Month: March 2016

Since she whom I loved

I love this.I wanted to have it at the funeral but my sister said it was too sombre.But I feel better when I listen to it.You can get all of these sonnets set to music by Benjamin Britten.They are called the Holy Sonnets.I believe he wrote them after his wife died.

No Man Is An Island – Poem by John Donne

https://youtu.be/AUmbXVqQbKM

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

John Donne

Metaphysical poets

John_Donne_BBC_News

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2691536

John Donne,the most famous.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_poets

The metaphysical poets is a term coined by the poet and critic Samuel Johnsonto describe a loose group of English lyric poets of the 17th century, whose work was characterized by the inventive use of conceits, and by speculation about topics such as love or religion. These poets were not formally affiliated; most of them did not even know one another or read one another’s work. Given this lack of coherence as a movement and the great diversity of style between poets, it has been suggested that calling them Baroque poets after their era might be more useful.

 

 

Enchanted English Grammar

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/grammar/

 

I’d like to write a preposition soon.

Because my eyes are feeling out of tune.

I’ll roll them up and put them down

I’ll send my specs into  the town

And then I shall  soon  see Siegfried Sassoon.

 

 

I’m amazed at how much grammar I’ve forgot.

………All periods,full stops and  those little dots……………………….

I think I’ll stick to commas now,

And cut out all the rest somehow,

I might persuade myself it’s worse than anything  with spots,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

I feel ashamed  of English being ill writ…

Even though I do possess a wit.

If only Ma had given me two,

I do believe I could make do.

I might have got a job as a Lit. Crit.

 

I once met Dr Leavis by a  lake;

My boyfriend was  there studying his mistakes.

He mentioned Hamlet more than once

I stood there and looked askance.

So Dr Leavis asked me could I dance.

 

I don’t know was it could or would or should?

The music was not playing in the woods.

I stayed real quiet,

On my word diet.

Yet Leavis was more pleasant than soap suds…

 

 

He swoons into her tarts

When my husband has been ill,he longs for a tart…

Well,you could start charging him!

Can you plug men in like you do with your mobile ?

I wonder if that’s why they have two ears?

What,does the charger go in their ear?

Well,they don’t use them to listen to us women.

I shall have to ask someone.

No,just look on the Internet…
I did look and the good news is,It’s free nowadays.

What’s the bad news?

It’s all porn

Did it affect you?

No,I’d rather read a book..

What sort of book?

The ones where she swoons into his arms

~and he swoons into her charms.

You read those books too?

I write them!

You never said.

No I write under a nom de plum

Plume!

Plum,plume,it’s all  a foreign language to me.

It’s French…

Like the tarts

The promised land

Joy sings now in golden light;
Yet after day comes deep,dark night.
New moon will rise by these grey trees.
This is where I want to be.

I want the day;I want the night.
I want the dark;I want the light.
I want to see and to be seen,
And not to lose myself in dreams.

The sun has set,grey clouds turn black,
The day just gone will not come back.
I’ll rest in thoughtful reverie
Until the reaper’s scythe takes me.

And then I’ll drop and mix with dust,
till worms and beetles sate their lust.
I fall into ten thousand motes,
And dance,in sunlight,music’s notes.

No more striving;no more ambition,
No more fighting;no competition,
Every particle’s the same
Without even its special name.

And, side by side, we all are one,
The lusts of life have been and gone.
We dwell with dirt and grain and sand
At last we’ve reached the Promised Land

Must we walk into that darkness?

The sunlight shining through these clouds in E...
The sunlight shining through these clouds in England is an example of sunbreak. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Four o’clock– and the sun’s still glowing
Four o’clock – of a  colour bright day,
Up above, pink-tinged clouds are sliding
Down still sky, sweeping sun away.

Come back sweet sun, do not leave us.
Come back bright beams,I need sunlight
Down on earth,it’s witch moon darkness,
When your golden face is out of sight.

I see the orange tinged clouds extending
I feel such sense of sky lit bright.
But gently now, the mist surrounds you
And sweeps away that happy sight.

Into velvet blackness sinking,
The dazzling, dreaming darkness falls.
Goodbye to haste,and glare, and sunshine,
Time for reverie,night time calls.

On the night-trains gentle journeys,
On this  trackless train we ride
Strange visions and haunting pictures
We will see in dreams’ designs.

In my night train,I’ll be happy
In such rich deep reverie.
We visit darkness in our sleeping,
There we learn its ecstasy.

Now we may have no God to hold us,
In His Hands of Living Love,
What will help us trust deep blackness
If there’s no Saviour from above?

