I never can look when I’m riding past
The ruin of Falconridge,
I turn the head of my horse away
When I cross the Narrows Bridge,
And I concentrate on the countryside,
Try not to think of Clair,
Or the simple stone where she lies alone
Beneath its towers there.

But now and then I will think again
Of her and her sister Ruth,
Of the happy days when we used to play
In the dim days of our youth,
We would picnic out in the meadows
And I would chase them over the bridge,
For a kiss or two, though I came to rue
The House of Falconridge!

For Ruth was the elder of the two
And should have been first in line,
She grew to a haughty damosel
So I wouldn’t make her mine,
But Clair was bubbly, full of fun
And she showed she really cared,
So I knew that she was the only one
From the love that we had shared.

‘You will not marry my sister Clair,
I must be the first one wed,
I’ll not be seen as unwanted, left
To cry alone in my bed.’
So Ruth petitioned her father that
He halt our marriage plans,
But he had shrugged off his daughter,
‘This affair is out of my hands!’

The Banqueting Hall in Falconridge
Was decked with flags and flowers,
While Ruth went muttering her dismay
And hid in one of the towers,
She didn’t come out for the service
Though she did come out for the ball,
But sat and glowered at Clair, as we
Had danced our way round the hall.

Their father brought in the caterers
From the other side of the lake,
And they had wheeled in the greatest prize,
A huge five layered cake,
The tiny figures of bride and groom
Stood proudly on the top,
Then Ruth had suddenly come awake,
Leapt up and shouted, ‘Stop!’

The guests had stared, and a sudden hush
Befell the Banqueting Hall,
As Ruth seized both the bride and the groom
And dashed them against the wall,
She seized the knife from the wedding cake
And screamed in a long, high note:
‘I hate you all at this wedding ball!’
Then stabbed my Clair in the throat.

She ran right out of the Banqueting Hall,
I held poor Clair in my arms,
The blood poured over my wedding suit
As they called the Master-At-Arms,
She locked herself in the Northern Tower
And she lit a fire by the door,
Then ran right up to the topmost room,
Lay wailing, there on the floor.

The fire spread up through the Northern Tower
As Clair expired in my arms,
I couldn’t see through the veil of tears
How the guests had fled in alarm,
‘My love, my love,’ she had sighed at last
‘I forgive my sister Ruth,
We shouldn’t have taken her place away,
We wronged her, that is the truth!’

The fire raged, and burnt to a shell
The whole of Falconridge,
But Ruth they found, blackened and burned
As her flesh peeled off in strips,
She’s locked in one of the tower rooms
Will be locked in there for life,
With her claw-like hands and melted face
But it won’t bring back my wife!

I had a mirror placed by the door
She can see herself through the bars,
She has to suffer as I have done
By looking out on her scars,
And from the ruin of Falconridge
You may hear her cry, somehow,
When the Moon is over the Narrows Bridge:
‘Who will marry me now?’

David Lewis Paget

Epitome of despair
A little Impaired
Agony and hatred
Entertained by Clair

-Oh, Clair how are you?

My name is Pablo Cervantes
But you can call me Quinton Saint Clair
I’m something rare like turquoise tangerines
Or crystal cathedrals and blistering sunbeams,
My stare is a raw gaze full of awe like ocean’s dawn
I ride ******* on polar bears in the dead Alaskan air
Slay undead corpses, a tantalizing career  
Drink the tears of Jesus to make life clear  
Eat waterfalls for breakfast, mountains for lunch, and last, but not least I feast on shooting stars before I go to sleep
Just call me Quinton Saint Clair savior of all quintessential affairs

Clair
My baby girl
My heart
My rock
You're my everything
You keep me grounded
You protected me
You loved me
You annoyed me
You were my sister
My confidant
My friend
My everything
And I'm so sorry baby girl
I'm sorry that we had to let you go
I'm sorry that we gave you away
I never wanted this
I wanted you forever
I wanted my family to satay together
I'm sorry Clair
I'm so sorry baby
I'm so sorry
Clair

When my sister played Clair de Lune
I’d go into her room and sit on the floor
with my ear to the side of the piano
so close that the sound would fill my mind
with the image of the long, coiled strings
vibrating, glowing golden in the darkened box.

I could hear my sister’s feet dampening
and undampening the pedals, muting the
strings, then letting them ring, resonating,
one note overlaying another, could hear
the creak of her piano stool and smell the
smell of wood dust, like old sheet music,
and my ear would pulse, almost hurting
from the sound of the hammers striking steel.

And I would begin to imagine things,
different things each time:
my aunt in a blue flowered house dress
standing in her kitchen holding a jar
of homemade pickles, her thin white hair
always in tight pin curls.

Or I’d be alone, in a long, softly lit hallway,
the walls covered with wainscotting and
lavender striped wall paper yellowing
near the ceiling. At the far end of the hallway,
a solarium, and beyond that a balcony
glimmering in sunlight.

Or I’d be in a field with small, white flowers
bowing with the weeds rhythmically
and sensing that I was
loved by someone.

And it would be that my sister’s
fingers were pounding deep into
my chest, and always, always
by the end of the piece
I’d ask her to play it one more time.

