are necessary in the nexus of the moment? Do we allow the pinprick of reality fracture a soap bubble existence just to know why?
Transient as steam in the midafternoon breeze, such things are to be savored, felt, devoured with kisses and laughter.
Save the questions for the day after, or the day after next. Ponder and wonder what discrepancies live between waking and dreaming and that daring limbo in between. There will be time enough for truth.
For now, I breathe and I see. Even if it is a fairy tale.
Silence of the Salaams
I’m so horribly stuck on you,
Said the Dragonfly to the Amber.
Why then does that make me weep?
I tried so hard to set down
my expectations
But find still
disappointments as I
give and give
and you take and take
Swallowing me whole
While I wait for
snatches of a touch,
a taste of your lips
the honey in your kiss
tastes like time
Froz-rnmmmnnff …
The power of pedicures.
“Girl, what is up with your toenails?”
Allow me to explain. I’m not exactly girly. In fact, other than breeding, I rather suck at being a typical, processed American female. As a child I was always up a tree, as an adult I aspire to dig holes for a living, sift dirt and play with the tinkertoys of yestercenturies. Not until my thirties, have I learned to successfully apply the tribal warpaint of the average American woman. Foundation, blush and shadow are adequately, not artfully, applied and the jury is still out on liquid eyeliner. Some days I can pull off the look; other days I’m fair certain I’m just Pennywise with boobs.
Also, I am a Floridian. 99.5% of my days are spent barefoot. Yes. I am aware of the risks. I have my own private nag nurse that informs me constantly.
On this day, after not seeing (and speaking little) in the past seven years, my cousins do not greet me with fond hellos and hugs and how you’ve beens.
Nope. Not in my family. That would be too predictable.
So quickly was I ushered into a seat and had my feet seized that I was more than a little dizzy. They fawned over the disastrous state of my toenails (are you seeing velociraptors yet?), buffed and scraped and cleaned and polished. Greetings come in several flips and flavors, quite often entailing food and whether or not someone had eaten. Today, it was feet. The state of life and affairs was exchanged over a little loving personal care that I rarely offer myself. By the time my wiggling little piggys were all glossy and colorful shades of femininity, the seven years had fallen away as if they’d never been, drying in the sun like an afternoon shower. There were smiles and laughs enough to crack my face, and I remembered what it was like to be a part of a larger group of shared blood.
You may be surprised to know, that I am a rather black sheep. I know, I know, right?! Who me?
For whatever reason, by virtue of blood or bone or deed unknown, I’ve not shared in that extended family since my mother’s passing. A little laughter, sunshine, and nail polish did much to resurrect that connection in me.
Pillow Talk
You get the words
That never
reach the page
The scraps
of thought
That play the
Soundtrack of
A heart that
Pounds ink
Little blessings
Such trust lies within
The little hand that slips in
Mine and holds on tight
Ah like my men like ah like my coffee…
Roasted caramel eyes
Do shock me with your taste
Burn my tongue
With complexity
And allow me
To swirl my cream
into your dark, mysterious depths
and drink the nectar
of your sweet french press
Deathbed confessions
“Who the hell is this woman?” Said my thoroughly strung out brain, even as I was hovering over my mother in her hospital bed. The story that had just bled into my ears painted images of her in ways that could not be unseen by my bloodshot mind’s eye.
I will neither confirm or deny the use of substances at this time, but my mother lay dying and I will apologize for nothing.
My mother had seen the finer end of remission for several years before the cancer reared its ugly head again. She had been active with survivor groups and charities and awareness walks throughout. Vengeance cliche notwithstanding, from resurgence to remembrance, it was a very brief year.
Despite the warning, the end came suddenly with all of the dizzying decision making that comes with it. Once the final decision came to cease life support, we were left there in quiet contemplation.
Beeps, chimes, wheezing machines and my father besides me begins with, “This one time, me and your mom were fooling around in the back of my car.”
My head lifted from where it hung in my hands. I can only imagine the horrified expression I wore. I am coming to the painful realization of the finality of this situation and now, this? My mother, Catholic school girl (the good kind!), quintessential Latin mother: tough, fair, full of life and laughter. The worst thing she’d ever done was put a tack on someone’s chair in school.
Some days it truly is a curse to have a vivid imagination.
My brother and I exchanged looks. We could say nothing as the memory granted us a glimpse into a woman I knew all my life and knew not at all.
Canoodling (it’s a word, my spell check says so) in the back of a Lincoln towne car in 70s Brooklyn, my parents steamed the Windows a la Titanic. Unbeknownst to them, in their frolicking, the local law enforcement had had just about enough of their shenanigans.
Flashy blue and whites colored their various clothed and unclothed bits a lovely shade of patriotic when Brooklyn’s finest came over the trusty bullhorn. “You got your twenty buck’s worth, now let her out.”
I was aghast for my mother’s sake, ready to rail at some long since retired flatfoot for besmirching my mother’s thirtysome year old honor.
That Catholic school girl turned to my father and said, “Let me out and hand me twenty bucks.”
Odd Observations from a Skewed Perspective 