You Animal You!!

http://www.animalinyou.com/test.php

" I am the Walrus" *

* koo koocha choo

I retook the ANIMAL IN YOU personality test recently, because I don't want to be a PORCUPINE, ala prickly Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and Bobcat Goldwaithe.  

I don't want an ideal career as an IRS Tax Agent or Postal Carrier  or Customs Inspector (not that there is anything intrinsically evil about officious civil servants).

The new and improved test result says I am a HORSE or a DOG or a BABOON.   

As a HORSE, I would work well  in physical labor or medicine or law. Like Magic Johnson and Tom Selleck.

I  align more, however, with Simia hamadryas, with famous BABOONS like Robin Williams, Jim Carey, Billy Crystal, or Conan O'Brien... and to have a career as a Journalist, Artist, Entertainer or Comedian. And, yes, I do enjoy "Massages,  Camping (Lite), Family Time (Lite), and Talking (!!)."

 

This is beginning to feel scientific.

Dr. Phil is a TIGER and supports the test's validity, though it asks only ten simple multiple choice questions, including how large are you and do you like to travel on vacations.  Mrs. Doctor Phil is a BADGER and does not like --or trust-- the test at all.  "I do not baaaadger you," she whiiines.

But test designer Roy Feinson claims it is "the original and most accurate personality test on the Web."  I Wiki'd him, and the guy  has major scientific cajones.  He has written two books on the evolutionary influence of animals on human behavior...and done much more.

This modern-day Davinci just happens to be the inventor of predictive cell phone text.  So when you type "Four sco...,"  and the entire Gettysburg address spins out, you can thank Roy.

This South African's an international artistic wizard, as well. His impressionist mosaics have been displayed at Disneyland and were used at last year's Grammy Awards show.  In fact, his 3D mosaics invention generated graphic programs for fluid time lapse and forensic video analysis used by California law enforcement...and  likely also insurance defense attorneys.  

Both his credentials and the telling test results convince!

I am a BABOON.  And Dr. Phil's wife badgers him.

~ Buh'byeeee ~

Attack of the Easter Spider

"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, 
most of which never happened."
Michel de Montaigne 

The Muse's Salon: Greetings 
from DeNeice’s Easter Spider

"It was jet black, a shade of black so deep your eye just kind of slides off it.  And it shimmered when you looked at it. A spider, big as death and twice as ugly. And when it flies past, it's like you hear a scream in your mind."  --
Lt. Warren Keffer, "Babylon 5"

I know that my mother loved me, but I am convinced that she loved to torture me sometimes. For every Easter, she dressed me up like her baby doll, recited again and again how beautiful I was, yet made me endure the most awful assault on my child body. Those excruciating  Easter dresses!   With their stiff, starched, sinister seams that slashed my soft little girl skin. 


So pretty on the outside and so evil underneath. 


Yes, I was pretty....miserable! 


I remember lying in the back seat of the dark green '52 Buick Special on the way to church, with my skinny little stick arms and stick legs stretched out straight, hardened, and held far away from my tender torso. I lie frozen like a kidsicle so that mean frock could not gnaw at my sides.

We did look pretty though, didn't we, dressed in not only in our Sunday best, but our Easter best. Little boys in itchy wool suits and neckties that strangled. And little girls looking like cake decorations. We learned very young though through personal experience that Easter had something to do with a suffering body. For suffer we did until we could rip those clothes off and be about our play on this special day.

As I grew up, Easter's meaning outgrew the pretty dresses.  The holiday reminds us that things are not always as they appear. All that glitters is not gold. Beauty is only skin deep. And as Gilbert and Sullivan penned in HMS Pinafore, "Things are seldom as they seem." 

Remember Richard Moll as Bull on NBC's  Night Court? 
Here he is off-screen, intense, handsome and very hairy.  Not that funny bald bailiff.

Easter reminds us that life transcends appearance. It is a portal to eternity, and it offers immediate instruction to face life faithfully and bravely. We don't need to worry so much. Ernest Holmes in Science of Mind calls fear "misplaced faith in a negative outcome."  


