A gesture of dismissal July 23, 2012

I have to stop reacting to what she posts on her site.

I keep re reading the Forgiveness poem and get enraged over the assumptions she made and the attitude she’s adopted, the presumption that all the blame is on my side, when it is not.

Mary Ann calls it “passive aggressive,” in that she apparently gets to play victim while is actually the orchestrator.

I’m not sure I’d go that far, even though at times over the last six months some of her actions seemed calculated. Yet just as often, she seemed to be a different person at different times, almost scripted for the occasion.

I can’t tell if this is intentional or merely how she copes with the world.

She spends a lot of time self-promoting, perhaps – as my old Freudian Professor Thomas might have claimed – in desperate need of love.

The salesman at the office sees her as some kind of magnet. Men are drawn to her, and she seems to accept that as natural, the right and proper way of her world. She gets upset when someone eventually upsets the routine – which always eventually happens as men get too consumed with her and want to own her.

Not all men do, only men of a certain kind. Many appear perfectly content to love her at afar, to have had their brief moment on the stage to later fall into supporting roles – friends or angels as she might call them.

But like any good casting director, she selects those who get their chance to perform with her, and later to reject them.

Those who get too addicted to her eventually become her stalkers.

But she has said more than once, when she moves on, she never looks back, and there is a certain attractive arrogance in that, making it worse for those addicted to her.

I guess that’s what’s most disturbing about the tone in her poem, the royal arrogance, a sense of superiority, a queen ushering the undeserving from her presence.

She’s too good a word smith for this to be accidental, imperial gesture dismissing the unworthy from her company. Powerful poetry and equally powerful revenge, she knowing perfectly well how indignant I will become by it, and how profound an insult.

 

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Isolated and furious July 21, 2012

 As I wrote earlier, her poem “Forgiveness” pretty much said it all: Okay, you’re forgiven, go away and don’t bother me.”

What should have sounded like a reasonable request came off as arrogant since there were no innocents in the parade, and she has yet to admit culpability to her part in all this, while I did my best to admit mine, only to have my own words used against me.

Here, she dismissed me as if I was a guilty child.

I suspect Mary Ann, my poet friend out west, may be right in that this is all about control.

For the most part, I have gone away as commanded, except at work where interaction is unavoidable, and even there, this attitude of superiority taints things – such as when she lied (but she doesn’t lie she says) about contacts I needed for a story.

Mary Ann thinks she wants to control what I put up on my personal website – at least in regard to things about her. She apparently stopped looking at my site for those few days when I posted only innocuous things clearly not remotely having anything to do with her.

Mary Ann suggested the shut down in order to let things cool down. But I tend to have a knee jerk reaction and can still feel the steam coming out of my hears over her forgiveness poem.

Mary Ann said I should post some of the writings about a past that has nothing to do with her and so may cause her to cease looking at my website in the future when I can once more write and post how I legitimately feel.

“Give it a break,” Mary Ann said.

Yet it is clear that the situation will not resolve itself until one or the other of us leaves the company. Even with me exiled in the auxiliary office, I am likely a danger to her and she to me.

I don’t think she feels she can operate as she has in the past in other places with someone like me hovering around, lingering in the shadows, capable of spoiling things just when she has set things up the way she wants.

With the exception of Mary Ann and other friends unrelated to the company, I have nobody to confide in, least of all the former temporary boss, who may still be a confidant of hers.

I feel isolated, and perhaps that’s what she intends.

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A strange bird July 20, 2012

   

The popular salesman elsewhere on the third floor of the office called her “a strange bird,” though he was clearly impressed with her ability to sing.

She was his third choice of a staff largely made up of pretty women, an evaluation given me without prompting, during my weekly visit to the main office.

We had stepped back from the edge of nuclear war, although my whole time there I was on edge, made even more manic when the male owner called my extension and I saw his name and extension of the phone ID – thinking he had thought things over or had been convinced to and had decided to fire me after all.

I finally called him back; it turned out to be routine, his concern with the local hospital and a story he wanted me to follow up on, apparently one of our staff had had a heart attack, had been rushed to the hospital and saved, and he wanted me to do something to glorify our biggest advertiser.

