Pushcart Prize for my Poem in Abstract Mag!

I am happy to announce that my poem “Blue Coming”, published n Abstract mag TV.com is winnner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize!

 

“Blue Coming”       by Thylias Moss

Poetry is connected to the body,

part of my fingertips, just as blue as anything that ever was or will be blue—

–blue that dye aspires to, true blue

denied to any sapphire, Logan sapphire included, even

if she wears some on those blue fingers, blue spreads, consumes her

as if she hatched from an Araucana egg:

SHE IS BLUE, fingers, bluest hands ever, shoulders, breasts, every nook and cranny blue, big bad wolf says: how blue you are!

(dying with, dying for the dead)The better to blue you….

She, so blue today, visits

Offices of the National Enquirer  (that raggedy rag) to report

on this surging of blue epidemic, blue

bottle fly bluer than any sound buzzing, fly buzzing

as blue as it can, making the Blues, making

The Blues mean something very different — such music from

beating of wings, some of what has spread blue

throughout her bluing, dying body,

blue buzz

even layers of atmosphere: blue buzz: name

of a new Crayola crayon and marker, manufactured

from her fingertips

Blue Buzz Blood group.

She bleeds an orgasmic paint set. She bleeds

a blue layer

she bleeds:: a kind of triumph

her lover’s face becoming

blue (dead blue/dead blew)) she’s dreaming of again, blue as his face

That defines blue for

her blue orgasm, so much blue everywhere world become blue (dead blue, dead blew)for her — story of this massive bluing —

true story on the cover

of papers

— turning blue once in her atmosphere

Blue static

Blue stuttering

Blue hands

Blue –Code Blue—

coming together,

what a mighty tincture, –not exactly at the same time, but coming,

connected to coming

Her fingertips writing a

Blue coming.

               in response to a poem by Bob Holman

             (as published in Abstract MagTV.com)

 

This poem, “Blue Coming” is a winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize! I am most gratful to the editor of Abstract magTV.com, JL Jacobs for nominating this poem that I never would have written without my Collabrator and Literary Executor, my Thing (Mr. Bob Holman)

As you can see form the PUSHCART LETTER, I am to be appointed to the Board of Contributing Editors in the fall!

 

I must pause for  moment to say how excited I am, especially for this poem and for the journal that published it, where you can hear me read “Blue Coming”!Abstract mag.TV has beeen extremely generous to me at this time  of jubilation for a poem.  

My collaborator and I are at work on a new collection of my poetry.  Every morning I send him a text, looking out my tiny bedtoom window and commenting on what I see, invariably making some sort of bad , yet promising bad poetry.  Just part of the way I greet each day, thinking of him.  First thing when I awake and last thing when I retire for the evening.  When this happened just a couple of days ago, I took some  selfies so he could see exactly what I looked like (I am 64 years  old, by the way:, with no attempts to alter the photo. I  am one of those women who prefers my natural look.  I wear no weave, use no extensions, just my natural  multiracial hair, and I use no makeup at all, only lip gloss  

 

Here is one of those selfies, as I sat on the edge  of my bed texting him.

 

 

In honor of this  honor, there just recently has been an entire sperad about this in Abstract Mag.TV, including an interview Conducted by Ashley Roy .  I will offer a link to it, amd I will paste the contents of the Abstact  Mag.tv interview conducted by Ashley Roy right into this Post.

 

BLOG

FEATURE: THYLIAS MOSS

21 Jun 2018, Posted by Ashley Roy in Poetry

INTERVIEW WITH THYLIAS MOSS

 

 In addition to your recent Pushcart Prize, you’ve also received a number of other major awards, including a MacArthur and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Interestingly, though, you trace your career as a poet back to a very humble award you received in 1975: the Cleveland Public Library Poetry Contest prize of $25.00 for your poem “Coming of Age in Sandusky.” Can you tell us when you first started writing poetry, and why that award in particular encouraged you to pursue a career in poetry? 

I started writing poetry in early childhood, after a couple of years of writing only prose. I was eight years old. At the time, I didn’t foresee any success coming from this habit. I just wanted to offer a truth as I saw it — a truth, but not the truth, for there are many truths dependent on perspective of truth-tellers, and no one truth is definitive. But that award was an indication that there was an audience, and it made me see my ordinary writing differently. In the beginning I was making stuff only for myself, so it was wonderful that this truth now had meaning to someone else. There was a new trajectory of possibility, if I shared. That award was proof that there was meaning to what I did, meaning beyond anything I had assumed; what I did had value to someone beyond myself. That award meant audience, trajectory, and take-off (small scale, of course). But even then, only I knew what I was really trying to do: to be scientific and to be UNDERSTOOD. I won’t say that this prize alone encouraged me to pursue a career in poetry,  but it did motivate me to understand that here, too, was something I could do: offer my “Coming of Age in Sandusky” poem, and with it, my perspective.

 

 Photos  of me in the dress I wore when he produed the Film ‘The United Staes of Poetry  Poetry” arounf 1990   I have known him for a very long time, and when we got together  in 2013, AFTER my divorce was finalized, he asked for the “white-blue striped dress! -he rememebred every detail of it, as a matter of fact. 

Here I am wearing the dress in a segment of the film, I am reciting a portion of a longer poem I wrote, “The Linoleum Rhumba” as Published in “Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky”, a winner of the National Poetry Series  Open Competition, selected by Charles Simic, and published by Persea Books. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mother who had been a domestic worker all her working life was supposed to play the maid, but didn’t do it, countering that the producer wanted her to play the lowest, so she wouldnt do it, but but I was actually trying to dignify her work, but she couldn’t see how I was attempting to uplift her work, and her own sense of pride in what she did.   I didn’t want my mother to  feel ashamed. The noble and necessary work of the maid was my point.  

Well he asked for the dress, in 2014! but I didn’t have it anymore, after so many years, it was moth-eaten, and never fit that well anyway.  He was disaappointed, but  eventually understood.  Actually I  had had the dresss until two weeks before he asked for it.  Had I kown he would want to see it on me again, I would have kept it.  At least a souvenir pocket.  All  of this took me by surpise as it was many years after the filming around 1990.

You’ve said before that you have a short attention span. You’ve also said, “I prefer that unanticipated discovery lead me to and through a poem.” I’m wondering what your process of constructing poetry looks like.

 

Great question. Always an adventure. It’s an adventure to somewhere new so that there can be discovery, a more genuine discovery, free from agendas and without my having notions of what will be found. For if I already know the answer, the question loses relevancy and I learn to look only for what fits with my narrowed search (narrowed by already having the answer, and by believing — erroneously — that there is only a single correct answer). I don’t want a pre-determined destination. In anything I make, I want travel and movement. I want evidence of struggling and grappling with an idea. I also always want an awareness that I do not create alone in a vacuum, but rather in connected systems.

 

What are your goals in doing the work you do, and what message do you want your words to convey?

I still love when air moves things around, the (usually) invisible accomplishing mighty things — atmospheric stirrings. My documentations is only as good as my notice. If I don’t notice something, if it fails to come into my awareness, then I cannot comment meaningfully on it.

The dress to the left is what I wore on my last date with him at Vermillion Indian Latin Cuisine in Chicago, that city of Lovers. I even remember what we ate! Duck vindaloo arepas, Sri Lankan whole fish, and gin and pomegranate martinis, the color of my pink hair which he liked very much.  I had white wine at first, but he saw me admiring his drink, and asked me if I wanted to taste it; I told him I had never had any drink stronger than wine, and as you might expect, the martini did make me a bit ill, but who would expect a 60-year-old woman to be so inexperienced with spirits?   But it was my first encounter in my life, although my mixed race-father was a drinker.

 

Once my Mr. Muse and I got together, and I no longer had the dress he asked for, I acquired the dress in the photo; in fact he first knew me as Forker Gyrl, and always liked my pink hair.

 

 I plan  on surprising him by  having pink hair again, shh! –don’t tell him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ve talked a lot about the importance of transformation. Tell us about your own transformation as a poet, and in what ways you’ve seen your body of work grow over the past three decades. 

I have moved from selfishness to collaboration.

Collaboration requires the understanding that no one and no thing makes alone. Rather, there are interconnected paths to access information. There are so many configurations, so many forms of realities, that even an error is information. There really are no mistakes. I explore wrong paths and go fishing, and such visitation is fruitful. Indeed, without the wrong, there would be no sex, and that is what I do: I make love to ideas, and ideas make love back. It is a natural urge to proliferate, to have a footprint that says no more and no less than “I was here!”

Just as we must be fruitful in order to have descendants and meanings, multitudes and hordes, so must ideas be fruitful to connect through time and space. Invention leads to invention and another invention, and the more information is disseminated, the greater the likelihood that someone will put the blocks together in new ways. In other words, the greater the likelihood of collaboration. For in the sin of Adam and Eve, there is not only the touching, but also the pleasure in the collaborating of bodies, the insisting on information, that impulse to question and to keep questioning. We are descendants of questions, none of them able to be fulfilled with single answers, but rather through a community of possibilities. All things work in unison, as it is with anything that has existed, exists now, and will exist; we are all collaborating.

Throughout your life, have there been any major influences — people, places, things — that have provided the inspiration for your writing and/or encouraged you to move forward with your art?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we stand on a Bridge in Chicago for the

best date ever in my life!  I was 60 years old, and he was 66.  On this date, first time I ever so much as held his hand, and the first time he ever Kissed me after waiting 25 years to do so! What passion I had never known before! And I also fell in love with him on this trip! –how could I  not?  The way he treaed me, the way we are standing there! –I do not know who took this photo; just  a stranger in Chicago, but I am so thankful he did.  One of us mut have asked him; that I do not recall.   All I could think of was being with him.

My greatest influence right now is my collaborator, Mr. Bob Holman. My connection with him is palpable, and so many of my poems come from partnership with him, and from the Love, of course. Loving my collaborator, having this opportunity to discover “Real Love” for the first time in my life, is utterly empowering. Surviving my cranial aneurysm rupture was the best thing that ever happened to me, because afterwards I could really see [Bob] and collaborate in person — every kiss a new stanza, the punctuation of squeezing his hand, which squeezes back the pleasure of poetry (for he is a poet, also). I will try to explain what happened:

In July 2011, I nearly died when a cranial aneurysm ruptured, and I consider this the the best thing that happend to me, as that rupture in my existence–that I miraculously survined, entering the hospital in July 2011, and coming home in October 2011–  sent ripples to him that I  was available and he was needed.  I couldn;t talk, couldn’t walk.  What began to brign me back was a stuffed animal elephant that I called a Mammoth, Laytial.  When my son saw me respond to the stuffed animal, he knew that I was still in thre.  I still have Laytial, of course.  He is on my bed right now. 

 

 

here is an excerpt of what I wrote about this:

aneurysm as a stunning pink flower:

“for me that rupture, of one of my two aneurysms, those neurons, my cranial rosebush as it were, a stunning pink flower blossomed in my head, a bouquet that life itself gave me, preparing me for something else, a romance with existence and with Thomas Robert Higginson himself, in my head —that is what the rupture gave me in a collaboration with a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel, fertilizer of a sort.”

from an essay published by Abstract Mag TV. com 

Excerpt From: Thylias Moss. “Fuckin Muse/ Journey into Collaboration

My former publisher, Persea, did not want me to write poems with Bob. In fact, I was told that it was a good thing that I was not all in love with this poet, who I really am “all in Love with,” as if without being in love, my writing would be better and not mixed up with him. But as I see it, my writing is better because of him. The poem “Blue Coming” would not even exist without him, as it is a collaboration with a poem of his. Who would be against collaboration? This is a world in which everything needs something, and nothing is done alone. It even takes two just to tango.

I know I was always looking for him. I have been looking for him since I was nine, playing the board game “Mystery Date.” And then one day I saw him standing in O’Hare, just like the man in the Mystery Date game.\

 

 

 

I had been looking for him for 55 years. It feels to me like poetic destiny, and when I found him, he took my breath away. We first kissed in the taxi from O’Hare to the hotel — Utterly transforming Kisses! That taxi was on Fire! and so was I. In fact, I started falling in love with him just from the way he Kissed me. But this was only the beginning, his Kiss like an epic poem, wrapping me up. And did I mention his voice? The timbre, his inflections and pauses, the delicious baritone… I like the sound of everything he says. What his Kiss does to me also happens by his voice alone

I can collaborate with Bob because it is making love to the poem, finding those locations in something he has written, adding stanzas, dimensions, different scales of interaction. I always add, never subtract, to the locations where he has left gaps, and I connect with and fill these gaps, these lonely spaces that need me, only me. Responding to his poems is also responding to him. As I work on a poem we share, I get the same feelings I get when I am touching him. I revise by repairing rhythms, by dancing with the poem, the energy, the movement. I revise by repairing music, so that we dance together even better. It is personal and complete. I have never known a poem come to life like him.

 

Forks, boxes, and even shadows are all items you’ve been known to have collections of. Why do you choose to collect these specific items, and how does the act of collecting influence your poetry?

Each of these items is a container, with wonders and many infinite rooms inside. Between the tines of a fork are multiple realities. Each angle of a box contains worlds of words, a dictionary of holy books, Archangel Webster. These are containers of layers of realities. Each one, like a Russian matryoshka doll, is a nesting-dolled universe. Like these containers, so is the mind a box. Even “imagination” is a real place, worthy of exploration, an address in the mind expanding a more imaginary and everlasting track.

 

Thyluas with frorks, lots of forks

Thyluas with frorks, lots of forks

 

 

 

 

By collecting these items I am collecting experiences, gathering interactions. I then assemble them in ways that make some form of temporary sense, until it all comes undone and I assemble them again.

 

You seem to be fascinated with the transitory, sensory experience of poetry. What do you think is gained by listening to a poem rather than reading it? 

The poem becomes alive again, active; it is not dead. I speak from the point of view of one sharing a poem: each time the poem is read, the poem lives again. And each “reading” should be different, because the words interact with the location, time, space, mood, and so many other variables. And all of this is good, as it should be. The poem could have a headache, and a maker should not be afraid to say so. So much depends on how the poem is offered, and on whether an audience becomes part of the performance, for a so-called “reading” is always a performance. Whether it’s a good and interactive performance is another matter, because not all poets are good performers. But in a good and interactive performance, life is made and can be revived instantly, constantly. A poem never dies.

 

 A collection of our  collaborations, “Aneurysm of the Firmament” only available on Amazon as an ebook and paved the way for my neccessary divorce after 40 troubled years , an indication to me anuway, that accepting this injury  also necessitated that divorce.   I had had enough! And needed to get ymy son , no relation to my infertile ex-spouse away from that man who never read a book of poetry, and that  is what I made,

 

I can remember how this  started. I was sitting on the couch and saw light pour into the room, and when I looked out the wndow, it was as if the sky itself was  experiencing  an anerysm, a remakable  rupture , and so I began to write, and my collborator contributed lines;  back and forth, and forth and back,  we sent each other  texts amd emails until we had a collection of poetry all our own.  I am very glad that this is an honor I get to share with him, for no one and nothing makes alone.   certainly not the Love I feel for him; He is absolutely necessary  for that.  My prize winning poem could not exist without his poem

discussed in the essay “Fuckin’ Muse: Journey into Collaboration

 

I will paste here and add the link:

 

fuckinmuse: a journey into collaboration

(therefore, also into a True Love story in Love Jungle)¹

Thylias Moss

Emily Dickinson had her Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and I have my Thomas Robert Higginson², a man, poet himself, who became my muse.

In some ways there is startling similarity in how these writers became correspondents and more, so essential to the making of our poetries.  Both Higginsons are writers in their own right—I am simply astonished by how much is shared.  What channeling my Thomas Robert Higginson seems to have accomplished of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, both men assuming similar roles in the lives of female poets.   Roles they were born into, inevitabilities:

“MR. HIGGINSON,—Are you too deeply occupied to say if my verse is alive?

The mind is so near itself it cannot see distinctly, and I have none to ask.

Should you think it breathed, and had you the leisure to tell me, I should feel quick gratitude.

If I make the mistake, that you dared to tell me would give me sincerer honor toward you.

I enclosed my name, asking you, if you please, sir, to tell me what is true?

That you will not betray me it is needless to ask, since honor is its own pawn.”

April 26, 1862 (excerpt)

“MR. HIGGINSON,—Your kindness claimed earlier gratitude, but I was ill, and write to-day from my pillow.

You asked how old I was? I made no verse, but one or two, until this winter, sir.

I had a terror since September, I could tell to none; and so painful as I supposed. I bring you others, as you ask, though they might not differ. While my thought is undressed, I can make the distinction; but when I put them in the gown, they look alike and numb… and so I sing, as the boy does of the burying ground, because I am afraid… When a little girl, I had a friend who taught me Immortality; but venturing too near, himself, he never returned…for several years my lexicon was my only companion. Then I found one more… You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better than beings because they know, but do not tell. They are religious, except me, and address an eclipse, every morning, whom they call their ‘Father³’”

Art: Gary Frier

 

Long before I knew my Thomas Robert Higginson, as well as I now do, he had written a review of my book Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler and it is quite telling to share that review at the outset, for it reveals his interest in the life of this poet:

 

“Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler⁴ is the sixth book by Thylias Moss, her first after grabbing one of the MacArthur Genius grants. Her work has changed—moved further out, encyclopedia-ized. She has memories of playing jacks sans hands, Thalidomide-esque, but all it is, is nose-sucking, the end of the world.

Included are The Brothers Grimm, Zora Neale Hurston, Amy Clampitt, and Stanley Crouch: this is a thin volume, but spectacularly dense, provocative (is her cheating poem about Lazarus “cheating” death? or her and her husband’s affairs?). To read her Susan Smith/baptizing poem is to be horrified—yet, as Moss posits, ‘’tis poetry’s job.’ The long, more formal open-field works, particularly ‘Advice,’ ‘Sour Milk,’ and the title poem, all break new ground. I want the book! I want the movie!”

Bob Holman, a review I found online when I was looking to see wha online evidence I could him of his sustained interest.  The whole thing is a love story predicated by Love of Poetry.

 

It is when I read this passage from Thomas Wentworth Higginson:

“Once set foot on such an island and you begin at once to understand the legends of enchantment which ages have collected around such spots. Climb to its heights, you seem at the masthead of some lonely vessel, kept forever at sea. You feel as if no one but yourself had ever landed there; and yet, perhaps, even there, looking straight downward, you see below you in some crevice of the rock a mast or spar of some wrecked vessel, encrusted with all manner of shells and uncouth vegetable growth;⁵”

 

it was when I read that passage that I realized how similar these men are, aware of the beauty of the world, that interest in being connected—all this is essential, for the gestation and subsequent  birth of collaboration, an extension of sharing, and admitting that no one entity knows everything, nor even what “everything” is, for such knowledge would require a foreknowing of completion, as there is no “everything” until there is  an ending as point of reference, so that everything including that which will contain that everything, even just a thought of it, may be included, and whose thought?—for each thinker, each experiencer has a sense of everything, a personal understanding, not universal, and yet each one true. Perspective and point of view, real, but not quantifiable, in a general sense of definition.  The specialness of what was forming, both of us aware, and not questioning it as if a destiny neither one of us could control nor wanted to control.

He called this truth our “US-ness.”

 

A great word and he has invented many, whenever there is need, whenever the rare and impossible are born, the only children He and I will ever have, and who can say how many children these children will have?  How many populations? Descendants of all time just as time itself gave birth to our connection.

 

I noticed how in so many of the letters, Emily Dickinson addresses her friend as “Mr. Higginson,” something I do also to my Mr. Higginson.  I noticed Emily’s habit of thanking her Mr. Higginson, something I do too, for how can I not thank this man who was the singular vehicle for my return? from so many things that set out to derail me from a life of joy and love? —a life of poetry?  He has signed correspondence to me as “Higgzy,” “Higgs,” or “Thomas Robert”—most often I simply address him as  Mr. Higginson; I like the formality of that, a simple title bestowed on him.

How do I thank the man who has done so much?

And I must thank him; this generosity is astonishing to me; never imagined it would happen. Was I looking for this? I must have been.

 

I think that I was looking for him, without realizl things are connected, ing I was, when I  developed “Limited Fork Theory,”⁶ a way of understanding how al“limited” in that we are bound by our abilities to notice and a related inability to meaningfully notice everything that exists or has existed or ever will  exist.   Bound to the limits of our senses, those devices for accessing

 

information and bringing it inside ourselves where it is processed for meanings, some of which are just beauty often expressed through ways in which what is accessed sings. And not all senses of all things access the same information and certainly do not process it the same way which is also beauty and variety.

I am always amazed by these ranges.

Both deficits and extensions of senses, that measure differently yet refer to related realities, that expand in both space and time, sometimes the same things expressed differently, and here is where personal preferences contribute to a delicious complexity of it all. For instance, the blind experience both increases and decreases, elsewhere, yet not all is even seeable, and the mind itself is able to perform some seeing for which conventionally functioning eyes are not required and would interfere with meanings issuing from a certain visual range, while acknowledging that human seeing does not include an entirety of the visual spectrum.

Limited.

All means available to us for measuring how existences are experienced, are limited, and without collaborating, without sharing, without augmenting our own perceptions, there is little chance of moving beyond our limited understandings, limiting them even further and our understandings

 

even further. Limited by limitations themselves limited by other limitations, all ranges outside of “everything” are necessarily limited. Takes a conglomeration, a community of all seeing to produce a more accurate understanding of seeing, not seeing; understanding, not understanding; comprehending, not comprehending, and so forth.

