Extract from book named at the end

“I came to the conclusion then that “continual mindfulness” could certainly not mean that my little conscious self should be entirely responsible for marshalling and arranging all my thoughts, for it simply did not know enough. It must mean, not a sergeant-major-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to look and readiness to accept whatever came…. Whenever I did so manage to win its services I began to suspect that thought, which I had always before looked on as a cart-horse, to be driven, whipped and plodding between shafts, might be really a Pegasus, so suddenly did it alight beside me from places I had no knowledge of.”
― Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/proved-upon-our-pulses-keats-in-context

Mary decided to go to bed early..She sat down on the  green velvet chair in the corner and took off her outer  woollen woven clothes which were  pale pink and ready for the wash.As it was so cold she decided to leave her red   damart thermal underwear  on over which  she donned a  purple fleece nightgown and a  mauve woollen bed jacket.She put some long  green woollen bed socks on too and a  tan sheepskin hat from  East Norfolk.
By her bed were some sheepskin slippers. from Drapers of Glastonbury.
After cleaning her teeth  with her gas powered toothbrush she climbed into her  bed and began reading Ted Hughes’ letters in a fat volume which she had had for a few years but never finished as she only read them in bed to save carrying the heavy book about.
He certainly knew how to write letters she murmured to herself.
Suddenly her door opened with a thud  and a large ,handsome old  man came into her bedroom looking puzzed and amazed.
Good evening,baby, he said.
Good evening,she replied slightly angrily as she was busy. reading.Why she’d had enough of all that with her husband and her ex lover Bill Clinton
Why are you wearing all that  heavy clothing,?he asked nosily.
What’s it got to do with you? she demanded sarcastically

Well,it’s going to be hard to make love to you,he told her chastely with  his loving eyes.
What on earth do you mean,Mary cried mysteriously.He came a bit closer and  looked  down at her face.
I’m terribly sorry,he said.I must be sleepwalking,
What number are you?
78 ,she told him calmly.
Oh my, I am dyslexic.I should be at 87.
But how do you get in Mary asked him ,her face red with the warm clothes
I just  open the lock with a credit card,he replied intellectually.
A policeman in Oxford showed me.It was the only useful thing I learned at the University

Well,  you are here would you mind making me some  fresh tea.I am sweating so much I am dehydrated.Julius went into the  teal  and cream colored kitchen where he found all he needed.
He got a tray and took the tea up to Mary just like her husband once did.
Here you are,dear.he said kindlily.

OMG,y ou’re Stan,  she shouted.
Sorry to disappoint you, dear but  I am Julius Tweezer from round the corner.
I didn’t know there was a corner,she said curiously.
I like your kitchen,he told her.My wife liked red but it was too bright for me so I left he .
I think that’s ridiculous,Mary cried.To get divorced over a red kitchen is really stupid.

Well,it’s less embarrassing  in court than to say you are frigid,impotent a bully and mean as well,he said coyly.
Very cunning,Mary said,I didn’t know men were frigid and why were you so mean?

I am a hermaphrodite,actually ,he boasted.I don’t know why I am mean;it must be genetic like intelligence was once imagined to be.
Well drink your tea and  don’t think of England,she whispered.
I am too old for all that,she lied gently

You look  young to me,he faltered.It’s all in the mind.so they say.
Suddenly a policeman came in wearing a floral apron
Sorry,madam,he cried.This poor man has got lost and I have come to take him home
You can take me home,Mary said flirtatiously.I’m only 32 and full of beans
Madam ,control yourself.This is  a Christian country. Which is odd as Jesus was not a Christian and never saw the Vatican and all that tat.
Well,Jesus would not mind,she  bragged, because he understands women taken in adultery.
So you are married then,he asked sycofrantically

Well I have a wedding ring on but I’ve lost my husband,Mary yelped like a terrier at a foxhole.
They are a nuisance sometimes aren’t they , said the officer.
He’s probably hunting rabbits by the old  greenwood with  Ted Hughes.You go to sleep now.He began to sing,”Golden Wonders kiss your eyes” and Mary was lulled to sleep under her old  duvet and a thick acrylic and mohair rug she had knitted herself.Let’s hope she doesn’t wet the bed because she’s just had cystitis and drunk 3 pints of water.

What a funny day, mewed Emile.But nobody heard him except the mice in the wainscotting.He put on his hat and went into his basket with a rosary to play with or is it pray with?

Good night

https://godblog.org/paying-attention-with-simone-weil/

The quotes below  are from Iris Murdoch [ see the article above}

The enemies of art and of morals, that is the enemies of love, are the same: social convention and neurosis.

Love is the perception of individuals.  Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. (Sublime, p 215)

Hamas TV  building from Guardian,com

What a shame, people in Gaza can’t  watch the News now.

