Algebra has made  an impression
The opposite of a depression
What value is X
Is it something like Sex?
Bring back the days of repression

Topology  is hard to explain
Rubber sheets,  here’s geometry again
Would it be better
To write you a letter
As long a I show no disdain

Doing the tax form is hard
What income  have I ever declared?
I do have my pension
Will I get detention
For spending it all  at the Fair?

I see an equation go by
I   say, never focus your eye
Or  you may try to solve it
Or even dissolve it
I’m truthful; I never tell lies

What we are reading this month:

The Duty of Genius by Ray Monk

[ a biography of Wittgenstein  and  descriptiions  of the era  he lived through]

Cheap as a kindfle book and I have read it 7 times already/

On the surface of our self we dwell
Mysterious the dark  the ignored, heart
Till we have an accident, are ill

We’re like a little snail without its shell
Trodden on by others we depart
Oh surface  living paves the way to Hell

We climb our way up the consumer’s hill
Filling up our trolley  as we walk
Till we have an accident, are ill

Imagination  helps us more than  Will
Oh, to be in Dorset, sea and lark
On the surface of  this place we dwell

When at last we die, where is the bill
Where the confrontation wise and stark?
When down  comes a  new virus, we are ill

Oh, pain, oh fear.,  surrender  now the will
Intuition tells us  to be still
On the surface of our self we dwell
We  think that we are living very well

“‘Normality,’ says Howe, ‘is the paradise of escapologists, for it is a fixation concept, pure and simple.’ ‘It is better, if we can,’ he asserts, ‘to stand alone and to feel quite normal about our abnormality, doing nothing whatever about it, except what needs to be done in order to be oneself.’

E Graham Howe

In a rage we break our treasures  fine
The china  gold, the artwork, worse…. a friend
Possessed by envy, hatred,  thoughts malign

Little children scream,no, that is mine
When we’re older wisdom might descend
Still in a rage we break our treasures  fine

We are human beings, not divine
We make an error, should that be the end;
Possessed by envy, hatred,  thoughts malign?

After we have   broken friendship’s lines
When in grief our  best garments we rend
So  in a rage we break our treasures  fine

Later in regret we  see we’re blind
And it’s too late to  make or do or mend
 Ruled by envy, hatred,  thoughts malign

Inside ourself ,  do know we ‘ve sinned?
Weep and weep , this  seems to be the end
In a rage we broke our treasures  fine
Now we live in  imprisoned ,unresigned.

• Wind blows soft on my bare arms
  I ride through deep green woods.
  These simple pleasures still I love,
  Air on my skin feel good.
  The wind shakes leaves for  sidelong sun
  To make her  pictures from.
  So much, so rich the offerings
  This is senses’ realm.
  Alone in woods, I plight my troth
  To earth and gods thereof.
  I sing my own sweet melodies,
  To solitude and love.
  Far from the maddening crowds of folk,
  I hear earth’s own true songs.
  And then refreshed by woodland charms,
  I feel at peace from wrongs
  Inside my heart,there is a wood,
  And there I shall now dwell.
  And so I’ll solve the mystery,
  Of how we can live well .
  Each wood has its  special birds
  On tree tops in sunlight.
  And each wood has its special song,
  And each wood has its sights.
  I shall accept the mystery
  Of who has made my wood;
  And how we are all joined bodily,
  All sharing this green blood.
  Deep down we go into our hearts,
  To find out who we are.
  Just at the deepest,quietest parts
  We find all beings there.
  

I once knew a lady called Jane,
Who found writing poems a pain.
She took out her pen,
And tried to write when
All the fuses blew out in her brain.

Jane studied  mirrors and magnets.
She’s always been well versed in gadgets.
But to do it to yourself,
Is not good for your health.
You need to pay Freud for some magic,

Some days are sad and blue
And then we feel lonely too;
Or we cause rifts.

Joy is not far away.
Joy will return one day
With life’s arts and crafts

GRIEF IN THE USA

Authorities had not yet officially named the suspects in either shooting, but local law enforcement sources in El Paso named the shooter there as Patrick Crusius. Police were also examining a hate-riddled message on the website 8chan, posted around 20 minutes before Saturday’s attack, in which the author expressed sympathy for a white nationalist massacre at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, a few months ago, and which stated: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

By late Sunday morning, the US president, who is spending the weekend at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, had not addressed the nation in person, with a statement from the White House saying: “Our Nation mourns with those whose loved ones were murdered in the tragic shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, and we share in the pain and suffering of all those who were injured in these two senseless attacks. We condemn these hateful and cowardly acts.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-me-in-we/201806/paranoid-schizoid-and-reparative-states

EXTRACT

Effective reparation also involves a distinct form of guilt, one that is not so overwhelming as to induce despair and humiliation. This is a not a punitive or persecutory guilt, but guilt of a different sort. Carveth puts it this way, “If I injure someone and while he bleeds I self-flagellate, that is punitive guilt; but if I put down my cat-o-nine-tails and reach for my first-aid kit and start bandaging, that is reparative guilt.” 

