A red diamond bullet May 2013

  

 

I really have no good reason to revisit this poem about pain anticipated because I believe the original interpretation seems to be valid, concerning her derailed love affair. But like many of her poems, this one may well have a broader meaning that I did not consider during my first go around.

The poem seems to describe of what may be a behind the scenes train wreck, a slow motion disaster she can see coming but cannot avoid.

While I first saw this as a concluding poem in a series of love poems, it may well reflect the broader fears of what is going on where she is employed, the threat of legal action against her mayor, and how everything is taking place in slow motion, when she would rather see the whole thing happen quickly as to get it over with.

She may even see this as a test of her ability to withstand, while insiders count down the days and hours when the whole game comes to an end.

At times, she seems to believe she can pull it off, bracing herself against it, able to handle the situation, while at other times, she sees the “red diamond” bullet coming straight at her head from an engagement gone wrong.

This again suggests the romantic angle may be the most accurate, and that the love affair had progressed further than merely love making but to the point where her lover wanted marriage, and she saw the engagement in violent terms – back to buying the farm, as she once referred to her first marriage in a previous poem.

But engagement may also refer to her leaping onto the political bandwagon only to suspect the wheels might fall off it at any time.

She has tied herself personally and professionally to a person perhaps that has proven less capable than she first thought – perhaps RR, or someone else. In either case, she appears to see her situation as dire, if not yet doomed.

She may even be blaming him (whoever he is) into getting her into this predicament.

If it is RR, then it is a romance that goes back further than even I thought, she making reference to him in an essay she wrote in June 2011, when she talked about her attachment to a law enforcement guy – most likely RR.

But it seems farfetched to believe that she could maintain such a heated relationship for so long, and her other poems, especially those she posted earlier this year, suggest that while RR might have seduced her into this political life, her most recent romance was with someone else.

It is difficult, however, from the context of this poem, as to whom she is blaming for the whole mess.

Another aspect of the romantic angle may well be the approach, not of legal issues for her mayor, but something more personal, a commitment to marry someone – the red diamond bullet aimed straight out of her, and she has come to realize that it is a mistake, filled with anticipated pain, and she may be looking for a way to squirm out of the engagement, “the engagement gone wrong, thrust upon your finger that points towards pain.”

In an earlier poem, she talked about hesitating to give an answer, because she did not want to give her away her personal identity to become part of “we,” and I wonder if this is part of the same analogy, as she sees marriage as a trap she needs to avoid.

All of it is too convoluted to fully understand without knowing more details, which I never will be able to garner.

Needless to say (with great relief) this is one poem I am absolutely certain has nothing to do with me.

 

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Shakespeare revisited May 2013

  

 

Since I mention the scribe poem over and over again in these pages, I should look back at it again, just to make certain that it says what I thought it said when I fire wrote about it – since it is the poem that has sent me scurrying to reexamine other of her poems I had first assumed had nothing to do with me (and may still not).

Because my first take (second and third takes as well) made the assumption that this poem was aimed at me, I’m going to take a giant step back and evaluate the poem more objectively, making no such assumptions about who it is dedicated to, and focus entirely on what exactly she is saying, and possibly why.

The poem is about writing, about creating a world out of words that others may not have the talent or vision to do.

These poets make sense of a world that “normal” people might not – and here she seems to begin a theme that she will return to later, about what is worth fighting for – the good fight – or worth putting into words, as she puts it.

Most people don’t have the words or the sensibility to “describe things adequately.”

She as poet pushes on, frustrated by her inability to describe the absurdity that is her life, while at the same time grateful.

She is a writer that “scribes” and “describes” for a living, always struggling to make that living.

She is “the rock” or stalwart for those too scared or underpaid as she is.

This reference seems odd coming at the time it does, since she really isn’t making a living as a writer at the moment, and it almost seems as if she is drawing on experiences from when she was still at the office – which would give the poem more relevance, since she sees someone – the person to whom she is writing as standing in her way, and she manages to achieve anyway.

This is the confusion of the poem, as if it is a time warp, something – like the circa 2003 poem – written in the past, but posted now, making reference to conditions that are no longer valid, but were valid once when she worked with us.

It is almost as if she is writing about what was last summer or before, rather than what it is contemporary, perhaps looking back in bitterness or resentfully at what might have been.

Since she uses the word “we” early on in the poem as part of a cabala of poets, the person to whom she is writing the poem is clearly a writer or a poet as well.

The poem shifts in point of view from a collect “we” to “I” and finally an accusatory “you.”

The “we” are members of the unique tribe that struggles to use words to make sense of the world, standing up for righteousness, even when “normal” people lack vision to see what the world is truly about. But the poem shifts to her as poet struggling and not always successfully using her word talent to make sense of her own life, and the struggle she goes through to make a living. The final shift attacks the other person, who she believes tried his best to prevent her from getting what she wants or deserves.

