Fancy Dinosaur

I was ironing my fancy soul when the phone rang. It was God. He said, I’m not dead, and I’m calling those who still iron their fancy souls to give me praise.

Abandoned Love

I can hear the turning of the key
I've been deceived by the clown inside of me.
I thought that he was righteous but he's vain
Oh, something's a-telling me I wear the ball and chain.

My patron saint is a-fighting with a ghost
He's always off somewhere when I need him most.
The Spanish moon is rising on the hill
But my heart is a-tellin' me I love ya still.

I come back to the town from the flaming moon
I see you in the streets, I begin to swoon.
I love to see you dress before the mirror
Won't you let me in your room one time 'fore I finally disappear?

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in the experience that most deeply engages our intellect and our hearts? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!

Feminism

All over the world, Little Bees, Star Scouts,
and Blue Birds play telephone, whispering messages
in a chain link of ears—no repeating (that’s cheating),
only relaying what they hear their first shot.
Sometimes “Molly loves Billy” becomes “ A Holiday in Fiji,”
or “Do the Right Thing” becomes “The Man Who Would Be King.”
Still, there is trust. Girls taking the Blind Walk,
a bandana around one’s eyes (Pin the Tail on the Donkey-Style)
as another leads her through the woods
or a backyard or entire city blocks. Girls helping
where they are needed or inventing ways to aid
where they are seemingly not.