Author: Katherine
Poetry writer and author
Listen to the humming bird
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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
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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
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How to discriminate
Extract:
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.
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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?
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Watercolour love
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
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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
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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
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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
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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?
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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?
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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
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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?
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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
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He is alive again
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
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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?
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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
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
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.
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What you can do when it’s pouring rain and you can’t write a poem
1.Read all the comments in your Spam folder
Unfortantely for me, there were 428 but they were all the same and written in Spanish.I can’t see any sense in that
2.Put a comment on the blogs of all your followers over a few days but make them genuine or don’t bother
3.Learn a new poetic form and use it
Different forms evoke different thoughts and ideas
4 Watch a still life drawing class on YouTube
Try it out
5.Find out how much cats cost in your town and fantasise about how you’d enjoy one
6.Cook a complicated meal and phone a neighbour who lives alone promising to leave half in a covered dish on their step if they would like that
7.Write an advice column on your blog.Subject….. what are you good at? What do you know?
8 Invent a new joke
9 Find out why X is the unknown in al-gebra
10.Really feel that the world is not flat
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Turn off that light
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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 a 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 it 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 broad 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
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Art in heaven
I believe in God.My own father was very similar
Luckily I am a girl
Wow,Art in heaven!
Why must God’s will be done?Is the church a democracy?
What is a dictatorship? When one person has all the power without any love for others
Sounds like marriage
Why do we only get bread from God? Can’t he even give us water? I’d be better off in prison
Does everybody except me trespass and if so why?
Can’t we get into temptation without being led?
I don’t want to be delivered from, by, or to Evil
Why was it ok for Joseph to adopt Jesus.Was it legal?
He wanted to give him a good start in life
Why did God create Earth?
He wanted to grow his own fruit and befriend a snake
Why did God only want one child?
He had insomnia
Why is it wrong to lie? I can’t sit up all night
Where is Adultery?
Is it free?
Why do we not convert our neighbour’s wife?
Why do we go to church? Because they burned down the Synagogue
Did we convert?
On the face of it
But we don’t eat pork
That’s just a coincidence
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Life
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Senior semi lapsed Catholics’ to do/be or not to do/be programme
1.~Start early to prepare for Confession if you still go
Commit an interesting, but harmless to others, sin early in the week to avoid that dumb panic on Saturday at 5 pm
You may already have done this accidentally,
Do NOT kill anything nor tempt others to sin [my, I never knew I was so attractive]
What sin is interesting without being wicked?
Do let me know
“2
Never tell a sick friend that you can’t visit because you are going to Mass, Vespers ,lighting candles etc
3
Never talk about religion unless others do first.In any case, it’s probably better to avoid it
4
One of the main points of religion is to remind us we are not God and never will be.
Leave it all out if you like, but keep this.
You don’t have to go to church to listen to the Sermon on the Mount or to spend a short time alone with yourself and present to your self…. in that, we may find some connection we didn’t know of.Similarly you can sit with a friend having a hard time without lecturing them on how you would cope
5.Try to ignore that desire to correct others errors including do help them by mis-pronoincing a word they just mis-pronounced; unless you are a teacher in school
and especially theological errors
6.Listen for the still small voice rather than shouting a list of desires godwards.He/It/She is not Father Xmas
7 Go into a wood and forget everything including this.
Read theology by people who are NOT Catholics like Martin Luther King
That’s it for now
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Sins of humour
So,how are you getting on with your SoulMates choices
I’ve just met someone who disbelieves in the same God as I do
What about his job?
He’s been fired just like I was
Well,this sounds promising.Does he have a sense of humour?
Yes, he’s trying to live on Benefits
Is he in good health?
No, he’s in Godmanchester
Is he well dressed?
For an unemployed widower, yes!
Where does he take you?
To the public convenience
Why?
To save water.
Where else?
To the library
Does he read?
He read History at Nottingham
And what does he think?
He’s still in shock
What about?
Caligula
Is he doing Ancient History?
It’s all ancient or it’s not history
Will you marry him or join a nunnery
It’s not all black and white, you know We might live in sin
I’ve never been,is the climate good?
Hot as hell
So it will raise your Vitamin D?
To infinity
You don’t say. can I come?
Don’t ask me.I’m annoyed
Why?
If Boris Johnson had gone to a Polytechniciv none of this
mess would exist
Just a different one
Could it be worse?
Oh, much worse.
How?
The hills would be mountains
The sea an ocean
Do you write poetry?
No,I speak it
Is it a tongue?
Who decides?
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Doctor,I don’t feel ill- be patient
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Photo by Jonatan Vanting Iversen on Pexels.com
Doctor,I can’t eat my dinner
Try drinking it
Doctor I’ve got an ulcer on my bunion
Don’t keep showing off
Doctor, the cat bit me
That’s not a cat, it’s a tiger cub
Do I have to die while you carry on about names?
No,I’ll be silent
Doctor I was sick on the TV
Fame at last!
How can I get it clean?
We didn’t do that at Medical School.
Doctor, my wife is expecting a baby
Are Amazon sending it?
No,Hermes, they say between 6 and 9 pm
Well, make her something nice to eat
I’ll show her the recipe
And she will just show you the food.
Can’t I feed the baby?
Are you transgender?
Not yet but I live in Hope
Go back where you came from
That’s what they said to the Jews and look what happened!
