I wish I were a worm inside the earth
Hermaphrodite well able to survive.
Then I would not wonder what I’m worth.

Yet a worm must dig its holes and never surf
Are they aware that they are here  and alive?
I wish I were a worm inside the earth.

Worms do not have to suffer giving birth
Nor do they demand  to meet one’s wife
I wish I  did not wonder what I’m worth.

Yet I do  enjoy some laughter and real mirth
On my chair with humour, I may writhe.
Still, I wish I were a worm inside the earth.

Are worms as lonely as a Cain who’s cursed?
They never go on holidays or drive
I wish I would not wonder what I’m worth.

Yet we deplete the earth of goodness as we thrive
Into hell we do not  run, we drive
I wish I were a worm inside the earth
.Then I would not wonder what I’m worth.

A mirror is somewhat like a window.Both are made of glass and both will send back an image to your brain.A mirror reflects you back to yourself.A window shows what  or who is outside of your residence, be it a hut or a palace.

Ths first mirror is the face of your mother…she reflects you back to yourself and ultimately that is how you develop a  sense of self

A window is a way of looking out or indeed looking in if you are walking by a house.We seem to have ambiguous feelings about letting people look in so here many people put lace or net curtains up to veil themselves from the public at large

Now, this is very bad because I am coming tonight to look into your window.Why are you so shy?

Are you doing something you ought not to? Like reading Pasternak and drinking brandy while your cat dances the minuet on the table?

I have read a few articles lately about the poet Sylvia Plath.She suffered from severe depression and wrote a novel called “The Bell Jar” based on this.

Being behind a glass wall is an experience I have heard other people mention.So you can see people but you feel unable to make contact with them.Maybe you need a time of isolation but maybe you got stuck in there:Glass,windows,  mirrors there’s a lot of very deep meaning in these images.

So although I do look into windows I am not being unpleasant and I like to go into friend’s houses and sit there talking  or listening

If you feel sad and lonely in your bell jar find a group of people who will let you sit and listen without having to speak much.Maybe you can help wash up afterwards..Just being near some kind people can be soothing especially if they will just let you be.Or talk about simple things like flowers and cats and the weather.It’s the animal in us that needs to be be near others even if we feel very sad.

It’s all about balance…alone is good, together is good.And as long as you have a soft tongue .most people will like you.I think we imagine others to be more critical than they are.

To be frank, most people are very caught up in themselves and would hardly notice if you had a tea cosy on your head and a dress made from an old blanket.As long as you are clean and polite just forget about that side of things.Nowadays dress is less important in many countries as more wear jeans, chinos and sweatshirts and that’s the women..

Don’t stare too deeply into people’s eyes unless you are looking for a one night stand… if so do take precautions,like a relative  for example but do look a little into my eyes as I am peeking in at you tonight as I pass by to the Pizza Hut with my cat and my partner who will be paying for our meal..I leave my money at home.There must be one night a week when a man pays the bill….My money is for those essentials like the hairdresser and the beauty salon or maybe some novels… a man likes to pay,I find.Even if you have to give them a £50 note from your purse before you leave home. A man is the best accessory I have found and you can talk to them too and buy them clothes and tickle them with your fancy

“I’m on a whiskey diet. I’ve lost three days already.” Daily Mirror

No, that is not funny enough.They must be lacking in knowledge

But then would you write for a Mirror?

Like writing for a window…. you can write on my mirror, though, if you want  to as long as you do mirror writing

ie you start on the right and go left.Then when I see it I will know everything

Build me a mirror at my gate

And call me up on the phone in my house

So I can  slip off

and look at myself….

Maybe better in the bathroom

There is “The Writing on The Wall” but where’s that wall?

And the game is up.

We know what you are after.. ……but what are you before?

The newspaper should be The Daily Window…after all we don’t believe the world is just a mirror to us, do we?

Looking in. we miss the  outer world
The  blossom hanging  from the vicarage wall;
An old man’s hat which by the breeze is whirled
The toddlers skipping in the Shopping Mall.

Now coffee shops are where we socialise
No more we labour over stove and sink.
And listening, hear what would not meet our eyes.
When for one little moment they both blinked.

And  yet we  long for time to be alone
To breathe more freely, play within our mind
For being far less solid than a stone
Impingements to our boundary  we find

As we balance on this old seesaw
We know nothing is static.life is raw.

