We need a list like this, because songs do assault the heart, and the two most readily accessible lists we find on the web of “songs that make you cry” are so-so, mostly devoted to recent and mediocre indie rock songs.
The “songs that make you cry” lists are further limited by a lame criterion of a close-reading of lyrics—many people don’t know this, but this song is really about a friend of a friend of the songwriter who was dying of cancer, etc.
A great sad song should strike one as sad immediately, by itself, on its own, with its own poetry and music and mood—it should not require an actual sad reason why it was composed revealed to the listener—one shouldn’t need to have the lyrics explained in order to be saddened by the song.
And yet, and yet…secret sad meanings hidden in the lyrics…okay, who can resist those?
But here’s the deal: First, if the actual tragedy the lyrics allude to is the source of the heart-breaking song, then how is this any different than if someone simply told you of a heart-breaking tragedy?
Second, it is the discovery of the hidden aspect in the lyrics which does most of the heart-breaking work, for it is this ‘finding out’ which imitates the mechanics of regret: oh if I had only known how much they really loved me! It is this dynamic which is at work in the oh this is what the song means! trick.
Whether the song is about something that actually happened is beside the point. If we are really moved by a song, on some level it is real for us—and nothing more needs to be said on the issue. Obviously, the point is, when compiling this list, we have considered the total impact on the heart by the song itself. The tragedy (imagined or real) matters, obviously, but more importantly is how it all comes together in the way it is conveyed by the song, so it stays pleasantly in our memory. The melting of the heart by a song (whether “tragic” or not) should be a pleasant experience. Bewitching perhaps, but ultimately a pleasure, since happiness is (or should be) the end of existence. The songs on our list may, or may not, make you cry. But it should be a happy cry.
But the more we ponder this whole question of context, the more it threatens to explode the whole project: what about a song like “Un Bel Di,” from Puccini’s opera, Madame Butterfly, also known as “One Fine Day?” Does one have to know Italian, or the opera’s heart-breaking story from which the song emerges, to appreciate this song?
Well—to truly appreciate the song, yes.
“Context,” which, for the sake of “artistic purity,” we have been trying to mitigate, if not eliminate, keeps looming up, like a moon which needs to shine.
The best conclusion, we think, is this: if the moon is a really beautiful one, and is really shining beautifully—if the song itself really is magnificent—we can expect the listener to also understand the clouds heaped up around that moon—especially if the song is already deservedly popular; or, if the song itself, because of what it is, really deserves, in our opinion, this extra knowledge and attention.
We will not worry ourselves that lists like this can never satisfy everyone, for this does not mean lists such as this are not worth doing. Scarriet’s One Hundred Hippie Songs of All Time, published a year ago, is consistently visited two thousand times a week.
But of course “hippie” is more readily understood than “heart.”
And here we might as well add that the heart needs protection—and this is what T.S. Eliot meant when he famously said poetry is “an escape from emotion”—the heart-breaking song is restrained and cool and artificial to a certain degree precisely so the heartbreak doesn’t overwhelm us. But… isn’t that the point? To be overwhelmed, so the heart “melts?” Yes, but some cry at almost anything—commercials, other people crying—so that the songs on this list aren’t even necessary. Keep in mind we speak of ideal, aesthetic, and universal “melting.” This entire list, obviously, cannot be heart-breaking for you.
Further, in this list we attempt to appeal to all tastes.
The genres of hard rock and blues, the music that “sold its soul to the devil” receives its due punishment by not being included on this list. We could have picked a song like “The Thrill Is Gone” to honor the late, great B.B. King, but we could not find it in our hearts to do so. Work like this is admirable, but, for us, just not heart-melting. The stretched-out, pounding attitude of ‘ain’t life a bitch? doesn’t quite fit what we are after.
The “melting” is not finally from pity, but from the extraordinarily beautiful and wise.
Occasionally the beautifully wise is like ice—but as this list shows, icy perfection rarely melts the heart. Often it is just a warm, slow melody.
Puccini might be said to have invented the modern pop song, or maybe it was Mozart? Or Bach? The hook—and then creeping behind it, another equally as sweet! And so sweet—it has to be brief.
And then, added to the music, the story and the poetry. What mortal can resist it?
Anyway, we hope you enjoy our latest, One Hundred Songs To Melt The Heart.
1. One Fine Day (Puccini’s Madame Butterfly Aria, “Un Bel Di,” is the heart-breaking standard: beautiful, involves a young girl’s heart—that sings the song—a sailor, and two cultures on either side of the world—and the “one fine day” never comes.
2. Nothing Compares 2 U (Sinead O’Connor’s performance of Prince’s song proves sadness is best when it is majestic, observant—“7 hours and 15 days”—and has no bitterness. A tear-jerker for the ages. An electronic standard.)
3. Someone Like You (Adelle’s voice inhabits this Edna St. Vincent Millay-type song’s every pitch, timbre, and mood—resigned, but not resigned—almost as if her very heart were the instrument. Too recent to appreciate? No, this performance is timeless.)
4. Just Say I Love Him (Nina Simone’s six and a half minute, poignant, subtly electric guitar-soaked revery from her neglected masterpiece Forbidden Fruit—1961. If women are dominating this list so far? That’s why they call them divas, fellas…)
5. Video Games (The video of this casually, stupidly languid but passionate song by Lana Del Rey has 83 million views and yes we are in a different era now of perfecting heart-tugging—technically and artistically. A female’s hungry, proud, sultry, deeply expressive voice is still key, however.)
6. Sue Me (Duet between Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. When her voice tearfully cracks on “I could honestly die.” From Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls. The scene itself is semi-comic—it doesn’t matter.)
7. Hurt (Johnny Cash. Noble, yet agonizing. Tears the only defense against this.)
8. Honey (Bobby Goldsboro makes a goddamn movie with a song. Sentimental, perhaps, but the vocal and the lyrics expand possibilities in a way that practically forms a template of its own.)
9. O Mio Babbino Caro (Puccini and Callas. The song doesn’t need translation. Puccini invented pop, perhaps.)
10. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (The Smiths. Urban, angsty poetry at its very best. The Smiths’ signature sound is divine, in a fake-casual sort of way.)
11. Stranger in Paradise (The Four Aces’ hokey-histrionic performance of this exquisite song is the formula of homely passion which is necessary; it is not icy, classical perfection we’re after. Sigh deeply if you agree.)
12. It’s All In the Game (Tommy Edwards. It’s all in this glimpsed not quite sad perfect gem of a song.)
13. Alameda (Elliot Smith almost wallows too much in self-misery to project: “Nobody broke your heart. You broke your own cause you can’t finish what you start.”)
14. Hello In There (John Prine made a masterpiece for neglected seniors.)
15. Heart of Gold (Neil Young. It’s very hard to write a truly beautiful sad song. The slightest trace of self-pity ruins it.)
16. Saint James Hospital (Pete Seeger’s Youtube ‘video’ of this beautiful, beautiful, somber, ‘dying cowboy’ folk song has only about 3,000 views. A pity.)
17. Turandot (Puccini. Pavarotti. Music so sweet it hurts.)
18. Lacrimosa (Mozart. The Requiem. The happy genius feeling indescribable pain.)
19. Green Fields (Brothers Four. Layers of slow, trembling, lush, melancholy. Gorgeous.)
20. Wild World (Cat Stevens. An achingly sad ‘lover leaving’ song tinged with impotent fatherly advice. )
21. Blue Velvet (Bobby Vinton sings this as schmaltzy pop–the velvety tune itself transcends its setting.)
22. My Sweet Lord (George Harrison took the most powerful secular format ever: rock music, blended it with religious feelings, in a way which still sounds like a love song: “I’d really like to know you.”)
23. Auld Lang Syne (The Bobby Burns’ tear-jerker.)
24. April Come She Will (Simon and Garfunkle. We can never get enough, it seems, of lost love and seasons. A couple of guys from Queens, New York. Maybe the best singing/songwriting team ever.)
25. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away (The Beatles. John Lennon had this love/hate thing with the music of Bob Dylan. Lennon was a genius who hated/loved.)
26. Space Oddity (David Bowie. Alienated by technology, a theme of this great techno-song from our modern era of passionate contradictions.)
27. The Man That Got Away (Judy Garland. Ju-dy Gar-land. Man-that-got-away. Okay?)
28. The Way We Were (Barbara Streisand. Nostalgia from one of the greatest pop divas.)
29. And The Sun Will Shine (Bee Gees. Robin Gibb. Sweet. Vaguely sorrowful. That is all.)
30. I’m Not In Love (10cc. “Big boys don’t cry.” Yes, they do.)
31. If You Go Away (Shirley Bassey best performs this Jaque Brel number of what we all fear.)
32. Dream Brother (Jeff Buckley. A superbly expressed song of beautiful primal longing.)
33. High Your Love (Donovan, from his 1996 Sutras: “Looking for you in the longing of life, and all the time, you were here by my side.” Wow. It’s rare when embarrassingly wise wisdom breaks your heart.)
34. Do You Realize?? (Flaming Lips. A sentimental song that grabs sentimentality by the throat.)
35. Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye (Leonard Cohen. The nearly atonal baritone delivery manages to be a mesmerizing diversion. Anyone can sing. Anyone can make music. Anyone can cry.)
36. What Is A Youth (from Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet—also known as “A Time For Us.” This lovely song, sung as Romeo and Juliet first cavort at the home of the Capulets is a happy/sad cinematic, musical stunner)
37. Knocking On Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan. Zimmerman was so sentimental he had to be tough.)
38. The Only Living Boy In New York (Simon and Garfunkel. It is about tall Art going off to an acting gig and leaving small Paul alone, who takes the sweetest revenge in it.)
39. It’s All Too Much (The Beatles from Yellow Submarine. A lesser known song, but it could be the best Beatles’ recording. A pounding, psychedelia of heart-melting sweetness from George.)
40. The Incest Song (Buffy St. Marie. There are tragic ballads galore; this one is quite good—from her 1964 It’s My Way! one of the greatest original folk albums—no, albums—ever recorded.)
41. Go Way From My Window (John Jacob Niles. An old man’s heartbreaking voice. Bob Dylan would later use the title of this song as a lyric in his sad-but-slightly-snarling “It Ain’t Me Babe.”)
42. Lonesome Valley (Erik Darling. “You’ve got to cross that lonesome valley by yourself.” Lyrics, music, delivery. Easily one of the greatest recordings of all time.)
43. While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Harrison’s third on this list! “They bought and sold you.” They did.)
44. Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol. “Would you lie with me and just forget the world?” Asked sadly and sweetly.)
45. Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying (Jerry and the Pacemakers. String section strains to slow down the finger-snapping beat of the sad, optimistic shimmer. “Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey” is equally as good.)
46. Your Song (Elton John was a throw-back to the Tin Pan Alley days when composers and lyricists were separate people; John wrote all the music; Bernie Taupin, the lyrics: “how wonderful life is that you’re in the world.”)
47. I’ll Be Seeing You (Billie Holiday. This is perhaps the poetic trope: seeing the beloved in other things. And Holiday’s voice is one of those sad ones we love because it talks/sings.)
48. Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel. Their album of the same name beat out Let It Be for the Grammy as the 60s came to an end, Art & Paul and the Beatles splitting up.)
49. I Think It’s Going To Rain Today (Judy Collins sings it from her magnificent 1966 covers album “In My Life.”)
50. It Was Sad When That Great Ship Went Down (Honestly, we couldn’t find the definitive recording of this great, great folk song of the Titanic disaster. Probably Pete Seeger.)
51. Perfect Day (Lou Reed. Languid masterpiece from another artist with “a voice that came from you and me.”)
52. Lady Jane (The Brian Jones era Rolling Stones. Old people back in the 60s who hated noisy rock must have been taken aback when songs like this were produced.)
53. A Day in the Life (Beatles. The reflective, sad quietness of this song reflects the touring band, going in the studio, growing up.)
54. Walk On By (It can’t help but feel a little like Bacharach, David and Warwick is music as business. A perfect business. Imagine these three as unknowns, turning out hundreds of songs a year, and then the whole cache is discovered.)
55. Sarah (Scarrietmeister. We include our own singing, songwriting, and producing only to prove that Poe was right: only a good poet can be a good critic. We humbly write and record music, and that’s why we can sensitively and lovingly make these lists.)
56. Smile (Iconic lyrics; the musical credit goes to Charlie Chaplin from his 1936 film, Modern Times. But the tune really comes from Puccini’s Tosca...)
57. End of the World (Skeeter Davis asks “Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?” in one of the sweetest, simplest, and most poignant songs of all time.)
58. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me (The reggae beat, the bend-y notes, the hopeless, self-effacing melancholy required, perhaps, a Boy George, to make it happen; or was this song inevitable?)
59. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (The songwriting team of Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach wrote this for their 1933 musical. Great songs are inevitably written for something…a musical, a movie, a friend, etc)
60. Moon River (Once lyricist and Georgia native Johnny Mercer put “moon” with “river, the song probably wrote itself; he originally tried “blue river,” but found it was already taken. “Huckleberry friend” worked, too.)
61. Over the Rainbow (The best songs are simple ones: “somewhere,” became for the songwriting industry what “nevermore” was for poetry; the octave jump from some to where launched us “over the rainbow.”)
62. Good Night Irene (Leadbelly learned the song in the South from family in the beginning of the 20th century. Pete Seeger with the Weavers—before Elvis—made black music for the American masses: Billboard’s no. 1 song for 1950, the year after Leadbelly died.)
63. I Will Always Love You (Written and recorded by Dolly Parton in 1973 and made into a monster hit by Whitney Houston in 1992. Both times for a movie.)
64. Come All You Fair And Tender Maids (Pete Seeger sings it best. You hear a beautiful, old, neglected folk song like this and you can’t help but wonder how easily today’s pop machine could make it a “hit.”)
65. September Song (Lotte Lenya sings this sad song written by her husband, Kurt Weil)
66. You’ve Got A Friend (Carol King wrote it and James Taylor recorded it in a comforting blast of singer/songwriter bliss.)
67. Ave Maria (Schubert. Uplifting. Can the heart follow?)
68. Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Elvis Presley was a rocker, but also country western—a genre, we are aware, that is not represented well by our list. Hank Williams moans and cries, and we won’t deny the greatness of this music, but heart-wise, it often sounds too quirky or cornball to our N’eastern ears.)
69. Sheep May Safely Graze (Kirsten Flagstad does a pretty good job with this Bach cantata.)
70. The Three Ravens (Alfred Deller sings in the “sweet and high” style this ancient English ballad about a dead knight and his faithful animals.)
71. An Affair To Remember (Nat King Cole. One of the great heart-melting singers. Beautiful, sad song from the beautiful, sad film.)
72. Is That All There It Is? (Peggy Lee gets deep.)
73. The Winner Takes It All (ABBA. Is this really true? Is there a “winner” in love? It doesn’t matter, because the song makes it true.)
74. Where Have All The Flowers Gone? (Pete Seeger’s song, fashioned from other sources in 1955. It led to Dylan’s question “How many roads must a man walk down?” and the rest is folk/rock/pop history.)
75. Those Were The Days (Mary Hopkin. Does history kill nostalgia? The Beatles produced this.)
76. My Cherie Amour (Stevie Wonder recorded it; he and two others wrote it. Sweet, sad, pop perfection.)
77. Cry Me A River (A jazz standard embracing heartbreak for two.)
78. Another Day (Paul McCartney wrote a lot of sad, clever, touching songs; he sang this one with Linda.)
79. A Day In The Life Of A Fool (Jack Jones does a solid job with this sob-fest from Brazil. Black Orpheus is the 1959 Academy Award winning film which made the song famous.)
80. It Was a Very Good Year (Songs that look back over life are usually a pretty good bet to be at least mildly heart-breaking. Frank Sinatra is the wistful deliverer in this case.)
81. Oh What Wondrous Love Is This? (A spiritual which is similar to “Amazing Grace,” and just as good.)
82. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett was their songwriter, and then, after he tragically left, the subject of their best work.)
83. I Don’t Like Mondays (Boomtown Rats. A big hit in England, Bob Geldoff wrote this song in 1979 from a news story out of San Diego, California: a 16 year old girl went on a shooting spree for no apparent reason.)
84. Hey There Delilah (Plain White Ts. Songs with girls’ names are usually a good start.)
85. Indian Summer (The Doors had a bunch of haunting little numbers like this. It is argued often that Morrison was not a “real” poet, but this group used Brecht/Weil and William Blake in their recordings. They were one of the truly poetic rock groups, far more sensitive than most.)
86. Time Of Your Life (Green Day. A breakup song that doesn’t quite sound like a breakup song—the most noble kind.)
87. La Vie En Rose (Edith Piaf is the world’s favorite female French singer. This one song will have to represent the lovely French cafe tradition. Our favorite album of this type is April In Paris by Jacqueline Francois.)
88. You Are My Sunshine (First recorded in 1939; covered numerous times. Sing it to your kid.)
89. Bittersweet Symphony (The Verve. We love the video of Richard Ashcroft knocking people over in London as he lip-syncs.)
90. Viva La Vida (Cold Play. An uplifting number. The lyrics are somewhere between profound and hazy, but the song is catchy enough so one doesn’t care.)
91. It Will Rain (Bruno Mars. Perhaps the best from this visceral writer/performer. This one was co-written for a movie—“Twilight.”)
92. Careless Whisper (George Michael. Co-written with his Wham! partner when they were unknown. Sexy. Depressing. Very 80s.)
93. Come As You Are (Nirvana. Kurt Cobain generally expressed pain very well—some might feel this song is heart-breaking.)
94. Maggie May (Rod Stewart. A sad, in-love-with-an-older-woman, not-knowing-what-to-do-with-my-life song. Doesn’t try to be a heart-breaking song, but it is.)
95. Fortunate The Man With None (Dead Can Dance. The lyrics come from a Bertolt Brecht poem.)
96. I Say A Little Prayer (Aretha Franklin sings one of the sweetest songs of all time.)
97. Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues. “Just what you want to be, you’ll be in the end” is a killer.)
