Fair is not fair May 22, 2013

  

 

I’m sure I’ll keep returning to this poem, just as I have the trickle up poem and the change of priorities poems because they lay it all out, as painful as it might be for me to read.

Why painful? Why should I care what someone does with their own life or why they decide to live by their own rules?

Good questions I can’t really answer, except in that I have invested more than a year of my life trying to make sense of this storm that swept through and can only marginally say I know more today than I did when the first clouds appeared on the horizon.

The poem goes so much against the grain when it comes to my sense of morality that I struggle to get through it, even though ultimately, she is right – right and wrong count for nothing, and fair and unfair bind you from getting what you so desperately want – or in this case, what she thinks she deserves.

The poem is a rebellion against those judgements people like me make about her, and in that regard, it is almost as painful as the forgiveness poem she directed at me last summer and which sent me into a tail spin.

Whether or not this poem is directed at me, it hits a nerve, because it is saying out right she does what she does, and nobody has the right to judge her for it.

This is her life.

The intense honesty of this poem, the refusal to be humbled or made to feel guilty about what she admits is her life, makes this one of the most remarkable poems I have read by her so far, something so powerful in its deliberation, I feel ashamed all over again for what transpired last spring into the summer.

The poem is not free of bitterness. Especially about her lot in life. And it is not without guilt or perhaps the sudden realization that she should not be condemning herself for doing things that bring her joy.

Nothing is worse than putting yourself on trial.

I would like to argue against the poem’s theme, to say that most people live with the consequences of their actions, and guilt is part of that. But a year of reading her poetry and getting a glimpse inside her has answered many of the questions I raised – about her frank talk of her sexuality, and need to be recognized, appreciated, and rewarded for her gifts, as a person and as a writer.

And how inappropriate it is for anyone like me to pass judgement on her, when, in fact, we all lack the courage to do what she does, even though we want to do exactly the same things.

More on this poem later.

 

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Right and wrong don’t matter. May 22, 2013

  

 

Only now, do I realize that I analyzed this poem out of order – after having been sidetracked by other poems that I went back to instead of taking everything as she posted them.

And this poem of liberation I thought came at the end of April actually came at the end of May, explaining why it seemed so jarring to me after the love poems prior to it.
Taking ii in context, I realize she had been building up to this poem, and how fair and unfair, good and bad no longer matter to her in the larger scheme of things.

Apparently, I did take note of the poem when she posted it, scribbling things down in several places about my first impression, and how shocked I was about her views of what many might consider traditional morality, and how they are defined by words, and not by her concept of truth.

Her obsession in her poetry over what is true is very much reflected in this poem. But truth is rarely what people make it out to be and certainly never objective, or as from one of the Indiana Jones movies, science deals with fact, not truth. If you’re seeking truth, you’ve edged over into the quasi universe of philosophy, which means anyone’s point of view is truth.

Unfortunately, as her poem points out, good and bad, right and wrong are also relative, subject to opinion and to circumstance, which may invalidate them. What appears as good or bad or right and wrong, are also subject to motivation, what a person intends, and in many cases, what looks like good or bad on the surface, may not reflect the true aspirations of the person they describe.

They, like truth, are just words.

Justice, unfortunately, falls into this same category, depending on too many factors we can’t possibly evaluate.

Yet, her poem (which I call her poem of independence) is much more specific in that it is making a judgement about those words themselves, saying she should not be held accountable, and perhaps goes deeper in saying, nobody should – that life is a series of events which we act out, and must do the best we can to gauge our progress, and should not be saddled with the baggage of social judgement.

As I said in the previous journal entry, she is shedding all pretense and admitting where she stands, and daring people to challenge her or judge her, using a girl she spent an hour with who “made my everyday reprise of wantonness and regret a breeze.”

This meaning her self judgement over what she enjoys doing in life. And this meeting of this girl helped stop “the tiresome, selfish monotony of everything is wrong and how could this be?

The poem awards this girl near sainthood, as a pure spirit, who lives by the credo that fair and unfair are just words,” not reality, and that the world does not revolve around the concept of guilt. It is not a fair world. People aren’t rewarded for merit, but for other reasons, a very poignant point when it comes to her situation, not just where she is now, but where she has been.

Nor can you base your worth on right or wrong, which basically binds you to a way of life that keeps you down.

“Life – it is,” she says. And she needs to live life without regret.

As said before, my first reading of this poem shocked me, and I’m still unsettled by its conclusions, even though I suspect she is right.

I’ve never been ambitious the way she is, and never nearly as wanton (though I wanted to be) and so I can pretend to live by rules when I know they don’t work, and that people who get ahead ignore those rules.

I’m sure I’m not done with this poem because it reveals more about her inner being that most of her poems, less blatant as trickle up, less disguised as her change of priority.

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In the corner of the eye May 21, 2013

  

To whom her next poem is written remains a mystery.

Since there are no direct references to anything I’ve written, this could simply be a poem addressed to herself, although it actually appears to continue a discussion with someone over the nature of life, the other person calling a situation complicated, while she maintains it is simple – but with caveats.

Since I can find no reference to any argument I made, I’m assuming this poem is to someone else, someone who also reads her poetry.

Still the title implies a stealth relationship, similar to the “clever and illusive” bit she stuck at the end of one of her poems last fall, a fleeting glimpse of something in passing, rather than anything direct.

Happiness, which lies on the edges of perception, does not last, and this secret it to enjoy those brief moments when it exists while they can.

This may well be a reference to a relationship she is involved in, something separated from the main action of her life, yet still connected – perhaps the same man she was involved with previously, whose marriage got in the way.

Although I’ll likely come back to this with a fuller analysis, the poem essentially says life is what it is and she can’t change it, and it is a ride she on until it ends, and will have high and low moment, and rare moments of unthinking peace.