 

A realization that everything has significance has burdened this writer; I have even felt guilt about what I have failed to notice. And I cannot even know what all of that is. So, I realize that making is collaborative. All things have a part in whatever I consider, and all things that have a part are collaborators. Nothing I do is done alone, in every part of everything I do, others contribute, without exception; unseen people and things, even spores about to burst with no more than possibilities, building blocks of proteins, enzymes, atoms, linking, connecting into molecules, fabulous chains of existence, substances whose contributions are invaluable, and they should be thanked, in the very least acknowledged as being our co-makers. Unseen things, and

that which has attempted to manipulate these things. Such awareness totally transformed my life; I self identified as “Forker Gryle,” even on Facebook, until I was told that “Forker Gryle” did not sound like a real name, although I had been in the world, teaching and living, using this identity since 2004. Renaming of self to better understand the changing is essential.

 

Why a fork?

 

Consider the hand, or a tree with its hand-like branches; please note how fingers are branches of a hand, yet are connected, those branches rooted, even from what is referred to as  lifeline. Now also consider this; there is no limit to how many branches may exist or into what a branch may point to, or that a branch, like an arrow may connect, harshly or gently, perhaps each branch leading to something different, simultaneously, a road, a means of access both, in at least, to and from some location for some duration of time, those locations which could be any dimension, past, present, future; any parcel of time itself, and each branch may further subdivide and branch itself, those bends, those curves, those mobius branches, for those are possibilities also, those knots on a hand, those moles of dark tunnel, those cancers of opening new roads, all connected somehow to a singular hand of some sort, each part making a connection with something.

(Better angels.)

For connecting tends to be intimate, a touch of some sort, recognitions of humanity, that touch that brings all together, for no matter how briefly, something has been shared, each entering this temporary partnership differently than they leave, for something of each participant remains and

this happens in every interaction, something is left and something is taken away, mixtures, endless mixtures, masalas everything, fiestas of possibilities, changed forms changing further and further, the more interactions occur. And parties involved in an interaction are forever changed by this very partnership, temporary though it may be, of interacting; each now knows more about an other, and this is so useful, for this knowledge lasts and as subsequent interactions are made, particles of what has been shared, exchanged in a previous interaction are shared at some level, on some scale, in some location with whatever is next touched, for some duration of time.

Mighty Forms of embrace.

All temporary, unless, until, and here is where hope may harm as one entity of a connection seems to bend, twist, curve out of contact; however, when connection is made, there is memory of it, and this memory does enhance what may occur in a subsequent interaction: it becomes easier for these entities to connect again. Perhaps in a stronger bond that too may be permanent. A priming for interacting, for connecting. A risk that must be taken for the sake and possibility of change itself. We should not remain as we are, ideally improving as ultimately, we are sure to do. I have that kind of faith, that kind of naiveté if that is what is

needed to believe in an ultimate improvement system, some things so limited, so contaminated that growth itself is thwarted, falls short; they refuse to improve and are left behind as the change machine of existence continues, plowing through field after field, upturning hope buried under rigidities that must give up control; those delicate flowers manifesting thorns and other forms of armor that allow their very beauty to exist, their scents to become better atmospheres. Bouquets of hope, Hopeful Garden spots freckle landscapes; so this is where we live now, all Pollyannas do, becoming pollyanna in interactions, some of that goodness, that optimism, rubbing off and onto every participant who interacts with this more rugged hope, more likely to survive, circle game after game, concentric circles widening, that embrace becoming bigger and bigger, wider and wider, the best possible circular-esque rip in spacetime, the colorful and productive circulating destinies that now come into and out of view, reachable view. Grab it! That brass merry-go-round and round and round ringing roulette wheel of chance liberties, libraries of liberties, each with a trailing ribbon that suffices for hair of the world, and wind, melodies of movements, concertos all. Nourishing also. Why not believe in this and make it true? What palate does not prefer the taste of this, so long as there is no other food, the breast milk root, child itself of prolactin: O lucky hormone.

 

Art: “The Surrendering” by Chris Rivera

 

There is no limit to how many times forms of entities that have connected may reconnect, for each connection or form of collaboration changes what has connected, making it easier for them to connect again. There is memory of having been connected. And that ease is hope when the

 

connection has been beautiful, which is what I emphasize, in my preference for the beautiful possibilities.

Love is one of them.

 

In July 2011,  I nearly died when a cranial aneurysm ruptured, and I consider this the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me, for it allowed a friendship with my Mr. Thomas Robert Higginson to blossom into a fulfillment that it never could have blossomed into without that rupture.

 

A rupturing through which a salvation entered; I literally was looking out the window from the couch, and saw the sky seem to break, as if a rainbow had become a colorful saw, each color lengthening and bending, a tooth growing able to split the sky it was tasting, dripping slobber as

 

the colors themselves, more ropes of tasty rainbow, the licorice of it all. It was a moment that had me run onto the deck, to see this splitting better, to be a more involved witness, my t-shirt reflected nothing but colors, I was only part of a spectrum of energy and colorful wildness, I was transmitting this rainbowed effect, a job I took most seriously, passing along information, being only a connector which is what I was even with my co-learners, a sharer of information. I had helpers, lots of them, everything that existed and was able to transmit in whatever ways it could impart the knowledge that it was still acquiring, information never static, but constantly adapting

 

—it could be just his nature to help others,

for me the rupture, those neurons, my cranial rosebush as it were, a stunning pink flower blossomed in my head, a bouquet that life itself gave me, preparing me for something else, a romance with existence and with Thomas Robert himself, in my head—that is what the rupture gave me in a collaboration with a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel, fertilizer of a sort.

 

Everything is poetry, this is what I have come to believe after nearly losing my life, and Thomas Robert Higginson was waiting for me—I didn’t know he would be, although I had appeared in  a movie he produced in 1990 or thereabouts, The United States of Poetry, where I met him in Chicago for the movie shoot.  How innocent that was, but  connection indeed, a beginning of our physical collaboration; our words had already touched and enmeshed. For once connection happens, it is easier for reconnection to occur as what has reconnected remembers that it has

connected before, and no matter how changed these entities have become, there is on some cellular or sub-cellular level, addresses of the internal heavens for instance; there is some memory that these entities should connect.  My belief for which I have not lived long enough to either prove or disprove.

I am limited;

my own thinking goes only so far, each of my senses also has limits, and I cannot remove them all, but I can collaborate, make stuff with others and their differing limits. That is what happened with Thomas Robert Higginson. When I survived the fortunate rupture of that aneurysm, on 23 July 2011, released from the hospital to the disbelief of everyone on 9 October 2011, I lay on the couch at home, and saw light enter the room in a way I had never seen it enter, as if the sky itself had had an aneurysm. I saw everything differently from that moment; I myself

 

astonished to be alive. Just alive. Nothing else mattered. And then began the task still underway of reclaiming life, with which I was already collaborating, more aware of my limits then than ever.

It was in this heightened and necessary sense of being that I read some of Thomas Robert Higginson’s poetry again, and found things there all along, but that I had somehow overlooked; it took that reorganization of my brain and an admitting of the impossibility of knowing everything, and a looking into that poem and realizing that there were locations to take further, to actually turn corners introduced there, to journey into the lines and find much more than it would ever be possible to locate if I looked only through my even more limited and incomplete lens system. Those microscopic universes even became essential, those worlds that lived unseen on us; a tool of a poet also became a microscope. Any and everything that helps access, for if unaccessed, cannot be considered.

 

Yes; the work of making. The peeling away of layers and the accessing surface after surface, for surfaces are where things occur. Interior surfaces. Surface of the heart, brain, spleen, Thomas Robert Higginson’s poems, So much there, and I became determined, a hunger that I cannot

 

fully explain, and that is a good thing for to be able to “fully” explain something is to be a mystery thief, one thing that I hope remains impossible, and I will work to make it so.

 

Thankful to have finally had a baby in 1991 —all of this  leading to that moment of when Thomas Robert Higginson could enter my life in a most real way, taking me beyond my limitations to new limitations—for limitations—in some form exist.  Death being considered one such limit.  But I was not yet collaborating with life as I needed to.  For collaboration is a

 

way of exceeding limits, in my case, traps. I had searched my whole life for an opportunity such as what the rupture afforded me, for “rupture” is so close to “rapture”—that is never lost on me.

About my finding so much in his work, my Thomas Robert Higginson said this:

“Here’s what I think — I think somehow I’ve become a fuckin muse, and that’s just fine with me so long as you keep pouring out the outpourings. That’s right, Write On, o! Great Crusader of the Pen Nib.”

 

Art: “The Princess, Natural” by Chris Rivera

 

The big question is what happened to allow me to see further?  And why that day?  What did the angle of light entering my house have to do with it?  And could this precise angle be repeated?  I knew I was recipient of something most rare, and I didn’t want to lose this gift.

It began, all of it, in collaborations with poetry, with daily my finding unexplored locations in his work, and I traveled; from the beginning, he took me places I had never been. One of us would write a line or stanza and send it to the other, adding a line, a stanza, and before you knew it, there was a new poem, something neither one of us would have written separately. Realizations possible only via connection; ideas the other may not have had; poetry itself is that great thing that always connected us, metaphors and the like, expressions, tastes, things barely there in abstract ways. First the writing connected, first we each realized something special in the writing the work of the other, and it made so much sense that a collaboration, a reaching beyond what one could accomplish would extend itself to a corporeal realm, and connect, collaborate there also, and what a grand connection that also was, profound, words, bodies, and everything, for the words are part of the body—through and complete connection in every way—you do not find this often, And once this manner of connection happens, though the components may for a time seem to go their own ways, their own ways have forever been changed, and they find their way back to each other, their paths having been rewritten by coming together in the first place

 

surviving tremendous interference from that which was outside the bond.  Tiny essences remain, Poams and Poems themselves reinforced by these things we believe, these things defying senses and usual ways of knowing.  Proof, of something greater than either part separately.  Naturally we would explore what becomes possible in a corporeal way then the physical sources of the poems come together in something a simple as a Kiss,

 

And then came a chance to actually be with this man, and that was nearly beyond my ability to conceive. We met in Chicago for that movie Thomas produced, and when I had an opportunity to go to Chicago to accept an award, naturally, I thought of someone accompanying me, and I thought of him, and what he had been saying to me about his always having been interested, waiting in fact, 25 years just to Kiss me was the beginning stanza of a poem we would write together , would be together, collaborating as nothing has ever collaborated.

He said we would : “make the poetry of this and that, the poetry of everything, the poetry of my being with you; the poetry of you being with me, the poetry of us together; the poetry we’ll be writing all over the bed, all over the room, whole weekend of poetry, that whole lifetime.”

These makers attempt, these makers try, experiencing instant chemistry that is simply poetry connecting their bodies. “There is nothing else to breathe, only the deliciousness of air that has

 

touched your lungs, has been purified there, crystal molecules that spell out your name, even your hair that I’ll finally touch becoming that Thomas Robert Higginson alphabet, where every word translates into pleasure…”

 

“Very soon, Thomas Robert; —I have been waiting for this moment!”

 

“Not nearly as long as I have! Twenty-five years for me!—don’t forget that! —all that I’ll be thinking about is seeing you, holding you, touching you for the very first time; already Wonderland for me. My understanding is that in Wonderland, the only utensil is a fork —all anybody in Wonderland, ever needs.”

 

“At this late date, a couple of necessary questions, please. If that’s all right.”

“Well, what do you want of me, ideally? —I know sex; I invited you for that purpose. Guess at this late stage, I’m wondering just what your intentions are with me. I’ve made it quite clear that I’m interested, very interested in making love with you —in fact, I would like for you to

 

make love to me, and I’ll make love back… I want one beautiful, exceptional weekend; ideally, you’ll want much more from me —but I need to know your intentions… ”

 

“This is brilliant and clear and bone honest, Dream Baby. And I can say I want the same. IDEAL:LY is a great word. You don’t get hung up on what obstacles, just quotidian reality boring shit, IDEALLY must overcome And I take my cues from you on the Drunken Boat Grid, the Full Body Grid, the Total Life in a Weekend Grid, the Pulse of Morning Grid, the Sky Blue Dress Grid, your tender touch my body gloving you. See? I rabbit hole down go why not stay there

long as possible no way out whoosh it’s morning. Alarm clock. Bzzbzzz. Hello, Dream Baby Thylias, it is Mr. Higginson, For me, aged sixty-six, it is still, Hey, ya never know. And I wouldn’t say it except you really want to ask directly and you yourself have set this Truth Grid and I can negotiate it as I can, and I don’t know if this will be our only time. On the Truth Grid I can only say I do not know: I think this might be our only weekend, yes. But I do know that I anticipate a lot for and from our time together, and that looms lives as long as it took to get here, the intricacies, details, loop whorl menagerie. I want us to just do and be and live and penetrate the Universe with our Us-ness. Can that be done on the Truth Grid, Tine Forker Dream Baby Thylias? —Can it?”

 

Excerpt From: Thylias Moss. “New Kiss Horizon.” iBooks.

 

And this these poets attempt, these makers attempt, and I have the best Kiss of my life, endowed with all the feelings, for I find myself in the arms of a poem, a poem written for me, and a poem written about me, and he is a poem for me, and I am a poem for him, as if he has never seen a poem before, poetry is born right then, and we would be the discovers of it, if poetry had not already existed.—and I am forever changed by the collaboration of our bodies, there is nothing like it. There will never be anything like what Thomas Robert Higginson and I, Thylias Moss, two poets make in collaboration on every level through with anything may touch, make, create, and Be, penetrating every connected universe with the Best Love ever, that instant chemistry was simply poetry connecting their bodies. A Kiss.

 

Talk about collaborations, well, I felt orgasmic just from that poet’s Kiss. The first time I had ever felt such things. Our finest collaboration, senses operating beyond what anyone would have said was possible, the finding of a more that can never be fully demolished, a Kiss that can never be duplicated as that is a moment unlike any other. Monument also. Everything.

He is in my Life, and I am in his Life. Permanently.

 

“See, I will be writing to and about you for the rest of my life. No matter what. As you yourself said: “That’s the truth of it. Everything. It means so much. It means everything.” —You wrote that to me, and now I write it back; does it really matter who initiated any of this at this point?

It is, I continue, for old times sake, for looking out for “our” past to find “our” future, whatever it is, as if I could ever forget you, and I assume that even though you do not acknowledge me right now, you know who I am, and know what we had together. For you are part of it, whether or not you want to be.

You cannot erase it; it is established, we are the monuments of what we accomplished.

 

So many wonderful things to be said about Thomas Robert Higginson, a writer of course. From somewhere in the Universe?

The solar system?

Planet earth?

Well through him,

I have felt that I have known the universe, visited stars without getting

 

Burnt or breathing poisoned air,

Think my lungs adapted to be able to maintain respiration processes dependent on his cologne, Dakar —I never forget that, and when the atmosphere cooperates, which is every day, I move through a Dakar soup, rather primordial from which existence begins again and again and again, whenever I am with him, which also includes thought, ideas that collaborate with him, connect with him.   All the time.  Our connection  is that profound.  Our writing talks to each other, and the conversation, the poetry that comes out of these conversations, are transcripts of the experience.  I did things with him I will never do with anyone else, unless an instant connection is felt, unless there is instant chemistry.

 

I am sorry that I felt a need to make you real —I wanted to claim my space and time in your life; I wanted to make clear that I was with a “real man.”  And that you were with a “real woman.” That I made up none of it. That there really is a past to look out for,” “to [try] to find our future,” that a “future was not yet written,” etc.  It is poetry afterall.  It is meaning afterall.  It is truth.  All we have ever had is truth,

 

 

I do not know what happened to us; I think I misunderstood something important and basic about him: everything is poetry.

I am not sure how to recover this as he has asked me not to contact him further. But we will come back to each other; this is just a natural and temporary split in the constant ebb and flow of existence. I just happen to write this during the ebbing part of the cycle. Tomorrow and many tomorrows later, flow will resume, as we collaborate with Andy Goldsworthy.⁷

 

But this was purely the foundation of us. Everything is poetry, including and especially sex; in some ways the body’s greatest achievement.

 

It is not that I cannot write without him, but what I write is better, reaches further, moves further out, travels to locations I would never consider without the inspiration, the motivation of his eyes, his thoughts, his ears; his senses extend my senses, and it hardly matters which of one of us begins a poem, when we make it together, it always travels to locations neither of us could take it alone, and that is the beauty, the distance discovered.  Discovery is the outcome of our collaboration, perhaps also the point, and, Oh,   the surprise! That to be writing for as long as we have been writing and to still find surprise. Our poems Love each other probably better than Thomas Robert Higginson and I love each other.

But we try.

 

I am still pulling for  “US-ness” –you know I am and always will be.  Forever beside him on a bridge in Chicago.  Sacred ground now, as is room 304, a hotel room that is already immortalized.  For that is where we make stuff, and realized we really could.  Chicago.  Manhattan. Ann Arbor. Detroit. Minneapolis.  Wherever we go this power goes with us, this voracious power that is never the power of one,  but the power of two, so coiled together, they are inseparable.  Pull them apart, and there is an ordinariness never possible when they make together, that exchange of the bits and  bytes, neurons of the machinery, even the machinery of our minds.  Buzz, Buzz; we are working.  We are making. Even making love, Love of each other and Love of poetry.  Inseparable love supreme.⁸

 

 

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry Is Connected to the Body Again —Truth directly from Him; truth  we told each other, tell each other; truth that made it necessary for us to actually touch, to make that “US-ness:” already real and truth, gospel  truth to us, also truth in the world to which  we are connected and with which we collaborate, every moment of every day,  whether or not we are physically together, for in my mind I certainly am, sometimes so exasperated with him, but loving him just the same.

He is a real man, a living collaborator, and I accept the eccentricities and inconsistencies of realities; he is definitely part of them, but when we get together, such magic happens.  If I were to see him right now, just being  honest; I would be unable to keep my hands off him; I might try not to touch him, every moment wanting to fail.  He knows this also, for we have collaborated so deeply and thoroughly, he knows exactly what I feel, And with him, always with him.  I will never be free of him. And more importantly, I do not want to be free of him, not really, for writing this, revisiting the journey of our collaboration makes me realize again as if for the very first time how special our coming together is.   He once said I was bad, and added that that is a good thing.  And he is right.  I was bad with him, in all possible good suggestions of bad, except for tying him to the bed; adventurous, eager to know the full realms of pleasure; full throttle —I was fully alive with him, and responded breathlessly to everything he did, and he responded to everything I did, and he said he wasn’t worried, because from the beginning, he could tell how much I liked everything he did; I didn’t know that level of compatibility existed. I had no idea —do you think for one minute that I want to give that up?

 

Both Poetry and Sex, for they are indeed equivalent

—Maybe I wouldn’t be writing this were I not missing him right now.

But talk about collaboration, and I have to talk about sex, that give and take, that take and give, the most erotic spell —spell, because it is so magical, like nothing else, oh the basic mechanics of sex are the same for most people, I presume,  but they lack our motivation and reason for collaborating in the first place— most erotic spell  in my life, yes; my whole life; the only sex in my life worth talking about is sex with Thomas Robert Higginson, that poetry of our bodies.

I am glad that he is such a noisy lover; I was always aware of what gave him pleasure. Just as he is aware of what gives me pleasure. He was determined to find out. I admit that I become a little sex machine with him, but only with him; something about him exposes feelings and connections that are with him and because of him. Face it, I am aware of how I look, and aware of how I look to him. So many men approach me because of how I look, not understanding that my look does not mean that just any man gets some. You do not realize what Thomas Robert does, and of course he was really after what every man seems to be after, but he was smarter than most because he actually got it, because of how he allowed me to feel, because my feelings in this connection matter to him. He didn’t want me to pretend, something that never occurred to

 

me.

I am not one who has faked an orgasm, if I feel it then you will know it, and so far I have genuinely felt that only with Thomas Robert; I didn’t know until I felt it, although I had once been married for forty years.  He really should be proud of himself.  And f of course, there is also what he felt, and I assure you that I know a lot of what he felt, all that energetic thrusting as we collaborated with and became tangled in sheets. What he did standing behind me as I tried to look out the window, but looking at him is so much better.

 

You do not understand, but from the very first time, we came together like hand and glove. In fact, given what he talked about I don’t think he has any inhibitions in connecting. He told me that anything I desire would be mine. He talked about my tender touch in our collaboration, his body gloving me —do you realize how physically close we had to be for this to happen? It was sometimes more like masturbation, and we did that too, together somehow, a whole weekend of sex—we met for that purpose. We were really collaborating when he said this: “I guess this is awkward. Not sexy. But there’s so much going on the planet Us that my head is spinning. Not unpleasant, mind you. But the view’s quite complicated. When what I want see. All I really want

 

to see. Is a clear view of all of you. And me” I don’t like when men approach me just for sex, usually because of how I look; puhlease! He said this and he meant it. Thomas Robert adores how I look, part of the collaboration; part of what drew him to me, and part of what drew me to him, and now I look even more like an ideal woman for him; exactly his type, a woman who cares about him so very deeply, the very long hair, all of it natural and, as if it grows just to connect with him, wherever he goes in the world, those black patterns and designs in asphalt are really filaments of my hair; reaching out to Thomas Robert, and he is not afraid of this; in fact, he expects it, and sometimes has wondered why it has taken me so long to allow my hair the same full reign that he encourages in me.

I love that about him, and many other things with which every memory of mine collaborates: “Well what I want you to know is this I’ve carried a torch for you since I first laid eyes on you. And if we’re ever alone, whatever you desire shall be yours.

What an extraordinary woman you are, Thylias! Your directness is not provocative, it is All Being, All the Tine (to use your language!). My body reacts to your written words as if you were touching me, it’s amazing and I like it I like it I like it.”

