My wandering boy is moving

bending to touch the earth

When will he pass by again?

When will he have his birth?

The leaves of his father

his mothers face next to mine

and all the places he’s covered

just to come to a bed like mine

 

 

 

 

My wandering boy, he tells me

not to wait, not to intrude

He left this morning, noticed,

his body flesh and nude

I slept in warmth and silence

as he turned toward the door

touching the picture I’d shown him

telling him I had more

 

My only boy is weary

He tells me what he’s seen

and how when he woke up one night

after seeing me in a dream

Just an island in his road, I think.

I pray that I am wrong

I listen to the words he says

I sing him his favorite song

 

These are the things he gave me

here by my window sill

The sun on my feet in the morning

and the arc of a falcon’s curl

See the way he looks at me

see how his smile curves

see me skipping

down the hill so fast

falling into the world

 

My wandering boy and I

tell us apart if you dare

He holds up the water for me

as I wash the day from his hair

We sleep with the scars of silence

He kisses me gently there

He’s here to stay

he says

as he

touches his fingers here

 

2:54

Siobahn, Sh-boom, Sh-boom, hey, Si, what’s up?

Thanx for the tape. If I were a clubowner, I’d hire you guys. I really like "Lonely Bitches." What a crack-up. Send it to MTV anyway, what the hell. The rest of it sounds like you guys need to twiddle your own knobs. That guy who "produced" it left no room for a voice. A vox is not a pox is not a thang to abhor. It quite simply cain’t compete with those guitars, and polyps ain’t exactly a delight for the throat, are they? IUD Roach is a better name than The Everything, but I still think that Ovulator must exist as an all-girl metal band for at least one hell of a concept-party album: "Ovaries of Rock." It would be a perfect flipside to "Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy."

But, anyway, in that song about parents, "The Marsupials of Mars," what with the feedback and the reverb and the micing of the drums AND you never did like getting INTO the microphone, it sounds like you’re singing: Those little children/whom you think are your concern/Only think of how much they will be able to get for your urn/You loved them once, can you love them now/You left them once, can you leave them now/Be here now, is it too much to ask?

Is that it? If so, I think it would be fine without the babies crying in the background. The cry of a baby may be a delicate phrase for a poet, and it is the metaphor of all-time, but to listen to it for the length of a four-minute song makes you want to give them whatever they want and when they STILL won’t shut up so you ignore then and they STILL keep screamingggggggggg!!!!

Well, anyway, you get the picture.

So, tell me about this little girl you’ve adopted. Must be like Grand Central Station what with the whole band living there with you two. Dionne tells me that you guys all sat around with a name book and a witchcraft book for hours, trying to cast a blessing for her and finding the perfect numerological name for her. A name to give a daughter? I think I’d be tempted to call her Lolly Menomonee, or maybe Blanche Hiscock. Bertha Boxholder? Blowzy Blowhard? Yeah, that’s it, then when she’s old enough to know, when you take her for a walk and let her know that she’s God, too, you can scream out across the waves from the cliff at Discovery Park "Go for broke, Blowzy Blowhard!" She’d go giddy and never fret again, you’d think. You’d hope.

Has Otto written to you much? Did he tell you that we hooked up in Amsterdam one night to see the Legendary Pink Dots at the Melkweg? Get their album The Lovers. Mmmm...good stuff.

He just wrote to ask me what the job situation looks like in NO. I’m sure he’d find something, but he’s so petrified of being crucified as a yuppie, and he hates realizing he’s not in his twenties anymore, but only when he dances, which he doesn’t do much anymore anyway. Always staying home to read some obscure African mythology or something. God knows he’d love Nawlins just for that, let alone the railings, the hieroglyph hobo marks with and without museum approval, the Indonesian Follow-way. Land sakes and look alive, Otto, I told him: Your favorite sister is here, what bad can I possibly say about the place? Took me long enough, though. Six years and all that distraction with J. Dove and dayjob hell jobs and Europe and suddenly Vic. He’s probably in Britain somewhere, still hasn’t written. Of course, the address I gave him I just found amongst my stuff, but it had been washed away by a wine spill the last night we were together anyway. So, maybe it was all a goddamned dream after all. Damn special one, though. And there is nothing finer than a good, old juicy, Technicolor, winding old dream. Alcohol-guilt-I’m-a-nasty-person-dreams are interesting, and mushroom dreams are especially "different," but after weeks of nights of nothing but sleep, it feels so good to remember the next day how you lucidly crawled to a party, drunk already, and left it three bands, four conversations, five hours and six beers later, completely sober, with baker’s chocolate in one hand and a guy who knows all the words to "Stella By Starlight" in the other.

The words you see at the beginning of this letter is (was) how I was doing a few months ago, when I was in love. The stage of love when it’s like a revolution, which, of course, can’t stay like that very long, before everything gets normal again. Yeah, so I don’t have to worry about taking myself out right now. Not as I tend bar and lend ears to any barstepper I please. "Please" is all their eyes ever say, as if I have anything more to serve them, like booze always suckers you into thinking when you drink. Listen to me, Queen Liquid Courage herself not that long ago. I guess that’s why I’m doing this: Trying to conquer another temptation. Either that or the cash, I forget which.

Angel Crisis. I think that would be the band name if I were to be in one, or the name of a rose I made myself, or the name of a child I have myself. Whoops. Cat’s out of the bag. No, I’ve been careful. It was my mouth that said that, not my uterus. A dog will do until I’m ready to have a kid, and a guy would be better...Guys, men, boys, what the hell are they, then? Yesterday I tried writing a letter to that guy I worked with in Seattle at Garfield High School. The one I blew off who got all freaked out at all women after. "Straighten Up And Fly Right" I tried writing to him, the Nat "King" Cole song he needs to hear. Don’t have to be the King, though, it could be the Count or Prince or the Prince of Darkness or Boozoo or Queen Latifah or Gloria Jackson-Nefertiti. What I wouldn’t give to have my next life as a powerful, centered black woman. No longer the reigning white empress of rain, but a sun-blackened crown of laughter, guts and gumbo.

That California trip to see Ruse in Berkeley I’ve always wanted to do might be done finally, after the novelty of New Orleans wears off. (When all my tattoos wear off.) Let me know if you’re interested depending on the band and the general state of the house, I guess. It would be good to see her now, all these Christmases later. To think that one Christmas she asked me all about the University of Washington and before the next December she had almost died b/c of that Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. I looked it up and it sounds like a hernia of the upper body, which sounds like a hard-core waitressing position she must have had. I guess she’s no longer the conga-playing DJ on a motorcycle with parachute pants like she once was. In the photograph she sent me, her eyes have such a frightened, hollow look, it was probably taken just after she could stand up again, trying to smile in her black lace dress and her hat. Apparently after she recovered and applied and was accepted to the woman’s department graduate school at the University of Washington she had a relapse the day the Gulf War began. So, she’s suing George Bush for her medical bills and the tuition and relocation fees and registration fees and...looks like Millie’s gonna have to write another book after Ruse takes him to the cleaners. God I miss her. And you, Si. And you.

 

Keep on rockin’ girl

-Estrelica