Thank goodness, most of the dark possibilities we dread never materialize. Keep a worry list. Review it periodically and you will appreciate the flimsiness of your fears.  

We are afraid of the same, strangest, silliest things-- clouds, clowns, The Pope, long words like "arachibutyrophobia," which is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Pteronophobia is the irrational fear of being tickled by feathers.  

  
Below.  Cartoonist Gary Larson jokingly named Luposlipaphobia as the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly-waxed floor .... and Anatidaephobia as the fear of being watched by a duck in his Far Side comix.

Some fears are so common they seem rational.  People fear public speaking and dentists and spiders more than death. Yet we are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider. 

I used to believe that the Boogie Man lived under my bed but could not grab my ankles if I jumped quickly enough from his grasp.  He was also in the alley at night where I emptied the kitchen garbage.  Today I'm more afraid of my plane crashing or my car falling off the side of a mountain road or of varmints biting me.


Like spiders, in particular "The Easter Spider."  

I remember one sweet, sunny Easter morning, when I was dressing for the special day.  I opened my lingerie drawer, and just as I reached for my undies, I noticed the biggest, ugliest, scariest spider crawling just inches from my fingers! 


I panicked! Drew back my hand in horror and ran for a shoe. As I banged away at the brown monster, waves of conscience began to punish my decision. 

  "This could be a good spider," I realized. "Most of them are! They eat other insects that I don't need inside my home. My gosh! This could have been Charlotte, the heroic spider of childhood storytime, that I just murdered." 
 But I kept pounding the poor defenseless creature. 

 Then, finally, I lifted the garment gingerly from the drawer by the heel of my long boot... and dropped the undies to the floor to examine the spider's brown smudgy remains.

He was just a tight ball of fuzzy brown...

Wait! He was just a tight ball of feathery brown... 


Oh my gosh, he was a... feather! A little brown feather. No monster, this was an adornment from my new Easter hat that my cats had knocked from the top of the armoire into an open drawer. 

I had been driven to murder..by a feather!  And my own fearful imagination. 

 My monster was just part of my Easter bonnet!

How many fears in our lives are mere feathers?  

Fluffy stuff absolutely without substance. 

So.  Boys and girls,  shall we gather-up the feathers of our fears into white cotton pillow sacks and whale away with gleeful abandon?! Our joy will make fear fly!!

EPILOGUE.  Easter 2012.  A few years ago I participated in  a Native American Vision Quest with Animas Valley Institute.  http://www.animas.org/about.htmThe major part of the ten-day adventure was a solo Vision Quest in the wilderness. For four days and nights, I slept alone on the earth under a tarp in a remote wooded area near the cliffs of a canyon in Southeastern Utah, miles away from another  human, alone, and fasting with only water, and three "emergency raisins" to take like a prescription should I become too weak to continue without additional sugar.  

We'd trained, including a Sweat Lodge to talk about our personal fears.  I worried about the typical risks--coyotes, bears, snakes. Instead, during the actual experience, I faced three days of non-stop rain and fretted about staying dry and warm. On the final night, we'd been encouraged to not sleep, to stay awake through the exhaustion and weakness from the fast.  

The night was rare, ie dry and clear, but I was tired and in a fog from the fast.  I lay under  the tarp all night, battling  exhaustion and an unending army of creepy creatures of the night. Spiders of every shape and size and color, hour after hour after hour into the dawn.  I wondered if my flashlight attracted them and whether I should turn it off, but in the moments of experimental darkness, I imagined the scariest scorpions stinging me. The light stayed on, and I witnessed Spider Hell.


Finally, morning arrived. I found surprising strength to pack and carry my  heavy backpack back to  camp where the seven Questors  shared stories.  

Confessions, eg "I ate my raisins."  "I took a forbidden cell phone, which did not work."   "I ate a protein bar over the four days, split it into quarters," from both the oldest and youngest female participants.  And the inevitably boastful "I never got hungry or tired," from the most overweight participant.   We noticed how much weight and size many of us had lost over the four days.

