If God knows everything, why should we tell our sins to a priest?
God must be stupid if he spends all day watching me or you or anyone.I mean he watched Hitler and what good did that do?
God must be cruel otherwise he would never have created human beings who kill animals,birds.trees and each other.I mean,why?
If God know everything, we might be just a tiny part of that.We are like flies buzzing round his kitchen.One day he will buy some flyspray.
Well, not buy it!

http://www.warscapes.com/poetry/poem-history

“Brenda Marie Osbey’s long poem, “History,” from which we have published an excerpt here, comes from her recent collection History and Other Poems (Time Being Books 2012). The subject of these poems is colonialism, the slave trade, but also, the telling of history itself. We have asked Brenda Marie Osbey to discuss the relation of  poetry to  history, and to discuss the relation of history to the literary symbol, and we have transcribed this discussion below:

Noam Scheindlin: Your poems engage with a long tradition of the poet as historian.  Your poems also seem to manifest something of the impersonal thrust of history: the disembodied voices, snatches of songs, unattributed quotations could be understood to perform the way history creates subjects.  But there is of more than this: there is a counter-thrust; an opposition not just to the way things happened—but to the way-things-are-told.  How do you understand the function / phenomenon of poetry in relation to that of “history?” Can a poem be history?

Brenda Marie Osbey: There is a longer tradition of the poet-as-historian than we readily admit. Isn’t history always the way/s in which things are told, who does the telling and on what authority? Antar ibn Shaddad, the Black Raven of Saudi Arabia, wrote that three things define man: “to make love, to make war, to make verse.” Long before his 6th century epic of war and love, the Gabon Death Rite Suites and hunting poems were composed, and the Khoikhoi lyric poems on the nature of the universe, all of which tell such a great deal about ancient sub-Saharan African social and political life, religion, mythology and warfare. The teachings of Lao-Tsu come to us in verse. Much of the accepted history of Western antiquity comes to us from Homer. And, of course, the Nahuatl philosopher-poet-king and master craftsman Nezahualcoyotl recorded in poems and songs much of what we’ve come to understand about life in the pre-Columbian Americas. Indeed, much if not most of what we know (or claim to know) about the ancient worlds of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, we know through poetry anyway. What ancient societies can we claim to know that didn’t have generations of peripatetic bards carrying news and history in some combination of song, lyric and narrative poem? More recently, so much of what we’ve come to understand about the experience of the Middle Passage we know from Robert Hayden’s brilliant narrative poem of that title. In the words of the late Audre Lorde, poetry is not a luxury. Literary critic Deborah McDowell writes passionately about “the myths, the fables, the abridgements, the approximations, and the outright lies that masquerade” in the name of history. This presumed divide between history and poetry really is a relatively recent one, and one that seems to underscore the recent need to segregate intellectual and creative work into neat and exclusive categories. Hence, the notion of history as the serious business of historians and, more and more, of journalists, and of poetry as an art form concerned primarily with personal identity and craft, precious, interesting perhaps, but signifying nothing. My own practice has always been to think of poetry first, foremost and always as a way of engaging and interacting in and with the world.”

Waiting for a sign
Shall I see or hear
Where is the design?
Why do I shed tears.

How can I bear pain
Alone and paralysed
Sitting in the rain
Tears I should have cried.

Why do I hide here?
Why do I feel shame?
God I do not fear
Bless that unnamed Name.

Dissolve me into earth
Let me fertilise
Who decides our worth?
When shall love arise?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/03/first-you-write-sentence-joe-moran-review

“In the first page of this book, Joe Moran quotes Gustave Flaubert’s claim (in a letter to his lover, Louise Colet) that his mind is always “itching” with sentences. Flaubert is Moran’s natural literary authority, because for him literature was style, and style came down to the shape and wording of sentences. Later interpreters might read Madame Bovary as an anatomy of sexual hypocrisy or class conflict or the pains of bourgeois marriage, but what the novelist really cared about were its sentences – their rhythm, their wit, their beauty.

Moran shares Flaubert’s values. His book recommends the pleasures of the well-made sentence, to writers and readers. For both, the sentence is the essential unit of expression. Moran remembers the Struldbruggs, the cursed immortals in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, who as they age lose even the solace of reading, “because their Memory will not serve to carry them from the Beginning of a Sentence to the End”. A sentence is what you hold in your head, whether it be Ernest Hemingway or Marcel Proust. A sentence is where you make sense of the world.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/18/why-dont-i-have-any-friends-google-answer?CMP=twt_gu&CMP=aff_1432&awc=5795_1538653826_37f5e23f27942fe9cfee03104633dffe

“Or, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth put it more succinctly: “If you can’t find anything good to say about anyone, come sit next to me.””