Has God spoken to you?
Yes,but in Yiddish
You can’t expect him to learn English
But he expects us to learn it.
Oh, stop babeling on
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Suave
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/suave
Meaning of suave in English
A suave man is very polite, pleasant, and usually attractive, often in a way that is slightly false:
He’s very suave and sophisticated.
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We see not what ‘s there,we see our self
The eye is not a camera taking shots
Our mind affects the aspect we perceive
And what it feels important it allots
Gives grace or hatred ,causes us to grieve.
When we are afraid ,we see the worst
We see disgrace or ruin as our fate
As if our self for horror has a thirst
So all the little details we collate
Yet when we love we see before us joy
The flowers each sing, the birds dance in the air
We see no evil nor with hatred toy
All aspects of our world appear more fair.
We see not what ‘s there,we see our self
To learn ,we must employ our own mind’s wealth
Our mind affects the aspect we perceive
And what it feels important it allots
Gives grace or hatred ,causes us to grieve.
When we are afraid ,we see the worst
We see disgrace or ruin as our fate
As if our self for horror has a thirst
So all the little details we collate
Yet when we love we see before us joy
The flowers each sing, the birds dance in the air
We see no evil nor with hatred toy
All aspects of our world appear more fair.
We see not what ‘s there,we see our self
To learn ,we must employ our own mind’s wealth
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Not again
Will you kindly hear my Confession,Father?
Yes, I am here.
I have committed the wrong sins.
Any sin is wrong,dear
I mean,some people break into a bank and steal millions
Yes, but they usually end up in jail
Well, in jail I wouldn’t have to boil my husband’s hankies
But won’t you feel sorry for him with no drawer of neatly ironed hankies?
Maybe after a few years
Get back on track.What are these sins that you call wrong?
I am fuming with rage,madness and jealousy but I don’t let them show.I act pleasant
Well, that seems very kind to me.
Not to you.To my sister and my brother
But our minds are not our own.These feelings arise.It is not a sin unless you do something cruel because of them
I’m unsure if I believe that.Is there no way of living where we don’t have those feelings?
I suppose if you lived on top of a pillar in the desert but your mind might wander back
I think it would.Why do minds wander?
They get frustrated by boredom.So maybe you need something stimulating to do and then you need to be contented
I thought I was contented.But clearly I am not.There’s always somebody somewhere who has more then I do
You seem to have a brighter mind than many.
Yes,it wears me out.
You should just wear it lightly
How do you wear a mind?
In or out?
When in doubt,say nowt.
And do you repent?
I am trying
I so agree.You are but never mind.God has forgiven you now.
I’m not sure about these rites.Still,It lets us reflect which is good
For your penance look in a mirror and admire yourself three times a day
Well, that’s a very unusual penance.Can’t I whip myself and call myself a bleeding idiot?
Now, that really would be a sin.What are you ,a sado-masochist?
Oh,dear.I have fallen into evil ways.I hope God won’t turn me into a pillar of salt
As a child, I thought it was a pillow of salt
We all see and hear things in our own way.
May the Lord bless you and keep you
May he let his countenance shine upon you
Amen
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Walk in ferny woods. exchange a glance
Wasting life when we would like to dance
Walk in ferny woods. exchange a glance
Can we have a decent person at our head?
Jesus Christ,no b*gger understood
Why be happy when you could feel mad?
Glad that Donald Trump is not your dad
Don’t let logic, reason or plain thought
Sell you something Mother never bought
Why not let the police take all control?
They know how to score a self made goal
They can kill a man and wound a child
Yet kneel down in Church along the aisle
Holding a black Bible in one hand
Will not take you to the Promised Land
Cain and Abel,Jacob and Esau
Does he hopen to start another War?
As the old man fell towards his death
They offered us a handrail for the bath
I was so shattered by their wilful lies
I could not speak, my saliva had all dried
He was walking albeit slowly when at home
When they took him off I heard the groan
Lost inside his head, no wife nearby
Even Satan would have wept that night
Gabriel and Satan, hand- in -hand
Neither one will ever understand
We humans waste so much,we’re almost blind
Full of envy,hate and so unkind
G
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Beauty
People killed by motorcars don’t count
Three times fifty thousand just last year
Covid’s killed 1/6 of that they hint
Whose ghosts will gather round the kitchen fire
Here’s a man who drove when almost blind
He crashed into the chidren leaving school
Here’s a lawless lady who can’t find
The brake, the map, the light, the book of rules
We can’t fly to to to Chile,Singapore
We’ll have to drive to Devon in our cars
We may have an accident at home
Or get so drunk we fall and see the stars
It seems we have forgotten we’re like flowers
A moment’s beauty , then the heavy showers
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Test your own eyes
I nearly died of laughter when he went out for a drive
Simply,purely, only to test his bleary eyes
He put his toddler in the back, just to be quite sure
He would not be orphaned if his father crashed the car
To make it even safer he took his good wife too
Even though she felt quite weak after having flu
They went to Barnard Castle, not just round the block
The river Tees is very fine, the Castle on a rock
It was all or nothing;was it murder,suicide
Taking all your loved ones on a really dodgey ride?
The Unconscious has impulses of which we do not know
Like sending cripples out to buy their own food in the snow
What can we deduce from this, is he Head of State
Ascending up to heaven, does he want to emigrate?
How my heart speaks 