bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Tag: poetry

May 8, 2015

Tangled Up in Blue

Concerning Petrarch, poetry, and a question from a reader:

I read a lot of poetry, and I listen to a lot of music.

Often these two habits will intersect in my life in strange and delightful ways, especially where and when my Gods are involved.

One particular song that I have always loved is Bob Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue.

And I came to love it even more when the Indigo Girls released their cover of that song on their live album, 1200 Curfews, in 1995.

As you may or may not know, it was not until 1997 or so that I started getting specific spiritual nudges again.  And sufficed to say, this song came up a lot on the radio at that time, and as a result, I heard the Indigo Girls’ cover several times a day.

But as much as I knew the lyrics, there was one particular verse that always baffled me, however.

This one:

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
“I thought you’d never say hello” she said
“You look like the silent type”
Then she opened up a book of poems
And handed it to me
Written by an Italian poet
From the thirteenth century
And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue.

 

All I could think of was…what sort of words were those?  And even more so, who wrote them?

I mean, as a person who loves poetry, I could absolutely agree that poetry, in all its forms, is the highest form of word-alchemy.

As well, I would be the first to agree that good poetry certainly can and does transcend time.

But I had to, absolutely had to… find out who was that ‘Italian poet from the thirteenth century’?

And no, I don’t think that anybody really knows.

As far as I can tell, Bob Dylan has never identified any particular poet as being the poet that he references…so I began to wonder if Dylan was just simply trying to convey some universally profound fact about love and human relationships, as well as something similar to what I just wrote up there about poetry being word-alchemy.

~~~

Cut to three years ago, I was in a large retail bookstore chain, just browsing, as I often do.

If you must know, I wasn’t even in the poetry section.  Because, as much as I love poetry, I hardly ever buy books of it.

So it was more than likely that I’d been skimming a Kingdom Hearts graphic novel with my kid, or trying to choose between two or three sci-fi/fantasy anthologies, or whatever, when ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ came up on the in-store music system.

I remember looking up from the book that I had been browsing, to see that someone had left a copy of Petrarchian love sonnets on the floor.

…and that exact verse – with line about an Italian poet from the thirteenth century – was the verse that was playing when I noticed that book on the floor.

And no, I didn’t buy the book.   I brought it back to the poetry section and left it there.

If I bought anything, I probably purchased an anthology of short horror stories and a comic book for my kid.

But when I got home, I Googled ‘Petrarch.’   Having been an English major in college, I did know that Petrarch was an Italian poet… and just as any English major who studied poetry, I was familiar with the Petrarchian sonnet.

What detail that I didn’t know, or likewise remember, was that Petrarch wrote most of those sonnets about love and loss…in the 13th century.

In that next week or so, I hemmed and hawed about this whole thing being  a ‘universal sign’…

 

But eventually I did purchase a book of Petrarchian love sonnets a few months later.

 

So.

Yes.

You may take it however you will, but that book of Petrarchian love sonnets is on my altar because of one particularly sneaky incidence of pandoramancy coinciding with a misplaced book.

🙂

 

 

 

 

 

 

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February 14, 2015

14 February 2015

Happy Valentines’ Day.

~~~

While I’d actually intended on posting another piece that I’d found a few weeks ago (that I’d been saving to post here today), here is a lovely poem by Mary Oliver that I woke up to find on my RSS feed this morning:

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

— from Blue Horses, collected poems

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September 3, 2014

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly.

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

                               Hafiz

(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

 

~~~

Hail to that Sneaky Ton of Bricks Himself

❤

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May 28, 2014

Rest in Peace, Maya Angelou

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Statement from Dr. Maya Angelou’s Family:
Dr. Maya Angelou passed quietly in her home before 8:00 a.m. EST. Her family is extremely grateful that her ascension was not belabored by a loss of acuity or comprehension. She lived a life as a teacher, activist, artist and human being. She was a warrior for equality, tolerance and peace. The family is extremely appreciative of the time we had with her and we know that she is looking down upon us with love.

Guy B. Johnson

 

Image

~~~~

I awoke this morning to the sad news via Tweets and various messages on my newsfeed that Maya Angelou had died.

