phantom thunderstorms

"say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime..." or anyway just this 
evening with the lightning coming across the horizon, the flat vast 
openess with the rolling thunder making snowballs out of the earthquakes 
in her head...there it is, in the clouds, the hanging strobe light, 
pulsating in the blackness, gathering cotton balls to pad itself with 
(god's holding a discotheque up there, or maybe the care bears opened up a 
new club...) still it gathers, in waves, just like everything else, and 
bleeds across the evening sky on a dewdrop dream, calling to me, sending 
me forth, drowning me under in downpours, in wetness, when i can try not 
to breathe but still lasp for something to do, for time, for another 
afternoon like this one...march showers. march showers in the wind, in the 
kites, mad as a march hare the alice girl gathers up her shoestrings and 
threatens to knot the entire universe in two, or even braid it a 
while...she smiles. really smiles for the first time it what almost seems 
to be half an eternity, this is what she has been doing. she's silent. no 
one has to know, but they already do. alice wears her heart on her sleeve 
to often, underneath the cufflink labeled "drink me" and "drown me" and 
"this book belongs to..." but the phantom was there. in the world of 
curtains, in the universe of turnstiles i never thought i would find, i 
never thought would ever want me, the universe where all of the other kids 
in the universe went except me and me alone harvesting cornbread on the 
other side of oblivion knowing nothing but the smell of the forest after a 
cool mountain rain in the spring, the kind of noise rocks make when their 
seeping with water, when you push your ear to the ground, and jack the 
hare's favourite hiding spots. which was enough for me, enough, away from 
the city, from the noisy caution lights blinking on and off, on and off in 
their silent hymn with the sirens, unspoken words but this endless shriek 
like a banshee's whistle...the city makes my body defy itself, turn inside 
out and hide under the blankets and covers and turn the flashlight on, 
with its encompassing buildings that hide the stars and the moons and the 
clouds and only stand with their concrete masses in bulk stretched out 
just to prove to the universe how big they can be...some flashdance 
afterthought of mankind's signature imprinted in these giant skyscrapers 
laden on the sidewalk and blocking the view...too many people, pushing 
around, pushing through, wanting to stomp on poor charlotte's little life 
flowers, under the shoe and never noticed... but here i was, in the city 
again, under the protective tresses of my velvet cloak and on the arm of 
some outstanding angel who would dare to outshine them all, and so i got a 
little braver...just a little... just enough to give a little laugh, to 
skip a bit, to hum, to smile, and they all stared at me as if i were out 
of my skull, talking to strangers...until i got inside, because it's safe 
there--everybody is some mother's son, right? everyone exists and everyone 
else says, "yes, you're fine, you're here, you could afford to get through 
the doors you couldn't possibly be one of those bucktoothed barefoot 
tennessee girls from the mountains who lives in the single-wide trailors 
and got free lunches all of her life..." ha ha ha ha ha...whatever. i know 
the sound of the trees, the way that mountain air feels when you're 
topless and free, riding bicycles through the snow, dancing in leaves... i 
know what the stars look like, and i doubt that is something any of them 
know, any of them bothered, that there are certain ways to milk cows, that 
you have to slop the hogs at least three times a day if you want good meat 
from them, that there are bears in them there woods and you got to be 
careful when you see their pawprints in your path...they don't know what 
it feels to frolic in the hay, to climb in the loft, to watch a certain 
mumbles boy carve your name into an i-beam and nestle in his arms while he 
sings to you strange songs of photographic books about birds...they don't 
know what it's like to get stung in the foot by a wasper, i bet, they 
probably don't know what it's like to get bitten by a chicken, what little 
small baby chicks feel like when they're all "cheap, cheaping" under the 
incubator lights...or what it's like to have to chase the hawks away from 
your chickens and your kittens and how much you cry when one of them 
finally carries them away...what it's like to watch your grandfather catch 
the biggest fish in the universe with a little bit of cheese and sausage 
for bait. redbuds usually bloom before dogwoods, and if the frost comes 
back after a warm spell you have to go cover up all the peach trees with 
huge pieces of plastic so the flowers won't die. i bet not one of them had 
ever gone out and taken carrots straight from the ground up to supper, or 
watched the magic pumpkins grow to be half your size...but then again, i 
had never seen phantom until that night, so there's not much i can 
say...remembering the cartoon, city and country mouse, when the civilized 
city mouse brought his cousin from the country to his home for a visit and 
how the country mouse didn't understand anything and was so scared...me, 
little country mouse. straw hat and barefoot.

