Still on the chopping block Dec. 1, 2013

  

(This is the point in my journal I intended to stop posting when I started this several years ago. I'm not certain how much more I'll post even though I have material going into 2015. )

She tried the same trick this time (the naming of a school after the U.S. Senator) as she pulled last time (the naming of the school after the congressman).

At the Congressman’s event, the cops on duty told me that I lacked updated press credentials – something only she could have told him.

I told the cop I had credentials; he escorted me out of the building anyway, telling me that nobody without “full” press credentials would be allowed to cover the event – no doubt quoting what she said to him.

Fortunately, the press person for the congressman was there and told the cop that all press with credentials or not to be let in, and then looked at our poet and said, “Get it?”

This time, ahead of tomorrow’s event, I spoke to the Virgin Mayor about access. He had invited me personally.

He assured me I would be allowed in, and arranged for someone on his staff to notify me ahead of the event  but when one of my other contacts in his administration called me early to ask if the mayor’s people had gotten back to me, he was shocked when I told him no. I had not even received the press release all the other members of media had.

My contacted texted our poet’s boss to send it, and after I texted her boss myself twice, I eventually received it, learning definitively at that point that our poet was the person who was supposed to have sent it in the first place.

All this suggests a number of things. First, she continues to dislike or -- as she put it on leaving our office about not hating all men only some – hates me.

It also raises questions about her relationship with her boss – which I’ve only speculated on in the past (especially regards to the Hometown election).

Had she trickled up from RR to her PR boss after RR proved to be a dead end?

Or was her boss the mysterious man she had fallen for early this year? (something I doubt, but this interchange over the school naming seems to further connect the two, and perhaps ties her to that disastrous Hometown election, and her role as a possible spy.

She, her boss, and the other members of the inner circle are tied to the Virgin Mayor’s power -- which might have changed if she, A, and others had managed to get R elected Hometown mayor. Since they could not, they are back to where they started, clinging to the Virgin Mayor’s shirttails, or perhaps in some ways controlling him.

All this scares me a little because I had assumed time had diminished her rage at me and that I was no longer on her radar, when these two incidents at the schools suggest otherwise.

For all my wishful thinking, I’m clearly the central bad guy in her universe, the one who perhaps “shot her in the back” or has stood between her and what she hoped to achieve. She like our former temporary boss might even still believe I am the source for all the Hometown blogger has been posting about what went on and may still be going on in her office in connection with her.

Her position as a possible replacement for her boss in the Virgin Mayor’s town or some new position in Hometown seemed to have compromised by events that took place like June, as well as the distrust the congressman, the Small Man and their staff have of her.

Exposed as she has been, she is no longer as a valuable commodity as a stealth agent, and gauging from the reception she gave me at this event, she appears to be blaming me.

She is clearly frustrated by all this, and doesn’t feel she has the control she needs.

What new dirty trick she might pull ahead of tomorrow’s ceremony remains unclear.

But the whole thing has soured whatever tender feelings I’ve had for her after having followed her plight with her lover, and created additional (and quite unnecessary) distance, making it clear there will never likely be a chance at reconciliation.

But as The Beatles put it, Tomorrow never knows.

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Aching for a grand slam May 15, 2024

 

 

I won’t pretend

To understand

How she feels

Or why she needs

To go so far

When live pitches her

A curve ball.

She always swings too hard

She always tries to reach the stands,

Why does it seem so complicated

When we all ought to simply

Have what we need,

And get what we want,

Grab what we think we deserve,

Finding pleasure in a pleasant

Afternoon ride

All else intruding on us,

Making magic moments

Unserviceable,

When they ought to be

Full of joy.

I don’t pretend to know here,

Only the edges of what she reveals,

The outlines of a promising life

She is so desperate to lead

If only fate

Or god

Will let her.