Within moments of reading the above words, I found myself unable to articulate exactly why I feel such a sense of loss.

Meanwhile, my friend, Sarah Sloane, upon hearing the news, put her feelings succinctly, thus:

 “No…no.  Losing Maya Angelou feels like losing my loving, empowering aunt, the one who told me that my soul had wings.”

Yes, that, Sarah, I agree with you.

Maya Angelou was exactly that.

She was an amazing writer, teacher, and activist certainly, but she was so much more than that to me.

Her words inspired me – in the truest sense of the word ‘inspired’ – and her poetry and essays carried me through some of the darkest hours while I was growing up.

I remember when my father had collected a huge cardboard box full of paperbacks and college textbooks that had been left behind in the dormitories during the summer remodel of Wellesley College in 1984.  (The contractor company that he’d worked for assumed that the crew would just throw away any and all contents of the dorm rooms that were slated for remodeling, but my father has always had difficulty throwing away books of any kind.)

So that’s how I ended up with a dog-eared copy of her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and her poetry collections, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diie.., and Still I Rise.

I don’t know if that’s exactly what my father would have intended, but I spent that summer, sitting under the back porch, readingreadingreading about the evocative power of love, grief, pain, and spiritual truth that also touched upon race, gender, and the intricacy of human relationships.

And so began my lifelong love of her poetry, her writing, and her keen, unflinching eye that always focused on the humanity in history.   And whether her unflinching eye focused on the good or the bad of humanity, in the end, it seemed to me that the gist of her words always concerned the importance of moving forward, moving upward, toward the exposure of truth, and the revelation of love.

And I needed that in that difficult summer of 1984, when I was 13, and struggling mightily with myself.

I count many of her poems as inspiring, but here are three that I find especially so:

 

Refusal

Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
Your Laughter brave
Irreverent.
Those sweet excesses that
I do adore.
What surety is there
That we will meet again,
On other worlds some
Future time undated.
I defy my body’s haste.
Without the promise
Of one more sweet encounter
I will not deign to die.

~~~

Seven Women’s Blessed Assurance

 
One thing about me,
I’m little and low,
I find me a man wherever I go.
They call me string bean
’cause I’m so tall,
men see me, they ready to fall.
I’m fat as butter and sweet as cake,
men start to tremble
every time I shake.
I’m young as morning and fresh as dew,
everybody loves me, and so do you.
I’m little and lean,
sweet to the bone,
they like to pick me up and carry me home.
When I passed forty, I dropped pretense
’cause men like women who got some sense.
Fifty-five is perfect, so is fifty-nine,
’cause every man needs to rest sometime.
~~~~

Preacher, Don’t Send Me


Preacher, Don’t Send me 
when I die 
to some big ghetto 
in the sky 
where rats eat cats 
of the leopard type 
and Sunday brunch 
is grits and tripe.

I’ve known those rats 
I’ve seen them kill 
and grits I’ve had 
would make a hill, 
or maybe a mountain, 
so what I need 
from you on Sunday 
is a different creed.

Preacher, please don’t 
promise me 
streets of gold 
and milk for free. 
I stopped all milk 
at four years old 
and once I’m dead 
I won’t need gold.

I’d call a place 
pure paradise 
where families are loyal 
and strangers are nice, 
where the music is jazz 
and the season is fall. 
Promise me that 
or nothing at all.

~~~

Rest in peace, dear Maya Angelou.

It is with tears in my eyes that I thank you. and wish you safe journey.

May all promises be kept.

❤

 

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May 22, 2014

Some days, I need poetry.

Even if these are someone else’s words, I need them.

Sometimes, I need words so desperately, and often it takes someone else to write them, or say them before I can rest, before my busy, angsty meat-brain will be quiet.