Must we enter that great darkness,
Go back to dark from which we came,
Into dark all living creatures,
In that darkness find our home?

Trust the dark unknown, to hold us,
Trust the dark,both night and day.
Must we walk into that darkness
And trust it is our safest way?

Related articles

Gradually

You came here gradually,
from the whirling chaos of the dreaming infant,
anchored by the maternal hand to earth.
Do not try to fly back to heaven today.
Be patient;your guides will,with no effort,
Teach you the patterns and the dance.
All you need is to be open and to trust,
For you have a place in the world.
We need your contribution.No-one else
will see this world from your perspective.
And as you trust the chaos now,fear it not
Should it return.Every creative act
involves the breaking of these barriers
by which we keep the chairs and tables
anchored into themselves.The patterns may break up
but new ones are somewhere near.Patience
with this suffering is the only route now.

You cannot go back.Heaven comes only after
you have grown roots into this earth,
grown sunward,and travailed the storms
and stinging blows;
have grown your flowers and leaves
And let them fall.
Accept.

The only way you can go
is the earthly way.
You are part of us.
We love you.
Our hands are reaching out
If you just lift your eyes.

In the Chaos,God danced and rainbows
Flew from his hands; tears fell from his eyes…………
Those tears which fertilized our earth.
He wept, knowing of the pain to come;
And yet,he did not cease to dance.

Fumour

For non English speakers, the words,fumour and gloomour are inventions by me so don’t use them in essays etc.

 

 

 

Is it easy to write limericks and humour

To rescue folk stuck in their gloomour?

Well,why rescue at all?

Let them all fall.

See if I care about fumour!

 

Fuming is when folk get too  cross

Hot and smokey,it’s their loss.

Noone can make us feel

Other than what is real.

Don’t ley their moods be the boss.

How can we learn to live with love, not fear

 I try to feel through dark and distant space
To where you dwell in a so called “heavenly” place.
And you are far from those of us, who care.
Our hearts are dulled with loving thoughts not shared.
Your absence has so distanced us in grief.
We can neither share our loss, nor gain relief.I stare into the star filled sky at night
And see a space almost devoid of light.
I feel into the edges of my soul
I sense,somewhere, a partially dismembered whole.
Would new technology be able to aid my view,
As I search everywhere for some tiny trace of you?

How can someone vanish suddenly in the night,
And never,from then on, be in my sight?
I wish that I’d been there when you went off.
Then I could have expressed,in touch, my sweetest love.
Shall I never hear again your gleaming tenor voice
Enchanting me once more with your intriguing choice?
Shall I not even find the laces from your shoes,
Floating gently back to earth through these elm trees?

I see more flocks of gracious geese flash by.
Are those your fingers tracing lines across the sky?
Do you too see these geese from up above?
But you’re on the other side, too far away from love.
And even with the very new best technology
There’s no way back now,so you won’t ever be
With us again,Goodbye,Goodbye Goodbye
I’ll turn away my tear filled green- blue eyes
And look at all that’s near,as I’m still here.

I know now you’re too far away ,too far away, too far away ,my dear.
I know now that you’re too far away,my dear.
How can we learn to live with love, not fear,
As we go on ,now, down these coming years?
So sad that you’re not near,not here,not here,my dear.
Shall I sometimes,in the night. pretend, you’re there,
And that heaven is not really so agonizingly too far?
As we slide down the escape chute of the years,
Like children clutching at our teddy bears.

A gambit is the opening move.

A gambit is the opening move.

A manoeuvre the player can choose.

She seeks a quick lead;

A game at full speed.

What  shame if she thereafter should  lose.

 

I am innocent of tricks such as these.

I play games in order to please.

To  enjoy some fun,

No matter who’s won.

Then at leisure to relax at our ease.

 

In my ambit I find tricky folk

Whose guns are over-eager to smoke.

So I  am turning gay

In order to say,

I love you ,without being provoked.

 

Who understands a woman like me?

Is my mind a disorder to flee?

I may be  brilliant at times

But who chooses my rhymes?

I am who I am,let it be.

 

 

 

 

Gambit: your leg

12717545_665991480207400_9095795496204359785_n.jpg

gambit

See definition in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary

Line breaks: gam¦bit

Pronunciation: /ˈɡambɪt/

Definition of gambit in English:

noun

1An act or remark that is calculated to gain an advantage, especially at the outset of a situation:his resignation was a tactical gambit

MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCESSYNONYMS
2(In chess) an opening move in which a player makes asacrifice, typically of a pawn, for the sake of acompensating advantage:he tried the dubious Budapest gambit

MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES

Origin

Mid 17th century: originally gambett, from Italian gambetto, literally ‘tripping up’, from gamba ‘leg’.

