Appreciation April 28, 2014

 

Sometimes, I want to believe her essays are honest and sincere, while at other times, I think she’s engaged in her PR hyperbole.

This latter struck me when she talked about her “professional” camera.

And yet, I get the sense that she is so down and out that she needs to cling to whatever shreds of dignity she can retain

She has immense amount of talent in so many areas that it gets confusing as to which way she ought to go, much like my best friend, Paulie, who is also a singer, artist and an assortment of other things.

Fortunately for me, I’m limited in what I can do and so I don’t have to choose between this or that, and can throw all of my effort into one thing, never distracted by other potentials.

Yet I can’t make it as a writer, then I’m doomed, while people like her and Paulie can shift gears.

Yet, may sometimes shift gears too often, failing to get success simply because they gave up too soon.

With all the things that have gone wrong as of late, she has shifted gears into doing freelance work, photography and book editing.

In some way, her most recent essay reminds me of the one she wrote after the infant died when struck by a jitney back when she still worked for the city, although in this aspect, she clings to what’s left of the wreckage of her life, like a life preserver she can hold onto until the next boat arrives.

She clearly still struggles with lack of acceptance, returning home from the nearby art show, having not been able to prove herself, and so snatches up her paints, to prove to herself she still has it, and maybe at some point in the near future, able to prove it to other people as well.

This also reminds me of when I covered her career day event and she caught me talking to another artist who was making a living as an artist, when I should have been focused on her. She needs to be recognized, even if it is only in private, even if it is only people like me who do so from a distance. She, of course, most likely will never know how much I do appreciate her.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Sunshine turns to rain April 27, 2014

 

 She and I passed each other in the street yesterday without knowing.

I was covering a World Peace event in the Virgin Mayor’s town, she went to an arts event in the town next door.

I still don’t know who mailed me the information about her salary, but it fills in some of the missing pieces, although losing her job means she may have go to on disability – another sharp drop in salary.

She’ll be poor again until she can find a comparable job at a comparable salary.

It constantly amazes me how hard she tries to get ahead and almost always comes back to being relatively poor.

She apparently got dressed up to go to art event recently, most likely at MOMA, but this was something different.

‘I went to see my brother and his friends at a small art fair a few blocks from where I live,” she posted, noting that she had been sick for three days with some viral infection that kept her out of the program.

She spent the sick days watching Netflix documentaries and strange French films.

She said she doesn’t do well when she has nothing to do, her crack hamster spinning all kinds of things such as “what are you going to do with the rest of your life, even though she is doing much better with her self-care, and might have left the house even ill, but for the constant hacking

Guilt still finds a way to creep into her brain.

She forced herself out onto the sunny streets for the walk, arriving breathless.

The attendance at the art event was sparce, attended mostly by the artists with a few customers, but she said she enjoyed the change.

She said she chatted with the artists and a few friends, and realized she had a dread of her new freedom, after having put most of her energy into getting herself well, and exhausting proposition.

But a neat side affect has been a rekindling of her creative passions, a key – according to her counselors—to her recovery.

This includes the social side of involvement in the arts.

“Since I’ve been home, I’ve dabbled in photography, brushed up my resume and sent it out,” she said and tried to keep up her writing skills as well as her networking. She even did some freelance work, editing someone’s book (you have to wonder if this involved our former temporary boss, who has been sending her chapters of his book for her to read).

Unfortunately, she is still waiting to get inspired for her music and painting.

A friend of hers told her to use her free time to get creative.

She thought about painting or picking up her guitar –which she said has accumulated way too much dust from disuse, but she has yet to be able to tap into it.

Oddly enough, she left the art fair feeling a bit alienated from the community, after having dropped out in order to find time to heal.

While she tries she is not superman and she feels just a bit off when she got home and dropped onto her couch, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the day.

The bright sunlight through her parade of windows did not help. She said she got inspired by darker elements, such as rainy days. Even then, she had the art set she had purchased during her time at the clinic staring her in the face, increasing her guilt.

As pointed out earlier, she had gone to Newark to photograph the cheery blossoms there, the first photos she had taken with her professional camera in months, and hoped creativity would beget creativity.

When the rain finally came, she put on some soft music that seemed to go along with the sound of the rain, and tried to paint something, some woman in a kimono holding a water bucket, restoring the peaceful feeling she always got from doing such things in the past.

It made her feel connected again, and so inspired was she, she signed up for an event at the college she graduated from, telling herself she needs to take things one step at a time.

She hopes she can trust the process of transitioning and hopes she has the patience to stick to it.

