so where in your book does Jesus say to exclude and persecute? does he promote the attacking of those who are different? does he say rebel against Cesar? does he say thanks peter for chopping that guys ear off now can you finish him for me – hes a pagan after all. does he say no women, does he say lepers deserve their state for past sins – no help for them. does he say get these beggars out of my sight. does he say any of the hate stuff that i hear so much these days? know what he says – treat each other like you would treat me. be like little children. be peaceful. forgive as you would be forgiven…. Jesus never said stupid shit.
one of the things i love best about still being alive is:
suiting up in that old 3/4 dark almost black green wax coat, slipping on the knee-high wellies (reinforced so nothing can pierce the sole) zipping up every zip, snap, hood, buckle etc and going out in the near dark of winter walking with the little jack russel for company – even when the rain is hard and wind is strong or maybe i should say especially when, like tonight the moon late rising one star amidst the breaking clouds, mud n bog n field n down along the grassy banks the lake waves like an ocean, occasional squawks of errant crows not yet settled for another winter night. nothing stops the little dog, she is an atv of heart and blood, through the hedge rows, along the rocky shore catching waves, like some mad moon in orbit she always returns to me and we walk until we find our way back hardly able to see, she knowing there’s some treat, a bit of old bacon or such, me knowing that there’s something sweet from the oven and that michelle and morgan have the fire tended and after a bit of washing up and maybe a cup of black coffee, i get the evening meal started and i suppose that’s more than one thing, its truly somethings i love best about still being alive.
and that coat you know, did you ever have one? you can go out in any weather and not mind, as if you sealed up every bit of whatever was and is good in your life and it settles all around you keeping anything cold or harsh or wet away – but you know not really away, because somehow you still feel every bit of weather and you really wouldn’t not want to feel each and every inch of it, but rather that magic of the coat is somehow it transforms even the most daunting winter night into something you can’t wait to experience?
I dreamed my love had found me my children gathered too put down all their weapons eased their hearts cried their fill then they began to play like they did when they were young and when I woke I’d forgotten all my dreaming days were done.
I went down to make the coffee sat by the open window ran my fingers through my hair thought I heard somebody talkin’ voices carry on the air birds out over the ocean rising silver like a prayer
Big Lorraine is in Cape Breton Nova Scotia, Canada. In one of those vast woodland logics of Cape Breton, Big Lorraine is much smaller a town than Little Lorraine is. In fact I don’t think there’s more than a house or two visible from the highway. Maybe it was different back in the day? Anyway Cape Breton is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever lived in. There are many ghosts along the rugged coast and through out the highlands where sometimes they don’t even get a town left standing for them. So this is a ghost poem and it is obviously for Big Lorraine.
I’d say this was written in 2003 or maybe 4. A version appears in Caribu & Sister Stones : Selected Poems by PD Lyons, selected by Deirdre Kearney, Published by Lapwing, Belfast, 2009. ISBN 978-1-905425-90-7 .
Will ye no come back again? Will ye no come back again? Better lo’ed ye canna be, Will ye no come back again? – and me still here crying but not minding. I miss my dad.
DAD
The swans out in the field
Their secrets not revealed
Passing into silent flight are they
Perhaps their subtle sigh
Stifles some deeper cry
As they know you’ll be leaving much too soon
Walking down the lane
The filly foals refrain
Their running is the sound of falling rain
Are they restless from the summer?
Or somehow do they know
You’ll not stay to seen them fully grown
By the fairy mounds of old
The pock marked GPO
Cross the Boyne to bang your head on spiral stone
See the wonders down at Fore
And the ancient seat of kings on Tara hill
Now sitting by the fire, music’s playing’ low
Guess I’ll raise a glass or two before I go
Though it’s to an empty chair not your smiling face I stare
(Yet) whenever that door slams I still hope to see you there.
And sitting here I wonder
All those stories finally told
Revealed how in our youth
We were so very much the same
Was it drink that made us bold?
Or did we speak so true
Because somehow, we knew
You’d not be coming back this way again?
Somewhere Still
Somewhere there is still a place, you sitting in the sun, concrete porch paving slabs, Cape Cod Grey picnic table, small summer savages running jumping clinging – immune bare feet impervious to sun. Skin frosted with salt, lotions, cake icing.
Somewhere children still take your hand, invite you to cross the street walk with them down to the beach, taking them sometimes instead to lunch…
Long-time companions, comforts of old age, afternoon naps, books, TV, mail order catalogues, big band music and too those ever-dangerous memories – love, marriage, a hole never in twenty-three years has time healed.
Somewhere she still takes you by the hand. Ohs your name laughs into the open window, Fifty-five Chevy, summer bright chrome. So close to flying great American V8 highways up through the Canadian border dwindling into heavy Nova Scotia sands.
There has never been an ocean too cold for her to swim in. Long after your retreat to safety – Flamingo towels, Knickerbocker beer, USMC Zippo, Old Gold cigarette spiral prayers. Gratitude at last. Unable to fathom any reason to feel bad about surviving.
Deep breath wonderful (not a god damn palm tree in sight). Watch that woman of the sea; only wish there would never have to be a time to leave.
Later she gets tipsy; acquiescing when the waiter offers to sweeten her drink no knowing here to sweeten means more liquor. Out on the dance floor, hold each other tight as you want because she’s your wife now and you always liked the Mills Brothers.
Sometime after midnight, small cedar room, Stuart tartan blankets, crisp white sheets. Strange night sounds traipsing gingham curtains. As if tiny fingers, she ohs your name. Answer back with words you never knew before.
