Tom Robbins - Undisputed Master of the Metaphor!!

A quote to whet your appetite: "Spoon surveys the room. Moonrays are driving through the window like a fleet of white Cadillacs." ~Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", page 250


This is a long post. Probably the longest post I've had so far. I'm finally getting to the prolix part of my brain. I have a serious case of prolixity today, but I've been working on this post for weeks trying to get everything I want to say in---not possible considering the subject matter. This is one of my rare stream of consciousness rants about an author I worship and adore. But to try to minimize what I have to say about Tom Robbins, the KING OF METAPHORS, is unconscionable, totally not do-able, etc. So please, bear with me because you won't be disappointed if you're just discovering this man's writing. If you already read Tom Robbins, please feel free to share your favorite quotes or books. I'd love to know so I can secretly judge you by what's in that grocery cart of a brain of yours......LOL! I don't judge, but I am quite the curious girl, pun intended.


Many days I wake up and wish I'd never read a single word he'd written so I could re-experience the ecstasy of finding him. Oh, to be a Tom Robbins virgin just one more time---it gives me shivers, just the thought of it!!! I love this man's words more than chocolate or mocha frappuccinos and that's really, really saying something. I'm posting covers of my favorites of his books. I love every one he's written (although I haven't read his new one, "B is for Beer" yet. I'm saving it for a dreary day so I'll have something to look forward to.......) and highly recommend them all for great, never-your-average reading.

CREOLE DEBUTANTE

By Tom Robbins

She went to the School of

Miss Crocodile,

learned to walk backwards,

skin a black cat with her teeth.

Soon, she could dance with

dead pirates,

cook perfect gumbo,

telephone the moon collect.

But it took 23 doctors to

fix her

after she kissed that snake.

From: "Wild Ducks Flying Backward", page 150

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

TRIPLETS

By Tom Robbins

I went to Satan's house.

His mailbox was painted black

A fleet of bonecrushers

was parked in his driveway.

The thorns on his rosebushes

were longer than shivs.

And sixty-six roosters scratched

in his front yard, their spurs

smoldering like cheap cigars.

I went to Satan's house.

It was supposed to be an Amway party.

I wanted one of those

hard as hell steak knives.

The ones that can't tell the difference

between mama's sponge cake

and a chunk of rock cocaine.

I went to Satan's house.

I felt a little out of place.

But Satan's twin daughters soon put me at ease.

They tried on funny hats for me,

showed me jewels,

danced around my chair.

They read my fortune

in a bowl of ashes,

let me pet their Dobermans,

and watch while they rinsed out their pink underthings.

I stopped by Satan's house,

I just happened to be in the neighborhood.

Satan came downstairs in a Raiders jacket.

His aura was like burnt rubber,

but his grin could paint a sunrise

on a coal shed wall.

"I see you've met Desire

and Fulfillment," he said,

polishing his monocle with a blood-flecked rag.

"Regret is in the kitchen making coffee."

From: "Wild Ducks Flying Backward", pages 125, 126

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

In the world of writing/reading, there is Tom Robbins, then there is everyone else and I am seriously not exaggerating or pulling your leg. As Mama says, “I shit you not!” Go ahead, ask anyone who reads Tom Robbins and you’ll find a passionate, ardent, fanatic; a fiery-fierce, ferocious free spirit; a person with whom you’d trust your life and your children’s lives and even your groceries. I am being as serious as a dead grasshopper here!

I have been going to library sales and used book stores for 35 years and I have yet to find a single, battered Tom Robbins book ever. Why is this? BECAUSE NOBODY EVER GETS RID OF HIS BOOKS! I can’t say that about any other author on earth! Nobody!! Nowhere! I used to have a habit of highlighting favorite passages in books. I gave up on his books because I have entire books highlighted! Entire books, people---every magical, crazy, hypnotic word! (Have you peeked at Amazon.com and hit "Add to Shopping Cart" yet???)

Everything I read before Tom Robbins was piss poor, stale white bread. He is the juiciest, most mouth-watering steak, the finest, aromatic wine, the most luscious, pristine, fresh vegetable---to put it gastronomically. He's the red, ripe Chipmunk AND Grasshoppper untouched tomato fresh off the intoxicating vine. . . It was like this: I thought I had been drinking coffee all my life until I had that first cuppa Starbuck’s Espresso Roast, freshly ground, then I realized I’d been drinking colored water up until then---that's TOM ROBBINS! He’s so far beyond what I can even describe that it’s pathetic to even try. Excuse the abundance of exclamation marks, okay? I’ve been saving them up for this post and they’re all jumping around in my pockets in anticipation of their appearances! I promised to use them all in this post......!!!

