He tittered and cackled
At the refugee plight,
Revelled in innocents
Running for life.
Spends his eternity
Stoking flames,
Mixing ashes
Through worldly pains.
Each closing border
A fire's refrain.

Then humanity stood up,
Spoke up, rose up
To feed and clothe
The homeless hordes:
Lucifer wept
Over our good world.

Gigi Hadid wore pearls, a t-shirt and jeans to Paris fashion week. So, our (Lisa, Leeza and my) theme for this New Year’s Eve is “Jeans and pearls.” To be accurate, Gigi’s distressed, slouchy bottom, boyfriend jeans were embroidered with pearls - the pearls weren’t worn as a necklace - but Lisa and I think anything involving embroidery is a trailer-park trend - so we’ll be wearing strings of pearls. If Karen (Lisa and Leeza’s mom) lets us, that is.

Karen has four strings of Tiffany pearls - called Essential, Ziegfeld, Akoya and South Sea Noble. They’re all 16-inch, single strand strings (which we all prefer) and they range in value from $600 (the Akoya) to the expensive (South Sea Noble) string - that she won’t lend anyone. The good news is, if anyone is thinking of buying me a string of pearls, I can’t tell the difference between the cheap string and the expensive string.

Leeza (Lisa’s 13-year-old sister) wants to be included in EVERYTHING this year, which is funny because last year she either attacked us or completely ignored us. This year, Leeza has a thirteen-year-old’s razor-sharp instincts and relentless curiosity.

As we’re Planning New Year’s Eve, Ethan Bortnick’s song, “Engraving” was playing. It’s a crazy song with middle-school, EMO, angsty vibes. One of the lines of the song is “strip for me”. As the song ends, Leeza suddenly asks us, “Have you two ever been to a *******?”
“No”, I answered.
Lisa said, “Once.”
“What?!” I asked.
“Really?” Leeza gasped, “Spill!” She demanded.
“This has random context,” Lisa begins, “I’ve been inside a ******* once in my life.”
Leeza and I tittered nervously. “I’m scared,” Leeza said, as an aside, grinning and rubbing her hands on her knees, clearly more delighted than scared.
“I was attending a middle school, Model UN conference, at Brown University,” Lisa continued, “and they took all the kids to a ******* for their model UN social.”
I gasped and blurted “There’s NO way this happened.”
“Yes,” Lisa insisted, “you can ask my mom.” she said, with a serious look, “And, and obviously, it was rented out for the night, but they didn’t, like, think to take away any of the normal features. There weren’t any strippers, but they didn’t take the poles down and they didn’t turn off the multiple TV screens on all the walls that were playing their normal rotating video content.”
“Wow,” I said, with my hand over my mouth. Meanwhile, Leeza was chortling like a mad woman and rocking back and forth.
“Everyone walked in,” Lisa went on, “and it was just middle schoolers, thirteen years old. There were pictures of the dancers on the poles, and our history teacher came in, and freaked OUT, saying, “Oh, no, No, NO!” Because it was a school event, we had taken school buses there, it was a boondoggle. They turned us all around and hustled us out of there.”
Leeza had stood up and was twirling with glee. Middle schoolers live for chaos.
“Taken out of context,” I said, “It was crazy you went to a ******* in middle school.”
“It was a jump scare, for sure,” Lisa confirmed, “we went from one vibe, a school field trip, to a *******.”

Anyway, for New Year’s, a lot is still up in the air - undecided - but we’re determined that we want to have a blast. We’re young and we want to support bad ***** energy (BBE).
“Oh, I have a BBE song!” Lisa squeals, “Mafiosa!” (by Nathy Peluso) She names it as it begins playing.

The songs in Spanish and when it ended, I’d looked up the lyrics because my 2 years of Spanish weren’t good enough. I tell Leeza the lyrics go: “Let the bad men fear me, when I arrive in my car - they speed off.”
“Yes!” Lisa Laughs, “We don’t drive - but, YES!”
“Emotionally,” I say, laughing too. “But verse two asks the great question, “What the frack is wrong with men when it comes to women?”
“It’s,” Lisa started, looking up and searching for words, “SUCH a timeless question.”
“Why’d you pick that song?” Leeza asked.
Lisa chuckled,” Because you don’t get more BBE than a female Mafiosa killer.”

