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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
 Posted - 06/27/2018 : 17:46:58
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| Fortunes Rocks dark marble. New Wingland, he called it. Fire rings down the beach. Grounded stars. The moon's elliptical pull on the tide. "I'm trying hard not to..." she said. His head tipped back laughing, "hahaha." Flurry of sparks in the air. His high-bridge nose and charcoal-smudge eyebrows. His chin leading with endless questions. "What do you think of...?" he said. She said, "You, Senor. I think only of you." |
Edited by - Ailinn on 06/28/2018 00:31:52 |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 06/29/2018 : 16:12:52
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She's Persian. A real beauty.
The dark eyes so deep you drown.
Accent from her first language, Azeri.
Grew up in Mashhad, city of mosques.
When the revolution was stolen
she was 22, a goddess in mini-skirts
and bellbottom slacks. Nobody liked it
when the religion took over.
That's what drove her to leave and come
here, to the shores of Iona,
her apartment overlooking the mud flats
her hijab a kite, the wind
lifting her hair like a wing.
DL |
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Jonmark
Windchimer
USA
1791 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2018 : 06:16:03
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| Good to see you, Douglas. Look forward to meeting her someday. |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2018 : 18:09:47
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| Doug- Nice to see you here. I remember you two sharing a cookie once. Wishing you both much happiness. |
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San Diego
Swinger
509 Posts |
Posted - 07/02/2018 : 18:13:41
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Horizontal lightning over flat Kansas corn. Chasing the sun on the last flight home. Seat belt sign across most of America. If we exited on the tarmac I'd have kissed the ground.
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Edited by - San Diego on 11/20/2019 14:25:50 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/08/2018 : 16:25:37
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| She's handy with a camera. Knows what to keep in the frame. He doesn't like posed photographs. Spontaneous moments she saves in a box marked Thanksgiving Recipes. Surprises out the window. The sky up late. White flowers in the clouds. "I painted it to slow it down..." he says. One hand waving. One hand shading his eyes. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 07/16/2018 18:10:07 |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 07/10/2018 : 22:52:53
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I had a dog named Banjo and a girl named Muffin
I'd just blew in from Texas and I didn't know nothing
I found my way around this town
with a friend I made named Guy
Who loved Susanna and so did I
Now there was this run down shack on Acklen Avenue
That I shared with Skinny Dennis
And a poet name of Richard Dobson
who had a novel he'd never finish
That's when Johnny Rodriguez, David Olney
and Steve Earle first came through
And every other guitar bum whose name I never knew
Old School Nashville, Harlan Howard, Bob McDill
Tom T Hall go drink your fill and blow us all away
There was this tight-rope-walker
who called herself the queen of Poughkeepsie
Who ran away from the circus
with some roustabout redneck gypsy
They were Townes Van Zandt fans prone to combustion
They fought like dogs in Spanish
and made love in Russian
I wish Newbury and Buck White
would drop on by the house tonight
Things have changed round here, you bet,
but it don't seem much better yet
I first met Willie Nelson with some friends at a party
I was twenty-two years old and he was pushing forty
There was hippies and reefer
and God knows what all
I was drinking pretty hard
I played him this ****ty song I wrote
and puked out in the yard
Old School Nashville, Harlan Howard, Bob McDill
Tom T Hall go drink your fill and blow us all away
Rodney Crowell, 'Nashville 1972'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhZtiNXnCXE |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2018 : 18:17:51
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"There's this place..." she says. "I got lost there." "C'mon..." he says, "...let's see if we can get lost again." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2018 : 18:25:28
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| Thorn gate. No hum from the highway. Rock slide road in a bowl between two mountains. NO TRESPASSING county sign at the dirt junction. A warren of cactus-choked lanes. "What risk...?" he says laughing. The two of them under wide Kodachrome skies. Everything knee-high alive around them. Overhang of tangled branches. The grass greening up like cresses at the edge of the lake. Cast the line in the shelter-shadow places. Let the clouds pass over while you wait. The breathtaking double strike. The irrefutable connection. Prism light on the dusty windshield. Intermittent static on the long ride home. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/16/2018 : 18:13:58
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| Deep water. Mica-flecked air. White rooms with curtains billowing. Gantry cranes across the Bay. Newspapers. Coffee. The toast burnt a little. Elastic clock on the counter. His deep blue presence. His indelible stare, "No rules..." he says..."...jus' start talkin'..." |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/16/2018 : 18:20:39
