Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who’ll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women’s tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It’s not their fault that they are mad,
They’ve tasted Hell.

It’s not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It’s not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren’t look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/-i-write

Reginald Sheperd

The possibility of suffering being redeemed by art, being made meaningful and thus real (as opposed to merely actual, something that happens to exist, happens to occur), is still vital to me. Art reminds us of the uniqueness, particularity, and intrinsic value of things, including ourselves. I sometimes have little sense of myself as existing in the world in any significant way outside of my poetry. That’s where my real life is, the only life that’s actually mine. So there’s also the wish to rescue myself from my own quotidian existence, which is me but is at the same time not me at all. I am its, but it’s not mine. For most of us most of the time, life is a succession of empty moments. You’re born, you go through

The possibility of suffering being redeemed by art, being made meaningful and thus real (as opposed to merely actual, something that happens to exist, happens to occur), is still vital to me. Art reminds us of the uniqueness, particularity, and intrinsic value of things, including ourselves. I sometimes have little sense of myself as existing in the world in any significant way outside of my poetry. That’s where my real life is, the only life that’s actually mine. So there’s also the wish to rescue myself from my own quotidian existence, which is me but is at the same time not me at all. I am its, but it’s not mine. For most of us most of the time, life is a succession of empty moments. You’re born, you go through x experiences, you die, and then you’re gone. No one always burns with Pater’s hard, gem-like flame. There’s a certain emptiness to existence that I look to poetry, my own poetry and the poetry of others, to fulfill or transcend. I have a strong sense of things going out of existence at every second, fading away at the very moment of their coming into bloom: in the midst of life we are in death, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it.

 Rosa  awoke later than she liked to which indicates a control freak element in her personality.She had stayed  at her desk   till the sun was rising  writing  her  intriguing  diary. which she hoped would rival Sylvia Plath’s.She got up gingerly and made herself a cup of tea   in a china mug on a work surface in her lovely peach  and teal kitchen
Passing water into a small bottle for the doctor to have analysed was a task even the most brilliant find hard.Rosa  was not even the averagely  brilliant amongst the brilliants of history like Plataho,Aristittle ,Simone de Boredwoy or Blazed Rascal not to mention St Coal,.She grabbed her mobile as a dying man at his wife’s hand  and rang the cab service. she used now she was unable to see properly or ride her bike.
Hello,it’s Rosa Benchez here.Can a driver pick up my urine sample and take it to the surgery for me.Thank you so much.
No problem, the manager told her and soon afterwards a young man with dangling earrings arrived.She showed  him the sample hidden inside a Sainsbury’s shopping bag.He looked puzzled but agreed on payment of £259.89
She realised she had not eaten any breakfast so  decided to have an early lunch instead.As she ate her toasted cheese  and snake oil she fell into a daydream.She was with her  online man friend walking through a huge field of  her favourite flowers,cyclamen.They were walking along companionably without holding hands but together whilst also being apart which waa delightful.This was agreeable  since she had never met this very charming  man in the flesh.He was called XY Matrix although his parents had never studied algebra as far as historians cand tell.Could it be a pseudonym?
Maybe he was being raised to be a mathematical prodigy but he became a writer  and musician and managed to earn  a good income and he had a beautiful detached house filled with antiques and ceramic lamps like Freud’ study.In fact ,he had copied that from historical photos and descriptions and one day he planned to become a therapisr.
Rosie and Fox as she called him got on well and shared a liking for poetry and music.Sometimes he had sent her music  as attachments on his emails.He seemed to love Wagner and Britten which is a curious combination to the British woman.He loved Britten’s Donne’s Sonnets sung by   the  stunning tenor Ian Bostridge.

After lunch, Rosa opened her laptop.She found an email from Fox.
You have been here and broken all my windows and my bath  is ruined,he wrote.I  am moving house to get away from you.And I am having  plastic windows.
Rosa was alarmed as it  defied  common senseShe did not know where his house was and  it was in another country.So she emailed him back,
What is wrong ,dear?You only said 2 days ago that my poetry had helped your sick friend when you went to visit him in the hospital
Waiting anxiously for his answer, she sipped some coffee and looked at her friend Dolly walk by, dressed in a pink suede jacket and black linen culottes with matching  red boots.Where is Dolly going she wondered pensively,feeling like a cloud floating over Rydal Water in the winter not knowing which way the wind might blow it
After two hours  of  utter silence, she decided to wait until the evening when she had put away the  groceries and written a  triolet or two.She was  keen to do  it before she lost the  impetus
The whole evening went by so she emailed him again.But again he did not reply.
The next morning  she found a letter on the doormat.

1,Rancour Villas
Horror Lane
Dumbtown

Dear Rosa

I thought you would be kind and gentle like your poetry but you  have wounded me.You asked me what date my dental appointment was which was an invasion of my privacy.You told me you would not mind if  your son was gay whereas to me it is a sin  to indulge those sick appetites and you should not encourage him

Signed XYM

A dental appointment? It’s not as if she had asked him if had a sexually transmitted disease or whether he really believed in Jesus as his Saviour.Nor had she asked him if he liked  to smoke cigars in bed nor if he  let Lassie his sheepdog sleep on the bed and cuddle with him.For all she knew, the dog might be his partner or even his wife

She emailed him  as she felt anxious  in case he was having a breakdown.He replied,   saying she was not who he thought and he was finished with her.
I wonder who he thought I was, she asked herself as she sat   with tears in her eyes feeling concerned about what was really going on in his dear  mind.Her cat Lucy ran up and sat on the arm of  the chair gazing frenziedly at her owner and mother
Don’t worry Lucy.I am sure I will soon  be ok.This must be a mistake.I think he has got paranoia which gets worse and then better

Rosa looked on Amazon and found a book called