With pity, we see ancient tribes dispersed
As if the origin of man, itself, was cursed
They  lived this way   three thousand years
Their tents black specks show all a desert’s thirst
They, elemental, did not need a pass
Before history they were here ,were first
With pity

Bedouins without  camels  moved to town
They will adapt or die, did Darwin mouth?
Their land is to be a military zone
Human folly   outlasts Emperors’ crowns
In the desert see those whitened bones
With pity

Against  sadness:no-one here must weep
Nor lounge  about in melancholy deep
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit  his muse,
For  even masterpieces  ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair  but not his views
Nor his  mind where technique made strange leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news,
Against sadness.

Happiness  or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News preys on our minds
Yet some are  cold  towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone  in old  face   lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men  kill thus?
In Syrian wars  the  innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the  frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We  hold our hands out, wanting to be nursed
Against sadness

I send this card to tell you,dear
I don’t love you or your sneer

This little card tells you we fear
Something went wrong on your smear

Please see your doctor very quick
This X ray looks really sick

We did your ECG today
Will you buy it on Ebay?

Hi, this is the NHS
We  are in a dreadful mess
Can you send us £20?
Then we’ll spend  it  down the town

Theresa May wants you to know
She don’t love you any more.

Boris Johnson, we hate you
You are a pain and you are through

Why  does the Tory Civil War
Ruins Britain more and more.?
Let us see another vote
Before the dust turns into motes

I send this card to give you joy
I love you, be not annoyed

Why did Henry  have six wives?
Only two got out alive

It’s lucky   we don’t chop off heads
Except the boards on those old beds.

Be filled with happiness to day
We have got your pension pay

If you have no money by
Be a witch and die by fire
Then there will not  be a Mass
St Peter is made of glass
He said God has gone for good
Knowing him,I guessed he would.

Happy Xmas   when it comes
I am going to heaven,chums

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/quantum-poetics

“Scientific Description vs. Poetic Image

The rift between scientific language — consisting of clearly defined descriptive terms — and non-scientific language — which is more ambiguous, haphazard, and often metaphorical — goes back to the very beginning of the modern scientific project. One class of Francis Bacon’s famous “idols” of the mind— the false images of reality that he believed philosophers were fixated on to the detriment of good science — is the “idols of the marketplace.” These idols are words from everyday chatter, both popular and scholarly, that sit comfortably in our vocabularies but lack unambiguous counterparts among the things in the real world, making clear reasoning impossible.

There are two kinds of word idols, Bacon explains. First, there are “names of things which do not exist … or they are names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined, and hastily and irregularly derived from realities.” Among them are: “Fortune, the Prime Mover, Planetary Orbits, Element of Fire, and like fictions which owe their origin to false and idle theories.” Second, there are words that have multiple meanings. A word of this kind — his example is “humid” — is “nothing else than a mark loosely and confusedly applied to denote a variety of actions which will not bear to be reduced to any constant meaning.”

In Bacon’s new science, words of both kinds are to be shunned, and so part of science is the need continuously to cleanse language of its imprecise and misleading words or meanings, and to find more fitting ones, because purification of language, and thus of thinking, is necessary for apprehending the world truly. But this way of putting it makes clear the value judgment against non-scientific, popular, or more poetic ways of speaking. They can soil scientific discourse, and as the gap between scientific and non-scientific language — and the according need for translation — grows, so grows the importance for translators to stay clear of imprecise words or to offer precise definitions when needed.

Underlying Bacon’s call for a scientifically strict language, and his judgment against words of the “marketplace,” seems to be a larger point about how language changes over time as our scientific knowledge increases. In his 1609 work Wisdom of the Ancients — a retelling of classic fables with fresh interpretations — Bacon explains that parables and metaphors are useful for teaching people difficult concepts, which is why, in the ancient days of greater ignorance, so many fables were written. As popular (“vulgar”) knowledge grows, metaphors give way to scientific arguments. Even so, the poets and storytellers remain useful for introducing arcane scientific insights, which then over time can again be rendered in the language of science. exceedingly useful, and sometimes necessary in the sciences, as it opens an easy and familiar passage to the human understanding, in all new discoveries that are abstruse and out of the road of vulgar opinions. Hence, in the first ages, when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common were new and little known, all things abounded with fables, parables, similes, comparisons, and allusions, which were not intended to conceal, but to inform and teach…. For as hieroglyphics were in use before writing, so were parables in use before arguments. And even to this day, if any man would let new light in upon the human understanding,… he must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method of allegory, metaphor, and allusion.”

