a bonfire on Saturday he says but no right?

it is adjusting to the shock over the loss of what could have been; squandered by choices others made and then say you to me smile why not, you say —and why not only this rose is of a different kind and outlasts the winters 

Oh to have a daddy 

in bed with a wolf

It was somewhere after passing out and waking to get up in search of the toilet to vomit in and feeling miserable after when she noted the unfamiliar surroundings. Then remembered ….Greg….what was he said about the morning ….? 

But her head was just pounding too hard to contemplate anything in any great depth and it’s funny how the mind goes to familiar things when in a moment of abject misery ….Imogene always kept sodium bicarbonate in the bathroom medicine cabinet next to a handy glass. 

“Aha!” Diandra found it 

Then it was ….two —what do they call them here? In the drawer next to the first aid kit.

After that she got into the shower and sat on the floor of it and let the water beat down on her until the danger red finally went away. 

It must have been after that when she dropped back onto the bed Greg had hours before dumped her in, her hair spilled out in twisted, mad, wet, ringlets and her skin scrubbed to a flush, she fell naked back asleep. 

But as the sunlight later came spilling in with the morning when she opened her eyes 

….there was Greg at the foot of the bed 

Grey matters

I remember the sound of David Bowie’s voice 

   on the way to school

that first year …..

       ground control to major Tom….

I’d watch the road as the old tour bus moved through the cold wet cement streets 

 I remember the winter when we first moved away to Holland. That was the soundtrack on the radio ….between Eric Carmen’s All By Myself which was based off of some famous opus ….but it’s tone seeped into the narrow of my first true winter with snow 

The school in those days was rough. It was an international school; a Montessori principal ran it which ….is so much why I am who I am; she formed my moral compass 

The place the students of many world nations gathered in the Dutch city of Osdorp. Always wet pulling up. Our school was in vacated old Army Barracks. So, off the tour bus, with bright orange upholstery on a wet and very gray day. I recall. We filed off. Eric Carmen crying all by himself. And ….. the wet road to the army barracks. 

So once you find the maze where all the barracks line up…. Main office to right ….. I knew I was meant to go somewhere left….

The ground…. square bricks ….slick…. chilled to the bone…. eleven years old; never saw snow; from Florida ….in a thin brown coat shivering as I searched for my sixth grade home room first class 

It was down the left alley. Second barrack. Then the step inside and the left to my class room …. And my first male sexual predator boy bully I encountered was sat waiting as I stepped through the door.Sargent was his name who waited like the Cheshire Cat 

Oh that cold February …. 

    when only hours into that first gray morning day, our Montessori principal stepped into say,

“Class dismissed—everyone is to go ice skating on the canal all the rest of the day!”

And that was moments right before ….. I met my English love— when he threw me down onto the ice 

so, i prefer Plan B etter

every ten minutes

you know, I think I’d rather be exactly where I am.so unassuming, so easy to never see, so off the edge and fresh pretty. I do think I am an anomaly, I don’t know why but instead of wondering anymore, I think my pilgrimage is some sort of key.and the ones who recognize why I appear for them are the ones it’s for but they come on their own it’s not my focus

I’ve never been anywhere I like better

the skateboarder from last year I caused to wipe out I bump into three times.he must be a student returning; he’s grown into an Adonis— it took me by surprise. he follows me all the way to the bridge without a wipeout, hair a golden mane in the sun 

that feeling as though a black hole just ripped right through you. what exactly. vacant. no wonder. but I’m baffled.more like wreckage and pick up the telescope backwards —and look at it from the ….other side 

and sink down 

the drainpipe 

and it pours out.you know, it just gurgles out, the washed out purple grey that once might have been great

or ….no

you only thought it was; you imagined it and 

if they were words they would be running across the pages and the ink would surly smear ….the only thing that was right was ….going

I will

    to thee the sum of my meanings ….these mute walls who hear me ….bc no one else does or ever will

I never could live my life according to their compass. Why should I start now?Always the one slightly out of step.walking the wrong way.   wrong ….

?                    

The bus to sunflower valley

In the end, it was the sudden bolt of lightening just then 

that decided the matter when the bus came to a full stop 

Hempstead Turnpike

perhaps the most undesirable road for someone like my mother. 

I discovered it quite by accident. North Shore people are not usually found around there. 

The only time my mother left the north shore for the south shore was to move into the Southampton house and her weekends in the Hamptons prior.

But I found it because it had two places that were impactful. It had one of the very first “superstores” which was then a bookstore that was the size of a grocery store but had a cafe and entertainment on weekends and evenings. I wound up a manager at just said place. It also had the icon art store Pearl Paint that was also the size of —more the warehouse of a grocery store or an airplane hanger. Where I also wound up a manager at.

