With trepidation

Let preconceptions, though well meant, depart
Creative work evades such plans and schemes
To write a poem will shake the entire heart

To write a poem will take our entire heart
Our mind and soul, our body and our dreams.
With trepidation, take a pen and start

We travel lands unknown without a chart.
With our courage, trust the dark unseen
For inspiration, take a pen and write

We bite the apple,bitter, hard and tart
Knowledge enters in its dream -like streams
To write a poem will move each living heart

No logic,reasoning, signs,however wrought
Will bring to life the holy pattern’s themes
With each image, still your dreaming hear

The earth,
the oceans, seas, the sacred scenes
Where humans live out daily what life means
To write a poem, we need the mystic heart
In emptiness, we fill our pens, we start

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3441/the-art-of-fiction-no-72-joyce-carol-oates?utm_source=The+Paris+Review+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5a6e53ddcc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_19_10_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_35491ea532-1ba85b6ef5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=5a6e53ddcc&mc_eid=552ffa9eef

Our Father,Aneurin Bevan,
Exploded is thy game;
Why,Kingdom come,
Before thy will be done.
No N.H.S.No Heaven.
Give us fair pay,our daily bread;
Don’t leave us with PTSD
As we confront those who legislate against us.
And feed us not with deprivation,
But deliver us from Weasels.
For thine was the Fair Game,the Hour and the Story
Maybe once but will it be ever again?
…

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. C. S. Lewis
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/worship_2.html

If we knew a human being who demanded constant praise and admiration then we would think they were a bit odd..mayube children need it  and it’s nice to get a litttle but if God needed it all the time he’d be  a narcissist which is illogical with regard to God

We worship God because it’s  in our nature to worship and so we  need to worship someone  or something which is good.Otherwise we will worship the Queen new kitchens,copper pans, handsome men,lovely womem,loft conversions.expensive food…my calves,my eyes,my mind,your mind,arguing,war,sex,drugs etc,halogen cooking hobs, washing machines,

Better to worship trees if God is not your  cup of tea

And I believe many people feel being grateful for the beautiful world is good for us instead of complaining all the time.Gratitude and  making up quarrels is good for our spirit.I think it must be terrible for people who commit murder especially because even if they are sorry they can’t bring their victim back.In such a case  praying and meditating might help.Sadly most murders take place at home and it seems children are often victims.That is something I  don’t know enough about but povery and lack of work  for men seem factors..Husbands and wives always quarrel and it’s not beyond imagining we might pick up the bread knife and wave it about.
If I were God I’d  prefer people to try to get on with other people instead of worshipping me.In the past the idea we might go to Hell was meant to stop us doing bad things but I don’t think it worked as people in difficult situations lose control and now it is never mentioned.

What is most puzzling is why Christians like the Crusaders thought it was alright to murder  hundreds/thousands  of Jews and Moslems as they approached the so called Holy Land.You don’t have to be THAT  intelligent to see that  if God exists he made them as well  as us.So why would he want  us  to kill them?I don’t know whether on balance Christianity has done more harm than good.I fear it may be so….Jesus would be surprised if he saw the Vatican… he is surprised,he told me just now… why not sell it?Give the money to the poor… well,it’s there in the Bible.. the still,small,voice

Jeremiah,why are you here?

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/jan/20/retired-teachers-pension-stopped-as-provider-refuses-to-believe-she-is-not-dead?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Going into the darkness of the dream

Afraid to sleep in the world

Where dark Satan stands smiling by Jesus cradle

He couldn’t wait for the holy wars but how to have Jesus put to death as soon as it was clear who he was

Then his people were degraded and sent into the dark

The demons outnumbered the angels and we didn’t know because we couldn’t see them

But when we’re old we get second sight and we know the Shadows and the darkness.

We bear all this because we don’t want our children to know

Now even my children are old but no wiser

Learning is so slow and shedding blood so easy

Evoking the beauty, the stars so far away,
I like to watch geese at the end of day.
Patterns and poems disclose other worlds.
Feel the hand of a baby with the fingers all curled

See the trust and the smile when the mother is home,
To create entire worlds for the one she has borne.
For chaos and panic or not far away
Even in adults who don’t care to say.

The little hands touch me so deeply, so well;
How come the world is diving to hell?
How can we kill little wains by the score
Was it for this that I opened your door?

Was it for this that love electrified us,
And we were lost in each other, in the holy white dove.
Was it for war that we gave love our wombs
Making more soldiers and filling more tombs?

