Inside an ugly rock a jewel lies
Discovered by an accident of fate
By those who have the courage and the eyes

He who is a fool cannot be wise
His character displays his flimsy traits
Inside an ugly rock a jewel lies

The powerful will steal and speak in lies
With knives, they will cut down the ones who fail
Fight for those with courage and wise eyes

Since bedroom tax and food banks, who has died?
How many poorer mothers sit and wail?
Disguised by  jewels,  the ugly croak their lies

From the heart of love  the arrows fly
Like refugees, we come to love derailed
Fight with those with courage and wise eyes

Oh, human beings, do not leave it late
Repair the evil ,  no more  desecrate

Inside an ugly rock a jewel lies
But who has got the courage and the eye?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/dec/15/poetry-protest-politics

I voted for the one who cooked the best
My gut tells me how I  relax is wrong
Because I  ate the algebraic text

I voted for the one  whose muscles flexed
My mind became a spinning wheel of song
I voted for the one I loved the best

On weekends I  dictate to men, the loony pests!
As I type the book  where sums are wrong
I concede I  flunked the algebraic test.

I see the exit polls  all  have gone West
I knew my calculations were unsound
I voted for the numbers.  cleverest

I seem to have a mind which cannot rest
I  heat pyjamas just to get unwound
I concede I  bonked Al  when he  felt depressed
I am in doubt  while seeing flaming tongues
I tamed my  plastic tiger before long
I voted for the books I loved the best

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. Pablo Picasso
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/pablopicas387546.html

As this era  ends, we hold our breath
Our guts and vitals shiver with suspense
Eyes protrude, face pales, whose is the death?

The forces of the media oppress
They never even  pay, less recompense
As this era  ends, we hold our breath

Blunders made, dilemmas will oppress
Too much thinking does not make more sense
Protruding eyes, pale faces whose the death?

Each of us believes we know the best
But no-one is at ease, we tremble, tense
As this era ends, we hold our breath.

I wonder how to greet this  dreaded test
My eyes drag down, opaque the   fragile  lens
Protruding eyes, pale faces whose the death?

As the tigers launch, men smile content
They have satisfied their egos in this dance
As this era  ends, we hold our breath
Eyes protrude, face pales, whose is the death?

In Bedzin and in Krakow they breathed in
What they denied in conscious thought or word.
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin

Penetrating lungs so deep within
The dead  unburied mixed, in air secured
In Bedzin and in Krakow, mortal sin.

The nearby people turned to burial urns.
The human dust by  breathing was allured
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin.

So  Europe took their human ash within.
A graveyard we became unknown, impure.
In Bedzin and in Krakow, more of sin.

And who they thought destroyed  lived on in them
Controlled their lungs, their hearts  their minds uncured,
The ashes of the Jews,borne in their skin.

Like a mass communion without words
We ate and breathed the Jews, the gays, unheard
In Bedzin and in Krakow  we walked in
The ashes of the lost, the glades of skin,

New  Jerseys cremated
Boast potatoes
Smack it potatoes
Red bunions
Sprung onions
Casserole of teeth in tears.
Chicken , hurry
Casserole of  lamb in bier.
Cheery tomatoes.
Fresh ballad daily.
Pot of wee for two.
Bring your own water to drink here,
Pot boasts of beef.
Potatoes au Marcon
Strumpets with Lure pack.
Baked jeans on toast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-40191270

The book of Vulgar Prayer
The Missile
The Ribald
The New Assessment
TheBold Assessment
The Hebrew Rival.
Teaser Sunday
Christmas Ease
Balm Sundae
The Dissension
The Cymbal
The Repression Box.
Benny Fiction
Horatio of the Cross.
Vacations of the Lost

Oh,Alfred,my beloved,do not go
Do not leave, but warmth to me bestow,
Lie beside me in my bed all night
Succour me when stormy dreams affright.

Oh,Alfred,-tis your eyes  that turn me on
The green and golden light  is never gone.
Affection constant,  touch and feeling shared.
I am not embarrassed when you stare.

For you , the  gallant male, have ever  seen
My naked form well lit by  Jove’s sunbeams
And if I wear a gown of wincyette
You love it ,,as it’s made for paws of cat.