This is why it is easy to interpret this poem as a shot at me, a testimony of defiance, saying she has succeeded (after a fashion) despite all the person she is writing to has done to stop her.

Again, the poem comes at an odd time, following a number of unrelated poems, some about heart break and others possibly connecting to this sense of resentment.

Since reading this for the first time, I been searching for something that might have triggered this sudden outburst, but realize it may simply be her looking back or maybe even an older poem written at the height of our conflict.

I tend to dismiss the idea that she might have had a more recent conflict with another writer or poet to whom she is writing this poem, someone who might have stood in her way as she believes I have.

The incongruity of the poem comes from several references  -- the claim that she is still making her living as a writer, when she is not, and by the fact that she perceives herself as underpaid as she claimed (with serious evidence to support her claim) she was underpaid.

Then we get an extremely complex line that includes a sarcastic thanks “for the opportunity to be all that you hope I wasn’t,” followed by her gratitude to be able to “write it word for word, when you fight so hard to deny it. You make me thankful for who I am.”

I’m not certain as to her intent. On one hand, she is grateful for her ability to have her say, even when the person she is writing to tried to squash her ability.

The poem suggests that she managed to write the truth, despite his claims contrary.

There is a possible more positive if also personally painful light, suggesting that the person to whom she is writing the poem – by the mere fact that he is out there somewhere has allowed her to admit who and what she is (back to the redemption poem of fair and unfair) even when someone might have wished it wasn’t true, and wanted it not to be, and yet by letting write it (perhaps causing her to write it) he or me or whomever gave her the ability to be grateful for whom she actually is.

A more negative angle evokes the idea that she believes he – the person she is writing to – has tried to reshape her reality, and because she is a writer, too, she was able to get her truth told despite his tale telling. This seems to be born out in other poems she previously wrote.

The poem is structured in three basic settings, the opening that refers to them both as part of a special breed of wordsmith, followed by her personal struggle to tell her story and earn her living, and ending with her boasting about being able to get her truth told despite him.

Although I’ve isolated this poem, you can’t ignore the four or five poems she posted within four days, many of which depicting pending pain, some of which allude to the aftermath of her affair. Perhaps this scribe poem is about her failed love, and the man who has severed connection with is also a writer or poet, part of the cabala of special word smiths who are tasked with documenting the world, when normal people can’t.

But the other poems suggest an emotional panic, perhaps a vision of her world coming to an end, highlighted perhaps by the legal troubles of the Virgin Mayor upon which her economics depends.

Hard to tell.

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Mood swings? May 2013

  

I won’t pretend to understand what prompts her changes of mood and tone from poem to poem, and if any of it really concerns me at all.

Perhaps there is legitimate personal confusion, since she tends to use her poems to send messages that she might otherwise fear to send by other means.

Sometimes, I think she is spinning a web, although it is also beyond me what she expects to catch in it when she does.

She seems to have hunkered down in her new job, and appears to believe she is part of the inner political circle – and yet as the poem I wrote about yesterday, there seems to be a political divide that keeps her from being with the person she loves.

The mentioning of politics in that poem appears to indicate she has taken a side perhaps within an insider dispute.

This makes me wonder once again whether or not her moves inside our office and outside were politically orchestrated from the start, or that her actions regarding us may have been more or less controlled by those same forces to whom she must answer now.

And it may be that the only place she feels comfortable enough talking freely – even if vaguely at times – is in her poetry – perhaps even converse with her arch enemy, me. This may well be a venue where she can maintain control when all other venues are closed to her or monitored.

Circumstances within her world may be the cause of her poetry mood swings from rage to regret, or from the struggle to maintain control of her own life. She swings from nice to rage back to too nice again, this last even more saccharine than the batch of poems prior to it, and perhaps the essential takeaway from all this is her belief that some people (especially me) don’t understand her.

For a long time (and still) I was uncertain if any of these poems were directed at me.

 I keep hoping it’s not the case – while at the same time, still vague hope she is communicating with me (my pathetic ego again). As written about in previous journal entries, the only poems I am certain were directed at me came last summer, and since then my wishful thinking or perhaps paranoia may interpret some as – such as the scribe poem.

From what I can gather from her most recent Facebook postings, she is still connected to members of the RR family, who like RR all have jobs with the town.

As much as I believe her poems are a reflection of her true feelings, I distrust her need to be so cryptic, as if she needs to say things, but doesn’t want just anybody to get what exactly she has to say.

Some of it is so subtle that nobody could use it in any way against her such as the trickle up poem or the change of priority poem of 2003.

Her more recent liberation poem about right and wrong, fair and unfair, finally came out of the closet, and yet I get the feeling this might have scared her a bit, even though she did not remove it from her blog the way she has other poems she might have seen as too revealing.

Of course, she is clever enough to use her poetry to push buttons to get reactions from people—including me, which is one of the reasons I keep a separate poetry journal that allows me to react, but which I neve post (with rare exceptions if I can sneak one or two passed by cyber nanny), a degree of separation that I lacked early on when I had knee jerk reactions to some of her poems.

