Posts for June 29, 2019 (page 6)

The shame is mightier than the sword.

The squeaky wheel gets the shame.

No shame is an island.

People who live in shame houses should not through stones.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the shame.

Keep your shame close, and your enemies closer.

There is no shame like home.

Familiarity breeds shame.

Shamed minds think alike.

Shameliness is next to godliness.

Shamers can’t be choosers.

You can’t always shame what you want.

If it ain’t shame, don’t fix it.

One man’s shame is another man’s treasure.

Leave no shame unturned.

All good things must come to a shame.

Shame doesn’t pay.

Absence makes the shame grow fonder.

Shame is the best medicine.

Shame doesn’t grow on trees.

Patience is a shame.

Don’t shame your chickens before they hatch.

You can take shame to water, but you can’t make it drink.

The early shame catches the worm.

Where there is no shame, the fire goes out.

You reap what you shame, then shame what you saw.

Good things shame those who wait.

Better shame than sorry.

There is no shame like the present.

Honesty is the best shame.

Discretion is the greater part of shame.

There is no such thing as free shame.

Shame is the mother of invention.

Shame helps those who help themselves.

No shame, no gain.

Practice makes shame, shame makes perfect.

If you want shame done right, you have to do it yourself.

Italian Cat House in Rubble

When they carried out
the dead, he said:
They could have been any soldier’s sister.

those a man wants to take to bed;
those he wants to take care of.
Those he said are the ones to wed.

Before he died,
he clarified his message:
if your love
is dangerously beautiful
when I meet her,
I’ll say keep her.
Life is too short
for any man to have
to sleep alone.

I want to liberate her sandy
fragments but Daddy won’t

spring for a columbarium.  I try
to pry open the fake marble

urn with a butter knife, replace her
with all-purpose flour. He’d never know.

I’d release her into the muddy
waves of the Cumberland, her pidgeon

colored dust surging. Some
say there’s an inborn

light in the bones
of saints. Consider St. Agatha. The faithful

trek to Palermoto be close to whisps
of her braided hair, the small

bones of her upperarm. Saint Mother
rests urn-tight on Daddy’s

living room table. Monthly I make
my pilgrimage & rant

at what’s left of her. Beloved
lush in a Girl Scout

leader’s snappy felt. Our Mother
of Wine-in-a-Box, you never

forgot the Tooth Fairy, you covered
my bad checks. Pilgrims still

pay homage to St. Foy leaving,
century after century, small

jewels behind: opal, emerald,
topaz. Broken mamacita, today

I wear the jade & silver
pendant you bought to celebrate two

months sober in ‘87 & return
to your ashes to haul

them away. Daddy’s got a girlfriend
now & with me is St. Margaret, the scamp,

a richman’s mistress & blessed
sinner St. Angela of Foligno, a hedonist

& terrible gossip. Gather in
female saints & sisters. Let’s walk

down to the turbulent
river & like fireflies we’ll light

up & whirl. We’ll bark & yowl
like a skulk of foxes. I’ll hurl

your gravely bits — finally —
into the river’s coiling

currents. Unmanagable creator,
my mama — goodbye.

We walk around all day in this virtual reality,
physically experiencing what the mind is telling us.
If we stop, see through it all, and give it up.
What will become of us?
It’s a little scary because
Everything in the end is a defense against nothingness.
The word Reality comes from the 15th century latin word “res”
meaning thing or every thing.
The word Truth coming from old English
with its deepest meaning being
nothing or no-thingness.
Is Love a thing or nothing?
What does Love look like?
We are first and always
compassionate beings of clear light and LOVE.
Yet here we are little egos on the mend.

For Justin, Jacob, Elise, Emily, and the new light to come

Buffalo Kaplinski, the Santa Fe artist,
captured the magic of the West, the almost-
dark sky with distant fencing stretching forever–
purples and lavenders and indigo blues–
rounded adobe growing out of pure snow.

I breathed it in like pure oxygen.

The watercolors with their simple, pure lines,
embodied the freedom of the West.
I wanted to take them home.
My young husband wanted a bargain
more than the paintings.

Did I set a precedent when I took out my checkbook
and wrote a check, the first inkling of finding
my own way?  He couldn’t envision I could stand
on my own.

To keep silent

This thorny life
a clutch of grief
spackled with kindness.

Two tender humans
tossed, punched under
milky green water.

Indelible image
you can’t unsee
hunkers beneath your ribs.

~ Found poem composed/modified from words in the poems “House Sparrows,” “Artifact,” “Bee” and “Daybook” by Claudia Emerson

With all this rain,
the berries have exploded,
fireworks of red and pink,
bursting through
spiky green leaves.
I pick them carefully,
the ripest ones fall easily
into my hand,
letting me know
they are ready.  

I make my way through the patch,
parting branches
like cascading waves swirling around me,
sharp with broken shells and sand.
I do not mind this.
But I wish I liked raspberries more.
They confuse me with their bumps and seeds.
I always think they should be sweeter,
the taste of jam sugared and cooked down.  

False promises.

butterfly
floats over funeral prayers 
waves goodbye

I’m an analog man
with a digital wife.
Somehow we’ve rigged us
a digilog life.

( with gratitude to Joe Walsh)