Break Forth O Beautrous ........

After the rain has fallen.....

All things bright and beautiful.....

It is nice to be reminded that....

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.  It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life…Go ahead and make big scrawls and mistakes.  Use up lots of paper.  Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism; while messes are the artist’s true friend…We need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here.”   
                                -Anne Lamott

The Begining, Middle and End

Aristotle by Billy Collins : The Poetry Foundation [poem]

Hear this poem

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces himself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

With fingernails that shine like justice.....

....And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

This song came on the radio today, still as good as it once was.

Short Skirt / Long Jacket
~~Cake

YouTube video

I want a girl with a mind like a diamond
I want a girl who knows what's best
I want a girl with shoes that cut
And eyes that burn like cigarettes

I want a girl with the right allocations
Who's fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's playing with her jewelry
She's putting up her hair
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnng jacket......

I want a girl who gets up early
I want a girl who stays up late
I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity
Who uses a machete to cut through red tape
With fingernails that shine like justice
And a voice that is dark like tinted glass

She is fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She's touring the facility
And picking up slack

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnng.... lonnng jacket

I want a girl with a smooth liquidation
I want a girl with good dividends
At Citibank we will meet accidentally
We'll start to talk when she borrows my pen

She wants a car with a cupholder arm rest
She wants a car that will get her there
She's changing her name from Kitty to Karen
She's trading her MG for a white Chrysler La Baron

I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnnggggggggg jacket

Green and Growing....

Like my garden which is producing new green shoots each day, those tender new words akin to a spring vocabulary are sprouting in conversations around me.  My own being feels the energy and creativity springs anew out of every pore like tender shoots finding their way through the soil.  (Note:  I use the word creativity and not talent!)

The words of this hymn come to mind.  I've also included a performance by the Choir of Ely Cathedral.  The hymn is set to a beautiful medieval French carol.

Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.
    `from the hymn Now the Green Blade Riseth by John MacLeod Campbell Crumb

Performed by the Choir of Ely Cathedral  

If only I.....

...could weave words like this:
 

Our Conversation

Pure gaze, you are lightning beyond the last trees

and you are the last trees’

past, branching

green lightning

of terminal brain branches

numened densely with summer’s

hunter color, as night comes on,

the ocean they conceal

gone berserk, wind still rising.

Pure seeing, dual vortex doors

to the blue fire where

sex is burned away, and all

is as it was and I am being offered

in your eyes, as in cupped hands,

the water of to never thirst again.

Again I turn away,

and the future comes, all at once

towering around me

on every side, and I am lost.

Pure looking, past pain

(this is promised):

we must have wed on poverty’s most hair-raising day

delighting, flashing risk, risk

unfailingly lighting the way,

anything possible

in that dissolving of seam

between minds,

no more golden time—

each step I took

the right step, words

came to me finally and finding the place

you had set for them,

once again

wrote themselves down.

Till true word’s anvil ring, and

solid tap of winged blind cane come,

I wish you

all the aloneness you hunger for.

That big kitchen table where you sit laughing

with friends, I see it happening.

And I wish that I could not be

so much with you

when I’m suddenly not; that

inwardly you might switch

time, to sleep

and winter while you went about

your life, until you woke up

well,

our conversation resumed.

Ceaseless blue lightning, this

love passing through me:

I know somehow it will go on

reaching you, reaching you

instantly

when I’m not in the way;

when it is no longer deflected

by all the dark bents, all

I tried to overcome but I could not—

so much light pulled off course

as it passed within reach, so much

lost, lost in me,

but no more.

~~Franz Wright

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/241822

Weaving Words intoTapestries

Words
~~Sonya Kitchell

My words ran away from me,
now I'm lost and they're out at sea,
sailing away.

They come and go, like the breeze.
Whisper sweet, burn like disease.
They change with the day.

And I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time.

My words took me down the wrong track,
and now I want to take it back,
so I'll run away.

If only I could be free
of the plague that my words seem to be,
I’d thank the day.

For I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time.

And Life can be
such a give or take.
Some laugh while they're dying,
some cry when they wake.
But there are some words
that I could never do without
that paint pictures on polished walls
and dance away with doubt.

My words came back to me,
they stayed awhile, we had some tea,
while time whiled away.

I said, Please be kind and please don't go.
They said, We'll try, but you never know
Depends on the day.

And I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time

My words ran away from me,
now I'm lost and they're out at sea,
sailing away.

They come and go, like the breeze.
Whisper sweet, burn like disease.
They change with the day.

And I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time.

My words took me down the wrong track,
and now I want to take it back,
so I'll run away.

If only I could be free
of the plague that my words seem to be,
I’d thank the day.

For I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time.

And Life can be
such a give or take.
Some laugh while they're dying,
some cry when they wake.
But there are some words
that I could never do without
that paint pictures on polished walls
and dance away with doubt.

My words came back to me,
they stayed awhile, we had some tea,
while time whiled away.

I said, Please be kind and please don't go.
They said, We'll try, but you never know
Depends on the day.

And I seem to say,
all the wrong things on the right day.
And I seem to do
all the wrong things on the right cue,
at least most of the time

And dreams came around you in a hazy rain, you opened your mouth wide to feel them fall

SO much has been said and so much is yet to be said about the power of dreams.  I still love this poem by Yeats, for we have both those dreams during our sleeping hours and those during our waking hours.  For a rare few they might be the same, regardless they represent our deepest wishes, hopes and fears, so please tread carefully.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven 

~~William Butler Yeats 

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet; 

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. 

