Wednesday, May 30, 2018

More Nikita Gill & Some Story People

"The cruelest thing that someone can do to you is first claim to love you more than anything in the world. That they have never seen anything as exquisite as you. That you are every star in the night sky, you have a love to give sweeter than any they have ever tasted. That they will never leave you, because my goodness, look at what all you have to give, they are c0ntent, they are content, they are content. And then one day, out of the blue they do.
The cruelest thing that someone can do to you is lull you into a false sense of security. Convince you that this, this is the forever love you have been looking for. This is the kind of love you needed all this time, the kind of love you have craved and let you get comfortable in it because it will last, it will last, it will last. And then, one day, they wrap all of their love into a bundle and walk away without a second glance back at you.
The cruelest thing someone can do is convince you that you will be enough for them. That there will never be another that makes them feel this way, play with their hair, tease them, make them coffee in the morning just the way they like it, you are a language that has become their mothertongue, and one cannot forget their mothertongue. And then, one day, they forget all about you, like you never existed and you are left with this language in your mouth that no one else speaks.
The cruelest thing someone can do is simply leave without warning after promising you a life together. They take this soft heart of yours and love it until it’s so full only to throw it to the ground and crush it into a million pieces. They take everything you built together and take a hammer to it like it is nothing but a glass house that is meant to be destroyed. This is the cruelest thing that someone can do to you. Disappear without a warning when they swore they would love you. " ~Nikita Gill 
From:  Story People by Brian Andreas

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

You Matter by Nikita Gill



You Matter
By Nikita Gill

You are not small.
You are not unworthy.
You are not insignificant.
The universe wove you from a constellation
just so, every atom, every fiber in you
comes from a different star.

Together,
you are bound by stardust,
altogether spectacularly created
from the energy of the universe itself.

And that, my darling
is the poetry of physics,
the poetry of you.

From:  "Your Soul is a River", page 12


Saturday, May 26, 2018

What Are Poems by Marion Lawless

A collaged notebook I made years ago...


What Are Poems?
By Marion

Poems are things.  
Poems are living, breathing things with bloody, beating hearts.  
Poems are salvation, damnation, birth, death, loss, life, rebirth, love, and hate.  
Poems are endlessly ticking clocks, broken watches and treacherous friends.
Poems are why I'm alive, in this moment.
Poems take you out of a painful existence and give you peace and hope.  
Poems transcend and uplift.
Poems are fiercely burning desire and ashes of unrequited love.
Poems save us from ourselves, then destroy us with their power.
Poems gently hold our angst and carelessly hold our joy.
Poems are razor sharp knives and cloud-soft sighs.
Poems are destructive storm clouds and bright blue skies.
Poems are guns and bullets and bombs.
Poems are windows and doors and cracks in the walls.

Poems make love to us, then leave us, never bothering to call.
Poems take us out of ourselves and show us who we really are.
Poems tear our broken hearts out, then tenderly stitch them back together.
Poems are our teachers, friends, counselors, gurus, saviors.
Poems are.

~×~×~×~×~


Mugged By Poetry 
By Dorianne Laux

—for Tony Hoagland who sent me a handmade chapbook made from old postcards called OMIGOD POETRY with a whale breaching off the coast of New Jersey and seven of his favorite poems by various authors typed up, taped on, and tied together with a broken shoelace. 

Reading a good one makes me love the one who wrote it,
as well as the animal or element or planet or person
the poet wrote the poem for. I end up like I always do,
flat on my back like a drunk in the grass, loving the world.
Like right now, I'm reading a poem called "Summer"
by John Ashbery whose poems I never much cared for,
and suddenly, in the dead of winter, "There is that sound
like the wind/Forgetting in the branches that means 
something/Nobody can translate..." I fall in love 
with that line, can actually hear it (not the line 
but the wind) and it's summer again and I forget 
I don't like John Ashbery poems. So I light a cigarette 
and read another by Zbigniew Herbert, a poet 
I've always admired but haven't read enough of, called 
"To Marcus Aurelius" that begins "Good night Marcus
put out the light/and shut the book For overhead/is raised 
a gold alarm of stars..." First of all I suddenly love 
anyone with the name Zbigniew. Second of all I love 
anyone who speaks in all sincerity to the dead
and by doing so brings that personage back to life, 
plunging a hand through the past to flip off the light. 
The astral physics of it just floors me. Third of all 
is that "gold alarm of stars..." By now I'm a goner, 
and even though I have to get up tomorrow at 6 am 
I forge ahead and read "God's Justice" by Anne Carson, 
another whose poems I'm not overly fond of 
but don't actively disdain. I keep reading one line
over and over, hovering above it like a bird on a wire 
spying on the dragonfly with "turquoise dots all down its back 
like Lauren Bacall". Like Lauren Bacall!! Well hell, 
I could do this all night. I could be in love like this 
for the rest of my life, with everything in the expanding
universe and whatever else might be beyond it 
that we can't grind a lens big enough to see. I light up 
another smoke, maybe the one that will kill me, 
and go outside to listen to the moon scalding the iced trees. 
What, I ask you, will become of me?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I wish I'd written "Mugged by Poetry" because it perfectly describes how I feel when reading poetry.  I'll read one poem that will lead to another and well, it goes on all night.  I highly recommend all of Dorianne Laux's books.  Her poetry is awesome.  Also, read every poem she mentions  in her poem. 