Yet, I could not help getting the feeling the call was more than just about that and pondered it for a long while after I had hung up.

The tension is so thick, I could choke on it, and I don’t know how long it can go on like this, coming and going, day in and day out, everybody pretending like there is nothing wrong, when we all know there is.

The owner had said nothing about her, not even a hint, and yet the tone of voice was distant, as if he was holding something back.

I learned later he had given her special projects as an excuse for a raise (this coming from the usual ever reliable gossips on the first floor, who spouted information like this unasked for frequently, liking the idea they knew something nobody else did, and could not resist spilling their guts.)

Perhaps the owner has something to hide after all, and my confession about what happened and the accusations against me made him nervous – after all, what can happen to one of us, can happen to us all. But he’s a closed a book as the gossips are open. Still, I wonder how much more he knows than what I told him, and has he spoke to her about it (as he should have since it is really more than the personal issue, he and his partner play it off to be) to get her side.

Unlike our former temporary boss (and his heart of gold), the owner doesn’t strike me as the sympatric type who would offer her comfort in her hour of need, leaving the question open as to what exactly does he offer her.

 

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On thin ice July 19, 2012

 My big concern about meeting with the owners is that I was still not sure of her relationship to the male boss – although for weeks when we still talked, she spoke frequently about needing to get more money and her plans to ask him for a raise.

She asked me how she should approach him, and apparently made the same request of our former temporary boss.

Something kept her from approaching the owner several times, but apparently, she eventually did.

When still on speaking terms I texted her, asking if she had gotten the raise, and I received a single one response of “yes.”

An odd circumstance if true, since others with more elevated positions in the company had tried and failed, sometimes even encouraged afterwards to find other employment elsewhere.

This coupled with the open flirting I had seen going on between the two in the office, she once tapping him on the top of his bald held with her pad.

But our former temporary boss apparently believes she did not get the raise since he had been among those who had sought a raise himself and was refuted.

“You can’t squeeze anything out of that cheap son of a bitch,” he bitterly proclaimed.

But she had legitimate reasons for getting a raise, since she covered a number of towns well after a number of employees before her had not.

Perhaps her flirting with the boss was part of her campaign to get on his good graces.

All this made me less confident that I would get a fair hearing when the owners finally met with me, especially if they consulted with my former temporary boss, who may well be seeking to have me fired.

I hoped my account emailed to the owners would be enough to convince them of my innocence.

Then, shaking my confidence even more, the boss at the satellite office where I worked notified the owners that she would like to write for the beat I was writing for, and even hijacked a story I had already proposed, making it seem as if indeed, my days for the company were numbered.

As it turned out, they were not numbered.

When I met with the two bosses, they said the issue between me and her was personal, but I would have to continue on at the satellite office – as I had figured – to avoid further complications.

I agreed. I had no choice.

But I had the horrible feeling I still skated on thin ice and needed to make sure I did not do anything to draw their attention again in a negative way.

 

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Staggered July 19, 2012

  

After more than a week since her last posted poem (an opus on Forgiveness or perhaps lack of it), she posted a very short, but also very revealing poem, less arrogant, while reverting to an earlier theme: immunity.

There is some irony in the title because it comes a short time after she read me the riot act and issued her list of demands, a list of things Not To Do, any of which would bring down the wrath of God on my head if I violated them.

You would think from the title she had reached a level where she truly believed herself immune, while the body of the poem suggests just the opposite. In it, she comes across like a punch-drunk prize fighter still staggering from a nose-to-nose confrontation with a tough opponent, a fight in which she came out as a technical winner, yet to her does not feel like a victory.

She puts a foot forward while the world spins around her, she on the verge of falling down, grateful for the fact that gravity “does not affect your soul.”

And as in an earlier poem, she suggests her soul is beyond the reach of her attacker as being in “all places at all times.”

The poem alludes to her early poem when she claimed her soul was beyond the reach of a stone (as in sticks and stones or better the Biblical reference of he who is without sin cast the first stone).

The tone oozes with the tone of someone who had gone through a real conflict that has left her reeling with the suggestion that she must keep on keeping on, even if the conflict staggered her and she might soon fall down.