Reason  and rhetoric convince
Those who from knowledge have winced
But ignore the archaic
Be more prosaic
With fortitude, you will not flinch

Prudence and patience will gain
Much that when young we disdain
Courage and timing
A pinch of good rhyming
Life is a wonderful game.

Temper the iron till it glows
Till the heart is as strong as what grows
Do not work in haste
Think of good taste
Feeling aright is what shows

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/nov/29/nick-laird-poetry-religion

Extract

“Though an atheist – in that I believe we’re here only by happy accident – my sensibility is religious. I like ritual and heightened states. I like mind-altering drugs. I believe in invisible forces – radioactivity, magnetism, sound waves – and I’m more than willing to sit for an hour listening to a church organist practice, which I did just last week. And I’ll let myself shiver along with the immense chord changes. I don’t like faith but I’m fond of its trappings- the kitschy icons, the candles, the paintings, the architecture and, especially, the poetry. Though many great religious figures, from Augustine to Screwtape, have taken prose as their instrument for confessing or cajoling, when it comes to praise, poetry’s the usual choice. I’ve been reading Robert Alter’s magnificent new translations of The Book of Psalms, and “My heart is astir with a goodly word”.”

He felt he deserved love from me
How deluded  can anyone be?
He stole my best titles
Claiming  them vital
For maintaining a good boundary

So now he is called Lady Muck
And down in the bog he is stuck
If he says he’s sorry
There’ll be no more worry
Just the more normal type of bad luck

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-cardinal-virtues-542142

Prudence: The First Cardinal Virtue

St. Thomas Aquinas ranked prudence as the first cardinal virtue because it is concerned with the intellect. Aristotle defined prudence as recta ratio agibilium, “right reason applied to practice.” It is the virtue that allows us to judge correctly what is right and what is wrong in any given situation. When we mistake the evil for the good, we are not exercising prudence—in fact, we are showing our lack of it.

Because it is so easy to fall into error, prudence requires us to seek the counsel of others, particularly those we know to be sound judges of morality. Disregarding the advice or warnings of others whose judgment does not coincide with ours is a sign of imprudence. More » “

https://aeon.co/essays/can-meditation-really-make-the-world-a-better-place?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cf699a6448-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_08_11_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-cf699a6448-70520193

“The utilisation of meditation techniques by large corporations such as Google or Nike has created growing tensions within the wider community of individuals who practise and endorse its benefits. Those of a more traditional bent argue that meditation without the ethical teachings can lead into the wrong kind of meditation (such as the sniper who steadies the killing shot, or the compliant worker who submits to an unhealthy work environment). But what if meditation doesn’t work for you? Or worse, what if it makes you feel depressed, anxious or psychotic? The evidence for such symptoms is predictably scarce in recent literature, but reports from the 1960s and ’70s warn of the dark side of transcendental meditation. There is a danger that those few cases that receive psychiatric attention are discounted by psychologists as having had a predisposition to mental illness.

See The Buddha Pill “

The sky is overcast by dull,grey clouds
The burning sun  no longer burns so bright
Heavy with humididy the air
Reaches where it should not be allowed

Artists love the brilliance of the light
They mix their colours with much patient care
Oil or  pastel, watercolour, ink
Imagination brings their image to our sight
With their talent, with all that is fair
We can but stare.

Pray Father, give me confession
No, it’s  for you to confess to me
Oh,yes, so it is
What have you done or failed to do?
That will take a long time to say
Can’t you do a precis?
Stop showing off your French
I thought it was Latin
Look  why are you so argumentative
No, it’s you.
Now, Father, can I begin?
You already have not just confessed but demonstrated  your main sin
Well, only God knows if I did it with full intention
I see.But if you kill a  man you will  go to prison anyway
Who went to  prison when Jesus was killed?
They didn’t have the system we have.They labelled him a criminal
It’s all  perspective I guess.
Is Donald Trump a criminal?
Well, he’s never been tried
He’s tried others
It is more cunning than crime.Even cunning is too kind
So what word means that but is less kind?
Evil?
Possessed by  Satan
Hang on a bit! How about Hitler?
It’s all  about chance and opportunity
But Trump is not as bad as Hitler
True, but would he be if he could
I thought this was a confessional
I know, we can both repent and then both bless each other and for our penance we will give a  donation to the Red Cross
I see Confession is now mutual
I like it!
Me too!

The Most Misread Poem in America

By Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

• The leaves are waving in the breeze;
  The blackbird sings on high.
  The sun shines through mysterious clouds,
  A skein of geese flies by.

