Month: January 2020
Spring is coming
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Oh, good Lord, don’t let me be your prey
I forget that I am old until I’m out
Walking like a cripple in a drought
People tell me,dial 999
I don’t want to be so well defined
Getting off the bus, five people call
Wait until he stops or you will fall
Am I looking worse than yesterday?
Oh, good Lord, don’t let me be your prey
I sit down on a wall, is that a crime?
Have I crossed a boundary or line?
The wooden benches all are gone away
The homeless used to sleep on them, they say
I sang Joan of Arc at the bus stop
In Lancashire they say, y’ alright cock?
Cock and darling,honey and my sweet
My lovely, you are looking a real treat
I forgot to keep accounts and say my prayers
I guess I’m fending off some kind of dare
Where’s my handbag, where’s my bloody phone?
It’s acting adolescent as it roams
When I take naproxen, it won’t work
Opium is dangerous with some luck
I lie in bed and see the sun pour in
Then I know that life will always win
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All shall be well
Beautiful images by Mike Flemming 2020,Copyright
“All shall be well,and all manner of things shall be well”
St Julian of Norwich
Trust the unknown force that grew you,
From the joining of two cells.
Act of love, of mutual giving,
Created you,a new made self.
Trust the dark,the unseen aspects
Of the life we all must live.
Trust that there is wisdom elsewhere,
To your emptiness to give.
Wait in patience for the time
When inspiration comes at last
Trust in darkness,silence,lowness.
Opposition forms the cross.
Pain is bearable in lowness,
Like the worm in earth I dwell.
When I look I see the sunrise
And I trust all shall be well.
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It’s wyrd
I’m a loud speaker
Are you really? I’m a gramophone needle
Can you speak?
If I couldn’t I wouldn’t be able to answer
Your clothes are very loud
No, your eyes are too sharp
Can you turn up my hem?
That’s a change from looking at your etchings
Where is the button off my shirt?
It can’t speak or phone
Is public speaking easy?
Nothing public is easy.
Even silence.
What is the agenda?
We didn’t do Greek at my school.
Why is weird right? Should it not be wierd?
It used to be wyrd before the Normans
That’s a relief
Where is my hat?
It’s learning tricks.
.
Where is my cashmere jumper?
Inside a lot of moths
Where is the frying pan?
In the fire
Where is the clothes horse?
Naked in a meadow.
Where is my mug?
It’s been shot
Why do you answer like that?
I’m a robot
I can’t believe it
What will you believe?
I don’t know…
That toast is Jesus?
How horrible
But do you believe it?
I’m godsnacked
See.
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Dreaminess and calm
The mind with space for reverie comes first
There love can dream and hate can be informed
The inner garden, sanctuary and rest
To live completely, hope to live with zest
Patience, slowness, dreaminess and calm,
The mind with space for reverie comes first
We all sin and we may not confess
Unless we’re held by love in gentle arms
The inner garden, sanctuary and rest
Preoccupation with our own self is a curse
Be ,to your own heart, a lover warm
The mind with space for reverie is blessed
Wasted time is never reimbursed
Can we live without the holy balm
The inner garden, sanctuary and rest?
Each one lives,creative in her rhymes
Our life is art as colour washes lines
The mind with space for reverie is first
An inner garden, sanctuary and rest
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I see your face
I
Image by Mike Flemming copyright
Image by Mike Flemming copyright
The blank paged notebooks where you used to write
First with pencil then with ballpoint pen
The Freeling novels you read in the night
These special objects bring you to my sight
I see your face, you disappear again
To blank paged notebooks where you used to write
The reading lamp showed in its small clear light
Your telephone, your desk, your writing plan
The Freeling novels you read in the night
My heart feels strange, my feelings re- ignite
The fires of love quelled by the sudden rain
Oh, blank paged notebooks where you used to write
I did not let you go without a fight
But once accepted, I endured the pain
I read the books that you read in the night
The force that makes the wheat produce its grain
Also kills as freely as blood stains
In blank paged notebooks where you used to write
Where do you read now in endless night?