I like the fact that she has opened up in her poetry more, even though I’m not certain how long it will last – and even if they have nothing to do with me.

If they are in some ways directed at me, then it is clear that water has not passed under this bridge fast enough and old wounds have not yet even started to heal, and I need to create even greater distance between us (even though I have not seen her or even talked to her since she left our office last October).

I suspect some of the poems are at least in part directed at me as it the scribe poem. But fortunately, most of her poems appear to be about other people, and perhaps if I remain “clever and elusive” enough, we can get to a point where none of her poems are pointed in my direction. Time will only tell.

 

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All the way over there May 2013

  

 

I’m only going to briefly revisit her poem about “being over there,” because I suspect my first interpretation was correct.

But after being stunned by the sudden appearance of the scribe poem, I find myself doubting what I first believed as the meaning of all her poems and must look at them again, if only in passing to make sure there was not some hidden bit such as she inserted into a few poems last fall.

As first interpreted, this poem seems to be most direct, losing the vagueness that she usually incorporates when being sly or seeking to disguise some deeper meaning she might later be able to deny if someone exposes it.

There is almost no doubt about how she feels in this poem – and appears to be written as I first indicated – to a lover, perhaps the same man she’d had the affair with earlier this year, or another whom she would like to have one with, but as indicated in the Romeo and Juliet essay, divided by forces beyond both their control.

Only an extreme fantasy and ego-gratification interpretation would suggest this poem has anything to do with me, positive or negative – as much as some egotist part of me would like it to be.

But this county being one of the most political in nature, it is easy to believe that the subject of the poem is indeed someone on the other side of the political divide.

What she means by “I’m all the way over everything,” may suggest that she is forced to move on – although this is not the same tone as she had last fall when forced to resign from our office. This seems at the same time more personally significant and yet less massive a life choice. Life had forced her to choose between this or that, which is unfortunate because the two (whomever they are) could have continued to enjoy the over and under of their romance. There is great regret in the tone, and just a touch of something darker, tragic even.

The poem suggests what might have been, sad, not despondent, filled with tender disappointment, but not resignation, as she looks elsewhere for something that can better satisfy her needs.

She clearly sees nothing here for her any more.

Yet at the same time, it implies gratitude for what was, and she seems to be summing up a situation and saying thanks before shutting the window of whatever it was they shared.

To whom the poem is written is a very lucky man indeed, although in some ways the tone resembles things she later wrote about her Brooklyn stalker, how it was a situation that could not work out, and you have to wonder if there is a bit of opportunism here as well. She claimed to have left the job with the stalker because he was such a bad businessman and it left her no opportunity for advancement. Is this a similar situation in which politics got in the way of her ambition?

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poetry journal from early may 2013

 Can't trust the dates on these things since I went back and forth, reexamining older poems as I tried to figure out possible changes in meaning. The poetry journal, however, was the first response to her poems when she posted them

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She can see clearly now. May 2013

  

 

I keep coming back to the same place, even though I started out thinking one thing about a particular poem, only to find the poem may have a different and more nefarious meaning after all.

Each new posting makes me reevaluate what I thought before, and threatens to toss whatever I initially though into the proverbial trash bin.

What I sometimes see as a self-righteous if not openly hostile tone of some of her most recent poems, may not be at all accurate, including some of the assumptions I’ve made about the poetry’s meaning, leaving me in the unenviable space of not knowing anything at all.

So, I have to assume her world is not the way I see it, and that I haven’t a clue as to what is really going on – just guessed that may coincide with personal prejudges – and that somehow I got screwed in this whole mess, when I’m the only who may have screwed her.

The only thing clear is that I’m seeing a dramatic shift in tone in her more recent poems.

It is impossible to know for sure to whom some of these poems are written, and perhaps a guilty conscience makes me assume they might be written to or about me.

I don’t even know if these poems are written to the same person, or different people, thought I can’t help getting the nagging feeling the nastier of these recent poems were written with me in mind.

Even though I already speculated on one particular poem, it seems to demonstrate a sharp shift in emotion, displaying negative and positive, and some sense of instability.

Yet her ability to be indirect in her writing leaves a lot open to interpretation – and later, possible deniability.

And this poem I’m reexamining takes a giant step back from directness, and  the tone, less blunt than a poem or two earlier – which she likely wrote in rage and now seeks a calmer approach, needing to establish a more reasonable even suggestive voice, that does not sound so fanatical or final,, desperate or angry -- as if she regretted losing control.

While I would like to think this poem reverts back to a more hopeful place while she suggests there might still be a connection (between us or whomever, possibly her ex-lover). But the poems posted more recently previous to this imply a much darker, and as I reread them and others I get the impression they are less affectionate or hopeful than their surface meaning sometimes implies.

This poem, however, seems determined to regain control of her emotions, but not out of any kindness or affection.

