Beyonce - Still In Love (Kissing You)

Beyonce puts to music what it is to love kissing a beloved....

Kissing Revisited....

It's an intriguing topic...so I'm back to redress it, determine what keeps it on my mind. I know there won't be enough time to mine its gold before my fingers recede from this keyboard and my body seeks my pink sheets, but at least I'll have given it the best of me for now.

Attended a beloved friend's memorial and the kitchen was filled with friends and family. Food lined the counter. Everything from my raw kale salad to my sistafriend Jaslyn's delicious bean pie and veggies and a tasty assortment of chips and dips. There were sips of wine. And there were couples amongst the singles.

A twosome caught my eye. They were precious, one possessing a lovely smile, the other a rakish grin. Delightful. I took them in, as inconspicuously as I could, but I ambushed myself when I whipped out my camera and flat asked them if they would kiss for me. (AN IDEA TO REVISIT LATER!)

They wavered. Momentarily. As if to make certain they understood my request. I assured them they had. Then what happened next was akin to watching the treat through a video camera's lens. In slow motion, like a stream purling towards the ocean, they flowed together, one moving yet waiting, the other coming, already close-eyed, both merging as though for the first time, pooling into one skin. I was transformed, observing almost outside of time, the kitchen and the merriment drifting away, nothing left but the observer and The Kiss.

I felt their chemistry behind my camera's lens. Heated romance tempered on the fire of familiarity. Did she actually soften, receive her lover through the fabric of her dress? They shared the same breath,a communal heartbeat. Had they been a movie I'd have wed repeat. They kissed so long I got rooted in the moment, wondering: Would I know The Kiss this lifetime?

Not just a brushing of lips, theirs was a meeting of souls:a moving of the earth, fire in limbs, a toppling out of time, an undeniably, undisputed stupefaction.

Once, a treasured friend said a kiss is a gateway to fireworks, and, without it, you nurse a wet match. Just yesterday one of my sisters confided a kiss detonated just so, minus you knowing it'll have a Richter-scale effect, is worth running out to meet a nebulous tomorrow.

On her B-Day DVD, Beyonce sings about loving kissing her husband. The emotion in her voice invites me to be with her words and her seductive video image on a beach practically masturbating in the shadowy water. Exquisite. If I knew how to post the video here, I would. But since I don't, and my contacts are sticking to the balls of my irises, I am about to shut down for the morning. And maybe I shall work on posting it later!

Here are three POEMS that gently scrap the mixing bowl of my kiss-sweetened thoughts! Enjoy and please feel free to comment. To share this journey makes all the difference in the world!


BESOS MUAH KISS--KISS SMOOCH



THE KISS
We kiss
Before we ever meet
Our ravenous glances incomplete
Awaiting baptism
In the other’s virtual caress.
Your sweet, honey-dew lips
Promise
Cataclysmic explosions along my Southern shore.
There’ll be ‘No turnin’ back’ no more.
Thrills rumble my insides;
Blinding me
Consigning me
Unhinging me
Soaking me,
While you visually tongue me. O, the way you divine me
Turn me out of myself
My G spot shouting.
Dangerous glints stud our eyes
Starting an instant ache, a delirious dancing
Melting my defenses, leveling my walls, liquefying my knees---
All I thought I knew of desire deceived.

You taste
Me with a steamy, mocha gaze
Licking me right there and there.
A mango flicking explores my skin conjuring sensations deep within.
Dazed, I am still, shell shocked~
A stranger, you erotically push your way into my day~
Causing my pencil heels to reel
Our kisses raining cinnamon showers
Sweetening my inner rivers
Your audacity
Leaving me to hunt wave-tossed, fragments of myself.

We merge
Past invisible signs of No Return,
Lips
Parting
Tongue
Darting,
Mmmmmm Yeaaaaaaah
You taste like I knew you would
A mouthful of butterscotch sunshine
A shot of moonshine
Aged wine
So electrically divine….

© Claudia Moss 2/1/2010

*******************************************************************************

The Kissing Booth

Behind this makeshift stand
2010 KISSES
Pout on sensual command:
Soft kisses
Tongue kisses
French kisses
Hot kisses
Wet kisses
Forehead kisses
Belly kisses
Clit kisses
You can have it just right at The Kissing Booth every night…
Licked kisses
Dismissive kisses
Slow kisses
Drive-by kisses
Empty kisses
Nasty kisses
Femme kisses
Fuck-you kisses
Only for you, we’ve got prevailing sales at The Kissing Booth…

Dom kisses
Fragile kisses
Nipple kisses
Masculine kisses
I-hate-you kisses
Stay-away kisses
Come-closer kisses
Let’s-play kisses
Interracial kisses
We’ve got whatever kisses your taste buds can fathom at The Kissing Booth…
Gimme-som’ kisses
Not–on--your--life kisses
Not—in—this—lifetime kisses
Earlobe kisses
Pricey kisses
You-know-you-want-it kisses
She-can-get-it-forever kisses
Maybe-next-lifetime kisses
One-night-stand kisses
Sweeter-than-sex kisses
I-love-you kisses
If we missed it, we back-order your kisses and lay-them-away fresh here in The Kissing Booth…
Note:
A PENNY-A- PUCKER AND NO SUCKERS, PLEASE.

