The Big Heart by Anne Sexton

A tree that wears its hearts like leaves....

(Thank you, Annie, for sending me this poem a few moons back on the beautiful scroll.)  

THE BIG HEART
By Anne Sexton

"Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold."  ~From an essay by W. B. Yeats

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
in the people I have:
Max, Lois, Joe, Louise,
Joan, Marie, Dawn,
Arlene, Father Dunne,
and all in their short lives
give to me repeatedly,
in the way the sea
places its many fingers on the shore,
again and again
and they know me,
they help me unravel,
they listen with ears made of conch shells,
they speak back with the wine of the best region.
They are my staff.
They comfort me.

They hear how
the artery of my soul has been severed
and soul is spurting out upon them,
bleeding on them,
messing up their clothes,
dirtying their shoes.
And God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt
as hollow as the Grand Canyon,
still God is filling me.
He is giving me the thoughts of dogs,
the spider in its intricate web,
the sun
in all its amazement,
and a slain ram
that is the glory,
the mystery of great cost,
and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in--
all in comes the fury of love.

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"Birth is nothing but death begun......"  ~Stephen King, The Dark Tower VII, page 588

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My 7 year old granddaughter, Mary Mace, calls me almost every night.  As she says, 'We have a LOT in common . . . We both love dolls and fairies and have big imaginations.'  She's the light of my life.

Mary Mace:  Grammy, are you a crazy cat lady?
Me:  No, Mary, you have to have 20 cats to be a crazy cat lady and I only have six."
Mary Mace:  Oh, okay!!

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"A child needs a grandparent, anybody's grandparent, to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world." ~Charles and Ann Morse

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Mam, Me and Mary by Marion

Our Lady of Guadalupe in my yard surrounded by wild berry blooms and Apple Mint.

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

This is a repost from my old blog.  I wanted it here with my other Mam poems.  Please excuse the rerun.  

I saw my first dragonfly of the year today, 2 weeks before spring offically arrives.  Happy, happy, joy, joy!  We put up 4 Bluebird houses last week and four little Bluebird families have moved it.  More joy! 

xo,

Marion

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M'am, Me & Mary
by Marion

M'am & me lived on a
old houseboat barge
deep in the Atchafalaya swamp.
She made a livin’ sewing
counterfeit voodoo dolls
and sellin’ ‘em to a lady
what had a shop down in
the Quarter in
N’Orleans. I helped her some
by collectin’ & stitchin’
on the Spanish moss hair
and she’d pay me by lettin’
me take off into the swamp all
by my lonesome with my
beat-up copy of
Gone With the Wind.

I’d find me a dry
hidey hole & sit, read &
dream I was
Miss Scarlet kissing that old
scoundrel, Rhett Butler.
I never got tired of him.

In the corner of our barge,
were a statue of Mother Mary
with dollar store candles
in blue mason jars
all ‘round her. She shore was
purty at night. It was like
fireflies worshipping @ her
ever-young feet. M'am says that
the only god worth her gumption
was precious Mary.

She’d clarify, between puffs and fancy exhales
of her Pall Mall filterless ciggies,
“Sweet Lord, but givin’ birth
ain’t hard enough, like squeezing
a GD watermelon out your arsehole
but the Blessed Mother
did it as a virgin.
Shit, I know it ruint her
for sex ever after."

I sure miss M'am. Them
damned Pall Malls kilt her
way before her time.


---------------------------------
 
"Come voyeur my poems

Feel free, I feel free."

~Carrie Latet

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"A bird does not sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song."  ~Chinese Proverb
 
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In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Hodges Gardens State Park last Spring

I love this poem the way I love my very own life.

xoxo,

 ~Marion

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

In Blackwater Woods
By Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

From:  "American Primitive" by Mary Oliver, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

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"Imaginary gardens with real toads in them." ~Marianne Moore's definition of poetry, "Poetry," Collected Poems, 1951
 
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To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.

~Emily Dickinson


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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. ~John Cage

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The Naming of Cats by T. S. Eliot

I have 6 cats and I know they party at night while we're asleep.  You have to own a cat to fully understand this strange phenomenon.  Cats are wild & crazy people in little fur suits.  :-)

"Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" by T. S. Eliot is my favorite book of cat poetry.  The illustrations are pretty awesome, too.  Did you know that this book (which Mr. Eliot wrote for his godchildren in the 1930's) inspired the Broadway musical Cats?  Indeed! 

