Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Workplace

the moonlight stands ajar in story=book gold
I have fashioned after a fashion something to remember
in this cell:

a cubicle of diamonds, while I’m working forever
on someone else’s something else oh
hush they’ll see
which would be a new experience for them,

after all

mary angela douglas 31 july 2013


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Rebranding The Branded Who Are No Longer Here

these are the separate strands
of the rainbow-riven fields
may-broidered

floating, thinned-

so that it is today
100 years after
you did not turn around.

these are the separate strands

reworked so
hand-tinted carefully
so that the fading fades-

so that the portraits seem brand-new

framing the far-sighted
who are no longer here

mary angela douglas 30 july 2013

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Read In Your Own Language

read in your own language
the thrumming of rain on the rarest roof
the first one
red, purple or green one
you felt you would live beneath forever.

read in your own language that
sliver of moon. remember?
the peach frosted sunrise
soothing your nervousness before
winter’s long school;

or the apple surprise of those pale
flowers on the very same tree turning to rubies
later on

turning to rubies.
no one told you this would happen.
no one said in any language yes but
tears can melt into the quartz of years
so that looking back maybe all you’ll see

is the luminous
mary angela douglas 27 july 2013





Thursday, July 25, 2013

Through These Sheer Battlements

[to William Shakespeare]

through these sheer battlements
the myriad suns arose
over a single field of language
forged gold beyond gold
and shining, still, as unsurpassed,
the life and death of kings of saints
of jugglers of every form and color

of a dream that could be dreamed
within a dream
or foregone wholly.
Holy.

are you gone or buried like the sun
said Mandelstam
we’ll meet again

we’ll meet again
inviolate language unincorporated
when these sheer battlements have

 done

 mary angela douglas 25 july 2013




I Dream Not Like A Fugitive, Leaving The Light On In The Poem

seeming candlelit at times
a cuticle moon slips down
even a fragment of window

somehow the shadows flame out
you don't ask how
into silver-pointed dawn.

you'll stand near an open window
letting in as if it were the sun,
the wind, the vast sprinkling of stars...

mary angela douglas 25 july 2013

Oh Flower Flotilla Down The Dead-End Mines I Floated You

oh flower flotilla down the


dead-end mines I floated you;



it was not in vain:




though rust appeared in the night sky


as though it were enamel.

the stars creaked on.



now past the horsehead nebula I thought you



climbed, but falling back into the mist I find


the beads slipped through my fingers, time...

and the prayer unwinds where wheels of fire keep still-


restrained by God,


above a well-glazed martyrdom





wherever rust appeared in the night sky, enameled


mary angela douglas 25 july 2013




God Is Nearby

God is nearby.

let the hush of His whiteness

deeper than all snows



suspend your disbelief;
the crooning of His Might.


let the jeweled javelins of those
who know better-

oh, let them miss their mark.

at least, let the emerald of His speaking pass

through the wretched borders
of a purblind earth

heartless without Him



mary angela douglas 25 july 2013


Dear Christmas King My Star

dear Christmas King, my Star
whether near or far
I do not care how many


theologians

agree to disagree on the
head of a pin or elsewhere
if there ever was a manager
or a Star


or who you really Are

whenever the snow wind blows.


I know.

it is in my heart
it is in my heart


mary angela douglas 25 july 2013

Thursday, July 18, 2013

I Tripped On My Shoelace Down A Starless Hole

I tripped on my shoelace down a starless hole
where the Red Queen rose like bread overnight
where we never stopped painting the blue sky brown;
the green earth, raveled

in a dream
I followed the followers Down
you forgot your sweater, Grandmother cried

from the pink brick house;
my grandfather died;
rising like bread, overnight-
into the winnowing heights.
but mirrors are all alike here.
and I am sleeveless  in a sleeved charm

where the swans still return at sunset
interrupted like a dream
and the poem will ravel
mary angela douglas 18 july 2013

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Losing Your Place In The Audience


losing your place in the audience
you turn to find stage sets of childhood



so tea set bright and apple refined and

glowing, down the glass mountain,


spinning back, the prize you could not reach.


but watch it sparkle from an  unseen window:
you’ll have such a view never
fetched from starlight for any princess

of all the ways they’ll squander what you had
of Time.


whole kingdoms under snowdrifts drift away
sans lock and key how can I say who tore it all


away from the notebooks of your

dreaming, unassigned?

trespassers on the fairytale glimmer

and on the lawns of Day,

scanning the margins for what they can use...

still, sparkle with the newness you knew then
before the cruel ones came even in the name


of diamond God
and of His green.

mary angela douglas 16 july 2013;27 november 2014



Friday, July 12, 2013

As If It Could Be That Way

let me exchange
as if it could be that way
three more wounds later on
for the silver crumbs scattered
under sudden moonlight

for I'm misplaced
in this kingdom of glass
where anything breaks into
rainbows if you just look at it

and always picking rose-petal words too fast
to be believed by the nursery floor
lions split at the seam

half-splayed in their pink
night-lighted dreams
and always butternut whispering:
"why is she always this far
from the castle
and no further-

waiting to be believed?"
as if it could be that way.
that I may not distress
any further the voice
of darling God caught in the
brambles, every time;
moving that stickily on Lily-pad Paws
too beautiful to be believed,
oh my savannah.

to be believed.
as if it could be that way.
when I have closed my eyes
too far to see
and no one comes to find
I will exchange
one small rose petal kingdom
Misplaced in the kingdom of glass
for three more wounds later on
when this has passed.


