ruff from 2011 in eight bits, by pd Lyons

So because the day is bright and dancing outside my window I am most lazy regarding today’s blog so forewarned be best armed – what follows? 2 photos and a newishly  found ruff unpolished as if in amber piece.

’til next time

pd Lyons has left the building

edinborough scotland

 

 

25.3.11

today out on the veranda of all gone away youth whiskered timber dreams woke another coffee

1
you wouldn’t have to wait for anything to boot up
turn on or upload you could just sit down
bang away royal keys upon a cotton rag of water marked paper

you wouldn’t have to settle for crap wine, Bordeaux châteaux
would be easily accessible even to a low level pot dealer

you could get a soft pack of Marlboro that tasted good –

better than the hard pack in the days before anyone even thought of lights

the rent was 180 for five big rooms a laundry room full bath including heat and utilities

you could sit on the second floor back porch blow a joint in broad daylight watch some old ginger tom prowl around some inner city orange rose bush while the most beautiful girl you thought you’d ever know sat on your lap your hands finding ways to make her melt underneath her long gypsy soul skirt.

2.

starbuck girls go by to boys that somehow remind you to your own self except instead of love they sell schemes and plans and how to maximize income and output and the most beautiful girl in the place gives her precious attention to someone who won’t even make her come, too busy trying to sell her something that she won’t ever need on her death bed.

3.

don’t know what the reasons for the way we are is
don’t know how we got to be so far away from where we were
but there’s a time a place for everything
there’s a never ending ever changing way of everything
so they say and who are they for us to disbelieve when we can see it in our selves
we cross the street together out of step

we walk up stairs without noticing our own eyes
we can’t get on because all we want is something we remember way back there

4.

so much can happen when we live long enough
so many thing s we thought were no possible could have come to pass
but not believing in the future
did we not live grandly in the past?

my mother wanted things for me I did not believe in
my father wanted me to somehow not be a worry
my regret is only that being so inarticulate I could not explain
how I could love them but not want to ever become them

5.
cannot manage this consistency too well
I know your chimes of freedom flashing
I am the outlaw child of all these blue collar working class heroes
I am not them but am eternally grateful to them
all they gave of their own unrequited youth so that I could be the rebel born
and I will not forget you and I will not neglect you
and I will raise your soft n hidden heart to my own pure unbridled lips
my kisses unconcerned with the blood of my mother and my father
I will cherish your suffering transformation into peace.

6.
whatever went winkingly down the stairs clinkily
open and wondering wounded and proud
never more thinkingly would she be drinkingly
out on the balcony summers no more

hearts could be full of love cause the most damaging cuttingly cursingly no matter how true could never be you

7.
how many times have I thought to see you there?
after all these years – damn near 40
don’t I still imagine I come round the wooded path way bend
and by that pond somehow you’re there

ghosts haunt the places that the living know
it has nothing g to do with where they died
ghosts haunt this place where I grew up
where I first saw you naked
and you broke my heart open before I even knew I’d love you

I know I won’t ever see you now
but if promises can be made to ghosts
then someday soon I’ll meet you here again
golden apples silver apples
pine needles on a summer day patch of grass back by the old turtle pond

8.

today I do not want backward

I know there is no such thing as then or later
and now’s so fleeting it hardly exists

I know the moon
calls me on the road of no stone no sand no steps

Paris France

 

not what breaks your heart

not what breaks your heart,

but what hardens it –

this causes true harm – Djanet Tozeur

 

unknown photographer

Mother Nature by pd Lyons

I am blue skies

trailed with perfect black birds

over an autumnal tree line

I am an ocean so blue

it makes everything else seem white,

A forest of shadows so deep any midnight would be envious

I have been the heat from which the iron of this planet ran .

I have been an ice so deep that for a thousand years the sun stood in retreat.

And you with self shackled minds,

dreams tinier than any, ever- living thing ?

what you do you think pursuers of poisons?

are there any poisons that are not mine?

what do you think deniers of your own senses?

where do you think the chemicals for those thoughts come from?

I have seen stars begin and watched them dwindle.

I have seen every living thing that has ever done so,

and will see every one that ever will be, born and die.

Do  you think I who hold on to nothing care about what you do?

from the bookshelf ~ Joisha Allen’s Wife

---

Marietta Holley (pen names, Jemyma, later, Josiah Allen’s Wife;^[1] July 16, 1836 – March 1, 1926), was an American humorist who used satire to comment on U.S. society and politics. Holley enjoyed a prolific writing career and was a bestselling author in the late 19th century, though she was largely forgotten by the time of her death. Her writing was frequently compared to that of Mark Twain and Edgar Nye. Along with Frances Miriam Whitcher and Ann S. Stephens, Holley is remembered as one of America’s most significant early female humorists. Holley’s work appealed to all classes of society. Her readers are scattered over the entire world and include men and women of every station and grade. Her books are widely read in Europe.^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marietta_Holley

As we are moving we are finding many books we have forgotten we had. So here’s one.

