| I. She cut her fingers short because she chews them otherwise when she gets nervous. Star. It's raining, and she's in love with the sounds of rain. She could sing to the clouds if there was a song fitting. Unfortunately, she is not a writer. Do you ever see homeless men sleeping? They retire to cracked blue tarps and stolen blankets, are they in love with the sounds of rain? America is wating for the next attack, her citizens wonder wander detatched, microwaving mail to kill anthrax. Doesn't that start fires? Star shakes a leg at anxiety, pondering the world's hostility. Closed grocery stores clean the mess of the days subdued vorage of customers, while countries mourn the seering onslaught of stealth bombers. Televisions crawl with news flash tid-bits and fresh advertisements to entice the public. While T.V. crews cast the news like fishing line, baiting the hooks with the powder of crushed buildings and bones, of cultured chemicals and dreams. We stand by as blue tarps become body bags, cursing commercials. And now what beauty lies ahead, what festering scars of ripe bombs ticking in torsos, exploding fleshy shrapnel into the hearts of no one but herself. Inside imagined dreams spoiled by blaring alarm clocks and morning talk shows. Blurry eyed and puffy faced she stands crooked on one hand to face the glare of a new day. A broken mirror holds the shattered faces and fading memories of the past. Time is nothing. Today is tomorrow is yesterday alone. An old and crumbling blank page filled with erased mistakes shining thru the dirty smudges of embarrassment. A clock, a watch, a spinning propellor out of control. The Aeroplane Flies High (turns left, looks right) up to the sky (to meet a June bug) to mend, or remain shattered; seven years bad luck. Star lives music sparked fantasies, shorn skulls, imagined conversations, encounters and hugs, ghosts to hold her at night and tell her life is allright, electric blanket warmth, embraces from herself like an underdeveloped fetus tossed in a dumpster, comfort from fabricated whispers in the dark from no one there, unwritten letters playing on repeat to someone unreal whom she holds no picture of. Who ever takes pictues when they should? To freeze moments gone in the flash of an eye. June. In a tree. In a photograph. In black and white. She's still there declaring what a horrible picture it is. Gray eyes smiling back thru the glossy paper, from her perch from the past. Does anyone remember what she was smiling about? "Good for them, good for them getting what they want" Does it make you jelous? Wipe the tears from the lonely child as she treads water amongst the cold ocean waves, blue in the face and screaming a silent trail of razors and rum. Shiver old thoughts of alcohol and tears, turn to long walks and beer..."just leave me on the fence I'm begging you"...She was, they were, beautiful warm curves, wrapped in eachothers bodies like feather down quilts. Star can still taste Mira's lemon tea kisses and feel her full lips on her skin. Her eyes are penetrating photographs in Star's memory. Brown glass flowers with black disc centers and a shining moon beam in each to hold Star transfixed in her midnight memory. But now Mira has gone to warmer seas to search for pearls alone. And Star hovers above your heads threatening to fall, don't forget to make a wish. |