Update: Karen agreed that as long as Charles is with us (and really, when isn’t he with us?), we can borrow the three inexpensive pearl strings (worth about 5k). So, I’ll be wearing the Akoya pearls, an Anna Molinari white, basic, cotton-shirt, washed denim cropped jeans with white bridal flats and Lisa and Leeza will wear their own, white tops, jeans, flats and pearls and we’ll be on-theme.

Happy New Year’s Everyone!

'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped - In vain! vain! vain!
Machine-guns chuckled, - Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.


Another sighed, - 'O Mother, mother! Dad!'
Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
       And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
       Leisurely gestured, - Fool!
       And the falling splinters tittered.


'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till, slowly lowered, his whole face kissed the mud.
       And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
       Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
       And the Gas hissed.

Fairies dancing in the breeze
swinging daintily on flowers leaves
teasing animals as they fly
gone in the blink of their eye

Sprinkling dust as they go
painting nature to and fro
delicately leaving their mark
was that a coy flutter, hark

Giggling as they sprinkled a bee
he sneezed, they tittered prettily
mischievous little sprites
playfully sharing delights

Nighttime falls, they leave the ball
on the wind they sensed a call
homeward bound they meander
leaving behind a world of wonder

Shuffle
Skip
Repeat

He played his usual game of pretending to consider the palatable array of music which graced his iPod before settling for an Arctic Monkeys song, as always, just in time for the 7AM school bus that revved up the road with a satisfying crunch of gravel. The morning had a deliciously crisp quality to it, with swirls of fog swathing the trees in mild ambiguity while the sun danced a waltz in a rose and custard sky, the colour of cakes sold in Pastéis de Belém, the best patisserie in Lisbon.

He realised he hadn't eaten breakfast just as he boarded the bus.
Ah, well. **** it.

The sun skipped between the spaces in the leaves, playing hopscotch with his imagination as he dazedly looked out the window, lost in his music. Although the people on his bus were nice, he didn't exactly like them. The boys wore low pants and branded caps, the girls caked on makeup and tittered vapidly at everything the boys said. A few others quietly occupied the back seats like him, engrossed in their own world. He felt a stronger connection with these people, although he'd barely spoken to them before.

He lapsed back into his reverie while looking out the bus window, lazily tracing patterns in the cracks of the broken walls of the empty restaurants and hotels that passed by. The economic crisis had rendered hollows of places previously choked with people, now haunted with the after image of busy commerce and make-believe vignettes of scenes occurred in these skeleton remains. They were darkly beautiful, modern bones of the city that held a history too close to his own.

He forcefully snapped out of his running internal monologue just as the bus pulled up the driveway outside school. The distance of a block stood between him and school, a block fraught with danger, for he'd been robbed on a previous occasion (not that his school bag had much else besides lunch money and books). At least they hadn't nicked his iPod. He'd be helpless without it.

Music was his poison. He drank it in like the alcoholics of the night drank scotch. Every drum beat was a ricochet echo of his own heart, every guitar string picked was a twanging of his veins.

And music got him through the day. The last bell had already rung and school was over. The kids rushing out the hall blurred into an exquisite pointillism of neon clothes and benevolent cusses at each other. He picked up his bag and walked to the bus, lost in the sleep deprived haze of his thoughts.

On the ride home, he wondered where he'd be in a few years. He wondered if he'd find a place in the cascading chaos of a society ruled by the anarchy of physics, and the fear of inevitable oblivion. He wondered if he would be remembered, if his footsteps would have an echo.

But for now, he thought, his microcosmic life in Lisbon would do. There were dark alleyways to explore and museums to visit and pastries to eat. Somewhere, a waiter put a tablecloth on a dinner table with a flourish, where two lovers would later dine. Somewhere, a boy ran down some abandoned train tracks with his dog, laughing at the summer sun. Somewhere, a girl with auburn hair picked seashells from a glimmering beach as the waves crashed around her fragile legs.

Somewhere, in his heart, a flicker of nostalgia coursed through his blood.

The next song on his iPod came up.

Shuffle.
Skip.
Repeat.

