Frenzy by Anne Sexton

My garden gnome, Benny, watering the flowers.

Frenzy
By Anne Sexton

I am not lazy.
I am on the amphetamine of the soul.
I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense,
like a wolf at a live heart.
Not lazy.
When a lazy man, they say,
looks toward heaven,
the angels close the windows.

Oh angels,
keep the windows open
so that I may reach in
and steal each object,
objects that tell me the sea is not dying,
objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish,
that the Christ who walked for me,
walked on true ground
and that this frenzy,
like bees stinging the heart all morning,
will keep the angels
with their windows open,
wide as an English bathtub.

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"Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock."  ~Big Bang Theory

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"A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman." ~Wallace Stevens
 
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To a Dark Moses by Lucille Clifton

P. J. (named after my fav grrrrl rocker, P. J. Harvey) jamming to The Doors on vinyl.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities.  Opens all doors.  You can walk through any one that suits you.

...and that's why poetry appeals to me so much---because it's so eternal.  As long as there are people, they can remember words and combinations of words.  Nothing else can survive a holocaust but poetry and songs.  No one can remember an entire novel...

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."  ~Jim Morrison, from the Prologue to "The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison - Wildness, Volume 1."

***************

to a dark moses

by Lucille Clifton

You are the one

I am lit for.

Come with your rod

that twists

and is a serpent.

I am the bush.

I am burning

I am not consumed.

From:  "The Best American Erotic Poems from 1800 to the Present", page 112



House, Garden, Madness by Cate Marvin

Yet another collaged page from an old journal.  I was listening to Stevie Nicks while I made it.  :-)



It's been over two years since I posted this poem.  I love Cate Marvin's book, "World's Tallest Disaster" and this is my favorite poem in the book.  I've been accused of having a bit of madness myself.  Just last week my sister and mother were discussing my sanity.  They think I'm going over the edge because I collect dolls.  Tee-hee.  Don't you just love family? 

Enjoy,

Mad Marion

*******************************

House, Garden, Madness 

By Cate Marvin

Meeting his mouth made it so I had house again.
I called him garden and drew him so, grew
his long lashes like grasses so I could comb
them with my stare. Some evenings a low cloud
would arrive, hang its anxiety over the yard.

Having his mouth at mine again gave me back
home. The walls painted themselves blue
flowers grew larger than my head, stared
at me with wide eyes through the windows.
I was surrounded. A cloud stretched gray arms.

His mouth and mine again built something back
up with heat. The house was home again, wherever
I lived. The flowers grew fat, fed on weeds
around them. Ladybugs tucked their red luck
beneath petals' chins. The cloud came home again.

His eyes were closed but mine kept swinging open.
I saw him in the garden, surrounded by its light.
The flowers cut their own stalks, handed themselves
over to him in bunches. He kissed their bouquets,
and petals raptured. A cloud lowered, dark with fury.

I pressed my mouth to palm, closed my eyes
to find the garden, then saw: window shut in fright,
roots drowned, flower stalks broken, their heads dead
in puddles. Startled, I looked around. The cloud
descended, prepared to hemorrhage in my arms.

From: "Poetry Daily", page 173
first published in The Paris Review, no. 158, Spring, Summer 2001
also from "World's Tallest Disaster" by Cate Marvin

**************************************

The Frankie-Stein Monster Doll Sisters...striking a pose.

*************

"Today I felt pass over me

A breath of wind from the wings of madness."

~Charles Baudelaire

**************

"Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness."

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

**************

Morning Bird by Tret Fure - Music Poetry

Songs are some of the most magnificent poety we have these days.  I just heard this song recently and love the lyrics.  Enjoy!

Morning Bird
By Tret Fure

Huddled deep beneath the blankets
Hunkered down against the cold
No one there to keep her warm
No one there to hold

She's calling out a name at night
Hoping to be heard
Far across the lonely miles
Sings the morning bird

There's a candle lit forever
In the smallest, darkest room
Burning strong against the cross
Against the heady gloom

And a place is set forever
At the table of the soul
You can see it through the window
You can feel it through the cold

When the darkness falls upon you
And the pain is hard to to bear
When the heart is bleeding bitter
And the cold is everywhere

Just bite into the stars at night
And bold into the day
And remember that the moonlight
Is just sunlight anyway

Driving into town one night
Driving to the WOW
She practiced smiling in the dark
She'd forgotten how

And it felt so foreign at the time
But time does move us still
And though it seems impossible
You will's your will to will

Striking out upon the road
Struck down on her own
No one there for company
No one left to phone

She's calling out a name at night
Hoping to be heard
Far across the lonely miles
Sings the morning bird

And remember that the moonlight
Is just sunlight anyway
Far across the lonely miles
Sings the morning bird

From the CD "Back Home" by Tret Fure

Poems, Cats, Snakes...

Garfield, being a cat.

Morning
By Mary Oliver

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

from New and Selected Poems, 1992

========================

Little Debbie, huntress, pouncing on her brother-cat.

Notice
Steve Kowit

This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into this street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.


from The Dumbbell Nebula, 2000

Yeah, baby, it's Spring in the swamp.  Let the snakes slither on!  I think this is a King snake.  I let it live, but I'm not sure if the cats did.  They deplore reptiles. 

Sometimes what's in my head demands to come out and it scares the hell out of me.  This was one of the last times I smeared glue and pictures and words from my head onto a piece of cardboard.   I know, right???!!!

xo,

Marion, still celebrating National Poetry Month with gusto!!!