The Counter Girl

Coiffed to perfection
she stands at her station
with studied foundation,
a touch of translucent La Rose blush,
lush Esquito mink lashes
framed in veiled Chanel ombre eye shadow over
defining Revlon color stay liner,
all dusted with shearest Guerlain powder,
and completed with Dolce & Gabbana aubergine lips
lined in NYX plum for definition.

She’s the counter girl

On her feet 9 to 6
behind her station,
attentive to every passerby,
she demonstrates technique to a matron,
teaching how to apply perfect tones
while ringing up a boxed soap set
and spraying L’air du Temps
on some strips for another interested customer.
All over and over-
so many brands , so many colors.

She’s the counter girl

Home to a precious 4th floor walk-up
with chintz Laura Ashley wallpaper
she put up herself over dingy walls
to give her ruffled furniture definition
from a silk Hermes scarf covered lamp light.
Her windows look out at a next door brick wall
and a fire escape she has set with geraniums
to give a bit color to her view
over the air conditioner,
a tired old unit about to give up the ghost.

She’s the counter girl

Every day 6 days a week
She takes the E train
59th and Lexington
with a packed lunch,
and vitamin water,
and her current issue of Allure-
ready for another onslaught,
another sale,
more screaming kids,
and Upper East Side bitches.

She's the counter girl

Even with her cosmetic perks
and store discounts
She finds it difficult to stretch her
fourteen dollar an hour wage
plus commission
to handle a Manhattan studio apartment rent
and building utilities,
along with food and sundries,
and a seasonably fashionable wardrobe
to be presentable as required for the job.

She’s the counter girl

So ever on the lookout;
among the guys buying for their wives,
trophy girlfriends, or Mothers-
Even presentable ones along her route
or on her studied Sunday museum and gallery visits,
hoping for encounter with a man to call her own
after a few dates with flowers and dinners,
an engagement,  the wedding,
and a cute little house in Connecticut;
She is always at her best.

She’s the counter girl

It takes just one damn chance
to work this all out.
People do win the lottery,
so she hopes and prays
thru days of slush and wind and snow,
or summers deluges and hot wilting sun,
that there is someone to take her away
from makeup and fashion and standing all day
to a place far away...
where absolutely and finally...

She’s Amy, not just the counter girl.

Ending

It is easier than anticipated to let go.
No more impatient cats paws on my face mornings,
serenades with strawberries and Mozart by a cellist boyfriend
or standing in the cold waiting for the train to work on frigid winter mornings.

Memories ebb and flow like crazy
Belly laughs at Annie’s loud fart in Biology class.
“Coming out” to my Mother,
or dinner in the Eiffel Tower.

Faces of my life flash fast
Professor and bodybuilder Frank murdered by a tenant.
Dear Debbie; the love I could never have,
or David, who I loved and lost.

There are so many unwrapped packages-
I never finished that painting for Peggy,
or patched up the tiff with Diana,
and I never visited Machu Pichu.

But there is also no more chemo
no more radiation
no more enduring “ It’ll all be O.K.” by clueless friends
I don’t have to worry about “stuff “ at all anymore.

So many seasons and adventures now packed up away in the ether
a life so full of joy and sadness: true friends and lovers,
grand wines, great food, moving music;
reading , writing and “rithmatic.”

I know I have heard my last clock chimes
I hear no angel’s harps
there is no bright light
my thoughts and feeling all just blissfully fade away.

“Will I dream?,”HAL said.
It is upon me now.
Breathe out one last time,
Until   ..

Sir Edward Elger (1857-1934), English Composer-  was so vain he actually posed for a staged "deathbed"  photo well before his actual death.

 

Just Desserts

 I have fought for some status in life using my body and a great deal of manipulation.  It  involved a lot of living hand to hand and of wresting opportunities into making a better life.  I finally have made a turn onto easy street with my marriage to inventor and marketer of such products as the Slice O Matic,  Reeler Rod Pocket Angler,  No-Smoke Ashtray, and the TV Easy Rotisserie. It was very difficult and vexing to beat off competition to finally snare the old fart as my own, taking over as the fifth Mrs Donald Rompeel - only a year after the untimely demise of the 4th. .