I spent over half my life eating said white bread then a friend (who cannot remember the person who introduced them to the master?) sent me an old copy of “Jitterbug Perfume”. My life has never been the same.

I am on my knees bowing, head to the ground, arms waving up and down in the air to Angie C. the best friend on earth, who sent me her very own copy of “Jitterbug Perfume” back on October 14, 1999---I told you one never forgets---From there I escalated to “Skinny Legs and All”, then to “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” and all the rest of them. (If you're a real Tom Robbins nut, you own the movie version of "Cowgirls" with a young Uma Thurman....Of course, I have it!) Hell, I even found some poems he wrote in "Wild Ducks Flying Backward" to keep with my blog theme of poetry.

I met Angie online in a “Discussion Group” about Anais Nin, my favorite female author, way back in the virginal days of cyberspace in 1998. It was fate---we're still good friends, too! You might forget your own Mama’s birthday but you’ll never forget the person who introduced you to Tom Robbins---EVER! Thank you, Angie, I’ll owe you till the day I become ashes spread in bookstores around the world……(That's my last request, that my husband put on his favorite jeans, rip a little hole in the pocket, put my ashes in and take a road trip to the biggest, best bookstores around the USA and dribble my ashes in the poetry sections of as many as he can...if he dies before I do, my daughters have this information and swear to do it themselves...no boxes in the ground for this girl!)

I found an interview with Tom Robbins online and share my favorite line here where he attempts to describe, quite aptly I might add, his own books. You can read the entire interview if you want to at the website following the quote:

TOM ROBBINS: "If unrestrained, I might describe my books as hallucinogens, aphrodisiacs, mood elevators, intellectual garage door openers, and metaphysical trash compactors. They'll do everything except rotate your tires. As a novelist, my goal has been to twine images and ideas into big subversive pretzels of life, death, and goofiness with the hope that they might help keep the world lively and give it the flexibility to endure. Now, having said all that, I should confess that I probably have no idea what I'm talking about. I rarely indulge in self-analysis and I'm as surprised as anyone else by what seeps out of the end of my pen."

From interview with Peter Wild at Bookmunch:

http://www.bookmunch.co.uk/view.php?id=1628

And now for a few of my favorite quotes from his books:

Jesus: Hey, Dad.
God: Yes, son?
Jesus: Western civilization followed me home this morning. Can I keep it?
God: Certainly not, boy. And put it down this minute. You don’t know where it’s been.
From: “Another Roadside Attraction” by Tom Robbins


"Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air moist, sultry, secretive and far from fresh---felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face." ~Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume", page 66

"The Chinese fingers of dawn, slender and opium-stained, were massaging the bruised bottom of the sky, and owl hoots were beginning to be supplanted by benevolent birdsong and what might have been the sound of the night shift punching off duty at the buggworks." ~Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", page 72

"The last thing she hears as she dives deep down among the keys and change, Kleenex and Boomer letters, post-Jezebelian cosmetics and tattered old magazine photos of Georgia O'Keefe, is the joyful laughter of the heathen dildo.......The average woman's purse weighs approximately one kilo. The average woman's heart weighs nine ounces.....Can a woman who does not know the contents of her handbag know the contents of her heart?" ~Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", page 279

"The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week---yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat night and day, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town." ~Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume", page 240

"....I always wear flats to work, you've hardly ever seen my prime-time heels. I mean, hey, I'm no Imelda, but I've got three or four pair that could loot the treasury of a Third World country and make the natives say thank you. My hot pink Kenneth Cole pumps could fleece Manila in an hour......Let me show you a pair that takes no prisoners. Ellen Cherry knocked back a slug of Rum and vanished into her bedroom closet. When she reappeared, she was holding out in front of her, as if they were twin holy grails, a pair of pumps that seemed to have been fashioned from passion fruit and monkey entrails knotted together in posh bows; with cut-out insteps, ribbon ties, and spool heels, wider at the ends than in the middle. 'Ta-da,' she said softly and without emphasis. "Now, aren't these the shoes estrogen would wear if estrogen had feet? I call the color neon fox tongue, but that's another story." ~Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", pages 293, 294.

