On Break From The Offices

on break from the offices

before the weekend weddings of our friends

we halfway hid under the underpasses

of a cavernous place

from desert to desert

passing the time

no coffee. no dessert.

unless you think waiting is delicious and a treat.

even without cream, the skies.

discussing. making the time go by.

suddenly, I felt to leave as in a dream

or a movie you know

now's a good time for that.

too late, the armies with their new flash lights

showing off came running up and now it was night.

but as in the fairytale, the magic egg appeared.

though it was plain white, only a little oversized

I prayed in the name of Jesus, cracking it open:

inside, everythiing to make a world. all food stuffs,

notions.

a golden one I thought?

and then I woke up.

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Note on the poem:  this is an exact retelling of a dream I had early evening July 15, 2014.

The only embellishment being the part about coffee and dessert and the creamless skies, about which there was no consciousness at all.

Everything else in the poem was in the dream, except that

when the armies with the flashlights came, I couldn't find room to say in the poem that they were scientists and not political, looking somehow happy and relieved to find us, and even more happy to find the enormous egg, or to find us finding it. It seemed to be simultaneous almost, the two events: their arrival and our finding the egg - but, a little off in synchronicity as it is in music sometimes when someone is new to practicing.

I forgot to say at the point they showed up I tried to wake myself up in the dream and thought I succeeded and then I thought, seeing them still there conversing among themselves, but you're not supposed to be here, anymore I'm awake...shortly after that I did awake for certain.  I have been reading Kazuo Ishiguro's  lovely book The Unconsoled all week with its spacious dream landscapes and irritations so maybe this was an influence.

The question of whether it was a golden or good world in the egg was something I wondered when I woke up thinking of the dream details. But the atmosphere of the dream was not negative just not something I wanted to be bothered with.

I wanted to rest.

Psalm For The Unsuccessful

even if you bind His hands and feet

and nail His forehead to the starry skies

you still won't own Him.

He still made the clouds, the suns, the ellipses

maybe you were over-proud to discover

one by one

through it took you centuries.

and is it an ivory word to say out loud-

a priceless one,

with a bounty on its head that

He still lives; abides your line of questioning

in the too brightly lit auditoriums

and where the velvet seat the velvet

ooing over the supermoons?

His torn angels smile, so used to it.

and in His green shadow of a shadow's fingertip

infinitely flourish

whole multitudes of those you fed a watery soup

ladling it out and with arched eyebrows

from the golden crockery you

had made for yourselves 

mary angela douglas 15 july 2014

Billy The Kid In A Sky Blue Kerchief

[on Mr. Perry Cordill's illuminating, "speaking" portrait
 of Billy the Kid]

Billy the Kid in a sky-blue kerchief, barely standing still against the skies under which he wandered; he wandered, wished the skies would open up; wished for

the angels on a black day, suddenly sunlit and is it sunlit in the

portrait, would you say? the eyes slit with a pale blue marksmanship; the diffident something besides a smile; the head aslant, unsure, under the porkpie hat of

the stranded Magi, what, you never heard of?

in an off gold shirt and open at the neck to the gallows?

for this year's pastel Christmas card, hand-painted.

oh paint, he seems to suggest if he had the nerve,

to the portrait-maker-

a stage coach one-way ticket

to a different homeland, maybe I'm the

orphan of too many destinations left to count

cut out of the picture book, a someone to save when

trying to reconstruct

lost prayers for all the outriders in the margins of

the unwept for (perhaps, not now):

American West

mary angela douglas 13 july 2014

Note on the poem: This painting "Billy the Kid" by Mr. Perry Cordill, a Sonoma County California artist can be found at
 www.perrycordill.com.  Just click on Wild West and it's the last painting.  And use zoom to magnify it if you wish.

There is such real intensity and feeling in the face.  It's simply incredible.  While you're there, you might want to look at the other portraits.  I especially love Annie Oakley against a prairie rose pink sky the color of a dress she might have wanted to wear but didn't get around to.  The freshness and the glory of a dream Wordworth said of his lost feeling for natural scenes.  The same phrase could be used to express the wonder of these American West portraits.

