Most peoples don’t know how lonely the farm is.  I mean my sister Nancy carries on with her brown doll Maggie, and mom and dad got each other to lean on like pitchforks.   My pet pigeons used to coo to their mates till Bega came along, and set them free to crack their wings over the silo.   The city kids got their clicks, the Catholics got their Virgin Mary to sin with, but I’ve got no one to really talk to.

But don’t get me wrong.  If you love your freedom, I live in a pretty nifty place.  Inside our quarter section, theres fields galore, and tons of corn silk to smoke.  Drill you out a cob and a willow branch, you can puff till your tongue gets raw.  But to be truthful, nothen gives me a buzz like a Camel does.

And theres secret places you can escape to.  When I aint runnen one of my 4 business, they is seasonal, I slip off to Cheever slough.  Wade or swim across to The Island, the gasses going blurp blurp as your necked feets sinks down into the oozes, you end up in a wild er ness only us crazy Indians care to under stand.

Should the White Coats come with their nets, to drag you away to Cherokee, the geeses will honk and say

Put out your fire quick.

Keep your brains little boy

Cause we like talken to you.

Don’t let them trick you,

Like what was don’t to

Your blue Aunt Myrtle.

Stay here safe at Cheever Slough.

So believe you me, I got it all planned out.  Run through the stinging nettles, and then knife me a hollow cat tail, and ease on into those troubled waters.  Hook my feets into the roots, breathe though that tube, till the doctors with their scap pulls vanish like dragon flies on the surface.

I know all the wild edibles to eat.  Always carry with me my bow and hunting arrows. Often bring my microscope along to My Island, carrying it a top my head in my rucksack, sos nothen will get wet.  Have you ever seed the creatures that make whoopee inside a drop of swamp water?  Also got my telescope earned from my weed pullen money, which brings in the 7 sisters just fine, but I warn you, try to spy on 400 pound Ruby Shopher, she’ll come at you upside down.

Have even camped on My Island in the dead of winter, practicing my survivor skills, the frost on the canvas of my Sears tent real speck tack que lar, when the mornen sun shines thru its crystals.  I got all the dial a grams in my head, shelters, snares, stuff from old Horace Kipharts 2 books on camping and woodcraft.

Have cooked in the coals arrowhead tubers.  Tastes like spring potatoes if your asken for my onions and garlic.  And spruce needle tea tastes grand.  Beats the hell out of Liptons, which aint got no vit a mens to speak of.

And learned from the Lakota how to hide my tracks.

There’s only one fly in mom’s Vasoline jar.  Honestly, I could make it on My Island just fine, but I would have no other homo slippiens to really talk to.  Ain’t we mammals?  Don’t we need someones body heat to keep us warm on endless winter nights?

So I pray long and hard for someone to share my life with, and to bless me a first kiss.

Didn’t work out at all with my cousin Jan.  Mom took this photo, which she got developed in the bath waters inside Rexall Drug.  Mr. Robinson sells me my chemicals hes got hid away in his back room.  Did you know mix up 75 saltpeter, 15 sulfur, and 10 per cent charcoal, it makes black gunpowder?  And wow the blaze!  Its burns plastic faces on the garage floor you can’t pry off with dads hammer and chisel.

Don’t try this on your basement bed, cause you will burn a hole in your moms mattress, which will smoke on all the way to China, where it was invented.  There is olden and yellow peoples there, with long beads rolled up like scrolls.  Someday I’ll travel way far East, and read whats going on inside their wisdom hairs.

Am I seeing this right?  Here I stand in my Sundays best, leaning forward, flowers in my hand, fire in my eyes, the whole shebang, but my un kissabull cousins not interested.  In fact aint Jan laughen at me?  But I guess she has sense enough to know I’m not The One.

