If I was in love
I’d stuff my pockets apples ten
And pebbles two, then two again,
And ribbon twenty-seven yards,
One shoebox brimming crystal shards,
And marbles fifty, puppies one,
And gators... well... I’d better none.1
Eleven notebooks scribbled green
And colored pencils, say fifteen,
A quote by Robert, one by Bill,
And one by Maya’s ripping skill,
A matchbox holding seven shells,
Around my ankles – seven bells.2
#3
“Security alert, security alert...” the horns started blaring all over the airport and uniformed police officers started chasing passengers out of the way with impending Armageddon on their tails. “Out of the way, out of the way...” they shouted, dropping sandwiches and pulling handguns, shotguns, riotguns from hip, thigh, armpit, sock, helmet holsters. I tried to move out of the way, my bulk hardly responding as panic started sinking into me as well. “You there stop!...” ...they were aiming their guns at somebody, I did my best to move faster... “You there, stop or we open fire!...” and tens of clicks of various metals and different calibers made a noise as if a field teeming with crickets started a new year’s concerto in mid May. I suddenly froze, something was wrong here... I was alone in the middle of the marble floor, various uniforms in various crouching or lying positions aiming some lethal piece of iron towards me, at least twenty five manufacturers about to make a fortune from selling the additional lead needed to fill in the emptying loads after some of these would fill my body... there was at least one bazooka there and a Derringer proudly held by an elderly Texan civilian (judging by his hat) which reminded me somehow of president Bush.4
A figure extracted itself from the surrounding crowd, a black woman, huge, gigantic, imposing and imperial, probably a general if to judge by the various shiny stuff on her shoulders, and advanced towards me holding in one hand a thick plastic shield and in the other Dirty Harry’s gun.5
“On the floor, on the double!...” her voice was not as imposing as her stature but the gun in her hand was. I tried to maneuver left, right, no way I could have laid down on the floor by sitting or bending, I was too stiff and my middle too bulky. In desperation I was about to let myself fall down when she screamed...”Don’t... move!...” and she signaled an aide to her side, conferring for a few seconds. “OK, no sudden movement, we don’t want nobody hurt, do we?” she added in imperfect English. Seeing as I did not respond (how could I with a mouth full of unswallowed saliva threatening to choke me), she continued “OK, start emptying your pockets... slowly... one by one and one hand only, I want to see your hands all the time... understand me?” I understood enough and could move just enough to nod my head, and started lowering my right hand towards my trousers’ right pocket. I had a lot of pockets to go through, and more...6
An unending series of clicks and snaps and yowls and thumps started raining around me as I, slowly as ordered, started emptying my pockets, my shirt, my trousers, my waist, my shoes. Frowns changed into smiles followed by chuckles or exclamations of disgust, everybody’s gun (except the Texan’s) starting to lose its tension except for one moment when everybody jumped one step back and raised their gun up again for a few seconds. But this passed too. The last click to the floor, then quiet. 7
I’ve never seen a mountain previously hanging its jaw so low. She was frozen for a few moments, as if her command reflected from me onto her, then shuddered awake again, dropped her shield with a thunder to the floor, holstered her gun and approached me. She carefully sidestepped the gator (don’t ask...) who was busy scratching his head with his rear foot, then turned his belly up waiting for my shoe to scratch it. The puppies kept snapping at her ankles, hanging to the cloth every time she lifted her foot till she carefully put it down again so as not to step on them. She moved around me twice from right to left, then twice from left to right while her deputies were busy counting and registering the stuff around me. She made a sign and someone brought two chairs over, one for me and one for her, and she just sat there staring at me with incredulity, mirth, sarcasm, pity, rapture, serenity, and other synonyms and antonyms. She picked up Maya’s quote and kept looking down at it and up at me, as if she was one of those toys that keep nodding in the back of cars.8
