Happy Birthday, Claude Debussy! (And a hug to "Chou-Chou"}

Embarrassed I never knew of this poet before....

Frank Stanford (August 1, 1948 – June 3, 1978) was a prolific American poet. He is most known for his epic, The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You— a labyrinthine poem without stanzas or punctuation. In addition, Stanford published six shorter books of poetry throughout his 20s, and three posthumous collections of his writings (as well as a book of selected poems) have also been published.
Just shy of his 30th birthday, Stanford died on June 3, 1978 in his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas, the victim of three self-inflicted pistol wounds to the heart. In the three decades since, he has become a cult figure in American letter

The Minnow
If I press
on its head,
the eyes
will come out
like stars.
The ripples
it makes
can move
the moon.
Frank Stanford, ©1971


Death In The Cool Evening
I move
Like the deer in the forest
I see you before you
See me
We are like the moist rose
Which opens alone
When I'm dreaming
I linger by the pool of many seasons
Suddenly it is night
Time passes like the shadows
That were not
There when you lifted your head
Dreams leave their hind tracks
Something red and warm to go by
So it is the hunters of this world
Close in.
Frank Stanford, ©1974

"Katie Peacock; Still Life in Motion"

The River Awaits the Footsteps of the Messiah

                Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize

                The stars are words

                and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words,

                and so is this world too.

                And I realize that no matter where I am,

                whether in a little room full of thought,

                or in this endless universe of stars and mountains,

                it’s all in my mind.

                –Jack Kerouac

                Lonesome Traveler

Raymond Chandler -----more quotes to come

She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

― Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

― Raymond Chandler, The High Window

  

 

And Now For Something Really Scary....

                    The spirit

                        likes to dress up like this:

                        ten fingers,

                        ten toes,

                        shoulders, and all the rest

                        at night

                        in the black branches,

                        in the morning

                        in the blue branches

                        of the world.

                        It could float, of course,

                        but would rather

                        plumb rough matter.

                        Airy and shapeless thing,

                        it needs

                        the metaphor of the body,

                        lime and appetite,

                        the oceanic fluids;

                        it needs the body's world,

                        instinct

                        and imagination

                        and the dark hug of time,

                        sweetness

                        and tangibility,

                        to be understood,

                        to be more than pure light

                        that burns

                        where no one is --

                        so it enters us --

                        in the morning

                        shines from brute comfort

                        like a stitch of lightning;

                        and at night

                        lights up the deep and wondrous

                        drownings of the body

                         like a star.

------Mary Oliver