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Cars multiply
In the dark street with its glaring lights
Deserted pavements, cars that multiply
I see two of everything in sight
Twenty dogs two owls that fly by night
Two black cats with amber eyes run by
In the dark street with its glaring lights
As I walk I sing to cats’ delight
I sing Joan of Arc,I wonder why
I see two of everything in sight
The song takes seven minutes,or it might
If I sang like Leonard , if I sighed
In the dark street with its glaring lights
No-one can detect my wandering sight
Yet now and then I wail or emit cries
I see more than you do with insight
These little deaths mount up as our time flies
In the end we step with shuttered eyes
In the dark street with its errant lights
I see two of everything in sight
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Screen size for people with eyesight problems
23
My understanding, from quite a long time ago, is that founts Georgia and Verdana were designed specifically to display best on screens – others are mainly meant for high-resolution paper printing. Lucida Console is another fount designed for screens. I don’t know if this information is still valid.
Another eyesight assistance if working in poor light is a backlit keyboard. Not a fancy multicoloured one for snazzy games, just a white light underneath the keys. If on battery, switch the backlight off unless needed.
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Cry till you laugh
You can laugh till you cry but not cry till you laugh.
You can act the fool but can you fool the act?K
You can fail to think properly.And bad thinking can make you fail
You can solve equations but can they solve you?
You can commit a sin yet in marriage it’s a sin not to commit
You can apologise profoundly and also feebly.But not together.Why not?
A sin can be mortal and mortals can sin.
A sin is venial if it’s not mortal so a venial sin is immortal.That is bad but is it a sin?
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When ignorance hurts
Recent photos by Mike Flemming.2020.Copyright
I am going through something at the moment which I can’t reveal.However it has been illuminating to watch people using Freudian defences to defend themselves from knowing or hearing.
It’s a bit like this.
You need to have your appendix out [ which we know needs anaesthetic and surgery]
You have to see your doctor because you need a tetanus shot, nothing to do with yiur appendix
When you meet your friend, you can see she thinks the doctor removed your appendix while she was walking to meet you.It is obvious if one thinks that it would have been impossible
So when you say you are going to the hospital, she says: I thought the doctor fixed your appendix last week.
The only way that could be true would be if the doctor took a book you had written and removed the appendix from the book.Anyone could do it
So it seems human beings do have defences against knowing certain things.Unfortunately we who speak don’t know what they hear and vice versa
No wonder we had Brexit!
No wonder families split up.
Defences are needed but they have a danger in that you may need to be vigilant about health or other issues and defending yourself from knowing could shorten your life
Anxiety is horrible but like when you put your hand into boiling water you need to feel pain to make you pull it out.
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Vibrate with me
I have made an odd number of mistakes
How can you get even?
What’s odd about a mistake?
It’s the error
I dream while I’m awake
Better take a sleeping pill after breakfast then
The ghost always comes at midnight
Can it tell the time?
I think the light made me jump
I just can’t believe in those photons attacking you any more.
Why not?
I’ve seem the light
Numbers can also be operations
I wish my lump could need only a number to remove it
A number of operations?
The number is the operation but it might be complex
I love your imagination
Which proves you have one too
Dirac does not sound like an English name
Neither does Battenberg
Was he Jewish?
He still is.
But he’s dead
Like Jesus isn’t?
Why did Heisenberg laugh?
It should be, when not why
Why?
You can’t laugh and cry simultaneously
Are you absolutely certain?
No,I am a postmodernist
Are you sure?
You’ve got me now.
Why, am I playing dumb?
Put the lid on it
I’m not a piano, yet.
I’m mute with shock
Was it electric?
No, it was visual.
I see nothing wrong
That’s denial
You can’t prove it
What, is it right and wrong together?
It’s fuzzy
I half believe
If only we’d done algebra
Why?