The bombs are a-loading they’re having parades.
It’s not North Korea, it’s Washington, dude.
Let the tanks roll on Corrie and the Bedouin tribes.
Let the allies laugh blindly as the Lord Jesus dies.

O take me, dear mother.Please take me away
I can’t see no point in saying my prayers.
The leaders’ religions are making God frown.
The desert is empty, the tents all dragged down.

The centuries of living so free , so mobile;
The holy land blessing as they pause for while.
The little black tents like wombs of the night
Are all gone to shredders as we sing, Silent Night.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/161844/more-light-659ec46913f0a?utm_source=Poetry+Foundation&utm_campaign=b8ff92e6bb-POFO%E2%80%93JANUARY_19-2023%3A_MORE_LIGHT%21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff7136981c-b8ff92e6bb-185545637&mc_cid=b8ff92e6bb&mc_eid=548544474a

How Photography Cast New Light on Art https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/16/arts/international/how-photography-cast-new-light-on-art.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/jun/16/george-washington-university-professor-antisemitism-palestine-dc

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Our inter-self, dismembered, broke apart
Give me courage on the journey slow

In good time , we lose our self in flow
To be self-conscious makes shame rule the heart
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Do we have no self when partners die?
Bewildered, can I find the way to start?
Give me courage on the journey slow

Where is my best path to discover
The way to mend a self, holed by grief’s darts?
Without your gaze, I’m nobody I know

Like a ship strikes rocks deep down below
I risk getting hit without some charts
Give me courage on the journey slow

Will I know myself when new betrothed
To mirrors unfamiliar to me old?
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Give me courage in the darkness gross.

Elena,a baby wrapped in woollen clothes.
On the last train,Warsaw to Moscow,
[ change Niegoreloje.]
1939.Father,mother,brother
You passed through the Arctic Wastes of life.
Still as if travelling on a train
To an impossibly far destination.
As you left the German Army crashed into Warsaw
Lost,your aunts
Your cousins.
Your culture.
How does God select the damned?
You had your own baby,here in England,
Not lost like all those others.
Your father died by his own hand,
The hand of history;
The fingers twitching,
Not sure where to point.
Then settling into frozen grief
A sculpture only your mother saw.
You saw too,Elena.
You always saw,though you can’t remember;
The long journey, your mother’s breast,
Your father’s silence.
Only the dead know that silence.
Only the dead weep
With the rocks and stones .
And the ice in each eye
Fell like snow down your cheeks
As you held your own infant.
Warsaw to Moscow,
Moscow to Jerusalem.
Always journeying
Looking for what they can never find:
The home they left behind
The presence of the dead
Lying in gaunt heaps
Like rubbish
Your aunts, Elena.
Your cousins.
You never knew them.
But there’s a hole in your mind
Through which the Polish wind forever blow

Love

When first I saw your soulful face,
Then wished I most to you embrace.
I wished as well to clothe you in
The sacred images within.

To find a home for love without;
To fold my dreams all round about
Your loving body and your face
Were covered in such joy and grace.

But now my dreams are cast aside
The world of meaning denied life.
What seemed most precious now is fled…
And I lie sleepless in my bed.

What is the world when unadorned
With all that in my heart I’ve formed?
There is no meaning I can trace.
As in a mother’s empty face.

On these grey rocks my path is hard.
From paradise, my self is barred.
To struggle or to grief succumb
When this dark day of mourning’s done?

Into His dazzling darkness dart
My dreams and love like dying sparks.
Into His Mystery now so fair
I’ll cast both hope and my despair.

Thus my dreams will be transformed
To show themselves in other forms.
What feels a loss may foretell growth.
On my hope,I’ll take an oath

That nothing in my life is waste,
That I have not for phantasms chased.
And you are human,as am I.
Let’s live again until we die

So my copse has ripened to a wood
How many living creatures dwell within?
The shades of green, the sunshine, and the Good

Once we had three apple trees,a glut
Today, too old to fruit, they stand there still
My copse has turned into a little wood

Neighbours hint that I get my trees cut
Yet these leaves of green make my heart full
The shades of green, the sun the wind ,the gods

Once we read there was a total Flood
Now we have the bush fires and their will
Still, my copse has turned into a wood

Trees have their green sap where we have blood
They will never wound, will never kill
The shades of green, the sun the wind ,the gods

Just like Eve and Adam we may sin
The maple waves away my mental pain
My copse has turned into my private wood
The shades of green, the long path.Come, my Love.

“

I have walked the silent paths of grief
Sunless,dreary,cold and all alone.

I have slept on beds of winter leaves.

