Old man,bending over,
arched like a fallen moon
in a dark lilac November sky.
joy and pain wrestle my heart across the emptiness
and toss it up like a damp rocket
to fall in a hidden corner where mice live.
Would that not be a good ending,to be dust
to these little creatures nesting
in my chewed green twine and my tartan basket?
They have eyes and shiver in my hand when I rescue them
from the cat…
as any heart might.
Now night falls on the newspaper basket
where the damp Times and the Guardian mix into glue
and tomorrow the sun will rise
and it will just be the garbage
with no poetic undertones nor deathly hushes..
Heather and a silver light
you stand on a hill top like a god
looking over his domain.
Strong and now weak
it’s the human condition
Everlasting life is too dangerous for us.
Silent,motionless,home of beetles
bit by bit we fall away
into the mother soil
with cracked jugs and dropped coins
for a future academic to dig into.
Transparent the hand that touches me.
Whose might it be?
Month: October 2016
An historic performance
How are we affected by the loss of many people killed in WW2,and by Stalin and by Hitler ,including the Holocaust? And how did the Church respond?
It is estimated Hitler killed 12 million people,half were European Jews.Stalin is estimated at 7 million.Such numbers are hard to imagine.Especially to feel each one was a unique person like ourself is to us and our loved ones are to us.These were unique ,beloved people.
Surely Christianity itself has died along with the innocent ?
What I have been thinking recently is: how different is the world and especially Europe is .since we lost so many people and hence lost their descendants? Jewish people were almost wiped out and I believe Yiddish is not spoken now.Yet Jews are usually said to be very intelligent [ like Nobel Prize Awards are much higher in proportion ]
Is it possible to grieve such enormous losses? Nobody knows.We lost then but we lost our own selves as well/Who are we now after such murder?
I wonder , if we include the soldiers killed. in battle , whether Europe has lost out genetically.That is my thinking on wondering why we have so few admirable politicians and other leaders.It doesn’t explain Donald Trump except he is half German.His family must have left before WW1.I am unsure why so many Germans went to the USA.Possibly to escape rigid European work/class problems and hope for more freedom.Nobody quite like that exists here, thank God.
I have read that some people think Judaism was wrecked as a religion by the Holocaust but I hope that is not true.But belief in God is tested by immense tragedies.And modern life, in general ,has little time for any religion.
I wonder if to the folk who run the world it is a like a big game and we are their toy soldiers.Dispensible.
Vengeance is mine,says the Lord.Where is he?Why is he waiting?
Like a fox hides in a hole or den
I have been acquainted well with grief
I have wept at home and wept abroad.
I have lost my loved ones to this thief.
I have known grief spread like rivers wide
I ‘ve been hurt by painful ,wracked tears
I have felt the absence of my God.
I’ve known grief for more than sixty years
My father and his brother were the first
I have met no being who’s been spared.
Yet we have no permission here to weep
I long for ritual like a writer needs a pen
I long to dream of them while I’m asleep.
Like a fox hides in a hole or den
I would like to hide when days begin
Uncontained by his love again
As a tree mourns for each little leaf
As God mourns for Adam’s holy sin
I have been acquainted with harsh grief
I have seen each ghost and I believe.
A turn up for the books

Harry Heber with his parents and sister. He arrived in the UK in December 1938 on the Harwich ferry. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian
How is the world,now emptied of your being?
In fields of lushest buttercups we ‘d lie
We’d watch the clouds as gently they blew by.
Love was born we thought would never die.
But now you’re gone, and so I sadly sigh
That love itself remains without your form
Yet tears of loss enfold me like a storm.
I knew you’d never hurt or do me harm.
I felt your smile’s embrace, so wide, so warm.
How is the world,now emptied of your being?
No sound,no touch,no smell,no sight,no seeing.
How is the world when you have gone ahead
Yet I must linger in this empty bed?
Yet those who love are grateful for this gift
Our sorrow is that life itself’s too swift
Come live with me
Come live with me and be my helpmeet now
I’ll share my only bed with you and how!
If you let me love you
I’ll darn your old wool gloves 4 you..
If you come and meet me brow to brow.
Come live with me ‘n teach me all you know
About poetic licence and Defoe.