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Friendly advice July 17, 2012

 He said he doesn’t want to lose one of his best writers over all this; we both know its about more than just that.

To begin with, since the regular boss has returned, she is no longer “his” writer.

And if Tom is right, she’s already have gone, operating on someone else’s behalf, this mysterious “RR.”

I also think he’s running for cover, scared about her reaction after I betrayed him, repeatedly telling me every time we talk “this conversation never happened,” and if I was to say something, he would deny we ever spoke.

Worse, I think for all concerned, is the idea that this might seep out of the office. Already, the infamous blogger, GA has been asking questions, saying she had a source inside the paper – and her questions suggest she knows a lot. I suspect the source is the boss, who spent a significant portion of her maternity leave, sabotaging via email comments to the paper and possibly the owners, the work of the her temporary replacement – no doubt fearing a repeat of what nearly happened during her first maternity leave, when the kindly owners offered her job to the temporary boss, only to take back the offer late – possibly due to additional behind the scenes sabotage by the boss he would be replacing.

GA knew intimate things about what went on inside the paper, some of which even made it to her blog – although using a fictious name.

He also pretends that he is not infuriated with me, when I know he is, acting overly friendly, like one of the characters from one of her poems, smiling behind clenched teeth.

He’s caught in a precarious place after he failed to disclose to her our conversation in the park, a seeming betrayal of trust since he had taken her under his wing for protection.

I suspect he’s the one who drafted her list of demands, and possibly suggested her to send her pathetically weak compilation of evidence to the public safety director as future leverage against me.

I suspect he knows how little any of that would hold up and apparently drafted a new plan, one that might keep him out of the crosshairs of management and could possibly get me fired.

This depended upon his keeping his cool and maintaining the pretense that all was still well between us and what was in the best interest of the company

“If she files charges, it puts the company at risk,” he said.

And by rights as former boss – he should report to the owners.

“But I won’t,” he said “But this doesn’t mean if they ask me about what you said to me that I’ll remain silent. I will tell them what you told me if they ask me.”

He suggested that it might be in my best interest to confess to management about my misdeeds.

Again, he repeated his often-repeated phrase, “This conversation never happened, and I will deny it if you said it did. “

He said I can’t tell management he encouraged me to call either.

“I don’t want to be in the middle of this,” he said. “She is my only concern. I don’t want to lose her as a writer and get stuck with some schlock.”

He called what went on between me and her “acrid” and didn’t want it spilling onto him.

I hung up; my hands shook so much I misdialed the first time the owner’s number. I reached him on the second try.

I told him about my dealings with her, about her warning, and the risk to the company, and how he ought not honor my request to work in the main office after all.

I hated saying this because I felt so isolated in the satellite office. But this mess made it necessary for me to live with it.

The owner said he would call his partner. She emailed me later to say we would have to meet after the weekend to discuss the matter.

In the meantime, I wrote down everything from beginning to end – with the exception of Tom’s suspicions – including conversations I had with the former temporary boss, including his recommendation that I should call, and his insistence about not telling them I had talked to him.

For most of the report, I drew heavily on my journal for dates, times, and events, detailing my conversation with the former temporary boss in the park, and his sneaky reaction afterward.

I emailed the document to both owners, giving them time to digest it all over the weekend, before we met in person.

 

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Forgiveness is not possible July 13, 2012

 

  

By far this is the most painful of all the poems she has directed at me to date, partly because it is dismissive, and in some ways inaccurate, and uses some of my own statements taken out of context against me.

I need to resist trying to defend myself here and attempt to focus completely on the statements she is attempting to make, dealing later in other pages of this journal in an attempt to set the record straight.

Right from the opening lines, she dismisses the need for forgiveness, largely because she said it would imply the possibility of a “next step” or somehow getting back to a previous stage before all the hostility transpired, when it is clear that is not possible.

While the poem does not explicitly say so, there is no going back, too many bad feelings, too many unforgivable things said.

She describes the “ugly mornings” and the “sweat-streaked days of locking and unlocking” her door.