“Lack of friends can be a result of reading signals incorrectly. Many people think other people don’t like them, so they don’t like them in return and thus it goes on and on and before you know it, you hate that person, before you’ve even spoken to them. What I’m about to say sounds tremendously trite, like something you’d find printed on a tea towel in a seaside shop selling awful scented candles, but smiling at someone can be the first step to friendship. It can make someone warm to you, make them like you, because they think you like them.

Friendship favours the brave. Those who aren’t afraid to smile or put a hand out first.”

I’m far too old to write a villanelle
A sonnet or a roundeau or  free verse
Besides I know my poetry won’t sell

I have my life  and living now to tell
But maybe you would like it better terse
I’m far too kind to write a villanelle

I  need another life time just to mull.
How I can avoid the writers’ curse?
I suspect  my  sonnets just won’t sell

Is the mind complete, might it be full?
I’d hate to have to write when in my hearse
I’m far too daft to write a villanelle

Get the knitting needles and some wool
I feel as if my brain is going to burst
Writing   sonnets  when they never sell

Yet writing of all options is least worst
Acting like a midwife or a nurse.
Am I too grey to write a villanelle?
Can I be sure my poetry will not sell?

1.

Soup of the fray
Jellied heels
Vice on toast
Roman numerals in ice
Mixed  leftover vegetables with  free green mould

2.
Grass green chicken with chips and baked cream
Beef in butter with red eyed bean  in potatoes
Curried toad  with pasta and  wholemeal bread
Macaroni , fleas and sauce with home made dread.

3.
Diabetic ice cream and insulin
Gooseberry tarts with insulted maidens
Custard creams with  vengeance of fruit over-ripe  but not rusty
Very rude blue cheese and no biscuits either
And  finally

make your own pudding from anything in the fridge,except sausages [raw]

“Those sentimental radio hits, with their artificial naivete and empty crudities, are the pitiful remains and the maximum that people will tolerate by way of mental effort; it’s a ghastly desolation and impoverishmment. By contrast, we can be very glad when something affects us deeply, and regard the accompanying pains as an enrichment.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

https://thinkwritten.com/poetry-prompts/

My ideas

How language can never fully describe the world

The

Here are a few from the link

1.The Untouchable: Something that will always be out of reach

2. 7 Days, 7 Lines: Write a poem where each line/sentence is about each day of last week

3. Grandma’s Kitchen: Focus on a single memory, or describe what you might imagine the typical grandmother’s kitchen to be like

4. Taste the Rainbow: What does your favorite color taste like?

5. Misfits: How it feels when you don’t belong in a group of others.

6. Stranger Conversations: Start the first line of your poem with a word or phrase from a recent passing conversation between you and someone you don’t know.

https://www.bartleby.com/360/1/185.html

Deferential, I
Eternity await
Submit to your  grace
In my patient state.

 

None but God can judge;
None have his pure gaze.
Write me not your wish.
Tempt me not with praise.

 

Timeless as the  heavens
Eternity is now
Mindful of this lesson
Grace will show me how

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/07/cerys-matthews-poetry-and-music-closely-think

“The Welsh word “cerdd” can be translated as either “verse” or “music”. It covers both meanings, because, as we know from history, when the great bards were performing their poetry it would be accompanied by music. The two were always intertwined and music, poetry, spoken word and performance have been a part of our society for centuries. The festivals called “eisteddfod” combine literature, music and poetry. These cultural competitions were not just for the rich or educated, but were held in pubs and other meeting places and brought everyone together. They are part of an oral tradition entrenched in Welsh society as it is in many other cultures, as diverse as the Somali tradition of oral storytelling or praise poetry in India and Pakistan.”