but there was phantom, and that was all, the curtains and chandelier, the 
music coarsing up and around and through with these gigantic waves of 
emotion drowning me, giving me goosebumps...transfixed. eye candy and ear 
candy. i always knew there was a certain unspeakable magic to the theater, 
but with all of my dancing in faerie wings on stage, being queen, and 
around and through with the flowers and my bower and oberon forever 
stepping on my wings and bending them out of shape, and puck's tree with 
the vine-swinging clown who won my heart with a handful of carnival 
tricks...i knew magic then, but this...this complete immersement in to 
something so huge, so much bigger than me, with the lights and the dancing 
and the thunderclap of foreverness...it was wonderous. little miss alice 
from down home in a theater, a big one, in her best velvet dress hiding 
the shoes underneath that are splitting at the seams and are scuffed from 
five years of wear, here, lost in the story, eyes bugging out wider and 
wider untill the chandellier collapses and sends this blinding shot 
straight through my cornea...how can this be? how is this possible? so 
perhaps the city has a certain magic to it after all, to let such things 
happen in its asphalt arms, when through the concrete embraces and masks 
of ivory can such a spell be composed...to loose myself in a story. there 
are so many, perhaps i've overlooked a few. myself, forgotten. at least i 
remember now. all it took was a little getting used to, a little retch and 
wear and grinning from ear to ear and an impossible thunderstorm or two, 
right after my asking...angels can do things like that.

so here i am, half past thirsty in something akin to paragraphs, 
completely exploding in inner happiness and thinking too much and 
wondering and wandering and lost, really lost this time, even if my hands 
aren't...remembering and laughing and it is march, it really is, it's 
almost kira's birthday, it's almost alestar's birthday, it's almost that 
day to go home and dance around those i miss so much and more...and then 
there will be feasting and rejoicing at the man with the xray eyes' abode, 
in which he will celebrate such a day of himself... and i keep thinking. 
and dreaming. and musing. fingerfood, or food forever. watching the 
candlights flicker across the stage as christine and the phantom cross, 
from my seventh story window, where the streetlights mimick their 
shadowplay, with del amitri humming in the background and i think of home, 
of flying down fish hatchery road and looking up to the biplanes in the 
sky thinking, "this is what i want, this forever," with the ring master 
thumping me on the head and telling me what a silly little girl i am and 
smoking her cigarettes that we've stolen from her too many times to count, 
charlie and i, hoping she'd quit...and now even she is happy, she in the 
arms of someone asleep, she, after all this time, picking flowers and 
drinking mead and truly living and letting herself go...so many stories, 
just wrapped and intertwined in cellophane, in silhouette...pass the 
elipses i watch them all tumble, and love and smile and remember what it 
means to be mad, truly mad, upside down in a sunny-side-up world, baking 
cookies and tangling yarn...this is what it means to live. stale captain 
crunch and a warm spring rain, fortune cookies and red red red exit 
signs...listening to the most amazing voices pouring through an auditorium 
and telling a story in song...sitting in a room of computer scientists and 
listening to them figuritively blow themselves up, over and over...i love 
this life, being here in these shoes where i've always been, spinning 
yarns and stories and poems with my golden wheel, kicking my heels up and 
falling flat on my face, clumsily graceful sending little messages in 
blackboard, watching the faces spin around, talking to ed of pen-stealing 
techniques, watching the neat ways his face contorts in a different 
expression with every sentence, his complete mockery and disreguard for 
everything except that which is his...and we are his, the handful of 
friends he keeps in his pocket, those of us who continue to scramble to 
his doorstep in any dark hour he may need us to call on...yellow. neon 
pink. rainbow bread. remember our neverland food, lost girls? when i came 
and stayed in your world and we shared multicolored bread and peanut 
butter and "we can fly we can fly!" running around rain's living room 
floor with our cloaks on backwards...this is everything. here. falling 
asleep nestled in an angels arms, breathing something about his tree and 
how nice it is, just now. and now! how many others from that side of the 
mirror long to taste, to touch those prisms that humans privy themselves 
to...what is sorrow in the face of such wonderfullness? of the moon 
pushing through the clouds at half-mast, showing off a new face...and we 
all dance, in our cinderella shoes...that is the way. and apples. and 
snowflakes. and just a little bit of glass.

and thunderstorms.