“It is not allowed to bring apples into the country, you know? I will have to fine you for that. Let’s see...” and she took the list from the guy who just finished it. “So you have here twenty five apples, seventeen pebbles various sizes, one as big as a football helmet, three hundred thirty three yards of silk ribbon, three shoeboxes with no shoes but filled with broken colored church glass... you are lucky I didn’t hear of any churches vandalized around here..., five hundred seventy nine marbles, some of them probably mine lost long ago...” she smiled hugely which was, I guess, a good sign... “twenty two notebooks with green illegible scribbles, ninety nine colored pencils, some with broken tips, pieces of paper with quotes by Frost, by Shakespeare, by Poe, by Byron, by Angelou...” she lifted her head an looked at me long and hard... “a matchbox with seventeen shells, thirteen bells around your ankles, three live gone mad puppies, and one nine foot long alligator that missed being a belt and thinks of himself a brother to the puppies. Man, but do you have a problem...”9
She stood up, I stood up as well because I am polite by nature, she came towards me and suddenly hugged me... I felt being swallowed in the bosom of Abraham, warm, protected, loved, my bones breaking... wasn’t surprised to see her name was Sarah.10
“Man, but do you have a problem...” she repeated herself... “...man you are in love... madly so. Now take your stuff and go before I change my mind...” She stuffed though the Maya quote in her breast’s pocket, well, I did not insist, I had more of it.11
I started filling my pockets with the marbles, and pebbles, and puppies, the gator around my waist... in about ten minutes I was ready, and left to sounds of cheers and whistles and hat throwing. Only the old Texan seemed unconvinced and made a sign like... we’ll meet again... 12
She waited on the other side, steaming, impatient.13
“What happened to you, I am waiting here for more than two hours?”14
“You’ll never believe what happened to me...” I answered, and she did her best to forgive me by jumping into my arms and taking over my breath... Where are those cops when you need them? was my last coherent thought as I waddled my way to her car and Elysium took over soon after. I guess she was right, that cop lady, I was madly in love.15
#16
If you were in love... with me
You’d stuff my pockets apples ten
And pebbles two, then two again,
And ribbon twenty-seven yards,
One shoebox brimming crystal shards,
And marbles fifty, puppies one,
And gators... well... you’d better none.17
Eleven notebooks scribbled green
And colored pencils, say fifteen,
A quote by Robert, one by Bill,
And one by Maya’s ripping skill,
A matchbox holding seven shells,
Around my ankles – seven bells.18
So she started stuffing my pockets with thirty-seven apples, twenty-two pebbles, three of them the size of a football helmet... well, I guess you start getting the picture...
Author notes
she was here 
i am going there time for some light hearted writing
What did you think? Please comment!
Comments
1 - 25 of 25
-
"You really got me, you really got me goin' now..." Hmmm...Methinks the Scribe has it bad, in a very good way. Funny...your first stanza made me think you've been peeking inside my box of treasures. I have collected many stones, of varying hues & sizes. I grew up with the sustenance of mostly apples. I have some pieces of crystal, one of which I keep in my purse. I have always been enchanted by the sea & have many shells, too. I love puppies. Nearly all critters, actually...Gators, not so much. I saw a few of 'em in the 18 months I lived in Louisiana. I kept going 50 mph in the other direction. I have a picture of Bill hanging over my desk. Maya came to the college where I worked in the library to give a lecture, at the behest of my favorite professor, in the early 1980's. I had to work, since I was the night supervisor. I wrote a poem for her, though. My professor came in the next day, bearing a notice of the lecture with the inscription, "Wanda Lea...Write On!!!" signed by Ms. Angelou herself. Hurricane Andrew ate it & all 5,000 poems (typed & originals alike) I had written as of 1988 (I've written more, as if it wasn't noticeable), along with losing irreplaceable family photos & other cherished things. Ohhh...by the way...did I mention I love your writing, Scribe??? Wanda
beginning: 5, language: 5, plot: 5, ending: 5, dialog: 5, characters: 5.