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Feeding the beast (2014)

  

(This is in response to claim she made that at her age (then 33) she was at the peak of her sexuality)

  

It is the peak of it

She thinks,

The top of the roller coaster

From here its all

Down hill,

If she does not engage it,

Make the most of it,

She will regret it,

Not love, not exactly,

Not mere lust either,

This mingling

This tingling sense

Of something inside

Stirring,

A witch’s broth

She stirs

Yet has no control

To try and stop it

Makes no sense

She will still feel

The need,

Just who matters less

Than the act,

To feed this beast

All men lust after,

If she does not feed it,

Time will starve it,

The worms will eat

The remains – as

Shakespeare once claimed.

Best to give in

And feel it live

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Erased but still there May 25, 2012

 

(sort of a response to one of her poems)

 

I love fog

It erases everything

Especially the mistakes

We see the river

Out from our office window

But not always the spires

That make up the city beyond,

You claiming it may never

Have existed,

But I feel the weight of it,

Even in the fog,

Our lives always dictated

By things we cannot see

Or control,

The whisper of wind

The howl of the storm,

The growl of the mad dog

Deep in the shadows,

The invisible aspects

Of our lives,

So strong we sometimes

Cannot exist without them,

Perhaps do no want to,

Perhaps we have become

Invisible ourselves,

Holy ghosts clinging

To this landscape

To survive.

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Summer time ain’t easy either May 22, 2012

 “Summer time and the living is easy,”

Only it ain’t, especially if you

Can’t stop and smell the roses,

Poor kids on rusted swings

In the church yard next door,

More free in their simply way

Than the hustlers and bustlers

With heads full of schemes,

If only I could rush out

And feel clean air again,

Cool or hot,

Breathe free when we

Spend our lives desperate

For something to happen;

It never does,

We all live school kids lives

Waiting for the school doors

To open and let us loose

Not to return until

After Labor Day,

I want to live my life

Over again

And I suspect you

Do, too,

Only we’ve both

Forgotten how.

 

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Alone again naturally Nov. 27, 2013

  

Her posting last night makes six poems in less than a week, competing with her out put from those glory days when she was angry with me.

On the surface, this most recent poem seems nostalgic (as did its predecessor), but there is an under tone in both poems that belies the surface appearance.

Coming this time of year, she may be searching for something to be thankful for, but clearly is pained by the fact that she is spending this holiday alone.

She smells a memory of cooking from past holidays, “of roasting things” wafting into her work days, as well as her nights alone, where she gets to celebrate by watching cooking shows on TV.

She looks back to a time when she was a little girl, when she was unaware that it was the best time of her life, and back then had the most to be thankful for.

“Too young to know better than to know it would probably never be better,” she writes, an more than ever it was a good time to be thankful.”

By using words like “Phantom,”  she makes it clear that the wholesome sense that is promoted at this time of year is largely imaginary, and this undertone is supported by her use of the word “mimic,” as she substitutes food television shows, and goes on to make it clear than when she actually felt good about the holiday, she was simply “too young to know better,” or in other words, how the world really works.

The intense bitterness of the undertone plays against the over sense of nostalgia to give this poem incredible potency. She spends her nights alone, sitting watching food shows on television (instead of having someone’s loving arms around her, sharing her time.”

And yet she is somewhat cynical, reflecting on how she didn’t know in the past as a girl that it would never be better than it was.”

Unsaid, of course, is the fact that she did not have a happy childhood for the most part, but in looking back, from this particular moment, it seems happier than she currently is, painting a snap shot of her isolation.

The oddity in all this is that – despite all of her stalkers, all of those men and women who profess to love her, all of those men or women she could have with the snap of her finger, she can’t be with the one she loves.

Yet, there is a sense in this poem, a kind of repeat of her poems about living borrowed lives, that she is always really alone, even with she is with people, even with that man she aches for.

This is an intensely sad poem, although I’m not certain if she is sending a message to someone with it, or just reflecting on the reality of her existence.

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No regrets May 18, 2012

 You shouldn’t regret it,

Even if you wake up in time

Or slam on the brakes

Before you collide

Or do what you need to do

Before you need to

Have it done to you,

Never regret someone

Clearly not good enough

To shine your shoes,

Or kiss your toes,

Or do all those things

Lesser people need

To do to get ahead,

When they (we)

Do not have the heart

Or the talent

Or even the worth

To be where you are

And have you do what

We are desperate

For you to do.