It uses letters
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The purest soul in physics
https://physicsworld.com/a/paul-dirac-the-purest-soul-in-physics/
Extract
1st Extract
Like all scientists at the highest level, Dirac was not afraid to descend from the pinnacle and discuss more down-to-earth matters. Here are two examples. Much of our knowledge comes from light scattered by matter; in particular, that is how we see. In a clever stroke of lateral thinking, Dirac realized that the quantum symmetry between waves of light and waves of matter implied that it is also possible for material particles to be scattered by light, a ghostly possibility that could be observed, as he showed in 1933 in a paper with Peter Kapitza. This was observed for the first time about ten years ago and the manipulation of atoms by laser beams is now a thriving area of applied quantum mechanics – a fact recognized with a Nobel prize last year (Physics World November 1997 p51, print version).
2nd extract
Dirac stories
It is not my intention to write about what sort of person Dirac was. But I must mention the genre of “Dirac stories”. He was so unusual in the logic and precision of his interaction with the world, both in and out of physics, that tales have become attached to him and have acquired a life of their own. I suppose it matters to a historian whether they are true or apocryphal (or as Norman Mailer says, “factoids”), but to us they have a deeper resonance that transcends fact. Resisting temptation, I retell just two less well known ones.
Like many scientists, Dirac was known to sleep during (other people’s) lectures, and then wake and suddenly make a penetrating remark. Once, a speaker stopped, scratched his head and declared: “Here is a minus where there should be a plus. I seem to have made an error of sign.” Dirac opened one eye and said: “Or an odd number of them.” Another time, Dirac was at a meeting in a castle, when another guest remarked that a certain room was haunted: at midnight, a ghost appeared. In his only reported utterance on matters paranormal, Dirac asked: “Is that midnight Greenwich time, or daylight saving time?”
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And died in peace
My husband was a very selfish man
He gave me polish in a brand new tin
That was for the furniture not for me
Well some may lose yet others might well win
He thought that I was programmed by my genes
To bake him cakes and polish wood and brass
To cook lamb chops and boil potatoes new
I said we did not learn that in the maths class
Then he grew enraged that I was bright
He told me off for playing Chess with men
He told me off for reading Wittgenstein
What could I do but drink all of his gin?
He complained I knew the villains in a film
My brain was far to fine to make me dear
Perhaps I was a witch in angel’s clothes
Drinking tea like others might drink beer
After he’d unloaded all his grief
He thanked me for my love and he died in peace
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The wall
Sitting on the neighbour’s wall
Nobody around to see
Waiting for the minicab to call
Life seems like a trial not a ball
I wonder why I’m feeling so free
Sitting on the neighbour’s wall
Why is there a mirror in the hall?
Shall we see a demon drinking tea?
Waiting for the mini cab I called
I wish I were shopping in the Mall
If you think I’m silly,I agree
Sitting on the neighbour’s wallB
What is meant by promiscuity?
Where is there a public lavatory?
Sitting on the neighbour’s wall
Waiting for the Lord to cut the cord.
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Is that clear?
People slept in A & E last night
Sunderland, oh what a ghastly site
I can beat that, my man died
In A & E four years ago,surprised?
He was only there for 18 hours
When he ran out of any kind of power
He smiled benignly ,closed his eyes so blue
I thought, this is the end of me and you
In fact I did not realise the truth
The nurse apologised with bated breath
The cubicle was small but very clean
But not much privacy for those who scream
So when I sang the psalms the whole place heard
Perhaps they all had nightmares, being scared
No Chaplain came, it’s changed to D I Y
After that it’s cherries in the sky
After death the patient is released
From all the tubes and bottles, wonders cease
So then I met the audience outside
Ten doctors listening to my singing voice
I do not think a better death could come
And anyway my precious man was gone
They expressed their sadness at the lack
Of beds in wards where men could die dumb struck
The papers make a picture that gives fear
It matters not where we sleep,is that clear?
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Deep the soil
Photograph by Mike Flemming 2020 copyright
The ancient bricks are crumbling making space
For living creatures humble,self effaced
The wallflowers waver on the topmost ledge
Leaning out to watch the hurried pass
The sun shines from the East in blinding glare
Shadows shorten .trees bud ,Spring is near
My baseball cap protects my eyes and skin
Even the most strong will never win
We take the humus ,grow our crops and flowers
When our time is done, we will not cower
Gratefully we love our neighbours,friends
Right until we reach the very end
Then with the bones of innocence we lie
Deep the soil and deeper still the Eye.
