Ward Stories: Poetry

Organized by Dan Frey, Editor in Chief
Four poets are featured in this Winter 2018 edition of Ward Stories: Eva Tortora, Mary Divine, Richard A. Martinez Jr., and Louie Morano. One poem has an expression of love, another an eloquent and painful complaint, the others offer advice with a side dish of hope. Find what you need; take what you want and hopefully enjoy.

Love
By Eva Tortora
Love
surrounds my heart
from you
accepting me
and all my poems
and all my years
of battles, roses
sweat and tears
so on this day
thank you
and all my lessons
and all my poems,
love in my heart
from your acceptance
so I can write 1,000 more poems
and songs and words
blessing you

Living life with P.T.S.D.
By Mary Divine
How am I supposed to feel,
When the pain and nightmares become so real?

What am I supposed to say,
When all my hope has gone away?

When do I stop and get the choice,
To end the noise, quiet the voice?

Flashbacks, isolation and hypervigilance abound,
Peace and calmness cannot be found.

I often feel like the walking dead,
Stuck with the memories inside my head.

I sit alone quiet and don’t want to talk.
I think I would feel better if I go outside and walk.

This does not help, I feel as bad.
Am I going crazy? Am I going mad?

What can I do? I know this feeling is wrong.
I feel I’m always fighting, but help! I’m not that strong.

I wish I could go back in time,
To a place where my life was truly mine.

And be the person I used to be:
Normal, happy, smiling, free.

But no, this is not then, but now. 
I must devise a way somehow.

To halt bad thoughts, somehow someway,
To live my life from day to day.

A Season of Change
By Richard A. Martinez Jr.
Spending time
With family, with those who care
Living life
With people who share
I know when handling stress
From a heavy heart and burden
Can only tell why
Suddenly you can be certain
There is no way for me to tell
One thing from another
Just treat your sister like your sister
And your brother like your brother
Another day
Under what we stand for
Greatness can be made
Our hearts are our cure

Your Problems Will Disappear
By Louie Morano
You can make your life anything
you want it to be
simply by changing the
way you Think.

Instead of being sad you can feel great.
Go ahead and do it and give
yourself a break.

Turn a rotten day into a terrific one.
Good Times have just begun.

Listen to Norman Vincent Peale
and think positive.
It will be like crossing a bridge
from a world of sadness
to one of joy.

If life has you down and you feel annoyed
Think different thoughts that are a bit happier.
All your problems will disappear.

Bruni in the City: The Perfect Macaroons

Bruni in the City: The Perfect Macaroons

A Column by Christina Bruni

Stay True to Yourself and You'll Find the Right One

I've drowned myself in macaroons, courtesy of Cream, a new coffee bar in Bay Ridge on Third Avenue at 72nd Street in Brooklyn. My favorite is the wedding almond. I buy two and a hot chocolate with whipped cream, no marshmallows.

Cream has free wi-fi and a quartet of tables in the back, plus a restroom. I prefer going here to the Starbucks down the street. Donuts are also on offer, like the hibiscus or the chocolate with cocoa nibs. A standard variety of coffee, too.

The winter is not my favorite season. Late summer into early fall is when I have the most energy. Thus I decided to try to find a guy in the early spring or thereabouts. I bombed out on the Internet matchmaking services. Earlier this year, I decided I would never again be untrue to myself by trying to get other people's approval.

The guys online left a lot to be desired. That is, I wasn't willing to settle for one of those average guys. For a number of years, I've bristled at how sick people are praised because they hide behind a cloak of normalcy. You can be rude to customers. You can fail to do your share of the work at a job. You can be outright hostile. And you'll be celebrated because you don't have a mental illness.

The guys online were crackers. I was open-minded, so I sent a message to a vegan, and he didn't respond because I eat chicken and fish. I also sent a message to a psychiatric worker who specified he wanted to meet a "sexy" woman. No response here either.

Not only were the guys a few bricks short of a house, I realized I couldn't compete in these traditional dating arenas because 95 percent of the guys are only interested in finding out if a woman is "fuckable." If you're an intelligent, hip, socially savvy woman, you're expected to be grateful for the crumbs on the table that these guys deign to give you. You're supposed to overlook that they're unmedicated yet not normal.

As my efforts derailed, one after the other, over the last two years, I decided that I hadn't failed; it was my approach that failed me. I took myself off the market to focus on publishing my memoir, Left of the Dial, which went on sale on Amazon this past December 2014. After the book came out, I kick-started marketing it and selling it via my new website and my blogs and other channels.

The more I thought about things, the more I realized that changing myself to fit a mold of what other people in society deem acceptable is a no-win game. The self-doubt was replaced by a new confidence because it suddenly hit me: Do I really want to date a shallow guy who seeks a tarted-up, tatted-up woman? No, no, no.

Two real-life experiences cemented the truth in my mind that settling for any old guy who expresses an interest in me is not the way to live. I hold two truths to be self-evident. First, I have a best friend I'll call Josh. He has a female companion who collects SSI. He takes her to lunch. He takes her to dinner. She doesn't wear stilettos and a cleavage-baring, leopard-print dress.

This cheered me because I realized I might be able to find a great guy like Josh who doesn't immediately want to get under my skirt. I am not a bimbo. My great worry has always been that I would have to stuff down my personality and change myself to be in a relationship with a guy.

Have no fear. A free spirited woman I know wears cowboy boots with a skirt. She is always nattily attired in jeans and a t-shirt. She pulls it off with her own joie-de-vivre. And no, she doesn't wear stilettos on a date either or slit-up-to-there skirts.

That's how I realized there was hope for me. A psychiatric worker only wanted a sexy woman, and a narrow-minded vegan was critical of a woman's food and fashion choices. Since I couldn't compete online in this arena, I realized I would have to live my life and see who I met in person at a book talk I gave.

