Photo by Mike Flemming 

{I  blame Mike for the moth holes in my clothes}

I must be poor I’m wearing a thick coat
Sat here at the table where I write
I  know my grammar  and I made a note
Sat  here is allowed but it ain’t right

My coat is dirty green and a bit black
So I can sit on stairs when  in a  shop
They don’t have chairs  not even a stuffed sack
When I can’t walk, they tell me I must hop.

If science was taught they’d  know well that  a hop
Puts twice the weight onto a single foot
Maybe I should give my legs the chop
And get some steel ones when there is a glut

My coat is better now for I feel hot
My hanky’s red for I have spilled my blood
My nose was bleeding from a vein I cut
I never took a drug but I pretend I could

LSD is too wild for  my mind
And even at my age I am with child
I fear the risk of growing  yet more kind
The child’s my nephew and he ‘s very mild

 

 

 

When we’re chilled by illness or bereaved
The  spring tides of  the seas of memory  lust
The mind’s door swings,  the  torture scene’s retrieved

Children   have no power and  cannot leave
Adults  fearful,wild, and, more, callous
Caught too soon  by fools and madmen’s weaves

In Europe where our vicious wars  conceived
Children  dwelled the   depths of   frozen malice
And dreadful  memories steal their minds like thieves

Are  souls mature  enough to learn  from such deep grief
When we feel  like  rubbish, thrown adrift, alas?
When we’re struck by hardships  , we still seethe.

Adults have  the power to look, perceive,conceive
Each child is Jesus,tortured,tried, and tossed.
This is the birth  and death of memory

My heart is   pierced  by children on the News.
Echoes shake  this heart till black and blue.
Whether  felled by error,war ,disease
With patience , can we tolerate unease?

When we’re chilled by illness or bereaved
Memories, shatter,seem to drown us
The mind’s door swings  the evil scenes retrieved

Children   have no power
Adults  fearful,wild,seem callous
Whether they were ill or sad, bereaved.

By Europe’s  many vicious wars  deranged
Children   felt the  cold and heartless  malice
Now dreaded early memories are retrieved

The eye and soul mature  are less constrained
Yet  we fear like children do
When we’re felled by illness or bereaved

Adults have  the power to look, conceive
Our minds are  broader  we know values
Despite the  dreaded  early memory

It’s hard to watch new suffering on the News
Echoes shake  our hearts till black and blue.
When we’re felled by illness or bereaved
With patience   may we tolerate unease

Peaceful as the starry sky
See the flowers as you walk by.
Beauty in suburban sprawl
Nature makes a silent call

Photo by Mike Flemming .Copyright
http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/

http://fashion.telegraph.co.uk/columns/justine-picardie/TMG3453815/Mother-Courage-Dorothy-Rowe.html

http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/

“She acknowledges that modern women have the advantage of not living in a society ruled by sexual taboos and secrecy – ‘my mother never even told me the facts of life’ – but also observes that an insistence on the overriding importance of sex can be equally oppressive. ‘Once you’ve satisfied your curiosity, and had some children, if you want them, then there are more interesting things to do. I remember a survey that showed that the majority of women preferred gardening to sex.When I say that to women in their fifties they usually laugh and agree. All this emphasis on having to enjoy sex as you grow older – why?’ Rowe has an equally no-nonsense view about women’s struggle to stay as slender as the celebrity blueprint – ‘We don’t have to believe that simply because a woman is very thin she sets a standard that has to be emulated’ – nor is she convinced by the punishing diet and exercise regimes adhered to by a female icon such as Madonna. ‘Your experience gets written on your face. Her face is very hard, and there aren’t too many laughter lines. It’s a tough, unsmiling face, and that’s a bit sad, for a woman who has achieved so much.’ As you might expect, she is no more impressed by the 21st-century vogue for cosmetic surgery. ‘General anaesthetics are serious – they carry a risk of death – but to have one in order to get a bit of your body changed is the utmost foolishness.’ Her dismissal of human folly is, however, tempered with sympathy; so that when we talk about the sheer physical horror of a face-lift – your nose being broken and your face destroyed before it is rebuilt – she says, ‘How little you must think of yourself, to choose to do that to yourself. That’s so very sad.'”