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Sacred Music
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Mahler
Should I comfort you?
What you mean is I should comfort you
You are grieving for the man so kind
You miss my husband, that is merely true
I know the loss has made your heart feel blue
I didn’t realise it also makes you blind
What you ask is I should comfort you
I wish that you would find cures for Chinese Flu
That you would be forced to change your mind
You miss my only husband, is that true?
What d’y mean. .. you don’t know what to do?
Don’t ask ,me for guidance,I’ve resigned
Why do you ask what I can do for you?
I only wish that I had married two.
But here it is not legal so to bind
You miss my only husband, will you sue?
Do you write on paper filled with lines?
Do you feel beneath this ground are mines?
Why do you ask that I should comfort you?
I’m the one bereaved and I am through
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The fashion page
What to wear in winter,
What to wear in Fall
What to pay your bills with
Money talk appals
If you read the Guardian
They keep you up to date
One page is genocide
Next how to find a mate
Seems a denim jacket
Lined in wool of sheep
Will be ideal clothing
For those we love to meet
Standing at the bus stop
I feel very cold
Seems they do not think about
The poor folk and the old
Of course it’s for the adverts
Not for real life
Not for poor dear husbands
Nor even poorer wives
Why if we are human
Cannot we decide
What to wear in Winter
Not be taken for a ride
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Life is here
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Wild wallflowers
Wallflowers grow among the ancient stones
From the highest part they cling to life
Reminding me of Devon where we roamed
In the cliffs of Beer, wild from sea foam
We saw their flowers one happy Easter time
Wallflowers grow among the ancient stones
Down there I feel there must be little bones
From birds and animals that long time died
Deep in Devon’s cliffs, its muddy lanes
The wild flowers live in verges left un-mown
The little herbs we crush as on we stride
And wallflowers grow on clffs or ancient stones
Most of our wild places are unknown
In these tiny homes God still resides
I’m humbled by our place in nature’s schemes
In a flower’s heart designed to guide
The Lord himself is wont to from us to hide
Wallflowers grow between the ancient stones
Memories of much love not passed nor gone
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I thought I hated God but Love had struck
Only my despair made me static
Paralysed by grief and guilt I failed
By the end I had tried every trick
From prayer unthought to deeps of pure logic
My life, my engine ,shuddered off the rails
I hated God and of “his” Church was sick
Starving and alone I was in shock
The death of one I loved had made me frail
At the end I had tried every trick
I felt love’s hands around me, death to block
I knew this goodness, why else would I wail?
I thought I hated God but Love had struck
Warm and golden light that did me hold
Where are you now when refugees die cold?
Kind despair that made me long time sit
By the end I knew Love needs no tricks
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Thank God, they never freeze
I’m getting some new glasses
To wear upon my head
I think they’re multicoloured
Better red than dead.
I need a pair of new ones
In case I lose my this pair
I think they are transitional
Does anybody care?
I went to Cafe Nero
I could have been in Rome
The people were so beautiful
I’m reluctant to stay home
Then I went to visit Lorna
A friend with three degrees
She has orchids on her mantelpiece
Thank God, they never freeze
I left the heater in the hall
In case the cat was cold
Blacky cannot speak yet
But he is growing bold
He runs out via the kitchen
When my back is turned
He’s like a nuclear weapon
So fast he causes burns
I listen to Mr Cohen
I like Jenny Warnes
She sings his famous songs again
I feel like I’m reborn
Now it is the weekend
I like the book reviews
I like to be with my old friend
Forget about the News
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The Fire
The fire shot out its sparks like Catherine wheels
The coals were living creatures and red-faced
Now I’m angry,I know how they feel
We said night prayers with hearts like stainless steel
Said them fast as if prayer were a race
The fire shot out its sparks like Catherine wheels
My mind was wriggling like an angry eel
As if it sought for subjects to out-face
Now I’m angry,I know how that will feel
The outside stiff, the inner self revealed
The fury at the loss of love’s embrace
The fire shot out its sparks like Catherine wheels
We were raised to keep our wounds concealed
To show no affect, keep a stiffened face
Now I’m angry,I know how that feels
Never given love nor even praise
Is it a surprise we were ill graced?
