It doesn't matter how intense the heat is inside me when I
reach out to touch I am all, thumbs
I see myself as suave
when clearly I am not, bumbling through this like The Three stooges, the blind
spot of my desire always before me, so I envision what I want rather than what
I deserve, love is a rose with too many thorns upon which I prick my fingers
and bleed everywhere
the heat inside me,
driving me forward, even if I can't quite see what I am about to crash into, a
regular demolition derby I cannot escape
I ache to be tender, to touch those parts of her that are
the most appealing, but like a gardener with no green thumb, I bumble it, then
cringe over the fact I did not see it coming, eternally regretting it,
perpetually trying to take it back, while still longing for it, needing it,
desperate to have her in my life, and all this time later, and these miles from
this highway, I still feel the same, meaning to let the heat out of me, needing to have her
Same old video replays over and over again in my head, not
dressed up in her tight black gown but a black top, orange skirt and she
flushed with the exuberance of having waited her turn, leaps almost ballet like
out onto the front of the stage, belting out some tune I have never heard
before, the credits running at the bottom of the screen, misspelling her name
with a j instead of a g, almost it's a deliberately, and I straining my gaze to
catch every aspect of her on the small screen, unable to look elsewhere, and
when she leaves back off the screen, I strain to find her, the camera so cold
and its every aspect moving gradually on to someone else, revealing her by
accident in transition and yet I remain fixed, watching for those brief
glimpses before I rewind it again
Slanted sunlight streams through the Windows of the train as
I ride going south
light that helps create the haunted impression of upcoming
Halloween and though a dozen such seasons have passed it all still reminds me
of wen she left for greener and perhaps more pleasant pastures, though I still
feel the pain of her vacancy, like a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle that
denies me the ability to see the whole picture
she too vital to the
outcome and whose absence continues to nag me all these years later-- what
happened through still reverberates through like circles of a stone dropped in
a pond less intense as time goes by
I do not know how much to believe of what she writes in her
current essays I have refrained from writing much even though she has provided
dozens of pages of a writing to analyze no poetry just her therapy ironically
she appears to have broken a tow almost 2 years to the day when I had my spill in
the supermarket parking lot.
Once again she comes across as a victim
In today's post she talked about the panic she is in to find
a job waking at 4:00 a.m. but suggests that the reason for her relapse had to
do with the job she just lost
She claims not quite unemployed still on medical leave from
it that played a giant roll in her relapse she says
Apparently tried to get her old job back in the virgin
mayors town and I was told she was supposed to be hired in mid-may but that
didn't occur
in her May 25th
posting she wrote about another shot of the job which came two days before
graduation from the Ed clinic she had an interview for a spectacular job
opportunity and was told she would be given homework to do as the next step
towards hopefully obtaining it she said the man had given it to her Thursday to
follow up emails on her part later she's still got no response
She figured maybe his email went down or he was still on his
Memorial Day camping trip
Or maybe he found someone better and broke his promise
promising to let her know
On June 9 Joey d business administrator for the Virgin
Mayors town tried to get her job with Politicker , a high level political
Nationwide publication but they did not hire her either
On June 11th she wrote she needs a job and that she had been
moving towards one but have not heard back from the potential employer in a
week and a half
he just stopped
communicating mid communication dropped off the planet
it seems and she is left again with an endless sea of
applications sent into the void of the internet
she called it a scary
void for someone who overworked herself for years and to find yourself by it
All this seems to be her sending a message to someone but I
wonder who and what the job she was promised and what exactly happened in the
virgin mayor's town that forced her to take medical leave
All the same unanswered questions from when she left last
year
As pointed out yesterday I haven't written in this journal
about her in almost a month partly because my focus has shifted to the county
seat and I am less aware of what is going on in peninsula city where Joey d has
been trying to get her a job if the current Challenger for mayor wins
Things are sort of winding down now that she has been cast
out of the Virgin Mayor’s town and she appears not to be able to get back.
