They Get The Lingo Jingo

they get the lingo down pitty pat butter pat

in any generation, that's for sure

whenever they're wrangling their wranglers

oh it's a tip top ranch with branches everywhere.

no trees they can't see the forests for.

oh but it's parquet floored it's in the right

neighborhood and with the approved rugs,

the specified pugs.

at Christmas, sparkle!

you wreaths in countless windows.

with every other symbol.

I'm impressed.

not dressed for success though

(clueless are the shoeless)

in the know and

edgy as all get out.

get out!

sprtiz yourself all over with

the latest words

it's still all

Halloween Junction.

no compunction

when it comes down to it

in trading your soul

for the new one on display

is that ok?

you'll ask their mirrors

does it make me

look complicit?

mary angela douglas 7 june 2015

I Just Want To Go Home

who got a heart that ticks like a watch
at the Emerald Fair?
a thimbleful of courage.

a mind that sees
through crystal doors.
oh why not skip the route through the

poppy coloured fields
and pick at very last and least
the door that

leads to pure freedom; to
crushed diamonds on the winter air
and to the open plains.

but you demur and I despair
and circle the wagons
that just aren't there when

the dolls won't drink the milk
in the bottle
that never disappears.

oh we'll go on for years
you say, thinking you
are some visionary.

but I hear bells like stars
and the Christmas steeples glint
through the blizzards of

bright lies I've heard before.
I know that Christ

is real and I mean Jesus
not someone else
in his disguise

though you use coloured
chalks to QED it on the Palace
blackboards and cry, otherwise! when

your equations shine in the dark.

and though the drowning sink
below the water lines
it's all just watercolours

in a gallery where
it's always raining and
I just want to go home.

mary angela douglas 7 june 2015

We Who Are Subject To Mirages

we who are subject to mirages

to the fluttering of failing wings

of the small things

so prone to disappear

we need you near oh God

in our tiny rooms

making do with scraps

for curtains unable to bear

the View.

and losing, losing, lost

we bear the cost of our clouded

then occluded dreams till

oh from our windows and at

the very sills at times

we long for some release

where somehow Beauty never ceases

flowing in waves from ever

your weeping hands.

then snows visit us and erase

our solitary tracks

when we look back

and light your Light

comes to our cages

and we see, oh

benign and gleaming:

the shadows of your angels;

not the bitter facts.

mary angela douglas 6 june 2015

Almost The Wish You Wished For Did Come True

almost the wish you wished for did come true

pointed out the good fairy softly

there it is under the Tree, and are you

really going to ruin Christmas

just because you can't see can you

how almost the wish you wished might

be the one you really wanted?

she waited. we unwrapped at last

the shiny paper, curling ribbons

new oh spanking new as anything

bright could be.

whatever it was I won't-

she won't I mean

tell you.

you'll just have to find out

yourself

when it happens to you!

mary angela douglas 5 june 2015

I Dreamed Of Manderley Last Night (Second Version)

[for Daphne Du Maurier, on the novel, the film, Rebecca...]

I dreamed of Manderley last night
wrote the second Mrs. De Winter, years after
her coronation; still fresh in mind

it was a dream but even so
it was not the same in Time as dreams refracted it, there,
as the rusted gates close on us all,

don't they, drifting back, even in dreams

the dream gates waver.

but she went back to Manderley it seems,
seeking to savor it again;
seeking a gleam of what remained,

remains for the fragmented mind
puzzling it again

in beautiful sentences wrote Du Maurier

the most beautiful of any I have heard
in noveldom turning the page on beauty,
to peruse it, farther on.

and at the beginning of the book
she said this, beginning a dream alphabet,
language of her own. dream language dreamed

not saving the best wine for last.
ah unsurpassed I dreamed of Manderley
last night I dreamed...

I dreamed and dreamed over just those
lines such a voice over of angels
on a familiar narration oh not really my own

your own though it sounds like you speaking it:
you, farther back the angels graciously suggest

and you are all alone now
wither shall I roam and find the dream-time home

and even yet,you dream of Manderley

your own version of it

and shadows and shadows
on the long avenues
cast by the fitful trees wind-torn

as the heart remembering;

lining the roads, the trees and their reveries
that won't that can't anymore
lead home.

mary angela douglas 5 june 2015 rev. 22 may 2017;4 july 2019

Why Your Package Isn't Going Anywhere Admonished The Admonisher or: Sorry I Asked

