THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

The men at Club Q were slaughtered like fresh meat because they were doing the very same thing that toddlers do. They were playing dress up.   In their own private playground.   They were all young people with futures as colorful as their beloved flag. The word they used to define themselves was gay which used to mean lighthearted and carefree. Now it means targets for brutal murder. Do not forget for a second that all of them were someone's babies whose through-the-years highlight photos are arranged on walls, lined up strategically on top of pianos, and stuck to refrigerator doors with colorful magnets which, at the speed of madness, have all become standing memorials to men who preferred mascara to massacres. Last night in a Virginia Walmart Supercenter a shooter assassinated six people in a break room and wounded four others. Gone this time are mommies and daddies, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters whose empty chairs at the Thanksgivi...

She floats  on a mattress protected by the parent arms of side rails to the sedated fugue  of murmurs and machines along the fluorescent horizon of a   hospital room which was once upon a time a fairy pink crib with billowing sails that skimmed along the surface of a wind-blown, sunlit nursery bound for all the birthright adventures to come which are now as lost as comet trails The distant traffic is conducted by  the highway sway of palm trees Everyone is going somewhere. But not her. Not her. She is old now But young when her eyes are closed. which sends her back to the time when she would lie like a ball of house cat beneath the curved rear window of the Hudson Hornet watching the tapestry of infinity swirl by while daddy Captain of the wheel puffed on a Bering Plaza like he was blowing kisses, the ponton body of the car rocked her baby brother like a cradle and mommy   misted with Arpege   sang Catch A Falling Star and Put It in Your Pocket for that nig...