When I was  28 my husband bought me a tin of lavender wax polish for my birthday.
After 45 years of  marriage I found he liked me mainly because of my beauty ‘[?]
When I was recovering from a serious operation ,he said,You are not very house proud, are you?
When he was  near death he slept a lot  in an armchair by my side.One afternoon he woke up and said in a very loud voice:
You’ve got a brilliant personality.
Then he went to sleep again.
When we were first married we were out in the country.We were in a lane with steep grassy banks so we lay down at the top and rolled down!
He rarely noticed if I went to the hairdresser until I had it cut very very short.He was annoyed because when it was long he liked to brush it in the evening.He could have tickled me with a feather duster instead but he refused.I didn’t have a feather duster but I am sure I could have bought one.
He used to bring me a cup of tea  in bed until he could hardly walk.
After I  had an eye operation I had no  glasses for 6 months and for 3 months I had gas in my right eye so it was blind.We were  in the car, approaching a junction and he said,Which way do I turn? I said,talk about the blind leading the blind
Just after that a friend rang up and said she was very upset she had to wear glasses.How horrible it was.I couldn’t  see. even with  glasses.It made me learn how self centred we are much of the time.
My husband was very humorous.He could imitate politicians so maybe it’s  a good thing he has gone.He would not have believed the last 3 years in the world.
.

Photo by my sister or her husband

Well,I was on the bus and it was very full.so I said to this man, could I have your seat?
So he says,No,you are equal now so you have to stand
So I said,My knees are killing me
So he sez,See the doctor!
So I said,I’ve got my husband here.
Where? he asked
He’s in this bag here,I told .
He looked a bit puzzled so I said. it’s his ashes actually.
So he said,All right you can sit down.
I said.Don’t bother,grace will aid me.
Who’s Grace,he said looking round.
I mean God’s grace,I told him.

 

If you ask me,God’s a bloody disgrace.he replied.
I said,please watch your words as it may disturb my husband.
He said,Surely he can’t hear me now,can he?
I said,No the waves of sound might rattle him.
He said,Rattle!He’s not a skeleton,is he?
No,I was using it to mean upset or disturb in a poetical sense
My.my he said.Who are you,Mrs Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein never married,I informed him.Nor did he write poetry though the Tractatus does have a stern beauty
What a shame,he said.You’d make someone a lovely wife.
Is that a proposal,I asked him humorously.
It doesn’t seem right when you have your husband’s ashes on your knee.
Too true.I fancied having a quiet time on my own with no men around.
So you don’t want passionate bodily love? he asked.
I might want it but I have no desire to wash underpants and boil hankies any more.How that ever got linked to passionate love,God only knows,I murmured seductively
No, he doesn’t because he has no nose! he informed me quietly
Wow,I never knew that, I lied despondently.
Excuse me,can I get off? he enquired gently
Not on me,thank you,I answered with a cunning smile
You are so vulgar,he noted journalistically.
Thank you.I’ve been training for a year or two.I told him wisely, with a shy laugh.
Why,can you have lessons?He asked quite jocosely
Just watch some soaps on TV….I offered unevenly

http://youtu.be/Pp5iZdWKaA8

I prefer gardening,he replied regretfully
You can prune my bush tonight if you like,I reminded him perversely
I say,that’s a bit off! he said wistfully
The ashes have gone to my head.I said in desperation.
I say,shall I take you home? he offered gallantly
I have no home,I responded poignantly.My lover broke a window over my head after my husband took ill.
That’s odd.
Even for a man, I told him numerically.
He should have been glad,he replied sensately.
No, he was afraid of commitment, I informed him furiously.
How would breaking the window help? he asked curiously
It would give him a way to escape from me.I chattered obviously
My goodness,we are at the terminus.We’ll have to get another bus back to our stops.He said anxiously.
Just then we saw some police approaching.
Excuse me madam, Are you Muslim?
No.I always wear cotton in hot weather.Unless I am making cheese.
Sorry. he said.How do you worship?
I think you need a Rabbi.
So you are Jewish?
No.you are.
How do you know,he said.
As you have a big hat on like Leonard Cohen ~I deduced you were another of those Cohens.They are all descended from Aaron,you know.There must be a few hundred of you.
I fear you have made a logical error,madam.
As long as I don’t make an error of the heart,I don’t bother about logic.I said informatively
Surely we need both a heart and a head ,he asked me questioningly.
Definitely,but why are you here? I demanded.
That’s what God said to Elijah on the mountain.
And what did Elijah say,I enquired.
I heard you calling me.

