When Poetry Becomes Propaganda

when poetry becomes propaganda
by the time that has taken root all over the world
I would have finished you would have finished

they would have finished their waxen wings
and flown into the sun
rather than to hear one more lie disguised

in your phoenix fleece and weeping

ah poetry fallen archangel, wounded bird
in the mire of gold I found you and I
cared and lifted you above

and remembered your former skies
your cathedral heights soaring into God
the one they no longer name.

am I unwise even to write this here
that I remember when you were

clear sapphire through and through
and I could see the skies
the tops of trees fomenting only green.

why have they taken your name and
rammed it into a  perverse flag and turned you into
a nagging day in and out

and beauty has fled into the wilderness without you
where there are no more flowers.

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017

A Bit Of A Recurring Nightmare

I'd like to move out of bogus land, if I could
then again, how would you know 
when you'd crossed the border?

bogus land never ends;
it's only interrupted by oceans, rivers,
baby creeks,

silent moments instead of prayer.
what would I take to be on my way from there?
a pot of jam, black bread

like in the fairy tales?
bogus land is an infinite jail.
even with salami in the lunch pail;

delectable meat loaf sandwiches...

you try to speak

but your words flare into sudden roses
and are gone, singed on the air.
you fling your words up all firework

pretty in the night skies.
but the air is damp with all the lies.
the way you see things in your mind,

it just doesn't come to light.
what went wrong I asked the ghosts
from city to city from flight to flight

and in between.
the ghosts didn't see me.
I was their ghost.

how do you like that,
I said then, scraping the butter on
the last of the toast.

who can win in bogus land.

what would it even mean
if you did?

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017

They Spoke In Waves

some learned to speak in waves
not to be detected
never to be forgotten

like the sea
like summer light and sequined
on the rivieras of dream

though in reality's subzero
they imagined palaces with
lunar balconies

what they pleased
and gestured only slightly
to the skies so that snows ceased

cruel winds as well
they spoke without speaking
as flowers may

even the dew
as leaves along the avenue
and in the square

the pure white square
as in Malevich they found a
where to stand

as in infinite light
without being rounded up for it.

mary angela douglas 23 september 2017 

La Vita Nuova

we'll see the rivers in the sky
of all that starlight going by
and flowering trees from space

when earth turns pink and green and plum
in another place as we are watching, rapt
and breathe in the solar winds and all of that

rainbowed excess

when cosmic rose, seraphic saffron light
our way into the gloaming of the day
when grief has passed

like this summer's clouds
and each cathedral child
can dream out loud

the visionary new meant from all time to be
the God of love and truth anew exalted
all heaven and earth new vaulted.

each broken heart, reprieved.

mary angela douglas 22 september 2017

Even If You Stare

speaking of God out loud in the pancake house
on a first name basis
and that's the truth I saw some people

shift in their booth

and look at me as though from Mars
I had descended and upended earth's last copy of
the Big Book of the Big Bang Theory.

I am so weary I said like some Poe heroine
fainting away an emblem of a mythical day
that crumbled along with the bacon

looks like I've awakened oh
I'm so sorry it troubles you

that I speak His name in gold 
and up there too
with all the stars He made.

and i love pancakes too

and I'm not from the zoo
but I'll say I love you to Him oh
any old where.

even if you stare.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

He Died Tonight

he died tonight
his ragtag army said
turning away from the Capital

trying to think of other things instead
he died tonight
or by late afternoon

and paid their golden tax
and we are left now to resume
life or its semblance

with the questions we would

have asked him had he lived
one minute more
walking along the shore

or murmuring among ourselves:
what sunset's here?
or is it the world's strange end

that ever he called us friends

when we went on from year to year
so blithe and astonished
by the kind of man he seemed

even more by the One he was
and what he dreamed of us, insisted
we could be...

tearswept is the time of doves
departing the arc

finding nothing left that's green
and the Flood gone over our heads
while we repeat, rehearse the dread

of the last, few days and which we

argued would shine in His kingdom most
the Father. Son or Holy Ghost
and who of us was closest.