The poem is written to someone with whom she has shared some kind of dream, but which has slipped away or impossible to obtain (possibly reverting back to that series of love and breakup poems she posted previously).

You can almost hear him telling her “it’s complicated,” a catch phrase for uncertain relationships – possibly alluding to his wife.

She sees the situation as an aspect of life, perfectly simple, even if impossible to attain.

The opening lines suggest that they are in the ending steps of long dance, which has moved far from the original glitter romance had originally promised and suggests that what they had together was merely “a gifted glance into a life that is not ours.”

Again, suggesting that they can’t have what they originally thought they could, he reverting to idea that the situation is complicated, when she says it’s simple, it is fate or whatever, that brings her once more back to the same place, her lot in life.

In life, she said, there are moments “quick, shocking, unexpected, beautiful” that are awe-ful, terrifying trysts of what they want yet is deceptive, “glittering in front, behind and in our periphery.”

And there are moments when they are so full of awe, they forget, and let it be, “when we forget all else” and just are alive,” and the struggle is to remain unthinking for as long as possible. “There is nothing else.”

The first stanza suggests that this is something secret, and that they need to be wary,” and they see something grand in their affair and are drawn to it, but ultimately, it can’t be sustained – and this is not unusual for her.

Her life is a “circumscribed circle” and seems to place boundaries on her. She can operate freely within those boundaries but can never escape it. She ultimately ends up at the same place. And the poem suggests that they need to appreciate what they have, while they have it, and forget everything else during those brief moments.

The glitter is always beyond reach, something they see out of the corner of their eye, drawing them to it, only to ultimately get disappointed.

Yet, while they are in the midst of it, they can forget everything, must forget that it cannot last.

If this poem is about the same affair as she alluded to in other poems, she is once more making a case to have their cake while the can, knowing that in the end, he will return to his life with his wife.

Happiness comes in small brief, glorious doses, but it is like the illusive butterfly of love, lingering beyond reach, glittering behind and in front, but most of all at the edges of eye sight so when you try to pin it down, it vanishes.

The secret is to live with the illusion, to enjoy those brief moments, and forget they must come to an end.

 

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Downwind to nowhere May 20, 2013

  

Since she posted this poem after I posted a picture of RR on my site, I have to wonder if she went into her current situation with her eyes shut tightly.

I had perhaps mistakenly assumed that she had moved on from RR, and that the brilliant and moving love poems she posted a few months ago were meant for someone else.

Now, I’m not so sure.

The poem is clearly a reflection of something failing, some falling apart, hopes dashed like a ship against rocks.

She assumed she could handle the situation and the people who operate in the shadows, perhaps even seeing herself as one of them, a clever and illusive player, who could hold her own in their company, when they have made a profession as confidence men, and may well have used her, but given her nothing in return for her loyalty.

Again, all this is trying to figure out how a watch works without opening up the works, relying on clues left in poetry which often are too obtuse to give off anything accurate, not even the time of day.

But like most of her poems, the real meaning is not what it appears on the surface, and though it is full of bitterness, it is difficult to determine just who it is aimed at, and who it is she blames for her current situation.

This bitterness is emphasized by the rare use of foul language, which although apt to the title of the poem, is startling none of the less.

This poem does not reflect a naïve person whose eyes have been suddenly forced open to see harsh reality but implies someone who was part of the scheme and got cut out from what she expected to get as reward.

The opening line connotes surprise, something unexpected has occurred, followed by several lines that implies some confusion about expectations: “it gives; it gets off; on.”

Gets off suggesting some perverse amusement.

Then back to the central question: What gives?

Possible double meaning: such as what’s up? Or implying something that is supposed to give.

The next line, opening the second verse, raises perhaps the most fundamental question as to her expectation and what actually happened. “Is this all there is?”

Or is there something she doesn’t see, hidden away, stashed in the depths of the danger, “of the black, of the shit.”

She implies she didn’t get a whiff of it when she got into the thing. It smelled safe to her.

“But then again my nose is too quick to even trust what that must be like,” she wrote, a difficult line that possibly suggests that she is not attune to stench of such corruption so might not have recognized it for what it was, not until she was already immersed in it.

Barely in but forced to swim to get down wind from the odor of it and the flames that feed off the many dreams she foolishly feeds the flames with.

She clearly sees herself on the fringe of this, and now swims away from it, angry at herself for sharing her dreams, placing faith in their ambitious agenda, but clearly can no longer buy into their bullshit.

The poem suggests that she feels cheated out of something she either was promised or led to expect, something she feels she earned – perhaps even a place as an insider.

It is difficult to tell from the context of the poem if she sees this group self-destructing, or simply edging her out – even RR, with his position on the parking authority, does not seem to be one of the principle players. She may have gambled on his becoming one and may be disappointed on that account, or if not him, she may have made a play for a more significant role with someone else and finds herself still on the fringe and still without just rewards.

Far from being naïve, she simply seems to have gambled on the wrong horse and may well feel as left out as she did when she saw how incompetent the owner of the restaurant was three years ago and realized she wasn’t going to get what she wanted there, and perhaps sees the handwriting on the wall now that may bring her back to where she started, which is downwind to nowhere.

 

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At the parade May 19, 2013

  

  

 Fate or something akin to it brought me face to face with RR yesterday at the Memorial Day parade in Secaucus. He had set up a lounge chair on the sidewalk around Paterson Plank Road about a block up from the bridge over Route 3.

I was hurrying to get to the head of the parade when I saw him.

He looked exactly as he had in the photo from the Virgin Mayor’s fundraiser, just sadder, more isolated.

She was not with him; he was there with his two kids, yet just as telling, neither was his wife, making me think of all those poems she’d posted, about suburban life, about the relationship that had fallen apart.

