Do not  grate the cheese with your false teeth

img_20200418_193506395Put salt onto your scalp with your shampoo
If like the ocean you are feeling blue
When you rub, the dry skin will come off
So at the moment  you must never cough

Do not  grate the cheese with your false  teeth
This will give your  other some relief
There are  great devices you can buy
Make certain yours  is not a home for flies

Coffee with no  milk may be a dye
Pour it on your head as alibi
Is there any warrant  for arrest?
Do not send your blood until it’s blessed

If you see some tear gas in your street
Lock the door and hide beneath the sheets
The Bible as a weapon is uncouth
God does not embroider  his own truth

Integration means so much  to me
I learned  the Calculus from A to B
I learned  about  geometry ,don’t tell
If Euclid comes I’m up  the pole as well

Even Alfred got puzzled


Alfred,cat ,both black and white
Do not be afraid
Alfred dearest, that was News
Before the Trump  arrived
Alfred how I miss you now
I hope you’re still alive
You look quite puzzled or afraid
I’m sorry I was sad
In this world of madness  now
We search for tidings glad
If you have another home
I don’t mind now you’re gone
I hope you find a  warm bed place
And sleep  until  you’re done

Fuzzy numbers

In calculus we find mysterious forms
Minute numbers disappear,return
Zero is not nothing, but a cloud
Of motes that dance in sun or disappear
Fuzzy logic too has mystery
The truth says nothing is mere black or white
Just more or less and these may overlap
Dissolving into clouds upon a map
Numbers have no feelings but make form
I once saw them moving, patterned, in my dreams
Golden letters telling me the way
The truth is often very hard to see
Like those tiny half alive mind dots
Flying through our minds like dust flies in the sun

An old garden

Red-Admiral-2020-1

It reminds me of an East Anglian landscape.
This garden’s flat planes of grass give the illusion
Of greater distance,the eye travels down them To the trees rising at the end.
On this scene my mind superimposes
Other ideas of summer days in hot places
In flat fields stretching on either
Side down to the sea.
My eye enjoys the shape,the flatness
The form,a symbol for so many other gardens
And summer journeys on unknown lanes
Across new landscapes ,delighting in them,
In the space extending,and the trees

A gentle contradiction to the horizontal meadows.
In summer in recent years,
what I remember Is the sun across these long,flat shapes.

Looking at this small garden,
I remember So many things,
my eye sees through

What is here,to far beyond
What has passed and what is to come
All contained here.

The erections must go

There once was a very rich man
His  statue  erect is now damned
For he traded in slaves
And sent men to their graves
This stupidity is sure  to  be banned

 He wanted to be seen after death
To be admired, unknowing of our wrath
He did not imagine
A changed reaction
Oh.Lord, let’s all take a deep breath

 

Britain has   great evil  to show
Sending many men to death row
The poor  children were  starving
While being disregarded
The system was  as cruel  as  they go

What shall I call them?

15977118_846858878787325_6294777997997974550_n (2)

 

 

 

Would you mind calling the police?
What shall I call them?
Would you like to ring 999?
I’d rather ring a bell
Shall we get an ambulance?
I’d prefer a cat,myself
Shall we go to A and E?
Rather go to B C D
Do I need stitches?
No, we all have mouths
My nails are very long
Like hair, they grow

Mother, help me,mother I can’t breathe

He went inside a shop to buy some bread
Then minutes later he was lying dead
Life is so precarious   every day
Police are meant to help us on our way

United now the entire world  protests
A video of a man with neck compressed
Mother, help me.mother I can’t breathe
Oh,Jesus, you were killed between two thieves.

Now, he has been buried let  us note
No man is an island,John Donne wrote
We are all connected,  make  new laws
Ask why this  man’s murder gave us pause

Who believes, the black  folks,killed, oppressed
Were never by the government addressed?

 

Why not ring 999?

water blue ocean
Photo by Jaymantri on Pexels.com

 

 

 

Your kettle won’t boil
You have lost the tea bags
The water is not hot enough for you to take a bath
The  TV won’t come on
You need some fish and chips
A button came off your coat
The cat is on your chair
Your phone needs charging
You want some cigarettes
Yout partner is in a bad temper
The sheets need changing
Your jeans are crumpled

Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove.

img_20191122_203051https://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/

Excerpt

Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem says:

“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”

Stated in Formal Language:

Gödel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.”

The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness.

Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. (In other words, children can do math by counting their fingers, water flowing into a bucket does integration, and physical systems always give the right answer.)

Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete.

Syllogism:

1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete

2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system

3. Therefore the universe is incomplete

You can draw a circle around all of the concepts in your high school geometry book. But they’re all built on Euclid’s 5 postulates which are clearly true but cannot be proven. Those 5 postulates are outside the book, outside the circle.