oh God

that we were dead
and not the King
the ointment's broken now

in the myrrh scented dark
o Jesu here in my heart I finally see
we are your wandering stars

destined to be

who in your rusted armor now are
thrust into a dissolving world.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

The Leaves, Dreaming It

october soon, you thought;
throwing it all again
into such an acute soft focus.

and the firecracker leaves
exploding and the air
rich with the golden lost,

the rubies flung suddenly
at our feet in heaps.
who are we to be walking through

the jeweled leaves; already their
countdown has started
and watercoloured intensively

the skies direct convincingly
the azure arrows through the heart.

will they funnel up from the ground,
the leaves, imploringly, under some
tawny spell or

prayer of the pearl grey doves

as though the trees. the trees
were still with them, like a ghosting love;
how can we sail apart? they

sing, flying back to the branches
that released them.
and I could cry, as if I were

still a little girl to see them whirling,
trying to get back-
the twigs now, one by one unlit

and cannot be lit again.

is it their light is going backwards
and flickering so that you almost envision:
saints in the afternoon?

or will this be forwarded, late or soon,
to winter's as yet, unknown address where
we will be salvaged

asked the candid,
raveling, raveled the cherished
till they disappeared

into the furnace of the years.

and it's only the leaves dreaming it
in the upward gusts of wind
or we, who were stranded for so long.

or me, at the beginning again
in the roundelay of this song.

mary angela douglas 20 september 2017

And Slip Away

they will chop in little pieces
what you thought you were
almost greeting you at the food bank

or in the grocery store
or looking somewhere else
when you try to meet their gaze

to say to them look there's nothing to be
afraid of here:
sudden poverty isn't catching.

or maybe it isn't about
the fact that you're down there
and they're not.

never have you wished more
for the three good wishes unwasted.
as it is

I dream of letting go.
of occasions fit for the frothy dress
the velvet bandeau

the one of yellow sapphires set or of
the early snows;
of space, lodged so far from allthis

so that it almost chokes the soul
imagining the way back
from canyon to canyon

as in the intricate equations
of our major scientists
seeking the circumference

of the vastness between us
when neither heat nor light nor any human sound
comes to us in waves anymore

in the luxuriant afternoons...

harness the polar winds the frozen over smiles
I say to them from my cartesian plane
where it echoes not and the high winds rise.

all this is how it seems said no glittering fairies
while i, the I I was and am, can barely stand, must flee
the caustic breakroom stare, the looming severances of pay.

the cost of living this way is remaining yourself

in God, regardless, my adequate angels say: o search, oh search
for the boat of dreams.
and slip away.

mary angela douglas 19 september 2017

Seeing Clouds In Faces

something shifts and I see angels in your face
the light of the previously unknown
or in my own, in the mirror

come to full flower now

but what was sown I know not
nor do I dare.
as though they had been to the moon

your children
you thought they were in their room
but you did not check and see.

but a grace has fallen on them
like an evening dew
something askance

you notice at breakfast, the very next day
but what can you say?
but from a far Kingdom

not the one you knew, they knew
we know, we will have known
we shall know

all the tenses there at the same time
simultaneously thinks the one who
looks up everything in the dictionary

but there's no dictionary for this.
we are all mysteries.
and other mysteries pass back and forth

continuously unbeknownst to us
across the sky of our faces
as if they were clouds

clouding Clouds

mary angela douglas 17 september 2017

Better It Was

better it was that the castle lights were on
that the princess slogging through rain and mud
could see more clearly

the way through.
that from the halls came
the soft sounds of musicales

of court dances
then in favor.
how would they know her

among the coloured fountains
the spray of the wild sea on her cheek
lost amid locked gardens

in her merino cloak, bedraggled
with the tired look in her eyes
I could not surmise nor she

a certain nobility of posture that remained
a retience an elegance more of soul
then of the golden shoe

the ivory petticoat showing through
the some quality in the face
and in her clouded eyes

would gain her entrance.
even in disguise.

mary angela douglas 16 deptember 2017

Shouldn't It Be True

shouldn't it be true
that we should become known
only for the fact

that light shone upon us
and afterwards

that snows flew crystalline
when melting was always
within.