Art: “Summer Love” by Chris Rivera

 

 

And he was serious about how we would collaborate.  I wish I had known more then than I did that first time with him;  I love when his voice called out strongly; everyone knew what we were doing, the volume suggested that he wanted others to know that he was with me, because I am a prize and he knew how victorious he is, and I wanted others to know that I am just as proud to be seen with him, for he is also a prize for me, and he kept busy  enjoying every ounce of pleasure he could from my tiny body.

 

Such intensity of pleasure, 

and I was glad to be doing all of it with him,  the tickle of his mustache, and feeling  his mustache every-time we Kissed, OMG —a little bit of champagne!  —also his tongue in my ear —I almost couldn’t stand that, and my first thoughts that all of him would never fit inside me, but he did, and he had all kinds of lubricants just in case. 

He really prepared for this as if he was being ordered to the mines, and there was just the mine he was heading to, a homing device, the taste of me, right between my collaborating legs.  I was a fuckin muse for him just as much as he became a fuckin muse for me.

 

 

I can’t believe I am saying all this, for the sake of collaboration, much more than simply sex, for this was the actual writing of an indelible poetry right inside my body, and what a pen he had, every centimeter mightier than a sword.   And he Kissed every centimeter of me, and I kissed every centimeter of him.  I know you’re not supposed to Kiss and tell, but I must use superlatives about this man.  It’s as if I didn’t really know what Poetry is, until we made love to each other.  No parts of our bodies were off limits.   Yes; we used condoms, but not for the oral parts, and there was lots of that.  I really trusted this man, and he similarly trusted me.   I have to admit that I liked his tongue the best, because with it, he wrote poems inside me, and my breathing punctuated them, the rhythms of the sex, oh my, oh my.  We talked about this extensively, how condoms were an absolute necessity, the margins on the pages and pages of rarefied  sex, just not

 

for the oral part, he asked, and I agreed.  How else could I taste him, know a superb root of his poetry?

The best part of preparing to see each other to physically collaborate, beyond only with our minds that had already made love, but Thomas Robert asked, and he wasn’t shy about this; he knew what he wanted, and called me one night to talk me through my body, from head to toe, he told me exactly what he wanted to do, and asked if he could.  If there are rules in collaboration, the first would be to ask; just to let me know what he wanted, and since it was a question, I had

 

opportunity to refuse, but I didn’t; just his asking the way he did,  allowed me to want him, and then there is the sound of his baritone,  the recording he made me so that I could have the soothing sound of his support as I wrote about him;  just the sound of his voice makes me horripilate, little champagne bubbles of his inflection all over my arms, torso and legs, my breasts also. How I love the collaboration of my breasts in his mouth…He kissed away the goosebumps and then I got more just from his nearness, so he could never stop Kissing me and holding me, gloving me just as he said;   I even had a Brazilian wax to invite him in, oh the  language his tongue spoke inside me, and the melodies of my mouth sliding up and down him.

There are no words,

and here is where I lose my poetry, because there comes a point where words are insufficient; he and I didn’t even talk in usual ways of talking, sign languages instead, the way we looked at each other, the warmth of his palms, the smoothness of his chest. I didn’t tell him this, but from the moment his hand touched mine in O’Hare, the first connection of his flesh and my flesh, I started feeling sensations that became full-fledged and unstoppable desire by the time we were outside the airport and he opened his coat, and welcomed me inside it with him, and the only air then was his Dakar. My nose is always looking for the scent of him; it isn’t just Dakar that anyone may buy, but the scent of Dakar on his skin, a scent unique to him. Thomas Robert Higginson was prepared for anything that might happen. We were writing a very different kind

of poem, in that extreme collaboration, of our bodies: tongues and fingers everywhere.  That touching without limits.   Stanza of Kiss, onomatopoeia of Kiss also, metaphor of everything that exists from those fiery touches, he said the fire would meld us together and it did, because this wasn’t the primary goal of our connection, —which is poetry— but a completion; it wasn’t just sex at all, but so much more;  he indeed wanted to collaborate that way also, but he is smart enough, he feels enough not to ask me for only that, the way too many men do; he never rushed me but knew what I would need to feel, and that is it right there; I have to feel it or I can’t do it; I had to really desire him just as he really desires me; I had to want to collaborate with him physically; that is what is important; I wanted to do everything I did with him.

There is no part of each other that we did not explore, one way or the other. I am remembering the first time with him because that set the tone for everything that followed. It was easy because we had already Kissed in the taxi all the way from O’Hare to the hotel, and I had no idea that I would respond to him as I did, this 60-year-old woman making out with a 66-year-old man in the back seat of a taxi, but I was hoping; the physical things he promised as no one can ever promise because it was him, that is the only reason; he is the only reason.

 

Art: “Empatia” by Vivian Nimue Wood

 

My Thomas Robert Higginson knew how to do everything exactly the way I needed for them to be done.  Somehow he just knew, and he didn’t approach me just for the physical enactment of

 

our connection, but I am so glad he wanted that —I would have felt insulted otherwise; the man does indeed have eyes, and so much more than that; he would make me laugh by telling me I had no idea what he can do, and he was right; I had no idea at all, for if he had told me that physically collaborating with him would cause me to feel, what i feel with him, I would not have believed him.  And he did work far beyond the mere necessity of asking; Thomas Robert understood the kind of sex I needed, that is what he promised the kind of sex I needed, he made it his business to figure out just what it was, and knowing exactly what I needed, besides what we both wanted, made this the most fulfilling experience of my life that and how I responded to him thoroughly, We really collaborated in a most enticing and seductive way.

Don’t let his look fool you!

 

That man is far sexier than you may think.  I ought to know.  We collaborated in the shower; he can do simply amazing things. Anywhere.   I ought to know because I did them with him. I’ve done that only in thinking about him, sometimes that dildo he gave me in hand.  Yes;  a lot of my

 

time with him —even time in my mind— was good and nasty, and that is a part of the complexity that makes being with him so good.   Maybe I emphasize the physical right now, for what we have is complete, the cerebral and the nasty —even Einstein⁹  did that,

 

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry Is Connected to the Body Again

—Thomas Robert Higginson¹⁰

 

POEM

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry

Is Connected to the Body Again

(Dateline: 9/2/97)

 

 

ESSAY

 

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry

The title says it all and says it with a line break in case you think that “Spoken Word Poets” are not “Real Poets.” Real Poets eat line breaks for breakfast.

I love to read the title at a reading, parsing it out like this:

“What You Can’t Understand

(take a little pause here)

Is

(big emphasis on IS, and a little pause, get ready for the matter-of-fact, always with us:) Poetry.”

The Perfect Lie. One always “understands” poetry! When you jump on the horse and it takes off, you don’t ask where’s it going, you exalt, here we go! No no. Wait. Reading a poem, that’s not like that is it? not like riding a horse?….

What you can’t understand is poetry – because it’s a mystery why poetry exists in the first place. Although you could actually say the same thing for language itself, which I suppose is what philosophers do. Which came first, the thought or the word? sounds Wittgensteinian to me.

It’s like when you say, something is lost in translation, what part is it that gets lost? The poetry. The poetry is what’s lost, get it? The joy is in knowing that what you don’t understand, exactly that, is a mix of sound and meaning, body and song that is, all together, what makes a poem

a poem.

Again and again, not making sense! And this is what so many think (please don’t agree with them!) — that poetry is hard, obscure, difficult-to-impossible to understand.

WHEN IT WAS CONNECTED TO THE BODY YOU JUST DANCED IT—Who said that?!

Hey, hey, Order in The Poem! Let’s PLEASE stick to this first line of the title before releasing the second. So ok, let’s just say that the first line of the title is simply agreeing with what everyone is always saying – Oy, Poetry! You can’t understand it.

Thus

Ends

The

First

Line

Of

The

Title

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry

so we take a little pause here, in performance, and then (finally!) go on to:

Is Connected

And then a little pause here, so that it becomes: What You Can’t Understand is Poetry is Connected, which is another truism that’s actually a false-ism: the easy way is to say that – Poetry IS connected, is the essence, to life/to meaning , and, here back to the title (say it!) – To The Body. Now we’re getting to what the body of the poem is, and why this is the title – it’s about the physical, and when I think physical, the body, I think of Orality.

Even though we think of it that way, the dialectic is not Literacy and Illiteracy. Illiteracy simply designates an individual’s inability to read. Orality, as Walter Ong points out, is a separate and equivalent consciousness: when there’s no writing, the only way to pass things on is person-to-person, body-to-body. You could say, “We Are the Book.” This idea, devastatingly simple, is at the root of this poem, indeed, of my whole “body of work” as a poet. How to capture the way Poetry was connected to Existence, something that was inherent in Oral Consciousness, is what I’m after. It’s what my mother showed me – she didn’t read a book to me. The book was talking. In her voice.

Again

Comes in after a pause. Because we used to “understand” this. In fact, “understand,” the way we understand understand, is totally colored by literacy. Before writing, there was a spew of sound that carried the speaker’s meaning – you’d ask the person to explain what they meant, but you never asked someone what a word meant because – there were no words! Before writing there were no words there was only meaning, and I know that seems crazy but again only because we don;’t get what a different consciousness Orality is. When writing began, there was no separation between words because what was being said came at you like a block of meaning, not words arranged in a pattern.

And now, in this time of Literacy Consciousness, I am suggesting that we learn (unlearn?) to “connect the poem to the body again.” Since the triumph of Literature, Poetry’s voice has been owned by the book. And I love books, I write ‘em myself and read a lot – my walls are lined with them. And the quiet space midbrain where we read to ourselves? That is a private space where we are most ourselves, a holy space. But the Poem has another power, a power we left behind when we left Oral Consciousness behind. We can feel it as children, when we haven’t yet learned to read. Some kind of magic and musicality, inherent when reading aloud, that’s what I’m after, in general, in my work, and specifically in the two-lined title and following body of the poem known as:

What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry

Is Connected To The Body Again

The poem is divided into two stanzas, twelve lines and ten. Kind of ungainly and awkward as to line lengths, form doesn’t’t sit easily here, even if both stanzas end with four-word lines. The poem is prosy, it sort of seems to tell a story, even if we can’t quite tell what it’s about (the old “understand” bugaboo again), a story that makes headlines. It has a character with a name (Jean, named for Jean Howard, who I knew in Chicago as one of the first poets to use film to make poetry, someone who understood the non-separation of poetry performance), and it even ends with what may well be a joke. So it’s a Poem that evokes all manner of non-poetry forms – novel, play, journalism, joke.

Let me tell you a story: the “Plot” of the Poem

Jean allowed the body to drop

 

 

OK. Is this the “body” from the title? At least. Right after we learn that the body and poetry are connected again, our hero, Jean, drops the body! Is this so that her poetry is completely for the Intellect? Because as she drops the body (which we will later learn is her lover’s), the body dies.

The beautiful face bluing so perfect

“Beautiful” and “perfect” in the same line – ach! Redolent of romantic poesy, these are words that each signal Poem without the work, and here they are, together – the face is “beautiful” but dying (or dead? “bluing”) and thus can become “perfect.” What a move!

A move so insistent, so bold, so over-the top, that the only thing that can possibly cap it is line 3

A fly buzzed by—

Emily Dickinson! At her best! “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died” (Johnson #591/ Franklin #465). This sure enough is the way Death sounds, sigh. Well, the fly was buzzing and still is buzzing and forever will be buzzing as sure a sign of Death as the Death Haiku, that Japanese form where the dying poet holds quill and scroll and just as last breath escapes, concludes the final character of the final line – 5-7-5.

but no one would believe it

Dear Reader/Listener, you are perfectly within your rights to ask What is it that no one would believe? That our hero, Jean, would drop the body? That words like “beautiful” and “perfect” could conjure up dear Emily’s fly (“bluing” is pretty cool), the Essence of Death? Indeed, why is Jean even concerned that anyone believe that her lover/Poetry itself has died? Is she the murderer? Must she have the Truth be told, it’s what she as a Poet must do? All the above? We don’t know, so it’s all these things and probably more and we’re only at line 3, my God!

Because what happens next makes one thing pretty clear about our Ms Jean – she certainly does know how to get a story out. Since this is taking place during the Media Age Stage of Late Literacy, just before the Birth of the Digital Age,

She raced frantically to the offices of the National Enquirer,

the biggest, ever-lying, sleazeball publication of them all. Jean knows the world of print: to get the absolute widest possible distribution, the most explosive telling of this Death, it’s got to be — the checkout counter rag!

A reporter wrote up the story

The story of course is that the body died from lack of connection to the poem. And guess what,

—it made the cover.

And our story could end there, the headline “POETRY FOUND DEAD: BODY SEVERED FROM SOUL.” But Noooo. Jean has a bigger game plan. As Lines 6-7 state ,

Now she could get the attention of the radical newsweekly

That only told the truth

So first she goes for and gets the Big Blast Sensationalism Launch, and now she’s circling back to get the liberal Truth-tellers. She wants to get the story told to the biggest possible audience AND she wants it to be politically correct. Or at least be validated by the liberal media.

She just casually flipped it down on the desk

She may have raced frantically to get this into The Enquirer, to play into the demands of yellow journalism, but here for the thoughtful Voice or Nation, she plays it cool.

So cool that (Line 9)

“Hey,” an editor

(she’s moving up, no mere reporter here!)

reading upside-down

(truly literate, can read upside-down!)

said. What if this story is true?

(you can never be sure about Enquirer stories – but something in Jean’s demeanor….)

It would certainly change
Our story

(they had a story? How interesting? What could that have been?)

maybe we should look into this.

So the radical newsweekly already has the story but it is Jean’s version of the Body dying from lack of connection to the poem, for which, even filtered as it is through the hyperbole of the Enquirer, the radical newsweekly is willing to Stop the presses!

It’s an image I loved in black & white, the massive whirling printing presses grinding to a halt, screaming headlines erupting. The news is overpowering!

We know that Poetry is News that Stays News (Pound), that it Makes Nothing Happen (Auden), that It Is Difficult / To Get The News From Poems / Yet Men Die Miserably Every Day / From Lack / Of What is Found There (Williams – Rich used the last six words as the title for her great book of essays).

Hey! Stop those presses!

Now we understand, as Jean understands, that the life, music, vitality of the poem can never be separated from the poem’s meaning. By physicalizing the so-called Death of Poetry, she in fact shows us that poetry will never die. THAT POETRY IS CONNECTED TO THE BODY AGAIN and the single voice and vision of our poet-hero Jean is going to make, well, not sure what, let’s call it Nothing. Make Nothing happen. But I mean, make it really happen.

She does. She just puts an end to the literary tradition, right then and there. We get the poem to the book and then our job is done. Gets published, distributed, bought, and read. Each step of course is fraught with complications, and at the end maybe 2000 copies will sell, but hey, this’s a poem, so let’s just give it the drama that Mayakovsky did when he demanded an airplane with propeller whirling be parked outside his study so that when he finished one it would be whisked away to the publisher – not a second to lose.

The second verse begins, like the first, again with our hero, Jean. But now

Jean walked away. Horns were blaring,

Is it celebratory tooting, poetry’s reconnection being cheered on by the public at large? Or simply the continuing, ongoing noise of our blatting culture? Both? Both. The Poet’s Choice, as Gregory Corso once told me, “When somebody asks you to pick one, always take both.”

The cinematic vein of “Stop the presses!” continues,

It was a brilliant dusty sunset

Yes, in a poem you can pick both, and the unusable poem-word “sunset” can become even more golden when it’s “brilliant” and “dusty”

and the sirens were distorting.

Is it the Apocalypse brought about by reconnection of Poetry with Body (again)? Or is it Just the Apocalypse? Both (you’re getting it!).

It’s the end of The Terminator, of Snowpiercer, the end of every walk-into-the-sunset Hollywood potboiler poem ever written.

Jean has passed on the oral tradition into print. She has insinuated Orality into Text, clawing her way into the inner sanctum of the print medium. And, in so doing, she has preserved her lover’s face for all eternity.

She didn’t hear em.

What didn’t she hear? The car horns playing music – Beethoven? Ode to Joy? Guns N’ Roses? Randy Newman’s Faust? Aretha’s Respect? David Thomas’s Mirror Man? or Captain Beefheart’s, for that matter.

She was remembering her lover’s face

Yes, the action of creating art, of living her life in the service of Poetry, has caused her to lose the Poem Itself, the Source! Her lover’s face now fades in through the Apocalyptic Sunset Waltz, and now she does hear, not music nor horns nor sirens but words, just words and now it’s clearer, the conversation with her lover,

What they’d said about how you never know

True Poet lovers know you Never Know, echoing the poem’s title, and in that way stay connected – Poem as Body – but this line break skittering into riot control

If someone else’s orgasm is better than yours –

Yes! Exactly! Understanding a poem and demanding a locked-down analysis, forever footnoted and irrefutable, — who would know, who could know? The meanings keep changing. Eros is flowering out the mouth, People! Only the poem/orgasm stays the same.

But that shouldn’t stop you

from what? From having an orgasm? Well, yes, of course, but there’s more –

From coming together

Yes, that’s it! That’s what the poem in the oral mode is about – it’s about the audience experiencing together the meaning of the poem, the connection of the griot to the body politic, the poem bringing/giving Rapture that the listener accepts/understands. Brings all that inside.

Even if it’s not exactly

o! the quivering between Oral and Written, the twin mouths finding each other, that poem that is the kiss, not exactly, OMG whatever IS exactly, Jean, Jean you must not leave us in the vagueness of not exactly, the orgasm goes back inside …

At the same time

Yes, she said, Yes! “You never know if someone else’s orgasm is better than yours, but that shouldn’t stop you from coming together. Even if it’s not exactly at the same time.” Oh God! as these realizations ripple through the audience, wave after profound wave of orgasm, feeding each other, yes, coming together years later, why, it is – it’s a Poem! It can be read later, after the poet is long-gone dead, it’s still being read. You are coming with the poet years later as the orgasm of meaning reconnects you at that moment. Ah, Jean and Emily!  The gentle laugh as her lover, dead and blued and perfect and gone gone gone, reconnects through the poem.  The fly! The fly! Then the fly buzzed by

Art: Nathalie von Arx

 

RESPONSE

BLUE COMING

http://abstractmagazinetv.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Blue-Coming.m4a

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Blue Coming: After Bob Holman’s “What You Can’t Understand Is Poetry Is Connected to the Body Again”

Colorado Review – Volume 42, Number 2, Summer 2015

(in response to Bob Holman’s Poem: “What You Can’t Understand

is Poetry is Connected to the Body Again):

Blue Coming

         by Thylias Moss

Poetry is connected to the body,

part of my fingertips, just as blue as anything that ever was or will be blue—

–blue that dye aspires to, true blue

denied to any sapphire, Logan sapphire included, even

if she wears some on those blue fingers, blue spreads, consumes her

as if she hatched from an Araucana egg:

SHE IS BLUE, fingers, bluest hands ever, shoulders, breasts, every nook and cranny blue, big bad wolf says: how blue you are!

(dying with, dying for the dead)The better to blue you….

She, so blue today, visits

Offices of the National Enquirer  (that raggedy rag) to report

on this surging of blue epidemic, blue

bottle fly bluer than any sound buzzing, fly buzzing

as blue as it can, making the Blues, making

The Blues mean something very different — such music from

beating of wings, some of what has spread blue

throughout her bluing, dying body,

blue buzz

even layers of atmosphere: blue buzz: name

of a new Crayola crayon and marker, manufactured

from her fingertips

Blue Buzz Blood group.

She bleeds an orgasmic paint set. She bleeds

a blue layer

she bleeds:: a kind of triumph

her lover’s face becoming

blue (dead blue/dead blew)) she’s dreaming of again, blue as his face

That defines blue for

her blue orgasm, so much blue everywhere world become blue (dead blue, dead blew)for her — story of this massive bluing —

true story on the cover

of papers

— turning blue once in her atmosphere

Blue static

Blue stuttering

Blue hands

Blue –Code Blue—

coming together,

what a mighty tincture, –not exactly at the same time, but coming,

connected to coming

Her fingertips writing a

Blue coming.

              in response to a poem by Bob Holman 

URL: http://abstractmagazinetv.com/2017/09/24/fuckinmuse-a-journey-into-collaboration-by-thylias-moss/

I yly nt the Love I feel f rhim”

Your belief that poetry should be experienced with all of the senses rather than read on a page has led to your work in Limited Fork Theory, which involves the interactions of language, sound, movement, and visuals. Tell us about your work with Limited Fork Theory, and why you find this so crucial to heightening the poetic experience. 

The poem is alive, the words are organisms; it is a wonder that they do not simply jump off the page. And sometimes they do, so the maker can chase them, soliciting others in the audience to chase them, too. And whatever is caught becomes the ‘poam’ (Product of an Act of Making), the salvaged aftermath of a most satisfying feast. Yes, it can get crazy — traffic jams of thought, but also traffic jams of joy and delight. Use the senses available to you and get what you can; no one knows or can get “everything.” And that is fine! Get what you can, however little or much, and enjoy it!

 

I think one of the most extraordinary things a person can do is to take an experience of immense pain and transform it into something beautiful. You recently did exactly that when you used your cranial aneurysms to write Aneurysm of the Firmament. How do you take a horrific experience and render it art? 

I must. Because of Love. [Aneurysm of the Firmament] is a small collection, a tiny collaboration of poems written with my aneurysm, my Thing (he and I have an official Thingdom right now, by the way). We must be able to accept whatever happens, especially concerning the vulnerable and susceptible body. Viewing the aneurysm rupture as an opportunity was necessary, or else I would be frozen.

