If you grow up between thieves

  

 

(written early February 2013)

Something is definitely amiss in Oz, if my readings of her posts from her Facebook site are any indication.

Again, I’m not sure why she opened her account to the public again after panicking a few weeks go when she discovered we were connected.

Perhaps she feels safe and that I no longer have access to see her public postings but needs to site to send messages to one of her other victims.

She is fully aware that I read her poetry postings on her blogger account, and perhaps tailors each to specific people.

But in some ways, both poetry and Facebook communicate similar messages, although Facebook appears to be saying it more openly – although not too directly – and appears to suggest that there has been a significant change within her enclave, although just what this is, I can’t say.

Two of her more recent poems from the blogger site hinted at some change, and conflict, but it is not possible to know from them what transpired.

This change was reflected in a poem posted on Dec. 19, in which she talks about the frustration of the social games people play.

“All seems a bunch of crap to me,” she wrote. “You can say, as you sit alone and once again alone, `At least I took the proper steps,’ seems awfully flat and cold to me. This does not a true love make, in my own mind, at least, or maybe therein lies a fairy tale I do not believe anyway, so maybe I have spun one for myself. And at this stage in the so-called game, at a time when game-playing exhausts me, and I, of an ilk that does not naturally play these games at all, and if love is a game that must be won, and played so calculatedly to sustain, It's time, I think, to try and consider a life alone, or, at least, to learn to love myself and my instinct to stay away from all the play that doesn't feel like play at all. No games, no unclear and stagnant ritual, no stupid dancing around the beauty of the truth. For one who over thinks anything that can be thought, I think it's time to do.”

This signaled some dramatic event in her life that does not appear to have anything to do with me, although she had to be aware of my reading the poem when she posted it, since a number of the other poems she has posted were directed at me on some level.

This came just after her poem from back in 2003, suggesting that she has finally come to realize that she had been used by others she had an attachment, too, possibly RR.

Apparently, her attempt to “get into TV” supposedly a gig on NBC or CBS failed, and she was floundering for identity, and even went so far as to offer to do work for her mayor’s Chief Rival – although this may also have been a political ploy designed to undermine him the way she apparently did at our office for RR and the breakup with RR (if it indeed occurred) broke off this arrangement, and she scrambled for work again.

After almost a month of not posting, she put up the poem talking about turning towards the right direction when all else is failing and her need for affection which she almost forgot she needed. This seems to correspond to her getting a job as a secretary or press person in the Virgin Mayor’s office.

 A she posted a few days later about waking up early in the morning in search of answers.

Four days later, she posted yet another nostalgic poem about her love of a famous professor in Columbia who she might or might not have had an affair with, but certainly admired, and emulated, and looking back to 2001 when she studied with him, she seems to be longing for the opportunities she had then but never materialized.

Then last Monday, she posted a poem in which she bemoans the fact that she must grab onto the short straws and the small calls of duty as what is, rather than the loftier road insisting on what should be.

This may well define some of the conflict between her and RR, where as he kept bullshitting her about great plans she had had, or it may simply be her acceptance of her job rather than the great schemes she imagined she deserves.

Since I don’t check any of her sites often, I’m not sure exactly when she made her Facebook page public again, but the first post was posted about the same time she was making reference to a chance to work together with good and dedicated people.

Again, she seems to be bemoaning her inability to achieve what she wants.

Ironically, I ran into the head of the shelter in the town I work in last Wednesday while covering a funding event there, and when I approached him for a quote and told him where I worked, he made reference to her, telling me “She’s really a great person.”

He had the same love-sick look I’ve seen on the faces other men when referring to her.

What exactly is transpiring in her life, in the office, or elsewhere is hard to tell, but she is clearly still in the middle of some drama that she is struggling to work out. One of her male friends on Facebook replied to her with a message of support “Just know you are not alone in this wild, wild world...no matter what.”

She replied about an hour later, “Thank you. Knowing we all go through the same thing keeps me going.”

At this point, the police director she had used to threaten me last summer came in asking “Holy Mackerel!! What's going on up there???”

Whether he meant her apartment or city hall, it’s hard to tell.

Although with posting of snow photos from out of her window, one of the church yard, another of her fire escape, she posted another Spanish quote

"Si te crias entre ladrones siempre piensas que todos te van a robar,” translated: “If you grow up between thieves you always think that they all are going to steal you.”

Assuming that she made her Facebook public to communicate with someone, and that someone is not likely me, what exactly is she saying here? Is she sending a message to RR or to herself, is she talking about her disappointment with his delusion or blaming her family for how paranoid she feels?

Hard to tell.

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When life gives you a lemon… (written late January/early February 2013

  

(from an alternative journal)

 

There is a strange disconnect between what her poetry says and what she says to other people.

Her poems suggest she is near despair, locked into a situation she can barely tolerate, something so far below her talents that she has to brace herself up to keep on going.

Her public pronouncements tell a different tale, as this one after a snow storm hit our neck of the woods.

“Glad to work for a town ('s mayor) who appreciates the weather conditions and lets his employees go home at 2 p.m.,” she wrote. “I haven't had a snow day since the four-foot-snow blizzard after Christmas 2010 when my restaurant shut down, and before that, not since high school!”

This may have been written with the knowledge that the Virgin Mayor – to whom she is referring – may well be reading it, or one of his henchmen, and is designed to create the impression that she is on the same team.