He ate a piece of rancid cod

Image

Stan is feeling very odd
He ate a piece of rancid cod.
He hates to throw out bits of food,
but now his insides stewed.

He feels sick and tired of life.
He hates the housework and his wife.
He’s tired of cooking cakes for her.
And he dislikes her hair.

He does like talking to his cat.
They always have a friendly chat.
And he likes teaching tricks and jokes
And see….his ears do smoke!

He went to see a Doctor Brown
Who wore a bright red dressing gown.
He asked him why he had no suit.
And only wore one boot.

Dr Brown said, Look here, you!
I’m the doctor, how do you do?
So Stan said “I am feeling sick.
The world whirls far too quick”

“Travel sickness is not nice,
The world spins once, then you spin twice.
I’ll give you some pink medicine,
See how you get on.”

“I want to get off, not get on.
My time on earth is surely done.
I want to hear angelic choirs
Instead of Mary’s tyres.”

“I think you’re very melancholy.
I prefer my patients to be jolly.
Please take Prozac ‘ere you come”
“I’ve already taken twenty-one
,
But I still feel so black and grey.
I can’t tell if it’s night or day.”
Oh, help me doctor, it’s that time,
When men run out of rhymes.”

“Now look her, Stan,” the doctor said,
“I think that you should go to bed.
A little rest will do you good
And renovate your blood.”

“But who will bake the cakes and bread.
And make sure that the cat’s not dead?
And who will clean the purple bath
And sweep the garden path?”

So Doctor Brown began to cry.
He’s not much good but he does try.
So Stan went home and had a rest,
And ate some buttered toast.

Some days the world is too much here,
But other days it seems less queer
Then Stan feels he can cope with life
And even with his wife!

Croak

My doctor likes playing  small jokes

His ears wiggle and emit smoke.

It distracts us, the patients,

From mentioning  ailments

I laugh so I almost choke.

 

When I go into his room

His eyes focus and then they zoom

He hopes he can see

Right inside me.

So I hum a beautiful tune.

 

 

 

 

The exit

Watching Plato shining torches into blackness,

Wandering through the galleries,
Sepia paintings of pines;
Pain came to the emptiness once my heart,
I sat picturing screaming Popes and babies.
Eastward, looking for fresh instruction,
My mind unpleated, like a pair of curtains
Hung out to dry in equinoxal gales.
The bells of Satan’s cell phone
Rang again, startling in this silence.
“You had your smear done yet?”
“It’s me, hinny”
“I’m having coffee here in Costa’s.”
Then I awoke, a man appeared.
How apposite, I need you, Ludwig!
I can’t fly my kite.In the Science Museum, the mirror cracked
And from it stars flew out,
Adorning cars and bicycles and buses.
The building gently fell into its own reflection.
People shot out like gasping rockets,
Illuminating the blankness,
Calling “Is today the day?.”

Blatherskite

BLATHERSKITE
blatherskiteLine breaks: blather|skite

Pronunciation: /ˈblaðəskʌɪt/

 Definition of blatherskite in English:
Noun

chiefly North American

1A person who talks at great length without making much sense

1.1[MASS NO Foolish talk; nonsense:politicians get away all the time with obscurantist blatherskite

Origin

Mid 17th century: from blather + skite, a Scotsderogatory term adopted into American colloquial speech during the War of Independence from the Scottish song Maggie Lauder, by F. Semphill, which was popular with American troops.

Definition of blatherskite in:

Stan and the brass

Stan was outside polishing the brass doorstep.”My,these microfibre cloths are wonderful” he thought resentfully.Mary was out taking a load of stuff to the Oxfam Shop.Suddenly he heard a loud cry, then he felt a pair of hands fondling the top of his bald head.”Eeh, no rest for the wicked, even at 81,” he screamed.He staggered to his feet and rubbed his knees.”Just give me a hand”, he said, I’ll have to stretch my hamstrings.They tighten up so.”
“I’ll stretch them for you!” Annie whispered roguishly.Stan leant forward to touch his toes and she could not resist the temptation to give his bottom a hearty slap.”For Pete’s sake,Annie” he shouted faintly.”Someone might see that.””Don’t worry, there’s no-one around at this time of the day” she tittered.
“Oh,yes there is!”
It was Dave, the paramedic.He had been lying behind the wheelie bins, all three of them standing plaintively in the tiny front garden.”I’m an MI5 spy, and I’ve been reading your blog, Mr Brown.”
“I’m not called Brown”, said Stan nerdishly.”Refuses to accept reality,”Dave wrote in his little notepad with some blood he had taken from himself earlier,”Jesus Christ!”, said Stan.”Now,now,” said Dave,”that’s not your name.