It's The Dark Geranium Skies That Make Me Weep

it's the dark geranium skies that make me weep

at least I tell myself that's true in a dream landscape

I'm unsettled

why aren't you?

or can't you find the vu-finder on the stereoscopic snows

the Christmas swaying through the ice storms where the angels chime

and round about the candles fly their semi-golden imitators or

I'm on the carousel of sighs and dropped the key you gave me

long ago and don't know where to live.

and yet, they let me through the gate assuming it can all be sorted out as if I were laundry,

later; when would that ever happen in a dream

mary angela douglas 13 july 2014

A Sparkling Ensued

[to my sister, Sharon,

and all her glistening music]

go deeper into the woods soothed my pages,

butterfly fluttering from the rose of peeling shelves.

and in no breeze at all,

a sparkling ensued.

a sparkling ensued and all the golden paths were opened;

though whether their gold was sunlit or was You, dear God,

could I even imagine.

it was You. and a sparkling ensued. and I went farther back

as though instructed, you know, to that part of the fairy tale

where all is about to go well if you will only listen.

you will only listen

and a glistening ensued.

and the woods were so much greener than we remembered:

in full summer, when we peeked through our fingers to see

falling snows and you felt like lace.

you felt like lace;

never losing your place in the story

once you'd begun, reminded someone dressed in lilac,

in a peaked hat, shimmering,

as I longed to be-

all alone on a nursery stage proclaiming:  I am the princess

who could not smile until my baby sister piped like

a silver bird crying, angela, don't cry!

anymore. anymore.

we'll go like the children hand in hand

through deeper woods than these

guarded by angels

where the roses foam in the moonlight

to the play house we know is there,

pink coated in candy sunlight

with a green awning.

then, the breeze is awake-

like it's Christmas day.

and we're the flower girls at the weddings

where Grandmother played Mendelsohnn

for all those brides.

or in pale Easter dresses

on the Other Side

in new bonnets with the sprigged cherries.

mary angela douglas 12 july 2014

Note on the poem: My sister is a pianist.

  I remember her playing Chopin for hours barely out of grade school, and the shimmering cascade of sound.  When we were younger in nursery school I gave a convincing performance of the fairytale "The Princess Who Never Smiled" and cried (like one of our dolls), real tears.  Alarmed, my little sister stood up from the crowd and comforted me.

My Grandmother was a piano teacher and an organist who played for the weddings of all her older pupils and others at our church.  My sister and I lamented we were only the "rice girls" when it was the custom, to throw rice at the weddings.We longed to be flower girls in long dresses, scattering the rose petals wildly.

We threw the rice very hard, however, in huge handfuls, so that the brides complained and then we were just free to enjoy the candied mints and nuts at the receptions.And the lime sherbet punch in the cut glass bowl.  I wish I had some now.

In my dream of Heaven in this poem I have changed us into the flower girls.  But the brides should have let us throw flowers instead of rice and then they wouldn't have had anything to worry about.

(We threw the rice hard because we thought it would bring them more luck.  I have no idea what put that into our heads.)

"pages" in the first line in the meaning of pages of a book and also in the meaning of "pages" from the King's court, messengers (in this case, of course, since we are speaking in fairytalese, they are winged messengers)

I Am The True Giselle She Said, She Did Not Say

[for Olga Spessivtsova-

and to all the Giselles, the Swan Queens,

transformed and transforming...]

I am the true Giselle she said; she did not say;

it was for someone else to say or not.

the swan transformed in the lakes of a living mirror:

meticulously pearled within or the wavering of what you

glimpsed underwater before you came up for air on

a summer's day, an opal breeze

when you are lost, in need of wings.