Didn’t work out at all with Mary Ann Goodyear neither.  Out on the dock at night, the milky weigh spread out like strawberry jam across the sky, the waves from Big Spirit Lake kind of sucken the mossy heads of the stones on the shore, she wears this perfume which must have come from a blue bottle flown all the way from Paris, France, which is a sent I’ll never forget.  But even out there under the blazing heavens, the lips of fish making circles in the water, we don’t talk much, just look at each other and giggle.  I want to kiss her but I don’t know how to.  Sometimes she leans just so, as if she wants to, but I’ve been raised not to be to forward.  LAY LOW IN THE IOWA WEEDS, DON’T MAKE NO SPECTACLE OF YOURSELF.  I figure that’s our also family motto.

So far that’s been the story of my life.  I was beginning to wonder if there’s a girl out there who will ever wake up this toad with a first kiss.  And what with my bald head, I got a lot going against me.  Kids snatch off my stocking caps, and when they see my moonscapes, they call me Naas the nigger nut.

Could be its corn genital.  Could be I’m just like my Aunt Myrtle, who drove her nifty 2-seater coop all the way to golden California, looking for her lost Jim.  She picked up an abalone shell along the shores of a mighty salt ocean, which she gave to me when she returned, tail between her legs, to live in that dark and terrible Waters man shun, where she was hated by her black widow spider mother.

When she gave me that shell with lots of holes in the bottom, pricks your fingers if you ain’t careful, colored with rainbows, whispering lots of voices in your ear, she said Love is the most important thing there is. That was the night before she was drug by her heels down that staircase, drove off to Cherokee, to have the Mind Operation.

Ain’t seen Myrtle #1 since.  #2 lives in Minneapolis, where mom says it takes her an hour to make a glass of cherry Kool Aid.

Can’t never think of that Mississippi river that slices like a scalp pull the twin cities into 2 pieces.

Mom says I’m a lot like my favorite aunty.  The thing is, my 4^th of July sparkler was unlike any other woman I ever met.  She was blarney and all things lacy fancy.  Could be she took after her father Thomas Waters, who mom says closed down the taverns, and was rough as timber and swore a lot.  But ended up, before the black widow para liced him with her venoms, ownen half the town of Estherville.

I mean, my aunt Myrtle Waters wore silk stocking on every day except Sundays.  When she smoked one of her Chesterfield cigarettes, she took just a few puffs, the ends marked with the richest lipstick manigable.  I used to collect her butts and save them in my King Edward cigar box.

When the men gathered at twilight on the pouch at Big Spirit Lake, she sat with them and drank Bud Wiser straight from the long neck bottle.  How I loved to sit near her, hear the waves tumbling softly, smell her beery breath, which was mixed with a perfume I will always remember.

When she told us jokes and true stories we’d never heard before, while the women was fryen fish in the kitchen, she had us laughing so hard we fell on the lee know lee um floor.  Its like her voice had bouquets of roses inside it.

She talked about places I’ve been to but only in my magination.  She loved cities and #1 took me bus riding all over Minneapolis.  We always skipped to the back of the bus and took a seat there.  She said just like a roller coaster ride.  And she was friendly toward strangers, and had me try out some of my jokes with the darkies sat back there beside us.

Once she took me down the Mississippi in a paddle boat, which split the brain between Minneapolis and Saint Paul in two.  I can’t think of her story and not remember that twisting river.  I can’t believe how cruel some trips can be.

And I better watch out, cause I could get my wild Irish rose snipped out too, if I aint careful.  Un Great Gradma Waters has already snatched away my real name, and gave me Ronnie instead, which must mean chicken shit, or something worser in Hebrew.

Naas aint real neither.  Our real name got lost somewhere in the snows of Russia, when my ant cestors came over here on a ship to America.  All I got left is my middle name Lee, comes from my Grandpa Lee Jones, who beneath the catalpa tree, taught yours truly how to tie his shoe laces in 4 leaf clovers.

So pleeeeeze, you gotta keep my true story of Princess Vicksburg and her proud brother Bega hush hush.  I already got troubles enough, me with my bald head behind the 8 ball head, flunken the 4^th grade, cause of my horrible englishes, my handwriting looken like the tracks of chickens spread all over the ground, after a rain storm.  And I can’t get the hang of long divisions, me always trying to devide the noomerater by the denominator.