The poem itself has suggestions of this reversion, as if trying to explain how she came back from the brink she brought everything to in the previous poem, and ironically, she claims she has come closer to clarity.

I originally assumed there was a romantic tie in, that love had come into her life unplanned, blurring the line between her dreams and reality, and then it went away.

But the poem may also be a reflection of her hopes and ambition, and how close she has come to achieving them, and how it is this perception of possibility that continues in her veins to give her hope for the future.

While it may be about her failed love that continues inside her, but also this sense of self, this idea that she has come close to getting what she wants, lost these, and yet still retain the afterglow of possibility.

The rage of previous poems gone or put into suspension as she looks at what she has and what she might still have in the future.

While it may be someone who has done this for her, light a fire inside her that continues to burn, it may also be her ability to survive.

This feeling feeding her and keeping her fed, at a time when things have not worked out as she’d planned.

And out of all this, she can see a bit more clearly, and that, too, provides her hope.

There is no blame in this poem the way several of her other poems had. And while I still think the poem may well be a wave of good bye to her failed love, it is also a promise of better things to come.

Fortunately, in looking back at this after reading her bitter poems (some apparently aimed at me) I can’t find a trace of myself in this one, and that’s a relief.

 

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The test? May 2013

  

 

 

Essentially, our former temporary boss is right about her.

She lives her life in terror; and down deep seems to fear men as much as she is attracted to them, assuming the worst as the same time she can’t live without them.

She seems to think all men pose a threat, even the unsuspecting and seemingly kind ones, although I still recall her comment last fall at one of our staff meetings when she said she didn’t hate men, she loved men, it was only some men she hated – and looked at me.

But she also once said on Facebook that she doesn’t need men, she has her cats.

All of that should be old news after so many months without contact, as I thought it was when she found someone to love.

She does, however, seem to admire people (men or women) who don’t hit on her.

“You’re one of the few politicians who hasn’t hit on me,” she told the Virgin Mayor’s arch rival at one point last year, while telling me much earlier how the Virgin Mayor frequently did.

This seems some kind of test few men manage to pass.

She seems to be constantly testing people – men in particular – to see how they will react.

This thought struck me back when she picked up the rapist rapper, she picked up a year ago April, as if she was testing to see how I might react to what she called “a working things out fuck.”

I didn’t pass the test.

Her replacement in our office may not have passed the test either, although he may well be innocent enough to truly find her admirable. He doesn’t gush so much as glows when he talks about her, even when he knows the truth of what happened between me and her.

I suspect she keeps close tabs on him more to keep hold of some of the power she had when she worked that beat, a kind of control by proxy.

With rumor that she is up for a $20,000 raise at her current town hall job, you would think her finances worry free. She was always harping on about how little she got paid at our office (something that turned out to be true) although at the same time she wound up with a new iPad and guitar, she claimed were early “gifts.”

Even her poems I am learning although the most honest (in a convoluted way) seem to test people. While an honest expression (apparently) of her current feelings, these poems tend to present uncomfortable truths.

This may explain some of the abrupt changes of tone her poems have taken recently, concluding (at the moment) with what may be a revival of defiance, blaming me for her downfall, and her promise for revenge.

She has a vindictive streak, shown several times when she mocked people – in particular men – when in the company of other women – one time I overheard though she was unaware I was nearby at the office.

The man she mocked – the Virgin Mayor’s arch rival – may have gotten the last laugh, however, if the legal case goes the way he expects. He apparently realized later how she had played him for a fool last December when she came to him looking for a job, and then took all his secrets back to RR and the Virgin Mayor. One of his aides told me flat out, she’ll be toast if and when the Virgin Mayor falls from grace.

After all, the Virgin Mayor gave her a job, and she owes him her loyalty.

But since the beginning of the year, there seems to have been some kind of falling out – perhaps due to her romantic entanglement which likely occurred with someone higher up in the gravy chain, slightly altering the trajectory she envisioned when first taking the job.

But she was included in the inner circle, spying for it, seeking to find dirt on their political enemies (and as in the cast of the Small Man and those associated with him) the Virgin Mayor’s allies.

Yet still, in one poem, she indicated she had taken on a lesser role (a problem for someone with a dual personality, who is both extremely insecure and extremely ambitious.)

But she obviously kept close to her replacement at our office, figuring he could act as a surrogate for what she could no longer do herself. She clearly has been feeding him story ideas (within the purview of a PR person, only she really isn’t the town’s PR person).

Perhaps, this relationship with her replacement got to close he told her I had confided in him about the events over the last year, and this may have resurrected her outrage towards me.

What comes next is a great mystery, only it appears she is as enraged at me now as she was over the summer, and I wonder how this translates into action on her part when some of the key people she relied on such as the Public Safety Director are gone.

 

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Return of the queen May 2013

  

I keep revisiting the Phoenix poem because I mistook it’s meaning the first time I tried to interpret and yet, each time I reread it, the poem appears one of the most direct poems she’s written in a while.

