[Buffalo Bill 's] by e. e. cummings

Buffalo Bill ’s

defunct

               who used to

               ride a watersmooth-silver

                                                                  stallion

and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat

                                                                                                     Jesus

he was a handsome man 

                                                  and what i want to know is

how do you like your blue-eyed boy

Mister Death

----------------
I discovered this poem when I was 14 years old in jr. high school & instantly began a life-long love affair with e. e. cummings.

It's brutally hot & dry here in the swamp.  When I water my plants, dragonflies come & drink right out of the hose!! I'm looking forward to the 2nd full moon (Blue Moon) this month in a few days.

Dreaming of Autumn,
Marion

                                                         One of my dragonfly friends.

MY PEEPS: I've recently had issues with my comment section due to harassment by 'anonymous', but I think I've got it worked out. If you tried to comment in the past few weeks and couldn't, I sincerely apologize because I love your input. Sorry for the word verification, but it's the only way to stop the spamming/harassment!  xo

A Few Words For The Visitor In The Parlor by Olena K. Davis

A Few Words For the Visitor in the Parlor

By Olena Kalytiak Davis

Every time you wish the sky was something happening to your heart, you lose twice.

Mother kept sending me back to the kiosk. Where they wrapped the paper in fish. Pivovarov and the other artists, they were worried. The blood was Ukrainian and it was all over the place. Go and wash your face. No, no one said anything about auto-workers. I am simply saying to you what my mother said. I am simply saying what Pivovarov painted: Go and wash your face. People are coming soon. It is not good for them to see you looking like this.

I slept the afternoon, but you know what Breton says: I was not in the mood for visitors. Picture yourself inside that word. And yes, my house is a word, but my words, aren’t they words also? Today, the sky just wouldn’t happen. Today, I was blind sided. Neither pain, nor its powdered absence. Like most days, I became the kitchen sill. I’m simply saying what I always say: what is lace-winged cannot be strong.

My wedding dress hangs at the end of things. It’s the kind of thing you think while sitting on someone else’s couch. There is something elegant implied by length. Or: So this is a living room, what was I thinking. Grass stains where the peach-colored silk drank in the ground. But when I get home the urge to clean immediately leaves me. Alone, I can only think of visiting those plain and exotic places. Oh, my cloud covered heart.

She was a branch covered in hoarfrost. I must forgive myself. Something clings to the whore’s hem. Dear visitor: you divide your age in two then square it by a dying mother. I am always gathering her up in my arms. Believe me, you never forget someone that thin. You start remembering the way that summer lay differently on top of that year. The hood burns you. I tried driving as gently as I could, but you know, the road had last winter inside it, the winter before. That drive was painful, just look at her face. You remember because someone starts talking about time. Someone says time, time is like water. Someone says: There was once a living room made entirely of death.

Today, the sky was white. And the ground was white, too. Yet, I could tell them apart. They were that easy to distinguish.