98. Dear Mama (Tupac. The late rapper appreciates his mother.)
99. Everybody Hurts (R.E.M. Many songs tell stories, give advice, but not that many are written specifically to reach out and comfort.)
100. Blue (Marina and the Diamonds. Released this year; energetic and vapid, as all ‘young people’s music of today’ seems to those who are older. But it’s still about the heart.)
Scarriet 
V.MUTHU MANICKAM said,
June 8, 2015 at 4:47 pm
Life is so meaningful with this 100! One shall long to live beyond the 100!
duncangmaclaurin said,
June 9, 2015 at 9:03 am
“One Fine Day” has never done it for me. Whereas “Una furtiva lagrima”…
thomasbrady said,
June 10, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Thank you, Duncan!
Una Furtiva Lagrima for me is more solemnly beautiful than heart-breaking…a beautiful dusky cloud, but not one that splits and rains; but this may just be purely a matter of taste in what may spill our tears…
Jan B said,
November 23, 2020 at 12:17 pm
‘Danny Boy’. I can tear up just hearing it in my head. Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Circle Game’ is one of those songs that you need to be a certain age to be truly moved by, I think. Kate McGarrigle’s ‘Go, Leave’ is very moving. But Kate & Anna McGarrigle’s ‘Talk to Me of Mendocino’ breaks my heart every time I hear it.
thomasbrady said,
November 23, 2020 at 6:09 pm
Thank you, I wasn’t familiar with Kate and Anna. Circle Game is beautiful. Buffy St. Marie (no. 40 on the list) is so powerful, I also had to listen to her, again, and she goes back to my childhood. Now That the Buffalo’s Gone and Universal Soldier, I know those who disagree with the message, but her voice and her playing give me chills and tears.
noochinator said,
June 10, 2015 at 10:34 pm
This one breaks my heart because I wasn’t in Montreal that night in 1983 to hear this performance by Hall and Oates:
thomasbrady said,
June 11, 2015 at 1:31 am
Was that song a hit for them? Didn’t they have much better songs? I couldn’t understand what that song was about.
noochinator said,
June 11, 2015 at 9:18 am
It’s about a serial killer, singing about the voices in his head:
“Charlie [Manson] liked the Beatles/
[Son of] Sam he liked [the song] ‘Rich Girl’/
I’m still hung up on the ‘Duke of Earl’/….
It’s the voices I hear at the subway stop/
Keep singing ‘Diddy doo wop’….”
Sick? Yeah, it is — but you put “I Don’t Like Mondays” at the #83 slot…
thomasbrady said,
June 11, 2015 at 2:52 pm
I invited it, then. Ugh. Maybe I should replace #83 with something else. I was trying to appeal to a broad range of taste. Trying to please everyone always backfires. Was their song based on a true story?
noochinator said,
June 11, 2015 at 4:43 pm
I don’t think that the song is based on an actual killer. The Anglo-American song tradition has always dealt with grim subjects: murder, assassination, infanticide, mine disasters, floods, etc. — although that’s little consolation to grieving family members who hear a ditty that exploits their grief….
thomasbrady said,
June 11, 2015 at 6:47 pm
You are right about the Anglo-American song tradition: a cinema of carnage couched in sweet, sing-song melodies: my dad had a lot of folk records when I was growing up and I think that’s why 1) I’m a poet 2) very sentimental and 3) lazy and cruel. It’s those fantastic folk songs!
noochinator said,
June 11, 2015 at 10:51 pm
It’s interesting that the Korean versions of the songs “Dear John,” “Delilah,” and “Banks of the Ohio” are given happy lyrics, whereas the originals detail, in respective order, a break-up, a murder, and a murder….
thomasbrady said,
June 12, 2015 at 11:57 am
“Delilah” by the Plain White Ts is a murder song? Really??
Mandy. I forgot Mandy by Barry Manilow.
noochinator said,
June 12, 2015 at 12:30 pm
The song “Delilah” sung by Tom Jones is a murder song. I don’t know nothing ’bout no Plain White Ts….
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
November 10, 2019 at 3:22 pm
Best version of The Banks of the Old Ohio.
From Deep Gap, N.C.
noochinator said,
April 27, 2020 at 3:55 pm
Pretty fly for a white guy!
Just kiddin’, it’s great, no lie!
The crone said,
June 13, 2015 at 12:25 am
Well, why not 100 songs? Or to satisfy some kind of ineffable urge regarding lists, perhaps it should have been 113, or 527. Or 18. Or one of each. Be that as it may, I would find room there for Bill Morrissey’s Handsome Molly, and Among My Souvenirs (artist unknown) and Vaya Con Dios (preferably not by Les Paul and Mary Ford). And maybe Jesus Loves Me. That made me cry when I was 6 years old.
(This is not The Crone, but someone who knows her intimately.)
thomasbrady said,
June 13, 2015 at 12:51 pm
Yes! some songs I associate with singers and others are beautiful songs you learned as a child and no recordings will ever do them justice. You sing them to yourself alone and cry. I wrote a song that caused me to burst into tears when I sang it to myself. “Oh it’s just a memory that we loved. You know so much. That’s why I trust you.” It was because no one at that moment could be trusted that I cried.
Phoenix Woman said,
June 25, 2015 at 1:00 am
Is there a category for the songs that you don’t really understand until puberty hits you like a ton of bricks?
Guys, I’m especially thinking of you here. Are there songs that seem embarrassingly mushy when you’re ten or eleven that suddenly are the painful oracles of your life when you turn fifteen and hear them again?
A classic one would be Roy Orbison’s “Cryin'”. The original. Another would be “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” by the Righteous Brothers. Or “Crying in the Rain” by the Everly Brothers.
noochinator said,
June 25, 2015 at 4:16 pm
“Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues is probably the supremest of “the painful oracles” of my adolescent life. “Wild is the Wind” by David Bowie is another (though of a far lesser order), along with “Fireflies” by Fleetwood Mac, “Julia” by The Beatles, and “Meeting Across the River” by Bruce Springsteen, the last of which has inspired numerous short stories that have been collected in a book:
Plus there are songs I once thought mushy that now make me tear up at age 50+: ABBA songs like “The Name of the Game” and “The Day Before You Came”, and “Touch Me in the Morning” by Diana Ross. All easy to ridicule, unless one is fatigued after a bad day, in which case one needs must take precautions to conceal the self-pitying waterworks or face ridicule from the wife…
There’s a fun book by Tom Reynolds, I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard, which further covers this territory:
Desdi said,
November 9, 2019 at 2:10 pm
Tearing up for ABBA — I can definitely relate.
Don’t DARE play “My Love My Life” when I’m 50 + years and 3 beers in. I hope Agnetha will be in heaven . . .
It’s her teeth, I tell you, her teeth that raise my pulse (before she got them all fixed)
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
November 9, 2019 at 2:52 pm
When I was in my 20s, if you came to a party with an ABBA record to play, you’d get thrown out the front door on your ass.
Desdi said,
November 9, 2019 at 3:35 pm
Well you must have been too cool for your own pants then. And I bet you still are !
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
November 10, 2019 at 3:01 pm
I love you Desdi, and yes I was pretty cool.
Top 10 bands on the old Bang & Olufsen turntable in the late 70s (Charlotte, NC):
10)Little Feat
9) Led Zeppelin
8) Talking Heads
7) Jimi Hendrix
6) Lynyrd Skynyrd
5) Neil Young
4) The Who
3) Allman Bros Band
2) Rolling Stones
1) The Beatles
Hon. Mention: The Band, Steve Miller, Floyd, CSN&Y, Clapton (any version)
5766) ABBA
Desdi said,
November 10, 2019 at 5:35 pm
🤩👍🎵🎶
I went through a phase of being ashamed I had liked ABBA but now I recognize them as a great band.
I also like all those groups on your list !
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
November 10, 2019 at 7:37 pm
Guilty pleasure. Mine is The Bee Gees. Love me some disco Bee Gees. I like The Eagles too.
Anonymous said,
November 11, 2019 at 2:01 am
Dylan? The Dead?
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
November 11, 2019 at 2:13 am
Those too.
Anonymous said,
November 11, 2019 at 2:26 am
Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead lyricist) and Robert Zimmerman (Bob Dylan). Two of the greatest poets of our time.
thomasbrady said,
November 11, 2019 at 2:45 pm
The era of the rock quartet, featuring drums, bass, guitar, vocals which flourished most prominently from about 1964 to 1974, was one of the greatest periods in music, ever. The sudden and profound popularity of the Beatles was simple: it was the aesthetic appreciation of this combination: drums, bass, guitar, vocals, all equally prominent, in a kind of mathematical musical heaven. Great “songwriters” belong to poetry, and is something entirely different. Jazz, which doesn’t feature the same forceful combination of these four elements, is something entirely different. Whether we’re talking about Simon and Garfunkle or Donovan on one hand, or Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones on the other, this is the uniting musical feature: drums, bass, guitar, vocals. A timeless musical materiality.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 30, 2020 at 11:35 am
THE GHOST OF LANGUAGE GONE
better to speak no word at all however embroidered
than to let one snowdrop teardrop diamond fall
in an envious room
better to be sealed entombed;
let silence flower endlessly instead
and those who lie in wait to
stomp to death one earnest phrase
find nothing there to grasp;
the ghost of language gone;
all utterance ceased
then to prolong
the candle wick extinguished
by those despising light.
rage on;
you will find nothing there.
only the wounded, the incriminating air.
mary angela douglas 30 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
November 22, 2020 at 5:13 pm
MY HEART AS A KITE
what shall I do with my heart made of pink paper
pink wrapping paper over a kite frame it flies
as if it wanted to drift with pink clouds toward Heaven
as if its pinkness qualified it to be in that flock
the clouds know better and the rose billed egrets
they are more unfettered
goodbye clouds my pink kite heart sighs coming down
in the rosebeds or
in a pale green meadow because that is the way we
wanted to make our poem like a picture book story
it lands softly, my heart. it misses the clouds already
the might have been of the egrets
but we have to buy groceries now so I reeled it in
I being in this case, my mind or is it my will
or something else that likes gravy and mashed potatoes
but chooses sweet potatoes frozen instead.
ah well that’s enough said.
one birthday morning we will rise
my heart and I on quite the rosy day
flinging the string to the ground
able at least to reach the ozone
and at last, God.
who has watched our progress with interest
past the seed pearls of the stars
he has scattered graciously
to light our way.
mary angela douglas 20 november 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
December 18, 2020 at 6:17 am
DISAPPEARING INTO THE PICTURE
the angels disappear into the picture they are the first to go
having further messages to deliver than to the children looking for upside down
umbrellas, parrots out of place I trace the semblances and await the snow filled frame
with only the names remaining that once meant something when
unlocking the fairy tale cabinet des fee
who can say what now we should not be breaking this way
it’s evergreen the angel whispers and leaves her silver shadow on the floor and do not be dismayed anymore we tell ourselves in her echoes as though we were lecturing our dolls and not our souls
I will weave it into my song with the pearls my Grandmother gave me in the long ago the creamy ones the ones I gave my sister after all
because she wanted them so
because i loved her ballades her wild attempts at the ballet
we will trace the semblances each in her own way what remains
understanding how time has fled for us though the inner kingdoms wax strong
and in their candle flares in a stiff breeze I know the fragrant petals of the stars
will come to me will come to me as though it were still April when we were April too in our cotton flowered shirtwaists
learning all the meanings at once, each in our own music finding the way
the thread of light that threaded through the necklace of our days
as though the outcome and the way home were already given
the dot to dot of it secure.
and grief the wine bright shadow of leaves only the rustle of old newspapers
and their conundrums, the colour of Sunday comics that came off on our hands
while we were passing through such marvel strewn lands
in emeralds like Dorothy, after the house settled or
coming home through the vast the spiced clover fields
and in a jubilant tear streaked daze
to what was always ours in the first place.
and could not be shaken like the glitter snow in the domes.
mary angela douglas 18 december 2020
i
thomasbrady said,
December 18, 2020 at 4:02 pm
“to what was always ours in the first place—and could not be shaken—like the glitter snow in the domes.”
maryangeladouglas said,
December 18, 2020 at 11:02 pm
I did very much like that kind of winter modulation at the end;it felt like it went into a different register somewhat. But you know how it is with writing poetry;sometimes what you perceive about your poem doesnt always project itself to others in the way you perceive it. I still think though you should trust your own musical ear regarding those things. What else can you do, really.
maryangeladouglas said,
December 19, 2020 at 5:12 am
HE IS EVERYWHERE IN THE PALE BLUE WATER COLOUR SKY AND AMONG THE TEACUPS
sometimes I do not pray before I eat and somewhere there may be
someone
thinking I am a heathen. You dont understand what it is to live alone with Him. wistful in corners examining His original dust.
Why must I summon Him from some failing blue water colour sky I could not
finish for art class correctly when I was fourteen just to say we are eating now and we’re having Your strawberries minus the cream
when already I may hear him ringing among the teacups and in the cherry sound the teakettle makes
when it is thirsty.his shadow bright as marigolds on the wall
in the rising the desultory steam.
why should I summon Him at all who is already here all of the time being everywhere present in the gleams
why wouldnt he be there in my cockpit kitchen just a trace
or in the wisp of my chimney dreaming song or here where the books are toppling all over themselves
in saturday profusion teasing the illusion and out of Time
dont they believe He is everywhere. certainly that does include not having to come in from the pale and failed
failed wounded wisteria
blue water colour corner of the picture where the colour dripped continually as though there were
a perpetual rain in the painting a spigot I could not cut off I could not be graded on fairly
even though I put pink tints in it at the very last corally sprigged instantaneous instant suddenly majestically emphatically mystically reminded
of His most recent tea rose dawn for it was apt, far more than Aquinas and all of that:
creaking through the cracked ivory
of the blinds with the little draft.
the fumes from the neighbors cars.
a few of the lingering stars…
mary angela douglas 18 december 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
April 8, 2021 at 11:34 am
SPEAK LIVELY THE POEM AT HAND
to Miss Alberta Harris, the best speech teacher ever
oh please do not read the poem that way
in that single celled replicated deadpan way
with its slightly mournful tone imitated tonelessly
endlessly at open mics all over the country
each word is a nova, paint it any color with your voice
but for God’s sake paint in your own colors,
your own voice;you’re not there to just make noise
each word is a world a planet suspended
each phrase could be rearranged upended
in infinite combinations inflections of the honeyed gold
do not speak so bought and sold
oh sound like a xylophone pinging
temple bells
you know very well the span of monotones
speak instead the prairie grasses in a cyclone
a lost star colliding, past all deriding
speak the poem in a thousand variations
prismatic through the sun as seen through raindrops
one by shining one
make it sound like Chopin if you can my lambs
in a failed disguise. “THOSE ARE PEARLS THAT WERE HIS EYES, HIS EYES HIS EYES”
call to it like the dove of rare renown
the bird with fancy plummage on its head
lest it abandon you and every word you said
no matter how spangled in conceit
to the very very dead.
lest past eloquence weep at you
putting the zombie audience to further, quite intractable sleep.
speak the poem from the ghostly deeps
ENUNCIATE. Angels stand by to aid you.
the reverberating Stage through all Ages!
mary angela douglas 8 april 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
May 9, 2021 at 2:36 pm
ON THE DELETION OF THE WORD GOD FROM THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER PROCLAMATION AS SIGNED OFF ON BY PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN MAY 6 2021
(To God, My Father)
Your name is a nest of lilies where my soul finds rest
from wild dogs tearing it apart your name is a green glade
where I breathe when overwhelmed by the lack of oxygen
in the rooms of those who think it a slight matter not to
mention you at all, even those who call You so many names in private
bowing down to the earth
I will not desert your name more precious to me than the
fragrance of all the roses, birdsong in the midnight crisis hour
than the storm in its violet creases who are they omitting your
name your name your name or letting it all go by
the core of the flame that lights our way
without which we are nil
and have no name at all ourselves. mary angela douglas 9 may 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
May 9, 2021 at 5:26 pm
MINIMALISM
they will edit the moon from the night skies
reduce all music to a blank extinguished cry
leaving the branches bare all summer long.
how shall I append my heart o where;
to a nest where the birds of silver
have never been?
mary angela douglas 9 may 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
June 14, 2021 at 1:05 am
THE BEAUTIFUL EVENING AT THE END OF THE WORLD
the beautiful evening at the end of the world
I try to imagine it, the skies turning orchid
the elegant gathering on the terraces to watch the summer
constellations little girls staying up late in fresh
pique, pink or green or blue
or gazing at the moon as though it would never be enough
gazing
there could never be enough gazing to see it in the way that
it shone and who lit the lantern then was it Rousseau
you can see the poem would flow better in French
except that I know that lantern the silver one was was lit by God
as well as the daylight sun, his golden one
they are a matched set though in the beautiful evening only
one is visible depending on the angle of clouds or if suddenly
you should brush the mist from your eyes
at the thought of leaving
the beautiful earth on the beautiful evening
how I would like to be by the side of the house I grew up in
near the gardenias and the skies so thick with stars as they were
back then
I would say another word to God such as oh let there be gardenias in
Heaven
the music of Ravel of Debussy’s cathedral
submerged again in music
in music that never ends.
and the houses lit within.
mary angela douglas 11 june 20
maryangeladouglas said,
June 15, 2021 at 10:47 pm
CONQUISTADORES
(on some aspects of poetry, poets in the present age)
they trample everywhere now every bush and briar
the unmetered/metered mercenaries, only interested in power
in scoring, seeming the shining light of the hour
or what passes for it in dubious translation
poets in their skins and out for hire
not lit from any Orphic fire, self bought self sold
what’s in it for them? while words turn cold, even glacial
at the prospect:
their borrowed skins, their furrowed pelts, glad to be
listed on the global shelf by pilfering the local Delph
whatever else they can to stride colossus like o’er sea and
land with an
uber networking glad hand
oh to be John Keats away from this under the myrtle tree
the nightingale singing only for thee
or a friend of Keats:the bride of the unvanquished urn
the pure song of pure liquidity transcribed
in quiet reflection earned,
banished from all this or self exiled
knowing what you know the heart should turn to snows in the wild
first or to stone,against these murky tides
the heart and its strictures cast inside, in words in beauty
forever enshrined far away from this she repined: the Soul;
my protagonist flinging no paper roses
from the cardboard balconies;
only myself weeping into the bitter grass, dill and the tarragon;
Constantinople in the mists;Albion, opal, I turned to go:
longing for the poetry that lasts, outlasts this dumbshow;
this picaresque.
