No-one ever told me grief was fear
Or did they speak but I refused to hear?
Like cancer, blindness,  suicide and hate
The words  describe the folk of foreign states.

Vigilant and wary as we weep
We feel the loss of God and then our sleep
The world  no longer has a solid  floor
The foot is hesitant, the head is more.

The rudeness of  old friends can hurt like knives
They rush to tell you, you are no-one’s wife.
Though we know we  must meet God alone
The status of our soul is overthrown.

And yet we  see new visions and new ways
Lying with the worms , as beetles gaze

https://youtu.be/BmPUu-rMpWA

The  tempest  loud is blowing
Soon it will be snowing
The birthday cards are late
One  my lover ate
We need some postal order in this land
The government is lacking
The thin ice it´s  a cracking
Amber Rudd is   weeping
The harvest  she is reaping
I have my own camcorder in my hand
They say the weather´ś odder
We are the  old gods fodder
Flu is running rings
The fat lady has rung
We need a wall and border  by the band

The  good thing is that a child of immigrants from Pakistan  is Home Secretary.Apart from that the actions of ~Amber  Rudd and T.May are despicable.
And in May the Royal Family will welcome a  mixed race wife for Prince Harry.After his wild youth he now seems to have a capacity for  helping others  in particular by revealing his own mental suffering when Diana died and after.Whether you think we should have Royals or not,I am looking forward to the drama and  pleasure of good news

As teeth have roots  I wish  most they  had flowers
And leaves of  green and little humming bees
I’d sit and see your smile for  hours and hours

Sharp teeth made for biting and for chewing
Predators  are made to kill,not please
As teeth have roots I want them to have flowers

Which is stronger,love or  total power?
A few men enforce sex like they’re diseased
I’d love to see you smile for  hours and hours

Remember  how in Auschwitz they had showers
Poisoned so  no biting to displease
As  Jews  walked to  grim death ,they had no flowers

As they walked they prayed, their Faith endured
The mystery like to Job’s will never cease
The queue went on  for   more than days or hours

 

The God that made the tiger and the bees
The God  who sent his Son to bring us peace
The God who made  the wild flower and newt
Oh God , you suffered under Hitler’s  boot

 

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/gentle-self/2016/01/donald-trumps-unenlightened-embrace-of-anger-or-how-to-deal-with-rage-productively/

 

“So rather than helping us to accept the losses we have to endure, and find solutions to the problems that really can be fixed, our presidential candidates – first and foremost Donald Trump – choose to keep us stuck in a spiral of hatred, blame and anger.

It is the most unenlightened way to deal – or rather not deal with the challenges we are facing.

Of course, there is also righteous anger. When injustice is being done, and all reasoning falls on deaf ears. Righteous anger has a place in the public discourse in order to draw attention to what is wrong. Once attention is gained, the only way forward is to let go of destructive emotions and come up with solutions.

We have yet to reach this point.”

 

Roasted Rudd with Earl Grey Flea and cabbage  [Amber Rudd]

Eggs in May on hay. With bread,butter and pot of tea.

Hot brains with a bed  of mashed cantatas

Pig’s tongue with raspberry horse { Sorry I’m a  Viking]

Curried legs with free hot Boris steamed and battered.

Pudding

Yoghurt with real glace cherries
Real maple syrup inside a baked nipple
Real milk pudding with real sugar.And Cream
Sherry rifle
Bed and buttered hugging.

Watercolour by Katherine.What a shock of shades and hues,
Can I pay with money?
Acrimony?

How much to Wexford?
It’s in the EU now.
So?
You need a Visa.

How much does it cost to Bath on the train?”
“If you can get your feet in the sink, then it’s free.”

How much to Manchester?
They have enough men already

Can I keep  my coffin on the train?
Not if you are dead.

Can I bury St Edmund?
At the station?

If you keep yawning, a fly might get into Yarmouth
Don’t worry there are plenty of flies there already.~

I hear of King’s Lynn a lot.
Those gossips are everywhere.

How about Hunstanton?
Sorry,I don’t like Huns.

How much to Bury?
Where exactly?

s

 

 

The virtuous flower lives out its right design
It  envies none and does not wish for  more
Is faithful to its truth and love combined

 

No human sees its heart or draws the lines
Of grace and beauty, honour at its core
The virtuous flower lives out its right design

To its end, it’s patiently resigned
Fertilised by bees  with their taut care
Is faithful to its truth and love combined

But how should we live with our human signs
The ruminating thought, the anguish bare?
The virtuous flower lives out its true design

Jesus praised the lilies living wild
We must strip ourselves of heavy ware
Be faithful to our truth, our love refine.

Do not fear the tiger,loss ignore
Live   most fully till you are no more
The virtuous man lives out his right design
Is faithful to his truth, the world,his mind.