http://youtu.be/Pp5iZdWKaA8

To torture water throw it on a fire

The water disappears or I’m a liar

Innocent the water meets the flames

Unknowing of the end of the small games.

If we meet our opposite we die.

This isvm was the spider told the fly

0 fire and water in the right amount

Each destroys the other with no doubt

The kind of writing the first produced by rotation?

Is different from what’s arriving please buy pen

In a normal letter that may not matter but it will matter in a poem with a pen

When you try for each letter separately the words mean

More. But when you speak and its typed it seems more fluid and the individual words don’t separate

I think I’d rather write with a pen but then I’d have to type it out again

And even that’s ok it’s only when 

There’s no connection to a fountain pen

Individual words do matter that is plain and that’s why I feel so bad once again

I cannot feel your words inside my heart

I hope I have to make a better start

If only you that would understand and 

Want to see me again

With or without my pen

Because you love me

And if you were referred

You can say that again

That

I remember daddy in the park

In Lancashire we did not hear a lark

You showed me how to eat peas on my fork.

Dandelion and burdock was uncorked.

We never went to Morecambe with you then

We went to Morecambe later we our mam

I remember buying nettle tea

The cottage in a lane towards the sea.

The Ribble buses gave the poor delight

Up the valley throug11h the Pennine’s light.

We did not know that man must work to eat

To pay for shoes to put on children’s feet

We did not understand industrial life

The smoke,the mills,the labour of the wife

By the pavement edge we played new games

Skipping ropes and a marbles

Purl and plain.

We watched the boys do tricks

Upon their bikes.

Vying for girls favours in the dark

When we were young like that the body spoke

School work and hard books

Were of no note.

Daddy was not there to see me grow.

Losing him,the first and heaviest blow

After 12 years of conservative government we have 14 houses have burnt down spontaneously in London

A lot of domestic cats have died in these fires.

How did Boris Johnson manage to start these fires?

One possibility he is in league with Satan and that can be very dangerous. It might be worse for Satan to fight with jealous Boris Johnson

As We know hell is full of fires

These are the fires of hatred and malice and perhaps envy.

Is there really so much malice in London now to make 15 houses burn down spontaneously?

There is certainly a lot of fear and it doesn’t make take much to turn fear into to hatred of those who might be against us including our own family

It’s hard hating your own family so it’s easier to do a displacement and hurt some group of people that you’re not familiar with personally but may seem possible possible sources of harm.

probably completely innocent people but don’t let that stop you from hurting them

Your enemies are inside your own head so no matter how much you hurt other groups of people in our society you will not feel better

The Queen Mary did not feel better after she executed Lady Jane Grey

It seems not enough to stop her

from executing other people from different religious backgrounds

Her idea of God was that everyone who did not become a Catholic would burn in hell.

Her sister Queen Elizabeth had the opposite view.

However you choose the group that’s going to burn in hell it’s bizarre concept of God

And it just not correspond to any of Jesus teachings as we know them in the New Testament.

Why would you hate someone so much that you want them to burn not just to burn to death but to burn forever and ever?

The human minds is a terrifying place.