It is a silver snail between the lips,
cold as a quarter bitter as a penny,
Not even the aftertaste of chlorine.
Patchy F# smoker’s exhalations
Grit the teeth and the ball of cork
lolls in its belly.
Look down your nose
it looks back at you,
Blurred.

Look back at you.
On sticky tile bare toes clenched,
and chin lowered to chest, pool-parched lips
Took the Acme Thunderer and—
Blew.

echoes whipped from ceiling to surface to
bare-slick backs of streamlined swimmers.
Spines curved into fins—
Lungs collpasing slow as a circus tent
Even the bubbles tittered with reverberation
Faster.

Not a splash as pointed feet flicked at the ankle
Casting expanding triangles of wakes
And lips kiss-close to the plastic lane line
Breathed.
And finger-tips yearned for that two hand touch.

And now—
Blow.
Only shivers of sound.
Just spit it out.

That unmusical clang as it hits the desk.
Exposing distresses of is and was
escher-impossible to tell which is which.
Waiting for that hollow echo
of high ceilings and deep water.

In that age of aged seasons
predating our own's four-square rhyme,
a reasonable jape was hatched
beaked but hairy to a guilt-free Hen
whose humors ran with jaw-slackening
creatures, foul and not at all bird-like.

Soon after its mixed-up cracking,
two prattle-prone Wrens hopped to spread
rumors of an un-chickity chick
and the ungodly origins
of fatherless yowls. Their tittered jeers
found welcome ears, and Mother Hen preened
her babe chased by merciless guffaws.

This Hen was not one to lay
down meekly, and a never stony
tongue rolled out its antidote myth
to a pair of gabby Gulls: "My child
may look not-much, but he's divine
engendered and miraculous born.
Sure he's messy, ah, but you'll see
he'll grow to be, much-much-more than
any feathery tykes your like did bear."

She clucked it so seriously,
who were they to doubt her? The plumed
sniggering ceased. But before another
grateful day could dawn in a hallelujah
glare of right angles, out pecking
up a snack, Mother made eye
contact with an unfortunate Fate
brandishing his lucky-gripped ax.

What of her wonder-why, joke of a boy?
Left alone at straw-pocket home,
waiting for his Hen to return,
he starved then decayed to hollow bones,
and was never thought of again.