This is one of my favorite poems in the book:

The Naming of Cats

By T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

It isn't just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Fabulous New Book By Jeanette Winterson

I've read all of Ms. Winterson's books and was extremely happy to get an advance reader's copy of this, her new memoir, which comes out March 6.  I highly recommend everything she's written.  

Here's her web page with a listing and description of all of her books:  http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/books.asp

HAPPY MARCH!!!!!

xoxo,
Marion

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The Freedom of the Moon
By Robert Frost

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air
above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster
as you might try a jewel in your hair.
I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,
alone, or in one ornament combining
with one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.
by walking slowly on some evening later
I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,
and brought it over glossy water, greater,
and dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,
the color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

Mistaking Opiates for the Clear Light by Suzanne Paola

Support Poets.  BUY LOTS OF POETRY!

Mistaking Opiates for the Clear Light
By Suzanne Paola


There's always been this confusion with white things---
hospitals, cold, moonlight.
They seemed to embody the will
paralyzed into peaceful acceptance.
Blank paper consecrate
to the end of words:  I love that,
secretly, more than this.
Quaaludes in my palm, rowers, eucharistic form.
Clear bag of heroin.
Stuff, we called it.  Too foundational to define.


*


In a clear bowl, a pear & a pomegranate wizen
into color.  Almost
alive, skins rucking
in on themselves.  Cheeks
sunk, russet
& carmine, seeming
almost to care about this...
Each a countenance
too private for a face, collapsing
in the hard gravity of color.


I was their opposite, pale girl, not living
or dying.  They were
what I feared.


*


I trust in the bardo wisdom:  how the gods,
with their soft white light, draw us in, convince us
their stuporous world is all there is.


I've seen them, slumping
forward, burning themselves with cigarettes.


How grand they were for a while:  their leathers, their etched
            bodies, a stalled
writhing eagle on each arm.
And their nectars, their secret foods, that gave
an easy kind of sensate order.


Though a god's world finally
suffers itself away from him, braille of the tracks
of a thousand needles, transgressions of red
under the skin---


From:  "Bardo" by Suzanne Paola, pages 6, 7 (Winner of "The Brittingham Prize in Poetry")


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Oh, how I love this book and this poem.  I love it like I love ice cream.  This poem whispers to my heart and says, "Well, it's full of truth, isn't it?"  And my heart turns away and replies, "Not now, heart, not now...."  I'm enjoying my in-between state...  I love it when a book speaks to me, don't you?


xoxo,
Marion


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FYI, here's a tiny bit about the meaning of "bardo":
 
The Tibetan word bardo means "in-between state." The word is commonly used to mean a state between death and rebirth.  However, the Bardo Thodol -- "Liberation through Hearing in the Intermediate State," known in English as "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," describes six kinds of bardo:


Three are associated with life:

1. The bardo of birth
2. The bardo of dreams
3. The bardo of meditation

These three are the states from death to rebirth:

1. The bardo of the moment of death
2. The bardo of supreme reality
3. The bardo of becoming.

Pretty Words by Elinor Wylie

Yellow weeds a sproutin'...
Pretty Words
By Elinor Wylie (1885 - 1929)


Poets make pets of pretty, docile words:
I love smooth words, like gold-enamelled fish
Which circle slowly with a silken swish,
And tender ones, like downy-feathered birds:
Words shy and dappled, deep-eyed deer in herds,
Come to my hand, and playful if I wish,
Or purring softly at a silver dish,
Blue Persian kittens fed on cream and curds.


I love bright words, words up and singing early;
Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;
Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;
I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,
Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees,
Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.


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Bees love yellow weeds....in my yard.