-
-
oh, that sounds TERRIBLY sad, wanda girl. i think i would have been close to commiting suicide if such a lose would have befell me. really lost it all? thank you for telling me such niceties about my writing, my friend
-
-
waddling to the car...lol my favorite part. such a picture to imagin; someone waddle with so much in their pockets.
Connie-
ending: 5.
-
thank you buki for the link, it is much appreciated. yes, i promise to continue my journey of words and of love with the one who inspires my writes and guides my heart (and who, for one week now, has proven to me that heaven has moved location to MA, hence my “silence”
) . thank you for your appreciation and for the honorific title .
-
aw...*bats eyelashes* lol....no no no, the pleasure if all mine and so much, i want to paste this on my author's page and make you the poet of the year! you have overwhelmed me with your words...honest
be well and continue your journey of words,
buki
-
dear gnd, of course love is for you, just don’t look too hard, it is on its way coming your way and when it’s gonna hit you... ... thank you for your wonderful words, my friend
-
my dear buki, i have a very small collection of comments waiting to be engraved on a plate of gold and hung next to my kid’s medals . yours has just joined this collection. so few leave this kind of heartfelt comment, i am simply overjoyed and about to write a thanks letter to the gods of statistics for guiding your ‘click’ . thank you immensely my friend.
-
thank you my friend, mainly for YOUR smile (hey, I think we share the same muse though it is certainly a different woman )
-
thanks for visiting and commenting
-
wow, what a nice compliment my friend... many many thanks (and of course, i agree with you )
-
This is soo pretty !!! very very pretty!!! i want to be inlove yet apples rot, puppies die, marbles get lost . . . and my hope fades away everyday . . . make be believe love can be possible now a days cuz i feel its just not for me cuz i haven't found one to love and to love me in return . . .great write very rare yet it was simply a masterpiece!!
lots of hugs and kisses GND -
if this doesn't become a movie, i'm making it one
i am remarkably impressed...flabbergasted...filled with giggles and yet so serious....your imagination is wonderful, it is something i have been looking for in a poet...many seem to pass that by and glance and smile and well, why not take that which we love and use it? you have impressed me, floored me....
I need to fall in love just to come to half of this...i might even have to do it twice
best wishes for your life, your poetry, and your love,
buki
-
wow... I mean wow. It was flowing and then random and WOW. I really liked it. Im glad I read it cause it brought a smile to my face.
-
beautiful... i'm leaving it at that
-
that was probably the coolest thing I have seen on all poetry yet.... I am so impressed by it... It would be absolutly hilarious to see that... You should make a movie... Honestly thats what love is really about! lol
-
touché... guess we'll better move to im...
-
With or without you in there?
-
well, how are the american jails from the inside?
-
Promise?...
-
this and probably more...
-
OMFGoddness... is this what will happen next week? ...
-
hey, sonja, finally a deserved gold , so thankful to you for this compliment, my friend
-
hey, tell me when you get to that first million ...just watch me, you will see it in real life now i have to work hard i see (that's unfair) to surpass this one what a compliment... each time, lolol. rarely do i have a triple big smiley in one answer, so many my thanks, jenn...
-
I would like to be there to see this picture myself lol. I can visualize you there on the floor, with all of your pockets... This is perfect, much more than perfect... I said that I am not going to be surprised with your scribles anymore, but now, without a contest, you deserved a Gold. Bravo maestro.
~Sonja~ -
APPLUAD! APPLUAD!
*gasp*
It's so beautiful, mimiagatha! I want to see that in rea life, something as wonderfully creative and romantic and poetic in life, before my eyes.
I could easily see this all happening, from each point of view from each person present.
By far my favourite of yours...even though I have those often...
*reads ten million times*
TOTALLY BOOKMARKED!
♥ Jenn
Adding your comment:
1 - 25 of 25
