Month: March 2020

Terror and rage

 

A force far deeper than our anger
Elemental as a storm
Annihilating all before it
Terror makes our rage perform.

This force saying self is threatened
Runs to rise and to protect,
Most murderous when we’re most alarmed
Rage the enemy detects
.
Over-riding other feelings
Deprives us of the power to think
Like a nuclear tsunami
Disconnecting human links.

Reddened vision,focused,narrow;
Eyes locked onto enemy’s
All the wider context losing,
Wipes out our good memories

Like a mother tiger fighting,
And the cornered eagle’s force;
We will destroy what we think other
Without bitter,pained remorse.

img_20200308_121807723-1

Nature made such to protect us;
Yet our perception can be wrong
. Once the flood of feeling takes us
All reflections seems too long

Later, if we see our victims,
Will we know that we have erred?
For hate deceives ourselves and others
When our inmost terror’s bared.

How can we step back and ponder,
See life from a wider view?
How can we become less blinded,
So we see our world anew?

Succumb not to final despond
Succumb not black despair
Always there are those who see.
Always there are those that care.

Tempered by reflective wisdom
Rage can change when understood.
When we find another being
Who  helps hold our frightful flood

I’d rather swim through it

 

Scilla-greilhuberi-2020Would you like to  be my friend?
No,I don’t   value him highly

Would you like to fall in love?
I’d rather swim through it

Would you like a new car?
I’ve not got an old one

What is your name?
No, it’s not, it’s Nat

What shall we eat tonight?
I can chew my nails after putting mango chutney on them

I don’t like to eat snails but neccessity is the mother of invention
Will you saute them in olive oil?
No, I’ll stuff them into a tomato
You need a big one
I’ll crush them
How cruel cookery can be
But not as bad as Goering,Stalin,Hitler or Nero.
Snails won’t know that
But we know

Where are the children?
I didn’t know we had any

Why are we in bed?
Because we are married
Since when?
Gosh, you’ve got dementia already
Well, we do live in a Care Home
Wow, only 29 and in a Care Home
We run it

Fragility is measured by the glass

As fragile as the sacred crystal glass
Which  broken was smashed up like any cup
Till its particles invaded us at Mass

Uncontained,  how will this  moment pass?
Suffering  breaks us down, what helps us up?
Hearts as fragile as  a crystal glass

Do not climb the cliff  in love’s mad  rush
Height  endangers, vertigo, a drop
Whose particles invade us at the Mass?

Feeling like the flower tramped underfoot
Never to be raised,  true life has stopped
When fragility is measured by the glass

Did Jesus know that physics  would  forecast
That he could be alive mixed in, not mocked
His particles  shall dance with ours at Mass

When we die, the shop is out of stock
There is no other I in any book
As fragile as the ancient crystal glass
Whose particles  fly solo in the Mass

A cruel hill

We measure walls and windows and the rain
But not the patterns painted on  the  pane
We measure flour and butter and  the tin
But not the love with which we mix them in

There is  no  linear scale in human  minds
Where you are up above and I’m behind
Complexity and wisdom  intertwine
No measure seems quite apt  for those who’re blind

There’s something  Nazi in  the way we rank
The industry of measurement now stinks
Every human  is a  unique  world
Yet into the abyss , they might hurled

We do  not   get perfection as we kill
The Christs who stumble up   their cruel hill

No way out of this one except glass eyes.

I feel mathematics is bad for society
Do you have the statistics?

I  wish people would not pick their noses
I always thought your was  rather large for your face

Why learn algebra and be unable to boil an egg?
Well, you can fry eggs,

Do we really need fashion in  frames for glasses?
Maybe they have a “see by ”  date
That would be just the lenses
But you can’t use them without a frame.
No way out of this one except glass eyes.

Why are people so kind to me during this crisis?
They have read your stories and feel sorry for you
Why?
That you are not  a writer  who makes a profit
I  even make a loss
What on?
Buying laptops,printers and  having acupuncture
I don’t see the connection
I feel it

Is this a coup d’etat?
No, it’s just a trial run

 

 

Make my heart into a cottage pie.

Make my heart into a cottage pie.
Already it is minced and lies estranged
My   enemies insult me with their lies
And my last will and testament is made.

An onion and a carrot chopped up fine,
Saute  with these my heart till  all are gold
With herbs and spices I will taste divine
A mashed potato will a rooftop mould.

Do not forget my blood to use as sauce
Though now it’s cold, with garlic  make it boil.
For what is gravy but the blood of lamb
With  sliced  onion  fried in olive oil?