© Claudia Moss 2/1/2010


*******************************************************************************


My Kissin’ Experiment
You willin’ to be my experiment?
Gotta silence a vent
Inside this predicament
‘Cause she said my lips weren’t intended
To lick and be licked like peppermint.
No, don’t defend it.
It’s your entitlement
To end it
Before our lips begin this commencement.
Goin’ to kiss you ‘til you can’t stand it
Make you pray a new commandment
With kisses so soft I’ll dent
Your contentment
Of how she used to demand it
O, forget about containment
My kisses trickle, slither, slurp, slide with abandonment
From the back of your thighs to the hollow in your belly button up to your judgment
I’ll blow a breeze so bewitching---you’ll breach your sense of devilment.
Do you get it?
Or are you yet rife with the prophetic?
Uum Muuuaah! Besos, mi mujer! I’m harmless; you’re pathetic.
There’s nothing you can do yet
So I’ma finish gulping you and gorge on the gold at the end of your rainbow. Got it?
© TheSiren 2/1/2010

July Gems...Getting Ready for THE COVER...

Next week is the middle of July, and I'm standing in the middle of the month marveling at how fabulously fast time passes. This month, my mind and calendar are set on finishing the final edits of my second novel manuscript, IF YOU LOVE ME, COME! Yes, that's right! I said it, and I mean it, even after 10+ years.

One thing us writers must learn to do is let the baby go...release it into the world knowing that you've done your absolute best and believing that it will return to you heaped with blessings!

As I was editing the work today, for the umpteenth time, I fell in love with the story all over again. The characters yet moved me, the writing still engaging and charismatic. But if my knee-baby sis, Glenda, Miz Know-It-All, had her way, she'd be screaming at the top of her lungs, "You should have let that book go years ago! Learn as you go! I'd be working on my 15th book by now, like E. Lynn Harris, had he been here!" She has a point, I know!

Maybe it's the former teacher in me. I want my literary baby to be the absolute BEST that she can be, before I swirl her out debutante-fashion to bookshelves around the country.

I've decided to go with Country Press. A fellow writer friend suggested them, I did the research, and they won out! My excitement could fuel a roundtrip sojourn to Venus about now. It seems all my life I've been waiting for this ONE moment, not that I haven't published before. This time, everything is different! I'm grown now. Like Shug Avery in the church, exclaiming, "I'se married now, Daddy!"

The paradise of a picture at the top of the blog is from my foray into Lake Allatoona this summer. It reminds me of where I stand, of my vantage point. I can see only the next 100 feet, yet I am confident the Divine paves a road before me, miraculously, and my destination will be wondrously ventured. I intend to be photographed by the Lovely Lady Photographer Toni Hughes sometime SOON! And identical to Oprah, I intend to be on the cover of all my books---from the Wanda B. collections to the novel. Holaaaaa?

Yep! You got it! Es verdad! I'll be posting the pictures that make the cut here and on Facebook to determine what you feel about which ones should be used.

Prayerfully those July Gems should be ready for posting before July 31, as I am on a mission!

Stay tuned! I'll be posting a teaser of a short story in parts, to keep you near and beckon more readers. And whatever you do, please remember, your comments are greatly appreciated, so leave what you will, AMADOS!!!

A Slice of IF YOU LOVE ME, COME...

Come and sit a while. Let me serve you a slice of a fictional treat that is a chapter of my novel manuscript IF YOU LOVE ME, COME....

After partaking of this repast, if your curiosity lasts, I will spread a feast before thee....

If You Love Me, Come

Sample Chapter

25

Disquietude and dread befriended him. Took up with him for weeks now, like old friends.

Victor Naylor opened his front door to a resounding silence. He didn’t have to shout her name and walk through the bellowing rooms to know she wasn’t there, but he did both anyway. Action steadied him. He entered the kitchen. She’d scoured it of everything, even smells. “Shar-maaayne!” The inside of the refrigerator was a telltale sign, much like the unanswered calls when he’d phoned home from Colorado and North Carolina. He walked inside the pantry and found a can of whole stewed tomatoes and a half-empty box of macaroni among the olive oil, crackers and oatmeal.

When he tired of the mocking house echoing her name, Victor washed his hands and boiled and drained the pasta and then, in a small sauce pan, sliced the stewed tomatoes over the unappetizing concoction.

Was it possible she was gone?

He ate, his head churning with thought. Leaving the dirty dishes on the table, he sought refuge in the living room, where he sat in his favorite chair and imagined what he’d say when she walked through the front door. From shopping with Free…most likely. He picked up the phone to call Freddie but changed his mind. Freddie might say the unacceptable.

Exhausted from bouncing on the lumpy seats of his tractor trailer, he climbed the stairs with wooden legs, gripping the banister to heave his weight to the next stair. He undressed slowly. The bedroom whined and he knew why, though he needn’t have opened her drawers and stared at the gaping space in the closet where her clothes had been. No shoes neatly arranged on the other side of the door. No make-up tiered on the vanity. Not even the latest books she was reading on her side of the bed.

“Shar--maaayne! Sharmayne? SHAR…MAYNE!”

A cold shower revived his faith and he sprawled across the bed in fresh boxers and a white T-shirt he’d found in his underwear drawer. With bleary eyes, he bore holes in the vaulted ceiling, bewilderment closing in on him like a lizard with addiction in her veins and infection between her legs, stalking a truck stop for peace in a stranger’s arms. His body cried out for a few measly hours of real slumber, but his mind mocked louder than the mocking house, louder even than roaring silence.

He still couldn’t believe it. His woman had snapped, had allowed those freaking spirits to uproot shit in her touched brain. An unnatural heifer. She and that…that…damn dyke were probably laying up lapping and feeling on one another and bumping and grinding and doing whatever else made up their unnatural bullshit love.

When Victor couldn’t take anymore of the ceiling, the white stucco flashing subliminal images of women having sex, he flipped onto his stomach and pressed his forehead on his crossed arms and gritted his teeth to keep from crying.