Alfred ,we  can’t  marry   yet I fear.
Cats can’t read the Book of Common Prayer.

Despite the pain of anger unprovoked
Suffering, losing , for a while, myself
Your love has  fed my heart  and joy evoked
Gifted  me  a source of inner wealth

I feared there was  no clear way   from the end
I might have dropped deep  with the devils dark
But love stored up gave me or maybe lent
The  vital will, the lift, divine the spark

As we wake up and feel the pain’s descent
Into our breast his chosen  altar stone
The heart so pierced shrieks , makes its own lament
And wishes it were not raw flesh but bone.

Hard to  love again with  knowledge learned
When all our pity in the fire is burned

Without him.Did I do enough?

I walked into the little ward that he was in.The place was a rehabilitation centre for old people recovering from hip replacements.My husband was dying from severe heart failure. and severe leaking from a valve.I knew 3 or 4 days before that he was dying but the doctors somehow blocked it off and told me 6 months
Unfortunately, there was no doctor on the site at all.The first full  day he was there he became ill with what turned out to be pneumonia.They had to wait till 6.30 pm to ring the out of hours doctor service.They phoned me at 11 pm.
The doctor had just been, given him antibiotics.He had waited 12 hours for them
On Saturday he seemed very weak in the evening.He was trying to speak so I leaned right over him.
How will you manage, he whispered.That was about the last thing he said to me.
The next day he was sitting in a chair.His face was black.I went over and he fell onto me.I said
,Are you very depressed
.He nodded.He was dying with no trousers on in an open ward.
He ended up in A and E where he died .As he was not given a bed he does not count in their admissions data.I don’t mean to say that was the  real reason but after 19 hours on a trolley, one might have expected a bed to be available.Otherwise, all was excellent.To be honest I was not aware of it being A and E.
Be aware if someone wants to put your relative into  a place with no doctor.
Were they not kind letting him  use the gym free of charge to make sure he dies rapidly?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-40162024/my-parents-were-executed-for-spying

On England bitter, wild winds blow  and grow
The blossom’s  thrashed, knocked off the  living stem
As if for a new catastrophe we’re due.

This week, this world, imagine what we know
As Terror and Election come again
On England frail with fighting what to do?

The little nesting birds sway in their tree
Summer  is suspended, voters  groan
As if for fresh catastrophe we’re due.

The common people quarrel violently
An abscess bursts and then hot  poison rains
On England now the wild wind snarls anew.

The cold contempt   divides us into two
The only good is that we can’t buy guns
When for a new catastrophe we’re due.

Saturday, the News struck Britain dumb
The blood  and guts of sacrificial victims ran
The death of God calls forth barbaric brews
Can we change, embrace a better view?

Though full of direct knowledge of her fellows
Whose eyes and faces are a script humane;
Though voices sing to him like Lobos’ cellos
In lack and loss and woe this man remains.

In times gone by, the voice and face sufficed.
Poets’ music seemed to us almost divine;
But now a subtle torture’s been devised
To write with pen and letters intertwined.

This man, though wise like cat or bear or owl,
Has failed in his acquaintance with the pen.
Nor does he have the words which politicians howl.
Nor can he re ad his list of sin.

For now, the map is where the mind must dwell
And of reality, no-one can tell.

After the terror attack [BBC]

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music… and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: “Sing for us soon again;” that is as much as to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul.” ~Søren Kierkegaard

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/how-do-you-begin-poem

Cate Marvin

“I like to think of poets as moving through the world with their minds poised like nets, intent on capturing scraps of language, resonant images. Thinking as a poet means viewing the world as a poem; thus, the poet is prone to existing in real space and time in a most vulnerable manner. This means being super-observant wherever your physical self takes your mind, as it requires being terribly receptive to light, images, movement, conversations between others, oddities many might be inclined to overlook in newspaper headlines, heatedly intimate conflicts overheard in public places, disingenuous directions offered by advertisements and street signs, etc.”

“When Levinas meditates on the significance of the face, he does not describe the complex figure that could be portrayed by a picture or painting; rather, he tries to make us ‘experience’ or ‘realize’ what we see, feel, ‘know’ when another, by looking at me, ‘touches’ me: autrui me vise; the other’s visage looks at me, ‘regards’ me.”