Come back to me, my sweetheart
Don’t leave me all alone.
Come back to me, my darling
I can’t believe you’ ve gone.
I’m crying ‘cos I’m feeling blue again.
I’m crying’cos I’m falling like a stone.

Controlled by law on what’s permissible  to say
Subjected to a fine for our mistakes
We need to understand the reason why

If we perceive  the Other is  but I
And  I am   Other to  their   life  today
Will we need controls on what we say?

Appearances deceptive are portrayed
Giving falseness  its own name and sake
Better understand the reasons why.

The surface may look   better formally
But we can’t see the rage, don’t hesitate
Is it wise to control what folk say?

Perhaps by now such thinking is too late
We’ve hidden truth, reality, hence fate.
Controlled by law on what’s permissible  to say
We needed to  be told the reasons why

Today the radio has come on twice by itself.The first time it was playing,
The lark ascending which I had at my husband’s funeral, and the second  was,
The water’s wide  and I cannot cross.
So seems like the other side is coming over to me

Feeding the homeless in London UK

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/british-muslims-london-homelessness-who-is-hussain/

The volcano of unconscious rage erupts
No longer are we sure  who to scapegoat
The face of human dignity combusts

We look around for Others to distrust
And utter imprecations with coarse threats
The volcano of unconscious rage erupts

The fear and hate  don’t vanish into dust
When told we must  be careful how we speak
The face of human dignity distrusts.

Unable to release our enraged lust
It’s being withheld  does not make us feel meek
The volcano of unconscious rage erupts

The low paid workers honored with disgust,
Found now their  painful hearts can coldly  speak~
The face of human dignity  is bust

The workers felt  that they were ruled by cliques
The rich, the educated, the elite
The volcano of unconscious rage once trapped
Is now released but must our hate combust?

Seems now we won’t be keen to fly on planes
The  air attendants, crazy, unrestrained
Babies holler in their mummy’s arms
While authority’s resistant to their charms

Seems like a sort of social suicide
Next, we’ll hear some passenger has died
His seat was needed for a staffer’s hide
It’s getting dangerous for us to fly.

It’s not the trainers  with the bombs inside
It’s how the flight attendants damn you with their eyes
Seems somethings cracked and  we’ve nowhere to hide
Did they say how baby Jesus died?

Joseph  Mary, Jesus  tried to go back home
They had no wish to stop to visit Rome
When she let Jesus suck her breast thereon
They shot them down with bullets made of bone.

It seems the devil’s left his evil cave
He’s having lots of fun  on Jesus’ grave.
Did you think the humans could be saved?
Ahahaha ,see how they rave.

Let’s knock the doctor’s teeth out, break his head.
A mother with her  twins should be in bed
Grab her stroller, make her cry instead
Good grief, they’re much more mad, old Satan said.

They say we let the cat out of the bag
We North Americans will have our jag
Kick the Asians, steal the women’s rag
Let them show their bleeding wombs the flag.

The USA is not what it once was
And is it Ronald Ace and what he says?
I can see him chucking chinkies out of planes
And kicking women where they feel the pain

Overton’s window moved t’et right of page
So us,we think it’s good to be enraged
We’re all in hyperactive modes un-sage
By the way, the devil loves a stage!

We know there is a blind spot in the eye
We cannot see the entire view, the whole
The blank bit in the mirror of the car

In science, there are limits that apply
Chaitin’s  constant may indeed appall
We know there is a blind spot in the eye

The  blind spot may depend on where we are
So its action may lead scientists to brawl
The hole in  the mirrored image in the car

The  naming   of the numbers infinite
Discloses a fine paradox,  enthralls.
We know there is a blind spot in the eye

We long for deep control of what we are
By religion, science or New Age notions foul
Fill hole in  the mirrored image in the car

In between the consonants the vowel
Make explicit that we want  no further holes
Yet there is a blind spot in each human eye
Like  a blank in the mirror in a family car

What we do depends on what we see.
By writing, I can change  my own fixed view
Gain perspective, focus less on me

And to others, make an honest plea
We can look again and see anew
What we do depends on what we see.

How the world is, how it ought to be
In writing, I can make my own review
Gain perspective, focus less on me.

Then replace “ought” by “possibility.”
A little change  beats  weeping, feeling blue
What we do depends on what we see.