was i expected to just stand there and take their *******?--yes, i walked away, i said that i'd stay and get that information, but they were playing me for a fool and when i figured as much out, i walked out without saying good-bye, for who would say good-bye in such a set of circumstances as this?--wasn't it already bad enough that when they'd seen the planting of fennel happening, the ladies made me pull up to the hedgerows where it was all going on so they could get out and walk around and feel like they were part of something that they actually weren't a part of, something that, in actually, they'd been apart from their entire live so?--oh, i'd wanted to tell them, believe me, that they were ******* hypocrites, but what was the point of ruining a day that, for me, had been ruined the very instant they'd asked each other if that group of cars over there, up on the hill, had been theirs, if these were the ones responsible for all the activity that they considered losing themselves in--wasn't it bad enough i'd been dragged all the way out into the country just to drive through a bunch of cemeteries because they thought it'd be romantic to see what the old gravestones were like?--and what had they done when we'd gotten there other than say that those weren't the headstones they'd imagined, that those were too modern, too ugly, too *******, and why had i even taken them there when i could've taken them to this or that other cemetery?--wasn't it bad enough that for whatever reason the biological imperative had divined, i'd wanted to **** the both of them and knew in advance, knew even before i opened my eyes that morning, that i wouldn't end this day inside either of them?--and yes, i would dare to be this honest with them if i thought they'd be able to look me in the face afterward...it's not like i didn't know they didn't want me--it's that i had had nothing to do with my days so that i found myself in their company and after not a very long while, i ended up desiring the both of them--i'm not saying this makes me a good person, or a romantic person--quite obviously, i'm not talking about holding hands with them or losing myself in the depths of their eyes--no, i said good-bye to all that nonsense when i was still a young man and now that i'm not a young man anymore, i find myself asking if could pull off the whole "lothario" scene, you know?--just sleep with women and not find myself in a relationship with them...it's something i'd feared becoming all my life and yet, i'd ended up becoming a lot of things i'd once feared becoming--just look at how i woke up every morning: alone and in silence with only my breathing out a sigh so filled with the ennui of this world that i thought eventually the ceiling might start raining its own precious tears on my behalf--this was my life now and i wasn't quite thrilled at the prospect of living the next sixty or seventy years of it, not like this anyhow...and yet there they were, consciously splitting off from where i was standing by going off on their own, and was i to presume there were merely taking in the sights of nature around them?--were these two just innocent city girls walking about and snapping pictures of the volunteers planting what they told me was fennel but might've been anything on earth?--maybe they'd separated because they were going to whisper about how they'd been having simply an awful time and wasn't i just the most awful person to imagine themselves having a ******* with?--maybe they were kissing each other and snapping pictures of each other's face of pleasure and repeated ****** as they went down on each other...this is all the paranoia that was trapped inside my head, this is why it wasn't fun to be me sometimes, why i would try to lose myself in the previous night's dreams: because who in the world would want to walk about on his own knowing that two women, possibly lesbians, were ridiculing him as they were making each other *** and keeping their experiences "for posterity"?--yes, this is why when i'm asked at times, "why the long face?" i just smile and chuckle and say, "everything's fine"--again, would anyone want to be the one to say, "well, actually, if you really what to know, i've been dying to get this off my chest fora while now," and let those monsters in my mind off the hook they're barely fettered to now?--it was just here, when i was about to fell pretty deep into the whole "woe is me" routine that the people who'd been planting all their sprigs had found me and asked if i wanted to come inside and read their literature and listen to the tales of their collective journey, so i said sure because what else did i have to do, i was just killing time till those two came back wiping their mouths and looking at each other like i was some kind of ******* idiot not to know when, in reality, they might've just been out there really and truly taking in the sights and smells of the country they rarely got to walk about in...and yet, when those fennel people, as it really had turned out to be fennel they'd been planting that day, discovered that neither of the women they'd seen me with had been my wife or my girlfriend or even a lover, but were both friends--and, yes, i even think they sensed i'd wanted to put air quotes around "friends" when i said it aloud--that's when they understood their collective or cult or whatever this whole fennel thing was a beard for wasn't going to accumulate into its ranks three more that day, that's when they told me to stand there and that someone would be with me shortly, and of course, like a polite ******* i stood there and smiled when one called over two or three more to point me out and crack a smile as they tittered to each other and walked away...i stood there and looked at the interior of that home that looked like they'd just killed someone and assumed control of it for themselves: i stared at the pristine oak floors, the pristine white banister of the steps going upward where the pristine light shone sympathetically down as though it too were laughing at me--why didn't i just ask them who i had to **** to get some acknowledgement that i existed as someone separate and apart from all others, but who was a whole human being and didn't need to be attached to any collective or cult to feel like he was "someone"?--of course, this wasn't a real question, it was just my sheer frustration at feeling like i was being dismissed by everyone in whose company i was in that day: the lesbians who might not've been lesbians, the cult-murderers who might not've been cult-murderers...it all just bespeaks of the kind of headspace i'd been forced to live in all my life, really, i understood this too...and here i sound like i'm writing from the grave of one of those nineteenth century writers with all of this grammar that makes the writer seem so far away from whoever his audience is, but it's only because this is how i've been forced to live--i've been forced to accept that i just don't get along with people and this is so because i just don't trust them and this is so because i've been betrayed too often to ever trust anyone again--yes, it all makes me sound like a child, but isn't trust what everything in a relationship is based on?--true, there must be respect, and there must be some kind of human feeling or caring for the person, but without trust you're just going to end up like me: don't you see me looking all around the room, using my eyes, swiveling my head, turning around so or three or more times when it feels like there's something happening, something about to happen behind my back?--it could go on like this forever, and yes, with me holding their stupid ******* pamphlet in my one hand looking and swiveling and turning and turning...which is why i just left, i didn't even wait for whenever was supposed to get back to me with the time and number of their first meeting to return with that information because it was probably all just their way of having fun, of taking a break from the break that was their life doing all this "conservative work," which we all know is the labor of the rich, the pastime of those with too much money in their banks accounts and too little imagination in their heads...but i know, i know, here i am with far too much imagination in my head, here i am heading out and leaving those friends of mine, who are no true friends of mine--but who i wish were "friends" of mine--to their fennel fields with with fennel sprigs and to those who might be cultists or murderers or both because they all deserve each other, and whether or not it's all true isn't my concern anymore because i've been made to feel this way, i've been made into this creature now stalking its way back to the car--yes, i am an "it" these days, i am a sort of post-post-modern and meta and very self-aware monster that should not be and yet look at me, just look at me: i'm not even looking around when i start the car, i don't even care who i back over even though i know already no one's around, and when i reverse the car and get ready to turn back onto the highway, i roll down the windows just so i can try to hear what might be taken for the strains of their cries over the engine and in the distance, but i try to hear them so i can feel some sort of satisfaction as i press the gas enough to begin a gentle roll--i don't think i'd ever stop even if i could've heard them screaming for me to come back for them, to come back and save them--for all i know, they might've been in on it the whole time...or they still might just be going down on each other back there--

