Rumors and more rumors February 9. 2014

 

I still haven’t gotten a straight answer as to whether our poet got fired or quit.

Looking back at the poetry she posted over the last couple of months, it is clear she has been in the midst of a mounting crisis, within her and possibly in the world around her as well.

And even as I write this, I get calls from insiders who tell me she’s no longer part of the team, although they are very short on details.

But despite the buildup over the last few months, whatever happened, occurred all at once.

In the aftermath, some details about her relationship to “the team” have come to light.

Sal Vega, the mayor before the current one, claims Joe Garcia hired her last year in order to keep her out of their opponent’s camp.

This dispels the notion to some degree that she had acted as a spy for the virgin mayor when she offered her services to his political enemy.

Vega said she had floated from place to place (after her resignation from our office) looking for a camp to land in, perhaps even still hoping to broker her contacts in our office as a way into one political camp or another. Her approaching the mayor’s rival made the virgin mayor nervous (according to Vega), and they (the mayor and his henchmen) decided to buy her loyalty with a job.

Garcia and others apparently believed she had more influence than she actually had.

Vega claims she tends to boast about what she can do, a really good sales pitch, only after she got hired, she needed to prove it.

Vega believes she began to trickle up in the Virgin Mayor’s organization once she got her position in it.

At one point, her handlers apparently asked her to put together a coalition of opponents of the Freeholder and The Small Man, but nothing seemed to come of it.

While Garcia, according to Vega, was the one who hired her, the virgin mayor and RR, became her protection. She worked under the PR man, with whom some claim she got involved (There’s no evidence to suggest this).

Vega claims her undoing came one day when she opened the mayor’s mail and discovered that Sylvio, the mayor’s chief of staff had just received a $20,000 a yea raise.

According to the freeholder, she stormed into the Virgin Mayor’s office and demanded a raise as well (even though she received a $20,000 annual increase the previous May).

The freeholder claims the Virgin Mayor got angry and fired her for opening his mail. Vega on the other hand claims they got rid of her to make room for Paul, the PR guy from the state Senator’s office.

If she got fired, I suspect it was something other than either of these claims, perhaps something personal between her and the virgin mayor. Perhaps the Small Man, who forced her to resign from our office, pressured the virgin mayor to get rid of her – the small man still angry over her work with RR to undo the congressman and her attempts to go after some of the small man’s staff (through the son of the small man’s closest political ally.)

How much of any of this is true, I can’t say. There is even a rumor that she’s been driving a new car (she gave up her old car sometime ago).

At the end of the day, nobody knows anything about the situation only that she’s no longer working for city hall.

 

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This strange duality May 2012

 

 

the last thing I want

is for her to feel sorry for me ;

yet it is exactly what I want,

the odd duality

of a supposedly mature man,

 if any man can actually be mature.

We are all children really,

 lusting after our mother -- as Freud says

plotting the deaths of our fathers,

 poking out our own eyes

when we wake up and realize

 how childish we have been,

 this intense sense of jealousy

 over something we claim

we don't really want,

aching down deep in the bones

for something we know we should not have,

 and falling into a tantrum

 when we see the treat we want

in someone else's hands,

 this duality that has nothing

 to do with right or wrong,

 a fine kind of madness

to which pain is the only cure

 and time.

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Fool’s gold May 2012

She is so much wiser

 than I am in the ways of the world,

maybe because she is a woman

and has had to endure so much more

turbulence than i ever could

the men who hit on her,

 and walk away,

 bearing no impact

 for what they've done

sex not being love,

 even to her,

 though in some cases

with some men

in the right moment,

 it can lead that way,

though more often as she

like most women have learned

it can be a tool,

an instrument of control,

 a way to claw up that invisible ladder

 that might allow her to get

on equal footing with men

 who would otherwise use her,

all this foreign to me,

 aching less for power

than the tender touch,

 always mistaking one for the other,

settling for the other,

 mistaking fools gold

 for the real thing.

