Month: July 2019
I broke all the China,marriage free
Now we live alone we cannot sulk
We can’t glower at the door mat or the key
We can’t let out our feelings on impulse
I broke a bowl and then I broke on bulk
I broke all the China,marriage free
Those who live alone can rarely sulk
If we want more love, we can’t repulse
We affect chic ;we fix our hair with glue
We might let out some feelings on impulse
Why waste our money, are we still compelled
To wear silk stockings then catch Asian Flu?
Find a lover then you’ll find your sulks
The doctor said ” she’s dead,” I had no pulse
I heard that cat miaow ,How do you do?
Impulse hot, the virtue which propels
I paid the price and then I paid the bills
My acts as ethical as you know who
If we live alone that’s why we sulk!
I sat here with these words and tried a few
It’s like a jigsaw, not like Su Doku
When we live alone we need not sulk
We can release our feelings , mea culp
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Ariel
bhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49001/ariel
Ariel
BY SYLVIA PLATH
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else
Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
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The poet who invented Fascism
Gabriele d’Annunzio reading. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)
IT CAN BE HARD TO reconcile the incredible charisma of Hitler written about in history books with recordings of his speeches in which he looks like a madman. Some might conclude that perhaps Germans didn’t notice how off-putting he was because his style of declamation was widely used at the time and has simply fallen out of fashion.
But Hitler’s speeches weren’t normal or spontaneous. Neither were Mussolini’s. Both of them were to a large extent imitating one man: an Italian poet named Gabriele d’Annunzio, who lived between 1863 and 1938. He was a war hero and famous libertine, and he essentially invented Fascism as an art project because he felt representative democracy was bourgeois and lacked a romantic dramatic arc.
D’Annunzio was a thrill-seeking megalomaniac best described as a cross between the Marquis de Sade, Aaron Burr, Ayn Rand, and Madonna. He was wildly popular. And he wasn’t like anyone who came before him.
Read more below
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-sex-obsessed-poet-who-invented-fascism
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Malice is empowered
Now we know how fascism rose to power
The envy and the malice seek to harm
While claiming to relive our glorious hours
The poor are scorned, the single mothers cower
The Jews are blamed ,oh Magdalen, oh balm
Now we know how fascism rose to power
Even as wild roses charm the bower
We humans do not wish for a world calm
Britain had such cruel Empire’s hours
The faces of opponents mock and glower
In secrecy we keep our sulphur warm
So we feel that fascism will empower
We lit a fire that won’t die in a shower
The mountains burn, the valleys are alarmed
Britain had its Empire and its Tower
Paranoid,depressed, and narrow eyed
We recreate the worst , it’s suicide.
Is it certain fascism holds the power?
The past is gone, the future might yet flower.
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Underneath the text the patterns play
What makes us think we know the way to pray
We memorised well known and dated words
Recite this mumbo jumbo every day
Words split from the wordless in dismay
From the fracture thunderous clouds appeared
What makes us think we know the way to pray?
First who must have found the sacred way?
The rituals, compressions evoked , heard
Why mutter mumbo jumbo every day?
Underneath the text the patterns play
Till our little souls are waken, stirred
What makes us think there’s just one way to pray?
The texts were meant to indicate, not bray
May silence reach the sacredness of air
Don’t mutter mumbo jumbo every day
In the towers of gold not much is learned
Yet in the meadows, runs the joyous hare
Conceit rejects the urge to learn new prayers
Excites with mumbo jumbo , cold, theadbare
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Will we hear the waves swirl as we gasp?
We are walking like small children on the sands
Sinking very slowly as we go
Our legs get shorter as we cross the bay
As the currents of the Kent still outward flow
Now our feet and legs have disappeared
We can’t swim through sand or muddy shore
So we’re stuck , and wildly wave our hands
It’s too late to learn the seaside lore
Now it’s just our heads that stick out, breathe
We see the Langdale Pikes distinctive form
I lift up my eyes, salvation’s gone
I’m going under now, we’re all alone
We keep on walking , crazy in our trust
Will we love the waves swirl as we gasp?
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What comfort could I bring to the Unknown?
I have spent a hundred nights alone
No face to greet me when my dreams depart
No comfort from the warmness of your arm
I hear your key but it’s a false alarm
A tear runs down my face and then more start
I have spent a thousand nights alone
A river with no bridge nor stepping stone
This water which keeps lovers late apart
No comfort from the warmness of an arm
I see you are now dust, where are your bones?
Where eyes to show me when you are contrite
I have spent ten thousand nights alone
In the night you prayed for all who groan
You smiled when I once spoke of future life
What comfort could I bring to the Unknown?