mary angela douglas 14 june 2021;15 june 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
June 16, 2021 at 9:01 pm
THE LILACS IN THE EVENING OF MY POEM
let the moon be bright and clear in my poem about the lilacs
though I know so many have written, have sung about them before
still they have not written my lilacs into their poems
how could they
so I feel justified in making this small garden shine
and letting it be evening in the poem and it has rained
and of course the perfume of the lilacs is stronger now
and the wind knows it and the wind comes through my
poem’s screen door and laughs and scatters all the papers on the floor
and opens all the books to the former poems about lilacs
written across the ages
and we are like, that suddenly
a shop with jeweled clocks and timepieces
all set to the same hour
the self same loveliness ticking away and suddenly hushed
no longer young or old
just caught out in a lilac moment
and this poem I present to you
is a bouquet of them, at evening tied with ribbons of silver
in the aforementioned moonlight
and the purple clouds of the scent of the flowers
has made you happy
thinking about this:
in heaven the lilacs are infinite;
we will be too
mary angela douglas 16 june 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
July 13, 2021 at 2:58 pm
GO I KNOW NOT WHERE;FETCH I KNEW NOT WHAT
to the poet John Keats
go I know not where find I know not what my favorite title for
a story anywhere is from an ancient Russian tale
and I have sought at least in dreams to follow that directive
so that my hands bled from the nettles weaving the shirts
to set the captives free and waiting for in blind prayers
the downrush of delivering wings my life is spent
I seem to have wandered in vain along each frost glazed
rose drenched lane
for that which was not found nor sought in me
but in my seeking oh what treasure there
in the purpling darkness close to despair to see Orion’s band
or in a single shaft of sunlight half awake between hard lessons
see the Jacobean ladder through September’s mist and the traffic
of angels
this is to live for poetry as it once was
the rose and the briar
to sing beyond the resonance of earth half caught in the mists
and the rains never inured to disdain but
becoming lost to Time itself or, by design
not found not lost either, and yet akin to the in between
curve of the music where the ghosts are seen
the loved ghosts, the disappearing few that loved you
or seemed to…always, perpetually leaving you
like the heart rending echoing bar in the music repeated
to weep into the thorns to be forlorn in the world at large
yet inwardly rich that even in a ditch
you dream the years away and climb into the boat at last
that rows you to the Blessed Isles or are to be helped in
by those who guarded every tear
unknown to you, in your disgrace
though now you see them face to face.
The Holy blazing Trinity.
mary angela douglas 12, 13 july 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
July 13, 2021 at 4:40 pm
The lines did not fall correctly, some of them but the intact version is on my blog angelidicuoremare.blogspot.com. Im not saying that to self promote, just to rectify. I hope the lines will fall correctly in this poem, as the lines are shorter:
SOMETIMES I DREAM OF THE MOON OVER CALAIS
in homage to Peter Weir for his haunting beautiful film THE LAST WAVE…
sometimes I dream of the moon over Calais
the sea, the darkest shade of ink
or in waves of dreams I contemplate at random
any secluded bay and the sea is jade
the moon I think rosee
each cream tipped ripple in abeyance
as on an ancient scroll where all seems calm.
and whole.
but then from an antique vault of pearl
another scroll surfaces, an almost shattered world
and one wave is tipped
up to the opal heights of the ancient constellations poised
and presciently I weep
for the villagers still asleep.
in their own dreams, self enclosed and oblivious.
mary angela douglas 13 july 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
July 13, 2021 at 4:42 pm
These lines didnt fall entirely correctly either. I never have lines with just one word on them.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 5, 2021 at 9:41 am
TO GOD MY FATHER IN RECEDING STARLIGHT
we too shall illuminated be
your manuscripts, beyond receding starlight
there, corrected in your hand perhaps John Donne would say
has said, will say again
to our lost shreds of gold, our last
sweet reds and blues of the birds and flowers in the margins
and flight and bloom of all the hours
we have spent on earth not knowing truly who we were
we are your own
in gold leaf or in stone
brief hearts under the moon
in Christ, at last
emerging from this tomb.
mary angela douglas 5 october 2021
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2021 at 11:46 am
You will go down in history as one of the great Christian poets, Mary. In the 1920s you would have won a Pulitzer. Edwin Arlington Robinson (I never really studied him—he’s remarkable) won 3 in the 1920s. Millay (who was also awarded in that decade) had sensitivity; Eliot was considered Christian—you are those 2 combined, with more hope and beauty.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 5, 2021 at 3:07 pm
What a beautiful thing to say, Thomas West Graves Jr. I deeply appreciate it and will do my best to live up to that. I found a few years back at a library book sale a substantial book on Edwin Arlington Robinson and was shocked at the beauty of his range and of how little of that filtered through in our anthologies in school. I was thinking of that lovely passage in John Donne about us being translated into books, our souls as books while thinking too of our poems and our souls, we poets the unacknowledged legislators and all that and also I was thinking about the beauty of illuminated manuscripts so those things kind of converged. I do believe in the Resurrection not only of our souls but of our poems, those of us who have worked intrue earnestness even if we dont even get a Cracker Jack prize on earth. I love the religious aspect of Eliot and the lightning struck grandeur of Millay on occasion. There’s a vein of gold running through all of English and Ameican literature the best of it in my opinion as Gerard Manley Hopkins said; “like shining from shook foil,’ I do aspire to. Hope I quoted that right, I sometimes mangle my quotes. I think the aspiration of a poem is more important than anything else. Your poems for example always have an aspirastion. That is why I find them beautiful almost always.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 5, 2021 at 3:09 pm
P.S. I need to have more of an aspiration to not make typos.Maybe aspirastion means something almost in another language.
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2021 at 8:55 pm
I was thinking…a most impressive sounding word! Is that what my poems have? Aspirastion! I’ve never seen that before!! lol Thank you, Mary!
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2021 at 12:46 am
Haha thanks for making me laugh, Tom. But you should know and take hope from the fact that your work is closely followed by civilimations we’ve yet to classimoy.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2021 at 8:47 am
CAUGHT IN THE SNOW QUEEN’S BRIGHT, EXACTING MIRRORS
caught in the Snow Queen’s bright, exacting mirrors
children pick their way through the shards of facts
somewhere an apricot sun is dreaming
they can never feel it on their backs
wasting their lives on riddles that heal nothing
sifting no labyrinth sublime
faint in the awful spell she’s weaving
fading before they start in their own Time
who will deliver thee from ice floes
core ice drilled in thee hark, the chime
Christ from the sweet light vanquished
returning, cries in the slaughterhouse
NO! all these are Mine.
mary angela douglas 6 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2021 at 5:02 pm
ALL THE POEMS ON EARTH CAN’T TELL ME WHAT THE LIGHT SAID
all the poems on earth can’t tell me what the Light said
the light winding through the blinds
the Venetian ones, cracked ivory that came with the apartment
with the snow outside
nor you with your chalk in hand
or marking down the score
or counting on the odds whom I cannot implore
can help me reach that shore of lapped waved silence
but only the singular hint of God
set deep in the pearl beset ease
of the earliest white skied breeze
can utter to me
what the Light said in palest orchid,
recently
mary angela douglas 6 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 8, 2021 at 9:23 pm
FOR THAT WHICH IS BEAUTIFUL THE ARTISTS CARRIED WATER
we would have painted clouds on the horizon
to keep her from thirst
or carried the last drop of water in a thimble
across ten saharas
this much we cared for Beauty
for the ark embroidered song
and the seven rainbows
though masses cried you do us wrong
who speak no word to revolution
but I, I who have bartered the need to belong am happy
for the feeling all along sans restitution
that paper roses could bloom and just like that become the real
thing
or you could find yourself on the wrong train going back in a
dream
and suddenly step off into a field of pink clouds forever
concealed from the grisly righteous.
to tell such stories was our aim
to keep her from wandering away
to keep the yellow light in the rain soaked window
all through winter alight and bear the living flame
that we should find in God bright raiment again
without a coin without a name, still let beauty ever reign
though we’re looked at with disdain by all the socially thundering
that children may hunt flowers and stars, bright agates
and not lose wonder.
mary angela douglas 8 october 2021
thomasbrady said,
October 14, 2021 at 1:24 pm
“and not lose wonder”
maryangeladouglas said,
October 18, 2021 at 6:59 pm
STOP FOR A MOMENT AND READ THIS POEM
stop for a moment and read this poem.
let the greenery of it rustle in the wind
and there you are a child of the wind yourself
that blows all corners of the map in the fairy tale,
remember?
you were at work and now you’re not and you can breathe
and in the poem are all the roses you have forgot
each individual rose scent each colour, contour and the petals
drifting
or you are at home and hear your mother calling you in
from the blue grained dusk
look up from your invoices for a moment
from your latest to do list in the kingdom of what must be done.
oh shun. shun everything but the clouds in the afternoon sky and
later on
they will turn to rubies emeralds yellow diamonds.
this is for you then
when it happens:
remember the poem that told you so.
mary angela douglas 18 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 18, 2021 at 7:14 pm
oh NO, NO…Thomas West Graves Jr. please change the word calking to calling as in ‘you hear your mother CALLING you in” or this poem is going to make my mother sound like someone from Poe’s story about the cask of amontillado and my mother was a sweet person who would NEVER wall someone in and seal them up like that. Worst typo I have ever made bar none, not even the ones I made at work when I was passing myself off as a word processor/secretary. Help.
noochinator said,
November 21, 2021 at 8:32 am
I changed “calking” to “calling” for you…
maryangeladouglas said,
October 19, 2021 at 10:50 am
IMPERISHABLY
time is broken she said to the wall
and at her murmuring it became a wing
half drowsing to soar
time is broken she crooned to the thorn
and out of it bloomed a mysterious rose
don’t ask me if I know that this is true
don’t ask me if I know that this is true
so many things will be beyond you in the ballad
I have saved for you in snow;
written in snow imperishably with a half frozen hand
a twigged hand, almost bearing leaves.
time is broken;
I know you understand.
mary angela douglas 19 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 19, 2021 at 11:01 am
There should be a semicolon, not a period after the last “broken” (in the next to the last line.
maryangeladouglas said,
November 20, 2021 at 2:16 pm
LONG LIVE THE EMERALD CITY I SAID
long live the Emerald City I said
to no one near but God
long live the place where we were fed
bright cereals, crackling in milk.
and though this world be full of the ilk
of those who harry us dawn to dusk
that we may earn a simple crust
long live, long live the storybook friends
and the ones that shone from the movie marquees
or even from the small tvs
in our past, erstwhile living rooms
where we found respite from the dooms and glooms
and for eternal fortitude and singing all along the way;
long live our mutual courage and the ruby shoes
the golden means to the golden end
the path we took so far from home
not knowing where we were going then
on the backs of cyclonic furies
that led us somehow back again
through many trials my friend my friend.
mary angela douglas 20 november 2020
noochinator said,
June 26, 2015 at 8:25 pm
This one was big to me as a teen:
And this too — both strike me as homoerotic in tone, which gives me (and perhaps 1/3 of the Supreme Court) a few qualms:
Then there’s Kate Bush with the “wow” factor:
Phoenix Woman said,
June 25, 2015 at 1:04 am
Johnny Cash does an excellent job with “Hurt”, but you need to hear it as part of the video. Trent Reznor (who wrote the danged thing) at first thought it was a so-so cover… then he watched the video.
It was then that he understood just what Johnny did.
From death’s door, Johnny grabs at thee.
thomasbrady said,
June 25, 2015 at 1:59 am
Beauty created from hurt love appealed to me as a child. Once sexuality arrived, the beauty was still appreciated. The hurt from grownup love may inspire a composer but a little of that for this listener goes a long way. Classical music which sings from the heart without words is preferred. Romantic music, if your heart is broken, can be very painful.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 9, 2018 at 5:06 am
EVEN IF WE ARE SCATTERED
even if we are scattered to seven winds
so that our dust flies up in the face of
the disgraced
our candlewick snuffed by a wind in transit
prelude to December-
God will puzzle out the pieces of our diamond souls
we will return as snow
I will she said, clutching Hansel’s hand
purpling as night the shadows around them
as though they were berry stained.
there had been no berries that day.
the doves took the bread away.
they ate music out of the sky
oh skylark, skylark
what am I
neither bread nor berry
that they may get by.
and scarcely, music.
mary angela douglas 9 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 9, 2018 at 12:05 pm
AFTER AWHILE
we’ll live like gypsies after awhlle
or at least, the ones in folktales
and live in places under the stars
with no bugs.
and beat the rugs until they shine
like fairy gold.
maybe we-ll find
abandoned castles
with the feasts newly laid
in summer, sudden shade.
a land of green shutters
and lemonade.
and children will grow used
to the sound of the sea
and need nothing from the earth anymore
but a secret door
into God.
a million scarves
the color of sunsets.
hope as blue as larkspur.
mary angela douglas 9 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 9, 2018 at 3:49 pm
LO HOW A ROSE ON THE DOWN LOW
“amid the cold of winter, when half spent was the Night.”
from the Christmas carol. “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming.”
the maiden speech of the maidens cancelled
the filmy veils wrecked
because the dragons were hungry
no longer circumspect
this was left off the menu
the literature of the field
the field where lances broke
against the Invisible
and on covenant lands,
the quiring angels queing up
for the inevitable downtown sunsets
or the food trucks
of the newly glitzed
the condo served.
oh poetry my lost
amongst the herds trampled
the popcorn crowds exiting
and under a sullen moon
no longer recited.
while we make our covert home
amongst the briars
waiting for the resurgence
of the Rose.
mary angela douglas 9 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 13, 2018 at 7:25 pm
SOME DAYS I JUST WANT THIS
some days I just want to look at the land
at the bands of rain sweeping over it
in crystalline beading
at the green haze of trees sponged in
as if in some middle distance painted
by an unknown painter, not me,
who can only gaze and gaze
into the violet blue of skies
above thunderheads
the cream of what’s left of the day
brimming, the birds skimming
thin gold off the horizon
the lemon moon made new.
those days I cannot speak at all
or be spoken of
be spoken to.
what language is greater than this
to see no matter how briefly
to feel
the scope of it all.
to be caught in the rains in this way
may be sheer Heaven in the end
to feel as Whitman did
the sacredness of grass, blade by miraculous blade
the petal of shade falling over it now
near nightfall
the rich eventide, hushed etude of the soul
even with its scarcity, cloud covered,
of stars.
mary angela douglas 13 september 2018
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
September 14, 2018 at 1:27 am
Good one!
maryangeladouglas said,
September 19, 2018 at 6:38 pm
Thank you Gary. I treasure your good opinion as you are a true poet.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 23, 2018 at 9:40 pm
I COULD WEEP FOR JOY
the last wick of the blue dusk verging on nightfall
I saw once in a dream in the twilight that precedes
wakefulness
and it seemed to me the angels were saying goodbye
and I was still in my grandparents house in the room
with the taffeta spread, the frost white curtains
the earlier blue of twilight
and I remembered a dress that colour
I wore once with a tea rose
picked from our garden.
there are moments cloudlike
in the silver treasury of my mind
so that despondent angels sing suddenly
though it isn’t Christmas
and when I see my face in the mirror then
it seems also lined in silver
like a sudden cameo in the gloom
or a star in the spring evening
when someone is playing the piano
and I could weep for joy.
mary angela douglas 23 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 16, 2018 at 3:18 am
iT WAS NOT THE WAY THEY SAID IT WOULD BE
I see the patchwork on His stars
how He is holding us all together
in the supposed flood zones
I see how the flood doesn’t come
not the way that agrees with the models
outwitting all predictions.
the rain is soothed
going as if in a dream into mist
some other way.
predictions fail.
the bold pronouncements
this and then that
the flood plains drowned
they say. they said.
but the wind is stilled.
love remains
He remains patching the stars
they shine in us
and there is no flood
no flood at all not the epic one
they wanted to come
since it would prove
their predictions true.
no rivers cresting
in the small and ever smaller midnights
I forsee
overreaching their banks
swallowing us whole.
Tremulous, discounted, not in the mix
we lift the lamp of faith
above the dark caverns
and men are angry
who don’t know themselves
why they fight so hard
for the floods to prevail
while the floods fail
and the patched stars shine.
mary angela douglas 15 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 16, 2018 at 1:33 pm
As a citizen of North Carolina as well as an American I just want to state that this whole time period where we heard words like 1000 Year Rain Event, Monster Storm, epic rainfall, and the Gov’s scary pronouncements DISASTER IS AT OUR DOORSTEP NORTH CAROLINA, and now the grossly inflated numbers for countless rivers expected any moment day after day, the unpredecented levels of tons of rain supposedly holed up in the massively stalled humongo hurricane, tropical storm, tropical depression, ghost of a ghost of a rumor of a stom THAT NEVER FELL when they were suppoed to be pouring out in buckets in scary apcocalyptic buckets all over town well, here in Winston Salem NONE OF THIS EVER HAPPENED. NO HIGH WINDS, NO TORRENTS, NO FLOODING NO DOGS AND CATS SCURRYING TO THE ROOFTOPS. NOTHING. There were lots of counties were nothing ever happened. Lots of towns. WHY THIS WAS LIED ABOUT AND SHAMELESSLY DISTORTED ALL OVER THE PLACE AND NEVER ADJUSTED FOR THE TRUTH I DO NOT KNOW. BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN SO MUCH SLANT AND OUTRIGHT BLATASNT PROPAGANDA IN MY LIFE.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 16, 2018 at 1:44 pm
That’s in regard to Hurricane Florence. You can file that under Bridge Over Untroubled Water If You Want to. Or The Whole State of North Carolina Was Never Underwater. Or Lies Incorporated, I don’t care. I just have to say this wherever I can.
