A watercolor film reel.
            That is how Olive is to me,
Dancing in the dandelions,
Grinning chicklet white teeth.
Olive smells like summer-
Like salt and a wild sea;
A mane of seashell secrets,
And eyes that mirror the gleam.

The gleam of self-realization,
The leaping fires in your dreams,
But in such a supple pastel haze,
That quietly, sings and sways—

Like hot cotton in your ears
Behind your eyes
And round your throat,
But the tune is gentle and smells of the ocean-
Olive’s own anecdote.

And I remember, at the end, she put the sea into a jar-
Sand, colored glass, and rippling waves of ocean water.
It felt like a tribute; a memory-
Like death.
When olive left the coast line,
And her glass ocean world-
Glinting crystals in the sunlight-
On the cat walk,
Still sat.

Kisses laughed too loudly
that summer afternoon
we walked the weathered planks
to and fro, to and fro
those so short shorts calling out
an invitation to potential paramours
eyeing our free-wheeling parade;
our rattle wagon welcoming guests
seeing them home, announced by
the creaking twin gates swinging wide
at the end of the bumpy ride.

Chicklet couldn’t remember
something now easily forgotten
and we cackled, a barnyard
full of happy hens,
to watch those too-full eyes
twist with concentration,
twist with consternation while those
lush lips refused to acquiesce, refused
the words to prove our teasing wrong.

She ain’t dumb drawled a sudden Southern Kisses
momma done dropped her on her head as a baby
and Chicklet smiled a fragile crease,
shy and kinda wavy but lost as it was to the
slap, slap, slap of a dusky mosquito massacre.

Chicken and potatoes set steaming on the table
I’d keep those days just as they were
if I were only able.

As midnight smiled we swam naked
beneath a too-full moon
in whose pale light we shone
laughed and splashed in golden sea
and soothing tumbled foam.

It was love that made us three and
a promise of better days, adrift,
surrounding us; we’re children at play.
silly, silly grins and declarations
set to fly on summer winds,
in cloudless skies,
of bonds that keep
and devotion that never dies.

I marveled at his big, chicklet teeth.
They were huge, white, s t a r i n g a t m e.
I smoothed my tongue over them and fell in love.
The kind of love that snaps, crackles, and pops all in an instant.
That dizzied me like a kaleidoscope.
Like my head was under my feet.
He was older but I was wiser.
Wise enough to know better.
But then I forgot.
It was a round-peg in a square-hole or whatever they call it but that's what it was.
Anything sticks together if you have enough glue.
Our dreams were the same! We were changing the world.
Or so we thought.
He said things like, "tomorrow" and "everyday" and "always."
I said, "yes" and "forever" and "only."
Secretly I shuddered.
Big teeth and big heart and big dreams but small us.
It ended in September.
On a Sunday.
And I wonder now where he's gone.

When I was young I thunk Chicklet was quite the sassy, saucy dish:
double stitching ******, stripping for money, eating discounted fish
and majoring in alcoholics while imitating crapped-out Lillian Gish
******* on Easter portraits to the wall as that was her Easter wish.

Her yearly rout precludes calcifying bonds, tanning hides & wearing Japanese pants. ****** is the great shutter-upper...to words, from consonants in line denying what's worthily worrisome. [Chicklet had staying power in commissioned reports.]

When I was young I thunk Chicklet was quite the sassy, saucy dish:
double stitching ******, stripping for money, eating discounted fish
and majoring in alcoholics while imitating crapped-out Lillian Gish
******* on Easter portraits to the wall as that was her Easter wish
Let's force our greasers punked up on acid to pay steep border taxes
to seat obese Arizonian ******* witches in lawn chairs that relaxes
intestinal tracts south of ghettos, west of any congress that backs us
with terminally benignant tumors on communitarians who tracks us
befouling a eugenically, puritanically Marxian, hocus-pocus praxis
Back, back into the hobo camps of our most viciously-local hordes
a ****, ******, blondish woman of 25 can strain folded vocal cords
Girly bodies are Lord-filled temples, like carriages carrying gourds
as Jerry and Betty were just 2 of the rat-milking, rat-breeding Fords
You as a scoffing ******* are, of course, free to freely scoff
but don't till you've walked in my 2 shoes with both legs blown off
knowing that these lung-replacement problems began with a cough
while doing ****** under bridges is worser than a rental apartment
or wiping up gooey filth in New Stanton's G.M. dental department
as only niacin will **** cannibal queen Beth's mental bombardment
Cast your queer leer to the queerest of baited states: Massachusetts
that has granulated Hillary's lesbian **** above where her ***** sits
Iraqi citizens saw the free eye surgery provided by Saddam Hussein
as a surgical gift of vision freely given by their sad man who's sane
as opposed to the mayor of Bangor proposing a sand dam in Maine
In an empire failing Americans find Uncle Sam ****** in Bahrain
Trifling things shall not diminish my reverence for Miss Kitty Ting,
despite the fact that her '67 suicide made moot mere mortal atoning
from Diana's birthing moon where Earthen-Human souls are placed
in 0-72-hour newborns after old-corpse memories have been erased
K.F.C.'s M.S.G. excito-toxins made Harland Sanders a river dancer
before he crapped out from acute leukaemia & chicken liver cancer