Day: December 26, 2016

I dreamed I was not a Catholic last night

I dreamed I was   no Catholic last night
I was in a church,unlit by candlelight
The clergyman had got no vestments on
She gave an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We had no Consecration then at all
But later we had Tizer  and played ball
Apparently we have Communion now and then
After an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We don’t kneel in a Confessional and admit
We kicked our little brother in the butt
So we have got no penance  then to come
After an extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon

We sang these great old hymns by Bunyan
I loved them each and every single one.
But where had all the   ceremonial gone?
Instead it’s extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon.

We mayn’t  pray to  Jude for hopeless cause
Nor ask Our Lady’s aid from  hellish maws
We speak direct to God when we feel glum
On an extremely  stunning,  Lutheran  mobile   phone .

So God  must have got a lot  pairs of ears;
Lots of eyes to weep  about  what he hears
He can’t have any helpers, even nuns
What an extremely lengthy, long and  trying carry on.

I woke up in the middle of the dream
And gave a loud and penetrating scream
My boyfriend said he knew sex was a sin
He rang St Francis on his  mobile   phone

Now I go to Mass on weekdays if  I can
Although I’m so attractive  I’ve been banned
But any ritual is  really better than
That extremely lengthy, long and  Lutheran  sermon.

Oh,Alfred,my beloved,do not go

Oh,Alfred,my beloved,do not go
Do not leave, but warmth to me bestow,
Lie beside me in my bed all night
Succour me when stormy dreams affright.

Oh,Alfred,-tis your eyes  that turn me on
The green and golden light  is never gone.
Affection constant,  touch and feeling shared.
I am not embarrassed when you stare.

For you , the  gallant male, have ever  seen
My naked form well lit by  Jove’s sunbeams
And if I wear a gown of wincyette
You love it ,,as it’s made for paws of cat.

Alfred ,we  can’t  marry   yet I fear.
Cats can’t read the Book of Common Prayer.

Emile enjoys a swim

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Mary was  in her  oak panelled,  blue walled dining room sitting in her old fuchsia coloured  rocking chair reading “The History of God” by Karen Armstrong while the washing machine was doing its best to wash all the clothes she had found on her  large bedroom chair.She decided to make some more coffee.
As she opened the walnut and maple  kitchen door she saw Emile swimming in  a large pool. of  water He was as happy as a duck  on Hampstead Pond in sunny  August
Good heavens, she cried baring  her small white teeth in horror.
As she looked at the washing machine she saw a strap from her  brown silk petticoat was dangling through the door.Water was running down it as the machine spun.
Surely the door should not have closed with something hanging out,she told Emile who was still bathing in the water.
She ran upstairs two at a time and fetched some bath towels.
Emile was  somewhat angry
I like having our own pool here in the kitchen and I love this Persil Silk and Wool Wash.All I need now is a spray on hair conditioner.
Mary dialled 999.Hello I need a paramedic.My cat is disobedient.
After a few minutes Dave the bixexual ,transvestite  paramedic arrived wearing a denim dungaree dress  over a striped Breton Top and a pair of wellington booots
It’s great that we are so tolerant here,Mary told him.The NHS let you wear anything  at all>I quite fancy a denim dress myself.
Well,said Dave, being a transvestite is my way of life and my knees are very nice.
Mary made no  more comments but led him to the kitchen
Emile,you must come out of that water,he said sternly.
I think I’ve had enough, the naughty cat replied.Put the  gas fire on to dry me,please.

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I  am glad Annie is on holiday,Mary told Dave as they spread the  towels  on the red  and blue lino floor.She would get very agitated as she fears being electrocuted like Thomas Merton the famous Catholic monk and mystic who took an electric fire into the bathroom in some moment of madness whilst in Asia at a conference.It seems odd unless it was the rainy season.
After their efforts Mary and Dave had coffee.
I’m reading Ted Hughes’  letters he told her.I wonder why some people keep all their letters for ever?
I kept a few of Stan’s she said but I think I’ll destroy them to stop my  relatives  reading them  if and when I die.
I read Ted Hughes and I really  enjoyed the letters and other prose works

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I suppose I’d better go back to work Dave said,Shall I pop in tonight.
Yes,do,Mary told him.I’ve made a beef pie  and I can make  chips and fry a few dozen eggs too
Lovely,cried Dave as he jumped into the Emergency ambulance and disappeared.
Mary put the towels  into the washing machine with some Tide.I guess a hot wash is best,she told herself.Where the  dickens am I going to dry all this stuff and iron it too.I think I’ll enter  a religious order and wear a nun’s habit.It’s like a school uniform
Come to think of it,I could invent my own uniform.
And so say all of us.For he’s a jolly good pillow

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What art has twisted branches to this form?

What art has twisted branches to this form?
The beauty  makes my eye feel satisfied.
This  power affects us  all  like a wild storm.

The  beauty speaks  like  hidden poems
Important  to see nature dignified
What art has wrestled branches   to this form?

