https://home.isi.org/why-you-need-poetry

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While poetry engages your emotions it does so in a rational and structured way. Poetry is smart. It does a formal dance around the emotions and engages them while also engaging your brain. Emotion on its own is mere sentimentality. Emotion in classical poetry fuses the intellect with emotion in a high and noble human experience. – See more at: https://home.isi.org/why-you-need-poetry#sthash.gWzjV2Uo.dpuf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-chelotti-/why-read-poetry_b_5227554.html

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Read poetry because the political and environmental realities make you weep and poetry can help. Poetry can help. Read poetry because it offers no answers, no advice, no cures, just understanding and love and timing. Read poetry because the world is more than the facts of the world. Read poetry because you don’t have enough mystery in your life and you want to become even more mysterious (re: attractive) than you are already are. Read poetry because you have poems in you that need to be written. Read poetry because birds, honeysuckle, lit windows, new shoes, walking outside, donuts, lipstick, fresh peaches, cocktails, kisses in the rain produce in you a feeling that you never want to lose, but you will, and the only thing you can do is pay better attention when the feeling comes again. And here it comes.

Oh, leather shoe from Hotter’s sale
At your beauty, grown men quail.
Far better than my vinyl pumps
Which made my feet grow big red lumps
In these shoes, no-one can see
My bunions, in God’s artistry.
When the sun shines winter low
I  see my  feet all bent a-glow
Although to doctors they’re deformed
In their curves are beauteous charms
Just as wrinkles in our skin
Look delightful coloured in.
As subjects for  computer art
Curves and wrinkles play a part.
They are microcosms, you see
Of the world in its glory.
Mountains worry not if bent;
Streams run blithely up to Dent.
There in a small natural pool
My husband swam to get more cool.
Meanwhile, I ran up the  road
Giving sheep the biscuit owed.
Then we  got into the car
As Dent is further than we were.
Oh leather shoes, you are my pride
And in all senses, you’re my  guide
May you last well and  glow bright.
If Dad was here ,you’d be his rite

http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/listed-poems-inspired-paintings

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/the-difference-between-poetry-and-prose/

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Prose is all about accumulation (a morality of work), while poetry as it is practised today, is about the isolation of feelings (an aesthetics of omission). Among other things, prose is principally an ethical project, while poetry is amoral, a tampering with truths which the world of prose (and its naturalistic approach to mimesis) takes for granted. Poetry creates its own truth, which at times is the same truth as the world’s, and sometimes not. Whatever the case, its mimesis is always a rearrangement, at a molecular level, of that axis between the “seen” and the “felt” (that coal chute which connects the childish eye to the Socratic heart), which, were it not for poetry, with its misguided elenchus, would remain obscured. In both classical and modern languages it is poetry that evolves first and is only much later followed by prose, as though in a language’s childhood, as in our own, poetry were the more efficient communicator of ideas

Your face is map enough for me
Your gaze, your smile, your frown, your glee.
If I want to know the rest
The shape your posture’s  made is best
For showing how your life is now.
A look, a gesture,  this  each show.
Till all you are is well disclosed
And I am in your arms enrobed.
Love vanishes when analysed,
And thinking too by Love’s despised
Use the means to fit the end
And then I’ll be whom you intend

• 
• A sheep at his heels, he rode  down his own well
• He laughs backwards  and flails on the chair
• Streams over the tea kettle kept it full of free water.Drink.
• If they lack a frown, smile.If they smile then laugh
• At the flop of a cat,  go to sleep
• At the eleventh lure, give in
• At the end of my cope, I went  completely la la
• At the end of the play I was left ringless.it was my late husband stealing it off me.
• At the rendering  of the wrecking order, we asked for a Turner painting
  Play the last sonnet
• As wits descend, take their decisions
• A battered  buoy keeps pancakes away
• Latter worlds left me dancing in sin
• Facts to blind, facts to shun.What do you mean, the money’s fun?

Integrity, what does it mean?
Whole, with no sin hid unseen?
We know we can trust’em,
Because they confessed’em.
Integrity, the truth is what’s seen

https://www.expressvpn.com/internet-privacy/guides/

When Oscar sits on the windowsill

And sees someone within,

His mouth opens wide in soundless cry,

He gives us his cat grin.


Oscar rubs around my legs

He's such a friendly soul.

He then rolls round upon his back

And waves his long striped tail.


But after Oscar's greetings done,

He's off to do his rounds.

He sets off from the white door

To the long thin gardens end.


Every inch of soil and seed

Is subject to his nose.

The garden looks one way to us,

But he can see much more.


I wish that Oscar cat could talk

And tell us what he's found.

Ten thousand spider's weaving webs,

A slow worm on the ground.


A million ants climb up the rowan,

I sometimes watch them too.

I see the striped wasps and honey bees

In this small natural zoo.


The hedgehogs sweet have long been gone,

but we have diverse birds.

Oscar sits on my tall stool.

He watches them for hours.

The man who never listened to the troubles of his wife

fell down the escalator at King's Cross station.

No-one met his eyes,

as he lay sickly on the concrete,

though someone did push his shiny briefcase towards him

as if hoping that was enough.

He phoned his wife but she was out

complaining about him to a neighbour instead

of painting or cooking dinner.