I. That summer the radio
Played nothing but Cat Stevens
While I hummed harmonies
In my first car
It was a wild world indeed
when kudzu overtook
The cornfields
All the ears were foreigners
The leaves basked in light
That dead-ended on route 15

II. That fall we spotted UFO's
Shining over the municipal
Park
We chased them across the
Ballfields
To the high school cross country course
A dirt track running
Through the woods
And when there was nothing
Alien lurking there
Our hopes fell
Faster than the stars

III. The following winter
Three inches of ice cut the powerlines
Impounded our school supplies
With the outtages
And the temperatures plummeting
Seventy percent of our hearts froze
All the parts that were water
Expanding our chests
Like balloons
Expanding our vision too
We thought this was the beginning
Of the end of St. Clair county
We though we'd all get out someday

IV. By spring the graveyard smelled
Like lilacs
And dead town elders
Came out to dance in the scent
We played capture the flag there
On school nights
And the cops could never catch us
Behind the headstones
Of our family plots
We wrote our own epitaphs
"I was water and I could have been
A fine wine"
*I fell asleep in sweet green clover to the sound of smalltown sirens...

Your soul is a choice, bucolic scene
With charming travellers in a masquerade
Playing the lute and dancing, yet seem
Sad beneath their fanciful charade.

All carouse in a minor key
Of victorious love and opportunity,
They seem not to believe in their delight
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

In the still moonlight, beautiful and blue,
Birds in the trees dream and sigh by
Elegant fountains among marble statues,
And the cascades in their ecstasy cry.

I've had a thousand conversations with you in my mind this week.


I already know what you will say.


My responses,
yes,
...they are rehearsed.


My patience is limited for,
       unlike you,
...I have seen this movie before.


Sorry,

            "It doesn't mean I do not love you,

in fact,

...it means the opposite."




...because you are all I think about

                                                               -constantly.

* It is not that I am really smart
It is not that I am really smart
It is not that I am really smart. *


I see you all.

All the time,

endlessly

Thirty feet tall Madonna, is one of the things-

My ultra-stylish city that grew up,

Rave, raunchy catwalks beneath those chandeliers-

The Toyota drives by the Manhattan Beach, amidst bikini wardrobe.

When I read those Taxi-dance barbettes-

I wish I could lost in their growling gowns,

All my wishes fulfilled one day and flew me down there-

My boasting finance job and some pals were African browns!

It was that ultimate visa down the Fashion Avenue-

Most of their lipstick glosses were supported by Chelsea revenue.

I could not breathe the invisible virus against my immunity,

The enigmatic pleasures that lived inside the skyscraper community-

I had no qualms while cherishing the barbeque restaurants poisoning,

My fascinations without imaginations had no logical reasoning-

Many of us at Saint Clair’s ward#3, NYC, were at once there fugitive-

Now moaning like chickens to be butchered, we are all *** positive!


Did you know that…

Pop diva Madonna is a gay icon and the gay community has embraced her as a pop culture icon. She was introduced to the gay community while still a teenager. It was her ballet teacher, Christopher Flynn, a gay man, who first told Madonna that she was beautiful. He introduced her to the local gay community of Detroit, Michigan, often taking her to the local gay bars. Flynn encouraged Madonna to walk away from her full scholarship to the University of Michigan and to move to Manhattan.



The disease of AIDS…
Was first uncovered in homosexual men
From Manhattan


Synopsis

What happens when your dreams turn into reality? It’s a paradigm that you celebrate, live life to the fullest. There is however, life that exists beyond this celebration, sometimes good and sometimes not so good like you expected. And when it becomes not so good like you expected, you spat with bitterness and associate the term bad. Anything against your wish and will is then bad and one day you might fall into live with this bad. All I can say is that they are individual retrospection.

This is what Manhattan Dreams exactly captures. The first half can successfully open the door of fascinations that a college teenager in search of a lucrative career and living might jump into- “Style, fashion, exuberance, beaches, skyscrapers, stardom and what not!” Everything is colorful about Manhattan, even the way it is spelt and pronounced. A financial job inside a long cherished skyscraper, international friends, restaurants, pubs, smoking, the kind of gay evenings are not only meant for Hollywood films but can happen to someone like you. And then one day, the world economy complains your presence there as a fugitive, you are fired from your job and your world crashes to a clinic or a hospital confirming you *** positive. What will you do then?

That is what you are getting from the second half of the poem. As if the drama has reached a ****** like after the interval in a film. There seems a sudden pause in life from where there leads the road to uncertainty, disappointment and delusion. This is where the poem ends, because this is where the human mind stops thinking often. A never before kind of bitterness cataracts the dreamy visions and the object of your dream becomes an excuse of your current defeat.

Manhattan Dreams is not a criticism of the gay culture. Neither it attempts to de-criminalize the society nor does it pollute the appeal of Manhattan at all. It is the victim’s individual retrospection in the other side of his celebrated life which is no more a celebration now. The stylish Manhattan is both a dream and a reality. It has nothing to do with your personal glory or agony. Depending upon the situation in your life it might serve as your forefront or background.

The night is closure for me.
Filled by the sound of piano notes,
Guitar strings warming the darkness.
Losing myself in the sound.

The light music plays softly,
But seems so loud in the closing night.
A background melody calms me down,
Composing the perfect tune.

I forget my surroundings,
Complete senselessness overcomes me.
A classic lullaby helps me drift,
I forget my existence.