The first time I saw them,
She was drunk off of apple *****,
Giggling hysterically in my face.
Her breath smelled like candied puke.

“They’re stylish.”  She laughed
When I pointed them out.
“They’re the bling I can’t afford to buy.”

“Why?”  I asked, running a finger
Over the ridges of skin.
“Because I’m broke, silly.”
She tittered, rocking back and forth.

I bit my lip, wondering about the
Friendship bracelet I’d given her
A year ago.
“Didn’t Nate give you a necklace for
Your birthday?” I whispered.  
She made a face.
“I don’t want to die, Sam.”

I blinked in confusion.
“Why would you die?” I said.
She threw up on my sofa.
I didn’t bother asking again.

She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.

Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.

The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’

They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.

The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.

She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day!’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth,’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.

David Lewis Paget

I loved it when the Snowflakes fell
On the fourth of July.
They tittered there, in my eyes,
Captivating you as you stood idly by.

It made you think of yesteryears,
So cold in the snow, the forest here,
But as it quietly fell all round' you did not fear,
it was the chill that made you feel warm, alive, real.

Your blank spheres connected with mine, across time
and through space you could see the patterns,
they too made you feel alive, a blink of life,
A maze of God made man to get lost in,
and, alas, you felt, a tingle, a spark,
a fire in your heart,
A tickle on your cheek,
A nerve run down your spine,
It was inebriating, illuminating,
without form or word, just a feeling,
And the smile never reached my lips but
You could feel the darkness my little snowflakes,
Reminisced.

We’d made things once, things of substance:
Copiers, straight-sixes for Chevelles, Novas, Impalas,
And tons of film, of course, loaded into tiny Instamatics
Which accompanied us to everywhere and everything
(Unless they mystifyingly scampered away from pocket or purse,
In which case we drove, cursing and volleying blame to and fro,
Fifteen, twenty, maybe more miles to retrieve them
From the kitchen table or back of the toilet)
To document births and baptisms and weddings,
The in-betweens and hereafters,
(Renderings of children and dogs
Sitting under trees with blossoms of pink and red
The blooms implausibly bright, child and beast stolid yet smiling,
Or tableaus of tux-clad cousins and brothers,
Squinting blankly in the aftermath of a visual right-cross
Courtesy of the supernova-esque emanation
From the blue cube perched on the camera’s top)
So they would not be victims of the vagaries of memory.

All of that is gone--no, taken--from us now,
The means of production having embarked for Memphis or Mumbai,
Those things which sustained us now simply vestigial curiosities,
Like hand-cranked presses or ancient milking machines
We’d tittered at on long-ago school field trips.
The march of time and technology, to be fair,
But it has left us obsolescent as well,
Stranding us without context or clarity,
With access to neither advance or retreat
(The old photographs simply mock us now,
The red-eyed images fading to the soft tones
Of a rose at the end of its summer,
The name of the third man on the left,
Who’d worked on the line with us nearly three full decades,
Refusing to be conjured out of the thin air)
Leaving us diffuse and unordered
As the old and cracked negatives
Stuffed higgledy-piggledy between old snapshots
In an enveloped at the back of an old file drawer.