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
September 17, 2018 at 1:14 am
16 people have died. Have some respect idiot.
Desdi said,
November 9, 2019 at 1:59 pm
People die every day.
Whoopie ☻
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 1:03 am
I never disrespect the dead. Im talking about officials hyping a situation which actually caused people great fear due to the hype in order to get more disaster dollars.. There are people who make life so miserable for others they feel they are dead. Hyping a tragedy is sure one way to do it and I really think you said that just for kicks.
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
April 13, 2020 at 1:34 am
I forgive you, my lamb.
I’m still waiting on my free verse poem.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 2:28 am
Write it yourself. Im not your lamb. Im not your anything. Why do so many people on this blog talk drivel. The Lord is my Shepherd. And I shall not want.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 17, 2018 at 6:01 am
HYPING THE HURRICANE
I was alive when they were hyping the hurricane
while in the shadows of small riverbank towns
the floods really did come.
the shadows thickened in the mud flats
the tree frogs sang.
then we were a million miles from home
home floating off as if it were a barge
so far from Homer and all his songs.
they were all out
hyping the hurricane. so long, they said to us
while we just prayed.
in a parallel universe
they remained
on a flickering tv screen.
seeming to me at least a bit insincere.
drowned crickets sang
their angel ghosts
the Heavenly Host
the ghosts of summers drowned.
what does truth matter anyhow
when they lie about the weather
some places got no rain at all.
they think we are too Southland
small and stupid to notice
when rain gets hyped
and small towns too.
and who is who
and catfish fried
where someone died
and water burials
lily pad dreams.
and schemes of those out
hyping the hurricane.
those of us
who really miss our homes.
who care about the details.
of living
getting the story right.
staying up all night because its
us you know
with no place left to go
no games to play
with an ear out for rushing water.
oh sons and daughters of the being not seeming.
look to your redeeming.
the folklore of the free
who can still see things with their own eyes.
and know the wisemen really did come at Christmas.
no matter what the papers say.
mary angela douglas 17 september 2018
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
September 18, 2018 at 2:50 am
Yes, it’s a good poem, but you might still be going to hell.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 18, 2018 at 3:47 pm
I SAW THE GHOSTS OF ROSES RISE
to Alfred Lord Tennyson
“…My children, who do not lie.”-The Holy Bible
I saw the ghosts of roses rise
the hour that the Princess died
that way of looking at the world
died with her.
then poetry unfurled
the thin silk scarf of grey
the thread of warning.
I saw the clouds disperse
but only to reveal blank skies
blank pages blank Ages
a spark gone out in the eyes
of everyone, it seemed that way
to me then when
I saw the henchmen looking for that spark
only to quench it.
the execution of children
by subtle means
the ones who still dreamt
when they slept
and in between assignments
on the crumbling steps of all parthenons
the unscheduled dreams…
we met in grottos
our candles of thin means melted down
and remembered when Song
was the highest art
for what it dared impart
to the human heart
of the Divine.
Oh King in exile
your children too
refuse to honor the wastelands
just like You
to drink from the professional cup
when the empty toasts go round
to sound the trumpet
of the vacuous – New.
mary angela douglas 18 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
September 25, 2018 at 11:43 am
WHAT TO PACK IN AN EMERGENCY
three acorns full of sudden illumination
three dresses to match
a match
and a thousand candles
the Gospel of John
a rug to fly upon
rose seed, the King’s own sealing wax
the golden stamped insignia to go with
a child in need of fairy tales
the fairy tales themselves
the Book of Kells and gingerbread
a rain cloud’s wishing well, weeping
and a featherbed for sleeping
with multicoloured quilts innumerable
and one pea
the spell of human kindness.
green leaves
in case the new planet doesn’t have any
a Christmas toy train that runs at all speeds
through a welcoming village
the radio from Cocteau’s film
that only telegraphs poetry
silver songs, indifferent swans slightly rumpled
a cherry orchard
that cannot be felled.
mary angela douglas 25 september 2018
Chado said,
November 22, 2020 at 10:11 pm
Honey, you unstable and easily offended. Take a chill pill.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 27, 2020 at 3:56 am
DIMES FOR THE METER
we need a new way to look at time when time is running out
no more dimes for the meter
and the sky has more of a faraway look to it
even in the cinema the sky rolls in with its clouds
past the lobby, the refreshment stand, rumbling
its cumulus colours
the ink you write in is indigo though it starts out gold
and finishes in amber whatever it is
you are finishing it always feels like
winter is about to descend
you dont cpnsult your watch anymore
or even distant friends
you wait for something like a bell might ring
a crystal bell summoned by angels you are
summoned by angels or you could be or a
ship is docking where there are no waters
and there’s nothing to mend
because you won’t be wearing it tomorrow
mary angela douglas 26 september 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
September 27, 2020 at 4:51 pm
DIMES FOR THE METER (LATER VERSION)
DIMES FOR THE METER
we need a new way to look at time when time is running out
no more dimes for the meter
and the sky with more of a faraway cast to it than ever
is closing in.
even in the cinema it rolls in with its clouds
past the lobby, the refreshment stand, rumbling
its cumulus colours;rounding the bend.it finds you.
the winds gather speed.
the ink you write in bleeds to indigo though it starts out gold
and finishes in amber whatever it is
you are finishing invariably knows that
you know winter is about to descend
you dont consult your watch anymore
or even distant friends
but wait for something sensed as if a bell might ring
causing commencement
a crystal bell summoned by angels you are
summoned by angels or you will be or a
ship is docking where there are no waters now
and there’s nothing to mend
because you won’t be wearing it tomorrow
mary angela douglas 26 september 2020
thomasbrady said,
September 28, 2020 at 7:56 pm
“even in the cinema it rolls in with its clouds”
Great poem…impending death!
garybfitzgerald said,
September 29, 2020 at 12:56 am
Or impending life.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 29, 2020 at 7:49 am
It could be that too Gary. Its a mood of being in the ball park range of death and yet there still is possibility of reprieve because the Ark is there, but not yet, the Flood.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 29, 2020 at 7:42 am
You might laugh at the source of that image about the relentless sky and clouds. I changed the mood of it radically, but the image really came from the funny Grade B horror movie called The Blob when the kids are watching the movie in the theatre and the blog comes after them. Thank you so much for reading it and commenting. For sure it is about impending death. Even if I did have to metamorphose the Blob to get the affect I wanted.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 29, 2020 at 7:43 am
LOL. I mean the blob not the blog comes after them. Some words are slipping out of my mental file cabinets lately. I just shove them back in.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 29, 2020 at 7:45 am
WE ARE NO ONE’S TOY SOLDIERS ANYMORE
we are no one’s toy soldiers anymore
I said to the troops inside my mind
who had started to assemble once more
on the parade grounds
from now on it is Christmas time forever
Christmas leave and we are free
and we are no one’s toy soldiers anymore.
I repeated, because they did not stir. or acknowledge me.
I thought they would explode with joy
throw scarlet caps into the air with golden tassels.
the troops in my mind, but they were so used
to assembling there they remained
in perfect formation never looking at the clouds.
shall I blow a trumpet into their ears
my companions of the years
my thoughts who have kept me company
and ranged themselves with a will.
they may as well be phantoms so little
they heeded me
and I was at a loss what to do now that
they could not desist from marching
though marching orders were gone
and marching on and on
never looking at the marsh where the wild birds rose
and the moss, so velvet green and the under grass
where the shadows of peace unseen
covered all their futile maneuvering
where the long shadows lulled me to sleep.
mary angela douglas 29 september 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
September 29, 2020 at 8:06 am
All my poems start out with a certain feeling and usually one line that pops up and then it continues but this poem was unique because while still writing in the minor key my brain by way of a joke suddenly flashed onto its inner screen the scene where the blob starts oozing into the theatre aisles so I quickly flipped it as I was in the midst of trying to describe what it would feel like if the faraway sky came down to earth to look for you and so I kept the mood going. But when I looked back on what happened in my mind it really did feel like a part of my brain was rebelling at writing such a final poem and interfered by suggesting the blob as an appropriate image which made me burst out laughing so I guess if my mind does that probably the end is still some ways away for me and hopefully, from all of us. Its really something when your own mind tries to play a joke on you while you’re trying to write A Serious Poem.
Anonymous said,
April 23, 2021 at 12:40 am
NO OTHER SONG
how I wish that I could have translated into one searing valentine
the blurred heart stung obscenities of the man this evening
standing confused in the middle of our hallway with the speech impediment
of thick lava and remorse standing
as if he were at a four way stop where all the stoplights went blind
and I know he was trying to reach Heaven like a black dove
with something childlike in his heart to say why why do they turn away
but he didnt have the words the way
with the marbles in his mouth from birth no way of forming eligible syllables
to reach the angels the citizenry and so I cry but my cry also is a ragged ragged impression
fading away
compared with his sublimity his
childlike cosmic way of turning a mangled phrase his soul- like the orphanhood
of a world within him his words striking my heart like a gong
until finally i can hear no other song.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2021
Anonymous said,
April 23, 2021 at 6:30 am
NO OTHER SONG (WITH SLIGHT REVISION)
how I wish that I could have translated into one searing valentine
the blurred heart stung obscenities of the man this evening
standing confused in the middle of our hallway with the speech impediment
of thick lava and remorse standing buttersoft and stranded
as if he were at a four way stop where all the stoplights went blind
and I know he was trying to reach Heaven like a black dove
with something childlike in his heart to say why why do they turn away
but he didnt have the words the way
with the marbles in his mouth from birth no way of forming eligible syllables
to reach the angels the citizenry and so I cry but my cry also is a
ragged ragged impression
fading away
compared with his sublimity his
childlike cosmic way of turning a mangled phrase his soul- like the orphanhood
of a world within him his words striking my heart like a gong
until finally i could hear no other song.
mary angela douglas 22 april 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
September 19, 2018 at 6:41 pm
THE BLACK EVENING GOWN WITH ITS SINGLE ROSE FOUND
I see the black evening gown as a pure object
with the familiar delight of its off the shoulder rose
the rose being a true red, not a false one
and layers of black tulle
with their occasional sparkles sewn in
oh, are they jewels? we wonder with delight
like those sewn into the clouds when they break apart
like the light of small small stars in the evening
I think of the play by Maeterlinck
and this is the costume for night
Night in an allegory
with its exquisite red rose
we point it out in the picture
see? it’s the same one
its puzzle pieces of little stars
oh purest of gowns
then, the costume of sheer poetry
nightfall and the blue dusk leaving us behind
at dreamland’s dreamy edge
with the scent of violet cologne
when my mother bends down in the old novel
we made up for her
kissing us before she turns to go
leaving us with realms of Let’s Pretend
to step silkenly
into a golden carriage.
the one we knew was coming for her
at the End.
mary angela douglas 19 september 2018
maryangeladouglas said,
October 4, 2020 at 1:08 pm
THEY STOPPED SPEAKING IN GOLD
they stopped speaking in gold
but I did not hold my tongue
or do what I was told
gold is the language of God I said
look at light.
for this I was punished
never sent anywhere again from the job agencies
I will raise my shade and I will not see the complicit world
but the one of silver and gold
the one that kept shining in the poetry of old and though,
they neglected it
thus and solely, they looked the other way, the moderns
the ones who have banished me.
who will not greet me even on the lawn.
one day I will enter into it the world beyond
my fairy foot lingering on this shore
and we will speak in gold
forevermore
mary angela douglas 4 october 2020
garybfitzgerald said,
October 5, 2020 at 1:04 am
Didn’t Jesus turn over the gold and the silver on the money-changers’ tables because they defiled the Temple of God?
garybfitzgerald said,
October 5, 2020 at 2:22 am
What I mean is (poetically speaking) are silver and gold really good symbols for the Divine considering all the evil they have caused on Earth?
Or did I miss the irony?
thomasbrady said,
October 5, 2020 at 7:35 pm
Hello Gary. I hope you’re well. I really shouldn’t speak for Mary’s poem, but wasn’t the “money-changing” the fault, not the gold or the silver, per se? And isn’t relying on symbolism too heavily a fault in itself? I think silver in gold in Mary’s poem is not the same as gold in the hands of evil persons. Gold has more meaning than is dreamed of in your philosophy. Don’t you know that old folk song? “I’m but a poor little country boy, money I have none. But there is silver in the moon, gold in the morning sun o sun, gold in the morning sun.”
garybfitzgerald said,
October 5, 2020 at 9:03 pm
I agree, Tom. However, taking symbolism out of poetry is basically like taking the poetry out of poetry
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2020 at 5:17 am
Thank you Tom for understanding. They stopped speaking in gold refers to the loss of lyricism in poetry in the English language in both the modern and the post modern periods. And I do mean also the gold in the sun the silver in the moon or as it says also in the Bible a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. And there is gold in the Light of God by which we are illumined and without which we cannot live. There is also the ironic poem with the line adding to golden numbers golden numbers something like that. That’s not in my realm. I spend all my gold on books and I have cheated no one for it or compromised nothing for it. And I do regard God as my gold now and forever. And also as my gold the kindness of friends, and those who like Tom, like Gary truly care about poetry and always will. Whatever realm they inhabit.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2020 at 5:36 am
I also think of John Keats lovely line: Much have I traveled in the realms of gold
maryangeladouglas said,
October 6, 2020 at 5:43 am
And for silver there is this and a thousand million other figurative references in literature, in poetry in fairy tale or in the injunction to load every rift with ore and it surely must have been the gold of language refined the poet was talking about only they have stripped the tree of Poetry of all that and are proud of themselves for doing so. But I am not proud of that. I want it put back. So at least I put it back in my own poems.And I am not writing about Wall Street.
Silver
by
Walter de la Mare
Slowly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon;
This way, and that, she peers, and sees
Silver fruit upon silver trees;
One by one the casements catch
Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;
Couched in his kennel, like a log,
With paws of silver sleeps the dog;
From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep
Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;
A harvest mouse goes scampering by,
With silver claws, and silver eye;
And moveless fish in the water gleam,
By silver reeds in a silver stream.
garybfitzgerald said,
October 7, 2020 at 12:40 am
Okay, Mary. You win the Gold Medal.
Tom wins the Silver.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 7, 2020 at 10:57 am
AND CLOSING OUR EYES WE DREAMED THAT WE WERE SNOW
(a lullaby)
and closing our eyes we dreamed that we were snow
the milk white netting on the stars when it is not quite day
and we lay between world and world quilt heavy in our antique cribs
and would have counted the purple shadows on the bars
If we could have counted then
How vague- the dimmed green crowns of trees lifted in the outside wind
as if they were friends
we could see through the upper window;
we nestled in.
and suddenly it seemed as if the same dream came to us again
or a sifting of rose petals from the grandfather’s garden
and the snow was falling over us and we understood
Its heart its heart is the crystal in our Mama’s necklace
and we were comforted..
mary angela douglas 5 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
March 25, 2021 at 11:05 am
NOT THE FRAIL BUD SHAKEN IN THE WIND
not the frail bud shaken in the wind
the small cloud scattered no one will mend
the sparrow frozen at midnight
nor all our faded once upons
can be unaccounted by You
feeling every tremor in every blade of grass and weeping
keeping it all in your Keeping
until the vicious storms have passed.
mary angela douglas 25 march 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
April 10, 2021 at 12:31 pm
WHERE WE SHOULD NOT VENTURE
I was weeping stones not pearls
the Princess in retrospect signed;sighed
and the winds came up and puffed their angelic
faces into the maps that marked the territories
where we should not venture
in the ruins of the Beautiful Voice
but stop our ears the charlatans advised
where we should not venture
the voices have been stilled against, against their wills
the marauders have wept into lace handkerchiefs
feigning everything;
the masquerades, an accomplished fate.
I haven’t signed on to the Carnival Time
she said casting plastic beads into the creek
oh let the ship with rubies in the hold awake
let God tear the mask off the Word
I am devastated by the waste places
worn out from stone cold enterprise
adrift in the kingdoms of straw:
let the gold show through let the eglantine
let the music of birds softly rhyme;
redeem the trodden lilies
o my retrograde singing
mary angela douglas 10 april 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 14, 2020 at 4:14 am
THEY ALWAYS SHOOT THE WENDY BIRD
for J.M. Barrie
they always shoot the Wendy Bird when they get to that
part in the play
the lost boys in the never land of my recurrent days.
I wish I could write it another way
I wish that I could straighten the seams
but the scene plays out.
in every dream.or matinee.
maybe it’s just that they’re too tired
or that they had too much to eat
overfilled on sweets and stories with elaborate endings.
lost in a pirate pretending.
too blind from the glare on the green blue lagoon
sooner or later she will plummet in blue
her pink sash immaculate;fair ribbons streaming
and I will awake locked out of dreaming
murmuring on the lawn
how long how long
can this go on?
they always shoot the Wendy Bird
their eyes full of sudden tears
and then they say
they never meant to.
and this occurs for years.
mary angela douglas 13 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
March 25, 2021 at 11:30 am
CARTOGRAPHY
long have I poured over sundry maps and strange
detailing the way to take in the old forgotten tales
which way to the crone in the forests whom
you do a good turn for who in turn makes it happen
that the kingdom goes to you for a well answered riddle
men had died for;or been lost at sea
for the pealing bell that echoes that echoes the wishing well
echo location dipped in gold, all the answers falling like snow
for the bread and cheese that can never grow low
the best there is, as rations go
despite months, even years of meandering.
not at any auction would I give them up
the singing kettle or the loving cup
the mound in the grass that will lead into
the fairy chambers, the healing of the World.
mary angela douglas 25 march 2021
thomasbrady said,
March 27, 2021 at 1:52 pm
Your poetry needs to be sprinkled over the planet, Mary.
maryangeladouglas said,
March 28, 2021 at 9:58 pm
Just so long as it isnt the ashes of it. Thank you Tom. Like the morning dew. For hope. I hope. And beauty. At least the way I saw it, see it still. Many thanks for the kind thought.
maryangeladouglas said,
November 17, 2020 at 6:45 pm
ON VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY
perhaps there were embattled angels in his features
some saw from the corners of their eyes at that first press conference
the angel delivered from a hell more furious than Dante’s
I dont know
a suprahuman messenger or a bent wing with a searing eye
unaccountable humor; a cat. forget all that.
basically at 76 called home wherever people like that go
when the trump sounds.
the one that comes for all as Donne noted.
emperor and king.
our best men.
our best men.
obituaries said so little.
of the man seeking judgement in Moscow
the man some said who loved rose trees
friends. what he meant by friendship some know.
