David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.
Just like the embedded fragrance forever in my mind
Invisibly color the uncolored
And fade away the veiling blurred
Sparkling eyes having visions inside
Innocence offers ravishing rides
O’ The fragrance of generosity and humble
Regards, Respect, and dignified dale make it a bubble
A feeling of expressing is now double
Fragrance of all styles
Fragrance that touches the unheard miles
Grooming the dimness into eager lights
O’ the Dazzlingly fragranced like a hearth
Dispersal at the end of your breath.
Tajalla Qureshi, a radiant literary gem from Pakistan, stands as a beacon of creative brilliance. A wordsmith par excellence, she masterfully blends introspection, devotion, and creativity into compelling narratives that transport readers to enchanting dimensions. Her art lies in weaving words into wonders.
Additionally, a true polymath in the literary world, Tajalla’s portfolio spans poetry, creative columns, essays, and flash fiction. Each piece is a testament to her unyielding passion and finesse, intricately designed to evoke profound emotions, spark vivid imagination, and inspire the human spirit.
On the flip, celebrated as an international interviewer, columnist, and editor, Tajalla’s voice resonates far and wide, captivating audiences around the globe. Her unique perspective, lyrical style, and profound insights have cemented her place as a leading figure in contemporary literature. Furthermore, her work exemplifies the transformative power of words. With every sentence, she crafts an intricate tapestry of emotions, ideas, and lived experiences, inviting readers to embark on a journey of introspection, growth, and boundless wonder.
a Gothic French princess on a hill overlooking the Sunset Strip a white stone beauty with a casual toss of gray head of slate roofing earthquake proof, turreted the castle still stands almost a hundred years of tread and wear parties, scandals, affairs of musicians and actors of writers making history.
They came under cover of darkness entered silently through the garage, no need for anyone to spot them no bright-lit lobby their shame, their value in the critical eyes of a culture where privacy not guaranteed but at the castle they could mourn, drink, create inspired and protected by the knowing kindly staff.
A glamorous shabby-chic version of the Loire Valley’s Chateau d’Amboise opened as apartments on the teeter edge of the stock market crash cheap rooms with cachet.
The movie studios funded Chateau suites for cheats to preserve their stars’ gleam the new owner made it safe for Hollywood royalty the hunchback manager the in-house phone operator the Garage Boys valets and maids always silent on the misfits, iconoclasts, outcasts, deviants, gays after the drunken fights trashed rooms, broken hearts the news had no clue.
The New York writers came uncomfortable in LA at home in the Chateau Hollywood-on-the-Hudson and they wrote scripts Rebel without a Cause, Sunset Boulevard, Music Man, Ben-Hur articles by Dominick Dunne on the infamous O.J. trial and so much more.
Run by eccentrics for eccentrics the castle fell to careless hands holding companies, banks threatened foreclosure the downslide of the aging belle at the seedy top of the hill shag rugs patched with tape peeling paint in shreds, must furnishings broken fixtures shabby-genteel, a place outside of time.
The new owner updated an elegant conversion with old-world charm a historic cultural monument where hijinks could continue: Jim Morrison fell off the roof a lyricist shot himself John Belushi overdosed the hideout hit the papers the Chateau an open secret of legendary, fashionable funk.
A new era, a new owner New York nightclub magnate full restoration upgrade to a chic upscale loftiness a buzzy bar scene, swanky showbiz party exclusives splashy bashes for the stars their premieres and awards.
So now the old girl looks down a long nose from her perch on the hill over the new Hollywood still classic, still historic with a modern LA brand.
The Chelsea (1884-present)
“You’ve got a great future behind you.” —old billboard in Times Square
New York’s most illustrious third-rate hotel the place Leonard Cohen made love to an unforgiving Janis Joplin and Thomas Wolfe wrote You Can’t Go Home Again and Arthur C. Clarke 2001: A Space Odyssey Arthur Miller the play on his iconic ex-wife Bob Dylan the lyrics for Blonde on Blonde and Dylan Thomas drank until he died young.