How the hell had loneliness climbed down out of his truck’s cab and walked its ass into his house like he wasn’t Victor Naylor? Behind closed lids, he strained to remember who he was. Amused, his mind took pleasure in the knowing and reminded him what others thought of who he was, too.

On a run in April, a fellow Georgia trucker stopped at his table. Over a dinner of liver, side salad, rice and gravy, and rolls, they shot the breeze at a North Carolina stop. Victor did most of the talking, guffawing at his own jokes, while he shoveled food into his mouth, and kept the Mexican waitresses tickled at the play in his eyes and the dollars tipping from his wallet to their palms after he’d palmed them enough to understand, “No mas” and “Muchas gracias” and “Le gusta?”

The trucker’s mustache fluttered over thin, gravy-stained lips. “Victor, man, you talk a lotta shit about that woman of yours. She cain’t be as bad as you raggin’.”

A penetrating blue gaze dribbled over Victor, unafraid of the result of his unsolicited advice. “Ever have a decent word to say about the old lady? Ain’t half careful, man, your lady be done packed and left you with a big-ass gapin’ hole smack dab in the middle of yo’ heart, and you, my friend, ain’t gonna have the ready resources to repair it. Keep talkin’ that yang, Homeboy.” How he pronounced ‘homeboy’ ridiculed Victor’s ears for hours afterwards, male laughter at an eavesdropping table curdling his hunger.

Now, bile in Victor’s stomach spawned the notion that although he rarely had anything pleasant to say about Sharmayne, surprisingly, he did love her and found her physically appealing. He vowed to fill the house with purple hydrangeas and lilacs and find her, wherever she was, and invite her home.

The Friday after he’d been home for one week, disquietude and dread caught up with him in the form of a tall, officially pressed sheriff, who served him with papers that brought tears to the back of his throat before they stood in his eyes and overflowed his heart with shards of a woman he never imagined he’d miss in a thousand years.

***

Passion lived in Nzinga’s fortress, Sharmayne’s spirits knew.

Lying on her back, arms splayed in sleep’s helter-skelter repose, Sharmayne awoke gradually, mind and body yawning, like the morning, every inch of her instantly desiring a replay of last night’s love-making. She luxuriated in the beauty of her magically changed life, and in the way it, like her body, had come into a wondrous wakefulness. Her toes snaked the width of the cozy bed, already knowing as they slithered, the object of their hunger was up and about. Skiing into the warm indentation left by Nzinga’s body in the waterbed, her toes ached to caress Nzinga’s ankles and feet, one of their favorite pastimes.

Slender arms settled for cradling a starched pillowcase, sweetly redolent with the vanilla scent of Nzinga’s body and hair. Sharmayne lay under baby-powdered sheets, listening to another Monday morning symphony of her lover’s presence.

A flush of water, a cascading waterfall, segued into the padding of feet to the vanity, where a pelt, pelt, pelting simulated the music of morning rain.

After the pelting, a whining cabinet creaked and an electric whir followed a soft sucking of teeth, and then gurgled liquid wafted to her ears. Spurts of rain masked footfalls into the walk-in closet. Then, almost imperceptibly, there was the quick click of metal on metal and a soft slap of leather against skin.

Unless Sharmayne muffed her ears, Nzinga couldn’t camouflage her coming.

Would she ever get enough?

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Nzinga grabbed a handful of sheet and yanked it from its tucked-in neatness at the foot of the waterbed and slid her hand underneath the

cotton, aiming for Sharmayne’s ankles. The tiny woman squealed in delight, flailing her arms and straightening then drawing up her legs and skating them out of Nzinga’s grasp, their foreplay making her ‘it’ in a heated game of tag.

“I heard you coming. No fair!”

Nzinga marveled at her raven’s heightened nature, at how perfectly she fit into her muscled embrace. “You hear everything?”

Sharmayne giggled, sheets above her head. “Uh huh, but I’m not sure what you did in the closet.”

“Got a shower gift from me to you. And a promise, you’ll never be the same.”

“Life-altering, huh? Might have to think about that one.”

“Abandon thinking. The objective is to feel. And feel deeply.”

With heavy rains still falling, the squirming bundle fell limp, listening, as Nzinga crawled the sheets and squatted over a humped back, cocooning it, and when she did so, a thickness between the cleft of Sharmayne’s ass made both women shudder. Nzinga lowered the sheets and breathed in the macadamia-perfumed locs. She stroked the frozen shoulders, a purple and beige strap-on, custom-made, fitting perfectly on her washboard waist. Nzinga tapped it against the guitar-shaped curves of her woman’s body. Dark and delightful. The phallic saluted, its cool, bulging head startling Sharmayne.

“Not frightened, are we?” Nzinga kissed the back of Sharmayne’s hands. When Sharmayne shook her head no, thick locs sweeping her shoulders, Nzinga cupped the small chin, and turning it sideways, gently kissed the mouth, sucking her bottom lip. She caressed the neck, the hair, the shoulders, before savoring the sensual delight of a handful of beautiful breasts. The nipples chocolate raisins, Nzinga tasted and nibbled them, until they melted on her tongue.

Sharmayne sighed. Her lashes black butterflies, like the bevy swarming about her heart, making her flesh glow with a sweet heat washing over her entire body, from the curls of her nape to the back of her thighs, every inch of her alive with throngs of quivering for Nzinga’s kiss, for the way she was drawing every drop of flavor out of her, her pussy weeping to have Nzinga finger it, kiss it, and now fuck her with a dick bigger and more colorful than any she’d ever seen…

Nzinga’s fingers massaged her spine, soothing her. Though her heart was beyond soothing. It throbbed with a frenzy that doused the jet skin in a spicy sweat. Everything about the woman made Sharmayne feel so good. Flat on her back now, Nzinga above Sharmayne, their breath in the other’s lungs, the women embraced.

