Month: May 2017

I’m stuck outside the glass

The familiar  does not feel quite right to me;
That uncanny state post -holidays.
I cannot click back in
I feel I am no thing
Lonely is the world without your light

I do the things I need to do quite well.
No-one else has noticed, I can tell.
I’m stuck outside the glass
Where the demons gasp
Lonely is the world without your sight.

A feeling hard to transmit by English words
The football players look like circling birds
I feel them dance around
I’m underneath the ground
Lonely is the world I feel at night.

I wonder if I can do this all alone
My heart has never been as hard as stone.
Who will carry me
Across the final sea?
Lonely is the world without your light

If I feel a little better, I feel worse
I feel as if the suffering is a curse.
Yet almost everyone
From Jesus to Marcon
Has suffered but not written it in a verse.

Millions  have been tortured even killed
I wonder what it  means about God’s will?
God seems helpless too
Jesus was a Jew
Lonely is the godless world I feel.

Like the dust motes dancing

If we see some cherries
Hanging from a branch
We’ll pick the fruit and eat them
It is our last chance

When our end is nearing
We must live far more
Like the dust motes dancing
In the sun, in joy.

See the clouds all blowing…
Where is it they go?
Like the leaves and flowers
Like the rivers flow.

See the face beloved
Known, not understood.
See the human mystery
Feel how love can flood.

See the smoke blow upwards
See the children gaze
Innocence and beauty
Newborn each day.

The first time our eyes opened
We saw a human face.
The last time we close them
Let us then embrace.

Though the day is ending
Do not cut it short.
Live each moment till the last
In love as we were taught

Ironic humour draped with British smog

Now we women can’t assume we’re done.
No more can we wear fleeces and old rags.
The French have shown how age is overcome

In certain ways,  for men, this might be fun
But not at the expense writing blogs
With a  blog,  our writing ‘s never done.

The way we dress should be the way we pun.
Ironic humour  draped with British smog
Brigitte shows how age is overcome

She looks as if she’s partial to a run
And never eats a wild French boar or hog
Now we women can’t assume we’re done.

A dose of HRT, we are no nuns.
Look, see the world is  smilingly agog
The French have shown how age is overcome.

Well,I have malformed feet  with bony knobs.
I can’t afford to buy in Knightsbridge  shops
Folk assume I’m   too old to want fun.
The mind can be where age is overcome

We lose the power to think, as we aspire.

Catholic in the production of its flowers
The  shrub is bent, adorned with them all day
Behind them there an  ancient holly towers
The shrub is kneeling, see it wants to pray!

The endless cycle continues year by year
Unable to choose far fewer,new  offspring
And so it is with our consumption here
There is no end to what we want to spend.

Economies powered by growth pull on  desire
We do not realise how little we resist
We lose the power to think, as we aspire.
We make anew our lengthy shopping list

Too much growth can kill as we know well
Yet we wander blithely down to hell.

Was it wasted?

Where has all my love  gone to
All the love I poured on you
Where has all the love gone to
Was it all, was it all wasted?

The actions and the calls of love
Disappear  like flying doves
Is there meaning I can’t give
Was it all, was it all wasted?

Pouring fragrance on his feet
Money wasted, it might seem
Signs and symbols darkly gleam
Nothing  ever is, nothing ever is wasted

We all live in faith our love
Where it comes from, how it does
We live in faith , like hand in glove
Pour  the love  and let it rove
Excess and glorious as above
For it’s made to be,made to be wasted

You can sleep anywhere

Doctor,doctor,I;m worried about my coughin’.
What about your coffin?
Well,it’s keeping me awake at night.
Why,are you sleeping in it
I have only one place to sleep.
If you are tired you can sleep anywhere!
is that legal?
Of course, it is.
Well, can I sleep in the Queen’s bed?
In theory,yes… but you might frighten the horses.
Why, do they sleep with her?She must have a big bed.
Don’t be so ridiculous…
Well, she has loads of money; she, could have a bed made for her.
She has a bed maid for her
Do you mean someone makes her bed every day?
well,don’t you make yours every day?
No,I bought one in a bed store and it’s well built.
But do you change the sheets daily?
No,i never use paper I write letters on my chromebook.
Which letters?
Any letters at all,except French ones.
but they use our alphabet.
it’s not ours.
Whose is it?
Possibly the Romans.Tantrum ergo!
They are all long gone into their coffins.Uno,duo tres,quattore…,decem,duodecem,duagessin’..
I knew coughin’ was very dangerous
I think your grammar is bed.
What a posh excent you have
It’s all I have left of the old palace.
Well, never mind you can share my coffin if you like.
But is there a bed in it?
Just a bed bug as yet…
I blame the CIA.. who do you blame?
I blame God and he blames us so it’s pretty much a stalemate.
We need the Messiah…..
Not again,we’ve not got over the last one yet…
You make him sound like a hurdle…
Well,it’s one way of looking at it all.. a big hurdle.
It’s all this talkin’ keeps me awake at night…
At least it stops you coughin’

Doctor,doctor,the coughin’s keeping me up all night again
For goodness sake put the lid on it.

