pretty girls sit in a west side bank safe looking for trouble and treasure.

Old friends collect like constellations in a sky full of starry storytellers and say, "do you remember when...?"

your calm keeps me up all night. it is the summer of pink elephants and in between two cities of fourteen hills is the sea where i keep secrets about men in the sun, naji al ali and the butterfly's burden. creators and inventors were raised in these villages and grew beards and brains from this soil's suffering. they were all strangers and heros to me and held me up as well as any Sufi prose. especially under tarzan's spell, folklore replaces reality and the hill is where i got engaged to a mosquito!

yukon gold seeping in through the blinds
projects sunlight lines on the pillow & you sang,

"i wanted to make it...
i got that from waiting here.
tran tran a la la,"

"ta ta
tip top tap, my dear.
we've seen how strong winds blow,
but i've had you all this time."

future flash forward to a time machine
and we'll go back to the city of apples, or those orange groves by the sea.

mayday started at the haymarket fair on the west side of chicago. & now 125 years later, it's still a wildly important and beautiful place, at least to us anyway. it was there that i found yemen, afghanistan, peru and so much that felt like summer rain. i walked around the park block dozens of times just surrounded & left only after i felt read. thanks kaki king for your ambient notes and legs today, they made me so tall. lessons learned: there's a lesson to learn. when in rome, say "come nostalgico!" DISSOLVING IS THE NEW WEAK KNEES, people!

on april 28.2011, i wrote: elephant tusks were about to emerge from his face, i swear it was that much of a moment.


who was that about?!

april showers dance lightly and carry a lot of grace. that equation is more than my heritage, it's my soul song.

for philistines, the past that remains is found within a future that can't exist. this sentence is the salt of my sea. it weighs me down and helps me float.

in another life, this siren would have spent days in idyllic laughter with sea salted caramel skin under a mediterranean sun...& that's what she thinks of as her body lies restlessly floating on driftwood in the dead sea. nearing the jordanian shore, she crashes into a pile of wrecked ships and a titan's memories, "is this where they find sleep bound relief?"... the question echoes in her head and imprints her back as she falls into a heap of a human atop the dark planks. like a lullaby, the wonder cradles her young body into a purpose-driven dream about a listless city and for the first time yet on this maritime escape, she slept.

rise rise rise. someday lambs will become lions and we will all hafta grow up. but not yet. right now, there is just so much to say about living in a book and dreaming of a paperhouse and a picket line.

they say if your lover is a bull, wear red. i wore a red dress & worried about two things exactly.
1. subtle body, dream body, it would be the worst if you left with my soul before my mindless body.
2. some stranger is my spirit double and has both the care and callous to walk around with my memories. (if the myth is a man, i'd hope he at least has my coral cheeks...)

asking important questions came later. first, my autumn car took me out to play saturday games. i was an hour behind spring bodies & even still learned that paper frogs are meant to be shared over coffee for a citybrother, a street friend and laughing goatee. though it wasn't the first time a fisherman was a medicine man's messenger and the siege a prognosis, it was the closest to home. it taught me to stay away from the sea & that river stones keep you safe. in moments like this origami is therapy & cigarettes necessary. life has legs and it's running. so here's to the happiness that comes when the ant eats the snake & all the folkloric love of luck that comes with that image. tutto a posto.