On the other hand, she tends to throw herself all in on new enterprises and may well be an honest expression of her enthusiasm to be given and opportunity to be a member of the team.

The conversation talks about previous efforts to get to work in any kind of weather and ended up with her joking about it.

“I know this is going to be overused like "like" in a sentence, but: I FOUND NEMO,” she wrote.

But her posts go on as if to convince herself of how good she has it now as prior to this, alluding to an optimism in public that she does not seem to have in private.

“I am grateful for my optimism despite all the (allegedly) inordinate amount of crap (I disagree; I believe that's just life) that's been (so they tell me) laid upon me in such a short space of time, because most assume I'd be a hardcore pessimist; but despite my daily struggle to believe in a world I don't feel at all a part of (but am not bitter about!), I still carry on and encourage others to do so once I'm moving well into my day. And thank *insert power here* for whatever power that grabs me hours after the morning hours that keeps me here.”

But then, in a subsequent post, she describes a typical day in her life/

“Step one: eat half of giant sandwich. Step two: pass out. Step three: wake up and eat other half of giant sandwich. Step four: cry self to sleep, shedding alternate years of guilt and satiety. I am grateful for possibility, because it turns the status quo into a heartless myth.”

She goes on to talk about what else she is grateful for.

“I am grateful to have heat today, because the local shelter requires its residents to leave the premises from 8 am to 6 pm and I can't even be in the cold for twenty minutes without weeping like an idiot,” she wrote. “I am grateful for lemonade, because it makes me happier than an unused lemon.”

 

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Roving photographer? Written late January/early February 2013

  

(from alternative journal)

 

She has been doing photo work for The Virgin Mayor -- press release stuff and coverage of events. So, she likely decided she can pursue a career in photography.

She is nearly as good a photographer as she is a poet and artist, although her talents are wasted on press releases.

Last summer, she attended the magazine party, acting as if she was the official photographer, something the owner seemed to approve of.

Lately, the owner has become super critical of all the other writers’ photo stuff and is redesigning our website to be more photo intensive.

And now, he suddenly he proposes I do a photo shoot in my town, and without warning the very shoot he told me to do she posts on her Facebook page, making me wonder if he intends to hire her back to work as our roving photographer – a position we’ve not had since our office issued digital cameras in the late 1990s. He may want her photos to help spruce up our website.

All this makes me wonder if she could not resist bragging about her photos to the owner before he could pull the trigger for my failing to do the shoot -- or perhaps, she showed him the photos before she posted them, inspiring him to get me to duplicate them for our website.

I got word from someone political that there is trouble in her town between her and other people there, and that the Virgin Mayor is expected to step down soon – so, she's scrambling to come back to our office and may be using our owner to do so.

I texted the police director asking him to get me on site today so, I don't get arrested, he hasn't gotten back to me. I also resent an email to the people in charge of the site -- the previous emails at a mistake in the address -- asking them to permit me to shoot either today or tomorrow, just in case.

Two good things come out of this -- although I've barely had sleep.

First, this confirms that she and our owner have continued their relationship even after she left -- and he is likely trying to find a place for her.

She may have acted on her own to do this shoot. He may have talked to her about it when with her -- last Tuesday when he left and came back in a strange mood -- and this would really piss him off that she took the photos and posted them without telling him.

My finding out about it may even scare him, because unsaid in all this is my knowledge of their relationship. The fact that I have one of the sales people and our boss both contacting her for use of the photos makes it impossible for the owner to cover this up.

 

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Where to go from here? Jan. 18, 2013

   

No news is good news, but I don’t trust the resounding silence coming out of the RR camp, especially in this era of conspiracies, conspiracy theories, calculation, and perhaps in this case, miscalculation.

RR wants something, but nobody knows exactly what – or more precisely, everybody has a different theory, no two theories adding up to anything logical.

Perhaps she, RR and their close associates talk about amongst themselves, and RR may even want to use her to get it, urging her on by feeding her ambition, even though it is even less clear what she ultimately wants.

Although it is pretty clear to me, what he wants is his badge back, proof of he is not crazy or corrupt and if he is made a cop again people might forget entirely what got him fired in the first place or that he was a dirty cop who got caught and then to save himself turned on his own friends.

Fired and unable to get his old job back, RR became an avenger, searching out and prosecuting what he considers dirty cops, but is as often wrong in his assessment as he is right, traveling across state lines to sue or protest.

“He has big plans I can’t talk about,” she told me during a phone interview back in September, her voice so thick with admiration, even after he lost his legal battle to get back his job last year.

It almost seems that she might do anything for him and may well explain why she went as far as she did with us to help him overthrow the congressman – who he falsely blamed for his inability to regain his job.

Now both of them seem to cling to the Virgin Mayor, RR, hoping to broker this relationship into becoming county sheriff. But what does she get? What is her ultimate goal?

It’s hard to trickle up when there’s no place to trickle up to.

 

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Getting run over by a runaway train Jan. 16, 2013

  

It is tragic what will happen next – the next step into the political big leagues where players when they tag you out, they make sure you don’t get up after knocking you out.