All I ask is that you polish me

I am a kettle made of stainless steel
I am a saint,  for tea  is brewed to heal
And , unlike kettles on an old  coal fire,
I am not dirty nor do I perspire.

My mirrored sides reflect you as you cook.
Look at me and read me like a book
I’m  full of love and hotter than a man
Oh, dear lady, love me while you can.

Superior mother,  yet inhuman  I;
Even electric kettles sometimes lie.
I shall never punish you, my dear
For perfect love like mine shall wield no fear.

All I ask is that you polish me.
For, in between your hands, I  yearn to be.

Who can tolerate the need for words?

Our structure grows as we are socialised.
We hear and see and reach for kindly touch
We learn to speak and later to tell lies.

We see clear truths which adults then deny.
We hear the priest shout in the holy church.
Our structure grows as we are socialised.

They question us but must we then reply?
They peer into our souls in constant search
We learn to speak and later we hear lies.

We’re like a dry stone wall when vandalised
Some stones sink down and others  try to clutch
Our structure grows as we are socialised.

What part is it that chooses how we grow?
Is it soul or heart in  troubling lurch?
We learn to speak, we hear and we tell lies.

Who can tolerate their need for words?
Who can bear the need we have for care?
Our inner structure grows  to social ways
We learn to speak and integrate our lies.

It fell to earth with solemn gravity

Another branch has broken from the tree
For nine short months, it weakened and grew dry.
It fell to  earth with solemn gravity

Is comparing us to trees good simile?
I’d find a better if I’d wits to try
Another branch  has thundered from the tree

The tree grieves not, for it likes to be free
Its main desire is stature, to be high.
Dead branches fall to earth by gravity

Some compare life to a drunken sea;
Or to the sky where dance wild nuclei
Yet one most ancient symbol is the tree

The strong hang on in their tenacity
Even as their leaves and berries fly
Weaker branches fall  with gravity

 

Death comes  so much harder to the high
This is no truth but neither is it lie
Another branch has broken from the tree
It disconnected all its twigs; lay down in lea.

I copied some leg exercises

DSC00038

 

Fly on your black, with your legs stretched back and hands by their sides or floating like wings
Bend the left knee and tape it to your chest then write a note
Put an electric brand around the ball and then hold both the ends by the hands.Now draw an image in Paint on the ceiling
Slowly straighten your West foot up towards the ceiling and bookmark your own toes.
Make sure your hips and the grass you brought are firmly pressed into the beloved earth.
The right foot should be kept afraid and the toes vexed, pointing to the ceiling.
Count till 20 while in this position and then faint sideways onto that grass we met before
Do the same routine on any other legs.
Do 3 Frets and two moans and you’ll be a different person.
You’ll be arrested.

De mortuis nil nisi bene

IMG_3549

 

Philosophic  [from wikipedia]

We assume a special attitude towards the dead, something almost like admiration for one who has accomplished a very difficult feat. We suspend criticism of him, overlooking whatever wrongs he may have done, and issue the command, De mortuis nil nisi bene: we act as if we were justified in singing his praises at the funeral oration, and inscribe only what is to his advantage on the tombstone. This consideration for the dead, which he really no longer needs, is more important to us than the truth, and, to most of us, certainly, it is more important than consideration for the living.[3]

And looking at the world with gratefulness

The dead flowers in the vase have their own charm
They have their form, their shape, their wistfulness
What is dead no longer does us harm

Thus being dead is no cause for alarm
There is no need to suffer loneliness
The dead flowers in the vase have their own charm

As they age, they look like a dead palm
The sort we got in church had comeliness
What is dead no longer does us harm

The secret of long life is keeping calm
And looking at the world with gratefulness
The dead flowers in the vase have their own charm

Meditation on dead flowers is balm
We fear no longer our own death’s fullness
What is dead no longer does us harm

Waste not time in hateful wilfulness
We sing with love our own dawn choruses
The dead flowers in the vase have certain  charms
What is dead no longer may  alarm

Diary poems by Anne Cluysenaar

Sunrise in winter

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/12/poem-of-the-week-anne-cluysenaar-diary-poems

 

 

 

January 13

Hunting the Higgs

No wonder they love a laugh, the physicists.
What ever they find or don’t, it’s OK.
Symmetries of the world just remnants
of those which, if perfect, would only have led to

no world at all – anti-matter, matter
would have cancelled each other out. Maybe.
Or maybe not, if the theory is at fault.
And if it is? More exciting still.