Jesus of Nazareth…better love than this…
building castles in all that spare time.
spare time.in between tortures and reports.
multiple inanities. East and West alike.
how far the human heart can drag itself
the lips slaked from no thirst still speaking
to the snow blind tone deaf carnival elites
so little time to understand what is in man.
to be defamed as a saint.
how to fling yourself in the fire again when you have no limbs left
to speak of; psychologically, spiritually speaking
how a being like that ever got here in the first place.
was sent here.
survived. beyond survival itself.
bore witness. prevailed. kept hammering the nail.
you explain if you can all those prating of the Russian dissident movement. this unusual orphan of moral rectitude the Idée fixe
how an avenging angel fell to earth whimsical; quizzical,
all too human. puncturing the Wound
a continual crystalline self willed falling on the sword of Truth
an anguish of gold and incorruptible weeping, hemorrhaging
and did what he did irrevocably.
with nothing left unsaid.
mary angela douglas 17 november 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
March 29, 2021 at 8:02 pm
THAT I MAY FIND
whatever princess it may be this time
from what foreign tale or bleak design
suddenly flecked with gold I’ll glimpse
the delicate slippers mired in the mud
and she is at the crossroads again
halfway exiled from the castle
on her way to who knows when
what life is this recorded that holds
neither history nor science nor anything
in the proven realms
and yet still seems to me the shred of a kind
of reality familiar from our birth the partially lifted veil
the key to life on earth
and catching the threads as best I can
I’ll wander on the journey planned
in some mysterious way run off the rails
that I may find long last, the one true Dale.
mary angela douglas 29 march 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
December 20, 2020 at 3:19 pm
SOUNDING THE CHANNEL
“Though I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am nothing.’ from 1 Corinthians Chapter 13,The Holy Bible, King James version.
forgive me if I speak in dreams not of my own devising
that they just come to me that way and furnish the lock but no key and am sometimes rather cloudy
not clear in my meaning it isn’t that I don’t care if you understand
it’s just that the visionary is beautiful to me and a country long sought I don’t know how to live any other way in any other place
caught between worlds unable
to tie my shoelace on the common pavement
forgive me I know I ought to consider always the words of St. Paul
to speak with love or not at all I get carried away by the elaborate and
the beautiful vanishing everywhere around me and I cannot help but mourn
these inscrutable losses.
words are for love, for charity, for kindness most of all. I know this is true.
my Grandmother taught me the Golden Rule but something else as well,
a longing for music and for music in the sound of language as well
and I cannot help it I want the moon of it and the ladder to it as well
as depicted in one of Blake’s etchings, the dear and brave man called mad
because he listened to the voice of God to HIM.
I want to listen for the inward sounding of the channel of which I am only a part;
there are depths and shallows there.
forgive me, everyone, please, for the shallows.
mary angela douglas 20 december 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
December 20, 2020 at 8:47 pm
THE SWARM IN WINTER
“the white bees are swarming” I read in someone’s poem once about the snow
I wish I could remember whose it was or perhaps in an English translation of
Hans Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen” whosever it was it was rich in allusion
it gave back so many things I felt in that season of winter prolonged such a circuitous marvel of engineering,
music surely that would be the image for that Kingdom and the stinging nettle weather and how we were wronged.
and where the ice grew more thickly where we could no longer measure it at the poles,
enduring only another white twilight white night chain of our lack of being any longer
in the bright world the warm world or even just happy
amid the sugar snow, the sweet
maple reductions, left with only compunction
and thus, the sound of everything had become
the white bee swarm of the snow making it all indistinguishable for a long, long while, you know, or you don’t know or you will forget
though it hasn’t happened yet
both hill and fern and the immovable waters.
we could not have settled into that cold. it is always stinging but it became hard to leave
the puzzles behind simple to become entrapped in figuring out to perfection
what really should not matter to us at all. under the thrall of the white bees. the White Queen the numbed and numbered dominions intractable; measuring everything zeros and ones
the white bees swarm and the snows are stinging us repeatedly the summer of clover of cloves has died
each time we contemplate the weather outside and worship it as a god oh solstice solstice the murmuring drones on
no longer can it be called midsommer the heart is a husk that goes on beating while it is sleeting no longer will we
make flower chains and return to our mother with the violet and the honey colored ones
the heart is a blank mariner has set its frozen course in a mechanical diction, dictation with the buzzy buzz words
spurious meticulous nation reducing all music to a single drum
and cannot love and cannot remember the sun, the roses! Gerta cried the purple onions, or any one
because “the science has moved on” in stupefied impervious gestures
the Queen of all law now
sweeping the data before her; dismissing
the wailing, the waning of the children. elegant. proving everything should be shall be
insensate, without mercy.
Corrected. surpassingly drained of life.
and all of us one rapt field of acquiescence
who have laid down forever, our diamond shields.
mary angela douglas 20 december 2020
thomasbrady said,
December 21, 2020 at 2:13 am
“who have laid down forever our diamond shields.”
maryangeladouglas said,
December 21, 2020 at 7:03 am
I hope nobody thinks this is about the Environment. Its a retelling of The Snow Queen and a certain emotional climate I feel going on but I certainly don’t intend to acqiesce to. Anyway, Andersen’s Fairy Tale turned out right and we DON’T have to go to sleep in the poppy fields like Dorothy and the lIon almost did in the Wizard of Oz. We DO have free will. And we do have a purpose on this earth no matter how crazy things get. I say so what to the whole thing. We werent given diamond shields for nothing.
thomasbrady said,
December 22, 2020 at 3:51 pm
True, Mary. Today it’s common to take the view that the “environment” is everything, and we are just animals who must obey the environment. Andersen was an only child, never married, and suffered from unrequited love. He lost his father at an early age and had an active, difficult life, like the Grimm brothers, who came from a family of 8 and had to become parents to their siblings. We forget that all these glorious fairy tales (they affected me greatly as a child) belong to the same spirit of 19th Century Romanticism, Poe’s tales, and national literature made for ‘the people.’ The Snow Queen, and other fairy tales (which is perhaps the finest literature of all) has no doubt influenced you. I have never read the Snow Queen, so I shall do so at once.
maryangeladouglas said,
December 25, 2020 at 8:14 am
i have been consciously aware of being influenced by the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen since I could read at all and actively sought to read all of them in the best translations as well as the Brothers Grimm. This is not just a fluke though I know you arent implying that; this IS, like a destiny, like a personal musical signature transposed;it is not a light thing to me at all and the way in which the fairy tales embed themselves into my poems is not something another poet can imitate. . They run like the Mississippi at flood stage through almost all my poetry and they have for decades. My soul is made of them. They are my very real and rock solid inheritance from my mother and my grand parents. And no mistake. Anyway I came by to wish you Merry Christmas, you and everyone at Scarriet.
And to share this poem I wrote through the early Christmas Day dawn:
SOMEDAY MAY ALL LOST ROADS CONVERGE
(to the poet William Butler Yeats)
someday, may all lost roads converge
where we have traveled wearied and alone
a desert to ourselves
no water for a stone.
at times the heralding angels seem to close in
and then and then
that music ripples away
how is it we seem to have gone through centuries this way
and the clock at only 3 who can say
whether afternoon or in the middling night
of the same the same day
still I have tuned the strings of my bent lyre
to the old music, flaking of rose gold; acquired, the
beating of wings against the heavy air o where-
still the same yearning will bud into song
I know it will: only be still
my ancient sorrow that yet without warning we may float
beyond the bounds of music to sing to sing
to Thee to rise from weariness, footsore yet
with inexplicable brightness clothed
like those like those of old
on the brink of Jerusalem and the holy gates
who learned to wait
to find again the pearl of dawn
the rood of the Rose remembered
the earthquake shift on the page
where the birds are jubilant;
the old dreams return.
mary angela douglas 25 december 2020
thomasbrady said,
December 26, 2020 at 4:18 pm
Rhymes and fairy tales, Mary. Looking back, this is what people want from their words. T.S. Eliot had his Cats, Auden, his light verse, Yeats, his rhymes. Weak writers, terrified of sounding too much like “children’s literature,” embraced a frigid modernism of fake sophistication and hollow avant-garde gestures—it’s still going on today, and has been, for over 100 years. Get over yourselves, people. The greatest literature is for the Child. Or the Adolescent, preparing themselves for the Holy War of Feelings.
garybfitzgerald said,
December 26, 2020 at 11:49 pm
God bless Aesop.
maryangeladouglas said,
December 31, 2020 at 7:00 am
THE WORLD EVER KIND
(to my sister with fond memories)
upon the paper doll winsome stage
we reconfigured the fairy tale Age
and dropped a faint coin down the wishing well
that in the retelling was golden golden
the king commanded no spinning wheels
but the rose hedge grew with its thorny briars
and we made of time a silver liar
that a dream could last one hundred years
and on that stage belied the fears
that one day we would go away
and never return through the garden gate
but find our coins unaccepted there
in the world beyond so full of care.
how may we forget the treasured hours
we had such a kingdom
and such high towers
and took turns being the Queen of the flowers
we played the roles to our hearts’ content
and summoned the fairies
and would never relent
dressed in the pink or in the blue
still seeing the happy endings through
back then when we played in or out of school
oh could I find the swan boat still
or live again on the glass glass hills
the amber apples we would find
the sun and the moon and the world ever kind.
mary angela douglas 31 december 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
December 31, 2020 at 7:03 am
I certainly do agree with you about all that Thomas Graves. And you are very brave to point all that out.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 2, 2021 at 12:41 pm
ENTER PIERROT, LAUGHING
dusk falls in sepia tones
as it always does in the vintage photographs
but pierrot is a complex subject even so
is he laughing or crying
will you ever know the pinwheel effusions of his summer epochs,
his heart that sows white rosebuds
seen from the distance you are sure his smile is real
on closer inspection what does he really feel
no photographers hand will ever reveal
the exquisite task of detecting is it laughter or tears
is it the sun after rain or the other way round a hopscotch falling to the ground a lamentation of coloured chalks in the photograph he’s out for a walk in infinity and his silk shoes wont ever touch the wire; what was it you aspired to;. a long time ago I played la Pollichinelle on the piano.
no one would believe it now. how I paint in imagination’s gallery
his lavender tears, the small smile of extravagant sorrows.
perceptive angels, hear him! I am too far away. mary angela douglas 1 april 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
April 2, 2021 at 7:46 pm
FADE LIKE A PEARL I WHISPERED
I always provide a sunset for each poem
at least I try: to keep for you the vestige
of a raspberry sky.
that you won’t feel the passage of time
just an opaline glow no need to know
where the meanings start to fizz
above a lemon ridge
or it begins to snow, obscuring the clouds.
the new moon phase…a light green vow;
fade like a pearl I whispered
to a word or two, a phrase
or else maintain in the lavender:
a constancy of blue.
hilltop or plain with rose endued or in
fragrant, the departing rains
the coloured lights will dim
to candlelight, within.
mary angela douglas 2 april 2021
thomasbrady said,
April 3, 2021 at 4:03 pm
there’s a magical light in your poetry, Mary….
maryangeladouglas said,
April 5, 2021 at 6:48 pm
Thank you Thomas Graves;I do feel that way when I write certain phrases. Not by design;it just happens. I think if you tried to make that happen through an act of will the light would just float off. You can’t summon it any more than you can summon the sun or the moon. It just shows up.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 5, 2021 at 7:00 pm
It seems to start with a feeling neither here nor there;in a dimension without headlines.
ALONG THE BORDER
I was planting irises along the border
the border of what perhaps the angels queried;
or my old teachers, coming to the point;
the villagers in the dream, coming back from the fishmonger’s
with the fish with the golden scales untidily wrapped
the border I said thinking they should know about that already
my border neither sun nor sky the indelible, the violet winds of it
words drifted away on oh not again I cried
not at this temperature
how could I say what I meant then
that orphaned in an amethyst light
that everything in the story
would come out right in the end
or explain to them who were counting the cost of butter
the need I have for clarity, not for stones,
I’m not alone! I cried.
I know that it was Easter, Easter Day
over the wall I heard the bells I heard the pearled bells say:
stay O stay and I hung on;
I felt the dark trees sway
I smiled then my best wavering
smile it will be alight in a little while;
I said
when the skies are flowering.
we will cut the bread
and halve the little oranges.
mary angela douglas 4 april 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
November 24, 2021 at 4:05 am
NIGHT LIGHT AT CHRISTMAS
TO MY DEAR SISTER SHARON AT CHRISTMAS AND ALWAYS
keep a candle in your heart
when it gets scary in the dark
and keep o keep your Christmas glow
like Eloise, that hint of snow that jingle jangle
very merry way of living, chocolate cherry
recall our trees with bubble lights, the color wheel
the angel flights and angel abra carousels
and all the reasons to be well
dismissed from school, the final bell
and then released to Christmas vacation
to all the sugarplum decorations
pine cones painted silver and gold
happy at home long days and nights
free to follow our heart’s delights
remember when the snow was new
and with our Gramp the snow igloo
we built and lived in for a bit
then went inside for peppermint
ice cream, frothy in the bowl and crunchy candy
good you know; brazil nuts, oranges, gold doubloons,
stuffed in our stockings in the living room
petit fours on a delicate plate
and oh how hard it was to wait!
and how our Poochum sparkled around
and tore the wrappings with puppy bounds
and in the window from the front
the sweet nativity light we sought,
beckoned us home from the angel pageants…
it seemed so real the Christmas star
shining over our backyard
that’s how I feel, how I felt then
remember starshine on the wind
remember carols from Goodyear
the Holly Ball, and dollies dear and books galore
and wondrous wonders how happy we were
the Yuletide bright when Mama sang oh Holy Night
and Grandmother hugged us very tight
and most of all in the manger crib
we felt that baby Jesus lived
and was our friend and loved us so
our Saviour like a Christmas rose:
oh keep, o keep your Christmas glow.
and every glint of long ago
for it is really all we know and all we needed
ever to know of Heaven.
mary angela douglas 23 november 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
November 25, 2021 at 4:25 am
RESTLESS
Our hearts are restless, till they rest in Thee
St. Augustine
sometimes the heart must find rest
from all the questions that it cannot guess
from the quest that keeps falling apart
sometimes the heart runs out of homelands
is tired of taking a stand
is a nameless guest at a nameless feast
and can eat nothing
it will starve watching only the night skies
waiting for signs
oh that it could rest from all contrariness
that it could find a home under the small ferns
where it would be always, Spring.
mary angela douglas 24 november 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
November 26, 2021 at 12:36 am
I know I have totally messed up the chronology of this thread but since I already have and many times over, I just wanted to wish everybody at Scarriet a Happy Thanksgiving Night and I am grateful for Scarriet among my many reasons to be grateful. I love T day food but my fam was never big on Thanksgiving. My grandmother who raised me was NOT a cook she was a piano teacher so we would get invited over to my Grandmother’s friend Elizabeth Huckaby to eat T day and she was my mother’s former English teacher and later a vice principal for girls at the infamous Central High School in Little Rock and a rather Ps and Qs lady. So T day made us nervous. But Elizabeth and her husband Glen shot their own turkeys and she made really good gooseberry and muscadine jams. She was also famous as the vice principal most sympathetic to the black children who integrated Central High School in 1957, she later wrote a book on it and single handedly preserved all historical evidence of the time that came her way as to how the students were treated. She was a kind lady ar heart but she could really pin your ears back as they used to say so my sister and I never really liked Thankstiving. All the other holidays we stayed at home for just us and we loved that. Grandmother loved Elizabeth and considered her her best friend. But she would always say when we got home “I dont know why her turkeys are always so dry.” I dont know why that makes me laugh now, but it does.
maryangeladouglas said,
December 13, 2021 at 4:37 pm
IN WINTER
(for Gustav Holst)
earth are you haunted with the ghosts of leaves
the oblivion of deep snows
the crumbling of crimson and of gold
and do you mourn them yet, repeatedly,
for centuries after
how long is your widowhood tuned
so far from Junes to the tuning forks of trees
shorn of it all.
yet birdsong remains the same
or seems to or do migrational anomalies
indicate otherwise when silent and of one accord
the birds in flocks arise to no sure enterprise
and icing begins on the ponds and various scenery.
how beauty flies so many have testified
surely the children of men
have company in their laments
long after Time is spent;
the company of the wild things who cannot flee;
the plants, withering where they are.
the Northern star; the taciturn, other planets.
mary angela douglas 13 december 2021
thomasbrady said,
December 17, 2021 at 1:49 pm
I can hear Holst’s music in your words, Mary!
maryangeladouglas said,
December 18, 2021 at 6:11 am
Thank you so much, Tom. That is a wonderful thing to say and I know if anyone can hear music through poetry, it would certainly be you.It IS you. That infinitude.
Mr. Woo said,
May 26, 2016 at 11:59 am
Ben Howard’s Esmerelda
One of the best singer-songwriters working today.
thomasbrady said,
May 28, 2016 at 12:39 pm
Thank you, Mr. Woo. Ben Howard is good.
I wish I had a good studio and the means to make a great recording and a great video. All I have for the songs I write and play and sing is a phone:
Mr. Woo said,
May 28, 2016 at 8:23 pm
Yeah, cool video, huh. Studio-That would be nice. One day perhaps…
Always enjoyed the lo-fi sound myself, a la Neutral Milk Hotel and that weird indie crowd.
“Sarah”– Love it.
noochness said,
April 6, 2021 at 8:51 pm
The original version, digitized from a cassette tape
thomasbrady said,
April 9, 2021 at 3:34 pm
https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCCX49XNH_1DvgAxVlNVm5mw
A “covid song” I wrote and recorded a year ago…
Nothing To Do With You “I thought I might be crazy, perhaps a touch of the flu; I felt a little dizzy; nothing to do with you.”