The implication here is fear of violence, something she alluded to in an earlier poem as if such a thing had already happened, when it never had.

It appears, this fear comes from past experiences, creating a false narrative and paranoia about what she envisions might be possible again.

The poem uses an odd phrase: “Bargaining with God and country” to be left alone. At which point, she quotes an email I sent after she had threatened me and gave me a list of demands.

I had told her I had no hard feelings over the threat, and understood her need to protect herself (even if there was no reason to and even though when I said it I knew she had altered our many text exchanges to imply my saying things I never did, much as she had done to the text message from her New York stalker, leaving out all of her side of the conversation, suggesting she had egged him on into saying things she later used against him.

Her poem takes on an aloof tone, a dismissive air of moral superiority, saying she could care less about my having hard feelings when she had lived in fear for so many weeks and lived through so many sleepless nights.

In one section of the poem, she projected her belief that I believed her past experiences (with many stalkers) had toughened her, or as she put it “seasoned” her, projecting the belief that I assumed she had no feelings.

Again, with a hard tone bordering on arrogance, flatly states: “To want to be left alone is not a feeling”

 At this point, she broadens the scope of the poem to include all those others in the past she had forgiven, people who were actually shocked by that fact, then quotes a close friend, perhaps one of her angels as asking how she could forgive them when they hurt her.

She said they (we) hurt themselves, and if we stopped to thin at all, there should have been no need for forgiveness in the first place.

In other words, we (the collective) brought it on ourselves, and yet in a brief consolidatory tone, she points out that forgiveness is a way of life, and there would be no need for it if we all just left her alone.

The poem structure goes from specifically speaking to me as an individual to a more generic group which I served as an example, and ends speaking directly to me again.

Unlike some of her previous angry poems, her rage is controlled, she comes off as sounding reasonable, explaining how she suffered, and how much she feared.

Forgiveness is the theme or the lack of need for it.

She clearly needs to put the whole affair behind her, and makes it clear any effort on her part to offer forgiveness would suggest some hope for a future between us, which she state’s quite frankly, doesn’t exist.

Nothing can go back to what it was, too much water under the bridge.

Then in an arrogant, nearly God-like tone – like a priest ending a sermon at the end a mass, she says, “You were forgiven long ago, as you should have done yourself. Now Go!”

 

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Prison of her own making July 10, 2012

 

  

It doesn’t take much imagination to whom she meant as a vampire in the poem she posted today.

The real question is who she meant as her angels? I make an educated guess but will never know for certain.

The poem covers a time when she clearly feels under attack and has taken refuge in a self-created bunker with as she calls them “concrete kryptonite walks,” something like an air raid shelter from a different generation, built to protect people from “the bomb.”

Or this might well be a bank vault since later she refers to someone with the right combination, “the right Morris Code knock” to help her escape.

You could almost envision her as a Steve McQueen character from The Great Escape, bouncing a ball off the walls while waiting to get out – only this is a self-imposed imprisonment, and she is hunkered down for her own self-protection.

So, even when some people who are “kind enough, and persistent and smart” come to set her free, she resists leaving this place of safety because it goes against her instinct for self-survival  -- and it is only when they finally free her does she realized these people are angels as opposed to the “vampires with closed mouthed smiles” who pretend to be.

Her hiding in her fallout shelter is not new as the opening lines of the poem suggests, and there is a tone of self-approach when she says some people learn from experience to survive “the dark hours,” as if an allusion to her own poem previously posted about what she might have expected.

The use of the word “kryptonite” suggests the need for superhuman effort to ward off external evil, or perhaps needing it to ward off the powerful evil trying to get in at her.

During these times, she says, she is general alone, except for a few cats/

But occasionally – actually she uses the word “rarely” -- some kind souls figure out the combination to the safe she’s locked herself in and they lure her out, showing her angelic kindness as opposed to the evil vampires show.

The use of the term “picnic cooler fort” connotes additional meanings and supports the concept of self-containment and protection. “Cooler” is a term sometimes used to refer to jail, in particular a World War II prisoner of war jail. “Fort” also connotes a protected space where the inhabitants are protected from external threats rather than simply a prison. “Picnic” suggests something not permanent, a temporary retreat, setting aside just enough provisions to weather the storm which must pass on eventually.

