You have to wonder about her poetry and what it actually means, and how they are shaped with craft enough to be taken on a number of levels with multiple meanings, sometimes including odd bits such as that schizophrenia poem a few months ago that seems to take a cheap shot at me, or even those poems over the summer couched in apparent kindness – such as the quicksand poem, when perhaps they aren’t kind at all.
Some of her poems barely control her rage, although most poems struggle not to reveal the near despair she clearly sometimes feels.
At the same time, it is easy to read things into her poems that might not be there, or perhaps she did not intend, the unconscious revelations all writers display unintentionally, aspects of the creative process we must rely on, but sometimes can betray our honest feelings, when we never intended to.
It is dangerous, however, to look for clues in her poems or to presume messages that are not there, such as might be the case with her former boss from Brooklyn.
Such is the path of folly.
We all misinterpret even when we have the best of intentions not to, such as when she misinterpreted by intentions last September when I tried to set up that meeting between her and the Neighboring Mayor in an attempt to broker peace. She mistakenly assumed my motives were to see her privately.
I have since assumed that time would dissipate this paranoia and have done my best to avoid any kind of contact since (or in the future), I suspect she still thinks I do.
I also have to avoid falling into my own kind of paranoia, avoid thinking she might be baiting traps for me in an effort to expose me, and why I study her poems to find a meaning that has nothing to do with me – yet, at the same time, reals something about her character that I might better understand what it is she is going through.
Even to assume who is it she is writing a poem about is dangerous business – since the further we get from the summer the less likely anything she writes is even remotely directed at me, although at the same time, I assume she must know I read these poems, just as her Brooklyn man does, and perhaps others who she has left behind in the dust.
The poem about her stealing intangible things could be written about anyone, but it also reflects this problem of reading into things that may or may not be there, as she reads people’s smiles and looks to reflect her own desires, inadvertently becoming the clever and cunning imp she implied I was last September, and ultimately setting herself up for disappointment – or perhaps major heart break. Those things may indeed be there for her to read but may be – as those unconscious things in her poems – unconscious revelations from someone who has no intention of acting on them, love affair in the mind that remains pure if it is contained, and her forcing these into the light may well create an unintended tragedy for him and for her.
For me, this is a kind of sad voyeurism, like watching what I know will be a train wreck, and yet have no way of stopping it – even if I should.
In the end, we all make our own choices, and live with the consequences of them, and I suspect that at the end of this, when after the trains collide, she will be posting particularly painful poems that I will also read, unseen, if not uncaring.
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