#TwistedNurseryRhyme “Mary? Mary, How Does Your Garden Grow?"

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells

And pretty maids all in a row

-- By Mother Goose

Did you ever wonder what the purpose of those “pretty maids all in a row” might be?

Mary? Mary, How Does Your Garden Grow?
by D. Denise Dianaty

Cobblestone paths ‘tween bowered vines…
Scents of jasmine and hyacinths…
Fragrant blooms of rose that climbs,
Creating those fairytale depths.

Birdsong lilting… just to entrance
‘Pon wing-ed flights of fancy trill.
Colorful feathered fairy dance
Drawing us to share the idyll.

Mary, Mary, timid belle,
Delicately tends this garden
Of silver bells and cockle shell…
‘Pon shadowed paths inviting us down…

Beckoning now, she calls to you
To share her shadowed fears with her
That she might not walk alone through.
Join her there, against fear aver.

Many a pretty maid walks there
To bear her company awhile.
They step into her garden fair
And revel through each aisle.

Those pretty maids, all in a row,
Tramp into the garden smiling.
They dance and frolic, safe they trow,
In th’error of their beguiling.

In that garden smiling went well
Pretty maids someone should miss.
But none came out again to tell
The fate of idyllic promise.

Now… Mary, Mary, who can say
The reason for your timid tread,
On those oh so enticing pathways
Through this sylvan fairy flow'rbed?

Mary, Mary, why so wary
Walking your sunlit garden path
Where such flowers lovely tarry
And birds singing sweetly thou hath?

What darkness bides there in that glen?
If innocence is doomed… who’ll know?
Tell me Mary, Mary, what ken…
Tell us… How does your garden grow?

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/17/1734/JPC3D00Z/
posters/edmund-evans-mary-mary-quite-contrary-how-does-your-garden-grow.jpg 

My deepest thanks to David Lewis Paget, 

Tate Morgan, and Rick Peutter for lending 

their guidance and tutelage to this composition.

by D. Denise Dianaty

© 2015 20 October 2014

Pick up your own copy
of my first book of poetry
at My Life In Poetry

Original Poem "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"

History In Pictures

A silly little rhyming game or a dire warning? 

Do You Know the Muffin Man?

“Do you know the Muffin Man?

The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man

Do you know the Muffin Man

Who lives in Drury Lane?”

Should I know the Muffin Man?

Will you tell me? What is his tale?

Do I want to know that man

Behind his friendly veil?

What lurks there… can you tell me…

Of what evil hides in plain sight…

Warning what darkness you see…

In soiled innocence plight?

Rife the news of missed women's

Bodies dragged for in tributary…

And all down along the Thames…

Where evil might carry.

Is’t worse than th’Angel Maker,

That loathsome ‘Ogress of Reading,’

Who wound tape o’ dressmaker

Round babes ‘stead o’bedding?

This Muffin Man of-whom you warn…

Is he worse than ‘Melia Dyer,

Who four hundred babes did not mourn,

But murdered for false hire?

Is’t worse than tales weighted hard

Of life there and down Feathers Court

Where life comes so cheaply marred

And death doth hope abort?

This warning dire you deliver

To ‘ware the wicked Muffin Man,

Does set my soul a-quiver

In fear of the villain. 

I don’t want to know that man

That Muffin Man, that Muffin Man

I don’t want to know that man

Who lives in Drury Lane!

by D. Denise Dianaty
© 25 October 2014

Amelia Dyer killed 400 or more mostly illegitimate babies between 1880 and 1896. She was paid -- a practice called “baby farming” -- to take the children, usually with the understanding that she was adopting them or finding homes for them. Dyer killed the infants by wrapping dressmaker’s tape around their little necks " but not so tightly as to kill them quickly -- and slowly strangling them. She confessed to her crimes, -- and to her pleasure watching the life slip away from those choking innocents -- admitting, “You'll know all mine by the tape around their necks.” She was tried and hanged in 1896 for murder. 

Drury Lane was long infamous -- even in Shakespeare’s time -- as a place of abject poverty, of moral and social degradation. From the 16th through the 18th centuries, Covent Garden, especially in the area of Drury Lane, was the primary location of London’s sex trade. It was long known for it’s questionable ladies whose clientele included not just the poor and criminally or socially questionable inmates of the area, but also privileged gentlemen seeking entertainments found between Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Doubtless many of Amelia Dyer’s victims were progeny of that human flesh trade.                                                                    …………………………………………………………………………… 

  

by D. Denise Dianaty
© 25 October 2014

Pick up your own copy of my first book of poetry at My Life In Poetry

Lyrics: "A Soldier’s Hell"

This was composed to the driving strains Santana's screaming guitar and Clapton's wailing guitar in their collaborative performance at the Crossroads Guitar Festival.

If eyes are the window to the soul, then why?…
Why can’t they see Hell blazing in his eye?

Mortally wounded spirit cries… the hellish chasm gapes
Over his every tortured nerve another memory scrapes
Darkness personified with every remembered face
Wounds of the soul so deep Time cannot erase

If eyes are the window to the soul, then why?…
Why can’t they see Hell blazing in his eye?

Honor and glory gained for gory deeds
Guilt cuts like a knife while murdered hope weeps
The eyes take in what the hands have done
The soul forever sees the black victory won

If eyes are the window to the soul, then why?…
Why can’t they see Hell blazing in his eye?