If God exists, will she with me agree?
No doubt she’d have a wider, higher view
And share perception with someone like you

Would our world were shared by love, virtue.
A willingness to wish , desire  the true
What we do depends on what we see.
Perspective, focus, possibility

The danger in our culture is fatigue
We ask the rich  for taxes, they refuse
We’re tired of envy, politics and  greed

Does any human know just what we need?
Are we by the elite class confused?
The danger in our culture is fatigue

Exploitation of the poor who bleed——-
The goods produced by slaves we’ve not refused
We say we’re tired of politics and  greed

With Brexit  done, our racism’s now top league
We wonder for how long  this rage’s deceived
The danger in our culture is fatigue

We view too much, so pity  leaves the scene
Our values  are corrupted or confused
We’re tired of envy, politics and  greed

Victims of our  culture’s self-abuse
Satan in his black pit laughs, amused
The danger in our culture is fatigue
We’re tired of envy, politics and  greed

I sometimes wonder if Europe and the world would now be a much better place if all the people killed in the two World Wars  had lived and had children. if they wanted to which many would  have liked to.
And of the 6 million Jews, the gypsies and the homosexuals killed by the Nazis had survived.Not to mention Russia’s losses and Stain’s victims in their millionsAnd then a man like Alan Turing was driven to suicide because he had consensual sex with a young man.What important contribution to Maths and Computing he would have made.The Middle East would not have been divided up between France and Britain and Palestine would have remained one country.
When I look at the political scene, I think ,possibly, the best people were wiped out.And we invented nuclear bombs
You might even think Hitler won the war seeing us now in our diminishment, our post-modern art of urinals and dirty  beds and clanging noises with offensive words, our fundamentalist Christian beliefs and the belief most people are damned anyway except for our special group.And the fundamentalist atheists who long to destroy any religious belief of any kind
Were any Muslims of any type responsible for the 20th Century murders?Why do we think we are better?Europe conquered the world , stole treasures and enslaved black people.It will be hard for anyone else to do as many wicked things as our ancestors did.And we are so smug.We say they are in the Middle Ages and the modern era is so much better!
Did monarchs then have nuclear bombs?

And BTW how did they create beautiful buildings while we have the Carbuncle?We are so rich yet we make rubbish.We  have lost our vision.Let’s see if we can do anything ourselves along with others near us  to make a better and more beautiful human world

The inky pen has fallen from my hand
As I lay my body on the bed
It dropped uncapped like shell on sea edge sand
As I find I ‘m born but never wed

I see my body sprawl on sheets of red
My choices  have never been  called bland
In the daytime, am I read or dead?
I look down and see unwritten bond

A barren woman  is forever damned?
No child has she, but blood  overwhelming shed
The fig tree laughed as Jesus was condemned
I see myself from high  above my bed

No library was built for women’s works
In the space between the men we lurk

My mind will settle not on literature
Like stories, novels, chick lit, shades of grey.
Instead, I’m forced to books that will ensure
No critic  will despise my chosen way

Unconscious phantasy exists in all, Freud said
By radios, I’ve now become obsessed
I tinker with   their chargers  from  my bed
Not for those vibrators,  they’re so sad.

Hence, instead of grieving I caress,
Sadly wish I’d got him  better  radio sets
I’ve made a  little shrine upon his desk
Radio, long candles , woollen vests

His ashes  dwell inside  a hessian bag
I cannot climb Sca Fell with him to drag!

I’d throw him in the sea but he’d get mad

I’ll  put him in a plant pot here instead

I came home from the funeral weeping blood

It got inside the hoover while I blogged

I think I might  well bury him with dad.

I’ll keep him till I die  then he’ll feel glad

When I  leave you, do not shout and cry.
Remember ancient joy and sunlit lands
We must find a way to say, goodbye.

We need to part, to cut the strings that tie.
Never clutch me with your  uncrossed hands
When I  leave you, do not mope and cry.

It were easier had I not stopped by,
That I were injured by  the molten  ones
We must find a day to say, goodbye.

I have lost a sense of  what is mine
For my wishes, you did countermand
When I  leave you, speak and do not cry.

Intimacy has its many lies
Ambivalent, we  crave to understand
I will  distant be from  your  near sight

Drawn by dreams to seas and foreign lands
I am living ,so I make my plans
When I   go, please do not shout and cry
Your vocation is not to be my spy.

We can communicate via images too.

