Stray Parts...Claim at the Checkout Counter

We are parts of a whole, but the whole does not exist in reality. We are pieces of a gigantic puzzle that can never be put together in any intelligible form. We are toes and eyes and ears and snot - the sum total of our constituent elements. We are the stray idle thought that flows uninvited through out minds; we are overpowering emotions that arise when we least expect.

But we are not this person, at this time, or in this place. For person, place, and time are mere fictions of the mind designed to give identity to something that is in essence a no-thing.

Stick to the stray parts...you will find much more meaning there. The whole is much too much complex for mere mortals to fathom.

Angelinis

Have to write a poem about a significant relationship that I had with someone. I decided to reflect upon a minor relationship that I had in the distant past with a girl named, Angelinis. The relationship, as you can see, was purely platonic but was important to me at that time for some rather obscure reason. The fact that I can still see Angelinis' misty eyes all these years later says something about her impact upon me when I was a teenager.

Sadly, she did end up badly...a victim of the substance abuse that was endemic in New York during the late 70s and early 80s. And, yes, I did see her one day by Central Park about ten years ago. There was something about her that was very much the same as the innocent girl that I remember from Junior High, but I could see instantly that her life had taken a hard toll on her.

So the poem I wrote turned out to be a wistful, sad memory of a minor relationship from the distant past. I tried to write it in a more stream-of-consciousness style than I usually do to fit the character of the subject as well as the mood of the poem. Otherwise, this poem is very similar in style to most of the other ones that you will read in this blog, using free verse, short lines, and flowing stanzas.

When I was fifteen
I had this
really amazing thing
for an angel,
a real angel.
Okay, maybe
not a real angel,
but her name was
Angelinis.
And if ever
a name conveyed
the essence of a person
her’s did.
She had
eyes as blue
as misty sea water,
eyes
that could look
down deep into your
pitiful soul,
and when you gazed
into them
you beheld
the mysteries of the ages.
And when she smiled
at me with her
full, wide mouth
which she did often—
not because she
was into me or anything,
but just because
that’s the kind of
thing that angels
are known to do—
I would buckle
under the magic
of her sweet
seductive spell.
But I went on
to my own
white starch prison cell,
and she descended
with cruel inexorability
into the hazy realm
of methane soaked oblivion.
When I saw her
last on the street
of the windswept city,
not far from Central Park,
she looked
pail, fragile, disjointed,
like one who has had
her soul surgically removed.
She barely recognized me
at all;
but I recognized her
right away.
Angels don’t stop
being angels
just because
they need
to shoot a bit
of pixie juice
into their veins
now and then
to blot out the pain
of this tawdry existence….
That just makes them
all the more angelic.