The little  words invented as we loved
Now have no other  speaker but myself.
Lost,unique, the man  whom I once loved,
These humorous  words came from our deep, sweet love.
In my tongue , these words no longer live
I  cannot  use  our words, our loving  wealth.
The chosen  words  invented as we loved
Now have no other   listener but myself

I wish my heart were made of iron or steel

I could be alive but never feel.

Made of glass my heart could crack and break

My tongue would fail my mind make its mistakes

A plastic heart could deal with feelings cheap

But such heart could never hold the deep

Shall I freeze and turn to metal strong

But then I could not love or not for long.

Which is worse to bleed and suffer pain

Or turn to steel and never feel again?

I cannot choose I do not know what’s worst

May our human hearts survive uncursed

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.

The dentist wants to charge in advance in case I die in the chair

Surely it’s not electric.

Not the first time apparently.

Is it not murder?

I don’t know I’ve never been murdered.

Have you ever commited suicide?

Why, have you?

I have not.

I am thrilled

I didn’t know you cared.

I am shy

That’s one way of describing it

What do you mean?

Some of us thought you were conceited.

About what?

I can’t recall.

Are you demented?

Just argumentative.

I hope you are soon at peace.

Is it far away?

No it’s here if we are.

I feel you’re right.

You can feel me all over.

Are you a rash?

No, an allergy.

I don’t like Greece.

I saw you frying bread.

But not licking the pan.

I lick the pen

When the voices demand

Stop listening.

Alright

What ?

They are like some other beings altogether the cry more animal than human The wordless pathos, musical,disturbing They have gone back to a troubled and unimagined infancy but no mother responds to such a nightmare of overgrown voice boxes the cry of a rabbit wolf in a trap it’s the shriek in the wall cry of a baby in a psychotic nightmare. Nicholas haunts Sylvia in the evocative memory of Ariel And so it will end for you and me Trapped in this old body with its old brain on and on they cry help me, help me,help me nurse nurse I want the manager I want the manager I don’t want to be here I don’t want to be here I want to go home Help me we don’t listen because they have dementia what they say has no meaning. that’s our defence I am the norm You are abnormal but you smiled when I asked you if you would like your hair dyed pink and I know you love the music therapist. Your smell repels Alas Is this where Jesus dwells If you did this to the least of my little ones, you did it to me. We you haven’t forgotten about Eros you are still hoping to find love you are not dead yet but you can’ wait to go home Published by Katherine

age grief love Poem

Comments

I was diagnosed with this a few years ago and I have to take folic acid

As we get older it’s a good idea to have blood tests to see if we have any kind of anaemia or shortage of vitamin d or iron etc because it’s all too easy to label people as demented sometimes even fear can make someone appear to be demented as I saw with my husband when he had an accident

Today I’m  grieving feeling sad and lonely

Like the saviour said I’m feeling blue

Today I’m feeling nearly black and homeless

Every day I’m missing missing you

Everyday I think about your laughter

Everyday I think about your joy

I remember how you loved your little boys

You said my poems had got even dafter

Everyday I think about your garden

Everyday I miss your homely voice

I hope my tender heart will never harden

That is down to me and my own choice.

Everywhere I look I see your image 

My tears fall on the flowers like  gentle rain.

The world you loved so well may pay you homage

Love is wiser, greater than our pain

Just after you died I bought a new chair

I

Now it’s old, the armrest is worn .

I have sat on this chair for 10 years

But you have never come back

I have never watched the television again.

If the chair is worn, then how must I look?

I suppose joints of the chairs or id humans can wear out

It’s easy to buy a new chair if you have some money

Not so easy to buy a new joint for your knee or your shoulder.

Ask for the organs you can have a new kidney even the lung now .

Even the heart can be transplanted if it’s a good one.

We didn’t have a piano and now I regret it

Should I learn to play the recorder instead?.

Maybe a violin would make my neighbours realize I’m still alive.

That’s my ambition to get them to complain about something that I do like playing the violin upside down on the ceiling looking down upon them mournful and humorous

They have a large ginger cat but I don’t know its name I call it Ginger

Ginger does not respond to my voice but maybe a violin would help.     what do you think?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/series/poemoftheweek

https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/frozen-in/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-cancer-diagnosis-gps-illness-b2856125.html

Trial by life has an unbearable twist
Sad days of darkness must come to an end
Trial by life’s an endurable test

Send for the minister,send for the priest.
With her long pointed nails ,she has her garments all rent.
This trial by life’s unendurable tryst

The priest is no longer either sacred or blessed.
The succession has faltered with bitter dissent
Trial by life’s an endurable test

The people must now to each other confess.
The Tabernacle’s empty ,for who paid the rent?
Trial of life, who can endure such a tryst?