The fire shot out its sparks like Catherine wheels
Anger made our hearts dance violent reels
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Mary meets a man
I
I am doing research into which place people watch TV, the young man at the door told Mary
I rarely watch TV, Mary informed him
First please tell me your name and ethnic group .he asked her.We must follow the rules ,if not the rulers. he muttered
My name is Danish so I am a Viking, she told him proudly
OK, that makes you English, he said deftly filling his form
You might as well say that the Romans descendents are English, she said in her mellifluous voice
After 2,000 years I think they qualify, he joked
Some were black
I don’t care if they are purple, he said courteously.At some point those born here are English.
What we mean is that there is no such thing as being English,Mary said academically
So true, the poor man John whispered.I am a Celt.Not a cult. You seem a very nice lady.Would you like to go to McDonald’s with me? We could csrry on chatting
Do you mean come?
Come or go, give me an answer.do
I know it’s not where you usually go but I don’t earn much.
Yes,I’ll meet you at the bus stop at 5 pm, she answered.I don’t have a car
Neither do I, said John.
I like this bus.The people on it are really friendly
Mary shut the door and wondered what to wear
Annie appeared and tapped on her window with her manicured hands
You are just who I need,Mary cried with joy.
She explained her problem and her date
I think jeans and a nice anorak with a scarf that makes you look grotesque
Will John like that?
It’s the fashion,Annie said pertly.I am amazed you are going out with that man.You don’t
know who he is.He might be a murderer.
I doubt if a psychopath would take me for a burger… more likely a posh restaurant
Good point, said Annie brightly
Let’s look at my scarves,Mary said.How about this zebra print?
I like this blue one with books printed on it,said Annie
I could wear both of them!~
You could start a trend, her dear neighbour told her
Meanwhile Emile was having a panic attack in the kitchen
Don’t panic,Emile said Mary.You can’t linger in McDonalds
The seats are small and close together
Tell me, which scarf do you prefer?
I like that one with cat’s eyes on it.Wear that and he will know you have a protector.
Honestly, it’s too much bother to decide.If only women had fur like cats,Mary said
What about shoes? called Annie
I’ll wear the green trainers and red socks
You will be a sight for sore eyes if you add some makeup
On hearing this, Mary screamed hysterically.
I think I’ll stay at home
And so will all of us
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The boats on Windermere
When I wake up in the morning I think you are still here
I feel warm and cosy but it doesn’t last for long
The sudden shock of memory fills my heart with fear
The memories of Brancaster, of the seats on Southwold Pier
Soothe my inner being as if I hear birdsong
So I wake up happy,thinking you are here
The cottage of our honeymoon, the love that was so dear
Even though you’ve gone away, with you I will belong
The sudden shock of memory fills my heart with fear
Waking up completely seems to be ,well, insincere
Here are my two pillows on the floor where they’ve been flung
When I wake up in the morning I think you are still here
I walk into the bathroom,I must wash my hair
I see your tartan handkerchief, it dispels my song
The burdens of the memory ,heart filled full with fear
I get aching in my heart, aching lasts so long
But I will keep on singing, the cat ain’t got my tongue
I wake up in the morning, I think you are still here
But then return sweet memories, like the boats on Windermere
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I love you Eliezer, yes, it’s you.
I love you Mr Cohen ,yes I do
I see you and hear you every single day
I have a secret passion just for you
I felt deep sorrow ,I was feeling blue
I tried to see and hear it in your way
I love you Leonard ,yes I do,I do
The End of Love is never, in my view
I love your band when you all sing and play
I have a secret passion, it is you!
I seem to follow like you are a clue
If we met I wonder what we’d say
I love you Eliezer, yes I do.
The puzzlements of love and hate are due
We who feel your questions ,feel half crazed
We all have secret passions just for you
I love Picasso,and I love Paul Klee
I love the blossom trees that bloom in May
I love you Mr Cohen ,how I do!
I cannot hide my passion, it’s your due
How my heart sings 