Cautionary

gingerbread house the gingerbread house

the peppermint bark, the gum drop crenellations

the sugar glaze on the windows...adorable, the nibbling mouse

marzipan can you imagine?

and you've been starving for so long

and the gingerbread house came along

oh what oh what could go wrong

the little blue birds trill

already you're snacking on a sugar loaf brick

there must be some trick! the badger warns

some rose with thorns some haunted lemon drop sill

but you close your ears with a will

oh surely it must be God

who planted this house in this here fudge cake sod

to get me out of the wintry ditch

so in you go without a glitch

and the witch is there with plates of deli

sandwiches, corned beef on rye oh my oh my

and cherry danish too thick with Montmorency cherries

and pastry puffed inside:

exactly the creamy crumbly cheese you longed for

in your dreams oh please pass me the mustard.

and after that, the custard...

a few days pass at last you find

the shoo fly pie and the daily grind

the sweet locked door from the inside

and you cry

because you understand

a gingerbread house

stuffed entirely with flan or with a chimney

of brownies construed

can be the trap designed for you

can be the trap designed for you

mary angela douglas 12 april 2021

HOW IT APPEARED TO ME THEN

 the red rose dance again or the dance in the red rose dress

is how I saw it then since every red dress was rosy to me

how I remembered it then watching the dance on tv even in black and white

the threshing of tiny fires in the grass of the Unseen and the child I was entranced by

the smart tap of the shoes like a telegraphic relay

the castanets swirling, in a limited cascade of the ruffle

of the wave

of the dress in rose, rose red

so pure it seemed to me to be the one dancing the dance of the red

rose en espanol would be a way to be vivid just for the sake of vividness itself

to be precise for the sake of precision to be definite in the world, defining just

this space, to be as you wished to be not to be seen but to be for that moment the arbiter of the dance

almost a Queen without consciousness of it at all

to glance suddenly upward toward God flinging the beauty back

of the tap and the tap and the tap, distinct, the sharp! crackle of the fan

the time allotted a kind of rose music exemplified rarified distinct:

become a brief lifespan flaring now and then, the burning bush in

retrospect

a code learned in a circumspect way an unexpected staccato of sparks in the end

flown upward ruby sparkles and the fan shuts closed

that they may become the stars.

mary angela douglas 11 april 2021;14 september 2022

1Mary Angela Douglas

Skipping Rope Rhyme I Needed All The Time

everybody wants what they want what they want

I don't know how to tell what they want what they want

whatever I decide that they want what they want

its always the wrong  way

what they want what they want

I don't know what to say when they want what they want

or even how to play what they want when they want

I know that I cant change what they want what they want

or even rearrange what they want what they want

so I'll just stay the same what I want what I want

though it's not what they would want any day

what they want what they want.

so I'll just bid good day when they want what they want

and leave them all to pray

for what they want what they want.

and skip on down the lane

what I want what I want

mary angela douglas 10 april 2021

Pushing The Words Away

this is the way it is, then;

pushing away the words that you say

the words that you say make little inroads in the sand

then disappear

as if they were never here

and its all hard water

harder than I can say using any metaphor

getting harder every day

pushing the words away

the words that you say

the little inroads day by day

watching the crumbling of my heart

as if I were some distance away

some day I will be

totally free from pushing the words away

I will have golden oars in my hands then

a boat of pure sapphire;you won't be able to tell me from the water.

I will find Avalon, the silence beyond the seas.

mary angela douglas `10 april 2021

Where We Shoud 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

Cherry Red Teapot Lane

you'll want to be one day turning off into your own lane

a thought came to me one day not into the neighbor's driveway

for some borrowed tea

you need your own teapot cherry red

a song to sing underneath your breath

while waiting for the vent to kick on once again

a familiar tree that knows you

in  all seasons

even if all of this is in your head

and you live in a box or on the bus all day, round trip

you know, if you think of it first

it will still be your own lane

and you will love it.

mary angela douglas 9 april 2021

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 plumage 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

