THE HOLLYWOOD RAGE PAGE

My heart is   swaddled in the nursery of my chest swinging on a breakable bough frightened of the cradle and all fall until it’s comforted by the cavalry of memories like the ghost image snapshots of my long losts who adore me to this day through the code of their scrapbook eyes. My heart is a teenager still drunk on the  Absinthe of perfume or the memory of  long girl hair swaying like a hammock on the summer porch  of her naked lower back My heart is a bridegroom walking the last mile condemned by commitment  who is suddenly pardoned by the entrance of  my barefoot Titania in Queen Anne’s lace, attended by her bridesmaids, Cobweb and Moth, who have come to make tender folly of my fears and whisper their fairy songs of love which sounds like the lullaby tide of a never-ending beach. My heart is a father whose knees still quiver whenever it hears the word,  “Daddy.” And now it’s a grandpa moved to its core  by the stampede of feet and the cad...

They all return, The treasured ones. Sometimes it’s my sister the way my voice becomes her’s my vocabulary possessed  by a single ghost word It’s her. Not me. It’s her. Sometimes it’s my dad when I laugh or during the after hours when silence becomes a billowing parachute. It’s his enchantment that tucks me in. It’s him. Sometimes it’s my mom in the mirror It’s her nose. Greek. Her eyes  a duet of iris sorrow that no one ever heard but me. It’s her. Sometimes it’s my dog When I walk myself along the shore Imagined paw prints unfolding She hears my whistle. She looks back. It’s her. Sometimes it’s my fallen friend Who makes cameos in my dreams that feel as real as the grief-stricken moon or the just stilled heartbeat which only moments ago pulsed like my hand me down watch that I depended on and thought would last forever.