Rhythms of Grace

after all: a love poem

after all by marilynn griffith

after all these years
love poems make
me hungry and tired
hungry for some of that want
folks sing about

the O'Jays
the old days
the old ways

and tired of trying to be something
other than old. I make a bra
with my hands and pretend
it's 1983 and you still want me

the O'Jays
the old days
the old ways

I laugh like crazy but don't let go
until I feel your arms around my
waist, your lips on my face. In
the background, I hear

the O'Jays
the old days
the old ways

Maybe there's still a taste of
honey in the ease of my neck,
the crook of your elbows, on
the backs of my knees. Maybe
we're still a poem after all.

Take off Your Shoes

Take off your Shoes

I remember when you
used to step
hard, sure-footed
and fire-wide
so I could get
the beat easy.

Now sometimes I
hear whisper-toes
moving shuffle-hearted
like you 'shamed of
something.

You 'shamed a me?
It's funny if you
is, 'cause I made you,
baby, shade you
crazy all that good stuff.

But I ain't mad at you
anyhow. Sometimes
I get tired of being
loud. Want me a
whisper mister too,
want to lay down,
be like you.

But we can't,
'cause we be
lifehide stretched
tight over drum
bellies. Waiting for
the beat.

And it's coming fast.
Don't you hear
it? Yeah. So take
off those shoes
they gave you, baby.

Chalk it up to knowing
nothing, growing nothing
and toss it back. There is
no lack of catch over
here in the wide black
blue of you. Take off
your shoes.

Copyright 2007 Marilynn Griffith

Cookies

I wrote this post in August 2004. I was finishing a book and thinking about Christmas, just-right moments and my infamous white chocolate chip and cranberry cookies. Today I was in a cookie swap over at the Shades of Romance blog, so I revamped the post and the poem.

Cookies    

Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. (Psalm 34:8, NIV)

 

Today I'm thinking about cookies, Christmas and fat baby toes. I'm thinking about times when I've had nothing but my children's squished flowers and a snaggle-toothed smile. An open hand asking for peanut butter and honey, all that I had to offer. Isn't it good when what you have is just the right thing? Not something that can be made right or adapted to be acceptable, but the thank-you-Jesus-just-what-I-was-looking-for right thing?

I love when that happens. There have been few moments like that in my life--moments of not having to fold up my wings and lower my voice, moments when people smiled if I laughed too loud and ate with my fingers, moments when my favorite outfit was only available in a size 18, when everybody in the house tolerated my crazy  cranberry white chocolate cookies without throwing up. Moments of acceptance. Seconds of grace. I love those times, but the truth is, each day assaults the possibility of another just-right time. People (and vice versa) superimposes themselves upon me, editing my life with semicolons and other proper pauses.

Sometimes they are right. They think my cookies are good just not broad enough in their appeal. "Pick cranberries OR white chocolate," they say. And so I do. The result is pretty, the edges crisp. Any food photographer would love them. Why then, do they taste like dog food to me? I chew silently, lamenting the sweet-sour pain forever lost to cookie buyers, hoping that still somehow one person will have a just-what-I-needed moment. I doubt it, but God surprises me every day. In fact, lately, the only thing I expect from Him IS to be surprised.

I'm laughing, but hurting too, wondering whether it is better to pleasure ten people to tears with everything intended or to provide for thousands pretty, safe snacks. Oh well, I'm not that great a cook anyway. I just know what I like. I never realized until now how powerful that is, to know what you like. That's my cape, my lasso and the boots too. I need to feel something way down to the bones. I guess there's no law against skin deep cookies. It all ends up the same place. :)

May you be to someone today just what is needed: the scalpel to save, the hand to help, the food to fill, the heart to love, the alla that in their alla this, the Christmas cookie in August.

Just be.

As an apricot tree stands out in the forest, my lover stands above the young men in town. All I want is to sit in his shade, to taste and savor his delicious love. (Song of Solomon 2:3, MSG)

Umph. Anybody got an apricot recipe? Oh yeah, and there's a poem. But you knew that, didn't you?

The Dozens by Marilynn Griffith

I like white chocolate chips in mine, with cranberries, pecans or something funky. Always just a little something. You wince, pursing your oatmeal-raisin-peanut-butter lips.

"Too sweet," I hear you say in the direction of my lumpy, chunky mess. Unwilling to lament the tart virtue of the cranberry, I smile. Put my too-much self in a heap, reaching for quick oats and brown, flat raisins.

For a moment, I consider trying golden ones, but I won't do you like that. Not today. Not knowing how much you rely on things being what you expect. Behind me, you prowl softly, hands around my waist, kissing me with pecan breath.

I stroke your face, thinking of the dozens of crazy cookies you eaten from my feeble hands. You lick your thumb when I'm not looking. I stir faster, careful only to go counter-clockwise, pretending not to see. Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me.

Copyright  Marilynn Griffith 2004.

Didn't get the recipe yet? Click here. If you make them please tell me how they went over.  If you really want to have some fun, toss in some chopped pecans or toffee chips! (Just brush your teeth after. LOL)

Tonight

Tonight I'm working on a book that's due sooner than I'd like to discuss. And the book is working on me. Sometimes when this happens, this working on each other sort of thing, my mind folds her arms and plants her feet and refuses to take another step. At least not until she gets a snack, usually a good poem. Well, not tonight. Tonight, my muse spit out everything I tried to throw at her and demanded that I cook for her myself.

So I did.

Now back to the book. :) Pray for me. You can hear and read the poem below.