 

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altered reality July 25, 2024

  

I don't know

what to make of it

this altered reality

this game of tag

something I can

no longer touch

even though I still feel it

this coming and going

then going again

these visitations

as if by saints who are not saints

or space aliens who abduct us

 and return us to our old reality

 fundamentally changed

not so much for the worst

but utterly different

so it is impossible to go on

 as we were like a Time Warp

we steered into a different track

to a different destination

we never intended to steer for

and now can't stop ourselves from going to only you are no longer part of that ride or it's destination but a site we see

 out the window of this train

 of fading images,  a billboard advertising

a life we might have had

had we've been wise enough

 to get off the train in time

 

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What happened anyway? feb 8,2014

  

so what happened

who exactly are these angels

our boss was acting pompous yesterday claiming he was " a lover not a fighter” an odd thing for him to say in front of everyone and yet suggests that they might well still be among those who provide our poet with her safety net

she has a few people in that stable and some ow maintains them long-term even her ex-husband is still her friend

but something happened in her Town, some event that forced her out the way the small man did from our office

with her tendency for secrecy it is hard to say what or where she intends to go this time .

after our office she float around for a few months before getting settled into her spot with the Virgin mayor. this also happened after a gig with the chef and also after she fled the business of New York State.

so she might well be scrambling again to find some new career

yet it is clear she did not leave completely out of choice

She comes and goes when she wants, one of my sources in her Town said. nobody really knows what she does

yet the fact is that her boss did not know about her leaving dispels the idea that she may be involved with him though for a time she apparently was

 but she has trickled up to someone else perhaps Joey d, the business administrator, who had been cast out also or demoted Sylvio would not play with her in the same way

he doesn't tolerate that kind of stuff. my source said.  he's first in and leaves last and expects everyone else to do the same

but her boss didn't know about her leaving then only two other people could have done it if she was fired the mayor himself or Sylvio

since the poet has been advertising herself as the Virgin Mayors confidential aid and she once claimed he came on to her there had to be some kind of falling out between her and the mayor for her to leave

she grooves up to power that helps make her immune to the slings and arrows of misfortune and political retribution

 so to remove her the Virgin mayor had to have given the okay or perhaps was told to get rid of her for some reason perhaps as part of the power brokers move to reinvent the mayor as more upstanding citizen

having our poet as a mistress put the mayor at risk especially when he is engaged to someone else and it is possible that his fiance discovered the affair or demanded he get rid of her if so this took a long time coming especially since our poets stood out as a sore thumb parading around City Hall as if she owned it just as she routinely did and other jobs were she trickled up

all this comes after more than a month turmoil that begin with her taking down both of her Facebook pages at the end of the year and the debate over reforming and the conclusion that she should not leading me to suspect this last merely concludes a conflict that began in December and may will involve some of the political turmoil surrounding the Virgin mayor this gives evidence to suggest the powers behind the mayor pushed him to get rid of her rather than some personal issue with her fiance the Virgin mayor tends to be loyal to those who are loyal to him

this all leads to one question what comes next

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angels. Feb 6, 2014

  

how many angels

can fit on the tip of a pin

or in the City of Angels

or in some limbo place

we envision but can't quite see

we are all encumbered by

our own personal guardian angel

perched on their shoulder

like a raven

keeping us from harm

while advising us

what is right from wrong

did she mean to have a personal devil too

perched on her other shoulder

 the way old cartoons depict

 tempting each of us

with pleasures no Angel can provide

 giving us the option to

 give up eventual salvation

in some remote world for

 pleasures we might enjoy right here on Earth

do we dare risk it

sell our soul so cheap

 give up the promised Land we cannot see

for promises we can feel or taste

salvation and illusion we hope for

 even pray to achieve

 when what we need

we can't achieve on our knees

regardless of the number of angels

 on the top of a pin or on our shoulders

 when there is so much more to offer

on the other side

 

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memory 2014

 

in the end

All that remains is

the memory of it the

stirred broth I ache to taste

to satisfy this urge

that grew into something

it was never supposed to become

an unexpected butterfly

rising from a cocoon

 I thought was all there was

when there became so much more

in the end

 there is only the memory of it

 the soft touch in the dead of night

the connected lips of a kiss

we should have avoided

 the silky feel of you

 I should never have tried to feel

and embrace

a tease , an intense and

delightful pain

all packing into that limbo time creates

reshaping it all into something

that seems all pleasant

when it was not

memory hiding the truth better

than forgetting does

 shaping reality into something different

 from what it was

and revealing what it could have been

when it could never have been

 in the end

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it's over. Feb 8, 2014

 

it's over it's over

I hear Roy orbison's voice in my head

not for the lonely as Springsteen does

but the repeat of what she said a year ago

 or so when she ended it with us

 like an echo in an empty canyon

with The only voice she hears her own

it's over it's over and yet it's not

 just what she said she would die

before she did again

and then she went did it again

and now she needs the help of angels

to protect her

 to escort her off to the Sunshine State

where she can heal

seventh heaven standing has vacant here

 as a tomb

the fragments of her old life

 and the lives prior to that

 scattered among her possessions

 the baggage of a prior existence

 she may soon have to shed

as she scrambles again from one shell

 to the next desperately hoping

 her real self remains unexposed

during the transition

 all she has she carries on her back

 like a turtle or a hermit crab

what she needs to bring in order

 to start a different life

while as Roy Orbison says

 about her old life

 it's over

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The same old story July 29, 2024

 

They are stripping the name of the U.S. Senator off the school in the town where the virgin Mayor once presided.

