The Haunted Ones

You like the haunted ones, don't you?

You like Maricela at midnight

With her black mantilla

And a red rose.

No Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm for you--

You like ravens, not robins;

Dropping your sewing and rushing outside

Whenever the storm flags go up.

She speaks only Spanish

And you speak only English

But you both eat meat always and only on Fridays

And laze through each torpid Sunday morning after everyone has gone,

Passing understanding

From her tongue to yours,

Lighting each other like yellow candles

In the unsanctified hour

That hurries past like a prayer card in a

Sudden and unexpected wind.

__________

Requiem

I (over)wrote this gloomy little piece when I was 18 years old and just out of high school. It got published in Speakeasy magazine. Most of it makes me cringe now, but I have always really loved the ending. Here it is, and please be merciful.

__________

The empty concert hall--

The podium conducting, the stage performs

A piece of Beethoven's shattered plaster head

In forgotten time.

Ladies and gentlemen--

If it please thee, I sit hangdog on the world's steps.

In the window sobbing three floors above,

Love stands head in hand as

Scores blow crazed past my rubble feet.

And I lay myself open to you, then.

My madness mirror, tender across time and

Believing caressive until it lay sprawled

Hit-and-run

Six o'clock and real, but so am I...

Though I kneel broken,

The bitter victim of iambic pentameter--

My feeling eyes still journey

My seeing heart still voyages

Until, stumbling on a piece of Beethoven's shattered plaster head,

The air hammer song and banking cosmic goes flying

My God, now they'll never know

the moving

measured

female beauty

Of a street sign in the rain.

______________

Aviary

GOD WATCHED A WOMAN SLEEPING

AND, BEING GOD, KNEW HER DREAMS.

FROM EACH BREATH SHE TOOK,

GOD MADE A PERFECT LEAF,

AND FROM EACH RIB, MADE

BRANCHES. WOMAN, WAKE, WHISPERED GOD,

AND WHEN SHE OPENED HER

EYES, SHE WAS MOTHER TO

EVERY EMOTION, EACH ITS OWN

COLOR, A DREAM BIRD RAINBOW

ABOVE HER, SINGING AND FLYING.

_________

6 Things That Make Me Happyyyyyy

Pouty Lips tagged me for this meme. The Lois Lenz speedy secretarial version of the roolz, is this: link back, list six, tag six.

I will break one of these rools.

Now then, my six things that make me happy:

1. Breaking rules. Sometimes I make up rules for my dog Bosco, just so that he can have the joy of immediately disobeying them. It makes him smile. Me too. NO SMILING. *smile*

2. Bosco, the super wonder dog!!! He is a six year old border collie, and the apple of my eye. To me, everything he does is terrifically charming. He is smart, loyal, brave and handsome. I sing "My Guy" to him. He likes that, too.

3. Blog friends. From New York to Arizona, and from Miami to Charleston and back to Michigan again, then over to Oregon, I love you all.

4. Music. Pouty Lips, who tagged me for this meme, introduced me to Robbie Williams's song "Feel". Now I love it, too. I love everything from Vivaldi to Soft Cell. My music player here is ever-changing with my moods. I love to discover new music.

5. Being a girl. I may have mentioned this before, yeah? Some are born female, others achieve greatness. ;-)

6. The Detroit Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals. Even my alter-ego Barbara, over at Objets-D'art thinks that's elegant!

7. Breaking rools. Oh wait, was I supposed to stop at six?...

8. Old silent slapstick comedies. I just love them. All those pratfalls and chases.

If you'd like to share six (or so) things that make you happy, consider yourself tagged. :-)

____________

Girl

I dreamt that we were in a garden, which was also a playground.

There was a white filigree bench,

And yellow daffodils.

There were lush strips of grass,

And swings and toys

Where your children were playing nearby.

I was watching myself, and you, from a short distance.

I wore a white lace dress

And was younger and prettier than I really am.

You wore brown cords and a beige henley

And your hair was long and loose.

You said, "you're having a girl," and then I realized why my dress flowed the way it did.

I knew you were right, that this was one of those little intuitions that land in your hand like gifts.

I was smiling, glad for your being there,

As I felt something circle within me

Like a flock of birds,

Spiralling up through my heart, through me,

Like a blessing, like happiness,

Like that welcome visitor

Called Joy.

________

Cheetah Girl & Bird Girl

Cheetah Girl said,

Speed is the way so the past won't come around--

My feet are always gone when the dust comes down.