As he lay down there on a level with the feet

of the commuters

he noticed no-one polished their shoes anymore...

well,no-one could polish trainers of course..,

though you can wash them----

he saw the way people leaned forward as if pushing themselves

against a gale.

though it was a still warm day.

It seemed as if they were battling against a huge force,

not relating to the feeling of their weight upon the earth.

It was some spiritual force which was pushing them back

towards the Underground,hot and turgid with sweat and dust.

A sanitised Inferno,where the hell is in the collective mind
.

The force seemed to push them in and they pushed back and did

eventually make it into the street outside and into Westminster,

for we all need our rulers.

He lay there all morning musing, until a tramp came over

and asked him to buy a copy of the Big Issue.

And he stood up and bought it gratefully,

taking strength from the acknowledgement of his humanity.

He phoned the office, went home

and told his wife

he'd like to know how she had spent her morning

how she felt,how he wanted to learn to talk and listen,

and recommends now

that if you can fall off the escalator

without breaking a leg

you might be glad

to see life from the bottom up;

for he'd always looked from the top down

and was above everyone.

These reversals,though fearful,

can give us a new perspective

especially on women who are so often

on the underside of society

He's wondering about changing his life

from up to down..

and down to up.

Mothers always said,it's good to have a change.

I don't think it was their husbands they meant..

though.........who knows?

A game of musical chairs might be good

on the weekend,

if you live near a good escalator.

Escalating... it's not for the beginner

at falling.

• 
• A sheep at his heel, he rode his own well
• He laughs backwards over my sekoj
• Streams over the tea kettle kept it full
• If  they lack a frown, smile.If they smile then laugh
• At the flop of a cat,  go to sleep
• At the eleventh lure, give in
• At the end of my cope, I went  completely la la
• At the end of the play I was left wingless
• At the rendering  of the wrecking order , we asked for a Turner
  Play the last sonnet for me
• As wits descend, take decisions
• A batter  buoy keeps pancakes away
• Shattered  whirls left me dancing  wildly
• Facts to blind, facts to shun.

Where I had lain  for many dreamy hours.
But when I dressed this self-same sun had fled

Like a bulb in  winter soil seems dead
I lay inert, a lifeless withered  flower
This sun enticed me from my winter bed

I lay  in weakness like  one who’s been bled
But  with my heart, I wished  for summer bowers
Though when I dressed, flirtatious sun had fled

What is shown us, sometimes can’t be said.
The language of the heart its truth declares.
This sun  aroused me from unmoving bed

Who can’t be pushed may  yet be gently led.
The language of the body plays its share
Though when we dress, unfaithful sun is sad

What do bulbs feel when they reach the air?
What do flowers feel when they are  first bared
Warm sun entices all from winter beds
And when we dress .let’s muse on  flower heads.

It’s so easy to be good with Paypal
If you remember the password
So quick, I do it all day long.
£25 to Oxfam and $13 to some American online magazine
£15 per month to  our Samaritans and a  one off to Syrian refugees.
There’ll be more one-offs ,  I think
I won’t notice when I get my bill
Amid the Sainsburys home delivery ; the wool jumpers from Marks;
A book about Palestine ; my brother’s gift;
Green amber for my sister’s Xmas necklace;
Books for Lin and tokens for the children
Cards from Amazon
And  me being unwell, postage stamps bought on line
I won’t notice I  get the Guardian delivered and also donate online.
There are so many items on my bill, God could be living with me!
It’s even easier to sign  petitions
Demanding    my name to go  on a  list
Fo worthwhile, life-saving  political events
Or for me to like a page on Facebook.
This is post-modern charity:
A card, a password, a tick in a box.
There, that didn’t hurt too much, did it?
Did it?

CHAPTER THREE: WHAT IS POETIC TRUTH? The story of Socrates is a kind of fiction. This is not to say it is untrue. The story represents one of the great half-truths of Western civilization. It is a …

Source: Socrates as social entrepreneur: what is poetic truth?

“As French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) pointed out, there are many kinds of truth, and many different ways of speaking the truth. The problem with assuming that modern scientific (demonstrable) truth is the only form of truth is that it leads us to overlook other forms of truth, even while we make use of them. Such is the case with poetic truth. This form of truth dates back to ancient times. It was challenged by Socrates and defeated by the intellectual culture that grew up in Socrates’ wake.

Yet poetic truth never really went away. We experience poetic truths in the course of our daily lives. We use poetic speaking to articulate truths that have profound implications for our personal, social, cultural, and political lives.”

I  found my trousers inside out today.
I looked at them with puzzlement dismayed
I forgot to use my rose deodorant spray.

I should have went to church  though yesterday
We need sweet,people for free tea and hay.
I wore my trousers  upside down  in May

If we do wrong, then will they have to pay?
The cat says he is  turning  into clay
I forgot to  use an evil eye to spy

My husband is a follower of Paul Klee
He bought Picasso’s cap from off E-bay
I felt his trousers were a site too frayed.

All the world’s enraged, so Shakespeare says.
He wrote fine sonnets without any play.
I forgot to wash his  trace off yesterday

Why moon, you are not silver, Sylvia says
What are the rights of spring, I meant to say?
I   found my trousers caught Virginia’s way.
My boyfriend took them off so we could  lay.
.