The sky is a cloudless crystal blue
with a breeze to chap your lips
I’m grateful for it, it’s heaven-sent
the dawn was a celestially stamped, angry red
sailors take warning

It’s going to get feisty cold,
I’m told
about the time we go back to school.
A polar-bear vortex with all its features
will spread its icy paws

What jumps out at me first
is how it could be worse.
if unapologetic nature
pounced sans disclaimers
with a cold worth semi-Shakespearean verse

What follows, star-crossed
is a week storm-tossed
a winter holocaust
with heaven-kissed frost
that only madness would call a judgement

We’re steered from harm
by precision alarms
stay warm
sweet friends
wrap up, stay in
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Songs for this:
Come In from the Cold by Marc Broussard
World's A Changing by The Bingtones

(a holiday vignette)

I’m taking a chunk of my holi-days to work on my thesis (So is Lisa). Without classes we can fully devote our minds to them.
My senior thesis hangs over me, I can’t ignore it.

I banged my funny bone - what even IS a funny bone? My entire arm is tingly and numb.
This song is playing → ’Talk talk featuring troye sivan by Charli xcx & Troye Sivan” I’m feeling so happy—it’s electric—peridot—it’s good.

I’ve got a buffalo. (a buffalo is a cool, high or positive event)
It’s really not that much of a story.
Lisa and I were walking down 5th avenue and there was like, this old man, who was standing out by the curb with a camera—in kind of an adorable way—looking for things to take pictures of—so I smiled as we walked by. Not Lisa though, she’s from Manhattan. Manhattan girls don’t smile on the street.

Then he was like, “Stop, STOP! Stop right there!” I stopped, Lisa walked on a step or two.
“I take street photos, and I want YOU TWO to model in them.”
I was like, “OH, oh NOOO, I don’t know about that.” I looked to Lisa, who looked aghast.
“I use the pictures for street fashion layouts - have you seen New York Magazine’s ‘Street Style?’
“What are you stopping for?” Lisa whispered to me exasperatedly.” She has a horror of modeling.
“He’s kind of adorable, don’t you think?” I asked in a ‘come on,’ pleading voice.
“Most of the time they don’t even use the faces—and I can give you one if you’d like,” he said.
He handed me a New York Magazine business card, he’s on Insta, so he wasn’t some crazy homeless guy.
“Ok, I said,” after a moment, shruggingly. He smiled and backed off several feet, getting ready.
"Anais!" Lisa said, shocked at my ‘out of towner’ naiveite, “I’m not,” she shorthanded, stepping away.

So, for a couple of minutes he took a potpourri of pix, posing me with comments like “turn sideways, pout, pop your waist,” and “look bored.” Now it was cool and windy, I was wearing a hoodie and jeans, and he was never creepy or anything, but I thought, ‘how do you pop your hip in a hoodie?’

As we walked away, Lisa said, “Why’d you agree to do that?”
“Charles is here,” I said defensively, “he had a card and book,” I shrugged. If anything, Charles was amused.
He gave me a couple of pics - cringy and un-model-ly. I think he really wanted Lisa (duh). Anyway, that was my New Year’s Day buffalo. I felt glamorous—for a minute.
Then we went for apple-brandy slushies—which were pretty buffalo too.
.
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Songs for this:
Glamour Girl by Louie Austen
Street Life by Randy Crawford
Talk talk featuring troye sivan by Charli xcx & Troye Sivan

A bluebird came streaking violently out of Central Park,
it blurred over the lanes of traffic towards 220.
I flinched in anticipation of the impact,
but at the last second it darted directly up,
as if caught in a sudden wind current.
“Did you see that?” I asked Lisa.
She didn’t, her phone was jiggling.

My boyfriend left yesterday
He had to leave before New Year’s eve!
he has to work and cannot play
he finally gets to run the hadron collider
go get em’ tiger
but I’ve decided
you can’t fight the zeitgeist
that when the cats away
the girls will have their day.

Someone start the music please,
because it’s NEW YEARS Eve!

Happy New Year’s Eve everyone!
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Songs for this:
There goes my baby by Kelly Jones
Back on the chain gang by the pretenders

I see them in reflections - the orange juice glass at breakfast or my iPhone where they can pop-up, like notifications - I keep my phone face down.

They usually want to tell you something - how it was for them - their history. I discount these emotional messages - they come with the jester's assumption that I care - that I need the performance and will get involved.

“What are you doing?” My mom asks, as I’m taking all the shiny, mirror-like ornaments off the Christmas tree.
“The glare gives me a headache” I say, without stopping.
“Your Grandma does that too”, she says, wiping her hands on a Santa-themed dishtowel.
“Really?” I say, but I know that, and I know why.

I started having nightmares, when I was in first grade. My mom thought I had an overactive imagination but when she described it to my grandma, she soon showed up for a visit.

Over the next few weeks my Grandma told me about our “gift”. About how we were both born on the same day, under a waning third moon, in Autumn. That we're both “Yins,” doxies (sweethearts) of the dead and that we could, at times, see and hear people who were between stops on their way to their afterlives.

That’s why the dead parachute into my unused moments from reflective surfaces. They can be anxious or in despair - when their deaths were cruel or sudden - but I'm barely an adult - I'm in school - what can I do??