Was this the man she was writing about the whole time? I had discounted it; but there in the middle of Secaucus I began to wonder if perhaps I was wrong in doing so.

The wife’s absence said a lot about his marriage in the way he resembled a number of estranged husbands, many of whom stood along the same stretch of road, using the parade to bond with their kids.

While she (the poet) may have liked parades, she wasn’t about to get mixed up with his kids – no matter how glowingly she had portrayed them a year and half ago when she did her puff piece on him.

A lot of water has gushed under that bridge since then.

What I could not tell from seeing him is where he currently stood with her. Was he the romantic partner she had melted over and then rejected, refusing to give up her own identity to become part of “we” with him?

Was he still her grand protector the Small Man once portrayed him to be? Had he become her principle ally now that the public safety director was gone?

RR nodded at me and called me “Mr. Sullivan.”

The fact that we both knew each other on sight said a lot; the fact that neither of us flinched said even more.

Was this really the man who orchestrated the plot to take over our office and use us to strike back at his political enemies, perhaps even getting his job back as a cop?

Seeing him in the flesh, I began to think it was not possible for him to have orchestrated such a complex and cunning plot – although I had no doubts about his ability to sway people.

I just could not see how he could fool someone as smart as she was; if anything, I might have suspected it to be the other way around, using the old routine she used with the rest of us, pumping up our egos to make us believe each of us was more important than we actually were, in order to make herself more important.

Since he was still a player inside the Virgin Mayor’s machine, he still had his uses for her – perhaps one more stepping stone in her move to trickle up – but to where? Could she really believe she might become the right-hand woman for the mayor, indispensable the way she had been in all those previously jobs?

RR didn’t even flinch when I told him how impressed the freeholder had been with him and his new position as head of the parking authority.

“We have a nice small authority,” RR told me proudly, making me wonder if the ploy to butter up the Freeholder might not have been a ploy at all, despite claims inside the Virgin Mayor’s camp to have pictures of the freeholder with prostitutes.

RR seemed too petty a character to play the main role in her ambitions, and too inconsequential to have hatched the kind of plots that people gave him credit for – getting his own guy as county prosecutor, bringing down the congressman.

He was big talk, but as others pointed out, he rarely delivered.

Yet, if RR isn’t the mastermind, who is?

The list of names of political insiders rushed through my brain along with the photographs she had taken of each at the recent fundraiser.

Even she wasn’t capable of such schemes, even though she might have taken advantage of them.

Suddenly, I found myself feeling sorry for RR, realizing he was just one more victim.

I wished him good luck and then moved on, but later made a point of taking his picture as he applauded the parade, the younger of his two kids cuddled in his arms.

He was fighting to keep his little piece of success after so many years of frustration, and seemed to be utterly alone, no wife, no poet, just his two kids to share that special moment with.

 

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Being her arch enemy May 16, 2013

  

 

So, what happened to turn her anger in my direction again, if indeed I am the creator of the show as she claims someone is – or is there some new arch enemy that rivals me for her dubious affection.

This new phase of the cold war comes after an intense and heated romance with some man, a romance that ultimately did not work out.

I am tempted to think she needs to divert herself from those emotional wounds by resurrecting an old enemy she can focus her attentions on.

And yet, something may have happened, some event that caused her to abruptly change course in her poetry, and turn her wrath back on me, perhaps something I posted she interpreted wrongly (or rightly?), and which put me back on her periscope.

The big question is what to do about it, if anything can be done. I cannot communicate with her, and even if I tried it would only make matters worse, reverting back to that situation of her birthday disaster, or any other attempt I’ve made to apologize, whether or not in the case an apology is even warranted.

The best thing, I suppose, is to remain “clever and illusive,” stay silent and bear the sting of these stones and arrows, if I am actually the person to which these poems are directed.

I would be a relief to find that she has found a new arch villain, and sad as well since there is some distinction in having some impact, even if it is a negative one.

Which is worse, being yelled at or being ignored?

Being her arch enemy shows that she cares – if only to condemn me for everything.

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Arguing over good makes no sense. May 2013

  

 

Although I did not intend to revisit any more of her pervious poems, I felt the need to examine her good fight poem at least once more before I moved on, since it seems to be directed in my direction – although I might be wrong. At least, it made me cringe in a similar way as her poems did last summer, making me feel as if I am a bug under a magnifying glass with the heat of the sun focused directly on me – although at times during last summer, she seemed to think she went too far and posted poems of pity such as quick sand and compassion.

There is some of that in this poem, as if she is taking a half step back from her previous total outrage, becoming more reflective.

This is not to say that she is any less angry from the poem in which she accused me of playing games, and in which she refused to fall for the seductions of my smooth words, and this poem seems to reflect that distrust of my poetry as the earlier poem did, and makes the distinction between what she believes is true and what is said to be true – and extremely legitimate argument since a lot of what I’ve posted had nothing to do with her; she simply may have read meaning into them that wasn’t there.

It is her “reasonable” tone rather than content that suggests a rethinking from her previous poem, and a backing off slightly, less a gesture of mercy to me than a need for her not to seem unreasonable.

On the other hand, this poem may not be directed at me at all, but a general observation – perhaps reflecting the turmoil she has to deal with in town hall where she works.

Still, I get the feeling it is about the war or words she perceives we are engaged in, and the concept of what it means to be good to her, a state of being that cannot be argued.

Good fight often means righteous in one sense, though she argues no fight is good when it is being waged, when it shouldn’t be a fight at all.

But then she becomes realistic saying we should not waste our lives on “should bes or get sucked up in arguing over what is right, when right is right and there is no arguing that point.

This is in sharp contrast to an earlier poem in which she said right and wrong, or good and bad are just words.