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Inside you (2014)

  

I need to climb inside you,

The way you do a shell,

To look out of your eyes

To taste what you taste

With your tongue

I need to feel out it feels

When I touch your breast

Kiss your nipples

Plunge deep into your abyss

I need to fell what it feels like

To have me kiss you,

To know from inside out,

If you feel the way I do,

I need to wrap myself up

inside your skin

To love what you love

To take warmth from my body

When pressed against your,

Sharing sweat that can only be

Created by rubbing together,

I need to hear what you hear

To know you’ll believe

When I say “love.”

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This precious nugget (2014)

 

If I rub hard

and long enough,

It might shine,

This ugly piece

Of stone I possess,

And think of it

As precious.

If I hold it long enough

In the palm of my hand

Feel it go

From frigid to scalding,

I might believe

It will bring me fortune,

Or turn fate’s head

Away from me,

This thing I need

I know has no value

Except what I give it.

If I put if under

My tongue

And taste its bitterness,

I might come to believe

Everything else is sweet,

A hard, bitter

Less on life

I might swallow

And digest,

And still not be

Rid of it,

Feeling it creep around

My insides

Stirring me to trouble,

As each part of me

Connects,

This worthless nugget

This painful excuse

Destined to devour me

Whole

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The Buddha in me (2014)

 

I ease out the Buddha

Because it grows

Too big to contain,

Its head red

From the rush of blood,

Deep veins exposed,

Like a road map to joy

I can only follow behind,

I ease out the Buddha

Because I can no longer

Stand the pain,

The chains that contain it,

Feeling the lash

Of the whip

I self-inflict

With thoughts of you,

With thought of my

Desperate need.

I ease out the Buddha

When it tells me to,

Draws me to

The sacred well

To drink,

To plunge my head

Deep into,

And drown,

Forced to breathe

Your scent,

Of pleasure and pain,

Only the Buddha

Knows how to find.

I east out the Buddha

And think only

Of you.

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Vampire Redux

 

(this was inspired by three things -- that mistaken interpretation of her poem about truth, that night at the German bar, and the brilliant surrealistic story she posted at the end of the summer of 2011. This is magic realism but pales in comparison to her piece. I can't do what she does in prose, but come close in some of my poetry.)

 I hear the blood flowing in her veins and I get thirsty.

It stirs from her lips, her hips, her breasts, churned up, her cheeks red from some bout of lovemaking that makes me all that much more crazy for my wanting that, too.

I hear her blood, hot blood, blood I can almost taste for its scent, only I’m do not how to get at it, she is as remote as a Greek goddess.

We see each other only in public places like this, seated at her desk on the third floor or across the table in the meeting room, always under the scrutiny of others – too many nosy people already suspicious, all ready to expose even the faintest irregularity, in him, in her, or anybody.

Then, she looks across the table at me as if seeing me for the first time, a spark in her eyes, stirring up my blood this time.

I lick my lips and stare deep into those eyes, swirling around as if in moss agate, shapes of things there I do not suspect to find.

She is far from stupid and things, about me, dangerous things other don’t know, and she is attracted.

“Would you like to get a drink?” she asks me, sounding so innocent I’m baffled again.

 Drink of what? Does she know what she is saying? Is she offering it freely to me?

In ancient times, my kind relied on the church to provide virgins, whose blood tastes pure. These days, my kind has to settle for what we can find, flavoring our diet with something different if not pure.

And I can already taste it, line fine wine, a vintage maybe not as rare as in the past, but with its own attractions.

“Where?” I ask, hoping some place private, some place where we can get down to it, where I can sip from her uninterrupted by the snoopy society.

I’m a little disappointed when she mentions the bar down the street from where we sit.

And at the bar, she studies me closely again, suspicious, her instincts telling her things about me, perhaps things I don’t even know about myself, this weakness, this ache to get more from her than just another sip of blood.