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Cast Your Golden Word

over the frozen landscapes of this earth

oh Lord the gethsemanes you surely know, have known

the unfeeling gardens the numbness of the mind

the heart shut out in the dark

with the door slammed just in time

Lord God please cast your golden Word again

that we may live despite all calumny despite the slicing winds

that mock us in our flights from place to place

all those who live within Your grace

yet have the Snow Queen world hurled in their face

let the race not be to the swift

but to those who cling to Your Mercy as to the sinking mast

of the last ship

and the court of last resort.

mary angela douglas 8 april 2021

Let's Start Again

let's start again

turning the crystal page of the wind

holding the ederberry summer in a thimble

breathing in and out with the leaves.

there will be mint and eglantine

as in the finer poems, the stories that unwind

from brightly coloured spools

whenever you're not in school

dreams will pass as if they were clouds

more slowly overhead

we will be in the music and not lose our place

no longer suffering in the great the meaningless race

toward a horizon never the same orange twice

I will drift as if on ice floes

to a kingdom nobody knows

we will be magic again.

and blend in with the roses and the hyacinths

and in odd, silver hours

be happily mistaken for flowers.

mary angela douglas 7 april 2021

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

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

Notes From The Recital;Words Breaking Into Song

carrying a nosegay;standing at large on a stage of pearl

I remember some things, just not the whole thing

the grand piano with the open lid, the coiled interior

knowing that the keys were ivory.

wear your pink dress for the recital

the one with ribbons on the sleeves

curtsy before and after

if you fall into the music you won't make mistakes.

I have lived nearly an entire lifetime in that music

floating on a sea of crystal notes and into each I impressed

my soul feather light as it seems written in an invisible code

abandoning all mirrors.

I felt my way along the walls of the castle 

except in the towers where usually it was too late

to weave the skein of one's hair into moonlight

I walked over bridges in my time

facing the traffic going the other way.

I learned the alphabet for reasons I cannot disclose.

every one of them glad, if not carved in gold.

And I am happy God let me come here.

mary angela douglas 2 april 2021

Speaking Of Other Aprils

because it wasn't my fate anymore

to wait expectantly for those pink lofty blossoms

near the Tidal Basin

to visit the bookshops, the French Impressionists at the museum

I started to visit the orchards inwardly to weave the cherry blooms

into a corridor of the mind, as if I were a glass dome though which

those petals endlessly sifted, and then the snow

second snow on the snow of monuments

I became obscure. particularly to myself. is it me singing

I wondered anymore or what is it that still trills on.

so that I know still the snowy poems, the petals brushing against

the inner skin. onion skin sensitivities of the soul Spring then from another train. or no trains, only buses, limited service

the memory of a banishment

not that well defined.

was I really ever there as though all we are could be defined by one city

on resumes sometimes people questioned in country oblique ways

you werent really there were you

so that I rattled off all the metro stations to prove it.

yes I was.

I was many places.

I found out , the only root is God.

mary angela douglas 1 april 2021

The Ones Who Get To Go To The Funeral

this morning I started thinking about the dignitaries

the ones who attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II

you know, the heads of state

because the Pope represents Jesus you know, on earth,

his presence amid the troubles of the world

so isn't it right and correct and touched with gold and magic

that only dignitaries are invited though maybe a few old friends

from Poland made it in...

that there should be this symbiosis you know

somehow

I don't understand anything in this world.

In his travels John Paul sought out the poor

those who are called the rank and file.

He was serious about it.

And so were they.

in the gospels the crowds that followed Jesus

were largely the poor, the distressed, those who needed a friend

who had no networking connections shall we say

someone to speak a kind word whom they could see and sometimes touch

and sometimes he would ask, can I come home with you and can we eat supper

and then I know Jesus was happy and the rank and file person he chose to

sup with was most certainly happy.. Zacharias up in the palm tree for instance

a little supper probably. maybe lentil stew or a couple of fish with some honey.

a few figs. who knows. the glory of God.

I don't think even one person like that was invited to Pope John Paul's funeral.

and I have nothing speciic against Kings or Presidents, ministers of war.

It just seems curious to me.

a thing that causes unease in my heart.

mary angela douglas 1 april 2021