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Mary was making her supper.She put a pan of chickpea dahl onto the stove
 Fortunately the heat was low
Emile decided he must watch the pan as Mary had burned eight in the last three years
He wondered what  to do if it  began to smell odd.
I suppose I could bite Mary’s  ankle ,he thought.But she might kick me.He decided to ring 999
Hello, my mother has set  a pan on fire and I have burned my  foot.Can you send Dave please.
You have a strange accent.Where are you from?
I’m Albanian ,he boasted
So is your mother Albanian?
No, it was my father and we don’t  know his name.
Well, it sounds suspicious.Are you an illegal immigrant?
No,it was all legal.Except they weren’t married and as mother is English I believe I have the right to stay
Oh,I wouldn’t be too sure of that.When Jesus  applied for asylum they sent him straight back.
Where to?
Wherever his father lived.
So that’s why we never saw him again!
I can’t keep talking like this.I’ll send an ambulance.
OK, said Emile.
Dave the paramedic ran in wearing a trench coat and trainers.
What’s happened?
Mary has left this pan on.She’s writing again
Well, it seems she has also left some bacon cooking.Good thing she has you , Emile.
Mary walked in
What’s happened?
They are threatening to deport me to Albania,Emile purred.I told them my father was from there.
Well, it is possible,Mary agreed.But  they can’t prove it
Let’s hope Emile is not made to wear a yellow star on his collar and sweep the main road with a toothbrush. said Dave.
It would take a very long time unless all the cats in Knittingham were sent there as well.
Why doesn’t the Council buy a vacuum cleaner,asked Emile?
That is the least of our troubles, muttered Dave.
And so say all of us

The shift to Autumn comes as a surprise
Summer was extreme  yet it has died
The intense sun, the air on naked flesh
The sweat and strain, the heat, the thirstiness
As in the meadows we were walking by
Forgotten were the worries of past days.
We had knelt and wept and wished to pray
Words came very hard and with delay
Or suddenly like hailstones in a rush
A strange Autumn

We do not want revealed the  unknown way
We wish to be the same and life to stay
Yet like blood, the sudden tears will gush
As if the poison of the grief will flush
And we the final bill must surely pay
In Autumn

we

“A statistician is someone who is good with numbers but lacks the personality to be an accountant.”

Speaking as an ex-lecturer in maths and statistics, how can I prove this is wrong?
By collecting data?

To be uncertain.live in mist and fog
To tense the eye and feel the mind’s  a bog
To hope but not to know what it’s for
To be afraid of who comes to the door
As  if the visitor may be a dog
Fierce  yet irritated by  a frog

Who owns this machine, am I a cog?
Or am I lonely, mentally unfed?
Friendship is not purchased from  a store
We feel uncertain

Life is easier, teachers do not flog
Criminals not hung   nor  flung in mud
Yet of all  the world’s ills we are made aware
As at our little screens we  fearful stare 
Seeing refugees and  children dead
Calm is uncertain.

What time is it, the old man said to me.
Time for conversation with no fee
We have to pay the therapist to hear
Why we feel we need to live in fear

Lurching yet graceful ,the old black cat sets off.
Slowly he circles the edges of the garden in joy.
In the car ,though still in a shut basket,
He always knew when we came to the turning of the road.
Was it the cherry trees in blossom,a scent
Or something we could never be aware of?
I would open his basket in the car.
He comes out and descends so carefully
Onto the pavement,then tries to bound up the path,
The long wooded back garden is his total joy.
He would sit watching tiny frogs in a deep pond in the sun.
No doubt he longed to catch one.
He once brought a robin indoors,
The bird was completely unharmed.
Must have been his gift to me
We released it later after its shock had worn off.
Now he can only hobble,
And soon, his thinness warns me, he'll be gone.
No cat has ever loved or will love like this cat,
A rescued, terrified animal.
His eyes say everything to me.
I look into their clear-jewelled greenness
I look into a deep,still glowing sea of light.
The last day,finally, all day,he's on my knee.
I say"goodbye,goodbye,Pussy".
And he's gone,just before tea.
Now the garden seems empty.
Love leaves a gap.
Love leaves us bare
Love leaves us stripped.
Yet Love is eternal grace.
A mystery of faith.
I believe.
Believe.
Be.

https://thescribeunbound.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/that-chaunge-sank-into-myne-herte-roote-depression-and-medieval-literature/

Extract:

“Thomas Hoccleve wrote his Complaint [to a friend] in around 1420. That’s nearly five hundred and ninety four years ago. Yet, we read with empathy as he struggles with feelings of listlessness as the summer turns into winter. The Complaint‘s Prologue opens as follows:

After that hervest Inned had his sheves,
and that the broune season of myhelmess
was come and gan the trees robbe of ther leves
That grene had bene and in lusty fresshness,
and them in-to colowre of yelowness
hadd dyne and doune throwne vndar foote
that chaunge sank into myne herte roote (l.1-7)

Hoccleve describes the ominous visual signs of the transition between autumn and winter as Michealmas arrives and robs the trees of their adornment. The yellow leaves that fall and are ‘throwne’ under careless feet contrast with the green, ‘lusty’, fresh, feeling of summer. The most sinking feeling comes as the change of the season sinks directly into Hoccleve’s ‘herte roote’ – the innermost depths of his heart. We know that feeling, right? That sense that the cold, dark, days are physically seeping into the depths of our souls?