Nothingness has caught me by the throat
Tossed me  to the innards of  its prayer
Joan of Arc unhorsed in  a nightmare
Burgundy makes  offers for her coat

When we’re real and know the here and now
Do we entertain our thoughts and dare
To let   perception grow in all its  flair
Lamenting   foreign   insights we won’t know

From the mountain, I see Windermere
I see Coniston and Morecambe Bay
I see sheep and  flat  green fields arrayed
The shadows of the hills , the dread, the fear

Where can we be now on this  our March?
The moon, the sky , the aluminium arc
The universal suffrage of the dark
The  rights  of strangers, the Triumphal Arch

In the third part of the unknown Play
The lost beginning in the  mire just past
We act as if we’re real just for today

We seem to know  what we don’t  need to say
To leave old Auntie cackling at her post
In the third act of this rolling Play

She says she’s ready, now she airs a prayer
The actor paralysed, she ‘d gutted loss
The bones were real, the flesh was laid out bare

Acting badly adds a special  glare
The gap between the face and  candy floss
In the third act of this wooden Play

Here’s her winter coat, it’s coal pit grey
The actress holds the knife, the cruci-cross
We act as if we’re  here occasionally

Will there be an end, a deepening frost
One by one the actors are each lost
In the third part of the unknown Play
Everyone will die eternally

The cause of sin was flesh of pleasured fame
From the Devil,  tempting envious bile
The world, the politics, the evil  games

The Armies of the West, their grand  parades
Killed one God, gained power   to  us beguile
Was most of sin our  flesh and  pleasure  gained?

The devil dwelled our genitals,  priests claimed
Sex was  bad unless it  made a child
The vulgarity, the lowlife  loving games

How we feared the overwhelm,were tamed
We did not see   our Father´s  cold strained smile
Most of sin was ignorance, hearts maimed

The cloven hoof of Pan, his foot arraigned
God of nature changed to devil  wild
The world, the gambles and the snake filled  games

Is every human soul  born dark and  soiled
As Adam plays, the great serpent uncoils
The cause of sin was flesh, its pleasure   lamed
The views, the politics, the old,sad  games

https://apcsweb.wordpress.com/2016/06/27/disgust-and-contempt-in-the-white-house-susan-b-miller-ph-d/

“It hasn’t escaped notice that Donald Trump is easily disgusted, Not as much has been made of Trump’s inclination to contempt, a related but distinct emotion.  Donald Trump liberally uses both the sneer of contempt and the psychic heave of disgust to define his place in the world.

When Mr. Trump calls an opponent “loser,” “basket case,” “moron,” “clown,” “third-rate,” “dope,” “pathetic,” or “desperate” (NYT, March 4, 2016) while at the same time portraying himself as a hugely loved and successful winner, he is talking contempt, not disgust.  When he refers to another as “grubby” (NYT March 4, 2016) or he talks of the awfulness of imagining his female adversaries’ body functions, he is expressing disgust, which he communicates with his face as well as his words.  Can  psychological insights about the nature of these emotions allow us to elaborate on why a person might be so quick to feel and express them and how they might serve the person’s psychological balance and influence his leadership behavior?”

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/78384-from-self-published-to-mainstream-an-indie-success-story.html

No longer human,nor  two gendered flesh
Just numbers in equations’ tight knit net
But when did numbers eat, make love or dress?

In friendship or in love we tightly mesh
But  this cracks open for the dealers’ bet
No longer human,nor  two gendered flesh

Now we can fulfill    erotic wish
Without the need , the  other in our pit
But when did plastic eat ,befriend or dress?

Turn the current off and what a mess
For nothing now remains of holy writ
Nor human beings ,nor  two gendered flesh

See  vibrators  cancel   love’s access
Then two hearts can scarcely ever knit
But when did dildos eat, make love or bless?

As in mindfulness we senseless sit
The soul is ravaged in  the wild bear pit
No longer human,nor  two gendered flesh
But when did numbered  labour pray, confess?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69592/poems-for-peace

Extract:

And how to overcome—in ourselves, in the poetry world, and in all the wider communities in which we situate ourselves—our own resistances to an engaged poetry that stakes specific claims about the world, a poetry that could be partisan and provocative and even utopian? After all, many of us feel as John Keats did, despite his friendship with the partisan poet Leigh Hunt: “We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.”

And if the poetry that presses “palpable design upon us” were not challenge enough, then what to do about poetry that proposes something about peace, the very word of which veers into a kind of New Age ganja haze and evades the pungency of real life; or, to let Keats muse on the subject, “for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses.”