Dad says Im ass backwards.  That’s cause of me trying to back the tractor and wagon up to the grain elevator.  Took him a day of cussen when he had to mend the fence, when I ended up in the barnyard, his M Farmall still spinnen its tires.

But suddenly, one bright morning, walking into the living room after doing chores, I had someone I could really talk to.  And someone I will always adore.  Reining high on the bookshelf, the color of lava from a volcano as it cools, my black princess and her brother smoldered and glowed there in the sunlight.

They must be important, I says to my self, since they held the only two book in our farm house together–the family Bible and a green copy of Mr. Robinsun Crewso.  How Robinsun and that darky Friday got stranded 7 dusty miles from that Valley of the Shadow some calls Estherville Iowa I just don’t know.

For no girl at school looked like my dear dark lovely.  I loved the smoothness of her skin which was like touching the burned glass of the meteorite we got a piece of in our town library.  Her nose was bold and strong, the way some gourds are in moms garden.  When I stole up to her, felt her magic on my cheek, I swear I could smell the far off flowers of Africa.

The nifty thing is, her face was never the same.  Sometimes I’d peek around the corner after midnight, when everyone else was asleep, and she was the Queen of the Dark Continent, all her subjects bowing to her like parrots from the trees.  At other times she was a girl my age who looks like she like she’s yearning to be kissed as much as me.  Sometimes she looked as old and scary as the gypsy fortune tellers at Arnolds Park who sit in their booths along the shores of Lake Okoboji, their crystal balls glowing behind the curtain.

Sometimes she was the dark wood Lady I saw inside Uncle Leos Church, when I was invited up North to Dancing Waters Resort to splash red and white Daredevils into a lake so clear you can’t tell the sky from the water.

No matter what face she choose, she knew my puss, seemed glad I’d come to pay my respects, and we shared a smile thats hard to catch on even the sharpest treble hook.

My Princess Vicksburg had short hair, and when I teased my fingers through her tight coils, she buzzed me with a charge that tingled my belly, run up my spine, lectrified my heart and sent my thoughts soaring toward the stars.

And I was sure I was looking at the dark face of God, or at least 2 of Holy Spirit’s most precious gifts.

So I asked Mom, a huge smile on my rue barb pie hole, where did She come from?  I figured someone as beautiful and unusual as this goddess of glass must have cost at least 4 crates of egg money.

But Mom dodged my question and told me she had spread out my good clothes on the bed, and that company was coming.  I never could figure out what the church ladies said about my black lovely.

They pointed at my soul mate and laughed, as if they didn’t know she was a princess or a queen or a goddess or the dark mother of Jesus, or something.  Cute, they said.  Does she do floors and windows? One up and asked, I wonder if she’s the darkie who ate our last missionary?

What I didn’t get is why mom put my love up so high on the bookshelf, holding together our family Bible and the green jungles of Robinson Crewso, just to make fun of her.

Camped out near the dish of nigger toes, which is real delicious black skin nuts, I said nothen.  I aint fond of taking a hour to make no cherry Kool aid.  But I wish Id a had the test tee culls to say my Princess Vicksburg had become my black magic lady.  For when I listened to her, great things happened.

The sun was more golden, and the stars lept out at me from the night sky, whopping me in the face with their plates of lemon marang pie.  She still be my Pole Star, round which my heavens move.  And when she winks at me in the morning as Venus, the peoples I saw during the day was hooked together in a love web I can’t explain.  Even the bullies at school fit perfect into her scheme, cause she always told me to invite the help of her gee knee us brother, Bega.

So we hatched this plan for me to pass the 4^th grade.  Teacher, who, if I ever work up enough balls to ask her a question, looks at me cross eyed, like a heffer slammed tween the eyes with a sledge hammer, she invites us kids to do show and tell.  So Bega urges me on, saying I got the perfect true story, and he will help me spin my yarn about The Runt Pig At Midnight.  He says fear not, for I will be with you, even into the mists of forever.

