My short story

My story "False Pride" is included in the new all-female anthology of short stories, "Lipstick Diaries", by Augustus Publishing. Out in all the big book stores, including B & N. I’m the only white woman whose story is included; a blue-eyed soul sister. “False Pride” is a story about a young white woman from the hood on a journey of self discovery who continues to struggle in spite of making some bad choices, to make her dreams reality!

The cover is sizzling and so are the stories.

Read this short story; the entire explosive novel is soon to follow it!

You can also check me out at:

My Space

And listen to me read poetry and talk at:

Cool on the Groove

My contract gives me 2 boxes of books and now I'm paying for the copies so please support me by buying directly from me.
I can be contacted at violetwrites@nyc.rr.com or 212 569 4048.

TWISTED, A SESTINA OF LOVE

Everything always seems to be twisted
Nothing is the way we’d expect
If I want one man, I get another
I should be happy and get what I like
If I can’t be with the one I love
I should give my love to the man I’m with

It’s better to give my love to the man I’m with
Than to try to love someone who will twist
my heart; a strange phenomenon, this thing called love
The one I get is never who I would expect
him to be. Do you think we ever get what we like?
It’s a big mess, first one lover then another

He’s not endeared to her, he wants another.
She wants him and not the one she’s with
It’s so confusing, no one gets who they like
Mind is like a monkey, grasping and twisting
from one branch to the next; never where I’d expect
It to be especially when it comes to finding love

I sometimes wonder, is there true love?
Or could it be one man as well as another?
Who can fill the gap, meet my expectations?
Can I meet a love eternal and stay with
him forever to an end with no twisting
fate? Can he stay with me and like

what I do? Or should I expect that he’ll only like
What I don’t like? Should I freely give my love
Without worrying that our love will twist
To hate? Then instead of him I’ll seek another
Man who I shall repeat this cycle with
until it’s finally over when we least expect

I should realize it’s stupid to expect
Anything to turn out the way I’d like
and in the end be with who I want to be with
And the one I love would just love
me, Only me and wouldn’t want another
just me unless he became mean and twisted

Twisting my heart, then he’d expect me
to find love with another like the one before who I liked
With whom I was so happy before things got so twisted

© JL written in 1981 at Columbia U writing class

Harold Hunter

I met Harold when he attended Seward Park HS. He and I hit it off (I was one of the counselors there) but he was assigned to someone else. I asked the other counselor to let me see Harold instead of him seeing Harold since they didn't have a relationship anyway. The counselor said "If you want to but he's never here." I managed to see quite a lot of Harold and learn a lot about him. Harold had a very hard life and I related to that, having had a very hard life myself. He was such a fantastic kid and so friendly. He had the biggest personality. I later met his brother when his brother was at a GED program and his brother was a very talented artist. He drew great comics.


I remember once running into Harold when I was with my son, and being proud to introduce him, because Harold was the type of guy anyone would have been proud to know. After that, I ran into Harold infrequently and when ever I did, he always spent time chatting and telling me what was new in his life.


It's no wonder I found myself crying after I got to work, I just couldn't stop the tears and contain myself. And it was probably meant for me to meet that young man I met this morning on the train who told me Harold was dead. I just began talking to the guy because he had a skateboard and it reminded of Harold back in the day. Actually Harold had been on my mind lately because I always ran into him around NY. I had been thinking seeing him is way overdue. I'm so sorry - it's a loss to our world and a reminder that we are all only visitors here of our own demise.

SOLSTICE

It's summer solstice, the longest day of year, I want the light to last but it's fading. Shadow is everywhere. The sun is
sinking into the horizon behind the trees, and I can't see anymore what I came to see. There are thick bushes laden with berries. Plump black ones, tender to the touch. Bruised, they bleed a dark bluish juice on my fingers. I move to the next bush and reach for sweet red berries, not quite ripe but leaving the promise of sugar to come. The ground is moist and gives way beneath my feet. The smell of rotting earth and leaves teases my nostrils. Exciting me. Reminscent me of days spent in the woods when the sun burned down and the stillness was suddenly disturbed by thundering clouds and lightening. Then later, long after the rain stopped, the pungent seductive smell of earth lingered.

