"Bubbles Tastes and Flirts" by Parisjean

I found Parisjean's poem, "Bubbles Tastes and Flirts" on fanstory.com and I love it! It tickles your senses and has a seductive, flirty feel. Hope you enjoy it as well.

Bubbles Tastes And Flirts by Parisjean
Artwork by simonka at FanArtReview.com 

You light a flame
And so I relish your
Cold taste teasing
My taste buds like never before
So as you awaken my taste buds
And slide your coolness down my throat
I welcome your flirt in my mouth
Making me beg and want you more
I am so so thirsty scream my thoughts
As I take another big swallow
From you
My delicious sweet champagne
Of bubbles taste and flirts  

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Oh the Things We Miss Because We Aren't Looking

Some days I hit "Publish" on a blog post and I wish I had taken longer to work on it. There are some that explored topics I will likely explore more fully in the future because they didn't get the time or the quality that they deserved. Thursday's post was one of those.

Here is the poem that provided some of the inspiration for that post:

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

"Wild Geese", a Poem by Mary Oliver

In her poem "When Death Comes" Mary Oliver says:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

A friend of mine, one of the most giving people I know, suffered yet another tragedy in her life a few days ago. She awoke to find her husband of 27 years lying dead on their bedroom floor. The hardships this woman has suffered in the last year are numerous.  She deserves so much more.

The poem in the video is also by Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese". It acknowledges that we all have hardship. We all feel lonely at times. And when we do we don't have to be anything. Just be. Feel what you feel and share what you feel but also don't forget the world goes on and has much to offer.

I used to get angry when someone would say "Well, life goes on" and shrug off whatever was upsetting me. But you know what? It does. The world keeps turning.  The sun rises and falls. My children still count on me and need me. The bills still have to be paid and the cat still has to be fed. The world doesn't stop because of some turmoil in my life. And really, how big is that turmoil anyway?

A Legendary Poetic Love Affair

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning - courtesy of history.com

The love affair of Emily Barrett and Robert Browning is one with which anyone who is a romantic at heart (secretly or visibly) can't help but treasure. Two poets completely in love writing beautiful poetry and 573 letters to each other. Not the only time this has happened but thankfully it ended better than say Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.  

In 1844 her book "Poems" was published and prompted a letter from Robert Browning expressing his admiration of her work. They met the following year and were together until her death in 1861. Their letters and poems to each other can be viewed online as they were written - pen to paper in their own hand. A sample of their loving words to each other - you may be familiar with the first poem, written by Elizabeth to Robert.

Sonnet XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints.  I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life;  and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Maya on Love

So much wisdom in one person, one soul.  I think this is because of the road she has traveled.  

, 

Each of us is a product of our life experience. Maya was the victim of horrifying crimes at a very young age, crimes that plunged her into darkness, silence, and fear.  Whatever our life experience there comes a time in each of our lives that we have to choose our path, the proverbial "fork in the road". We have the power to determine whether we will continue to live our life as a victim or turn it around and live the rest of our life as a victor. Thank God Maya chose to become a victor. 

I believe it's true that the wisest people have been through the most. I can't say that we learn only from mistakes. Hopefully we learn from good choices and from bad choices. But we learn empathy and compassion from experience. We learn about life and ourselves from bad choices and bad experiences.  Wisdom really is the ability to discern truth in the midst of the garbage that is piled on us every day. If we can't recognize the garbage then we can't discern the truth.  Difficult, painful life experience expose us to the garbage so we can recognize it in the future. 

Maya on love:

Touched by an Angel

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls

The Incomparable Maya Angelou

Before we begin, you must promise me something.  Promise me that you will read to the very end of this post.  You will not regret it - not because of any eloquence on my part but because of the awesomeness that is Maya Angelou.

 

The Lesson

I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the
Small fists of sleeping
Children.
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live. 

I love this poem by the beautiful Maya Angelou.  It's about hope and joy that is deep in your soul and not dependent on things we see with our eyes.  There's a saying that "seeing is believing". That is true of some things.  But i think that often we have to believe something in order to see it.  There's plenty of crap all around us but there is beauty and inspiration everywhere as well, it just isn't as obvious.  We have to look for it - external to ourselves as well as internally.  

The last two lines of this poem - "I keep on dying, Because I love to live" - have a slightly different message.  We do die when we love to live because loving life requires opening ourselves up to really experiencing life, which requires vulnerability.  And because the world is not perfect and people are human, we will inevitably die inside from time to time.  There's another saying that "Grief is the price of love".  It's true.  When we love, when we put ourselves out there and allow ourselves to really enjoy life, we are setting ourselves up to be hurt eventually.  But it's completely worth it because of the richness of life that we gain by seizing it and immersing ourselves in it.

In case you haven't heard Ms Angelou's story, you can read it here, on her own web site.  


Now, the promised jewel at the end of this post.  Maya reciting her poem "And Still I Rise".  Maya rocks!
 

 

 

A Poison Tree

A Poison Tree by William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.



My first impression of this poem was that Blake was saying that unexpressed anger is deadly, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively.  As I read about Blake, however, I learned that his message is larger than I first believed.