 Then finally someone asked, "Did you see the meteorite showers on the last night!"  "It was like the fireworks," another added.


 The last night? You mean, the night of the living spiders?


No, I had not seen any meteor showers. No stars at all.  I had hidden under my tarp, with my ten-hour debate about whether to go to sleep, whether to turn the flashlight on or off, fretting whether the spiders would bite me, and whether their bites were venomous, etc.


 I had remained with my fears.   I did not even really know it was a spectacular night  outside my familiar, tight space under the tarp.


I felt stupid.  But ordinary, knowing that we are programmed to do what is familiar--however awful or mundane--rather than to take the tiniest step outside our comfort zones into the vast night heavens which are exploding with surprise and beauty.

"A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
Fran in “Strictly Ballroom”

"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?
That's what it is to be a slave." 
Roy Batty in “Blade Runner”

The World According to Pink Poodle Purse

Pink Poodle Purse is both well-groomed & well-behaved so was invited to the Mingei Museum's jazz fundraiser. Having successfully passed Party Purse 101 training-- Pink Poodle Purse responded well to commands including,  " Purse! Fetch the house chardonnay!  and Purse! Clap on 2 & 4!"  

"I'm French and pale. If I don't suntan, I look goth."  Fair-skinned Pink Poodle Purse wears fashionable Audrey Hepburn'esque shades, after a lavish application of hypoallergenic PABA-free sunscreen.

 One is Pink Poodle Purse, and one is Peanut, a Yorkipoo.

 One man's "Spoiled" Pink Poodle Purse is another woman's helpful and positively-reinforced Personal Assistant.

Pink Poodle Purse is a working purse who carries her owner's personal belongings in exchange for MilkBones, freshly cut flowers and permission to sit on the snack bar.

 "Fetch the MAC Orchid Lipgloss.  Sit! Good purse! "

 "Fetch the keys!  Play dead. Good Purse!"

"Purse, rooooll over!"  
Wow. That trick's worth twenty bucks!  
"Purse, fetch Andy Jackson!"

"Who got in the Milk-Bones?"

Where, oh where, oh where, is my perfect woman!

“Perfection has one grave defect:
 it is apt to be dull.”

William Somerset Maugham

“In all my life, I have never met anyone that has had the perfect relationship. Whether it be a relationship with themselves, their country, their friends, family or significant others -- nothing is ever perfect. ...

So, if perfection doesn't exist, then what types of relationships should we strive for? A satisfying one? A stable one? More comfort than conflict?

On the subject of relationships, a good friend of mine always says, "You must be challenged." It's way too easy to slide through life un-phased and un-attached. A solid relationship is one that always keeps you on your toes. It takes work. It takes commitment. And, at the end of the day, you're a better person because of it. Is it perfect? Never. But you don't want it to be."  From the film “Trailer Park-the perfect relationship”

Some conversations are unforgettable.  I recall one with a friend, who a few years ago, cheerfully proclaimed his new girlfriend as "perfect.”

“No red flags. Not one,” he said, after resolving on January 1st that he wanted to find his mate in 2006 and, lo and behold, found Her on January 7th.

Well, he admitted, “She doesn't come to a complete stop at traffic signals, but that is a 'minor thing.”

“Wow.”  I was almost speechless.

It took a few weeks for me to erupt with my pithily succinct inquiry, “Perfect?”

He clarified, “Well, we see each other as perfect, so we are perfect for each other.”

“Wow,” I replied.

I don't think I've ever met anyone I thought was perfect, although I have known someone who said I was perfect.

It felt weird. 

“I find imperfection the most interesting thing about a person”

Anonymous

Maybe new lovers sense perfection in each other in those oxytocinated blooms of lust. Nature is brilliant, probably providing this relative blindness just long enough for a male and female to lure, mate, and reproduce.  Then they/we roll over in boredom. Or she, disgusted, bites off his head and/or he, feeling frantic and un-free, runs away, leaving her to the tiger. 