I take my camera out as I sit warm
By this stone wall my eye is gratified
The  power is like a  god in his fierce storm

What would I do if gods bent  these, my arms?
So human lovers could not in them lie.
What mystery  twisted branches   to this form?

What  is  the power by which the trees are calmed?
Where is that being  in whom I can abide?
The  power affects  my  heart like a sweet balm.

With my infant hunger gratified,
I see  the world with no fierce greed allied.
Whose  the  heart  that twisted    all to  form?
This art affects   green  nature  like   named storms.

Abandoned and lost?

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http://www.thebookoflife.org/how-to-get-over-someone/

“Fixation on an absent other allows us to be publicly committed to love while privately sheltered from any of its more arduous demands.”

Horrible thoughts

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http://www.thebookoflife.org/why-we-sometimes-hope-the-people-we-love-might-die/

Quote:

Being close to someone necessarily involves a high degree of what therapists call ‘ambivalence,’ a blending of deeply negative and positive thoughts. When people play an outsize role in our lives, when they have an enormous emotional power over us, when our debt to them is immense, we will both adore and at points resent them hugely. There will be tenderness and rage; attachment and revulsion. They can let us down like few others can, they know our weakest spots, they enchant but also exhaust us.

We’re not actually going to do anything – of course. We’re not even taking the tiniest preparatory steps; we would never buy poison or encourage them to go cliff-walking on stormy evenings. But there is relief to be found in the odd grim daydream nevertheless.

Fantasies are not plans of action. They don’t correspond to our real values or intentions. They operate as momentary escapes from powerful feelings. We fantasise about the death of a loved one not because we truly want them gone but because being close to them is such a large and therefore at times tricky part of our lives. Our fantasy is a strange but real tribute to the depth of our bond. The guilt is a symptom that despite the inevitable and very real tensions and disappointments of the relationship, we care about them very much. The meaning of the fantasy isn’t that we are sick. It’s that loving someone is never free of frustration.

Why most people find writing hard to do

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https://bakarichavanu.com/2013/02/19/7-reasons-why-most-people-find-writing-hard-to-do/

 

“6. Most people don’t realize that writing is a process —of hard-to-get-started introductions, messy drafts, and tedious revisions. Students need to be shown that most writing is not done in a single draft, nor should teachers expect it to be.”

He downsized to a house in Beirut

My doctor was n’t highly astute
He downsized to a  house in Beirut
He said he was deaf
But nevertheless
A chauffeur was hard to recruit.

My dentist came from  Judea  last year
But we call it the West Bank down here
But North,East or South
To tell you the truth
The politics are   projections of fear.

The chiropodist  came here from Ceylon
She came with false eyebrows glued on
For  her thyroid was low
And one way it shows
Is the hair we once had is now  gone.

So  thyroid deprivation’s  effects
Mean you don’t need a  Brazilian  wax
For our hairs are so weak
They fall off with no tweak
But we will not let them labelled as lax.

Now women are not shaved to give birth
So why  treat this terrain with a curse?
A man  who’s mature
Will not do a detour
If a   few curls  protect  his  wife’s pur

Is difficult poetry bad?

img_0090http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2007/04/in_praise_of_difficult_poetry.html

“To update Jarrell: When a person says accusingly that they can’t understand contemporary poetry, their tone implies that most of their happiest hours are spent at the fireside reading Eliot’s “Four Quartets“or “The Waste Land.”

Robert Pinsky

To the tea pot

Who invented this  sagacious jug,
With lid and spout  and handle all in curves?
Why do  restaurants use  just one tea bag,
So savaged by hot water, it’s unnerved?

Are  teapots reminiscent  of the breast
Which nurtured us and gave us nourishment?
Our  mother’s  milk became   our loving feast.
While deprivation seemed harsh punishment

A ceremony,ritual and a rest,
For friends  enjoy to watch the tea poured out
And family  sit around and  feel well blessed
Such kindness  comes  much better from a spout

A teapot’s more essential than a phone.
Such sphere  nearby, you’ll never feel alone.

 

Start writing poetry

fernforestnz
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-m-raab/start-writing-poetry_b_7005194.html

“Reading and writing poetry also has healing and transformative powers. As a matter of fact, many therapists augment their treatments by encouraging their clients to write poetry to express their feelings. This is one way to foster hidden creativity and a chance to allow the client to express themselves using another form. This may be done by writing about a moment or experience in the past, the present or even the future. The idea is to write including as many details as possible so the reader feels as if they are with you on the page, living the experience side by side. Writing poetry also forces you to go deeper into your heart and to write with your heart and not your head as a way to access your inner voice.”

We need some special Christmas trained police

Ambivalent Christmas feelings rise  with ease
They fly across the room like  whistling darts.
We need some special Christmas trained police

Oh,who expects no torment at this feast?
Shall we resent the piercing of our hearts?
Ambivalent Christmas feelings rise like geese

Some  enraged by Santa’s   late demise
Tear up parcels  and will not take  part
We need some  clever Christmas trained police.

What is Christian ,what comes from that beast
Slouching towards Bethlehem all night
Ambivalent, prayer-less feelings rise to tease.

