sailor master-myth

A translucent mustard-stained chariot driven by a grass-puffing seafarer wearing a bouquet of white roses around his neck is waiting on the street of new night.  He tosses his hair flop away from his eyes and my feet disappear.  I notice that the roses are tied with fancy macrame, in networks of webs.  I drift towards the car, spread my fingers and Chinese lanterns drop like yo-yos from between my fingers.  His hand reaches out with long fingers, surrealist balletdancers, touching the tips of my hair that is a halo of captured sunlight.  One of the albino peacock feathers I braided in slides into his hand and a massive swell rushes over us, replete with a stir of seagulls wings beating the air, turning the wind.
Fossilized amber Ain’t Jazz playing hot behind the magnet pull.
“I’ve been ingesting roses for awhile,” I say.
I plop in next to him on simple cloth and grin, some wild iron horse you have, double-wide, with a silver filigree heart and anchor rearview mirror dangle doing a sway.  Great, Maxfield Parish dreamscene.
He is hanging out with a maraschino cherry stem like a toothpick when he speaks his teeth spark slow stars and clutch at the lisp parts.  He drives liquidly.
When we slow and ease into a spot a streetlamp light hits his moon earring.  I stay dug-into the velveteen steep.
“The other day,” I say, “I saw 2 swans swimming out from a wooded green collection of boats or houses that looked like boats.  They glided under a walk bridge and then, a week later, it was a brighter blue day and I saw 1 swan.”
I can see him dimple and I drink it in but he says, “Come on.”
Okay.
We stride in like we’re riding a wonky surf that rips and curls and then wanders back like it may have left something behind, but it’s not sure.  Centuries crunch together, corners rounding life puffed cereal.  Our Lady of Guadalupe rotates her auric splendor in neon bursts among the bottles on the shelf.  We say “Hey,” I sidle on up alongside kind of hung back can’t talk about things, just watching the mirrors and playing with flowers, getting into the music.  I feel a light touch on my lower back, one look and bobbing back out to “the car,” as his friend refers to it.  Sphynxes up front, fox in the back.  My sensitive eyes sting from the smoke.  Absolutely a wild story, a master-myth of sorts: The Eagle.
“Did you know that eagles live to be either 35 or 36 or 70 years old?  When they’re about 35 they fly to a mountain top and proceed to pluck off their feathers, peck off their talons and then bang their beaks against the rock.  If they can survive the next 2 weeks, they grow a new beak and talons and fresh feathers and can live another 35 years.”
My mouth drops and enchantment enters.
At the Time Travel Mart I wander the aisles the air is sage and salt, my hair gets bleached just standing around.  I need a spiritual lighter or a box of matches with a diorama of my future and some sour gummy worms and a mini bottle of Elderflower liquor.