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| ...big city... But the neighborhood was small. The corner market had hot bread before seven. The beat cop knew the shopkeepers names. You could order one slice of pastrami. A pickle. A piece of cheesecake. Eat it standing on line. Subway stairs down the block. Carbonated blood in the tunnels. Underground thunder when the stations blur by. Sandwich boards on Broadway. Backstage assignations. The Camel man's perfect smoke rings. Headlines on the Zipper. The park trees folded their green jackets in Fall. The sky growled in December. Slush in the gutters. Snow in your boots. The Met Knights in their armor. The one with the star... |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/16/2018 : 18:37:13
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| "You're thinkin' two things. Think one," he says. The deck broken-in a little. The flex he likes when the cards fly out of his hands, "Now...?" he says. "Eight of hearts," she says. "Good!" he says, "...better. An'...?" "Six of clubs," she says. He nods. "Red two," she says. He says, "Which red two...?" She says, "...can we start over again...?" Distilled memories. Star wine in the Valle de Guadalupe. "How changed?" I ask Santiago. "No more hill," he says in Spanish. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/22/2018 : 19:32:12
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| Sun-shot days. High-heat afternoons. Aqua horizon. Steep sea lavender path. Reckless in dark glasses getting sunburned like everyone else. Months to burn before December. "...you remember...?" he says. "Like gypsies sleep with their feet escaping..." she laughs. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/25/2018 : 20:06:24
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| Midnight on the deck in a fog thick as lambs wool. "Nantucket... Fishermen's tales," she says. "How the place came out of the glacier. Nor'easters. Hurricanes. Ships lost at sea. Crows on the gravestones. Pitted angels. Green flies in the stinging marsh. The widening crack in my dollhouse. The menace in ordinary things. Those too-high steps to Heaven." Sparks in the dark when he puts his cigarette out. A hush when he rises. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2018 : 17:50:33
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| His endless curiosity. "...ancestors memories...?" he says, "...in us...behind the curtain...?" "Like stars..." she says, "...or handfuls of salt thrown in the oceans. So many ideas down here..." The front legs of his gravity-defying chair come down hard on the kitchen floor. He leans forward, his hands folded between his knees, "...down...?" he says, "You think down...?" |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 07/30/2018 : 17:54:35
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| Ground fog starting to clear. Sun's delirious appearance. Prime light in the Technicolor Garden. "You an' me, ma'am..." Adam says. So much blue in his eyes in slow July. |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2018 : 18:16:34
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| Breaking history in a sleepy Border town. "Lemme tell you somethin', lady... Ten... Twenty years from now..." and he makes a wide sweeping gesture, "...you can kiss all this goodbye. All gone. You won't know it." "Historical landmarks," she says, "...it can't happen." He's suddenly quiet. Years later The Sailor and The Mute Fortune Teller on a street called Days Gone By. |
Edited by - Ailinn on 12/03/2018 10:00:44 |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 08/05/2018 : 22:21:45
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| "You remember the first thing you ever wrote?" he says. "Letters To A Dead Man. I don't know why. I was fifteen in the New Paris Café. A beatnik coffee house. Everybody in black turtlenecks. We'd read our stuff and people would stamp their feet if they liked it. Snow plows in the street. Somebody singing fado. I remember that. And the white world outside the window," she says. "...the days flow of color..." he says. He believes colors have size. Red is the biggest. He can take you anywhere with his words. |
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Doug L
Firefly
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 08/10/2018 : 16:58:33
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He was listening to that William Prince fellow
from the Peguis First Nation of Manitoba. A song
called Carny, carnivals being one of the enterprises
that hire indigenous folks. Deep body in that voice.
He was half, orphaned in sort of, grew up around
indigenous people who took him on. Indians they were
called back then. Open air prisons, the reservations.
A sorrow every time he went back, one thing or other,
his step-mom's eyes, the broken glass bits under his
old man's boots, two cars rusting in the sun.
There was a bread man worked out of his station wagon
and what he couldn't sell he'd bring around to the
reserve late in the day. Practically gave it away.
Donuts, buns, melting chocolate long johns. He had
to clear 'em out. The kids loved him.
Quiet guy, that bread man. You could tell he was smarter
than needed for the job, but there he was. It's likely
he was outlasting some setback or habit, and one day
he hoped to get a leg up on something better.
I guess he did.
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Ailinn
Windchimer
2197 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2018 : 21:01:16
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| Tumbled granite boulders across the Valle de Guadalupe. Shining weather. Maverick wine. Olives and orange groves beside a grassy plank table. His broken stone oven that bakes better bread. Handwoven napkins from the bullfighters widow. A basket of lavender and limes. "...just a little accordion embroidery..." he grins. |
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The Nightly Vigil