The largest, longest lasting creative community in the world designed as a haven for artists in the old theater district a cooperative building twelve stories of red brick in Queen Anne Revival style with wrought iron balconies a homey atmosphere in-room fireplaces a rooftop terrace a basement kitchen with dumbwaiters private dining rooms and a public café.
Attracting a cross-section of all social classes the rent affordable the rooms soundproofed for musicians and writers north-facing windows in studios for painters short-term or long-term a friendly residence an experiment in living in harmony with others.
By 1905 the co-op failing financially forcing subdivision from 125 rooms to 300 smaller spaces then bankruptcy after the Depression and Hungarian émigrés purchased and protected the hotel and the artists for 75 more years.
The theater district gone meant a downhill slide a rundown neighborhood seedy offices, tawdry bars and gradual hotel decay clanging heating pipes shabby rooms, dirty rugs with further subdivisions to 400 dingy rooms still popular, still housing knowns and unknowns long-distance truckers pensioners, burlesque dancers novelists, crackpots, drunks.
A miniature Ellis Island of the odd and avant-garde through the ’40s and ’50s the bohemians, the beatniks Kerouac and Ginsberg and the drug-fueled ’60s Christo and Warhol Pop artists, rock bands Jefferson Airplane, Janis slugging Southern Comfort Alice Cooper with a python wrapped around his neck.
Marijuana smoke wafting tattered halls, tattered tenants paying overdue rent in art displayed on lobby walls and hiding from hustlers pushers, hookers, pimps holdups, gunfire, junkies room fires, overdoses, leaps from the roof or out windows.
A city no longer doable for artists, the young or old the hotel sold, closed down the power of the creative community forgotten as history made way for the fortunate few rooftop gardens torn up the wall art torn down rooms gutted and enlarged into 155 elite suites a lobby full of new art a lobby bar full of chic.
In the city of ashes the city of gold, the Chelsea on the Register of Historic Places the icon casts a glitter sheen for influencer appeal.
Key West
The southernmost isle once called Cayo Hueso the island of bones— bones from a battle or Indian burial ground so there was always this legacy of lawlessness: pirates, wreckers, smugglers drugs, drinking, wilderness only reachable by boat the glistening white sand water jade green and aqua where ocean and Gulf met.
Pirates hunted for booty until the Navy arrived built a base, a busy port for Greek sponge divers for Cuban cigar makers treasure hunters seeking shipwrecks and sunken gold then the hotels and shops cottage homes and bars the Conch Republic born of Caribbean and Cuban influx and escapees from elsewhere creating a rough culture.
Henry Flagler linked the chain Palm Beach to the Keys the East Coast Railway and a hotel for visitors escaping winter storms Prohibition’s restrictions to where liquor flowed the Conchs smuggling in fat boatloads of booze after a deadly hurricane blew down the railroad the Overseas Highway the route to Key West the tropical oasis otherworldly, exotic a seaside sanctuary where art could flourish.
Hemingway in residence fishing, drinking, writing his most significant works he nicknamed his island the St. Tropez of the poor and Tennessee Williams bought a bungalow refuge brought gay friends to stay in the laissez faire outpost of the next literary star Thomas McGuane filming his rock ‘n’ roll novel Ninety-Two in the Shade his pal Jimmy Buffett on the soundtrack with no real music scene in the eclectic bars where everyone gathered, all types: politicians and criminals hippies and rednecks artists and bums and he sang for free drinks began to write story-songs on the laidback island life.
When “Margaritaville” hit the charts and the tourists flocked to the happy hours cheeseburgers in paradise cruise ships, mad crowds crime, trash and trinkets new rents and home prices nobody could afford so the writers left the millionaires, developers vacationers and wannabes an alcohol-fueled theme park the old island of bones the legacy of pirates seeking others’ treasure blind to it themselves.
Provincetown
A finger of land at the very tip a sandbar to mainland Mass a salty spit of gray isolation after the Mayflower anchored the women washed, their men stole Indian corn, skirmished before moving on to Plymouth and Portuguese whalers arrived harpooning thick pods to sell whale oil, bones, baleen, the cod catch plush so they sent for family the railroad down from Boston and the Cape Cod School of Art in the diverse community of immigrants, artists, outsiders.