Whatever we’re made of, it wants to know
how it came to be what it is. In us,
for a while at least, the stuff of stars
gets a glimpse of its own precarious life.

Like a single life, that will soon be gone.
Universes before, maybe, or after
our own, we won’t ever get to explore.
They make up what is, though. And here we are!

I do believe I’m feeling underwrought

Epimedium-latisepalum2017

The villanelle won’t jell, I feel dismayed.
I know they’re hell, but they distill my thoughts
A triolet would work if I could play.

I boiled the villanelle  to sell    today
I do believe I’m feeling underwrought
The villanelle won’t jell, I feel dismayed

I planned to sell the whole lot on Ebay
But someone threw a hint I never caught
A triolet would work if I could play

I appreciate the values of wet hay
My teacher never mentioned  poems  caught short
The villanelle won’t sell, I can’t  display.

Some will plight  their  troth and others  pray
The teacher saw the writing  she’d not taught
A triolet would work if I could play

I wrote a poem with words I had not sought
Is it vice to pay when we’ve not bought?
The villanelle won’t jell,I  say,hurrah
A  violin would work if one could play

The End by Emily Berry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/118582?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PMAG_MAY_09_2017&utm_content=PMAG_MAY_09_2017+CID_81ba1eb43cddc435e618fa33b180458d&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=The%20End

 

The End
BY EMILY BERRY
I believed death was a flat plain spectacular endlessly
Can you distort my voice when I say this?
My scared ghost peeling off me
Distortion, she says, as if she has just made it up
And then she is quoting a line from a poem
Or is it a whole poem, I wish I could remember
My voice opens and calls you in
I don’t know if you can hear me
I said, I carry inside me the trace of a threat that I cannot discharge
I said, I want to ask you things you can’t ask a person who doesn’t exist
She said, Why can’t you ask them
If we can’t have everything what is the closest amount to everything we can have?
She said, Why can’t you have everything
Well, you know, when you’re looking for a person, sometimes they appear
And a light goes on and off in the opposite window, twice
Yes, you say, that was a sign
Strange love for the living, strange love for the dead
Listen. I don’t know who you are but you remind me of —
I wish you would put some kind of distortion on my voice, I tell her
So people don’t know it’s me
They know what they know, she said
I told a story about my shame
It got cold when the air touched it
Then it got hot, throbbed, wept, attracted fragments with which it eventually glittered
Till I couldn’t stop looking at it
Exactly, she says
And then she is quoting a line from a poem, I don’t know which one
In my dream she reached out to touch me as if to say, It’s all right
How I began to believe in something
Are you there?
The wind called to the trees
And then it happened
And they said, How do you feel?
And I said, Like a fountain
Night falls from my neck like silver arrows
 
Very gently

When he woke up he looked the same

 

He was always very adamant
He could not change his mind
So I soaked his head in old red wine
Because I am so kind.

 

When he woke up he looked the same
But he spoke so tenderly:
You may have tricked some other guys.
But you ain’t trickin’ me.

 

I said I knew  no other men;
He was my heart’s desire.
He threw his water glass at me
And said I was a liar.

 

So then I realised with dread,
My love was utter folly.
I gave him 20 English pounds
To buy himself a lolly.

 

Adamantine’s good for jewels
But not for picking men.
I shall learn my lesson now.
Pray I’ll never sin again

With my footprints on the back

He was wearing the wrong kind of clothing
His awkwardness  gave him away
He wore a white mac
With  my footprints on the back
Where forever they will rightly stay,

He went out to Mass on  a Sunday
And confessed all his sins well before.
He  suffered from pride
And many women he eyed.
Whom he gave a warm welcome and more.

