Monday, March 18, 2024

Poetry Journal Oct. 7, 2013

 

Oct. 7, 2013

 Scared?  Yes, of course.

You don’t come face to face with your mortal enemy and not feel fear, the tightness in the throat, the extra beat of heart the closer she gets, mouth so dry even my teeth hurt, not grinding, not that kind of scared, just a lost kind of scared, what to say, if anything, where to look anywhere but where she is, each stare from her stabbing, drawing no blood, just pain – a year not enough time to heal my self-inflicted wounds or more so, the ones I caused, my fingers clutching my camera until my knuckled turned white, as I wait out for something I expected to happened, but doesn’t, won’t, as she floats here and there, like a bumble bee, stinger me just to look at, to be seen, as I wait out the time for it all to begin, then end, so I an crawl home, bleeding, just not bleeding, scared, but I know not what of.


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And yes she can dance Oct. 6, 2013

  

I supposed I noticed earlier that she has gotten into posting video, yet I was still surprised by her latest offering.

It makes me wonder if this is the direction she intends to pursue to further her career.

The latest video wasn’t even on her regular YouTube site, but part of a personal one that I rarely check.

Although she continues to post occasional poems, she hadn’t posted a “real video” since the beginning of the year -- and that she had posted to her Facebook page.

For the most part these early videos on her private YouTube were short comic things, while her regular YouTube account had most of her music stuff (the last of which was posted over the summer of 2012 in reaction to the death of a close friend.)

 As “clever and elusive” as she once claimed me to be, she still checks in on my blogs and videos, and I can’t help wondering if this is a kind of message, too, warning me that she’s still watching what I’m doing in case I do something she doesn’t like.

Seeing her at the congressman’s event yesterday seemed to confirm her hostility towards me, perhaps fed by what she perceives I am posting.

I’m not saying this is definitely the case since we did not speak, and it was difficult to interpret her stares or know what transpired between her and her friend in the purple dress. But I’m convinced the Public Safety Director’s actions may have been motivated by her – if she did not order him directly, then he acted on a perception of me that she fostered – much in the way she won the sympathy of our former temporary boss when she played up her fears about her Brooklyn stalker.

This is my perception of the events, although I hope I’m wrong. I hope she was simply as startled at seeing me there as I was seeing her (this was our first face to face meeting since that “I don’t hate all men,” comment in the office a year ago.

One thing that concerns me is her mention of problems she is having with her voice, more than a concern maybe, since that is an extremely important part of her life or used to be. Perhaps the fact that her most recent video deals with dance, not singing is a sign of a change of priorities again.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into all of this, because the video isn’t much different from those thousands of teenage girls post when bottled up in their rooms at home, yet compelling in a herky jerky kind of way.

But since she is subtle it is hard to know if she is pulling people’s chains or merely having fun.

Yet seeing her in the flesh again only made me realize just how alone she must feel, despite her long list of friends on Facebook


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Poetry Journal Oct. 6, 2013



 

Oct. 6, 2013

 

She should not be here, this genuflection, this vast apology to a congressman she plotted to destroy, the vindicated virgin mayor making amends with the naming of a school, and I sent to cover it, thinking it was safe, thinking even she would not have nerve enough to show her face, yet she did, not just brazen, defiant, on the periphery of it all when they (the masters of this universe) refused to let her do the job the Virgin Mayor hired her to do, saddled with a camera and an intense sense of isolation, an insider forced to look in from the outside while others celebrated, staring at me as if I am to blame, if not for this, then for some other imagined indiscretion, her dog, snapping at my heals (perhaps at her direction) one more of those powerful people she collected to protect her, used as a weapon when she needs to


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Sunday, March 17, 2024

When old friends meet Oct. 5, 2013

 

 

She came in with her entourage – a flaky girlfriend and the public safety director, but for the most part didn’t seem part of the crowd.

When I say flaky, I mean really flaky, and they huddled together on the sidewalk outside the school.