I know that death’s a greedy starving thief.
Although my heart weeps and my joy has gone.
I have never felt I was deceived.

I have learned that human life is brief.
I have learned by sorrow we’re undone.
I have sifted earth and what’s beneath.

I have felt the dark emotions seethe
I’ve felt cruelly burned by glaring sun.
I have learned the geography of grief.

I wait in sorrow for this life to cease
Yet some are never loved by anyone
I have dreamed in beds of winter leaves

Unconsoled grief can make us dumb
Into our hearts, we drag the ice that numbs
I have walked the silent paths of grief
I have made my bed on winter leaves

Hidden in the sprawl of suburbs green,
Extended semis,kitchens full of tools
Ancient houses where the long lost dreamed

Visited by Tudor king and queen
Here to hunt,to gain release from rule
Hidden in the sprawl of suburbs green

Keats’s autumn mists and mellow streams
Where children loved to fish in dark cool, pools
Edged by houses where the long gone dreamed

In new kitchens, butcher’s sharp knives gleam
See tall fridges where the meat is cooled
Common in the sprawl of suburbs green

Busy parents don’t hear children scream.
Welcome to the demons of misrule
In the houses where no-one can dream

Now time is racing, pauses are for fools
Post and pre, our modern life is cruel
Hidden in the sprawl of suburbs green
Ancient houses, would that I could dream,

Hello I am calling from the doctor’s surgery

Someone told us that you are feeling rather low. Are you planning to commit suicide?

No I’ve never been very good at planning I believe in spontaneity

Well are you thinking about it?

Dr I think you need help. Have you heard of Heisenberg uncertainty principle? My

I’m not certain.

That’s the thing nobody is certain. We might plan to commit suicide at 4pm and then 0 we might see the ice cream van coming down the streetm

So you would rather have an ice cream then die at 4 p.m.?

Well I could have the ice cream now and then commit suicide at five p.m. unless something else happens like my husband comes home from work and wants to go to bed with me.

What before he to’s even had a shower?

Sometimes men can’t wait

How about having sex in the shower?

It’s too wet for me

Anyways the doctor wants to know if I’m planning to die soon.

Tell her to make a novena and see where her God will reveal the truth.

But it’s so uncertain isn’t it because even if you’re planning something you can change your mind because maybe you’re doing it because you want to write a novel and you’re living out the action in your own real life first to see how it goes and if you’re satisfied with it you can write it all down and make it into a novel and make a lot of money out of it!

I don’t know what Heisenberg would have thought but as is no longer here we just ignore that.

The one advantage of feeling low is you can’t go any further down

He that is down need fear no fall

He that is low no pride

Wow you’re getting poetic

And if you’re at the top you can’t go any higher so you have to come down

Come back to me, my sweetheart
Don’t leave me all alone.
Come back to me, my darling
I can’t believe you’ ve gone.
I’m crying ‘cos I’m feeling blue again.
I’m crying’cos I’m falling like a stone.

Oh, let me tempt you with my beauty
And my voice forever young.
Let me tempt you with my spirit
My laughter and my songs.
I’m crying ‘cos I never did you wrong.
I’m crying ‘cos with you I  still belong.

I thought maybe I’d follow,
To see where you have gone
But there’s a hand upon this tiller
That is not mine alone.
I’m crying ‘cos I wrote this old blue song.
I’m crying ‘cos I’ve been lonely for too long.

The hand upon my tiller
The mystery of the dark
The unknown one who lives in me
And sings like a skylark.
I’m singing ‘cos I wrote you a new song.
I’m singing ‘cos the cat ain’t got my tongue.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20130&version=KJV

I dream at nights of my old friends
My husband and his loving hands
I dream of all the cats we had
Alfred who slept on the bed
He laid his head upon my foot
As I wrote a poem of love
Jimmy who was small and black
She bit my hand if I got up
I did not wish to wet the bed
She did not understand a word I said
The last night here she gazed at me
I think she knew she would not be
Lucky was the nervous one
Black and white , apartheid none
He liked my husband’s shoulder dear
He draped himself and lost all fear
Now the cats have all gone off
I am frightened by my cough
My husband comes to me at night
Fortunately he cannot bite
He touches me with tenderness
Smiles and wished me,God Bless.
When I waken I feel lost
So I have to wear a watch
I seem to have no solid self
I feel nervous of those elves
I don’t mind an angel fierce

He could rub my aching feet
I will have no other man
They are frightened of women
They don’t like to lose at Chess
They don’t like to wash my dress
They will brush my winter coat
Never ask me what I wrote
I do not wish to anger men
They might shout and bawl again
I think maybe I will turn gay
Ask a lady, what to say?
They may not understand my needs
Killing flowers to help the weeds
Talking all the weary night
On the whole they’re parasites
Also they may menstruate
I can’t give them seeds to take
So they will leave and get a man
This is where it all began
Eve and Adam,God and man
Cain and Abel, apple flan
Noah and his Ark so fine
I wish I had one in the rain
I wonder when the world will end?
I am old so be my friend

I wish we were in Silverdale again

The meadow full of flowers,the nettle’s sting

The boarding house,the hedges rich with song..