In this poem, she then asks what is right?

I should agree although in actuality, truth and right are relative, easily redefined depending on your point of view.

A good fight for a bad cause is still bad. Even the Nazis thought they were fighting for a noble cause.

Then, she talks about the sliding scale, more or less reflecting this relative concept, the inability at what point to when something is right or true, or when you have a victory.

Even defeat is relative – just a word – and one of those things that divide people.

So, people fight for the right to be good in a world where right is spoken into existence.

Here she makes the distinction between “Good” and “right” and that good is not the same thing as right – right and wrong are created, manufactured, while good is a state of being.

In some ways, she appears to be saying that she can be wrong, but still be good or vice versa – and while good happens it is often argued out of existence by who is right or who is wrong.

Again, the poem isn’t quite an olive branch, but it is a relief in that it seems less bitter than some of the other poems she posted recently, less hostile, even if she comes no closer to making peace.

In all this is the presumption that we have been conversing, when only occasionally do I get to speak directly to anything she posts. She may well believe I am inconsistent in that regard, when I’ve made no effort to be consistent.

I have no clue as to what any of this actually means, only theories, most of which are likely mistaken or flat out inaccurate.

 

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Good is a spiritual being. May 2013

  

 

Some of her poems are easy to interpret, or at least, can elicit an educated guess as to what they mean and to whom the poem is directed.

This poem about the good fight is not one of those, loaded with ambiguous references that might easily lead to false assumptions, and I believe to some degree this is intentional, as she takes a step back from poems too easily interpreted which left her inner self too exposed.

This poem also takes a giant step back from the intense emotional swings of some of her previous poems. It attempts to be more objective and rational like a mathematician trying to work out a calculation. There is no emotion in math or in logic, and this might be labeled a logical poem in that regard.

In some ways, this poem reflects the theme she posed in her earlier poem on fair and unfair in that what we say are just words. In this case, the word is “defeated”, suggesting a negative outcome to a conflict she has been having with someone she seems to have considered as close because there should not have been a fight at all, and the conflict about who was “right” a waste of time.

“It simply is. Right?”

She implies that there is no absolute right, calling it a sliding scale (once more echoing her redemption poem when she claims right and wrong are just words, and here defeated is just a word, too—and words seem to separate people.

The speaker in this poem seems to want to mend fences, and yet at the same time, not want to admit defeat,

Again, she seems to be desperate to sound logical, reasonable, and yet not accept the other person as being right, and again presses the argument that “truer words” tear them apart.

And so, they fight for the right to be good, where right is something artificial, created, when goodness is not spoken.

This idea that good or right or even happiness gets pissed away by arguing about who is right is the central theme, a wasting away of a life that could be better spent doing better things.

Right, wrong, good and such self-defeating in that they will never be resolved, or fully understood, because they are all aspects of opinion, with both sides of the argument truly believing they are in the right and represent good.

And that whatever good feeling that exists between these two people is lost in the heat of dispute.

The poem is built on seven uneven stanzas. The first of these uses clever word play and irony when the good fight is never good in the midst of the fight because there should not have been a fight in the first place.

The second stanza said it is a waste of life to be spent on things that should simply exist, and the concept of right drags people into dispute when both sides seek to be in the right.

Right simply is, she says, “right?”

The fourth stanza questions the grounds of argument, saying there is a sliding scale or in other words, everybody has their own opinion of what right is, and suggests she might have lost the argument – “defeated” only to argue that defeated is an opinion as well, and that these words tend to separate them.

She gets even more abstract in the fifth stanza when she says, “truer words have never been soke as true,” because true words won’t be spoken as they tear them apart – this suggesting that in the heat of argument, things get distorted, truth gets lost.

And so, in the sixth stanza, this continues the fight “for the right to be good,” where right is created while good is but not spoken, existing of its own accord, but sadly, as the last stanza claims, everybody argues it away.

The poem deals with concepts of truth, goodness, and right as concepts – being right isn’t always true or good, but an opinion, yet good and right are often lost in arguing over them. Good is something that exists, but can’t be defined by words, while good and right are concepts that are created out of speech, and something amounts to little more than hot air.

 

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Back to the coliseum May 15, 2013

  

I’m totally screwed up when trying to keep up with her most recent poems, partly because I keep going back and reassessing poems, I’ve already assumed I knew the meaning of.

But I suspect I have caught up now and can get onto her most recent posting, trying to avoid the misconceptions that sent me scrambling back to reexamine poems she posted previously.

I got lulled into believing that some of the poems she posted were about her failed romance, missing the sudden change of tone and the possible nasty redirection of some at me. Even her poem of liberation may well be her shedding any guilt and telling her critics (and she sees me as this I suppose) to not judge her.

The scribe poem came out of the blue since there seemed to be no inspiration for it, nothing done on my part to cause her to post it as a reaction.

The show poem she recently posted is another one – at least in part – aimed at me, and again it is difficult for me to figure out what inspired it.

She can’t possibly know about this journal (I hand write it and post it nowhere) or even my poetry notebooks from which only a precious few ideas make their way to my blog – and yet this poem of her seems to know all I write in private as if she has a psychic spirit looking over my shoulder as I write.

Which, of course, is impossible.

She is either building a case against me based on her own imagination (that comes dangerously close to the truth) or is writing about someone else doing things in a public way she has concerns about.

Let me examine this poem as if it is actually about me, then step back from it to look at it potentially being about someone else.

The central theme is that “the show” doesn’t really exist, except in the minds of people like me, who create it all out of smoke and mirrors, while she has to live with the consequences.

She says she should be used to this, those who “gather behind stage right curtain” to make their comic entrance – to pounce and make the audience laugh.

The hero always cringes, yet must carry on with the show, even though there really is no show.

