Boycott Author Toni Morrison

I despise racism in any form. That's why I've burned every novel I owned by Toni Morrison. I will never recommend them to my family or friends again.  The answer to racism is not hatred!

To wish a person dead merely on the basis of their race is the most vile, inhuman, horrific thing a person can say.  Toni Morrison is a racist. Had a person of any other race said the following words, they would have been shamed and vilified.  SHAME ON YOU, TONI MORRISON.  I am seriously sad and disappointed in you as a human being I used to look up to!

"Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison took a harsh view on the issue of racial disparities in the justice system during a recent interview.

“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race,” Morrison, 84, told The (U.K.) Telegraph.

“This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back,” Morrison said. “And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”  ~The Guardian, April 20, 2015

The Language of The Brag By Sharon Olds

This poem has been floating around in my head all day today and I haven't posted it in a couple of years so it's due a rerun.  It's had over 4,000 views, so others must love it, too.  Enjoy! ~Marion


THE LANGUAGE OF THE BRAG
By Sharon Olds

I have wanted excellence in the knife-throw,
I have wanted to use my exceptionally strong and accurate arms
and my straight posture and quick electric muscles
to achieve something at the centre of a crowd,
the blade piercing the bark deep,
the haft slowly and heavily vibrating like the cock.

I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body,
some heroism, some American achievement
beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self,
magnetic and tensile, I have stood by the sandlot
and watched the boys play.

I have wanted courage, I have thought about fire
and the crossing of waterfalls, I have dragged around

my belly big with cowardice and safely,
my stool black with iron pills,
my huge breasts oozing mucus,
my legs swelling, my hands swelling,
my face swelling and darkening, my hair
falling out, my inner sex
stabbed again and again with terrible pain like a knife.
I have lain down.
I have lain down and sweated and shaken
and passed blood and feces and water and
slowly alone in the centre of a circle I have
passed the new person out
and they have lifted the new person free of the act
and wiped the new person free of that
language of blood like praise all over the body.

I have done what you wanted to do, Walt Whitman,
Allen Ginsberg, I have done this thing,

I and the other women this exceptional
act with the exceptional heroic body,
this giving birth, this glistening verb,
and I am putting my proud American boast
right here with the others.

"The Language of the Brag" is from SATAN SAYS by Sharon Olds.
Copyright © 1980

My Mama Moved Among the Days by Lucille Clifton

My Mama Moved Among the Days
By Lucille Clifton

My Mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was here
seemed like what touched her couldn't hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in 

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

Spring
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Nick Cave, My Muse, Has New Book Out

#AmReading #Poetry

"The Sick Bag Song" by Nick Cave. Unique, shimmering, simmering poetry/prose as light as a moonless night & dark as the sun at noon.  Soul food for the poetheart & relief for the pain of living.

Excerpt from the chapter, "Nashville":

“A young boy climbs a riverbank. He steps onto a railway bridge. He is twelve years old.

He kneels down, under a harsh sun, and puts his ear to the track. The track does not vibrate. There is no train approaching around the bend on the other side of the river.

The boy starts to run along the tracks. He arrives in the middle of the bridge. He stands on the edge and looks down at the muddy river below.

On the left side is a concrete pylon that supports the bridge. On the right, a half-felled tree lies across the river, its branches sticking out into the dark water. In between there is a small space about four feet wide.

He has been told that it is possible to jump in at this point, but he cannot be sure, as he has never seen anybody do it.

The stones beneath his feet begin to tremble. He crouches down and again he puts his ear to the track.

The track begins to vibrate. The train is coming.

He stares down at the dark, muddy water, his heart pounding.”

“The boy does not realise that he is not a boy at all, but rather the memory of a boy.

He is the memory of a boy running through the mind of a man in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, who is being injected in the thigh with a steroid shot that will transform the jet-lagged, flu-ridden singer into a deity.

In three hours he will burst from the hotel room. He will move through the empty city, crossing vast rivers, driving through empty prairies, along tremendous, multi-laned highways, under darkening skies, like a small god, to be with you, tonight.”