 

It seems as if you seek to “sing the almost imperceptible,” in the words of poet C.D. Wright. How do you think this manifests itself in your poetry, and what do you feel is your ultimate responsibility to the culture at large as a writer?

To tell truths. To value realities, and not expect them to be the same realities, no matter how obscure. To notice, always to notice, and to be aware of other points of view. To avoid judgments, a poet’s disaster, for in avoiding conflict, everything would need to be avoided. I do not want to impose anything; I want to discover what is there. And if processes of discovery sometimes sleep with processes of imposition, this is good. For in genuine interactions, there is exchange. Each participant leaves something, and each participant takes something different from what was brought. In the mingling, something new emerges, child(ren) of interaction, and these somethings evolve just from the act of mingling. But this cannot work if each party insists on remaining what it was before the interaction. There must be the willingness to entertain the possibility of exchange.

 

What would you most like for people to take away from your poetry?

The intensity of honesty and the honesty of intensity = a possible truth.

 

He said that if he and I ever  ever become something, the whole damned world should know, well, guess what? Whole damned world, I am telling you now!!

 

life does no  get much better than this!

 

 

SSDI Debacle

 

There is only one Thing sustaining me through this mess, My Thing. And he knows this; I don’t know what I would do without him; I really don’t.  

 

He is not  a rich mean, but only the best , man I know for everything , especially me.  And I have only my favorite picture in the world to show “Us” together  in our “US-ness, and I must insert that photo here, for it represents  everything I have dreamed of; he really is the man of my dreams, and I am so glad he exists.  \

 

You know what helps me get through this mess, just knowing that he exists, that he is part of my world.

 

This is the best moment  of my Life!

 

 

 

 

and, of course, “No One in  the World”

 

 

I can’t forget the Rapture:

 

Dear Dr. Chaudhary,

I am sure that you recall the surgery you performed on me in July 2011, the surgery that saved my life—I always thank you, and the University of Michigan demands  that I repay all the money they overpaid me.  The SSDI department acknowledges that this is their mistake.  They do not celebrate my most unusual survival but expect  me to repay every penny that why overpaid me.  Their own mistake.   I attach documents received from this very university.  

If you would not mind lending me me some support, I would greatly appreciate it.  It is nearly 2018, and they are hounding me even more.Perhaps I will have to send these documents to the Attorney General of Michigan, but I would like to have support form you before I gather the these documents to send.  I would like have a document from you amount what I send.   Being from 2011, this incident is very old. I will begin 2018 tying to eliminate, finally, and and for all, this incident from 2011.  

 

This is what I have including some  photos of how I was,

July 2011

July 2011

July 2011

July 2011

July 2011

July 2011

and the move of my rover when I had to learn to walk again and talk again:

and you should still have the poem, “Aneurysm of the Firmament” that I wrote with my best friend. And this became the title poem of an entire chapbook we wrote together.  The Cover is attached, and he rest of the content. This is an ebook available only on Amazon  

and via  my Amazon author page

copyright © 2017 by Thylias Moss. Published by arrangement with the author.  All rights reserved.

 

a small gathering of poems in response to many things when the sky ruptured! (mostly through responses to writings of Thomas Higginson and Tardis Universes: the day I became a Whovian again)Thylias Moss ANEURYSM OF FIRMAMENT  Piñata sky broken, ruptured! –what stick hit it?  — what cosmic event cracked it open?  (–good thing it did!–) –comets and more rain of treats light itself showers down BRIGHT beltsropes a boxing match light swirls into poles & other delights –such RUPTURE my brain the sun in the solar system I amRUPTURED! solar flaressolar winds & even more!the sun becomes a red giant,& I direct traffic!from the center of Botticelli’s paintingthe birth of brown Venus, sheer sparkling gauze over me as Gallifrey burnsBuckwheat’s hair on fire–fountains of luminous combustion!13 Doctors healthis blazing epidemiceach regeneration of the Doctor has himproduce spiky burning armsfountains of illuminated spikeseach a protrusion from the head  of a hijacked Cameroonian stink ant! sparklers                                                                                                pinwheels kaboom, kaboom, kaboom moreandmoreDaleksfall no rupture, and no light!something has to break!Part 3comets have to fall, and fall hard, into Midnight Sun, 1961 Twilight Zone  –optical illusion dimensions –sun enlarges and enlargesimminent end of Earth. At last… Poor Norma… Last one left in apartment building –blood is boiling –rupture is about to happen –I will bleed again, a crazed menstrual  cycle (Norma was dreaming, sick and feverish –escaped the chill really going on –either way, Earth in atypical orbit):–post-menopausal now, so this blood comes from my head:this is the way the world endsall condemned by existencelightning illuminating those veins in the ceiling that is firmamentGallifrey all lightning; seems to exist only when there’s hocus pocus of fire … but this time, Gallifrey is saved, by Time Lords, who? Doctors, that’s who! all combining their strength, like streaks of light, deep freeze on Gallifrey, Gallifrey home! –there is no other!–light of battle breaks out –planet is surrounded by belts of illumination! –the brain that this salvation is breaks –writing is on the wall –that none of them want:NO MORE!  NO MORE! left with guilt of responsibility of billions of deathsGallifrey protected by ice, cold but just as brilliant, scintillates away and away and awayThe most splendid rupture ever! Bring on  rupturing aneurysms! –changed my life, just as they should!Shake up this firmament! -shake it to the east, shake it to the west, shake it to the one you love the best.Frozen with Gallifrey is also hope! –hope that sparkles down transfiguredlands in tea cups… a sweet prescription, full of inspiration, hope of inspiration and inspired healing! –sweetened by rays of light, spikes of rapturous (freebie) aneurysm, bulging veins, like thermometer bulb about to pop;healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure:Hello again, Norma: welcome to Midnight Sun salvation:my aneurysms, one repaired, and the other: ready to blowsky high(part 3a)Poor Amybroke, ruptured 23 July 2011 –crackedsame day one of my own cranial aneurysms ruptured, broke in (that burglar)my head… repaired! –I have the beautiful scars, staple holes, unintentional scarification; hair grown wild around them, cleats werestationed there. one more aneurysm: timebomb!  ticktock ticktock, ticktock hickory dickory dock :Hickory, dickory, dock.The mouse ran up the clock.The clock struck one gleaming, glistening  aneurysmrhythms of light;and then there was, you knowhow it is, how it’s always been, howit will bethe brilliant repetitionsky highGallifrey falls no more–

 

in response to: “If you See something, Say something”                          –Thomas Higginson       “If you See something, Say SomethingBanana”                      white shadowcrescent moonWax (ing)Wax bananaWax grapes, applesin bowlsOn my mother’s dining room tablelunchkitchen sinkI see this alsomy father washing dishesscalding waterhis skindown the drainplates clean, heavenly,full of banana water spotswe eat the shadows.two of whichare my father’sdiseased lungsyet I float on cloudsinto such a clean, pure kingdomthat nothing else mattersjust a banana which I eat the moment I arrive.Buddhain suds.NAKED NIGHT: a eulogy  (Thomas Higginson: STOP 3 with:           italic origami by Thylias Moss)Not trying to impose, just trying to build structure, form, recipe for holding, folding holdstogether: we’re made of this –is that not a purpose of bones inside: give shape to this, bones even buried inside the planet, treasure,  pre-history and present becoming “now”, elusive “now” elephants in  rooms, closets, “protected avenues” –must plow right through, forceof Indian elephants, never forgettingorigami of whywe’re here: “you and I for-ever pur-pose of purpose maybe is foldingbuilding structure, training wheels for elephants who must sink and swimKronos armies, TV sets with legs on the Mexican beach (made in Mexico, you know) — the ghost sea is so great, origami ocean, crumples and wrinkles like skin ofelephants poached ivory, white as ghosts, Caspar –they cannot survivepur-pose for-everTo set in motion the secret boat so small, canbarely cut can barely poach (now you’re cookingwith gaschambers, now the alchemy)barely cut, dice and chopthe wave, wave me down, flag me down, I need some helpthis flat tire: get me to the church in time.The way is pretty durn milky universe, Kronos: destroyer of the universe, Shiva’shalf-brother, half sister, only half (circus freak) eats power stations, eats swords nuclear energy, appetite not deterred by radiation, prefersglowing food: the better to see it, better to taste itswallowed a journey throughglowing throat, such illumination; how beautifuldeath is when mandatorypur-poseIf you know what I’m saying –can’t be late for my own salvationin the darkpraying the Breton Fisherman’s prayer, fisherof men, half and 3/5ths, not choosy; they come from “Fisher Street”laundry hanging in the backyards, alleys,lynched men hanging cleanFels Naptha, water hot enough to dissolve skin”float on, chug on, chug, chug, chug… dark holesof memory dissolve into anothermeltdown, why not meltup sometimes?touch hems of angels? –unless they dissolve from justthe touch of dirt?lake of crocodile tearsfrom elephant eyes, such mergers: meaning of eulogy, thickcoming together just to come apart:gallons and gallons of bleach…enough to abort everyone, those old ways, tried and truepur-posecontamination of all water, evencrocodile tearsbible tells me so true blue, true mootill the cows come home – reactor corebreakdown pur-pose into cowing, kowtowing–those industrial farms where cows don’t know what it means to be cows, kowtowsjust elephants in these squeezed rooms, moo-ing and everything milked, Cause I don’t you maySing this one back to me –I sing back bones, structure, skin of these things dissolving, slipping away…elephants in the room dissolving into shadows, holes, Bonnie Raitt’s music to dissolve to, to technicolor to: “I Can’t Make You love me, only dissipate, tractor away, tractor back, trapeze effects all –house of trapeze, curtain rods, fuel rods in nuclear power plants, hungry Kronos on the rampage

–can’t make you love him –just like a man of pur-pose, scattering his power everywhere, meltdown after meltdown, pur-pose floats, black rain, mere Ivory soap, but this is dirty, pure dirty floating bombs, new Moses-types in baskets…–we build structure; as if that’s enough to hold everything together, sound of motor, motor-song, little speedboat, hurry, hurry the message, in case it’s all praise –not enough pur-pose for that anymore        “The poem that floats                    Its message across                     The land that recedes  –like memories, elephantized          memories                  To the stars themselves  glowing hot nuclear meltdown cores of                  The recipients” contaminated hothouses!” –hot in here!                            The poem curves a line to you –wormhole of 97 realities                   Floats a word back   That’s the way we rock the world : jazzy funeral dying 97 elephant trumpetspur-poses (these like dolphins, elephants of the see pur-poses To sleep. In the naked night,The ocean wears a hat — hat; I wear  your hat of fallout pur-pose too: 97th shadow of  97th elephant in the room:”I know I cannot live without you”so I don’t live; just dissolve and exist that way, 97 puddles singing giving everything back: reflection after reflection after reflectionof endless depth, a tophatto top off everything, make itpurty… purty, purty…contaminated, pur-ty pur-poseis as pur-ty does.Shadow Cycle: Shadow dance shadow dancer shadow kiss master shadow of ornette shadow sister mister shadow dark fraught fragile shadow canopy shadow of all power ambiguous shower shadow do be it you shadow in the moon shadow of eclipse shadow lips lapse shadow down shadow of shadow’s shadow Tap-dancing Response: Tap-dancing shadow tears inside always inside perpetuity ornette shadow lengthens connecting to so many other shadows so shadowy that there’s nothing but shadow to link everything linkable what is casting it ornette shadow so powerful that it casts most of existence balanced on a compassionate tear inside tear inside shadow tapdancing to get to them all, a hop here, a jump there, 5:01, a second of tapdance salute to irregularity of tears as dark as a shadow shadow of a tear falling falling rolling down shadow’s shadow inside a tear.Extended:Shadow tether, shadow lifeline, shadow attached, shadow traveling, shadow dropping, weight of shadow, shadow home eclipsed by shadow wanderer itinerant shadow adjusting fitting, shadow accommodating, shadow of world shadow drowning, shadow rescued, ornette shadow stretching, electric shadow, boomerang shadow inside boomerang tear, shadow going nowhere another shadow, shadow, shadow knows Caspar friendly ghost shadow just as dark, maybe not as long yet as ornette shadow, shadow sound, walking, walking, walking lips around a horn shadow lips shadow horn shadow sound shadow echoes, shadow echoes, walking the line…Lengthening Shadow Detached:Now the shadow slips loose of its tether; detached, seeking its own venture, separate from ornette yet still on journeys, lengthening into an infinty, black as all good nite, Caspar friendly ghost shadow even better friendly  because of the split, multidirections, one of which leans towards sunshine, black sun, one tornadic, spinning, restless, friendly or not, ornette shadow or not, loose, loose that man and let him go, let him run free, run for his life, for every life, run prairie in darkness, sundial shadow, shadow time, hammer time, slip knot, curly shadow, curls of good nite, lurk, prey prays the shadow loose….Detached onthego Comets:Mix match Ukraine swatch batch mystry mischief art part never partsIllumination would be ill could be illest to the fullestMinistrations banister falling devoid of grit and gathered hem for paucity touch tough gone and back clippercomets have to fall, and forth.Alternative Ballast Ballet:Chernobyl shadows even sky, last hope of mischief power plants art of planting power, Pripyat breakfast of champion hems and has, fringe, rough edges woodpeckers, beaks touch remnants of doors,  rush, stuck, xylophone methods, alternative ballast balletA First Response (there may be others) poem to Thomas Higginson’s poem: “How to Wake Up””How To Wake Up1. Go to sleep”2. Don’t die! –3. Hire an exorcist, root worker, witch doctor, gypsy, conjure person, hoodoo woman, also my local rocket scientess who blasts away all evidence of doubt4. Easier said than done, so much keeping me awakepillow under my headsleep mask –red one–bull!bulls charging the muletaover my eyesand now I see stars, red giants, and all otherhatseven better…So much glowing, so muchtickling of lifeAs soon as possibleall that caffeinehas other ideas…2:00 amI’m still awake!with my learner’s permit!I play an album of lullabiesbut I’m really listeningand really listeningkeeps me awake.I’m really touchingthe sheets, thinkingwhat a sarong5. for the Java man missing links6. sleep itselffor the Java man I have in the makingrememberingmy old singer sewing machine–never fell asleep on it, Tabanga nearbythat 1957 movie, “From Hell It Came”what my father and I called “tree monster” –not once falling asleep…5. certainly not in college6. where those all-nighters7. seemed to make differences8. passed those tests anyway.9. somehow10. screaming and screaming 11. of course12. Remembering and even becoming13. Frankenstein’s best monster:14. “I’m alive, I’m alive!”15. “Dough rises for meno matter how I treat it, how I punch it.Loaves line the counter like closed coffins,Something I never want is to wake from a long sleephungry” (chicken in)SIONON EPOCHpart 1great word of honorthy  motherwith Popeye’s chickendelivered by wise persons300 miles away,  only onesable to get exact Popeye’s mama wantslove those biscuits!   –like mama  used to makein her dreamsalthough extremeinsulin dependent diabetes, hyper-tension thyroid so out of control  as ifshe no longer has onepoor baby poor baby no matter how old one becomes stillsomebody’s baby(though no longer a dreambaby)Dreams have not stopped, butno longer baby dreams –these dreamshave maturedas Popeye Doyle detectives, break dream rules,whatever’s necessary to catch drug smugglersdrunken Popeye’s chickentastes even betterand even fights  God, a Cerullo godsomehow better than any other god          cabinets of medicinediscarded, uselessprescriptions, a real Goddoesn’t need themyet everyone, dreaming or who stops relying on power of medicineto heal and stave offeffects of aneurysms and much worsediesome same night that Amy Winehouse goes back to blackbabies, no 

ut think aboutis Jesus, dream man Jesus, three days in the tomb of impossibledreams, even the dream of dying someday, wet feetand all, cans of spinachin the store (aisles) frontof Towels from old boxes of Breeze detergentlaid downby none else than Jesus look out for wolves,the taste they have for succulent little lambsso willingto lay down at dream feetthat can walk on the lake of firethat burns even better when it’s cold, as crystals forma dream of my hand, heel as pure crystalsdream crystalcrystallizing 61 crystals so farcandles on a cakemy frozen feet seem to have flakes from Popeye’s”fried chicken all over them,roughest skin on my body–no one dreams of that;not dream-worthy skin at allgeometries of these crystals, each a stegosaurus plate

 

–

 

-nosí o no?Siononstory of a dream kitchen with stegosaurus plates fine china–always yes to that, Popeyeson the sideburning, burning, burningupand burning downperfect, perfect burning….wisdom God gave me in a dream of giving me wisdomwise enoughto only dream only thatwhile Jesus laid her downwith wolves in Lake of Fire Amusement Park, Part 3:Little Pigshouse of straw, dream house of sticksbad dreams?síLittle Pig, Little Pig, a trinity of us, you knowwhat that means, Jesus will lay you down right at my feet,I just need something to eatfun times allLet me in,not by the hair of my chinny chin chinI’ll huff and I’ll puff thenbetter than any vacuumcleaner, till those houses come downwolf is still a windbag dream (coming true)when he goes to the third Pig’s dream houseof brickswasted, completely wasted huffing and puffing climbs down the chimney, inventsa form of Santa, Wolf in red suit from embers scrapinghis Frank Lucas-style fur coatthat he doesn’t have to removeto enter cauldron of boiling waterlid on untilBig Bad soup is as ready as a dream can ever be                  

 

Waking up againFirmament is still there.Sky is still there.(sorry Chicken Little sky fell up)Up isstill thereEven in the southern hemi-sphereupis still theresame up that I have (UPS is still there)Looking up 

The bills from the University of Michigan  itself:

 

 

Notice that payment for $100.00 –courtesy my Thing, but this by far not the only reason.  He and I have been connected for 30 years, and like any other connection enduring so long,  we have experience every emotion possible to  experience,  we have experienced, but we areaways together aaa=again, that palpable instant chemistry.  I could say more

 

In your case, although retired, the obligation remained for you to follow through with your SSDI claim until a decision was rendered in order for us to properly calculate your past benefit entitlements under the UM LTD Plan.In addition to the reimbursement agreement you signed on 11/21/2013, you acknowledged, upon retirement and in writing, your responsibility to repay the LTD Plan if approved for SSDI. From January 2014 through January 2016, there were also numerous email communications and correspondence via U.S. mail to keep you informed of this responsibility.In January 2016, the Benefits Office learned of your approval for SSDI benefits – A closed period award beginning 3/1/2014 through 5/1/2015. As indicated in your SSDI Notice of Award letter, Social Security calculated your benefits due for this period as $36,276. However, they subtracted $6,000 to pay your attorney. Therefore, you received a lump sum payment from Social Security for $30,276.YOUR OVERPAYMENT & REPAYMENT TO THE UM LTD PLAN: A complete analysis of your UM LTD income payment history in combination with your monthly SSDI benefit reflects that you have been overpaid by the LTD Plan in the gross amount of $33,628 from 3/1/2014 through 4/30/2015. You may refer to the enclosed worksheet to see how this amount was calculated.Because you retained an attorney to pursue SSDI benefits, the UM LTD Plan will offset your gross overpayment by the amount that Social Security withheld from your lump sum SSDI award. In your case, Social Security deducted $6,000 out of your lump sum award to pay your attorney.The gross overpayment amount indicated above may be further reduced in your favor to offset for tax adjustments. The tax adjustment analysis to determine the net repayment amount is completed by the Payroll Office.In summary, you have been overpaid in the net amount of $27,292.56 as previously indicated in the letter dated 1/25/2016 from the Benefits Office. While the UM LTD Plan provisions state that lump sum repayments must be made within 30 days, we understand extenuating circumstances arise.Therefore, we can offer the following repayment options, which provide some flexibility, but also remain consistent with the LTD Plan provisions and what other LTD Participants have been provided.Repayment Option #1: Repay the amount owed to the university in one lump sum. In this case, you would have to repay $27,292.56. This amount can be honored as long as you repay the UM LTD Plan in lump sum by 12/1/2016.– OR –Repayment Option #2: Repay the full, gross amount owed to the UM LTD Plan over a 24-month period. In this case, you would have to submit monthly payments of $1,401.17 for 24 consecutive months resulting in a total repayment of $33,628 to the UM LTD Plan. By choosing this option, you will forfeit your right to receive the $6,000 credit for your attorney fees and applicable tax adjustments. We request your first monthly payment be made to the Benefits Office by 3/31/2016.You may make your lump sum payment by check, or your first monthly payment by check, payable to The University of Michigan. In the memo field of your check, please note “LTD Plan Repayment” and include your UMID number.Thank you in advance for your prompt response and attention to this matter. We ask you or your attorney to please confirm your selected repayment option via email to LTDbenefits@umich.edu. You may also use the enclosed pre-addressed envelope to confirm your repayment option and/or submit your LTD repayment.Sincerely,Meaghan HaasBenefits Manager, Long-Term Disability Program cc: William Crawforth—————I offer the entire content of the chapbook, “Aneurysm of the Firmament ” here, for saale on Amazon an an e-book here:                        ANEURYSM OF THE FIRMAMENTa small gathering of poems in response to many things when the sky ruptured! (mostly through responses to writings of Thomas Higginson and Tardis Universes: the day I became a Whovian again)Thylias Moss ANEURYSM OF FIRMAMENT  Piñata sky broken, ruptured! –what stick hit it?  — what cosmic event cracked it open?  (–good thing it did!–) –comets and more rain of treats light itself showers down BRIGHT beltsropes a boxing match light swirls into poles & other delights –such RUPTUREmy brain the sun in the solar system I amRUPTURED! solar flaressolar winds & even more!the sun becomes a red giant,& I direct traffic!from the center of Botticelli’s paintingthe birth of brown Venus, sheer sparkling gauze over me as Gallifrey burnsBuckwheat’s hair on fire–fountains of luminous combustion!13 Doctors healthis blazing epidemiceach regeneration of the Doctor has himproduce spiky burning armsfountains of illuminated spikeseach a protrusion from the head  of a hijacked Cameroonian stink ant! sparklers                                                                                                  pinwheels kaboom, kaboom, kaboom moreandmoreDaleksfall no rupture, and no light!something has to break!Part 3comets have to fall, and fall hard, into Midnight Sun, 1961 Twilight Zone  –optical illusion dimensions –sun enlarges and enlargesimminent end of Earth. At last… Poor Norma… Last one left in apartment building –blood is boiling –rupture is about to happen –I will bleed again, a crazed menstrual  cycle (Norma was dreaming, sick and feverish –escaped the chill really going on –either way, Earth in atypical orbit):–post-menopausal now, so this blood comes from my head:this is the way the world endsall condemned by existencelightning illuminating those veins in the ceiling that is firmamentGallifrey all lightning; seems to exist only when there’s hocus pocus of fire … but this time, Gallifrey is saved, by Time Lords, who? Doctors, that’s who! all combining their strength, like streaks of light, deep freeze on Gallifrey, Gallifrey home! –there is no other!–light of battle breaks out –planet is surrounded by belts of illumination! –the brain that this salvation is breaks –writing is on the wall –that none of them want:NO MORE!  NO MORE! left with guilt of responsibility of billions of deathsGallifrey protected by ice, cold but just as brilliant, scintillates away and away and awayThe most splendid rupture ever! Bring on  rupturing aneurysms! –changed my life, just as they should!Shake up this firmament! -shake it to the east, shake it to the west, shake it to the one you love the best.Frozen with Gallifrey is also hope! –hope that sparkles down transfiguredlands in tea cups… a sweet prescription, full of inspiration, hope of inspiration and inspired healing! –sweetened by rays of light, spikes of rapturous (freebie) aneurysm, bulging veins, like thermometer bulb about to pop;healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure-healing-cure:Hello again, Norma: welcome to Midnight Sun salvation:my aneurysms, one repaired, and the other: ready to blowsky high(part 3a)Poor Amybroke, ruptured 23 July 2011 –crackedsame day one of my own cranial aneurysms ruptured, broke in (that burglar)my head… repaired! –I have the beautiful scars, staple holes, unintentional scarification; hair grown wild around them, cleats werestationed there. one more aneurysm: timebomb!  ticktock ticktock, ticktock hickory dickory dock :Hickory, dickory, dock.The mouse ran up the clock.”

