Semana Santa Cotton-batting webs sad mimics of imagined decrepitude put on a brave show alongside plastic skeletons like cheap-version Santo, but brought down from the attic or choir? for a weary All- Americana Samhain --no, not Easter. Or is it Eostre? ...or Ishtar? Pay no mind. The sentiment lost is found there in pristine, pressed white blouse backed against the rafters as we gaze in mute fear and fascination at a fragrant Nuestra Señora de Soledad meditating upon the wounds of Her anguished, long-lashed Kristo.

Connections Brilliant utterances attract a bevy of eyes that only see Cleverly Arranged Instances #life Idealizing Make-believe All the while the tinker barely ruffles the curtains

OH. YOU. (and Other Script Rewrites) Hello! Hello..? Oh, whew--good you did hear or see me-- your presence took me by complete surprise and this is not the revenge movie that has been scripted and refined over the years in my head because in each and every one of those various incarnations you had a decaying foot nicking soil into the six-foot and I was the Goddess of Sex and Vitality heave-ho-ing you along the way making sure the dirt is packed even and tight. I suppose in any new remakes you and I would meet somewhere amidst disappointment and decrepitude of course that is if you are not kicking back at an all- you-can-eat buffet with Satan in the hereafter.

Deafening At one point today we were blaring the same aggressive song, that failed, too, to connect us, along any discernible shared blood -line, where real people stop and cringe. Bodies leave their own souls behind now.

Rage Rage does not always present itself a red hot entity. In my experiences, it has appeared as varying and persistent gradations of a grey that swirl as if at the bottom of a wine glass. Opaque, transparent, sometimes tinged in a blue that forms it steel-like, sometimes a fog, a mist. It also isn't a bull, charging in mad frenzy, no singular plan, power and fortitude realized, but sans a purpose should it stop in its mad dash to remember. There are no splintering doors or the shattering musicality of bone china pulverized in an exciting caricature. Mine is perhaps the way a lioness stalks prey through the long, golden grass. It is patience. It is a jewel drop brilliance of intent. It hones a razor sharpness in the time of crouching and waiting, in the time before that and the time before that. I've heard told that rage is a glorious explosion--a fitting culmination of frustration, slights, ill-fortune and denial bottled and rammed together tightly, creating a concoction of elements that repels each other in an instant of touching. Boom! What a release. These are the stories, the examples that could almost render me envious. How convenient would that kind of expression be? How dramatic and satisfying and over all too soon. It almost leaves you longing. If we are wise in anything, we are wise in the knowledge of clinging to the familiar pathways we frequent like a holy procession. Where I sit crouched is still a good vantage point, where my bounteous well of rage is oily, homogenous, flowing into receptive channels and ducts eternal.