I’m nervous, glancing around, aware of others in the bar, not all of them unfamiliar, we all part of some odd collective of familiarity, faces we see to whom we can put no name, and yet recognize each other in passing.

I wait, a quaking hunter, looking for the right moment to pounce, realizing it when she says she needs to go outside for a smoke, and I follow her out, my teeth aching like the wolf in the woods on the track of Little Red Ridinghood.

Oh, how sharp these teeth are!

Outside, she sucks in smoke and stares into the remoteness of the dark, her thoughts caught on something far away, and so, when she is distracted, a steal a kiss on her lips, and then, a nip on her neck, drawing a dribble of blood. I lick it up. It is very much as sweet as I imagined it would be, and I want more.

She shudders, her long fingers reaching to the place of her wound, touching the blood, looking at the drops dripping from her forefinger, her a bewildered expression coming to her face.

Is she pleased or pissed?

I can’t tell, and she won’t say.

She just hurries back inside, where at the bar, she starts to talk to someone else, someone we both know, someone who seems puzzled at the fact that we are here together.

Yet, she looks at me out of the corner of her eyes, scared maybe, certainly alarmed.

But the taste of blood had set my blood to boil, and I can’t stop lusting after her, a pang as deep as any I have ever felt, even in my reckless youth when I sucked as much as I could find and was still unfulfilled.

After a time, she seems less put off, maybe even attracted, the way innocent women get attracted to dangerous men, knowing we can hurt them, knowing we will likely cause them pain, and yet for some mysterious reason, needing to play on the edge of it, a dance of defiance.

When I suggest we go to her place, she nods in a distracted way.

“Will it hurt?” she asks.

“Not in the way you think,” I say. “You might even like it.”

Her fingers rise to her neck, touching the place where my nip drew blood.

“Will I die?” she asks.

“I would never take things as far as that.”

“Will I turn into someone like you?”

“You could,” I admit. “Would that bother you?”

She does not reply. She simply gets up and I follow, out to the street, out to her car for the short drive in silence to the place where she lives, then up the stairs and into her apartment, where I sit on the couch and she says she needs to change, only she doesn’t come out from the other room right away.

“Are you okay” I ask.

“No,” she says, still not visible. “I’ve changed my mind. I think you should go.”

“What if I promise I won’t hurt you?”

“I don’t believe that,” she says. “I don’t want to be alone with you.”

When she appears, the blood has drained from her face and she looks more like a vampire than I do.

“Please go,” she says, sensing the intensity of my desire, the deep hunger I can no longer hide, the lust for blood I’ve already tasted and need to taste again.

“What if I promise I’ll only fuck you,” I ask.

“You would be satisfied with that?”

“I want that nearly as much,” I say, imaging what it’s like to touch her, to run my lips down her long neck, to ease my tongue into her welcoming mouth, to have her breasts pressed against my chest as I plunge my cock deep into her pussy.

“But will that be enough?” she asks.

“I don’t want it to be,” I admit. “But if that’s all you’re offering, I’ll have to be satisfied.”

Although I know, I won’t be, know I’m already disappointed.

She sits next to me on the couch, and I kiss her lips softly, and then as I imagined, run my lips down her neck, passed the wound my nip gave her, down to her breasts, and I suck on the tip of one, then the other, drawing out liquid that is not yet blood, and then sink one tooth into that tender flesh and draw blood, but not a lot, and no more painful as to cause her to retreat. I run my lips down, pausing at her belly button, and then get into the mix between her legs, the taste of her wet pussy nearly as potent as her blood, dripping into my mouth as I lick her click, circling the little nub with the tip of my tongue and when I’m about to plunge in, she stops me.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I have my period,” she says looking down at me as I kneel at her feet, her legs to either side of me.

I smile.

“Perfect!”

I plunge in, lapping it up, but aching for more, rising slightly, pressing my chest against her chest, my lips against her lips, as I thrust my cock into the deep darkness where my mouth had been, riding her, forcing moans out of her as we go in and out, in and out, her cunt closing around my cock as if we have bonded completely, a single entity of pure joy neither of us wants to abandon.