I don't know the dynamics but if the congressman's pr person
is so dead set against her getting a job in any place nearby
Which meansour poet
is going to have to move on to Greener pastors elsewhere
With the exception of my poetry journal, I have really very
little new information to relay about her activities
Although she continues to post essays, they seem to be
geared towards her ED and aimed at particularly people: perhaps her therapist.
The landscape is changed she has moved on even if that has
been forced upon her and I can now breathe a deep sigh of relief knowing that
whatever went on over the last few years is now pretty much over between us and
whatever she does now will be a leap into the unknown where I will not follow
my poetry is different but that isn't so much about what is
going on with her but how I feel about things
All this of course could change in a heartbeat if she winds
up with the job and peninsula City or gets reinstated and still will have her
connection to our office and the and our former temporary boss
Even the hometown bloggers seem to have abandoned her partly
because they have escaped fate with a lawsuit brought against them and perhaps
do not want to tempt fate by pursuing something that no longer matters
At the end of the day the world is changing and I have moved
on and hopefully this will all mean nothing in month or year or decade from now
My source in the inner circle of the Virgin Mayor claims our
poet’s name came up during a meeting this week,
She allegedly tried to get her job back and was rejected
again.
This may explain some of what she said in a recent essay,
blaming someone for causing her to have a minor relapse with her disorder.
She may have approached someone last weekend – possibly the Virgin
Mayor himself – and this person rejected her, which apparently prompted the
discussion among the inner circle, and led to her writing her spoiled grapes essay.
June 6, 2014
I stopped writing the previous essaynearly a month, picking this up again when I
got told she attended a fundraiser for the Virgin Mayor, again with the aim of
getting her old job back.
She was apparently received warmly from all, including my
source, who apparently has become as taken with her as the rest of us.
My source claimed things looked good for her possibly
getting reinstated.
Unfortunately for her, the PR person for the congressman
pulled strings to prevent it from happening. The PR person claims – in her
words – that our poet got her hooks into the business administrator, someone
she may have been involved with prior to all this (Joey D) or she may simply
have leaped onto his bandwagon when all the others rejected her.
But a lot has changed over the last month and Joey D has already
moved on after running the election in the Peninsula City, where he is expected
to take up a post as business administrator there if the challenger wins the
runoff and as the new mayor takes over on July 1. This may explain why Joey D
keeps trying to get her a job there. The congressman’s PR person, who is
connected closely with that mayor, may have stopped that as well, leaving our
poet fewer options and perhaps a shot a getting her old job back with the Virgin
Mayor.
From what I can gather, she apparently believed that enough
time has passed that would allow her to return, but has yet to come up with a
plan that would allow her to do so.
At the fundraiser, my source claims, she greeted everybody
with a kiss or a warm embrace. Joey D called an online political website to see
if he could find someone to hire her, something that also did not pan out
(possibly because of the Congressman’s PR person again putting the Kibosh on it
all.
There is a strange alignment of people from the north part
of the county with those of the Virgin Mayor, such as James and his pal, Lauro,
and the chief of staff for the neighboring mayor, with whom our poet had a feud
(and who prior to that feud seems to praise our poet – no doubt a falling out,
and yet, more pieces to a complex puzzle.
I learned, too, that our poet and Silvio do not get along,
and he may be the person who got her dumped from the Virgin Mayor’s job in the
first place.
My source believes our poet may have hooked her wagon to
Lauro – since Lauro and Silvo are arch enemies, and as the old saying goes, an
enemy of an enemy etc.
When I asked the Congressman’s PR person about our poet
getting a job in Peninsula City.
I feel the heat of it each day even though it is a different
heat than before, not warm so much as scalding, the way my fingers felt when I
didn't listen and touched the stove, a lesson I never learned quite right and
must learn again and again, a groundhog
day I must relive until God or fate or pure stupidity relieve me of the burden.
we must live with the
heat of it when the scalding is all there is to tell us we still feel anything
at all , burning better than being numb
While I ache hate from one and hate the other; singed
fingers telling me I still feel, a heat that boils up on the inside now even
this late.