and we lived in a secret music
counting the beats in between
the irrefutable scenes:

what is the soul
was studied in many ways
in the great universities

and in the byways
I sighed that the soul is
where the poem grows

and fends for itself,
where forevers begin
and cannot cease glowing.

who are we that light
shone upon us, that there were roses.
that we were that privileged

that even the nights were
vivid with His stars

that we should have been
and that we are:

given, each one, the key
to something imperishable;
nor confined to learning

the history of zero alone
standing outside of Time
oh clouded Chronos, nevertheless,

still breathing beauty in.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2017

Then We Were

then we were waiting a long time
for the sun to become the moon
for silver to fall from the skies

so that it could be called "rain"
and I was standing still
near the honeysuckle vines

and could not tell you why
only something out of Time
was scented there.

how summer shaded into September
and it was the time for learning numbers
for the clock on the wall

and heavy Roman numerals
and I thought: is this all
not knowing that each letter

would become a door
and behind each door
another world

so that we spoke roses
into the air, slight ferns,
earth turning

and the code of the stars.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2017

The Emperor Dreams Of Tailors

to you it may seem hard
measuring out invisible cloth by the yard
I don't know.

the Emperor will wait
for lavish cloth no one can underrate
figured in stars or gold medallions

in silk, moire but never
the fabric of the day to day
the colours of the sun

when resting on the sun dial
or by angels spun
and in the looking glass

he's sure so sure
of cherry buttons
bound on fast

and even the slippers match
in which he treads
the light fantastic

or the halls of dread.

mary angela douglas 14 september 2017

Horse Story

then we were at the top of the hill
and we rushed down
the amber hours falling all around

I dreamed I was like the wind
and with the wind I flew
then it was school again

and time to sit so still
and daydream, sometimes,
out the window sill

where the scarlet leaves
followed their course.
oh I am like a horse

who can run forever
though a small one.
this I knew

and thinking it through,
I know it still.

mary angela douglas 13 september 2017

These Things

these things I brought with me from the long ago:
rose tinted clouds, my favorite Christmas snows
the ones outside the castle

the glow of That star
the map to where you are
when you are dreaming

or locked inside the twilight hour
with the key ringing from my
moon of whitest gold.

the valentine requited,

the stories I was told
I told myself
the ones that caused sad

angels to breathe past the rustling of trees.
my harp, of pleasing sounds.
no one knows but me

where the case that holds these lies
in the trunk (wrapped in silk
with its disguise of Spring

woven out of a lily's dream

a midnight's choir.
ah, my mother's lyre, restrung
and all her prayers impearled

for Kingdom Come

mary angela douglas 13 september 2017

My Small Flag

not in vain oh Lord have I planted my small flag
and housed myself under the underpass
when the storms flew over me, in Your care

aware of your presence and of little else
and You and the angel of death passing over me
was no castastrophe.

no small flag have I planted.
the hill was vast I climbed alone
and it has grown

mountain sized
oh realize I loved only You
though all the earth should pass

I plant my small flag
and know that it will last
though the earth slides off
its axis

and falls off spinning
when all of this has passed.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2017

Goodbye To The TIme Of Standing Still

goodbye to the time of standing still
I said to the backyard whippoorwill
goodbye to the sunsets at my door

to the honeyed shadows on the floor
to everything I was before.
earth is mercenary as you know

my mother wrote so long ago
in a letter filled with so many things..
but Heaven once seen

can't be denied
despite the liars in disguise
the knaves you meet along the road

you traveled leaving your fair home.
you'll still keep deep
inside your mind

the time of standing still.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2017

Tales My Mother Told Me

I placed my tears in a golden casque
the ones I found through the looking glass
where I grew small and smaller.

when will you ever grow taller
mocked the creatures
in their ruffs

and in their evening tiaras
when through all the dusks
i groped my way

into the ending of the Play
and into the countless
Who Invited Yous

that came my way.