I hope so, too.

email to Al Sullivan

Unicorns and John Wayne Nov. 19, 2024

  

I didn’t know about the unicorn thing until she mentioned it during one of her video blogs.

It was one of those kick in the head moments that brought back a whole litany of memories, most of which have nothing to do with her.

More than once I compared her to a stripper I dated in the 1980s – although she (the poet) has much more talent, and is a liberal, where the stripper was a hard core Republican, posted a full sized American Flag in her window, and loved John Wayne.

Our poet is a liberal, almost completely drenched in the new woke culture, and probably hates John Wayne.

The stripper loved unicorns, and almost every man she ever dated bought her unicorn knickknacks as a way of ingratiating themselves with her. Everywhere I looked in her apartment I saw unicorns.

I cannot say the same when I visited our poet’s apartment, which is why her recent statement about being in love with unicorns as a young girl startled me.

I wrote several books about both women, and numerous journal entries, although I wrote more poems about or for the poet, while I wrote a number of songs for the stripper – including a rather pathetic song about John Wayne, her cat Jessy, and a unicorn, which I recently went back to look at.

While both women are similar in a number of ways other than their politics and their favorite movie stars (our poet loved a particular food writer from what I can recall), the unicorn stand out.

The stripper committed suicide just prior to her 40th birthday. I usually put a single rose on her grave several times a year, along with a stuff bear (she loved those, too), and from time to time, I also put a small unicorn novelty there as well (which usually lasts through the winter when I need to replace it).

Fortunately, our poet appears to have saved herself and so will not require the same treatment. In fact, recently, she celebrated middle age, pointing to a strand of gray hair on her head. Instead of rewriting the song I wrote about John Wayne riding off into the sunset on a unicorn, I’ll just have to do a cover of The Grateful Dead’s touch of gray.

If I ever do buy a unicorn novelty for the poet, I’ll have to place it somewhere in conspicuous, perhaps in a park near the river.

Who knows.

 

email to Al Sullivan

 

Facts of life April 26, 2014

  

Apparently, she still has enemies in the Virgin Mayor’s town, one of whom sent me details of her salary, unasked for.

It came in an envelop with no return address, but post marked for the town.

Not apparently from any of my usual sources.

Just why I’ve no clue.

From what I can gather, she got hired in early 2013 as an administrative assistant at a $30,000 annual salary  -- certainly more than she got from our cheapskate owner while she worked for us, yet barely a livable wage in the town where she lived.

She hit the ground running sending her first press release to D, who had replaced her on her beat, though eventually, she got promoted (or perhaps promoted herself) to become a PR person, working under the PR guy who later did work for R’s campaign in Hometown. It is hard to tell if this was a change of allegiance from RR and the Virgin Mayor. But this was the time when she posted the first of a series of love poems to some married man she was tempted and eventually got involved with, possibly someone she worked closely with in city hall.

A number of other things also occurred around the same time, including a brief interlude with Cryan, who was then Hometown Democratic chairman and eventually moved up to the virgin mayor’s town replacing RR as the head of the parking authority. This job may have been a reward of some kind.

According to GA, the hometown blogger, (actually it was kboken – most likely our female boss—that said) our poet also became a barhopping friend with A, who went from being our Hometown writer to the PR person for the third candidate in the hometown election, earning $10,000 as a spy gal.

But then, according to the documents sent to me this week, our poet also got a big raise last May, $20,000, pumping her annual salary to $50,000 more than double what she got paid in our office.

According to rumors (which I’m not certain I believe), she apparently expected another $20,000 raise at the end of last year, which someone else got instead of her, and also according to rumor, how she found out about it led to her getting fired.

I don’t have real facts about the end of year raise, but the documents showed the other two figures as correct.

Did she push things too far in expecting the second raise? Or are there other factors that I know nothing about, and will likely never learn. The fact that the PR guy didn’t know about her being fired until he contacted her later suggests all this happened rather quickly and involved only a few higher ups – the rumor is the Virgin Mayor did it himself.

Although I have a good relationship with the Virgin Mayor, I don’t have courage to ask him about it. Maybe some day. Not now.