The Pilchards.23,Sweetnames AvenueKnittinghamNear Nottingham.England

Dear Jane

Hope you are keeping well in this unusually cold spring weather.Stan has had flu.It made him so bad tempered and waspishthat I took up the Duraglit polish and got him to polish all the brass,except the front door knob, as that doesn’t come off.Mind you,it made the bedroom smell odd… a mistake,perhaps…so I sprinkled lavender oil around.He seems to get thinner and I seem to get fatter.So our average w eight remains constant.What a relief.I’d like to be weighed as a married woman.Can you believe this..I’ve got chilblains! It’s those dratted blood vessels of mine.Still,I polished some old plum colored leather and wear them in the house.We seem to be doing polishing frequently here.. boots,furniture,apples.How is your new book “Nonsense:A.N.Whitehead and Lewis Carroll” coming on?Hope it’s progressing….to a nonsensical ending.I’ve got a new book of poetry coming out in April[from Polar bears publishers]It’s called,”An unpolished performance.”My fourth book on Wittgenstein’s cats is almost finished.And the publishers can’t wait for the photographs…I’ll get a friend to do those for me!!It gives me a change from all that polishing.I’ve begun to talk to myself out loud…. in the street.Just seeing if I can still do my old Lancashire accent.I suppose it might worry people but no one has said anything as yet.They may be afraid.”That which is unsaid can,nevertheless,still be heard.Stan is still involved romantically with Anne, our next door neighbor.I can’t blame him as chilblains and Wittgenstein not very romantic.When I think of how we used to be,it makes me smile and feel sadness too.I wonder if I can find someone new for a romance,myself… someone with Asperger’s syndromepossibly…as I’ve just been diagnosed.It’s quite common in mathematicians.It may be anadvantage in concentrating a lotI need a boyfriend with weak eyes as my clothes are all full of moth holesand I’m damned if I’m going to buy new ones.I can’t see well enough to darn but I’ve sewn the holes up neatly thusgiving a strange pleated effect to my clothes.On my merino wool knitted trousers, one hole was right on the ass.It looks now as if I’ve been shot in the rear…but I can’t see it.So it does not exist.Sometimes in the past I would iron on those motifs likebutterflies…butI think it would look odd having a butterfly just there…. or indeedanything else like wild rose.I could make a little sign saying”Keep clear,from my rear.This is a hole where a moth scored a goal.”Still,not many people are going to look there now I hope….I seem to have stopped knitting but am still drawing.Meantime I’ve just ironed some of my winter clothes as it’s still chilly..and am planning to iron all my pink and blue knickers nowas I believe it kills any germs left when you wash at 30 deg.I got those colours in case I shouldchange sex or is it gender?I wonder if I should iron the sheets?Could I do it while they are on the bed?I don’t wash them much as it wears them out and me too.I am going to take up baking again because Stan is getting so thin.I fancy a Russian cheesecake as it had a lot of protein in it.I have a genuine Russian cookbook and also am waiting for a delivery of aJewish cookery book as I have lost mine..no it fell down onto my head last week.God only knows where that came from.but I believe there were good cheesecakes as Jewish cooking has much incommon with Russian,perhaps because once many Jews lived in Russia.I justmade friends with one here….he is charming and like me he hates golf.I have got almost all the Penguin cookery books ever printed but mislaid afew.In fact it’s quite hard to get into the kitchenwith all these books on the shelves.And a little food.I was comforted to read that the parent’s of John Burra,the artist,had books piled every where in their large house….and he was very untidy too.So all I need is talent and practice and I’ll be an artist.After all,anyone can be untidy but not everyone will practice their Art.I’d like to practice the arts of love.They say you should love your neighbor as yourself,but personally I prefer the neighbor or even the milkman to myself.Meanwhile I’m happy with Emile our catand my 500 photos of Wittgenstein.I shall make Stan a lemon sponge pudding.That is the love he wants…Food.”If music be the food of love I’ll cohabit with a pure white dove.
And while he coos and sings for me.
I’ll try not to :fall out of the tree,
Get stung by a bee,
Have psychotherapy
Make more enemies,
Let my thought free,
Hurt my knee.
Let moths frighten me.Well,time for some tea.Now Jane, please write to me soon.I love to see your so strangely beautiful handwritingand to hear about Whitehead and Cambridge and all the weird dons.I hope it’s not too damp and cold there near that river.Keep warm and make a note of any intriguing happenings to relate to me.And anything beautiful you can see or hear.I hope Edward is writingregularly..where is he doing his research now… did you say Stanford?Maybe you should install Skype..then again,perhaps not as you would have towash your hair too much… and comb it too…perhaps we could wear wigs.Do write soon,Love always,Mary.