The use of the term “Morris Code” also harkens back to both World Wars and may well allude to the most famous Morris Code, “SOS” signifying distress, and suggests that someone, maybe more than one, recognized her call for help and were “persistent and smart” enough to rescue her from this prison of her own making.

 

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Without apology July 8, 2012

 

At first glance, the poem she posted today strongly resembles in theme one she wrote about when observing the outlandishly dressed woman from a few days ago.

The difference, however, is highly important in that this poem is much more direct.

This poem is almost like a confession, but also a defense of who she is and what she does, without apology.

And while she does not mention accusations made against her, they are strongly implied.

The poem opens with the desire for a peaceful place, “soft and cool, and low.” Where the sound of water helps sooth raw nerves in what could be construe as “fear” yet is not.

She describes these feelings, these “scraped nerves” as the result of living on the edge, in that zone between what other people call normal and what she describes as “right for me.”

She takes comfort in the idea that what she is, what she does and what she has done is “right and true.”

There is a huge gap between this poem’s claims and a poem earlier which described tales about her as “gossip” or fabricated.

She is setting the record straight, saying whatever path her footsteps take or have taken, whatever acts she performs or has performed, are all part of who she is and to do it any other way would be unnatural for her.

This in some ways echoes a poem she had posted at one point and later removed in which she admits to “trickling up,” behavior some others might not see as “right” or “true.”

She is clearly saying these things are right and true for her.

While not quite as strident, the poem comes across as a declaration of independence with the underlying notion that she does what she does because she feels that is who she is, and what is right for her to do.

By implication, this harkens back to another one of her poems and throwing the first stone, and asks without asking, what right have other people to judge her regardless of what she does or will do.

This creates a certain moral ambiguity in that it suggests as the Bible sometimes does that nobody has the right to judge anybody else, leaving that to God, and alluding to the often over used metaphor about walking in another man’s (or woman’s) shoes.

The poet clearly feels wounded, angry as well, and perhaps – even though she denies it in this poem – afraid, seeking to find a way to heal herself and yet not bend to the implied accusations.

She attributes her wounds like to fear by to wear and tear of living life on the edge, admitting she does not live a life of “norm,” again defending herself by claiming she is being true to herself.

She takes comfort in the healing waters of knowing what she is, does or will be, is right and true.

 

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Betrayed again and again July 7, 2012

   

If the poem she posted yesterday was defiant, today’s poem highlights just how vulnerable she believes she is., and how betrayed she feels, not just by me, but by our former temporary boss whom she previously trusted, and now, does not.

This is perhaps an unfair assessment because looking back at it, he really did not betray her, a fact she will likely come to realize eventually and continue on with him as friends, mending bridges clearly impossible to mend with me.

 As with yesterday’s poem, this poem reflects and over reaction, panic and mistrust that will likely calm over time, but will never get back to where it had been previously.

She describes it as a cold mistrust that breaks through a positive heat, affecting her stomach and causing her hands to shake.

She finds herself remote from herself, looking down at the whole mess with confusion.

She claims she does not normally panic at high-risk things – she has lived her life on the edge. It’s the ordinary stuff that gets her, such as steady breathing, answering the telephone, going out for anything other than work – still worse, sleeping.

The poem uses the metaphor of a fish bowl which distorts reality, regardless of whether you are inside the bowl or outside. Reality is warped by the glass, and appears alarmed at how changed that reality is, she catching glimpses of things she thought steady, but have changed, causing her to panic.

The inside and outside the fish bowl metaphor may well be a comparison to how she sees things and other people outside see her world – but this may be stretching her meaning.

She says, she can’t even trust her own thinking, because she has failed to expect betrayal, when it appears she has been betrayed before.

Why had it taken her by surprise? She should have expected it.

What she assumed was one thing, turned out to be something else, not just this time, but every time.

The poem goes on to ask what can be trusted. Can she even trust her own perceptions (through the warped lens of the fish bowl) and perhaps she has fooled herself by not expecting to be betrayed?