IMG_0027

“No my name is Tan,not Brown,you’ve been reading the wrong blog!” “Stan Tan!”
Dave appeared crestfallen,”Any chairs need mending today?”
“My what beautiful ears you have, sweetheart,” he said to Annie,
“They look like sea shells,” “Your eyes are like shallow pools in Lake Windermere during a thunderstorm.”Annie replied womanfully.”Are you still a transvestite?” she followed on incoherently.
“No,I had a mystical experience and now I’m a Zen Buddhist”
“How did that happen?” demanded Stan querulously.
“Well,I was knitting myself a Shetland lace sweater in pale blue mohair and I suddenly had the feeling that everything was interwoven.Going forward or backwards, sideways or straight ahead, it is all part of the warp and weft of life.””Mistakes don’t matter” he continued idly.”Oh,yes,they do,”Annie said pouting her full lips, cherry pink by courtesy of L’oreal of Paris and New York,lip balm by Yves St Laurent,peach foundation by Lancome also of Paris,toning smokey grey mascara by Max Factor,handbag Annie’s own,deep burgundy 70 denier tights by M&S,Grey pointed ballet slippers by Bally of Switzerland.[also available in black,red and teal].Raspberry lingerie by ,strangely,M&S.
“As I was saying..”
Dave dived back behind the wheelie bin.
Stan polished the brass and Annie disappeared in a puff of smoke.
It was Mary’s famous imitation of a bicycle bell that had alerted them to her imminent return from the Oxfam shop.
“Don’t they make bike bells any more? ” Dave  wondered as he carried on reading the new life of Emily Dickinson”A loaded gun.” He  had thought it was an army training manual, but hey, mistakes don’t matter! Or do they?

Some Poems

The Day the Rain Falls The lake is speckled with rain. Each dot an echo of the last. Swans pedal. My eyes are wet. Life is melting. I always do this. This is the way it always is. Kids jump in pudd…

Source: Some Poems

New proverbs

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  • “Two gangs don’t have to fight.”

    “Two tongues don’t add appetite”

  • “The lens is mightier than the word .”

    “The end is slighter than  a bird”

  • “When in foam, do as the foaming do.”
  •  “When you rhyme,do as the   poets do”
  • “The leaky seal   lets liquid seep.”
  • “The pesky  steal the calm of  our sleep”
  • “When the  mowing gets tough, the tough  take the aftermath.”
  • “When knowing is tough,the tough still look”
  • “No pen is in  wry hands “

    “So when is it in my hands?

  • “No pen is a dry one”

 

How can you use proverbs to learn English?

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http://www.phrasemix.com/collections/the-50-most-important-english-proverbs

What are proverbs?

Every culture has a collection of wise sayings that offer advice about how to live your life. These sayings are called “proverbs”

It’s good to know the really common English proverbs because you hear them come up in conversation all the time. Sometimes people say the entire proverb to give advice to a friend. More often, someone will say just part of a proverb like this:

You know what they say: when the going gets tough…

(Read #5 below to learn the rest of this proverb and what it means.)

Learning proverbs can also help you to understand the way that people in English-speaking cultures think about the world.

Proverbs can also give you good example sentences which you can memorize and use as models for building your own sentences.

The most important English Proverbs

This is a list of some of the most important and well-known English proverbs. Below each one, there’s a simple explanation.

The meanings of some of these phrases have shifted over the years, so a proverb might have originally had a different meaning than the one I explain.

  1. “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

    When someone has done something bad to you, trying to get revenge will only make things worse.

  2. “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

     Trying to convince people with ideas and words is more effective than trying to force people to do what you want.

  3. “When in Rome, do as the Romans.”

     Act the way that the people around you are acting. This phrase might come in handy when you’re traveling abroad notice that people do things differently than you’re used to.

  4. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

     You can get better service if you complain about something. If you wait patiently, no one’s going to help you.

  5. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

     Strong people don’t give up when they come across challenges. They just work harder.

