A play too far

The loss  had struck me down like a wild car
It jumped  the reservation by a fluke
Then landed  where the lost  were passing by

We crawl away, we’re bleeding ,we want air
The sense of what has passed is in some book
Loss  will strike us down like a wild car.

My heart ached like an abscess  on a scar
My eyes were wide but still I  could still not look
As the lame  were passing  with their sighs

I seemed  to drop onto a stage bizarre
A drama  being enacting as I shook
The loss  had tossed me up, an iron bar

I  must play my part, that’s how things are.
The waves of  loss whirl round like skipping ropes
The sad were passing  with their   shuttered eyes

Getting washed and dressed, I felt remote
Yet  love still spurred me on  to hope for hope
The loss  had struck me down like a wild car
Accelerating  till it   threw me f out past “far”

 

 

 

 

I held your hand

Walking by your side,I held your hand
Wondering if  this might be the  final time
The towpath was as dry as desert sand

 

Love’s a mystery  none can understand
Yet all of us can allocate the  blame
Walking by side by side  you kissed my hand

 

My tears are salty as  they reach my tongue
We need water, we need heavy rain
The towpath was as dry as desert sand

 

Where are you,darling, I can’t walk for long
I suffer from my torture  and its shame
Walking by your side, you held my hand

 

I’m sitting in the garden,it feels wrong
Yet who but God themself receives the blame?
Once in  deserts far, Satan  harangued

I wait and wait , the angel never comes
The sadness in the garden leaves me stunned
I walked out by  the stretcher,felt your hand
You smiled at me, oh love that was  so fond

When will it be history not News?

No-one mentioned we must mourn the Jews
They were Europeans  and well skilled
What treasure Europe lost’s not on the News

We can’t lay waste  the world, blow up the fuse
Can we ever raise enough good will?
No-one mentioned we’ve not mourned  our Jews

We wander now in madness well confused
All we know is money and the till
What treasure Europe lost’s not on the News

All the  offspring  unconceived,unviewed
Would Europe be so crazed  were they here still? 
No-one mentioned we’ve not mourned   the Jews

Jesus was no Christian, but a Jew
His  eyes are bleeding as  he’s gassed in hell
No wonder Europe’s lost  the  chosen few

To Western minds , the  Word’s not fully formed
The Word came down in Palestine  not Rome.
No-one bore the pain   nor helped the Jews
What treasure Europe lost, those left  abused.

Two million pounds a house

 David Cameron’s bought another house
He says he’s very sad  for us poor mice
He like to take his children to the sea
Two million pounds sounds quite un-right to me

The suicide rate is rising  every day
Domestic violence screams as children play
I wonder if he thinks it’s all God’s plan
Wondrous are the ways of wealthy men

God is not the puzzle nor design
The puzzle is the people with no minds
Sharing would be sanity   and sense
Give the poor   and old a  recompense

Why do we  not what is so clear?
There is an answer but it is too near

After being hurt we hide away

After being hurt we hide away
We turn down invitations  feeling blue
Ashamed to show our anguish or be prey

Behind a wall of glass we live our days
Thinking   others know the hidden clue 
After being hurt, we hide away

We miss the help of sharing or of prayer
Out skin feels thin, we agonise and stew
Ashamed to show our anguish or be prey

The way we feel is common, it’s not rare
We need to know that others suffer too
After being hurt, we hide away.

Our suit of armour stiffens , won’t repair
Retaliation   banish, don’t pursue
Enraged by our  own anguish we feel prey

Is there anyone who will rescue
The people who  to grudges cling like glue
After being hurt we hide away
Ashamed to show our anguish or be prey

The heather

After marriage we went to the North
Putting down our roots by others’ hearths.
We roamed  the hills and dales and lay down too
The heather is as warm as  it is purple blue
All the world dwelt  on the Cleveland hills
Where bees blossom, where the heart is thrilled
In the distance from the A19
We saw the sun set  in a flush and dream
His father died and now we had to go
With  mother’s home made bread  with well proved dough
With heather honey and a cake  with jam
Sandwiches well filled and not by Spam
Across the Valley of the  widening Tees
The hills stood out  like  faces in the breeze
The shape affects  the heart  as prophets knew
The landscape is well known,oh honeydew

From outside

I looked into my window from outside
The books were piled on  shelves in random ways
I thought I’d see  him  there though he has died

In the past I lost another , life denied
I had to carry on, to grief was prey
I looked into my window from outside

My pain was such, I  felt that I might die
The shrapnel  in the heart, the guilt unpaid
I dreamed I’d see  him  there though he has died

The  fiery bush ,its flames have caught my eye
It burns forever  showing us the way
I looked into a  window from outside

I used to live  behind a glass, no bride.
Yet  the vital work was  learned in play
I wished to see  him  there though he has died

Now three are  gone  am I supposed to pray?
The  jackets tweed, the smell of smoke and clay
I looked into my window from outside
I thought I’d  find someone with the right eyes.