But being who I am, wanting what I want, I am not satisfied, waiting for that moment when she cries out with passion and cums, to plunge my teeth into the vein of her neck, as deep and passionate embrace as that which goes on between our legs, my cum filling up those dark places below as I feed from her, sucking deeply her essence into my mouth, her moans telling me she likes this, too, and wants it as much as I do, trading off her blood for the gift of cum I give her.

When I fall to one side sated, she touches her neck where my teeth had been, her fingers covered with her own blood, testing it with the tip of her tongue, then putting her bloody fingers into my mouth.

“I feed you,” she says.

“I know,” I say, and cum inside her again.

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Along for the ride May 18, 2024

 

 

She should leave

The camera on

Her head

So we can see

Where we are going,

Making me take back

That off the cuff

Claim she looked

Silly with it,

Needing to keep it

Up there

As to see what she sees

And not the back

Of the horse’s mane,

Leaving us to imagine

What its like

On the journey,

Desperate to catch up

With that vision,

Which we miss

With the camera

On her chest,

I have no need

To see her in her

Regalia,

But would rather have

The camera fixed

To her forehead,

Like the lamp

On a coal miner,

She galloping through

The world with

No clear destination,

Just a giddy kid,

Thrilled by

Childhood dreams

That actually come true,

Letting the rest of us

Go along for the ride,

If only, we could see

Where we were going.

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Just the tip (2014)

 

I don’t want to put

All of it inside you

Just the tip,

Between those other lips,

I get to kiss with it,

Just an inch maybe,

So, I can feel you

Close around me

As I ease in,

The feel of you,

How you consume me,

How I ach for more,

And yet just let me

Dip the tip of the wick

Into you,

I’ll be satisfied,

That easing in with it

Just a little bit,

I promise not

To go too far,

Even though

I ache to go

All the way,

Just this little bit,

The tip will do,

More than enough

When it’s never

Enough,

When I ache

To go so deep

I can never get out.

 

 

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Karmic justice (2014)

 

Everything is in limbo

That space nuns say

In-between heaven and hell

Where we all wait

For fate to decide

Which way we

Ought to go

Karmic Justice

Measured by

How much good we do

Or bad,

Like the holding cell

I spent three days in

Waiting to see

If I could make bail,

This time, it’s her jail,

Not mine,

Self-imposed,

Sending her off to

The Sunshine state

To rehabilitate,

Reboot.

Start over

With a blank page.

Will she ever come back,

Or some back so different

Another person,

Or will she settle into

Yet another shell,

For some fool like me

To fall in love with.

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People are in fact poems May 17, 2012

 

 

People are in fact poems

We just don’t always know it,

Or show it,

Heads filled with sawdust

And though she sees me

As self-serving; I’m not,

Or I would be more

Than I am,

The scarecrow

Dorothy finds hung up

In a cornfield,

Mocked by the crows

I’m supposed to scare,

Scared of my own shadow,

Out of which I shape

All those things I fear

Just a silly straw-headed poet.

Struggling to make rims

Out of sawdust and dreams.

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Betrayed by the one she loves Nov. 26, 2013

  

The emotional impact of her most recent break up has stirred up her defense again and seems to have continued her effort to survive at any cost.

I also do not know what she thinks my role has been in her demise.

But her most recent poem about survival seems like a declaration of defiance.

Something, at least, bent her over backwards and snapped her back as it kicked her in the butt when she thought she was protected.

“Shot in the back” while she slept as she put it.

Normally, this would have destroyed her – in a self-accusing manner: This is what I deserve – as repeated from the past.

But she is telling herself that she is stronger now, gotten over the worst of past plights, and this time it might not actually be her fault.

Where as all the kings men and all the kings horses could not put her together in the past, she done so for herself this time, so she exudes strength, laid if not stood supine, suggesting her endurance.

