Day: May 1, 2017

Trying to digest life’s strange and awful ploys

Trying to digest life’s strange and awful ploys.
Is it merely chance that brings them here?
Send me my mother and my little box of toys

I only wish I had a stronger voice
And a breastplate to protect me from the spears
Trying to digest life’s strange and awful ploys.

When I was a child, I liked to play with boys
As they tormented me, then I began to fear
Send me back to  mother and my little box of toys

For fifty years I’ve known love and all her joys
I have loved men but now  they look unclear
I hope to digest life’s deranged and awful ploys.

Some call me bold and others call me shy
I  wear a dress   like  my mother used to wear
Send me back to  Mammy and my little box of toys

Today was bad and now I feel  you sneer
I’ll hire a boat and row to Southend Pier
Trying to digest life’s strange and awful joys.
I need my Mammy and my little box of toys

 

 

Yours sincerely, Lord

4663189_f1024

Dear God,
Decide with me>You see  the evil minds
The darkness weeps; bairns in me confide
When mother’s helpers fail and contort glee,
Smoke all the kippers and open up for me.

Drafts blew  off  my clothes and  cinders  lburned the day;
Earth’s toys grow thin; its stories passive,grey.
Change and  replay is all around  for free
O Thou who changest notes, save some notes for me.

Come not  with bull terriers, nor as the king  with wings
But underwrite  the good, with healing  and  new strings,
Tears for wholesome souls, new heart for every  bee
Come to  lines of sinners, and be derided by a  flea

Thou on my shed in early youth laid tiles
And, though it  seems ridiculous  we’ve reversed them all  meanwhile,
Thou hast not written me, as oft as I ‘ve written Thee,
Yours sincerely,  Lord,

Kate and her house bee

PS  Please write to answer me
Kindness wins the plea.

 

Extinguished candles smoke at Tenebrae

We are little leaves upon the tree
We  never did control our  tiny worlds
The tree of life; what power, what  mystery

With metaphor, it’s easier to see
Life is tender, see each leaf unfurl
We are only leaves upon the tree

Singing in the sun we seem to be
Full of joy until the storm winds swirl
The tree of life; what power, what  mystery

Extinguished   candles   smoke at Tenebrae
We are blown to death however bold
We are little leaves upon the tree

Thus we sacrifice to God uncertainly
Yet as the wars continue, we grow cold
The tree of life; what power, what  mystery

Who has dropped us from the hands that hold?
Who has stolen certainty untold?
We are little leaves upon the tree
The tree of life; what power, what  mystery

Do we have no choice, no voice, no throat?

We’re not drowned but dumb, inert, we float
Glancing at the News  with great alarm
As if we have no choice, no voice, no throat

We  signal no one, so there’s no lifeboat
And all alone we suffer greater harm
We’re not drowned but dumb, inert, we float

The organ shudders with its final notes
No more to play toccatas, no more charm
Do we have no choice, no voice, no throat?

From the others, we grow more remote
Feel we’re suffering from a dreadful storm
We’re not drowned but dumb, inert, we float

See the powerful, how they, selfish, gloat
How we long for comfort and for warmth
Do we have no choice, no voice, no throat?

Now we pray for peace and seek for balm
Will our human world gain greater calm?
We’re not drowned but dumb, inert, we float
As if we have no choice, no voice, no throat

A noiseless patient spider by Walt Whitman

 

http://www.famousliteraryworks.com/whitman_a_noiseless_patient_spider.htm


A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a promontory it stood isolated,
Marked how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

 

 

 

 

Psalm – Poem by Paul Celan

No-man kneads us again out of Earth and Loam,

no-man spirits our Dust.
No-man.

Praise to you, No-man.
For love of you
we will flower.
Moving
towards you.

A Nothing
we were, we are, we shall
be still, flowering:
the Nothing-, the
No-man’s-rose.

With
our Pistil soul-bright,
our Stamen heaven-torn,
our Corolla red
with the Violet-Word that we sang
over, O over
the thorn.

Paul Celan