Sunday, June 19, 2011

To Gil with Love on Our Anniversary by Carolee Ross-Golpe


Fifteen  years ago, I thought
That life would always be
Memories and longing
And anguished words,
An empty bed
And a life spent in solitude.


A life spent wearing the armor
Of a self-actualized woman;
Independent, feisty,
One with many interests
And loving friends
With a house full of animals
And plants and books and music.

I was so together
Everyone said;
I had my work,
I could summon up images
And play the sorceress,
Commanding my computer
And my legion of cameras
To obey my bidding.

Creating,
Fashioning words out of stars
Walking on the wings of the wind
Grasping at the sands of time
Dancing with ghosts
And tarnished dreams.

Sixteen years ago
I really didn’t want to meet you;
I didn’t need a man
To fill my arms and my soul.

I was safe, immured in my woodsy castle
No love could pierce this armored shell
fashioned out of brittle pieces of my heart;
Constructed with tears and sighs
And laden with dollops of sarcasm.


Occasionally I glanced at old photos
Tattered and fading;
Of myself in love, of myself in pain
Of myself in loss
Of myself with the smile of a happy clown.

And swore that no more
Distantly disturbing faces
Would clutter my study and my life.
And swore that no allegiance
Would tie my wings
And singe my soul
And pull me back to grief.

So I tended my garden
And wrote my stories
And missed my Papa
And watched old films
And read until I’d vicariously experienced
Every  emotion
My eyes cried tears
My heart took in strays.














But then the miracle happened
The kind I’d always called trite
I gathered whatever courage
That was left inside my soul
And answered a short bleep in space
After listening to stringent warnings about
That sort of folly.

You were an Aquarian with a Cancer Moon you said;
So was I --
how could another mortal bear such a fate?
You’d been to Nam
while I picketed and protested.

We’d both been married to possessive, critical people
For way too many years --
And then you told me you were a strange mix;
Half Latino, half Slavic
But as serendity would have it -- so was I.




After two months of writing
Lots of E-mail notes,
This wounded woman went forth,
Mentally battered
and emotionally bruised

To meet you;
My twin, my friend, my lover,
The swan I was sure had died years ago,
The Man at the Last Chance Saloon.

And there began a fairy tale
In this epoch of cynism
A slightly scarred Cinderella
And a sweet introverted Prince,
Friends throughout the ages,
Twins who were created
at the same cosmic moment in time
When suddenly the vortex pulled us apart
to hurl through the Universe, forever
Or so I thought.


It was you, dear Gil,
whose dark eyes held mystery
whose touch was new, yet dear,
familiar yet intense;
whose gentle voice whispered songs of the ages
whose face I knew in a glance,
whose soul was the other half of mine.
 










Thursday, June 9, 2011

Fantasy Bits and Pieces

Bits and Pieces: The Fantasy of a Lifetime

By Carolee Ross



We go on about our lives,

Each involved in the daily pieces

That make up an existence.

The dentist, the doctors, the Sunday barbecues,

The storms, the sunshine, the exquisite and the mundane.



But once in a while,

We look up and stare at nothing in particular,

And remember

A beautiful day in April

When she was the most beautiful girl in the world

And he was the only boy.



When we were both

Very young and very passionate

And very poetic

We wrote tomes of love letters

We kissed as though kissing was illegal,

We touched, we loved, and we felt

And everywhere we went,

People smiled to see us love.



But when she went home

To finish college,

He stopped writing

And she stopped calling

And hoping

And wondering.



And so, she went about her life

Marrying another, raising two children,

Paying the bills, answering the phone,

Burying her parents, getting a few degrees.

And then they met again,

A once in a million chance, 29 years later.



He was a top executive

Living on a house by the Potomac,

In his second marriage

And second set of children.

And she was divorced and struggling.

As usual.



Can it be?

Is it really you?

Memories rushing back,

Midnight at the horror movie show,

Sodas at the ice cream parlor,

Walking on a beach filled with palms,

When Florida was still young

And the Cubans still lived in Cuba.



He went home to his mansion

And she went home to her

Crumbling house,

Living on freelance pittances

And waiting

Waiting, waiting, again, almost 30 years later.



He was in and out of her life again

Proclaiming that they'd never be apart again

That she was still the girl in the photos

Still the girl standing by the 50's auto,

Still the girl who dazzled him

But now she was a convenience

In his compartmentalized life.



There was a brief, passionate flurry

Of hurried kisses,

Short, brief, intense, lovemaking bittersweet;

And then the excuses

He had to leave because:

He had to catch a plane

Or call his kids

Or prepare a report

Or drive to a meeting.



And then, she was tired

Of reliving the past

Of promises unkept

And waiting

And realized

That the Prince was really a frog.



A frog who sucked the pond dry,

Who reveled in fantasies

And didn't know how

To live the pieces of life

On an everyday basis.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Don't Edit for a Friend by Carolee Ross (copyright 2010)

Don't Edit for a Friend
by Carolee Ross
 

My friend of almost 50 years

Asked me to edit his memoirs

I trust your judgement, he said

I've read your stories

And your letters and know I'm making a good choice.



His letters had always been beautiful

Full of intelligence and sensitivity and kindness

But what I read in his memoirs

Was trite and maudlin and uninteresting

Incredibly uninspired.



So I went to work,

Smoothing transitions,

Clarifying, adding suggestions,

Working on the pitiful document for more time than I ever had before

And sent the revision on.



I encouraged him and told him not to mind all the red

And urged him to keep going,

That writing wasn't easy

And that I'd been redlined for decades

And learned, and grew, and finally became a bit of a writer.



He wrote that he felt he'd been raped

That he felt as if I was telling him to stand in a corner

And excused his attempt at writing

As "not for publication"

Not for public consumption.



His story was an attempt to tell a tale from the past

It was part of a larger story whose chapters came before this one

He wrote it as a stream of consciousness exercise

And didn't think I'd rip it apart

With such hatred.



Now, for the first time in years,

There is silence

And I suspect anger on the other end of Internet space

Was it retribution for wrongs done long ago

Or a good editor trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?



Don't edit for a friend,

Don't try to teach a pig to sing

It will only

Annoy the pig

And waste your time.