The Urban Elf

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 19:17:09 +0000

I have cried

In a place of solace.

I have screamed

In a place of peace.

I have disgorged

In augery to see you,

Only to find you

Here.

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 23:26:00 +0000

Willy Nilly was a knob.

He would not shut his stupid gob.

He'd groan and drone and carry on.

All that heard wished he'd get gone.

Then one day when nature called

He was pulled from his stool

to a washroom stall.

On the way back to redon his airs

Someone tipped him down the stairs.

Willy Nilly was a knob.

No one saw nothing

yet they applauded the job.

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:26:00 +0000

One cannot sing

When breathing is

Restricted.

However,

With just a little air

Still one can hum.

Humming is vibration

Harmonic vibration

Which,

If amplified,

Can drop a plane

From the sky,

Shatter a building

And possibly...

Topple a regime.

written October 27, 2025

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 02:14:00 +0000

Will you leave me

In September?

When summer stutters

And maples blush?

Will you leave me

In October?

When the gale first toddles

And the tourists crush?

Will it be November?

When the harvest's time

Is due?

Or will it be December?

When all your people

Have laid sacrifice to Yule?

Do not leave me,

My darling,

In a season bright or cold.

Do not leave me,

My darling,

Please,

Until we're so very old.

Classic

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:07:00 +0000

You see yourself

In that perverse window

That inverted surface

Studying every crevice

Worrying every wrinkle

Wondering

Where the days have gone.

And I tell you

Through this lens

I see

Like all men

You have packed

Those days with living

And stacked those years

Like cord wood

To feed

The blazing glory

You are today.

_______

Previously posted on Threads

Rites

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:04:00 +0000

Dig a hole.

Dig it deep.

Lay a heavy stone.

We do not wish

Him back again.

Not brow

Nor breath

Nor bone.

______

Written last fall.

Calypso

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 02:02:00 +0000

Wrote this last October at the Valentin Imperial Maya but posted elsewhere.

____________________

She dances

as though The Sea

were within her.

Calypso calls,

And she responds.

A song and a thrum

Beating at the edges

Of most mortal reckoning.

Yet to her,

The surge and retreat

Is the call

Of an insistent lover.

Rising to meet the rhythm,

She makes it her own.

Queen.

Monarch

Of a court

In elemental sway.

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 13:20:00 +0000

Never underestimate

The terror

Of The Ocean.

She birthed all life,

Swallows our shit,

And keeps her cards close.

A whim

Can sink a ship.

A wound

Can erase a coastline.

Imagine

What she could do

With intention.

- Written a few weeks ago and previously posted elsewhere. -

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 13:16:00 +0000

As an unbalanced spin cycle shudders and bangs, thudding its percussive bluster, dissembling to violently disassemble the machine in which its tempest whirls so might one describe the current condition of my mind.

- Written back in April and previously posted elsewhere. -

Barstool musings

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 22:10:00 +0000

I wrote this a bit ago, but only posted it to one or another of the socials...

I want to stay here.
Slip into
The warmth of my cups,
In this time out of time
And stay.
Warm and happy
Adrift
On a cloud of music
Seperate
From everything
That waits outside.

Solstice

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:40:00 +0000

I welcome the darkness
And embrace the night
That on the other side the light
Of the sun might rise
Sooner bright.
For now let the spirits ride
And mischief let the twilight hide
For longer days
Of the sun's full height
Will once again hem in the night.
When magic turns to summer's dreams
And leaves behind winter's schemes
And nature trades her evergreens
For fireflies and nodding stems
Her snowy mantle for flowered hems
Then I will feed the daylight's pride.
This night
Under sacred dark
We ride!

Guidance

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 04:39:00 +0000

Somewhere in the starlight
Between the black and bright
Twist blue and purple ribbons
Stringing constellations like kites
Lifting diamonds free of coal bins
Warped to weave a tapestry
To write dreams upon the cosmos
With naive artistry
To fasten tight remembering
On the fabric of the night
So though we fear the darkness
We let land slip from our sight

Salem on October 1st

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 23:57:00 +0000

Here we sit

On the cusp of chaos.

The wind is lost

Sighing summer and singing fall,

Yet the people

In their numbers

Gather as if we all

Are here for their entertaiment,

Not just witnesses to it all.