 

 

email to Al Sullivan

Scared to death? Sept. 2, 2012

 

I ought to

Still be scared

Perhaps I still am

Having lived through

Another endless summer

Letting early fall rain

Cool my overheated brow

Life thick with

Back to school

And overly early

Decorations

For the scary holiday

As if my Tuesday

Visits weekly

Are not scary enough,

Almost religious,

Where I must

Confront myself

By being in her presence,

Feeling the way I did

In line for the confessional

With the invisible priest

Waiting to hear all I have done,

Dare I detail all the dark thoughts

I have thought in the dark of night,

The intense desires,

The panicked moments

When all fell silent

Save for the rapid beat

Of my overzealous heart,

Things I still won’t

Talk openly about,

The pangs I feel

Each time she passes

Or the avoided stares

When she is seated across

From me,

What is left to confess

That I have not already,

How much more terrible

Are my sins that

I dare not confess them,

What more can I say,

That I have not already said

In the dark of night,

Scared to death,

Of what, I don’t know.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Sept. 1, 2013

 

She needs to prove something to someone,

 only I don't know to whom,

 months after her surviving

 her life and death struggle,

after years of trying to work out 

what is right or wrong,

 this someone, somewhat remote, 

and she like the window

 of a husband gods tells her

 has been lost at sea,

 her thin fingers stretched out

 to touch the illusion

 she sees as him, 

aching for him to come back 

when it is likely he never will, 

perhaps relying on 

the kindness of Gods 

who recognized the intensity

 of her love, her need, 

the bigness of her heart, 

she, pleading perhaps 

for the immorality only love can give,

 perhaps with the help of gods, 

might give he and her

 both wings so they can fly 

beyond the boundaries of a world 

that keeps them apart,

 if only he would respond, 

reach out to touch her

 outstretched fingers.

email to Al Sullivan

Body memory 2015

  

The tips of fingers

Still feel it

Long after

My brain has

Gone numb,

The body retaining

What the mind forgets

The softness of it,

Pliable as a sponge

Giving but not

Too much,

Most as the tips

Just a drip

My lips sip,

Yet tongue

Can no longer taste,

Time rubs

The essence out of it,

We have only

The lingering desire,

Not the thing itself,

Remembering

The meeting of lips,

Not the tenderness,

The haze of it,

Though like a tinder box

It might spark to life again,

Igniting the old attraction,

When it is just beyond reach,

Finger tips dusting its edge,

Recalling where

When, why

When the brain

Lingers in a fog

Of forgetting

email to Al Sullivan

Diverse Nov. 18, 2024

 

Sometimes,

Diverse is perverse

When the sign says

 Closed to those

Who don’t believe

Like we believe,

Diverse meant

To stretch the walls

Of our little world

To fit everybody inside,

But only if you accept

What is expected,

University admitting

Brown or black

But rarely yellow or white,

While the local library

Hosts show time for kids

Too young to understand

The man dressed up as

He/she/it,

Diverse being perverse

If you sign says

You can’t come in,

Unless,

We all stereotypes

Brown, black, yellow, white,

Perverse diversity meaning

You’re welcome

As long as you don’t think

Too differently,

Like we all tend to do.

 

email to Al Sullivan

a Love affair of a different kind Oct, 13, 2024

  

She speaks of them

 as if old friends

they are the uncomplicated

 unquestioning equine lovers

she can trust never to betray her

 even when she lacks

The experience they might need from her

those who have been forced to surrender

 to some ailment caused by others

not all of them thoroughbreds

some nearly as flawed as she

 wounded by life and yet

she finding a way to carry on

 magical in their nature

if not quite the unicorn

she wanted to be

 to recount each

recalls good times and bad

 then physical feelings

as well as her own

feeling their lack of judgment

 in a world where no human

or at best very few

 could be nearly as so generous

a Love affair of a different kind

 

email to Al Sullivan

An old bone 2015

  

I wake in the dark of night

 not to hamster in my brain

just the tap tap and ping

that would ring in me long ago

too vague to pin down

as anything more than

 wind scraping leaves

 against the windows

haunting no less

 the spirit rising out

of the mist of sunset

to return to Earth again

when at last the sun rises once

 more the tap tap tap

like inpatient fingernails

the ping staring down deep

 in my bones

 felt more than heard

an ache rather than a memory

 of things I cannot reverse

 that exist

 persist and remain

 lodged inside me

 like a bone if only half swallowed

I can't spit up or digest

 

email to Al Sullivan

the relief of rain Sept 1, 2012

 

It is not yet fall

it merely feels like it is

 a pesky drizzle spoiling 

this end of summer ritual

for everyone but me

I feel relieved

 cleansed

the Cool wet clinging to me

drawing out of my pores

the last draught of Summer woes

 leaving me to feel drained

unable to fill the space

 left empty by it all

the vacancy love brings

and takes

which cannot be restored overnight

or with a change of season

like that of an intense pain

modified out of the passage of time

so what was wrong once

now becomes a naggingly numb

no longer unbearable

 yet still there fading

never gone

the old fire snuffed out

 except for the embers

that if I breathe wrong

I might I reignite

or move wrong and rub

I will bring back the throb

to deep pain

 I formally felt

maybe I always will

email to Al Sullivan

Fired april 24, 2014

 