"With it's marvelous pinkness, Conch shell's long, smooth, folded aperture saturated the cave. It was a bonbon pink, a tropical pink; above all, a feminine pink. The tint it cast was that of a vagina blowing bubble gum." ~Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", page 54

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Happy weekend, and happy reading. Hugs, Love and Blessings, ~Marion~

Linda Pastan's Carnival Evening, Amazing Poetry

There are some poets you discover and you immediately just KNOW that they KNOW. I first heard one of Ms. Pastan's poems read by Garrison Keiller on "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR and I felt an immediate kinship with her words. I was instantly enthralled and felt illuminated from within.

I own this book as it's an edition of new and selected poems from several of her books and I must say it's a fine book of poems, one that I go to again and again. I had a hard time selecting only a few poems to post here because I have so many favorites. If you haven't yet discovered Ms. Pastan's poetry, then you're in for a delicious treat. Enjoy! Blessings, ~Marion

WHAT WE WANT


What we want

is never simple.

We move among the things

we thought we wanted:

a face, a room, an open book

and these things bear our names---

now they want us.

But what we want appears

in dreams, wearing disguises.

We fall past,

holding out our arms

and in the morning

our arms ache.

We don't remember the dream,

but the dream remembers us.

It is there all day

as an animal is there

under the table,

as the stars are there

even in full sun.

Linda Pastan

____________________

IN THE MIDDLE OF A LIFE

Tonight I understand

for the first time

how a woman might choose

her own death

as easily

as if it were a dark plum

she picked

from a basket

of bright peaches.

It wouldn't be despair

that moved her

or hunger,

but a kind of stillness.

The evenings are full

of closure: the pale flowers

of the shamrock fold

their fragile wings, everything

promised has been given.

There is always

that moment

when the sun balanced

on the rim

of the world

falls

and is lost at sea,

and the sky seems huge

and beautiful without it.

I lie down on my bed

giving myself

to the white sheets

as the white sheets of a sloop

must give themselves

to the wind,

setting out on a journey---

the last perhaps

or even the first.

Linda Pastan

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

PAIN

More faithful

than lover or husband

it cleaves to you,

calling itself by your name

as if there had been a ceremony.

At night, you turn and turn

searching for the one

bearable position,

but though you may finally sleep

it wakens ahead of you.

How heavy it is,

displacing with its volume

your very breath.

Before, you seemed to weigh nothing,

your arms might have been wings.

Now each finger adds its measure;

you are pulled down by the weight

of your own hair.

And if your life should disappear ahead of you

you would not run after it.

Linda Pastan

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

A NEW POET

Finding a new poet

is like finding a new wildflower

out in the woods. You don't see

its name in the flower books, and

nobody you tell believes

in its odd color or the way

its leaves grow in splayed rows

down the whole length of the page. In fact

the very page smells of spilled

red wine and the mustiness of the sea

on a foggy day - the odor of truth

and of lying.

And the words are so familiar,

so strangely new, words

you almost wrote yourself, if only

in your dreams there had been a pencil

or a pen or even a paintbrush

if only there had been a flower.

Linda Pastan

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE BOOKSTALL

Just looking at them

I grow greedy, as if they were

freshly baked loaves

waiting on their shelves

to be broken open---that one

and that---and I make my choice

in a mood of exalted luck,

browsing among them

like a cow in sweetest pasture.

For life is continuous

as long as they wait

to be read---these inked paths

opening into the future, page

after page, every book

its own receding horizon,

And I hold them, one in each hand,

a curious ballast weighting me

here to the earth.

Linda Pastan

The Cracked Pot Fable & Ebb and Flow

This is one of my Morning Glories from last year. They're pitifully thin this year, I guess from the drought.


This cracked pot fable and the ebb and flow prayer have been on my mind all week. I tore my house up to find the Henri Nouwen book from which the ebb and flow prayer came, but I finally found it. I don't know, maybe someone needs to read it. It always lifts my spirits.


I'm hunkered down under the a/c trying to stay cool. The heat index here is 109 and it already feels like it. Even the locusts are singing with a slow southern drawl today in this heat and our family of raccoons who we usually only glimpse at night just now came to the back door to get a drink of fresh water from the gallon container I keep for the wild cats!! Stay cool, peeps........Blessings! ~Marion




The Cracked Pot


An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck. One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.