How can the world be here,yet he is not?

How can the world be here,yet he is not
But in that other  country  he must dwell
Is that heaven or some unused old lot?
How can the world be here,yet he is not?
Can it be his wife he has forgot?
He left me lone, a bird caught in a net
What truth is there and which of us can tell?
How can the world be here,yet he is not?
In  that other country  now he dwells.

 

Yet if the natural law they will assault

Must friendship close our eyes to other’s faults
Or see then with a sweet and tactful eye?
On the door within  must we place  bolts?

Can we trust our instinct or revolt?
Who can tell if one of us has lied
Must friendship close our eyes to other’s faults?

Yet if our human values they assault
The warmth inside our heart like love is fey
On its door within  must we place  bolts?

Chamberlain met Hitler  like a dolt
The Czecho-slovak state he’d occupy
Desire may  blind  our mind to others’ faults.

Into Warsaw came the Nazi boots
The Ghetto  where the Jews stood up and died
On  our memory’s door  must we place  bolts?

Did Stalin have a friend and if so why?
Hitler had a woman by his side
Must “friendship ” close our eyes to other’s faults
On the door within  must we place  bolts?

Trials of life:jeans

funnyjeanshttps://www.theguardian.com/fashion/shortcuts/2019/sep/11/asymmetric-jeans-will-you-wear-the-trousers-that-are-flared-one-side-skinny-the-other

 

The problem unrecognised by most of us is  that to wear unusual clothing like this, you have to look very  clean,well groomed and chic.And you might need new trainersIn other words, it is meant to be ironical ,a sign of wealth.If not you just look daft!

I am not critical usually  but when cropped trousers came in many people wore them with short grey/beige old socks and mouldy shoes.Wearing long trousers would hide all that.
Similarly your hair would have to be “styled” and if it is like mine that would be hard.
I fear if I wore them I’d  look like a mad old lady and I’d rather look elegant in my long velvet coat admired by millions.Now I need a big velvet hat.

The danger of lies

IMG_20190111_223122
My photo

From Counterpunch:

Hannah Arendt, an émigré from Nazi Germany.

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth,” Arendt wrote in her classic volume The Origins of Totalitarianism, “is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being 

Where force rules. love has no grounds

Once women to  a  man were bound
We could not vote nor own  nor lease
Where force rules. love has no grounds

Our menstrual blood  made us unsound
We scrubbed the linen, killed the louse
Once women to  a  man were bound

The older women passed hints down
Dealt with men who tried to pounce
Where force rules. love has no grounds

There were abortions, underground
Girls might die  without a spouse
Once women to  a  man were bound

As the world goes on its  rounds
The strong play games  like cat and mouse
Where force rules. love has no grounds

Disorder comes up from the past
In the night we feel the ghosts
If  anyone  is calm and  kind
Force rules less and love gains ground.

 

 

 

 

Parliament like cardboard fell

I could not write a villanelle
My mind is  battered by the sounds
The repetition seems too droll

The teacher said she’d pay me well
I fled into the underground
I could not  stomach villanelles

I went by bus to Camberwell
The Monument looked sadly down
Our new leader rose from  hell

Parliament like  cardboard  fell
Contempt  dripped  down Oxford gowns
He would not like a villanelle

Jesus wept and Satan yelled
No solution has been found
The  people shudder, is this hell?

By no convention  is he bound
Democracy he fines,  impounds
I could not write a villanelle
We already  sweat in hell

Useful proverbs

Tricyrtis-hirta-Miyazaki_19.jpg

http://www.special-dictionary.com/proverbs/source/m/macedonian_proverb/#sthash.9uK3o4t4.dpuf

A few relevant ones:

  • 7. Think twice, say once. Think twice, say once.. Macedonian Proverb.
  • 8. What one fool can ensnare, not a 1000 sages can fix. What one fool can ensnare, not a 1000 sages can fix.. Macedonian Proverb.
  • 9. Where force rules, justice does not exist. Where force rules, justice does not exist.. Macedonian Proverb.

