Steve Vai Guitar Dual from 1986 Movie, "Crossroads" - AWESOME!!!

Moonlight's Dance, A Poem With Pictures

My majestic Moonflowers are ecstatic with our August weather: afternoon storms so they can open early in the cooler, cloudy false twilight and fabulous humidity for maximum blooming. They're vining like crazy---reaching toward the sky, tangled in the Morning Glories, choking the Elephant Ears and even crawling along the ground---it's as if they know they only have another month or so to flourish radiantly before Autumn arrives and magically transforms what was flowers into big, fat seed pods.

Me, I get melancholy in August. The flowers are starting to be all bloomed out, school starts, time is flying by like a runaway train, and I'm oh, so bone tired, body-weary and in daily pain with my pathetic bad back which is getting worse. I know, I'm whining, but I haven't whined all summer, so gimme a break! LOL!

I haven't been inspired, but I went outside anyway last night to photograph the full moon. (Oh, how she glowed in my windows, moonlight lying like ghostly carpet on my fake wood floors!!!) Boy, was I in for a wonderful surprise. I have a new camera, another Kodak EasyShare, but with more zoom and megapixels, so these are the first moon shots I've attempted. I put it on the Night Landscape setting and below are some of the crazybeautiful, stunning photographs.

It's like the Moonlady Herself knew I was down in the dumps and wanted to cheer me by playing with me on this hot, humid Summer night. There are many, many more amazing photos but I'm not posting them here because I don't want anyone to take them (I know, we all do it). I have no idea how I got these mind-blowing shots, but here they are with a little poem I eeked out with much sweating and effort. LOL! (I plan to work on it and add more to it when the Muse comes back. In the meantime, I'll be doing art to rest my brain.) I hope you enjoy them.

Blessings, Love & Peace---

~Marion~

Moonlight's Dance
By Marion L.


Went out last night to take
her picture, to capture her
in fullness of face.
She spun away in modesty,
saying she had no grace.




I snapped her as she
was turning---
She twisted her head to the right





All that appeared on my pictures
were trails of
her luminous, white light.


August 5, 2009, Full Moon

Dragonfly Love

Dragonfly Love


I don't know from where
this dragonfly love was birthed.
Memories come to me,
all the way back to 5 years old
playing with dragonflies,
chasing them,
standing as still as a statue,
little fingers outstretched
hoping they'd think me a tree,
or sitting in a lawn chair
my red-painted toes wiggling,
willing them to land.
They always do.
Can it be their predictability?
Maybe.
Or that they soar about the earth
yet are birthed in water.


See his tattered, fragile wings?
See his curious big turquoise eyes?
See how he trusts me?
He's a survivor, like me.
Maybe that's our bond.


~Marion

Sky Calligraphy by Buson

The wild geese write a verse against the glow

Over the hills; their seal---the moon below. ~BUSON

~Haiku from: "A Net of Fireflies", translated by Harold Stewart, page 82

Photograph by Marion, taken on 8/1/09

Your Heart Was My Home Until You Handed Me an Eviction Notice

Your Heart Was My Home Until You Handed Me An Eviction Notice

by Amanda Bower, Stacy, MN

from: TeenInk.com


I removed the layers of blankets from my aching bones

to excavate the secrets that were held together by saliva

in papier-mâché envelopes, only to chew on disappointments

and lie on shards of fragile stained glass that tampered with my flaws,

instead of putting me back together with multicolored duct tape

so gray was only found inside of my body.

I wrung the tears from your sweatshirt and decided it was time

to give it back to you, in exchange for my serpent heart

[barely beating,

barely breathing];

instead of curling inside your stomach and making you

nearly as ill as I had become, just by drinking venomous nectar

and digesting fireflies so a small portion of me would feel alive,

I climbed over your picket fence and let you recline my eyes

in another awkward position to the point where I only chain-smoked

the main exhibits of your aesthetic proportions and declined

every deficiency of the person you truly are,

i. blunt

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

I found this poem in an old book yesterday, cut out from a newsprint publication. I don't know the date or where it really came from until I Googled it online and found the link listed above. The universe gave it to me.

I only know that it resonated deeply within my spirit's heart and poetsoul. Oh, the careless way we trust our beating, precious, only tender hearts to just anyone!!!

~Marion

Jason Bredle, Young Poet Extraordinaire

I discovered the incredible poetry of Jason Bredle several years ago online and fell in love with several lines of this particular poem. You can guess, knowing me, that the word 'dragonfly' is in most of my favorite lines. But I love the raw intensity of his writing and how he seems to reinvent language, yet not so in a way that's undecipherable as some poetry is nowadays.


I say this often, but we must buy poetry and support other poets. I read an article last week that said that most poets, even the award winning ones, must have other jobs to survive. It's a shame. We need poetry. It's food for the spirit. It's the lifeblood of language.


Poetry is my own personal lifeline and my very heartbeat. Poetry is what keeps me tied to this earth, but at the same time, gives me wings to escape it.


Enjoy.


