Was Dorothy right or a victim of ginned-up memory? She was so pleased to be deposited right back at her beginning.
But the colors weren’t there. Where was the action? The danger that infused her journey and spiked her nerve endings?

I guess that she eventually acclimated to her old routine. Gradually the colors and tingly tension subsided into a memory.
She helped with the chores, later married a farmer from a nearby town, and put on her apron to raise corn and a few kids.

Maybe one snowy night, though, when Dorothy was in her twilight years, all alone in front of the fireplace nursing a dram,
She took solace in the fact that once upon a time she was the star of her own technicolor journey. Close your eyes, Dorothy.
                                                                                              
                         And dream a little dream for me.

Letting go of the reins when the trees are sagging under the weight of irony and past iniquities may be cathartic.
Removing those blinders amid the collapse will sear the brain and remove any lingering doubt about the future.

For the shifts in mood and temperature, check the dogs. They are the barometer we can’t seem to reconcile.
Sometimes it is the cumulative that does us in. Like a cat with ball of wool. Once it’s unraveled, that’s the end.

I wish for a clear path from Point A to Point Z. If I stomp on my dreams, if I hit play, if I forget to love, if, if, if.
The God of Variables defies me. Our Lady of Misty Confusion works against me. The cat licks herself and laughs.

It was a dream-like state. A state I have come to prefer over the one that purports to be real. Just shut my eyes.
The tide had its way with me. The rhythm akin to love, the making of. A roll of the dice with a saturated sound.

The seaweed embraced me as if I were her long lost love. Her smell brought unknown memories from the deep.
I culled the entanglement of human’s leftovers from her being so that she could taste freedom and breathe again.

When I heard the cacophony of the maddening world, I had to make a choice. I chose my lover. Forever entwined.

The wind brought with it the memoir, wrapped up all nice and fancy with tiny love-me-nots in bloom.
A very tenuous grasp on reality from the person whose reality is based on fantasy. Can we trust her?

Several chapters to the story, beginning with an innocence-tinged laugh that belied even the child herself.
Bouts of alcohol rage and running with scissors stuff. Parents limiting their exposure to her from Day 1.

Hysteria? Hyperbole? The problem with a memoir is that we never know the ending, real or not. It just drifts off.
No conclusion, no final assessment, no lasting revelation or hope or despair.  Death takes care of  the epilogue.

THE CHILD
There is that head-slamming moment of clear sight. Something akin to a sucker punch.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The girl first slides out to a pink blanket and bow.
Isn’t she a little doll? Daddy’s princess will make her mark in the world with all that beauty.
Please dance for our guests, darling. And bake us a cake in mommy’s little helper oven.

THE ADOLESCENT
The frills and curls and princess talk take their toll, cuddle the girl into steps of submission.
Twirling for dimes and validation, letting the boys take a peep for love, fluffy mascara and
Glossy lips for insurance. The M.O. of pleasing becoming implanted as smarts go on hiatus.
Friends grow clique-est daggers, and gossip about the nasty abounds. Will she or won’t she?

THE ADULT
Of course she will and she did. Disappointed that the earth still turns, but who is she to judge?
Through the small measures and sense of her, we see that she begins to ask questions of herself.
She is not an afterthought of a rib. She wants to write to the world. Her silence has been corrupted.
And the metamorphosis begins. She loves, she procreates, and she sheds the princess skin of the child.

Maybe not head-slamming or sucker punched after all. She just grew up into herself.

Legs akimbo and fire in their eyes. The beautiful boys of summer.
Their perfect brown backs and hands waving everywhere at once.
Energy for a lifetime used all at once. Flying net-less through the air.

The boys of summer see gold and silver linings in the paddle of a canoe.
Walls are to be conquered, no signs of trespassing for these boys of summer.
They have a secret language that will last them until they hit their inexorable winter.

The winged boys of summer know nothing about fear or death, bless them always.

The poet bleeds ruby red words to match the injury. Follow the stains to find out whodonit, cathartic agony before redemption, loose ties abound.

The poet’s words a kaleidospoke of spiritual colors come to life. One strand of hair can mean life or death in the poet’s world. Always bated breath for clues.

The poet’s heart and soul cannot be bought and sold. Above the fray, giving hints of the immortal. Never didactically explaining. That’s below his pay grade.

Look to car bumpers for slogans and clichés; poetry is a unique view of the quotidian and the extraordinary together in curvilinear form. No straight lines.

The drama of internal dialogue is an art form for those willing to let the words in. Chew on them a while, and let the digestive process be everlasting.