I appreciate my friend's comment about his new woman's perfection.  It provoked me to revisit the notion of perfection, which has likely defined my own way of being since I was a wee rug rat.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a precious little girl in Amarillo, Texas “stole” some candy cigarettes from the corner market. Her (my) mother made her return them and apologize to the shop owner for being “bad.”

I was mortified at my quite innocent error and ordered apology—until that moment I had no concept of good and bad.  My mother remains incredulous that I can even remember the incident.

“You were two years old. You could barely walk, certainly not talk,” she said.

But a two-year-old can understand disappointing her parent with her first "mistake.”

Daddy, a few years later, lambasted my imperfect penmanship. Signing my name onto valentines for kindergarten classmates, I kept crossing the N's backwards.  I still hear my German father’s stern, loud—unsuccessful—coaching….and then standing in a corner while my parents chatted with an insurance salesman at the kitchen table a few feet away.

I –humiliated--was certain they were discussing, not actuarial tables, but my ridiculous N’s.

  “This is the very perfection of a man,
to find out his own imperfections.”

Saint Augustine

Sometime in puberty, we learn to compare our imperfect selves with our miraculously perfect peers.  I believe this happened to me when Mama came to hear me sing with my junior high choir.  I know exactly where it happened—in a long lineoleum hallway lined with steel lockers.  I know exactly what I was wearing -- the most adorable, new denim A-line skirt.  I thought myself quite “mod”  until after the concert, Mama noticed a quite curvy cheerleader wearing her quite tight mini-skirt.

“Too bad you can't wear a skirt like that, DeNeice.”  Of course, I heard, “Too bad you’re a candy thief who makes backwards N’s and wears square skirts and aren’t perfect—like her.”

“The mother is only really the mistress 
of her daughter ...as a model of wisdom
and type of perfection.” 

Alexandre Dumas Père

It  makes sense that I'm not like my male friend who measures perfect sunsets with a number 10...and who found his perfect woman in less than a week.

If there is perfection in my life, it comes one moment at a time, when I am so present that I am absolutely overwhelmed by the magic in the right here and right now.  In these special, real moments, the imperfect past and pluperfect future evaporate.  

These sweet, rare moments are bliss…as are the shadowy times where something or someone breaches my comfortable edges.  Then, I can risk discomfort and imperfection— to experience a sublime moment of extra-ordinariness.

The sages  seem also to prefer this treacherous, unfinished, imperfect adventure:

“A beautiful thing is never perfect.”  Proverb

“Perfectionism is slow death”  Hugh Prather

“Out of perfection nothing can be made.”   Joseph Campbell

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”   George Orwell

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”  Salvador Dalí

“The greater the emphasis on perfection, the further it recedes”   Haridas Chaudhuri

“Perfectionism is the enemy of creation.”   John Updike

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.” Anne Lamott

“The farther a man knows himself to be free from perfection,

the nearer he is to it” Gerard Groote

“A good friend who points out mistakes and imperfections …

is to be respected as if he reveals a secret of hidden treasure.”  Buddha

ADDENDUM:  Sometime between the 12th and 18th months of his perfect relationship, my manfriend found a number of unforgivable flaws in his perfect woman and they  ended the perfect pair bonding soon after she helped him set up what became his groovy bachelor pad. 

Without pause and with predictable masculine "kill the dear" focus, he began turbo-dating and reported a few months later that he was “intense” with one of his four girlfriends. He did not say she was perfect. 

ADDENDUM ADDENDUM:  The "intense" relationship ended.  Her successor had Big ("great, huge") Positives but, alas,  "more negatives than positives."

And so the quest continued -- continues-- for his illusive, perfect butterfly.
 

Dear Santa: I want a blow-up doll for Christmas

"She's like a porcelain doll. She sets me on fire."

--Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton

in Madame Butterfly

           

The Muse's Salon

   FEB. 9, 1999 

             

           Elmer (not his real name) and I rented the video "Shooting Fish" last night.  In this snappy buddy romp, two winsome hustlers swindle over 50,000 pounds from an inexhaustible supply of veddy propah British suckers.  Their scam with a bunch of blow-up dolls reminded me of my encounter with the adult inflatables a few years ago.