I shall find a way to carry on
I will find the secrets and the light
I accept a million nights alone
When we were joined , who knew when we would part?
I am left with fragments of a heart
I have spent so many nights alone
Give me comfort ,take me in your arms
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Mary visits the hospital
Mary went to the hospital to see the rheumatologist.The entire hospital had been re-built and half the site was full of so called “Executive Homes”
She and Annie took a cab as it was raining hard.Although Mary was wearing her new green raincoat, she did not like to get it wet.
Where did you buy your mac,Annie enquired jauntily?
Cotton Traders,Mary admitted nervously.It looked lighter than it is and Stan liked me in green
You already have two trenchoats and a nylon mac,Annie told her.And Stan is no logere here
What’s it to you?Do you want me to give all my money to the poor?
Well, some of it,Annie responded anxiously.You need to pay your utilities.
My utilities!That sounds like something sexual that cannot be openly named,Mary cried
You are confusing it with urethra, Annie laughed
What is my ethra? whispered Mary
No, the urethra is a little tube for the bladder to empty itself through
Isn’t the human body amazing? Mary acknowledged wisely
Definitely, said Annie and I love wearing beautiful clothes like velvet
Where do we draw the line though, between looking good and giving money to the poor, tortured or victimised,Mary pondered
It is hard now because we can see what the rich have and we want it.Annie shouted
Or in your case you can see all those philosophy books on Amazon and buy them with one click she continued.
Mary could see in her mind’s eye her living room piled high with books but if she were rich like Michael Frayn she could have a huge house full of shelves and desks.
Adam Phillips,’ room looked more full than Mary’s and he must want it like that
In the waiting room Mary looked at Wittgenstein’s biography by Ray Monk on her kindle
while Annie read The Sun.Soon Mary was called in
Hello, said Doctor Morse.How are you?
In the pink , she cried
I don’t understand, he screeched likea parrot
It’s an old English saying.It means I feel fine, but I don’t really that’s why I am here
He looked at her left hand. and said there was no cartilege betweeb the the thumb and wrist.
Where has it gone,Mary asked but he remained silent
Then he said,I think steroid injections will help.Would you turn your chair tound by 180 degrees so you can put your arm on my desk?
Mary turned round and felt a bit dizzy
It’s hard getting older isn’t it, the doctor said in a tone rather artificially kind like a bad actor on stage and afraid.
Mary burst out laughing.
You are a weird person, he told her tenderly with his glowing eyes shining like the moon over Lake Windermere in October.
Well, we can’t all be exact;y the same ,she told him logically
Then she had to turn her chair round again. despite her poor hands
Why don’t you have swivelling chairs ,she asked pointedly
They won’t give me enough money
Can’t you buy a second hand one? Mary wondered
No, it has to pass Health and Safety,Dr Morse whispered cautiously
I see.Well don’t blame it all on the EU.
I love the EU, he told her.I hope Brexit fails
Me too she croaked
They sat in companiable silence for a few minutes until his next patient arrived
I will see you in September, he told her
Miaow, cried Emile from Mary’s designer handbag
What the hell is that, the doctor asked nervously
Don’t worry doctor.I forgot to leave Emile in the Waiting Room
Emile stuck out his head and smiled at Dr Morse
Good morning, he said graciously.Is Dave the paramedic here?
No, they are not here they have their own Ambulance Station down the road
Emile began to sob.
Mary apologised as she shook hands with the doctor.
Thank you for helping me, she murmured.I feel better already
And so say all of us
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Can poetry change your life?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/can-poetry-change-your-life
Extract
His other idea is that the key to the real-world effectiveness of poems and songs is “form.” The invocation of form is awkward, for the same reason that advanced-pop criticism itself is inherently awkward, which is that most popular music, and especially popular music categorized as rock, is magnificently and unambiguously hostile to everything associated with the word “school.” And form is a very academic concept. It’s the shell in the game teachers play to hide content.
The phrase “equipment for living” is taken from Kenneth Burke, who also wrote that form is “a public matter that symbolically enrolls us with allies who will share the burdens with us.” Robbins likes this. I think it means that the experience of poems and songs is shared with other people, even if often implicitly, and so it can be a means of achieving solidarity. Form “grounds us in a community,” Robbins says.
This might be a little wishful. Reading poems is normally a solitary pastime, and so is a lot of music listening, except at concerts, where the emotions aren’t really your own. In any case, form cuts no political ice. The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” once an anthem of antiwar protesters, is played at Trump rallies. I assume it instills feelings of solidarity among his supporters.