Tonight by Marilynn Griffith

Tonight
I wanted a woman poem,
something soft but strong
like the fat on the back of my arm.
Nothing in my cellar seemed
right, save my own words,
cooked fast and pressed
against my lips like a first kiss.

Tonight
I dreamed with my eyes open
in a velvet dress made
in my own mind. I called to my
mothers, but they shook their
heads. Told me to make my own.
I bent over and birthed
it myself, rubbing my thighs
together to start the fire.

Tonight
I licked the spoon from my
own pot and remembered
that ev'ry now and then
a woman needs to let God
stir her soul and sprinkle
it with  hot sauce.

Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.

Poetry Month: Maya Angelou

When looking for the next poem to share, I went a lot of places, trying my best to stay away from Maya, knowing that once I started, there'd be no where else to go. (Yes, she is Maya to me. Always was. And Ms. Brooks is still Ms. Brooks). This poem is one of my many favorites as it speaks to the commonwealth, not a place exactly but the wealth that we have in common when we truly come together in work, in worship... In love. As a Christian, it reminds me that no matter how daunting the task or dark the day, I am never alone.

As the previous poem, this too is a place of remembrance. A living stone. It was Maya who often kept me company in those years of outside speak and inner silence. It was Maya who first taught me the power of the spoken word, the need of a girl to preach to herself. Though I think it was Mari Evans who I memorized first, Maya's poems often rocked me to sleep.

Alone

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don't believe I'm wrong That nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. There are some millionaires With money they can't use Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues They've got expensive doctors To cure their hearts of stone. But nobody No, nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. Now if you listen closely I'll tell you what I know Storm clouds are gathering The wind is gonna blow The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, 'Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. Maya Angelou

Ms. Brooks had y'all kinda silent yesterday. What say you about this one? Sound off in the comments.

Mary

Poetry Month: Gwendolyn Brooks

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the comments about the last poem and for letting me share my thoughts. Today's poem is by Gwendolyn Brooks or Ms. Brooks as she'll always be to me. I can remember reading this poem as a child and crying for the children and reading it again and crying for the mother. Now, when I read it I don't cry. Nod maybe. And smile.

I smile because I think Gwendolyn Brooks knew one of the secrets to joy--the art of mourning. Or remembering. I think that as a nation, as a generation we have forgotten how to remember. I know I have. Poems like this one help me though. This read took me back to the Madden Hills library in Dayton, Ohio. I was on my belly in the children's section, though I'd taken the book of poems from elsewhere. My mother had been waiting in the car, but as often happened at libraries, I'd lost myself and my sense of time. She had on a brown pantsuit and some bad boots. Her hair was flipped on one side. Oh and she smelled like summer.

With that, I give you Ms. Brooks.

The Mother

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get, The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair, The singers and workers that never handled the air. You will never neglect or beat Them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up the sucking-thumb Or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized Your luck And your lives from your unfinished reach, If I stole your births and your names, Your straight baby tears and your games, Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths, If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. Though why should I whine, Whine that the crime was other than mine?-- Since anyhow you are dead. Or rather, or instead, You were never made. But that too, I am afraid, Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all. Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you All. Gwendolyn Brooks

Poetry Month:Mary Oliver

Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; Its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame. (Song of Solomon 8:6, NKJV)

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

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

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Though I do not anticipate a cottage of darkness on the other side and the Bridegroom I seek will wed the world, this poem makes me want to live courageously, to take risks, to love hard, to hurt deep. This poem about death makes me want to live. What say you? Sound off in the comments.

Mary

Poetry Month:Robert Hayden

Hello all,

I hope you enjoyed your Passover and Easter. I did. I come out of the day with the same observations as last year: God is good. Easter grass is evil.

Since I'm in bookland now, I'm going to pay a nod to National Poetry month and feature a few poems here until the end of April. Today's poem is also part of the title of one of my favorite blogs. I'm going to try and update my blog list next weekend too. I've cut way down on my blog reading and though a lot of my friends are on that list, I don't read them all anymore. Some great new voices have sucked me in though.

Anyway, here's the poem. Enjoy.

Soledad

(And I, I am no longer of that world) Naked, he lies in the blinded room chainsmoking, cradled by drugs, by jazz as never by any lover's cradling flesh. Miles Davis coolly blows for him: O pena negra, sensual Flamenco blues; the red clay foxfire voice of Lady Day (lady of the pure black magnolias) sobsings her sorrow and loss and fare you well, dryweeps the pain his treacherous jailers have released him from for a while. His fears and his unfinished self await him down in the anywhere streets. He hides on the dark side of the moon, takes refuge in a stained-glass cell, flies to a clockless country of crystal. Only the ghost of Lady Day knows where he is. Only the music. And he swings oh swings: beyond complete immortal now. Robert Hayden

Hear Hayden read the poem here. Brief introduction included.

Thanks for being here,

Mary

gracias

gracias by marilynn griffith

words pounding in my head

i just can't get to bed

too many envelopes questioned

my promised pearls, destined

in darkness, hear the softness

whisper, gracias

life beats loud

sometimes love's a crowd

but I wouldn't trade it

thankful you made it

in the spotlight, hear the ne'er-do-right

shout, gracias

dark or light

blessed day or starless night

I thank you Lord

stretch my mouth forward

to say

gracias

When it Gets Like This

I was trying to remember if I'd written any poems this year. I did. Quite a few, in fact. It appears that January 25, 2005 was a longggggggg night. :)

When It Gets Like This by Marilynn Griffith

when it gets like this
breathing gives me fits
my skin turns outside in

when it gets like this
breathing gives me fits
the words rock me then

Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.