I’ll mend your vacuum cleaner,
learn expressions meaner..
How cheerfully the hours to come will go,
Come live with me and be my lover true
Without one,however shall we do?
I’ll set up England’s railways
And learn the Chinese weekdays
Come live with me and I will sweep your flue.
Come live with me in Norway on a fjord
I’ll use my Canon powershot even more.
I’ll watch the flowers growing
And see the waters flowing
How happy Wittgenstein’d be if he’d knowed.
Green?
I know why shyness make one blush bright red .It’s to make people steer clear but why does envy make one green?Is it a metaphor as it’s sickness that usually makes one go green.Envy may be sickness.Is that it?
I went white all over when he rejected me.I looked as if I was dyed
She has the blues but it’s not obvious unless you know her really well.Like if she cuts her finger.I blame Edward the 7th.He’s dead, you see.
Our language problems
Keep your sentences pithy with a full stop.Do not fall into it.
He has to have a semi-colon investigation soon.Is it the period or the comma, we may ask.
She has been in a comma for years.It’s a miracle she’s not read as yet.
He came to a full stop by the British Museum.He wants to end it there.I am distraught as I was mistaught.It was not a real sentence.No verb.
I said he was in the para-military,not he’s got a paragraph on the Mirror.They don’t know what a paragraph is and neither do I. In fact I could write enough about it to fill a third of this page.But don’t worry,I shan’t.So there!
Comma here,my darling.I have room for two ,,
Don’t reply to me,imaginary data.Exclaim please!!!!
When do you use a colon, the teacher asked?
The boy responded:after our food is digested, until we can evacuate the remains of the prey.
Why has the whole industry come to a full stop? It’s a cliche.Let’s start it up again.There’s more in this than meets the spy.
At the end os his sentences he always drew a full stop.Well, he was an artist ionce.,so he thought but he was autistic, though on a bend in the spectrum.Or was it blend?
As I entered the room I saw a question mark hanging over Mr Smith’s bed.He likes to play puzzles in the night.His wife wants a divorce on the grounds of punctuation games interfering with her sex life.When she looks up. her whole life passes before her.How would you like that?
It depends on the life!
When to use a semi-colon
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/semicolons.asp
Even Oxford educated people can forget the rules of grammar,just like nearly everyone else in the UK.In fact, if you are too good at grammar it might make you bad at it in a very real sense, at this moment in time.I hope you can grasp what I write and use it for something or other,like, er,what d’you call it?
It’s no accident that a semicolon is a period atop a comma. Like commas, semicolons indicate an audible pause—slightly longer than a comma’s, but short of a period’s full stop.
Semicolons have other functions, too. But first, a caveat: avoid the common mistake of using a semicolon to replace a colon (see the “Colons” section).
Incorrect: I have one goal; to find her.
Correct: I have one goal: to find her.
Rule 1a. A semicolon can replace a period if the writer wishes to narrow the gap between two closely linked sentences.
Examples:
Call me tomorrow; you can give me an answer then.
We have paid our dues; we expect all the privileges listed in the contract.
Rule 1b. Avoid a semicolon when a dependent clause comes before an independent clause.
Incorrect: Although they tried; they failed.
Correct: Although they tried, they failed.
Jane Smiley, the novelist
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6402/the-art-of-fiction-no-229-jane-smiley
“Do you know the writer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi? He’s a Hungarian psychologist who writes about the state of flow. If you’re in a creative state, then essentially things sort of coagulate and you enter a state of hyperconsciousness—you can write for an hour or so, but it only seems like a few minutes because you’re so concentrated on it. I’ve experienced that a lot, which doesn’t mean there’s no frustration, but I don’t really remember the frustration very well. I remember more when the writing comes together. And I’m willing to seek out that coming together. If I get frustrated, I’ll go eat something, I’ll go open another Diet Coke, I’ll go the barn, I’ll distract myself, and then the parts in my brain that were working click and I get an idea. I read an article about how to learn to play a musical instrument. You practice, practice, practice on Friday, then you walk away. And then when you sit down on Saturday, you’re better. Not only because of all the practice, but also because of the walking away. I’m a firm believer in walking away. ”