The House Was Quiet & The World Was Calm By Wallace Stevens

The House Was Quiet and The world was calm

By Wallace stevens

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Wallace Stevens, "The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm" from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. Copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge - What If You Slept?

What if you slept ... 

What if you slept 
And what if 
In your sleep 
You dreamed 
And what if 
In your dream 
You went to heaven 
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower 
And what if 
When you awoke 
You had that flower in you hand 
Ah, what then?   

~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

_________________________

I haven’t slept all night in years,

Pain, nightmares, fear, hot/cold/hot/cold.  

PTSD.  More nightmares.  FULL MOON!

Listen to true crime podcasts.

Stomachache, heartache, 
children & grandchildren ache, bite my cheeks,
cough, hurt all over, sadness, regret, anxiety, thirsty, 
WORRY, pray without ceasing, 
existential crisis, ageing horrors, melancholy, 
reading, listening to books, soothing music, 
cats making scary noise sounds, 
poetry circling in my brain,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Reading Patti Smith & Paris Nocturne by Patrick Modiano

"Birds no longer curious cease to wing." ~ Patti Smith, 'Devotion, Why I Write'

I am in love
with these
two books.
A dream sequence,
flowing, floating,
flavoring my
painful existence.
Escape into the
spaces between the
words and find
an entirely
new world.

Marion, still scribbling & making art...

I love kitty paws.  :-)

Joy Harjo, First Native American Poet Laureate

Congratulations to Ms. Harjo!  It's about time we had a Native American Poet Laureate.  Her poetry is transcendent.  Enjoy.

EAGLE POEM

By Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

• Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo. Reprinted with the permission of Wesleyan University Press,

My World

My 44 Magnum earrings.  I was inspired to make these after I saw a member of the Danish Symphony wearing a pair.  Armed and loaded. :-)

Tomatoes!  I’ve already eaten three. 

Heaven on a stem.

My Peach Roses by my St. Francis statue.

Lemongrass after a rain.

Garfield napping by my Ficus Fig trees. 

My neighbor’s brilliant Mimosa tree.

Wind poems & a video I made...

A breeze I captured passing through my front yard...

Windchime

BY TONY HOAGLAND

She goes out to hang the windchime

in her nightie and her work boots.

It’s six-thirty in the morning

and she’s standing on the plastic ice chest

tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,

hammer in her right, the nail

gripped tight between her teeth

but nothing happens next because

she’s trying to figure out

how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,

coffee in her hand, asleep,

when she heard it—the wind blowing

through the sound the windchime

wasn’t making

because it wasn’t there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes

till death do us part,

but I can see what I would miss in leaving—

the way her ankles go into the work boots

as she stands upon the ice chest;

the problem scrunched into her forehead;

the little kissable mouth

with the nail in it.

_______________

Who Has Seen the Wind?

BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither I nor you: 

But when the leaves hang trembling, 

The wind is passing through. 

Who has seen the wind? 

Neither you nor I: 

But when the trees bow down their heads, 

The wind is passing by.

Source: The Golden Book of Poetry (1947)

____________________

An Empty House is a Debt by Diana Nguyen

.

Days of Roses Passed...  My long gone Rose

AN EMPTY HOUSE IS A DEBT

Diana Nguyen

1There is a house in me. It is empty. I empty it.Negative space: the only native emptiness there is.There is

2An alarm goes off. It goes on and on. When the alarmdrifts to different parts of the room,I realize, that alarm is the sun.
3And there is no one who does not need,never an empty seat. And the blind one,he does not find a place. There is a god in himhelping him to need himself.
4A mother sticks a spoon into my chest,which is an empty bowl, actually,so the spoon lands quicklyand loudly. Heartbreak in the heart! she says.
5I reach inside my empty house: as far as I’m allowed to go.I reach outside my empty house: as far as I’m allowed to go.
6Or don’t love me, what do I care?I am tired of feeling guilty; I am tired of running up a tab.I want to run outside with a sack of huge penises on my back—into the empty houses of ex-lovers, of mothers, birdsscreaming out my name.A human terrifies.A human is someone who becomes terrified, and having become terrified,craves an end to her fear.This craving carves a cave.
7What is a maze if there is nothing to find in the maze.I find myself angry at nothing.
8My lovers bow before me as though before Medusa.Tell them you love them. See what they say.Or say it to yourself, and see what you say.When you love someonemore than you’ve ever known you could, it isa good thing, except for the terrifyingrealization that one day there comesa parting.

Uninspired by Traffic, A Classic

Uninspired by Traffic

From the album:  “Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory”, 1973

Sometimes I feel so uninspired
Sometimes I feel like giving up
Sometimes I feel so very tired
Sometimes I feel like I've had enough
Sometimes you feel like you've been hired
Sometimes you feel like you've been bought
Sometimes you feel like your room's been wired
Sometimes you feel like you've been caught

But don't let it get you down, no, no
There is no reason for not failing
You've got to smile and turn the other cheek
So today you might be done
By tomorrow you'll be sailing
And you won't even hear these words I speak

Some people want to be so desired
Some people can't stand the light of day
Someone laughing, while someone is crying
And old folks are watching the close of the day
But sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
The hunger and pain is all I see
I don't know who's losing
And I don't know who's winning
Hardships and trouble are following me

But don't let it get you down
There is every reason for not failing
You've got to smile and turn the other cheek
So today you might be done
By tomorrow you'll be sailing
And you won't even hear these words I speak

Some people want to be so desired
Some people can't stand the light of day
Someone is laughing, while someone is crying
Old folks are watching the close of the day
But sometimes I feel like my head is spinning
Hunger and pain is all I see
I don't know who's losing
And I don't care who's winning
Hardships and trouble are following me

Songwriters: Jim Capaldi / Steve Winwood

Some Funnies & My Beautiful Baby Girl!

Right???  Hilarious!!! 

INSANITY!  Like asking to be kidnapped, raped & murdered!

I adore nouns of assemblage! :-)

My daughter Sarah, with Tennessee Titans Quarterback, Marcus Mariota, at "Rally on the Runway" in Nashville May 2, for Children's Cancer Research, a great cause.

Dear Morning by Marion

I grew this magnificent being...

Squash blossom

Past year’s flags & new year’s.  Let your freak flags fly!!!!

Dear Morning:

By Marion

I wake with these lyrics

going round and round my head:

"And the days go by

like a strand in the wind

in the web that is my own

I begin again..."  ~Stevie Nicks, 'Edge of Seventeen'

I put the coffee on, then

head out the back sliding

glass doors to the patio.

The morning dew glistens on the 

freshly cut grass and

dragonflies dip and sip

like flying jewels,

wings sparkling

in the new day's sun.

I am present for this moment.

I'm alive and I see.

What more is there?

I water the garden.

The Bush Beans are

leaning, reaching

toward the rising sun.

The Squash blossoms 

vibrate with yellow-ness.

The Tomato leaves 

generously release

their unique fragrance---

The Catalpa tree

drops a blossom at

my dew-covered bare feet.

I look up...there are no blossoms

anywhere on the old tree.

A gift, this little Orchid-like

flower.  Thank you, tree.

Birdsong surrounds me,

a chorus of life and joy.

Thank you, Morning,

for your generous gifts.