The U.S. Senator was convicted of taking bribes, and must resign.

This is more than a little ironic since the naming of the school in late 2013 was the last time I got to see our poet, and the school renaming was part of a peace offering by the Virgin Mayor to make up for his endorsement of a republican against the U.S. Senator, and the plotting behind the scenes to unseat the U.S. Senator’s closest ally, then a congressman.

The congressman (also ironically) has become mayor of that town, although it is the Board of Education that voted to remove the senator’s name, not the former congressman.

The neighboring mayor, who was also a target back in the bad old days of a decade ago, is once again under attack, a new face of a new gadfly, but paid for by the same operatives as in the past, all trying to bring him down as they tried a decade ago.

Since I live in his town these days, I get his mailings the latest of which went his arch enemy from a decade ago as well as the mayor of the county seat (who used to be his friend).

All these years later, long after she has gone from the scene, the political bickering continues without her – the virgin mayor long gone, and so are many of the other players who had been part of that collective of scoundrels she had to suffer with while there.

The new war is being waged without her, with the neighboring mayor still the target, and his arch enemy, the former state senator, looking to destroy him before he retires from his own town.

A lot more is at stake these days as the mayor from the county seat looks to become the next governor, and our neighboring mayor stands in his way, endorsing a congressman from a near by counter (the son of the warehouse owner I worked for in the 1970s).

All this, of course, making me sad, as if nothing really changes, and I’m grateful she escaped this scene because it was never going to go well for her, these powerful people using people like her, even like me, as pawns.

But as the old saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

 

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Does she miss it? july 24, 2024

 

 does she miss it

the attention she got

the faces always in her face

or did it all get old

 too many clutching fingers

 too many arms aching to hold her

 hold her down and yet

 there must be something

about it all she misses

The Men who surrendered

their will to her

 aching to please her

 if she would only please them

 the lips that burn with the need to kiss

the sweet lies men must tell

 she never believes but pretends to

 if only for those few moments

of pleasure and pain

does she miss it

 the army of the ants that surround her

as if she was their Queen

 men willing to do anything in her service

 to service her in any way

 that might please her

does she miss it

 I suspect she misses it

 as much as we do

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back in the bottle (2014)

 

 

I can't stop

put the stopper back in the bottle

out of which the genie popped

I got what I wish for and yet

not the lips I craved

 the hips

 the ifs and buts and where fors

 lost time lingering aftermath

the craving this deep sense

of what can't be had with a wish

but must be worked for

churned up like butter

 from the most precious cream

 the dream love true

 not quite a nightmare

the ache denied

the shiver in the thighs

The Lost world in your eyes

 I got what I wish for

 now wish I hadn't

it is never enough

This lust for more and more

 this adoration

this sweet pain stirred up

with sweat

pounding it out like butter

like cream

like a dream come true

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expired 2014

  

the urge is always the same

 primal pent up

 a bulging dam

 waiting to burst

 the need to dive

 deep into these cold waters

 stir them

 make them boil

 get as deep into you

as possible

 before the whole of it explodes

 one soft touch

setting the fuse to flame

 a kiss

a cheek to cheek

chest to chest

 my arms holding it all together

 if I have strength left

 the potency of it

 most acute where

 we are thigh to thigh

 the cool water turns scalding

the deeper I plunge

 opening you up

 flooding you

inside and out

until that lasts

with more than one sigh

I am expired

 

 

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Overcoming her bad past February 3, 2014

  

She posted a new poem on Superbowl Sunday, something of a surprise, although the subject matter was completely familiar.

How she did not want to do what she had been doing, but did it anyway.

The poem suggests she still feel protected in her nest. She still hopes she can be saved by the angels in her life.

This poem comes about a week after her previous poem, perhaps adding evidence to her resolution to accept who she is.

In the poem she compares her “bad past” to dust and something dank, mixing with the future, dragging her back, and yet also forward, but not in a kind way.

‘The day I do it again will be the end,” she says, and still she did it, and surprisingly, she survived, though perhaps barely, and without straight to see ahead.,

She claims she doesn’t need to, that her angels have placed her in a box for the moment, allowing her to rest. They promise to take her away to some place else where she can be safe, where there is quiet, and she can rebuild her strength.