  6. “No man is an island
  7. You can’t live completely independently. Everyone needs help from other people

Windows and the danger of flattening tigers

Windows  open to let  in fresh air…but also you can fall out of them.Every positive thing has an opposite…

See what happens when we fall out.. not good is it?
You can literally fall out if you do the foolish thing,trying to clean the outside from inside.Some people sit on the windowsill with only their legs inside and attempt to wash the windows…then all of a sudden they lose their balance and end up in a rose bush in the garden if they are lucky.It may be they end up on a passing dog and that is called dog-slaughter here in the UK.So if you must fall out try to fall onto a dead cat.Well,what other choice is there?I rest my case on a dead tiger’s  head.Why is it here?I shall tell you another day.. but it was not I who shot it.No,I strangled it in a dream and my  life changed forever.If it’s any consolation, it was very old

The Universe said……..

And I listened. Untitled Abstract: 24″x36″ Acrylic,inks,varnishes and various glazes. Gallery quality birch panel 250 usd +shipping Close up #1 Close up #2 Close up #3 Close up #4 For t…

Source: The Universe said……..

Happenstance or even Serendipity?

 
  • Stan was reading the paper at 9 pm when the front door bell rang.Emile,his delightful tomcat who was asleep,nearly jumped out of his skin.Stan opened the front door cautiously.
    “Goodnight,sir.” remarked the handsome man standing there. impassively
    “Goodnight?”Said Stan confusedly,”But I’ve never seen you before.Are you the sandman who comes to put  little children to sleep?”
    “Good evening,sir.” the man continued,”I’m so sorry my English is so poor.I am ,  studying David McChrystal’s Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language and I’m still a trifle mystified.”
    “What do you want?”Stan asked him.”What do I want? I want to study philosophy and write a novel like Iris Murdoch did ”
    “No,no.” said Stan” I mean,why are you here ?”
    “A good question,why are we here? Do we have a mission in life or are we here as a result of mere chance and happenstance or even serendipity ?”
    “I mean,why are you here ringing my doorbell at this time of the night?”
    “Shouldn’t that be evening,sir?” The stranger enquired sardonically yet politely.
    “Look.are you after something?”
    “Well,I’m after getting people to go to church or  other place of worship.”
    “Are you partly Irish?”Stan asked him plaintively.
    “What’s happening,”called Mary from her study where she was reading a critique of Principia Mathematica for the seventeenth time.
    “God only knows!” said Stan.
    Mary came to the front door.She wore a green silk blouse with a jade necklace, a pair of smart jeans from Per Una and some pink trainers with yellow laces.On her face she wore Lancome of Paris light beige foundation,strawberry pink lipstick and purple mascarafrom Clinique.Her perfume was by Beyonce.
    “Goodnight,madam” said the stranger.
    “I think that’s  rude,” said Mary.”If you’ve never met someone before it’s inappropriate to say goodnight.”
    “Well,you aren’t in bed,” he replied laboriously.
    “What has that got to do with it?”
    “Inappropriate is often used to refer to sexual behaviour.”
    “Well,who are you?” she whispered politely.
    “I’m the new curate!””I’m Polish and I’m here ”
    “Well,I’m sorry I don’t know a single word of Polish.would you like to speak in Latin?”
    “Ite,missa est!”The curate exclaimed.
  • “Uno reductio ad absurdum”Stan muttered seductively.
    “That’s Italian,UNO” cried Mary shyly.
    “Well,it’s pretty similar.” Stan shouted romanically
    “Well,I must go,”said the curate amxiously.
    “You’ve not been yet so how can you go?” Mary asked mathematically
    “I don’t know,sir.Good evening,good afternoon,good morning.”the red faced man screamed as he ran hurriedly down the garden path.
    “Are we Catholics ?”Mary asked Stan.
    “Oh,I can’t remember,” he said.”Do we go to  any church,synagogue or mosque?”
    “Well,we may be non-practising at it all ,I suppose.”
    “Perhaps we’d better start practising,” he murmured affectionately.
    “Oh,if you insist,” she replied in an un-wifely roguish tone.
    “That’s right,blame it all on the man.In my experience it’s you who is keener than me on  all of that.”
    “What are you talking about?”she enquired seductively.
    Suddenly the door bell rang.It was the curate.
  • “Goodnight” he called.”goodnight”
    “Goodnight, old man” they responded in their reserved English fashion.
    “Mioaw” cried Emile,”Mioaw,miaow,miaow.
  • And so pray all of us.Amen

The “death instinct”

 

 

FullSizeRender.jpg

My sister made this.Her life instinct.

 

 

Freud did not believe every  single symbol in a dream was a sexual one.He also came to think there was a death instinct after living through WW1.His own sisters died in Concentration Camps.He barely got away from Germany in 1938.

I dreamed about cats and little coloured birds last night.And an Indian man was bringing more beautiful animals to show me.

I call that the life instinct

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-second-noble-truth/201110/how-recognizing-your-death-drive-may-save-you