It is something manufactured by people who display false sympathy, and then engage in speculation, as if “they” actually knew what was going on, “voyeuristic” people who she compares to the crowds during Roman times that came out to get their kicks watching Christians getting slaughtered, “a purely sadistic thing.” So that people like her who are just trying to get on with their lives “become subject of some grand entertainment.”

What inspired all this – as I said – is a complete mystery, if it is aimed at me, since I’ve done nothing to provoke her recently, except for my poetry posts, most of which are benign due mostly to my ever-vigilant cyber nanny.

If she was aware of this journal or my poetry journal, I might understand her outrage. But I share none of these with anyone, and is written in notebooks, not on a computer (so even in the unlikely chance my computer might be hacked, or the owner of my office would search my work computers as he’s done in the past) none of this would be accessible. I am, after all, making assumptions about her life, which may or may not be accurate.

This poem of hers bases its attack on her own assumptions about what I might be thinking or doing.

I suspect this poem is some kind of response to me, perhaps I’ve given something away about my thinking in the poems I have posted, or her reading into poems meaning that I never really intended, or perhaps some lingering rage from last summer she still needs to vent.

She admits that life requires change, and that people are pressed by issues like guilt and duty, but she resists being influenced by personal attacks on her especially when these are based on lies, “vengeance, revenge, fear” and an enduring “grudge.” Or worse, someone’s decision based on their daily mood.

Again, the poem might not be about me at all, and yet, I cannot imagine her acquiring more than one arch enemy like me in such short a time. So, you have to wonder what prompted her to open up again the heated warfare from last summer, as it is clear from her scribe poem that I am back on her radar.

The question is, how to I get back to that point where I am “clever and illusive,” rather than the creator of a show in which she seen herself as the primary entertainment, a Christian cornered, if not by deadly lions, then by ruthless gladiators.

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They might still be friends someday. May 17, 2013

  

 

Never trust anybody in this game to be your friend – sincerely.

This includes the conflict between the freeholder and the virgin mayor, and all those who claim a side in this political bloody contest.

The freeholder is a well-known associate of the opposition state senator, who had backed the previous incumbent mayor against the virgin mayor, and is still peeved the Virgin Mayor won.

But as loyal to the virgin mayor as RR claims to be, the Freeholder doesn’t see him as such as bad guy, and recalls a time when RR helped him (the freeholder) get out of a mess with a parking permit.

“He made me feel like I was the most important person in the room,” the freeholder told me. “I think after all this is over and done with the two of us might even become friends.”

What a fool! RR’s act was pure snow job, even though the two men had one thing in common, both had worn a wire for the feds at one point.

Only the freeholder hadn’t tried to shake down illegal Mexicans who worked the local restaurants, never threatened to call ICE on them the way RR had. The freeholder had never turned in other cops in order to get out of being charged with the shakedown crime the way RR had.

What the Freeholder didn’t know until I told him is that RR claims to have photographs of the freeholder engaged with Dominican prostitutes, pictures RR intends to use to discredit the freeholder as a witness in the upcoming trial.

It seems sex with prostitutes seems to be a prominent political weapon for all sides in this amazing county, and I would not put it past RR to have hired them himself just for this contingency.

The Freeholder denies the whole, but acknowledges the fact that the virgin mayor managed to buy off another potential witness with a high paying political job in town hall.

You have to wonder how she, the poet feels about all this, since she is still complaining she doesn’t get paid enough (though I’m told she’s arranged to get a $20,000 hike in her yearly salary this month, and makes me wonder who she had to blackmail to get that.)

RR is so slimy, I wouldn’t put it passed him to ask her to perform some of these acts on his behalf, though frankly, I suspect that would be the last straw with her if he tried.

She might spy for him; she might lie for him. She might manipulate the stories she writes for him. But I suspect she has too much dignity to ever do the dirty deeds he needs done.

At least, I hope she has more common sense than that.

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Only time will tell. May 17, 2013

  

 

 

The Virgin Mayor’s Chief Rival complained about a story D – her replacement in our office – wrote this weekend, perhaps because it said something the Chief Rival’s camp did not wish to hear.

But as D’s parting shot before he moves on to a new beat you have to suspect he was steered in that direction, one more effort from inside the Virgin Mayor’s camp to control media and its message – although it is more and more difficult to control the narrative as the trail grows near.

The freeholder. the man who brought the charges against the mayor, tells me the Virgin Mayor intends to discredit the witnesses, showing how these witnesses were involved with prostitutes – reminding me of how dirty politics can get, and similar situations such as the scene in the previous town I covered where the town administrator hired a prostitute to seduce the court administrator in order to force him to resign.

“I didn’t force him to go with her,” the town administrator later told me. ‘He did that all on his own.”

Things got infinitely more complex when I interviewed the prostitute, the madam of a local house of prostitution, and her thug circled the diner during the whole interview, waiting for me to come out.

When I complained to the police chief, he gave me sage advice, “He’s a former pro boxer, but watch him, he leads with his right.”

You have to wonder if the Virgin Mayor’s den of thieves did something similar, hiring prostitutes to get to the witnesses, and how aware she (the poet) was of all these unscrupulous acts?

Is she so naïve as to not be aware, even though she sees herself as an insider? Or is her innocence part of a well-rehearsed act. She must know she is on the dark side and must anticipate doom if the mayor goes down.

Can even her poetry be trusted? She talks a lot about soul in her poems, and yet, I get the feeling she’s given up soul and no longer has a soul to lose.

She’s been up and down, and when she gets sick of it, she’ll put an end to it all. A scary thought.

This is not a fair ride. It is what it is. She needs to get what she can while she can, and not let anyone or anything get in her way.

