Sound of Silence By Disturbed

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

Fools, said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence

Songwriters: Paul Simon

How It Adds Up by Tony Hoagland

I planted, grew, &  photographed this long stem red Rose.

I planted, nurtured, photographed this fragrant red Rose.

I planted the seed, watered & fertilized it, then photographed this magnificent red Dinner Plate Hibiscus.

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How It Adds Up

BY TONY HOAGLAND

There was the day we swam in a river, a lake, and an ocean.   

And the day I quit the job my father got me.   

And the day I stood outside a door,   

and listened to my girlfriend making love   

to someone obviously not me, inside,   

and I felt strange because I didn’t care.   

There was the morning I was born,   

and the year I was a loser,   

and the night I was the winner of the prize   

for which the audience applauded.   

Then there was someone else I met,   

whose face and voice I can’t forget,   

and the memory of her   

is like a jail I’m trapped inside,   

or maybe she is something I just use   

                                       to hold my real life at a distance.

Happiness, Joe says, is a wild red flower   

                      plucked from a river of lava   

and held aloft on a tightrope   

                      strung between two scrawny trees   

above a canyon   

                      in a manic-depressive windstorm.

Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it, Don’t drop it—,   

And when you do, you will keep looking for it   

everywhere, for years,   

while right behind you,   

the footprints you are leaving   

will look like notes   

                                          of a crazy song.

“How It Adds Up” copyright © 2003 by Tony Hoagland. Reprinted from What Narcissism Means to Me.

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Y'all, It is steaming HOT here in the Louisiana swamps!  It has been over 100 degrees for a week.  I'm used to it, but it's like childbirth:  you forget the pain until the next labor comes along.  Stay cool and read lots of poetry!  Thanks for stopping by.  I appreciate you all.

xo,
Marion

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"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." ~ Albert Camus

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"Being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her." ~Charles Dickens, "Bleak House"





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"I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart." ~L. Frank Baum, "The Wizard of Oz"

"I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world." ~L. Frank Baum, "The Wizard of Oz"

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"Whatever you are physically...male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy--all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)

The Road Not Taken

Candy Rose in her new hippie jean skirt reading "Gone With the Wind".

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

What the Bee is to the Floweret

What the Bee Is To the Floweret by Thomas Moore

What the bee is to the floweret,
When he looks for honey-dew,
Through the leaves that close embower it,
That, my love, I'll be to you.

She. --

What the bank, with verdure glowing,
Is to waves that wander near,
Whispering kisses, while they're going,
That I'll be to you, my dear.

She. --

But they say, the bee's a rover,
Who will fly, when sweets are gone,
And, when once the kiss is over,
Faithless brooks will wander on.

He. --

Nay, if flowers will lose their looks
If sunny banks will wear away,
'Tis but right that bees and brooks
Should sip and kiss them, while they may.

The Three Oddest Words By Wislawa Szymborska

Poetry & literary subscriptions from the past...

"It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things." ~Stephen Mallarme

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The Three Oddest Words
By Wislawa Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

~Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

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God Bless America

I'm proud to be an American!!!!

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above

From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with the light from above

From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home

From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home
God bless America, my home sweet home

Songwriters: Irving Berlin

The Moon in Your Hands by H. D. & Night Memory

THE MOON IN YOUR HANDS
By H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

If you take the moon in your hands 
and turn it round 
(heavy, slightly tarnished platter), 
you're there;

if you pull dry seaweed from the sand 
and turn it round 
and wonder at the underside's bright amber, 
your eyes 

look out as they did here 
(you don't remember) 
when my soul turned round, 
perceiving the other side of everything, 
mullein leaf, dogwood leaf, moth wing 
and dandelion seed under the ground.

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Once, I rode with my husband when he threw a Sunday newspaper route from his red Jeep Wrangler.  We took off at 1:00 a.m. after loading the papers at the newspaper loading dock.  The back of the Jeep was crammed with stacks of newspapers that I folded, put into waterproof bags and handed off to him to toss precisely into the yards...in the dark.  Most did not have boxes for the papers below their mail boxes.  

The stench of the ink was nauseating.  It rubbed off onto my hands.  There was no traffic in the rural neighborhoods and he turned, whirled and drove on both sides of the road, waving at the local police who knew him.  I got carsick for the first and only time in my life, puking out the window from time to time.  It was hilarious, really.  

I said all that to say this:  I experienced the nighttime as never before or since.  The headlights illuminated the undersides of leaves as the wind blew and we swooshed by: silver, opalescent, lunar, luminous, iridescent and glowing.  I was mesmerized, enchanted.  To this day, I remember  this rare experiencing of the other side of night, as if night opened herself to me and winked, raising her skirt and letting me see her frilly, delicate crinolines.  This poem by H. D. always brings back this sweet memory.  

Stay cool!

xo,
Marion

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"No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories."  ~Haruki Murakami