The presence of water discourages them - which is perfect - can you imagine seeing spirits in the reflections of your bath? EEUUUWWW!  
You’ll hardly ever see me without a water bottle or polarized sunglasses - which seem to break up the images. I'll not be smothered in other people's afterlives.

It’s a broken world
we need imperfect solutions
and there are plenty of questions

is it even possible to correct systemic
problems with individual solutions?

I recycle, so everything’s ok, ya?

some would usher in a revolution
while others would stand pat, thinking
they can marginally beat the house

the young believe the old are problematic,
out of touch and largely to blame for the world
the old push back on youthful, impractical,
self-indulgent and self-righteous idealisms

both groups must eventually wrestle with thorny questions

I doubt we could all agree on a short manifesto
or even a pithy rallying cry.
How about something brutal, almost offensive?

Dylan Thomas suggested we rage against the dying of the light,
but then again, it seems that's all we do these days—rage.

There’s a Korean concept called hwabyung,
or “burning sickness”—an intense, suppressed rage
that can blind and destroy us if we’re not careful

Science says we face a direct and bludgeoning future,
that we must be tenacious with the next phase of our evolution
—but must we be adults? Science is so 2014, and we’re all so smart.
.
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Songs for this:
Dance the Night Away by The Mavericks
I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack

Let's wax poetic - wax on..

We’re in for it
When we enter
the insubstantial country of love

That secret theater, in an invisible mansion of moods

it’s a resort that houses its share of speechless monologues and sore disappointments, all lovers know that, but there are infinite discoveries too—secret, intimate delights and sensual confidences.

Ok, wax off.

My horoscope this morning said, “any tension you’re experiencing now is just part of the process.”

Peter (my bf), flew in last night. When we’re separated too long, remembering him, remembering us, can at times, seem like a memory exercise and I find myself wondering if I’m wasting my bikini years on a handshake deal. Then we’re reunited and bam, I’m reminded why it’s a ‘dub-u, dub’ again.

He’s a delectation—in a Christmas bauble kind of way—shiny and dangerous because I want to touch him—but not be loud or showy about it. Leeza (Lisa’s 14-year-old sister) whispered to me, when I was getting some ice, “You watch him with the too-still poise of a cat about to strike.” I smiled at the complement because I love cats.

Every once in a while I’ll pinch him, to make sure he’s real. “Oww! Stop that!
“What?!” I ask, pulling back as if innocently confused.

I got him a room at the Marriott Essex House. It’s 400 feet down W59th from Lisa’s building entrance to the front door of his hotel. I measured it off, with urgent steps—then I helped him unpack. We unpacked a lot.

Later, we joined Dave and Lisa for a Christmas light tour—Manhattan’s flexing its wow-factor for us.

I didn’t get to sit on Santas lap this year, I’m a little old for that,
but I did get what I wanted most—I’m sure I’m grinning like an idiot.
It’s not quite Christmas yet, but thanks, Santa.

🎄Merry Christmas🎄🕎Happy Hanukkah 🕎🌟Merry Kwanzaa🌟
💈Happy Festivas!💈
.
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Songs for this:
Heat Wave by Linda Ronstadt
Same Songs by Kelly Jones
.
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Two days until Christmas.. how ‘bout some Christmas playlists?
https://daweb.us/xmas/
.
dub-u, dub = a big win

If you’re looking for yuletide cynicism here,
you’re shopping in the wrong place.

This is New York City’s time of year.
It’s stood the test of time and it fairly sparkles,
proving that the ordinary can be extraordinary.
With the right lighting.

Lisa’s (parent’s) apartment glitters like our promised heaven on high.
When we left at Thanksgiving, Michael (Lisa’s dad) had the concierge
service stressed, toting boxes of decorations up from their storage area.
When I waved my goodbyes, he appeared to be wrestling an octopus of
cool-white fairy lights into submission. Now everything glitters pyrite bright.

Our holiday time is limited—and this is our chance to unwind—so we’re
selective about what we decide to embrace. For instance, there was a sale
at Michael Kors where, no big deal, I got a pair of brogue, black
leather wingtips that’ll be straight fire with a little black dress.
The bargains were so good that I decided the store must be a drug front.
Not that I’m complaining. Do I ever complain? Nope, I’m stoic.

Like Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, Lisa and I’ve
been “testing the product” of Manhattan's club scene.
We’re searching diligently for the new and unfamiliar.

When it comes to picking which clubs we want to visit,
Charles, our driver and escort (a retired NYPD cop),
has gone as far as to suggest, we’re “out of our depth,”
and refused to let us even try one or two DJ’d, pop-up clubs
in Queens that were getting a lot of heat and likes.
“Roosevelt Avenue is the new 42nd Street,” he’d said.
What does that even mean??
Indignant silence

Anyway,
I hope Christmas finds you all merry and bright and that your holidays—whichever you celebrate— are carnivals of food, music, friendship and love—for those are the luxuries that count the most.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Merry Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus!
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Songs for this:
Absolutely Everybody by Vanessa Amorosi
Rock With You by Traincha
.
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A Christmas Playlist—because there's 4 days til Christmas
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_28.mp3