Reading Anais Nin

I have been reading Anais Nin all this week.  A very few of my favorite passages jumped out to be shared here:

“The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart. There is an instrument called the quena made of human bones. It owes its origin to the worship of an Indian for his mistress. When she died he made a flute out of her bones. The quena has a more penetrating more haunting sound than the ordinary flute. Those who write know the process. I thought of it as I was spitting out my heart. Only I do not wait for my love to die."  Anais Nin, from:  "House of Incest" (A Prose Poem)

 *****

Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were manna. Finding one's self in a book is a second birth; and you are the only one who knows that at times men behave like women and women like men, and that all these distinctions are mock distinctions." from "Collages" by Anais Nin

*****

"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living.  Then you read a book..., or you take a trip, or you talk about Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating...It appears like an innocuous illness.  Monotony, boredom, death.  Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it.  They work in offices.  They drive a car.  They picnic with their families.  They raise children.  And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.  Some never awaken.

They are people who go to sleep in the snow and never awaken.  But I am not in danger because my home, my garden, my beautiful life do not lull me.  I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing...."  from:  "The Diary of Anais Nin", volume 1, page 7

*****

"June (Miller) sat filled with champagne.  I have no need of it.  She talked abou the effects of hashish.  I said, 'I have known such states without hashish.  I do not need drugs.  I carry all that in myself.'  At this she was irritated.  She does not realize that, being an artist, I want to be in those states of ecstasy or vision while keeping my awareness intact.  I am the poet and I must feel and see.  I do not want to be anesthetized.  I am drunk on June's beauty, but I am also aware of it...."  from:  "The Diary of Anais Nin", volume 1, page 37

*****

"Late at night.  I am in Louveciennes.  I am sitting by the fire in my  bedroom.  The heavy curtains are drawn.  The room feels heavy and deeply anchored in the earth. One can smell the odors of the wet trees, the wet grass outside.  They are blown in by the wind through the chimney. The walls are a yard thick, thick enough to dig bookcases into them, beside the bed.  The bed is wide and low. 

Henry (Miller) called my house a laboratory of the soul...Enter here where one discovers that destiny can be directed, that one does not need to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities.  One need not be branded by the first pattern.  Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness; there is a possibility of joy."  from "The Dairy of Anais Nin", volume 1, page 105

*****

Anais Nin

Happy Birthday, Dearest Anais Nin

Anais Nin

A few of my Anais Nin books.

Anais Nin was a prolific diarist and writer born February 21, 1903. She is one of my favorite authors of all time and I wrote this little prose poem a few years back in her honor. (Her name is pronounced "ana-eese neen").  I first read her diaries in the 1970's and they totally transformed me.  She was one of the first women I read about who had the courage to create her own life, like a fine painting.  If you haven't read her diaries, then I highly recommend them, both the edited and the unedited versions.  They're a glimpse into the heart and soul of a creative, fearless woman.  Also, the movie, "Henry and June" is purely amazing and follows the first edited diary.  Uma Thurman as Henry's second wife, June, stole the movie...

"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection." ~Anais Nin

To Anais Nin on Her Birthday

I was hungry for a muse
when you came to me
and fed me,
filling me with your words
expanding my little world
changing me
forever.

Woman-child, Queen of artifice,
keeper of the gates
of feminine mystery,
I thank you
for having the courage
to have lived your life
as no other woman has
before you
or since.

~Marion

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Anais Nin, 1940

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."  ~Anais Nin, Winter of Artifice



God's Justice by Anne Carson

Red River Dragonfly photographed by me last year.

God’s Justice

By Anne Carson

In the beginning there were days set aside for various tasks.

On the day He was to create justice

God got involved in making a dragonfly

and lost track of time.

It was about two inches long

with turquoise dots all down its back like Lauren Bacall.

God watched it bend its tiny wire elbows

as it set about cleaning the transparent case of its head.

The eye globes mounted on the case

rotated this way and that

as it polished every angle.

Inside the case

which was glassy black like the windows of a downtown bank

God could see the machinery humming

and He watched the hum

travel all the way down turquoise dots to the end of the tail

and breathe off as light.

Its black wings vibrated in and out.

From:  “Glass, Irony and God” page 49

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

I recite this poem to myself whenever I'm feeling like disappearing and it hold me to this old earth.  I hope you all enjoy it and that life is treating you well.  Me, I'm trudging through that old slough of despondency once again.  Hopefully, this too, shall pass and I'll make it through to the other side yet again......

Peace, Love & Warmth & Shelter,

~Marion

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"Who, being loved, is poor?"  ~Oscar Wilde

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