The poem’s self-doubt tends to make the tone of defiance in her previous poem ring hollow, even though both reactions can be valid.

But she is clearly not as strong as yesterday’s poem implied, and is extremely vulnerable as this poem points out, raising the fundamental question is to how she can trust someone else when she can’t even trust her own perceptions.

She should have known she would be betrayed based on her experiences in the past.

Unasked in this poem, and so unanswered is what can she do to keep it from occurring in the future?

There is a tone of fatalistic hopelessness in this poem, as if she believes she can’t stop it from happening again either.

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Issuing her terms July 15, 2012

  

I keep thinking back about the poem she wrote during that brief lull earlier this month, about the angels and vampires, and though I know who the vampire is, the angels escape me.

The more I think about it, the more I regret throwing our former temporary boss under the bus with her. He truly adores her; I’m certain he was one of her angels before I betrayed him.

She claims she never lies, and she said she told him nothing about what went on between her and I prior to my meeting with him in the park.

Thinking about it, I believe her. He looked very upset when he and I talked, though it was hard to read from his silence at the time.

Her reaction later when I emailed her was more revealing, especially when she asked why I was ruining it for her with him.

He does fit the description of one of her angels, kind, and patient enough to work out the Morris Code combination that would unlock her door.

He has helped her, guided her through her dealings with her New York stalker, taking for granted all she claims about her one-time boss from New York, when I’m much more skeptical.

He sees her as vulnerable, in need of protection, an admirable idea except she’s stronger than she lets on, and I can’t get passed the feeling she is leading him on.

I hope not. If anyone is vulnerable in all this, he is, someone who aches to be a mentor, and if there is a way to get passed his defenses, it is by being needy herself.

He has a desperate need to be needed, and she seems to play off that, allowing him to help her when she clearly is the least vulnerable of the three of us.

I feel intensely sorry having taken this away from him, feeling less like the vampire she portrays me in her poems, but like a serpent in paradise, who just opened his eyes and for which he must be cast out to make his way in harsher world – although for all his worldliness, he is extremely naïve, and will likely remain blind to it all – an odd observation almost opposite of what I first thought when I envisioned him as cold and calculating (which he would like to be) when he is really someone almost frantic to be seen as important. This is not to say he’s free of manipulation; he’s simply too obvious when he tries it.

I don’t think now as I originally then that his advice was self-serving when he said I should keep my distance from her.

“Don’t go near her unless someone sends you there,” he said.

I’ve also come to believe she divulged nothing about me to him prior to my meeting with him in the park (it would not be in her best interest to do so) and he was taken by surprise when I talked with him – answering the old Watergate questions of “what did he know and when did he know it?”

Clearly her advisor when it comes to her New York stalker, has he also become her advisor in regard to me or does she rely on some other angel such as the man Tom called “RR?”

What makes me suspicious is the email I received from her stating her “terms” which repeated almost word for word the advice he gave me in the park and later.

If I did not follow her terms, she said she would file charges against me of stalking.

It became clear she was attempting to build a case against me, even though many of the incidents she cited were simply efforts to make peace with her, including the bottle of wine I left on her desk, an emailed apology, and a random remark made to the office gossip when I got asked why I was bringing in the wine, and poems I posted on my blog never sent to her directly, none of which mentioned her by name. She said she did not want me to lose my job or face charges and would refrain from doing so if I refrained from any additional conversations with our former temporary boss, in or out of the park, and if I maintained a professional distance.

Since I had stayed silent for the most part since May – with the exception of my meeting with our former temporary boss in the park – distance, professional or other wise was not a problem.

These were reasonable requests since she clearly felt injured by the information I had already disclosed, and in some ways, her gesture was merciful – although in reality, she has as much to lose by having the whole thing become public since this thing seems to involve more than just three of us, but one guy from graphics, one of the company’s owners, and maybe others.

If this is just a stepping stone in her career path, as the company gossip claims she said, then she could ill afford to have the whole thing thrown into the open.

I misread the terms the first time and had to email her a second time with my acceptance.