I was rummaging in the kitchen of baronial Rompeel Manor looking through kitchen cannisters. I opened the largest , a flour container that looked  old enough to be handed down from his grandmother. There was no flour, and more importantly, no stash of cash or negiotable notes. Damn!  Well, there was this letter, which I took out and began to read...

“Dear Newest Wife and Gold Digger,

I know you have managed to corral my husband Don, and I know you, by now, have found out he is more adept at spending money than he is inventing things.  I can tell you my years of work trying to contain his lavish spending were to great consternation and little avail.  The endless parade of young vixens turning his lascivious attention from home and hearth were my enduring sadness. However , I rest knowing the children are well provided for with  irrevocable trusts.  ( Note : irrevocable . )  Rompeel Manor is mortgaged to the hilt in  support of Ron’s insatiable quest to surround himself with younger woman in an unsupportable lifestyle.  No doubt you are rifling the house looking for things of value you can sell to get some measure of what you feel is your just reward for landing this whale.  As unsympathetic as I am to your lot, I do offer this note as some consolation  to you.
No doubt you are near exhaustion running around the house looking for the fortune of grandiose jewelry portrayed in the several paintings of me positioned on walls around the manorhouse. The diamond tiara and necklace depicted in my portrait in a Givencey in the parlour, the sapphire and ruby broach and ear rings on me wearing the Chanel in the dining room, and the emerald rope and impressive 20 carat diamond ring shown in the oil of me wearing a Valentino gown hung in the master bedroom.
Rest easy child, these jewels do NOT exist. Never did. I had all the paintings done just for this very occasion , with intent of driving you crazy trying to find where all this glittery loot was stashed.  Now  you can just settle down and take stock on what little you have until Donald finds yet another willing and eager money grubber .
Take solace in the fact there is probably enough left selling the mansion fixtures to get a good divorce attorney.
Karma is a bitch.

all love,
The late 4th Mrs Donald Ropeel ”

-Jerry Wendt 2017

Claire's Scare

The trees had just begun to leaf out . It was dark and dank. I had looked all over our old Wisconsin farmhouse for Aunt Claire.  I  called out, and finally found  her, sitting upstairs by an attic window with an open dust encrusted trunk , and a very bedraggled old book in her lap .  She looked up.


“Whatever are you doing up here dredging around in this old stuff ?,”  I asked.
She showed me the book she had been holding. It was a handwritten journal of sorts.   
Claire said,  “I had this very strange feeling that drew me up here to this old trunk and as I sat near, there was a wierd chill that came over me while the sky outside clouded over. It’s like days of funerals - as if the earth is mourning the passing. Disturbing.- Further,  it was though this old chest was almost compelling me to look inside. So I did.”

“And...,” I interjected

“ And ,” Claire went on, “so I rummaged inside and found this old journal.  handwritten by your great, great grandmother , Gerta.  The page I turned to began an account, passed down to her by generations long before, telling of an event occurring in 1628 in our ancestral settlement of Würzburg , Germany. 

It was a very turbulent time.  There was much religious contention then and the period was rife with dark tales of evil spirits , witches, and warlocks.  Indeed, the town was in the midst of regular trials of persons accused of witchery and Satanism.  In her journal ,Gerta writes of a story told to her by her grandmother. It was about a 19 year old girl in Würzburg,  Gobel Babelin, who was considered the prettiest girl in the whole town. Gobel was our blood  relative .

Gerta doesn’t give much background as to why the girl was considered a witch but my guess is that the town wenches were jealous of her beauty and found the accusations of witchery a convenient excuse to deride her. For whatever reasons, charges were taken seriously, and Gobel was tried as being a witch and sentenced to be burned at the stake. “

 I was chilled.

Claire got a very serious expression on her face and went on, “ But this is where the story gets really interesting. Gerta wrote that it was passed down down by family  present that day, that, when the fires engulfed Dear Gobel , bound on the pyre,  a placid smile was observed on her and , then, in a grand burst , flames sparked into a kaleidoscope of colors and sparkle. They subsided,  revealing she had vanished into the tumult that instant, leaving nothing behind . There was the silence of awe from the onlookers who were frightened by this strange event.  Babelin was gone, bones and all,  but the event was powerful enough that memory carried it forward.”