Don't grow confused
my mother said
when everything that's in your head

is bartered by them
for any old thing.
rebuild the wastes

and find the trace
of the gold they stole from you.
in season or out

and whether your dress is appropriate or not
treasure o treasure
the things they have forgot.

mary angela douglas 11 September 2017

Under The Door If Not Over

water streams into
the corners of the mind
will we get out in time

what if
there is no we
but only I

like some dread vagabond.
who's on the line
the soul questions

and answers itself
no one that you know
who knows you

from a former time
and the water streams
underneath the Dream's

best door
you watch it pooling on the floor
as if you were at the movies

but it's real
and you're in the film
kind of in a starring role

though you never auditioned.
or can't remember if you did
watching the mission

of those on a dryer shore

report the predicament
of so many
alice weeping because

no forecast is granted you
that remains the same
from minute to minute

changeable as she is
someone says invisble,
and yet in pain.

mary angela douglas 11 september 2017

Reading At Home

internal differences were charted
epiphanies of the winding stair
the ghost that looks clear through you

when the winter trees are bare
the prospects of the novel
on the day you're left at home

the summer branch rescinded
and the ice cream cone
and you're boarding at the harbor

the ship of the Unknown
and casting off forever
from the local port's zone

in indigo waters
o sons and daughters caught 
in imagination's breeze

as it kicks up
or lost, deliciously
from flowering lea to lea

in an untoward destiny
time after jeweled time
released from magic:

drenched in the fairy tale chimes.

mary angela douglas 7 september 2017

Imago Dei

I do not want to see you as a social problem

I don't want myself to be viewed in that way
to be "served" that way
to be nudged, cajoled, form filled out
and ready to be packaged
ready to fit the category neatly
with no warning flags to be noted
I do not want to be a case file
I do not want to be a client
I do not want to be the underserved
I do not want to be the poor

I don't know how to make you understand
that I am a you, I am in the image of God
I have a name I was called by my mother
I am a person who has gone through many things
I did not fail
even if I don't have what you may consider
a reasonable amount of money in the bank

I never took drugs
I never drank
I never ran around

I do not consider that those who did
should be judged by you though
how do you know how they feel inside
what they have suffered.

you hand me a leaflet or a line
this hurts the most,
as though I never heard of God

If I didn't know Christ already though
I would be dead
so please look in my eyes and let me
tell you this:

why would you assume I don't know God
is it because you believe that those who know God
must be in a certain income bracket
Must own or occupy a house
must cut the grass regularly
and get their nails done
must not have failing teeth

must be in every way imaginable
the image of a successful person
what do you mean by success

must be a leader
what do you mean by leadership
I would like to be a true friend

why isn't that enough
and to love poetry but oh I
must be made fit to be seen in public

and oh though you will not believe it,
I have a clear mind.

please do not give me a copy
of the purpose driven life;
it was by following my purpose
I am now in my current condition

oh
I had parents and grandparents
who trained me well
they said it is your heart that counts
if you do your best that is enough
God will always hear you

he will always know where you are
you are his sparrow, his flower of the field
he will not ask you to fill out a form
so that you may eat and then ask you
to fill it out again in six months

he will believe you when you simply say:
I am hungry.

he will arm you for the battle

so that you will remain yourself
in a sea of classifications.
so that you will know that you know
you belong to Him
and not to the whims
of strangers who went to school

to study you.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2017

Beautiful Theories Imploded

beautiful theories imploded
we went home to the folkways
where shimmering beans were planted

and the harps amazed.
and you were the one half turning
when the bells called deep and round

turn back turn back Dick Whittington
to London town
we will ransack all the treasures

that can be found
in the bookshop lanes
the tea shops glistening

the Lost Child found

and a kind of grace settles down
and the cries of those who sold their wares
all cherry bright and cherry ripe

and caroled upon the stair
the ghosts of those you loved
the valentine and the doves

sweet sweet reprise
the pearl edged tuning of the harp
and the heart's too frail disguise.

mary angela douglas 6 september 2017

Brand New Day

such a charmed life was shining
with cherries on top and malted
malt shoppe double malted

salted caramel wafted
through the cinemas of the Saturday children
no more wilderness

was chanted and we said goodbye 
at the Easter stations plied with
lilies kaleidosocpe turning

paperback yearning at
the school book fairs
and madrigaled near the holly everywhere

the rose cheeked frost engaging
dream of the bride doll's satin
redeeming down the aisles

of our play
I have seen the lustre
of the diffident moon through clouds
and cried for the crayon of the 

rose rose red
and said is it Chrirmas Eve
to the now long dead

saying please in the cherry strewn Spring
let them Return
the ones the one and all

who loved me when I was small
with cherries on top
in the gleaming of

a Brand New Day...