             

              I had run into an old girlfriend at the vet's.  She was planning a huge surprise party for her ex-husband 's 60th birthday and was overwhelmed. I offered to help.  She seemed relieved and leaned over to whisper, "I need one of those blow-up dolls."

             

              An odd request.  But Carla's relationship with her ex was far from ordinary. Despite the passage of a decade, she clearly was not emancipated from their 20-year marriage. She had found a particularly wily way to watch over her former spouse.  Their divorce decree mandated "joint custody" of the couple's six pedigreed puppies.  So the hunting dogs lived at the big house with their master, while Carla enjoyed unlimited visitation rights.  She visited daily.

             

              As Carla handed me some cash for the doll, she issued a stern command, "It must look like me."

             

              I knew the import of my task and decided to visit a local emporium advertised as "the world's largest adult super-market."  I parked at the edge of the parking lot by a trash dumpster and prayed no one would recognize the red Corvette with the license plate "CARGO."  

             

              I'd never been inside an adult bookstore and was as jittery as a teenage boy buying "protection" for the first time.  As I entered the immense warehouse, I tried to not turn or lift my head, to not move my hands or eyes, to not see other shoppers, to not see row after row after row of porn videos and sex toys. I tried to not notice a very long pegboard wall with hundreds and hundreds of dildos. (Dildoes?  Where is Dan Quayle when you need him.)

             

              "Everyone is watching me," I thought.

             

              I was paranoid and hot and beginning to sweat as I approached the elderly clerk behind a counter. She was finishing a vibrator sale and explaining to the clean-cut young couple that the product was non-returnable.  Her hands shook as she installed batteries, rocked the switch, and placed the humming wand against her wrinkled wrist 

             

              "Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!"

             

              "Wanna see how it feels?" she offered the young woman. Speechless, the young man grabbed the device and his consort's arm as they left the store.

             

              "Uh-uh-uh, " I stuttered.  " Uh, it…it's not for me, but I need one of those dolls. F-f-for my  friend."

             

              The old woman pointed to the farthest corner of the store, and I tried to remain inconspicuous as I began the journey there.  Mid-way, she screamed at me, "And don't open them dolls!" 

             

             Quickly, I crouched to hide behind a display of Kamasutra potions. Then duckwalked to the distant corner.  Finally there, I found a dozen cartons of the dolls, with full-color photos of sultry nude models on the covers.  But all sealed tight.

             

              I looked to see if Bad Barbie had been opened and heard the clerk's loud unsubtle admonition again, "Lady, I said don't open them dolls!"  

             

              But there were no cellophane peep windows in the boxes. No way to see what the dolls looked like.  One of them cost almost $200 though -- it assured anatomical correctness and sensual reality.  I had seen enough movies to know that blow-up dolls didn't look anything like the vixens on the boxes.  The dolls were cartoonish inflatables with flailing legs and arms and with several suggestively-placed hollows.

             

              I knew that if I was to acquire one that resembled Carla, it simply must have black hair.  And the only models with black hair were either Asian or African-American. Carla was quite Anglo. 

             

              Just as I was ready to surrender and withdraw, I saw it.  A plain white box with bold black letters in all caps spelling "PARTY DOLL."  Priced at $29 and promising to be "the life of every party-- public or private." 

        

         Sold!  To the bad lady in the back of the store!  I had no idea what the thing looked like… if it was even female or human.

             

              Days later, Carla called to report the party's success and to thank me for "the absolutely perfect doll-- she looked JUST like me!"

             

              I told my sweetheart the story last night as he was falling asleep after the movie,  " Party Doll was perfect.  It had short straight black hair and was petite."

     

      "Had no teeth?" he mumbled groggily.

     

      " I said it was PETITE!"

     

      Lights out.

     

      "…and it had no teeth."

"In West Virginia yesterday, a man was arrested for stealing several blow-up dolls. Reportedly, police didn't have any trouble catching the man 

because he was completely out of breath." 