“Wow,”  I was really taken by this dramatic story.  But the real catcher for me is that, as  Claire ceased her telling and closed the old journal, I saw incandscent colored sparks jump ever so briefly from her fingertips.  She smiled at me.  I know there was a legacy here, and it was Gobel Babelin that had left it.


-Jerry Wendt 2017

Gobel Babelin is mentioned by name in Jesuit Priest Friedrich Spee’s 1631 book Caudio Criminalis, detailing accounts of the famous Würzburg witch trials and executions occuring in 1626-1629. He mentions her as being noted as “The prettiest girl in town,”
-Wikipedia

Lost Transition

Lost Transition

A stealthy summer segue comes upon us.
Maples launch whirlygigs twirling down
into crispy leaf mounds
that delight shrieking kids
jumping at parasol milkweed seeds floating by.

Patio furniture yearns to come inside for the coming times
along with migrating field mice
seeking warmth from now summer silent furnaces.
There is assurance in knowing we have
an envelope of comfort waiting to shelter us.

Now, amid pumpkins, bonfires, and apple cider doughnuts,
we celebrate  change with our harvest of bounty,
a transition stolen from folks in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico,
who find their reality of change despair
strewn around them as flotsam, flattened trees, and besotted loss.

A seasonal shift with hope berift

.

-Jerry Wendt 2017

The Fabulous Lillian LaDeaux

All feathered and laced
quite strategically placed
as every girl knew
it was all in the view
for such was the trade of our fabulous Lillian LaDeaux 

Those boys far from home
knew Lillian’s aplomb
as she strutted her stuff
baring barely enough
truly studied finesse of Lillian Ladeaux

With her generous buxom
they wanted to reach out and pluck some
as LaDeaux bumped and ground
to the joint’s raucous sound
She loved the attention, our Lillian LaDeaux  

With a smile on her painted face
She charmed the whole place
And sent them into ecstasy
with frenzied intensity
all part of the charm of Lillian Ladeaux

They’d stand at the bar
four deep for our star
for the briefest glimpse
they fawned like limp wimps
it was all in apt admiration of Lillian Ladeaux

Dear La Deaux was a power on stage
but it wasn’t primarily her wage
for Lillian always left them below wanting more
but not on the second floor
Where there was barter for the “all” of Lillian Ladeaux

Alas, ladies of certain age
have trouble on stage
in flaunting their stuff
trying to give them enough
It was the end of her run,  Dear Lillian Ladeaux

That day poor Lillian was forced out
no more audience left to shout
But you can still go meet her
She’s now "Lil," the local Walmart Greeter
So that is the end of the fabulous Lillian Ladeaux

-Jerry Wendt 2017

Summers at the Lake

The lake bottom was squishy mud
with water plants that wound around your feet,
and sometimes fishes nibbled on toes.

There were ferns under the shady oaks.
If you walked through them you got ticks,
and Mom yelled at you cause she had to stop and remove them 

Mostly dinner was cooked outside.
the kids had to set up the grill.
which never met with Dad’s approval

The cottage was tiny,
There was no heat,
and morning  dew settled wet into blankets

There was an outside shower,
the water was numbing cold,
and shivers were the everydays’ greeting

We kids ran wild all day,
Baseball, Hide-n-seek, statues,
and you’d think all would be tuckered by dusk

Nightfall brought conclave in Coleman lantern reflections
playing games like Clue, and Hearts, and Monopoly
and sharing scarey stories with burnt s’mores

Bedtime was early
cause daybreak came earlier
and it took two tries to roust us out of bed

Cicadas and lightening bugs ruled the night
mosquitoes plagued finding sleep
and it took a stinky spray to allow slumber

Even with all this rigamarole
bad recollections seem to have slipped away from me
and I remember summers at the Lake as the best times ever.

                                                         -Jerry Wendt 2017