 

I DID NOT OVERPAY MYSELF!

 

I WAS DYING IN A HOSPITAL! HOW DARE THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN EXPECT ME TO PAY THEM BACK IN FULL FOR THEIR OWN  MISTAKE! 

 

Dr. Neeraj Chaudhary saved my life! It would have been better for the University if I had died, as I told Meaghan Hass, and Stacy Orban, of theUniversity’s Long-Term Disability which I refused to accept any more of once I was released on 9 October 2011

 

I did the right thing, but so what?

 

 

Truth of DELIGHT at last

A Very long Post about Love:

Despite those who have advised me to drop or forget Mr. Delightful.

It is not as simple as you may perceived, because I really do love this man, whether or not it seems to make logical sense, even if you want to call me a fool, I still love him, and I do not love him today and stop loving him tomorrow. Maybe I will meet someone else, but until I do, this Hopeless Romantic really loves THAT MAN.

This love is deep and real, and he must decide what to do with it; I gave it to him, and all of it is his. If I am a fool, I am not the first. Maybe I will stop loving him, but it will have to its natural time; if he is indeed scum, then maybe I just happen to like scum. But he is better than scum. How do you know that he isn’t filled with regret?

How do I know that for sure either?

Maybe this makes me the most foolish woman in the world, but until I do not love him, I am not giving up on love.

Lord knows, I am not sure at all what this means. Nor am I asking you. Whether I am called “Dream Baby” or “Eucalyptus Octopus” or “Trauma to Quotidian” –all of these names came from Mr. Deightful’s poem to me, the poem I still believe is about me.

I like these names. I like that they came from poetry. I like when I started calling him my “Muse” and he corrected that to “Mr. Muse”

At first I was concerned that so much poetry in my new book, “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code” was either written about or with “Thomas Higginson”, but now I am at peace with that, because I still love the man, and as long as that is true, I’m not turning my back on loving him.

I am not sure how he feels about that but it is my love to give him, and since I have given it, I am not taking it back.

Cover of “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery Of Realities’ Red Dress Code

You were not with him; but I know a tender side of Mr. Delightful and maybe he did tell some lies. Maybe he did allow me to believe one thing when he had made other –temporary– (one can never be sure with him). I know what makes him delightful.

No; he is not perfect, but then again, neither am I.

A entire chapbook of poetry that Thylias Moss wrote with Thomas Higginson is available right now at Amazon as a book for Kindle, and you may also be able to get this chapbook as a softcover book (I will check again this week), but if you would like a collection of collaborations between Thomas Higginson and Myself, “Aneurysm of the Firmament” (spelled correctly in the chapbook, ad actually not on the table of contents in “Wannabe“), then please acquire this chapbook containing only poems of our collaboration which has been long lived.

(buy the chapbook and Wannabe at Amazon here)

You just do not throw such things away. I hope the chpbook lives on after I do.

I kissed Mr. Delightful, well, he kissed me first, and then I really kissed him as I have never kissed a man before. That kiss told me everything worth knowing, and the kiss was real, so until and unless I find someone else… He is not easily replaceable. He is not toothpaste or only the flavor of the day, but he is mighty tasty –you wll need to read the romance novel for more details of my inspiration.

You weren’t there. You do not know.

It is not as if one day I decided, “hm, I think that maybe I’ll fall in love with him” –happened naturally, and if I fall out of love with him, that will happen naturally too, and for the moment I haven’t.

Maybe this is a man I will always love. I’m not going into all the details now. And whether or not Mr. Delightful ever knows of this, I am stating for the record, that I simply have never lied to him, and I am not starting to lie right now. When I told Mr Delightful that I love him, that was /is the TRUTH, and I am also saying it now, because it is the truth, that I still love that man, and no advice can change my heart; if an when it changes, I will say so. I am not vindictive; I just love that man as I have never loved a man.

I gave my love t0 him, and it is up to him what to do with it. It is his. I do not withdraw it. That is how serious my heart is. It is his decision what to do with my love. If and when I stop loving him, I will tell him first. But it will not be today and not likely that it will be tomorrow; sorry if I disappoint any of you. Sorry if this only seems to prove that I am fool; I would rather be a fool for love than for anything else.

I have a precious connection with this man, and maybe there are not many women who would love him as completely as I do, just as he is, flawed and everything, but this one does.

I told him once that when he becomes 70, not that long, 2018, he may find a need to settle down his very active life, and guess who will be waiting for him? His “Dream Baby“, his “Eucalyptus Octopus” [which he corrected to “An” Eucalyptus Octopus” as written in the poem], his “Trauma to Quotidian” will be there as long as I still love him. Love is like that, and can be stable, and not trusting him does not mean that I don’t love him.

Among many things, no way that you can ever know all of them, he wrote this to me:

“It’s a gut kick to me and I know I hurt you which ricochets back and painful. I couldn’t take it further, Thylias. I am sorry that the realities of life —my family, my job, my grief — consume me in a way that broke the spine of dream. Were we younger, were I more open, if only I could have put my responsibilities aside and blahblahblah.

I’m a bad guy if you want that, Forker, but when I think about our damn dream time together, relive the drama interplay spontaneity of the performance we did, all we shared and held, for me—

It’s a friendship that I treasure deep. Always will.

I would ask you to consider this an offer to continue our friendship. To support each other in a new way.

In any case, know that I an here for you, always will be, in a way for us still to find.

Love,
Mr. D

and he wrote this to me:

“Dear T,

What a moving and lovely letter, what a heart you got, a wondrous one, one that I got to know better, and better, and loved in the way we loved. A mind that evolved those feelings into literature, into a story for the ages.

And that art means so much to me —and this letter, just as much, meant just for me, explaining me back to me from you perspective, and through your lens. Our friendship has moved so many places the world cannot contain them all, and still goes on, growing every whichway.

So thank you infinitely for this gift of all possibility and the settling of the words’ world into a mutually respectful and fulfilling friendship. Of course that means ongoing, and how the works with collaborating, mutual performances, seeing each other etc etc —it’s all there, we just don’t know what yet, and that’s the beauty you have given us in this letter. The truth of it.

It means so much
It means everything

D”

You are not aware at all (well, maybe you are also so lucky); but you are probably not aware at all of what it can mean to kiss this man, but one real kiss from him, not the sweet peck in the airport, but that extended foreplay kissing in the back seat of the taxi all the way from O’Hare to the hotel, completely erased 40 years of marriage, 44 years with my ex-spouse; it was as if no other man had ever kissed me –please try to understand the power and promise of that kiss.. and helped me understand desire and expression of love as I have never understood it before. Forever transformed me in the most “delightful” way.

That kiss will forever be fresh in my mind. I even have a bottle of his cologne that I spray n my sheets to get into a bed of him, recalling instantly what it’s like being in his arms. I play the music we exchanged with each other; you can’t hear it, but it’s playing right now in the background. I listen to a playlist of it when I, this woman with MS go walking my 5-8 miles, and also on the playlist, because I love the sound of his voice, is a recording of the support he sent me so that I could listen to it, as I was writing about the two of us –I would listen t ohs voice all day, inspiring me to produce my best writing, in my opinion, ever, and in response to some of that writing, also in the chapbook, by the way, but not in “Wannabe” from which the poem, “If You See Something, Say Something” by Thomas Higginson’ with my addition / extension was rejected for “Wannabe” but was a poem published by “The Fiddlehead of Canada,” by the way, but Mr. Delightful wrote this to me after I completed that poem, before the Fiddlehead publication:

“”Skippity,

Sitting by a calming fountain in Kiev, just after the bells of St Sofia rocked the plaza — real rocks of noise
I can say a few things: how crazy are you? am I? we?

Pretty crazy, I’d say!

BUT certainly it is a continuously reviving poem
A fantasy dream and reality scream
You are a Go For It All woman finally free
You constantly inspire, and I wish to too
Standing off to the side and cheering you on
Hey! Watch out for that banana!

The Mnemonic of Yr Palindrome

TMnOYP”

I can’t say what is going to happen. It is not my job to predict the future, just live it as long as I can, the best that I can and if I live it loving him, so be it.

I really do love THAT MAN. And this is a fact. Sorry if I disappoint you, but I am not disappointing myself. I really do lovehim, and it was not a choice. My heart did this. I do not involve myself with multiple men. Good for you if you are able to do that. I can’t and I don’t want to. I once told him that I would rather not have a man, if it can’t be him, as long as I love him, and since I do love him, I guess it’s many manless nights, a lot of tears, a lot of loneliness, but a lot of love for him to try to keep me warm in the coming winter, when I will be living somewhere else — he wrote ” Of course that means ongoing, and how the works with collaborating, mutual performances, seeing each other etc etc —it’s all there, we just don’t know what yet, and that’s the beauty you have given us in this letter. The truth of it.”

Mr. D, as delightful as he really can be, also wrote this to me, when I really needed it:

“Thylias, I feel from your letter that you need an immediate response to help ease you into that house, into yr mother’s dementia, into Mr Moss’s inflexibility.

Somehow it seems the fork of love will give you strength. That is strength I want you to have. Because this fork moves poetry and heaven and earth and hell and all history and muse push and language rush and Amstead and so so so much else, the All of It, I want to simplify my response to: I give you a life of strength and support in our friendship, and let you define the love for you.

My own personal life is not part of that equation. That is for me to live. This is a privacy issue and not important to that house you are going into. Please accept this as the eternal strength and support, or as long as you need or want it.

Godspeed.
D”

(By the way, I need it forever  I want it forever)

And after a discussion on, “letting me define the love for me”,
Mr. D sent me this on 3 August 2016, not that long ago at all, :

““Thylias, It is Love & that is all, it is kin and Life itself.
Sending you strength

D “

to which I replied:

“You know that I accept this. I like hearing that it is Love.

I’m just afraid that it might not be love tomorrow.

I love knowing that it is Love, I need that more than anything…

As long as it will continue to be Love, I am fine.

No one can say how long it will continue to be Love on this Wildest of Rides, but I am glad to take this ride with you.

Thylias”

(we even have a poem about this “Wild Ride” of ours,

and here is some of it, (should have been in the chapbook also, my mistake, well, for the next chapter f the next book, because there will be one, of that I’m sure; Love demands this, and even if for mow it seems that it is only me loving you, so be it… As long as I love you, it must be this way):

Higginson The Thrill Ride

Every emotion possible to feel,
I have felt with you –highest highs
of my life
(also the lowest lows)

I once thought the Blue Streak at Cedar Point
was a tremendous roller coaster,
but you surpass that by far! –as
“Higginson-Higgs-Mr. Muse-Mr. D”
any of your personae—
I have been everywhere with you
yet nowhere

(and I wouldn’t trade this ride for anything).

You Are
The Wild Ride

(Higginson)

Loving it

“Higginson The Thrill Ride”

Every emotion
sighest mighty riotous highs
belowest lows)

the Blue Streak at Cedar Point
roller coaster blasts past
my past into your past passed
but you surpass t
“HigginsonHiggsMrmuse-Mr.D”
everywhere with you
butt nowhere

(and I wouldn’t trade this wild ride for anything).

Remember when I wrote a poem, and you couldn’t respond w=exactly as you would have liked, you wrote this to me:
“Thylias, wow, si o non

sionon

Great word

I am honored beyond beyond

But my plate is so big of full right now I can only make a new word and push on-words

Sionon it is on my part

You have my permission to use everything but I must beg your forgivenness in being unable to come out with the resounding affirmative the Soul cries for because I just do not have the time to do that. My film work, Ford Fdn work, poetry work, the Club, plain ol work, on and on —

I just want to ask for yr understanding on this.

OK, BFF?”

and this led to a poem in “Wannabe”
“Sionon Epoch” also in the chapbook

The primary point Mr. D, always so damn delightful to me, is that my Soul still cries out for you, and I may be a fool, but I am your fool; it is entirely up to you what you do with your fool,

and for a time you were foolish with me,

and I just want to remind you, that very few men, maybe no other man, is or has been or will be loved the way that I love you, and though I will not use you name, you know who you are, just as in that recording of the poem you wrote for me, and I can prove it if necessary, after I rejected a poem you gave me when I found you reading it online and complained that it wasn’t written specifically for me, and then you wrote a poem that I knew was specifically for me, with the references to particle physics; you know me Mr D, better than anyone, and when I hear d you reading it you saud, “It;s for somebody who knows who she is” amd she dies, she is me, your “Dream Baby“, your “Eucalyptus Octopus“, your “Trauma to Quotidian” your Thylias, apparently always yours, for the long haul

me in the “Dream Baby” dress :

and speaking of long hauls, surely you remember when you said you would “drive an 18-wheeler full of condoms down my street”? –really might need that many for the next time I get to be alone with you.

It’s not just sex, but loving him, melting every time his breath was on any part of me, his hands,  the weight of his palms, his exquisite tongue, his lips, sex became sublime.  

I will see, won’t I? –he said it, he wrote it, and the “written word” is just as sacred to him as it is to me –no there’s no “ring” on it, but there is something that maybe even better, the rings of love around my Saturned heart.

I just don’t know what yet. But maybe something, and just as I am worth waiting for, with all this love I have for him, he is worth waiting for also. And so I do, committed to the love itself for as long as I feel it.

I am getting so much closer to what I really need, for a future as uncertain as futures must be if they are unwritten, and they are.

I do not live a pre-determined life; I know what I want, and I am determined to have it, whatever that means.

I am 62, no longer middle aged, and since it isn’t likely that I will live to be 124, it is necessary that I act on whatever I can, and living in my own place, on my social security, and yes, loving a man, taking a chance on what I feel, because what I feel is real,

and I know I might sound crazy, and I know you know, or think you know who I love, but my feelings are real, and I have already given them to him, so they are his, and he knows this, and what he decides to do with his gift is up to him.

I do not give something to him and then withdraw it. That is not who or what I am, a so-called or proverbial “indian-giver” (and me personally, as a member of this heritage, have not known such phony-givers, and knowing myself, I am not about to be one now).

This is my only life, and I want to live it truly and honestly. I am the one who must face myself in the mirror, and I want to like what I see. (I know you like what you see in those photos of me, Mr. D; you already told me that, many times). That’s all this is: my chance to live the life I need; the life I want, preferably with Mr. Delightful, and that “terrific life” he told me I would have, and not just because he told me; I will have it regardless, but so much better with him than without him, which is what he meant, as I interpreted it anyway.

“Terrific life” with or without him, but much better with him… He also said to me: “Relax. It takes time”

And that is exactly what I have for you: Time.

Just as you waited 25 years just to kiss me, I know that you also understand time, but, please, not another 25years. Neither you (aren’t you already 68?) nor I at 62 have another 25 years.

But I will keep waiting. And while I wait, I will work on rebuilding trust. I know you didn’t want to have to tell me what you told me, but even that did not destroy the love I feel for you. Dampened it, because you evidently could not wait for me as I waited for you, and still wait; Dampened, but did not, could not Destroy.

I can’t promise you that I will still be beautiful when I am 70
and you will be 76 (!)

–I can’t believe that I am saying and thinking such things about a man as old as that, but you yourself told me that love doesn’t care about age when you carried me on your back in downtown Chicago, and it was obvious to anyone who saw this woman in the short form-fitting skirt, even shorter for being elevated on your back, and where your hands were (under the skirt) as you carried me, and where my hands were on you and you know that the form is also real, and unaltered (like your banana, if I may say so:

“Hey! Watch out for that banana!” 

The Mnemonic of Yr Palindrome

TMnOYP”)

 –unaltered

like my love for you;

it was obvious what this aging couple had done, just as it was obvious to that taxi-driver seeing that aging couple making out in the back seat of his cab what we were going to do as soon as we were alone in that hotel he drove us to; everyone knew, what we had done and were going to do again and again…

The way the registration clerk chuckled. Such a terrific moment.

All of them. All of them Mr D.

I have to be willing to accept the bad moments with the good, –love demands this–true love does, that is, but when I list them, the good is ten times longer than the bad.

Face it Mr. D, I love you plain and simple.

no matter who or what you love. or think you love.

My love for you is certain
–and if or when it isn’t, I will tell you.

I cannot offer you more than that.

And I would not want to offer you less.

whoever you are, sweet mystery man, my sweet mystery man, standing bside me on a bridge in Chicago, bridge to a terrific life: 

This “terrific” photo has its own life, as does this “terrific couple”

They have met in the center of the bridge… Desn’t matter how they got here, but here they are. And here they belong together. Everyine can see this, as you sad yourself: “That time was Delight” –you said that becase it was,it is.  

The photo never dies, and nor does the love, Mr. D.

I love you, just as I  loved you yesterday, just as Iwill love you tomorrow.  Whenever you’re ready, you know where I am.   

“Higginson”: The Thrill Ride”

(another poem for Mr Delightful [it should have been in the chapbook, and I will add it to the chapbook]. Hard to say who wrote which line; lines meant to be together just like Mr. Delightul and I. 

copyright © 2016 by Thylias Moss. Published by arrangement with the author.  All rights reserved.

Higginson The Thrill Ride

Every emotion possible to feel,

I have felt with you –highest highs

of my life

(also the lowest lows)

I once thought the Blue Streak at Cedar Point

was a tremendous roller coaster,

but you surpass that by far! –as

“Higginson-Higgs-Mr. Muse-Delighful”

any of your personae—

I have been everywhere with you

yet nowhere

(and I wouldn’t trade this ride for anything).

You Are

The Wild Ride

(Higginson)

Loving it

“Higginson The Thrill Ride”

Every emotion

sighest mighty riotous highs

belowest lows)

the Blue Streak at Cedar Point

roller coaster blasts past

my past into your past passed

but you surpass t

“HigginsonHiggsMrmuse-Delightful”

everywhere with you

butt nowhere

(and I wouldn’t trade this wild ride for anything).

My favorite picture of Mr. D  and myself; nothing would make me happier than being in  his arms again, arms meant to hold me, look at them; look at us.  

New Chapbook

Very pleased to announce publication on Kindle of a small chapbook of work by Thylias Moss and my poet friend Thomas Higginson:

 

Aneurysm of the Firmament

A very limited edition of collaborative poems.

I hope that you enjoy it; I certainly do.

NEW CREATE SPACE PROJECTS

Good Sunday morning!

For a change, I do not plan to write about the shambles of my love life; will not be fixed today anyway, and I can’t say when, but it will be and is.

Not much has changed; I am still in love with a wonderful sman; I like everything about him way too much, no one can be as good as he is, but he will have to deal with the man in the mirror.

but too  much is beautful for me to disrupt or destroy that beauty.  That it attained a pinnacle of loving expression will always be true.   Nothing can ever change that.

Enough said.

I have embarked upon, for 2 writing projects quite dear to me, Amazon’s CreateSpace, a self-publishing tool that will allow books made with it to instantly be sold wherever Amazon has a footprint, and where doesn’t that corporate giant tread?

The first project is a group of collaborative poems written with a friend,  (that much I’m sure of); a friend of mine, a lover also, the very best, you will have to take my word on that (or read the book I had to write after beign with him with him! Thoroughly Transforming!