 
I wish I were an apple I wish I were an apple
and you were eating me
I’d like to make you happy
As you sat by this tree.
I wish I were a blackbird
So I could sing for you.
I’d like to make you cheerful
And stop you feeling blue.
I wish I were the sun
So I cold warm your frozen heart.
And then your heart would melt for me
And you would be less tart.
I wish I were the moon
so I could protect you all night long.
But being only me may I
Present you with this song?Why 1.Why is denim now a sign of conformity not rebellion?
2.Where are the best jeans from?
3.Should you wear “double denim”?
4. Why is denim too hot for summer and too cold for winter and yet we wear it anyway?
5.Why don’t most people wear winter coats nowadays?
6.Why are the shops so hot they make one feel sick
7.How shopping makes me feel sick and other ways of saving money.
8.Why did the Russians have the best novelists?
9.Is 8. true?
10.Is life worthwhile?
11.What does 10.mean
12.Who can come up with the best ideas for small talk?
13.Food processors…are they a good thing to own?
14.Did you see the second version of Dr Zhivago?
15.Why is Russian Orthodox liturgy so moving?
16.Have you been to Walsingham?
17.Do you like day trips on a coach?
18.Why is fish and chips our national dish.
19.Why is roast beef our national dish.
20.Do other nations have fish and chips?
21 Is rapeseed oil any use for chip frying?
22.What an odd name rapeseed is.
23.Did Einstein eat chips?
24.Is your skin sensitive?
25.Why do women wear deodorants but men don’t usually bother?
25.Do you need suncream in the winter?
26.How many grains of sand are there on Brighton beach?
27.Why is the sea at Hythe sometimes teal
28.Why are the Saxon cliffs in Kent a mile from the sea?
29.Can the Kent authorities move the cliffs back near the sea again.
30 Isn’t it odd that the railway line runs at the bottom of the cliffs near Folkstone as the tide might come up
as a train goes by?
31,Is this small talk?

Yoo No,a blot of fiowk here dislake the MsLim women wearing a veil over there fices..But luuk at it this woy.. will they get skin cancer? Don’t detention thet to me after 23 injections in my voice.
Do they worry about ben hur days?Does chemotheropy make other English fowk even sodder as we cen all cee they are bald? You sea,it’s quote sansible, reelly… trust schemes a bit eerie tolking to someone who’s teeth are hidden.,Still it waves on lipstacks and lip glossies and other expansive items of make it all up.
So look out for my new Elfie…after I go somewear were they sell these torments for women.
I just wish English women wore a dense veil over their orifices.

Keep them privet like our Ann sisters did unless Ann Boleyn.

You get the massage?

After days of record-breaking rows in every street in London the government have decided to throw a bucket of cold water over the entire conurbation

Unfortunately the government are very stupid and do not believe a report from Imperial college that one bucket of cold water will not be enough to wet everybody living in London and its suburbs.

The government are in fact very angry with Imperial college and have decided to make a 50% cut in its research allowance for the next financial year starting 2 months ago.