I can't say that I know for a fact but at least one of my most reliable sources claims that the Virgin mayor fired her himself

What ever she did or said was apparently so bad it did the near impossible :it pissed him off

maybe she tried to get a raise in some manner that made him uncomfortable such as she tried back in our office

 perhaps she tried to use one of her surrogates such as the public safety director or RR to support her claim against the mayor

 this may explain the poem she wrote early on or some other writings where she defines her situation to make it seem as if her disorder was the cause and in a desperate moved to reinvent herself she agreed to extend the treatment

it also suggested her dream essay about returning to the paper was part of a scramble to find a path back to respectability

But our owner can't really help her nor can are former temporary boss and so she lingers in limbo more or less without power or position and in search of some new venue that is yet to materialize in this game she has lost significant ground because she destroyed her connection to the network

 that at least in theory gave her some measure of real power she may have only been someone's Eye Candy but it allowed her to have knob with possible group of power people and now she is on the outside looking in again

this won't be for long but it suggests that all of her therapy work, all of her essays she wrote since are part of this plan too trickle up or change her shell and start a life other than the ones she has borrowed before and used up

 her posts in public are rare now though she did Post photo in a recent visit to New York City either the MoMA or some other posh place like Lincoln center that required her to dress up again in her famous black dress, an event she no doubt found some importance in enough to allow people to access it on her Facebook page

where she ends up it's hard to say but in the end she will put a stop to it eventually because eventually she'll get too old to keep changing and rebuilding and reinventing

email to Al Sullivan

Earth quake September 2012

  

I feel it stir

As if in anticipation

Of an earth quake,

A distant almost

Indistinguishable rumble

I might mistake for

A truck passing

Along the highway

Near where I live,

Only inside me.

I can’t look at her old photos

And not feel it

Even if the reality

Of the seismic event

Is long gone

Hardly the shaking

I felt during those

Long lonely nights

Clutching my hone

Waiting for her reply.

I live on the fringe of it now,

Not the epicenter

Aware that the vibration,

Moved by it,

Yet not finding my world

Falling to pieces

Because of it,

Yet even at a distance

Even if not consumed by it

As I once was,

I am still moved,

Memory reverberating

Stirring me up,

Confusing me,

Making me hunger

For what it

Might have been,

The plates of our worlds

Briefly connected

Now drifting apart,

The impact that might

Have buried me then,

Now merely wishing

I could have it again.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Absolution September 2012

  

The rain relieves the heat

But little else,

Falls bringing change

Only maybe

Not for the better,

The drips of drops

Off the brim of my hat

As sad as tears,

Exposing those that

Have rained inside me

The whole summer long,

And still,

The west that touches

My cheeks make me

Feel different,

If not whole,

A sense that

I may have moved on

Beyond my intercessions,

I think of the

List of such I brought

To the confessional

As a kid, there with

The sliding door opening

And the sound

Of the priest’s voice,

Asking me to ask for forgiveness

Only none of what I’ve done

Will come out

I feel the rain

Falling inside my head,

Hearing it dribble down

Into the remote places

Where my sins are stored,

Yet unable to wash these away,

Or make them seem cleaner,

Or less severe,

Which my brain tells me

Are severe indeed,

As I wait absolution

I know I don’t deserve

From the imaginary priest

From God

From her,

email to Al Sullivan

reinvented April 22, 2014

 

How close she is to reinventing herself, I can’t say.

But as she has pointed out previously, she becomes what other people want her to be, and so any reinvention will likely require someone else to come into her life.

In some ways, this is how she controls the situation, a kind of Zen where she goes with the flow, even at the expense of losing who she really is.

But this didn’t always work in complex situations where there were multiple personalities involved, inside our office, as well as on the political beat beyond, since each of us had different expectations, and she must have suffered a kind of insanity trying to meet those expectations.

Outside the paper, I suspect she ran into other issues such as with the neighboring mayor some believe she got involved with for a short time only to have her cast her aside – he was a notorious womanizer, and used and abused women. She may have decided to get even with him using our publication.

He trusted me just enough to imply that whatever went on between the two of them went beyond his political war with the state senator, although she may have taken sides with the senator as part of her revenge – or may have been a mole for the state senator all along but failed to accomplish her mission. (I have no evidence to back this last paragraph’s conclusions other that speculation of others, who may know as little as I do).