I'm here for poetry.  I blog because I want people to love poetry and to give it a chance, to read it, write it, breathe it, drink it, buy it and support other poets.  I must joyfully confess, I've made hundreds of converts!!

I wish you all Love, Blessings & Poetry,

~*~Marion~*~


"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." ~Anaïs Nin

+++++++++++++

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." ~Anton Chekhov

~•~•~•~•~

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Where Water Comes Together With Other Water by Raymond Carver

I love the rivers, lakes, bayous and creeks of Louisiana...

Where Water Comes Together With Other Water

by Raymond Carver


I love creeks and the music they make.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams have my heart too.
And the places streams flow into rivers.
The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places.
But these coastal rivers!
I love them the way some men love horses
or glamorous women. I have a thing
for this cold swift water.
Just looking at it makes my blood run
and my skin tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers for hours.
Not one of them like any other.
I'm 45 years old today.
Would anyone believe it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and sere at 35!
Five more years had to pass
before it began to flow again.
I'll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
to their source.
Loving everything that increases me.
~•~•~•~•~•.

Little did Raymond Carver know, he'd be dead of lung cancer at the age of 50. 

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Praise Song by Lucille Clifton



This poem is for Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex.  Her wedding was beautiful, a fairy tale come to life...a prince & his lady riding in a gorgeous horse drawn carriage---but the photos of her sweet mother sitting all alone in that long, empty family pew at the wedding was heartbreaking.  She looked sad, lost & lonely.  I wish they'd had someone, anyone sit with her... Surely Meghan could have found ONE or TWO cousins, aunts or uncles to accompany her mother?  :-(

Broken, weird, kooky families are everywhere, I know.  I come from one, have one, but I don't have the entire world watching me.  Most families have the occasional crazy aunt or the stray weird brother, but to have no one at all is, well, bizarre.  I say all this to share my favorite kooky relative poem by the magnificent Lucille Clifton.  I love her aunt Blanche, a real hardcore survivor --- xo

~÷~÷~÷~÷~

Praise Song
By Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.

Friday, May 18, 2018

Two Sewing by Hazel Hall

A few flowers from my front yard...




Two Sewing
by Hazel Hall (1886-1924)

The wind is sewing with needles of rain.
With shining needles of rain
It stitches into the thin
Cloth of earth. In,
In, in, in.
Oh, the wind has often sewed with me.
One, two, three.
Spring must have fine things
To wear like other springs.
Of silken green the grass must be
Embroidered. One and two and three.
Then every crocus must be made
So subtly as to seem afraid
Of lifting colour from the ground;
And after crocuses the round
Heads of tulips, and all the fair
Intricate garb that Spring will wear.
The wind must sew with needles of rain,
With shining needles of rain,
Stitching into the thin
Cloth of earth, in,
In, in, in,
For all the springs of futurity.
One, two, three.

----------------------------


Born in St. Paul on February 7, 1886, Hazel Hall moved with her family to the bustling young city of Portland, Oregon as a small girl. She was an exuberant and unusually sensitive and imaginative child. But at the age of twelve, following a bout of scarlet fever, she was confined to a wheelchair, and, like Emily Dickenson on the opposite end of the continent, would live out her life in an upper room of her family’s house. To help support her mother and two sisters, Hall took in sewing, and gainfully occupied herself embroidering the sumptuous fabrics of bridal gowns, baby dresses, altar cloths, lingerie, and Bishop’s cuffs that would figure so lushly in her poems.