I can't believe I have to tell you this again
groused the vendor in his sleep
how do I  know where your package is

somewhere in the Andes I lost track
or maybe there's an ill wind at your back
or maybe your mailbox got invaded by red ants

and they ate the whole thing up
including the packing materials yum yum
your next to last pair of pants

and now they don't feel so good in the tum
from bright green bubble wrap (the ants)

or maybe the invite slipped through the cracks
since you're always the last to be asked to the
weddings and funerals and that only after its

all been done and dusted.
or maybe you'll just grow encrusted
you old barnacle

turned stoical through your
long in the tooth winters
without that Christmas overcoat showing up

or sup your sup without
that gold limned dinnerware

what can I say
who never handled it with care or any day
it went out the dock door oh don't implore me

or maybe I just don't like you

said the slime affixing no label at all or
I held it back at the last minute hehe
or maybe I stashed it in the bracken

or tossed it into the summer sea

where the dolphins made merry with it.
don't keep asking me please
ask National Geographic

or maybe the mailman was sick

or maybe I'm the White Rabbit
tick tick tick and

it's all too late in that case
you won't be needing your package
anyway now, will you?

mary angela douglas 4 june 2015


Note on poem: This poem is not really about package delivery. We have wonderful mail service where I live. It is about the feeling of sometimes never getting a direct, simple answer to a direct simple question, that feeling, and in the form of a dream-nightmare of the overworked person who truly is not able to answer the customer's question for reasons beyond his or her control, and in a wider sense that feeling we all have, even those who believe in God that no matter how we ask the question, sometimes there is just no answer (at least in this life) and the theories and explanations don't make emotional sense to us which is the sense that is most important, after all. Or in simpler terms, what it feels like when people don't even understand your question in the first place. I wrote this poem to get rid of this feeling which I hate to feel, don't you?

Origami in Gold Spoke The Poets

the paper clouds are folded so it does appear then
out slips a snowflake or a tear I can't say which
yet cries a child how can I spell the years

that time of year,..said Shakespeare
knowing he was autumn burnished
in a burnished word no more

than bare branched aganst an ancient
English sky I sigh for him for Margaret
said dear Hopkins who only sighs for

Margaret let these leaves appear; then
melt away said Robert Frost that
nothing gold may stay I heard the choric

poets one by one
and saw them on a vivid stage one moment's
speaking in a gold, gold language

then they stepped away
and each particular sun went with them
leaving these shreds of light for us,

who cannot will them back.

mary angela douglas 3 june 2015

Note on the poem: This poem alludes to three semi autumnal poems: William Shakespeare.s Sonnet 73 (That time of year thou mayst in me behold when yellow leaves or none or few...), Robert Frost's Nothing Gold Can Stay and Gerard Manley Hopkins lovely poem Spring and Fall: To A Young Child (Margaret, are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving)...I felt the music of these three poems unfolding in me as I wrote the poem and I imagined them, beautiful as they were folded, unfolded on origami paper of gold foil.

You Came To This World Selling Nothing

to Jesus Christ

you came to this world selling nothing.

what they were going to do with you

they did but still

you didn't waver.

change! they said

the angry children

change into anything else

you smiled.

light itself came down

wherever you walked

even if the sky clouded over

one minute before.

you arrived, already at home.

already the strange, the stranger:

no entourage.

no front men.

no no branding.

oh Christ oh Son of God.

where is love since

you departed.

we've looked everywhere.

mary angela douglas 3 june 2015

Missing The Nightingales

[to "archaic" Poetry, kicked to the curb]

missing the nightingales modern

words flooded the town squares,

the school playgrounds;

looked down on lilacs,

drifting moons, the

heart, kept hidden

drifting like a cloud:

the one for whom

Regulations

could not be made.

missing the nightingales,

roses turned to rust;

stars were only dust:

ah there was no more shining.

what are you pining for?

the savants asked me,

clipboards in hand.

already shaking their heads.

there is no mysticism

they tried so hard to say

their mouths forming only

soundless snows.

I'm not translating this;

I turned away

from all they would say

to me next

and heard the nightingale

lone singing o jeweled

in the mulberry tree

and glimpsed the ghost of Keats

writing feverishly in love

with the patter of garden rains

and everything Beauty named-

putting all of this to shame

putting all of this to shame

mary angela douglas 2 june 2015

Then There Is No More School

[on the passing of time]

one day in the rain you turned into watercolours
too bad, no one there to record it.
what lovely puddles

the small child said
splashing through your ghost
or watching your rainbows

trickle down the drains
too young to ask oh
what remains.

I scorched so many things while ironing
out the wrinkles.
remembering the heat that rises

from the radiators too,
midwinters, when being inside alone
is a Christmas in itself

when you are warm
and how this comforts you
pressing your nose against the

frosted glass and

how old wax on the floors
turns yellow as fried eggs
until the pink of sunrise

filters through in even colder dawns:
the bus honks twice then
there is no more school.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2015

Were We Painting On Clouds While We Lived On Earth

"were we painting on clouds while we lived on earth..."
I heard them sigh, "did all that drift away?"
in the eternal breezes down the

esplanades of Heaven
shimmering almost sad
where the gold leaf trees

never lose their leaves.
are there no more autumns then?
asked the child in me, in Paradise?

ah it will seem to you then as now
perhaps their better angels said in sweet surmise,
you wrought it all in vain

that the dark rains came, the darker floods
and carried it all away.
and yet, it is not so.