At the end of the long walk from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.


Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.


After 2 years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. "I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house."


The old woman smiled, "Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot's side?"


"That's because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them."


"For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table. Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house."


Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it's the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding. You've just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.


So, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell and enjoy the flowers on your side of the path.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


A Prayer to the God of Ebb and Flow
From: "Seeds of Hope" by Henri Nouwen, page 37


Dear Lord:


Today I thought of the words of Vincent Van Gogh, "It is true that there is an ebb and flow, but the sea remains the sea."


You are the sea.


Although I experience many ups and downs in my emotions and often feel great shifts and changes in my inner life, you remain the same. Your sameness is not the sameness of a rock, but the sameness of a faithful lover. Out of your love I came to life, by your love I am sustained, and to your love I am always called back. There are days of sadness and days of joy; there are feelings of guilt and feelings of gratitude; there are moments of failure and moments of success; but all of them are embraced by your unwavering love.


My only real temptation is to doubt your love, to think of myself as beyond the reach of your love, to remove myself from the healing radiance of your love. To do these things is to move into the darkness of despair.


O, Lord, sea of love and goodness, let me not fear too much the storms and winds of my daily life, and let me know that there is ebb and flow but that the sea remains the same. ~Amen~


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Healing Power of Flowers

I got the most wonderful envelope of flower advertising from a plant nursery a few days ago and they just screamed for me to glue them into my art journal. So here they are with a few added words and twirls and ink. Summer fun!!!

***^***^***

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be

mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us." ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

A late cloudy afternoon and one of my backyard Moonflowers on the verge of unfurling. They only live one single night, by morning they are dead.


+++++


"A flower's appeal is in its contradictions - so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect." ~Adabella Radici

A set of silky, wrinkly Moonflower twins in my front yard around my dirty ironwork. They're so fragile, freshly opened with their delicate petals and heavenly scent. The scent is like a drug---I can't keep my nose out of them! They remind me of the sand dollars we used to find on the beach. I saw my first pink and black Sphinx Moths the night of the full moon but they were too elusive to be captured in photos. One even bumped my arm as if to push me out of the way on her way to the intoxicating Moonflower nectar.

+++++++

"I know that if odour were visible, as colour is,

I'd see the summer garden in rainbow clouds." ~Robert Bridges, "Testament of Beauty"

This flower blooms in a little globe (I forget the name!) but it's not an Allium. The last few afternoon rains got her to finally bloom for me this year!

My sassy, pink Pansies have really outdone themselves. I just can't pass one by without snapping a photo.

Sunflowers are nature's enigma. They bloom early with their bright yellow, smiling faces, then bend their heads as if sorrow is weighing them down. I had to change this one to black and white because it just fit better. Doesn't she look forlorn? But the happy part is that she makes seeds and feeds the birds even as she is drying and dying.....

***~***~***~***

"Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock." ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers

Oh, the Zinnias, like rabbits they multiply! Just when I think they're done blooming, here comes another one in a color I've never seen before. These orange ones are blooming under the Sunflowers.

My backyard Zinna patch by my Tomatoes. They've been loaded with baby bumble bees ever since spring. Every spring I go to Dollar Tree and buy 10 packs of Zinnias for a dollar. So far, I've only planted 4 packs. I'm staggering them now every few weeks so I'll have their company until frost. I recently made a flower bed around my mailbox and mixed Zinnia seeds with Daisies and Purple Coneflowers. They're about 3 inches high. They'll make my mailman happy, bless his old heart. He told me the other day (when I have a package he honks the horn for me because he knows how I love my books and don't want to drive to the P.O. to pick them up) that I didn't look a day over 35. I told him I think he needs glasses. LOL!

"The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life." ~Jean Giraudoux

===========

Blessings, Peace & Happiness,

~*~Marion~*~

William Stafford, A Poet Who Inspires Me, Always

When I Met My Muse
By William Stafford


I glanced at her and took my glasses
off—they were still singing. They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased. Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent. I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched. "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said. "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation." And I took her hand.



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


Just Thinking
By William Stafford


Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.


Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot—peace, you know.


Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.


This is what the whole thing is about.



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


Waking at 3 a.m.
By William Stafford


Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn't matter—even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.