there's too much shattering, anywhere-
so that even the roses know it,

the rumpling lions



mary angela douglas 21 april 2012










Thursday, July 11, 2013

Pure Tangerine Is the Colour I Would Speak

pure tangerine is the colour I would speak
irrepressible cherry, lemon-lime so lingering
from the jump rope times

pineapple, coconut orangeade in the
tiny hamburger palaces
frothing as you wait in line
a little dreamy as you should be

as if for a midsummer Christmas
parfait but I
lose light, lose time
while keeping in my mind the swirl of

the giant lollipops I never got to wreck my
teeth on, sweet shipwrecks at peanut
butter-logged Stuckey's

only 50 more miles

mary angela douglas 11 july 2013








Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Softly, Before Summer

[a poem I wrote 43 years ago]


softly, before summer,

in nets of gold
the water meshes with the sun,
mauve past the end of the stream.
we are the song past the end of our world.


the sun is bleeding

and we are here, also, aging in
the drone of slow thoughts,
in this light.


a small child flings her silk

silhouette
and stones
against the water,
and it flames
mauve, past the end of the stream.
we are this fire past the end of our world.


brief is dreaming before we find,

I know you by not knowing,
sensing only, still believing, ripples
of breathing and being, faces brooding,
merging shadows thrown by the sun


is gone, splashed into vermillion,



vanished, we cannot know.

I know You by not knowing,
the last music pales,
the last thought in the darkening


spring.



mary angela douglas 7 may 1970

Monday, July 08, 2013

Setting The Table With The Last Of The Rubied Spoons

setting the table with the last of the rubied spoons
how could I see at first the small indigo thundercloud
near the cobweb’s chandelier

it’s the thirteenth fairy
madeline said while the prisms shook
and I thumbed through Betty Crocker's Dinner Parties:

Dealing with the Unexpected too late too late.
here’s your spumoni, dear, matilda said
to our preempting guest in gossamer
good luck with the spatula

mary angela douglas 8 july 2013





The Marvelous Floating Bookshop And Virtual Ice Cream Emporium

THE MARVELOUS FLOATING BOOKSHOP AND VIRTUAL ICE CREAM EMPORIUM

[to my sister Sharon re our childhood dream of founding a bookstore/ice cream parlour/toyshop, couldn't fit the toys in, sorry
but you know I tried]

the poem with the caramel icing
turned out right
though no one knew about it

and nobody ever saw
the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and Virtual
Ice Cream Emporium on Earth
(except perhaps, me)

though I promise, it was there
painted cherry vanilla
on the little lilac lane that

only came into view
on the left hand side of the bus
when I was the only one looking out
in that direction.

and you dropped the day in your merriment
melting like a creamsicle on the blooming sidewalk


where who could ever tell them from the flowers,
night children blowing in a garden- thick in the shade
of lime trees

and lavender blue at midnight
every blade of grass bent toward us
as we wandered into a strawberry feeling frothing,
the Marvelous Floating Bookshop and
Virtual Ice Cream Emporium:

four paperbacks, 25 cents each
wrapped in brown paper tied with a string
and no string theory and free, free, free
lusciously malted through and through and

I'll have a cherry phosphate stylish Rose said
in a book I read
crackling new

with a papery perfume
like a box of penny valentines just opened
and every heart

for you at the singular page
only you will decipher
still and still and still

you wander or you will among tinted illustrations
toward the drugstore racks in dreams that squeak
when you turnstile turn them:

content is a fizzing fountain coke
and the odes of poets never heard from on earth

mary angela douglas 8 july 2013






Sunday, July 07, 2013

The High Promoters Of A Lost Art

The high promoters of a lost art
Circled the circle and locked arms
And should I take arms against a
Sea of lockouts?
Or just not notice
Giving notice
That the high calling the high
Calling sped the lark through
Outer darkness toward a radiance
With no bars on the windows

mary angela douglas 7 july 2013






Saturday, July 06, 2013

Oh Negligent Star And Fire

oh negligent star and fire
of the seeming worlds wrought only from His dreaming

mind shadows the answer but the Heart is light




we cast our nets in a Sea of Lies and cry that the
Fish, mottled gold and silver, slip through our sighs

you are adrift, He smiled

not yet to endure the throngs that thronged
to the jeweled eclipse in a party mood

where Christ lifts the weeping sun back into

the grieving skies…


mary angela douglas 6 july 2013



Singing Without The Music They Passed On


singing without the music they passed on

battered by words who used words kindly

long nights without the stars


bounced on the pavements of the sun

and shattered, needlessly

prayers without hands
 

music out of the chamber locked and locked again

singing the song for the song beyond reach


beseeching no one and for breakfasts,


eating the brambles and the indifference

as though it were honey and dunned= and dunned=

and dunned-

mary angela douglas 6 july 2013





Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Someday On The Page Where The Monsters Are No More

someday on the page where the monsters are no more
we won’t believe that we’ve escaped them;
we won’t remember how

we came to life again in the frozen courtyard

as though there were a worldwide spring
sprung, secretly:

a rush of green and who let all these flowers in

where the guards were fiercely posted and forever.
a train emerged from a golden underground

as in a dream, the ways and means were found

the ways and means were found
little children. picking up loose

diamonds on the ground

who can’t stop laughing now

mary angela douglas 3 july 2013