Freeholder R confirmed that RR wants to be sheriff and has been pressuring the Neighboring Mayor to put him on the ticket – the same mayor she went after, the same mayor she called corrupt, the same mayor she claimed had knocked up a 16-year-old and had her stashed in a housing authority apartment – these accusations possibly made by her on RR’s behalf. Now, he wants the neighboring mayor to endorse him for the second highest law enforcement post in the county.

The Neighboring Mayor could bring RR as many as 10,000 votes, this before the opposition even has RR on its radar.

Yet the whole thing has the same feel as a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car and falls under the category of beware of what you wish for.

It is difficult to know if she is still tied up with RR or is aware of just how ruthless he can be when he wants, and yet is painting a target on both of their backs as he pits himself against the powerful county political machine, and she will find herself in deep shit when the campaign starts in earnest.

RR was on a countywide ticket with the Neighboring Mayor last time he ran for sheriff and still lost. But after all the backhanded things RR and she tried to pull on him, the Neighboring Mayor would be crazy to back him this time.

Tom calls RR and her political amateurs. But RR at least is a ruthless armature who aches to get into the game and will do anything to achieve that.

They are flying by the seat of their pants and assume that as long as they stay close to the Virgin Mayor, the Neighboring Mayor will support them.

But the Neighboring Mayor knows what the Small Man knows, all the back stabbing and petty schemes, and is not about to back a man who tried to use our office and her to bring down The Small Man and the Congressman.

Worse for RR still is her resignation from our office.

I suspect the original plan included not just an expose on the congressman’s corruption by a series of articles praising RR just in time for his bid to become sheriff.

With her gone, RR has to come up with another scheme, and perhaps they are floundering, which may explain why RR went on his hands and knees to the Neighboring Mayor.

When I asked the Neighboring Mayor’s chief of staff as to whether RR would be their choice for sheriff, he fell silent, and Freeholder R said it would be a foolish move for both RR and the Neighboring Mayor, since the sheriff’s position is controlled by the Senator, Neighboring Mayor’s arch enemy and would certainly lead to all out war, and if the Small Man is to be believed, exposing all of the dirty business of the past.

Unfortunately, this includes her and if RR gets run over by this runaway train, so does she.

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Nowhere else to go Jan. 15, 2013

  

 My best guess about yesterday’s poem may not be enough.

It is possible that she is suspects that she’s in a no-win situation, and that she is biased when it comes to dealing with those she’s involved with. But there she is getting something out of it, attention, affection.

She clearly believes that she had done the right and proper things and is perhaps a bit overwhelmed by the conflicts she engaged in, and really has no place else to go or anyone else she can count on.

RR is still in the mix although I’m not sure he’s the center piece. His marriage has fallen apart because he can’t stop cheating, even though his wife recently bore him a second child.

Does the poem reflect any of this?

I keep thinking of the poem she wrote over the summer about looking at an infant and wonder if she was looking at his kid, and whether she somehow feels culpability for the destruction of his marriage?

This brings me back to the central question of whether or not she as naïve as she sometimes seems, and whether or not RR has been manipulating her to become a tool for his agenda.

Did he talk her into it.

I keep thinking about the old woman who she met on a cruise back a decade ago, who taught her how to survive in the world.

Can she, a woman who has learned the ropes and worn out so many daily planners, be taken in by someone so obviously a con man as RR is.

I keep thinking about our former Temporary Boss, and how he ached to protect her, how she gave him what he wanted by letting him become her mentor, a kind of passive aggressive manipulation that would make her immune to the guiles of someone like RR.

I do believe she is desperate for love, regardless of how hardened and street smart she has become, and this may well make her vulnerable to someone like RR, who plays to that part of her so very, very well.

She is not savvy the way he is savvy. She does not know the political landscape as well as he does.

She must rely on him to guide her through the web of political deceit, because he may well be the only one who answers her cries in the night – if indeed he is feeding her what she needs.

But who is the savvier, I can’t tell. While she may think she is trickling up, she is in a cesspool with people who might well abandon her the moment she ceases to have a use for them – and that includes RR.

Again, she clearly can’t come back to our office.

The Virgin Mayor hired her at $30,000 a year with full benefits, up from the starting salary at our office of somewhere around $18,000.

RR, Joey D and others appear to think they are getting something for their money, a Mata Hari who can reach out to her political contacts in order to help the Virgin Mayor stay in power.

What happens when they find out, as the Small Man pointed out, she really has no political contacts, or at least not as many as RR and his cohorts hope for?

 

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Turning in the proper direction `Jan. 14, 2013

   

In her first poem posted in more than two weeks, she seemed to confirm the sense of confusion going on behind the scenes.

The poem ought to have surprise me coming at a time she ought to appreciate landing on her feet after what might seem like a national disaster being forced to resign her job with us.

Considering the insecurity of her situation and her inability to rely on anyone to protect her, she again seems to find herself drifting, and is seeking something to set it right.

Like many of her other poems, this one appears to be a self-reflection, the speaker of the poem telling herself what options she has.

The point of the poem is to explain those options, to point out what she has relied on in the past to get through such situations.

There is a strong sense of melancholy in it, resounding with a sense of loss.

There are three stanzas.

In the first, she is saying that turning herself in the right direction may be the first step. She uses words like “proper thing” a rather formal way of putting what might be expected of her, doing her duty perhaps as the world around her crashes. Perhaps even implying loyalty to someone or something.

