There’s a secret nuclear bunker ar the bottom of my street
It’s on the Ordnance Survey Map along with flocks of sheep
The other one’s in Essex near Brentwood says the sign
Dont get on a train just yet, it’s not the Central Line

Are they for the Government or for my neighbours near?
Who is going to drop a bomb and escalate the fear?
Why d’ye think our tax goes up Boris drugs the goats
He’s building his own bunker now, with a private moat

If the bunker’s secret, who’s it hiding from?
Who can’t yet read English, but knows best how to stun
Is it Meghan Markle or little Lilibet?
Or someone quite invisible who makes the neighbours sweat

Should we all dig trenches and say we grow our spuds?
Either way this is the end,I feel it in my gut

https://fb.watch/71oFtR3c6X/

I feel soft ghostly hands around my throat

That want to pull me to the  darkest deep

My husband cannot leave or be remote

He wishes me to join him in his sleep.

 

I shall resist for I desire to live

Though  blind now are my hours without his face.

I have no more I hope to give

Since he withdrew from me his  kind embrace.

 

As lonely as a swan without its mate.

As tired as swallows after they migrate

I must accept my unconsoled fate

I'll  not  accept this be a constant state.

 

From my loss I shall recover when

The birds return and summer comes again

I have spent  a hundred nights alone
No face to greet  me  when my dreams depart
No comfort  from the warmness of your arm

I  hear your key  but it’s a false alarm
A tear runs down  my face  and then more start
I have spent  a  thousand nights alone

A   river with no bridge  nor stepping stone
This water which keeps  lovers  late apart
No comfort  from the warmness of an arm

I see you are now dust, where are  your bones?
Where eyes to show  me  when you are contrite
I have spent  ten thousand nights alone

In the night you prayed for all who groan
You  smiled  when I  once spoke  of future life
What comfort could I  bring  to the Unknown?

I shall find a way to carry on
I will find the secrets  and the  light
I accept a million nights alone

When we were joined , who knew when we would part?
I am left with fragments of  a heart
 I have spent   so many  nights alone
Give me comfort  ,take me in  your arms

Katherine  March 7, 2017 

The world is exists but I just wish to flee
The flowers come into bud but I can’t see.
The birds have built their new   small nests again
Birds forget, but memory feeds our pain.

When I get trapped inside this mud black silt
I forget the tools my mind has lately  built
Again it feels eternal and unkind
The sorrowing  fills the endless realms of mind.

The mind  helps us to mediate and muse
We need it to give weight to different views
But   inwardness can  build up dangerous walls
We lose ourselves in shadow  and may fall.

The life within us will rise up again
If  we  can accept our mental pain.

I so loved your beautiful
coat of many colours
I almost passed out

Other women made such
Spiteful remarks
I knew it would be hidden

You wore a cheap mac from
A large chainstore after that
Depriving my eyes of drowned joy


And then I became afraid
Of women’s tongues
Destroying what they never found

Envy does not want to like
Handmade clothes
Colours of dawn or sunset

Wants others grey and plain
Treads on their bare faces
In disdain

Do read this interesting article by David J Rogers

https://davidjrogersftw.com/2021/06/16/why-do-writers-painters-and-other-artists-bloom-late/comment-page-1/?unapproved=14397&moderation-hash=e41a1752bdbcd5930ade9b82be66136d#comment-14397

 

https://www.vqronline.org/essay/purity-restraint-stillness

 

EXTRACT

 

Celebrating the painter Elstir, the narrator of In Search of Lost Timesuggests that for the great artist, the work of painting and the act of being alive are indistinguishable. For each of us, says Proust, there may be “certain bodies, certain callings, certain rhythms that are specially privileged, realizing so naturally our ideal that even without genius, merely by copying the movement of a shoulder, the tension of a neck, we can achieve a masterpiece.” The implication here is that art is not the product of the will. More than lack of ambition, it is the inability to surrender to our characteristic callings and rhythms that keeps us from fulfilling our promise.

The word surrender makes this achievement sound easy, as if the victory of each day were to wake up looking exactly like yourself. But even if we all possess certain rhythms, certain callings, not everyone is able to exist in the simple act of recognizing them. The surrender of the will is itself impossible merely to will, and we may struggle with the act of surrender more deeply than we struggle with the act of rebellion. W. B. Yeats called the moment of recognizing oneself a “withering into the truth,” and the word “wither” seems just right, for the discovery does not feel like a blossoming. Nor does it happen only once, like an inoculation. Proust’s Elstir does not inhabit himself truly until he has achieved great age.