The spiced and spooky

Pumpkin quest

Of eager minds,

Missing the point

Of a history,

Deeper than judgement

And sweeter

Than the Judas witness call.

May I Return?

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 15:19:00 +0000

May I return one day?

Bent and old

To sweep the floors

Of the hallowed hall

And the sacred spaces of making

Redolent of sawdust and paint,

Makeup and sweat,

And dreams?

May I hand out programs

And strugglingly direct supplicants and hedonists

to lettered and numbered perches,

Pilgrim's pews or thrones?

May I return?

With middle class purses held up in offering?

Or offering the currency of time

No longer spent toiling for wages?

To give the slippery hours remaining

To the cause of the muses

And maybe

Just once

Step out onto those storied boards

And read a litany of largess

Or an admonishment of flash photography?

May I return?

One last time?

To feel my swelling heart expand

As if to fill the cathedral of dreams,

Thrumming once more

With the all-consuming magic

that is Theatre?

...in which a gay Gen X-er mansplains his gender journey

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 06:38:00 +0000

I have never spoken about this publicly, but beginning at the age of 17 and lingering into my early twenties I questioned my gender identity. We had fewer options back then, even the transgender narrative was binary, and eventually I realized I was (a little to my chagrin) hopelessly cisgender male. I am a fixer and a mansplainer and I try to be better every day. Mostly I fail.

When I was a freshman in college I wrote a poem about my fantasy alter-ego, the one who had helped me survive being a less than macho art-fag in a an early 80s small town blue collar high school. In love with boys I didn't realize I was in love with, crushing on girls who made me feel comfortable and safe.

My Name Is Rachel

My name is Rachel and I deal with feelings.

Though they may not separate us completely

From animals they do make us so uniquely

human.

And between the realms of euphoria and pain

they possess the power to split a mind and

shatter a soul,

unbridled, their passions corrupt and destroy.

I stand in their path and manipulate their

fury.

My name is Rachel.

I have a friend and he is in love,

he is in pain.

Summoned by the tempest which has engulfed him,

I have come to help.

They are close, he and teh other,

but never closer than the boundaries allow.

Their love can never be, for the other is

trapped by society's web,

he can never accept the love of a brother,

only the love of a she.

So for my friend I will love the other.

I will take my friend's passion and give it

as mine.

i will share my body as only I can,

as my friend wishes he only could.

And for that moment we will exist as one,

tandem souls sharing heart and flesh.

Then I will depart

My purpose fulfilled.

I am Rachel and I am one of many.

OK, I was also fascinated by multiple personality disorder, still am, but that isn't what this is about.

What is Rachel saying? She is saying that her friend is a dude in love with another dude. Her friend is a gay boy in love with a straight boy, and wouldn't it just fix everything if that gay boy could be all the things that straight boy liked but also a girl? This is the logic of a 1980's adolescent closet case, who grew up idolizing Jodie Foster and Tatum O'Neal because tomboys were so much better at being boys than he was, and then got to doff their baseball caps and suddenly transform from objects of admiration into objects of desire. Thereby making all of the difficult conflicting feelings and urges her audience's problem. This is not a nuanced feminist perspective. It sees none of the struggle or danger inherent in being female in this society or any society. This is the magical thinking of a boy in love with boys who knows no other way for boys to love him. This is the magical thinking of a boy who saw tomboys in the media as more successfully tough and sporty, and therefore masculine, than he was. He also wanted to be pretty. And, so he dreamed.

I knew about transsexuals. I loved Phil Donahue, and as it turned out the first transsexual I met was in my great-grandmother's kitchen when her former minister came to visit on Thanksgiving. The dialogue back then was all about gender dysphoria. Were you in "the right body" or the "wrong body". I wasn't in the wrong body, I was pretty sure of that, I was in the wrong society.

The more I learned about feminism, sexism, homophobia and its roots in misogyny the more I realized that my personal crisis was about who I was expected to be. The more I learned about feminism, sexism, and internalized homophobia the more I realized this particular crisis (and oh I've had many) wasn't about who I was. We didn't have the word back then, but I was a cisgender male. Sometimes problematically so and for that I am not at all proud. But, just because that is where I landed that does not mean that there was not in my life a very real period of struggle and self-discovery. We are all on a journey. I don't know and it's not my business where any one person's road leads, but I hope we can all give each other the room to travel freely. Today is a future the 80s could not have imagined and there's still so much future yet to come, and that, my friends, is a wonderful and exciting thing.

