Mary was sitting looking at the execution of Mary Queen of Scots on TV while also mending some moth holes in her skirt.The only thread she got into the eye of the easy thread needle was blue but nobody was going to examine her with a microscope, she told herself gently
She also was thinking of her winter coat.Was raspberry really a good choice? Would dark grey not be more useful?After all she often sat down on garden walls while taking photos or even on old wooden benches.What she needed was a folding cushion or a small thick towel.No wonder woman have such big handbags.
Annie her neighbour came in the back door with a bag of broken biscuits.
Look at these!We used to get them in the market years ago.So for old times sake, I have hit these with a hammer!
What sort of hammer, Mary asked.
Why, are there different kinds?
Yes,but I expect yours is just the usual medium size.
Actually, it was Ben’s.When he ran away he left it behind.
I suppose it was too heavy to fit into his suitcase.Where did he run to?
I don’t know, said Annie but as his sister in law went with him they might have gone to Australia.
Do men in Australia often love their sisters in law? Mary pondered
Who knows? The point is nobody would recognise them.Although if I went on Saga holiday I might!More people travel now.My friend Jim went to Borneo last year,said Annie in a tone of wonder
So if we became lesbian lovers we could not hide in Borneo!Where could one hide now with all this travel?
Disguise might be best, Annie whispered.You could dress like a man!
You must be joking, at my size.
Well, there are plenty of fat men!
But would they have a shape like mine?
So the two friends while away Saturday afternoon, both now darning Mary’s other clothes.
Why don’t you just buy new clothes, Annie murmured kindly.
I can’t afford this quality.I shall have to keep combing Emile until I get enough fur to make into a thread.Then I can knit a scarf!
How ridiculous, You’d need a herd of cats to get enough, Annie informed her with pity.
What a lovely idea, Mary cried.But Emile might be jealous.Or he might enjoy meeting a lady cat… or two.
I don’t think you could have more than six cats here and with food and bills it would be cheaper to buy wool
Still, a ball of wool is not so good to sleep by as a cat,Mary pondered slowly.And it has no loving eyes to look at when one comes in from the shops.
I suppose just holding wool in the hand might be very soothing,Annie retorted logically.
Otherwise,we could join Soulmates she continued fluently.
Would men be attracted to a lady with darned moth holes in her clothing? Mary enquired humorously
Well, it would show you were economical and thrifty, Annie cried sensitively
Surely that is not the main reason men choose a woman partner, said Mary wonderingly.
I suppose they like a woman with a gentle sensitive nature.Annie screamed
Well.Denis Thatcher didn’t, Mary informed her delightedly
So true, but was she different once?
No, he wanted to be dominated.Mary decided.
I wonder if he liked being whipped, Annie thought having read 5o shades of whey
She could have used the Government Whips, Mary chortled.
Both the women burst out laughing so much that the sofa fell over and flung them onto the thick red and purple striped acrylic carpet
That sofa is unstable, Annie shouted.We could have died
Perhaps it’s us.Mary shrieked
Emile ran out into the kitchen and bit a piece out of the Xmas cake.
I can’t help it, he mewed.They are both getting madder by the day
And so say all of us
Emile’s a jolly good yeller
So pray for all of us.

https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SSE/article/view/326/299

 

” One of the things those poets had
in common I think was the post-war mood of having had enough
… enough rhetoric, enough overweening push of any kind, enough
of the dark gods, enough of the id, enough of the angelic powers
and the heroic efforts to make new worlds. They’d seen it all turn
into death camps and atomic bombs. All they wanted was to get
back into civvies and get home to the wife and kids and for the
rest of their lives not a thing was going to interfere with a nice
cigarette and a nice view of the park. The second war after all
was a colossal negative revelation. In a sense it meant they re’-
coiled to some essential English strengths. But it set them dead
against negotiation with anything outside the cosiest arrangement
of society. They wanted it cosy. It was an heroic position. They
were like Eskimos in their igloo, with a difference. They’d had
enough sleeping out. Now I came a bit later. I hadn’t had enough.
I was all for opening negotiations with whatever happened to be
out there. It’s just as with the hawk. Where I conjured up a Jaguar,
they smelt a stormtrooper. Where I saw elementals and forces of
Nature they saw motorcyclists with machine guns on the handlebars.
At least that was a tendency…..”

The fire   was burning, hot and red and good
The  Christmas tree placed on the shelf above
We saw  strange, little faces in the wood

In the Crib, the figures  gently stood
A light of blue made this a place of love
The fire   was burning, hot and red and good

All the ornaments were made by Dad
A gifted  man who died before Dads should
We  all watched   faces in the  burning wood

Later Christmas was desired but dread
He would have come to earth if he but could
The fire  still burning, hot and red and good

My heart was filled with treasure from the dead
So I survived the loss from those above
I saw his  face  like Joan of Arc’s in wood

We yearned for our Messiah like good Jews did
But after many years we still were sad
The fire   was burning, hot and red and good
The Holy changeless in the fiery wood

 

In my yellow puffa on the bus
A man at once stood up to let me sit
I stood out like a shark would in a tub

I  may look like the monster from Loch Ness
And make Sts Paul and Peter  both have  fits
In my yellow puffa which bees love

Do not fear I”ll sting you like wasps would
When I wear the rest of my new kit
I stand out like a shark would in a tub

I promised Jesus I’d be very good
So lighted is the candle  of my wit
Like my yellow puffa on the bus

But goodness  needs the grace of Him above
And cannot be achieved alone by will
I stand out like an eagle would with doves.

Maybe such bright clothing’s overkill
In the darkness, hold me and be still
In my yellow outfit from the bus
I ran out like a  torrent in full flood

 

 

https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-51/articles/13-ways-of-making-poetry-a-spiritual-practice/

“4. Engage with Primary Experience. Engage with direct experience through the physical senses – sight, sound, touch, and taste. Secure yourself in that. Keep coming back to that. In Buddhism this means the systematic cultivation of mindfulness. So, feel the sensations of your body as you walk to the tube, taste your tea, listen to music or birdsong. Consciously drop beneath the racket of thought – the repetitive mental chatter, the worry and flurry – into direct, unmediated sensation. Then the richness of life, rather than the hubbub of thought, will find it’s way into your poems.

 

5. Develop Imagination. Imagination is the synthesis and transcendence of reason and emotion. It develops out of our engagement with primary experience and is leached away by the alienations of distracted thought. So often we think one thing and feel another; or we don’t know what we feel; or our thoughts are really nothing but the half-baked views of the marketplace and the media. Imagination brings the whole person together – thought, feeling, volition, perception – into a single act of creation. You have to discover imagination, uncover it, find the place where the poem takes off and leaves you behind. Imagination always goes beyond you.

 

6. Beware ‘Fancy’. Coleridge contrasts imagination or the ‘imaginal faculty’ with ‘fancy’. Fancy is the same old thing – the same old you – arranged in bizarre, arbitrary combinations. Nothing genuinely new comes into being with fancy; no deeper perception has been unearthed; there has been no discovery, no realization of the thought the poem is trying to think. Fancy is characterised by ‘empty images’ and/or ‘empty thought’ – either the poet’s images have no internal necessity or purpose, or the poet’s thought has no emotional commitment or foundation in experience. Fancy can be brilliant, even virtuosic, but it is incapable of moving us. Imagination unifies reason and emotion: thought finds its place in immediately loved images, while images are underpinned by genuine thought. This unification of thought and feeling is experienced as having value – we feel that that something both meaningful and pleasurable is being communicated, and this is inherently satisfying. Fancy, on the other hand, is a kind of showing off.”