oh is it really true foreshadowing of the soul's eternal

freedom? their flight into lakes of light beyond the dress

circle. sparkling only for itself.  oh rise

en pointe, as if God lifted you, there and there: the rose,

the cloud, the pale blue intersections of

the far dimensions. forget yourself on cue;

you must or what is training for or life or anything

the handsewn sequined dress spinning out, centrifugal

petals on a flower whirled through opposing fronts:

hand layered with tulle and starlight and a sudden

vanishing

released from the jewel box stations of no cross

to the storm of music, the flaring of old griefs, illusions

set to music; the studied drift, the tips of satin shoes catch a gleam from somewhere else and are you

walking on Light as if you were jeweled

whisper her predecessors in every language

and are we somewhere else.

so that later, walking out from the theater

on legs like pins

like the fairy tale's mermaid for the

first time, on land

can you understand

when the mirror no longer clouds with your breath.

you're no longer recognizing

the metro stop across the streets

the little grocery with the red onions and

the newspapers-

in the after-mirage, still snowing, of the matinee-

in the trackless woods of

who you were and where

you meant to go

in the late afternoon

mary angela douglas 12 july 2014

Note on the poem: I only saw Olga Spessivtsova and heard her sorrowful, beautiful story through the dream-like, incredible documentary by Anton Dolin called A Portrait of Giselle which I saw on the A&E Channel (in 1988) when it was still about the Arts and not Law and Order repeats and I have merged these images with my childhood love of ballets and my later feeling, after seeing a Kirov Ballet matinee of Giselle in the early 90's at Kennedy Center when I walked past the yellow leafed early autumn trees and the roar of traffic by the Watergate still dazed by what I had seen and far removed from my surroundings.

The poem began today as I remembered the beautiful voice of the French ballerina Yvette Chauviré in the documentary,

recounting how someone had called her "The True Giselle".

Hymn To God By The Dimming Light Of Competition Still, Most Beautiful By Far

still, Most Beautiful, and star by star-

tomorrow they will bar Your sunsets from the competition

having been previously published

oh but not this one I cried the one of magenta fire

and not the ones before, before-

can't they see it's new, the paint's not dry your

 sorrowing angels cry

and mine in the lemon light cast they cast no shadows

in the tender grass and it's where we walked before

all this will pass and the angels and the angels pin blue ribbons

on all You have made 

and those who know You've already won will be gathered where

the beautiful is not weeded out of the garden

they pretend to own

who will not blow Your candles out

because You see in the dark

exactly where we are:

quenchless, Most Beautiful and star by star

mary angela douglas 10 july 2014

As If The Sun Had Words

[for Piper Laurie- 
in the alternate gardens of no cinema yet revealed-
on her irreplaceable voice and its musicality-
her incarnations spun of glass, substantially appearing,
irrevocably, memorable.]

a tone poem on her jewel-like trajectory in the film,
The Grass Harp...

it's not made of glass and yet it chimes

like the wind through old roses

in a garden from another time:

gardenia watered

through angelic rains- 

almost - of china - breakable-

ringed with the fanciful;

making the twilight hour

stand-  still-

ghost children, think so-

far away, wavering between Shine and shine

in the brocade of the prismed air

and down the bow of the night's proscenium where

the stars seem to have caught her light.

onstage, on the stage of verities,

simple as a valentine or not-

with scrolled handwriting

you thought you recognized?

was it a dream?

inscribed for someone else's life?

like the debut of flowers in each spring,

a freshness, with a difference -

a painting painted under the one we're used to;

the one we're unaccustomed to feeling, long out of view.

not now-

when suddenly the Soul

feels it was stashed in rooms with no other harps

through centuries:

contriving never to be smashed.

not that contemporary,

something harkens farther back

than anyone can remember rehearsing then:

her song, initialed with unaccountable jewels.

jewels on the surface of everything, 

she refracts without even intending to.

and is the world made of crystal, then,

sighed the children, wondering-

with an occasional orchid flare

going up,  from the otherwhere

and is it Christmas everywhere or

only where we are snowing?

where can the fountain flow for

such enchantments and can we go there,

please- and far from the broken things-

drenched in the borealis

up past bedtime-

or, is it, the lost languages of birds or

just her standing in a ray of light

filtering through the green-

about to speak

as if the sun had words

mary angela douglas 7 july 2014

Note on the poem: How can I explain the appearance of ghost children in the poem when I had nothing to do with it; they appeared of their own accord.  Perhaps, because we are all children before the true spectacle of the theatre, and ghostly in the sense that, caught up in the play, nothing else seems more real to us in that moment, enchanted by a voice as much and sometimes more than the story.