Hoccleve continues:

…and in the end of novembar, vpon a nyght,
syghenge sore as I in my bed lay
for this and othar thowghts which many a day
before I toke sleape cam none in myne eye
so vexyd me the thowghtfull maladye. (l. 17-21)

It’s the end of November, as it is today, 593 years later. Hoccleve is lying in his bed, sighing from the bottom of his heart, thinking over the thoughts that are bringing him down. These vexful contemplations drag him so low that no sleep will come. He lies awake, in turning sleeplessly in ‘thowghtfull maladye’. The very process of thinking is a disease to Hoccleve – his invasive thoughts afflict him like a physical malady.

Read it all.Click the link

I was tailing a pest again.Join the police and  get paid for stalking.

He said he was going birdwatching in Snowdonia.I didn’t know eagles bit men.

I unrolled a stone of Andrex
Then I suffocated but got the kiss of life.
From a policeman.He is now my husband

Never be tasty if you are near a lake.Mosquitos will wallow on you.

We had real toad in the hole in France.No wonder toads are always hiding

Can you drive men mad? No,I can talk them out of it.Besides I have no licence.

Do you need a licence to kill? To kill whom, Boris Nonsense?

Feel free to do whatever you like.
Alright, but I think I’ll go into the bathroom.
Why?
I want to  put some antiperspirant on.
But why?
I am going to clean the entire house.
Will it matter if you sweat?
You tell me.
Well, after that you’ll have to wash your hair
Why?
To stop me making love.
That would be hard while I am washing my hair.
So, why not buy a wig?
Buy  one!
Nothing is free in life
Except life.
Women are too clean.
Women are to clean…….

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability

Extract

“And Keats touched again on the idea of the passivity, humility even, of a great writer, in a letter he wrote to his friend Richard Woodhouse on 27 October following year. The ‘poetical Character’, he maintained,

is not itself – it has no self – it is everything and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in an Iago [the villain of Shakespeare’s Othello] as an Imogen [Shakespeare’s heroine in Cymbeline]. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the camelion Poet.^[3]

The word ‘gusto’ was used by Keats’s contemporary, the essayist and critic William Hazlitt, to describe the power and passion with which an artist creates another form. ‘The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shakespeare takes from his gusto’, Hazlitt wrote in the Examiner on 26 May 1816; ‘The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on any thing as much as he might, except a quibble.’”

Perhaps instead of criticising
people
for  excessive use of smartphoness,
we should ask what kind of society we live in where people need this?
I believe people who have come to work here
from another country want to keep in touch with their families.
And to see them on Skype
In London many of us are from other parts of Britain.
When we were younger  we could dash up and down at the weekend
but now that is tough.
So we may be lonely for them,or just lonely anyway.
If people eat bad food .we can’t order them to starve instead.
What does surprise me is folk watching TV on a phone.
A TV now is  cheaper than a  phone.
[cheaper than in the past]
On a laptop,yes.
On a phone,why bother?
However for people who hear voices,
the music from their phone can block them
so we must not desire to remove that aid
This shows we should be less critical if possible

Be patient, oh my heart, I cannot rush
Or that which lives in me will soon be crushed
Noone can speed constantly through life
Nor bear a load of enmity and strife
Who would see God burning in a bush
Or hear his voice or  find stillness enough?

Keep away from those with voices rough
The strong need not  behave as vile or tough
Noise may be a pestilential cry
Be patient

As our little life like candle’s snuffed
As our offering to our friend’s rebuffed
As in ruined monasteries we   cry
We seek a message from the very sky
Yet  voices we hear sound like  pigs in trough
Be patient

Poetry and psychoanalysis

“Joanne Limburg talked beautifully about how grief used to be considered merely as a process of withdrawl and detachment but that now it can be considered more as the ‘renegotiation of a relationship that is ongoing’, with writing that deals with loss part as ‘an act of symbolic reparation’. She talked of how a person may ‘remove their breathing presence’ but the mother remains their mother, the father remains their father. In loss, the deceased becomes ‘an internal object’ and a ‘legacy of complicated emotions’. Poetry is thus a process of reassembly, repair, reparation, through which the poet reassembles the deceased, thought by thought, and by incorporating the many fragments of real experience (with them). Nonetheless, she questioned the ethics of producing ‘capital’ (poetry) from loss and considered how, in guilt, we might seek to hold onto pain, as if keeping the pain of loss is a way of keeping a person inside you forever.”