“You…go-ing…in…to-day?”

“Not before you fully experience my gift.”

With kisses slipping down Sharmayne’s spine, her pussy purred prettily, and she gave herself over to being carried to wherever prisoners of love were taken at dawn.

Nzinga stepped into the tub and, maneuvering just enough to permit the cold stream to shock her body first, gradually eased Sharmayne under the deluge, the water beading clear crystals down her back. Sharmayne whimpered and went baby-soft against smooth, strong flanks, their bellies kissing, shapely midnight calves encircling firm golden hips. Soapy hands lathered Sharmayne’s body. Nzinga, gently penning her against the shower’s cold tile, moaned and stroked Sharmayne’s waist, back, and thighs. She wiggled in excitement, the cold and the heat commingling, taking her to the mountaintop to be baptized in Nzinga’s kisses.

Skin soggy, Sharmayne struggled to maintain a grip on Nzinga’s towering slickness. She tittered, slipping and sliding, thighs eventually tiring. To keep her from falling, Nzinga anchored Sharmayne’s weight with her hipbone, the upward motion sending shivers of liquid heat to her hidden pearl. Exhilaration surged between them. Moans kissed Nzinga’s shoulders, teeth nipping the skin over rippling muscles. Desire and wetness melded their flesh, leaving pellets of water powerless to squelch a smoldering racing towards a second coming.

Sharmayne gasped. Nzinga was lifting her up and down, slowly, playfully, and she reveled in the sanctity of her ass in Nzinga’s palms. She kissed her lover’s neck and lips as she felt a saluting stiffness kiss her own body. “Hold on, baby. Tighten your arms around my neck.” Nzinga’s murmuring against her ear made her shiver, and she clamped down on the Amazon, the shower’s tile aghast at her back. Sharmayne let out a soft shriek and leapt for joy. Nzinga was sliding a purple and beige wand into the pink folds of her flower. A tongue flickered over her nipples. A finger thrummed her clit.

And Nzinga’s gift filled her, and she rode it, and Nzinga rocked her, and she cried. It was true.

She belonged to Nzinga, and Nzinga to her.

Nzinga bouncing and fucking her to a variation of rhythms, their energy mounted, sending them into exquisite titillations, one filled, the other filling, until they imploded, together, in a spell of lights and colors and heat and emotion.

“You okay? Didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Only if you can make it hurt more…I’d like that.”

Nzinga laughed. “I can handle that.”

Sharmayne lay prone in a puddle of moisture. It was shameless, but she wanted this woman, Nzinga Edwards, to love her however she wanted, as long as she loved her passionately. Understanding, Nzinga planted a kiss, like an African planting a holder’s post, on the curvature of Sharmayne’s lower back. Then she plucked the CD’s remote from rumpled sheets, where it often hid, like Sharmayne and a book, and, pointing the remote towards a glassed, ivy-adorned, mahogany case, pressed a button and released her personal brand of fuck-me melodies, the first the crooning lushness of Me’ Shell Ndege’Ocello’s aphrodisiac, “Stay.”

Then Nzinga began to play her again, a maestro, this time laying Sharmayne on her belly, unaware she was, of how thoroughly she decamped all memory of Sharmayne ever lying under Victor Naylor, the memory, something that gnawed at her, sometimes, whenever they were in the company of men. But her insecurity dissolved, always, in the love in Sharmayne’s eyes. The woman couldn’t imagine a world outside of Nzinga’

kisses, kisses potent enough to have her, as she was now, climbing their waterbed, a sumptuous morning glory vine creeping toward the sun.

“Who do you love?” Nzinga murmured into the side of Sharmayne’s neck. “Who loves you?” Her breasts sighed against Sharmayne’s back, her pubic hairs tickling the gentle rise of the tiny ebony buttocks. She reached for a plush white towel on a chair and dabbed it along the soft darkness of her lover’s body. Their fingers laced spontaneously, and Sharmayne basked in Nzinga’s aura. A magnet, she pushed upward, slowly, arching her back, signaling Nzinga to rock with her against the cool sheets. The ceiling fan whirred rhythmically. A fine mist of sweat formed on Sharmayne’s upper lip and, as the music they made sizzled, her face against the sheets, rivulets of moisture glazing their skin, causing suction kisses and, remembering the shower, their tempo sliding from light to momentum, she fastened her perspiring arms about amber forearms, her backbone hot against Nzinga’s bosom, and the smack of Nzinga’s dick easing into the tight tunnel of her ass became a never-ending symphony.

Nzinga’s body commanded her, and Sharmayne couldn’t think straight to entertain the question lodged in her locs. She prayed Nzinga wouldn’t stop fucking her, but when Nzinga plunged the phallic into her soft ass, smashing a crescendo that mashed her dazed pearl into the mattress, her body’s seeping honey sweetened the grateful sheets and she lost the power of speech again.

“Who do you love?” Nzinga trilled, low, no threat to Ndege’Ocello’s soulful “Who Is He and What Is He to You?”

Sharmayne heard her and felt her and submitted. To a point.

She allowed Nzinga to play her skillfully. Teeth clamped, she suppressed what Nzinga longed to hear and went with the drumming in her ears a while longer. Complete submission would come, inevitably, as it always did; but for now, she bit her bottom lip, prolonging sweet release for them both.