And yet, even then, it is not completely clear as to exactly what she means.

Although I didn’t think so at first, I have since come to believe that the poem – at least on one level – is directed at me, as I am now presuming some of her recent poems also were.

Just why is still beyond my comprehension, as it seems to come out of nowhere, and seems to imply a relationship that does not exist – at least, between us.

This is the reason I first read this as the aftermath of her shattered relationship.

Yet with each new reading, this poem (as well as others) reveal possible underlying meanings I had not previously considered, or ignored in favor of the more easily understandable surface reading.

The poem may also be talking about power, and her inability to squeeze out of sticky situations.

If this is directed at me, then she may well be blaming me for her current troubles, as if perhaps had I not gotten in her way while she still worked at our office, her life may well have turned out completely different (an unlikely conclusion on her part since she’s always found a way to self-destruct, long before I entered from stage left.)

In this interpretation “getting her” means catching her as if in a game of cat and mouse.

If the poem is aimed at someone else, then it reflects some ongoing relationship I’m not aware of.

Assuming I am the focus of the poem, then she is assuming that I have actively sought to ruin one of her schemes, perhaps reflecting her still unresolved effort to get into the inner circle of the Virgin Mayor and RR to make herself a player, only to have this on the verge of unraveling as her mayor faces possible jail time. Perhaps she is referring to other insiders who she feels have denied her her rightful place, making it clear that RR and others are much better at playing these insider games than she is.

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Reading the tea leaves May 2013

  

 

A fascinating pattern has emerged as someone began probing poems I posted on my blog back in April 2012, at what would have been the height of my brief association with her.

If she is the one doing the probing, the question is why: Is she being nostalgic for that all-too-brief time of tranquility, or is she searching for something else?

The impression I get is that she is the kind of gal that once she leaves a situation, she never goes back. She moves on.

Although at the same time, I suspect if someone is persistent enough, depending on just how safe she feels. If unthreatened, she might even look back at some old romance with some affection, viewing someone with some regret as if a missed opportunity. This may well be true of her stalker from Brooklyn, when at the time she thought she was stuck “frittering every possible bit of energy away into whatever random task/job/relationship” she decided to “codependently sacrifice” herself, or would spend the rest of her expectedly short life to the concept of carpe diem.

She resigned the job, and yet, it becomes clear she could never separate her ambition from her flirtation, and the fact that she continued to communicate with her stalker long after she left the job (while at the same time accusing him of being a stalker), showed some level of lingering affection for the man – even though she put his stalking to good use in winning over future allies.

There is no way of coming to the same conclusion with me, and the tone of her most recent poems suggest still glowing coals of rage. Which makes her probing of my old poems (if it is her at all) all the more puzzling.

What I neglected to note was her claim in earlier posts that she suffered from heart problems due to the anxiety and stress, which she believes will lead her to live a short life. She also suffers from a contagious variety of cervical cancer (This according to the blogger GA, who learned it from two local attorneys in Hometown, who had contracted the cancer as a result of oral sex).

Her leaving the job with her Brooklyn stalker may have had more to do with the lack of future opportunities the job provided than the man himself – he was a poor manager, tips were down, and the business seemed about to hit the rocks. The same thing would have eventually happened if she had stayed at our office – something she well knew and why she told the office gossip that her job with us was just a stepping stone – perhaps to television or The New York Times.

But she knew she tended to self-destruct when things in her life became too settled –something of a self-deception since calm such as that was never real, an illusion seen from the outside, while chaos reigns within.

New York was no exception. She previously went through the same dilemma.

“I knew in my heart things were not right,” she said. “But I eat myself back into submission with the usual arsenal of excuses.”

It is difficult to know from the outside if the calm she appears to be inside of with her current job is merely the eye of a storm.

Most people learn and grow from experience. Not so much with her. She frequently spoke about “sacrifice,” or blamed the industry, and bolstered herself with the idea that she had to suck it up, a phrase she frequently used.

The fact that she tends to get involved romantically with the bosses at each of these places, suggests that her current failed romance has been with someone in authority, and that she has somehow come around again to that same point where she might need to suck it up or move on.

But unlike her job in New York, which really was a temporary situation while she tried to figure out how she could pursue her life as an artist, the current job really is a trap.

People tended to call her lucky because she has so many talents, but she often burns out even in art.

“I find myself unable to focus,” she said. “I’ve done the singing thing and found out how quickly what you love can turn into what you love to hate.”

Over the years, she did a lot of other things she loved, and in each case somehow managed to love to hate each.

Quoting Camus, she said, “There will always be external circumstances that will bring you down. It’s what you make of it that counts.”

Which brings us back to where she is today, and if she is looking for someone to blame for her current predicament. If I read the tea leaves right, I’m being eyed as her scape goat. I hope I am wrong.