In the second stanza, she describes herself in the midst of conflict, a struggle that has her grasping to hold on, as she pulls herself against the hostility.

She then uses another formal term “Predilection,” in a past tense, as if it is something she has relied upon in the past when all else has failed.

The word “Predilection” is in one sense, a tendency stronger than “like” but not quite potent as “love.” It connotes a sense of bias or prejudice and implies a leaning towards things she trusts or is predisposed towards, depending on what she believes already has served her as a crutch during those times when all else is in doubt.

The third stanza is something of a reversal, hinting of despair, a cry for help, a call for affection she so desperately needs.

The third stanza is more complicated in that she mentions “a cry” as if in a cry for help, “a call into the night, as if seeking someone without knowing who might answer, when she desperately needs affection to feed her.

It is not clear if she got the affection in answer to her cry and why she remains where she is or is still waiting for it.

It might suggest that she still believes in the cause she has taken up “the proper thing,” and she gets what she needs.

There is a feeling that her fate may be tied to something else, and if that something else fails (the mayor or RR) then she might not have anything else to hold onto.

The poem makes use of a brilliant pattern of rhymes, end rhymes that enhance the drum beat like message she is making, and a series of internal rhymes that pull the body of the work together.

The end rhymes through the three stanzas are do/you, knew/you, grew/you.

Direction/Predilection/affection and right/fight/ night make up some of the internal rhymes as each of these words appears in the same place in each of the stanzas.

She goes on to use parallel phrasing in each of the stanzas as well: “the proper thing’, “the only thing, “and then in a variation, “the only way.”

She also reinforces one of her internal rhyme schemes in a repeated phrase “Direction seems,” “Predilection seems.” And “affection seems.”

The end lines in the first two stanzas echo each other in a sense of distance and loss “fast from you,” and “far from you,” and in a more hopeful end of the third stanza, she reminds herself of her need for affection.

The poem appears to be telling her to hold fast, that she must do the right and proper thing, but must rely on her own wits and experience, and ultimately what she needs to survive is someone’s love or gratitude.

She is clearly adrift as the poem suggest, grasping to hold on to someone or something, and needs to remind herself of what has helped her in the past and on what she can rely, and the thing she needs most. If not love them something close to it, something that can feed or her soul.

The poem seems to say that she believes she had turned in a direction she considers right, and she is doing what she needs to do to survive “pull against the fight,” and yet, still needs something to give her hope and strength.

 

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The unrequited

   

Written mid-March 2013

 

One thing evident from many of her poems and almost all of her songs is a common and painful theme.

Actor and director Clint Eastwood in his masterpiece, “The Unforgiven” had a theme defined by its title in which nearly all of the characters are unable to find forgiveness – they can’t even forgive themselves.

In her work, the theme – or the title of a movie that might be made from her songs and poems would be “The Unrequited” since she apparently continues to give love that is rarely or at best only briefly returned.

This is particularly evident in a very short song where she is pinning over someone who is clearly unresponsive, and still she holds out hope he will come back to lay with her once he has grown weary of his wandering ways.

As pointed out, this is a remarkably short song, and the song does not fit the mold of an ordinary lyric.

 Instead, she seems to be singing a non-riming poem against a background of piano and ethereal harmony, not quite a dirge, but as slowly sung as if one, creating a mood of mourning for something she has lost or is losing, and which might not come back.

She lingers and emphasizes every word like a chant, giving the feeling that every utterance causes her great pain.

From the opening line, it is clear she and (he?) disagree, and she no longer wants to engage in the conflict, “all this noise is breaking me down,” she sings.

The song/poem is drawn together by the repetition of down as well as a repeated line: “You lie where it’s quiet.”

The word “lie” has potential for double meaning, to occupy a calm space, or to “fabricate” or “lie” with his silence.

The line also implies his stone-hearted silence in face of her needs.

As implied, this hardly makes for good company – or companionship, a stone cold in his silence, unmoved by her pain.

“In your eyes, I see my fear,” she sings

Her world is chaotic, and as she alludes in many of her poems, she struggles with sleep at night and still have to face the day time world, “face another noisy day.”

She is weary; he is silent.

“You lie where it’s quiet,” she sings, and yet as angry or fearful as she is, she clearly does not want to let him go, urging him to come back when he’s finished running around.

The implication is that he may have other romantic interests, while she wants an exclusive relationship with him, a very romantic, yet tragic notion.

The song/poem ends on a tragically optimist note that she will still be there when he’s tired of running around.

The unrequited, unrewarded love gives the song its heartrending tone, perfectly matched by the slowness of her singing it, as if she struggles o get each word out, so overcome with emotion.

She comes across as someone who truly cares, while he seems remote, cold and impassionate – and yet somehow in her thinking, he’s still worthy enough for her to wait for.

As suggested earlier, the song is unconventional in that it lacks the usual verse and chorus. But it can be broken down into three stanzas or verses. The first implies the conflict and how all this talk is wearing her down, its concluding line might be interpreted by the old cliché of her talking to a brick wall.

“And you lie where it is quiet.”

The second stanza starts with the claim that he is poor company. She sees her own fear reflected in his eyes, suggesting that he must understand how she feels and how she is struggling to get on in the day-to-day world, and still, he remains unmoved, “you lie where it’s quiet.”

In the third stanza, she tells him to do what me must do and come back when he’s tired of running around.