Mr. Woo said,
October 2, 2016 at 11:09 pm
Relistened to this album over the weekend. Keith Zarriello is my favorite troubadour working today. Had to share. Incredible. Worth a listen.
noochinator said,
February 23, 2018 at 12:19 am
Speaking of “heart”, this 2017 gig by a Heart cover band features a guest appearance by original Heart lead guitarist Roger Fisher. The Fisher King comes out around the 41:20 mark:
noochinator said,
April 3, 2018 at 5:32 pm
Speaking of heartbreak, here’s an excellent interview from 2004 with David Cassidy:
http://www.lovebookvampire.com/Other_novels/I_Think_I_Love_You/22.html
maryangeladouglas said,
October 20, 2019 at 2:13 am
FOR HAROLD BLOOM, PASSING AWAY OCTOBER 14 2019
the ghost of Autumn flits and you are no longer here but there
who thought it fit that you should cease now
has left the door open
and the classroom not so empty somehow
we wonder where you are
and hope you land
on the nearest star
and that you are welcomed
in the House of the poets you praised
your friends, mentors who passed away before you
the marvels of so many days, ages, epochs saved
oh nothing is in vain
despite all damning with reluctant praise
that you endured
how glad we are that you were here
and pray you’re in a kinder sphere.
mary angela douglas october 19 2019
thomasbrady said,
November 11, 2019 at 2:22 pm
Harold Bloom died in October. We know
This was the month which took Edgar Allan Poe.
There was a strange animosity in Bloom’s work
Towards Poe.
At times, everyone’s a jerk.
Sometimes, even the wisest just don’t know.
maryangeladouglas said,
November 16, 2019 at 2:53 am
It is for certain, Thomas Graves, you are the true champion of Mr. Poe.
maryangeladouglas said,
May 9, 2020 at 10:57 am
One of the most beautiful American art songs in my opinion is this setting of Poe’s Annabel Lee sung by Joan Baez when she still had that crystalline voice. https://youtu.be/CY1PFjbKsLk
maryangeladouglas said,
October 9, 2020 at 4:02 pm
THE GHOSTS OF MY GESTURES FADE
Sometimes I feel I am peering through a one way mirror
into the faces that I see into certain gestures into time that falls
away as petals from the flower of them as shafts of sunlight from the darkening trees
I can see all these I can feel in each detail the scent of snow or sudden hail spiced mold of leaves the antique rose the parboiled
fairy tale making do for dinner
and yet
there is no echo back not even a tapping on the glass.
the orange studded with cloves I made my Grandmother for Christmas Past
only the sense that I am acknowledged long enough for my answers to be copied onto someone else’s paper’or marked
“present” as a necessary foil
it baffles me. Looking out;fending within and wondering
is my planet shrinking; fixed in its untwinkling
my orbit negligible now;am I the ghost of my ghost somehow and was I
really ever tangible here in a walk on part later cut from the scene
admiring the rainbow oilspots on the carports;bicycling
or do my footprints disappear in the vast snows in advance
of their accumulation forgoing all that gleaming fine is sugar snow
that cannot blow on earth updrafting into the ozone
and are my words patched through this seeming
beyond all I ever felt or knew crumpling their meteoric trace
straightening their errant crowns at last beyond this place
sucked through an unmarked door perhaps
by angels finishing up their malteds or where dreams cannot lapse
into the dimestore looking glass of the world
nor waves nor gulls at sea nor meaning as I first believed it
bypassing this dimension entirely
weary from invalidations crowding the puzzle years and
seeking only God.
mary angela douglas 8-9 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 10, 2020 at 1:43 am
STEPPING ONTO THE TERRACE WHERE THE NIGHT FLOWERS BLOOM
let us pause this moment in the moonlight
stepping onto the terrace where the night flowers bloom
and in a younger mood, remember how the evening breezes then
seemed a composite music only you could hear.
then the ear was pearl and delicately tuned to the greening world
and you read St. Francis, canticles, the hymns to the Sun.
how far away it seems the lapping at that shore.
a farther distance than could ever be traveled again
even with the old maps laid straight before you.
and the routes marked ‘here’.and the exits, ‘when’
hold onto it somehow, in the fleeting, the sweet recalled
the mirage of how the stars appeared to you all
flaring and shooting off wistful sparks and clear:
into the deeper, labyrinthine fears where God’s still presence
still IS. and the fizz of memory is glad.
we will pick the rose colours from out of the sky
and fold them within and cease from tears.
the heart is lined with them
the heart is lined with them!
even after long years.
mary angela douglas 9 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 10, 2020 at 1:51 pm
YET YOU ARE STILL MY MOON
yet you are still my moon the immortal poet whispered
after all those launches from the Cape
the thunder of rockets in the afternoons
and that this dissipates we have found too true
after the circus novelties of all the landings.
still I see you floating in a sea of darkness
silver in the same way
weaving yourself through clouds so far away
though they have charts now
mapping every crater
and your invisible lakes
still elusively I trace
in fitful Spring
the changeless enigma of your changing face
even more mysteriously there.
and everywhere.
and I wonder how any footprint was laid against
your firefly dust.
still I see you white silver at best or rust in autumns
past counting
courting the blue shadows or in the rose
and rare appearances that you make
incalculably aloof
in bright residue and reserves
shining on my roof, above this earth
and flowing through my open shade
making lilac pools upon the midnight floor.
we hold conversation as before
Muse and musing; gardenia silence above
the milky avenues
and every word is minted new…
because, because of you
in cloud languages and the night bird songs
and me so small with this eternal childlike aching in my heart
that you alone impart
how can I tell them it is still you swimming in the dark
fish beyond catching
lingering strangely in chalk grazed daylight like a token
still the out of reach floating above the peach trees
and that they have not found you at all.
mary angela douglas 10 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 11, 2020 at 9:08 am
CANDLE
surely you are the candle that cannot be put out Lord God
the vast candle of the sun that lights the earth the only One
the small candle in my soul lit from my beginning
surely You are always winning pushing the darkness back
and on my foggy track the beckoning and the lighthouse
where I dream
I dream of refuge always knowing you are there
in any turmoil, movement toward despair
one shaft of light from star or sun
and I am overcome and hear you say
throughout my day however long and lengthening lengthening into night
Let there be light and light and light
mary angela douglas 11 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 13, 2020 at 2:23 pm
THE THIRD PERIL GEORGE WASHINGTON SAW IN A DREAM
this is the peril of the sleeping eye
that continues to watch you when you think its not
because you wont observe the semi transparent lid
least of all bow down to it
you imagine you are free
but the machine takes notes on your behavior
passing them out in the street, in the general assemblies
and hums in reverse telling the faculty everything
the machine trains its own
a thousand thousand knowing the part they play
in the coexistence of everything
in the shattering of the individual
the parties for the eclipse of the Sun
are you everyone now
have you made that much progress
have you converted the bushes too
the furniture
you are encamped against the encampment of the Lord
against the angelic worlds and the court of Heaven
we can leaven our bread again
the Lord can tell us where to flee
you aren’t as prevelant as you engineer yourself to be
and you wont engineer me
what can I say to you oh calculating universe
you wont make up in time you with your vast armies of new recruits
snow blank as hell
I have been watching you too
I know how you garble the secrets you think you know
and cast aspersions even on the roses.
on everything ever felt
or known
eavesdropping on my silent prayers.
who are you are you there
will you be there a long time
collecting evidence against no crime
whatever you do, do quickly
Jesus said.
you didnt kill him either.
mary angela douglas 13 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 18, 2020 at 11:23 am
silver sheep jump over the stile
and I am soaked in moonlight
for a little while this is a dream
and a radio telescope one
or so it will seem to me
back in the sun
counting the taffeta shadows on the grass
ah if only then it were the past
and the corsage moon pinned to the embroidered dark
and I in love with a silver tune
or is it a ruby lark
I cant get out of my heart my head
writing a pastorale instead
mary angela douglas 18 october 2020.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 18, 2020 at 11:27 am
TITLE of the previous poem surprise surprise is SILVER SHEEP.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 18, 2020 at 9:02 pm
GHOST TRAIN
are we the ghosts of You, the vestiges
that we should flit so dimly lit between worlds
and uneasy;sad puzzle piece! where will we fit
unless we find the puzzle scattered as we are
lost between sod and star
how shall we homeward be
unless we take the train marked Christ
remembering Thee
even if the long journey through we only
stare at the rain soaked fields but then we weep
when coming into view we see we see
intensely green, the welcoming trees of Eden
mary angela douglas `18 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 12, 2020 at 4:25 am
THE PICNIC AT THE END OF THE WORLD
shade two hills with green chalk
the pink sun setting between them
in a deeper hue
there will be me and you and all the people we used to know
gathering there like in the old hymns
singing the rest beyond the river
fried chicken on a chequered cloth, three kinds of cake
one pink, german chocolate, a coconut cake with a single cherry
in the middle
lots of cold drinks soft chatter
potato salad in every variation known
and lemonade the pink and gold
to wash it down.
beulah land sweet beulah land
the chorus will rise
beyond the river we will rise as well
leaving the basket behind.
and the pickle relish.
mary angela douglas “12 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 12, 2020 at 4:35 am
maryangeladouglas said,
October 13, 2020 at 11:35 pm
RED BANNER ON THE HORIZON
who can still be in love with the banner on the horizon
with its lipstick slash of red its tedium
I’m not
happy to see it back again.
hoisted aloft by trusting neophytes
whose hearts are they using this time
whose valentine cut outs whose early deaths.
red the colour of a dance dress maybe once
a Christmas color
something of gaiety a holiday declared
the ribbon you wear when you feel happy
a child’s crayon.the favored one
not this red. nyet.
there it is again a recurring nightmare.
stupidly portentous in the fog
can’t someone go out in the rain
and bury it
so no dog can possibly dig it up again.
mary angela douglas 13 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 13, 2020 at 10:18 pm
SABOTEURS
to those who go around blowing up bridges because
maybe they’ve seen too many war movies
and want to hear the sound of things falling apart
the screech of brakes on the train
well what words can be said.
get a better hobby?
the bridge will hold.
the trestle too.
it was all made of clouds anyway.
clouds disperse.
something that floating can’t be wounded.
it must be good to be clouds.
to be the reflections in the water.
we will stand there a moment
counting the water lilies in the painting
melting into their colours as if we were rippling rain.
now I am violet
now I am pale green. the dark iris smudge of ink.
now I am far from the simulated wars
and saboteurs
the golden rattle of peaches
the winesap bruising of apples in unnatural windfall
in the orchards of beauty in extremity
o my soul.
mary angela douglas 13 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 15, 2020 at 8:15 pm
NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY
I think it’s so great you don’t have to call God’s secretary
to make an appointment or see if he can fit you in.
You dont have to go downtown to his huge office
and wait uncomfortably by the magazines and the hundred thousand others
waiting their turn dressed a whole lot better than you are
to finally hear the receptionist say without even making eye contact:
The One Who Made The Stars Also Will See You Now.
and then you dont have to go in there to his office I mean
and there he is still on the phone with someone really gold plated important
can you imagine?
you don’t have to feel nervous when he gets off the line finally
and keeps looking at his incredible humongo wristwatch with the moon and stars also
emblazoned on it in blinding mother of pearl
while you are talking trying to get through to him
and you dont have to shift uncomfortably in your chair.
Nobody makes you curtsey to him or wear long gloves.
you dont even have to wait until he finishes dinner to get up from the table.
so when people try to make you feel small the last one to be
on a need to know basis basis
the most non essential employee ever in everland
just think:
I can talk to the King of Heaven
right now silently invisibly even while you’re smirking at me
or holding your nose
and the RECORDING ANGEL IS WRITING IT ALL DOWN,
mary angela douglas `15 October 2020😊
maryangeladouglas said,
October 15, 2020 at 8:19 pm
REF IN THE POEM TO ONE OF MY FAVORITE ALMOST THROW AWAY LINES IN THE BIBLE GENISIS 1:16….he made the stars also. The whole universe as an afterthought of God.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 15, 2020 at 7:41 am
HOW IS IT YOU HAVE LINED ALL THINGS WITH LIGHT
how is it You have lined everything with light Lord God
so that no matter what befalls us there is still a way home
as if you foresaw every impossible known emergency
happening to us
providing the needle and thread, the silver thimble too.
and every war long in advance of its breaking out
all upheavals you have rendered useless by your Glory
by your hidden streams. your indirection.
so that even in our weeping
a provisionary sorrow gleams and
there is something glistening
so that even in your shadow, even if we should vanish from the earth
there is a plum darkness
where a lone bird sings.
mary angela douglas 15 october 2020
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
October 17, 2020 at 3:34 am
I wanted MAD to send this poem to me before I even read it, and I shipped something back to her professing my love for her as i stared at the freckles on her shoulders:
Ok> why do I have to handle
the flaccid flesh
Whoa
to pee,
Lord, help me
flip it upside down
like it’s some kind of tool-
on the other side of town
I want to use its like it’s its.
Chado said,
January 3, 2021 at 2:00 pm
Dude you were drunk when you penned this one . . .
maryangeladouglas said,
November 16, 2019 at 2:22 am
IF AN ANGEL CAME
for Harold Bloom
if an angel came
came to the door and wept
keening the disappearing
of the lovely bequeathed
with a look less blazing
and in a haze of sorrow
why wouldnt it be believed
what we have seen, I have seen
the poets relegated to the ash heap
who might as well have been the ones
to invent the lyre;
to such an extent
the heart is misrepresented now
and their date is expired
it is generally understood.
by those lost deeper into Dante’s wood
but in my heart a rebel notion rises
I am not loth to express
and you can take the rest
of the dystopian martyrs the ones
who stress less is more when it is only less
because perhaps I am sorry to say
they are just not up to the task themselves
yet still I will bless Shakespeare
Keats, Yeats, Rilke and all the rest I learned
in green years past;
that is the Heaven I would live in
unsurpassed where words strike sparks
and there is life enobled, unbidden
to defend itself established in the Living Word
unwilling to leave Paradise even if the herd requires it
refusing to go, preparing in all I know to stand forever so,
forever toward Eden gazing.
mary angela douglas 15 november 2019
maryangeladouglas said,
January 25, 2020 at 7:19 pm
THE APOTHEOSIS OF JOHN KEATS
o bright ascension!
still to our untuned ears you play
the unheard melodies beyond the ragged cough
of the every day
the blood on the kerchief showing death is near
but still but still the nightingales hold sway
captive in your rain soaked gardens and glad to be singing
in the mulberry branches of your poems your fervid dreams
the ecstacy of timbrels cool quiet of the lilies.
what was the wine press of your soul to leave
such shattering odes at the door of death for
who can transpose in our day even one degree of your
measure
perfect as it is. the pearl of forever.
the embroidered lines grow wings and would depart
such was your art transfiguring but something, someone bids them stay
to remind us in a minimal age nothing beautiful can die
when it was made that way.
mary angela douglas 25 january 2020
Desdi said,
February 9, 2020 at 6:29 pm
Didn’t know where else to post this. Blew me away.
Forgive me if you have already seen it:
noochinator said,
February 10, 2020 at 8:54 am
Kid’s a natural!
Pop Leibel (@Pop_Leibel) said,
February 10, 2020 at 6:41 pm
Wow, she is!
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
February 11, 2020 at 12:22 am
Never believed in reincarnation but apparently John Bonham has returned!
noochinator said,
February 11, 2020 at 9:38 pm
Aerosmith decided Joey Kramer is a joker—
But who needs him if they have Yoyoka?
noochinator said,
February 11, 2020 at 9:46 pm
Desdi said,
February 12, 2020 at 5:33 pm
Talk about “ecstasy of timbrels” !
thomasbrady said,
February 11, 2020 at 12:55 pm
I heard Beethoven and Mozart had very fast fingers.
But composition is everything.
noochinator said,
February 13, 2020 at 9:49 pm
Here’s a song the kid wrote:
maryangeladouglas said,
April 9, 2020 at 4:59 pm
SOUP BONE
everyone feeds off the poor
the last major soup bone for the universal cure.
those who advocate, those who legislate
those who sleep too late
those who castigate, those who confliscate,
those who berate and berate and berate and
those who open the gate
to so many plagues on them
they cannot be numbered
all in the game of
stealing so much thunder.
and in the silent auctions
getting it all back and with interest.
some even get awards.
some play a few Grammy winning chords.
some make budgets for them
while they’re living out of doors.some
get their names up in lights
pretending to befriend them
and perhaps this is
the saddest sin ;but
they, each one disinherited in a singular snowflake way
inherit also Christ speaking to them in beautiful riddles
on a hillside in Spring.
mary angela douglas 9 april 2020
Desdi said,
April 10, 2020 at 12:56 am
I like this poem. It is a sort of beatific rap.
thomasbrady said,
April 10, 2020 at 1:16 pm
Good poem, Mary.
Nice, Desdi. I think you’ve coined a phrase. “Beatific Rap.”
maryangeladouglas said,
April 10, 2020 at 4:21 pm
I have nothing to do with rap. That is a total distortion.
Desdi said,
April 11, 2020 at 7:11 pm
Oh relax and enjoy a complement you silly poetess.
Happy Easter/Resurrection too.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 12:04 pm
Your calling me a silly poetess does not make me one. Your calling me a rap artist no matter what adjective you put in front of it does not make me one. You certainly well know I am not from that tradition;you certainly know I dont even like that tradition. And I am well aware of the ‘complimints” you give and why you give them. Jesus Christ called me to be a poet and that is what I am doing. And there is nothing silly about that at all. Your smirkiing, overfamiliar, arrogant, tedious witicisms over years at the expense of me and my poetry certainly do not honor Christ;nor Easter either. Look to your own house and leave mine alone.
garybfitzgerald said,
April 12, 2020 at 7:04 pm
Mary:
You should come down off your high horse. For such a devout Christian you seem to have an issue with humility.
Maybe you should re-read the Sermon on the Mount.