This is not to say her life is without turmoil. Far from it. Everyday is a struggle filled with anxiety and guilt, if not remorse. She lives with other emotions, too, much like dread, and a need to have control over the various elements in her life, moving pieces of a puzzle I can’t completely comprehend. And I suspect, she doesn’t completely understand it herself.

She constantly harps on about truth, but in her world truth is relative, just as right and wrong, fair or unfair, good or bad are – all merely words.

Sometimes, I suspect half of what she does or says is staged, which is why I cling to her poems since they seem the sincerest thing about her.

The D- thing suggests that she continues to control what does on inside our office, by proxy, which may explain the skewed story D posted just prior to his leaving the beat, perhaps believing he won’t be held accountable, or perhaps as a parting gift to her – to whom he had shown obvious affection.

Will she try and reach out to the incoming writer who replaces D on that beat?

Only time will tell.

 

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Back where we started. May 2013

  

I’ll conclude this volume of my journal by one more revisit to one of her most recent controversial and angry poems, which I have analyzed previously, but need to look at more closely one more time before moving on.

As suggested one of my previous entries, she implies that much of the drama that is currently going on in and around her life may well be manufactured, most likely by those who have nothing to do but cause trouble

Enter Snagglepuss stage right.

My first impression of this poem is that she may be seeking a scapegoat in the ever deteriorating atmosphere on her current public world, people inside getting nervous about the outcome of a criminal trial that could negatively affect all of their lives. She may need someone to blame or at least something to distract her attention for a while, and thus we get a flash back to a more personal time last spring and all the trouble I caused with our former temporary boss.

The poem may well reflect her panic, even though in some ways, I suspect she is exaggerating  how bad the situation really is.

The poem may be a reaction to her own growing vulnerability or may well be one undisguised sign of growing rage inside her that has resurfaced over the last few weeks, percolating behind several poems, some of which may have even seemed too nice or too needy.

My own paranoia makes me think all her poems have something to do with me (when they clearly don’t) and I imagine her laying a poetic trap that might get me to respond and thus expose this “clever and illusive imp” to prove something about me she has been telling her compatriots, but few of them believe.

I’m always fearful of booby traps even when I actually believe she really isn’t out to get me, the way this poem suggests someone (possibly me) might be out to get her.

One has to separate fearful delusion from fact, and in this case, I’m hesitant to believe she is laying traps and that the poem is exclusively aimed at me. Someone in her position makes a lot of enemies, and this poem might well be about anyone or even nobody specific.

In this poem, she seems to suggest that she is shadow boxing, fighting against lies and distortions but with no way to get at the culprit.

As with a previous poem, this one seeks to establish personal strength amid her weaknesses, and attempts to down play the impression on the outside world that her world is in chaos.

Things are bad in town hall, and only the core group can survive, cheering each other on with false bravado.

She said she should be used to being the target, and having someone hiding behind the current to pounce and make the audience chuckle, and the hero cringe.

The show must go on, even if there really isn’t a show, but the vivid imagination of people who watch and wait, feigning sympathy, basing opinions on conjecture, people who think they know what’s going on when they really don’t, voyeuristic vultures, part of the sadistic crowd who would feed Christians to the Lions for the entertainment.

She admits change is necessary, but she isn’t going to bend to their imposition of guilt, though she will fight when she has to against lies and fearmongering, refusing to become the bait of somebody else’s sadistic pleasure.

The rage in the poem is unmistakable, returning to a tone of voice she had frequently used last summer. It is full of defiance and outrage, but no longer as someone on a winning team. She is accusing someone (possibly me) of being petty and vindictive.

But again, this all seems to come out of nowhere since there has been no direct contact since October and no clear motive for why she needs to last out now.

She has repositioned herself again as a victim, someone who is barely making her way in the world and is being waylaid by wolves on the way to grandma’s house, rather than the political insider who has operated during her time in our office and since.

She pictures herself as under attack, the subject of rumors and speculation, something she said she ought to be used to, and yet, she clearly feels wounded by it all.

I’m not saying the poem is about me, but it feels like it is, implying that I am lurking behind every tree ready to pounce on her.

There is some evidence to suggest I am the target of the poem, such as her use of the term “sweet refrain,” when she says, “I am a certain thing that does not bend beneath the sweet refrain of guilt,” possibly referring to poems and music I’ve posted.

The poem continues a theme that she started several weeks ago, continuing the concept that she is the victim, and that she must remain true to her mission – whatever that might be.

Again, I am struck by the idea that she is communicating, only I don’t completely understand or trust it.

As the rock song once said, “Love is a mine field,” but then so is hate, and the best response to this poem it to stay silent and try not to post anything she might misinterpret as a response. The last thing I need to do is set off a mine accidentally, or even intentionally.

Somehow, I get the feeling that we are indeed back where we started and that’s not a good place to be.

 

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Not Raging Bull May 2013

  

  

These are the concluding pages to my second hand-written journal volume concerned with this particular subject, and I’m trying to find a way to sum up everything that has transpired so far (with the hope the next volume will contain far less emotional testimony.)

Writing these volumes has been challenging in a number of ways, but also therapy, a way to clear my head and to put things down on paper (accurate or not) to examine and evaluate. At the worst of times, I wrote some pages while I drove the 90 minutes to work each day and on the return trip, stopping at stop lights to jot down things I contemplated while I drove, needing to get it all out of me before I drove myself crazy.

No one else was ever meant to see these pages – or some of the alternative journals such as my poetry journal—but rather as a place to store images, feelings, conclusions and at times attempting to set the record straight, even at the risk of being proven wrong later.

As it turns out happened several times.

How do I sum up something I still don’t completely comprehend?

Perhaps if I sum up her as a person, a multi-talented human being with a sometimes exaggerated sense of her own importance, assuming she is destined for greatness, and crushed when real world factors get in the way of her achieving it.