It is easy to make assumptions about what she means by all this, who here angels are, and where they intend to take her.

The poems opens with a brief description of the kind of life she lived in the past, dusty and dank, a “bad past,” and an old way of life, which she claims she would die if she repeated, and yet suggests that she repeated it and didn’t die (although also suggesting she survived by a whisper).

Purely speculating, this may or may not have to do with Superbowl Sunday, and perhaps some old bad habit she fell back into on account of this, but whatever it is, this bad past tread on her current life and cast shadows on the future.

The poem suggests that she did not have to do whatever she did, that she is in a protective bubble for the moment, where she can gather strength, and has the promise from these “angels” that they will take her away to some place even safer.

I could easily put inappropriate pieces together that might shed light on her meaning about a “bad past” such being on same yacht, trickling up and such, but I suspect these might be my making judgements and so I’ll avoid imposing them.

It is possible that she may mean her eating disorder rather than the darker vision some of her metaphor conjure up.

But it is strongly suggested that she was unable to avoid bad habits of the past and threatened to cloud her present and future, and that she has been blessed by the help of angels who are keeping her safe for the moment and will take her to an even safer place.

The poem, while expressing hope, also is edged in sadness, and her holding out hope for a future that may or may not exist, and that she must accept her current situation even when she is ambitious for something greater.

The subtext is hope rather than reality, and this sense that she may actually not believe in future salvation, and fears she might continually do this thing until she decides to stop or is forced to, and she believes that going far away may get her to a place where she will be better able to resist these urges to back slide.

 

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An itch I can’t scratch Feb 1,2014

 

I won't pretend I don't miss it

that time in the dark

staring down into a tiny screen

for the icon telling me

you had texted me

this literary romance

this ache in my pants

this thing that itches like ants

and no way to scratch it

or ease it

no calamine lotion to soothe me

no drug I can take to make it go away

 I still feel it

still crave it

still wish I could go back

and do it all again differently

not the kisses or the touches

but rather the foolish things

that went through my head

 I will always want what I wanted then

 to feel your shape

against the palm of my hands

taste your taste when

 my tongue penetrates you

 to have your eyes swallow me whole

Jonah forever lost in the depths of you

feeling what it feels like

on the inside of you

 the press of flesh

the in and out

the hunger I can't satisfy

in any way with anyone

other than you

I won't pretend I don't miss it

I always do

 

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the price we pay. Jan 31, 2014

 

we always pay for it in the end

 we get you for a moment

 only to have the bill come

always more than we reckon on

 even when we knew the cost

 would come high

heartbreak the least of it

 and for this I count myself fortunate

and pity him, my friend and rival,

 for the suffering he has to endure

his love lost less than this mind

 has and perhaps it is because

of how much more he adored her

each of us the thieves to either side

of him on that hill

 the one thief promised redemption

 for all the kindness he gave

our suffering Christ

she one of the two Mary's we both desire

 a Mary with two faces

each equally desirable

if for different reasons

My friend and rival forced to pay

 the steeper price for

 which I am grateful

I did not,

 though down the I seek to be him

to have been so kind

 as to win that special

 piece of her heart

the man who knows

the right combination

to unlock it

and did

 while I fumbled with it

and lost it

and regret it

all this time later

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super bowl Feb 1, 2014

 

this is super bowl weekend and you have to wonder if our poet is off with the boys at some party or is that not her cup of tea

it amazes me how little I actually know about her such as small detail like that

most likely she is off at one parent or another

I've noticed that when she needs to regroup she often goes to one parent or another not for the guidance so much but just as a kind of touchstone

and she probably has a lot to think about since it is clear she will not be able to remain where she is much longer

fortunately she is much more stable than A was even if she helped recruit a of the hometown election

A came from LA on the promise of her fiance that he would deposit $10,000 in her bank account on the off chance she hated the east

Her fiance apparently reneged on the promise and accused her of being obsessed with money when she came to collect he called her a gold digger and because she wanted him to split the price of the engagement ring with her and that he had to pay for the wedding costs her parents had entailed when she called off the wedding

but eventually he caved into her

though he was clearly upset when she cheated on him how A justified any of this I can't say but she never forgave him for luring her away from a promising career in Hollywood

Falf of her activity with poopy and all of that was to get enough money so she can go back to her life out west

For me,  there is a sharp comparison between A and our poet because I suspect down deep our poet has ethics which is what keeps her up at night at times