Bird Girl said,

Feathers are desire, imagination is the air--

My bones are made of dreams, the ground of despair.

Cheetah Girl said,

No star ever born had to prove it was a star--

The night is a cheetah with its spots made of light.

Bird Girl said,

Down all of time, all the years that were or are--

Dawns are always days, even though they start as night.

____________

The Shoshone River

At the point where it bends lazily around from east to south,

The Shoshone is less a river than a big black pond.

If you should step off of the board-warm dock and into a waiting wooden boat,

You can row around to that place where the overhanging willow branches are like a certain girl's hair--

You'll remember touching it as she slept, one morning when you were younger, and in a different place.

If you lean over the side, just where the oar rests, all you'll see is the surface, like an iris,

Perhaps a bubble or two,

And a Jesus Bug not heavy enough to know it should sink.

When it gets so still,

About seven in the evening,

The houses along the banks will look back at you like Aunts and Grandmothers from old family albums,

And you might think that the world would stop altogether, but for the tiny flutter of a vein in your wrist,

Telling you that it's all right, blood is flowing and you flow along with it, in your little boat on the Shoshone,

Into the future,

Like a French missionary asleep on his horse,

Or a pretty blue silk streamer

From a lady's summer hat.

_____________

Art: "A Familiar Walk" by Susan Rios

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday....to me.

Truth, Lies & Blog Posts

As you all know, Word Garden is a poetry blog. I try very hard to keep it a peaceful place that people can visit and enjoy. Some of you may also know that I am not very fierce most of the time. Make a loud noise and I'll jump. Stand in my path and I will try to go around you, or even just turn around and go back home and make tea. But...

If you hurt someone I care about, then it has to end. Then, you're going to hear from me. And that has happened. Someone, and not the person I thought, has been upsetting my friends, simply because they are my friends. Someone, who has never even met me, has decided to tell the "truth" about me, despite not knowing the truth. It ends now.

This post will surprise most of you, I think. It may anger many of you, who will ask, "Why did you never tell me, Shay?" More on that later, ok? I'm on a mission. And when I am done, the haters will have to find another target. I am here to blog, to display my poetry, to make friends, to share every day ups and downs with the people I have come to care about so much.

I am a woman. Always was. But I am a woman with a transsexual history. I have changed my name. I have changed my body. I have changed nearly everything in my life, at great expense. I have lost my entire original family except for my mother, and that relationship has been rocky, to say the very least. I have changed all my friends. Along the way, I have been, at various stages, stared at, laughed at, physically attacked and insulted. Along the way, I have been embraced, accepted, loved, graced, and freed. I didn't make all of the changes I have made in order to deceive anyone. I know all about deception. I pretended to be a male for many years--after all, I had the body for it and was expected to live that way-- and it brought me addiction, depression, and despair, and it took me to the very edge of suicide, more than once. It made me be a stranger to those closest to me. It left me unable to feel anything but a horrible numbness.

From my earliest days, people around me did their best to kill off that sweet core within me that I knew instinctively was my best self. From being forbidden to play with my best friend, the girl next door, through being forced by my family to enlist in military service, I kept the best part of me alive, somehow. There were times, many many times, when i felt I would break apart from the sheer pain of being in the wrong life, of being expected to be someone I could not be, and did not want to be. For ten years of my life, I managed to get through by staying drunk. But when that almost killed me, too, I got sober and all the same feelings came back.

I got married. But before I did, my future bride looked at me one night and said, without prompting, "You're a woman in a man's body." And I thought I was covering so well. "How do you feel about that?" I asked her. We were married for 13 years. We raised a son, the light of my life.

In 2001, I found myself alone again. I tried to date, but women would walk in my front door, take one look, and decide there HAD TO BE a wife or girlfriend tucked away somewhere someplace, who had decorated all that. They didn't know they were talking to her.

I made a hard decision. I thought, if i were ever going to live my life authentically, this was the time. I had a job, a home, friends, family, and some savings. I decided to transition and live as my true self, but I kept my plan to myself at first, until physical changes became undeniable.

Listen...I have spent just piles of money. I have heard my mother say "I never want to see you again." I have never stood in the same room with, nor been invited to any family function by, any of my other family members since the day they found out my intentions. I have walked out my front door and into the world as a woman. I have walked into my job of many years, as a woman. I have changed all of my human connections and relearned my natural femininity while unlearning my unwanted male training. I have been up to my eyeballs in female hormones for years now. Some person sending hateful emails, and who has never met me, does not scare me. Not much scares me. Not anymore.