Nzinga had it like that. So she rotated slowly, until she faced her and rained a flurry of moist, tantalizing kisses on her face and neck, breaking Nzinga’s meditative pose above her. Slowly, methodically, Sharmayne pushed herself into Nzinga, their rhythm a slowed bongo that picked itself up and up, past Sharmayne’s elevated legs, and empty cat, then pounded faster, then beat harder, working itself into a steady, frenzied backdoor thrashing. In no time, Nzinga had her dangling over the edge of the world, right where she wanted her to be.

By the time Nzinga rescued her, breathing hard, and trembling, Ndege’Ocello had graciously stepped aside for the rock-n-roll sass of Melissa Ethridge, whose plea “Don’t You Need?” suffused Nzinga’s insatiable need to taste Sharmayne’s nectar.

“Who do you love?” Nzinga took a rare pearl between her lips. She massaged slender thighs before tossing them over her shoulders. Her tongue lashed a chocolaty clit, lips sucking greedily, mouth consuming sugary lips. Her fingers, thermometers, gauged Sharmayne’s internal fire.

Sharmayne couldn’t control it. She clawed the sheets. At Nzinga’s back. At her hair. At the soft valley between her thighs and hips. Until a scream roiled up from her. Head back, throat exposed, Sharmayne wafted towards a tongue that refused to take silence for any answer and, tensing with satisfaction, knew again the masterful musician Nzinga to be, her sonorous melodies coming from Sharmayne’s pores and pussy.

“Who do you love?”

Sharmayne couldn’t deny her. Forever.

“You!” she screamed. “Oh my god, you! I love you, Nzinga!”

Lips parted, like her thighs, both screaming their pleasure, the small body writhed in flames of liquid fire.

“I love you, too, baby girl.” The Amazon cradled her, their heartbeats one.

Neither woman cared a single iota about the unbridled passion slipping under the raised windows of Nzinga’s fortress in their North Highland neighborhood.

***

On the inaugural Saturday of the National Black Arts Festival, the sky was periwinkle blue. It shimmered with an invisible heat that reflected off the asphalt in the Greenbriar Mall’s parking lot and volleyed it up the bare legs of crowds of Festival-goers. Pinky and Sherrie Ann weaved their way through bands of folks heading towards the mall’s entrance.

“Honey chile, you betta drag your behind on.” Sherrie Ann had to admonish a tarrying Pinky, who strolled leisurely, hips swinging seductive in blue-jean shorts. A white crop top inches below her bust, glittering white flip-flops on her feet, without jewelry or make-up, Pinky was at home in her sensuality. Her A-symmetrical haircut had grown out, and the curly bob that replaced it now threatened to bouffant into something resembling the unconquered territory on Sherrie Ann’s straw-colored head.

“It’s hot as hell out here!”

Pinky snubbed her, stuck a finger into her mouth as if to vomit. “What’s the rush? There’s so much to see at these events, I love them.”

“C’mon, woman, before I have to cuss---some of your cousins stepping on my damn feet like they crazy and no apology to speak of.”

They cruised up the right-hand side of the mall corridor and jockeyed through a knot of kente-clad sisters engaged in a reunion and stopped to admire a display of hand-crafted, hand-painted, resin dolls. Arrayed in elaborate traditional costumes, with braids and soft wiry halos as hairstyles, the dolls were as natural as miniature girls and women.

“Bet Clemmy would love one of these little ladies.” Pinky examined a placard claiming the dolls as Sandra Blake originals. “I should put it on my credit card.” She peeked at another, searching for a price tag. “Girl, it’s a hundred and twenty-five dollars!”

Sherrie Ann frowned and gave her a look of disbelief. “Now, I know you didn’t come way over here thinking these folks traveled further to permit you to rob them slap-happy blind. They done sweated over this stuff, and can’t hand it to you, for peanuts.”

“I know…but…”

“Honey, unless Clemmy came out and said, ‘Mama, I want a Blake doll,’ I say you ought to encourage Homegirl to check in with that stuff-shirt daddy of hers and let him shell out his greenbacks for this doll.” All the while Sherrie Ann spoke, she guided Pinky backward into the milling crowd.

“Would you buy one, seeing how much you collect all kinda sculpture?”

“Yeah, if one could sing and dance and feed my fish and jump up and scratch my big butt when it itched. Uh huh. I’d buy one.”

Pinky laughed, cut her a Girl, shut the hell up look.

“Okay! I’d buy one if I really wanted it; they are nice dolls, but don’t make a decision just yet; you might see something else that catches your eye.” Stopping a few feet ahead, she peered left then right, before pivoting right and plowing towards a dazzling exhibit of African-American sculptures, the first in a long line of exhibits running the length of the mall’s main thoroughfare.

Pinky stared at her girlfriend’s departing back and shook her head; the woman’s living room was buried beneath wood cravings and masks and figurines. But she couldn’t worry herself with that nonsense, not with the delicious aroma of yogurt, candy, and chocolate-covered raisins assailing her nose. Though the last thing she needed was extra weight in all the wrong places. So she checked herself.

Then she meandered down another section of the mall, pausing now and again to finger multicolored ceramics, photography, more clothing, books and jewelry. When she’d purchased a set of seven-dollar copper bracelets for herself, a storybook for Mookey, and an unusual bangle, wide and silver, for Clemmy, she drifted back into a throng of shoppers and, stopping before a partially unoccupied bench, plopped down and crossed her legs and people-watched.

