Wild Luscious Wind

Wild Luscious Wind
By Randi Taylor-Habib

And with your kiss my life began,
But who to ask such savage tenderness
Little wonder treachery
A lusty good natured kiss to my left cheek
So long ago
over hamburgers
At a road side stand
Under the Santa Cruz sun

All America seemed to shine on us
You said my strangeness was an ally
Giving you a safe place comfort
Using my teenage aloofness from the suffering
Of throw away reality to bring your loyalty
And so I protected you
through the first child.
Having just escaped
The mindless cruelty
Of Sleet and snow New York Winter.

Stepping over crunchy ice cristyals and bodies
amongst the squats and deals of alphabet city
Bicycle riding through war-torn ghettos and barrios
of Reaganized darkness.
Scratching sleep in a bag under the grey asbestos pipe
To find these easy summer shores
The sweet warm sea air was heaven
But darkness seeped into the flats of these streets too
following the breadcrumbs of your desire.

Later, as I knew I would
With a smile over the hamburgers,
As you asked me to pay
I left you there alone
Pregnant and homeless with baby next, lover, in line.
To save the hope of my life
in the hard scrabble back East
Salvation Army nightmares
Kicking tires to overcome the frustration and fear.

I let you follow your desires towards the great forgetting.
Smack wrested you from three lovers and two children one fiancé
The victims there, the victor
of Reagan's Youth was only the first to drown
Asking you bride to be, in white what your choice was,
Like he or you could escape the pavement from devouring you both
With an insidious grin.
They found him in his truck drowned in grief
after the next one serial murdered by the true vermin of these streets
killers seeking their prostitute supper.
They had given you everything if they could
Two children who gave their lives
or your pleasures.
No one is that beautiful
to be forgiven that.
But what is forgiveness anyway, but a way to forget

To the Republican facists
You symbolize a disease, best left dead
But in their splendid superficiality
They would have been led victim to your social calls
Like B in her Playboy acting, beauty and grace amongst the generals
You would have played with them with cats paws, had you lived
But to me you were more than a beauty
Jealous of my every success
You were my closest friend whom I had pledged to help
Find a way out of the wet paper bag, of your own failures
The only person who saw every part of heart
And accepted me as her own because of it not in spite of it
You could not discipline your own wants from consuming that splendid heart so full of love.
And many despised but secretly admired you for it, and worked back water deals for your affection and power.
Many of exalted stature and status
Fell under your whims, even in your youth.

Our witch friends
Said you were jealous
But I took your admonishments
As enough little deaths
And decided to isolate myself
Among Redwood beams
Only to find you hiding out
With a stormy Guatemalan lover
In my shed.

What can I say?
Your life was a torrid wilderness
Like a mountain stream
With which you fought the police and death with wonton abandon
A tigress amongst acacia trees
To those you scammed.
In the end you bit all that stayed
With the same disease that you carried
The demons of the foster care, and orphaned shadowing the doorways of your heart
Holding back your love from flowing to all things.
That gentle yearning for a world beyond this one
Where all desires are met
With tambour tranquility

In your wake,
My beautiful nightingale of Acacia Moon
Skin of French alabaster, Japanese cherry blossom eyes
Your wake, whipped like a wild Hudson River wind of a thousand sheets of asphalt
Against the clinging mural of love in Lower East Side Puerto Rica
Devouring chill ran through what was your heart
What Californian child could withstand that?
You bulldozed them with your desires like limp rag dolls
Calling out their wounds, their wants, and turning them against them like many splendored knives
You were well versed in the truth of ambition
A dangerous seed, raised amongst bandits, part demoness and angel
Temptress of darkness and light
You were my friend,
Jenny Janne lost in
Your Chinese field of white
May you know peace
In that next world
Where you roam
Like a savage tiger moon



Poem written by my friend Randi. We were 15 when we met each other. We knew some of the same people--looks like a lot of memories are popping up for both of us.

Being a runaway homeless girl is probably one of the hardest things a child could be. Kind of crazy that we all knew each other before the shit hit the fan for all of us. Some made it out ok, some didn't make it.