But it was clear, she had not drafted this by herself, in particular the part about her sending off all of her “evidence” to the Public Safety Director in one of the towns she worked – something our former temporary boss had suggested for her when dealing with her New York stalker.

Still, I took her threat seriously, more because of our former temporary boss than her. I had injured him and that made him dangerous.

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Rage against the tyrant July 6, 2012

  Because the poem she posted today was like a shot gun blast to my head, I’m tempted to defend myself against it as I decipher the poem.

Yet once more, I vow to keep free of overt editorializing since I have in the many other hundreds of pages of this journal, more than enough space to tell my side of the story. All that represents her side in these pages comes from my interpretating her poems as honestly as possible, trying to convey what she is trying to say in order to create some kind of balance.

Besides, she is not completely wrong in some of her claims.

What stands out most immediately is her use of the pronoun “they” instead of “you,” expanding the scope of the poem beyond one villain, although it is clear from the litany of lines the poem is aimed at me and is in reaction to things that have gone on beyond our literary exchange, most notably my talk about her with our former temporary boss.

The other oddity is her use of rime, giving the poem a military cadence, hammering in each point she is trying to make, claiming “we” or “they” have caused her heart to pound (no doubt in fear or panic) which drains her energy as if “we” or “they” want to steal it.

In this poem, she is defying her attacker, saying he can cause her heart to beat harder, drain her energy, cause her to lose sleep, cause her to distrust people she previously trusted and reek other havoc on her, try to shut her down, and beat her until she bleeds, misread her honesty, dismantle her sanity, spread gossip about her till “we” or “they” chokes ourselves to death with the hope someone will believe them, spin tales and pout when life deceives us, yet “we” or “they” cannot reach her soul or “even come near it.”

She warns that there will be a reckoning although “we” or “they” won’t heard it as “we” or “they” pretend righteousness “we” or “they” don’t have a right to claim.

Then she alludes to the old children’s rhyme about sticks and stone never hurting her, claiming “we” or “they” won’t hurt her with a stone. This is also an allusion to the Biblical verse about “he who is without sin cast the first stone,” a stone thrown, she claims in anger or fear or a “narcissistic act of self-deception.”

Still more defiantly, she points out that when salvation comes “we” or “they” will be too deaf (perhaps deaf, dumb and blind) to be aware of it.

Then, in a gesture that hints of kindness, but also still bitter, she wishes me, we or they luck in that we or they might find redemption.

There is nothing subtle in this poem, despite her great ability at using language. This is pure reaction, pure rage, mingled with a lot of pain, and an intense sense of betrayal – she is clearly uncertain yet who to blame (thus the plural pronouns) or who to trust.

Taken in context with some of her previously posted poem, this poem shows real shock at the events that occurred, considering her previous poems had become more reflective, with a more peaceful and thoughtful frame of mind, from which she got jolted. This poem is both a reflection of her anguish and rage, but more importantly and expression of her defiance. She will not let these things destroy her and will not give the culprit the satisfaction of knowing just how deeply she has been hurt. She will retain her soul and her dignity.

 

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Pursuit of happiness? July 3, 2012

  

The poem she posted today said a lot about her, I had not suspected, although should have.

It deals with the concept of “fate” or inevitability, although she uses neither word. The poem seems to deal with innocence and guilt, but in an odd way, of unrealized expectations, and how struggles may not always be tied to experience.

In the poem, she is speaking to a new born baby, and raises the speculation of what she expected to feel when seeing the baby for the first time, and what she actually felt at first contact.

She apparently dreaded the idea of becoming a mother, describing it as “justly afraid,” or perhaps an even greater fear that she might succumb to mother nature’s call to motherhood.

Instead, she found an odd commonality with the infant she did not at all expect, noticing that the baby struggled with sleep just as she often has, only with the poet, there were justifications for this inability, worries that kept her mind running on what she often calls the hamster wheel in her head.

What did this infant have to worry about with so little time on the planet that allowed it toa accumulate such deep concerns?

The poet wants the infant to rest peacefully (an odd reference suggesting “rest in peace” and perhaps an allusion to the only real time when any of us are free of the things that keep us up at night, death being the end of all consciousness). The poet wants the infant to have the peace she herself as never felt.