Blessings and Love,


~*~Marion~*~





The Idiot's Guide to Faking Your Own Death and Moving to Mexico
By Jason Bredle


Every few seconds I check the Bible
to see what Jesus is saying about me. The answer
is always nothing. Sometimes
he's condemning me to eternal damnation,
but usually nothing. Tonight I am alone,
wearing my sex shorts, adrift amongst
the black suburban pools of eternal damnation.
No, I have not been in love. Yes,
I have been in love. I am speaking the language
in which no and yes mean the same, in which
apricot and goodbye mean the same.
I am remembering the kudzu of the awful season,
sitting with you beside the swamp for the last
time and neither of us knowing it was the last
time but yes the glass was hello and dragonfly.
Was it a blessing? They say so in this language.
Others say this language is dying, or already
dead. I speak it, nonetheless, while eating
apricots in the evening of eternal damnation
where you yell at the map and cut your wrist
and there is a darkness here that I have only shared
with my cat, like that guy in the movie who writes
graphic erotica and goes crazy. One says
pain near the black pool of everything,
my back is covered with wax. Every few
seconds I check the Bible to see what Jesus
is saying about me. The answer is always nothing,
aside from the time he lambasted the outfit I wore
to the People's Choice Awards. A green tuxedo.
Tonight, I am adrift in the suburb of the black sky,
I am speaking the language in which love
and apricot mean the same, in which pool
and death mean the same. I said goodbye
in a suburb like this, years ago. I said
goodbye in a suburb like this, years ago.
According to Hercules, if we make an angel
out of ourselves, that is what we are; if we make
a devil out of ourselves, that too is what
we are. See, this is what I am getting at.
It is the awful season and I am speaking
the language in which violence and God mean
the same, in which blood and dragonfly mean
the same. I am in the orchard of eternity
picking the goodbyes of damnation, I am licking
your dragonfly blood and speaking the language
in which pain means hello. A black pool,
a green sky. That is to say, each moment
without you is a vacant airport, each moment
without you is a glass apricot. Every few seconds
I check the Bible to see what Jesus is saying
about me. The answer is always nothing. Except
today, it's a bunch of weird stuff about how
I'm falling into a black pool in some suburb,
maybe Palatine or something, and just like that,
I've gone forever. I know! That's what I thought
too. This is the story, but in this language, this
is not the story. I am eating red ice,
harvesting a field of knives. I am speaking
the language in which heaven and earth mean
the same, in which sky and white mean the same.
O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you. Even
if you do not listen to it, just know, this
is how I have always felt about you. And I
am possessed. And I am a fatalist. Do you see
these bruises? Do you see these bruises?
They are a sad bouquet. They are a beautiful
scrapbook. I am floating. I am in love.
I am dead. On a perfect night, my back is covered
with wax. O Violence, but I did not want this hello.
O Lord, I made this dragonfly for you.
Even if You do not listen to it, just know, I made it
only for you.

maggie and millie and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)

it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

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

This is one of my favorite summer poems and it just happens to be by one of my favorite poets, e.e. cummings, whose poems I often share here. I post it for those of you who haven't read it. It's lyrical and fun and just plain perfect.

I don't know anyone who doesn't love the sea. I've been to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, but I've never been to the West Coast to see the Pacific Ocean. I hope to one day before I die. There's just something healing about the sea and the beach, standing on the edge of the land and looking out into that vast body of water. For some reason it brings to mind the first few sentences in a fabulous book, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston:

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."

It's a fabulous book if you're looking for something good to read. LOL! See, life is just this big cross reference where one book or poem leads to another and on and on. I love it!!

It's been a nice, stormy day here in the swamps with lots of much needed rain. It's cooler, but the mosquitoes are doing tiny little happy dances because of all the water they now have to lay eggs in. It's always something, right?

I'm not complaining, though. I love the cooler weather. It's pretty sad when 90 degrees is a cool spell! Let me head back to my books. I hear them calling me---

Hugs, Love, & Blessings,

~*~Marion~*~

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea." ~Isak Dinesen

"The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. " ~Annie Dillard

Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett

I read "Undiscovered Gyrl" by Allison Burnett, earlier this week and really enjoyed it. It was different from any other book I've read and the plot was ingenious, riveting, and heartbreaking all at the same time. I'm recommending it because it's about blogging, a favorite subject of so many of us, no? It's written in the format of an 18 year old girl's anonymous blog. This line really hit me in the gut: "Only on the Internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely."

In the interest of honesty, I will say that I'm now a member of the Amazon Vine program where I get to review books before they come out. I get a reader's copy of the book for free (thank yaaa Jaayyysssuus!) BUT, I do get to choose from a variety of books to review and I picked this one because it looked so interesting. I'm in the top 1,000 of reviewers at Amazon and have only been reviewing books there for, oh, TEN YEARS! I will say, when I saw the invitation, I did do a teeny, little happy dance...I mean offering a bookaholic books is like putting an alcoholic to work stomping grapes with the benefit of all the free wine they can consume if you don't mind purple feet. But really, the book is amazing and I think many of you would enjoy reading it. It comes out August 11, 2009.

I won't go into the story because you can read my review at Amazon. I review as Marion with my 'dragonfly' hotmail address next to my name if you'd care to toss me some bones in the vote department. Don't worry, I won't be bugging the hell out of you with lots of book reviews, but this one really got to me and was an awesome read.

Blessings, Love & Peace,

~*~Marion~*~

"There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?" ~Marina Tsvetaeva

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

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

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