Dull grey and still,
Waiting  birds peer out
What do they expect now?
Guess it’s  their fear of cats.
It’s like night, how the sun  is flattened
By the deep grey air
And our numb faces looking up
Wondering what to think about
Or whether to think at all.
Can someone make a deal?
The national gamble
Winner loses all.

I hope I am not
Turning into a right wing
Former leftie

I will not  mention it
If I think you are stupid
When we disagree

I am happy to
Listen to your point of view
I may not agree

Seems now Brexit’s
Not  easy to implement
It’s driving us mad

And my  hands hurt more
Yet I have to wait months to
See a consultant

So the NHS
Is running poorly already
GOK what will work

The Clifton Bridge will
Get more visitors quite soon
Beachy Head as well

I refuse to  die
I will wait patiently
I might shout EFF OFF

But it’s  you as well
I am not alone,dear God
We all feel very anxious.

Photo by Mike Flemming 2019 copyright

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/26/explainer-elucidator-enchanter-great-writing/

Extract

No deodorant
Can disguise the smell of Britain
Either corrupt or starving

Where is the Simple?
I forgot to put mine on
Men will follow me

They will be angry
As I am too old to breed
They don’t know  their own motives

They just want pleasure
That’s the trick of Nature,see?
She wants more children

Oh they may burn me
If only life were simpler
Fast deodorant

Why burn women now?
It must be in  most men’s genes
Burn with lust or burn with fire

See the lambs pass by
The Shepherd  does nor burn us
Crucify him, then

Thousands of people
Wait for a deodorant
Used by a film star

It  detaches us
From Brexit hard or total
Life is about sweat

Get the sweat controlled
And you will given grace
Ascend like Jesus

The beauty is this
Sweat is  not controllable
So the search goes on

We  can’t think about
Ethics, politics, loving
They are much too hard

Some worry , dirt, dust
They clean constantly
Another endless task

If we have no time
The government will carry on
And,see, how they do!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/04/what-writers-really-do-when-they-write

“We often discuss art this way: the artist had something he “wanted to express”, and then he just, you know … expressed it. We buy into some version of the intentional fallacy: the notion that art is about having a clear-cut intention and then confidently executing same.

The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and more of a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully.”

Photo by Mike Flemming 2019 copyright

Suitable  maybe  for  a summer evening in Southport

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jan/11/how-to-wear-smart-cold

I remember walking with you on a Sunday afternoon
Stumbling on the icy path, sun set low and cool
I took so many photographs,I tried to catch the sun
It hid its orange radiance , sensed the night to come

There were shrubs on the other side which seemed to  move and sway
They kept the sun from my questing eye, as from the path I strayed
It’s only across the road from here, yet I cannot bear to go
Because  you walked  here every day and I still miss you so.

In the morning I awake,I feel so warm and snug
I drink my tea hot and plain from a gigantic mug
My mind opens and I ask whatever has happened to me
I had a husband but he has gone, wherever can he be?

It’s like a swollen wound half healed, but I feel weak inside
Who killed my soul and  broke my heart when my beloved one died?

Sailing in our vessel, on the ocean broad and wide
The leaders cannot tell us if it’s been electrified!
Some say it’s a rowing boat and others say it steams
Like a boiling kettle, dancing on sunbeams

We’ve always been agressive and  conquered half the  globe
We see the Monarchs walking in their red and golden robes
But now we have no  empire and the rich will pay no tax
Some say this is a fishing boat and other say a smack

But we need  to have companions and share our expertise
We cannot be the top dog  but some will still believe
We set off on this long journey and thought that we were fine
Till Mr Putin caught us with his secret fishing line

We won’t forgive the Germans for the Wars and all the dread
Yet  expect the Jews to  recover from the genocide, the dead
We are perfect anyway and  will not share the boat
Yet what we thought was The North Sea is just an MP’s  moat!

Is Putin fishing secretly and collecting  our refuse
Playing  little spying games and trumping up  abuse
We have not got Australia and Canada and  Goa
We kept our image far too large, hoping for much more

Ireland  reunited,Scotland splitting off
England Wales , the Falklands…  that is not enough
We’ll kill each other,  have no luck, no insulin no bread
We’ll even get too bloody weak to have our fun in bed

A civil war is dangerous, we kill our very own
And you will end up just like me, writing strange  old poems
When did we lose our eyesight, our common sense  and thought
We must have done  it here somehow  and all the world   now gloats

We are our own  worst enemy, we’re paranoid and dim
If she says it not her fault  then we all look at him

Instead of going to Confession in future I am going to write my sins on a piece of paper,put in in a bottle addressed to God,and throw it into the sea from Southend Pier as that is very long.But will I get my penance in a bottle or take to the bottle

Instead of having Extreme Unction and then dying I plan to die first and then I won’t have to speak to the priest as he does his duty.