She marveled at the beauty and diversity in the predominantly Black faces and stared at the hairstyles---afros, cornrows, serious weaves, Senegalese plaits, dookey braids, straight wraps, pressed do’s, twisted locs, natural and permed, and wrapped kufi-crowned heads. Did the brothers always rival the sisters in clothing and headdress, many decked in loose-fitting, cool-looking African chic? After twenty minutes, she got up and looked around for Sherrie Ann.

Tucking her possessions under one arm and surveying more displays, she resolved to catch up with her talking girlfriend a little later. Right now, something was telling her to peep at one final exhibition.

Paintings, mounted in ornate frames, metal and wood, hung from a draped contraption behind a black, velvet-cloaked counter. A tall, good-looking, dark-skinned brother stood behind the counter, talking with a short stocky woman in a flowing dress. He was handing her a large bag Pinky knew whatever was inside she couldn’t afford, so she wended past a clump of teenagers with British accents scrutinizing a painting of a wearied black man leaning against a wall. She cocked her head in contemplation. What had drawn the kids’ spellbound attention? Wouldn’t have been Taylor staring at that picture, but maybe Clemmy. What looked like a nude sister painted in effulgent pastels, bringing to mind watercolors she’d purchased for Mookey, jumped out at her. She grinned and shook her head. That would be the painting her Taylor would deem tight.

Continuing to browse the exhibition unaccosted, Pinky floated from painting to painting, which seemed to oppose one another, watercolors now, brilliant with varied hues, and then charcoals, muted with subtlety, and always of familiar Black faces. Scenes. And emotions. One painting, no, a series of paintings, beckoned her, summoning her to communion with them, the intimacy of their women, common African-American women, some young, some older, alive with the pain and joy of living in their features and bodies and personalities. She studied the sequence of eight paintings, positioned in a thoughtful combination.

Astonished at the familiarity of the exchange between the images and her, she was transfixed, remembering, instantly understanding something of what could’ve reached out and held the teens rooted in their footsteps before a simple painting.

The women whispered.

Of secrets from her childhood. Of loneliness. Of longing and the compulsion to be wanted. Brown and black and hazel gazes stared back at her from breathing, still faces; faces that soundlessly chuckled at her tomboy appearance when she accompanied her daddy looking any kinda way; faces that bided her scoot back on a sofa and thumb a magazine while Earl Taylor’s speechlessness screamed under modest moans; faces that glowed over plates of beans and cornbread and salt pork and invited her not to nurse the food but eat it; faces that censured her whines and apprehensions when fast afternoons faded into slow evenings and tumbled into slower nights; faces that favored the wintry beauty of Grandma Taylor and Miz Too-Sweet; and most poignantly, faces that connoted specters of a face that might’ve resembled her own.

“They tend to wrench you right up out of yourself, don’t they?” a disembodied voice intoned behind her, startling her. “One woman told me yesterday they’re the very semblance of her mother and aunts---until it’s uncanny.”

Still under the womanly spell of the paintings, Pinky nodded slowly without turning to recognize the speaker. “Yeah, like they’re casting spells. The more I look, the more I see things I didn’t notice a second ago. And the strange thing about all of them is I know them, I really know them, but then again I don’t.”

The voice hummed and she went on. “These women was all I knew as mothers when I was coming up. By the same token, I didn’t have a mother, I mean, not one there every day, you know, cooking breakfast, fixing lunch, kissing your booboos, going to PTA, fussing you out, sticking up for you, and tucking you in at night.” She crossed her arms and outlined her lips with one forefinger. Lost in the pictures, she swallowed rising waves of bitterness and blinked back corrosive tears.

“Hey, it’s all right.” An unexpected hand on her shoulder soothed her. “I have happier paintings that might lighten your mood. Sorry my ladies conjured such melancholy memories.” The phantom of the exhibit, his voice crisp and up North, pointed a well-formed arm to frames of dark children carousing on a corner block.

The admission turned her head. “Your ladies? You painted these?”

“Afraid so, but I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll be flying away now?”

Why would she?

It was the tall brother she’d seen chit-chatting with the short woman when she first approached the exhibit. He smiled, his face suspended above hers. He was disturbingly handsome, the kind of fine Sherrie Ann would say, deserved some pussy on looks alone. She couldn’t arrest her gaze, couldn’t thwart her body from wanting to flutter into his arms, her heart abruptly evincing any number of reasons why he wouldn’t be a flawless fit in her embrace.

“Hi,” he said, still smiling and appreciating what he saw and reading the undisputed language in her eyes. “I’m Grant Johnson, the guilty visiting artist whose work has profoundly wrecked your morning.”

They shook hands and he imprinted her features on his painter’s retina, where he’d keep them, until he sifted through the images of beauty there and brought them out of safekeeping for memorializing on canvas. “So nice to have affected you, Miss---?” he hesitated, leaving the unfinished question dripping on the air between them, a balm. Fragrant and inexorable. Like her presence.

“Taylor.” She offered her prettiest smile and her hand. “My family and friends call me Pinky.” Invisible, the balm oozed along the surface of her skin, its aroma intoxicating. “Nice to meet you, too, Grant Johnson, the man with two last names.”

“As in General Grant, sometimes, too.”

“Ain’t never met no real-live painter.” The admittance plummeted through the balmy sweetness between them and reverberated a timbre a brother like this one wouldn’t want to get used to; the flatness of her tone and the childishness of what she’d said upsetting her, making her wish she could magically ingest the words.

“That’s perfect. Never met a real-live princess.”

They laughed. And he walked her around his kingdom narrating back story for his work. And she reigned in the sun of his easy talk and possessive nearness. And they exchanged explosive glances. And the episode of their love played out in their heads like a movie.

