haiku advice (for Linh Dinh)

fuck the streets, the beat
doorways, bums, drunks, hustlers
dig smokin' hot chicks

only hamsters are sexy

I visited Ruby's dance class one windy afternoon and thought the warm-up song blaring from the portable disc player was a little risque for seven to eleven year olds. The hit single in question was Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl."

Ruby asked me what 'risque' meant. I said it was more appropriate for older kids, like 'grown up stuff' that had to do with how people behave, like dress-up, but different, sort of burlesque.

She asked curiously about that word, too. I said it was like a show where characters act in funny ways, sometimes to laugh at the things they do or are, yet seriously take on certain subjects (again) more for adult concerns.

She said that was cool. It reminded us of a hamster she noticed at a party with a coller around its neck which had a name on it that she spelled for me but wasn't sure she was allowed to say out loud. The word is s-e-x-y.

I explained only hamsters can be sexy. At this, of course, she laughed.

pray for rain - and sun

Recently, Ruby and I went to church where, as far as transubstance is concerned, she remarked that the priest was making pancakes and fruit punch. I whispered to her that it was symbolically the body and blood of Jesus, his sacrifice at the Last Supper to remember him by.

I said, as we walked home beneath the swift clouds and through a steady rain with flowered and black umbrellas, that I would pray for Ruby to get better from her Pink Eye. She replied she would pray for my back to feel better, as it is 'out' and very painful.

She yelled at the sky to listen to her for me to get well. She asked if my back was fixed. I said prayers take time, you have to have patience. She said, "Why do we have to wait?" I told that's what we do, like for the sun to come again, to remember what happens before and what's next.