Poetry...Because...

Let us remember . . . that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.  ~Christian Wiman

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I didn't trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
-- Lala, 14th century Persian poet

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If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's going to be average. ~Derek Walcott


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Mr Witwould: "Pray, madam, do you pin up your hair with all your letters? I find I must keep copies."

Mrs Millamant: "Only with those in verse.... I never pin up my hair with prose."

~William Congreve, The Way of the World

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In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light by Charles Wright

Sunny & Susie, custom Blythe dolls

As Our Bodies Rise, Our Names Turn Into Light

By Charles Wright

 

The sky unrolls like a rug,

                                                unwelcoming, gun-grey,

Over the Blue Ridge.
Mothers are calling their children in,

                                                mellifluous syllables, floating sounds.

The traffic shimmies and settles back.

The doctor has filled his truck with leaves

Next door, and a pair of logs.

                                                Salt stones litter the street.

The snow falls and the wind drops.
How strange to have a name, any name, on this poor earth.

January hunkers down,

                                                the icicle deep in her throat---

The days become longer, the nights ground bitter and cold,
Single grain by single grain
Everything flows toward the structure,

                                                last ache in the ache for God.

1995

 

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I last posted this excellent poem in 2012.  I opened my "Norton Anthology of Poetry" to this poem this morning, just as I did that day six years ago.  It's quite worthy of a repeat.  

Please pray for my Mama or send good thoughts to her (Snow :-).  Her name is Juanita.  She's not doing well.  Thank you, my faithful readers & fellow poetry lovers.  I appreciate you all so much. 

xo,

Marion

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”-C.S. Lewis

Phoenix by Ijeoma Umebinyuo

Green!  Sunlight through my Fiddle Leaf Figs & pals...

Phoenix by Ijeoma Umebinyuo

From:  "Questions For Ada"

One day,
your bones will get weary
of men
who refuse to worship the God in you.

On that day,
you will either slit your soul
or gather your spirit
leaving any man
who has never called you
Holy.

Remember
how your mother kept her bones warm
on nights your father was far away.

So,
do not love a man who keeps you clinging
to the pillow for too many nights.

Stay away
from men who peel the skin
of other women, forcing you to wear them.

Remember how your mother struggled
to find her skin in the pile.

Do not
scratch your words,
soften your pain or scrub yourself in shame.

Do not
drown yourself in a man.

He will leave you struggling to breathe.

וווו×

All Things Pass...

(Moh-noh-noh-ah-wah-ray)

Buddha & my singing bowls...

Klimt

All Things Pass
By Timothy Leary, homage to Lao Tzu

All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass

 A cloudburst does not last all day 
All things pass 
Nor a sunset all night 

But Earth... sky... thunder... 
wind... fire... lake... 
mountain... water... 
These always change

And if these do not last 
Do man’s visions last? 
Do man’s illusions ? 

Take things as they come 
All things pass the

וווו×

RIP President George H. W. Bush

Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

My favorite Pink Floyd song of all time sung by the amazing David Bowie & Eddie Vedder...great memories...

David Bowie

Eddie Vedder

Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd

Hello,
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone at home?

Come on now
I hear you're feeling down
Well, I can ease your pain
And get you on your feet again

Relax
I'll need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?

There is no pain, you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain, you would not understand
This is not how I am
I have become comfortably numb

I have become comfortably numb

O.K.
Just a little pin prick
There'll be no more aaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick

Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working, good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on, it's time to go.

There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb.

Thanksgiving by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Pain doodles...

I wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving filled with love & laughter!

Thanksgiving

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850 - 1919

We walk on starry fields of white
   And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
   We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
   To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
   Of pleasures sweet and tender.

Our cares are bold and push their way
   Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
   Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
   We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
   And conquers if we let it.

There’s not a day in all the year
   But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
   To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
   Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
   While living hearts can hear us.

Full many a blessing wears the guise
   Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
   Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
   To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
   To gladden every morrow.

We ought to make the moments notes
   Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
   Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
   As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
   A grand Thanksgiving chorus.

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

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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