She’ll be there waiting to lie down with him.

She repeats the word “down” at the ending line of the two final stanzas, “down follows the word “quiet. in the second stanza, as if suggesting a quelling of the racket she has to live with.

The use of the word down in the final stanza that follows the word “lay” implies more than just sex, but something more intimate.

The song works partly because of its simplicity and her ability to use her voice to elicit emotion with more subtle background harmonies creating a hymn-like feel.

 

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If he runs the truth comes out Jan. 13, 2013

  

 These people are constantly scheming. But what good does it get them?

I had a long talk with our former temporary boss and told him I had a conflict of interest covering any campaign in which she is involved with.

I cannot be unbiased when it comes to RR and informed him about the story RR tried to plant with us, using her.

Our former temporary boss told me her replacement D would have to deal with it and with her on his own terms.

Then, I spoke to the Small Man and told him that she has been ordered to use her political connections to gather those who oppose him, the congressman and others, possibly trying to get the Small Man to support RR to become sheriff in the June primary, or even for mayor if and when the Virgin Mayor steps down.

“What political connections?” the Small Man asked. “She doesn’t know any political people in my town. All she ever wrote about here were artists.”

This isn’t exactly true. She often worked in mysterious ways, often using a network of people to achieve her ends. I agree with others who claim she isn’t as good at this as she believes. She is naïve in some ways. But I have seen beneath her mask a few times, the tough, savvy, street smart lady, who might surprise others with her cunning. She knows how to survive.

The Small Man said if RR runs for anything, then the truth will come out about his being fired from the police department.

The Small Man said even her replacement D saw RR as more than a little foolish, and he would have to write the story about RR’s past and the failed psyche test.

The Small Man said RR has enemies even among the Virgin Mayor’s supporters, which is why the commissioners ultimately refused to vote RR in as deputy mayor.

Her move to ensnare the Chief Adversary may have been part of a campaign to secure the Chief Adversary’s vote on behalf of RR, which failed. But even had it succeeded, the person replacing the Virgin Mayor would likely fire them both, the Small Man said.

“I don’t understand why she sees RR as a hero,” he told me. “What exactly has he done. All he does is go around suing people. He was a dirty cop who was only a little less dirty than the cops he turned in.”

Meanwhile, A, who covers Hometown, looks completely burned out, yet strongly resembles her at our staff meetings, constantly getting texts from people. A looks lost and confused, as if her world has turned upside down. It’s difficult to know how much influence she has on A, other than they’ve been seen bar hopping together.

 

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All ends against the middle Jan. 12, 2013

  

The situation is a bit clearer today if only because I have a better sense of what she is up to.

It appears her duty is to find dirt of Freeholder M, perhaps to blackmail him into dropping the charges against the Virgin Mayor.

“RR is using her as a conduit to reach out to all the people who are anti (Freeholder M),” One of the political gurus of Hometown told me yesterday.

Mr. C, who ran against Freeholder M, was never really after Freeholder M, but on the same track as RR, trying to destroy the Small Man and the Congressman (perhaps on orders from the State Senator, who had bought Mr. C off with a job, something he would jeopardize if he really wanted to bring down Freeholder M, also an ally of the Senator.

The Small Man is the reason Mr. C ran against Freeholder M, an enemy of an enemy so to speak.

The Senator must have spoken to Mr. C about it, which is why Mr. C would like to destroy the Small Man, which may explain why she is hooked up with him (if she is) since Mr. C and RR have a common enemy.

She has her own gripe with the Small Man, who pushed her to quit our office – though it is still unclear as to whether or not the Small Man spoke to our owner about her, revealing the full level of her complicity.

When proposing the story designed to bring down the Congressman several months ago, she told me she didn’t want to hurt the Small Man. She might feel differently now.

But all this shows how twisted politics can be. Freeholder M hates the Small Man, and yet she, RR, Mr. C and the Senator (who also hate the Small Man) are plotting to bring down Freeholder M anyway – if only to keep the Virgin Mayor in power, and thus protect their piece of the political turf.

If the Virgin Mayor steps down as some expect him to do, his town becomes a war zone with every mother’s son looking to run for his seat, a number of whom such as Freeholder M who would put her, RR and Joey D’s gang of cut throats out of city hall.

The Senator would likely try to reinstate the mayor the Virgin Mayor drove from office last year, while the Small Man and the Congressman would push for someone they could control.

Perhaps RR hopes he can slip in while the more powerful power brokers are at each other’s throats. But it’s doubtful.

His hope, as is hers, is to keep the Virgin Mayor in place, hoping he can weather the legal storm, and come out the other side still mayor, and thus, she, RR and others will still have their own positions.

But all these calls she’s making around town and the county are getting back to the Small Man on one side and the Senator on the other and will only make it more likely they will salt the earth against her in the future, making it clear she’s not to be trusted.

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Sink or swim? Jan. 11, 2013

  

I’m still getting conflicting accounts about whether or not the Small Man told our boss about her which forced her to quit.

Some insiders in the political scene said the Small Man did have the talk with our owner, and that it was our owner who read her the riot act.

I’m not about to ask our owner about it, though it would explain why he continues to find petty things to criticize me on, building his case to eventually removing me.

But if he knows why she quit, then he knows he can’t bring her back, and if he doesn’t know, then my asking about it will become one more nail in my coffin, an additional reason to get rid of me instead.

