4:52

October would be the hollowest of months if it weren’t for this day of the dead to blow the whole thing up just in time for All Saints Day. If I could just raise a horse to race in the Kentucky Derby I’d make pink peace petals rain from my window in a hurricane. Sweet surrender it would be, a valentine from an iceberg dynasty. Lavender dream, some would say. I’ll just do cartwheels in the hay and beg, borrow and deal to get to Reggae Sunsplash in Jamaica next year finally. And the men with broken teeth there will drool "White Masterpiece!" as they see my simplicity and polar eyes watch them lick their chops at me, a polar carefree wonder. But, some would say a shy girl, nibbling gingersnaps at high noon no trumpeter would ever serenade with his silk hat prominent like Las Vegas: A duet where Goldilocks sheds her skins to become a lady dressed in peace, the summer fashion, drinking white lightning as the purple piñatas explode orange blossom special sweets on her King Crimson collection.

Lemon-spice afternoons in the Mojave is where I could show off my legs more fully with sexy Rexy from sunset to sunrise with an heirloom pack of Bel-Airs and strewn headlines on the unmade bed of a roller-coaster collision where a coralsprite ring was found clutched in the teenagers hand as the "love" tattoo on her tush turned blue. Yes, blue girls do fall for Tropicana toreadors, and sexy Rexy can be nothing but a state of mind that can lure away any thoughts of living your life like an Olympiad, like JFK, from garden parties to Broadway, but my glory days will always be before me, like the red-gold band called dusk I buckle around my waist as I think of so many scarlet knights that some had once called fairies. But, they were the red masterpieces I sang softly to, watching unnoticed from across the street as they disappeared into Razzmatazz to get blinded by sequins bright as sunflares that shone off Brandy Alexandra.

Like an evening star ignored for the light it’s always shined, Miss All-American Beauty may have already had her day in the South Seas China Doll restaurant with a senator unbuckling his belt. In the white dawn he’s no matador, just a lollipop twist, a confection for some miscellaneous funny girl who fell for the red rascal at a polo club sweating drops of Spartan rage as he eyes the black garnet tucked in my candystriped tights from Tiffany’s, but with Patsy Cline on my Walkman I will be saved.

Who was my first kiss? Or at least the first that counted? Must have been the boy in Beverly Hills I met when he was working as an engineer, and trying to get his portfolio together, away from the boys, singing "Oh, when it’s partytime in Shreveport, there’ll be peace most everywhere. We’ll be hanging from the lampposts, praying in our underwear." Forty-niner fans obviously would never understand this. Fine. Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?

Peace is the blaze of a snowfire, as the color of the magic of a love, sunbright in the nighttime, strips away any pretension of tough, cool hipness that this dainty Bess has, and leaves me longing for a marina where I can walk and watch the loners yearn for...a voyeur of the heart? A panting summer dream? Impatience for a fresh, clean pair of panties every day? Or the one with the Bacardi bat tattooed just below her belt? I wonder who would ever notice a lady with the face of an angel if she moved through the rooms at Graceland swirling voodoo from her waist on down, spun by the Spanish sun scorched from on high as the medallion reflects back up at Saturn so pristine. The blue Nile knows this feeling of wearing hats just to break the rules. Hats off to Roy Harper, too.

Confidence I know noting about, but Park Place, well, that’s a different head of hair entirely. Still, Fred Q. Edmunds next door wouldn’t be able to summon love if his briefcase depended on it. Old Honest Abe himself would consider it a requirement for all of these candidates to go into the cities and ask why, not how often, they do drugs. And funny girl that I am, I’d probably go up and say "Uh...Mr. Lincoln...Did golden showers mean to you then what it means to me now?" Even Viva wouldn’t have been caught dead saying that. Then again, Viva’s concept of sheer elegance would probably be renting "Pascali’s Island" on videotape. And whom will ye be watching it with, Viva? "Just Joey." Ah, Joey. Joey could not have turned into Fred Edmunds, after all these years, not with a father like that, sweeping off with his wife to go hollering up into the mountains with only a boda and a blanket. Mmmm.

