Every year we pass the day of our death...

I planted this tree as a twig...

Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really.

How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. 

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless...

 ~Paul Bowles, from "The Sheltering Sky"

The Dead by Susan Mitchell

"It was as if pain were a room he had entered & the door had been locked behind him."  ~ Stephen Dobyns, from "Eating Naked:  Stories"

Be here now...

My precious, badass Sophie, in Cat Heaven, waiting...

The Dead

At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.

—Susan Mitchell

~×~×~×~×~

My knee replacement is better.  Almost 3 long months of grueling physical therapy has slowly helped, along with a cute physical therapist.  (I ain't dead yet).  This cold is wreaking havoc on my entire skeleton, though, and I went and hauled plants into the laundry room this morning, just in case it gets really cold, in the 30's.  It was in the 80's earlier this week.   So, I'm sitting here with ice on my knee, bitching.  Go figure... ;-)

Happy weekend, y'all!  xo

Ampersand Haiku by Marion

Ampersands dancing,

joining purple sentences---

Black & blue questions.

~÷~÷~÷~

My feet are bleeding...

broken glass, ampersand, blood.

Wake up!  Wake up, now!

Vote YES For Amendment 2 in Louisiana!!

WE PASSED THE AMENDMENT!  YEA!

VOTE - VOTE -VOTE - VOTE - VOTE - VOTE

Voting "YES" in Louisiana for Amendment 2 will require unanimous agreement of all 12 jurors to convict people charged with felonies.  The current Louisiana law requires only 10 of 12 jurors to convict.

Louisiana Amendment 2, the Unanimous Jury Verdict for Felony Trials Amendment, is on the ballot in Louisiana as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment on November 6, 2018.

A "yes" vote supports this amendment to require the unanimous agreement of jurors, rather than just 10 of 12 jurors, to convict people charged with felonies.

A "no" vote opposes this amendment to require the unanimous agreement of jurors, rather than just 10 of 12 jurors, to convict people charged with felonies.

Overview

What would this ballot measure change about convinctions?

Amendment 2 would require the unanimous agreement of jurors to convict people charged with felonies. As of 2018, Louisiana requires the agreement of 10 of 12, or 83 percent, jurors to convict people charged with felonies. Amendment 2 would not affect juries for offenses that were committed before January 1, 2019.[1]

Do other states allow for non-unanimous jury convictions?

As of 2018, Louisiana is one of two states—the other being Oregon—that does not require the unanimous agreement of jurors to convict people charged with felonies. Oregon does, however, require unanimous convictions in murder trials.[2][3]

Have the courts addressed the non-unanimous juries rule?

In Apodaca v. Oregon (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution required unanimous juries to convict persons in federal criminal trials, but that the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend the requirement of unanimous juries to state criminal trials.[4][5]

Never Grow Up - Never Grow Old

Sunny & Polly


I play with my dolls.
I'll never grow up or old.
Time keeps on slipping---

O, That Moon!

I wake, wide awake.
Everything black and white:
Night, moon, clouds, night, moon...  ~Marion

Late October by Dorianne Laux

A butterfly's delight

Godlight...

I am this woman, have been this woman, will probably always be this woman...thankfully.  My favorite October poem.  I haven't posted it in two years, so enjoy! xo


Late October
By Dorianne Laux

Midnight.  The cats under the open window,
their guttural, territorial yowls.

Crouched in the neighbor's driveway with a broom,
I jab at them with the bristle end,

chasing their raised tails as they scramble
from bush to bush, intent on killing each other.

I shout and kick until they finally
give it up; one shimmies beneath the fence,

the other under a car.  I stand in my underwear
in the trembling quiet, remembering my dream.

Something had been stolen from me, valueless
and irreplaceable.  Grease and grass blades

were stuck to the bottoms of my feet.
I was shaking and sweating.  I had wanted

to kill them.  The moon was a white dinner plate
broken exactly in half.  I saw myself as I was:

forty-one years old, standing on a slab
of cold concrete, a broom handle slipping

from my hands, my breasts bare, my hair
on end, afraid of what I might do next.

From:  "What We Carry", page 11

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

Nothing [everything] left to say, the poem says it all.  ~Marion

Psalms: Carnegie Hall Rush Seats by Mary Karr

By:  Katerina Evgenieva

X.  Psalms:  Carnegie Hall Rush Seats

By Mary Karr, from:  Tropic of Squalor", page 54

Whatever else the orchestra says,
the cello insists, You’re dying.
It speaks from the core

of the tree’s hacked-out heart,
shaped and smoothed like a woman.
Be glad you are not hard wood

yourself and can hear it.
Every day the cello is taken
into someone’s arms, taken between

spread legs and lured into
its shivering. The arm saws and
saws and all the sacred cries of saints

and demons issue from the carved cleft holes.
Like all of us, it aches, sending up moans
from the pit we balance on the edge of.

Lodged by Robert Frost

For my many fellow chronic pain sufferers out there...

.

Perspective, loves... Hold on for dear life...

A rare photo of moi, Princess Dragonfly...

Pain makes me NOT want to move...

Dying Dinner Plate Hibiscus...

~×~×~×~×~

Lodged by Robert Frost

The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
that the flowers actually knelt,
and lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

Be Inspiration

My Moon; My Sky

Be Inspiration
Every stick and leaf speaks:
I give you the sky.   ~Marion

.

My clouds, my trees, my sky.

inspiration

 noun

in·spi·ra·tion | \ˌin(t)-spə-ˈrā-shən,  -(ˌ)spi-\

Definition of inspiration 

1a: a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation

b: the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions

c: the act of influencing or suggesting opinions

2: the act of drawing inspecifically : the drawing of air into the lungs

3a: the quality or state of being inspired

b: something that is inspireda scheme that was pure inspiration

4: an inspiring agent or influence