mary angela douglas 5 septemver 2017

Someday We Will Speak Again

someday we will speak again
without dissension
now an unknown tongue, but Then

a heavenly declension
so music is to us now
a mysterious turning of the prow

of the heart's lost, misty, and confounded ship
not meant for earth;
the Soul's so fitful turning in its sleep,

the silvered leaf burning
on the tree of grief, released:

the reclaiming of the deep,
the unutterable;
the starry door swung open, suddenly

unto God.

mary angela douglas 3 september 2017

Fragmentary

no one was watching over you when you left
and so you slipped into the bog
you said to me in a dream

and the radiance all around you
holding pale lilacs in your hand
the lilacs of snow

is it all vanishing there I asked
or are you finally, home
but you said nothing

only later,
breaking into song.

mary angela douglas 2 september 20`7

The Sunset Of Words

from the sunrise of words they have stolen a little light
here and there so that words have taken flight,
the gleaming words

the ones you cherished in a lullaby sleep
ah they have stolen and coin by coin
my treasure! jeweled language

and was there none to cry out
no one to hear
no one to stand in guard

of all the angels o
they have stolen the lily and the myrtle
from out of the verse

of the past
the moon's reflection on the waters
the child's in a looking glass

the sighs of the least and last

and I am held in the tower
cried the Muse
the Muse of our lost hours

is there none to save?
men rave without speaking
day by day and close

the book and say
we have made the sunset of words
all by ourselves

and oh, we are proud

and will it out loud to be this way
that Beauty in tatters should go about the woods
senseless and dumb

in the mermaid hour
when the dagger must be flung out far
from her

and ah! beyond reach

flung far
that Love should rule in the End
even without speech.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2017

Opening Day

the bookless library opened...
with room to spare
in a beautiful building beyond compare

ah cried the kingdoms everywhere

a library without books
what an innovation
let our name be honored

among the nations
who had the imagination to see
you don't need books in a library

and I turned away for awhile from them
and found my way to the way back when
a child in love with the least word grew

in love with books and the pictures too
in love with the place where they were free
in colorful bindings and just for me

ah no I said and went my way
back home to weep for the opening day
of the Library of great renown

where few if any, books were found.

mary angela douglas 2 september 2017

The Sense Of Time Passing In The Fairy Tale

the way it made you feel when the Great Clock melted
into thin air
and your fine gown

they don't really tell
not even in footnotes in the Marvelous Editions
lilies and pumpkins embossed on the covers.

did you tell your children later on
"Time can only stretch so far;
be careful of it."

and they with their buttercup faces
could not understand
when life seemed long as their shadows

at noon.
and the big spoon full of icing was their reward.
centuries later

still reading about you
I think of Time too.
Cinderella, Ashputtel

fastening the dream clouds down
lest they blow away.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2017

For Isabel, That She May Find It

float on a tide of dreams
out of the Rabbit Hole...
this you will do, I know

when Christmas comes too slow
when life is in fetters
and you lose the key

look up
at the ceiling made of stars
and remember where you are

and Whose; how crystalline you shine-
bright angels laid for you
the rose flecked path

the way out of the woods
when it is dark
and the heavy clouds have gathered

in your heart.
float out, float out
on a tide of dreams

and gleam again
glad on a seagull's wing
and think of the myriad

jeweled things there are
still hidden from you
to find.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2017

Flood Stage

are you lost in your own life
and the signposts down
the rivers slipped their banks

and drowned the town
and you're the ghost of your own Ghost
and look around

at nothing familiar.
does the water reach the porch
and wash your dreams

and turn to rivulets and then to streams
and then are you swallowed up
and have the blue prints turned to clay

and every day a link in a nightmare chain
rain and rain and rain
and no  tears are left

earth has become one weeping sea
and you're bereft and then bereft again.
come unto Me he said.

come unto Me.

mary angela douglas 1 september 2017