And who will grow to be the white queen on the swing pushed by Handel’s Messiah? What fate awaits a dream of an allspice dynasty, impatiently cherished and tucked in a Saratoga trunk being unpacked after the last dress rehearsal of the Mikado, with Don Juan just behind the footlights at the edge of the stage so I can’t see.

A class act I’ve always wished my legs could be, "Prima donna," the crowd roars out. But, back in my dressing room, my shining hour would be a vision of Joseph’s coat and his honor waiting for me with glasses filled with tiny bubbles. My golden masterpiece, that, with a slight whiff of Christian Dior from just down the hall.

The bridal pink I’ll one day wear will match the skin in my underwear. Taking the clothes off my heart, I’ll eclipse old timers everywhere. A sterling silver touch of class will finger my royal gold fragrant memory to form clouds ninety-nine and nine again and one ah ate. My clouds will be pinstriped, mind you, with Austrian copper and Texan cobalt blue. Teal for me. Teal for you?

And what grand masterpiece, what duet, what tuxedo and what Chablis goes well with a Chicago peace rally, with the holidays spent in Caribe afterwards, tugging behind us the American spirit, courtesy of Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian so strong that this Wonder Bread Century would probably rather rename the place after Prince Pale Lily until, of course, they find out that he’s a Native American.

American pride they covet in Antigua, and our bright city lights like lavender jewel tournaments that spill over royal Canadian waters like French lace unraveling in the streets of blue ribbon, paradise as smoky as voodoo swirling around Queen Elizabeth and a new beginning, mon cheri, sheer bliss for all who think it, and the talisman folding in their fingers warm with the rays of white delight sweating from the Spanish sun. A perfumed delight medallion, a golden medal for all to see, like the tone of the finest trumpet player Oklahoma ever sired. Yes, what songs would he toot down by the marina? What red would he conjure from his lips? The red that draped Ingrid Bergman and her daughters around their cries and whispers? The vision of this evening star above sees a little razzle-dazzle bumping my tempo along right now, with Montezuma calling me closer to see the inkspots he’s arranged for the new days of sheer bliss.

And after the sarabande I’ll dip my fingers in a wee glass of Amoretto as the sun splashes like a little sizzler sliding down the sky. And in the morning a double delight butterscotch frozen yogurt with wild honey topping is the only thing that could cool me off as it’s licked off me. But there’s no royal highness worth his weight in quiet October’s coming round here, as a fragrant cloud of cherry vanilla spins off my hair, and me, a humble magpie amongst them all, half Cheyenne, half Swedish: Shall I get my training in title insurance, get my hands on all of the ancient treaties and sue for each one in order and then finish ground school and solo up in the clouds in a Piper Commanche? Is that dangerous enough for ya?

The cathedral for the children of Grenada will fetch a king’s ransom should the morning ever supernova, sending sunflares screaming "sweet surrender" at the shining hour when brass rings rain from the towers folding into the seafoam. Europeana, was that how you fell? With fragrant memories turning to soot like if Viva had eventually become Lady X? I’d say Ole, andalay, andalay, as the fairy Miss Perfect slips a bronze ring on my big toe. The perfect moment? More a milestone of confidence. Blue girl becomes a headliner perched on the lip of the iceberg with a heart of Oregon gold. "Showing off," they’ll say, when I’m with my child in me, as I think of what Whisky Mac would name her. And her first prize will be a sunflare shot from the Ferris wheel up to cloud eighty-nine as Pollyanna, maybe I’ll call her, covers her ears as she stands by my side at the circus, spilling her apricot nectar everywhere.

If there were a promise I could always keep if would be to reign like summer sunshine in any proud land in need of honor, be it half-time in the Superdome or from the bleachers of the circus run by the man who blinded himself with lye on Sunset Strip. The morning sun would do them all well. Toss in a convertible Chrysler Imperial, too. Couldn’t hurt.

La Campana

El Arbol

La Estrella