Ain't nothing like the real thing....

Lying on the couch reading, I am cognizant of how much I enjoy the tangible aspects of reading.  I like to feel the weight of the book in my hands and to move my fingers along the pages and feel their texture.  Mostly though, I am still enchanted by the act of turning a page and seeing what next will be revealed. So tonight I acknowledge those who acknowledge the "book."

"I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library."
~~Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
~~Jorge Luis Borges

"Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read."
~~Jorge Luis Borges

"Let no one reduce to tears or reproach
This statement of the mastery of God,
Who, with magnificent irony, gave
Me at once both books and night

Of this city of books He pronounced rulers
These lightless eyes, who can only
Peruse in libraries of dreams
The insensible paragraphs that yield

With every new dawn. Vainly does the day
Lavish on them its infinite books,
Arduous as the arduous manuscripts
Which at Alexandria did perish.

Of hunger and thirst (a Greek story tells us)
Dies a king amidst fountains and gardens;
I aimlessly weary at the confines
Of this tall and deep blind library.

Encyclopedias, atlases, the East
And the West, centuries, dynasties
Symbols, cosmos and cosmogonies
Do walls proffer, but pointlessly.

Slow in my shadow, I the hollow shade
Explore with my indecisive cane;
To think I had imagined Paradise
In the form of such a library.

Something, certainly not termed
Fate, rules on such things;
Another had received in blurry
Afternoons both books and shadow.

Wandering through these slow corridors
I often feel with a vague and sacred dread
That I am another, the dead one, who must
Have trodden the same steps at the same time.

Which of the two is now writing this poem
Of a plural I and of a single shadow?
How important is the word that names me
If the anathema is one and indivisible?

Groussac or Borges, I see this darling
World deform and extinguish
To a pale, uncertain ash
Resembling sleep and oblivion"  

~~Jorge Luis Borges

I am a collector

...of the traditional, such as: rocks, shells and stamps.  I am also a collector of the intangible, such as stories and memories, like this one, posted today in honor of my mother: an amazing person who continues to inspire me; and, one half of the symphony that has guided me and for which I lack the words to express my gratitude.

Memories

One quietly hums while the other softly sings

Creating a symphony

That jars me out of my reverie

Into the present,

Where I am suddenly aware

I have been given a gift.

A memory to tuck away

To be treasured at a later time.

For at this moment

I am kneeling

In a pew

With my father on my left and my mother on my right

Feeling so blessed

To be sharing this moment

With them.

They are unaware of each other’s contribution to this symphony

Or the effect this moment is having on me.

Light streams through stained glass windows

Creating patterns which today we observe but do not see.

We are together yet in our own places

Inside ourselves among our thoughts

With music and light filling the spaces in between.


Mother
Her
The
Home

Women: mothers, sisters, aunts, spouses, friends, thinkers, creators, innovators, listeners.....

Strong, Resilient, Amazing....

'nuf said.....

Still I Rise
~~Maya Angelou

Watch Maya Angelou read this poem. 

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt   

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?   

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells   

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,   

Just like hopes springing high,   

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?   

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,   

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines   

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds   

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,   

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,   

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.   

I rise

I rise   

I rise.

Find this poem at the Poetry Foundation site.

Women

~~Langston Hughes

They were women then

My mam's generation

Husky of voice - Stout of

Step

With fists as well as Hands

How they battered down

Doors

And ironed 

Starched white

Shirts

How they led

Armies

Headragged Generals

Across mined

Fields

Booby-trapped

Dirches

To discover

books

Desks

A place for us

How they knew what we 

Must know

Without knowing a page

Of it

Themselves.

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; "

Shakespeare's often misunderstood opening line from Richard III tells the reader that the winter of discontent has now been made glorious by the ascension to the throne of a son of the Duke of  York.  Poor winter.  All the seasons have baggage, but winter's is a heavier load to bear, at least for those of us in the colder climates, colder shorter days with little variation in the landscape.  So before we move into our glorious days, a look back to winter.

"I sit alone in this winter clarity which clouds my mind"  

~~ Thistles and Weeds, Mumford and Sons

I know, it is spring, but listening to this song on this dark and rainy day reminded me of a poem I had written and many more I had read regarding the supposed clarity of wintertime.  I think these lyrics are beautiful and obviously open to myriad interpretations.  I am going for the metaphorical winter as well as the literal winter.

Clarity

~~jkreed

Burnt umber leaves

Shriveling on this branch

Symbolize all that is lost

All that has gone undone

A valiant attempt now past.

The first leaf wafting to the ground before me

Bears away my last hopes of summer

Preparing me for the road ahead

A baron landscape

Through which my thoughts move freely

Unencumbered by frilliness.

Winter Trees
~~William Carlos Williams

All the complicated details

of the attiring and

the disattiring are completed!

A liquid moon

moves gently among

the long branches.

Thus having prepared their buds

against a sure winter

the wise trees

stand sleeping in the cold. 

 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174773

Lines for Winter

Lines for Winter

~~Mark Strand

Tell yourself

as it gets cold and gray falls from the air

that you will go on

walking, hearing

the same tune no matter where

you find yourself—

inside the dome of dark

or under the cracking white

of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.

Tonight as it gets cold

tell yourself

what you know which is nothing

but the tune your bones play

as you keep going. And you will be able

for once to lie down under the small fire

of winter stars.

And if it happens that you cannot

go on or turn back

and you find yourself

where you will be at the end,

tell yourself

in that final flowing of cold through your limbs

that you love what you are.