They say the first are last for Christ’s release.
The Cardinals each hurry with their light
Who asks  wisdom  from disdained  old priests?

Will all the family stand and make a fight?
To kinder hearts that seems more wrong than right
Ambivalent Christmas feelings spoil our feast
We need some  well lit Christmas trees , at least.

Patterns in the mud

 Prologue
Wittgenstein came to me in a dream
His eyes had a strange sea green gleam
He said,Postmodernism is dreck
I don’t give a feck.
That’s Yiddish and Irish,we screamed.
Why not use Yinglish I punned
He answered,Aber gesundt.
Oh,I’m alright Jack…
I heard a duck quack.
To me it’s all aber profundt.
What a friend Wittgenstein is.
Through reading his life I found bliss…
He did me chesid
for only ten quid.
Cryptic crosswords are stranger than this.
So Wittgenstein, aber gesundt
I sometimes feel I am defunct…
But a posteriori
That’s by no means a story…
Still,man,you pulled a good stunt
.
Wittgenstein lived in Vienna.
St Catherine came from Sienna
La dolce vita
Did not quite suit her…
Nor singing vulgar songs with piano.
Leonard Cohen (1970's)
Leonard Cohen (1970’s)
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Mary sat by the window  pretending to reading Windows 8.1.The Missing Manual.The advantage of this new Windows system was  said to be that  one  did not need to install  extra anti-virus programmes.So much time is taken up by looking after older versions that Mary was not surprised that Chromebooks were now very popular.Yet she  often enjoyed learning new skills; it’s not as if they are like the theory of quantum physics or even nonlinear algebra.Or Hebrew.
Stan had taken Emile ,their sweet black  cat for a spin on his old sports bike which he still used when  certain strange and disturbing feelings came over him.
He sometimes wondered if he were mentally ill.But who can say what moods or happenings are alright and which are not? It needs great skill to convey  one’s state of mind and heart even to a friend or partner.And  some people can tolerate mental unease better than others.Even hearing voices can be lovely if they are kind voices.
As they were only a mile from the  unremote edge of the mysterious town of Knittingham ,they were soon cycling through a deep green, quiet forest where Kings once hunted deer and no doubt chased women… or was it thaty chaste women hunted deer?
Mary had decided to stay at home ;she was expecting a new vacuum cleaner to arrive.She kept one eye on her book and the other on her neighbour Rick who was very handsome  andonly 89 years old.He was hanging his washing on his large front hedge which was unusual in winter.
Most of the people in the road had tumble dryers or heated rails.Some even hung their washing outside in the back garden on lines to let the blustery winter air dry it and kill the germs which might survive in a low temperature machine wash.Ironing will kill germs but nobody seems to know that now
Maybe I should do some washing ,Mary thought.How about I do my  annual sheet changing.I made a big mistake deciding it was to be in the winter,but,alas it is hard to change a routine.Am I a cyborg,she thought nervously,licking her lips till they were damp and red like a wild animal’s
Maybe I should clean the kitchen floor too.
She drew an elongated ellipse with some mud that had fallen of Stan’s shoes as he passed by.She looked down pensively at the pattern the mud had made on the lino.
I wonder if I can predict our fortune by studying this pattern deeply,she wondered.
Some people do it from the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup,so why not from mud?There seemed no logical reason why mud splatters should be worse than tea leaves.It is simply a pattern through which the Unconscious can send a message to us.
Why it could not speak in ordinary language nobody knew and nobody ever will.Not all questions have answers.How strangely dull life would be if that were so.Don’t you agree?I don’t agree with myself on Sundays.
Sundial
.Mary had just seen a short story relating a dream a woman had in which she had fallen in love with a  hippopotamus and taken it home.Unfortunately when they went to bed the weight of the animal had made the solid oak bed collapse onto the purple and orange carpet.Unable to give up her love,she had spent the rest of her life trying to build a new bed out of sawdust.It seemed not unlike the labours of Hercules in a new form
Mary was sceptical,
I can’t believe a woman could love a hippopotamus,even in a dream,she murmured to herself
But even if it was not a dream but a conscious invention,what did that say about the person writing it?
That she always fell in love with men who were too heavy for her and who pulled her down onto the carpet to make love whenever they felt the urge regardless of whether she was as flat as a pancake or even dead
A lion,yes, Mary mused,but never a hippopotamus.I mean,they have no expressions on their faces and could they drink tea in bed and chat?Unlikely.Still, other people’s dreams are a mystery.Even our own are but we can sometimes take a hint.
She heard the doorbell ring.Who could it be now,in the  afternoon?
Alas it was only a Mormon trying to convert her which was no good as Catholics can’t be Mormons as well.They are what one might call mutually exclusive groups.As I have no wish to teach algebra I shall stop here.However if that disappoints you,why not read
“A survey of modern algebra ” by Birkhoff and MacLane.I did and see what has happened to me!I’ll say no more on that topic as a kind voice has told me to make tea.
 lighter tree