The sketch pad,ink, the birthday pen

My brother’s humour and his wacky games

I miss his buoyant face, his eyes untamed

At least he’s not in prison doing time.

I liked the way he misprounced my name.

I wish we were on Windermere today

The bouncing sun,the blossoms rich display

Come back now I love you anyway

My heart was stabbed with death,you went away

I saw your shadow cycling in black rain.

May we help each other with the pain?

I’m in deep now,never been this deep before
The world’s hollow like a shell and I’m out its door.
In so deep, the ocean has its own startled floor.
I’m down,down.down.never been so dark , so more

I can’t rightly tell how I got where I am
I think I had an accident,fell over, then I swam.
Sometimes it’s a loss, be times it’s my man.
I guess I only do it cos I know some folk can.

I don’t know if the joy is worth the pain
Would I choose to relive if, I was born again?
The deep joy is the amazing gain.
But the sorrow is damn sad, let’s admit it plain.

I’m in deep and it’s over my head
What was I thinking of,when I fell out of that bed?
I look up and the sea’s so turquoise like that mist is red
When we get good and mad and wish some loon was dead.

At first, it was all just black,black pain
But from the bottom of the well, I looked up with awed love again.
That’s when I recalled,feelings are deep and sane
Joy is much greater when we’re in the deep,deep zone.

I dunno if I’m ever comin’ out.
We can’t control it,ain’t that what life’s all about?
I’ll never love with innocence again,nor not feel doubt.
But I’m no teapot and the devil ain’t got my spout.

I’m swimming and the ocean’s so mysteriously bright
Down here we don’t have no day nor no night
Fish nudge me with big grins and teeth white
Sea flowers fondle me and whisper,turn off that light

https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/06/24/julian-norwich-believed-all-will-be-well-would-she-say-so-today

While my husband kissed me in our bed
Our cat would  lounge on top and lick his head
No matter what gyrations that cat saw
All he did was pat us with his paws
The happy days of learning  how to feel
How to entertain with spicy meals
Of walking by warm rivers hand in hand
Watching coots and moorhens ,washing pans
Buying an old kettle, then a house
Driving  out to Ongar ,stubble fires
Smokey Essex cornfields, insects’ pyres
Driving  down the Saxon Cliffs at Hythe
Soft teal Sea,Capel le Ferne, men’s eyes
Happy  in a cottage in the wilds
I sang like some  small bird, we walked for miles
Kersey where the ducks bathe in the street
Kissing in the hedges was so sweet
Getting  our own garden, growing beans
Growing spinach, lettuce and snap peas
Picking  our blackcurrants, making tea
Making jam from raspberries. yes please
This proves that when you marry you need pans
Cooking  dinners  talking with our friends
Wearing jeans and  hair so long it flowed
My husband liked to brush it till it glowed
I dream some nights my hair is still like that
And how  the cat slept with his paws in it
How his father died and mother grieved
Life is not all positive, we see.
On we went and love  was what we grew
Though anger  did rise up and strain the glue
First the cat died, then my man went too
Can’t I adopt a beast  from Whipsnade Zoo?

http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/butterfl.htm

Mike has been taking photos all his life but  now has more time to do it.Why don’t you get a camera or use your phone and  start a new hobby? I do  it although I have no technical skills.Again my technical skills in art are not very good but I still like to try.

Essex UK.Drawing by Katherine

I should have studied cryptic crosswords first

Before I turn my mind to writing verse.

How could I bedazzle readers’ eyes

Hinting at the mysteries inside?

I should have studied Dante and John

Donne

Or Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson.

I should have gone to Eton or St Paul’s

then I could think in Greek by shadowed walls.

We have to make good use of all we know

Don’t keep crying out and calling More

Infinite the treasures of each mind

When like a little child we make designs.

On the seashore with the infants play

The grains of sand are infinite today

https://interestingliterature.com/2017/02/a-short-analysis-of-t-s-eliots-little-gidding/