~~~~

An open love letter to your inner child.

To the child who couldn’t understand

why nobody could understand.

To the one whose hand was never taken,

whose eyes were never gazed into by

an adult who said,

“I love you.

You are a miracle.

You are holy,

right now and

forever.”

 

To the one who grew up in the realm of “can’t.”

To you who lived “never enough.”

To the one who came home to no one there, and

there but not home.

 

To the one who could never understand why

she was being hit

by hands, words, ignorance.

 

 

To the one whose innocence was unceremoniously stolen.

To the one who fought back.

To the one who shattered.

To the never not broken one.

To the child who survived.

 

 

To the one who was told she was

sinful, bad, ugly.

 

 

To the one who didn’t fit.

To she who bucked authority

and challenged the status quo.

 

 

To the one who called out

the big people for

lying, hiding and cruelty.

 

To the one who never stopped loving anyway.

 

 

To the child that was forbidden to need.

 

 

To the ones whose dreams were crushed

by adults whose dreams were crushed.

 

To the one whose only friend

was the bursting, budding forest.

To the ones who prayed to the moon,

who sang to the stars

in the secrecy of the night

to keep the darkness at bay.

 

To the child who saw God

in the bursting sunshine of

dandelion heads

and the whispering

clover leaf.

 

To the child of light who cannot die,

even when she’s choking

in seven seas of darkness.

 

To the one love

I am and you are.

 

You are holy.

I love you.

You are a miracle.

Your life,

your feelings,

your hopes and dreams–

they matter.

 

Somebody failed you but you will not fail.

Somebody looked in your eyes and saw the sun — blazing — and got scared.

Somebody broke your heart but your love remains perfect.

Somebody lost their dreams and thought you should too,

but you mustn’t.

 

Somebody told you

that you weren’t

enough

or too much,

but you are

without question

the most perfect

and holy creation of 

God’s

own

hands.

    — by Alison Nappi, as seen on the Rebelle Society here

~~~~

Yesterday was that sort of day.

It was all on me, and no one could do a thing.

(It was the sort of day that I tend to wonder if I really should make t-shirts advertising Mr. L’s masonry business*, as it is very much still in business and obviously thriving, and that is likely due to me and my stubborn avoidance maneuvers.)

It’s my own damned fault – well, most of it — and a lot of that hit me when my therapist derailed my carefully constructed fortress of ‘everything’s fine! look at me, I’m meeting expectations’ when she said:

“Here’s a thought: Could it be that (your carefully constructed fortress of ‘everything’s fine! look at you, you’re avoiding again’) is just another reason that you could be — I dunno — hiding behind to keep yourself from having to make a decision?”

And I won’t lie.

I burst into tears.

She told me that it was OK, that it’s quite possible that I’ve never made a decision in my life without such an agonizing mental struggle, and that that is what we were here to be working on, and…

Then, she excused herself, and left in the room suddenly.

And I composed myself to the slow steady tick of the clock.

I am not OK.

It is not OK for me to hide behind this or that ‘reason’ — it’s just another form of lying….to myself.

It is not OK for me to avoid — that’s just another dodge of the inevitable

 

I should just shut my excuse-hole, and practice saying the truth, which is:

“I have not made a decision.”

 

And when I am asked why, I should say:

“I haven’t any excuse for my behavior.”

 

~~~~

*sneaky tons of bricks everywhere

 

 

 

 

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September 26, 2013

This is not. And yet this is.

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August 25, 2013

Oranges….and joy.

