Some Mary Oliver for the Solstice

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,

when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Mad Women Do You Love

Soo, I may have been watching the show Mad Men a little. Or a lot. This happened next:


Mad Women
Do you love

Lucy
Brick-a-brack brightened
Smile curved string of pearls
Do you love

Patsy
Swollen voice
Bruised lovely as a tumbling car
Pouring out past the wreckage
Do you love

Or hate
The signs on fountains
Wire and bone
Curled tight as your hair
Around your middle
Back straight
Do you love

Sexton
Or sex
Are your children bird-tongued
Indecipherable as your hands
Cramping for wonder
Do you love

Sylvia
Oven dreams
Crowding the bedside darkness
Anxious with thirst
Or cold
Do you love

The curlers
Tin cans
Books hidden under the bed
Do you love

When everything is either
An outside cardigan
Or an indoor plant
Do you

When you smell Marilyn's cocktails
And lethian fumes in your baby's shampoo
Love

Yourself inside-out
And back again
To you

Love.

To David Ferry's "Seen Through A Window"

You say she has plump milk arms
(The woman at the table)
Flowered with a blue bruise,
A cornflower kiss,
From some menial task.

Maybe her husband beats her,
Or perhaps he printed it on her mottled skin
With the hot and tender mouth
That even now gently masticates his food.
Perhaps they cannot wait for the end of dinner,
And bed.
Perhaps they are dreaming of other dinners,
Tables, and different chairs.
Yes, they are very beautiful in the green light,
Bearing each other up and down
Through the years and body of the room.

As seen through windows,
Aren't we all stones singing underwater?
Whatever we know of each other,
Is like these blue and milk kisses,
Is like a stone.




Here's a link to the wonderful David Ferry poem that inspired this one:
http://faculty.washington.edu/rmcnamar/383/ferry.html
(sorry, seems you'll have to cut and paste it into the browser)

I shouldn't read medical texts before bed.....

Lullaby

Dry-boned blinking child
I'm afraid I'll never bear,
Are we in a cradle
Or an old rocking chair?

Baby thrusting skinny
Little fingers into mine,
Our knuckles crack together,
Holding breath and keeping time.

You are thin as any whisper,
I'm concave as every word,
We are empty as an eggshell,
And your softness is absurd.

Though this dragon may deny you
I can see you from above,
You are made of crystal candy
Dreaming, stillborn little love.

Olive Trees: A Poem To Keep Warm

The hot shadows are pouring out from under the trees,
Draping themselves over tussocks and hollows.
We mirror them.
Peeling off clothing
Like dust scraped off of oiled skin,
Everything is found fresher underneath;
Rejuvenated and rejubilated
In the settling air,
The wondrous curve of limbs and twisting, artful trunks.
And we are damp against the baking earth,
The drone of crickets,
The quivering leaves.
The line of mountains softening into horizon,
The sky
Forged into beaten gold.

1,001 Nights

"Tell me a story."
He is hungry at her breast,
Impatient as his hands--
"Tell me a story."

Just once she would like to finish the tale
'Happy ever after' but
He likes to take things off of her,
Gowns and veils and secrets and
She must keep acquiring new ones so
There is always something for

The next night.
She re-dresses, though
Her skin aches underneath and
His kiss is an axe
She feels on her neck as
She weaves her myths together he

Listens, like a desert,
Raptorial, all eagerness to
The sticky truths she conjures up, she
Wonders what the end might be,
She tells him just enough.

Strange poems happen at 2am

Leda

Tell me again,
What the wild swan sounds like.
Not that sneaky god,
But the one that loved her
And dreamt of feathers to flesh,
Mouth to laughing beak.
How sad she must have been
That he wasn't really a swan;
With elegant neck,
And blood beating wings,
The gift of flight.
When she found a man,
Spoiled by his own radiance,
No wonder her daughter
Broke the world's heart.
That disappointed beauty,
That secret song.

A little something inpsiring

"The Quality of Light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are - until the poem - nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dreams, births concepts as feeling, births ideas as knowledge, births (precedes) understanding.
As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us."

Audre Lorde

Fireflies

I read in the news
That fireflies are diminishing.
On the banks of the Mekhong River
You can barely catch a glimpse of their stars anymore,
Swimming through the breathing night.
There are now so many artificial lights that
They can no longer find each other
And sail onward, signaling frantically.
A hundred ships passing,
Lost in the glare.
Sometimes I just don't bother with putting on lipstick
Before leaving the house these days.


c. 6/3/10

Making Aphrodite, or, A Recipe For Disaster

"poikilothron athamat Aphrodita,pai Dois
doloploke,lissomaise,me m'aisaisi med onaisi damna..."*

The rooms become aquatic,
High heat and holy days,
Scent fills the house;
A wave cresting and cresting.
Fish explore the furniture,
Pearls set up shop in tea cups,
Octopi move into the dishes in the sink.
It all boils together--
Semen and tears,
That dash of blood salted with the doom of Gods;
Leaving us unmade as the beds we depart,
Smelling of oceans,
The sheets turned to shrouds in their bare awkwardness.



*
"Ornately throned deathless Aphrodite,
wile weaving daughter of Zues,
I beg you, don't overcome my spirit
with pain and care..."
Sappho 1


c. 1/23/10

Gang members steal puppy

This was actually the headline in my morning paper today. Wtf. This is like some made up scenario you'd use to describe what some dastardly gang would do in a 1900's caper. Are they The Riverside Puppy Snatchers? Do they stomp and daisies too? And wear big black mustaches that they twirl while chuckling maniacally? Seriously, who steals a puppy? I hope they take good care of it....