 

The barren fig tree,God has struck and killed
For procreation is his holy will
Those who fail will suffer all the more
When at the gate of heaven he slams the door.
While those with offspring  grow and pay no bill
Barren woman stand beside the till
Or see their innards ground up in the mill
God has struck
Yet is God cruel like Nature and its drill?
The predator  can prey  and eat his fill
The facts, so ominous, we may ignore
Yet  in a holy book, there is our score
Far away, too far is that green hill
God has struck.

Cats in Blythburgh,Suffolk 1995 by Katherine

Would you think having to take a  lot of medication would  be a big weight on your mind? I mean huge
I used to do,but now I have found by studying the literature that nearly everything I take can be taken at night,including mini aspirins and thyroxine. And for some reason I feel better when I wake up and only have to take one pill.
Some acquaintances grumble they have to take one pill a day.
Some moan about having to wear glasses.
I’d wear jugs if I could see a bit better.Even if I had a white stick I’d probably sit down for coffee next to someone who was moaning about  needing reading glasses
.Most people don’t seem to  pay attention  to the person they are talking to
The strange thing about losing a lot of vision is that it seems like a  mini version of dying.Because seeing is part of the identity  of most of us.Alas some are born with poor  or no vision.
When you can’t see  well it feels you have lost your actual self.You start to put your hands out to feel your way.You can’t  judge the depth of steps so you can’t walk naturally,you need a stick to measure and then care to put  your foot in the right place.
Your house has stuff on the floor because you walk into the coffee table or the desk and knock things off so much.
Yet, disorder  is the source of creativity but it might not be the sort you want ——-like having wild animals moving into the extension,trees growing in the corner of the room and blackberry bushes in the kitchen. Willow trees by the bed where I keep losing aspirins.That is Nature

So who needs a boyfriend?
Well, if they like picking up paper off the floor or  hoovering the corners of the rooms take them  in and love them.Because everyone is blind in bed.

 

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/nlp/2013/12/sibling-rivalry/

 

“Researchers involved in the study have found that sibling rivalry is often filled with psychological and physical aggression, which can traumatize children, leading to higher instances of depression, anxiety, and anger later in life.

In fact, sibling aggression may be more damaging than bullying.

The study was commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

During the study, researchers found that 32 percent of the children who were surveyed suffered aggressive behavior from siblings that caused them distress and anxiety. According to the lead author of the study, Corinna Jenkins Tucker, this should be treated just as seriously as peer bullying.

According to clinical psychologist Dr. John Caffaro, sibling violence is the most common form of family violence, occurring far more frequently than parental or spousal abuse.

Some studies have estimated that nearly half of all children with siblings have suffered physical violence such as bites, kicks, and punches, while nearly 15 percent of those have been attacked repeatedly.

Even severe incidents are rarely reported because families dismiss them as horseplay.”

How about a broken finger?

Copyright P. Limbrey

I would be terrified but it must have been a thrill

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/what-is-the-best-poem-about-the-british-countryside-2066110.html

“I have to declare an interest and say that my favourite poem about the British countryside, “Adlestrop” by Edward Thomas, lies outside the shortlist and the anthology; but what we present here, and what is in the book, show a wide range of styles from the classical formality of Alexander Pope to the sprung rhythm of Gerald Manley Hopkins, all of which essentially propose the same thing: that the natural world and rural life in Britain have a special claim upon our souls.

The Quiet Life

Happy the man whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breath his native air
In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mixt; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.”

 

 

Whitby by Katherine

 Ruddy bell
Grubby dell
Flooded cell
Ducks cough
Rocks laugh
Luck enough
Pluck wrath
Muck rough
Mocked fluff
Suck off
Sick laugh
Quick enough
Wack stuff
Black stuff
Flecked cuff
Oh,ram it all.I’m going to the gods
You are a shallow pool.
I say, are you wavy?
I’m disused today

I’ve been trying to drop a hint  all day.Will I ever learn?
She hinted  so much, she told the old story
He kept nudging me  with th gun in his pocket
He winked before he died ;he had seen God,he  looked funny.
Hints mean different things to different vultures
I believe in being straight forward: Ducks cough
He vaguely  hinted at  marriage until I asked him what axioms he was deriving his notions from.Then he ran off with a nurse from China.Do you blame him? I don’t  as I find myself really irritating.
I did get married, mainly out of politeness\
He was very good at Chess.He even managed to teach me.I hate games
I think drafts is too easy, that sounds wrong.
Snakes and ladders, oh,my bladder

He dropped a clanger as he met the guests
He said he hated talking with no aim
Alas, he is the  local village  pest

His wife was in the oven,taking rest
Do not think that woman is to blame
He dropped a clanger as he met the guests