Hempstead turnpike. By Hofstra university and Levittown where the houses are all Levitt houses ….Bethpage and Merrick  

marks of thoughts at random/my Long Island past is moving in like the tide. How strange. Why are people from that past surfacing in my life all at once 

waves of eras that sweep across your thighs over a sandy beach like sea foam 

between the mazes

and why, I ask you, so exhausted of things ….why does seem now ? must appear that allegorical barbed wire like the reel —why, why must it not let the lilies lay still to just let it grow moss and sink forgotten, like a once proud prow that has broken off the ship and is destined to lay in the dark depths but ….no, the quiet tomb wants to trick me with worlds I believed did long depart—what weird joke is this….the ghosts return this time of year 

 

Choices

she was completely penniless. Broke. Devoid of funds. Ruined

when she, through a haze of blur; tears diminishing perception ….. searching heart, soul, universe …. and there on the ground it was

what ? 

no. Just a ticket. 

It was just a ticket. There. Left on the ground. 

She looked around to see who lost it. The street was completely deserted. A haystack even rolled down the street in derelict sadness. 

After awhile she forgot about the ticket.

She sat down on the ground.

 she didn’t care. She just stared into space. 

Maybe it was an hour. Maybe two or maybe more. So lost in her head over everything she was …. still stunned over ….. to care …..but …..then she looked down 

The ticket 

It was some ticket for a bus ride to somewhere she had never heard of. 

Only…. suddenly— as the sun was beginning to dip ….a chill swept through

….. and she realized

 she had 

                              no …. where …. to…. go….

She looked again at the ticket. Where? 

And where was the bus stop?

But it was really only the dove that fluttered by in its blaze of brilliant plumage that illuminated …..the stop Sign Post

She compared the stop ticket icon to the one on the post.

The ticket said …. 1:06 PM

And now …. looking down at her phone noting the time ….

1:03 PM

How very ….. fucking Alice In Wonderland 

she thought 

She looked around …..there was no one to claim the ticket ….. and she had nowhere to go ….. she looked at the name to the city on the ticket’s destination, it said simply 

“Sunflower Valley”

A bus was heard now in the distance ….it was suddenly in view not too far down the road 

Choices …..

the house the roofer jumped off of last year. I like the bathroom from here

picket fence on Johnson

I would rename the town Sunflower Valley

I think this year I really mean it.

Let’s see— how many days until Halloween?

If I get an outfit with a mask; Storm Trooper? I am small enough to pass as a kid. I want to go Trick or treating this year. I can’t eat any of the candy obviously, I’ll just donate my booty in my lobby. That is just how insane I really am. I’d only do it for the fun

What other character can I be wearing a mask?

I say thank you.and giggle despite myself

I run.i run like mad.i run to the university to run away from myself.i am lost in thought.i pass two female students who mistake me as one and one calls out to me, “I love your hair!”

I look over my shoulder to see if she meant someone else.no, me

and find I don’t know what to make of this. 

what about a new history

What makes anywhere historic? Of course, we know the answer to this, but I mean something else more vague and more romantic in that idyllic way.

As I’d love to wander down the streets of history as I once did through medieval streets

   to imagine where my writers dreamed their characters …. to me, those would be historical places

I want to go to all those places. Where the Brontës dwelled, and down what avenues; what sunsets and from where did they watch? Oh to stand exactly there. Yes, I would walk along far from the maddening crowd.

The streets of Bloomsbury are history too to anyone who got lost inside those romantics; those artists; that world that was that shaped a social mindset 

like under Kerouac’s window I have sat in Northport was like touching history. Visiting Cervantes’ home was magical to me at age seven—that I still recall. Being shown the exact spot where Picasso sat when we were in Monaco when I was a child— was truly magical. 

Yes, that is a history I’d visit like a museum; upon silent streets that hold their mute secrets. 

To muse from such places my heroes stood and breathed and laughed and delighted in life. To capture it in a bell jar of thought. 

I am half tempted to create my own historical place because. I’ve never known any unknown odd place that begs for it.you only notice the nuances hidden when on foot….just follow the yellow ….sunflowers 

the home inside

I have lived in the mid Atlantic, on the west coast, I was born in the south, lived in the south, had half an adult life on the east cost and had another half in the Midwest and grew up in another country 

and everywhere I go I take 

     all our celves with us.

always packed light. walk swiftly. don’t stop and see wherever the road leads. 

and 

 find I don’t mind

In the sun

https://youtu.be/U-5r_ZgCVDY?si=L27OiFfMQCimh2Cp

 

🌅

https://youtu.be/YveyvpB8grk?si=8jGBvcb9NbOOtUvC

 beat

https://youtu.be/aWmkuH1k7uA?si=IKvgwiHeshc8Zu19

me