As I was sitting here reflecting on a comment Rommel had made on my post “Style” I realised that as long as  our use of language was mainly oral we would not  have been worrying about apostrophes in the  sentence.

The cat ate it’s dinner v The cat ate its dinner.

The main reason,.I have thought of  , is that when we are talking to somebody in the flesh we have a lot more information about the situation we are in.If we had a dog called “It” my husband would know that the cat might:

Eat It’s dinner.

But he would probably be happy if the cat having been ill

ate its dinner.

When we move to written communication we have many advantages like being able to know   what ,others elsewhere think , share information , read books etc but we have to be careful to make sure that we get over exactly what we intend and I think this is when punctuation helps and why it is so important.Of course we can say,I mean the cat ate its own dinner…etc but sometimes people misinterpret what another person writes and don’t know that they have done that.Also I find writing poetry that it may have meanings I never noticed.

One reason that Bible reading was not allowed in the Catholic church before the Reformation is that it was thought people needed to be learned about  the time the Bible was written, about different translations etc. So the priest would expound to them upon a reading.I don’t know if they could ask questions.It seems unlikely but they could ask privately.

Many people don’t know that the Gospels were not written for many years after Jesus died so  the claim they are literally true might be misleading.The people  such as MMLJ who wrote them were in a small community where no doubt being Jews [yes!] they would discuss things at length and compare ideas and discuss what to write and how to explain  it to the larger group.When the Church grew  enormously that was hard to maintain.The split between Jews and Christians came in after the fall of Jerusalem in 70  CE when nearly all the Jews were killed by the Romans.The Rabbinical  sect and the Christian  sect were the survivors according to Karen Armstrong.They went separate ways.And  even with the Christians there had been conflicts about whether non Jews could become Christian.St Paul who wrote before the Gospels were written believed that non Jews were permitted to join but not everyone agreed, which led to a conflict between Jews who became Christians and Gentile Christians…. which led perhaps to the persecution of the Jews down the ages.

What we call the Old Testament is a selective rewriting of the Hebrew Bible which  has an even more complex history.Many of the stories are metaphorical as indeed they are in the New Testament.And many are now misunderstood like  ” an eye for an eye”

When we get the News now it’s not usually oral [I exclude TV as it is  not mutual].We get it in writing in the newspaper or on the screen here   and that is already an interpretation based on a  selective  choice from all that is happening..Again journalists need to know style, grammar and punctuation to make their writing transparent.Of the tabloid press, we might wish otherwise!We might choose to read other newspapers in other countries but time is a problem

If you disagree with me you can comment or ask me to clarify but if you disagree with BBC News or The Times it takes longer and may not have any effect.

I conclude that as humans move away from talking face to face it is harder to understand just what they mean when they use language..Talking together, we need no semi colons.As we moved into  using widespread written communication, we then needed ways to make clear our meaning but  in the end it is talking  between people which is primary and we need no lessons in grammar for that.I am surprise how no-one mentions how amazing it is that babies learn to talk without having lessons [but reading is harder for most children]

.Of course talking face to face has its own problems especially relating to power imbalances.And I have seen many articles about how we rarely listen properly and attentively to the person.Cultural differences also matter.I have taught many Muslim students and also interacted on-line and I find the men more courteous than   many  men from my  culture.It’s almost as if men here think, OK you want to be equal,we’ll hit you like we would a man or we’ll swear and curse in front of you or at you.Alas, many people don’t even know they are cursing and swearing as it is so common in soap operas.Why  even Alfred, my part time cat sometimes gives me a dirty look and a loud whine and might say something rude if he could talk in English.Thank God, he can’t

The power of meaning,  is that a  new idea;
No longer happiness or controlled thoughts?
With meaning , we can live with pain severe

When God was love , we knew the ritual sphere.
We did  not what we liked but what we ought
Is the power of meaning new and clear?

Religion left us many souvenirs
Although Indulgences cannot be sought
With meaning , we can live with pain severe

With religion ,we sought wholeness here
We indulge today in all that we have bought
Is the power of meaning new and clear?

Postmodern  Fascism, New Age spirits ,Fear.
Is this society  worthy of much thought?
With meaning, we can live with grief severe.

From God’s love , we thought  grace freely poured
Now  holy angels seem to  men  like whores
The power of meaning,  what an old idea!
With  less  meaning , life grows more severe