The moment she waited for seem to have come, but did not redeem her, and this was due to some serious betrayal.

But by whom?

So, she got up, put her clothing back on, brushed off the latex and shame and carried on.

No weeping. No wrenching of garments. Back where she started, a new world to stir her on and on.

As with the love poem about ending, this poem suggests that someone close, someone she trusted (someone that is not me) caused her demise or refused to stand up for her, but instead of falling apart, she grew harder, and tougher, more resilient.

With the echoes of the past “what I deserve,” still resounding in her ears, she questions her own stupidity, seeing what she wanted to see rather than what really was there in front of her.

Now she needs to move on, confused by the beauty of what she had, as opposed to the violence that caused part of this separation, the breakup inspired by what she calls “a violent moment” which woke her up, and forces her to do what she is reluctant to do, seeking some new opportunity to redeem her.

Everything she has been “told,” “felt” or loves,” she still believes and feels, although alludes to some conversation this poem only gives up pieces of, never spelling out the whole thing, a conflict that can only be resolved by a parting of ways, and a return of big fish eats little fish way of life she dislikes.

It is impossible to predict precisely what comes next.

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I write poems to exist April 24, 2024

  

I write poems

Almost in my sleep

Like dreams,

The wish fulfillment

Freud kept harping on,

I’m scared to stop,

Thinking if I cease

I will cease to exist,

Or get exiled

From Eden

For not having bitten

Into the forbidden fruit,

Clutching the serpent

By the neck

To keep it from

Spitting up,

These words,

These vague ideas,

Smeared across my belly

Just about the place

Where I ache most,

Counting out my life

Less in tea spoons,

Than in tea leaves,

I read, but do not

Aways comprehend.

I write poems until

I spill over,

Unable to stop,

Even if I could,

Unable to cease

Dreaming,

Unable to halt

The fangs that

Rip my insides out,

The only cure,

A temporary flow

Of words,

I write these

Therefore

I exist.

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I dream of now (2014)

  

I don’t dream

The same dream

I used to dream

Time’s watermark

Firmly imprinted

On what I

Once was,

No renewal can

Help me recreate it,

Unlike a fingerprint

No two dreams

Remain the same

Not inspired

By lust or dread,

Perhaps now

Instead by regret

I don’t dream

Of what I want

And can’t have,

But more of what I missed

And still miss,

Lost in a fog of a past

I cling to,

If only to recall

What was.

I dream of now,

And what is,

The ever-present

Feelings I did not lose

Despite the constant

Flow of waves

On this beach

Of life,

I stroll over sand

Littered with wet

Empty shells,

Once occupied,

Now abandoned,

And try to read

Into them

What they might

Have contained,

Felt, no longer feel,

As their occupants

Have moved onto

Newer maybe

Better shells

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I give up May 17, 2012

 

 

I would throw my hand up

And say: “You win.”

But you would never believe it,

Thinking you lost

Before you’ve even started,

Where I already have,

You sink for no reason,

Could not really have

That much faith

In me to have your

Fate decided by me,

You say, you flow and float,

Only to sink, and I say

It is swim or sink.

You being the strongest

Of the two of us,

If not the weaver of spells

Then one whose presence

Causes me to fall under one,

Perhaps a spell

Of my own contrivance.

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Not again May 16, 2012

 

I don’t stab myself in the hand.

I go for the heart.

 Chit chat, then butter knife

Not nearly sharp enough for all that.

The street walk filled with lonely talk,

Then my face smacked into brick

By my own hand?

That bar that night

To celebrate my birthday

Nobody else would,

A wine glass filled with

Sour trust,

I’m too scared,

She screeching on the cell phone

As I took the long walk in the dark,

Claiming to be gas lit,

Abandoned, I supposed its true

Going home to dangle

From her roof again,

And in my head, I think,

Not again,

Not with her,

When the last time

My true love

Put a bullet in her head

On the eve of St. Valentine’s Day,

Her own personal massacre

I still don’t understand

Why do all these great women

Want to end themselves

When they have so much

To live for

With or without me

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