You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the wood; you become
a secret storehouse that saves the country,
so open and foolish and empty.


You look over all that the darkness
ripples across. More than has ever
been found comforts you. You open your
eyes in a vault that unlocks as fast
and as far as your thought can run.
A great snug wall goes around everything,
has always been there, will always
remain. It is a good world to be
lost in. It comforts you. It is
all right. And you sleep.



_____________________________

Tokin' With The Lord?

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." ~Hebrews 13:2

HEAVENLY HITCHHIKER OR TOKIN’ WITH THE LORD

“Honey, I’m home,” Ray called from the living room, slamming the front door shut. I was in the kitchen cooking a skillet of hamburger helper for supper.

“I picked up a hitchhiker on the way home. Do we have enough for one more?” (This was in the days before cell phones, waaaaay before cell phones.)

”Sure,” I hollered back, used to feeding strangers, since Ray never passed a hitchhiker, this being the 1970’s when it wasn’t as hazardous as it is now to pick up a stranger. I was a little bit perplexed, though, as I knew he had ridden the motorcycle to work that morning because our car was broke down waiting for a payday to get fixed and we did live in the middle of nowhere on Lake Bistineau, 25 miles from any town. Who in the world would hitch a ride on the back of a motorcycle?

I opened a can of English peas and poured them in a pot to heat on the back stove burner and popped some canned biscuits in the oven before going to see who our surprise guest was.

I walked into the living room, wiping my wet hands on a dish towel and there on my ratty, gold fuzzy garage sale couch sat Jesus. Well, he resembled Jesus. He was wearing a dingy white sheet tied at the waist with a cloth belt and had on a pair of plastic flip flops. His hair was long and ratted from blowing in the wind and he had a beard.

I stopped dead in my tracks and just stared, speechless.

“Hello, there,” he said, “I’m Jesus. You can wash my feet if you want to.”

Still temporarily mute, I couldn’t resist the urge to look down at his feet. They were filthy.

I said, “You’re welcome to use the bathroom if you want to take a shower, but I think I’ll pass on the foot washing.” He took me up on the shower and Ray gave him an old robe and boxers to wear while I washed his sheet/robe. I took the biscuits out of the oven, buttered them, and put an extra plate, knife and fork on the table.

While Jesus was showering I laughingly asked Ray where he had picked this one up. He replied, “You’re not going to believe this,” but I urged him on.

“I was passing that little Assembly of God church that’s on the main drag there in town and this guy comes running out of the church’s front door waving wildly. I pulled over to see if there was some problem and he jumped on back of my motorcycle and said, ‘Hit it, dude, hit it!’ so I did. He told me he was Jesus and that he had been in the church blessing the place when a secretary saw him and said she was going to call the cops and that was why he came running out so fast.”

“Ooookay”, I said, giggling.

Ray continued (and this is pure Ray): “I wanted to test him, you know, to see if he might really be Jesus, so I opened up the motorcycle on that straight stretch of highway by the horse farm with the white painted fences. I know I hit 100 mph and Jesus didn’t even blink or hold on! The only words he uttered when I slowed down a bit were, "Cool, dude!”

“Hmmm, maybe he really is Jesus if you couldn’t scare him,” I replied sarcastically.

When Jesus came out of the bathroom, his hair still wet (we didn’t have a hair dryer), he sat down and pulled out a little Bull Durham tobacco cloth bag with a string pull and some Zigzag cigarette rolling papers. “Would you guys care to share a doobie with me?” Ray and I looked at each other and fell out laughing like hyenas. Tokin’ with the Lord, yesssirrreeee. (I swear this is a true story. It is!!)

How could we say no? Who in their right mind would pass up the chance to even utter the sentence, ‘I got high with Jesus?' Not us! I mean, it was the 70’s and it was quite unsociable to refuse a toke, much like refusing a cocktail in the 50’s.

We partook (it was some righteous weed---sorry, I couldn’t help myself) and he urged us to put on some music. I asked if he had any preferences and he said, “Y’all got any Grand Funk Railroad”? I put on the album, Closer to Home and he said he loved “I’m You’re Captain,” so we entertained Jesus with a perfectly appropriate song seeing as who he was and all.

After that, all mellowed out, I suggested one of my favorite groups, Pink Floyd, and he said, “Wow, Groovy!”