The Orange
 
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
 

Wendy Cope

~~~

It’s been quite interesting both in — and out of  — my head these past few days.

Things are happening, and some of that just feels as if things are finally coming together in a few important ways.

Lately, when I am writing or thinking about such things, I get so revved up that I feel that I must get up and move around to dispel some energy.

It’s strange — sometimes I almost want to read what I’m feeling as anxiety — but lately, it’s been feeling more like excitement, anticipation …maybe even joy.

Maybe joy is a kind of anxiety.

I was thinking and writing about the weekend, about the ring, and about the whiskey, and about all the things coming together — and suddenly, I just had to get up and move a bit.

It’s a good kind of excitement, I suppose.

I am learning.

I am happy.

~~~

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July 14, 2012

A sneaky ton of bricks.

“Are you the new person drawn towards me?”

Walt Whitman,  1819–1892

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose;

Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?

Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?

Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?

Do you think I am trusty and faithful?

Do you see no further than this façade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?

Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a real heroic man?

Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

~~

I love this poem.

And there is actually a reason for my posting it, which I’ll get to in a moment.

~~~

But first, I wanted to express my consternation at being very near the halfway point of the month, and yet, my intention of writing a daily devotional to Loki here, obviously, has not happened.

Though it hasn’t been for lack of material – though I did worry/panic a bit at the possibility that I would run out of things to post, and yet, surprisingly, that is not a problem — but it is entirely due to my inability to actually commit to sitting in this chair each day to actually post something.

And that is a problem.

Because now my brain is sorta backed up with stuff, and I have this wild ADHD-fueled desire to Post All The Things(!!).

But, with the help of some deep cleansing breaths, I’ve realized that I can commit to, at the very least, posting today about this poem.

Well, because, you see, this poem kinda snuck up on me, in a very specifically strange and delightful way, and I figured that finding this poem this morning was a sign that maybe I should talk about this poem.

Today.

In a post.

Right now.

~~~

Being a native New Englander, I am somewhat familiar with Walt Whitman, as Whitman is often lumped in with Longfellow, Thoreau, Frost, and other poets/writers of that time period….and Longfellow, Thoreau, and Frost are definitely associated with New England in a lot of ways. (Even though I was somewhat surprised about 20 minutes ago to re-discover via Google that Whitman is from New York. Hmm. I don’t consider New York as being New England, so that seems a bit off, but I digress…)

So, I would even say that I somewhat like Whitman’s poetry, and I considered myself familiar with a lot of his poetry, too.

But, mind you, Walt Whitman is certainly not enough of a favorite poet of mine that I maintain a digital collection of his poetry or anything.

But this particular poem?

I’d never seen it before.

And I almost typed ‘…until today’ but if I said that, it wouldn’t make any sense, really, because I found the poem this morning saved to my ‘Favorite Bookmarks’ list.

Now how could that be if I say that I never knew that this poem existed until today BUT it was somehow added to my Favorites list previous to this day?

Because it so seems to have been.

And yet, I don’t remember ever adding it to my Favorites, and this is my laptop, and no one else uses this laptop but me, and yet, it was obviously added before this day, because there are several entries before and after it that I do remember adding.

So.

What does it mean?

I don’t know…and yet, here is this poem that speaks to me today about something that has been on my mind for weeks, concerning authenticity.

I don’t know what this poem does for you — and feel free to let me know how it strikes you — but I know what this poem did for me this morning.

It got me to thinking about Loki’s ‘face’/’facets (and my own, too, of course.).

It caused me to think about how each face/facet exists alongside the other faces/facets, and how these faces can be ones that are intentionally shown, or they can be ones that are intentionally hidden, or even faces that one doesn’t realize are being shown/seen or hidden/known until one is ready to see/know them….

Hmmm…there are so many of them, aren’t there?

And it’s funny how this poem seems to have shown up on my Bookmarks suddenly, and its words hit me like a ton of bricks.

This poem is, in my opinion, a sneaky ton of bricks.

But then, again, it strikes me as definitely a poem about approaching. Approaching someone whom one wants to know, or one thinks that they know, and this poem can serve as a little introductory interview.

Ah….I see what you did there.

How so very… Loki of you.

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