This spring by the sea your little house will not find you. Gone now perhaps to wander just like W.B. said –
Glimmering girl once more beside you and pluck
Till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
(For: D.R.L. – with regards to W.B. Yeats, his favourite poet.)
Donald Raymond Lyons
Donald Raymond Lyons, 77, of North Shore Blvd., East Sandwich, MA, formerly of Rockledge Dr., Waterbury, passed away peacefully on Sunday, (January 26, 2003) with his family by his side at the Mary F. McCarthy House in Sandwich. He was the husband of the late Flora (Rosano) Lyons. Mr. Lyons was born Nov. 21, 1925 in the Waterville section of Waterbury, son of the late Raymond and Ethel (Pollard) Lyons of Waterville. He graduated from Crosby High School in 1947 and served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1943 to 1945 during World War II. Mr. Lyons joined the Waterbury Police force in 1953. He was promoted to police sergeant in 1965 and to lieutenant in 1973, retiring in 1984. He loved family gatherings, his books, wine, dancing, lunch dates and his grandchildren. He was a member of B.P.O. Elks Lodge No. 265 and the VFW Mattatuck Post No. 8075. He leaves his devoted family of three sons, Peter D. Lyons of County Cavan, Ireland, Mark J. Lyons of Waterbury, and David M. Lyons of Sagamore, MA; two daughters, Pamela A. Beane of Sandwich, MA and Judy M. Donovan of Plymouth; a loving brother, Raymond “Buddy” Lyons of Waterbury; and 11 grandchildren that adored him. He was predeceased by a sister, Shirley Aparo. The funeral will be held Friday at 8:45 a.m. from the Mulville Funeral Home, 270 West Main St., to St. Francis Xavier Church for a Mass at 9:30 a.m. Burial will be in All Saints Cemetery. Friends may call at the funeral home Thursday from 4-8 p.m. Memorial contributions may be made to the Mary E. McCarthy House, 73 Service Rd., East Sandwich, MA 02537, or to a charity of the donor’s choice. The family wishes to express their sincere appreciation for the love and support given to their father by his longtime companion, Eleanore Bryan of Sandwich, MA.
Published in The Hartford Courant on Jan. 28, 2003
Sixty- two Chevy pick up Bondo dust and shot exhaust Your brother driving 84 east Neil on the radio I smoked a million cigarettes So you wouldn’t try n kiss me Not cause of that but because your brother already wanted to kill me Was only driving me to Waterbury So I wouldn’t have no excuse To hang around you – Cowgirl in the sand.
A story, a story! (Let it go. Let it come.) I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender into this world. First came the crib with its glacial bars. Then dolls and the devotion to their plastic mouths. Then there was school, the little straight rows of chairs, blotting my name over and over, but undersea all the time, a stranger whose elbows wouldn’t work. Then there was life with its cruel houses and people who seldom touched- though touch is all- but I grew, like a pig in a trench-coat I grew, and then there were many strange apparitions, the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison and all of that, saws working through my heart, but I grew, I grew, and God was there like an island I had not rowed to, still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked, and I grew, I grew, I wore rubies and bought tomatoes and now, in my middle age, about nineteen in the head I’d say, I am rowing, I am rowing though the oarlocks stick and are rusty and the sea blinks and rolls like a worried eyeball, but I am rowing, I am rowing, though the wind pushes me back and I know that that island will not be perfect, it will have the flaws of life, the absurdities of the dinner table, but there will be a door and I will open it and I will get rid of the rat insdie me, the gnawing pestilential rat. God will take it with his two hands and embrace it.As the African says: This is my tale which I have told, if it be sweet, if it be not sweet, take somewhere else and let some return to me. This story ends with me still rowing.
– from The Awful Rowing Towards God 1975
( Her eighth collection of poetry is entitled The Awful Rowing Toward God.The title came from her meeting with a Roman Catholic priest who, unwilling to administer last rites, told her “God is in your typewriter.” This gave the poet the desire and willpower to continue living and writing. The Awful Rowing Toward God and The Death Notebooks are among her final works, and both center on the theme of dying
On October 4, 1974, Sexton had lunch with Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton’s manuscript of The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975 (Middlebrook 396). On returning home she put on her mother’s old fur coat, removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her garage, and started the engine of her car, ending her life by carbon monoxide poisoning.[12]
In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in 20 days with “two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital.” She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death. She is buried at Forest Hills Cemetery & Crematory in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts.
Sexton is seen as the modern model of the confessional poet. Maxine Kumin described Sexton’s work: “She wrote openly about menstruation, abortion, masturbation, incest, adultery, and drug addiction at a time when the proprieties embraced none of these as proper topics for poetry.”[13]
THE AUTHOR OF THE JESUS PAPERS SPEAKS
In my dream I milked a cow, the terrible udder like a great rubber lily sweated in my fingers and as I yanked, waiting for the moon juice, waiting for the white mother, blood spurted from it and covered me with shame. Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper. So I went to the well and drew a baby out of the hollow water. Then God spoke to me and said: Here. Take this gingerbread lady and put her in your oven. When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.
Anne Sexton from The Book of Folly 1972
the girls i knew in high school were all enamoured with Sylvia. and i must admit i was some what smitten. but there was this teacher of English. she did not debate but rather exposed the rare woman genius the all too common crucifixion the dark stronger than the bright, the strength to take control in a time in a place where all is only waiting around food feeding on food attracted like horseflies to tenderness. the time was she said now and so the time was and so she said it was therefore it would be now and never any other time but. – pd lyons
