AND 'FLY' SHE SURELY DID!

My tribute to Toni Morrison

(and her most memorable quotes)

... There is really nothing more to say-except 'why'. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in 'how'.

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint, or even remember it... It is enough...

"And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing"... 

Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling – I don’t think it’s any of that – it’s helpless … it’s absence of control –

I have no use for it whatsoever.

"He looked at her face in the mirror and

was reminded of days at sea when water

looked like sky".

B. 2-18-1931

D. 8-5-2019

R.I.P.  (gentle poet)

"She is imperturbable, articulate, magisterial, satiny, wise. She makes no apologies for her work, her honors, her offerings..."

SOULFULLY RECALLING THAT INFAMOUS NIGHT BACK IN NOVEMBER OF 2016,

  I pen these verses, all the while invoking the spirit of W.E. Henley [for his beautifully measured cadence via 'Invictus' ]. In the same spirit, I entitle my own written poem 'Convictus'.

 C *O *N *V *I *C *T *U* S 

Around that bleak November night,

      Among the nation's voting polls 

Whatever gods that might exist 

     Encountered pain within their souls. 

                  Some viewed this outcome 'circumstance',

      Much eased by Russians from abroad;

Behind dim cloaks of secrecy,

      Their stealthy actions beckoned fraud.

YET...

Abhorring pretense, scams, and cons

      Remain some guardians 'unafraid'; 

As years unfold, and facts give way, 

      It finds them weary of such trade.

No matter when feign glamour calls,

How charmed one is by crafty lure,

We MUST be masters of the 'GOOD',

Assuring grace and truth endure.

Written by LPG

                                                    EPILOGUE- The root of all evil...

"Let's write long letters on grand themes" ... [so said Frank O'Hara]

I adore poet Frank O'Hara's edgy style; hence, my celebration of various verses from his

Meditations in an Emergency

*********************

“I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.”

― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I've got to get out of here".

"I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to.”

― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

...“and I have mastered

the speed and strength

which is the

armor of the world.” 

“In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love. And give credit where it’s due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me how to be bad (and not bad) rather than good , not to the Catholic Church which is at best an over-solemn introduction to cosmic entertainment, not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you, glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope, stretching Vista-vision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms!” 

Happy 'Dog Days of summer' to all!!!

***************

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY...

SHIFTING THE SUN

-a poem by Diana Der-Hovanessian

AMID THE DRENCHING DEW...

      AT MIDNIGHT

A midnight walk,

Amid the drenching dew

After the rains have

Yielded to the clouds beyond,

Marries solitude to summer's

Saturnine command.  

Skimming the sky:

Bending to swoop

High, then low;

Bats inebriated with

The toxins of fireflies

Appear molten black

Against the full moon's heady glow...

Jupiter hangs in the deepening

Dark as a radiant prop;

Surrounded by  Europa, Ganymede, Io,

Callisto, Valetudo, and Amalthea;

I sense Galileo in these shadowy

Fragrant hours before the dawn.

-L.P.-G.