BODY LANGUAGE

Hear my body talk
My body speaks to
your body from across
the room aching
for your touch

At nite I awaken
several times
imagining your hands
upon my breasts
my body heats
I touch myself

Hunger and holding back
b-4 the rain, and after
we remain the same
all looks no caresses
Just desire stirred

my nipples tingle
my breasts yearn
for your solitary touch
Wrap me in your arms
provide solace for my dreams
Find a home for my lust
which you’ve reawakened
with a thirst I didn’t
realize still existed

You’ve reawakened
my girlhood charm
my lust, while you fight
your urges and mine

There you stand
Here I am
You’re too far away
to be blamed
for a lovers quarrel

Make your jokes
Pick me like a daisy
I do - I don’t,
yesterday was not today
I don’t know
who I am
Here I stand

MY MOTHER

My mother is an artist
She designs embroidery
- a dying art - and creates
any design she desires
her hands instruments
of a higher force

She explains to me
how this one is a fleur-de-lis
and how in the region
where we come from
it is made differently
from someplace else

With only one eye
the other is glass
she sees more than I do
She is dying
my heart is unsteady
I am powerless
a witness to her fate

My mother’s hands create
embroidery with many
names and meanings
She patiently explains
the subtle meanings
behind each motif

I listened in awe
while she explained
all of this to me
I had nothing to say

Now there is even
less to say as
Each day brings her
closer to her end
I drown in helplessness

She tells us she is sick, not stupid
she knows her death is near
If only I could relieve her suffering
I would do so until the end

She alternates between begging for death
then apologizes for doing this
She is my mother, she worries
about me, my mental health
how I will handle her death instead

I think about her hands flying quickly
the needle moving as tho she has 3 eyes
The pattern suddenly emerging
Then the design is near complete
like the course of my mother’s life


*This poem is published at Poetry Kite Anthology where only invited poets are published. Poetry Kite is administered by Jim Bennet.

Mimicking Marguerite Duras; A Tribute

She stood there, watching the wind lift her long skirt, playing with it. She spoke to the wind softly with caresses. She had red hair and blue eyes. She was quite alone by the shore, watching the storm heaving, as though it had spent the night drinking and could hold no more. She stood still allowing the wind to caress her hair.
Even at this distance her smile could be clearly seen. The stranger stood by the glass windows of the cafe and watched her move gracefully along the beach shore. An incredible sadness washed over him. His eyes were fastened on her red hair swirling into the oncoming gloom. The gloom of despair.
Great pellets began to beat down upon her. Still she remained unmoved. She may as well have been a picture, she stood untouched and alone. At this point the stranger saw the man come out from one of the bungalows. The man stood under the awning and yelled but his voice seemed drowned by the storm. All he could decipher was the howling of a wounded animal.
The girl raised her face upwards and closed her eyes, as though she were in prayer. She turned towards the cafe. The stranger felt naked, exposed, although, his eyes plainly saw the red gauze cloth clinging to her erect, rose colored nipples. The man by the bungalows had disappeared. She walked towards the stranger.
She entered the cafe. She moved her hips enticingly through the door, her eyes cast down. She knew there wasn't one person who could keep their eyes from following her as she undulated though the seated guests, looking for a table. Her red hair and Mediterranean azure eyes resembled a lit green emergency flare. She spotted a small table at the room’s rear, with only two chairs. She strode there purposefully.
The table may well have been in the room's center, for she reigned over the room. Her hair hung heavily against her as though it were another layer of clothes. When she sat, some of her hair fell to the floor. She picked it up and wrung it as though it were a piece of clothing. Drops fell glistening on the floor.
Every eye in that cafe, whether willingly or by force, belonged to her. She began sobbing, long deep wails that shook her body. She lay her head on the table and sobbed. People returned to their food and conversation.
The stranger approached her table and sat opposite. His eyes burned and melted, as though feverish. His tears fell silently aside hers.
She raised her head. Their eyes met. In sorrow they were introduced. "Please," he begged, "I only want to share your sorrow."