There have been sweet and also funny things that have happened. My first day at work as a woman, in 2004, three of my girlfriends came to me with three great big smiles and a huge gift, beautifully wrapped. It was a make-up case filled with every sort of cosmetics under the sun. How sweet was that? I'll never forget it. There was the co-worker who said to me, "You are the bravest person I know." There was my son, who, when I told him , said, "I already knew, and I love you."

Most of all there is the joy and incredible kick of, for the first time in my life, seeing my SELF in the mirror every day. There are my customers, who love their mail lady and give her all sorts of nice smelling girly glop every Christmas. There are my girlfriends, who offer me the sort of true and natural friendship I always wanted so badly. I just only ever wanted to be one of the girls. Now I am.

I've made mistakes. I've been afraid to tell people, even dear beloved friends, what my story is. I have entered into love relationships and still not told, until the telling came so late that it hurt them, and hurt me. I am sorry. I can't fix any of that. But I can say, right here, right now, this is me. I am a woman. I am flawed. I can say to my friends, I love you all, please stay. Please forgive me for not trusting you enough to tell you before. And I can say, haters, there goes your ammunition. I can say, leave my friends alone.

I have found that people can be incredibly cruel. I have found that, to some people, because I am a transwoman, every bad thing is automatically entirely my fault, and they needn't examine themselves. I have found that there will always be people who consider that I am "really" a man. I have found that people will judge me. I know that one in 13 transpeople dies by murder. Telling is no light thing.

I have found that people can be incredibly kind. They will include you, help you, love you. They will even call you "chica." ;-)

I have found that my poetry, dormant for twenty years, came back. I have found that, though I am attracted to women, I "get it" about men in a way I never did before. I like men. I just don't want to sleep with one.

I have found that a person can exchange one set of crippling restrictions for another. I am done with that. My business is really no one's business. But I've chosen to share it here, now.

That's me. Take me or leave me. I am here to blog, and make friends, that's it and that's all. I am not here for drama, intrigue or deception. All that ends right here, right now, with this post.

I love you my friends. I truly do. As for anyone who doesn't like me, it's a big world, move on.

Love,

Shay

_______

The Ugly Bird

Once upon a time, Mama Bird--considered to be a beauty--laid three eggs;

Two of them were boys, and beautiful just like the rest of the flock, with all of the very same markings.

"Wonderful," said a beaming Mama Bird.

But the third was not a boy and was not beautiful.

"Shit," said Mama Bird. "I don't think you are even a bird at all. I think you are some sort of feathered mouse.

"Look," she continued, "Stay low in the nest! What if someone should see you and think badly of me?

"Besides," added Mama Bird, frowning into her mirror, "you are plain and ugly even for a girl.

"And stop that singing!"

You see, the flock was beautiful, but never sang,

Being too busy preening to learn any songs.

As soon as she could, the Ugly Bird flew away

And landed in an abandoned orchard.

"Here I can be ugly without offending anyone."

She also indulged her urge to sing, and with the same reasoning.

In the orchard, there was fruit all over the ground, fermenting.

"Woohoo!" said the Ugly Bird, who forgot she was ugly.

The next morning, she said, "Ugh," and felt twice as ugly as before.

A squirrel appeared on an apple tree branch and said,

"You sing so beautifully when you are not fucked up."

"I do?" asked the Ugly Bird.

"You do," said the squirrel.

And so the Ugly Bird began to sing more often.

In the nearby village, the people listened.

The Ugly Bird's songs were so beautiful that they wept.

The Ugly Bird's songs were so beautiful that they laughed.

One day, a radiant young Princess came and sat beneath the tree where the Ugly Bird sang.

"Your songs are so beautiful," she said, "that I feel certain the singer must be too. Wonderful bird, I am in love with you."

The Ugly Bird, hidden high in the leafy branches, said,

"I have two things to tell you. First, I am a girl, too."

"So much the better," replied the Princess, who had never found Princes all that charming.

"And," continued the Ugly Bird, "I am ugly."

"I cannot believe that," said the Princess. "Fly down into my hand and let me see you. Then, we can be happy together forever!"

So, the Ugly Bird fluttered down into her dainty little hand.

"Shit," she said. "You're ugly." and she went stomping and scowling back to her castle.

Heartbroken, the Ugly Bird flew back into the tree and began singing beautiful sad songs about hard-hearted Princesses.