Whether that should be called the next financial year is open to debate but we know what Virus Johnson did in Oxford

And that was much worse than throwing cold water on people

Suggestions that wish for a bucket of champagne over London are made by men not realising that’ the amount of liquid in a bucket does not alter when it’s filled with water or when it is champagne or indeed when it is the urine of thousands of homeless people or babies a bucket is a bucket is a bucket in olde England

Normally a bucket of cold water is a metaphor but who knows?

I wake and feel bewilderment once more

My sister, friend admirers where are they?

Who I am and what is this lite for?

Whose the knock upon the great front door ?

Are they of the mind that I should pay

I wake and feel bewilderment once more

What are the memories in my mind’s eye stored?

Is it good that humankind should pray?

Who are we and what is this life for ?

For those enslaved life is a painful chore.

Would we buy phones if we knew of their day?

I wake and feel bewilderment once more

Who in the West will hear the voice of prayer?

Who’s the hearts and spirits that will stir?

We look for God but cannot find the door

We must do the work ourselves while feeling torn

Dear Arthur

0 thank you for the watch from Switzerland unfortunately after 50 years has broken can you please send me another one I will send you my new address separately

If you have remarried please do not burden your wife with any stories about me you know quite well that you are far too introverted to be married to someone like myself and I’ll give you a favour very unsociable that is by studying classics every night in bed

00000 the bed with 30 small we should have got a king size one

My it’s so easy to know what one should have done 40 years too late and it’s quite possible that you’ve been extremely happy with a young woman extroverts and lively disposition dummy

0 please don’t worry because you must be over 8 to buy now

Do you think of Google voice dictation

04 is it any good inferring human happiness from a phone even if it is a large roll

I have published 32 books under my own of poetry I do not use your surname anymore in fact I forgot what it is but luckily I still have your email address so I can write to you even though I don’t know who you are does it matter my letters to people practising my English and getting ideas and sometimes the letter itself turns into a phone so I can just publish it straight away without doing anything else to it isn’t it wonderful

0000 but Anna Anna freezes up was so much poetry being written

It is not the most popular kind of book I need to move into soft romantic fiction or cruel horrible thrillers incorporating sexual assault and murder I don’t think I’m going to do that 0 I will have to write something gentle but in this world do you think there’s any point

0 was there any point in the reign of Henry VIII

Get many books have been written about him combining murder sex violence passion and possibly possibly love what did Henry VII my love

0 I don’t know if any historians would have research that did love just mean desire for a beautiful woman who will give you children feel a strong desire or did it mean that you will care about them my as you care about yourself well I don’t think so not you didn’t care a damn where handball in went after their breakup so you decided to have a head cut off so beautiful that she would never talk to anybody else about their marital secrets and it’s potency or lack of it that’s all I have time for now

0 look after yourself remember you are 8 to 7

Very stylish

My first Possession and Destruction

The Devil of old Darwen

The ghost in the Dean

The graveyard of coats

The funeral writhes and what to do with them.

My first delusion.

The sign of the loss.

Can we believe that God needs a blood sacrifice after Isaac was savedvby the angel?

Can God do mathematics?

Would God really want children to learn quadratic equations?

What did God know about mathematics before it was invented or or before it was detected?

A life of stress was ended by a blow

Mindful meditation makes us mad

She faced death with courage as we know

Half of them that learn it feel distraught

Mindfulness is more than just a fad.

If you try it keep your practice short

The task of living is to feel alive
Not caged by walls of awe or steely fence
We want to love,be taken by surprise.

Our wounded, mangled self we can’t deride,
Recalling fights and struggles lived through once.
The point of living is to feel alive.

We dither to and fro in puzzled ways
We feel the anguish, still and quite intent.
We want to love,be taken by surprise.

The self’s spontaneous, not a thing contrived;
Formed with love and hate, contained, intense.
The rage of living is to be alive.