She assumes – perhaps rightly so – that she must take what she wants or never get it, and concludes that concepts like right and wrong, good and bad, are things that get in the way and must be discarded.

But she’s paid a heavy price for this, doing what she needs to do, while at the same time dealing with the guilt associated with her actions – guilt that eats her up because she has not fully shed the moral restraints, we all get imposed upon us while growing up.

Fiercely independent, she tries to hide her personal ambition by acting (even pretending) she is part of a team. Yet ultimately, in every situation, she works her way up the ladder (trickling up) into a position of power, and inevitably (as pointe out in my journal yesterday) causes resentment among others she by passes and threatens those whose power she would unseat.

As her 2003 change of priority poem indicated, she herself always resented those people who got escorted to the front of the line, the privileged people who seem to be part of some unspoken elite, and yet, this may be envy, and she apparently did the same when she had the opportunity.

Her distain for elitism and her insistence she is a member of a group in some ways is merely a cover for her ambition to get ahead, allowing her to trickle up without acute opposition until she has or nearly has achieved her objectives. She is often tied romantically to the powerful people she needs to propel her upward – a necessary evil in a world where nothing is fair, and where you need to use whatever tools you have to achieve your objectives.

This last offended me early on. I’m still not comfortable with it, even though I understand the logic behind it and perhaps even the necessity of it.

She seems to use the same routine in each new setting, coming in as a humble initiate who begs to learn at the feet of the master, until she reaches a point where she feels she can then trickle up, eventually ending up as the protégé of the most powerful person in the organization, at which point she seems to become a bit arrogant.

She never really get to be the most powerful person, and eventually, the whole affair crumbles in on itself, when the person she is attached to proves unworthy or incapable, and she must somehow move on to some new venture.

She doesn’t’ always abandon these one-time mentors completely. Some continue to have use for her. But few of them give her up willingly. The wisest accept their reduced role in her life and serve as somewhat remote friends. Those who refuse to step back become enemies and stalkers, who she casts out of the garden, never to share in her fruits again.

One of the reasons she is capable of rising so fast within an organization is her ability to work on several levels at the same time, having multiple mentors, each of whom is unaware of the other, and which she purposely keeps ignorant until she is ready to move on at which point she no longer needs them.

Some people like RR, she keeps close as protection, or for some other use that she still requires, although in some cases, she keeps some of these at arm’s length, even when early on they may also have been more romantically engaged.

Although she constantly complains about lack of money, she seems to know how to acquire it at need, even relying on the generosity of her father (a dependency she resents).

All this is something of an over simplification and makes her sound more ruthless than she really is – although ruthless she needs to be to survive in a world where she would get nothing if she wasn’t.

In each case, the environment becomes toxic and she can no longer sustain upper mobility.

It is unfair to say that she is a static character like those unchanging lead in Raging Bull. She is smart enough and strong enough to change, to grow, although I suspect it will take a much more significant trauma in her life to force her to do so.

People get comfortable with routine, even when they always lead to the same self-destruction.

But I suspect, there will come a tipping point, where she is on the roof and has to decide to leap or to change, and ultimately – despite my worst fears last year – she will opt for change.

 

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Real power or what May 2013

  

 

It was my birthday yesterday  - which brought back a lot of the pain from a year ago, and put an end to the craziness that had led up to it.

Again, as pointed out in another journal entry, all that happened back then wasn’t entirely her fault, and most likely, it was mine.

What I saw back then (she later called trickling up) I then thought of as cheating, and in the year since I’ve come to understand that in a world of clawing to survive, sometimes that’s the only thing you can do – fair and unfair, as she points out, are just words.

It is a difficult lesson for someone like me to learn, as is the fact that the owner and others take part in the game, and if there is guilt to be had, they must share in it, and blame cannot be put on the shoulders of one person, as pretty or seductive as she might be.

When you swim with sharks, you have to learn how to manipulate the powerful fish and get what you want if you are to survive.

This is hard to digest even now, even though I understand it better.

I relive that birthday celebration over and over again in my head, what I could have done or said differently, and debate whether anyone would have changed if I had.

I was too much a fish out of water, and had stepped into her environment, where she had all the power, where she knew just what games to play, where she understood how to keep people off guard.

As I pointed out, I’ve always been insulated from the ugly truth, and never had to fight tooth and nail to survive. I’ve been homeless, I’ve gone hungry, but I’ve always managed to somehow slide by without being forced to compromise those illusions of morality by which I pretend to live.

As I see things now, I got caught up in the middle of other people’s ambitions, some assuming I had more power than I actually had, or mistook what power I had for something transferable.

Power is an illusion. Usually, it’s based on a pyramid and to get to the top, you have to depend on others to keep you there.

This fallacy of being powerful alone drives people crazy. You become a target if you’re on top in that way, seen as a tyrant, and people spend a good portion of their time attempting to unseat you, partly because they see you as too independent.

In this county, power is obtained by getting other powerful people to owe you. The more favors you can dish out to such people above and below you, the more powerful you become. But you don’t stand alone, or at least very few people do, and generally, they do not last long if they manage to get the power they crave.

I’ve never hungered to be powerful in that way, or even famous. My sole ambition has always been to be a great writer – even unrecognized.

This is also dangerous to others because you also stand apart from the crowd, and give no favors nor ask for any, and those who owe nobody anything are truly terrifying.

My feeling is that she hungered for unrestrained power – in each case (as her 2003 change of priorities poem points out) being the one let in at the fancy disco or being part of an entourage, those she hated and envied when younger, by passing all the in between steps, the system of patronage, the owing and being owed, and thus ultimately becoming the target of underlings who resent her.