In the case of Piper Laurie I feel her voice and presence was far beyond the roles given her and could have glimmered more if given better writing.  Still, the jeweled light seeps through the almost closed door (I mean, in the lesser roles) - anyway.  God and the angels willed it so.

And I am speaking in the past tense but I wish I were speaking in the present and for the future as well.  Someone with these gifts deserves better vehicles all the days of her life on earth.

Always conveying a quality beyond the roles she is cast in that reaches all the way back to the highest aims and beginnings of world theatre, in my opinion.

Her most perfect performance I believe is
The Grass Harp, heart-breakingly exquisite and the one that inspired this poem.  

The poem reflects the roles I wish she had chosen or to be fair, I wish she were offered.  The kind of actress she would have been in a purer alternate reality and which, despite everything, she still projected, somehow. her voice and presence in itself has still to me those qualities the poem presents and it is a tragedy greater than the genre of tragedy that this did not come to pass, or only, rarely.  Perhaps she was born at the wrong time, being timeless.

Among those rare performances (rare in every sense)  I am looking forward to finding online or, otherwise, viewing her performance as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, as Auntie Em in Return to Oz and in the movie, The Promise which I have heard so many lovely things about. And I wish with all my heart I could have seen her onstage in The Glass Menagerie.

Happily, she is still doing work in the theatre, this summer in A Little Night Music.

I also cherish her performance in Inherit the Wind, with the magnificent actor George C. Scott, and her deeply complex portrayal in The Hustler although I hated that movie because evil certainly triumphed in it.

It is perhaps,important to notice that in the final image of the poem the (unconscious) expectation of the "children" watching her performance just before it begins is that of the children in Maeterlinck's Bluebird - that Light itself will begin to speak.  And it does.  And it has.  Thank you, Piper Laurie.

For James Joyce At The Beginning Of Days Or Near It

in the childhood winds of her, Maria Stella,

Christmas Queen, dreamed, ivory tower

he sees the small ships rise,

the silver and the rubied and the dimming

surprise of the pearl coves opening

and the hidden doors. and the whole of Dublin

sea washed, as in a dream

the ruby ships of the children crest and the

silver ones and he is all at sea and does not remember

his dream or how he felt then

or what it was he wanted to be or

maria stella, queen of everything and of the fabled ships

that fall away too soon. the silver and the rubied

stream breaks off into the blanched thoughts in the afternoon

where the orchards are razed in the snow blinds

when all is losing, lost and the cost of forgetting

Maria stella, queen of all heaven-sent, scented winds and of the

beginning when

the small ships rise and the lore lies all before me when

prayer is love and love is prayer only

it is only

the moonrise in her eyes

and the harbor takes the little ships farther than the foam of

those who left before rippling back now, for awhile, into the small

 coves

in the pearl coves and it overflows and he cannot forsake now can he

the silvered and rubied brimming over, the ruins of the beautiful

about his feet

in the shoals of his lost kingdoms

mary angela douglas 6 july 2014

I'm Not The Folk Tune Said The Princess

I'm not the folk tune said the princess

her head in her jeweled hands.

not even the broidered kerchief

with its thread of bluer skies than this.

I'm not the corn silk raveling

the flame petticoat cherished

by the dancer

washed out every night; the jacket

of gypsy green brocade

the flashpoint on the stage;

the open locket

flung away.

because I am not meant to be these.

but I am the mist where you think it is the sea;

the one white rose in the greenery

that doesn't blink out on the Christmas Tree

in a forest far from here.

the one at the ball with the least modern slippers,

in the tearose gown of the screened in afternoons

and spinning amethyst riddles

not to be answered; not to be sing song sung;

not to wear the hat of simple cherries

but the veil of moonrise.

the cost of moonrise.