Then Pinky bumped into time. It was already past 1:45 p.m. on Grant’s gold Timex. She remembered she’d promised Miz Too-Sweet she wouldn’t be late getting back so that she’d be there when that Free chick brought her and Mookey and Mr. Will back from a Festival event at her bookstore. She thanked Grant for his time.

“The blessing was mine,” he said. “Thank you for being…here.”

She turned to go, and then hugged him. “See you.”

“Hope so.” His words were more prayer than parting.

p.s.
I AM a novelist, short story writer, blogger, and poet. Please look for my book on a shelf near you SOON! All praise to the Divine!

A Winding Ribbon Ripples

More and more of late, I pause in the middle of doing one of the myriad tasks in my day and feel a magic carpet of rippling tingles vibrating deep within me. Eckhart Tolle, in his book, A New Earth, would say I am sensing my inner space. Mind-boggling and delicious, this sensing of my inner space is akin to a feeling of utter well being, of knowing that everything is as it is and all is as it should be. I am literally being animated from the inside out, an invisible energy flooding me with unadulterated joy.


Each time I feel it, I realize all over again the bliss of knowing that I am eternally connected to the Divine with a visceral realization far deeper than mere concepts can convey. Far deeper than what it might mean to recall a Biblical verse in a time of perceived peril or a line from a favorite poem when I need to be poetically galvanized or a delectable scene from a treasured novel during those times I want to be plunged sensually into another time and place.


Sometimes I close my eyes to more clearly feel the ripples, which reminds me of hanging on to the crossbar of a roller coaster car, the wind slicking back my locs, eyelashes bunched on my cheeks, a frozen smile plastered across my face. To someone on the ground, I might appear to be praying for the ride's end. But, inside, I'm basking in wondrous waves of exultation, fingers clutching steel to fully feel the flow of pure energy.


At other times, my eyes are saucers, round and watchful, alert, like my body, quietly waiting to give itself to the quivering. I am patient, but it comes, it seems, faster, when I inhale deep, luxurious breaths and exhale them in slow, calming exhalations. I air myself in the same way Sabelah, my Bosnian neighbor, tirelessly flaps throw rugs in front of the family's condo every morning. No matter what drama shifts and changes incessantly at the forefront of my life, as long as I remember to honor Presence, the energy that is Consciousness remains consistently unchanging. Some spiritual teachers refer to it as Awareness or Love. Whatever you term it, it is the Universal intelligence behind all that is, behind the seen and the unseen.


I am waking to Consciousness and its power to lift me on a winding, rippling ribbon that holds me in comfort and security and ecstasy, in the ever present now. For me, it's been a process. Not a single epiphany of insight, as it may be for others. My experience has been bursts of extended awareness, of Consciousness opening itself and allowing me to perch on an invisible windowsill, taking everything in as a Silent Observer, awed at the Divine opening me to Presence.


Now that I think about it, I am not only gently riding that winding ribbon rippling. In a very real sense, I am that winding ribbon. Yes, I am opening to an indelible truth. Simply put, I AM. Same as I posted on my Facebook wall a few days back. It was my spiritual experience. Nothing followed the words, for the nouns that might have followed would have been mere form. Concepts. Thoughts of how I envisioned myself in my mind, where my Ego sits high and looks low, poised to jet from its throne to right any affront something or someone may have brought against it. And if affronts aren't bountiful in the present moment, the ego will help itself to re-lived ones, of course, in the past and ever fertile ones that may occur in the future.


One day I'll write in more detail regarding this journey of my unique awakening to Consciousness. Right now, my right eye is complaining. Again, my body rails against staying up all night. It knows I will be cranky in the morning, when I rise earlier than usual to prepare for traffic court. Aaah! Another adventure in this golden life. But, hilariously, Thursday is right now, as the clock on this computer says 2:13 AM. While I was lost in doing the small things, (passionately crafting mental concepts into language and going downstairs to pour myself remaining sips of my orange tea), Thursday morning crept into my space.


Her Valentine's basket serenaded me with assorted teas and chocolates, a beautiful lavender candle (my favorite), a cute chocolate fuzzy bear and a red, leather-bound JOURNAL. If I reach for the dictionary on the carpet behind me and locate the word "thoughtful," I'll meet her before Friday, when we go for green tea and plum wine.....


It's strange. My intent with this posting was to write about the lovely anticipation of meeting a woman, whom I have never physically met, although she informed me in aurally vibrant narration, that we exchanged a "Good evening" nod at a Charis reading for an anthology in which my work was published. Could she be a winding ribbon rippling into my now? The anticipation of our first hello is frothy with champagne bubbles. I talk. She talks. We share. Laugh. Watch our roads diverge and converge. In lyrical Friday evening conversations. Perceptive, a few times piercingly so though never painfully, she is aware of my presence and falling away, in the briefest of moments. Do I like that? Hmmm. Gingerly bringing my attention to the disconnect, she takes my hand and guides me back to myself, to our talk. So, yes. Claro que si. A mi me gusta.




TheGoldenGoddess
February 25, 2010

Sensuality...

I am a sensual creature. I make no apologies for this truth, as I am not in the business of refuting the Divine's handiwork, which made me this way, including it in my DNA. In truth, I warmly accept the multiplicity of this personality, this tour de force, this art that I find to be...ME.



Sensuality floods me when I dance. And it doesn't matter, perchance, if the music, the beat, is fast or slow. I just let go. Fall back. Am subsumed in a cocoon of intoxicating waves, of vibes alive with liquid fire so searing...it incinerates me, and I am as tropical as these orange letters, as vibrant as tangerine leggings, as fluid as a russet sunset above Hawaiian waters.



