December 11th by Anne Sexton

December 11th
by Anne Sexton

Then I think of you in bed,
your tongue half chocolate, half ocean,
of the houses that you swing into,
of the steel wool hair on your head,
of your persistent hands and then
how we gnaw at the barrier because we are two.

How you come and take my blood cup
and link me together and take my brine.
We are bare.  We are stripped to the bone
and we swim in tandem and go up and up
the river, the identical river called Mine
and we enter together.  No one's alone.

From:  "The Best American Erotic Poems", page 95

Temptation by Nina Cassian

Temptation
By Nina Cassian

Call yourself alive?  Look, I promise you
that for the first time you'll feel your pores opening
like fish mouths, and you'll actually be able to hear
your blood surging through all those lanes,
and you'll feel light gliding across the cornea
like the train of a dress. For the first time
you'll be aware of gravity
like a thorn in your heel,
and your shoulder blades will ache for want of wings.
Call yourself alive?  I promise you
you'll be deafened by dust falling on the furniture,
you'll feel your eyebrows turning to two gashes,
and every memory you have --- will begin
at Genesis.

from: "Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times," page 48



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The Dish of Fruit by William Carlos Williams

Vincent Van Gogh, Still Life with Carafe and Lemons, 1888.

The Dish of Fruit
By William Carlos Williams

The table describes
nothing: four legs, by which
it becomes a table.  Four lines
by which it becomes a quatrain,

the poem that lifts the dish
of fruit, if we say it is like
a table---how will it describe
the contents of the poem?

from:  "The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams 1939-1962, Volume II", page 143

Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T. S. Eliot

Winter Moon by Marion

It's an Eliot kind of day today.  I came to Mr. Eliot's works in my early 40's and now I can't get enough of his writings.  I was reading this one late last night on my Kindle and fell in love with the moon imagery.  His poetry never, ever disappoints me.  Enjoy! 

Rhapsody on a Windy Night
By T. S. Eliot

TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,

And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.”

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.”
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:

“Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
The lamp said,
“Four o’clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The last twist of the knife.

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). From: "Prufrock and Other Observations." 1917.

Let Me Be Your Tattoo

My dragon tattoo, covering an old scar.

LET ME BE YOUR TATTOO
By Marion

Let me be a tattoo
on your cold, hard heart:
an arrow to pierce the plate of steel
protecting the soft, pliable tissue;
a black rose dripping red blood
onto your colorless psyche
to awaken you;
a skull and crossbones covering your third chakra
as a warning to others: fear me;
a slimy snake, slithering up your throat
to choke back your angry words;
an Indian chief on your left bicep
to cover an ancient wound;
an angel on your right shoulder to
watch over and protect you
from yourself.
Let me be your tattoo and
I’ll let you mark me forever
with the indelible ink
of your delicious,
dangerous love.

Leaves in a Drained Swimming Pool by Dean Young

Leaves in a Drained Swimming Pool
by Dean Young

Poetry is an art of beginnings and ends. You want middles, read novels. You want happy endings, read cookbooks. Not closure, word filtched from self-help fuzzing the argument. Endsville. Kaput. Form is the shape of the selecting intelligence because time is running out. Form enacts fatality. To pretend otherwise is obfuscation, philosophical hub-bub of the worst sort. A lie. We die. We go to art to learn the unlearnable, experience the unexperiencable. Art reports back. Form is the connect, primal haunt, carbon chain end-stopped. You can tell it’s late because we prefer the songs of Orpheus after he’s torn apart. Pattern as much a deficiency as a realization. No one gets to count forever. Irreverence is irrelevant’s revenge. When you slice yourself open, you don’t find a construct. Bloom rhyming with doom pretty much took care of Keats. Wire in the monkey’s diencephalon prints out a wave most beautiful. Open form prone to mouse-droppings just as closed to suffocation. The river swims in the fish. The giraffe goes knock-kneed to drink. The girl ties back her hair in a universal gesture. Theories about art aren’t art any more than a description of an aphid is an aphid. A menu isn’t a meal. We’re trying to build birds, not birdhouses. Put your trust in the inexhaustible nature of the murmur, Breton said that and know when to shut up, I’m saying that. We’re not equations with hats. Nothing appears without an edge. There’s nothing worse than a poem that doesn’t stop. No one lives in a box. The heart isn’t grown on a grid. The ship has sailed and the trail is shiny in the dew. Door slam, howling in the wood, rumble strips before the toll booth. Enter: Fortinbras. Ovipositor. Snow. Bam bam bam, let’s get out of here. What I know about form couldn’t fill a thimble. What form knows about me will be my end.