The reparative state marks our move to moral insight and development, and the ability of the child to distinguish between kind and cruel actions. 

I was angry with the cat ,  she bit my leg
I was angry with the kettle, it was slow
I was angry with  the lawn, it needs a mow
So I poured  my  violent rage on you instead

I am angry with the weather, it’s too hot
I am angry with the government  .it’s bad
If I don’t feel angry I get sad
I  throw my pain at you like a gunshot

I have no friends left,I am going mad
They all hate me,I don’t know for what
Is this Hell,I certainly feel hot
Do you think I acted like a cad?

I love you  dearest, please let me come back
I   did not mean  to make your eyes turn black

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/145052/the-choice-of-constraint

EXTRACT

In constrained writing, one writes under a condition. That condition might mean not being allowed to do something—such as not using the letter e—or following a certain pattern. If this definition seems broad, it is. All formal writing operates under some kind of constraint; a traditional sonnet, for example, asks you to manage meter and a rhyme scheme in 14 lines. In this essay, we’ll look at less-familiar uses of constraint, ones that will challenge you in different ways. It may seem counterintuitive to put limitations on your writing, but you may find that a small constraint can make a big difference in soothing your fears of the blank page. It does so by taking some choices away and by demanding that you make new choices.

To illustrate this, I’d like to look at one of my favorite constraints—the abecedarian. Abecedarians are poems in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows the alphabet: A, then B, and so on. The abecedarian is an ancient form; it may be as old as the alphabet itself. You can find abecedarians in the Bible, though you’d have to see Psalm 119 in the original Hebrew to notice that each section is headed by a letter from the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph, Beth, Gimel …). Contemporary poets have used the alphabet constraint on a grand scale, creating long poems, such as Carolyn Forche’s “On Earth,” and even throughout entire books, such as Inger Christensen’s alphabetand Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary.

We

Scilly Isles

Translate into French or whatever you like

Fish jumping with lucid frills.
Flandered will only be snow Blose
The heater in high through the thrills and bile;
I saw all the cowl Seance
The Spirit and Hilden waffotills;
Detide the blke, Coneath  the fleas,
There was a frieze pluttering
Conpenfed septati the flat oil
And swondleon mockiray;
And never had a stone in briched
Gargins wove through the beam;
The lower jaw is to me, a thousand and ruO,
Wessing them, in the shads Golightly spance.
Daves planced one another in them; but Loy
He said parkling surface Schlee
A paiter clutter does not glay
Pice in the second timpanee;
Glaced- glaced- I also plose
The ferret convention clight nealthy wasps
The plumage is for it, and when I am in my Louch Wight,
Racat extensively or in the water
And along the drat innards plie
Stitch in blast from molotude;
And then strapped to rest gills;
When a fish jumping daffofrills
Gloats on high and sees my pills

May I confess my sins online,Father?
If you must.
Well, I don’t like Nigel Farage
Is that it?
Sorry to be so boring.
Everyone today is confessing the same thing
I just saw him!
Yes, he hates himself too
Is he a Catholic?
Well.Hitler was.
But was Farage brought up as one?
Well, he knows how to confess sins
That’s no use unless he stops committing them
Right, he has no firm purpose of amendment.
He  compliments Trump for his racist outbursts
He may even complement Trump.
Stitch them together and there is still something missing
What?
Humanity, humaneness,caritas, agape,care,kindness
I  see you went to a good Seminary,Father.I used to like the Latin Mass
But not Latins en masse
I prefer them to the English
That is a sin.We must love equally
Can’t we hate equally instead?
I am  ambivalent about that
You’re a Paradox
Where do they  originate? 
Somewhere Unorthodox.
This is getting rude
No it’s not!
Don’t contradict me
That’s Latin!
It’s an order
Or a disorder?
Stop playing games
Who’re you? Wittgenstein?
He’s dead
What a shame
Actually would he  enjoy living in England now
No, because he was Jewish.
So are lots of people.
Somehow they get hurt  or even killed at times
What times?
Nazitimes
Stalintimes
Tsartimes
GoodFridaytimes
Greedytimes
Allthetime
In the Times
Of the times
Oh, time!
Well it’s about time we stopped it.
About time
On time
In time
After time
Time and Motion
Soon we’ll have the Flood
Why has Boris not built an Ark?
Because he doesn’t Noah how to
Because God didn’t speak to him
Because there was a  full stop at the end of the sentence.
Is that not normal?
Not on WhatsApp!
What is up?
What is down?
I don’t know what the Eskimos know!