When washed away by feelings glad,immense
That cross our borders with our glad consent.
The hope,the need of living thus is life
We want to give and take and live surprised

• Jim Brown was in his new conservatory admiring the windows he had just
  polished.His 82nd birthday was coming up in a few days
  Marie,his stunningly attractive yet irritable,nasty and over educated
  wife,a leading authority on Wittgenstein and most likely suffering from
  Asperger’s syndrome into the bargain,….oh a cliche prone author too—!
  had made a huge whole orange cake and planned a large gathering of friends
  to celebrate his survival for so long whilst married to her,not easy she
  knows.
  He heard a sharp tapping on the door.
  There lay Lucy their next door neighbour spying through the key hole.
  “Are you on your own?” she queried tersely yet rudely.
  “No, yet I’m suffering from chronic existential anxiety” Bill lied politely.
  “Well,I just saw Martina on her second hand Raleigh bike going to the
  market or the Charity Shop or possibly leaving home for ever….”
  “Well,I still have the cat here”,he whispered loudly as if he were free
  associating in a dream
  “Let me in and make me some coffee” she asked courteously,
  “She’s an odd one” the cat Emile thought naughtily.
  “Where’s my Carnation cat milk?”
  “Real or instant?” Simon answered suavely yet naturally.
  “Won’t it wash off your brand new coral lipstick from Chanel of Paris?…
  not to mention your factor 60 sunblock.”
  “God’s whiskers” she murmured quaintly to herself.
  “How does he know it’s Chanel?
  Is he a spy or what?
  Is he in M.I.5?”
  John got some instant coffee and debated whether to put in a little LSD to
  add some visions to their morning!No,a short breathing exercise would do
  he concluded after 9 minutes of obsessive anxiety.
  He sat down in his favorite old wooden Habitat chair having poured the
  coffee into some old plastic mugs.
  “Did you know Habitat is going b..b bankrupt?” she brightly stuttered
  turning pink with happiness and the menopause which so far had lasted over
  30 years.
  Suddenly Lucy sat down on Bert’s lap and began to kiss his right eyelid
  “Careful, my darling!” he muttered insensibly.
  He was savouring the annoyingly uncommon pleasure when the chair fell to
  pieces as it frequently did at such times, throwing the elderly but
  versatile and experienced couple down onto the new Mary Quant patterned
  pure New Zealand lambswool carpet.Suddenly they heard the peal of Mary’s
  bicycle bell.Shortly she walked into the room carrying 78 bags of
  groceries for the birthday party.
  “What’s going on here ?” she murmured seductively in a piercing shriek.
  “I’m so sorry, Jenny, please accept my apologies, he has this thing about
  chairs.It’s a fetish ,I believe, according to Sinald Floyd.””
  “Have you got your mobile?” shrieked Tom agonisedly in a loud whisper.
  ”I can’t get up.” he screamed softly.”Am I dead?”
  “What cannot stand up must forever remain lying down” As my old philosophy tutor at Cambridge used to say, muttered Marty.
  “Why, that’s bit extreme,” said Jane uneasily yet gallantly.
  .”MY tutor said “Who cannot speak must forever remain silent.”
  “Oh,who was your tutor?”
  “Elizabeth Ansconbe!” Amy admitted furtively.”She knew Wittgetensin well.”
  “Mine was Iris Murdoch!” called out Alf.
  Later they heard a silent siren.It was the emergency ambulance.
  Dick, the paramedic bounded into the room.
  “It’s this chair” said Marie urbanely.
  “Can you mend it for me? My husband can’t manage without it!”
  “Anything else, madam?” Rick queried anxiously.
  “Any coal to fetch in,tins to open, blocked toilets?”
  “Later maybe.”
  Danny looked at Joan.
  “Your eyes look like two deep pools in the Caspian sea.”
  he whispered into her left ear.
  “Are you on another creative writing course?”she quipped urbanely.
  “Yes, we’re on eyes at the moment; what colour is that eyeshadow you have
  on.”
  “This is called winter teal” She admitted uneasily yet seductively.
  “Did you know I’m a transvestite?” he admitted happily her.
  “Yes”,she replied dishonestly.Kitty like to give an impression of
  omniscience owing to her ontological insecurity and her ignorance of
  theology and also her narrowly trained mathematical mind.
  Unfortunately, that frequently gave men the wrong impression.
  Mamie cried out to Al,
  “Get on with it,my sweetie!” So he took out a big tube of glue from his
  jeans’ pocket and set to work reconstructing the chair.
  “Oh,dear, Stewart looks a bit odd”
  “!No,he looks quite prime to me.”
  “Is he an integer?!”
  “No, he’s a transcendental real number”
  “He’s a number all right.”
  “Never mind, we’ve just got new wheelie bins so I’ll put him out with the
  rubbish,”
  Marty joked on hearing Amy’s remarks to Zach.
  But Simon was not yet dead.He merely had fallen asleep.
  He dreamed of his days at Oxgridge University studying illogic and unreason
  with Rudolphina Catnap, the famous female philosopher.Oh, happy, happy days!
  Danny made the ladies some Ceylon tea in the fabulous oak kitchen with its
  pure linen curtains in raspberry beige. and its black enamel sink with
  matching double oven and microwave.”Why no halogen?”Iris Murdoch might
  have asked.
  “What is a human life,”he pondered.He was studying logic as well as writing.
  He began to tremble like a leaf in the wind to use a freshly recycled old
  cliche.
  “Help” he called,”I’m having a panic attack.Hurry I’m dying,I believe.I
  need a priest“
  “You can’t have a panic attack,” shouted Marianne
  “Paramedics heal themselves.”
  “Does God heal those who heal themselves he wondered as he lay under a pile

