snippet from the midnights

it was a long distant thing

wound through midnight

only years not just slender

rather deep meanderings

crossing radio waves rode

such music never knowing separation

immediate transpiring

heart

heart

savoring  wu li dances

deeper the space  purer the ecstasy

 

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

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the people who had cured themselves from the virus they once called language ( a dance piece) by pd lyons

the people who had cured themselves

from the virus they once called language

~

communicated eloquently

with their hands

with their arms

with their skin colour

with their eyes

a dance impossible to be misunderstood

~

they learned of the winds worship of leaves

the way the sun and every shadow enjoyed each day by day

and the height of midnight stars all sparkling –

happy with the moon

longing for its return

~

eventually they forgot –

the coarseness of verbal abuse

the trickery of its seduction

the con of its half truths

~

they made themselves dwellers of an island

rescuers and healers of those washed up from the deep

unafraid of reinfection they let the long term healing of their lives

speak for themselves

.

---

“Language is a virus from outer space”

― William S. Burroughs

two poems, ROWING & THE AUTHOR OF THE JESUS PAPERS SPEAKS by Anne Sexton

ROWING

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 plasctic 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 trenchcoat 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

---

Anne Sexton

1928–1974

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton#Death

Within 12 years of writing her first sonnet, she was among the honored poets in the U.S.: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.^[10][11]

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 enamored 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 that 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

A Bamboo Bitch by pd lyons

She’s a bamboo bitch

constantly under

someone’s  finger nails.

On the roof grey shingles

rain collects

finds an escape over the bed.

drop by

drop

the bamboo

grows.

 Tired of a leaky

bed

I lie downstairs

on the couch

trying to see things

in the dark.

When the rain stops

it is so quiet

I think of swimming to Brasil

to tell people

I came from Surinam.

The mud will be deep.

It has rained for days.

But today

sunlight in the dawn

she’s calling me

to see.

 

This was originally published in 1979, Dimensions Magazine. A publication of the then called Mattatuck Community College. I still remember showing the magazine to my grandmother. i felt very proud of the fact that there were 3 of mine in it. Her only comment was did you have to use such language? Referring to the bitch. I have made a few changes to the original but I could not find a way to get away from the bitch. So yes gran’ma , guess I really had to.

 

pdlyons photography

Waltzing the Night, by PD Lyons as published by Inquietudes Journal Issue 1: Ardor and Anguish

 

Waltzing the Night

We’d hold ourselves like prayers between each other
bare feet, beating hearts
soft by each breath
full moon kisses
beyond any daylight horizon

it was one o’ clock this morning.
woke up no particular reason
didn’t even need to pee.
kitchen floor so cold I hurt for shoes
stood there adjusting to Frigidaire light
three bottles of beer on the second shelf
opened one by the window
chugged a salute to those long
hard rain halos
this is not the city I used to know with you
maybe I go for another
maybe it’ll help me sleep
probably not
these days once I’m up
even beer can’t touch me

deserted even by the small comfort of your ghost
still I sway as if somehow
we’re dancing

https://inquietudeslitjournal.weebly.com/

https://www.facebook.com/inquietudeslitjournal/

https://inquietudeslitjournal.weebly.com/issues.html

 

Thank you to Inquietudes for their support!

maybe there is this kitchen, random on the spot by pd lyons

theres no place left to walk

there no where ever to go

and whatever might need doing

sure it’ll just get un done

 

so maybe there is this kitchen

maybe the coffees ready

and all the sun that hasn’t shined

decides to forget about winter and

hang around these windows instead

 

what could i do to tell you

what could i say to show you

one day when we were not yet old

didn’t we have so many things to do

and despite all that busy we still found out who we were

 

but now at the end of music

now close to the end of time

now that i’m just on my own

seems like loneliness is ok

some new girl on the stereo

reminding me

a few minutes

to remember

a few minutes beyond regret

you and me

once young

once upon a time

maybe you ‘ll come by

before its too far gone today

i’ll put more coffee on

i’ll share these new tunes with you

and the sun will smile even brighter

or maybe its just me

a bunch of yellow flowers in a jug

a sink of dirty dishes

an old pointer dog greeting you with what was silent tail wag

 

so

 

she could have told you

if you had asked

she could have told you,

because her bones ached

because her joints crack

because the balance on her feet was swimmingly

the weight of the planet on her eyelids

but probably not

even if you had

because there’s nothing to be done

because there’s nothing to be done

but wait

and meanwhile deal with  another fight

 

 

what if i could tell you, by pd lyons

What if i could tell you about the day?  first real snow? Crows huddled in the grey fingers of that tree, watching as if waiting for  for something I didn’t have to give

 

What if I could tell you, that poem you wrote? I’ve hung copies of it up on the bedroom wall, the back door, the horses’ stalls, and along the straight wire fluttering like little white flags between the paddocks and the pasture.

If you were here? Oh I know what you would say, you never liked it anyway, kept it only out of loyalty. That poem you tried to write for me

now like some accidental prophecy  no longer needing to be read

 

mix media by morgan lyons

 

This Morning On The Back Steps Sobbing Into Her Nightgown by pd Lyons

In the language of flowers

It meant good-bye with regrets

 

Left on the kitchen table

An emptied cup of coffee

half-eaten slice of toast

 

Hardly a hesitation

Picks up the toast

Held away between thumb and finger

Some dead thing she didn’t wish to touch

 

Steps out

Leans against the wood rail

As far as possible the offending slice

Tossed into the garden

 

As she does the wind

slams the door behind her

Startled but then relief,

Its off the latch…

As if somehow he’d known…

 

he had watched her soft like snow edited by pd lyons

He had watched her

Soft like snow

Every movement

A steady meticulous tenderness

Touching each part of the world

One particle at a time

Acknowledged gently

Precisely

Irrevocably