Oh, gentle spring rain...
Softens what bitter winter pain.
Then summer again...
Tears tittered as anxiety falls 'way
But strikes freely as you recall the day
These cries weren’t like a gentle rain—but when you used to play
Alone
That lonely autumn roam on the playground with no home
In which to return.
On yourself you were so stern...
"Never let them in,"
Ascertained, “Love never will begin.”
But here it has begun, and your heart’s song once unsung,
So unsung,
Plays on the brittle harp among this young
Love to whom you’ve now arrived...
They’ve intruded through what fortress fortifies the lies
‘Round the eyes like skies
Once full of birds but now emptier than the glass you leave in the quiet nights.
Safe no more are you in the barbed wire wrapped right wrong over your ribs.
Place down that nimble nib so eloquent with the fib
Of that which you feed yourself in this wintry crib...
The gentle spring rain is the shedding of your skin.
You let love in,
Afraid your bones will break at the first touch,
Wondering which is the last such...

You let love in and your weeps weaken to whimpers
Because you are so tired...your soul is so tired.
And finally you let love in...and you surrender.
To the touch that is so, so tender.
And everything
Is okay.

It was the season when a young man’s fancy
Turns to hunkering down as the land around him locks,
When the envoys of the abyss
Stalk elderly relatives and spindly late-born calves.
He’d happened upon her
At Aubuchon’s Hardware over in Gouverneur,
Picking up bits and bobs to tie up those projects
(The endless caulking, the pitched battles with plaster and lath)
Which had trickled over the spillway of spring and summer
When she more or less materialized,
Like the sudden bloom of some ill-timed crocus
Popping up through fallen leaves.
She’d quizzed him on the merits of levels, cup hooks, and spackles
(The story being she’d leased a gerrymandered third-floor studio
Over the Rent-A-Center on Clinton Street)
They’d chatted in the middle of an aisle for a half-hour or so
When she tittered You know, I could really use a beer about now,
Which became several, then burgers, then his house and bed
Where she settled in for the duration
(She’d had her suitcases in her trunk, and he came to surmise
That an apartment hadn’t been in her plans at all.)
He’d learned about her what little she chose to share:
A nut allergy, a borderline prodigal capacity for whiskey,
Certain boudoir practices and positions,
But her whos, whats and wherefores an admixture
Of carefully chosen quarter-truths and outright fictions;
He’d noticed, inadvertently,
That she had a half-dozen driver’s licenses in her purse,
And she’d been furiously tight-lipped
About where’d she been and come from,
Save one drunken mention of how she’d lived down near Ithaca
Just long enough to stand on the very precipice
Of one of the town’s plethora of gorges
Before deciding not to go headlong over the edge,
‘S no real point, she demurred,
In anything that puts a period on sumpin’.

There was no question of some Snow White happily-ever-after;
She melted away as abruptly as she’d arrived,
Leaving on an implausibly warm late-February day,
A deceit of sunshine and southerly breezes
Which belied the month-plus of hard slog ahead.
He’d cherished no illusions
Of going after her, of tracking her down:
There was small chance she’d given him her real name,
Assuming she knew it at this point,
And she’d changed her cell number in a matter of hours.
He’d done his best to simply chalk it up as a lesson learned
Or a hell of a hell of a story to share with the boys at Nina’s Hotel,
But she had become (or, rather, the notion of
What she might have become,
As all faithless acts require acquiescence to the existence of faith)
A giant hogweed in his very sinews, invasive and implacable,
All but impervious to destruction and subsequent reclamation,
And the throes of her remained as confabulations
In his mind and heart and groin
All through what turned out to be
The longest of long North Country winters,
With flurry and sleet enjoying dominion over new blooms
Until well into the middle of May.

I was wearing my dungarees
Sitting by the river
Despite my high fever.
Looking at the geese.
Laughing at their waddle
As if coming back from a lost battle
I tried to keep mum
While drinking my favorite ***.
I looked back
I saw  her sitting under a tree
She was playing the flute
Something strange started to move
From the head to the foot.
Her music made me hammered
I turned left and right
As if losing an eternal fight.
I was not nosy
But I felt drowsy.
My heart was on ice
Like poisoned mice.
I walked to her to pry
She asked
Why do you cry?
Your flute made me die.
I replied
Why do you titter?
I asked
Cause life is so bitter. "
She tittered.