The nearer  peace,more savage are the acts
Abhorrent to the atheist in us all.
History, undigested ,splits and cracks

As we whites  did evil to the black
With little difference, hate  for glory calls.
The nearer  peace, the more savage the acts

All of us can  disremember facts
Israeli hands  have gripped and then appalled.
History, undigested ,splits and cracks

As ,with Bomber Harris, Dresden packed
Burned  like grass the refugees to ghouls
The nearer  peace, the more savage the acts

We deny the  healing  we have lacked
For Jesus' Jews we let be killed ,de-souled
History, undigested ,splits and sticks

Palestine’s own Arabs are  ill ruled
And in return,  explode  like stubborn mules
The nearer love, the more  the  hatred whacks
History., inconceivable,   directs

Wurve yew been?
Ah fell of’t buzz
Owcome?
Mi glasses wer wet
Y?
There wur a thunderstorm
Did weeavit  ‘ere?
Did y’ear awt?
Ah can’t say adid
Wot wer ye doin’
Ask ye dad.
Ah feel shy
Oh,my.Is it  social globia?
No it’s  quite flat
Up ‘ill down dale
That must bi Yorksheh
It’s a  metafor?n
Matter fr oo?
Metaphor  ah meant
Ha.ve ye bin studying again
Ah can’t stop
Y az the mind no switch?
It’s not electric
Well what izzit, Gas?
That might expiain  ‘tbill
Too Woo

I unthinkingly trod on his  con-technology
Marriage is window dressing  for the unfaithful
On all my worldly goods  she  love endowed
Shall we   have breakfast instead?
My honeymoon was a state of kind
I never liked  the holes in truth.
I’ll be judge,I’ll be jury, we’ll persecute Fury.
She lost her wits to the owl, Too Woo.
I like to share my bed  with animals,vegetarians  or criminals
Why do I look a fright?
She frightened the hearses
Did she say where her purse is?
New curses for sale.Any offers inserted.

http://writersrelief.com/2009/11/09/un-think-your-poetry-how-to-write-better-poems/

Beginning{

1. To write better poems, turn off the part of your brain that is conscious of what other readers might think of your poetry. Let your subconscious do the writing. Don’t go chasing after the words you want to write; instead, follow the words as they come from within you. Don’t censor, second-guess, or hesitate. Just open your mind so that it can make connections that you might not consciously see.

Drawing by Katherine using  Microsoft Paint, for her little brother

Mary took out her easy threading needles and some blue thread so she could darn the holes in a favourite old sweater.Not only had a moth been living off it but she had to cut a little  more off when her mini shoulderbag had got its buckle stuck in the sweater.
What are you doing,Annie asked her?
Annie,I didn’t know you were here.How did you manage to get in.Have you got a key??
No,I climbed on my flat roof and in through your bathroom, window Annie admitted furtively
But why, cried Mary, as she noted Annie was wearing a blue jumper rather larger than normal, covered in  a print of ladybirds and spiders.
I just wanted to feel young again,Annie told her.
I never knew you were a burglar!
I didn’t steal things,I did it to keep fit!
Supppose the government advised people to break into houses  just to get some exercise?Would that be moral? asked Mary
Well, it would make us close the windows ,I imagine.I admit if Donald Trump climbed through my window I would be very anxious Annie admitted
Oh, don’t worry.It’s just cats he like to grab,Mary informed her
Cats? Is Melania a cat? asked Mary
I expect she is catty with him , Annie whispered
Well, thank the Lord he never assaults women,Mary muttered
Why does the Lord allow other women to be raped  or to have their clitorises cut off?Annie pondered
I say, thank the Lord, but I suppose I don’t mean it.As you say how can he allow all these evils?He must be less omnipotent than we were taught,Mary decided
Can one have degrees of omnipotence?~Annie enquired
I am unsure.I shall have to muse.But you can get a degree in omnipotence,Mary said roguishly
How?
Well, how much maths does a third class  degree confer on a person?
They got 40 % in their exams, Annie murmured
So if we have a  third class degree in omnipotence, we are omnipotent about 40 % of the time! First class about 70 %.Mary stuttered
I find it worrying that  a doctor  might qualify  when she  or he has only got 40 % in anatomy or in   heart murmurs.Not to mention the brain.
Do  they even have to know where it is?
Probably not, the women decided.
Emile was smiling his cat grin because he had phoned 999 and here was Dave running up the garden path wearing a jumper exactly like Annie’s   over a red spotted skirt from Cotswold Connections Sale and some purple trainers from TKMaxx with socks covered in squares a la Mondrian.
Will Mary be angry?Will she want a blue jumper too?
Well so will  all of us

The memory of Dunwich Heath
The birds so rare, the sea so near
The  broken marble  on the beach
The  inner fires, the burning Heath
The trees that hunch, the wind so East
The savaged,polished rocks now dear
The sacred life of languid heath