and to prefer the abandoned hour

the mist when you think it is the sea

the sea arising when you think

it's only mist.

and this is only this and never again she said

from the tower of the last day 

mary angela douglas 6 july 2014

Summer Music, Fireworks Melting The Ice Creams

it's the colour of ice cream on the curb

our summer moonlight we've grown fond of

half in and out of a vanilla dream dreamed

the children.

it's lemon shading on a pale green pear

and luscious shadows everywhere

the little dog bit into something bright

that moved when he did.

oh it's a silver confusion happy again,

a rose instep dancing

it's no ambiguities murmured God's angels

of a story that knows no end sighed the

princess and whole nations sighed

in an ancient cinema

for the light in the flickering castle.

the fireworks flowering

overhead

mary angela douglas 3 july 2014

For Trilby, My Ruby-Eyed Stick Horse, Wandering

to Trilby, the ruby-eyed:  long may you ride!

my pearl bright stick horse, across the grasslands

where the myths abide; the good ones with

the haloes; no longer on earth.

I understood the meteoric flash of your side eyes

set in felt, sidereal;

impatient, the faery bells on your bridle

only I could see.

and here, when I am home and by myself

and not that far from childhood, yet-

the stir of something in the twilight air

still lets me know you're out there,

nuzzling the lilacs, eating the blue asters.

through the window I will go

as down the slides, I used to-

in quilted slippers from last Christmas

for one last ride beneath

the custard stars-

mary angela douglas 3 july 2014

This Is Not A Consolation Prize

[to Rupert Brooke]

this is not a consolation prize,

she said silverly,

the moon in the skies so often

and the silk of clouds surrounding it;

lacework of winter trees, sunset reveries

and unexpected winds that rise

as you are walking by no seas.

and earth smells after rain, all mixed

with fern.

however hard you try you could

never buy them, earn them, win them;

overide-

this beauty spilling out from every side

of God's mysterious cabinets.

mary angela douglas 3 july 2014

The Muse In Flight Before The Approaching Armies

I hid beneath my eyelid the poem of Infinite light

so no one could steal it.

and in my shoe, the poem of going away.

and going away, again.

and in my heart,

all that could not be said-

and whether it flowered in almond branch or snow-

of the crystal wounds, untended,

of unwounding God.

mary angela douglas 3 july 2014

The Princess Missing Poetry At The Sold Out County Fair

I hemmed the handkerchief of the moon

and pure moon glow was in every stitch

and smooth as a lozenge of gold or a loggia

on moon bright waters floating,

the perfume of it;

no blue ribbon.

I made quilts out of sunsets, on raw silk

in colours of the ultraviolet and beyond it-

fantastical threads of the neglected spectrums,

mysterious dresses of a rose velour you would swear

were the very rose itself and I made jam

that tasted of the shade in summer; or sorted gem starred

berries washed in cream in layered cakes between

the king cried for;

no blue ribbon.

I wonder what their contests mean,

I mean, in the general scheme of things.

what kind of gardeners are they?

who pick the weeds for best of show,

and leave the orchids no token.

and think that poetry should be

plainspoken while tossing out bright ores

of all the unbidden languages to come-

and those that went before.

I'm not complaining; I don't deplore

my dresses for the everyday...

regarding the plainspoken,

I thought that's what our

common speech was for-

who left the charlatans in charge of it

mary angela douglas 2 july 2014

Note on the poem: well, who thought all this up anyway,

this way of separating out the wheat from the chaff in poetry, of sorting the major from the minor poets and the poets who are left standing with their "recycled" manuscripts not in their hands the poetry contest runners could not even be bothered to return to them (not even if you send them a SASE).

At least they could say they regretted not being able to return the manuscripts- knowing that, for aspiring poets, generally, no one wants their work thrown out! (what they really mean by "recycled" as in "all manuscripts will be recycled").

If I ruled the poetry world everyone would get a blue ribbon for even trying to write poetry and no one would be rejected. I feel badly not only for myself but for anyone who has ever been subjected to these kinds of systems of deciding who gets published and who, not.  However, I think in many ways the Internet may help in solving this.