O foes and devils eat me and you’ll be
Transformed into  myself, your enemy

Continue reading “Make my heart into a cottage pie.” →

Conceited,filled with pride, you  give me pain

Suddenly I know you as a fool
Believing you can love and yet be cruel
You’re blinded by excessive self esteem
When you’re a  cockroach as in Kafka’s  dream

Your eyes are hidden, yet you pounce, you snake
Your fire is going out and you don’t smoke
Why bother me when I have other friends
Since you came I see no decent end

I hope you fall off London Bridge at night
Hidden in the darkness of the  lights
Or maybe you will go when in your sleep
Stop harassing me, you are a creep

Conceited,filled with pride, you  give me pain
Why not flow with water down a drain?

 

The black cat

The sky  is stark, the air is cool and still
The black cat’s  run, the birds unfold all day
I sit  down here and with my totty pray
Ye cast o’ foolish thoughts, you raped my will.
We’ve  each enraged the bureaucratic mill.
Oh frigid purse, I never meant to pay!
The sky ‘s  a-spark, the air is warm and shrill
The saturnine demoted  knelled their way
With this feathered pounce, my sample quill,
I  cite the cheque and date it for next May.
Oh, tit for cat, the tiger’s  bed ‘s astray.
Yer  life is settled by  a  harlot’s will
The sky ‘s a shark, the air is sharper still

I don’t like gravity either

SmTort_NGWales2013-2

Clue:take the first sentence literally

I feel for you
She’s my wife

I  am feeling Very Angry
Will  he let you?

I feel intense hatred for my wife
That’s very kind of you.It will  make her burden less

Should I marry or live in sin?
Both

I feel blue or I see red
Do you hear yellow?

I feel  very down
Is it better than goose down?
Well it feels better

I hate my brother
I bet he does too.

I  hate my untidy habits
How do they feel about this?

I don’t want to work nor rely on a man
Your grammar is excellent

I am getting tired  of hunting for new recipes
Where do you usually find them?

Shall I have a cheese sandwich or a bacon one?
Have you no eggs?

Shall I take a Master’s Degree or go round  the world?
I’ll be interested to see  that

I hate  shopping for clothes
How about stealing them?

Will I ever get better?
What do you think?

You said I would find love in the afternoon
Don’t  listen to me.

Are you a real therapist?
At last,progress

Have I got a virus as I fear?
No, you have  it as you are relaxed.

Shall I take the Oxford entrance?
No, leave it.

Shall I read Medicine?
No, swallow it

I do hate the way buttons fall off my coat
I don’t like gravity either

I  am afraid  of  topology
You are so  conceited

I hate it when my thoughts circulate
Well, you can feel what you like, they are yours

I wonder if I  can afford Freudian analysis
I do too

I hate clever  people
Don’t come any nearer

I hate Catholics
Don’t tell anyone

Is Boris Johnson English?
No, but neither is anyone else

Why am I here?
Don’t start that again.

Does it matter why we are here?
No, it matters how we are here

That we are here

The survival of the fattest

Being obese might be one way of surviving this plague.
Or as someone said to  a cancer sutvivor: At least you have lost weight or was   it ” at last”
You would lose weight after death if you kept turning over in your grave…
Jesus never mentioned  weight:Go thou and weigh no more.Double entendre.
Who invented the word “sin”  and why?
Weight is  like savings in the several banks.You can’t lose it all at  once
I thought I was flat once.It was because clothes are.Yet chair covers are not.
 Don’t know where, don’t know when,  we’ll meet and hoard our funny days

Abbey Steps

I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores
See the Abbey ruins on the cliff
I can’t climb those steep steps any more

The whip of salty sea, the shells, the lore
The  old town with its alleys and its fish
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores

We heard the seagulls shrieking, Jesus rose
We were in a cottage but in fact
I  won’t climb  those abbey steps no more

In my mind I find an unmarked door
A dream comes by,  who  whipped my tender flesh?
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores

Fish don’t die like sheep in abbatoirs
But yet it must gruesome so to thrash
I can’t climb those steep steps any more

I don’t like eating fish,I hate their whiff
It makes me conscious of my father’s death
I’d like to visit Whitby and its shores
Who can’t climb those Abbey steps no more?

I wish we were on Sutton Bank again

I wish we were on Sutton Bank again
The Cleveland Hills with heather and bright bees
We lay down in the heather in the sun

We hitched a lift, Osmotherley, a van
Another day was Whitby and the sea
I wish we were on Sutton Bank again

I wish that you were near, my loving one
Your suffering  face was   very  sad to see
We   lay in  purple heather in the sun

What shall I do, what am I  to become?
I  waken up  too early, make my tea
I wish we  lay on Sutton Bank again

Our backs ,warm earth , our faces smiled as one
The  heather a warm bed, no shady tree
We  once lay in the heather in the sun

I miss your face, your eyes, their loving plea
The sun above, the windswept  leafless tree
I wish we were on Sutton Bank again
We ‘d lay down in the heather ,where’ve you gone?