  of broken china?”

  “Where’s the tea?” called the ladies.
  Ah ,if only Wittgenstein were here,he would know,t hought Emile.
  But I disagree.Only God would know that and He won’t say usually as he
  speaks another language known only to the few.Though sometimes one may
  hear it on the wind deep in a thick forest.
  That’s what I believe.
  Here endeth the first lesson… so be off!

In a private room they’re left alone

With old age and sadness they will moan

Gazing at the pictures on the wall

They see blurs yet,if they walk they fall.

Photographs of loved ones bring remorse

Memories of quarrels taunt and curse

Suffering pain, depression which is worse?

Ice inside the heart will numb the pain

To feel our grief, with sadness

We remain

At some moment will come change of heart

In the black death of the night a new life starts

My heart is like a boat on choppy seas

Directions changing,constantly deceived.

I startle like an infant with no guard.

All burned up.my self is painful charred

Why are the winds inconstant and too strong?

And where on earth does this poor soul belong?

I need a life official to take root.

Otherwise I shall produce no fruit.

Not the barren fig tree Jesus cursed

Save me from a life that feels accursed

Dislocated retina.

Detached shoulder

Broken charm

Split hairs

No heir.

Wandering mind.

Loss of correction.

Waving ears

Dry cleaned tongues

Cloven feet

Lost head

Head shrinking

Short trunk.

Bald facet

Died hair

Lost wig

Katherine poetry, Thinkings and poems, villanelle  August 24, 2016 

Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique
From  peaceful green of  trees where small  birds  hide.
The work within the mind  may be complete

About our souls, we each must be discreet
Even to those  living by our side
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique

Happy to do nothing,nothing seek
Innocent as  young, beloved bride
The work within the mind  may be complete

Ignorant of Latin,Hebrew,Greek,
The heart needs no such learning to decide
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique

I listen to the  world around me speak
Underneath the turmoil,love’s alive
The work within the mind  may be complete

In our world  the sensitive may writhe
Yet, by our intuitions, we may guide
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique
The work within the mind  may be complete

I am floating in the water in my maxi flowered dress

i don’t know where I’m going to,you just have to guess

No,I am not drowning.Nor shall I now confess

The priest was not amused, said my sins were very odd.

