Day: December 1, 2024

Please send God some gelatin

My husband is naughty a very naughty man
He throws down the newspaper on top of his beer can
He buys himself a sandwich in a nasty cardboard box
And puts trash in the laundry basket with his woollen socks.

He takes off his pyjamas and chucks them on the floor
He uses hankies frequently, so I have to buy lots more.
He wants to have thick sauces on top of all his food.
And when he has a hypo his speech is very rude.

I gave him such a shock when I learned to curse and swear
But we really need to, as “eff off “is everywhere.
Why even in the Bible there are some wicked words
I’ve not read it all yet, except Psalm’s I have heard

I mean to finish reading it and then when I must die,
I’ll come onto a cloud and shout, Oh pi is in the sky.
For transcendental numbers give a hint divine.
Although you can get it better with a glass of dry, white wine.

My husband drinks draught Guinness and then he falls asleep
He hollers and curses when the oven timer beeps.
He eats a piece of kipper and cried out,Oh, dear God!
Nobody caught this b*gger with a U.K. fishing rod

He wants to move to Whitby and walk upon the sands
Sit in the audience and hear the big brass bands.
He wants to see the sun rise and to see it set…
So please send God some gelatine in case the air’s too wet!

Angry at the end

Love me, lov,
You were angry with me ,I was much too bright
You taught me to play chess, then felt regret
The man must be the one who knows the rites

I didn’t know you minded my insight
When I won the game, you were upset
You were angry;I did not know I was too bright

I think you loved my body in the night
You loved my golden hair both dry and wet
The man must be the one who knows the rites

At least you did not scratch nor did you bite
I am weeping, I just found that old chess set
You were dying but I managed all the rites

Love me, love me, someone hold me tight
I am crying for his touch, my face is wet
The man might be the one who must depart

I shall live my future in your debt
You gave me all you had with no regret
You were angry, for an hour, then you were calm
As God came down and wrapped you in his arms

Work and the human spirit

Gerard’s ultimate subject, however, is genocide of the human spirit—including in Gerard’s own domain of academia. Learning, once intended to be a process of enlightenment, becomes a tool of self-blinding and a mandate of darkness. Liberation to think new thoughts is replaced by the prohibition of thinking beyond ideologically tolerable limits. Education “produces” products, product lines, productivity and repetition (as opposed to reflection) in a compliant “workforce.”

From preface to

Nathan Gerard

Winnicott and Labor’s Eclipse of life

Can poetry change your life?

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http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/31/can-poetry-change-your-life

Extract

His other idea is that the key to the real-world effectiveness of poems and songs is “form.” The invocation of form is awkward, for the same reason that advanced-pop criticism itself is inherently awkward, which is that most popular music, and especially popular music categorized as rock, is magnificently and unambiguously hostile to everything associated with the word “school.” And form is a very academic concept. It’s the shell in the game teachers play to hide content.

The phrase “equipment for living” is taken from Kenneth Burke, who also wrote that form is “a public matter that symbolically enrolls us with allies who will share the burdens with us.” Robbins likes this. I think it means that the experience of poems and songs is shared with other people, even if often implicitly, and so it can be a means of achieving solidarity. Form “grounds us in a community,” Robbins says.

This might be a little wishful. Reading poems is normally a solitary pastime, and so is a lot of music listening, except at concerts, where the emotions aren’t really your own. In any case, form cuts no political ice. The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” once an anthem of antiwar protesters, is played at Trump rallies. I assume it instills feelings of solidarity among his supporters.

With aesthetic experience in general, after a certain age, the effects are probably as much a product of what you bring to it as what you get from it. “Records are useful equipment for living, provided you don’t expect more from them …………