 

 

This treasure

Absenting ourselves from presence in this life
Glued onto the pictures in our minds
It neither matters if  we wish for strife

Or whether they fill needs of better kind.

We know that wish fulfilment comes in dreams
And also in our fantasies by day
When anxious worry fills our mind with schemes
Guilt and shame impede us from our play.

Creative thought requires the loss of self,
And needs our empty soil to plant its gifts
So throw out selfish fancies for this wealth
We’ll let ourselves  go slow, so minds can shift

To waste our days in suffering or false pleasure
Will lose for us this vital, vivid treasure

Pure presence

Red-Admiral-2020-1Pure presence is a gift without demands
No intrusion, no monopoly
Within its light our withered self expands

Those who had to sit before may stand
Beside the waves, the gentle rippling sea
Pure presence is a gift without demands

A quiet place, a friend to hold our hand
Helps us to  make bold our heresy
Within the  light our withered self expands

A gift of grace, as humble as an ant
Where can we be present you and me ?
Pure presence is a gift without demands

Is there more than human empathy?
The flowers so small and wild have sympathy
Pure presence is a gift we understand
Within its light our withered selves expands

 

No map

The more I  write, the more I feel the gap
From  the immense, the real  of skin and eye
To what  I write or draw upon a map

When you  lay still, my skin around you wrapped
I touched you with my  nerves   but made no cry
The more I  write, the more I feel the gap

We can hold  a baby on our lap
But not a  husband who needs space to die
What  could I write or show upon a map?

Words like little wires,  a  rabbit trap,
Catch a moving moment as it flies
The more I  write, the more I feel that gap

There is a silence, music is surpassed
A puzzled truth and not  wordly lie
What to  write or show upon a map?

Can we close the lids, the lover’s eyes
Sorrow  follows  couples like a spy
The more  the words, the more I feel the gap
The real  hides as I write, there is no map

He won’t like  the crap you shed

I am frightened I’ll run out of food
My   insides are in knots that feel glued
I  feel sick tonight
What was I ate?
The cat’s looking mad  yet amused

The Whiska’s beef ‘s  meant for the cat
I trod on him, he is now flat
I stole his dinner
I am a great sinner
I should eat  both the snake and the bat

This epidemic is my fault, you see
I gave away bat food for free
The homeless have soup
And suffer from croup
The rich  folk denounce liberty

A huge sense of guilt is conceit
In a sense it is also deceit
We’re not omnipotent
Nor are we impotent
We’re in the grey, be discreet

I wonder  what new world we’ll get
When Boris  in aspic is set
He’s having a  baby
It happens  now daily
It’s the mother who’s caught in his net

Fancy  a nappy change now?
Boris  is taking a bow
He won’t like  the crap you shed
When you are in his bed
Well, it’s far too late after the plough

Geese rested

In the distance I hear soft music on the radio.
The air is still and silence holds us
In her arms.
Quiet Sunday morning
Rode past the field where geese rested
Looking from far away
Like a flock of pigeons
In the sun.
See so many different kinds of brick,
Angles of rooftops,buildings haphazardly
Added to before planning laws.
I sit and watch the people pass,
Some happy,one weeping though she assured me
It's merely an allergy;
An allergy to loss?
Yes,I'm allergic to loss.
Loss makes my eyes water and my nose run.
Where does all that water come from?
Pass me your handerchief,mine is a ladies
Since men must work and women weep
Surely we should have the biggest hankies?
Men can wipe their nose on their sleeve
As long as they are not wearing their hearts there!
Or they might consider sharing hankies.
How kind;for at times, almost,
Every one weeps.

Whales swimming North in rows.

A day of sudden changes.Clouds

cross the sky

like whales swimming North in rows.

The sun was bright,dazzled my eyes

with gold and silver.

Wind cut across my face

like a slap from an angry father..

Those who love can also seem to hate us too..

The lure of that small childish body

tempts them to divert their anger towards it.

When the ones who hurt you

are also the ones you love,

it’s hard to know which direction to run in;

but it usually turns into a circle.

Retreating turns into a new arrival.

Straight lines might be better. though

On a spherical earth

difficult to find.

Even parallel lines meet

In their Riemannian geometry.

So we can never get away

Sometimes the best we manage

Is to increase the circle’s radius.

Though how is hard to know.

Do you love me or hate me?

Do you want me to stay or go?

What do I want?Do I have a me?

The memory of warmth draws me back

Like a cold lonely beast leaving the jungle

To lie down with a what appears to be a lamb,

Surprising the farmer up early to milk his animals

Finding a strange new one

Looking with tender,puzzled eyes

into His Human Face.

Why not make men eat quiche?