I put “Dark Side of the Moon” on and we sat, rapt, falling into the music. To this day I can’t hear Pink Floyd without recalling our visit with Jesus.

When supper was ready, I called April from Mama’s across the street to come home and eat. But Jesus said he didn’t eat meat, so I made him two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He then proceeded to lecture us on the dangers of eating meat and killing cows and other of his helpless creatures. He chided us both for wearing leather belts and shoes. I really felt ashamed for a minute or two.

He slept peacefully on our couch that night. I went to get his robe/sheet out of the dryer the following morning and discovered that the dryer wasn’t working---his robe was still wet. He said, “That’s okay, I don’t mind,” and proceeded to put his wet sheet on, and get on back of our Suzuki in the cold, damp morning air. Ray took him back to town on his way to work and dropped him off at a 7-11 at this request. His robe was dry by the time they got there.

We learned several weeks later by way of a newspaper article that ‘Jesus’ was really the son of a wealthy family and he had run away from a psychiatric halfway home. I often wonder what became of him, if he still thinks he’s Jesus. If Jesus came back today, do you think he’d be locked up and considered crazy? Probably.

The synchronistic, funny thing is that several years later we began attending that same church, the little Assembly of God where Ray picked up hitchhiking Jesus. The pastor and his wife and a group of church members were sitting around talking one day and someone said, “Do y’all remember the time that crazy man dressed in a sheet ran through the church and like to have scared us all to death?”

Ray and I just looked at each other and winked....

Ode to Tomatoes - Pablo Neruda and Erica Jong, My Teachers

I wanted to write an ode to the Tomato, goddess of the garden, today after picking that blue bowl above almost full of them from my little garden, my first harvest. This is my first good crop of tomatoes in over 4 or 5 years, yes years! I don’t know why they did so well this year. It could be the four egg shells I put in the earth below each plant to ward off blossom drop, or it could be the saltwater spray I made and sprayed them with, which, according to my sister-in-law’s grandpa is a magic potion that both fertilizes and keeps bugs away.

Some have told me it’s because I planted Basil with my Tomatoes. I think the new soil and new spot may have helped because the old place I used to plant them had black spot disease in the soil. I like to attribute it to love and lots of water and good soil and me watering them, often, with my own salty tears.

I gave up writing my ode (well, I'll still write it, but later) when I remembered that the mighty poet, Pablo Neruda, had already written one and I could never touch the level of his genius. I also recalled that Erica Jong, whose writing turned me on to Neruda, loved to write about fruits and vegetables. It was her writing that taught me to write about the ‘ordinary’ things in my life.

So, humbly bowing in gratitude to these, my teachers, I post a quote by Ms. Jong, a site where many of her poems are posted which you can read at your leisure, and two beautiful masterpieces by Neruda, "Ode to Tomatoes" followed by his magnificent, untouchable "Poetry".


“If a woman wants to be a poet,
She must dwell in the house of the tomato.” ~Erica Jong, from ‘Fruits & Vegetables’


http://www.ericajong.com/poems/


Happy Summer to you all! Blessings, ~Marion





Ode To Tomatoes
By Pablo Neruda


The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like a tomato,
its juice runs
through the streets.
In December, unabated,
the tomato
invades the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes its ease
on countertops, among glasses,
butter dishes, blue salt cellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it: the knife sinks
into living flesh,
red viscera a cool
sun, profound, inexhaustible,
populates the salads of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we pour oil,
essential child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding of the day,
parsley hoists its flag,
potatoes bubble vigorously,
the aroma of the roast
knocks at the door, it's time!
come on! and, on
the table, at the midpoint of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile star, displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.


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I can't even think of Neruda without this poem coming into my head. I've probably posted it many times before, but I never tire of reading it. Enjoy!



POETRY
By Pablo Neruda


And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.


I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery, felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.


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

Ars Poetica, Modern Sorcery and Song of the Builders---Poems I Love

I share with you three of my photographs and three of my favorite poems by Archibald MacLeish, Charles Simic and Mary Oliver. It's a lazy, hot Sunday here in drought-ridden, scorching Louisiana.

Even the exotic, black and yellow grasshopper came out for a drink of hose water this morning as I watered the drooping, brown flora and fauna, and I captured a photo of him! Wishing you cooling summer showers, peace, blessings, health and happiness. ~Marion~

ARS POETICA

By Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown -

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases,

twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

memory by memory the mind -

A poem should be motionless in time

as the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:

not true.

