the doldrums are upon me: and a few words about the totem muses

Thursday morning...after the Arts Festival read, but before the Malt on the Mon soiree.

The doldrums. Too quiet.

Got a belated birthday wish from an old friend and prospective lover, the Selke. Seems she has an itch we never got around to scratching, another casualty of the paradigm shift that occurred when Ann made her move. Tempting, tempting.

The old "champion" element in me, in my ethos, still is there, I have found...I am finding the need to identify and fix myself in orbit around someone, a lover. I have managed to avoid this so far, but only by faking myself out...the deprivations of the last year or so in the name of keeping my intemperate promises have worn thin. When your queen asks a quest of you, then leaves you to the wolves, after a while it is the nature of men to question their logic, purpose and value. Was I ever more than a wallet to her? When the money ran thin, so did her affections, that is a certainty. My heroics of the early times had become "old bones" to quote from Kipling, and the fact I had not yet gotten back on my feet after al that was grist for her family and friends to make mock of (note, these are people who had not made such sacrifices themselves, or accomplished what I had managed, so critcism came easy and ignorantly to them).

This does not diminish my feelings for her, but it does make me question the sacrifices I made. She's not a bad person (or at least, I can't admit to myself she is) and considering where she has come from, emotionally, it is remarkable she is as healthy as she is.

But when you're bleeding from a thousand wounds and the person you're taking those wounds to guard turns and curses you for allowing blood to get on her, it's time to reconsider allegiances.

Let's talk about allegiances (a major theme in my memoir, by the way)...

The romantique, when he (or she) fixes on a lover, they often become blind to sideshow issues. If I look back upon my past lovers, I can see where I have, at times, sworn my faith and passion to the ocassional unworthy. In "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love" I refer to it as lovers who would have no memory or care for me were it not for my trinkets of words they wear to prove their worthiness. I am, or rather my love and expressions thereof are, a trophy.

There are those who can point to the poster on the wall or at the book on the shelf and announce "a famous poet wrote that about me". I remember the Goldenheart told me of having printed off "the Goldenheart Cycles" and putting them up in her dorm roon. I remember Ann mistakenly thinking that "PanthEon" was about her and telling people thus. I remember how many people I knew of who had speculated out loud that they might be "the Panther".

Let's set some records straight on some of my most debated works:

The Goldenheart Cycles: Kristina is, was, and will always be her name. She knows who she is. She attended the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-1990's. An excellent writer in her own write, I know not if she is alive or dead at this time.

Cithara Song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon: Alisha, attended a Christian college south of LA in 1997 on a basketball scholarship.

Soubrette: Her name was Susan. She lived in Ohio in 1997 and was an aspiring essayist.

The Patchwork Skirt of My Love: This was also for Kristina.

eyes of stained glass and fire: Brigit. She was an extraordinary beauty, an awesomely clever mind and served as my sidekick for The Romantic and Erotic Poetry Group on AOL at its inception. Lives in the Midwest still.

The Selke Cycles: The Selke is a remarkable woman with an extraordinary voice (she working on a career in voice over work in Southern California) and when she chooses to write, is quite good.

Sonnet: A Vintage Passion: Got big "wows" at my first public reading of it, just last night. Nancy (Psyche) this is of you, as are "Monument", "tread softly", "The Unicorns", ad infinitum (with my catalog, closer to the truth than hyperbole)

taking a risk: Jan, my first wife. There are some very good works to her, and I take full blame for the end of that marriage.

The Panther Cycles" In one of the later cycles I actually use her real first name, plus anyone with a gradeschool IQ and the internet can put together that name with the name of the illustrator of "PanthEon". Duh.

There are other question marks, but let's be real...not all mysteries are meant to be solved.