Morning Coffee Notes 19.2.23

Sometimes the only purpose pains serves is distraction. Or is it? It calls my attention, but I have no answer. When there is nothing can be done, why doesn’t it just go away? Instead, unrelenting elaborates via frustration, anger, despair.

The Buddha says to meditate on what gives you trouble. So, do I meditate on this pain coming from nowhere,? Incessant, unsolvable? This no reason, no thing, unactionable situation.

~

Behind every noise there is quiet

Letting noise be as it is

Unadorned without judgement

Peace presents itself naturally.

~

Sometimes

The cold doesn’t hurt

Or rather its sting

Is not distracting but invigorates

Air easier to breath

Not heavy with heat

From those delusions of comfort

I have been taught to crave.

~

We were on the road in Clare heading to Galway. We had found a musician named Colm Mac Con Iomaire. So, benefiting from technology we had him playing through the car speakers. The soft beauty of greys greens and daylight, Irish daylight. The yellow lines on the road seemed golden and just sticking the phone video out the window was joy enough. The road fairly empty except for ourselves, occasional farm tractor and elusive visions of the sea.

And you drove and we looked

Spoke about what we saw.

And we listened

Spoke about what we heard

Hoping the Hares Corner would come again and never end.

Shop

Halloween, For all who’ve gone before we celebrate your passing and our own waiting.

Che by pd lyons w/photos

ruthless pursuit of your own dream.

suffering, the only reward for those who commit themselves to a dream.

swamped by muck of the masses.

vain valiant fool.

exhaustion your killer.

all sucked away, your ideals, your blood.

too late for you.

too late for those who loved you.

the people get the leaders they deserve.

no one asked you to die for them,

so they killed you.

2002.

poets we know and live with ~ 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 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

---

 

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 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

all photos C. pd lyons photography.

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

 

Thought for today ~

Paris c. pd lyons

Thought for Today ~

lake garda c pd lyons photography

New Haven

 

 

along marvellous streets

 the girl walks on her toes

sneakers let the ballet peer out with wonder

 

amid this morning garden slipping into the shade

who is it gives you pentagrams

whispers water lily secrets

when your mornings get too heavy?

 

Leaving the Stars behind

I call you flower by moonlight

you call me cypress by spring

I watch you from evening

change grey misty morning

across the spider down day

16 3. 73.

 

 

poets we know and live with ~ 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 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

---

 

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 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

all photos C. pd lyons photography.

There is New Snow (one from the old notes) by pd lyons

So of course over the years I’ve ended up with a collection of a fair few note books. lately I’ve been combing through them for forgotten gems. So here with a light edit is this one. As for the quality of its gem-iness, well I leave that up to you the reader. cheers.

mix media by morgan lyons

There is New Snow

someone has spilled oats on the walk way.

from the stairway I watch below

crows with snow in contrast floating 

when my heart is soft enough to weep

then I will call you

when angels fall without escape

then they will think of us

when all the secrets of our lives revealed

then they will be as blue as they were hidden 

when you know everything that you somehow never knew

then you will know the sound of my soft heart calling you

Until then not wanting anything

all I need fits into the pockets of this coat.