Inspirational: Washington Heights is Home

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS IS HOME

You found my online photo album and you saw the photos I’d posted of 1 Sickle Street both inside and out of the building. You wrote me and told me you grew up in Washington Heights where I grew up. You said, things look different yet the same. You recognized the building on Sickle Street where you had grown up and which now has been renovated. You commented on its revived beauty and said you should visit. You told me you often think of visiting that building and surrounding area.
“Yes,” I wrote you back, “you should before it's too late and you wont be able to. You know how life is, it passes by so fast; there’s never enough time to count up our regrets.” Think of all the times we say we’ll do something and that something never comes to pass.
I still live in the area where I was born in Washington Heights. I wonder if it's like at the end of the galaxy where the further away you live from where you were born, the more chaos you create in the universe. If that’s true, why have I been through so much? It seems as though I’ve survived an unending mass of crises always waiting to be resolved.
Maybe it’s just like my old social work professor said, Problems are proof of life, and so they ought to be celebrated.” I’ll go along with that.
It's strange to leave the neighborhood where you’ve always lived, especially when you only live in another section of the same neighborhood or even another borough of the same city. Then like you, although you’re still very close to where you grew up, you feel as though you’re a million miles away. Nostalgia sets in and then we desire what we perceive as lost. Even when what was lost was never that great - maybe even painful - when we had it back then.
I’m like the female counterpart to Jim Carroll, who wrote Basketball Diaries - having also grown up in Washington Heights - and also writing from an early age. I’ve been writing since I’m 4 years old. I did that for love. My life actually became a parody of looking for love in all the wrong places - obviously because I wasn’t getting enough in the right places. I had a very hard life as a youngster growing up in Washington Heights and then when I became a parody of looking for love in all the wrong places - and of all places -in Washington Heights, it sure didn’t make living any easier.
Now as an adult, I’ve been able to fulfill many desires I had as a child. And I’ve been able to do this in my birthplace, right here in Washington Heights. I literally live 2 blocks from where I was born, in Jewish Memorial Hospital, which is now JH 218.
I never had a childhood because as a child I had to deal with adult concerns. The good part of this is that my past made me who I am; a social worker devoted to helping people move ahead and also to get benefits they’re entitled to. I’ve devoted over 21 professional years helping people attain their goals, and many more years as just a citizen and human being.
I've gone from being a high school dropout to now being an Ivy League drop-in; I’m a double alumna of Columbia University. My undergraduate BA is in Anthropology and my Masters in Social Work. I’m living proof of someone who has pulled themselves up through the system by my boot straps. It was very difficult. One of the major pluses was how I capitalized on being poor and undereducated and got my undergrad BA for free. You’ll have to read my stories on how that came to be. Now I hold 2 master’s degrees, one in social work and the other in Creative Writing from CCNY. See, now that I’ve made it into middle class life, I can’t afford the best and Ivy League anymore. I have to pay for everything; sometimes more than others. Like in the Mitchel-Lama cooperative where I live; we pay a 50% surcharge.
I have a clear message to anyone else who feels like they’ve been through it all and had enough. After all is said and done, I’ll repeat what Irving Miller told me, after he called me “a mitzvah to humanity.” Mitzvah means gift and he called me this because I have an inherent understanding of people's needs and how to help them move ahead. He also said that my self awareness and acceptance of my own eccentricities and flaws make it easier for me to accept others. I agree with this; you must learn to accept who you are. The most important thing I learned from Irving Miller, my honored social work professor is this, "Celebrate your problems, it means you're alive."
My message to you remains the same; "Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Attack your problems with vigor as new ones crop up to replace the ones that have been resolved. Most importantly, always have a goal in sight and make certain it is an attainable one."

Buy my book, 'A Spot of Bleach' at Amazon.com and read more about being a social worker, growing up poor and making it in Washington Heights. Surviving and succeeding took hard work and courage and reading about my life will give you the strength to do what you need to do to get where you want to go.

Rosa's Legacy

Walking through Harlem on a dusty spring morning, the ground is slowly drying on one side of the street while the other side remains dark with the wetness of early morning drizzle. City sounds surround me. Horns blaring, people yelling, the sounds of cars and trucks whooshing by intermingled with the call of a crow just settled in a nearby tree. I make a strange sight in Harlem and some people stare while we wait for our bus. I hear their silence loudly, “What’s this white lady doing in the middle of Harlem waiting for a bus.” No one speaks yet their eyes say more or is this just my imagination?
Right now all I want to think about is when will the right bus pick me up? My fellow waiters give up staring at me and it is as though, by default, I finally fit into the scene. I become one with it. We are all just passengers waiting for a new life or waiting for our own demise. Well, o.k., I'm being dramatic, we're only waiting for the bus. It's taking a long time today. I'm waiting for the crosstown. I count four M100's and three M101's before the bus I need comes by.
When I finally board the bus, no one sees me anymore. I may as well be invisible and then a young pedestrian strides by dressed in a red plaid mini-skirt and thigh high stockings. The two ladies seated in front of me comment on her style.
The first lady says, "Oh, she thinks she looks cute, but she doesn't!"
"No," I cut in, "She don't look cute, she looks sexy!"
Both of them crack up. We're talking about overweight, middle-aged women.
I say, "If I were small and skinny, I wouldn't mind wearing that."
They giggle in embarrassment at my spoken words. I continue, "But I'm not. so I can't."
They laugh harder. "You're too much," one of them replies.
At that moment, I'm not white or black, just another woman who knows and sees what they see.
This makes some sense, fits the cliche. But what I really want to say is that there are all types of prejudice. Color is only one of them. Prejudice is an excuse to treat someone mean and put them down. People find all kinds of reasons to put each other down. Just examine history and you'll see. I don't even need to get into it.

Worries

I worry about the world and what will happen to it; the rivers and forests are being destoyed, the land is polluted and our air is smogged out. I worry about the future of our children and grandchildren who inherit the earth and wonder if they will save it or keep destoying nature.

What will happen to our planet?

Will this planet die out and turn to a ball of fire?

Will the life on other planets continue and will they ever discover our planet?

Fuck all this and tell me what's happening tomorrow. Another bomb threat on the subways?

Just do the best you can with what you have and keep going.

It's all any of can do.