 Frankly, I was shocked she showed up at all since she had – while working for us – tried to destroy the man of the hour, the congressman for whom the school was being renamed.

To my surprise, she was not dressed up as I had expected (white shirt, Capri pants, to look the part of official photographer I suppose), But her blonde bimbo friend had dressed up, purple gown and high heels.

I saw them before they saw me, quickly turning away so I missed her expression when she finally caught sight of me on the sidewalk twenty feet away from them.

But a glance back saw them in an intense conversation, all looking in my direction, and several times, she repositioned herself, so it was impossible for me to avoid seeing her, even when I was conversing with someone else.

When I entered the lobby with the crowd, so did she.

I eased through the door to the auditorium to get an unobstructed photo of the band practicing. Something she had just done.

At this point, the public safety director ordered me out of the auditorium, whether or not at our poet’s direction, I can’t say.

I spoke to the security guard and then called the congressman’s PR person telling her there was going to be a problem with me getting into the affair without a press pass.

I followed the TV crew back into the auditorium, half expecting to get arrested.

Eventually, we all wound up back in the lobby to wait for the official start of the ceremony. She clung to her flaky girlfriend, I clung to the TV crew until the politicians that including the Virgin Mayor and the freeholder, the man his son had hacked, came in.

The freeholder later claimed she glared at him as if she might have an invading army.

Finally, I went back into the auditorium to take more pictures, as did she, even though only a few people had yet settled into the seats.

She was apparently gathering photos for historic preservation. None eventually wound up on her web page.

As more people arrived, I met with a guy from the county with whom I chatted near the rear of the auditorium.

Once or twice, I saw our poet hovering nearby, just as she sometimes had during those excruciating days in the aftermath of our falling out, now more than a year later.

You would think that after more than a year since the last fiscal contact, she would feel less enraged, a point that shocked me as I stood there and got the feeling that she was daring me to look back at her. I did not. Eventually, her flaky friend settled in the lobby just outside the door where I could see her, and she could see me. My poet friend might well have been there, too, but she remained out of view if she was. Once the ceremony started my poet friend and I made our way towards the front, me to the aisle wall to the left of the stage, she to a chair near the front, although now oddly all by herself.

I never saw her flaky friend again.

For the most part, my poet friend remained across the auditorium from me. We both made our way to the front of the stage to take pictures, and then retreated to our respective corners like boxes waiting for the next round to begin.

Only once did we stand side by side only I didn’t notice until I looked over my photos later. A few times when she moved up the aisle towards the read of the auditorium she seemed to glance at me. I deliberately looked elsewhere.

At one point, she touched the Hometown freeholder on the shoulder. I didn’t know if she knew him or not. He later said he did not. But he’s such a womanizer, I would not have been surprised if he was lying about it.

After the ceremony, she took a number of posed pictures, but even as the town’s “official photographer,” she didn’t have exclusive access and had to squeeze between the mob of media.

I saw her only briefly after that, taking pictures. She did not appear to notice me when I left.

With the exception of the cop trying to throw me out, the whole affair seemed less hostile than I thought it would be – although I’m puzzled that she would have any feelings negative or positive towards me after a year of virtually no contact.

I’m imagine she must have been a bit startled to see me when she first arrived with her friends.

She did not come across as an official at this event, and in fact, I later learned from the congressman’s PR person that at rehearsal, she attempted to direct how the ceremony would go, but was told she could not, and so I got the feeling that she was isolated from the events and for the most part sat by herself, making a few attempts to talk to officials, but seemed even remote from them.

This makes me think that her so-called connection to the inner circle may have been exaggerated, and while she works in the same office with them, they may not confide in her – and that whatever power she has comes by way of the mayor, not from any position she holds, something that must add to her mounting woes.

I can’t tell from this meeting of old friends whether she holds all this against me or not.