 

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Clawing her way to the top May 9, 2013

  

 

 

Her fairness poem makes me realize just how out of touch with reality I am, something pervious poems of hers suggested, but none hit me so hard in the gut as this one did.

Except for when I was young, I lived by all the rules she has come to reject in her last few poems.

This may well explain my reaction to her when she began to trickle up at our office a year ago. I saw it as unfair.

Maybe I even feared she would wind up my boss, forced to comply with whatever dictates she gave, chained to my desk to wait my next order.

I’m not completely clear about my mind set back then, only that I sensed how powerful she was becoming and how it seemed unfair as to how she was obtaining that power.

But I did not realize until reading her last few poems just how high a cost she paid in her attempt to achieve power or status, the intense guilt she felt over what she had to do to thrive or even survive in a man’s world.

Her liberation poem shocks me because it rings so utterly true, and rocks me out of my own comfort zone – this belief that if I worked hard enough I would get my just rewards.

As she pointed out, it is simply not true.

And any observation of any of the other players around me – in or out of the office – show how little I know about how the real world operates.

When she arrived in our little part of the world, I lived in a bubble, not her.

But she did prick the bubble I lived in, and I could not accept it.

I saw what she did as “cheating” as she used all those things I didn’t have to advance her career.

I felt bound by rules that ultimately were chains enslaving me, chains she refused to allow to chain her. She understood how enslaved people could get.

And it is clear that if she was going to have to play the game of master and slave, she fully intended to end up as master.

She got ahead the only way people can in this ruthless world.

At least, that’s how I seem to read all this.

But her philosophy came at a great cost: guilt and self-accusation, not at all helped by judgmental people like me.

Guilt as it turns out can be just as binding a chain as obeying rules, something she only apparently realized recently when she met this woman who taught her to reject the guilt trip, and this liberation appears to have brought her great joy with her liberation.

Oddly enough, I’ve never had to compete the way she has tooth and nail, clawing for every inch.

Regardless of where I worked, I usually ended up in a unique position, somewhat remote from the power structure, aloof enough to be able to watch others fight for position, while holding a position immune to the shake up of power most businesses underwent: I was night manager in a warehouse, baker, and other such jobs that management needed, but I did not have to fight for position each time a business got sold or a new manger brought on, while other people scrambled to keep their place in the pecking order.

As her poems seem to indicate, as her history has shown, she did what it took to get power and fought like hell to keep it once she obtained it, often ruthlessly.

Her last few poems, however, opened my eyes to the price she had to pay for this kind of competition, the guilt she suffered and the world she was forced to live in, the real world I have never lived in, and yet I have arrogantly made moral judgments I had no right to make.

Where it all goes from here is anybody’s guess. She has tied her fortunes to a questionable mayor. If he survives, she may be able to retain the power she has accumulated. If he does not, then she’ll have to claw up a new power grid somewhere else.

I don’t envy her – or maybe I do in a strange way, wish I had her courage and her skills, wishing I could claw my way up the way she does, knowing when she reaches the top she has actually accomplished something.

 

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Coming out at last May 8, 2013

  

 

Far and away, this is her most controversial poem, shocking in its admissions, even after a whole year reading her other poems.

I’m not going to say this poem vindicates my early reactions to her – because the poem is far more than just an admission, it is a testimony to new found freedom and an outpouring of relief that should not be judged by any outsider, especially me.

For this reason, I am going to do my best to refrain from editorializing and do as straight an analysis as possible, letting her own words explain her logic – which may or many not fit with my sometimes too straight morality.

(It would be unfair – if I can use that word in this contest – to pass judgement, especially at time has largely proved my previous judgments wrong.)

Oddly enough, as shocking a poem as this is, it is not an indictment or a confession, but a celebration, an coming out in poetry that she has largely resisted in the past. Previous poems like the one about trickling up or even about changed priorities hid behind complicated metaphors that only the savvy could unencrypt. There is very little encryption here.

She opens the poem telling about a woman she spent an hour with “Who made my everyday reprise of wantonness and regret a breeze,” she writes.

The implication is that she has lived her life to this point feeling guilty about her “wantonness,” a word that describes lascivious and other excessive behavior, especially in regard to sex.

Who this woman is, she does not say. I might be her drinking buddy from our office, but possibly not.

 The poem calls this woman “a seed of change,” blown in on some breeze and grew into a rare flower” that turned into reality and stopped our poet’s constant self-reprisals – this rare and wanton flower reminding the poet that “fair” and “unfair” are just words, “not the way things are.”

The poet refers to this flower as a pure spirit, a miracle that jolts the poet out of her “older, time-worn ways” and into liberation.

The world does not revolve around guilt and perpetual penance, nor does life follow the prescribed rules of merit in which talented people who work hard will succeed and get their just rewards. There is no karmic light around the concept of “doing the right thing.”

“This is wrong,” she writes.

The key to happiness is not to base your worth on “right and wrong,” “fair or unfair,” which ties you to a kind of life that makes you bleed while you sit patiently waiting to serve.

