the ugly earring

Today 9th June of the year 1939

dollop of syrup
frizzing her hair
like feathers
in the middle of the fried egg
smelling of her song
of lilies

poem and painting: mother and child on the beach – picasso

Ah Margarida,
If I gave you my life,
What would you do with it?

I’d take my earrings out of hook,
Marry a blind man,
And live on a tree-lined block.

1. George Hendrik Breitner. The Earring. 1893
2. poem: Ah Margarida by Álvaro de Campos

and a treat:
the flowers she sent and the flowers she said she sent

…
And you tremble like an ostrich
In your ostrich feather coat

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desolate,
But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.

Responds,–as if with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
“‘Where hast thou stayed so long?”

poem: endymion – henry wadsworth longfellow
image: Diana the huntress, fresco. Pompeii, Italy. 1st century A.D.

A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

image: Virgin and Child with the Milk Soup, Gerard David
poem: planetarium, adrienne rich
and something i missed: her obituary

Sleep,
sleep.
We are together always
We are together always
There never was a time
when this
was not so.

poem: Leslie Marmon Silko, “Lullaby”
image: here

poem: the window diane di prima
image found here

I see thee better in the dark,
I do not need a light.
The love of thee a prism be
Excelling violet.

poem: emily dickinson
Part Five: The Single Hound, LXXIX

Be like a bear in the forest of yourself.
Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath.
Every hair has life
and standing, as you do, swaying
from one foot to the other
all the forest stands with you.
Each minute sound, one after another,
is distinct in your ear. Here
in the blur of mixed sensations, you can
feel the crisp outline of being, particulate.
Great as you are, huge as you are and
growling like the deepest drum,
the continual vibration that makes music
what it is,
not some light stone skipped on the surface of things,
you travel below
sounding the depths where only the dauntless go.
Be like the bear and
do not forget
how you rounded your
massive shape over the just ripened
berry which burst
in your mouth that moment
how you rolled in
the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling
with your sensate skin,
how you shut
your eyes and swam far and farther
still, starlight
shaping itself to your body,
starship rocking the grand, slow waves
under the white trees, in the
snowy night.

found at fern and moss

image – not sure of the origin – found at the lovely arielawonders
poem: a ring of changes by denise levertov