Conan O'Brian

 CLICK: FUNNY! White Water Rafting on Blowup Dolls

2009 Postscript. Blow-up dolls can be boundless fun at your next party!  Put him/her in a classy top hat for New Year's, in a diaper as Cupid, spray-painted kelly green for St. Patty's, draped in Mardi Gras beads, as a sexy Santa or elf.  


But before you surf over to the Frederick's website for costume ideas, check these tips: 
* Do not blow up the doll in a hot place.

* Buy the doll early enough to organize the costume changes, an impressive set, and that thrilling script.

* If you're contributing the doll for a friend's party entertainment, make sure they (your friend, not the doll) wouldn't be embarrassed... unless it's a surprise party or you want to embarrass them, and lastly

* Do not use crazy glue on the doll.  We've heard that attempts to attach anatomical appendages can melt the plastic.

I Want A Blow-Up Doll For Christmas

(c)1992 by Eric Brown
CLICK: LISTEN TO THIS HOLIDAY CLASSIC!"I Want A Blow-Up Doll For Christmas (c)1992 by Eric Brown

I want a blow-up doll for Christmas.

I want a girl I can inflate.
I saw one like I want in a girlie magazine --

The one that I hide between my mattress and box springs.

I want a blow-up doll for Christmas.

Hurry up, Santa, I can't wait!

I want a blow-up doll for Christmas,

'Cause I know that she'll be the perfect mate.

She must be heavy-duty to resist wear and tear.

She'll come with a special set of sexy underwear.

I'll dress her like a hooker, then dress her for the prom,

Then let her air out, fold her up and hide her from my Mom.

She won't talk so I won't have to call her on the phone.

I won't have to comb her hair because it's printed on.

Her lips will be shaped like an "O" and painted ruby red.

I'll have to hide her from my friends -- she'll be a real airhead.

Oh, I want a blow-up doll for Christmas.

I want a girl with vinyl flesh.

She must have a pretty face up above her neck.

The rest of her body must be anatomically correct.

I want a blow-up doll for Christmas.

I think I'll call her Judy or Beth.

I want a blow-up doll for Christmas,

'Cause real girls, they scare me half to death

 AND FINALLY, CLICK: Trailer for "Lars & The Real Girl"

..if it's purple, this must be erotica

In Wisconsin, if you win a girl a giant, purple rhinoceros,

she puts out.  --Michael Kelso, “That ‘70s Show”

It was just a purple bra that fit perfectly.  It was not unspoken commitment.  It was not a pledge to love until he no longer felt love.  It was not even a knowing glance.  It was just a purple bra that fit perfectly.

It cost $5 less because he was on the Victoria's Secret mailing list and received a coupon that would expire soon.  He usually bought their sweet scented lotions with the racy names, but she told him the heavy scent congested her sinuses. In truth, she did not want to smell like all his other lovers, all those women whose feet and hands and backs and more he massaged like prayer ritual. 

So he went to their shoppe in the mall, where in wild caveman fantasies he delighted and disrobed the pink-cheeked virgins and the red hot mamas, where he threw them wet and ready atop big round mounds of panties--skimpy brazilian thongs, playful polka dot bikinis, hipsters covered in red Corvettes, and conservative white briefs announcing "Luscious" and "Lovely" and "Lucky" like new days of an erotic week.  In his imagination, he took a young clerk's reluctant curiosity behind the hot pink Victorian cash register on the hot pink Victorian carpet.  In his imagination, he easily unlocked their sweet secrets behind easy dressing room drapes, sliding so easily apart, for him.

And he bought her--the recent lover-- a purple bra that fit perfectly.

He attached lusty post it notes to it.  She didn't recall if the sticky yellow memos proclaimed his love.  She knew they didn't whisper fidelity, because he had promised always to be fickle.  His quick scribbles probably appreciated her softness, snaring her affections like the purple bra that circled her roundness so perfectly. 

Hey. Did everything just taste purple for a second? --Fry, Futurama

From Indian summer to winter solstice, she stretched her self before him and invited his kisses upon her life.  She let him lick the lusciousness of her body, from purple toenails to juicy purple core. Everything in Life appeared precious purple through her rosy eyes.