Why do you think my classmates hate me so much?  I ain’t a Catholic or nothen.  The fish eaters go to their own school.  I don’t think I is a Jew.  The nearest ones 200 miles away as the crow flies in Des Moines.  And yet they torment me, tear off the stocking hat I got covering my bald head, and now say they can see the crack in my head.

Is it cause I’m quiet like my dad, keep to my selves, which invites their maginations to fill in the monsters they got inside them?

Don’t know.  Can’t say.  Ain’t no expert at what makes peoples tick.

So my classmates was reluctant at first to put away their Warewolf and Frankenstein masks, and clank their whips and chains into their little pop up desks.  Yes, I could read teachers face which said, Oh why oh why have I allowed this moron to tell his story, cause she sees me sitting permanent in the corner on a stool with my dunces hat pointed up at some black cloud, about to let loose terrible rain and thunder.

I took my stand in front of the class, thinking maybe I should take a run for the bathroom while I still had the chance, but then something took over inside of me, and my voice rose like the crows from the oldest trees in our grove.  As I cawed out my story, I could tell my tortures was becoming hipnotized by my tale, just sat there with their mouths open, their tongues collecting bumblebees.  Just for a minute I was a spider spinning my web of words, cacooning them in pleasure.   For a spell I was King of The Class giving them gifts that was golden and plentiful.

Never had I witnessed that the pen sure enough is more powerful than the sword.  I vow, even if I live to be an old man past 20, I will never forget the mess merized faces of my torturers.

Mom says Im also a darned good letter writer.  And that’s as close to cussen as she ever gets.  When I used to scribble Mary Ann Goodyear my e piss souls to how much I adored her dark sun tan, and freckles, and wishbone legs, mom would look them over, before I mailed them off with some of my Old Spice sprinkled on the envelope.  I kept Mary Anns, which was perfumed with them blue bottles from Paris, up between the 2 mason jars of mold I was growen.

Im hopen to make me some penn a cillin, which will help sick peoples, when they get in a pinch.  Like when they get caught in snow drifts so high it swallows the hog house, and cant get to no doctor.

Before I zero in on the Battle of Vicksburg, I otta say something about my real loves black brother.

Ever been spooked when walking outside at night, the yard light at your back, and you see your shadow moving though the grass, real big and magnified?

He said he was Bega from the get go, but kept behind me, so I never could see his face.  Till he appeared on the bookcase.

At first I was glad to have someone else I could really talk to. Wasn’t he the older brother I always prayed for, who knew all the answers? Wasn’t he the bossy one who, standing behind my back, says he knows everything there is about raising pigeons?

But that fall, after helpen me with my story, he betrayed me and didn’t speak to me no more.  I like friends who are loyal.  Not ones always playen hide and seek with their affections.  So I’ve come to this concussion.

Bega is all that a Naas is not.  While We Naases is as humble as shoe leather with holes in our worn souls, Bega is a bragger, a liar, and a thief.  He’s the one who showed me how to shop lift my stolen silver Cross pen.

Where we Naases think of ourselves as the worms who hide out under rocks in our bargain socks, my dark brother once preened there on top shelf of the bookcase, thinking he’s so beautiful he ought to be modeling furs in Paris France.

While we Naases believe we are poor, always vick tums of the Great Depression that stole away our first farm, Bega thinks he’s rich beyond measure, flipping buffalo head nickels up in the air, for others to catch.

Where We Naases still wear the faces of Grim German Lutherans who are nailed to our pews, our hands bound by ropes, I gotta believe Bega must be one of them Holy Rollers mom warned me about, in their circus tent up on Half Mile Hill, dancing their joy under the harvest moon.

I gotta admit, I secretly hoped mother Marj would snatch my show off brother away, and toss his smirking head into Cheever slough.  How could she find tolerable such a sulfur smelling Lucifer in her house?

Mom had bought me a Confederate hat to cover my bald head.  The cause of that was Ruby Able, a poor boy, near homeless, who came over from the Old Country, his englishes not near as good as mine.  So we got to wrestling, to show we was good friends.  It’s then he gave me his ringed worm.