 

 

close up photo of macarons on plate
Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com

Why not eat men who make quiche
Thinking to bake it on a beach
The sun’s  no oven,I   have   found
Nor is the London underground

 

Why not make some pastry?
You can  fill a tart with grated cheese. cooked onions ,fried bacon in ittle pieces,put a  thin layer of cooked sliced potato  under the other ingredients if you need more bulk
For a smallish flan o beat one egg with 1/4 pint of milk
Add seasoning and nutmeg Pour over the cheese etc
Bake in a medium oven 35 minutes  or so

First time?
Stay near the oven and check.If it’s not cooked  increase the heat and leave a bit longer
Best eaten the same day but will keep well

Metal  flan dishes give a crisper  pastry.

The mirror gapes at each new clown.

When you are far,so far away
The longest night,
The shortest winter day,
will be places where
I
might die.
The heart's interior
no-one else
Can view.
When you are lost,
I cannot find
your face...
Its outline on the pillows,
My fingers shaped to trace...
The new design,
the stellar rhyme,
Where have you gone?
You slipped from out my arms.
You slipped away.
Was night or day
Ever cut by such a narrow line?
In your embrace I lay.
You seemed so strong.
Yet,sighing, took the path away.
I can't see where
Is
it
night?
Or is it
day..?
I tried to write
to bring white light,
It's dark, and still.
I long for you to come.
Oh,will we ever quite
Find out our way?
Or is that pure illusion?
As we stagger through
the wandering furrows
in the fields
They shoot us down.
What is this confusion?
The war goes on
The world goes round
The mirror gapes at each new clown.
But in a crack, a seed may grow..
I can't see you,
But yet,it's so.

What to eat when you can’t shop for a few days

 

Photo0220_0011.Add quick macaroni to soup for 5 minutes to make it  into a filling meal
2..Make a cheese bread and butter pudding ;leave out sugar and raisins.Add grated  cheese
3. Hardboil eggs and eat with any salad you can  conjure up
4.Again with  above eggs you can  make a curry sauce with tinned tomptoes and eat with rice or bread or pasta
6.Make stuffed eggs

https://www.myrecipes.com/holidays-and-occasions/easter-recipes/stuffed-egg-recipes

Red lentils cook faster than other kinds
Cook some and mix with cheese sauce then bake in medium oven for about 25 minutes
Add bits of cooked bacon if you  have any
Rice goes well with it.
I just found some mince pies but I am afraid to eat them!

The riddle of poetry

 

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAhttp://shipwrecklibrary.com/borges/borges-craft-verse/

The Beginning

This Craft of Verse

Jorge Luis Borges
Edited by Calin-Andrei Mihailescu
University of Harvard Press, 2000.

I have spent my life reading, analyzing, writing (or trying my hand at writing), and enjoying. I found the last to be the most important thing of all. “Drinking in” poetry, I have come to a final conclusion about it. Indeed, every time I am faced with a blank page, I feel that I have to rediscover literature for myself…. I have only my perplexities to offer you. I am nearing seventy. I have given the major part of my life to literature, and I can offer you only doubts
—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Riddle of Poetry”

It is impossible to begin a review of This Craft of Verse without commenting on the Borgesian nature of the discovery itself. From 1967 to 1968, Jorge Luis Borges delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University. Having never been transcribed, they were subsequently assumed lost—until the end of the twentieth century, when a dusty recording was discovered in a library vault. There, committed to magnetic memory, was a voice from thirty-odd years ago, the voice of a poet now silent for half that time. A voice perhaps even more vital today, after the long and often controversial course of postmodernism has delivered us to a new millennium; a voice urging us to keep language alive.

Click the link to read the rest

Review of Borges’ “This Craft of Verse”

Into the Confessional with a dandelion

Father, it is fifty years since my last Confession
I didn’t  realise  you were an old person

We;l I was only  eight last time
You mean,  you have only been once?
Yes, it was a terrifying experience
Surely an eight  year old  would not have committed a  lot of sins?
It’s not the number, it’s the seriousness
Do remind me what you dId?
I made the cat have a bath
Is that immoral?
Well, the cat didn’t like it
Why did you do it?
I thought it would stop her needing to lick herself all over.
And did it?
She moved next door and lived there for 20 years
Well, that’s not too bad.What have you done now?
I keep dreaming about strangling Boris Johnson
That’s  only a sin if you  injure him
If only I could tell him how I feel
He can’t listen.He’s an egoist
Is that a religion
Yes, in a sense.They  adore themselves.
How about prayer?
They have no other god they worship
How miserable.Can’t they worship flowers?
I  wish I knew
What would Jesus say?
Look at the lilies in the field.
Well, we have none
It is a simile or metaphor.Look at the dandelions
I’ve always felt they were underrated

And so do all of us

Yes!