Or maybe we can all go up in balloons with sheaves of our poems and just rain them down randomly on earth for whoever finds them and picks them up.

We need every poem and every poet, at least, I think we do. It is stupid to me that things in the arts are set up in this way that people who are probably among the most sensitive of human beings are subjected to this nonsense of contests, competitions, prizes, etc.  Maybe those in charge are doing the best they can but that shouldn't block us from finding a new, happier way to proceed.

In a perfect world everyone's voice would be heard and never ridiculed.  Thank God (and I do) for every person who from a sincere heart has created anything in words, plainspoken, lyrical, anything. But I take the Princess' side in the poem that there is a tendency now (at least, in the U.S.) to slam the door on the lyrical.  By these kinds of rules I doubt Shakespeare could be published now.

I do believe there are whole libraries in Heaven that include the works of all the rejected poets on earth.  Think of it this way (if you wish): there are more people there (in Heaven or the afterlife) than there are on earth.

Therefore, a much larger audience. So don't be discouraged; nothing is wasted in God.  If you want to sing, sing. Someone will hear you. Even if it's only the angels.

And maybe the poets only the angels hear are the purest poets of all.

Plus, there is the fun of writing anyway just to capture something for this moment as if words were bright butterflies.  And you, in an endless beautiful field where they abound.  Dibs on the rose butterfly with the golden spots. And the milky jade one!

And I love plain speech too like plain bread and butter and weeds as much as flowers. Don't you? But, hey, let's be inclusive of all colors, shadings, variations, poetic modes past and present or does inclusive only apply to what's here and now that fits the bill of whomever's in charge?

P.S. I am secretly grateful for every poet who does get published because at least, there's someone who got behind the lines, so to speak, and for the innocent sake of beauty, truth, and goodness, hopefully.  May they flourish.

And it is so comforting to find and read the poets of the past, and so rich!  And to know they all went through this, too; though some - more than others.  It's not a numbers game and it's definitely not for profit.  It's because the heart and mind require it and for each poet, it is a sacred endeavor.

And so much more deserving of respect for the mere attempt at it.

I Want To Live In A Sky Blue Basket Said Someone Small

I want to live in a sky blue basket said someone small

when I'm in trouble and I will hide under very pink clouds

where they won't find me.

oh said her sister. yes they will, the clouds will fly off unexpectedly

and then you'll get it.

ok then. a sky blue playhouse with no door.

but how will you get in?

through the roof was said.

it comes off, like a lid.

it will for them too, silly.

look.

it's my story

and it will work.

mary angela douglas 1 july 2014

Metaphysical Wheat Germ Tableau With The Soup Not Highly Recommended

what if all God wanted from us was to sing in the trees

-or at least, near them, said my sister,

unless you think you're a bird.

and we were at the dinner table in the afternoon

after I put wheat germ in the soup.

they'll never notice it, said Adele Davis in her book

but she didn't count on my littlest sister, sharp-eyed

sweet eaglet that she was at five, despite the endless loop

of her rabbit frou frou song that never ended, and she said, 

chirping rather loudly:

what are all those dots in the soup?

what if there is no hell? I asked but only Heaven;

thinking of it before John Lennon did

to divert their attention.

but everyone kept slurping up their stew

and working around the B vitamins in it.

mary angela douglas 1 july 2014

His Paintings Mourn His Departure

[to Vincent Van Gogh]

cypress and star

and the wind soughs through the paintings.

a yellow wind;

the one of orphaned gold.

with heartache's  topaz hardly dried yet 

on the brushes, knife- the palette with its rare

hint of carmine,

of carmine that sobs like a rose in a gully washing rain

when the petals leave-
 as if, they are bruising the sky.

as if, they are bruising the sky

the milk glass galaxies strain against the blankest canvas

the executors have ever seen

and the hail of sorrow pelts in aquamarine's

distraught- summer-

and the crickets, who, because of you,

thought they were stars in the grasslands=

and that they sparkled-

simply-

cease to sing

mary angela douglas 1 july 2014;rev. 20 april 2015