Day: May 28, 2017

From being wise, a fool I am now grown

Although I cared for my old one alone
It seems now he is gone I need advice
From being wise, a fool I am now grown
So I am given orders; oh, surprise!

Do I sleep or eat or wash my bras
Do I wear clean knickers in the morn?
Intrusive,disrespectful ,tra,la lah!
On these cheeky folks, I pour my scorn

If I turn to gypsy ways of life
A wooden caravan and my own horse
I will be troubled by the heat of strife
I fear I shall become an alien coarse

Where were  they when I travailed alone,
Carrying in my breast a heavy stone?

To me. more adoration was obscene

A friend wished to insult me with her words
She was angry that I seemed to draw in men
You Siren, she exclaimed, in tones absurd
I stared astonished, feeling puzzled then

I wore  thick glasses, carried my old books
Read Birkhoff and McLean and Wittgenstein
To me, it was no insult to my looks
It was a compliment, not word malign

And I was married to a gentle man
Had never noticed what she’d claimed to see.
My evenings were spent boiling meat in pans
To me.  more  adoration was obscene

Now I grow old and see my hair go thin
I marvel at the label, you Siren!

Willing to be willing

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Definition of WILLINGNESS [ from Merriam Webster]

Cheerful readiness to do something [ plus ditto to feel or be something]

Thinking about the significance of “willingness” ,it comes to my mind that if we are asked to do something pleasurable we will not need urging.We will easily be willing unless we are masochists are have pressing needs that cannot wait.
So what is the significance of “willingness” when it relates to something unpleasant or painful we must do?
I can imagine one scene where I ask someone to do a small task for me and though they are busy they are “more than willing” knowing my circumstances.But I ask a different person and though they agree there is a grudging quality about their doing what I ask.
Tn the first case we all feel joy when we know someone will go out of their way to help us and in the second we feel uneasy about asking that person and neither side gains much from the transaction.
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Now turn inwards and imagine that you waken up feeling in poor spirits and moreover you do not like this.That is, you are unwilling to feel the way you do.
In my experience being unwilling in that way makes the spirits worse. We have secondary anger or depression about our state which can only make it worse.
Now think of the term “acceptance”.We can easily imagine that if we can accept a situation we can deal with it better.So a wife who finds her husband’s hobby is studying maths in the evening is going to have a problem if she believed they would spend every evening chatting together.
The husband too has a problem that he may not have foreseen when he was madly in love.He has to work out how much time he needs alone with his abstractions or whether it is an excuse not to engage with his wife.
The wife who finds her husband genuinely needs to study for long hours or he is unhappy will have to consider whether she can accept this as a way of life or whether she should seek a better partner because nowadays women want to have their needs met too,
If she accepts it and adapts then she may be happy.A problem rises if she keeps up a war with her husband, criticising and blaming him for his needs.I might say she can’t force him to talk to her as what value does it have when it is not spontaneous?
If people have good will towards each other then they can find away of living and respecting the other.
If we have good will towards our selves then we can accept and live with parts of ourself we do not like or parts which cause us suffering yet which cannot be changed and must be lived with.
If we don’t have good will  towards ourselves then life is much harder as we attack ourselves with criticism and deprivation of love.
I think willingness or good will is crucially important in human life though n doubt I frequently forget it! Ill will directed anywhere ou side or in harms both parties or splits the self and causes more deeper problems.
Of course it is hard to be willing to suffer painful emotions but what choice do we have?Only to find the best way or at least
“to be willing to be willing”
as I describe it to myself.
Is willingness a virtue or a decision? Or an impossibility for some of us?

With love thread through its heart

I get out my sewing gear

In the quiet times of life,
When I need to mend the tears
Torn by stress and strife.

I hold my soul so carefully
And look at every part.
I hope that light will come to me.
As I wonder how to start.

I take my needle out
With love thread through its heart
I scrutinise each inch
And then I start to stitch

In the quietness of the night
You heal me all the time.
You talk to me in dreams
And I write them down in rhymes.

Keep the cocoon whole
Till the soul’s completely there,
Then through its love sewn cloth
A butterfly will flare.