I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I didn't have to get tarted-up or tatted-up to snare a guy. The equation is simple: Only by acting true to yourself can you find your true match. I'm convinced there's a guy out there for me. Right now, the macaroons sure are delish.

Bruni in the City: Love and Arrows By Christina Bruni

Bruni in the City: Love and Arrows
By Christina Bruni
I Struck Out on OKCupid
I've had a wackadoodle time online. I don't recommend any of the Internet matchmakers.  OKCupid is only for hook-ups. The six foot tall guy I contacted there responded by telling me since I was only five feet tall he couldn't have sex with me, so he wasn't interested.
Imagine that: I was too short and too skinny for a guy even though I'm beautiful: go figure.
With OKCupid you take a quiz. If it rates you as less kinky and less adventurous, no guy will contact you. The service is rigged for sluts and gigolos.
I had no great experiences with chemistry.com and eHarmony as well. eHarmony caters to conservative Christians. If you write in your profile that you like to attend and perform at poetry readings no eHarmony match will contact you. They're looking for church-going hausfraus, not left-of-the-dial indie girls.
The matches on chemistry.com were incompatible too. One guy wrote the love of his life must love animals. I detest dogs, and cats creep me out. Dog hair sheds all over and dirties your clothes. Take your animals, Jack, and open up a zoo. Or find a woman who's willing to vacuum the couch and de-lint your suits; she isn't me.
You can see why I'm skeptical of Internet dating services; they promise so much and deliver so little. The alleged matches aren't compatible if you're looking for the right person, not just an almost-perfect person. I don't think like the author of that book who proposes you should settle for Mr. Good Enough. I think you should aspire to meet and date a great guy.
No guys on OKCupid were reliable. I could tell they weren't on the level. Guys would send this message: “hi.”  Just “hi.” That doesn't bode well for their conversational skills on a date. Guys, you respond to a woman online. Refer to something she wrote in her profile. You say “hi,” and I'll say “goodbye!”
I took a dating break this winter in the polar vortex. As I write this, it's March 2nd and a snowstorm is on the way, even though there's only three weeks until spring. My goal is to resurrect the love search in June when the weather is warmer.
Any woman who is desperate to meet a guy because she doesn't want to be alone will only attract Mr. Wrong, a guy who's going to use her, or worse. My hardship is that I have other more pressing goals and it wasn't ever my number-one goal to be in relationship. Meeting my soul match would be the icing on a tasty cake. I already have the cake; it's time to frost it.
I wanted to bet my friend a wager that I'd meet Mr. Right-For-Me in the summer. “D” turned me down even though I offered him a free meal, not a monetary prize. So, I'm going to bet the readers of New York City Voices a friendly wager: If I meet the guy this summer, I get to tell you I told you so. If I don't meet a guy, you can smirk at me.
To the victor go the spoils. To the heartbroken go the Kleenex. I've stocked up on the tissues just in case.

Pullout: “Imagine that: I was too short and too skinny for a guy even though I'm beautiful: go figure.”

Bruni in the City: “Falling Out of Love”

Bruni in the City: “Falling Out of Love”
By Christina Bruni
Like a Bad “Air Supply” Song
I fell out of love with the Holy Cannoli guy. It just happened that way. I was all out of love, just like the singer sang in that bad Air Supply song from the 1980s. He couldn't live without her, yet he had no love left either.
I have a problem attracting guys who can only see me at certain times because they're unavailable every week. One guy was a Tiger, and I'm a Snake. That makes us mortal enemies, according to Chinese astrology.
How could someone, a woman no less, fall out of love with a guy, when it's usually the guy who doesn't return calls and does an abrupt fade?
I'm not proud of this break-up. I recommend you screw up the courage to tell the person gently, "The feeling I had isn't there anymore. We were romantic. Now I'm uncomfortable just being friends after we dated."
That guy asked me what was up. "I'd rather you didn't call me anymore," I told him point blank. "Okay," he said. And hung up.
Ladies, it's a crock of bull to want to remain friends with a guy after you've been lovers. I tried that with a guy who thought we could return to being good friends. Did I really need to know the intimate details of his current love life? He didn't get it, and I didn't enlighten him either.
The recent guy and I hit it off, and that was the problem. I realized that if I could get together with him, I could find another guy if I wanted. Oh, I wanted it to work out. He was a good guy.
Last July, I joined chemistry.com. About every two weeks I get a "Christina, you've been noticed by him" email message in my inbox.
A psychic told me I'd meet a guy I had never met before, and he'd be divorced and the attraction would be solid. Could it be possible "Mr. Right" was on the way?
My latest goal is to upload circa now 2013 photos to the dating website. I'm an eternal optimist and a hopeless romantic. Chemistry.com is much better than the dating website for people with mental illness.
A guy on that site almost 10 years ago told me in his second online message, "I don't want to be friends...I expect sex," like I was some kind of inflatable vagina-of-the-month play doll. We hadn't even met or corresponded.
I know two people with mental illness who met each other on chemistry.com. Neither of them knew about the other's pharmacological history when they dated until they decided to get engaged and spill their secrets.
The point is this: There's more to life than your diagnosis. I signed onto chemistry.com because it matches people based on four personality types. I'm a director, and (ahem), "Sparks fly in the bedroom between two directors."  I'm still waiting for that to happen with the right person.
To all the guys I've loved before: You deserve better than a woman who ends her column paraphrasing a Julio Iglesias song.
What is it about bad love songs? Does getting to the church on time terrify me like it does for the guy in "Modern Love" by David Bowie? And yet, I want to find my number one, not a one-hit wonder. When that happens, I'll gladly take down this column and keep things private.
I'll report back soon whether my Summer in the City sizzled or fizzled out. Ciao for now.