“Life is, it is simple,” she writes.

In other words, if you buy into the bullshit people tell you about doing the right thing then you’ve waited the beauty of what is.

The idea is to live life without regret or guilt, and not to try to make it make sense.

Essentially, the poem says do whatever it takes to make yourself happy and do not bind yourself with outmoded morality that only brings you guilt and pain.

This is a poem of liberation, the culmination of a number of poems over the last month that seem to be building to this idea of an unfair world and that by obeying rules you are holding yourself back – and if you are made unhappy by obeying other people’s rules, then to hell with the rules.

The shocking aspect of the poem is the fact that she finally opens up about things she previously kept quiet or disguised in complicated poetic metaphor, alluding to a robust sexual life style and her ambitions for advancement as she struggled with resulting guilt.

The joyous tone of the poem comes from her throwing caution to the wind and proclaiming in a loud voice she won’t be ashamed any more of doing things that make her happy.

In some ways, this is a lot like a long-closeted gay finally coming out, no longer having to live with guilt and fear.

And as shocking as it is to read how openly she professes her life style (and how shocked I would have been and was a year ago by it all), the poem is a declaration of independence, and at the same time, defuses everything her enemies might use to discredit her.

 

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Poetry Notebook early May 2013

 These are largely two entries about the same thing, but I did that a lot in those days

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Sympathy for the Devil? May 7, 2013

  

 

In light of the scribe and the phoenix poems, I decided to revisit this poem too since my previous interpretation had painted it as part of the romantic series (which it may still be) and yet may have broader implications my previous view did not take into account.

This is especially true in the light of another recent poem about fairness she posted which I have read but not yet analyzed which seems to have a similar theme – if even more shocking.

In an upside down world, this poem claims--  as does the fairness poem--  ordinary rules no longer apply and the ultimate end game is to be survive.

She claims what was on the bottom it's now on the top and perhaps people with real talent and other virtues are frozen and dismayed and forgotten.

Her use of forgotten has multiple meanings: as people forgotten and “we” people who have forgot to obey the anti-rules of the day-to-day existence.

Anti rules have a number of inferences. The primary meaning: not authorized, illegal, elicit or unlawful.

But more to her point, she likely means a world where players are encouraged to ignore all rules creating a kind of chaos where things are unpredictable, and a person cannot simply get along by obeying ordinary rules

While my original assessment narrowly defined this in regard to love. her later posts make it clear she meant this in a much broader sense -- her language use reveals a much more aggressive approach to life and merely the aftermath of a  broken heart.

If she could “seize” what she felt she deserved she would feel less put out by the society and the company in which she finds herself.

She seems to understand that if she doesn't grab what she thinks she deserves she won't get it.

Yet, she implies in this poem that she might not be in a position to do so at the moment

And in a clearly unfair world, where up is down and perhaps right is wrong if she could grab what she deserves she would feel less fearful and less restrained by what she is so “unlawfully restrained from” and something that denies her self-forgiveness.

In her follow up poem on Fairness, she goes to a much further and scary extreme in this regard, so shocking, I’m shocked she did not yank the poem down before I could print it out.

In this poem, however, she defies my original assessment that painted this phrase in a romantic way – such as marriage or entanglement blocking her from getting the love she thinks she deserves.

It is clear this is a prelude to the much more unvarnished fairness poem to come, and seems a kind of Sympathy for the Devil extreme where right is wrong good is bad and in such a scandal existence everybody needs to be operating with the same plane if that's the only way a person can get what he or she deserves.

If there are no rules, then a person must do whatever it takes to get what he or she deserves or needs to survive

This is a much harsher assessment of this poem than the first one but is supported by the more recent fairness poem that takes this theme to an even more realistic and scary level which I will get into shortly.

 

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Playing with fire May 6, 2013

  

 

Looking back at this point she posted at the end of April, I can't believe I was so stupid as to believe it was aimed at her former lover.

This poem is too full of rage and only after having read the scribe poem (and more recently her shocking poem on fairness), I’ve become aware of a sharp change of direction in her posted poems.

My assumption this was too her lover could not have been more wrong.

While this poem doesn't have the smoking gun piece of evidence (as the scribe poem seems to have) to suggest it was aimed at me, the tone suggest that it is aimed at someone who has enraged her so much she would be willing to destroy herself if it also meant bringing down this person.

This is not the stuff of heartbreak so much as pent up rage and far better fits with the tone and meaning of scribe poem (as well as several others including her fairness) poem than any of the love poems posted during March the most of April.

From the opening line of this poem, she flatly states that this arch enemy is out to get her, to bring her down, yet she tells this enemy it won't happen and warns against his trying to do so or even for him to think of it and as importantly not to breathe it or anything more will not happen.

“You burn me I rise again and again and again you burn I rise until I burn myself,” she writes.

This is one-to-one straight talk, a warning that if her enemy brings her down, she will make sure that her enemy goes down, too.