I think he doesn’t know. I think the only conversation that took place was between the Small Man and her, and it rattled her enough for her to “do the right thing.”

Although I suspect the Small Man said something else, perhaps made some other threat that inspired her to quit. Whatever else was said, the Small Man wouldn’t say.

I have to wonder if her going over to the Chief Adversary camp was as calculated as people claim. In the wake of her resignation from our office, she may have scrambled to find a place to land, even in the camp of someone she tried to embarrass while still working for us. But the Chief Adversary believes it was a calculated move on the part of RR, the Virgin Mayor and perhaps even Joey D, who themselves cling to power by the skin of their teeth – since the Small Man, the Congressman and the Neighboring Mayor no longer feel confidence with that crew.

Her recent move to Mr. C only suggests to them that her actions were intentional, although it may just be another ploy.

Freeholder M calls RR crazy as do others, perhaps inspiring her to grab onto anyone of power just to still have a place in this political merry-go-round.

“RR spins a good yarn,” Freeholder M said. “He takes people in until they get wise to him.”

Has she wised up about RR, and is desperate to find somewhere else to be before RR finally pisses off serious power brokers and sinks the whole ship?

In any case, there is a lot riding on the Virgin Mayor’s upcoming trial for everybody, leaving everybody in the end to sink or swim.

 

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Dancing with Mister C Jan. 10, 2013

   

So, what happens if the Virgin Mayor is forced to resign?

I’m told the Small Man and the Congressman have already made arrangements to replace him in the special election.

This means she and RR will be out of luck after their failed coup to bring down the congressman.

Other sources tell me she’s already made arrangements to work for Mr. C, an ally of the Virgin Mayor, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. M for freeholder.

Mr. C hates the Small Man and claims Mr. M, who filed the charges of hacking against the Virgin Mayor, is the Small Man’s political puppet.

To complicate matters, Mr. C just got a political no-show job, given to him by the State Senator who hates the Neighboring Mayor – another Virgin Mayor ally.

This puts Mr. C in league with the Private Eye and the other scum bags who hire prostitutes and such to blackmail their political opponents. More importantly, the State Senator is behind Mr. M, and if Mr. C continues to plot to unseat Mr. M, Mr. C could lose his no-show job.

If these reports are true about Mr. C, then she may be making a mistake taking a job with him and might be better off sticking with the less-than-reliable RR – if only for the moment.

Mr. M tells me RR shifts with the wind, going to whomever will provide him with the best opportunity. Most likely, RR will remain close to the Virgin Mayor with the hope that he can take advantage of the chaos when the mayor steps down.

But as I said, the choice of the replacement will be up to the Small Man and the Congressman, and it won’t be RR.

What her caper with Mr. C means, I can’t say. But my contact has already made up his mind to tell our owner about her recent political appointment. This provides me with some cover because it will make it that much more difficult for the owner to bring her back (if he’s even tempted) and may make him back off his campaign to push me over the tipping point so he can fire me.

What she thinks she can gain by this move is beyond comprehension. Mr. C is just another loser the way RR is, the way her chef was, something she apparently only realizes after the fact, when it is too late, and which could ultimately force her out of the whole scene entirely after she has run out of people to latch onto.

Again, I suspect she will eventually end up with Joey D since out of that whole crew he seems to have the most options to move on somewhere else.

 

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High and dry Jan. 9, 2013

  

Best guess looking at it from the outside is that RR wants a piece of the Virgin Mayor’s money. But then, the whole crew around the mayor seems bent on getting their fair share, from Joey D and his developer brother to the crew that came in from the former Newark mayor’s campaign, one looking to cash in on the town’s insurance, while others eye other slices of the political pie.

RR seems like a free agent (or as the Small Man told me), operating for his own motives, not always in league with the rat pack led by Joey D. So, it is possible the others didn’t know about the scheme to use our office and may not have known about her role in it.

Yet, from what the Chief Adversary and his campaign crew told me about her wanting to create a paper she could write in their behalf, I suspect more than RR was involved, even when it came to what she wrote for us.

The deception is just too similar.

How far back all of this goes, I can’t say. Most likely from when the Virgin Mayor pulled off his upset victory last year, at which point RR and she started to get close to him. But like moths to a flame, they could not have predicted his odd behavior, his pissing off a U.S. Senator and alienating some of those people who helped get him elected. They certainly could not have predicted his legal troubles.

While Joey D and his rat back were stuck with the mayor, she and RR may well have looked for other options and that the scheme to bring down the congressman was RR’s personal revenge.

Her being forced to resign from our office may well have been another blow, and the whole crew began to alter their plans.

I’m told she’s been in on the political discussions and has been asked to use her contacts to find dirt on the Freeholder who filed the charges against the Virgin Mayor in the first place.

Her relationship with RR is also confusing. She might call him a boyfriend, but he seems more like protection, a strong man she can rely on if and when the going gets tough. Again, she is swimming with sharks these days, and needs someone she can rely on to have her back.

But getting too close to the Virgin Mayor is risky, and not just because she claims he’s come on to her several times. If he goes down, or is forced to resign, she has no position of power and will have to trickle up with a new power figure.

She is starved for personal power, and it will only frustrate her more if she has to start all over again from the bottom. She needs to somehow use this as a stepping stone to something else.