A is amoral

what fascinates about our poet is the fact that she is involved with all of these strange characters and perhaps is doing deeds that may seem unethical or worse on the surface but she can actually justify them and perhaps ultimately she is right

 again we're all in the same yacht now and she needs to survive

this is why I don't think she's out partying with the boys for super bowl weekend that's not her style even though at times she may pretend like it is

and I think our former temporary boss senses this other side of our poet, the deeper side even though I don't think he reads her poetry or even understands what she's writing about when she posts them

he gets her, understands her in a way others do not even me

so that maybe he is right when he sees her as constantly in pain

our poet is not as ruthless as she pretends to be or people would judge her to be and even those around her think she might be

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Birthday sonnet July 27, 2024

 

44 winters come to leave their mark on your brow

But does not dent that beauty  I see in your eyes

for winter’s chill always brings spring and spring allows

to turn a blind eye to all that mean time would demise

 

Your beauty is not a thing that we measure in years

But something grander that we see rise from within

The more you age we see this beauty rise free from tears

and in the end of time we see how youth’s folly thins

 

And the more we realize the bard's error when he proclaimed

That forty or forty four years might cause beauty to dent

And maybe that which was fair in youth may indeed come to change

But time cannot cause what is inside you to tear or rent

 

What you are cannot by time or age be put to waste,

And beauty cannot be lost by urgency of days or haste.

 

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gravity. July 23, 2024

 

the landscape here

 remains unchanged

 on the surface

 a painting of how life ought to be

never was

painted in points of color

that freeze time

and make it seem

as if she might walk out

from one side or the other

when all that ceased to exist

long ago

and All that remains is the memory

of it dashed by the feelings

we keep treasured even when

 they also ceased to be real

 this train passes places

she used to walk near

the ferry terminal where

I last saw her from a distance

 a ghost then more so now

tearing the frail fabric

of this thing we live through

 time and space bending

from the gravity of our lives

the weight of the world

 on our shoulders

the history that is no more

 

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When she goes she’s gone Feb 7, 2014

 

she did it again

even when she said

she'd die if she did

somehow still survives

 if not thrives

 moving on as

she has been expecting

 one day she was there

doing what she was hired to do

then taken by angels to a safe place

 she says where she can heal

 it was a year ago or so

 when she left us

feels as wrong now

 as it did then

as if the cosmos press against her

fated to repeat this

at least once more

where did she go

 I asked

they don't know

did she quit or was she fired

they still don't know

all this bubbling for some time

till finally it boiled over

 another shell abandoned

 or evicted from

 leaving behind baggage

she lacks strength to carry

 had she wanted to all

what's Left behind must

stay behind

 part of a life she

no longer wishes to live

 or can't bear to

not saying where she is going to

 only that she is gone

 box full of office possessions

carried out the glass doors

 to the cold street

when she goes she is gone

 

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She quit again February 7, 2014

  

It seems I got her poem all wrong, assuming it was about sex and trickling up (which probably still play some role in it ) when it appears to have been about her quitting her job – again.

She either quit or got fired, although none of my sources – even her immediate boss -- can tell me which. Her boss told me he was as surprised as anyone.

He said he called her to find out about a press release and why she’d not send it tome, and she informed him she was no longer employed in the Virgin Mayor’s town.

My best guess is that she quit – although some sources (none of them reliable) claim she was fired.

But if her immediate boss didn’t fire her, who did?

Only very small handful of people in that administration have the power to do that, perhaps the Virgin Mayor, who tagged me on Linked-in yesterday for no reason.

Most likely it was a combination of things that caused her to quit, mounting complications that she could no longer sort through or keep straight and so she panicked, just as she did when she resigned our office, and perhaps with other jobs prior to that.

As pointed out earlier, she rarely keeps a job for more than a year (discounting her five year stint on tour with the band), so this latest move might have been expected, even if as her poem pointed out, she believed she would never do it again.

Some of the language in this poem is similar to the poem she posted when she resigned our office slightly more than a year ago.

Her most recent poem talked about not doing it again and the dank smell of the past mixing with the future, bringing it back forward, but not in a kind way.

She says the day she does it again will be the end, but she did it again and is still here, but seems to weak to see what comes next.

If one rumor is correct, then the angels she talks about may be nurses, and the place they take her to may be some kind of home, where she can heal herself.

What brought about all this I can’t say, perhaps a trickling up that fell flat or maybe something medical again.

Is she fleeing some new stalker?

There is so little information, there is no way to actually know at least until she posts something else

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