For all the history of grief

an empty doorway and a maple leaf

For love

the leaning grasses and two lights above the sea -

A poem should not mean

but be.

Modern Sorcery

By Charles Simic

You could have been just another maggot

squirming over history's roadkill.

Instead a witch took pity on you, lucky fellow,

made you say abracadabra, and much else

you didn't understand

while you held on to the hem of her skirt.

You know neither the place nor the hour

of your transfiguration.

A kitten lapping a drop of milk

fallen from the Blessed Virgin's breast

in a church at dawn. That's how it felt:

the two of you kneeling there.

Outside, there was a flash of lightning

like a tongue passed over a bloody knife,

but you were safe.

Hexed once and for all in her open arms,

giddy and tickled pink with her sorcery.

From: "Staying Alive, Real Poems for Unreal Times" edited by Neil Astley

Song of the Builders

By Mary Oliver

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God -
a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside
this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope
it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

from: "Why I Wake Early" (2004)

Lucille Clifton, a Woman Who Knows

It's been a while since I posted some poems by my favorite poets, so I'll try to remedy that today. I picked up "Blessing the Boats" by the mighty Lucille Clifton early this morning and fell head over heels back in love with Ms. Clifton's amazing writing. She has no equal, in my humble opinion, and her sense of womanly knowing is phenomenally perfect. She's a survivor.

Here are a few of my favorite poems from this book, which is a delicious poetic feast. Buy it for yourself because you'll need to go back to it over and over again! It's heart-healing, soul-stirring and life-affirming. You'll see---

Blessings, Love & Peace, ~Marion

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PRAISE SONG
By Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.

*******

1994
by Lucille Clifton

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when a thumb of ice
stamped itself hard near my heart

you have your own story
you know about the fears the tears
the scar of disbelief

you know that the saddest lies
are the ones we tell ourselves
you know how dangerous it is

to be born with breasts
you know how dangerous it is
to wear dark skin

i was leaving my fifty-eighth year
when i woke into the winter
of a cold and mortal body

thin icicles hanging off
the one mad nipple weeping

have we not been good children
did we not inherit the earth

but you must know all about this
from your own shivering life

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

hag riding
By Lucille Clifton

why
is what i ask myself
maybe it is the afrikan in me
still trying to get home
after all these years
but when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

A Little Federico Lorca, A Little Naomi Nye

Dragonflies swarm me every time I go outside lately, fighting each other to have their picture taken. This green one posed the longest, so he won. I share a couple of poems I love below.

Peace, Blessings, Love and Poetry to You All----Marion, fighting the blues.....

Excerpt From: "Morning"
by Federico Garcia Lorca



"...The morning is bright
Smoke rises from hearths
and lifts the fog in its arms.

Listen to the ballads
water sings under the poplars:
they are wingless birds
lost in the grass!


Trees that sing
dry out and fall;
tranquil mountains
age into plains.
But the song of water
is a thing eternal.

It is light made song
of romantic illusions
It is soft yet firm,
full of sky and gentle.

It is mist and rose
of eternal morning.
Moon-honey that flows
from buried stars....."



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You Know Who You Are
By Naomi Shihab Nye

Why do your poems comfort me, I ask myself.
Because they are upright, like straight-backed chairs.
I can sit in them and study the world as if it too
were simple and upright.


Because sometimes I live in a hurricane of words
and not one of them can save me.
Your poems come in like a raft, logs tied together,
they float.
I want to tell you about the afternoon
I floated on your poems
all the way from Durango Street to Broadway.


Fathers were paddling on the river with their small sons.
Three Mexican boys chased each other outside the library.
Everyone seemed to have some task, some occupation,
while I wandered uselessly in the streets I claim to love.

Suddenly I felt the precise body of your poems beneath me,
like a raft, I felt words as something portable again,
a cup, a newspaper, a pin.
Everything happening had a light around it,
not the light of Catholic miracles,
the blunt light of a Saturday afternoon.
Light in a world that rushes forward with us or without us.
I wanted to stop and gather up the blocks behind me
in this light, but it doesn't work.
You keep walking, lifting one foot, then the other,
saying, "This is what I need to remember"
and then hoping you can.