The religious folk seem to get tempted
By the sins that they wrongly fear most.
They think of smart asses
And lasses in glasses
When  of their salvation they boast

We tolerate what once we could not bear

The pain of loss grows gentler by the year
Less jagged and destructive to the heart
We  tolerate what once we could not bear

We soothe ourselves by satisfying care
We let the dear one’s image separate.
The pain of loss grows gentler by the year

Sometimes grief feels like a panic fear.
We wonder if we chose the best of charts
We  tolerate what once we could not bear

There are folk of whom we must beware.
Gossips and audacious, head-less tarts
The pain of loss grows gentler by the year

Do not let the wolves boast of their lair
Evade the poisonous and their arrowed darts
We  tolerate what once we could not bear

Without will, the healing process starts
Slowly  pain and anguish will depart
The pain of loss grows gentler by the year
We  tolerate what once we could not bear

The isolating loneliness, the fear

The  widespread  scattering of the Jewish genes
Caused by pogroms, wars, and holocaust
A Russian mother, Father, German seems
Now all of them, have turned to earth and dust.

Then the city French called Montreal
Safe home  to refugees of every sort
Here Leonard found his path, he heard the call
And learned to bear the suffering of the heart.

Where many leave this world by their own choice,
The isolating loneliness, the fear
Instead, he struggled, strained, gave us his voice
Even after death, we feel him near.

A man descended from Aaron, the priest,
The same  genetic group that gave us  Christ

 

 

Yet to these gaps, wildflowers will be allured.

Life is like a  Northern drystone wall
The limestone’s perfect balance is designed.
But take one stone out and the whole will fall.
For every stone was to the next aligned.

Maybe its new form is strong, secure
But often it collapses, leaving gaps.
Yet to these gaps, wildflowers will  be allured.
And little pools  form, home to frogs  perhaps

As life goes on, our complex structure grows
And in some part, we see collapse contained.
Not just contained, but new life comes and goes.
In the end,  love’s willingness remains.

The journey takes us through a strange terrain.
We are a  whole, though parts are misaligned

Off the villanelle

I must get off the villanelle today
There are other forms that I might like
Then I can eat and read and love and pray

I could make a sculpture like a Klee.
Get new tyres upon my folding bike
I must get off the villanelle today

 

The thing is, writing rarely pays.
Ted Hughes  did it with his dream of Pike
Then he could eat and read and love and pray

Once upon a time my world was gay
Leisure was a  pleasure, heart was light
I may get off the villanelle today.

Sometimes I feel like just one shade of grey
The heart is numb and all is tinged with blight
Can I eat and read and love and pray.

Life is generous with its dose of fright.
The politicians’  tigers fight and bite
I must  write off the villanelle today
Then I can eat and read and love and play

Shopping

I made an error in my online shopping
I only got one litre of fresh milk
I got eight trifles and a dozen jellies
Cress in an interminable wilt.

I got two large  and multi-seeded loaves
Some eggs and bacon,not yet cooked I fear.
I thought I’d bake some  pizza  with bananas
While they’re reading Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Oh,I forgot to get a few tomatoes
It’s muddling looking through their lists of goods
I’ll have to make a sauce from old  potatoes
Do you think the Italians ever could?

I stand alone surrounded by these foods
No doubt they will enter my dear flesh
But there’s noone here I want to talk to
I feel my mood is going into Crash

Eeh by gum, I wish that I was here

DSC00054

I went visiting a rather silent neighbour
I thought that I could manage fine
After sitting feeling blank and boring
I went home to get  so drunk that I could dine

I had a problem with the oven settings
The sausages were as black as  grandad’s skin
The batter turned to biscuit thin and hardened
I ‘ll never  ever want a Toad again

I sat down, it was only Sunday evening
Six more meals to cook this coming week.
I must buy an oven thermometer
If only they made one that liked to speak.

What are all the quiet people feeling?
Would they like to talk but can’t for fear?
I find it hard to tolerate  their total silence
Eeh by gum, I wish that I was here

I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

I had six inky pages of crushed notes.
From a villanelle I tried to write
Corrections,edits, what I thought, I wrote.

Some of it was cliche or was quote
It was a very private, hidden sight
I had six pages of cramped inky notes.

Should I  reveal the work I  do, first thoughts,
Or keep you in the dark about my rites?
Corrections, edits, what I thought, I wrote.

There is  no answer only many “oughts”
Should these hidden jumbles come to light?
I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

My first thoughts of a theme are scarcely taut.
The   process opens windows shut and tight
Corrections, edits, what I thought, I wrote.

First, the  buried feelings must be caught
For my deeper thoughts, I watch at night.
I had six scrambled pages of my notes.

Passionate the feelings that ignite
The work of  poets with  their fiery sparks
I had six inky pages of handwritten notes.
Corrections, edits, what I  caught at night