I shall not rely on him,I rely on God

He told another woman she was wasting too much time

She was thinking carefully to make her sin’s a rhyme

She was also envious but envy is no poem

Did Jesus die on Calvary because Love is a crime?

Religion is perverted to glorify the Strong

Aint’ it bleeding obvious that is sorta wrong ?

I liked the explanation of how shingle on a beach is sorted by size (Letters, 10 July). The same effect occurs in a box of muesli when the raisins and nuts find their way to the top. Surely this can’t be down to longshore drift?
Joanna Rimmer
Lambley, Northumberland

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I wonder who thinks calculus is part of geomorphology?

Topology, a branch of mathematics, is sometimes called rubber sheet geometry.
It’s a sad world when mathematicians have to study the sheets of those of us who have leaky bladders.
However, if Tracy Emin’s bed is a work of art it extends the possibilities for scientists and mathematicians.And this needed because with all academics having to publish very frequently they might run out of topics.
So we might have a study of duvets and the different shapes they might assume when they are covering just one person, two people, three people and since we are mathematicians, we could study their shapes when covering an infinite number of people.
Alternatively how about the effect of one person being covered by an infinite number of duvets?
Would it be aleph-null the infinity of the rational numbers or aleph 0ne [the infinity of the real numbers]?
Aleph one is the bigger of the two .
Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet… and it is used because mathematicians already have used up the Greek alphabet.
So now we use the Hebrew one which is slightly different.
If you learned calculus you will recall all those delta x’s and delta y’s.
This makes me think calculus is part of geomorphology and I do believe that geomorphology which studies the surface of the earth is linked to the love and study of the mother’s face and body by human infants.
So calculus is linked to the studied love of babies.Can it be that if you had a disturbed infancy you will find mathematics very hard? Plastic geometry and plastic surgery will be dealt with later but obviously again it is linked to love or hate of the body though our bodies are not usually made from plastic but who knows the future?

Before he died he criticized our phone

If you go to Oxford buy a comb

If you see a brush then bring it home

The carpet’s full of crumbs, what is your name?

I don’t want to die he whispered plain

Let me be reborn to try again

I went over once with Ronald Knox

He was very holy See his socks.

He loves Jesus walking with his flocks

Don’t open your front door, God never knocks

My husband bore a grudge against my mind

He asked me to remove it for a time

But where is it situated I enquired

Behead me if you must,I am no liar

If without my head I please a man

On all ladies heads should be now banned

Of course without a head we cannot think

Nor be alive to wisdom, nor men’s winks.

Can we live forever with no brain?

If you cannot speak be dumb again

)

My point, once again, is not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally.

. . . I still hold two truths with equal and fundamental certainty. One: the British did terrible things to the Irish. Two: the Irish, had they the power, would have done equally terrible things to the British. And so also for any other paired adversaries I can imagine. The difficulty is to hold on to both truths with equal intensity, not let either one negate the other, and know when to emphasize one without forgetting the other. Our humanity is probably lost and gained in the necessary tension between them both. I hope, by the way, that I do not sound anti-British. It is impossible not to admire a people who gave up India and held on to Northern Ireland. That shows a truly Celtic sense of humor.

John Dominic Crossan

sadly, the book of Job was but a speed bump on the Deuteronomic superhighway. The delusion of divine punishments still prevails inside and outside religion over the clear evidence of human consequences, random accidents, and natural disasters. This does not simply distort theology; it defames the very character of God.

John Dominic Crossan, How to Read the Bible and uStill Be a Christian:l

The boots up on my feet made many dread

To see my body without any head.

Who was allowed inside the Tower that day?

With her life the lady had to pay.

The adults in her life had a feet of clay.

Is there any humble person who can pray?

I would like to write a book instead.

Light a fire and find out who is dead.

God preserve the humble from decay.

Why did Shakespeare write so many plays?