He closes his eyes to live out hell replayed
To wish just once, his hand could be stayed
His every step… every breath now death haunts
With demon souls of his dead his vision taunts

If eyes are the window to the soul, then why?…
Why can’t they see Hell blazing in his eye?

On his shoulder all his dead… faces pushing the slide
Every soul a demon howling… powering his final ride
No stopping him this time… no one to catch as he fell
His demons dragging him down… dragging him down…
down… down… down to Hell!

If eyes are the window to the soul, then why?…
Why can’t they see Hell…
Hell blazing in his eye?
Hell blazing…
Blazing…
Blazing in his eye?

I was listening to NPR, to a couple talking about their son, who returned form Afghanistan. They'd been so thankful he'd returned uninjured. His suicide devastated them. Something they said when they were talking inspired this poem. They said he was physically unharmed, but had a "mortally wounded spirit." 

It also reminded me of something my grandfather said once, about how it felt returning from Korea. He said everyone expected him to just get over it and put it behind him; and, that their expectation was "like a knife in the gut."


by D. Denise Dianty
© 13 September 2014

Pick up your own copy of my first
ebook of poetry at My Life In Poetry

Poem: Ten-Year Old Boys…

I think there's something to Ford Prefect's observation: “If they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.” (From Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, chapter 5, by Douglas Adams.”

Oi! Ten-year old boys… 

Oh! But they’re smelly…

And they’re - Oh! - so suddenly loud… 

They emanate such mephitic vapors…

Can they never stop moving and jolting and jostling? 

Why, oh, why are they ever so stinky… 

And, Lord above! They never stop talking!

And, withal, ever and ever more noisome!

Too clever by half, they know too much! 

Really! What a malodorous olfactory assault! 

They don't know enough to know they don't know enough!

And - oh, by the way - did I mention? 

They’re really quite odiferous.

But…Ahhh! Ten-year old boys…

He’ll hug you still, heedlessly…

And gaze adoringly up at you from that still cherubic face.

He squeezes you, so tight, so joyfully…

Always running headlong for joy, ever so endlessly bold…

His embraces remain spontaneous…

He’s in all things still filled with the glorious wonder of the new…

And, still, he wants to snuggle his mama…

What I have to say still matters to him…

He cleaves to me still, aggressively…

He cherishes and admires me and thinks I’m cool…

And still can’t go to bed without his hug and kiss goodnight.

He steals my heart every moment all over again

Each time he folds himself into my embrace.

“Pride is one of the seven deadly sins but it cannot be the pride of a mother in her children, for that is a compound of two cardinal virtues -- faith and hope.” by Charles Dickens

by D. Denise Dianaty
© 2014 MomzillaNC

Pick up your own copy of my first book of poetry at My Life In Poetry

Poem: Gaia Swoons

Gaia Swoons

The flowers are melancholy…

The forest primeval weeps…

Th’albatross and gull are laid low…

As the briny depths heave a sigh of regret…

The nightingale weeps a lonely song…

And the mountain groans incomparable loss…

As the majestic dance falters… and Gaia swoons.

by D. Denise Dianaty
© 09 September 2014

Pick up your own copy of my first book of poetry at My Life In Poetry

My Life In Poetry

My first book is available for purchase on 

Amazon.com at My Life In Poetry

(Please click on the above link and buy the book)

Much of my poetry is auto-biographical. The photography in the book, including the cover photo, is my own. I write of love, marriage, motherhood, passion, poetry, romance, Faith, and more. 

"Je suis Charlie!"

Thoughts and intellectual solidarity in the light of the terror attacks against the French publication Charlie Hebdo.

"Je suis Charlie!"

These monsters are trying to control what we think, to bleach our intellects and destroy free thought because their dogma cannot stand in the light of reason.

"Je suis Charlie" means "I am Charlie" and is the rallying cry of protesters and mourners trending today.

Make no mistake: this is NOT a war between Muslims and non-Muslims. This is a war between intellect and reason vs. dogma and tyranny. Don't forget that these monstrous people target far more fellow Muslims than any other group in the world for not being the right kind of Muslim or for not being Muslim enough. This is not, and never has been, about anyone's God. This is a war against the evil intent of individuals who begin by denying education and free thought because their dogma cannot stand in the light of compassion, Faith, and reason. 

We, as writers and intellectuals… as people of compassion, reason, and Faith in a just and loving God must give voice to the dead. We must answer this murderous assassination of intellect, reason, and free thought with our words never bending beneath their tyranny. When one falls, a hundred must take up the call until there is no voice left but the voice of freedom. It is always the way with tyranny -- first, shoot all the teachers… Then, silence the thinkers.

We must not be silenced. They answer reason and intellect, words and pictures with the tyranny of violence and death. But we must not let them force us into their mold of violence and tyranny. 

Freedom of speech must and can only be that -- free and unfettered speech. You don't have to like what someone says to understand they have the right to speak. Are we to have intellectual police deciding what is right and wrong? Has that ever worked when we try to police morality? The terrorists made statements as they murdered those people. The told the world their intent, leaving no doubt to their terrorist dogma and intent to silence any other opinion. As I hope most Americans will agree, I may not like what you have to say, but I'll defend to the last breath your right to say it -- and expect the same on my own behalf.

Please read this article:  What Every Christian Should Know About Muslims

NIV Romans 2:8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil… 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good… 

NIV Romans 14:19 Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.