His wife rubbed oil of olbas on her chest
It’s not a perfume  but some men like to play
Married to  the erudite, God bless

 

Their son let off three bangers  he had kept
Then  a Catherine wheel   whirled with  no shame
Dad  felt his old anger at the guests

He built a false self  which was so adept
He won a prize for coolness and disdain
Before he was the  famous village  pest

He had voted that  the guests should all  remain
They could never leave nor give him pain
He dropped a clanger from  his mind distressed
He said, good grief, I ‘ll sue you,I’m harassed

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/serious-art-thats-funny-humor-poetry

“Why is John Ashbery considered a serious poet? His poems are often ridiculously funny and campy satires of all we hold sacred. Yet Helen Vendler says “in short, he comes from Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Stevens, Eliot; his poems are about love, or time, or age.” And Harold Bloom claims that “Ashbery has been misunderstood because of his association with the ‘New York School’ of Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara and other comedians of the spirit.” There’s a suspicious double standard applied to certain humorous poets who have, for mysterious reasons, been welcomed into or excluded from the canon of serious art. Ashbery’s critics obviously find his idea of funny funnier than Frank O’Hara’s funny or Ron Padgett‘s really funny funny. Padgett and O’Hara have written scores of poems about “love, or time, or age,” and some of them have been funny, and some have been serious, but they are written off as “comedians of the spirit.”

Some people seem to think that writing humorous poetry is a terrible crime, like pissing on Plymouth Rock. Certainly there are lame poems out there that just tell jokes, poems that are just elongated puns or which simply fulfill a first line’s jokey promise. Criticizing these poems is easy, but it’s a slippery slope: if these poems with jokes in them are dull and unserious, then all poems with other kinds of humor must also be unserious. But there’s a kind of humor that is bigger than a giggle, bigger than a laugh. There’s a kind of humor that is as serious as the most earnest exhortation to support the troops. I’m talking about satire and irony. Satire and irony make people laugh. But they’re serious and multidimensional in a way that earnestness often just can’t be, and to discount them is to be blind to the possibility of serious art that’s funny.

Carolyn Forché, someone who has never been accused of being a funny poet, has said “irony, paradox, surrealism . . . might well be both the answer and a restatement of [Theodor] Adorno’s often quoted and difficult contention that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But what did the philosopher and critic Adorno mean by this fatuous statement? No poetry? Or just a very, very serious and earnest poetry? Because, let’s face it–earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. Often, but not always, satire does this too. But earnestness almost never does this–that’s not its job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort – cultural and aesthetic oppression. Irony and satire are such a good antidote to oppression because oppression needs to be earnest (or at least look earnest) in order to be feared by those it seeks to cow. Oppression cannot work alongside irony because it believes in its own righteousness and a monolithic concept of truth that must be asserted to the oppressed with a straight face. Irony and satire are the tools by which the oppressed get to make fun of the oppressors without the oppressors getting it.”

 

Read  more by clicking the link at the top

After so much sun, the cold returns
My feet are blue,  my nose runs like a tap
For the warmer months my dear heart yearns

I wish I had a real fire, wood to burn
A hotter kind of dog that never yaps
After joyous sun, the cold returns

Still, I  have much craft that I would learn.
A guide to navigate the poet’s map
For the warmer months my  body yearns

I wish my little cat were still  at home
To lie down side me while I take a nap
After  cheering sun, the cold returns

In the summer woods, I sing alone
I hate  my diary, calendar, all traps
For the warmth of love my  body yearns

In each  heart there is at least one crack
Where light gets in and  lights up what was black
After so much sun, the cold returns
But warmer times will come in their own time

A day as warm and bright as in the Spring
The pine cones shiver in the gentle breeze.
The trees in bud, the birds revel in song

Our memories cannot store the very thing
The air on skin, the feel of blossom trees
A day as dear with light as is the Spring

On days like this, once more we do belong
And nature will respond to make us pleased
The trees in bud, caressed with new bird song.

The sounds of earth are silenced when phones ring
Our flesh has turned to ashes long deceased
A day can take to flight as does the Spring

We are betrothed, the bridegroom’s in the wings
The new act starts, the play’s by con men seized
No consummation now, but for the winged

I wish that I had written more to please.
And yet the air is fresh and we still breathe
A day of charm may revolution bring
The trees still bud, the birds rebel in song.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/09/andrew-motion-definition-war-poetry-widen-not-just-first-world-war

 

Not just the poetry of other wars, in fact, but other kinds of war poetry. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” says the dead soldier encountered in Owen’s “Strange Meeting”: “I parried; but my hands were loath and cold”. This summarises the whole circumstance of first world war poetry: it often involved hand-to-hand fighting; it was intimate. The second world war, by contrast, was for many soldiers a more distanced affair. Keith Douglas when taking aim in his poem “How to Kill”, says: “Now in my dial of glass appears / the soldier who is going to die”. He still thinks of him as a fellow creature (the soldier “moves about in ways / his mother knows, habits of his”) but also feels a crucial separation – a gap that exists as a physical space, and proves the conflict has frozen or exterminated a part of the speaker’s own humanity.