Happy Easter
Gary
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:18 pm
You guys are full of abuse. You have no right to slander my character or my poetry. Take your abuse and shove it where the sun dont shine brother. And I do use the term brother very loosely. I never attacked anyone on this website yet I have been subject to random and vicious abuse for all lhe years I have been here. Go whet your butter knives on something else you bunch of Neanderthal Lords of the Flies. I know what your game is. And so by the way, does my Father in Heaven who has seen it all before. And is not impressed.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:36 pm
WHEN DID I EVER ATTACK YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD POETRY AND YOUR POETRY GARY? WHEN? I had nothing but praise for your poems. You and Andrew and the Nooch or the pooch or whomever can all take all your little staged nights of the long knives against me to hell with you. Although I admit the Nooch has been tres civilized for a long time now. Unless you chose to behave differently. I wash my hands totally of all of it. You didnt attack me because I am prideful. You attacked me because you think I am a soft target. But I am not.
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:42 pm
You are incorrect. First, I didn’t “attack” you or your poetry. Let me put it another way. You shouldn’t lower yourself to their level.
Shrug it off!
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:45 pm
It must have been your evil twin then.
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:53 pm
I guess he was talking to your insecure twin.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 9:59 pm
You just proved QED every single thing I said before.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 10:09 pm
My near twin is a Leo.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 10:45 pm
Gary i have seen you come out swinging quite a few times when you felt someone mischaracterized your poetry and I felt you were in the right to do so. Maybe the whole world doesnt take us seriously but so what. We SHOULD take our own work seriously if we are doing it at all. And we shouldnt allow people to say anything the hell they want to about it.. Thats all I was doing and that’s all Im saying.. I am not a rap artist. Period. Not by any stretch. And I sm most definitely not a “silly poetess”. I didnt come to Scarriet to be a figure of fun or made fun of in any way. I am a serious poet and I take poetry seriously and not only my own but that of others too and the whole history of poetry going back as far back in time as you can gp and going forward as well… I dont want to be treated like an idiot. And I have zero tolerance for it. Andrew was, as he often is, way out of line. I will call it like I see it. Everybody else here does.Why should I be the exception and let myself be turned into a carnival target.For what purpose.
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
April 12, 2020 at 11:24 pm
Fair enough. But every poet has critics. You shouldn’t let it get to you, especially if they have no credentials.
Sometimes criticism can actually be a compliment.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 12:14 am
You have a good way of looking at it. And I do think your poems have great value. I have had a millenium load of bitter criticism in my life from many different directions in every decade of life and sometimes within those decades every month of every year and Im just fed up with any of it at this point. It is never helpful and it is damaging. I dont see any justification for it at all.Especially the criticism that comes disguised as a compliment or suddenly veers into personal attacks and derision passed off as teasing.. Just a little too Judas like for my taste. Not talking about you. Anyway, we all have less time than we did once to work on our poetry on earth. I guess every bs thing that is ignored buys more time for each of us to do our work and if I could adopt your attitude I know it would be beneficial. In the end we can never control what other people do and say. And its very damaging to health to try.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 12, 2020 at 10:53 pm
As my grandmother used to say, quoting good old American anonymous: “Your freedom ends where my nose begins.”
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
April 13, 2020 at 1:23 am
This poem of mine may reflect on all of us.
National Poetry Month
Is it truly just coincidence
or maliciously designed conspiracy
that National Poetry Month
should begin on April Fools Day?
For as everyone knows,
though loath to admit,
poetry is but a fool’s game.
Of what use being quickly forgotten
to those who find glory today?
And of what use laurels and honor
to those who live in the grave?
Gary B. Fitzgerald
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 7:51 am
There is still, as the Russian Poet Pushkin said in writing and in reading poetry “the secret cherishing of an inner freedom.” but it is strange to me April is National Poetry month due to the oft repeated phrase “April is the cruelest month’. At our local library main branch which has curbside service only know, on their website and o ntheir blog there is currently no mention of National Poetry Month at all anda I am wondering if other cities are also experiencing this. Its like due to the virus National Poetry Month doesnt seem to exist this year. Except of course, thank you Thomas Graves, ON SCARRIET.
Great poem, Gary. But even firefly duration for a poem is something. Something beautiful hopefully.
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 8:02 am
There has been one open mic group in town that kept alive through Zoom with different poets reading online and also one meeting of the NC Poetry Society that was held through Zoom too. Re the open mic Im talking about in Winston Salem, NC. Of course anyone who wants to can read or write poetry every month of the year it just seems weird to me there doesnt seem to be any MENTION from what I can tell publically about it this year. But I dont listen to NPR so maybe there is there. How much actual good National Poetry Month does even in relatively normal times for poetry itself I dont know. I always have loved April as a month and the beauty of April. So personally I liked that was the chosen month. But more and more I dont like overorganized stuff about poetry. I like poetry when it just appears on its own without public requirements.
noochinator said,
April 13, 2020 at 7:18 am
Demons beset my heart and mind
And behavior, hard at work willing my doom—
I try to drive them away, but they return—
The best I can do is to keep them across the room:
maryangeladouglas said,
April 13, 2020 at 11:24 am
Gary, In reference to your previous comment about getting off of my high horse and etc. in my experience the main reason person A requests that of person B is so that person A can more easily beat the crap out of person B. So I dont think that’s such good advice.
Gary B. Fitzgerald said,
April 13, 2020 at 11:11 pm
“Blessed are the meek”
maryangeladouglas said,
April 26, 2020 at 7:15 am
LOVE ONLY JUSTIFIES LOVE
oh God forgive me for rank bitterness
for insults hurled at me from cars for
standing in the rain for hours and being drenched
in the snickering driver’s ill intent
and for my taking offense at everything
oh God bring me in from the rain
from the self accumulated pain
I wont let go of because it seems so unresolved
forgive me for the wounds that just wont heal
for everything I feel when thrashing
through the world’s dense gloom
I know that you have felt it all before
and so much more than I ever could
I know as hard as it may seem
the only feeling I should feel
is Love through you
all this I know
for every blow on blow.
mary angela douglas 26 april 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 1, 2020 at 7:36 am
THE RUSSET HOURS RETURN
we are the ghosts of ourselves sometimes
haunting the precincts where God has told us
in fragmentary gleams
now no longer dwell oh child of light
haunting the ruins where love took flight
be still, the Lord has mazed the mellow moon
in yellow splendor rising above autumnal earth
and banished tombs
and we would seek the richer harvests of His Light
come away from the dimly lighted
staring into the glass and pray;
oh Lord for all that has passed over me like a whirlwind
I do yet praise thee
cancel my haunting here
and let me see the rose dawn rising
over the greening fields.
and feel in the rush of stars from the skies a beautiful shearing;
the russet hours return, when You are near
mary angela douglas 1 october 202
maryangeladouglas said,
October 5, 2020 at 1:53 pm
AND CLOSING OUR EYES WE DREAMED THAT WE WERE SNOW
(a lullaby)
and closing our eyes we dreamed that we were snow
the milk white netting on the stars when it is not quite day
and we lay between world and world quilt heavy in our antique cribs
and would have counted the purple shadows on the bars
If we could have counted then
How vague- the dimmed green crowns of trees lifted in the outside wind
as if they were friends
we could see through the upper window;
we nestled in.
and suddenly it seemed as if the same dream came to us again
or a sifting of rose petals from the grandfather’s garden
and the snow was falling over us and we understood
Its heart its heart is the crystal in our Mama’s necklace
and we were comforted..
mary angela douglas 5 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
October 23, 2020 at 4:53 pm
TO A WRITER DEPARTED
the beautiful chapter goes on
the one you left unfinished
and the ink barely dried on the page
the one you were striving uphill to say
and with each last breath in a craven wind
we cannot and will not read on earth
because you left in the middle of it
did the pages long to fly out the window the door
to follow you there where no man can reach
or child, wishing on a star
the beautiful chapter goes on somewhere else now
where we cant read it not even in a darkened glass
someday when this is past
and we will have learned new alphabets post time and space
we will look it up and never lose our place in the manuscript again:in
the finished chapter on Grace.
mary angela douglas 23 october 2020
P.S.Attribution This poem was inspired by the phrase “the beautiful chapter goes on’ I heard this morning
listening to Christian radio
thomasbrady said,
April 27, 2020 at 4:33 pm
One song which came to my attention recently. Lonely Days. by the Bee Gees. It definitely has a Covid feel to it, and it’s extra heartbreaking to think of the passing of all but one of the brothers Gibb…
noochinator said,
April 27, 2020 at 7:25 pm
Loved that song since the early seven-zeros—
Had it on an 8-track with other music heroes,
Titled “Superstars of the 70s”, a Warners production—
And so rock upon me began its seduction
(That ultimately left me raped and freezin’—
Though now, pushing 60, I’ve regained my reason….)
maryangeladouglas said,
May 14, 2020 at 2:09 pm
QUIXOTE AND THE KNIGHT OF THE MIRRORS
quixote facing the knight of the mirrors…
I dreamed of him last night and the cover of the book
was midnight blue;its spine all lilies.
the horizon was midnight
the way it kept raining forever
the way there could be no rest
the clouds were so opaque
even the Isles of the Blessed
even with the Spanish lanterns.
the lure of the towers
the sweet valedictory hours.
ever the advance guard
Quixote cried so hard.
his tears were gold, como los siglos del oro
and molten, so that his skin cried out
I am the clown of nothing and they
have buried the sun..
his hands falling into petals
the petals falling away.
all that butterfly armour, drifting.
ya no se como luchar;
how can I live this way
with every socket bruised
myself a bruise on the sky
and the sky, fallen into clay.
the heart like a mantle spread.
his fractured shining shadow over the earth.
mary angela douglas 20 april 2020;rev. 14 may 2020
trans. siglos de oro: the centuries of gold, the golden ages;
ya no se como luchar (I don’t know how to fight anymore).
maryangeladouglas said,
October 26, 2020 at 1:09 pm
THE SLIGHTEST THING ON HAND
small as the fairy is, she bides her time
though Time seems a thing most vast
collecting rainwater in a thimble
to make provisions last
feasting on one wild raspberry the winter through.
and though her house is barely thatched
she will make do
with a coats and clark thread of sapphire blue
stitching the porches down
so what if you cant hear a sound
she plays the flute in any weather
and the sparrows understand
small music, muses matter
the slightest thing on hand.
mary angela douglas 26 october 2020
maryangeladouglas said,
November 6, 2020 at 12:24 am
LAMIA QUEEN OF THE WORLDWIDE PROM
“oh what can ail thee, knight at arms…”
John Keats
lamia queen of the world wide prom
if she has three heads or only one
be sure on each is a crown of crowns most succulent
a tendency to draw you in and round you her dire web to spin
blank sparkles in her gaze that’s tracking
everything inside her maze;she owns it all
woven ribbons in her topknot;nothing lacking in
the swish of the gown; three lilies, and the closing bell,
the tilt of the head
oh where can mercy be found among the dead
how much she hides
more than the hydra,
Keats in the withered sedge
surmised as he lay dying, ebbing dreams
queen of the prom universal making the scene
oh mesmerism’s dower; the fly trap poisonous flower
Medusa’s more evil twin
that traps small children in their book of days
and in those eyes on arrogant display
always the calculation rampant wheedling need
for another prize insatiable greed
and a sash to match them
and the darkening sun.
Ave Maria. Kingdom Come.
Spare us from the snakelike ones.
the constricting hour.
mary angela douglas 5 november 2020
Chado said,
November 22, 2020 at 10:15 pm
Definitely missed this one in your “Top Hundred”:
Mr. Woo said,
April 11, 2021 at 1:22 am
A poem published yesterday by Curtis Yarvin. His wife passed a few days ago due to a heart condition.
The Tubmaster
“Never once the rock we carried.”
But let’s be honest and admit that, at the end,
Her standards were slipping. Take the tub:
Cloudy. As I told her sister: starting now,
I must be the tubmaster. But did that start
This week? Memory’s judgment is severe.
It keeps telling me I should have known.
“I’m a playwright, not a housekeeper,” she
Would not have said, though in fact in her
Year’s last life she won some stupid award
In some festival in Leipzig. We’d have gone
But what a year. But what my old teacher, Mark,
Always taught me was that the poem’s stakes
Must be as high as possible. Take yesterday:
I was talking up my geographic perspicacity.
“We can even go to a party in the Bay Area,”
I said. “The other day I drove there and back
Just to kill my wife.” This was too much. Don’t
Say stuff like that. Still, one must consider
The three pillars of forensic culpability:
Propensity, opportunity, and motivation.
My best friend is actually a double widower
(I half expected him to say: “first time?”),
And his third wife the boldest of queens.
Do not we always trust the ones we love?
And—and here, dear reader, we must arrive
At the stakes—how much might you know
About end-stage heart failure? Imagine
Being sucked cold by vampires for years,
Slumping into a grumpy, choking blob
Like a human time-lapse cantaloupe.
Maybe you’re a saint. She was. Yet even
The saints shall find no peace; for hope
And peace are profoundly incompatible.
Every night, the transplant coordinator
Will torture your sleep. Whilst you slowly rot.
At least it doesn’t snap your bones like cancer.
What a world has all our art and artifice made!
The libs are right about some things, you know…
I geeked out at some length with the head
Of the department. He has the lost accent
Of my grandpa. He has been doing hearts
For sixty years. He never stands to lose one.
His theory: her pacemaker wasn’t working.
Hence the fragile right ventricle, already
Grossly distended, just burned itself out
In a bad rhythm, like a redlined engine—
If that also cooked the transmission and alternator.
She was fifty. She looked forty. And not
One of her organs was worth saving. Still,
Had she not won the race? “Like one who runs
For the green cloth, at Verona.” But still
We are dodging the stakes. Exhibit A:
The poem, posted three days prior.
Defendant uses the word “death”
Eleven times. He quotes Blade Runner…
I have asked myself a thousand times
And it’s still April: as far as I knew,
I knew nothing. What did I know? And if—
I even said to her, that Easter evening, “Honey,
Every time you’re on the bathroom floor, it
Turns out badly.” She would not let me
Take her to the ER until three, and then
I could not get her to the car. She was so cold…
“I’m so cold,” she said… so cold and so wet…
The thermometer did not read, nor the pulse ox…
The screen was a tomb… The tomb was empty…
I learned later it was cardiogenic shock.
That was how little I knew, how I tried to know,
How she knew, how she lived, how she needed to live.
I think her liver had been dying for two weeks.
My daughter said later: if she’d been $relative
Every other Facebook post
For ten years would have been about her heart.
On a planet that falls on its knees to the victim
She lived only for her children and her husband.
And she died for us, too. Hence the motivation.
I don’t mean that she planned it, like some ice-queen.
I mean that she was the rock we stood on,
Never once the rock we carried; and until Saturday
She was more or less herself—less attentive, true,
To the many duties of the house. I lost track
Of how often she said: “I’m not your secretary!”
Such a pathetic, unending parade of regrets!
And yet—well, if our little outfit was an army
I was the air force. She was the infantry.
Would you spend two years losing a war
Or two days? Such the scale of the gift…
Those ambulance lights, vanishing down the drive…
The hospital actually changed the rules for us.
First, she couldn’t see her kids. Then, she could.
Higher than hell and artificially inflated
By a million-dollar temporary pump,
But “nodding appropriately” and still all there,
She tried to say “I love you” through the tube.
She tried to write a note but was too weak.
(Isn’t this stuff banal? It will happen to you,
Somehow.) Next they tried a plane ride.
They told me to drive to San Francisco,
But at Donner Pass they called and said
To turn around. They couldn’t stabilize her.
Then a expensive plane ride… as I later
Told the kids, “Mom had already died twice
On Monday…” they sent me home at three.
The chief nurse had choppered in from ‘Nam.
Her name was Kelsey. She was insanely pretty.
And Kelsey, at nine, had been pretty happy,
All things considered—though I did hear
Another nurse telling her: “It just broke my heart
When they couldn’t get her on that plane.”
Kelsey, now a veteran of Khe Sanh,
Said: she’s in the air, but her heart stopped
While we were putting her on the machine. For
How long, I said. For five minutes, she said…
Now I am here in the cloudy tub,
Soaking in the world a dead woman built.
Literally soaking in her: her DNA, if
Cleaved by Oxy-Clean, is in the water.
Where is she not? I see her in the pigeon
On that pole—one tough pigeon
For these trashless, hawk-ridden hills—
The artillery flowers of a desert spring,
The shining white mountains of death
Beneath a timeless and lapidary sky.
thomasbrady said,
April 11, 2021 at 3:17 pm
good one, woo. thanks. “Where is she not?”
(wish I had written ‘Beneath a timeless and lapidary sky’)
Mr. Woo said,
April 12, 2021 at 3:01 pm
You’re welcome, Tom. One of the better prose-poems I’ve read in a while. And yes, he started to sing there at the end. Great line.
maryangeladouglas said,
August 4, 2021 at 11:49 pm
ANTHEMS
(to my Grandparents, in the singing of hymns remembered)
clinging onto the golden hymns and the silver
the amber ones of the first autumns the green and yellow
jonquil hymns the hymns of Easter April appareled
and in December the Christmas carols holding onto music
in this way I remember you my guardians on the way
of childhood, all the guardian loves and how the house was full
at the full then and singing as light and bright and in reveries half lights
and the evening hymns, the hymns of the white dawns
windows streaked with tears of rain or frost and going out again
learning to let go to be far from the glow of home as first remembered
in the singing of hymns, the amethyst slow and stately the folding down
of the griefs in the flower beds and the moon watching, moonlight washing me as I went away
not knowing I was leaving you too except for all that singing and the glow worm stars
oh where, where are you now as if I could bring you lilies and it would be spring again and all of us together again as though nothing
else had ever happened
in the blue promise twilight of the spring, and summer following then, the zinnias planted and
the church filled singing the Sunday noons and the rest of the week
stretching before freshly starched and pressed and put away for so long
now that hearing the old hymns I weep and remember you all.
mary angela douglas 4 august 2021
thomasbrady said,
August 5, 2021 at 10:37 pm
Beautiful, Mary. Wept when I reached “not knowing I was leaving you too” oh God bless us all
maryangeladouglas said,
August 6, 2021 at 11:37 pm
Thank you so much, Thomas Graves. Your depth of understanding is a truly beautiful thing.
maryangeladouglas said,
August 7, 2021 at 9:05 pm
THIS LEMON BAR OF SUNLIGHT
this lemon bar of sunlight cutting across my strawberry rug
in the present day as if to say something concise some distinct irrevocable message
relayed what is it
in perfect diagonal displayed
among the woven strawberry vines
like some kind of annunciation in this summertime, mislaid
so that I must pause and look at it in wonder
and ask of whoever may be listening
is this possible
can light from a long ago day visit us again
I swear that same ray fell upon a childhood rug
with roses woven in the same oval way
while I spoke with my Grandmother after school one day
as we sipped on Cokes and she told me again
not in so many words as in the trilling of the bird
outside her window
how she couldnt understand she would never understand
the death of her young husband at 29.
her eyes grieving in that familiar way.
seem still so brimmed with unshed tears
to me, today.
mary angela douglas 7 august 2021
thomasbrady said,
August 7, 2021 at 9:39 pm
“can light from a long ago day visit us again”
maryangeladouglas said,
August 9, 2021 at 3:27 am
It was a real question. Because I felt like I “recognized” the way the light fell in a very exact and particular way.