By taking the job so close to the Virgin Mayor, she has exposed herself to his enemies as well as to the marginal political figures who are with the Virgin Mayor only to a certain point and then will abandon him. If he goes down and she’s still attached to him, she’ll go down with him.

I suspect she’s already made contingency plans, eyeing someone other than the Virgin Mayor or RR as a life boat when the Titanic sinks.

Even RR’s wavering attachment to the Virgin Mayor is a sign of desperation, especially now that his schemes against the congressman are exposed. He claims he may run for mayor against the Virgin Mayor and the Chief Adversary and claims he can win.

My source close to the charges against the mayor claims that the Virgin Mayor is already negotiating with the Feds to plea to a lesser charge to avoid jail for himself and his son, which will allow him to keep Medicare and Medicaid in his private business which he would lose if he were convicted of the charges he faces now. But such a deal would require him to resign as mayor, leaving the whole rat pack including RR and her high and dry.

 

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Tipping point? Jan. 8, 2012

  

 

I’m not being paranoid.

Normally, I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. But I’ve watched the owner go through this routine often enough with other people to recognize when he is pulling the same routine on me.

It’s called reaching the tipping point.

The owner builds a case against you by emphasizing a lot of small things, adding them up until he can make it seem like there is too much against you for him to keep in his employ.

When you see this happening, the best thing to do is move on before the ax falls.

The question is: why is he doing this to me?

And is it already too late for me to do anything about it? Does it have anything to do with her? Is he blaming me for making her resign?

I believe I might have provoked her by posting photos of the main office and claiming I was finally free to return there again.

I wasn’t gloating, but it might have seemed that way to her.

Gloating is always a mistake because it always inspires retribution.

Although we no longer have any contact, I have to be careful not to read things into her poetry and react accordingly. She is a clever enough poet to seed things in her poems that I might think of as proof, but she can easily deny later if I attempted to use her poems as proof of anything.

That a road to paranoia I must avoid at all costs, whether there is any truth to her baiting me or not.

Again, rumors claim she might return to the paper, and since the owner has no idea as to why she left in the first place, he might well feel the need to get rid of me to accomplish it. Such might even me a condition she might impose for her return.

Frankly, I think she would be crazy to come back with or without me here. There is no advancement here, and most likely, she’s probably getting paid a lot better as the Virgin Mayor’s personal assistant than she’ll ever make here.

The one caveat is the mayor’s upcoming criminal trial. She and RR need him as mayor, and if he goes down, they might not have a future in that place either.

The Virgin Mayor is the source of their power. He has all the wealth.

Even the owner might get swayed by the promise of getting a piece of that action, provide he doesn’t have to stick his toes too deeply into that muddy water.

She and RR are gambling on the mayor surviving, not just the criminal charges, but a later election, and that they will get their just rewards if they remain loyal to him (though RR is only loyal when there’s an advantage to himself).

If this is the case, then she has no reason to return to our office, and the owner’s sudden building a case against me is for some other reason.

Of course, her demise (along with RR’s) is if someone else gets between her and the mayor, and she might have to find a new rocking horse to ride, possibly Joey D?

 

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Casting the net

  Written March 2013

 

Salmon nearly kill themselves for it, this thing that drives us – the male of our species – crazy from something we inherit from birth, making us leap up falls we ought to fall down, humping up impossible leaps to get back to that place where everything started. We are consumed with trying it all again, drunk on perfume or the look in her eyes.

Not just me, all of us, as if just a glimpse of her image scends us into a feeding frenzy, so utterly predictable, caught in the net of her gaze.

She doesn’t snare men. We snare ourselves, pained when she casts this one or that one aside because this one or that one just won’t do, the outcasts caught in some dead pool eddy, going round and round, and the most foolish of us, lingering near where the clear water still flows, desperate for a glimpse of her as she carries her net on to someone else, we who might have had, but just weren’t good enough.

For the first time after all these months, I understand the parade of such people, who gasp for air in the still water, grasping at slippery rocks just to keep from being dragged back down falls we are too weak or unworthy to leap up again.

Such men do not understand how she must feel, casting and recasting her net, dragging in bodies she hopes will live up to what she expects when none ever do, tossing them back when they don’t, and always asking as she casts again, “Is this the one?”

For all the fish in the sea, all those who leap with silvery wet skins shimmering for her attention, none prove worthy, none bringing with them that thing she so desperately needs, a thing she can’t describe even in the best of her poems, but will recognize when she sees it, none kind enough or caring enough, some almost, but not quite, while others taken, she casting out again and again dragging it all in, casting aside what won’t do, all these long months, all those sad poems, all those terrible lonely nights clutching her wet net and asking, “Is this the one,” and still never is.

It's no wonder all of her songs sound so sad, because they are.

 

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Not Mata Hari Jan. 7, 2013

   

Her taking the job with the Virgin Mayor raises a lot of questions and a lot of eyebrows.

According to the Chief Adversary and his Chief of Staff, they met with her for several hours, laying out their strategy for their campaign against the Virgin Mayor.

“She said she wanted to write for us, and we believed her,” the Chief of Staff said.

This largely proved her right about how stupid they were after her writing stories for us that were designed to humility the Chief Adversary.

Didn’t they get the drift from that?

The Small Man believes her sole allegiance is to RR.