Why not donate to McMillan Cancer Care if you are British?See more photos

http://www.redonline.co.uk/health-self/self/reading-poetry-is-good-for-you

 

“It reduces feelings of isolation and depression

As readers we take comfort in knowing we are not isolated in our struggles. Somebody has felt this way before! If you’re anxious, melancholy or grieving, the poet’s words mean that you no longer have to feel alone, and poetry can give hope for the future and even some excellent advice. Dorothy Parker’s splendid company at any time, but particularly if you’ve just been dumped.

It can boost your mood

Poetry isn’t just for leaning on during hard times. It’s a thrill to read a poem that encapsulates – more elegantly than we ever could – how it feels to be deliriously happy, or perfectly tranquil, or deeply in love. It’s one of the reasons that sharing poetry is so popular at weddings.

It can take you to the country in the heart of the city

A poem becomes an incantation to transport you from the humdrum daily world, an escape hatch from the commute, the queue and the waiting room. Choose verses about dancing daffodils, dappled things or stopping by woods on a snowy evening to provide yourself with a mental gulp of healthy fresh air, a magical five minute trip to the countryside while you pound the pavements.

It can calm you down

When I find I’m really about to lose my temper, counting to ten is good – but reciting a silly poem is better (out loud, it has the added benefit of getting the attention of tantrum-throwing children, but in your head is probably better for the platform when your train is delayed.) The poems from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland are my go-to for these times. It’s impossible to grit your teeth while mentally running through ‘You are old, Father William’s perky stanzas.

It can say what you can’t

Poems can also say something we might find difficult to, if we can’t find the words to comfort the bereaved, or are too bashful to talk about our affection. Candlestick Press (http://www.candlestickpress.co.uk) publish a range of beautiful pamphlets covering all manner of subjects from kindness and tea through friendship to cycling, which can be sent instead of a disposable greetings card and enjoyed over and over again.”

Photo by Mike Flemming

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Nature_and_Elements_of_Poetry/The_Faculty_Divine:_Passion,_Insight,_Genius,_Faith

 

“But if Milton had used the word “impassioned,” his meaning would be plainer to the vulgar Passion and Imagination.apprehension. Poetic passion is intensity of emotion. Absolute sincerity banishes artifice, ensures earnest and natural expression; then beauty comes without effort, and the imaginative note is heard. We have the increased stress of breath, the tone, and volume, that sway the listener. You cannot fire his imagination, you cannot rouse your own, in quite cold blood. Profound emotion seems, also, to find the aptest word, the strongest utterance,—not the most voluble or spasmodic,—and to be content with it. Wordsworth speaks of “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,” while Mill says that “the poetry of a poet is Feeling itself, using thought only as a means of expression.” The truth is that passion uses the imagination to supply conceptions for its language. On the other hand, the poet, imagining situations and experiences, becomes excited through dwelling on them. But whether passion or imagination be first aroused, they speed together like the wind-sired horses of Achilles.

The mere artisan in verse, however adroit, will do Emotion must be unaffected and ideal.well to keep within his liberties. Sometimes you find one affecting the impassioned tone. It is a dangerous test. His wings usually melt in the heat of the flame he would approach. Passion has a finer art than that of the æsthete with whom beauty is the sole end. Sappho illustrated this, even among the Greeks, with whom art and passion were one. Keats felt that “the excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relations with beauty and truth.” Passion rises above the sensuous, certainly above the merely sensual, or it has no staying power. I heard a wit say of a certain painting that it was “repulsive equally to the artist, the moralist, and the voluptuary.” Even in love there must be something ideal, or it is soon outlawed of art. A few of Swinburne’s early lyrics, usually classed as erotic, with all their rhythmic beauty, are not impassioned. His true genius, his sacred rage, break forth in measures burning with devotion to art, to knowledge, or to liberty. There is more real passion in one of the resonant “Songs before Sunrise” than in all the studiously erotic verse of the period, his own included.”

Mike Flemming copyright

http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/WStarling.htm

To avoid plagiarism. I shall have to use words noone has ever used before.But then nobody would understand me.
OK avoid sentences written by others…. that could be hard too

The bot was culling ,the title sucked
Malware,Macbeth,,malware
Caesar beware the tides on Mars
Who caused Sylvia?
He rewired marriage in Venice

 

How do I know if someone has written that before?