William Blake was raised by parents who were non-conformist on religious matters.  They read and believed the teachings of the Bible but they did not ascribe to the teachings of the Anglican Church of the day.  The Bible and religious/spiritual themes permeate both Blake's poetry and his visual art.  He believed that he saw angels and spoke to spirits.  He felt that he was used by such beings to communicate their messages.

Blake believed that human emotions should be allowed the freedom to be expressed and that the human spirit grows when this happens.  He called this existence a state of "innocence".  

"A Poison Tree" is one of 26 poems in a collection called Songs of Experience.  This collection of poems is an attack on the Anglican Church's teachings that humanity's "sinful emotions", including anger, should be stifled.  In fact, the first title for the poem was "Christian Forbearance", which he changed.  Blake saw this effort to make human emotion conform to doctrine or rules as very detrimental to the human spirit.  He called this existence a state of "experience".  

Some see the apple in the poem as being suggestive of the apple in the biblical story of Adam and Eve.  Biting the forbidden fruit brings spiritual death to Adam and Eve.  "A Poison Tree" suggests that unexpressed anger grows and bears fruit that kills human spirit.  

In the video below Martin Christopher does a beautiful reading of William Blake's "A Poison Tree".  Enjoy.

A Child's Ignorance

For a Fatherless Son

by Sylvia Plath

You will be aware of an absence, presently, 

Growing beside you, like a tree, 

A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree --- 

Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion, 

And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention. 

But right now you are dumb. 

And I love your stupidity, 

The blind mirror of it. I look in 

And find no face but my own, and you think that's funny. 

It is good for me 

To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung. 

One day you may touch what's wrong --- 

The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush. 

Till then your smiles are found money.

The Poet and Her Poem
Sylvia Plath is a fascinating person and both her work and her life are the center of much speculation and commentary.  One aspect of her life that relates directly to the poem above is the fact that she lost her father at the age of 8.  She admired her father greatly and was deeply affected by his death.  She married in her 20s, they divorced just a couple of years after the birth of their first child when he left her for one of his college students.  She saw a future with no father for her son.  This poem communicates her concern for her son based on her own fatherless life.  In the last few months of her life she wrote many poems.  The one above was written about a year before her suicide.

Sylvia seemed to see bearing children as the goal of her life.  She thought it would be the great accomplishment of her life and would give her the fulfillment she sought.  It didn't, however. Her work seems to indicate a lack of attachment to her children and a cynical attitude toward them at times.  

The poem above illustrates the complex emotions that I think she had for her children.  

You will be aware of an absence, presently, 

Growing beside you, like a tree, 

A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree --- 

Balding, gelded by lightning--an illusion, 

And a sky like a pig's backside, an utter lack of attention

This stanza shows her sympathy for the absence of her child's father in his life.  She acknowledges that he is too young to be fully aware but that as he grows so will the impact of his father's absence.  She describes it as a growing death tree.  She seems to feel true sorrow for her son in this stanza.

But right now you are dumb. 

And I love your stupidity, 

The blind mirror of it. I look in 

And find no face but my own, and you think that's funny. 

It is good for me 

To have you grab my nose, a ladder rung. 

The use of the words "dumb" and "stupidity" are derogatory and insult her child.  They represent the child's lack of understanding at this time in his life but her choice of words is not loving here.  She describes a blind mirror, describing how she sees herself.  She feels empty.  Then she describes joy she feels as her son plays with her, grabbing her nose.

One day you may touch what's wrong --- 

The small skulls, the smashed blue hills, the godawful hush. 

Till then your smiles are found money.

She describes a very desperate time that her son will go through in the future as the reality of not having a father hits him.  "Till then your smiles are found money" describes the unexpected joy that her son's smiles bring her.

There are many varied opinions on Sylvia Plath and there are endless interpretations of any given poem.  It's one of the fascinating things about any art form.  These are my thoughts on "For a Fatherless Son".  I would love to hear your thoughts.

Faults - A Poem by Sara Teasdale

They came to tell your faults to me, 

They named them over one by one; I laughed aloud when they were done, 

I knew them all so well before,— 

Oh, they were blind, too blind to see 

Your faults had made me love you more.

About Sara Teasdale

Sara Trevor Teasdale was an American lyrical poet.  She was born in St Louis, Missouri in 1884.  Her family traveled frequently to Chicago, where she became part of the circle surrounding Poetry magazine. 

She lived in New York City with her husband, Ernst Filsinger from 1916 to 1929 when they divorced.  She remained in New York City until her death from an intentional barbituates overdose in 1929.  

In 1918 she won the Columbia University Poetry Society Prize (which became the Pulitzer Prize for poetry) and the Poetry Society of America Prize.

Teasdale's early work was characterized by its simplicity and clarity, her use of classical forms, and her passionate and romantic subject matter. Her later books show her growing finesse and poetic subtlety.  

Other published works include:

Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems (1907)

Helen of Troy, and Other Poems (1911)

Rivers to the Sea (1920)

Flame and Shadow (1920)

Dark of the Moon(1926)

Stars To-night (1930)

Strange Victory (1930)