You can draw a circle around a bicycle but the existence of that bicycle relies on a factory that is outside that circle. The bicycle cannot explain itself.

Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove. Any system of logic or numbers that mathematicians ever came up with will always rest on at least a few unprovable assumptions.

Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language or philosophy.

And: If the universe is mathematical and logical, Incompleteness also applies to the universe.

Guardian letter page

With the number of MPs and advisers breaking their own lockdown rules, surely it’s time to impose the wearing of ankle tags on all of them. They could be emblazoned with parliament’s portcullis logo to make them a fashion statement.
Richard Cox
Groby, Leicester

 

Take your love and in your arms enfold

Did anyone believe blind rage expressed
Could benefit the agent without harm?
Did anyone read Freud and then digest?

Feelings need the heat of blacksmith’s fires
Held inside until they find their form
An image worthy of our right desire

As well as rage, we should mistrust love too
Be backward in expression till more’s known
Or risk an avalanche of cruelty.

Take care of others, they are not our fools
From sacred meetings all mankind has grown
We misuse folk to test our worth and tools

Holding in the inner fires our wish
The blackness of the heart can turn to gold
No contradiction hides such sacredness

Take your love and in your arms enfold.
The future of the world is growing cold
We liked to have the choice for rage and death
Until we found the charred remains of bliss

No body

Nobody has no mind, no self .no flesh
No sense, no purpose, nothing that will last
What is worse, to be trapped in a mesh
To be immoral, sinful and loveless
To stumble in a  morass of distress
The sinking sands  of childhood thought surpassed
Nobody has no mind, no self .no flesh
There is a body-mind retrieved from trash

Ready to begin

What is not a sin may be a crime
Tie me up and burn me,I’m malign
Don’t they say this is the best of times
With tablets. smartphones, free verse with  few lines
Though in the end you have you make your name
There is no need to hang it on a sign
What is never done may be a sin
Let me out.I’m ready to begin

How to discriminate

The language of the unheard

 

Extract:

religious wall art inside building
Photo by Emre Can on Pexels.com

Brutal systemic racism is a vast tragedy where both complacency and resistance lead to frightening outcomes. In such a tragedy, the first duty of observers is to listen to what is said in broken glass and wailing sirens.

You’ve probably already heard the line from Martin Luther King Jr., “a riot is the language of the unheard”. The speech, delivered at Stanford in 1967, is an extraordinary example of embracing moral ambiguity. King reiterates his advocacy for nonviolent tactics, saying that acts of “violence will only create more social problems than they will solve”. Yet he insists riots are not mindless destruction; they are communicative acts, drawing attention to decades of poverty and neglect. They are reminders “that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity”.

King’s insistence on seeing beyond simple judgement is echoed in recent trends in moral theory. Traditionally, western philosophy tended to focus on theorizing what makes actions count as right or wrong. But many philosophers now see this as an overly limiting project. Elise Springer, in her recent book Communicating Moral Concern (2013)writes that “nothing bars us from framing our practical life as a chronicle of individual actions, each with a stand-alone moral status; but it is as insightful as conceiving dialogue as a chronicle of individually chosen words”. Instead, Springer focuses on the importance of attention; moral communication is first about getting others to recognize that something morally important is at stake, not simply adjudicating its place in a table of rights and wrongs.

Grief in lockdown

Why do I weep when I am all alone?
None can see me ,none can  hold me here
The heart I had was made from heavy stone
Now it has dissolved into a groan
Why do I weep when I am all alone?
My mind is muddled,all I see’s unclear
Why do I weep when I am all alone?
None can see me ,who’s my comforter?

Watercolour love

Gethyum-atropurpureum-2020

Like watercolour pictures in the rain
Our colours mingled,yet the originals s remain.
Two watercolour paintings without frames,
Became one picture over time,
Yet two of us still there.
Our colors blended naturally,
Now all the hues are shared.
I love your colors intermixed with mine:
Together they have made a new design.
A Watercolour painted by the rain,
We may go, but our Watercolor Love will still remain

The words I’ve read

I like to go to sleep,I feel so hot
I need an ice cold drink by my old bed
There must be something else,but I forget
Why was Albert Einstein  full of smut?
Relatively speaking, he was shot
A photon waved and particled a dot
When you’re living you’re not really dead
I like to go to bed,I  have no plot
I buy a  book and eat the words I’ve read

Fortune favours the brave

Why fortune favours courage I don’t know
But if we’re too afraid, we do not see
We hate  so much that fateful heavy blow
Cringing, shrinking, with half closed eye
As if our vision’s blocked by heavy snow
We are  more brave when others share our view
Fortune favours courage, yet be slow
Fear  makes sight a tunnel, sadly true

The strange world of Stan

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 with politeness and humour
“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 loverbird
“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 neighbour 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

Waiting

Why is it so hard for us to wait?
Why be tense and make ourselves feel ill?
Why not use the time to meditate?

Do all human beings feel this way?
Think of Jews in cattletrucks,crammed, still
Why is it so hard for us to wait?

We  feel our own pain and we fear mistakes
As we live we’re ground by many mills
Could one use the time to meditate?

Life is short and tension lays it waste
I see tiny wren upon the sill
Must  it so hard for me to wait?

In mind madness, I can’t see your face
I lose all feeling; body, heart are chilled
Should I waste the time , not meditate?

If a jug is empty it is full
Full of air and happy to be dull
Why is it so hard for us to wait?
Why not  keep quite still, is my fate?

 

 

 

Am I wrong?

I thought I’d write another villanelle
I like  repeated lines as in a song
The music seems to permeate my cells
Inside my entire being music dwells
Would I write another villanelle?
A triolet is shorter, love is long
Musing, I decided villanelle.
I like  repeated lines but am I wrong?

The sun was very hot

I  have lost  my lingerie,oh dear
I dried it on a shrub, the sky was clear
The sun was very hot, my washing dried
I put in a bag which I can’t find

So now I wait for Amazon to bring
A parcel of white cotton underthings
I also have an ulcer on my toe
I thought it  only fair to let you know

Where are all the clothes that I have lost
While in my poetry I am engrossed?
Once my home had order and restraint
If a man came near me, he would faint

Maybe all this loss  is a defence
Keeps my mind  from wondering where he went

The change is come

The tender glance, the heart, the love displayed
Where will I find a home  now you are gone
Where in the abyss is such a place?
Where the eyes which will contain my gaze?
The voice that spoke to me can’t be replaced
At this turning point , the change will come
The tender glance, the heart, the love displayed
Where will I find a home,my love is gone?

He is no more

The heart that touched my heart I feel no more
Alone in this great space. I feel afraid
Like a conductor who has lost the Score
The soul that touched my soul I feel no more
As other orders  that soul did obey
The heart that touched my heart I feel no more
Alone in the abyss. I feel afraid

He is alive again

 

 

 

 

barn owl perched on tree
Photo by DSD on Pexels.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triolet#:~:text=A%20triolet%20(UK%3A%20%2F%CB%88,have%20appeared%20in%20its%20history.

 

 

The face that was familiar is no more
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again
If ,by a fluke, his life could be restored
It would affect me like the hidden chord
If played, my own life force would go.
That one must live and one must die is plain
The face that was familiar is no more.
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again

The baby sees but cannot speak

They tore the blanket in my pram in two
I could not sit up but I could see
Is this what older brothers often do?

I have no other memory nor a clue
I could not speak nor could I even flee
They tore the blanket in my pram in two

Ambivalent,dynamic,what’s this glue?
They fought at every chance,ignoring me
Is this what older brothers often do?

Parents were not there,that’s nothing new
Where do the feelings of the mute dwell silently?
They tore the blanket in my pram in two

Still these speech-wrecked moods descend on me
How to transform fear, indentity?
Is this what older brothers have to do?

Intense emotion feels  too sharp. though  true
The feelings push and shove inside of me
They tore my knitted blanket into two
If I’d had no brothers,I’d be who?

His absence haunts

How can it be he is no longer here?
How can it be I do not hear that voice
His presence haunts me from his battered chair

Though I have money and no needs to bare
I feel the grief, the affect of his choice.
How can it be that he has vanished here?

What is a world when loss turns to despair.
When every sheet by weeping is made moist?
His presence haunts from his beloved chair

Now we learn the symbol of the hare
Hunted, captured, killed,oh lachrymose
How can it be when love should counter fear?

Into the real, we stand and longtime stare

We’re begging, blaming, badgered, shamed and gassed

Some presence feints with ours in death’s own lairs

Now the world of man has long surpassed
The time we could blame God for what we ‘ve missed
How can it be that He is never here?
His absence haunts: symbolic, suffered, real.

A burning bush

When he  in whom you trusted turns malign
Yet does not tell you why this might be so
Just sends you hate mail, crosses boundary lines
This is both a  trauma and a blow

Shall I take  lose myself in thoughtless sin
Devote myself  to flesh and lovers wild?
I shall not run to where  revenge  may win
Nor burn my throat with  boiling, putrid bile

Humanity  turns backwards does not rush
Returns the evil with a strong, good wish
When God reveals himself, a burning bush
The flames will purify, the heat will kiss

Retaliation may feel very  sweet
But hate rebounds and  eats us, as is meet