This brought the young Princess back.

"Shut up, you stupid ugly bird!" she cried as she threw rocks up into the tree.

"I think love will elude me," thought the Ugly Bird sadly, while ducking and dodging.

The Ugly Bird lives in her tree to this day. She is ugly, but her songs are beautiful, and so she

Sings

And sings

And sings

And sings

And sings.

"Try and stop me," she says, but except for the angry Princess, no one does.

_________________

When Dentists Die

When dentists die,
They get popped right into the mouth of God
Like so many sugar-free lozenges.

There, among the pearly whites,
They investigate the afterlife with their little mirrors
And they say, "Karen, look at this!"

But Karen can't come--
She is still on Earth watching the EMTs thump the fallen figure in the white coat,
Counting off the compressions
As if they expected him to get up and dance.

When dentists die,
Angels put their charts up to a light,
Then carefully remove any accumulated sin
With their gleaming silver instruments.

Meanwhile, Karen leans against a sink and says, quietly,
"He can't be gone! He had a three o'clock!"
Tonight, she will go home and make pasta salad.
Her dog will be there, looking cheerfully up at her as if she had just dropped down from Heaven
Deus ex machina
And she will be grateful for his devoted heart
And his beautiful perfect white teeth.
__________

Dr. Bigelow's Field Observations On The Weaker Sex

1. Best lured with chili cheesy fries, beer.

2. Most experience five day cycle of activity, followed by two of inertia.

3. A few reverse this pattern, and are themselves observed by the first group.

4. All emotions are expressed by punching each other's arms.

5. Preoccupied with own tails, on front.

6. Vocal cords in good working order.

7. Apparently deaf.

_______

Dragonfly Days

My mother said:

"Girls who whistle come to bad ends.

Carry yourself with grace,

And keep your hair out of your face."

But Mama, that's shit.

There is kindness and love

And pulsing blood--

That's it.

I am thinking about dragonflies.

They carry themselves with grace and live for just a single day--

Their beauty made sharper

By brevity.

_________

Walnut Tree

A walnut tree

Leans over my house like a mother

And in the morning,

My bedroom window is shaded by her leafy branches hanging down

Like unbound hair.

All summer long,

She is a comforting companion

And she rustles in the breeze

As if she were folding clean sheets

Or moving about in long old-fashioned skirts.

But each year,

Usually in November,

She drops all her leaves in a single day,

As if autumn had simply broken her heart at a single stroke.

This winter just gone,

I knew exactly how she felt--

Both of us bare,

Bereft,

Bearing the weight of a hard winter on our shoulders.

Did my walnut tree know

That Nature will out?

Was she being coy

Not sharing what she knew?

Once again it's spring and she

Leans over the ones she loves.

She knows that, all unexpectedly,

Someone brought their sweetness

And my world greened up,

With summer and a warming trend

Blowing in from a western sky.

__________

Queen Molly

In 1996, a friend at work, named LoAnn, came to me with a mitt full of pictures of a very cute sheltie mix named Molly. "Want a dog?" she asked, knowing what a sucker I am for pooches. I complained that I already had two, but she told me that Molly had been saved from an abusive situation, but the lady who rescued her couldn't keep her permanently. Well, I guess you know the rest. A couple of days later, little Molly came to live with my partner, our son, and me.

She liked to sleep with Joe. From the start, she was a sensitive girl, the first one to sit at your side if you were sad or not feeling well. She never got over her distrust of men, but in our home she quickly became a happy, smiling girl.

Five years later, my partner and I split up, and I was the only one able to take the three dogs, Daisy, Alex and Molly. I was not as close to Molly then as to the other two. But, in the eight years she spent with just me, I grew to love her tremendously. She had a regal bearing, and would perch on the easy chair that she claimed from the moment we moved in, and survey her realm.

Each day, when I arrived home from work, she would run and get a toy and dance around in joyful greeting. At night, she always curled up on the bed with me. A sweet, calm presence.

In the past few days, though, she wouldn't eat, unless it was my food, and then not at all. I called the vet this morning to have her seen tonight after work. But oh...when I got home this evening, she was in her little bed as usual, but she was still. I cried. I will miss her so very very much. It has only been eight months since I had to have Alex put down, and our little family has gone from four to just two--Bosco and me.

She will be missed so much. I am just crying and crying, even as I write this. I hope that Sundance, Daisy and Alex will welcome her to the Rainbow Bridge. Our pretty little Queen. Our house won't be the same at all without her.