Ensconced in a lunar dunescape in the old Life-Saving Station young Eugene O’Neill penned 19 short plays, 7 long, his first performed in a decrepit fish shed Bound East for Cardiff giving birth to modern American drama Anna Christie about the fishermen on the island: a grand place to be alone and undisturbed.
John Dos Passos down the street on Commercial faced the harbor and Norman Mailer’s house where he wrote the majority of his books in summers and spent his final years in: the freest town in America that was naturally spooky off-season a place for murderers and suicides with cold sea air with a bottomless chill.
Painters came for the crystal purity of the aquatic light, translucent fleets of squid, flocks of white gulls drafting faded scallop boats squawking terns chasing scarlet crabs red-faced men on creaky piers inhaling deep the briny scent the slap of foamy waves against the rocky shore.
Mary Oliver wrote for decades lush poems on the beauty of the island she called home the skittish skunk, rusty fox glistening sand and scrubby pines the endless surf, the unending call of the foghorn’s haunting note winters windswept and desolate and summer’s blast of blues sunset orange on the salt flats soft music in the misty dawn of inspiration and retreat.
Greyhounds
Have you seen those women?
The confident ones?
The ones who boldly stride.
Like greyhounds they race past my garden.
As I
Barefoot
Heavy breasted
Kneel for the pulling of weeds.
The world is overrun with plays, with busy sets, overwhelming characters. The actors are passersby, strangers, who fire their perverse blanks inches from my temple.
The cars, the trains, are part of it. The ruined buildings and their ceaseless shadows too. My footsteps on the blunt sidewalk are the interminable soundtrack to the tale which keeps on telling.
It’s a love story. But I’m not the leading man. It’s a drama. Simple conversations are so fraught with dread. It’s a comedy. The audience awaits my very next pratfall.
Sometimes, I wonder what am I doing in the cast, why are they all looking at me, what do I say next.
But then comes the great relief of forgotten lines suddenly remembered. I’m an actor again. I inhale my motivation. I exhale my interminable bows.
DIARIES
Each cover had a lock
And there were five of the books in total,
one for every year from when she was 12
to her time as sweet 16.
She says she recorded everything
from the most mundane
to her deepest, darkest thoughts.
A page might consist of
what she wore to school
coupled with her feelings
toward her stepmother.
She held nothing back.
I asked her whatever happened
to her diaries.
She replied that she had stored them
in the drawer of her bed,
until she was twenty
when she took one out, began to read it.
The author was a stranger she concluded.
And it wasn’t much of a story.
So she threw them on the fire.
And those five years seemed grateful
to go up in flame.
They crackled and spat for a time
but ultimately were nothing but ashes.
Only the locks remained.
She let them simmer there.
For all I know, they simmer still.
HAVING LOST SOMEONE
In the darkness,
overcome with grief,
maybe a hundred,
a thousand, restless souls
throughout the city
whisper as one,
“What do we do now, sad people?”
I’m not saying
they’re the ones
gathering under the streetlamp.
But there’s a great sob
coming from that direction.
And I can’t believe
those are tears of light.
THE OSPREY IN THE MARSH POND
Sheer horror in the water,
a young osprey floating on the surface,
wings fumbling for momentum,
puncture wounds oozing blood.
One of the young birds I’d been watching,
so near to being fully fledged,
but now turning in an infernal arc,
as the parents screech from somewhere above.
Feathers that dealt him flight,
now tilted and waterlogged,
dark eyes scanning his slim chances.
I lift him up, place him on a rock.
No gratitude, just all fear.
My trespass shrinks before his dying breath.
It’s quiet in the clifftop now.
Noon sky turns to midnight.
THOUGHTS OF A WRECKING BALL
The building is flattened,
steel and brick and glass
scattered in all directions.
The wrecking ball
sways slightly back and forth,
like a mind ticking over.
124 North Main is a done deal.
What’s next?
120? 128?
How about the fast-food joint?
Or the book store?
Or the restaurant with the fat cakes in the window?
And there’re always the guy,
one good swing away,
riding high above the ground
in his little cabin.
He’s God.
I’m his wrath.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.