With aesthetic experience in general, after a certain age, the effects are probably as much a product of what you bring to it as what you get from it. “Records are useful equipment for living, provided you don’t expect more from them …………
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Double entendre
Art by Katherine
Will patients kindly sign this form before dying
I doubt it.Is it an order or a question?
Please die before we change the sheets on your bed otherwise we may run out
Anyone else mad around here? We’ll run out
Do not die during the Consultant’s visit
I bleeding well will.
We have no Chaplains.They were privatised
Who took them over,Satan! That explains this madness called Brexit
So all prayer is DIY,
And all DIY is prayer?
Die in your sleep if you can
Give me the poison now please
Keep your iPhones in a vault not here
Is that in the horse?
Please don’t ask a person with severe heart failure to close the window by your bed
I was only helping them on their way
No sadism in here
Take pleasure in our violence, kill and wound
We do not need the News blasted from your phone
Boris kills.
Why have the weather forecast on when you are dying,It’s a month before your burial
Just a bad habit, as Thomas Aquinas said
When the PM arrives we will all cry in one voice Alleluya
Is he God now?
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When God came down, our spies soon had him nailed
We may know what’s right and still do wrong
Greed and envy run our inner world
Like a crazed drunk bee we like to sting
Even as the blackbird is in song
The darkness of the heart will on it fall
We may know what’s right and still do wrong
We love to think we are the Queen or King
Perfect in our power , oh iron the walls
Yet crazed drunk bees can float on high to sting
The hurt inside the heart can last too long
The self retreats , the matador has failed
We know the end , the bull will kill the throng
When God came down , our spies soon had him nailed
The burning bush , the little voice, the tales.
We may know what’s right and do the wrong
Take pleasure in our violence, kill and sting
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When we don’t perceive, we duly fail
Sin may be invisible, though real
Who of us can judge another’s heart?
Admission of our faults has small appeal
Yet if we do not look behind the veil
We may kill .unknowing in the dark
Sin may be invisible, though real
Walking onwards on our human trail
What ignites the spirit,holds the spark?
Admission of our faults has small appeal
When we don’t perceive, we duly fail
We have choices , they are here and stark
Sin may be invisible, though real
We are weak , poor human acts prevail
Will alone can never do what’s right
In the seas of love we set our sails
We buy ourselves the best place in the Ark
Our neighbours wrangle.struggle in the dark
Sin becomes more visible and real
Holding wide our arms we hope love heals
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Eliezer ha Cohen
This week on Who Do You Think You Are is Her Majesty The Queen
Discover: The strange foreigners who rule the remains of the UK
And University Challenge has been cancelled as they are all online following Johnson
Or The Pied Piper of Westminster as I call him
Desert Island Discs is looking for a gramophone
Meanwhile use your phone
The Catholic Church hopes for more vocations as people flee life on so called “benefits”
Discuss it all with the ghost of Pope John 23rd at 6 pm. He is in heaven.But it’s hell
The News is not being shown till the day after it happens
Is it news?
Noone wants Boris more than Leonard Cohen
Well who could compete with Eliezer ha Cohen?~
How many meanings does that sentence have?
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And if love‘s good enough, we may survive.
We need to self-deceive to stay alive
To function in this terrifying world
And if no trauma comes we may survive
If we watch the shadows in the cave
We have our story ready to unfold
We need to self-deceive to stay alive
We follow rules on how we must behave
As if into a void we might be hurled
And if no trauma comes we may survive
The adages and proverbs satisfy
Unless we are attacked in our own world,
We cannot self-deceive, are traumatised
We need the hold of friends who’re kind and brave
We need this love that rises when it’s shared
And if love ‘s good enough, we may survive.
We will not scratch our wounds if we are wise.
We will not rush to speech while wounds are bare
We need to self-deceive to stay alive
The words that mother said we can embrace
That we are loved, despite fragmented face
We need to self-deceive to function right
And if no trauma comes we may survive
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This Titanic can no more deceive
The United Kingdom disintegrates by day
The Scots are breaking off at Hogmanay
Northern Ireland colonised,remote
Will Ireland be united at a stroke?