The words that flow from my pen or gloss my lips drip in sensuality, I've noticed, even if what I write or speak isn't particularly sensual in subject. You see, I accept it's simply the way I move in the world. My feet seek, naturally, sensual shoes, be they plastic with clear heels or penciled toes or pink bows. I'm real. Strip me of these shoes and, if I'm feeling draped in moonlight and ermine, I rise to my toes and fathomed stilettos are the way I go, swaying to runway reels in my locs. Now, some may allow this sensuality could possibly be replaced with terms that earn the connotation of conceit or narcissism. To that, I grin, allowing others their verbal frivolity, since I adore tossing words up and running under them to feel their eloquence on my skin, my tongue, my sensibilities, much like, on a scorching day, children engaged in watery play under Centennial Park sprinklers.



Instead of posing a question to a mirror, I asked the Universe, one sweltering summer night: "What is the epitome of sensuality in the myriad stretches of your galaxies?" The response drifted as soft as sapphires in my earlobes and about my neck, and I could not defy its gentle reply while the silent stars stared. "Woman." I blinked, I think, in the inky eve, and wondered if it erred. Yet the repeat of the nocturnal treat came again, so eternally sweet to my soul. "Woman. I would know, for I made her so. Consider the effervescence of her smile when beguiled. With one look, she annotates your deepest core, gives you back to yourself if you walk with her along the shore of trust. Her strength, her agility, and her generosity scatter the dust in your heart, even kiss away the cobwebs if, from your life, you've banished everyday art. A woman's loving nature is not easily effaced, although she will erase what persists on battering her inner space. The world's painters have pined to capture her face, the power of her mind, the paradise in the slope of her belly, the electric blue expanse of her soul, the guitar in her silhouette, the passion of her lips, her hips, the nurturing grace in her embrace, and the depths of her desire to create on an easel of erotic intent if intrigued. So, go and swim in the sea of sensuality. It is your birthright. From it, never flee like a gazelle in flight, my Queen of the Night."


So if you care to dance, Amor, I will unveil my smile, and we can light the midnight skies while awaiting sunrise. Entiendes?


TheGoldenGoddess
Monday, February 22, 2010

A MERCY: Toni Morrison's Treat to Literary Peeps

No other author does it for me quite like Toni Morrison. When I sit to imbibe one of her thirst-quenching masterpieces, I vanish within a world that is so exquisitely honed, so well detailed that I am left to the power of her almighty pen to walk through haunted houses, weep alongside friends who have known love and loss, stand up through the heaviness of longing for blue eyes and shake the acidic bite of a nickname like Milkman Dead.

I loved Paradise to a tender distraction: the cast of women in the book stealing my heart and from my schedule exacting hours of blazing bliss. Tar Baby yet sings its haunting refrains after our separation, one from the other, and I promise myself tonight: I shall find it and fall in love anew. Perhaps this is my Toni Morrison Year. Jazz sits on my shelf, either in my office or in a basket under my boudoir windows or on my overage shelves in my garage (I just hope I haven't loaned it to someone who has yet to return it...as I must confess, I've yet to read it. So, too, Love, which is opened before me now, like a lover in lace and maroon cotton, demurely present, patiently awaiting my touch, my kiss. And I shall comply with both, eventually.

Right now I've chosen to answer the call of Morrison's latest novel, which is two years old now. Received it as a precious birthday gift from my beloved sisterfriend, Anita Lynn Contreras. We have been reading buddies since we saucily strolled Tuskegee Institute's campus centuries ago. Why, you might ask, have I just come to this novel? After all this time? Who knows? Time spent engrossed in other things? Writing? Exercising? Living? Loving? Dreaming? Breaking up? Could be any number of things. The reality is, though, we get to what we get to in Divine time.

I shall relish A MERCY for Black History Month. Will devour and digest it before Sunday, February 28, 2010, so that my beloved friends and I can pay homage to it and Toni Morrison on Facebook. If you'd care to join us, please befriend me at www.Facebook.com/ClaudiaMoss.

Already, the opening woos me. "Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark--weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more---but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth."

With that, I am plunged into the 1680s, the Americas experiencing the beginning of the slave trade, the land rife with hatred, religious pangs, class conflicts, and instantly, excitedly, my mind conjures a quarry of questions. Who is speaking? Who or what is responsible of the person's fear in the telling? What has this unknown narrator done? What stranger things happen all the time everywhere? A confession? Has someone been killed? Can someone read? A slave? Hmmmm. And the curtains are lifted on the magic and majesty of Toni Morrison, writing with a definite assurance of a Nobel Prize writer, who brings us into the heartland of America and the people who land, are brought and are born there. In 167 pages, Toni Morrison will carry me on a journey, I'm certain, I shall long remember.

A master stylist, Morrison will teach me, mold me, beguile me, serenade me with the skills of her talent. And I will be, all over again, her willing student.

Lord, I love the way Morrison does what she does: the artistry, the poetic prowess in prose, the scanty dialogue, the workings of the characters' mind and the mind of the times that carry the story. Our first narrator confirms, "Let me start with what I know for certain." Mind you, before that is a discussion of signs and the countless meanings of those signs. But she comes for me, takes me by the hand and, beside Morrison, in sync, I am with her when she writes: "The beginning begins with the shoes." Afterwards, our narrator comes into a clearer focus. She is a girl, with "prettify ways" and the "hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady" and has "a minha mae" mama.

And that does it for me...I'm good to ride! Take me away, My Mind-blowing Scribe.

TheGoldenGoddess

2/1/2010