Writers have withered into variety, excess, and vulgarity; writers have withered into purity, stillness, and restraint. Why do the latter values so often get bad press, even from artists who embrace those values themselves? In my own experience, stillness can be difficult to separate from dullness, restraint from lack of vision or adequate technique; a young writer may embrace the glamour of risk in order to avoid parsing these discriminations. What’s more, the association of artistic achievement with heroic willfulness is endemic, and it is clung to in the United States with a fierceness that belies its fragility. Lacking a thousand years of artistic craftsmanship to fall back on, the American artist is called great when he is at the frontier, taking the risk, disdaining the status quo, but also landing the movie deal. What happens to the American poet who is destined to wither into stillness and restraint, the poet whose deepest inclination is to associate risk with submis

 

Oh,mother,I have stitched up what you tore
The cuts you slashed, the hate for me you bore
I’ve mended all the holes,I darned and wept
Thinking of the love we could have kept
I tended all my siblings when I could
Even when they hit me and spilled blood
I do not hold a grudge for what evolved
Life is not a problem to be solved
You were left a lonely widow too
You lost your mother young, so sad and blue
Yet you did enjoy to buy a hat
How I longed to help you choosing that
I wish you’d had more money and a man
You feared for us your offspring, had no plan
I lay awake afraid that you would leave,
Terrified and tortured by your needs
Yet I love you still, where is your face?
How I’d love to be by you embraced
Where do mothers go when they pass on
Mother,mother,show me where you’ve gone

Oh,my brother you must go ahead
You always ran away when we were small
I never thought that I should see you dead
Oh,my brother you will go ahead
And in the ground the worms will be well fed
By your loss of voice I am appalled
Oh,my brother youwill go ahead
You always ran too fast when we were small

You cannot speak, your voice was getting weak
Your eyes looked pained but you made no complaint
Even when the news was very bleak
You cannot speak, your voice was getting weak
A single leaked tear down my cheek
I forgave you in my late lament
You could not speak, your voice was getting weak
Your eyes looked pained but you made no complaint

Inside my shell I dream of pearls,
Caterpillars,snails with whorls.
I dream contented, all enwrapped
With reverie and dream I’m lapped.
The inner seas will comfort me,
While gods allow my eyes to see
Oh,sweeter than confectionery
Is my worn old dictionary.
The words whirl round and fall to shape
The sentences, which my world drape.
This furnishing is rich and strange
Yet magically self arranged.
Oh,sweeter than the love of manI
s reading works of poets long gone.
And feeling deeply their dark tides .
Upon which our boat may glide.
The sea infinite we float
on Is the same warm sea where ancients swam.
Sweeter still is this spring air
And the blossom spreading fair
.We’ll drown ourselves in deep green field
To the gods of poetry yield.
We’ll rise again and spring up tall
To grow more rich until we fall.
Sweet it is to live and die
And to write my poetry
Touch me with your ardent souls
My mind and yours shall all be whole

You can’t keep us confined another day
It’s a human right to have a holiday
We read the Daily Telegraph and moan
With hearts so hard they’d break the strongest stone

The holiday must be in somewhere hot
Hells teeth,I need passport, what damned rot
I won’t get Covid,I shall Covid spread
Till all the men I sleep with fall down dead

It’s a human right to make love in a bed
With strangers from the beach, while I’m unwed
But I don’t pay my staff a living wage
If they ask I fly into a rage

It’s well known that poor children don’t shoes need
And if we cut them they will hardly bleed
All they need is Blackpool for a day
Eating pork pies,chips with lemonade

What we need are rights from ethics gained
The right to care for others who’re in pain
The right to help the old folk get some food
The right to help the sick who sadly brood

I see Lord Jesus bathe on Gaza beach
Do they sell icecream and bags of crisps?
God himself has gone on a long Cruise
I know it’s true, it was on GB News

It was on Facebook only yesterday
Humans have forgotten how to pray

Grief  and love are linked by  metal chains
Imagination cannot  foresee change
When love is killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

In our wanderings in our mind’s domains
The furniture of mind is rearranged
Rage and love are linked by a  steel chain

The mind itself can change the human brain
The one most strong may be the one insane
When love dies, its shadow will  remain

The hate of loss  is like the mark of Cain
The rational one can be almost deranged
Grief  and love are linked by a  steel chain

What is lost will  heal in its due time
Murderous love   comes from the most estranged
When love’s killed its  ghost will  cause  much pain

Suffering most acute is now in place
Chronic losses cause a pale strained face
Grief  and love are linked by a  gold chain
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame