Month: May 2020

It seemed a good idea at the time

 I studied numbers,sequences and rhymes
Connections,patterns in between the lines
It seemed a good idea at the time

 Unfortunately,  with study, we use mime
We see   beneath the surface to the crimes
I studied numbers,sequences and rhymes

Whenever  I was found, I  took the  blame
 The clock gave  more than twenty thousand chimes
Life seemed a good idea all the time

Humiliation, sadism,torture,fame
We share the blasphemy  that God will smile
Life seemed a good idea at the time

How the world is full  of rebuffs yet  beguiles
Enough,I’ll give it one more finite trial
I studied numbers,sequences and lies
I joined the Secret Service,I’m a spy

Your menu

 

 Lockdown

Corned beef  and hot fried tinned peaches  with free tin opener
Bacon grilled by the SS
Cream on hot cross buns, fried bananas with grating cheese noise on a CD
Parts of my broken tooth  with quick macaroni buttered and bred [I will send photo of tooth which broke last week and more just snapped off
Rice and pasta with pig’s head on pig’s body [alive]
Bread on toast
Cake  with tuna fish on bed of Weetabixbnd
Sugar and butter sandwich
Sugar on wafers [ not from Church]
Hot tea and long life milk [now 67 years old]

I apologise for loving you too much 

photo0426

I miss the cat and the newspaper

I apologise for loving you too much 
We never learned to balance the see-saw
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

Two lonely   lovers with  a single crutch
Each one having many curious flaws
I apologise for loving you too much

What ever did I do to merit touch?
Then I was too careless with the salt
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

We should measure what we speak at lunch
Then we weigh the sentences that spilt
I apologise for loving you too much

Maths and stats are useful in the lurch
Equality of signs and numbers,bills
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

,

Let the mouth be silent, keep quite still
Love is rarely used when writing Wills
I apologise for loving you so much 
In modern times  we lovers cannot touch

 

 

The strange world of Stan

K 
Art by Katherine

While Mary boiled the kettle in the new greenish blue painted kitchen,Stan smacked his thick red lips.
“I thought we said, we’d have no more corporal punishment,” she murmured loudly.”
Why did you smack your lips just now?”
“Well,I can hardly smack yours” he said politely
“But we said no more smacking at all yesterday”
“I just like the noise” he confessed, turning as red as a stalk of ripe rhubarb.
“Sado-masochism may be fun, but after reading,Fifty Glades of Fray,I thought we said we’d abandon it”
“Well,why don’t we abandon ourselves to our bodies or divine providence?” he answered curiously.
“I am unsure if one can do that on purpose or if it just happens whilst doing something else.”
“Elser than what?”
“I dunno” the Oxgrudge educated woman replied sheepishly .
“The Government didn’t give you a three year research grant so you’d say,I dunno” Stan told his slender and silver haired wife and lover.
“Well,that’s their problem.Three years studying Searat’s equation did nothing for my spoken English” the brilliantly brained brown haired and eyed bonny bosomed  beauty told him shrewdly.
“Well,are there rats in the sea?
“I dunno”
“So who wrote the equation?” Stan asked her.Immediately in a peevish tone
the door bell rang.
“Hello,Mary,It’s me” cried Annie their naughty neighbor and man magnet
“No,it’s not”
“What do you mean?”
“You never invented Searat’s equation”
“Pardon me for living,”Annie answered rudely.
”I prefer peeling potatoes to this noisy argument.”
“I never knew potatoes pealed”
“Yes,it’s like little bells ringing” Mary informed her kindly
Oh,for God’s sake,”Stan shouted quietly,”that’s Emile’s bell ringing so the birds can escape from him”
The women went red all over with shame.Annie ran into the kitchen and poured a bucket of cold water over her head.
It’s this hot weather;it’s too much.I need a man now!I am mad with desire.
No,it’s just that mid life madness coming too late,she told herself gently
It’s too hot to make love anyway.
Why you must be getting old,she remarked to herself confidently
Heat never turned you off before.Why you once said you’d lie down in the road and sleep with the next man who passed by.
Unfortunately he passed by on the other side,just like in the Bible.
But in my case no Samaritan came to my aid.
“Am I having a mental breakdown/” she shouted pensively
“No,it’s me” Stan told her,I am trying to stop Mary smacking her lips but it is hard work. and it has create a bad atmosphere.”
“Is it wrong to smack your own lips?Can you morally smack someone else’s?” Annie said wonderingly
“Why do you ask me that?”
“Well,it seems lots of things are wrong if one does them alone but are moral if you do it with someone else or to someone one else”
“I just have no idea what you are talking about,”Mary called valiantly.
“Make me some tea.My lips are parched!”she continued
“No wonder,”said Stan vivaciously
Well,thought Emile,I am glad cats have no lips.That’s one thing less to worry about.
He sat up and drank some tea from his china saucer
Stan and the ladies sat quietly on the patio watching the birds flying about.
“Do birds ever get obese?”Mary asked.But answer came there none.
Night fell and they all went to bed together,Emile says there is safety in numbers and I find thirty is a safe number to share my bed.I write 30 on a postcard and pop it under my pillow.With my dentures and my hanky and four mobile phones
I seem to manage the night.

And so shout all of us

Stan tries to dust the house

 

 

adorable animal animal photography animal portrait
Photo by Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

Stan was annoyed that since the days were getting brighter and longer, the dust on the furniture was becoming more evident..Not that his wife Mary was a tyrant but she was out at work whereas he was free from his purgatory working with gamblers and homeless drug users but had to keep the home clean instead
Of course he had been pleased to be working to improve society ,but enough was enough.He already was helping two people on a voluntary basis at his church, Still Mary was labouring in the lecture hall. explaining how linear algebra might help folk to lead better and more virtuous lives ,especially if they were going into Parliament or the higher reaches of the Civil Service which aided government ministers dealing with strange confusions in the Economy ,and indeed in the entire world.
He picked up his microfibre dusting rag cut from an old towel and started to dust the TV set.After that he sprayed Dettox onto the keyboards of all their laptops,ipads,phones and remote controls.Then he dried them with an old tea towel made of cotton and linen.
Suddenly he heard the back door opening.In ran his beauteous mistress Annie wearing a green and red tracksuit and purple trainers with pink spots on.
Shall I make some lovely coffee,she asked positively.
I have not done much housework yet,Stan cried in alarm.
Let me see,she responded with the ripe interest of the retired and bored.
My, this remote control is very,very clean.
She put it in front of her eyes and glared myopically at it.
All her mind power was concentrated on this one object, which was at this moment in  time her whole world;usually myopia is a bad move as it impedes a wider balanced view of life.
You have done brilliantly with this but you do need a break from this tedious and arduous work,she enthused laconically.
Oh, OK then,Stan answered gently.
She poured coffee into two Portmeirion pottery mugs and took them into the conservatory where she admired his potted plants and his herbs.
What’s this here, she called.It wasn’t here last week,
It’s cannabis,he informed her unwilfully.
Are you a user now she enquired tactlessly.
No,I am keeping it for a friend.Stan lied truthfully
That’s what they all say,she riposted jocosely.
Well,I don’t know how to use it.I believe you smoke it so does it have to be dried?
I guess so,she said like a cowboy from a  desert in Alabama on a diet of coke and french fries.
Well,I am not going test it,he said pensively.I don’t even smoke a pipe any more.I suck my thumb instead.It’s free,he continued and needs no licence
Would you like to suck my toes,she asked him lovingly.
After all,the Duchess of York had hers sucked and I am her equal in some ways .
Sucking toes has so far not been part of my repertoire and neither
has whipping women and smacking them either.I prefer to suck their lips and caress their cheeks.
Which cheeks? she asked suspiciously, as if she was an examiner in an oral examination for a law degree.
Sorry,dear..I am happy to caress any part of your warm voluptuous flesh but I need to get on with the housework.
Just ignore it,she ordered him. rudely.I’ll help you after we have been to bed
I didn’t know we were going to bed, he said in a very puzzled tone of voice
Well,you do now,she giggled un-furtively
And so does Emile who is already on the landing from where he can see the mirror opposite the bed.What a naughty boy he is,but what would you do in his position?
I thought so.Ask a missionary at once.You have to believe me… or turn pale with horror at this evil couple.

http://youtu.be/Mb3iPP-tHdA

Yet underneath long sorrow there is joy

A strange flawed beauty  caught my naked eye
As if some  monstrous beast is hiding near
Where deep rose clouds   hang from a darker sky

Now the rose has gone and all is grey
The night will fall and sorrow is our fare
A  shattered beauty caught by mirrored eye

Yet underneath  night sorrow there is joy
The wisdom of the  ages  does not stare
Though deep rose clouds   hang from a darker sky

Now I see some gold spread unalloyed
The artist we can worship ,love, revere
 Beauty, fearless, caught  in mirrored eye

Nature in her way will never lie
Yet she can kill  what humans   hold most dear
While deep rose clouds   hang from a near night sky

In the clouds of sadness faces leer
Hallucinations look but cannot jeer
Such beauty ,numinous ,affects my eye
While deep rose clouds  sing from a darkening sky

 

 

Igor Levit–pianist who streams

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/igor-levit-is-like-no-other-pianist

Extract:

n March 10th, the German pianist Igor Levit played Beethoven’s Third and Fifth Piano Concertos at the Elbphilharmonie, the hulking concert complex in Hamburg. It was his thirty-third birthday and, it turned out, his last public concert for many weeks. The next day, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, delivered a dire warning about the scope of the looming coronavirus pandemic, and performance spaces began closing across the country. At the time, Levit had a full schedule before him. He had recently issued a boxed-set recording of Beethoven’s thirty-two piano sonatas, and was playing Beethoven cycles in several European cities. He was also preparing to tackle an arcane colossus of the piano literature—the seventy-minute Piano Concerto by the early-twentieth-century composer-virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni, a hero of his.

“That next day, the eleventh, was kind of a shock day,” Levit told me recently, in a video call from his apartment, in Berlin. “On the twelfth, I was shopping in a grocery store, and I had this thought: What if I live-streamed a gig?” He peered into his phone with a grin. He is a trim young man with sharp features, a high Mahlerian hairline, and a thin growth of beard. He was wearing a T-shirt that read “Love Music Hate Racism.” He speaks rapidly and incisively, his English nearly as good as his German. Sometimes he seems more mature than his years, poised and oracular; at others, he comes across as an antic, restless member of his digital-native generation.

Levit went on, “When I got home, I did what I usually do, which is to throw a thought into the public arena without thinking about any consequences. I went on Twitter and said, ‘O.K., I’m going to play for you guys tonight at my place.’ After having tweeted that, I realized, Hang on—I’ve never streamed anything, I know shit about streaming, I don’t even know if Twitter allows thirty minutes of streaming, I have no camera stand. I had a total panic. I was sending messages to friends: ‘Do you know how streaming works?’ And this tweet was already out there. It was a catastrophe. I ran to the last electronics store that was still open, and got some stuff for twenty-four euros.”

I saw Levit’s tweet and tuned in. The setting was familiar, because I had met with him there the previous summer. He lives in a spacious, airy, sparely decorated apartment in the Mitte neighborhood of Berlin, with plate-glass windows overlooking a park. His instrument is a 1923 Steinway B that once belonged to the great Swiss pianist Edwin Fischer. At 7 p.m., Levit pressed the Record button on his smartphone and trotted in front of his newly acquired home-Webcasting equipment, dressed casually in a black-and-gray pullover shirt and black pants. He gave a brief introduction, in German and English: “It’s a sad time, it’s a weird time, but acting is better than doing nothing. Let’s bring the house concert into the twenty-first century.” He then tore into Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, in a fashion typical of him—precipitate, purposeful, intricately nuanced. It was an imposing structure aglow with feeling.

“Joy and woe are woven fine”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence

Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr’ all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell & buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

Converting words

Using words to capture “love ” and  store
Thinking twenty maidens will  provide
I don’t  know how to love you anymore

The mask is almost perfect, it annoys
Hatred could seep in from the outside
Converting words to weapons   which destroy

What dark secret in  your soul is stored?
You  cut down your  better self with pride
I don’t feel I love you anymore

Through the clay and stone a hole is bored
To filch the riches, weapons  can be bought
Using words to  block out love’s  real core

Loving maidens  turn to haggard whores
The savings are all stolen,more beside
 Learn to love before they close your eyes

Evil acts make evil, turning tides
Judgment finds the virtue,love applies
Use your words to capture love   no more
I’m leaving now,I should have left  before

Logic of the sign

You’re my lodestar,you’re my light.
You get me through the darkest night.
You keep me on this path I follow
I hope you’ll  be  here  still tomorrow.

You’re my companion, other self.
You have knowledge, spiritual wealth.
You have studied,you have thought,
In meditation your soul wrought.

You are there when I’m in need.
You don’t allow my fears to breed.
Sometimes I catch a glimpse of you.
You mend my soul when life’s askew

You are here  but dwell unseen
Though you visit me in dreams
Give me words to comfort me
I  live my life  and hope to see.

Images and metaphors
Start and end the global wars
May our  symbols intertwine
With the logic of the sign

How I began writing poetry.

IWritten 20176429586_72f5d1321d_m

Apples inspired by Janet Weight Reed artist and blogger

I must have had a wish to write.Because for many years ,I studied books on poetry and creative writing.I began to collect images and events which affected me  emotionally in a notebook.Then one day I asked,When will I  ever  write?
I had to start,  unconfident as I was. Time was passing

Here is the first poem  I wrote.[January 2010]

CHRISTMAS SNOW

Too old for cold,I stand, now ,against the hedge,
Watching the snowflakes in the glare of neon street lights.
Darkness has come early,and I think of country uplands and huddled sheep.
On Salisbury Plain,shepherds watched their flocks
Just as in Bethlehem two thousand years before,
And then ,exactly when?
“Between the wars”,it stopped. Now we know there is no “Between the wars”.
And who decided
To cull the sheep and shepherds and the space for kindness ?
Now that same Plain still exists,but banned
And closed to human-kind,
For bombs ,not wombs
Nor for birth of lamb ,nor gypsy child ,nor Saviour
Where would He go today?
_
MImage

Photo my own

From the first poem, I can see my mind was wondering if there is any space in the world now safe enough for a creative happening.After I wrote this,I was unsure if I’d get any more inspiration but I did

Here is a slightly later poem

SUN PAINTING
Bright sun
Paints a shadow picture
On the white wall
Dried stems
Of Michaelmas daisies
A leaf caught in a cobweb sways
To and fro.
I gaze.
Silence.

After two years or so I began to write sonnets which I had never believed I could do

 

Photo1375

It looks and speaks just as a sonnet would

This poem is written in the sonnet form,
And yet I have my doubts about its shape
Though nearly to that structure it conforms
There may be holes where nightmare faces gape.

It looks and speaks just as a sonnet would
And talks of metaphysical concerns.
Do we conclude, as poets and readers should,
That in our schizoid age we cannot learn?

For humans may be decked in clothes of wolves;
And lambs be dressed in lions’ fearsome furs.
Thus, sense is tricked and problems are unsolved.
Landscapes etched, yet details seem quite blurred.

It looks like one,it feels like one,it speaks;
Yet from these words, does human feeling leak?

Another mind

7985150_f260-2

I made this image from a photograph of trees using Artweaver Free

From time and place and season I am lost,
Disorientated ,missing tracks well worn.
Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost,
Nor label me with epithets of scorn.
For usual paths lead to the usual place.
The safest way to live and perhaps to die,
But wandering through the woods I find new space
and in wild grasses with the fox I lie.
Through distant trees, I see a way to go
As narrow as a slit in  pale limestone.
I  pass in silence as if in deep,deep snow.
My courage rises even as I groan.

Remember when we’re lost ,we may then find
Another way,a place,another mind.

Touching them and keeping them at peace

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The photo is by Mike Flemming 2020
Thank you,Mike

 

We can cast our body like a cloak
Around the loved one when they cannot speak
Hold them like an infant  when at  rest
Sleeping softly on a mother’s breast

Touching them and keeping them at peace
Until they  can accept death and its release
They seem to concentrate  on unknown tasks
Till their minds are happy and they pass

They come first but afterwards   we  fall
Into  an abyss where  we just crawl
Seeing shapes and visions, feeling sore
Aching for the one we  see no more

A paradox , we  give  and nothing  gain
The suffering of the heart, the searing pains

Affect

 

How hard it is to grieve when we can’t touch
Sight  is distant,  has no real affect
No wonder that the eyes  of  poor folk lurch
How hard it is to grieve when we can’t touch
Though from our hand an enemy might flinch
Or grasp too hard, the knife hid to deflect
How hard it is to grieve when we can’t touch
Sight can never see the true affect

The pain of our own Cross

I see a friend who follows my old path
The downward slope, the tunnel through the dark
Helping partners ease their way through death

The hesitance, the disbelief, the wrath
The sharpness  like a knife that cuts  our heart
I see a friend who follows my old path

So many lovely friends, ny husband said
Just before he lost  the vital spark
Helping  him  to   float  from out his bed

I did not realise that he was dead
Until his pallor faded, blood departs
I see a friend who follows  on this path

We miss them where they used to lie in bed
We miss them  taking photos of the park
We help  them ease their way to  their good death

We need love  to help us with this work
Who will  help the carer when they hurt?
I see a friend who follows my old path
We each bear the pain of our own Cross

 

Who sieves earth?

When we think of God, we see an eye
Watching us like some abhorrent spy
What of his touch, his hearing, his   small voice?
What his  taste conveys and  how employed

Larger  than the total of  sand grains
That  form all  ocean shores  by  moon arranged
Smaller than  the eyes of ladybirds
And insects humble without   spoken words

What is size  compared to tangled roots?
What is loud compared to army boots?
What the colour, what the perfect form
To ripple through my eyes with no alarm

What do you here, what  vision do you flee?
Who  sieves earth and whose the face you see?

Words benign

The gap between experience and words-
Should any person be reduced to signs?
A hint, a sigh, a flight, a  little bird

Who ought express  in lines what has  occurred ?
            Does the  bloodied heart  weep words benign-
The gap between experience and words

A line distinct, a line that is too blurred
What impact can this have on a design?
Which  hint,  which sight,  which  flight, will kill the bird?

The sentence  well constructed has its flair
Yet  to the  void   much feeling   is consigned
That gulf between experience and words

Who tore  apart the meaning  we  hoped shared?
So now to nothingness we are resigned
No hint, no sigh,  no flight, no  little bird

With   whose filters  may  we be refined?
Who shelters souls that others have declined?
The gap between experience and words-
A hint, a sigh, a flight, the   shining bird

 

 

Jesus and the decimal

Wren_2014-2
Why did Jesus walk on the road?
Because there was no water
Why did Jesus drink wine?

He forgot to turn it  into water.

Why did Jesus   have 12 apostles?
He  didn’t  know  the decimal system

Why  did he spend  40 days in the wildnerness?
Because he slept 40 nights there

Did he want a church?
No, he had a synagogue
Why was he killed?
The good die young

Passing through

 

 

 

Tomorrow I shall eat a big icecream
Brought to me by courier  when I choose
If I cannot get one I shall scream
Rather pointless, how about more booze?

I shall drink  more tea and read a book
I read Ted Hughes letters late at night
I finished Sylvia’s journals, I was hooked
Brilliant, sad, pathetic, what outsight

I read her letters,  how she worked  too hard
Even as a tiny  child she strove
How she longed for greatness and rewards
Starting on the tapestry, don’t go!

Harder still and harder,masochist
Will and nature cannot co-exist
Flowers open  when the bees swing past
Birds build nests but  never build too fast

We need to be in tune with our own world
Harmonise  our breathing with the waves
See the  little leaves as they uncurl
Forget   advice,  enjoy life  till the grave

Any moment is epiphany
Jesus  passes by  but we are blind
Though now and then we catch a  burning tree
When we are in rhythm  with  the Mind

Up the waves run on the   risen shore
Bringing  wild  signs from  the ocean floor
Grit and pearls  and love we won’t ignore
Wise the whale  and wise the open door

 

I can’t take no more

Hepatica-okesabayashi-2020 (1)He was studying  love and ethics
He was looking for a  bride
He went to Greece  in his best fleece
Is that suicide?

Then he studied English
But only from a book
He went in town  in study brown
How do you think he looked?

Growing more impatient
He went  for therapy
He went abroad  still feeling flawed
Why can’t he just be?

I lent him all my novels
I lent him Dresden Green
He couldn’t read, his heart would bleed
What  ghost has he seen?

I took  him  in my bedroom
I’m backward but so kind
When I was nude, he was so rude
I  wished that he were blind

So in the end I left him
I can’t take no more
He seemed a catch, but I’m no match
So new locks on the door

 

What else can I say?

I can’t come any further
With love we said goodbye
I wish I was beside you now,
But only angels fly

I remember Xmas
You wanted chocolate from the tree
You climbed up the piano
Then fell and hurt your knee

You ran away and left me
On the way to school
I was run down by a bicycle
Children are so cruel

We cycled up to Arnside
We saw the Langdale Pikes
We saw the sands of Morecambe Bay
How we loved our bikes

We  didn’t go to Hazelslack
We didn’t have the time
We cherished the sweet memories
A holiday sublime

You asked me to come fishing
You hated being alone
I caught a fish and dropped it
Then we took the bus back home

Oh, brother dear, you lie alone 
In the Covid Ward
I know you will be suffering
This hits me very hard

Even worse for your dear wife
She gave you children five
She’s  cared for you for many years
Now she weeps  from the outside

Nobody can see you  now
Three months and a day
I once adored my brother 
What else can I say?

 

No eternal breast

He said he never loved me,but he   he lied to be more kind
Now he’s  epileptic , he’s as fit as he is blind

He said he had got dizzy and he thinks he saw  the Light
It was mainly migraine  but I recognise his plight

He didn’t want to drive me to the  bitter end
So I called a cab and went there ;I met some lovely friends

He carved the joint on Sunday and then he left me here
I’ve finished all the brandy and I’m starting on the beer

I will lose my  mind  on purpose and write from my own heart
If I act like crazy,  take me to the park

We had a cat from Tottenham,I preferred him to a man
I didn’t have to cook at all, he ate straight from a can

The cat we had much later, we thought he was a girl
The vet burst into laughter so I  scratched him with my nails

Then  we had a black cat, very small and  round
She got bored and went to Mass,Jesus  was her friend

Now the cat has cancer and I  am  feeling  gloom
Put a first class stamp on me and send me to the moon

The vet is getting friendly but I have  got no dog
I’ll have to get a virtual one right here on my blog

 

Welcomed by God’s eye

Dwell  inside your heart and breathe  just so
From there your spirit body  can outflow
Spread this round your loved one like a shawl
No need to  make a sound for  love will call

Two are one  like lovers in their bed
But now one has to leave , love cuts the thread
In  full silence ,  welcomed by God’s eye
They concentrate on  this  before they die

In  your  gracious  warmth they’re  feeling safe
As a child is in a mother’s gaze
Time  no longer matters. we’re elsewhere
Walking humbly ,softly i  to God’s stare

At last the work is done and   they are  free
Who can understand such mystery?