Barbara said,
August 8, 2021 at 6:40 pm
This is easily the fluffiest website around. No wonder no one has ever really heard of it. Years ago I would mention it and some people had heard of it. But now it draws blank stares.
Chado said,
August 13, 2021 at 3:47 pm
You don’t say.
And all this time I was sure Scarriet was up there in the top 50 international websites and definitely top 10 for poetry.
Forget it. I’m out.
maryangeladouglas said,
August 11, 2021 at 4:17 pm
SPIROGRAPH
(for Percy Bysshe Shelley)
into a cloud as into an azure shining fly
careening into a star that’s dying
into an orchid mist declaiming this
my muted birds
beyond immortal tree lines
spiraling
daunting in pearl edged mists dissolving
turning in the winds on the last blade of light.
before, before the songless nights.
mary angela douglas 11 august 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
August 21, 2021 at 3:11 pm
ROUND TRIP WITH EMERALDS
in your summer versions of the yellow brick road
you don’t anticipate the snow among the poppy fields
that kind of deliverance
that it may be necessary
to work the will as a not so oiled machine
in service of the heart that’s barely learned to tick
oh let us be wicks together in the emerald world
lit by the grand imagination of a storm induced dream
and gleam ourselves in the finale as though we were citadels
of the light putting the witches of despondency to flight
in favor of the beautiful, the beckoning that we have slowly, circuitously learned
is the endless return to ourselves
we must be shown; braced for the unexpected departures
in trepidation and in grace,
through this strange round trip toward Home
that nothing was ever wasted.and that we were not alone.
mary angela douglas 21 august 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
August 29, 2021 at 2:26 am
Still His wounded memory shines
beyond assessing human crimes
and bearing all is hemorraging in little stars
you call Him quaint if anything at all
and thicken the walls that seem to keep him Out
yet in His tenderness still we live
who doubt His longing to forgive
and laugh to scorn the steps he takes
to every Golgotha for our sakes
yet with each fresh wound Light must grow
that has no other course to go
and tread the way both broken
and Whole.
and tread the way both broken and Whole.
mary angela douglas 28 august 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
August 29, 2021 at 2:29 am
Very sorry;I accidentally left off the title of this poem when pasting it in: the title of this poem is PIETA
maryangeladouglas said,
September 4, 2021 at 4:30 am
GLORIOUS IMPROVISO
glorious improviso
the air after Spring rains, or autumnal
or the fairy tale on the wing as my mama told it to me
in the north and diamond wind and
under the thousand myriad coloured coverlets
of the Princess, tested by the pea.
I will dream again of these things
though I have no darling but God
or only for that reason
of the leaves when they were newly green
when we could turn on a dime in Poetry
even in our sleep and in the blue shade of my sister’s Chopin
rehearse our nostalgias in advance
even when the sugarplum dreams
stopped crowding in
so ornately. of when, of when
there were only heralding angels.
everywhere : the distant sound of chimes.
in Arkansas, the vast stars.
mary angela douglas 3 september 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
August 29, 2021 at 9:08 am
WHEN I AM LOST LIKE THE STRAY PUZZLE PIECE FROM THE BOX (Second Version)
WHEN I AM LOST LIKE THE STRAY PUZZLE PIECE FROM THE BOX
(Second Version)
when I am lost like the stray puzzle piece from the jigsaw
so that I want to climb back into some sky blue preexistence of the
Soul where the perched transparencies of song cannot weep from
my narrow shoulders
as if that could be or hide among the roses there
or in some unclocked in eternal glaze of the evergreen shade
take refuge near the silver of the winter sun
in the drifts between school days and beyond the accounts
or old homework dream
till I see the gleam of your stars Oh Lord when you set them there
before all tarnishing…
let me stay only a little longer in the twilight of all Mays
cast in my blue shadows or in the rose period remembering
fresh chalk and the pastels from the tin unused
knowing the pink blur between the green hills
had to be the rising, not the setting sun.
mary angela douglas 28, 29 august 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
August 30, 2021 at 11:04 am
RAINY SATURDAYS, CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY OF PRISMS
such things to do on a rainy Saturday we children knew
such as thumbing through the dictionary of prisms
the birds of the world in tinted photographs
the spectrum as it all breaks down for the color wheels of the saints
into a thousand thousand Christmas colours at their zenith
and Space as seen in indigo, even in ultraviolet.
this is how I remember Saturday and especially
summer freedoms, the days of the jeweled rains
when telling time
by the rainbows on the wall was superfine as child bright ardour
even in a squall was more than a pastime struck by
the endless refractions of light into magical brinkmanship:
the seed pearl destinations of the dolls
the birds going nowhere
somewhat stationary on the page
but so resplendent, visionary
our book reports on the field guide to the gems
of North America, using every crayon we had.
and how my little sister sparkled in the thought of peridot green
mary angela douglas 29 august 2021
thomasbrady said,
August 30, 2021 at 7:15 pm
“my little sister sparkled in the thought of peridot green”
You manage to come up with at least one immortal line per poem!
maryangeladouglas said,
September 1, 2021 at 4:53 am
Haha. At least. Thank you. In that line I just wrote down how my sister was. My grandfather’s little book on the living room shelf that had some books from each of my Grandparents. We loved that shelf. And that little paperback with extravagant color illustraionts. This was a little field guide to gems. We argued over the merits of the different stones and birth stones but peridot was her favorite and I could see why.But we agreed we loved all the gems and got suckered into buying a necklace from the back of a kid magazine advertisement with so many exclamation marks its a wonder they had room for them all extolling the aurora borealis necklace we could buy so cheaply and we thought it was like a diamond necklace. And in earlier years we actually thought that the dew on the grass in the early morning was diamonds actual diamonds and that if we went out on the lawn quick enough we could gather up al the diamonds and our family would be rich forever. So there are little glints of our “gemology” from childhood scattered throughout several of my poems and this is really not the first mention of cherished peridot.
noochinator said,
August 29, 2021 at 10:23 am
Julie Reimann and Sarah Takagi play the slow mvt. from Rachmaninoff’s Cello Sonata, at The Rice Barn Thai restaurant in Needham, Mass. Note the commuter rail train going by at 6:35!
thomasbrady said,
August 30, 2021 at 6:57 pm
The acoustics work better for the cello. Is this an early work of Rachmaninoff?
noochinator said,
August 30, 2021 at 10:21 pm
Wikipedia tells me it was written in 1901, when Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was 28 or so. A. Volodos transcribed the slow mvt. for solo piano!
thomasbrady said,
August 31, 2021 at 3:49 am
Thank you, a pretty piece. Somewhat uninspired to my ears; dare I say? I don’t hear any progression or real energy. Compared to Chopin or even the more “pop” confections of Debussy, Ravel, Satie, never mind Schubert or the other top masters…well I’m no expert. Pay me no mind. It hints at greater pieces R. would go on to write.
maryangeladouglas said,
September 1, 2021 at 5:01 am
Yay for R. and the Train. Lovely.
noochness said,
September 6, 2021 at 5:33 pm
Pianist Gwendolyn Mok et al. give a lovely perf. of the abovementioned Rach. piece:
And here’s Ms. Mok with a great anecdote about how to deal with group conflict:
thomasbrady said,
September 9, 2021 at 12:04 pm
Grape nuts without milk! Ha ha. How could he say Chopin and R. wrote best for piano? Wut. Mozart. Beethoven. Schubert. Brahms.
maryangeladouglas said,
October 29, 2021 at 12:48 am
IN OCTOBER
so has the soul found itself lost among the green and golds of
fading summers so as to hear only the soughing of the wind
of the beginning and the end and yet that is Christ’s name too
Alpha and Omega always in every story and there is Glory
and there is a hope beyond all seasons ;
so has the soul found itself to be reasoning not;
a drift of pale lemon across a vacant sky
exiled on earth turning inward
turning inward as the day was long
and the frosts, all early.
this is autumn and the end of days
formerly as they were spent though
not of music though you cannot tell
where it all went giddy as the leaves
departing suddenly
leaving the branches to mourn.
so the soul has shed gold, peach gold and time
but still, not music.
mary angela douglas 27 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 29, 2021 at 3:48 am
I HEARD THE WEEPING OF WORDS
in a dream I heard the weeping of words, the great Bruising
the ancient sounds from the rocks from the ground
the distances in singing, the anguish of breaking apart
in a dream I saw the ore of them taken
and on every shore the shells they had become, forsaken
forlorn
shells of words I have gathered in my small hands
breathing back into them life with such futility, the memory of before
when Light was at the door….
how can I say much less sing the stone trapped words
or they are caught in a web we have made for them
in the history of lies no longer responding to their childhood names.
oh God. I cried in a dream and could barely choke out his Name
for grief that words had fallen fallen
into such disdain.
mary angela douglas 28 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 29, 2021 at 4:46 am
THE END OF WEATHER AS WE KNEW IT
you will say suppressing a smile
I am speaking about the news on earth
but that is not the point at all
I mean the inner weather from our birth
how it shifts across the violet skies
and boils up in its own particular last ditch summers
and when it snows there it is a forever
composed of such intricate ballets
the soul never grows tired of enacting them
the end of weather as we knew it has arrived.
the pinkish amber of morning no longer comes to mind.
you breathe but not steadily
so many paths are overgrown with vines
so many trees pruned back in Time
beside unrecognizable housing.
we are at the end of weather as we knew it
the clarion autumns understand
leaf by leaf the life that was gold we are leaving
for something we don’t yet understand
and yet hope for life renewed is a fountaining tree;
the far off bells calling us to a life without forecasts at all.
mary angela douglas 29 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 29, 2021 at 7:58 am
This is not a heartbreaking “song’ at all but it still wanted to be here chirping in the ruins. (just joking;no ruins, just a lovely melancholy musical list)
THE BUSY SOUL
The Soul was busy
(my Soul) she liked to be called The….
as if she were the only one
the sole Soul she laughed
embroidering roses on everything
really she couldn’t help that
sometimes it did get rather out of hand
but she was as they say a stranger in a strange land
forever trying to understand
the difference between Here and There
and cubic inches. why there were asteroids, and finches;
why we had to do our hair. and use cream rinses.
what is growing older, Old, she asked one day
the way a child asks, ingenuously.
what could I say she was still so golden
copper penny bright, Springtime in her step and all delight
I was me yet I was still her too
the me that couldn’t go to work anymore
that still did the chores and made the smores
and all the meals so she could still be here
on earth, I mean
she was always Being
somewhere trying to find her shadow in the grass
what is here and there she asked
for the billionth time that day what’s elastic,
what is day today yesterday, centuries
hey she said trying to be colloquial
what’s a millennium can you dig a hole to China
and find Tertullian
then suddenly broke off into singing
hark the herald ….things like that.
swinging down from the bookcase
the rose figured hat rack
making funny faces at my (our) to do list
behind my back,
I’ll tell you, I said stirring the soup
if you’ll tell me
what is Eternity
mary angela douglas 29 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 31, 2021 at 12:51 am
I SING THE POEM IMMALLEABLE
I sing the poem immalleable
incapable of being beaten into gold
but which when held up to the Light
accedes to Light
and glows
its own sunrise, aurora, aureole:
rising of the rose heraldic.
all I know of it is all I know,
the frittering snows of edginess cannot swamp it
my little boat, so unaware
it sings along the wires and never will I tire
of that singing or despair
where it appears to float in the living air:
one spark
of Divine illumination
set against all Time.
mary angela douglas 30 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 31, 2021 at 5:02 am
LIKE SOME FORGOTTEN PHRASE
the things you said at the time seem faraway
life in another universe I could say
no way to reverse the charge and start again
all votes are in and counted long ago; I’m
knowing the outcome now too well
if only words were an ocean swell
that comes and goes and breaks not always hard
returning to the shore at the end of days
who are we now that former shores seem vague
or rather, dissolved or continents sunk below
this overcast day
where the rain blows in then disappears
like some forgotten phrase.
mary angela douglas 31 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
October 31, 2021 at 5:30 am
THE EIGHTH DAY
on the eighth day the stars rang out like bells
frost on the least of the leaves remaining
we lived for snow globes
subsets of the Christmas scene
and the fairy tale meanings.
I tried to wrap up the sun to give my mother
its hard to be young harder than you’ll remember it being
with the names for things so tenuous
you could say milk and really mean bread
or nothing at all and still be fed
and all your thoughts are feelings and coloring things in.
where am I going what did I intend
the gardens grew on their own without me
the stars lent their rays
mary angela douglas 31 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
November 1, 2021 at 3:37 am
FOR JOHN KEATS
perhaps he dreamed up his poems
that they should be past his Maytime flourishing
the brides of silence
unheard melodies he mused are sweeter
who could say that now
when everyone wants to be heard
but then he was a dreamer even for the times he lived in
and denizen of no socially trumpeting streets
inhabiting realms of gold
then coughing up blood
in the last retreats, so young! years condensed
beyond mead
who could match his effulgence
the brede work of exquisite workmanship
his melancholy exorbitance, bruised chivalries.
why wouldn’t the nightingale want to live
among his branches forever
to sing effortlessly there
perhaps that’s why we no longer speak of her so much, as such,
nor care, not in the old ways dim beyond repair
because she has gone, banished to better kingdoms
with him, oh John Keats.
I would sing of pomegranates, of unflinching stars
and destinies
of all you are and were
but you had left the harbor long since
and before I was a girl;
your Muse is past weeping now…
the sweet bird sings no fables here
not pouring out for our pragmatic ears
unceasingly, lavishly that music fountaining beauty
that he caught, rapturously,
world without end
mary angela douglas 31 october 2021
maryangeladouglas said,
January 23, 2022 at 7:57 pm
I DREAMED NARCISSUS LOOKED INTO THE SUN
(for mythologist and Greco-Roman scholar, Edith Hamilton
and for the Imagist poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
I dreamed Narcissus looked into the sun
and the sun was blinded;
the stars turning to silver nitrate
the bruised lidded sweethearts overcome
at the deafening, implacable stroke of one
and one alone of infinite self regard
no one worldwide mirror ever shunned
and no bright shard.
so did the diamond regress to ashen coal
and he had murdered the Age of Gold and caused
the white iris to wither on the stalk;
the soul to spin backwards unraveling the lilied web;
commanding all reflections to stoop down
mary angela douglas 23 january 2022
maryangeladouglas said,
January 28, 2022 at 5:20 am
FOR EMILY DICKINSON
perhaps she raised her small jeweled flags of words
in a stiff breeze so that the bees and flowers were confused at first
and the red clover
in the vast meadows she lived in, meaning her soul
and the stars over New England sighed on being told
by distaff cherubs
she is beyond you now.
as for men on earth who knew that she was scarcely here
an inhabitant at all
except as a gentle anomalie and almost as out of sight
as the ends of being barrett browning might have said.
if she could have,
now her self sown flags are planted in eternity and they stream on
transmogrified not a little
and sometimes in our minds while reading her
we almost hear, we think her astute voice and clear and
a stiff breeze enters our room
and we who have not yet died
neither for truth nor beauty yet adjusted in our tombs
can still aver and aver with her
toward which path for us, as well
the implacable mystic horses heads are turned.
mary angela douglas 28 january 2022
maryangeladouglas said,
February 13, 2022 at 3:05 pm
FOR THE BLESSED BALM OF CHOSEN WORDS
for the blessed balm of chosen words
I give you thanks oh Lord and for the cloud wrought
day in vivid display sunrise or sunset of your
alpha and omega the circuit of beauty
thou, and thou alone
returning to us in every wave;
have made known to us even as children
your ineffable colours, fragrance of earth
and the blossoming of everything
perceived and felt in quiet hours
you are all ours in a hundred thousand ways
how should we forget you now
that we lean into the wind like the grasses
before winter’s sheers
or feel ourselves to be ebbing toward Heaven
a little at a time, with the music of the years
a little at a time the stars climb the skies and to our eyes
seem then to descend
but what if everything we dreamed then we dream more and more
this close to the shore
of our disappearing.
mary angela douglas 13 february 2022
maryangeladouglas said,
February 13, 2022 at 7:04 pm
THE LAST OF THE SNOW QUEEN’S REIGN
we’ll dream the flowers back to life
so sprightly they will arise again
in this eternal spring we’ll win
co conspirationally with God, (our friend)
each petal blazing like a heart defiant
on a forbidding wind and sailing
past all the drear days
and that quite airily
merrily in the unseen meadows
soon to be seen; perfumes made visible
and the lilies laughing.
let the snow queen leave
no fond farewells in her calligraphy on
frosted glass.
untouched by her disdain, we’ll pass
and wearing our mittens of rose
and singing, singing by the holly berry bush
we will breathe out the clouds of cold
at the school bus corner
and make impossible summer plans
under a zinnia coloured moon
and read the poems of Spring
of the pale, pale green
in between ice storms
the prisms rainbow-shattering at our feet
the February sleet, departed.
mary angela douglas 13 february 2022