 

Thomas Robert Higginson (a pseudonymn) , right beside me here, and may it always be this way.

Dream date with a dream man, as we stand on a bridge forever connecting us, Chicago, 2014

That collection is finished; just waiting for the sample of the book to  arrive, and  if I like it, then into production; already has its ISBN number, so this book is real, and I am delighted by that.

Unfortunately, the sample isn’t due to arrive at my Ypsilanti house until the day before my mother’s 87th birthday.  If I do not, as I would like, get to go there, I have already planned to call her and sing to her; she always likes that –mothers you know.  

I am so eager to see that little chapbook, that contains two poems from “Wannabe“, with permission from the publisher (who I would prefer not to name), but…  Yeah, and my so-called comprehensive book with a blurb from Harold Bloom in the most prominent position possible on the jacket, extolling my stature as a writer of significance, except that he is referring to a New & Selected not even in “Wannabe” –I am in Harold Bloom’s “Western Canon” for “Small Congregations” –the only collection of my previously published collections of poetry not included in “Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code” –well, mistakes happen, I know quite well.  

together these 2 New and Selected collections contain the work needed to b single comprehensive collection

But some mistakes make possible wonders that could not be possible any other way, and for that reason, I am glad for what looking back could be seen as mistakes but I am not looking at mistakes today; I am looking at only opportunities which is what CreateSpace is.

So while I wait for the collection of poems written with my friend Thomas Robert Higginson (I may need to do a drawing of him; I assure you I can, all just from memory–what a great idea; I have never attempted a simple pencil sketch of him… Wonder how the pencil will feel in my hands drawing the man I so want to be with?  –a Thomas Robert Higginson comic book? graphic novel “graphic” as defined in multiple ways –I leap too far ahead; I haven’t even drawn the man, and the idea is forming even as I type this, but obviously the idea really appeals to me…  But to have him form right on the paper in graphite from what will become my favorite pencil after I draw him? and even the two of us together, using illustrations from, I don’t know, the Kama Sutra, as a guide, not that I’ll need one.    Too much heaven!  –and I am a little bit skeptical about him possibly seeing this; after all, we are “just” friends, and I shouldn’t permit myself to think this way  about a friend, should I? 

Leap, leap,  leap (into his arms –I can’t help it)

and wouldn’t you know, the Angel of the Lord returned to visit my mother who just called to warn me to make no decisions at this time; to tell me she was afraid, the spirit told her this, that now is not the time to try to sell a home because the republicans are about to seize power, although she detests Trump, yet doesn’t feel Hillary to be any better because she is a woman; she said for me to follow God, and pray for what I really want, and I did, but it’s not what she thinks it is.  (I prayed to have him, of course).

My mother has no idea how involved I’ve become with a certain man, and when I tried to tell her about him, just his name; he had wanted her to be in a movie about poetry he produced long ago, but she wouldn’t, preferring that no one know she worked as a maid; she has no idea how often I have included that info in my writing, and more recently her puritanical views about sex.  She would be shocked to ever know what I’ve done, and enjoyed with That Most Delightful Man. She told me then that the only man I need is “Jesus”, so when I first wrote about being with him in Chicago, I called him:

“Jésus” and that way, if she ever saw it, I was in fact talking about 

Jesus

Jésus

in the story “Mongongo Drupe” published in Callaloo.

(read most of that story here: “Mongongo Drupe“<https://muse.jhu.edu/article/576194/pdf&gt;

in fact, before I ever went to see him for that unforgettable weekend in Chicago, it was well before these recent events, so I guess that was for the best, as I would be unable to explain what has happened to her, and it is most definitely my life, not hers.  

“Mongongo” the name of the only oil I put on my hair, and it seems to be working.

Oh I well remember my son driving me to her house in Cleveland in the pouring rain, rather as it is right now in Ypsilanti, and exchanging texts with that Most Delightful man; how wonderful that was; you don’t realize how wonderful every moment has been…. That Callaloo story only gnaws at a most wonderful surface, and even that hardly accesses what is so amazing and terrific about being  with you/him…

Here’s part of that  email exchange:

-on our way to visit my sick mother –she’ll be 85 next month –and is finally okay with my seeing you –she even told me to visit thrift shops to try to buy back the blue striped dress [of course, she has no idea what I plan to do with you –and you don’t either; hope you’ll be happily surprised –and will surprise me also; I love surprises from the right man.  She’s never seen my parts in that movie about poetry you roduced and asked me to be in, and I plan to play the part with the dress for her once we arrive.

The rain is so intense windshield is completely obscured –hard to type, but wanted to forward this latest communication from the Teresa Nyong Vogel Foundation.

By the way, my ex is not   being  supportive at all of my trip to see you — though I really want to attend, that Teresa Nyong Vogel reunion is a veil, removable veil to see you. He remarked to me that I must really want to see you considering all that I’m doing –inviting you and everything, sharing a hotel room –dressing for you, trying to guess what you’d like to see me wear, but imagining even more how you’ll remove it, and look at me, then touch me –my son isn’t helping with the R&B music he’s playing
–Jaheim– and that music plus what I’m already thinking is dangerous… Now Luther Vandross –“Never Too Much” –“a thousand kisses from you is never too much, a million days in your arms is never too much”

Jaheim

Luther Vandross – “Never Too Much”

to which he replied:

“I worry about your safety and I chortle at yr wildness and I ripsnort with passion and I flagellate with absorption and I tentacleize with tendresse as I undress the emptiness”

I would never want to divest myself of the memories of That Delightful Man for that would be to try to purge my mind of the best memories my heart has ever known, as an adult.

He asked for the dress I wore in his movie he  didn’t just ask for it, but described it completely!   How impressive that is, and I am not going to throw this away… maybe he has revealed himself to be an ordinary man, but that is just fine, I like him, no I love him anyway.  

This is not the first time a woman has loved a man who still thinks so fondly of her, and even still loves her in his way… But asking for the dress, really shows me the depth of the impression I made on him when I was in the movie about poetry for which he was one of the producers and asked me to be in it; make no mistake about that!

The parts in the movie in which I wore the blue striped dress:

and:

“While the blue-striped dress is gone, I did locate two pictures of me wearing it, and those I paste right here (photos taken at my mother’s house in Cleveland, Ohio).

Not sure of the date, but judging from my hair, sometime in the 1990’s —probably early 1990’s as there’s no evidence of graying”

I’m in the back holding Ansted, Dennis is in the front, my aunt Eva who never married, and is mother of midget Mike, and who passed for white (she had some amazing stories until her death); JoJo Holman is right behind her.  The two girls are Bernard’s daughters.  Bernard is a huge lover of jazz and Godzilla.  My cousin Edward  (who lives in Chicago, but whom I won’t see while I’m there with you —as I mentioned, he’s only been to the airport once, and wouldn’t be able to find his way home; he lives on the south side of Chicago) is sitting to the left of Bernard’s daughter who also has MS –her grandmother, Belvia Brasier Hill, as I mentioned, died from a combination of MS and Huntington’s.  JoJo who lives in Tennessee is quite ill, and not expected to live much longer.  Haven’t seen him since this photo was taken.  We’re quite a small family with a terrible amount of distancing.

You asked, so let me tell you a little of how it was for me, flat-chested till I was in ninth grade –my mother and her sisters used to pray for me that I not remain so skinny and flat-chested. Then the miracle; overnight.  I was about 14, nearly 15 –went from a girl who didn’t need a bra (but wanted to wear a training bra anyway) to a 32D, the second most rare size, I was told by the Playtex salesman visiting the downtown May Co. Department store where I would work a few years later.

You can imagine the unwanted attention I attracted.  

I was just a shy little girl, shy little top heavy girl, more like the women on the maternal side of my family; and  thin, raw-boned more like members of my paternal extended family.  Those prayer sessions were rather intense.  And my aunts were (most of them are now deceased) pleased with the outcome.  Then, the most rare size a lingerie buyer told me: 32 DDDD.  Now, a mere 30 DDD or 32 DD depending on manufacturer…   I recall when I had the MRI on Friday  being asked what kind of implants were in my body and I tried to say that I had no breast implants –the expectation now, and I  seem unusual about that, natural, that is… So many operations for augmentation, and I once considered reduction.  Used to keep my arms crossed for a while, and even wore minimizer bras; used to try to hide, but  my ex really liked that about me, and actually I did too, and when I was nearly seventeen was glad to be pushed up.  

To both flaunt and have discretion; I was a most unusual professor.  

Bras were manufactured differently then, more pointed cups and so forth, so hiding was compromised.  I remember distinctly how I looked when my ex met me: a red stretch form fitting turtleneck (long gone) in church –exactly where a damaged 16-year-old girl belonged fresh back from an abortion in NYC (not legal anywhere else at the time).  Ultimately, I became more glad than not of my ability to attract certain forms of attention, but I’m so much older now, and what was once so attractive has changed a bit.  Tits and ass –that’s me, and I hope that you want all of that and will touch all of that –as much as you like, and I will reciprocate –maybe not in the beginning,  but in stages –I need to be introduced to eroticism and intimacy…  Please teach me, Mr. Delightful how to love you… How to receive whatever you want to give me, and how to give you whatever you’ll want from me…   Wish that you could touch me right now.  I really do.

There’s Huntington’s Disease in my paternal family (always fatal if you inherit the gene –are you familiar with that disease?–one death sentence I didn’t  inherit– and why I feel that most of them are deceased, and why I was unable to know my paternal grandfather.  Most of them lived in the south, Cowan, TN, at a time that races were discouraged from mixing). My paternal grandmother was mostly black, and some Indian (she was literate as was her mother in West Virginia, a small town for which Ansted is named), and my paternal grandfather was Native American, Caucasian, some East Indian (how all of that came together in Tennessee is rather strange –he was classified, as “mulatto” — I was raised to not be color conscious.  My paternal cousin in Wisconsin, whose mother died of MS and Huntington’s says his mother raised him as Indian period, Bernard H__.  One of my aunts “passed” for white so that she could work for the government. All my life, degree of pigmentation made differences in where I could go, what I could do, how I was treated, and I was one of the privileged because I wasn’t “too dark”, and had “good hair” (did you see/like Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” movie?).  

A real division in my paternal family because of degree of pigmentation and hair texture; some of the cousins (I actually have two in Chicago [Edward, and his sister Pam]) failed to inherit this hair –not me, and I was criticized for that– sometimes praised, but always considered “different” –and now, even at my age, with weaves, wigs and various hair attachments, and hair relaxer, form of lye, mostly, various hydroxides (I don’t have to use that product), it’s become rather common for black women to have hair that simulates a texture more smooth, and long –“Good Hair” explores so many topics, including “weave sex” –apparently so different from ordinary sex, but my hair isn’t like that; is attached, rooted in my scalp, without relaxer  

— as you can tell,  I’ve learned to flaunt that hair; I rather enjoy tossing it, and, as I said, I look forward to you brushing it, styling it, doing with it whatever you like –if you like that. If you want, you can use  your arms, maybe only one, and I could sit in your lap while you brush it –a turn on for me.  You’ll have to figure out best ways to position me for many things. 

 I’m sorry that I don’t know more, but will enjoy your teaching me, and no one need know.  Between us.  

I expect for everything that you do to be a turn on — I don’t really know what won’t be, but if I don’t like something, I’ll let you know.  Do you want me to be quiet when we touch, when we explore each other’s body? Or will I be encouraged to make noise? Will I be allowed, that is? I don’t want to be quiet; that seems unnatural.  When we actually make love, what if I want to scream? I will probably be shy at first, but I will still yield, and overcome my shyness.  I want this to be an experience unlike any experience you’ve ever had before… I want what happens to surpass anything you’ve imagined…. (I hope that you have indeed imagined us making love).  I want you to want more and more and more of me…. I want us both to explode… I look forward to detonation….

What are turn ons for you?  

I’d like to try to do them; I want you to be happy with me.  I want you to be really glad, even about that Brazilian wax, I got just for you, my first, in wanting you to be  really turned on that we’re together, alone in the hotel –one bed to rest things on, and another bed to use, ostensibly for sleeping (but only a little of that –I plan to have you as a stay-awake caffeine pill). 

Between the meetings that I also look forward to, and being with you, not quite enough hours in the day, but I’ll get by on reduced sleep so that there’s time for everything I hope to do with you.  

For the first time in my life, I don’t want any secrets.  You’re getting the me admitting to her lack of experience despite my age. 

My mother  accused me of loving my father more than her, and  I did –I identified more with him, maybe because he’s deceased, I did so much walking wih him, miles and miles;  my mother knew him only as a husband, a lover, but I knew him as a father, and I was an only child, and she never accompanied us on any of our walks –miles and miles…. Where I learned alternatives to the bible –the purpose of the walks, as soon as I got home from church.

He bought me a new book in the Golden L ibrary of kKnolwlede at the end of each walk (in this way making for me an alternative bible): 

A while ago you told me that if we’re ever alone the fire will meld us together.  We will be.  Soon.  Melding very soon.

“Weather is a factor, and those anticipated storms have arrived —love how the sky looks, it and the pond have merged.  Love the tapping on the roof, like fingertips, becoming angry at times, and then gentle, now scarcely making contact at all, but in roof-ways, the roof remembers the rain as a splintered lover that talks in thunder, and every now and then, illuminates their way with marvelous flashes of lightning, knife blades, marvelous knife blades….”

To which That Man regaining his sweetness as I remember so much, replied:

Dear Bullet Dodger —

Looks like you is stable eyesed!!!

Great photos of ver sexy you. 

and the family — who took the picture? What stories!!!! 

These photos were taken at my mother’s house, the home my father bought in 1963.  Badly in need of paint, something my mother will try to do herself.

______

We have such a long and complicated story; we have history, and that is just too much to ever give up. I can’t bear the thought of you not in my life… I want to get past this, and reinstate you as the wonderful, tender, caring man you always were, the man to  whom I wrote this:

All I know is that I hope to never lose your friendship (?)—but it’s more than that; I do  not know the proper word for what you are to me, but won’t say it again; nothing has changed, except I do not know the word acceptable to you (and I do not want to know what I am to you —not really [because I may not like it]) —but I am convinced that you care deeply, just as you know that I care deeply about you, no matter how old all manner of official documents say you are.  I like you regardless. I love you regardless, from the first time I told you.   The you, you are now, wherever you are, on a bridge or not.  We stood on something that connects us both literally and metaphorically —always, and that wonderful photo has life of its own.  It does what maybe we can’t, at this time.

Look, today I celebrate so much, being alive for one thing, and your existence.  I’m glad you’re in my world, and that I am in yours.  I’m glad that our story changes, grows [every “whichway”], mutates, but does not end.  I’m glad that we have a story, Mr. Delightful, and it is our story, and no other story is ours.  Only this one.  Always this one.  I’m so glad about this Mr. Delightful, more glad than I am capable of expressing (without some help from my very best friend: YOU):

“I can run alongside

You but can’t keep up with you, your tapdancing

Shadow, your clothing made of earth and spit. But I know you

And when you wish me Happy Birthday I trade it for yours,

You not growing old, you everlasting, you infinity you.”

 (excerpt from a poem you wrote for me, remember?)

and you wrote this to me:

“Dear T,

What a moving and lovely letter, what a heart you got, a wondrous one, one that I know and got to know better, and better, and loved in the way we loved. A mind that evolved those feelings into literature, into a story for the ages.

And that art means so much to me — and this letter, just as much, meant just for me, explaining me back to me from your perspective, and through your lens. Our friendship has moved so many places the world cannot contain them all, and still goes on, growing every whichway.

So thank you infinitely for this gift of all possibility and the settling of the words’ world into a mutually respectful and fulfilling friendship. Of course that means ongoing, and how that works with collaborating, mutual performances, seeing each other etcetc — it’s all there, we just don’t know what yet, and that’s the beauty you have given us in this letter. The truth of it.

It means so much
It means everything

Mr. Delightful

A complex story in which I have experienced every emotion possible to feel, and I must thank you for that, for allowing me to feel “everything” (sounds as if I’m quoting my children’s book [and new book, in which you are so involved, all those “Higginson” poems [that come out of really seeing you, hearing you —discovering you as if for the first time, [[I so want us to write more poems together, of course —I so like connecting with you that way]] –listening to everything you say in so many locations, and I know you recognize them, as honored as you are in my writing —what man can claim such honor? — that I really feel, and as smart as you are —even “smart enough” to see me – and really understanding [[parts —of you, never the whole ‘enigmatic’ Mr. Delightful] —a good thing; hope I’m never able to figure you out completely, and  I am quoting two of my books): 

“I want to be [‘wannabe’] eyes  looking, looking everywhere [and seeing you: that is a forking  everywhere].

I want to be  [‘wannabe’] ears hearing , hearing everything [you say, and that is a forking everything]

I want to be [‘wannabe’] hands touching, touching everything [all of you, and that is a forking everything]

I want to be [‘wannabe’] mouth tasting, tasting everything [all of you, and that is a forking everything [romance novel]]

I want to be [‘wannabe’] heart feeling, feeling everything [for you, and this  is (or rather: could be the most forking  ‘everything’ of all were it not for what follows:]

I want to be [‘wannabe’] life doing, doing everything [for you, with you, because of you, through you –the most everything, for your birthday and everyday [[on which you are endlessly reborn in my heart]]] —That’s all.  And that is a forking everything forking [some Midhudson Taffy also, which also must fork and fork and fork as it’s ‘eaten with a fork’]”

68! —way to go!  

You also said this to me, Lord knows you always know  what to say:

“making poems is making life”

and you said this to me:

“I have all yr books, I think, Mz Moss. I do love A Man (if she’s A Woman)”

and you wrote this to me, so much more than this,

 

Skippity,

Sitting by a calming fountain in Kiev, just after the bells of St Sofia rocked the plaza — real rocks of noise

I can say a few things: how crazy are you? am I? we?

Pretty crazy, I’d say!

BUT certainly it is a continuously reviving poem

A fantasy dream and reality scream

You are a Go For It All woman finally free

You constantly inspire, and I wish to too

Standing off to the side and cheering you on

Hey! Watch out for that banana!

The Mnemonic of Yr Palindrome

TMnOYP

—- and when you woke this to me, Mr. Delightful, 

“I should be working

Instead of smiling at you

Smiling at you”

to which I replied:

Isn’t smiling at me a form of work?

to which your reply was

“Lol!”

And how everything started with this:

“Hey, this won’t be a business call!

I’d be calling to reestablish contact, Ms Moss, that is all.”

Peace,

Mr. D

 

Surely you will recall that one stumbling block in the way of our love taking off; you called him “PSOG” (Previous Suitor Other Guy” although he had a name.   When you first contacted me after waiting 25 years, you had to wait an additional  two weeks, because of PSOG,  and when I contacted you two weeks later, just two weeks later, to tell you that PSOG was completely gone from my life (what I want you to say now about a certain nameless GF, you know what I mean); well to convince you that PSOG was gone, I sent him and BCC’d you on the breakup email of break up emails, this one:

Break up email of break up emails:

PSOG,

This isn’t as difficult as it may seem,

but under the circumstances,  I think it’s best to not be involved on even a  minimal level.  I appreciate — I really do— your continued concern, but I must try to achieve whatever I can on my own (or via members of family).  I appreciate your fondness and will remember it.  I agree that intimacy is not for us. Never was.  I can’t say that it will be with my new old-friend, but as I once told you, worth pursuing.  I like how for many years he’s cared for me —on any level.  Sorry, but I can’t do a blog or even go for walks, even if that leaves me out of shape.  I won’t forget my medicine, and I’ll find a way to get to that dreaded MRI on Sunday.  I’ll get there somehow, of that  have no doubt —even my ex has agreed to take me —I just don’t think it should be you.

You’re free to write responses to my writing —as any reader would be; I maintain a partnership in that sense with all of my readers (who are also forms of “collaborators”), most of whom never connect with me directly.  And yes; you may send your responses to me, and I’ll answer them as timely as I can, but won’t be preoccupied with responding (it’s not as if I have nothing else to do).  As long as such contact doesn’t suggest a sustained relationship with a possibility of growing into something else.  I don’t want such growth, and such growth didn’t happen naturally..  Send me anything you like via email.  Nothing wrong with that.  I just won’t go anywhere with you.  I can’t —would seem that I have no self-respect, and I do.  I guess I can blame all of this on match dot com, a service I no longer use, and won’t use again… If I hadn’t used it, wouldn’t have to write this message.  I’m quite disappointed with the service. 

It’s fine with me that we don’t attempt to pursue any romance ever—some things are just present, and no need to force what obviously isn’t there to kindle.  There is no fire to burn or extinguish.  No fire at all.  No attraction (other than my own —temporary— delusion).  

I’ll also be able to get to he airport; my ex has agreed to take me if necessary.  He’s also agreed to pick me up when I return to Detroit if necessary.  He has accepted that there won’t be any romance between us ever again –and he’s accepted that; he and I will be talking tomorrow, and he’s taking me to lunch, and will pay for all of it! —his and mine; he won’t ask me or demand that I pay for half! (as you did).  —Nor is there any romance between us, you and I, and I’m opposed to doing anything that might seem to open that door.  I’m closing that door for good- -something I thought I already did.  More than once.  We can’t be involved in that way for many, many reasons.  We’re so wrong for each other —in just about any way that I can imagine or construct a couple. There’s nothing right between us —and I can’t make it seem that way… I’m through pretending that we had something we didn’t.  I did that for too long, and I’m not going to dredge up past incidents —want to leave everything buried, and bury anything that remains above ground —all must be subterranean —coffin nailed shut.  Sprigs of garlic around, and a set of silver nails, wooden stakes

I’m trying to make this clear again: NO US!  —NOT EVER! —even if things fail abysmally with my new old-friend, I won’t be seeking to resume anything like that between us.  Just a casual friendship at best, right now (that includes Facebook). Whatever we almost or sort of had, is dead and buried, and I don’t rob graves to have some form of man in my life.  I don’t feel desperate.  Just divorced and available —for the right man, and that will never be you. He must ask have something to offer to me, intimacy of course, and you have none of that for me… Intellectual and emotional closeness; bonds of heart and mind —we’ll be able to connect on multiple levels —and we can’t, pure and simple.