The poem implies that her arch enemy has been actively conspiring against her to get her I thought originally, she meant romantically—about her former lover, perhaps a desperate reunion. But the work goes deeper, part of an extended conflict in which she believes he has been hounding her and the poem seems to serve as an advanced warning if she if he tries she will make sure he is destroyed too even if it means she is destroyed in the process.

It is impossible from the context of the poem what event caused this reaction yet it clearly comes at an emotionally complex time with her personal life in shambles and a professional life on the brink of collapse. You might think she is looking for a scapegoat to blame and may have resurrected all an old once legitimate issues to vent her rage on.

Because this poem was posted in the aftermath of her romantic breakup I mistakenly assumed it was connected to that.

It was not until she posted the poem to the scribe that I realized my mistake this and the scribe poem are intimately connected. This poem is full of paranoia and assume someone is out to best her and as a standalone poem that could be anyone--  a recent falling out at the office even.

But the scribe poem definitely defines who that person is: another writer who she believes has worked to hold her back, This poem is a warning to that person not to try and how if she goes down she'll take him down with the scribe poem sarcastically thanks him for making her stronger.

I speculated earlier that this might have been inspired by poems I posted and yet it seems it needs to be something much worse, more potent to have set her off in this road of rage, some event or rumor she got wind of that rekindled the old passion for revenge.

This poem implies that her arch enemy has been actually working against her plotting to undermine, her talking to other people about her and this poem issues the dire warning to that person to stop in light scribe poem I assume I am the target of both poems even though I am innocent of any of the things she claims.

There are other poems I need to reexamine and put in this context before I tackle perhaps the most shocking poems I have seen her post to date, about fairness and such. But let me look back first before I go on to that piece of shocking poetry.

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A secret society of poets? May 5, 2013 (date may not be accurate)

  

 

I'm not sure I'll ever get to the bottom of this poem; but a straight up analysis might help make it less personal.

The title itself implies duality in meaning or maybe more as if writing a letter addressed to another writer or in another meaning to explain what she does as a writer in describing the intimate details of her life.

The text supports both themes: a letter to a scribe and the art of wordsmithing.

There was something aloof, even smug in the speaker's tone although there is also an undertone of resentment, a bitterness inspired by longstanding hurt.

The poem clearly is one scribe speaking to another about the use of words that “we” do to create a world that makes sense of an existence others sees as normal.

Early on in the poem, she implies a kind of congeniality which separates “us poets” from the normal world.

She is elevating not only herself but the person to whom she is writing to a special status, a Charmin of the tribe of humanity assigned to keep a lid on what is basically an insane world.

It is a noble endeavor worthy of fighting for or worth wording.

Most people lack the words by which he means talent and they do not have the vision since to be as the position to describe things accurately.

Here at the poem diverges from “we” to the word “I” as she makes clear that she must forge on with words that fail as she is confronted by and at the same time thankful for the inability to describe the persistent absurdity that is her life.

The poem is all about her and her attempting to use her talent as a writer to make sense of the world while at the same time making her living as a writer.

Here we may have a bit of a time warp and perhaps an echo back to the daily beat routine she engaged in while still at her office since her current duties require far less of the grunt work she engaged in when with us.

But she still sees herself as a fighter, Fighting always for that living and become the rock for those too afraid or to underpaid “as I”.

By rock she seems to mean the foundation, or perhaps loyal resistance as if others see her as an example to follow.

Her the poem makes its dramatic and negative, turn taking aim at her critics who apparently try to hold her back “Thank you, (whoever I need to be thankful for )for the opportunity to be all that you hope I wasn't.”

The change from “I” to “you” is extremely significant since she is clearly talking directly to her arch enemy, another scribe, blaming him for holding her back, and yet, she claims to have succeeded anyway, despite him, maybe even because of his opposition.

There is no definitive evidence in the poem to indicate I am the subject of the poem. She makes it clear from the title she is writing to another writer, even admitting that she and this writer we are part of a special clan people whose role it is to make sense of a world other people claim as normal.

This goes a long way to verifying my suspicion earlier that we may have been communicating all along, although if this poem is to be believe, in an extremely negative way.

She goes on to talk about how this task of writing sometimes frustrates her especially when she must also use the same talents to make a living but her determination to forge on makes her an example to others and concludes in a definite sarcastical note, taking aim again at the other writer who she believes tried to hold her back and she succeeded anyway.

Her satirical thank you reverberating like a war cry and stirs up some of the same tone of defiance as one of her recent poems about her rising from ashes of defeat.

But as it turns out, this is only the beginning of a new series of poems, even more revealing than some she posted and took down in the past, such as trickling up, or the more ambiguous admissions she made in her change of priority poem. But since I am writing this a week or two after she posted this poem, I’ve had the chance to look ahead. But first, I want to look back at other poems prior to this I may have mistakenly interpreted. Then, we’ll get to a poem she posted very recently that even shocked me.

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