(translated from the original Elvish)

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 15:30:00 +0000

Some say we are spun from starlight,

That is how they show us the way.

Where men stumble in shadow

We dance as if welcoming the day.

But, not all darkness is nightfall.

Not all brightenings invitations to foray.

Beware the deepest of places

Where your eyes may seem to be open,

But the stars have forsaken the way.

(anonymous)

So I was called upon to comment on something...

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 06:30:00 +0000

Look, Facebook is a place where people connect, where they reconnect. People who have known each other since... I don't know... the eighties for example. And it was thus that on FB I was called upon to "narrate" a thing. What I put before you is my text inclusive of a link to the context. Please note that no disrespect to the undead nor to persons missing digits is intended, this is merely satire created at the behest of a friend of longstanding. And it's a pandemic, folks, people need to be heeded.

"Gilt stilts, waffletated body bags, and vampire-sized tea-cozies hand-wrought at a summer camp for the thumbless were only the beginning of what was to come as Valentino's parade of disaffected post post-apocalyptic refugees slunk down the catwalk debuting this "Eyes Wide Shut/Ass Wide Open" collection."

"Fuck that guy!" or "How a Trek convention ruined one of my favorite series"

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 21:08:00 +0000

I don't know why this popped into my head today. I haven't turned on the television nor was there a prompting meme crawling across my social media. But as I tried to stifle my anxiety over teetering here on the cusp of election day, and the interminable days of vote counting that will follow, this memory burst forth like a magmatic belch from the surface of a deceptively still and crusted lava pool.

A few years ago my (now) husband and I attended one day of a Star Trek con in Boston. Neither of us had ever been to one and I was curious about this "other corner" of con-going fandom. We quickly agreed it was awful; the vibe insular, the atmosphere a tad mercenary. I saw not one person whom I recognized from either of our local SFF cons, Arisia or Boskone, which was weird as all other nerd events tended to have at least a little overlap, anime, SCA, medieval music, steam punk, film festivals, cult films, lecture series... In retrospect this would have been best taken as a sign.

The standout memory is, due to arrival time and our one-day membership, the only celebrity speaker we had the opportunity to see was Robert Beltran. What an unbalanced ass-hat. He was bitter and whiny, petulant and vaguely unhinged, but what stuck with me has his vanity and the cruel way he spoke about his costar Kate Mulgrew, the first woman to captain a titular starship in a Star Trek series as Captain Kathryn Janeway. He ranted about *fans (and occasionally writers) shipping Chakotay and Janeway. He kept saying, "Why would I want to get with granny???" (OK, I'm paraphrasing, but he absolutely did refer to Mulgrew/Janeway as "granny" and "grandma" multiple times and always with a tone of disgust.) He then waxed rather greasily about how much more sense it made for him (Chakotay) to pair up with Seven of Nine played by Jeri Ryan...

Here's a quick math problem.

In 1997 when Jeri Ryan joined the cast of "Star Trek: Voyager" Beltran was 44, Mulgrew was 42, and Ryan was 29.

So while two years older than "grandma" Beltran thought it was only sensible (and palatable) that he play love scenes with an actor fifteen years his junior. He played this up to the audience. Strutted about running his fingers through his shaggy gray hair all but crowing as if to prove to someone, anyone, that his bird still had a beak. But how could it possibly peck at anything... well you get the idea.

Since that day, every time I come across and episode of Voyager, a show I truly loved, I am flushed with anger and feel my fist tighten whenever Beltran appears on screen. I try to "separate the art from the artist" but given how much I liked the Chakotay character and enjoyed his interaction with Janeway it is difficult. That said, the chemistry evident in scenes between the captain and Seven of Nine, or Tuvok, or The Doctor (think hologram not Time Lord) remains a delight. Maybe in time that will tip the scales. In retrospect Beltran's antics onstage that day were as pathetic and sad as they were infuriating, maybe knowing that might help... As would news that Mulgrew has punched him.