Instead of going to Mass I am going to worship a cat that lives by the river.After all,God made it.He made me too.This is not logic

If all the Vatican was sold, would God be happy?

You know,it’s not so much that God wants us to worship him, it’s more we want to do it,even need to worship something other than possessions and worldly things.Think about it.

When we had Benediction I dared to look up to see what Fr McGrath was holding up.
It was   called a Monstrance.Quite expensive unless it was just painted gold… who would know? I rather liked bowing  down to a sort  of golden wafer,if you see what I mean.Better than to a politician.What  God thought we  don’t know.Even if he has thoughts because language post dates God by a long way.

What  do Christians do when  God is dead?
Are there  rites to  decorate the end?
Or  should we worship  Hitles’s head instead?

Are there Rights to ease the foaming Flood
Shall a storm of mud on us descend?
What  do we do when our God is dead?

The axioms of our Reason   cruelly fled
Shall we tear our  hair, our numb  hearts rend
Worship   Mussolini …… but he’s dead

Who should  replicate the heart, the head?
Who can help us, who  will soon abscond?
What  do we do when the Lord is dead?

Does it matter what  crazed stuff we’ve read
How we waste our time,  our money lend
Shall  we worship   comeliness in bed?

Sometimes lines of latitude  will bend
Sometimes humans  coldly condescend
What  do we do when our God is dead?
Worship Fascist eloquence instead?

I’ve sorted out my cables and I classified my books
Cooking them in olive oil with garlicked lemn juice
I forgot to put my  best frock on and I got dirty looks

I got washed  with all my garments when I fell in yon’ brook
I met the Vicar down the road, we’d not been introduced
I’ve aborted all my   cables and I  burned the  holy books

I went  to see the  doctor but he says I am a crook
I looked at Euclidś geometry , cor, it has been traduced
I forgot to put my  head on, so I  can´t see how you look

I went to church on Saturday,I missed Mass by a fluke
I met a very perfumed man and now  he empties my refuse
I aborted  my   neuroses and I  burned my bleeding  books

I wakened up tomorrow and we’d all been damned and nuked
So all the works of Euclid will never be  re-used
I forgot to put my brassiere on ,crumbs , how bizarre I looked

I saw a worm  crossing the road for it had been abused~
God made  them  all hermaphrodites oh, what a  cunning ruse
I’ve sorted out  the log tables, ‘ declassified my books
I forgot to clean  my   eyeglasses ,  forgive my dirty looks

http://braungardt.trialectics.com/literature/english/auden-september-1/

W H Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,”
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

From the Guardian today

Boris Johnson and Turkey: what he said

“I am very pro-Turkish, but what I certainly can’t imagine is a situation in which 77 million [his estimate] of my fellow Turks and those of Turkish origin can come here without any checks at all. That is really mad” – Daily Express, 18 April 2016

“Frankly, I don’t mind whether Turkey joins the EU, provided the UK leaves the EU” – BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 5 June 2016

“The public will draw the reasonable conclusion that the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote leave and take back control on 23 June” – letter with Michael Gove to David Cameron, 16 June 2016

“It’s government policy to accelerate Turkish accession” – BBC EU referendum debate, 21 June 2016

What Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director, said on 9 January 2017: “If Boris, Gove and Gisela [Stuart, Vote Leave’s chair] had not supported us and picked up the baseball bat marked ‘Turkey/NHS/£350m’ with five weeks to go, then 650,000 votes might have been lost.”

Bless  the continuous stutter
Of the Word being made into flesh

Leonard Cohen from  The Window

Low sun  shines
Glistening  holly leaves,ah
A wood pigeon passes

All the trees shiver
And the ends of shrubs waving
Makes me think,goodbye

Leaves like littls stars
Bare wood like burnt sienna
With its glowing orange tinge

Why are shadows long?
The sun blinds me in winter
Then it creates a  moving image

Indifferent sun
Knows not of Syrian hell
But God remembers, suffers

Criminal Jesu
God descended to this world
He dies with victims

Why the torture
Fighting inevitable~But why such sadism/

Weep as the trees  lean
Sparrows  nests shudder, remain
Life is here again

ach

The doctor was in error
Deep down the crab  was  growing
The hogweed  fertile

Yes, he was forty
Is that old  or young these days?
Yes, he has gone now

His boy is  at school
He screamed for  forty minutes
After,”Dad is dead”

Total loss, a pool
Grows larger with each tear
Stars and rainbow meet

Try to catch a tear
They are not like mercury
They can disappear.

All the tears to shed
Like an old coat we grow out of
Who will they become?

Oh,God, the birthing
A fatherless child  is near
Thanks to the deep freeze

No Sylvia Plath writes.
The spaces will not lean on
Their  new solitude.

See night descending
Tear sacs burst while new stars sing:
And all shall be well