We will have a smaller house of cards
Boris Johnson’s patience brings rewards
He will be in charge just of Soho
Where ladies of the night rule men by blows
England’s not that big nor of pure blood
I’m half Scandinavian ,see my head
The violent people Brexit has empowered
At the bus stop they will on me glower
It’s time to get the lifeboats out and leave
This Titanic can no more deceive
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My joints are crackling, roast me in tin foil
My knee joints crackle when I stand up tall
Bit by bit the cartlilege has gone
The disablement attracts , the people call
Noone now will ask me to a Ball
I liked to dance but my desire is done
My knee joints crackle when I stand up tall
Instead of walking I would like to roll
The pavement is not fit to lie upon
The disablement an advert , my mind folds
The pain is so severe my muscles brawl
When I go outside with my big bin
My joints are crackling, roast me in tin foil
I have to write, I’m mindless I’m enthralled
I try to smile with my lopsided grin
Disablement’s a danger people wail
This is not a game that I can win
Save me from the demons of great sin
My knee joints crackle when I stand up tall
The disablement is vile I cannot talk
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Poems of anxiety and uncertainty
Photo by Mike Flemming copyright
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101584/poems-of-anxiety-and-uncertainty
Extract:
Poets are seekers and questioner They explore the unknown and help to give it shape. The insights and wisdom in the following poems below are hard-won; more often, it is simply the naming of the fear—personal, spiritual, or political—that offers solace, reminding us that people are connected by our worries and doubts as well as our joys. By resisting closure and easy answers and sounding out the darkness, these poems remind us that poetry has always been able to cope with uncertainties, ambiguities, and shades of gray.
Read the poems by clicking the link
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Joan Baez
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What time is left, has Palestine grown roots?
Oh,Mandy’s here displaying her white boots
She sees disintegration,loss and new despair
Douglas-Hume starts wincing on my roof
My eyes were open, dignified, aloof
Edward Heath, man, give me my bus fare!
What time is right for docketing the truth?
I knew there were strange numbers on the route
Take pi and e and i and stop just there
Harold Wilson tried in Downing Street
John Major felt my brain , he was astute
We see straight through your eyes into you, bare.
When day was night, the Bennites spoke the truth
I bought the book, I ‘ll soon be destitute
Iraq has made much wealth for Tony Blair
The bombs fell on the children , ain’t they cute?
Graham Greene, the end of the affair
Netanyahu is leading but to where?
What time is left, has Palestine grown roots?
Asylum seekers die for lack of roofs.
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EU money and child poverty UK
I took some photo of Leonard Cohen’s Joan of Arc song.This is one
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49131685
Extract:
Child poverty cash handed back to Europe unspent
More than £3.5m intended to alleviate child poverty and homelessness is at risk of being wasted because the government has failed to spend it, says a House of Lords committee.
Peers have written to the Home Office saying it is “extraordinary” that the EU funding has not been used.
They warn that some of the cash has already been forfeited and are worried about the rest being handed back.
The government said there had been “barriers” over spending the money.
But peers have written to complain that after almost six years, the government has failed to deliver spending aimed at addressing “the worst forms of poverty”.
About £580,000 of unspent cash has so far been taken back – and a further similar amount is at risk of being deducted at the end of the year.
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Read between the lines and then translate
The glances we exchanged without a word
Sympathetic humour , sometimes hate
The understanding heart , the mind unblurred
The hidden world which lovers make and share
To be one whole unhinderd by grim fate
The glances are exchanged without a word
We sense a meaning, sense if others care
Feel the lost love and the husband late
The understanding heart , the words unheard
Who can we trust to view our feelings rare?
Who will open doors, unbarr the gate
After glances flash and red eyes glare?
Did you ever marry, did you swear?
In sickness and in health how did your mate?
His understanding heart is hidden where?
Read between the lines and then translate
The culture and its meanings delegate
The glances we exchange beyond all words
The understanding heart , affections shared
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The face shaped by refinement of the heart
The face shaped by refinement of the heart
The love and what we suffer as we grow.
Our features form a map, a place, a chart
The face dispiays the comeliness despite
The hatred overcome, accepted, taut
The wind blows on our inner seas and shows
The countenance, the dignity, the heart
The love we give , we take , we live ,enjoy
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From our eye, a tear springs with relief
A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach
Can touch, can move, can embrace in its sounds
The inner soul where its vibrations teach.
When cut off, silent,after sad defeat
Such gentle words can break our sullen bonds
A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach.
We must not torture nor torment in speech
Our heart, the centre of our morbid wounds
The inner soul with its vibrations speaks..
From our eye, a tear springs with relief
From imprisoned sulking, jump with a great bound!
A word that’s spoken by a friend can reach.
Muscles weaken,but the mind stays fleet
Humour and its cousins are our clowns
The inner soul by its athletics speaks.
