1.Look at yourself naked in the mirror before your partner arrives.Then be thankful someone fancies you.Then laugh at the humour of life and cry for the lost beauty
2. Put Maltesers under the pillows then scream when you hear them crunch.Then share them and another bag you keep in the drawer for emergencies
3. Let the cat lie on top of you both.He won’t need much persuasion.
4 Play “The Ride of the Valkyries” on your smartphone while you are in bed.Then play with each other.
5.Pray aloud for God’s help  to ne able to make love once more when your lover believes you are an atheist.Keep them guessing.
6.Leave a funny message on your answering machine  which is by the bed and ring your landline with your mobile.

A  new Word
There was no time to  think, to frame new  words
His breathing shallow as a gentle bird
It was the life force emptied,oh,this sign.
Although the doctors never tell their paradigms
Their eyes seem wise yet blind, they try to care

Behind my ribs, my heart was scissored, stirred
A Bach motet quite distant, softly held
A sacred image seemed to  be assigned
What  cruel word?

Oh, if he could have spoken, I’d have heard
If he should have wakened, I’d prepared
All our going’s are in nature’s reign
Down deep inside our hearts, we sense  God’s mind
Would that all sweet comfort  could be shared
And when  one Jew was sacrificed, we heard
The New,The Old.The  One, The Stuttered Word

 

 

 

1.Become  even more self centred and never listen to a person who is talking to you
2.Never have a shower or bath,Do not change your clothes  more than once a week.
3.Make your bed with dirty sheets and scatter used  tissues on the floor.Have pillows  with no  cases,
4 Never remember a  person’s name
5.Shudder if a potential  lover holds your hand
6.Boast as much as possible.
7.Argue about Brexit.
8.If people are atheists tell them  they are damned and if they are religious attack them as naive and evil killers.
9 Talk admiringly of Trump all day
10.Say Cain was right to kill Abel.
11.Keep going to the loo so much that nobody else can go
12 Get drunk and be sick on the carpet

First we are  one,then two,then one sometimes
When we love another human kind
Or lost  and grasped by mystic work sublime

Ironically we must lose to find
Absorbed in writing,there’s another mind
First we’re  one,then two,then one  at times

A gift, a word, a phrase a new wrought rhyme
With growing work,our minds are  furnished fine
We’re  swimming  in the mystic seas sublime

We dive into the depths, we rise,we dream
Add to our creations, line by line
First we’re  one,then two,then one  at times

The journey of the heart has major claims
Tempests,rages,do not love define;
We’re  making it  in mystic seas sublime.

Those who see not beauty must be fined
Criminals to Nature, cruel  before,behind.
We’re  all one,our human souls aligned;
To loose  and find, by mystic work we’re claimed

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/13/carol-ann-duffy-poems-ageing

 

“Peter Porter, whose Better Than God was shortlisted for last year’s Forward prize, has spent a lifetime making the difficult dazzle on the page. Fleur Adcock is one of the most formally skilled poets of our time and, along with Feinstein, Fainlight and Anne Stevenson, provided a role model for women poets at a time when sexism and tokenism were nastily predominant. Clarke is a tireless evangelist for poetry and founded Ty Newydd, the Welsh writers’ centre, one of the most idyllic places in the UK for studying poetry in week-long courses. Anthony Thwaite and Alan Brownjohn share her sense of altruism, sitting on committees that give awards or support to much younger poets. Linda Chase runs the flourishing Poetry School in Manchester. Maureen Duffy, well known as a novelist, has always kept poetry close to the centre of her writing life. To see Nina Cassian perform her poetry is awe-inspiring. Gerda Mayer and Lotte Kramer are fine poets who should be better known.

I invited the poets here to write, in any way they chose, about ageing. Our society, I believe, is turning gradually away from its obsession with “yoof” and “slebs”. We are beginning to realise that we face, at the very least, an uncertain future, one in which wisdom and experience – and respect – will need to be accorded a more important role. A good place to start is to read and listen to some of our most distinguished poets and, through them, to assert the importance of poetry in our culture. As poet laureate, it is a privilege to say to these poets, on behalf of their readers and the poets who follow on from them, a loud thank you.”