Once upon a time, there was a beautiful but unhappy princess who lived in a castle named New York City. She was terribly lonely but thought her castle so wonderful that she imagined it was all there could be. One day, she woke up.**************************************************************Comedy writer, poet, political dissident and all-around dissident INFP free spirit intent on escaping the NYC metro area forever, at all costs.....the pursuit of enchantment, the archaeology of bliss."...there never was a world for herExcept the one she sang and, singing, made."Here are some of my poems and those of others:NARCISSUS, VANISHINGGray weather, and water-Hollow he turns and turnsTo the persistence of surfacing reflection.Trapped in rapture of these facets,           Unanswering beauty, he stops at the edges of Self; fears any widening in a vigil of sleep.  A chorus pools its shimmer of thoughts:Water can not, can notLove nor crowd in its ghosts,Can not offer up its secrets.Such desire only spirals,              Makes up illusions, conjuresVoices that double up through springTo carry back down the steady stair of echoes.   **********************************CATS AND CRIES  I can not choose. The instant I close the door I meet the cry haunting the house- My poltergeist flees grief, Its invisible corners. Inside I jump, shut my eyes, turn Between the girl I've again become, Caught suddenly, bowing before The queen's altar of screams-And the cat's blank, clocked look: The commoner simplicity of A moment's startled silence.**************************LORELEI (unfinished poem)I liveIn a still land,A smooth surface of sea swellsOn the edge of earth.Is desireThis rising face?Or sorrow, caught byThese emptied crevices?Hard tide,Hard as wheelsAnd anchors are:Scrim perfects scrim.White, Ignited, sirensExtend their scalesAs wind consumes my quell.************************LOVE SONG FOR ISHMAEL He wrote to me, sun-parched, a storm-poem; I had grown weary, wait to lay anchor. His seaward song brought me rains to fathom. On the driest of days I was tossed numb Though now the world about schemes much blacker. He wrote to me, sun-parched, a storm-poem.  Braved strange waters, across continents come, Piping raindrops over desert's ochre, His seaward song brought me rains to fathom.  His bass quenched summer's dearth, its spent chasm; Marvelled Summer into Fall, each acre.    He wrote to me, sun-parched, a storm-poem.  His hands so full of wind and momentum Gave gale, swept up salt like sour liquor; His seaward song brought me rains to fathom.  Eloped home now I am enchanted dumb; Yearn to nothing but again hoist anchor. He wrote to me, sun-parched, a storm-poem; His seaward song brought me rains to fathom. - Arianna Higgins                         **************************************CIRCE...As I pressed on, my heart remained strandedBack on her slow bright isle, drowsy in her bedForever?we, lashed together, we theWounded, sinking in that tarry water,Every sunset unleashed from its tarn, towedFrom the empty war and noise of our dreams. -Ernest HilbertCROSSING THE WATERBlack lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.Where do the black trees go that drink here?Their shadows must cover Canada.A little light is filtering from the water flowers.Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:They are round and flat and full of dark advice.Cold worlds shake from the oar.The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;Stars open among the lilies.Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?This is the silence of astounded souls.-Sylvia PlathLOVE POEMMy love, we know how species run extinct,And greenest plants grow to fossils in time,Mountains go molten and run to the sea,That our careful ideas, all we think,Will be forgotten, that continents climbAnd drop, shift away, collide endlessly;My love, we know the universe must bendUntil it ends, entropy will laborUntil all is cold and flat, that stars closeAcross icy gulfs, suns crash. All things end.Do not wish our love could last forever,Or grieve that it is one more thing we lose,Only that we drive through the dark weather,Through the gray, through night, and end together.-? Ernest Hilbert
Garden City, New York, United States