Mom tweezed my head to death, but The Terrible Worm just burrowed some where else.  The salve she put on my pock marks did nothen but stink and crust, that worm moving elsewhere on my moonscape noggin.

So old Doc Vauble, reminds me of a owl, with a 12 foot wing span, he could do nothen but scratch his big head, and say in all his years, he aint seen nothen like it.

So mom and dad drove me to Fort Dodge, where a machine with a big pointed gun made all my hair fall out.  I tried to cover my shame with stocking caps.  Kids kept pulling them off.  They already said my boots smelled like pig shit cause I’m a sod buster.  But all the sticks and stones and fights had already turned me into One Tough Son Of A Bitch.

At my new school at Manneece, I had fought the Hansen twins at the same time, and it came out a draw.  Then I took on the Giant John Hubbard, who tossed me up into a chain link fence.  When I came down, wrong, I got an S curve in my back, which not even the small but wise hands of the dwarf Doc Sevatson could fix.

As he had me on his couch, shooting my soul off to the stars, as he cracked my neck, I asked him lots of questions about Indians, and Doc says hes a homo path.

I don’t hold that again him.  Some folks was borned that way, and he always kept his hands to hisself, except when treaten my S curve, which must stand for STRONG, which is the one word Id use to picture my mom.

You carry my brother Twitchen Terry around for all those years, and you’ll feel what I means.

That’s why I got picked to be The Lone Southern Rebel.  That suited me just fine.  I strapped on my hat, tighten the string so no Yankee could rip it off, climbed the hill, and defended my Princess Vicksburg from the union hoards.  I did so to my bloody death.

Do you know that President Lincoln said Vicksburg was the pearl he needed to win the Civil War?  That’s the hill town he wanted to put inside his vest pocket.  If the blue coats break its blockade, you can float goods and soldiers all the way from Davenport Iowa to New Orleans.

And I ask you, are there more beautiful words in the whole wide world than my Princess Vicksburg?

And since she was a Queen who ruled all of Africa, sailed over here on a golden ship, then settled in Vicksburg, built herself a mansion on a hill, got even richer growing cotton, she ruled everyone, heathen Christian and Indian alike, with love, style and grace.

Everyone from the cannon maker to the girl who dumps chamber pots into the street loved her.  She even warmed up the hearts of the Grim German Lutherans.  They came from miles around just to attend her dances, which they called dry fucken.

Then the damn Yankees invaded, came down the mighty river in gunboats, flashing cannon balls at her mansion, came by land, led by General Grant and his swarm of fire ants, who surrounded her beautiful city and set it on fire.

But out of her window she is looking for one good man to protect her.  If he defends her hill, his sword thumping the flank of his black horse, his Confederate officers hat flashing in the sunshine, then tips it to her, showing off his completely bald head like it was a badge of honor, you will know he is Captain Ronnie Reb, to her rescue.

So I ran to the mound thats on our playground. A lone Confederate officer, I stand atop her hill, in the shadows of her mansion, the Mississippi River flowing at my back, and protected her from the hoards of varmets who want nothing better than to steal away her happiness.

It’s like everything in my whole life had prepared me for this one great battle.  The Yankees begin with a general cannonade of pebbles.  I tuck my wide Confederate hat down to form a shield, and the stones bounce off its bill.  I shout, That all you got for this 8 ball uncracked nut?

This pisses them off.  They swarm like wasps, their hive teased with a twig.  They pick up sticks and make a lance attack on this lone Rebel on the hill.

I see it comen, flatten to the ground at the last second, and they ram the other blue coats trying a flank attack.  You city kids smell like pig shit, I shout as I get up, holding my nose between my fingers.

By this time, their first rage a bit petered out, they get some organization about them.  They circle the hill, then all charge at once, squealing like boars getting their balls get off.  They kick and they punch.  They gouge and they growl.  They curse and they pound my bald nut to the ground.  I bleed.  They leave.

I lay on the top of the hill, raise the staff of my middle finger, and howl, That all you got for this nigger lover?