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"The effects of radioative particles on the human body, so topical in 1959, are nothing new to old poetry-lovers.  Used with moderation, a first-class verse is an excellent and usually fast-working form of heat therapy.  Once, in the Army, when I had what might be termed ambulatory pleurisy for something over three months, my first real relief came only when I had placed a perfectly innocent-looking Blake lyric in my shirt pocket and worn it like a poultice for a day or so.  Extremes, though, are always risky and ordinarily downright baneful, and the dangers of prolonged contact with any poetry that seems to exceed what we most familiarly know of the first-class are formidable..."  ~J. D. Salinger, New Yorker article

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I purchased an old white, long-sleeved man's shirt in a thrift store recently.  I am slowly filling it with black sharpie-written poetry.  I will wear it for weeks as pain medication and get back to you on Salinger's prescription. 

~Marion

In Praise of Lucille Clifton

To My Last Period
Lucille Clifton

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.
now it is done,
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn't she
beautiful? wasn't she beautiful?

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

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.

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

Today is Lucille Clifton's birthdate.  Sadly, she died last February.  She's one of my favorite poets and these poems are my favorite of hers.

Celebrate poetry every day,
~Marion~

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"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it." ~Ernest Hemingway, interview in Paris Review, Spring 1958

The Patience of Ordinary Things by Pat Schneider

In my kitchen window...

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

from 'Another River: New and Selected Poems'

Sacred Datura - I Paint the Earth and Sky With Flowers

My very first Sacred Datura flower EVER just beginning to open Wednesday evening on the full moon.  I planted this from a teeny seed in March and I was so excited that it chose to bloom on June's full moon.  I grabbed my camera, stood on a lawn chair and snapped this picture from above.   It's enchanting and otherworldly, well worth the TLC I gave it. 

I was at a local art gallery this week and my husband (who paints) was talking to the two owner/artists.  They turned to me and asked me what my medium was.  I replied, "Words, earth and sky.  I write poetry and plant flowers that paint the earth and the sky." Much to my delight, I left them both speechless. 

The white, trumpet-shaped bloom of the Sacred Datura provides a fairyland of delicate beauty, moths, butterflies, long-tongued bees, hummingbirds and mystical, moonlit nights. It gives rise to some of the plant’s other names: Angel’s Trumpet, Moon Lily, Moonflower or Belladonna (beautiful lady).

The fully open flower smells heavenly, but only lasts from evening till morning.  I have a passion for night-blooming flowers.  A friend/neighbor of my mother had this flower growing on a bush and she gave me a large green seed pod that had dozens of tiny seeds on it.  I saved it in a jar all winter and planted the seeds in March.  Now I have 3 bushes loaded with blooms just waiting to open up.  This flower is not the same as my vining Moonflowers which are of the Morning Glory family.

"Entranced by the garden's beauty, my soul was stolen from me, and I suddenly found myself standing in a world of flowers.  The blossoming flowers were all expanding to fill the air, the water and the earth.  Perhaps it was then, as I leaned over the petals,  that I realized I was touching something. . . something that wasn't the flowers."  ~Ohno Kazuo, describing the dance, 'Water Lilies'.

This is a long shot of the bush.  I have it growing in a pot, but it grows well in the ground.  Those finger-looking light green growths are future flowers.  The leaves are huge, soft and velvety to the touch.

"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

"The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers." ~Basho

Many people tell me that they have no green thumb.  Well, that's pure dee bullshit.  I've killed as many flowers as I've grown.  Like most things in life, it's all about perseverance. It seems there are certain flowers meant for certain people, is all.  I tell anyone who wants to grow flowers to buy a 10 cent package of Zinnia seeds at any dollar store, sprinkle them on any kind of dirt in a flower pot or the ground, water them and in no time at all you'll have dozens of blooming flowers in all colors.  I call Zinnias the crayolas of the flower world.  Also, they come back every year.

I leave you with one of my Zinnias.  It's brothers and sisters were pink, white, orange and yellow, some shaped like daisies, others like this one...all from the same package.

"Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning."  ~Lydia M. Child

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

WHAT I BEEN UP TO
By Marion

I been star-gazing, moon bathing
Growing moonflowers large as plates
Drinking books and eating lies
Reading apples and breaking ties.

Cuttin’ my hair and shavin’ my legs
Paintin’ on lips that make men beg
Talkin' to dragonflies, cussin’ my cat
Washin' dishes and fightin' fat.

Found 5 pounds and lost it again
Spend a whole weekend listening to the wind
Did a little study on Kate Chopin
Analyzed the myths, then turned and ran.

Saved some money, (got me a tan)
Spent it all on books, started over again.
Kissed the earth, then painted the sky
With awesome wild flowers that made me cry

Wiped my tears from off my face
Then headed right back to the old rat race.

Kafka and Tom Robbins. Why Not??

This is a gorgeous stray cat I was photographing in my back yard in early Spring. I seem to have this effect on male felines. They see me, fall down and roll in ecstasy. Tee-Hee.

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The above photos relate to my very favorite Kafka quote:

"You don't need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Don't even listen, simply wait.
Don't even wait.
Be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you.
To be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ectasy at your feet." ~Franz Kafka

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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",

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I leave you with a photo of my Moonflowers and the elusive Sphinx Moth. Or this might be the Tobacco Moth. Either way, they're beautiful. I hope the pictures show up this time!! xoxo

Love & Blessings,
Marion