#women

Ah fish gold fish swimming not

the time light travels

the time sight registers

the time thought conceptualizes  ~

that which we call fish

already moved on

the truth of it unperceived.

 

 

Ah fish gold fish swimming not

watercolor collage paper

I know forever is the memory of your touch by pd lyons

 

I know forever is the memory of your touch

 

Angels with broken wings

I taste the sin they bring

I want to cling to them

But something always haunts me

.

Lust that is true,

Dreams that have gone astray

Down every road you know there’s really nothing much to choose

       

The siren’s sweet lament

Their spell is my intent

But there’s something in my head denying my attempt

A kind of howling sound says I am pledged to you

       .

I cross the thousand years

 Part the veil of tears

Despite the demon fears

I’m reaching out for you

 

And breaking through at last

The circle finally cast

 Kneeling down I bow my head to you

 

 sword at your feet

 crown on your lap

my heart into you hands

I am the Lady’s man

 

The Man Who Ate Mahogany from Myths of Multiplicity by pd lyons

Right about ducks was his sort of thing,
the man who devoured mahogany
with his own yellow bill plates.

Knowing right about ducks :
the colour of water
compared to the state of fault
with the ass in the road
who shot bb’s and 22’s
into ducks
from the corner
under the street light bright as day
interrupting him in his middle
of mahogany meal –

Reading the righteousness
out of his mealy yellow mouth,
they shot out his windows.

from Erbacce Press http://www.erbacce-press.com/

all proceeds from books purchased will directly benefit the Erbacce Writers Co-op. Cost is £4.95 and includes shipping worldwide.

Poetry deals with primal and conventional things — the hunger for bread, the love of woman, the love of children, the desire for immortal life. If men really had new sentiments, poetry could not deal with them. If, let us say, a man did not feel a bitter craving to eat bread; but did, by way of substitute, feel a fresh, original craving to eat brass fenders or mahogany tables, poetry could not express him. If a man, instead of falling in love with a woman, fell in love with a fossil or a sea anemone, poetry could not express him. Poetry can only express what is original in one sense — the sense in which we speak of original sin. It is original, not in the paltry sense of being new, but in the deeper sense of being old; it is original in the sense that it deals with origins.

— Robert Browning (1903).

thought for today ~

Don’t think stuff up Figure stuff out

birthday note on turning 60 by pd lyons

1974

 

the old fellow near the sea

 

today ends my fifth decade. to morrow i will be 60.

the sixth decade begins at 5:54 am

bringer of the new dawn

 ever aging scorpion.

 

sometimes i think it has not happened

sometimes when i think of that certain little boy

i still get tears.

sometimes when i think back,

teenage, marriages, children, lovers, others –

reminding myself  of the good and of the not so very good –

reminding myself that I really  did the best I could.

 

but you know i am the luckiest man i know.

i have ended up in a country foreign to my birth

with a family of my own…

i  think i am in the best health ever.

no smoking for over 15 years

steady yoga meditation

and always did and still do love to walk –

there are miles of my life upon

mountains, shores, countries, continents

and  along those meandering pathways between the worlds.

 

and while i know all things come to an end –

as of right now i have not!

how cool is that?

cheers

.

 

 

photographer unknown

Where Her Breasts Used to Be, as published by A Quiet Courage. 2016

Was very pleased to have thise poem appear on A Quiet Courage! Thank you  Clara Klein!

I have also included a link to their submission page : https://aquietcourage.wordpress.com/submissions/

https://aquietcourage.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/where-her-breasts-used-to-be/

Where Her Breasts Used to Be

Posted by Clara Ray Rusinek KleinAugust 19, 2016

Home

He kissed her courage,

he kissed her fear,

he kissed her sadness,

her deep unknowability.

Because she was his dearest,

because she was all he loved

and ever wished to.

P.D. Lyons: Born and raised in the USA. Travelling and living abroad since 1998. Currently resides in Ireland. Received Mattatuck College Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. Received Bachelor of Science with honors from Teikyo Post University Connecticut. Books of poetry: Searches For Magic, and Caribu & Sister Stones published by Lapwing Press, Belfast. A third book, Myths Of Multiplicity, published by Erbacce press Liverpool as part of the 2014 Erbacce International Annual Prize. pdlyons.wordpress.com. amazon.com/PD-Lyons/e/B00B6PEFSQ.

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