He really is fricken nuts, I see in their fat city faces for the rest of the day.  But I have earned their respect by both the pen and the sword.  They leave this Crazy Indian alone.  They allow me the contentment of playing with my selves, which I figured is the best company I will ever get.

I do not gloat on the school bus home, for Uncle Bill, a Marine who won 2 purple hearts in WW2, would not approve of such unNaas like behavior.   Though I was defeated, I still claim a victory.  Its all in the way you wanna see things.

So I hatched another plan.  Don’t heroes get to claim their Princess once they have done battle with their dragons?  Didn’t Uncle Bill come home after wiping out Hitler and Hero Hito and take to the altar his smiling Shirley?

But Im not sure who my Bachelor Godfather Uncle Walter came home to.  Maybe his cows and the heap of money they say he’s got buried somewhere on his farm.

After running down the lane, opening the door to our farm house, I thank God Mom’s not home to see the mess Im in, blood smudged all over my new gray Confederate hat.  I place it at where my beautys feet would be, if she had a body, and were flesh and blood like me.

She does not hesitate.  She opens her eyes.  They are the prettiest and softest brown I’ve ever seen.  If mom is right about eyes being the windows to the soul, my lovelies go back for centuries, all the way to darkest Africa.

You’re so brave, she says.  I like that in my heroes.

I’m a Johnny Reb through and through, I say.  Ain’t nothen they dish out can hurt me.  They only add gunpowder to my fire.

What’s the fighting all about? she asks.  She seems truly curious.

About being my own man, I say.  About nobody-not even mom and dad, stopping me.  About making my trip to the far country.  About seeing what’s there.   Me being a crow, I got to find out the truth.  About flying my way back home.  About my real father running out to meet me in the lane.  About making you, my sick brother Terry, my sister, and my Aunt Myrtle proud of my daring.  About wearing the robe and the ring, and throwing a big party to celebrate things.

She asks, Once we’re all in his mansion together, what then?  Her darkness is shinning, her eyes twin lanterns.  She make me wonder if she’s not older than her eight years.

I’ll take the ring off, I say, and slip it on your finger.  We’ll form President Lincoln’s perfect union.  To settle things, I will kiss you and then we’ll get married.  We will love happy ever after.

She laughs, her voice like ball bearings over marble, and says, You’ll need all the rebel you can muster for that to happen.

Just you wait and see, I say.

Talks cheap, she says.  I only honor men who do what they say.

I get up to my feet and look her straight in the eye and say, But I guess I ain’t proposed yet.  I run my fingers though her coils, the charge running down my spine like lectricity though water, and then say, Will you be mine even beyond death do us part?

I’m truly honored, she says with the brightest smile maginable, the sent of magnolias in her voice.  But can you take a little joke?

I nod my bloody and bruised head, before she says,  You have this marriage business slightly ass backwards.  First you must make your journey to the Far Country, do what’s Necessary.  Then, much later, a door will open, and you will have chance to meet me in the flesh.

How I want to press my lips against her leopard skin.  I say instead, But I just don’t get why we can’t marry now and seal the bargain with a first kiss.

She says, That would be depriving your life of its magical, mystical journey.

So I says, What you’re saying is, come back to you when I’m older.

I can see, she says with a slow southern wink, that your mama didn’t raise no dummy.

You’re right, I say.  But if we cant marry now, at least we can share a little kiss.

Whoa there Ronald, she says.  Before you try to steal a kiss from your queen, I have one last thing to tell you, before I leave.

Boy, did that ever stop me in my tracks.  Nobody had used my real name but mom, who gave it to me after her 48 hours of sweat labor.  I still got the 2 scars over my eyes, when big Dr. Vauble yanked me out of moms narrow tunnel with a big pair of pliers.

I don’t blame you for not believing me, so here is a photo as proof.

Here I am at 4 months, which is my lucky number, but I guess not Moms.  Please look at her awkward backward hand like shes writing in code.  The deal is, she came into this world left handed, the Devils Hand, so when she got to school the Christians tied Old Black Satin behind her back with a rope, and forced her to write with her right, which is the Hand of God.  What happened is, she makes scribbles as bad as mine.