mary angela douglas 28 may 2015

Dorothy Nears The Land Of Dainty China

[an episode in the book "The Wizard of Oz", though
not expanded on in the film, I think", as well,
on Cervantes tale, "The Man of Glass"]

will words break here in the air
as you speak them?
dorothy wondered then

approaching the village of china.
how to speak with such
breakable residents.

it looks slightly bleak
she almost said to
her little dog

in Porcelain.

should I paint rosebuds
on the breeze
to put them at their ease?

forget me nots! she
almost cried
thinking of home.

step with your satin footsteps
only here.
or they will tremble as

though it thundered.
(learn to) 
breathe like. snows.

mary angela douglas 25 may 2015

To The Unknown Russia

before this sun of scythian gold
were there these spires, these domes,
dreamed of by the dreaming

yet unborn, the later to come?
and were the bird cherries annointed
with starlight from so far away?

it's the Russia of imagination
long gone by that never strayed;
the bells of endless tolling

beyond the range of suffering
the heart forever unwon
there is this mysterious something

glint of His kingdom come
hidden from view
except, for some.

this isn't true.

mary angela douglas 23 may 2015

The Snow Queen And Other Regimes

this is how melting started in the annals
of the world the unsmiling instructor
began...

but this is not the beginning she thought
inside her head where no one could hear
her yet

the child quite small at her desk
on wide ruled paper began to write
not what the teacher said but

the history of melting, in colours
of the flowers that appeared
in dream spectrums the snow itself

a spectrum of violets of orchids
of camellia alphabets no longer cryptic

and how it feels not to freeze anymore
to be free of mathematics falsely applied
to face those that lied to you with

a flower crowned head
and to be regally happy
no longer standing in corners

punished for enchantment,
for buttering bread on the wrong side and-
when you come down to it:

for withstanding even from a young age

the soul plucked out by the roots
for today's lesson on botany.

mary angela douglas 21 may 2015

There's No Conversation Like The One You Could Possibly Have

there's no conversation like the one you could possibly
have by yourself fabricating the fabric of it
so that every inch shines on the loom

and you weave in and out of it your own design
without designs on anyone else without the
glaring meeting your Good Morning!

on those mornings where the sullen canyons
won't even give you an echo back.
so here's the track we run on when it

all looks bleak, our own! and every part
of that railroad gleams and goes past
limpid streams that turn the waterwheels

round and the children in their colorful
outfits wave in the snow near the
evergreens lit for perpetual Christmas.

this is the secret of playwrights cherishing
their plays or the old men cracking wise with
invisible friends in the fast food chains

or the angels in a dark time
heralding pearl to pearl edged wing
alone

no shepherds yet in view.

mary angela douglas 20 may 2015

Apres Le Deluge And The Wounding Decree

the kings roses are in bloom

whose else could bloom

in winter snows and cast

a pink tinge on everything

even my old gown she sighed when

creeping round the edges

of the parchment multifoliate

the painted flowers cannot detract

from the decree

of wounding me.

I hide in the shade of smiles

I can't remember when

all this happened

still. and roses fade

but not the brier

roses fade and not the brier

she sang on one note only

till the last string broke.

and word of this floated

out of the Kingdom.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2015

I'm Missing A Clue Said Nancy Drew

[to Carolyn Keene, for the entire series]

I'm missing a clue said Nancy Drew
maybe it's in the old clock, hidden under
the stairs under an oak tree when

the moon irradiates the clouds
but how clouded can life be
in a pale blue convertible

and your dad, a lawyer
when Hannah bakes chocolate cakes
every other minute and you can

still wear those pencil skirts with
the matching sweaters
and read other people's diaries?

and there'll be a note in the bouquet
in of course, cryptic  handwriting
or a slight delay when the

operator puts you through;
an objet d'arte  in the old junk shop
and luna moths in the attics of odd years

won't ravage the old silks. shhh...
a click in the wall! my copy's late
again, from working on her story

a voice comes to you in a dream
when the spring to the hidden bookcase
swings out with the entire series and

you will finger your omnipresent string
of pearls and wonder who wrote
all this, really?

mary angela douglas 19 may 2015

Note: Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson was the original Carolyn Keene who wrote many of the early Nancy Drew books. Later authored by others. The best ones are hers.

What Will Seeing Be

losing your map of the constellations
what will seeing be
anymore?

the clocks say "nebulae",
"nebulae" moving
across town

will not solve it.

like Alice on a summer day
you're late in dreamland
a little off guard

leaving your equations behind
you in the summer yard.
your notebook and the new pencils.

oh what will you say to
them at teatime
when they don't pass the cake.

you're on your own now.
half way smile the cheshire cats while
somewhere on another block

shine beyond shining the
spring constellations
over the baby rosebuds

"and the rich sleep of whose gardenias?
what is all this weeping"

said the Red Queen.
I won't have it.

mary angela douglas 19 may 2015