“Where RR goes, she goes,” the Small Man told me.

But I’m not sure of even that. RR seems like a marriage of convenience, a strong man who can help her take the next step. Some believe she may have even tried to get behind the Neighboring Mayor, and perhaps even the Private Eye, forced to settle for RR.

Her fraudulent attempt to work for Chief Adversary is thick with political intrigue and may well have been part of a larger plan to undermine him from within. But she may have panicked at the idea of working as a double agent. She doesn’t have the nerves to be Mata Hari. I can’t imagine her keeping up the front of pretending to be on the Chief Adversary’s team, while sending all his secrets back to RR.

Maybe RR thought what she brought back was enough and sold this information to the Joey D and his gang of cut throats.

I’m told they expect her to call around up there and find more dirt they can use in the upcoming campaign.

Her taking the job with the Virgin Mayor may be as reward for her bit of spying although the Virgin Mayor said he gave her the job out of pity.

Regardless of how she got the job, taking it, as well as the betrayal of the Chief Adversary makes it impossible for her to ever return to our office – if indeed that was ever her plan. She would have no credibility if she tries.

But no doubt she is keeping close tabs on the owner and has been “instructing” her replacement, D--, so that he feels he can trust her. Perhaps Joey D and the gang feel she can still manipulate the coverage from outside. She has become a close bar-hopping buddy with our Hometown writer, A--.

But that kind of intrigue is never-racking as well. I’m not sure she has the stomach for it.

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Spy in the house of love Jan. 6, 2013

   

Rumor has it she wants to come back to the office.

If she is coming back, I don’t want to be here when she does.

This is partly inspired by the gossips who claim the owner has no confidence on her replacement D--. He doesn’t think D—can handle the beat.

The owner doesn’t yet know why she quit in the first place and might feel differently if he knew the truth.

I’m keeping mum about what I know, in part because the owner doesn’t particularly like me either.

He has been picking up on my small mistakes in an attempt to build a case against me and give him the excuse to get rid of me as well.

I think the rumor of her return, however, is bogus, since she removed our office from her job description on Facebook two days ago and replaced it with her new title as the Virgin Mayor’s personal assistant, pretty much putting her in firmly in the political realm. It’s hard to come back to this side of The Force when you’ve stepped over into the Dark Side.

“Her guardian is RR,” the Small Man told me the other day, finding it difficult to believe she could be working against the Neighboring Mayor when the Neighboring Mayor is still an ally of her new boss.

But RR, he said, is capable of anything.

“And she goes where RR goes,” the Small Man said.

RR clearly wants her to keep close to the Virgin Mayor, maybe to fill RR on the dirty little secrets RR can later use to his own advantage.

The Virgin Mayor’s chief adversary, the one-time male stripper she tried to embarrass while still working for us said her move from our office to the office of the Virgin Mayor was a surprise. But then, he found her a bit strange from the start.

“I talked to her just before she took the job, she said I was one of the few politicians who hadn’t hit on her,” Chief Adversary said. “I thought that was a very odd thing for her to say to me. She offered to do a small newspaper for me. She would write the articles and I agreed. But she didn’t get back to me about it until last week when she told me she had another job offer. She didn’t say what. But now I know what it was.”

Chief Adversary’s chief of staff believes now that RR sent her over to their campaign deliberately.

“We laid out everything for her,” Chief of Staff said. “We foolishly told her all of our plans. Now it seems she was spying for them and brought everything we said back to them.”

 

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She is not a locked box

  

  

Written March 2013

 

She is not a locked box, but an onion. No one key opens her up to reveal who she is. A man could spend a life time peeling away the layers of her and never come to the core.

Even she doesn’t know who she is, engaged in a life of painful discovery, a kid who constantly singes her finger, finding out what is hot and what is not, constantly opening the door of that old refrigerator to find the taste of juice still as acrid as all the other times she did, constantly retreating into herself, behind layers of non-reality and deception to protect who she is or what she has become, unable to determine which layer leads to her real self, if any of them do.

Men, who look for a key, grow bitter when they cannot find one, lacking the patience needed for the more delicate labor, the gradual pain-staking pealing back, the act of discovery, the realization that it is not what is down deep at the core, but what is underneath each layer of skin, these tender bits of membrane that collectively shape who she is, like precious petals of a flower man discard in search of something more substantial, destroying the treasure they seek with each ruthless shredding.

And after all this time, after all those who have come and gone professing love, it is a wonder that she has any skin left to shred, and how much pain she is expected to endure in this desperate search for love, the need of it forcing her to return again and again, the hope for it allowing the tearing of flesh to continue, the belief in it, making her stand each new endeavor, thinking maybe this time she might find someone with gentle fingers and a gentle heart.

 

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The fly inside January 5, 2013

  

 

He can’t let on what he feels to anybody. Letting down his defenses means letting someone close who can hurt him.

He maintains his tough face and spins the webs he needs to snare flies, while inside, he is not a web spinner at all.

Perhaps he is more vulnerable than the flies upon which he feeds.

Someone once called him a vampire, but cannibal would fit him best, forced to feed on his own breed while he pretends his is someone he is not.

Inside where he sits alone with himself, he hungers for someone he can open up with, someone to whom he can tell the truth.

But in this world of spiders and flies, he can never show the fly inside.

 

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