9/11 and unconscious racism

9100773_f260 (1)

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49582852

EXTRACT

In their study of the CIA, the intelligence experts Milo Jones and Phillipe Silberzahn write: “The first consistent attribute of the CIA’s identity and culture from 1947 to 2001 is homogeneity of its personnel in terms of race, sex, ethnicity and class background (relative both to the rest of America and to the world as a whole).”

An inspector general’s study on recruitment found that in 1964, one branch of the CIA, the Office of National Estimates, “had no black, Jewish, or women professionals, and only a few Catholics”.

By 1967, the report said, there were fewer than 20 African Americans out of some 12,000 non-clerical CIA employees, and the agency maintained the practice of not hiring minorities from the 1960s through the 1980s. And until 1975, the US intelligence community “openly barred the employment of homosexuals”.

Talking of his experience of the CIA in the 1980s, one insider wrote that the recruitment process “led to new officers who looked very much like the people who recruited them – white, mostly Anglo-Saxon; middle and upper class; liberal arts college graduates”. There were few women and “few ethnics, even of recent European background”.

“In other words, not even as much diversity as there was among those who had helped create the CIA.”

Diversity was squeezed further after the end of the Cold War. A former operations officer said that the CIA had a “white-as-rice culture”.

?What a wonder

2012-05-12-10-31-13-1 (1)

I did this drawing many years ago

He said he could never forgive himself if he forgave me.
Somebody has to be the bad person
Then someone else can be the good one.
As Melanie Klein might have said:

It’s the paranoid schizoid position

But what exactly is it?

My  Celtic feet have bones but not much fat

Mute-Swan-2008

 

I was bare as rocks are by the sea
My uniform had vanished  like the cat
I had to take exams  in geometry

I  felt  besmirched by nuns’ conformity
They always howled,  so pure they’d hit a bat
I was  as bare as babies on God’s knee

Nakedness displays  deformities
My  Celtic feet have bones but not much fat
I had to take exams  in geometry

My body seemed to cause hilarity
I had not typed it in the right format
I was  as  bare as swans  at Manningtree

I had no clothes,no pen, no mortgage fee
I left the room, I’m never going back
I  faked exams  in Greek and  poverty

My face was white, my eyes were blue and black
I   looked  so round ,I wore no corselette
I declare my  frocks  are up a tree
I had to  drop the bomb on  Coventry

Which human never feels these cruel assaults?

Here I am  half dressed with uncombed hair
As weary as  a wolf without a lair
Now my thoughts are waylaid by   my faults
Which human never feels these cruel assaults?

Why do I not think of all my joys?
Instead I recall cruelty  nuns deployed
If I could have hated them at school
My  anger would turn outwards ,be less cruel

Do we nurse  such hatred  for some gain?
Surely it ‘s not  worth the searing pain
I wonder how to let it go for good
And quietly bear my burden, cross of wood

Retaliation,  arrows that return
The  sender feels the pain but will  they learn?

Then one day the tide of life will turn

When I’m ill I feel my life’s a wreck
The mirror frightens me as I reflect
Who am I and why  do I feel so
Omnipotent,destroying as I go.?

Yet how we feel   will change as does our health
After trauma, drained of all our wealth
We stagger on the battlefield unsought
Until by kindness we are held and caught

We  must help each other,strength combined
A smile, a touch, a word, a little line
What seems common sense  may be ignored
The strong may hate the weak  and slam the door

Be with others, listen,look and learn
Then one day the tide of life will turn

Famous love poems

Silver-spotted-Skipper-2019

https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/i-carry-your-heart-with-me-by-ee-cummings

 

[i Carry Your Heart With Me(i Carry It In]

E.E. CummingsBy E.E. Cummings More E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Is baking irony?

img_20190904_184213

I believe that we English people use irony more than other folks do,although I’ve not carried out any surveys.I am waiting for the government to give me 5 million pounds to carry out a short research project on this.