I am the lobster who
does not realize I am boiling over until it is too late to stop
the kid who must
reach up to the stove over and over to see if it's still hot and not learning
that it will always be
I look at the video of her with the band years out of date
and I think I might have fallen for her even then, become a groupie, offering
her anything for just one look or even a pat on the head
black top orange
skirt in one film, other outfits and others, she always the same, the center of
my attention, a fixation I might have had long before I fixated on her for real,
before I even knew who she was, not a rockstar yet a bright spot on the stage,
thick with old men playing old songs, none of which mean anything to me without
her on stage with them
maybe it's hindsight,
me thinking this and attraction that might not have been any attraction at all
I later felt
attracted to her and maybe in the depths of night listening to her other songs
I still imagine myself as her groupie and maybe I always will
She returned the book I lent her, final dismissal, a gesture of defiance, though behind the mask
she wears her real face which cries
it was not my book
but a book I bought to help me learn how to do what I do better and at the time
I lent it to her because she said she hadn't yet got accustomed to the job
management expected her to do
as if any of us ever
are up to snuff in this world where we ache for achievement, yet don't quite
know how to achieve; and I think if she with all the raw talent she has, can't
get what she wants how can the rest of us with so much less even hope to
all these thoughts
coming at the end of our excruciating roller coaster ride, the screams of which
still echo in my head, over the phone or from her rooftop, where I carelessly
drove her and don't know how to talk her down
I avoid going anywhere near where she lives, skirting her
street even on my way to the Riverside we both love so much
I'm scared I might
catch a glimpse of her seated on her windowsill, smoke billowing out into the
end of summer air, scared too she might glimpse me and slam the window shut
Or has she already done metaphorically
I go to the river to
wash myself of my sins
if they are sins of the mind or flesh or both
to stroll the
promenade to view the skyline to find a place for myself amid the massive
landscape of concrete and steel
all too inhuman a
scale against which I can't possibly measure up, as I feel I have failed to do
on a smaller scale with her sometimes
it's a blessing to be invisible and not measure up
Her hair is not red and I am not a frustrated crab driver
yet I know the moment I saw the film again just why she sees herself as that
girl a goddess from outer space The fifth Element ancient priests need to tap
into the person whose emerges from her cocoon
Naked and vulnerable yet so potent has to be able to counter
all the forces of evil set against her will I like the cab driver who finds her
as she falls into his flying cab fumbles around somehow looking for my place in
this world-saving scenario, pressed in on all sides by angry establishment who
wants to use her for their own purposes and somehow in some way I hope to
divert them long enough for her to do what she came to this planet to do The
fifth element so innocent yet also so wise as we both stumble ahead
Startled but not surprised at how our poet feels connected
to Leeloo character in The fifth Element this strange twist of innocence and
potency inherit in both
Leeloo is a godlike figure in the movies mythology the
startling beautiful redhead who will save the universe or at least our corner
of it from the nasty aliens
Our poet has a similar attribute a certain innocence --The
experience kind Blake went on and on about and a definite sense of self-worth
which she constantly questions she would like to save the world I think
Her attraction to Leeloo character says a lot I might have
guessed in that she often finds herself in a corrupt world among people who
would want to use her for their own purposes such as the general in the movie and is
constantly searching for an ally such as the cab driver who loves her for what
she is rather than what she can do
Like Leeloo our poet is constantly surrounded by users -- even
the priests who need to exploit her power and her beauty whereas the cab driver
who sees her innocence are rare in these days
Leeloo like her poet resists being rescued partly because
she perceives herself as powerful enough to overcome evil and yet in reality
must rely on others who she trusts and
who can determine how she will come out in the end
And she remains apotent gift to the real hero if she indeed
can ever find one