From: "And Her Soul Out of Nothing" by Olena Kalytiak Davis

The Garden By Moonlight By Amy Lowell

        Moonflower at Sunset, July 2015

       Sky-Wonder During A Magical Sunshower

        Rain-wet Zinnias After Sun-Shower

          Passionflowers After Watering

~~~~~~~~~~~

THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT

By Amy Lowell

A black cat among roses, 

Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, 

The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. 

The garden is very still,   

It is dazed with moonlight, 

Contented with perfume, 

Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies. 

Firefly lights open and vanish   

High as the tip buds of the golden glow 

Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet. 

Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises, 

Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.   

Only the little faces of the ladies’ delight are alert and staring, 

Only the cat, padding between the roses, 

Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern 

As water is broken by the falling of a leaf. 

Then you come, 

And you are quiet like the garden, 

And white like the alyssum flowers,   

And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies. 

Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies? 

They knew my mother, 

But who belonging to me will they know 

When I am gone.

Hurricane Child, A Mam Poem By Marion

                                         Hurricane Audrey

HURRICANE CHILD, A MAM POEM

By Marion

I were born a hurricane child

strong 'n furious, dark 'n wild.

Come here ass first, bloody & gleamin'

not cryin' but laughin'; Mam were screamin'.

Windows imploded, spewin' glass,

wind was howlin', (it wouldn't last).

Rain was peltin' like fallin' knives

cuttin' out ditches & stealin' lives.

My face were masked with a glistenin' caul,

Mam's was faded a peculiar pall

She be a special one, the midwife said---

Shut yore hole, cried Mam from the bed,

Ain't no gift, it's a burdensome curse

a'knowin' most things & havin' no thirst

fer mystery. Havin' the sight can be a fright

and thieve the best years from yore life!

And a'top all this the moon she's full

so my babe here daily will feel her pull.

She'll be called crazy, lunatic, insane

oftener than folks say her given name.

Hurricane Audrey, she blowed outside

a whippin' & a shriekin'---were we safe inside?

The floor were sparklin' with glass & rain

& I were birthed in the Hurricane's pain...

Advice

"If a woman wants to be a poet,

she must dwell in the house of the Tomato." ~ Erica Jong

Ocean By Olav H. Hauge

Ocean 

by Olav H. Hauge

This is the ocean.

Vast and gray,

gravity itself.

Yet just as the mind

in solitary moments

suddenly opens

its shifting reflections

to secret depths---

so the ocean

one blue morning

can open itself

to sky and solitude.

See, the ocean gleams,

I, too, have stars

and blue depths.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Don't Come to Me With the Entire Truth

by Olav H. Hauge

Don't come to me with the entire truth.

Don't bring the ocean if I feel thirsty,

nor heaven if I ask for light;

but bring a hint, some dew, a particle,

as birds carry drops away from a lake,

and the wind a grain of salt.

From: "The Dream We Carry" Selected and Last Poems of Olav H. Hauge

Translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin

Swamp Rising, Etc.

Normally, a neighbor's yard down the block, now a fast-rising swamp, gators included!

I found a Toad hiding in my baby Hibiscus plants. See her?

My Tomatoes are thriving, even the ones in small pots.

Moonflowers slowly climbing my rusty wrought iron posts & Jasmine blooming!

Books! 

The Clock By Marion

The Clock

By Marion

...is very important when in chronic pain

because, of course,

the clock, the clock, the fucking CLOCK

is Master, Ruler, Tyrant, God.

God tells me, whispers (tic-toc) into my aching 

bones, marrow, muscles & tissue

that it's time to swallow

more

poison to ease the torment for a few (very few)

blissful hours. Tic-toc, unlock those neurons

that bind to the ravenous receptors

in my brain that carry

this vicious/exquisite venom

to my constantly tired, 

cotton-wrapped/warped brain.

Tic-toc SCREAMS the clock, the clock

which no amount of sound will block---

an hour's gone (one, NOT two) but it's too soon

(too late) &

the pain refrain is endlessly

ringing, tolling in my ears: 

more, more, (no more!), MORE, M-O-R-E...

Never enough, time's too short, too long.

Too much pain, too many/few pills

never enough relief---

thief, stealing my life

killing me slowly & for what?

One hour of relief, seldom two,

four times a day.

Forget sleep or counting sheep

they're bleeding, bleating & hurting

too. 

Death will be the

only escape

from this throbbing, robbing hell.

Only death can

stop the damned

screeching tyranny of the ticking,

sickening clock.

Tic-toc it mocks, it mocks, it mocks

tic...

...toc.

6/12/15

The Towns We Know & Leave Behind, The Rivers We Carry With Us By Richard Hugo

My mighty Red River almost over the banks, still rising. How I love this muddy, red water!!!!

A battered, tattered, curious old river dragonfly who visited me in 2011.

I first posted this poem 3 years(!) ago and it came back to me today as the Red River slowly & steadily rises on this hot June day. It's a poem to memorize and chew on. Blessings, ~Marion

The Towns We Know and Leave Behind,
The Rivers We Carry with Us - By Richard Hugo
— for James Wright

I forget the names of towns without rivers.
A town needs a river to forgive the town.
Whatever river, whatever town –
it is much the same.
The cruel things I did I took to the river.
I begged the current: make me better.

Your town, your river, or mine –
it is much the same.
A murdering man lives on the land
in a shack the river birds hate.
He rubs the red shriek of night from his eyes.
He prays to water: don’t let me do that again.

Let’s name your river: Ohio.
Let’s name all rivers one in the blood,
red stream and debris in the blood.
Say George Doty had a wrong head.
Say the Ohio forgives what George did
and the river birds loved his shack.
Let’s name the birds: heron and sweat.
Let’s get away from the mud.

The river is there to forgive the town
and without a river a town abuses the sky.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
Let’s name my river: Duwamish.
And let’s admit
the river birds don’t hate my home.
That’s a recent development, really
like mercury in the cod.

Without a river a town abuses the air.
The river is there to forgive what I did.
The river birds hate what I did
until I name them.
Your river or mine –
It is much the same.
A murdering man lived on the bank.

Here’s the trick;
We had to stay drunk
to welcome the river
to live in a shack
to die on the bank
beneath the bigoted sky
under the river birds
day after day
to murder away
all water that might die.

A murdering man is dead on the bank
of your new river, The East,
on mine, The Clark Fork.
It is much the same.
Your river has gulls and tugs.
Mine has eagles and sky.
I rub last night from my eyes.
I ask bright water what’s happened.

The river, I am not sure which one,
Says water has no special power.
What should I do?
Or you?

Now water has no need to forgive
what shall become of murder?
How shall we live
when we killed, when we died by the word?

Whatever the name of the river,
we both had two women to love,
one to love us enough we left behind
a town that abuses the day.
The other to love the river we brought with us,
the shack we lived and still live in,
the birds, the towns that return to us for names
and we give them names knowing the river
murders them away.

Altar #3 from 'Broken Chord Sequence' By Marilyn Chin

                Dried pink Roses, an offering scented with pure Rose oil by my weary hands

             Resting Buddha with two friends

“Altar (#3)” from “Broken Chord Sequence”

By Marilyn Chin

Why cry over dried flowers?

They’re meant to be straw.

Why cry over miniature roses?

They’re meant to be small.

 

Why cry over Buddha’s hand citron?

Why cry over the hidden flower?

Why cry over Mother’s burnt forehead?

Her votive deathglow, her finest hour.

“Altar (#3)” from “Broken Chord Sequence,” from Rhapsody in Plain Yellow by Marilyn Chin.