Then one day after he applauded her puffy purple sweater, he reminded her how he hungered for other colors.  

So she left him.  Speedily she filled four ugly brown paper bags with all the things which she he had carried there, things which he insisted had brought him joy. She removed every hint of her every having been there.  


Except one.  


She left behind the purple bra that fit so perfectly it made her cry.  She slid it under his pillow where they had often tucked her saucy panties for his private pleasure. 

The woman who was the happy girl with the beautiful purple bedroom wanted no purple in her life.  She wondered why lilacs and violets and irises instead were not red and pink and orange.  She cursed the healing benefits of dark grapes, swore merlot and cabernet bitter and staining.  She warned that deadly passion is purple, that Batman’s joking arch villain is purple, that the ghastly peripatetic dinosaur Barney is purple.

She prayed for the blackness on her bruised heart to fade fast through that cruel color into blue, then green, then yellow, then to disappear into the pink radiance of her playful spirit, before it was tempted again by a purple bra that fit perfectly. She wanted the color expunged, purged, banned.

Then she remembered The Color Purple and Whoopie Goldberg’s battered and unfalteringly sunny Shug who proclaimed, “I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.” 

And she smiled and decided to paint her toenails purple.

DeNeice Kenehan is a hedonist, a romantic, a singer, a photographer,  a decent cook, and an occasional raconteur.

Insinuate Broadly

So you think of me when you hear that song, 

Well, I see you in moon and stars, and

when cauliflower clouds conspire over distant mountains, and

when little grey birds make music in fallen leaves, and

when ancient stones peek from secret depths, so

think of me when she 

speaks of sky or earth, or

whispers secrets of you and she, or 

when her eyes meet yours, or

when her fingers brush your skin, or

when your squeals combine in harmonic rapture, and

when you kiss her tears, 

their salt is mine, and

when champagne bubbles tickle tongues, they are

our giggles in paradise ethers, so

see my smile when you please her, and
when your sweaty sauces merge, and

when you cannot catch your breath, and

when your heart pounds in your throat, 

feel me, and

when your mouth samples hers, 

taste mine, and

when you enter her, 

imagine my sweetness, and
when you hear crickets and coyotes and false dawn's rooster crow,

hear my voice, and

when you walk, 

feel my bare, graceful feet in your stride, and

when your hands work or play,

see my elegant, perfect fingers, and

when your tongue laps water or wine or cream, and

when your teeth nip apples or grapes or pears, and

when your lips meet cheese or almonds, or crunchy cabbage or anything, 

we feed upon each other, like

starving caterpillars destined for butterflight passion, so

when you speak or chew or swallow or kiss, or

you notice any mouth, 

my lips are on you, and

see my curves in the moon's, and

spot my body in every circle, from

hot sun to dotty bug, and

when the air sweeps your skin, 

it is my soft hair, and

when you bathe, 

it is the water of my passion, so
smell me in your bed, and 

when you retire, 

my hot thighs pillow your sleepy head, so

when you slumber, and I, 

haunted by you, 

lie sleepless, 

dream of me, and know 

I am the secret shade 

that heals your exhaustion after a morning ascent, and 

I am the pulse of every lazy afternoon love poem, and  

I hide in prickly cholla blossom and fuzzy nebula ring, and

I am delicate kisses on the nape of your neck in the breeze, so 

I am everything that touches you

everywhere and 

everything you touch, so

let us love on the sand, and

under trees, and

in the chapparel, and

in icy storm, and

in barren desert, so

you find me in every place and clime, and

let us make love 

from dawn to dusk, and

from sunset to sunrise, so

you remember 

me in every moment, and 
let us argue and rant and sob and fret, so

you recognize me in your angst, and  

when ecstasy swallows darkness, 

glimpse me in the shadow, and  

when we are torn apart by

proximity, 

hear me in the white space, and  
when everything fits, and

is beautiful, and

well, 

think of me. 

Insinuate broadly.

(c)