In “Two Sewing,” from 1921, as in so many of her poems, Hall escapes her confinement into the fertile refuge of language and imagination. As both seamstress and poet, she enjoyed the fortuitous coincidence of two activities that ingeniously referred to and informed one another, the interplay of stitch and song.

After seventy years out of print, Hazel Hall’s poems have been rediscovered and her Collected Poems republished in 2000 by Oregon State University Press.

~÷~÷~÷~÷~


At a certain point in your life---probably when too much of it has gone by---you will open your eyes and see yourself for who you are, especially for everything that made you so different from all the awful normals. And you will say to yourself, "But I am this person." And in that statement, that correction, there will be a kind of love.". ~Phoebe in Wonderland


"The playwright Eugene O'Neil in 'The Great God Brown' said, "Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue," So maybe life isn't about finding a cure but instead discovering what it takes to keep ourselves together, to mend ourselves so we can go on and live life to the fullest." ~From: "On The Couch" by Lorraine Bracco, page 283


"Please do not leave me when my moods make me a burden to you. I need to be heard and to be loved. Stay next to me and give me what I have never had." ~Elizabeth Peters


Friday, May 11, 2018

Read Every Damn Thing, Especially These Books!!!!!!

YA FANTASY.  Fabulous, beautiful stories!

My 3 Fiddle Leaf Figs:  Rory, Emily & Lorelai.  Something to take care of.

FUNNIEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN!!!!!! 

I would have bought the top two books for the covers alone, but my daughter read some of a story to me and I was instantly hooked.  I highly recommend both of Ms. Barnhill's beautiful, dazzling, wildly imaginative books.

 "Southern Fried Divorce" by Judy Conner (sister of THE Sweet Potato Queen, Jill Conner) is by far THE MOST HILARIOUS book I have EVER read in all my life!!!  And a perk is that it's set in New Orleans in the 1970's through the present.  AND, a little brown dog almost steals the story.  Seriously, I laughed at a time in my life when I hadn't laughed in over a year...and when I finished the book, I went right back to the first page and read it again and laughed even harder the second time.  I wish I could give this book to everyone I know.  It's a must-read.  You'll laugh till you cry.

Thank God for books.  I'm going read now.  xo

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Some Prolixity

I love reading James Lee Burke's books.  He's been in my forever top 10 for well over 20 years. 

Lots of Snapdragons this year

Spider and excellent web looking down into in my half empty water barrel.

Sunny, in the Azaleas loving her John Lennon shirt from Spain.

Tee Joy and Pink, chilling in their outfits made by an Italian artist.

Molly, in her new outfit made by a London artist.

Blondie, wearing her outfit created by a talented Canadian graphic artist and doll collector.

Tee Joy and Sunny, sisters from Detroit, customized by an artist who also makes Blythe clothes.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Some quotes for Domestic Violence Survivors


                           

 



Tuesday, May 8, 2018

In Someone's Shadow - May 17 Poem

I'll die living in your shadow, my only home.


May 17
By Rod McKuen

I believe that crawling into you
is going back into myself.
That by the act of
joining hands with you
I become more of me.

There are no whiskey bars
for dancers like ourselves,
and so we move into each other
like drunkards into open doorways.

My need for you is near addiction.

No sailor ever had tattoos
growing on his forearm
the way your smile
has willed itself back behind my eyes.

It will not dissolve.
It will not divide.
For I am nothing if not you.

~from:  "In Someone's Shadow", pages 20, 21

~•~•~•~•~

Sunday, May 6, 2018

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

Not a weed.  A bouquet of yellow flowers.


Love After Love
By Derek Walcott

The time will come 
when, with elation 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror 
and each will smile at the other's welcome, 

and say, sit here. Eat. 
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 

all your life, whom you ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life.

~•~•~•~•~•~•~


Saturday, May 5, 2018

Grief by Louise Erdrich


Will it ever end, this heavy, cold, lonely emptiness & sadness...

~×~×~×~


Grief
By Louise Erdrich

Sometimes you have to take your own hand
as though you were a lost child
and bring yourself stumbling
home over twisted ice.

Whiteness drifts over your house.
A page of warm light
falls steady from the open door.

Here is your bed, folded open.
Lie down, lie down, let the blue snow cover you.

Wednesday, May 2, 2018

hearts can be broken, love destroyed

Sorrow---

Burned out; broken; but surviving...trying hard to breathe.

I will always carry your heart in my broken heart....

~×~×~×~

carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings

~×~×~×~×~×~