In this age of ill-advised, inflammatory, and downright insane tweeting one need not go to a convention to hear a famous person (even another Trek fave *cough* Saavik*cough*) spout things that threaten to cast their previous work in a jaundiced light. Yet I am sticking with the choice made upon emerging from that dark corner of the convention center. No property-specific actor-peppered for-profit cons for me. I'm sticking with the volunteer-run genre and pan-fandom barn shows I know and love where at least the ass-hats are people I know and/or know to avoid, and can maybe pull aside and say, "Dude, WTF is wrong with you?"

*Full disclosure, I was one of those fans. I was not writing fan fiction but was absolutely sitting on the edge of my couch willing the writers to finally "go there".

I still get the best text messages

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 15:49:00 +0000

Operations: So is the kilt AND the katana umbrella over the top? It IS Allston?

Domestic Affairs: As long as you have the right shoes

Ops: Have you met me?

DA: Forgive me; compliance is a big part of my role at work.

Ops: I understand.

Harvard Square... it's Worcestering.

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 03:33:00 +0000

Standing at a bustop in a saturated landscape painted in reflected auras of neon and sodium as the calendar begs 2020 with 1979 synth pop in my ears and stirring my brain it is suddenly 1987, July, in another city... and of another mind. What is time? And, wherever are we in it, when the guideposts are out of sight, and all we know is "now", isolated, singular, beautiful, and deeply mournfully ephemeral?

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 17:57:00 +0000

My life
Is a fractured Kaleidoscope.
Lightning and rain,
Dissolving sands,
Clouds afire...
Crooked fractals
Of broken meaning.
I wonder at the patterns,
Divine and scry
As I may,
But the answer...
There isn't one.
No matter how hard,
No matter how long,
I tear fruitlessly...
At the bones of yesterday.

The subconscious is a strange beast

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 14:00:00 +0000

Sentence left floating in my head as I surfaced from a dream:

"That moment when the stripper at your table says to Burt Reynolds, 'It's a pity the coffee's not strong enough,' and you're fairly certain she means to support her weight."

What is that light glinting in the darkness, is it a blade, a tear, or a star?

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Thu, 07 Mar 2019 19:44:00 +0000

I've been listening to my friend Drioux's music a lot lately.

When my birthday arrives in a few days it will have been one month since my friend Drioux Galván left this world. He left not in an apocalyptic blaze of performance art pyrotechnics suitable to his creative persona but in the far more common way, quietly, in a hospital bed succumbing to the struggle. As I thought about Drioux in the days leading up to his death I kept coming back (as I still do now) to the Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi and Kintsugi. They are respectively the philosophy of finding beauty in the imperfect, impermanent or incomplete, and the repair of broken ceramics with lacquer and precious metal dust to transform that which would be discarded into a beautiful and unique treasure. Drioux was beautiful for his brokenness, simultaneously strong and vulnerable. And he used that to create beautiful art sometimes indistinguishable from the artist himself. Filling the cracks with feathers and shining metal, honing the rough edges to obsidian blades provocatively peeking from within a mirrored sequin gleam. He had a big heart and loved passionately. He was always a pedal to the floor kind of person in all things, and that is likely part of why he is gone. I will miss him greatly. I have lost a good friend and the world has lost a great talent. Drioux always found a way to make beauty from pain and find humor in the darkness. I hope that I can do the same.

This may be my new favorite song.

Just texting with the boys (an excerpt)

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 19:33:00 +0000

our west coast correspondent: I wonder if defenestrated could be used in a sentence along with rusty tin bucket and spade?

operations: Possibly....

owcc: Having already administered a tracheotomy with a spade, he defenestrated the remaining body parts he'd gathered in his rusty tin bucket.

me: Upon being discovered cowering in the upstairs lavatory Lord Edgar was promptly defenestrated, which owing to the lavatory's second floor location he would have likely survived had it not been for the rusty tin bucket and spade, left lying about by the gardener's pathologically distractible daughter, waiting below as if their destiny was to at last become one with his aristocratic throat.

me: Hahaha! I love that we both "went for the throat".

owcc: Because, we're both writers, darling. 😉

More musings

noreply@blogger.com (R. L. Allison) — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 03:52:00 +0000

The dripping of the ice melt, iron lattice, old stone, salt and snow. Another neglected street, the suspect countenance of commerce that has ceased... and yet where are we in this Urban dream? Fumbling towards mediocrity as if it were the pleasure-dome. Promised, but wholly incomplete.