  The daylight hours are longer now,
  The high point of the year.
  The sparrows chirrup in the holly;
  Rejoice,now our summer’s here.

  More blossom than we’ve seen before
  Hangs heavy from each shrub.
  Summer air is filled with perfume.
  In this is  time of love.

  Ripeness we shall see in autumn,
  But taste the summer day.
  Replete with sun and air and fragrance,
  Thank you, we will say

Art by Katherine

https://aeon.co/essays/the-roots-of-writing-lie-in-hopes-and-dreams-not-in-accounting

“In each of the four sites of the independent invention of writing, there’s either no evidence one way or the other, or there’s evidence that a proto-writing pre-dated the administrative needs of the state. Even in Mesopotamia, a phonetic cuneiform script was used for a few hundred years for accounting before writing was used for overtly political purposes. As far as the reductive argument that accountants invented writing in Mesopotamia, it’s true that writing came from counting, but temple priests get the credit more than accountants do. ‘Priests invented writing’ is a reduction I can live with – it posits writing as a tool for contacting the supernatural realm, recording the movement of spirits, inspecting the inscrutable wishes of divinities.”

https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/046.htm

Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
with a second person pronoun named Phil,
and when she walks into the room,
everybody turns:

some kind of light is coming from her head.
Even the geraniums look curious,
and the bees, if they were here, would buzz
suspiciously around her hair, looking
for the door in her corona.
We're all attracted to the perfume
of fermenting joy,

we've all tried to start a fire,
and one day maybe it will blaze up on its own.
In the meantime, she is the one today among us
most able to bear the idea of her own beauty,
and when we see it, what we do is natural:
we take our burned hands
out of our pockets,
and clap.

“Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” ~Anonymous

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/easing-the-effects-of-humidity-on-joint-pain_us_57c85488e4b06c750dd8f68c

“When there is already a high level of moisture in the air, it is difficult for the air to absorb the moisture from our skin. This can eventually lead to a loss of body fluid and dehydration. Joint cartilage and the discs in our spine have high water content, and dehydration can decrease the concentration of fluid, agitating any arthritis that may be present. Dehydration in the heat can also cause more serious conditions like heat exhaustion and heatstroke.”

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/tetchy

To write a poem I dream an undreamed dream
The woods in France deformed by dead young men
A nightmare complex in its perplexed themes

In our dream the narrative has means
To make those killed communicate again
To write a poem I dream an undreamed dream

Later, in another war, trains steamed
To take the “insect” Jew, no longer “man.”
A nightmare simple in its evil themes

The little pearls we half see, as we scheme
The evasions we ignored but which remained.
We read a poem, we dream an undreamed dream

Who we are and who we might have been
At 4 am in isolated pain
The Nightmare Complex, come to share your screams

Can any see the woods as Dante aimed
To recreate the moment where we change?
To write a poem embodies soldiers’ dreams
Nightmares dark yet piercing wartime themes

Mike Flemming

Doctor,I went to the sorting office
Are you a parcel
Sort of.

Doctor,I went to the Synagogue
D¨ýou?
No,I’m a Samaritan.

Doctor, I like Cheesecake
Thatś not a disease
But it might cause  one

Doctor,I am a genius
Who told you?
Why,did you know  already?

Doctor,I have no man to love
Be  less choosy
Alright,I shall love a woman
Who?
Give me a chance!

Doctor,people never phone me
Where is your phone?
I don’t have one.
Well, there’s the answer.
An ansafone?

Doctor, shall I go out?
Yes, go now!

Doctor, are you married?
I think so.
You dress so well,I think you must be
Yes,I accept that argument.
Surely it’s easier  and wiser to go home and look round  rather than use reason
Good thinking!

Doctor, I love maps
Why tell me?
Because I have had a heart attack so I have printed out the route to A and E
Surely  the paramedics would know
I don’t trust them.
Suppose you have one when you are out of the house
I  shall have to use more GNT.
Don’t blow up a shop.
Alright,I’ll go into  cafe first.
But how can you walk with a heart attack?
Unless I am dead I can still walk albeit slowly
Wow, what a vocabulary you have
I did spend 3 years in Cambridge
Doing what?
Listening.
Are you a spy?
Not now.
Can you prove it?
It’s not like proving pi is transcendental
You’ve lost me.
Well  how about  natural logarithms?
Please stop.
But you could learn.
I  am a doctor
Just of medicine?
Just?
Seems plain to me
Now knitting, that is fun!