At least she’s got some excuse.

And yes my mom used to call me Ronald, which she says means, He Who Would Be King.  But unGreat Grandmother Waters, Queen of the black widow spiders, she laughed at that, and said my true name is too good for the son of a common dirt farmer.  So mom, being half a Waters, she agreed to call me Ronnie, which must mean pig droppings, or something smellier.

I picked this picture because it speaks the truth and tells a story.  Once I was happy.  Now I’ve fallen into a sea of troubles.  Theres a part of my face that’s light, a part that’s black as the spiders who bit me when mom tossed me into the attic closet, cause I was swaying up in the squeaking elm tree during a lightning storm.

Part of me is tears, part is the laughter of the crows.  A section of me is Russian Naas, another part of my lake is Irish Waters.  Sometimes I use my left hand, sometimes my right.  Mostly they don’t agree and quarrel.  But I will always have the hand of Ronald, which points upward.  Someday I will know again the joy and the peace that passes all understanding.

Leave? I say to my departing queen.

Leave, she says, like its already come to pass.  I see the sadness in her eyes, as if my valentine arrow has pieced her heart.

Then she says, I must return to Our Fathers House, where there are many mansions.  Always know I will keep a candle lit in an upper story window.  It glows there especially for you.

How wonderful her long nails felt upon my skull, her fingers toying with my future hair.  Then she says, When your time has come, you must be brave and daring in order to open the door, climb the staircase, and discover me once again.

She pauses and nods to her left and says, To do that, you will need the aid of my brother.  But please remember, he will only come to you, when invited.

I look at him smoldering in the darkness, a sleeping volcano if there ever was one.

You talk riddles, I say.

She tilts her head like Mary Ann Goodyear did on the dock, her eyes suddenly green as Big Spirit Lake in the spring, and says with a tease, Would you like me any way?

Its then I placed my hand at the back of her neck and drew her towards me.  Never did cold lips feel this hot and inviting, though she held them so tight I could not enter her promise with my tongue.  Never did my fingers feel more joy exploring the islands of her African face and her lectric hair.  Never have I received so much pleasure whispering love words in tender dark ears.  Never have my night dreams flowed with so many rainbow waterfalls.  During the day, I saw so much plenty, it’s like I’d entered that funnel-like thing mom puts in the center of the table at Thanksgiving.

After that first kiss, my head was filled with hopes.  My spirit flew like pigeons around the silo, cracking their wings in the sunlight.  My heart was aligned with the iron rooster on the barn, his arrow pointing me in the right direction.  I had the wisdom of the crows who circle the nest tree on a neighbor’s grove.  Maybe I will be able to pass the 4^th grade, master long division, though I am short on talents in that area.  Could be my englishes will improve, so the teacher will no longer see me as the class dunce, his hat pointed up to the clouds.

And just maybe this black goddess is wrong with her fortune telling.  Could be, cause she loves me so much, I am an exception to what this black meteorite fallen from heaven just said, her skin smooth as glass to my caress.

Maybe I will grow back my long blonde hair, and I won’t get bullied no more.  Maybe for the rest of my life I will be normal.  Could be I can give back the abalone shell to my Aunt Myrtle, the one she found searching for her lost Jim on the golden shores of California.  Then no White Coats will come from Cherokee, and slice my brain into parts.

Maybe for the rest of my life I will have my dark princess to really talk to, and love no matter what the season.

Course, things didn’t work out that way at tall.  If Ron lets me, I’m itchen to tell you my feelings and the vows I made when my queen and her uppity brother got snatched away.  Could be youll be able to figure out why.

Cant say Im good at detecting what makes peoples tick.  Some folks is real weird clocks, whose jerky hands I hope to tell you about.

Oh yeah, you gotta know what kind of hair ventually grew back on my behind the 8 ball head.  And Jeeze, you gotta see what statues mom put up on the bookcase, after she snatched my queen of spades away from yours truly.