Take an insult

Towards an insult, pacific one might be.
For why waste time on listening to a fool,
Unless the mocker knocked your painful knee?

Alternatively, thank her for her plea
And pay for her to go right back to school
Towards an insult, pacific one might be.

Go as far as offering a fee
Ask her if he’s heard of old George Boole
Unless the lady kicked  your painful knee?

Ask her for more detail verbally
Ask her if’s she has a log at Yule
Towards an insult, specific one can be.

I returned an insult with my eye
A dirty look, there is no final rule
Unless she picked you for your pretty knee

A well-versed tongue may be a useful tool
Take care with teachers as they’re rarely cool
Towards an insult, apathetic one might be.
Unless the cruelty  wrecked your sympathy

Where once he had imposed a love of knees

When insults and wild taunts were sent to me
It was the grace-mucked ego of the man
He  climbed the titles of my poems like trees

Where once he had imposed a love of knees
Instead, he used bad language like “foregone”
His insults and mild taunts were sent through me

He followed me in a secret up this tree
He liked to  compound  interest, just for fun
He wrote my poems and tested my gee bee.

We know that hate  can cry and love can gleam
At best, he  varnished ladies  till  they shone
He consummated love with  almost  three

And yet he had his welcome dignity
He wrote real swell as if he were a  man
He might have caught me if I charged him free.

The closeness of a bond  can overcome
The hatred  that’s engendered being twins
His interest and his haunts were  agonies
He used the titles complimentarily

How Amazon do what we’d like people to do and it is not a good thing

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If you buy books from Amazon, you have probably noticed how they frequently use your forename when giving you information or asking questions.Now with people, if you want o be friends it is nice to use their first name a lot.Amazon must do it because it will make us feel they are our best friend.Well, it is good to be able to find books we want but Amazon is a business.The more friendly they are the more we are likely to buy and return to their site.So tey are using social psychology to manipulate us/Advertisers used the work of Freud, his ideas about the Unconscious.His nephew was one of the first people in that field.
And propaganda in wartime is a similar type of activity.We are made to feel safe by someone who gets the right image across.In reality it may be a mistake.
It is hard to resist the kind of way  Amazon addresses us.

There is no past

My fate has brought me losses in excess
Since you died by your own choice at last
Control of life we do not now possess
My fate has brought me losses in excess
And  left me dwelling in the wilderness
In the deeper mind, there is no past
My fate has brought me losses in excess
You died by your hand,  the trumpet blasts

 

Who are not here

How much I long for you who are not here
I  lose myself in music and in words
Your memory so  clear , so very dear
How much I long for you who are not here
My eyes are blinded with my heavy tears
My heart unpeaceful with your image  stirred
How much I long for you who are not here
I  lose myself in music and in words

How great my grief- the triolet

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https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/triolet-poetic-form

 

 

Posted

September 29, 2004

Type

Poetic Terms/Forms
More Poetic Terms/Forms:

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The triolet is a short poem of eight lines with only two rhymes used throughout. The requirements of this fixed form are straightforward: the first line is repeated in the fourth and seventh lines; the second line is repeated in the final line; and only the first two end-words are used to complete the tight rhyme scheme. Thus, the poet writes only five original lines, giving the triolet a deceptively simple appearance: ABaAabAB, where capital letters indicate repeated lines.

French in origin, and likely dating to the thirteenth century, the triolet is a close cousin of the rondeau, another French verse form emphasizing repetition and rhyme. The earliest triolets were devotionals written by Patrick Carey, a seventeenth-century Benedictine monk. British poet Robert Bridges reintroduced the triolet to the English language, where it enjoyed a brief popularity among late-nineteenth-century British poets. Though some employed the triolet as a vehicle for light or humorous themes, Thomas Hardy recognized the possibilities for melancholy and seriousness, if the repetition could be skillfully employed to mark a shift in the meaning of repeated lines.

In “How Great My Grief,” Hardy displays both his mastery of the triolet and the potency of the form:

     How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee!
—Have the slow years not brought to view
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Not memory shaped old times anew,
Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
How great my grief, my joys how few,
Since first it was my fate to know thee?