A year later, it is difficult for me to understand what she expected to get in our office when there are better, players at the game than she, and ultimately, no place of power she could attain without putting somebody else out – such as the boss in her corner office, who is as ruthless as anybody in keeping her position.

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Poetry notebook: words

  

May 13, 2013

 

I can’ believe how bad it feels, knowing that there is no hope, that in a year of whispers, sighs, only emptiness comes at its end, not now, not yet, but soon, when she  decides she can no longer stand the rising and falling, when she assumes that nothingness is preferable to pain, coming fully to believe good and bad are just words, what is left to live for? The only Rolling Stones song about sinners being saints, and since I am neither, I wonder what side of the scale of life I wind up on in her eyes, someone who is a mixture of both, struggling to weigh in on good she doesn’t believe exists, and in a world where nothing matters, where right and wrong, fair and unfair are just words, what is left to live for? We float in a limbo of emptiness, looking for meaning when everything that would mean anything are merely words.

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Sink or swim? May 2013

  

 

I keep meaning to move onto her new posted poems, but get distracted by revisiting previous poems in which I think I might have missed something.

This is true of the poem in which she talks about Acing it, which means accomplishing something with success, in a way that is so significant nobody can top it. It is a term that comes out of tennis when a player hits an unreturnable serve against an opponent.

The impression I get considering the context is that she has decided to go down with the sinking ship if indeed the ship sinks. Perhaps because she likes the company she keeps, something she did not have during the previous disaster.

 In an earlier interpretation, I called her a good soldier.

She talks about the current disaster and how she needs to “suck it up,” an attitude she has maintained, not just in reaction to this disaster, but throughout her life, forced to accept roles that are beneath her, and yet critical roles that with this current den of thieves are required of her.

Better to drown on a ship of fools than to drift aimlessly in a hostile ocean waiting for some savior that will never come.

She seems to be struggling to find a place in some society where she actually feels important, serving some purpose, and even though the ship may be on the verge of hitting an iceberg, she seems to think she has landed in such a society – if only the ship doesn’t sink after all.

She clearly still sees herself as a player.

And yet, she may suspect deep down, as she has in other circumstances such as with the chef in New York, this gig isn’t taking her where she needs to go, even when she does everything she is told, such as spying on the Virgin Mayor’s political enemies.

The shifts in mood feel a bit like desperation: what if I try this or try that?

She must have had high hopes with the Virgin Mayor, a man whom she clearly saw as attractive, almost a father figure to her – even though her real bread and butter guy was RR, perhaps leaning more and more to RR as the Virgin Mayor self-destructed.

The whole thing is a series of moving pieces. Since she was hooked up with RR at least since she started at our office, perhaps even the June before that, the blessing of Virgin Mayor’s victory seemed to promise great opportunity for RR and her, suggesting that our office was never really the end game, but a tool for another purpose – one she appears to blame me for side tracking, and may explain the more recent poems of resentment as the Virgin Mayor’s ship struggles to stay afloat.

For the moment, that den of thieves is all she has and must cling to them as if to a life preserver.

In some ways, she has been far too honest in her poems, saying things most people might have kept secret, hoping I suppose that her use of metaphor can defuse some of the message for people unwilling to fully engage them.

All this, of course, will be resolved when the court case concludes, and she will have the choice to sink or swim.

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A return visit. May 10, 2013

  

It appears she’s taken an extensive weekend off to go visit her best friend in Haverton finally, her childhood companion to whom she always turns when things go sour in her life, and to whom she wrote her penny for your thoughts poem a few weeks ago.

This is the second time I caught her snooping at my website from there, back last fall when she ran to him like a wounded animal, hoping he could heal her.

There were other times she looked at my site from her own town – most often coming at times when I stopped looking at her web pages – perhaps just a coincidence, who can tell?

Most often, the suspicious hits from as a result of Google searches on my name. She might even have adopted software to hide her web signature the way the hometown blogger GA has.

I suspect she does, and so when she checks out my site, the report shows her coming from some remote place like Council Bluffs or odd places in Virginia. I suspect she uses similar tracking to be aware of when I visit her site as well.

 In any case, she seems to have been very circumspect when visiting my pages, leaving as few traces as possible behind, which makes those few times like this stand out. Perhaps she isn’t aware I know the significance of Haverton and so feels safe hitting my site when visiting him.

In some cases, I suspect she deliberately leaves a trace, again adding to the illusion that we are conversing – especially since these obvious hits come at times when I have not looked at her webpage for several days.

She obviously needs to look to see if I’ve written anything about her, when with my cyber nanny, has become much rarer except what I put in my poetry notebooks, which I rarely transcribe to post.

This is a kind f cat and mouse game in which we each leave a trail of cheese to see who will follow it.

The fact that she is in Haverton is not surprising. She goes to him in hour of need, and her pennies poem shows that she was thinking about him from afar even when she could not get there.

Now, she has, leaving me to wonder what woes she brings with her this time, about her failed romance – the engagement ring finger, which in rereading that poem again is full of multiple meanings, some of which I missed in my original analysis, but some which seem hostile, as if a threat – or as pointed out earlier, impending doom she seeks to avoid.

Her last visit came when she had just resigned from our office and was in that limbo between jobs, almost as desperate as she was when she left the employ of the chef.

This time, she may fear the outcome of the Virgin Mayor’s trial, pain anticipated, but I suspect, she is still reeling from the romance that didn’t work out.

Where I come into all this is beyond me, and her few apparent references in my direction have made me want to hunker down and hide even deeper, perhaps cease leaving my finger prints on her website, take a vacation from her poetry, at least to the point where she stops being suspicious about my intentions.

Anyway, I hope her old friend can help her heal. What is good for her is ultimately good for me, in that maybe she’ll cease sending barbs in my direction.

 

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