We need to look into our own hearts that cursed.
We need to take shelter,though torn is the Tent
Trial by life’s an endurable test.

Who gives the verdict,which judge is not bent?
Who can decide whether we should assent?
Trial by life:what a blow ,what a fist.
Trial by life: the unbearable last

When first I saw your soulful face,
I wished to dwell in your 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.

I found my dreams were cast aside;
The world of meaning denied life.
What seemed most precious now is fled
As 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 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”

Attracted by the light that is enough

We need not look for wisdom somewhere else

Wandering through the world so dark and rough

We may find the secret in ourselves

The sacred is as spare as leaves are fine

No wasted bud no colour in excess

So loving senses decorate the mind

We need not hide from chaos or distress.

The secret Life is here, the everyday

This is where we know the mystic light

Our tongues alone will tell us what to say

Our normal eyes will show us holy signs

for with our shadowed selves we rightly play

Enlightened by the flowers so wild and free

The sacred is on earth for you and me

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/01/margaret-atwood-memoir-extract-booker-prize-death-of-partner

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.

Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13818697-200-mind-body-modes-of-mind-what-have-small-children-playing-with-dolls-in-as-edinburgh-nursery-got-to-do-with-buddhism-one-psychologist-says-she-has-found-a-link/

. “It is
in the second half of the book, however, that Donaldson asks herself that
‘very important question’: do the emotions develop in parallel with the
intellect?

She takes as her starting point the fact that many people report intense
emotional responses to works of art or to nature and, further, that many
also report having powerful ‘spiritual’ experiences. These kinds of experiences
interest her because, like the thinking of the advanced intellectual modes,
they seem relatively free of entanglement in ‘narrow personal goals’.

But such experiences are rarely the subject of scientific scrutiny.
So to study them, she is forced to look at how they have been perceived
in the past and how the world’s great religions, especially Buddhism, evaluate
and attempt to cultivate them.

She concludes that there are indeed advanced modes of development for
the emotions. Since these emotions are deeply significant for the people
who experience them, she calls them ‘value-sensing’. She identifies a ‘value-sensing
construct mode’, which is the realm of the arts and of religious myth and
ritual, and mirrors the intellectual construct mode with its scientific
thought. And then there is a ‘value-sensing transcendent mode’ which is
the realm of spiritual experience, and mirrors the intellectual transcendent
mode with its mathematics.

She describes these modes as ‘advanced in the developmental sense, in
that you can’t get them in the early stages of living. They are also perhaps
advanced in another sense, in that they have to be cultivated more than
the early ones. There may be flashes of either emotional or intellectual
insight, but to cultivate them you have to be systematic and disciplined
and you rely more heavily on teaching.’

Her ideal is to be able to move from one mode to another at will. We
may choose to think logically about a problem, for example, when that is
useful to us. In the same way, it can be useful to have transcendent emotional
experiences. ‘They put our personal goals into some sort of perspective.
By being more aware of our emotions and valuing them more, we might live
more happily and society might work better.’

She concludes by speculating on the possibility of a ‘dual enlightenment’
in which intellect and emotion are equally valued. If that happens, ‘we
may come to feel less embarrassed about and suspicious of transcendent emotion,
seeing it as no more ‘weird’ than the capacity for mathematical thought’.
Each of these, she says, is ‘a normal, though generally ill-developed, power
of the human mind’.”

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-negative-freedom-thirteen-poets-on-formal-verse/

Among the many reasons poets choose to write formal poetry in the 21st century is an intuitive distaste for the imitative fallacy. To write about chaos, one need not write chaotically. It’s only a minor paradox to say that discipline and constraint unlock freedom. Steele goes on to say that form-minded poets are assumed to believe that “the universe is a nice, neat, orderly place.” On the contrary, he says:

I suspect that most people who write in forms feel that the obvious disorder and chaos of the world afflict us intensely, coming 

http://not-yet-there.blogspot.com/2013/09/0-0-1-192-1097-nottingham-trent.html?m=1

How far does our openness to aesthetic experience, and new forms of knowledge, depend on our capacity to enter and indulge states of wonder and awe, doubt and failure, ignorance and play? How critical are these conditions to the creative process? How do artists invite the unknown into their creative practice? On Not Knowing brings together contemporary artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines to explore the role of ‘not knowing’ within the creative process. The state of ‘not knowing’ or engaging with the unknown is an important aspect of all research. For artists it is crucial, as the making process often balances a strong sense of direction with a more playful or meditative state of exploration and experimentatio

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/nov/23/highly-sensitive-person-discovery-label-validating

https://substack.com/@annelamott/note/c-170385510?utm_source=feed-email-digest

Is it a contradiction to say that the lonely seek for someone to be silent with ?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/oct/31/the-best-recent-poetry-review-roundup

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/learning/word-of-the-day-rectitude.html