The gravity of loss brought me to earth
Beneath the rotting leaves, I lay with worms.
I wondered if I were of any worth

No more to be enchanted by love’s mirth,
I  with unnamed particles was turned.
The weight of loss bears down the heart to earth.

I could not rise alone but saw a path
While I slept  new unity had formed
I learned I need not think of what I’m worth

My sorrow brought no guilt nor fear of wrath
I am both  eagle and  a twisted worm
In my little grave, I  loved the earth.

Like the adder, shocked into rebirth.
I from silent underworld had learned
Not to judge my soul to be of worth.

I shall not  fear the flames of hell that burn
When blackness is accepted, may one learn?
The weight of loss breaks down the soul to earth
With dusty shredded leaves, we then converse

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/meditation-is-touted-as-a-cure-for-mental-instability-but-can-it-actually-be-bad-for-you-10268291.html

Extract

“I looked further into the literature. In 1992, David Shapiro, a professor at UCLA Irvine, published an article about the effects of meditation retreats. After examining 27 people with different levels of meditation experience, he found 63 per cent of them had suffered at least one negative effect and seven per cent profoundly adverse effects.

The negative effects included anxiety, panic, depression, pain, confusion and disorientation. But perhaps only the least experienced felt them – and might several days of meditation not overwhelm those who were relatively new to the practice? The answer was no. When Shapiro divided the larger group into those with lesser and greater experience, there were no differences: all had an equal number of adverse experiences. And an earlier study had arrived at a similar, but even more surprising conclusion: those with more experience also had considerably more adverse effects than the beginners.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/74593/in-good-form

“A well-turned line, a sparkling rhyme: craft is essential to the art of poetry, writes Poetry editor Christian Wiman in the October 2012 issue. He explains:

Why do you think craft matters? Do well-crafted poems hit you harder and remain with you longer, as Wiman suggests? Why might poems devoid of craft seem disrespectful—perhaps because they demand our time without rewarding us with pleasure, insight, or staying power?

The most recent issue of Poetry provides plenty of fodder for such questions. It offers several poems in received forms, such as Joshua Mehigan’s sonnet “The Professor” and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan’s villanelle “September 2011.” And it features invented forms as well. Take Marie Ponsot’s “Private and Profane,” reprinted from a 1957 issue:”

Doctor,I feel terrible
You look terrible as well

Doctor I feel grey
Do you mean gay?
No,but if it helps I’ll be anything merry,blithe or gay

Doctor I am grieving
Well,you look charming
So you like crying women?
Not  usually but I’ll make an exception for you
Will it comfort me?
No,but I’ll send you a teddy bear
I want something alive
How about a flea in your ear?
Are you really a doctor?
Yes, but in relativity theory.
So why do you practise?
My bad handwriting got me the job. MADPHIL  written with   a stick
So you are a psychiatrist?
No,I’m just mad,Phil
Be patient.All will pass
That’s what happened in the exams.They added 30 to all our marks so I got a first having scraped 41/100
So that’s why Britain is going down hill,Phil
If you knew more you’d go mad.
I’m mad already.
Are there degrees?
I’m sure there must be…. like Hell

Do you see me with a white stick pass
Are you looking inside your dumb head?
My lover  loves me more without the glass
Everyone is blind when they’re in bed

I’ve loved  so many people I lost  track
Most of them were what are called “ill bred”
I prefer the ones with wit and humour cracked
Yet everyone is blind when they’re in bed

On my  shut eyelids I see sharks blue
I’m glad I no longer see bright ,vicious red
I won’t ask you name your favourite hue
Everyone is blind when they’re in bed

Is it worse to be a fool or toy?
Come,my lady, were you never coy?

I thought I’d learn some Japanese,today
I’d write with different letters in my hands
Better then to capture moths and ghosts
Bits of life that fly past my own eyes

Moving places,moving plans  then gone
Another island where strange humans dwell
Yet subtly different like a Plath  and Hughes
The genius of this place is  wide and shrewd

But Japanese is tortuous and inturned
No immigrant is citizen at all
Would not learning Russian add more play?
Tolstoy still waiting  here unread

The language  will construct the world out there
Inner tyres are tubes and filled with air.

“We are continuing to receive reports of people having barbecues in the #winterhill area! This photo was taken last night when we discovered a family having a BBQ near to Rivington Barn.

We are satisfied there was no malice on this occasion and the family appeared completely unaware of the major incident ongoing above them! This could have had huge consequences! ”

As below.Could some family have a BBQ and not look up the hill? I suppose it may be like Repression……… that we can ignore or hide certain things even what is right in fronrt os us and might kill us /animals etc