Now,if you hear someone say

This government is the best one since King Alfred burnt the cakes or since Queen Elizabeth the first lost her virginity,you would guess they did not mean exactly what they said.
BTW what kind of cakes did Alfred make? More importantly,what kind of oven did they have in those days.We had one adjacent to a coal fire so to bake or roast the fire had to be well alight and going strong.
Burning cakes was not too easy because there was no thermostat and the fire tended to die down.So you could not turn the knob around by accident or for fun as my brother did in 1947  on our gas cooker when my mother had put all her eggs,dried fruit etc together to make a Xmas cake… rationing was still on and besides we were quite poor then.A cake like that needs a long time to bake on a low  heat.
So it was ruined and although I was only a baby then I can hear the shouting now.Had my brother been the king ,no doubt he could have put all the family into prison where at least they would have got a slice of roast pigeon and some stale Xmas cake…. probably left over from Saxon times.
Come to think of it,were the Saxons Christians and if not  how come they made Xmas cake? If the Royal family had gone to Amazon and bought an oven timer history would be quite different.I wonder what Alfred was doing? Was he enjoying the delights of his Queen? Now in my baking book it says

Never  make love while waiting for a cake to bake.Not even to yourself.It will distract you.

Personally I’d admire anyone who got turned on after spending hours mixing the ingredients and preparing the cake tin but maybe I am unusual.
How would I know if I were?I can hardly go around asking if they find making a cake arousing.I’d have thought that it’s what you do when you are frigid as you hope the oven might warm you up.
On no account must you  try to make love inside the oven on a household cooker because  it’s not possible.Why?
That requires a  lot of thought.Basically it’s all about size
.Now if Queen Victoria had baked instead of having so many children the history of Europe would have been very different.
The Kaiser was her grandson and because his mother was Victoria’s first child he believed he should have been King of England.Now if he had been,would there have been a war?Is there any point in speculating like this?
Again I need a research grant to carry out …. research.Speculating can be dangerous sometimes.Again soe folk like gambling and others like playing Solitaire.Vive la difference.Oy vey.Amen

Now if Victoria had stuck to jam and cream filled  sponges the world would be utterly transformed and we would all be speaking a different language…but which?

We will never know

I watched her in my silent way to learn

The matron of the Home made cakes for tea
Her husband helped by stoking up the fire
How happy all the residents would be
Home made cake was  very much desired

This Home  where men and women shared their meals
And went for rambles in the afternoon
The spirit of the Home  was made to heal
The grief of those just widowed felt its boon

The Matron like a mother showed great care
I watched her in my silent way  to learn
Now who makes cakes  to feed the old and scared?
What kindness  is there now for those who yearn?

Food  will help us live and keep our health
It makes a symbol  shared ,  our spirit’s wealth

Now I am  old and I have realised

pteroceras-semiteretifolium

Once I  cared for people who were old
Who wet themselves and  felt the winter cold
I gave them baths and washed their backs  and fronts
Helped them to get dressed and  zip their pants

I made them pots of tea and gave them cake
I gave them dinner  on a china plate
I listened to their stories of the past
An unknown world of war and  terrors vast

And if they cried I’d wipe away their tears
Talk to them  till sorrow disappeared
I’d   do the washing up and  clean the knives
The women missed their being someone’s wife

Now I am  old and I  have realised
I really had no feel for what it’s like.

Who could  think that work might be a sin?

Our narcotic is excessive work
Who could  think that work might be a sin?
Thinking numbs the heart in sadness stuck

Learning mathematics,feeling pert
Latin Greek and music, what a din
 Our narcotic is excessive work

I wonder if my cello I could pluck
Its metal strings  made grooves upon my skin
Abstraction numbs the heart in sadness stuck

If we feel, our feelings make us hurt
We kick the nearest person on the shin
Today’s narcotic is excessive work

With our government we  stay alert
We can’t be quiet inside when all’s maudlin
Exotic symbols numb the heart so stuck

We feel the pricks of many sharpened pins
The  conscience of the soul is wearing thin
Our narcotic is excessive work
Thinking numbs the heart in  angst now stuck

Is love a crime?

I have not had sex since I was born
Augustine said it’s sin to touch  those parts
Yet God gave us  vaginas, where’s the harm?

I thought I’d fall in love, is that a crime?
But I got laid by sickness,missed the start
I have not had sex since I was born

Some must procreate however torn
Others are  well pricked by Eros’ dart
 God  made our vaginas, where’s the harm?

Even poppies give out seeds  with charm
Opium  is the drug that warms the heart
I have not had sex since I was born

The Church  has uttered edicts  that deform
No Catholic child can sin however smart
God  made our vaginas, where’s the harm?

Are greed and lust less bitter than my heart ?
Is envy  and its death wish more refined?
I have not had sex since I was born
God gave some  vaginas, I’ve got corns