How can this infant be struggling when it has everything it needs, love and affection, protection, and such, and yet it still cries, having none of the adult experience to justify it?

In some ways, this poem raises questions about the nature of innocence and whether or not we as humans are fated to misery, even when as young as this infant is.

This infant has had no time to build up a ledger filled with guilt or regret, hurt or disappointment, and has been showered with apparently endless love (perhaps suggesting for the poet that the pursuit of love may not be the answer she is seeking for herself.)

This kinship between poet and infant appears to be based on pain or concern, and the question as to why people cannot find contentment – and perhaps more fundamentally, the poem seems to ask, if the infant with so little baggage and so much love, can’t find happiness, what hope is there for the poet?

 

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On her own terms June 27, 2012

 

While not at all lighthearted, the poem she posted today was less intense than many of her previous poems, and at first glance does not seem to be about me or our situation. Though as you get deeper into the poem, which is essentially saying she wants to live her life on her own terms, the message seems to repeat a statement she had made more directly to me in other poems.

The poem is essentially a character profile of a neighborhood character, she sometimes sees making her way up the street, someone outrageously dressed, listening to music on her Walkman or boom box, while making her way to the local grocery store – the woman’s outfit and example of what a woman her age should not be wearing.

Other people start at the woman, sometimes in disgust. But the woman clearly does not care about what other people think, and the poet, sitting in her kitchen window looking out, gets less depressed from seeing this woman, finding inspiration in this strange woman.

There is contrast between the woman and those who would pass judgement on her, she dressed in pinks and blues and bright green, wearing a flower in her hair, while those who judge her are dressed darkly and possess “darker souls.”

In this, the poet seems to be making reference to our conflict.

The poem is about the woman and by default, the poet, needing to live her life, whole those who pass judgement are malevolent beings bent on destroying this woman’s joy. The woman refuses to be intimidated, a lesson perhaps for the poet, that she should not have her joy ruined by judgements other people (like me) make, by those (like me) with dark souls.

This seems appropriate since she (the poet) has made similar statements in other poems which were directly aimed at me. She just wants to get on with her life and live that life in the way she wants.

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Walking with God or alone? June 26, 2012

  

I tend not to believe in coincidence. So, when she posts a poem with a nearly identical title to a poem I posted previously, I suspect a connection – especially when she got enraged over an image I used when I posted my poem.

On the other hand, she posted this poem today a whole month after I posted mine, leaving room for doubt as to whether or not it was a reaction.

These two approaches alter the interpretation in subtle ways, even though in either case, the poem largely says the same thing.

In this poem we get a definitive “I” who is walking through a massive church filled with gold and wood, slight streaming through large windows and onto the pews with warmth.

And she speculates on how years ago, people coming into a space like this might think they are walking with God.

This is something of a cynical perspective, a disbelief in the artifice of faith, perhaps seeing these things as trickery that deceives people into believing in God, or at least God’s presence, while she casts doubt about it, perhaps even going as far as to question the existence of some all-powerful spiritual being.

“Non believer,” might be too strong a term to descript the speaker in this poem, but she is skeptical, and judgmental, looking at other people from another time as being fooled.

The meaning of the poem changes subtly if seen as a reaction to my poem where I talked about a craft vendor who pulled me aside during one of my many trips to Woodstock to tell me I walked with God. (She, the poet, mistakenly assumed my trip there had something to do with her, a perception aided by the fact that among the photos I posted was one of a street sign for a restaurant where she once worked.)

The vendor’s remark came at a time when I struggled emotionally and struck me as a sign of hope, if no faith.

In either case, her poem questions the foundation of faith, claiming we get impressed by the trappings of spirituality when in reality there might not be anything there. We assume we walk with God because of the massive architecture we have built around our need to believe.

If her poem is not a reaction to mine, then she is simply questioning people’s gullibility. If it is a reaction, then it is a cynical reproach for me not to believe everything people tell me -- not just that vendor in Woodstock, but closer to home as work.

In both interpretations, her poem seems to say, if there is a god he walks elsewhere and most likely he walks alone.

 

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