Haven’t tried building my own Frankenstein’s monster, and I don’t want to form  closeness with a monster anyway.  No zombie for me either; I want a flesh and blood man who is confident of himself and seems to value me as something special —we’ll be special for each other —that can’t be you.  I want the man ultimately in my life to value me as much as I value him —nothing forced; completely natural, and its not natural for you to be involved with a woman on this level, a woman like me, I mean.  I’m well aware how that Teresa Nyong Vogel Prize was something you could use to a form of advantage, especially at Cottage Inn —but not to my advantage, only to yours…

We are no more! and I’m completely okay with that.  I’m shedding no tears.  Just moving forward, without you

—all I have holding me back is that MS-related optic neuritis (simulating blindness in my left eye) and my loss of directional skills  (aneurysm related) —I can get lost so easily; remember all the trouble I had when we walked and I had trouble knowing which way to go?  This is a problem I have.  Perhaps it’s permanent. I hope that the man who becomes the man in my life won’t mind, that it won’t be an encumbrance for him; we’ll find ways to navigate around this glitch, I’ll call it —just who I’ve become physiologically —we all change with age, by the way, something that I know you know, and won’t mention again (would require a little grave-robbing, your impotence that you tried to blame on me, grave-robbing, so I guess I do  leave on a vindictive note, but I am sure you know your own impotence that you tried to blame it on me).  Causing my friend to allow me to see him nude from the waist down, asking only that I take no photos; i didn’t but kind of wish I had, as I had never seen anythingn so huge and entirely tempting that would very soon —if I could accommodate all of him–be inside me

It wasn’t just the porn vignette.  Many things…. There is no path to romance for you to me.  Not ever. And I don’t want a path from me to you.  Not ever.  

My mother commented last night that I have no need to tell anyone even that I have MS, since my disease is so invisible, and she’s particularly upset with you as it looks as if I was a prize that you couldn’t recognize for what it is.  Obviously you weren’t ready to pursue a relationship with me or perhaps with any woman (you did tell me about your involvement —brief— you said, liaison  with another man) —but that may be too accusatory to say.  I’m not writing to solicit a response, just to finish closing a door, that I thought was closed anyway, and maybe would still be had I not mistakenly invited you as a possibility for getting me to and from the airport —Sorry for the invitation.  I’m withdrawing it now, and will be sure not to invite you further to anything.

Just to make this as clear as possible:

No us.  Not now.  Not ever. No matter what happens.

Thylias

and after this you were fine , and we could begin… one of my favorite parts was when PSOG tried to blame his impotence on me, and also said he refused to use condoms, and you told me that you  would drive an 18-wheeler full of condoms down my street, and talking on FaceTime, you showed me and told me that if I could see you right then, and I could, everything, I would know that impotence around me was hardly your problem.  And it certainly wasn’t. Not then, and definitely not in person.  I must confess, that I really liked seeing this.  Really gave me something tangible to dream about.

 

But in the hotel I was offered an upgrade on the room, a single king bed instead of the 2 queen beds reserved, and you answered, so, so eagerly, your arm tightly and tightening even more around me; you were determined never to let me go, now that I was yours.  “we’ll take the single king” and we did, Room 304 –I will never forget that.  

 

Oh well: Delight after Delight Mr. Delightful

Don’t you remember this?

 

Soon after that, you sent me this:

“Baby
I can’t wait
To taste your kiss
Kiss kissing kisses
Slow you lead your
Beautiful tender lips
Just to rest there
So quiveringly touching
The moment itself
Kissing”

Don’t you want to remember this?

Aren’t you glad that I do?  Aren’t you?

Oh Mr. D, I hope you  also remember writing this to me:

Don’t be nervous, except a little, in a good way! and don’t worry about Sat — you can play by ear, and you should enjoy the Geniuses as much as you can. We’ll have plenty of time — and will probably be wanting a bit of rest…  !!!

Mr. D

 Mr. Delightful, I don’t want you to be able to forget a single second of what we have shared! including this:

“You are beautiful

3,766. I  am looking forward to reading your letter and viewing the attachments

Mr. D” 

You are still this man, aren’t you? Aren’t you still the man with whom I fell in love?  Aren’t you?  Don’t you want to be this man?  Don’t you want me to love you, even t  –Something I have never done with you is lie.    Please don’t make me regret all the poetry (including the poetry of our bodies; I know it looked divine, just the way you made me feel –that photo that I will not post out of respect for your “decision”  [now that really is a “glitch“]– we’ve shared and even written together… Please don’t make me feel that I meant nothing to you…

The absolutely delightful  man who also said this: ” You have always inspired me, Forkergurl”

–and of course, Mr. Delightful has always inspired me… 

You just don’t know all that we have shared; Mr. Delightful, can you possibly understand the complexity of what you might be  throwing away? rocking the eery foundation of everything we’ve shared over the years, causing  me to have to question everything that transpired between us?  –transforming all of it, and there has been so much, into lies.  

Just really try to understand what this is doing to me, because I want you to be as delightful as you always had been, delightful and honest… 

How can I be so replaceable, when there will never be anyone else like you, I know that, and as I’ve always done, I want to celebrate you! I gave myself to you fully, and all I ever wanted was for you to give yourself to me just as fully, just as completely.  I have been willing to work on the terrible distance between us that didn’t drive me to  lies! –Not once did I try to deceive you.  Not once.  Think about it.  Love like mine is rare Mr. D, and it is all yours.  All yours.  Forever.

Very recently, on 3  August, you wrote this and lit up my heart, Mr. Delightful:

Thylias,  It is Love & that is all, it is kin and Life itself. 

To which I replied:

You know that I accept this.  I like hearing that it is Love. 

I’m just afraid that it might not be love tomorrow.  

I love knowing that it is Love, I need that more than anything… 

As long as it will continue to be love, I am fine.  

No one can say how long it will continue to be love on this Wildest of Rides, but I am glad to take this ride with you.

Thylias

And now?  I still love you, 

 

 

I shouldn’t love you if and while you are involved with your GF who should be me, and who was.  Only me.  I did that for you.  I never lied to you, Mr. D; not once.

You are worth it,  and

and I am still worth it. Mr. Delightful.

and, Mr. Delightful, I remember all, all of it so damned good

Even more recently, in September, last month, he said, “Relax –it takes time”

after I sent him a text in which I told him how I really want to see him, and how I really hope he likes my selfies.  

“Relax – it takes time” he said

and “why so choosy picky? They are all great as usual”

to which I said, “All great as usual? Nice of you to say that before you’ve been see them,  I guess you do notice me and I am glad.  Very glad actually.”

I have always worried that he likes how I look; I have always wanted to appeal to him physically.  You see for he 44 years I was with my ex, beginning when I was 16, he never, not once, called me pretty or beautiful of anything like that.  He said my head would swell, and over the years, I thought of myself as unattractive, not to mention when a grade school teacher said when I returned to visit her when I was in ninth grade, “Thylias! –you’re beautiful! you were such an ugly child!”   I was.  I know that.

I’ve seen this man in Chicago, Minneapolis and Detroit., and he made it a point to always call me beautiful or pretty; he had no idea how badly I needed to hear this until I told him what I never heard.  And then he said it all the time, and I learned to think myself pretty, and now I have a problem with vanity…  Anyway, one day Mr. Delightful sent me a text,

“Thylias, you are one gorgeous woman”

I have loved having dinner with him so much. I had my first real dates with this man.

I learned how to kiss with this man, and he can really kiss.   I was touched in ways I’d never been touched before, with his fingers, tongue and, well, not an x-rated blog. but you get the idea.  

In Minneapolis, when we were about to go to dinner, he said he’d come to my hotel room at 5:30 pm, and asked “U r ready for dinner?”

to which I replied, “Sure. Don’t look my best, however.”

to which he replied, “LOL”

and I had another wonderful meal with him.  Sommetimes, I forget all about context.  My sense of time gets out of whack.  And then I accuse him of things he did not do.  This doesn’t mean that he  handled this current “situation” properly, because he didn’t. But when everything is added up, the list of pluses is substantially longer, and besides, what human being does not deserve forgiveness?  He needs forgiveness; we all do, and this way, I get to have some peace, and continue the best friendship I have ever had in my life.  

There has been enough hurt, and if he is able to love anyone, that is a good thing.  

May we all be so lucky as to find someone to love.

DEVILISH Disillusionment

2016, 3 AUGUST:

I  really want to be in your heart as your 3 August message implies, “It is Love” 

Just know that I fear that you will never care for me any more, and that disparages me, although just in August, you told me, and I know that I don’t need to repeat this, but these are your words that I prefer, you know (I repeat them for myself, I like to read them.  A lot):

“Thylias,  It is Love & that is all, it is kin and Life itself. 

Sending you strength”

It either is Love, or it isn’t.  

And the minimizing, the, as you put it, “extent” of our encounters, those precious and sweet encounters that compelled me to write so much about you, even what I consider, no matter what critics eventually say, my best poem, “Higginson Matters in Magnificent Culture of Myopia”, and I guess I say this out of anger more than anything, but I thought, well, I was hoping that I meant more to you than something reduced to, as you put it:

  

who we have become since our meeting a couple years ago, that weekend, plus our reading together in Detroit, being the extent of our time together.

He  omitted Minneapolis, we saw each there too; he is scatterbrained; I started to say the it wasn’t important to him… But that wouldn’t be fair;  Maybe it was.  Maybe he did love me. And he couldn’t anymore.  I believe that he did love me, maybe still does  in his way.  It’s the deceit that bothers me.  Much more than anything. 

I am just too beautiful to be unlovable.  Too smart also. And with the long hair, long 100% natural hair that men love, including him, maybe his GIRLFRIEND has it; I certainly didn’t ask.  I don’t want to be able to compare her with myself, although I would come out ahead 🙂 

But I am not about to enter a battle to fight for him?  No way… If he couldn’t choose me as openly and as  honestly as I chose him, fully faithful, committed to only him… then what is the point?   I want a man who will choose only me, and be glad for the choice. I thought it was him, and it easily could have been… I wasn’t looking for a BOYFRIEND!  I thought I had him; I thought we could be a couple, once the distance ceased to be as much of a problem as it is now, and now added to the distance of his own choice, there is no hope of anything like that.  

I DO NOT HAVE A MAN,

despite what I thought, despite how much I love him; I do not have him, and as long as I was so easily replaceable; well, that tells me a lot, because I can’t replace him; that is, I haven’t wanted to replace him, I haven’t felt that need, because I was more than satisfied with him.  There was no need to go further.  

You reach point where you have to decide which set of imperfections you will accept; everybody has them. I do, and so does he.  He is/was perfect for me as he is, and I am/was perfect for him.  As I am. Only those who are there, me and him, can  understand how perfect our imperfect connection is, has to be to have lasted so many years…

What I am trying to say, is that  the longevity of this connection has been so secure, but I never took it for granted, tried to nourish and care for it the best that I could, but seems that I have failed.  I don’t know how to stop loving him, and he’s on so many pages of my new book.  Remove him, and the new part shrinks by half.

I have been grateful to have found this connection; some people never do…

So I am one of the lucky ones, as he most definitely is to have ME, ALL of me; I withheld none of myself from him,

and now, I feel so used… so mishandled, so ill-loved… so , the worse of it, so DECEIVED, but dwelling on this accomplishes nothing, just prevents from moving ahead alone.

If he can’t love me for a couple of months, let alone a couple of years, what good is love as shallow as that?   I want something little more reliable, a little more secure and substantial. When he told me that “It is Love” –capital “L” Love,  (“Thylias,  It is Love”)
I was so excited, as it seemed then that  he really was every bit the man I thought he was, and I replied, 

“You know that I accept this.  I like hearing that it is Love. I’m just afraid that it might not be love tomorrow.  

I love knowing that it is Love, I need that more than anything… 

As long as it will continue to be Love, I am fine.  

No one can say how long it will continue to be Love on this Wildest of Rides, but I am glad to take this ride with you.

Thylias

But now,   I  feel so minimized, so inconsequential by that, even if that’s not how you meant it, but that’s how those words, your words, affect this little literalist, and that tenderness you showed me in Minneapolis… Tenderness that seems to mean more to me than it does to you.  Yet, it obviously means something to you for that is how you behave… Maybe you always behave like that, and if so, no wonder women seem to love you; you are great to be around… You have a welcoming personality, a caring demeanor.  

 

But you are also a Devilish Liar

easy to love

I just want you to understand in the context of feelings I have for you, I now wonder whether my feelings are maybe being wasted.  I respond to you in the only ways I can, 

but if you have decided, and that still is “IF” because I still retain hope, but if you have decided that nothing more can ever be, then I am wasting my time, and my heart is shattered.  I never wanted the tragic romance that I have.  You know I didn’t, and not seeing you doesn’t present a chance to see what might still be there, or can be there.  

I had reason to fear that it might not be “Love” tomorrow, because it isn’t.  Barely lasted long enough for belief.

And let another year go by, and subject that passage of time to your minimizations, and there is no chance at all.  And that is what frightens me: no chance at all.

caring about you is not supposed to hurt…

but it does.  

I  care about you too much to ever let you go…

I hate your math, your system of determining what extent means, and can be, Mr. DICTIONARY.  

Why don’t you seem to want any more encounters?

___________

Then in a telephone conversation, Ladies, on 8 October 2016, after months, I would safely guess, of not saying what I suspect was already true, FINALLY matching my Honesty, because I refuse to lie,

Ladies, he tells me, the Scoundrel, that HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND!  

and SHE IS NOT ME!

At first, I  was stunned, demoralized, heartbreak was seething, but is he really worth it?  

My time with him, that “Mystery Man” dates back over thirty years, and ends with this betrayal, in his “CONFESSION” finally meeting my honesty with some honesty of his own, and told me he has a GIRLFRIEND? –HE SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THE MOMENT HE KNEW! –AND COULD HAVE! but didn’t! 

He does not love me, he loves her, whoever she is, I do not want to know; of course, for various reasons that have to do with life, he waited 25 years to kiss me, and, I have to be honest, even though I hardly want to praise him now, but it was the best kiss I have ever had in my life, the whole ride in the taxi from O’Hare to the hotel was one extended, the most romantic kiss possible; there is no man on earth who kisses like that, I HAVE TO BE HONEST! yes, I invited him, and he immediately accepted; I was single for the first time as an adult, when I was 60, and I’m 62 right now…  I love when he carried me on his back in downtown Chicago; how he wasn’t ashamed to be seen with me at all.  All those conversations, 400 pages of text messages.  The way he asked to see me, the way after waiting 25 years, he had to wait an additional two weeks, for me to beak up completely with a man from Match dot com –who will be nameless also, a man who tried to blame his impotency on me, which prompted this man I trusted (!) to tell me that “If you could see me right  now, you  would see that impotency around you is hardly my problem” I did see that clearly! —Oh so clearly, using Facetime, and then in person… well… Save that for the movie.

We even planned that too, who would play me and who would portray him Anthony Quinn (in some sort of Scifi resurrection);  for  me, either Kerry Washington or Frema Agyeman from Dr. Who

Way over thirty years, and that’s why this hurts so much… I am unable to sustain anger (I was still married when he and I became friends who never spoke love, who never touched each other  but all along he was lusting it seems, although I wasn’t;  I confess that I never thought of him that way; I was all involved in a marriage the began in exceedingly difficult ways; I didn’t think about a lot other than finishing school, college and so forth. I was married before I graduated from college, of course. I was 17 when I graduated from high school, and when I first enrolled in college. I didn’t think that way at all until I was in that movie about poetry, and then I caught a glimpse of what it might be like being physically close to him;  I was close enough to smell the scent of his cologne, and to eye the patten of his hair, and to notice how he wore his clothes, and to glimpse the movements of his thigh muscles; okay, we all have our quirks, and I happen to like how it feels when that muscle contracts and expands under my hand, depending on whose thigh it is.  TMI!).

He has been so important to me, and I allowed myself to think of future days, to imagine what it would be like to have chance encounters, running into him at markets, the dry cleaners; I had even imagined what it would be like cooking for him, living closer to New York city after I sell my house, but for what?  All those dreams have shriveled up… He wasn’t thinking this –I WAS, about such a skilled Flirt, the best by far.

I am 62, and never knew what it’s like to be truly kissed,

the kiss from a man who’d been waiting to kiss me for 25 years… I can still picture what it was like, waiting for him in O’Hare (when I was 60); he was supposed to arrive first, but his flight from NYC was delayed, so I, an extremely nervous wreck,  had to wait for him, but he was so calm, because he finally had his prize: ME!

–I was his prize for a little while, and that’s why this hurts so much; he knows how to treat a woman when he wants to; he knows the things to say when he really feels them, the way to touch her, the way to soothe her, the way to make love to her, and I just wanted a chance to close the gap of physical proximity, and see what the effects of less distance between us could  mean… The way he walked to my gate, the way our first kiss ever was so public, right at my gate, just  a sweet little peck, how he stood in the distance, his long gray coat around him, what a cinematic moment… I remember sending him a text in the airport, and I love his response, “Don’t move, Baby; I’m on my way.”  

Please, the man loves how I look! he told me over and over and over; “Beautiful” and “Pretty” –repeatedly.  The things I longed to hear, because although I was with my ex-spouse since I was 16 years old, my ex never told me I was pretty or anything because  and this is a quote, “my head would swell”), but this man always did.  One day, just sending me a text, “Thylias, you are one gorgeous woman” –damn right I am! and he could see this, and was not afraid to speak on this.

That’s what I like so much,

the way he treated me, the way he made me feel so special! –I felt things with him I never felt anywhere else! –such intense (orgasmic) pleasure just from kissing him in the taxi; he was not ashamed of this, released his full necessity to kiss me as he’d been wanting to for so many years, finally admitting to me that from the first time he met me in person for the shooting of a film about poetry, he’d been interested , and wanted to take me in his arms right then, although he was married, but he didn’t. He was obedient to the rules, and that told me a lot about how honorable he is.

He waited until he was single himself, and I was divorced from a man who never kissed me as this man did, but never will again… (I am always going to miss that kiss, but SHE WON’T, the “new” GIRLFRIEND, maybe she’s kissing him now; I don’t want to think about it); I was divorced from  a man who never said to me the things this man used to, saying them now to someone else, one lucky woman I despise, although I don’t know her and never want to.  

HERE I AM IN the dress I wore in Chicago for the last of my “Dream Dates” with him, and although my hair (which he likes, although he won’t get to see it, and run his fingers through it, finding no tracks and no glue and no extensions); and although I’m 62, he could easily lift me  (I really liked whenever he literally got my feet off the ground, but just being around him, just the sound of his voice, lifted me, and still does); although he likes long hair, mine is much longer now than when he saw me for that weekend, waist-length now, and the things he could do with this hair… no weave, no relaxer, no extensions –none.

Tag for that dress; I bought it just to wear for him.:

The flowers now, I will never destroy them; I will keep these remnants, just wish I had pressed them, but these roses  are dried  out,

completely dead

like our relationship. 

what a DISCOUNT (well, he DIS-COUNTED ME) on these roses as they are now, value only to me to whom, even in this state, they are priceless.

Other things I can’t show, for they would reveal his identity, and his identity is his, not mine, such a this handwritten ticket he gave in Minneapolis to his performance; the actual ticket is signed. but I will post a version without his signature:

I love how he treated me at his performance, in a makeshift bar across the street from my hotel..  I arrived and just stood in the back, but as soon as he noticed me, he pulled me to the front row beside him and put his arm around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder until it was time for him to perform…  I am not going to say the our hands did not explore each other, and everyone could see that we were a couple in love… He didn’t try to hide anything. No one doubted that we were a couple.  It was obvious… But no more.  No more.  The relationship is DEFUNCT.

How the roses looked as I traveled home with them on the plane, such a sweet gift from the Dysfunctional Dandy;  he bought them for me right in O’Hare, pushing me in a wheelchair after the sweetest little first kiss:

 

Thanks for the most sobering conversation, Mr. Diurnally Delightful Former Lover.  No more love letters from me, but I do hope that you liked them.

Congratulations on having a girlfriend in your life.  No need for me to say that I wish it were me. So I won’t.

Who knows the twists and turns of life.  If it’s over, then it’s over before it really had a chance to become anything.  Guess I can forget that except for how sweet it was.  The possibility of becoming something has shifted to impossibility, unless? (see how reluctant I am to kill the last drop of hope?) So many things I’ve dreamed about have to go to that graveyard of dreams, little things I’ve kept because they meant so much, and hoping, though you have a girlfriend, hoping to see you again.  Yes; that imbalance.  

I am more sad than angry, because you didn’t get to know the me I’ve become, and I would prefer that you, ah, a D-word, the right one; I would prefer that you Dump her and not the one that you remember, me: your GIRLFRIEND at the time, you said that’s what I was, you even said that at the restaurant where I had my first taste of liquor, your gin and pomegranate martini,   and you took my Chardonnay, and ordered a second martini for me, which  was way too much, considering my weight and my total inexperience with liquor (I was told before we even got together in Chicago that you are an honorable man who sometimes drinks too much, and  I told you I’d never had liquor before); guess you didn’t believe me, or it was just so surprising, even that I love you (now) as I  (still) do…  And that is true, And I did get sick from the martini and a half.