 

 


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Poetry journal Sept.27, 2013

 


Sept. 9, 2013

 If you tell yourself often enough that you may be healed, then maybe you will be – like that blind man on the side of the road who is lucky enough to be where he is when Christ passes and the Son of God takes pity on him, and restores his sight, a miracle made out of mercy, the blind man may or man not deserve, and perhaps comes to regret later when he bears witness to the horrors of this world, the Christ who healed him crucified, the slaughter of innocent lambs.

Each cure comes with a cruse of awareness and the realization we have mistaken shadows for something real, and when cast out of the cave again, we are blinded by the scalding brightness of what we never expected to see, eventually forced to poke out our own eyes and wander the earth in shame, for things done we did not recognize as evil.

 


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Saturday, March 16, 2024

An unfair exchange Oct. 2. 2013

  

The apparent simplicity of her most recent poem posted today adds to the intensity of its feelings—and again, she repeats the theme of many preceding poems – Love lost, which she aches to have returned to her.

I said “apparently” simple because this is as complex a poem as many of those she had posted in the past in that it alludes to a dramatic change, a reluctant acceptance of the reality that her love may not be coming back to her with this as an effort to appeal to his nostalgia for the amazing things that transpired between them.

She looks back at the point when they first came together, how he “disarmed” her and lifted her out of the “the vast, thick sand of a numb existence” and transformed her into a “newer, better being,” an experience that has changed her life forever.

Only now, he has “exchanged me in our existence for something you can disarm at will.”

This suggests a number of things, in one regard, the use of “something” instead of “someone,” alludes to something more than just another person who had taken her place, but perhaps a way of life he has chosen over life with her.

But it also suggests that he had replaced her in his existence with someone else, some other situation in which he continues to maintain a level of control.

There is nostalgia in this for something they had together but no longer have, the lovemaking (she once claimed she could die for) and a closeness she clearly misses.

The ending lines are a bit confusing, but I think they claim that he once disarmed her, changed her life and how has abandoned her for someone (or something else) over which he has more control, and (by adjusting the punctuation a little) she claims they can still be naked together and close, but all that is behind them now.

As with many of her other poems, this implies an immense amount of guess work on my part, and yet the tone and structure suggest she had turned an emotional corner and that one some level admits he most likely won’t be coming back, as the same time, she reminds him of what they had together and how significant a role he’s played in her life.

Far from resentful, the poem contains an accusatory note, which largely says: How can you go with someone else after all we have meant to each other.”

The repeated use of “disarm implies two distinctly different meanings. The first implies that he (in a positive sense) got through her usual defenses to lift her out of the funk of her life.

The second seems more sinister, a less positive use of force to get someone he can control at will ignoring the fact that she is still available and needs to be with him.

He, as indicated in previous poems, has changed her into a “newer and better” person, something she had been trying to convey to him and get him to believe how different she is from what she used to be, and gives him credit for it.

This also hints at what may had caused them to part ways, perhaps a level of independence (she choosing “me” over “we” as said in a poem last spring.

She clearly doesn’t understand why he had abandoned her for someone (or something” else.

In some ways, this poem challenges some of my previous assumptions that she has gotten involved with a married man, although his exchanging her for something else may well imply that he is married with kids and a picket fence, and a life style he can control, while life – as amazingly passionate as it is with her – is unpredictable.

He clearly has decided to live a life with the least risk.

 


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Poetry Journal Feb. 15, 2024

 


Feb. 15, 2024

 

The old Chuck Berry Christmas song fills my head as I hear her lay out her plans for her move, “Run Rudolph Run” she fleeing something I can’t see at a distance, yet clearly overwhelming from where she sits, this need to flee overpowering her need to be where she is, where we all assumed she was happy, a sudden dash for safety and yet, as she says, something coming on for a long time, yet sooner than expected, Run Rudolph Run, as fast as her feet can fly, going where whatever or whomever it is can’t reach her, though as in the past, the shadow of this thing clings to her heels, haunting her, making her need so much more to hurry.

 


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