From When I Was Wild. OC & Coming Home.

It was spring time I was fine you looked finer with your brown hair long then and the body you still took care of we were eighteen I had bleach in my hair and a checked blue shirt tied at the belly I wanted to say was gingham, but was not, we were suburb not country kids and you took me on a picnic under the power lines so I tried to play the part.  It was hot for the spring and the pot made it so we couldn't tell was that just the heat or was that melting in our minds.  You loved Jesus but wouldn't admit it, and late at night we'd get in fights because it was a misogyny thing afterall for you who secretly didn't trust his mom, who thought the world was going on fire because the women were aloud to speak again the weird thing is you an Only Man back then...only one never turned on me but loved me better when I got to use my tongue.  Voice people, this is about voice not sex.  But we did that too didn't we, the hot kind the teenage kind wicked and innocent out back in the car at parties or the church parking lot or the one time under the tree in the graveyard on acid our bodys seemed so big, then small, our arms wavery my breath its own language echoing off the red coming off the trees.

I wore dark purple lipstick then, or red, and had the hottest little body remember I used to show off my tatoos.

There were all those others at the beach, it was never easy for me to talk about that.  Part of it was how I hurt you when you and my one friend went off walking down next to the ocean.  That was the night, or more next morning on the boards yellow mist of sun trying to make up its mind am I heat making dry this water or light making clear this new day from the dark that I knew that I was different for good that I had made my choice, without meaning to.  Seeing what I was capable of.  As if you'd ever cheat on me.  You know that night--two of the four guys I was smoking with are dead now?  We were on acid then, too.  One of them I never even write about.  He was a mean little fuck, we used to get drunk and I'd run my mouth and the one night over in the Meadows at that one place when they were living with RayRay we had a flinching contest where I let him hit me hard as he could, as long as I got to hit him back, and again and again we hit one another and I stood and took it all 108 pounds of me thinking I was a man.  And that was the choice, there were always two in me la santa y la diabla, and that is the night I ran off with the devil holding my hand.

God damn did we have fun.  I heard from someone on the periphery back then this week--this happens enough, private messages thanking me for this blog--that I would say it happens regularly and so thank you all publicly for reading it makes me feel so, so good and this is a shout to all you private ones reading along, and a specific story just for him.  I remember you and some others were living uptown on 143rd doing the more mellow surf thing I only made it up there for example when Jesse or Kareem came to town because hidden in someone's wet suit was all the drugs!  And anyhow one day I was off or likely just on break from hot assing on the mic to Big and Meth and Tom Petty and The Dead up at the peir (Jerry still alive in the beginning of that summer, dead by the end and vigils on the boardwalk and the 9th street squatters house still there, near where the old, old old Chat Street used to be) and you walked in I think with Mike?  and we were in the middle of an all out indoor water gun fight, blue plastic dollar store beach sand buckets filled to the top with oozy automatics and us shooting water or late at night emptied-forties malt-liquor straight in to our mouths...The boys all shirtless only wore only baggies that summer that's how you knew the local rats downtown, so I was always like fuck it I'll just wear my bikini all the time!  You who was always on your own buzz keepin it so chill had the most shocked look on your face when you walked in the house--front door always wide open bedroom me and Fannon's then me and Kev's once Brian moved out always closed
--and then it broke, the shock and you smiled like I'd never seen before a light of joy and radicallness breaking out straight from your mouth.  You grabbed a seat way on the side of the room one of the bros tossed you a beer and then of course did we proceed.  That might of been, but likely was not, the same watergun fight that wound up across the street running the outdoor halls of the Americana sneaking around corners and hiding behind doors when I camped out upstairs at the dirty frat guys (I used to stand in the alley out back and cus those fuckers out all the time even back then clear to me down the center how we were different and stood on different lines) on their front porch and waited until Jeremiah gave up and then dumped an entire bucket of water on his head when we was walking back surrendered to the apartment.  Remember that shit?  We kept a baby wading pool out on our front porch to chill in and would add ice in the afternoon to keep all the beers more cold.

Hahahaha.  I live here again and barely ever think of that stuff, those times anymore.  Fannon gone, Kev.  Blugh Kev.  Phil... 

Una Santa, y Una Diabla.  The poetic imagination and living our own myths.  Last week I was chilling one night over with these friends of mine, hanging out with this girl from the county but who I never knew back then only met down here at the beach, an old friend's friend.  I got to telling stories and of course because I am writing so much again and also because I am a McMullen and all those all those all those late night convos as a girl, or around the table basement at Grammy and Pop's or any single one of the aunts and uncles the Jameson and laughter and warm remembering every time, because of all that and because of my myth, my heart my spirit where the saint and the devil collide I am a wild women, full of the spirit and the ancient forbidden gnosis which is just know-how which, common sense people is just know thy self,  this wisdom business that penetrates so deep within.  And so for all of that of course I am storyteller, La Cantadora she who knows.  And so chillin last Wednesday late night, and Saturday too I got to telling some stories of my own, I have a lot, and a lot of them some of the most important ones are from the beach they all, so much happened right here.

So without meaning to I am gathering bones again and doing it near the ocean in the northeast wind under the winter sky.  It is so important, this archeology, these bits and pieces scattered everywhere it is the real work it is the poet's work it is the work always always always of recircling the brave warm or coolly shadowed places we continually label or even disregard that when we are still live deeply, live on, within.  In the end these are known and called by that most powered word of words, home in the end I choose not to go with the howl scowl on my face but the wicked happy satiated smile of she who knows that peaceful all-knowingg grin, so right now today and tomorrow's today and each and every step I take I say Amen.  Amen Amen.  This is all real and really happenening, this is life it does and it did.