I smile and smile yet rarely do I frown
For I will rise up, even when low down
A word that by a friend can reach,provoke
In our souls ,deep memories will evoke
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The universal heart dies in such games
When the sun feels violent in its heat~
We learn the world’s not ours nor is it kind
As skaters on thin ice find love’s deceit
So the heart must struggle with its beat
As panic bites like cobras in the mind
If the sun feels violent in its heat
Our knowledge and our will power incomplete
We cannot know the future, we are blind
As skaters on the ice may be deceived
Can we trust the darkness and the ghosts?
Some have found their souls in such hard times
Why is the sun so violent in its heat?
If we fight and squabble, what will break
The universal heart dies in such games
So thin the ice , sadistic are the stakes
Time is measured out by hearts and rhymes
But nothing’s clear when fantasy designs
When the sun feels violent in its heat~
So skaters on thin ice learn love’s deceit.
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Yer no quiero ser tu enemigo
Oh,Lord someoene’s turned the light out on this dark and misty day
Well,Lord,I am complaining but I don’t know who to blame
I turned back for my sleeping bag and my convertible laptop
When I started out again God hit me with his mop
I knew it had been raining though I didn’t see a drop
I don’t wanna go on drowning anymore
Oh, the sun was shining wetly as we put our trenchcoats on
We were off to Marks and Spencer’s to buy two smart old phones
They sell coats stuffed with eiderdown but though that is quite light
If we put the red ones on it won’t make Britain bright
I don’t wanna pass for English ever more
Half the sky looks dirty and the other side is black
I’ll ask God for his bill of rights and put it in my sack
We are greedy we are selfish, we are generous at times
We love to cook for children and to write them funny rhymes
We envy and we hate and yet we do our good deeds too
We listen to our hearts and souls and fix them up with glue
I don’t wanna to be your enemy no more
I don’t want to be your enemy no more
Ich will nicht mehr dein Feind sein
Yer no quiero ser tu enemigo
Vreau să fiu prietenul tău pentru tot mai mult
I want to be your friend for evermore
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Sulking
As respite from my work, I tried to sulk
I practised , it became my art and life
I never spoke but glowered like a pike
Till the cat’s claws lit up like street lights
You cannot sulk alone, so get a mate
Then sulk all day and sulk all through night
If they do not notice, you ‘re becalmed
Unless the wind of change bring new insight
Sulking draws us on to sinking sands
The risk is not apparent when we start
An estuary’s currents brings us great alarm
In our breast, we feel the thumping heart
Sulking is so tempting when morose
With our better angels let’s converse
With our inner demons, let’s get worse
If we see our partner, does it hurt?
With our blackened souls we feel the curse
Man United won and I am bust
I never liked board games and this worse
If you’re writing ,aim to keep it terse/ aim to write in verse
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The alphabet convicts us by its charm
The noises we can make with mouth and throat
Make patterns like the music of the birds
The graphic line, the new emotion caught
Expressed by sentence and by the true words
No teacher or professor made our tongue
A gradual evolution done with art
Before the prose there was the evensong
As home the little sparrows want to dart
Yet with this language we can commit fraud
Lies are hidden even in our bones
Then we have the enigmatic code
What translates and what is lost,alone
The fractured chaos of the world takes form
The alphabet convicts us by its charm
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Post modernism and poetry
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/postmodernism
Extract:
It includes other 20th-century theoretical movements such as poststructuralism and deconstruction,mainly through a common emphasis on discourse and the power of language in structuring thought and experience. Because it attacks traditional concepts of history, knowledge, and reality itself—arguing that “truth” is culturally and historically specific—postmodernism has often been accused of relativism.
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Glower again
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/glower
verb (used without object)
to look or stare with sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.
noun
a look of sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.
NEARBY WORDS
ORIGIN OF GLOWER
1350–1400; Middle English (Scots) glowren to glower; akin to Middle Low German glūren to be overcast, MiddleDutch gloeren to leer
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Who was William Blake?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/blake_william.shtml
Extracts
1.Considered insane and largely disregarded by his peers, the visionary poet and engraver William Blake is now recognised among the greatest contributors to English literature and art.
2.“In 1789, he published his Songs of Innocence, the gentlest of his lyrics, but the collection was followed by Songs of Experience, containing a profound expression of adult corruption and repression. His long list of works shows relentless energy and drive. As one of the most complex writers known, it is impossible to summarise his career – he was a combination of extremes. His vision of civilisation as inevitably chaotic and contradictory mirrors the political turmoil of his era. It is only in retrospect that we can begin to appreciate his work and unravel its complex and allusive sources.”
BBC weather photo
How my heart sings 
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