What difference would it make if I read at your club or not?  Would it matter to you?  And would seeing me mean anything to you? At all?  Well, if anything negative happens with you and that lucky woman in your life, please think of me, and I guess there’s no reason to invite you to my relocation party; I don’t want in any way to seem to interfere with your life moving ahead as it should.  As long as I don’t hear anything about you getting married; I could not take the implied permanence of that; not that I want to get married again myself, it’s just that marriage would put you officially off the market, and as long as you have only a GIRLFRIEND (!), you are still a bachelor, but apparently a fickle one at best, a bee buzzing about from flower to flower, pollinating, fertilizing them all, and that does sound a bit like you, Mr. Pollinator.  And besides, even if you were invited, I doubt that you would come.  

You always claimed to be so busy,and sometimes I am sure you were,  but some of that busyness had to be obligations to your current GIRLFRIEND (!), obligations you wanted to keep, and so you did; because they were important to you in a way that I am not.  I’m also sure that with your GIRLFRIEND (!) you do not have the problem of physical proximity; I am sure that that is not a problem at all. And even if she were a couple of hundred miles away, I am convinced that you would find a  way to go see her or invite her to where you are, where I still want to be, truth be told…

Never mind the sweetness; I will allow it to remain sweet.

Who knows, perhaps by next year when I return to Manhattan, you will be free,

but not likely for me. 

Mr. DEVILISHLY DECEPTIVE MAN, I am giving up.  

Seems that some changes are in order.  

This doesn’t mean that those objects I mentioned have lost or are losing their luster, just tarnished a bit, and I didn’t have my chance to try to make things better with you; I didn’t get to introduce the new and improved “Thylias” to you, and even if you met her, there is no way I would do anything (even If I wanted to [I do] —forgive me the  Mr. (Once)Diurnally Delightful man, but I must vent a little bit.  I want you to realize just what you are giving up, so your reduction was only the precursor to what happened this afternoon… 

I am all out of D—words right now. Dumbfounded, (self)-deceived. Oh the deleterious propensity of this entire matter, the utter disaster. the difficult debacle, disenchantment, displeasure, disillusionment, that too.  “Corner of your eye”, but never the center. 

I still want the romance novel all about being with a man like you, practically your twin, and the chapbook for that matter.  Hope that you still want Wannabe, Sir. I won’t bother to tell you what I wannabe. You already know, and I really told you way too much. I am not going to repeat to you, all the errors I made in trying, so futilely, to get you to love me.  

I told you I was being faithful to you, although I knew that you weren’t being faithful to me (although I never mentioned it,I assumed, I knew). Yeah, “all in“, you said but all in “what“?  I really was “all in“! –you know I was; all you had to do was say you weren’t; that’s all, and if you could say other things, true, at least, for the length of time it took you to say them, you could have said that I’m only “half-way in”, “a fourth of the way in” , ” a tenth”, one one hundredth” because I know you like reduction, and you even reduce our “precious” time together to goose eggs, nice fat zeros.

But even if I think of more, I won’t bother to disrupt whatever you have going with my little interest in you.

No, you do not love me.  

But I believe you did… You really did.  Finally you decided on some honesty to match the honesty I always showed you.  Always, please remember that! –you got honesty from me, and I gave you everything;

I gave you me, there is nothing more than that.

Despite ideas, as you realize how even the slightest glimmer becomes a lamp for me; despite ideas that seemed to suggest otherwise, I will just remember that you said them, just as I will long remember many other things, as I become only that sweet memory I was afraid of becoming.  Time is the enemy here.  I never got a chance to show you, and that is by far my biggest regret.  Glad that the chapbook by Thylias Moss and Thomas Higginson does not bother you.  My weekend project. Makes even more sense now, that your legal name not be on anything. I am sure your GIRLFRIEND (!) wouldn’t like it.

I am now unsure about next year…  I am unsure about possibly seeing you again and reading at your club; I am not saying that I don’t want to do this, but I am thinking about how it will feel seeing you again; thinking of my little poem: “All Is Not Lost When Dreams” (D-word) “Are” –one of my own poems from “Small Congregations”

(copyright © 1993 by Thylias Moss. Published by arrangement with the author.  All rights reserved.)
the New and Selected book of mine for which I hold all the rights:

ALL IS NOT LOST WHEN DREAMS ARE:

The dreams float like votive lilies 

then melt.

It is the ways they sing

going down that I envy and to hear it

I could not rescue them.  A dirge

reaches my ears like a corkscrew of smoke

and it sits behind my eyes like a piano roll.

Some say this is miracle water;

none say dreams made it so.

Long ago a fish forgot what fins were good for 

and flew out of the stream.

It was not dreaming;

it had no ambition but confusion.

In Nova Scotia it lies on ice in the sun

and its eye turns white and pops out like a pearl

when it’s broiled.

The Titanic is the one that got away.

I do not know how to gracefully bow out of a romantic component of being involved with you.  

I do not want to lie, 

so I will have to admit that I am involved only on my part with a man who has ceased interest in a certain kind of connection with me —side chick at the best! —that’s what I was, and now? Poof! memory and air.   The next man, #9, will be kind, but he still won’t be you.  No one will.  And I hope that no one in your life, will be me.  I still want to rank highly, as I become one of the number of women who have loved you.

–and no one understood “limited Fork Theory” better than him, he even wrote this to me, recently, about “The Fork of Love” , and I am so gullible that I believe it (not past tense, for I sill believe it:

Somehow it seems the fork of love will give you strength. That is strength I want you to have. Because this fork moves poetry and heaven and earth and hell and all history and muse push and language rush and Amstead and so so so much else, the All of It, I want to simplify my response to: I give you a life of strength and support in our friendship, and let you define the love for you. 

Silly me, I took that to mean that he might really love me, as I believe you did but not long enough or intensely enough to carry over time.  Yes, his heart is a real thing, nd so it mine. Friendship love, I guess, and not any other form, but you wrote “let you define the love for you”  What did you think I would do wth such a chance that you created, and surely you knew what would happen by “letting me define the love for me“, your love for me, so that is exactly what I did, I defined “love” the way I wanted to define it, encompassing of all forms, we would be able to touch, you know, as in “friends with benefits“

Please notice how I bite my tongue, for I am not vindictive, and wouldn’t this be the time for that? I guess. 

And I do feel like an idiot for giving myself to you the way I did.  I will cease doing many things, now that I have reason to, except being your friend.  “Always” you said. but not your GIRLFRIEND; there is a distinction, Mr. DICTIONARY.

At least you did not lie.  And this explains why there was never anything in the mailbox, or anywhere else for that matter as there would have been had I only meant more as I really wanted to, you know I did.  But since changes seem to be in order, I will put them in order; I will no longer count you as anything more than my friend, since that is acceptable– friend. 

And see what happens form that.  Likely nothing

(I fear).

As for my extreme sexual frustration, that it all mine; it is not yours. And yes  I want to send you more selfies mostly because   I want you to see what you are missing…  You bet I do. Without doubt! But I won’t.

I will not even send that chapbook of our collaborations to you; you will have to buy one if you get one, and since you wrote the poems with me, maybe you’ll want one to add to the attic of memories that may smell as sweet as the cologne I wore when with you, your “Dream Baby” and no one else’s; my name came from your poem, and you liked that.  Liked that I really read your stuff, transcribed your podcasts also….  No one else ever gets to call me “Dream Baby, that was our name for me that I took for the poem you wrote for me.

Don’t ever forget all that I did from distance; the most that I could, all the time trying to get physically closer to you, and now there is no reason.

 Your opinion is just an opinion.  

Thanks for writing some poems with me.

As I also told him, because I still love him (although he probably  does not DESERVE my love anymore), but as I also told him (just before that  fatal for our relationship “GIRLFRIEND” blow):

“We have shared too much that has been sweet, sacred, and beautiful for soothing gestures that gloss over the underlying issue: my caring about you is so much that rather than hurt me, seems you resort to silence.  Only seems. 

I hope that I am wrong here.  

Hope, that this doesn’t mean you’re dead set against seeing me again.  I hope that whatever it is you will tell me; if you have already decided that seeing me again is out of the question for whatever reason, please tell me.  Please be as honest with me as I have been with you.  Even now. 

 All of this has been  most serious for me.  I never played or joked around with anything I ever did or said with you.  You know I didn’t.  I have been honest to the point where it causes me pain.  

All of my involvement with you has been sacred for me.

 

 

Despite the terrible heartache, how can I discredit those —blasted— “sweet” as you call them, sweet memories, because that is what I have become for you a “sweet” memory –and there are none sweeter, as you will find out, 

You recently, just last month had this to say about my selfies, right after telling me to “Relax, it takes time.  Why so choosey picky? That are all great as usual”  –didn’t sound like a man with no interest… I believe you still have interest, things were fine as long as I assumed that you were with others, as I knew all along, for that’s the kind of man you are, such a romantic, so full of those loving possibilities that women desire, but once you gave her an “official” title, “GIRLFRIEND” it was different, leaving no room for me.  

Excerpts from my Facebook posts as I try to cope with having lost the man I love:

How right you are, but he is honest now –as far as I know. He told me on Saturday that he no longer wanted to deceive me, and I appreciate that, but I DID NOT WANT TO HEAR THAT HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND! A GIRLFRIEND? –even made me wonder what was I to him? Of course, distance was a huge problem; he even said that it was. He lives in Manhattan and I live in Ypsilanti Twp, Michigan. I guess I am playing myself a little bit. We even wrote poetry together, and in the next couple of days, I will be completing a chapbook of poems we wrote together; we tried to have this chapbook before there were any problems with Persea books, but the head of the publishing company, K. Braziller, told me that that “too many books on the market by the same author only confuses reviewers who won’t know what’s important”.

We have written so many poems together, no doubt about that… Could be what I like best about him, that we shared writing… So we didn’t get to to have this book then. But very soon now. Probably no one knows but us the many poems of our collaboration… probably enough for two books. Some of my favorite poems. And, I didn’t say that I trust him. I can forgive him without trusting him. I do not trust him, and doubt that I can ever trust him again. Maybe.  With work, that is, if he wants me to trust him again, and why would he? Unless?  (whoa, let go of this hope, Dream Baby).  No matter what happens. Side Chick syndrome, that is indeed what I have.

He is indeed a dishonest man; I asked him why was it that he never surprised me at my front door, and why did I so seldom find anything from him in the mailbox, and he reflected on that a bit, and at first said he didn’t know why there was never anything from him in the mailbox and why he was never at my door, and then he told me that time and distance were the spoilers. Believe me, I didn’t want that distance problem.

We performed together in Detroit, MI, the whole thing was so sincere, that joint performance in the Hannan Cafe, following his reading of some of his poems  that was where he even met my son, and he prepared a dazzling surprise for me in Detroit, even reading the love poem he wrote to me; It was beyond compare… I had no idea the he was going to do that… I would post the poem but the wold give away his identity, and I am not going to do that… Of course, his GIRLFRIEND wouldn’t like that anyway.  But it is an absolutely wonderful poem. He just walked up to my son at the end, shook his hand, and said I’m So and So, and my son was quite impressed with you, your magnetic personality.   I feel it too.  And this is what another member of the audience had to say after we performed together:

Writer L Bush’s comments about the reading with THAT MAN,  MR. DEVILISHLY DELICIOUS in the Hannan:“Hi Forker Gryle; I did not film it; I shot pics. Had I known you would go OFF like that, I would have filmed it. I was totally unprepared for the Tina/Ike ( happy days) vibe you two had going on. It was FUCKING AWESOME! -w.”

and then he introduced me to this group of Detroiters, and then he proceeded to read some Love poems, including the love poem he wrote to me… I had no idea that he would be reading it; what a surprise that was. The first love poem he wrote for me, I at first accepted, and then rejected when I saw him reading it online, so I complained that he didn’t write the poem just for me, although when he sent to to me, he said, “Of course, it’s for you“, that DAPPER Prevaricator I still love, and maybe, probably  always will, every kind of love –(but I do not trust him; how can I?)  But I really want to trust him; I don’t like not trusting the man I still love…  if he is a bad man, I must check  my own systems of judgement;  I can’t believe I would have been so deceived. He is not that kind of man; is he?  If he wants me to trust him, I will try to work on this, but I cannot accept his current GIRLFRIEND (!) because not long  ago, his GIRLFRIEND was me].   

And then he wrote a love poem obviously just for me, and with the particle physics in it, it was wasn’t a routine love poem, so I still have that and a few other trinkets, including the bouquet of Roses he bought for me in Chicago –where my parts in a movie, his brainchild, I think, were filmed, and where we met again after so many years; of course we had contacted each other off and on, over the years, but it was Facebook, that allowed us to have a relationship; within just a few days after I changed my relationship status from “married” to “divorced”, he contacted me, and I thought if was for the same reason the we had been in contact over the years, but it wasn’t. He told me that this time he had something else in mind.

Unlike my ex-spouse who had read none of my books, he had read all of them, and even quoted my writing to me… I never felt more special.

When I divorced after 40 years of marriage, 40 years with a man who never called me pretty, beautiful, or anything like that, this man always did! –and still does (he knows and likes how I look, but that isn’t enough), girlfriend or not; oh I remember everything precisely! those dates we had in Chicago were my first real dates, except that I was 60 years old, and he was 66, and he carried me on his back in downtown Chicago, and the traffic would pause to look at this spectacle, my short skirt even shorter practically to an obscene height, and he said to me as cars kept honking, and people kept staring at us, and I said what are these people thinking of us? and he said, you think they don’t know what we’ve already done? They know he said… We’re telling them now? There has never been a more appreciative man, until this. His GIRLFRIEND (!)

HERE ARE SOME D-WORDS OF MY IMMEDIATE REACTION:

01. DIFFICULT DEBACLE

02.DECEITFUL

03. (I was self) DECEIVED  (by a grand) DECEIVER

04. (your) DELETERIOUS propensity for

o5.    DIABOLICAL (LOVE) (D)CHICANERY 

06. I am apparently DISREGARDED 

07. DISRESPECTED

08. (BANISHED INTO) DESUETUDE

09. (UN)DESIRED

10. DYSFUNCTIOMAL DANDY

11. DIFFICULET DEBACLE

12. DISPLEASURE

13. (RE) DUCTIONS, his math, so that the total of all our years knowing each other become something so much less to him, especially after e become romantic, when things really meant more to me.. You must understand the long hours of talking, many, many of them… I can’t (well, I could, but I won’t.  Some things a woman never tells().  the way he asked for permission for everything he did, and if this is just the way he behaves in all his passionate encounters; he told me that “the fire would meld us together” and it certainly did, and how!

14. DISRUPTION of my life, in so many good ways, I’m reluctant toes it sour now… All he had to do was wait just a little longer for me; I was his, and I told him so, and no offense, can his new GIRLFRIEND (!) truly be better than me?  Do you realize what you had? Are you aware of what you are allowing through slip through your fingers?  Better than me?   You were a such a king with me beside you; you seemed to know that, for the was exactly how you behaved… 

15. (all of not lost when DREAMS are

16. DREAM BABY I was once the “cream in his coffee” –he told me the too.

17. DISREGARDED

18. DUMP (he’s quite good at that, behaving like such a dump and DOPE of   man, but that;s not who he really is.  I got to see a tender side of I’m, that’s for sure.  To walk with him beside me; to feel his arms around me when I was on the ground, and when he lifted me. I asked him if he could, and at only  about 96 pounds when we met to move from mere friends into something that it seems unlikely to me any other man can attain, the assured me that it would be easy to lift tiny me, and it was in easy for him, but

19. now all that DISQUIET 

20. and DISTEMPER in my soul

21. as I continue to be knocked in a general malaise of DISPLEASURE and 

22. DOOM

although he is hardly the only man in the world, although I did everything to make him feel that he was, even just by having my willing company.  I even got a Brazilian wax for him; I wanted hm to be so pleased with me, and he was.  He just needed to wait a little longer, and he couldn’t, or at least, he didn’t, for whatever reason, but I am worth waiting for, and I told him that, being faithful to him because I was his, wearing the “For Sale ” t-Shirt, because shortly before the flight to Chicago and having the best weekend of my life (no lie), my ex told me that the man (whom he knew superficially of course) had bought me and threw two fifty dollar bills in my face.

 Here I am, in what I wore on the flight to O’Hare; this is the woman who waited for him because his flight was delayed.  I was 60 yeas told, and such a tiny thing

23. DISENCHANTMENT

24. DUPLICITOUSLY DUPED

25.DE-Mused

26.DEBAUCHED

27. once DIURNALLY DELIGHTFUL

28. DISSOLVING and

29. DISAPPEARING and

30. DISINGENUINE love,

31.DEPORTED from his heart.

 What more can be said?  Ays the moment, I remain in love with him despite his GIRLFRIEND (!) -who is not me?   at the moment, the is where I am:

“Well, I have decided to remain friends with that man; he said that we are friends forever. We have agreed to that. He agrees that we have shared too much for over thirty years to call it quits completely.

and little fool I am, and caring for this man as much as I do; he knows everything about me, including the name of every man I’ve ever been with intimately; that is how much I trust(ed) him. Although I am 62, he is only man #8

but a friend like him is rare and I hope I always have his friendship, bottom line. So as friends we move forward,

but just the thought of never kissing him again leaves me so bereft, something I do not yet want to try to imagine. GIRLFRIEND  or not!

Hope it’s okay to say that I hope their relationship doesn’t last?

Bring on the voodoo dolls!

I’ve known him too long… He waited 25 years before he got a chance to kiss me, and that is something that will always be true. Always.

Whoever he is, and wherever he is, he is a most special man, and I have been 100% faithful to him, preferring flesh and blood to the dildo he gave me and named after himself; prefer (and how) HIS flesh & blood.

 

 

Some advice I was given on Facebook:

 

“It’s OK to forgive, but don’t play yourself. He should have been honest enough to respect both you and her.”

 

“Sounds so poetic, I hope that you heal peacefully from this. With love.”

 

“I’m no expert Miss, but I think you better separate yourself from communicating, and give yourself some space and time away from Mr Mistake. You have time to be friends after you heal. If he really cares about you he’ll stay away, if he doesn’t that will tell you he doesn’t.”

 

that’s it for now, the 

 

32. DASTARDLY DARLING

 

33. DAMN U (Prince)

Damn U lyrics:

 

Damn u, u’re so fine
Seems 2 happen 2 me each and every time we make love
I can’t hold back
It’s like having a hundred million little heart attacks
Damn u, baby u’re so fine
Damn this kooky love affair
All I ever want 2 do is play in your hair
2 people crazy in love
Into 1 another like a hand in a glove
Damn this kooky love affair
(damn u)

Like animals just born 2 breed
Come 2 think about cha baby
U’re my only need
I’m on fire ’til u come and put me out
All I’m trying 2 say is that my psychadelic shouts
When u damn me
Damn u
When I’m in your arms it’s all that I can do
When we’re makin’ love, I can’t hold back
It’s like having a hundred million little heart attacks
Damn u, baby u’re so fine

 

 

 

 

 

 

AUGUST UPDATE

Have been in a blazing fury of writing –as if my life depends on writing, and it does.  Writing, and writing about everything I can, and most difficult for me is writing about my aneurysms, cranial aneurysms, one of which ruptured and nearly killed me on the night that Amy Winehouse died.    The night of my death also; yes –it seems that I’ve returned, but what is here is a resurrected form –I shouldn’t even be able to talk, let alone write, but here it is; I don’t really care if it’s good or bad –so, so nice to feel this unusual motivation, the laptop doing the best it can, this silicone typing skin covering the keyboard, so that the depressing of every key seems to have an echo, as if, almost, as if, I’m doubling the words…

Tonight I completed  a first draft of what might become a chapbook –an idea for writing I couldn’t stop! —I didn’t want to write it, but I indeed was compelled –almost as if I would never, never write again —I was sitting on the couch reading, reading, don’t know what I was reading, when light poured into the room, seemed to set the room ablaze, as if the sky had cracked open, and this light, (light I didn’t see on the night I died); went into the hospital, the ER, on that July night, expecting to come home that very night, but came home in October, and began my new life.  Light, stunning and unexpected radiance filled my lap!    

—Every crack of the room was ablaze! –what celebration! –I was not alone! –as if , as if, the light itself was writing! –indeed my laptop blazed! –I have since doused this fire! –Amazing what can still be accomplished with MS and two cranial aneurysms! –just one rupture however! –I’m supposed to be dead, but I’m not! –I defied the odds

It was as if the sky itself had an aneurysm rupture! –no other way could I explain such extraordinary illumination! –yes; there was the title of a poem right there, a poem of my new life! –an “Aneurysm of the Firmament”! How I look now:     I have two aneurysms, one in my forehead, the one that ruptured, and killed the form of me that was the only “me” there was until that night, and now this changeling form is the only one that there will ever be…. Time bomb in my head, above my right ear… Could rupture anytime; hope it doesn’t of course….  (at least) Not before these books are published: 1.”Wannabe Hoochie Mama” –my big New and selected collection of poetry, due in the fall of 2016 from Persea. 2. MAYBE! also a collection of prose poams: “LFMK: Looking for my Killer (a PSA, of sorts) –manuscript has been submitted to a potential publisher, just waiting for an answer… Not bad for someone who wasn’t supposed to ever talk again, let alone write! 3. Chapbook! “Aneurysm of the Firmament” –newly completed… I’m so very hopeful! –haven’t had a new book since 2006 and Tokyo Butter, from Persea…