__________

A Short Course In Ornithology

for R.P.

The reason eggs laid in a nest

Are round--

Is because they are directionless.

But feathers are pointed, and meant to seize

Both desire--

And an uplifting, animating breeze.

_______

Travel Adventures For Girls

There is a reason why people go to Paris, not London, for love,

But try to tell me anything.

I arrived at Gatwick on a Sunday,

Innocent as a cardboard suitcase,

But a week of drizzle and English reserve would make anyone want to slip down a side street and change their name.

If your Love hands you your skin and asks you to kindly fuck off,

You can always disappear on the Underground--

Blue line Piccadilly, Victoria line north--

But finding your way can be tricky,

It's crowded and busy, no place for a yokel;

You can end up with more time than purpose, dragging the best of you behind in the damp corridors like some eviscerated doll,

Far from home

And the only thing to do, though you've hardly the heart for it,

Is to get off the train and let yourself be swept toward the exit by a sea of souls who are all better looking than you and not bleeding.

Get up. Get out.

Sorry, you're not allowed to die here.

Thank you for visiting London, and remember,

Mind the gap.

___________

Flash Fiction Friday

The succubus sits on a hill overlooking town, brooding. There were hikers. Now there aren't. Never disturb a hormonal succubus. She looks down and sees a smoke plume above Mulberry Place Mall. They must not have had the shoes Chloe wanted. Now that that God chick transferred to Danny's Too in Norman, it's love again.

_________

The Crooked Bridge

In my dream I found the crooked bridge.

It reached out of memory, and suddenly I was home again

In a time of trotting horses and clapboard houses.

The bridge was as crooked as the path I have traveled since--

But beautiful for that, in all its rising and descending lines.

I loved it for being familiar,

For being old,

For being trustworthy,

But most of all because you lived at its foot.

The stars pinwheeled and made tracers in a sky Van Gogh would have been proud of;

It was Independence Day 1894--

We thought, "great things are at hand."

I wandered through the crowd,

Knowing I would have to go back to my own strange "present."

Passing through an iron gate, I found what I was looking for and sat down on the grass of a shadowy churchyard.

"I miss her," I whispered, and wept beneath the star-spangled sky.

In the way of dreams, you appeared at my side in your long dress and wrapped your arms around me in the dark.

"Shhh," you said.

"I know," you said.

And then I was back and awake, living alone, making coffee and starting this poem.

________

Nocturne

Silent as a stringed instrument,

I am untouched, unshouldered, incomplete and wooden--

Hear it in my breathing that gleaming in the moonlight is not enough.

There are a million pitches and tones that I could be,

But tonight, there is only one.

Gather me in,

Be my Blue Fairy--

Allow me the knowing that when I step off of the shore of myself,

You will be my welcoming opposite bank.

You are a woman, my mirror,

But the other side of the mirror--

Your body is the home I curve into,

A treble clef from which

All of my music proceeds.

_________

More Movies

I enjoyed doing Lil Bit's "8 Things" meme so much that I have decided to do ....

"8 MORE Movies That I Love!

1. "Steel Magnolias." In case you've been living on Mars and missed this one, it's about a group of southern women who face life with humor and strength in a movie that always makes me both laugh and cry. Always.

2. "The Horse Whisperer." I read the much-ballyhooed novel and after the first fifty pages, it was laughably bad. But the movie is one of the best ever, with a much improved ending. A girl and her horse are terribly injured in an accident. Her magazine editor mother (Kristin Scott-Thomas) takes them out west to see Robert Redford's horse whisperer, in an effort to heal all of their spirits. A marvelous, grown-up story about all sorts of love.

3. "The Bridges Of Madison County." Again, the book was goshawfully written. But the story is compelling. Clint Eastwood plays a photographer who has come to the midwest to photograph covered bridges for National Geographic. he encounters war wife Francesca (Meryl Streep) and they find something together. If you can watch the end without bawling, then you're made of tougher stuff than I am.

4. "A Little Princess" (1995). Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett's famous children's novel, this newer version makes all the right changes to make this one of the best family movies ever. Sarah Crewes' father leaves her well-provided for at a school for girls when he has to go fight in WWI. But things happen, leaving Sarah at the mercy of the cruel headmistress. Full of scenes of India from Sarah's earlier life, this movie is just a joy. You'll love Sarah. She says, defiantly, "ALL girls are princesses!" Too right!