Excerpt From: Nick Cave's excellent new book, "The Sick Bag Song". Canongate Books Ltd. iBooks. 

The Lonely House By Emily Dickinson

THE LONELY HOUSE
By Emily Dickinson

I know some lonely houses off the road

A robber 'd like the look of, —

Wooden barred,

And windows hanging low,

Inviting to

A portico,

Where two could creep:

One hand the tools,

The other peep

To make sure all's asleep.

Old-fashioned eyes,

Not easy to surprise!



How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,

With just a clock, —

But they could gag the tick,”

“And mice won't bark;

And so the walls don't tell,

None will.


A pair of spectacles ajar just stir —

An almanac's aware.

Was it the mat winked,

Or a nervous star?

The moon slides down the stair

To see who's there.


There's plunder, — where?

Tankard, or spoon,

Earring, or stone,

A watch, some ancient brooch

To match the grandmamma,

Staid sleeping there.



Day rattles, too,”

“Stealth's slow;

The sun has got as far

As the third sycamore.

Screams chanticleer,

"Who's there?"

And echoes, trains away,

Sneer — "Where?"

While the old couple, just astir,

Fancy the sunrise left the door ajar!”

From:  “The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson.”

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

*portico - a porch leading to the entrance of a building.

*chanticleer - a name given to a rooster, especially in fairy tales.

Meanwhile By Mary Oliver

Thank you, Laura Sorrells, for telling me about this poem! xo

MEANWHILE 
By Mary Oliver

Lord, my body is not yet a temple,
   but only one of your fair fields.
   An empty field that nobody wants, at least not yet.
   But even here the lily is somewhere.
   Sometimes it lifts its head above the grasses,
   the daisies, the milkweed, the mallow.

And sometimes, like us, it sleeps, or at least
   leans below the blades of the grasses.
   Lord, I live as you have made me to live.
   I bite hungrily into the peach and the turnip.
   I bite, with sorrow, into the calf and the lamb.
   I drink the tears of the clouds.

I praise the leaves of the shrub oaks
   and the pine trees in their bold coats.
   I listen and give thanks to the catbird and the thrush.
   Meanwhile, the fox knows where you are.
   The bees leave the swamp azalea and fly straight
   to the shadow of your face.

Meanwhile my body is rustic and brash.
   The world I live in is hedges, and small blossoms.
   Lord, consider me, and my earnest work.
   A hut I have made out of the grasses.
   Now I build the door, out of all things brash and rustic.
   Day and night it is open.
   Have you seen it yet, among the grasses?

How it longs for you?
How it tries to shine, like gold?

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

Many years ago I was walking in deep woods on a narrow dirt trail. I was depressed, crying and praying. I was seeking God. I sat on a log on this beautiful Spring day, right there by the trail, and asked God to give me some sign of His spirit. I was broken, emotionally. And I sat longer, soaking the peaceful stillness when suddenly a tree beside me began rustling by a breeze. It was the one tree blowing in deep woods. I gasped and fell to my knees.  Truly, it was an encounter with God's spirit. I recall that day like it was yesterday and not 30 years ago.

Blessings, Peace & Love,
Marion

READ THIS BOOK: The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake

There are stories and then there are STORIES!  Somehow I managed to miss one of the greatest writers of my generation: Breece D'J Pancake, until about a month ago when I stumbled upon his book in someone's "must-read" list on Twitter.  It was fate.  Tragically, he committed suicide at the age of 26, leaving only a handful of stories collected in this book:

"The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake"

If you Google him, you can find several of his stories online which were published in "The Atlantic Monthly" magazine. There's also a fine review by Joyce Caeol Oates and a few articles.  But mostly his life and death remain a mystery...

His stories are pure poetry/art. He paints with words so vividly that I became lost in them...I vanished from my world directly into his, blinking and disoriented when each story ended.

If you only read one book this year, make it this one. You won't regret it.

xo,
Marion

"I effing love books. It was books that saved me & made me. I'm nowt but the residue of books wrapped in skin."   #MarkOneInFour, from: Twitter