Whatever happened in our office or in the pollical sphere beyond appears to be over except for Joey D’s efforts to get her a government job in the Peninsula City – which I suspect will go nowhere.

She has to start from scratch, and her effort to recover from her eating disorder appears to be a positive sign.

Since she can’t go back, she must go forward, and reinvention is a huge part of that process.

I just hope she doesn’t fall into the old patterns once she moves on, giving her a chance perhaps to reveal her real self and perhaps find someone who can love her for what she is, not what we all want her to be.

email to Al Sullivan

Brittle leaves (from Bear Mountain poems) Oct. 18, 2024

 

 

I came for the leaves

But almost came too late

The bitter heat of summer

Making each leaf too brittle

To do much except

Turn brown

The wind making

Those that fell

Swirl at my feet,

As I stroll this mountain

Named after a bear,

This last gasp before

The air turns bitter,

Too much for

The brittle leaves to bear,

The river,

Her river and mine,

Flowing before me,

Connecting me here

With where she is,

Even if neither

Will ever see the other again,

Connected by the elements

Of wind and rain,

And in the lack of rain, fire,

The tender, even bitter kiss

That I feel still

Missing it,

Reading into it something

That may not be there,

Reading tree leaves

Not tea leaves

Believing all they convey

The wind, the chill,

The leaves that fall,

All part of what we are,

And always will be.

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Tipping point (from Beat Mountain poems) Oct. 17, 2024

 

I know the leaves have

Already changed

Where she resides,

The tipping point of

When gold and red turn brown

And yet as I drive north

On a road that hugs a river

I cling to their aspect of beauty,

Taking in the painted tips

Remembering the tender lips,

the tree crowns

bulging out, making me ache

to touch, as I cling

to memory as these remaining

leaves cling,

the colors seeping into me

along with the growing chill

as the world changes

and I know I will have to

live with the barren world

when they are gone,

until spring brings green again,

yet it is not the same,

this image of leaves,

the color of the sky

the darkness in her eyes,

the setting sun peeking

perpetually through,

always drawing me back

always making me

think far too much

about what I miss,

when I miss her

most

 

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Dick Tracy (2015)

  

I still see you

Wearing

That Dick Tracy hat,

Tilted down

Over one of your

Mysterious eyes,

Framing your face

As you pose for the picture,

Sent to me

Via text,

Though even then

I could never forget,

Your blouse parted

Just enough to reveal

The swell of your breast,

A tease I know down deep

You fully intended,

Your eyes

Including the one under

The tilt of hat

Glinting devilishly

A minx

A playful kitten

Whose expression

Promised to scratch me

If I go too far,

As I aways want to,

Aching to get scratched,

Even now

Even after having not seen you,

Just that photo

That hat,

The devious stare,

Telling me

Once

Anything was possible.

 

email to Al Sullivan

Hook, line and sinker (2015)

  

I’m not the one

 who chooses

You do

Girl picks boys

And he’s lucky

To have her,

The painted lips

The shadowed eyes,

The tight hips

The becoming thighs

Bait to bait me

And I always bite

Taking the hook

So keep inside

I can neve yank it out,

Living with the cut of it

If I move wrong

Or think too much,

Even though you’ve

Cut the line

Returned me to the pond

From which I came,

I will always feel the barbs

Stabbing at my heart,

Each time recalling you

And yet,

I still ache for it,

Hook, line and sinker

 

email to Al Sullivan

Blinded by the light April 13, 2014

 

An old poet once claimed

The night has a thousand eyes

And it does,

All of them hers

Rising even as late as dawn,

I see them always,

Like the after glow

From my staring too hard at the sun,

Streaming into the dark of night

Clinging to my world

As the sun sinks again,

My brain trying to sort

Through them all

To find out which of them are real,

My heart beat quickened

By my thoughts of her,

Even now

At this late date,

When her sun has sunk

And I see is what I wish to see,

The aftermath of how

Bright she was,

Impressed on my retinas

A stubbornly as a tattoo,

Destined to fade over time,

Yet not quickly,

Not completely,

So later,

Even as I stumble on

Blind,

I cling to it

As if it is still real,

A thousand eyes by night,

One intense brought by day,

Scalding me still,

Making me burn

On the inside and out,

A memory of something

So potent

I dare look at it directly,

Blinding myself in her brilliance,

Her stare, blistering me,

And still,

I can’t make myself

Stare away.

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