5. "Better Off Dead." An 80s classic. A young man loses his girlfriend to the captain of the ski team, leaving him feeling that he is better off dead. He keeps trying, hilariously and without success, to kill himself until he meets a cute French exchange student who changes his tune. Full of dancing guitar-playing Van Halen hamburgers ("Pig Burger! Everybody wants some!"), stalky paperboys demanding five dollars, slacker mailmen and hilariously kitchen-challenged Kim Darby as his mom, this is just a stitch.

6. "A Simple Twist Of Fate." In this modern retelling of the famous (and, I think, forgettable) novel Silas Marner, Steve Martin plays an embittered man who cares only for his collection of gold coins. That is, until a little girl literally wanders into his life and, in opening his heart to her, he finds his own. It's sweet, and one of my favorites.

7. "Narrow Margin." I mean the remake with Gene Hackman and Anne Archer. Urged by a friend to go on a blind date, Archer ends up witnessing a mob hit on her dinner companion. Assistant District Attorney Hackman tracks her down at the remote cabin where she had gone to hide, but the mob is hot on their heels. They end up on a train going through the Canadian Rockies with, you guessed it, a trio of assassins trying to kill them before they get to safety. The perfect Saturday afternoon movie.

8. "Jacob's Ladder." Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer returns home and gets a job with the post office. But weird things keep happening to him. He keeps having dreams that he is still with his ex-wife and that his dead son is still alive. Weirder still, demons seem to be trying to kill him. Helped by an oddly angelic chiropractor played by Danny Aiello, Jacob must unravel the mystery of his life before he can have any peace.

Come on over! We'll make popcorn and watch movies together!

* * *

PS--today I got to meet my bloggy friend Pouty Lips and I can report that she is just as peachy in person as she is in the blogosphere. One or both of us will post on that soon!

_________

Raptor Grrl vs. Coma Boy

I was having a conversation with a man in a persistent vegetative state.

Am I too harsh?

All right.

I was having a conversation with a man who claimed he had found peace and joy by releasing desire.

I ran my fingers through my hair and said, "You're shitting me. What's the deal with that?"

He told me that despair and elation are twin beasts.

"They will leave you as nothing but bones and regrets, every inch striped and scored by their teeth as they devour you. Each is as savage as the other. Don't invite them in. Don't pursue them. Their Master is named Desire. Eschew him.

I crossed my legs and jiggled my foot the way I do when the train is late.

"You don't say," I said.

"But I have to admit, I've been those bones.

I know despair--

It burns.

When it is done with me, I am nothing but a fine white dust, I can't get out of bed, or up off the floor. Someone has to come around and feed me, like a fucking baby. I am barely a heartbeat. It's like getting carpet-bombed from the inside out.

I also know elation--

It burns.

If you see me dancing, it isn't because it's springtime;

It's because the floor is on fire.

It's the same as despair except much louder, and my heart just loves the stuff."

He said, "That's not serenity."

I said, "What the fuck's the matter with you?" and I brained him with a paperback copy of that Gary Snyder shit that he goes gooey for.

He just sat there and smiled.

I thought, yanno...

Yanno...?

I said, "When I am burned down to nothing and the beasts have gone,

It is only desire that refleshes me

I want I want I want

Pounding in my dainty little ears.

I want a big meal,

I want the woman (or man) I just met,

I want to quit my job,

Go to the beach,

Drown in the surf,

And come back again better than before."

He said, "That is not realistic. There will be a price attached to every desire, and each one will break your heart, over and over again."

I said, "Each 'I want' is a feather in my great glorious black wings."

He said, "They will not take you where you want to go."

I said, "Then I will just stand here blocking the noonday sun," and I ruffled my wings meaningfully.

"You're nuts," we both said together.

Fuckin' right.

__________

Flash Fifty-Five

This my contribution to G-Man's flash 55 thingie. There are rules. (there goes my facial tic again, geez.) 55 words, no more, no less. (twitch twitch) There may be other rules, (eeee! eeeeeeeeee!) but you all know how I am about rules. (GAHHHHHHHHHH! stop saying the R Word!) Anyways, here it is:

Stolen by eagles, Baby Jane

grew on bird barf in

the nest like a cuckoo.

"Ain't got wings, better grow

my hair fast, like Rapunzel--

be a blondie Boeing 747

with no security clearance and

don't want none, look out

below, or clear out above,

I'm a misfit Bird Girl,

here I go, no hands!"

_________