I saw some mobile foam coming out of the bathroom.Then I knew

She said, what a tart phone

She sai,d  about thy lines

I have a war in  my bed robe

I got some kosher vitamin D today.So then it might be my far wits are……

I have my own Tablet so all I need is God.

Can we have  more athletics free with our newspaper?

I forgot we need washing but I ironed my soul today ready for the knight

So we bathed in the River Mersey  and oil came free.

I  can’t bare to turn off my phone in town

I have been smart myself at rhymes.

So  we all have cameras,  who looks at the world? Is there any?

My IQ is like infinity… it gets bigger and bigger and suddenly is infinite before coming back to zero from the negative  side.

You say I’m unbalanced.Yet I have smashed the wide hopes of  the Langdale Bites

We are all human.But not Gods. We are Gods’.

Travelling down these sentences we find
Unknown,unsought, unthought, but always real
A home where we can rest our  fragile minds

The people  dropped,the habits left behind.
The good, the mediocre, what we steal
While travelling with the sentences we find

The hate that frees,the love that too close binds
The heart, the soul, the body, how we feel
For homes where we can rest our  fragile minds

The touch that chills, the distances unkind
Unwished for yet demanding all the soul.
Unravelling are our sentences unblind.

The freezing looks,the glories undermined
Ill timed,ill gotten, ills both new and  old,
Hedge homes where we could rest our  fragile minds

I have never dwelt in realms of gold;
But there are many stories never told.
Suffering our own sentences we find
A  home that welcomes, our more liberal minds.

Image by Katherine

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/18/the-future-of-

Extract:

“The simplest and best answer I got at the event in Oxford was “for paying attention”. Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, echoes that phrase. “One of the things poetry gives all of us is a way of developing an attentiveness to life, a way of observing the world, of noticing things and seeing them differently,” she says. A good poem looks closely at the world; does that Martian thing of trying to see it for the first time. Everything else – the emotional charge, the lyrical delight, the intellectual pleasure – is secondary.

The Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes, who teaches poetry at the University of East Anglia, says poems try to capture a reality that is deeper than language. “You’re trying to say: I know what this thing is called,” he says. “It’s called a chair, and that thing is a table. I’ve got this word ‘chair’ and I’ve got this word ‘table’, but there’s something peculiar about this chair and table which using the words chair and table will not actually convey.” Readers, he says, may race through novels because they want to know what happens, but they should look to inhabit poems. “Nobody reads a poem to find out what happens in the last line. They read the poem for the experience of travelling through it.””

The  doctor  took my blood and said
Are you alive or are you dead?
I answered boldly,I don’t  know
See what the tests and samples show

Meantime give me food and drink
I like milk and apples pink
I need protein,I need wine
I  need cigarettes divine

Then the undertaker asked
When he could begin his task
I said I can’t pay in advance
So now I’m  in a deep dark trance

Surely someone else should pay
I was still alive today
But now I wait  enchanted here
Drinking guinness, that black beer

I ate beans and then  they grew
I see one has attacked my shoe
Sausages and steak are meat
I am feeling indiscreet

The little  words invented as we loved
Now have no other  speaker but myself.
Lost, unique, the husband, so beloved,
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

As all set out,storms set in,then we all fell out 

if you see what I dream.

I   am mean

You are as truthful as as a chorus of wrongs

 in rites of the Church choir

Don't leave me in the lurch.I'm a liar.

He’s as tense as a mournful frog in a bog in Ireland in wintery discontentll

It's all meant

As far as the wife can throw,I flew.

I shall  sue Sue.

I was flooded as a whole.

My emotions welled up and ran all over me like fairies’ hands..

Like elastic bands

I am honest as the day is wrong.

Give me a song

He was torn in three by tomcats with balls of steel

They will appeal

I have lost a whole stone and still no moss will grow on me.It grew on the stone!

Now I feel so alone

As Gluck would have it, music is heavenly singing by invisible choirs of cats.

He was bats

I sought him here,I sought him there.

I sought him with angelic flair.

But noone catches Tony Blair.

I am as snug as a lapdog in a bog

 with a brick on its head

Can I sleep on your bed?

She was as tender as an apple tart is round.

 and quite sound

As the crow flew,I had to fly as well 

to avoid it escaping me..I leave no crow alone

They usually get stoned but they won't share their drugs

https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poems-times-turmoil

Always forgive your enemies.Nothing annoys them so much

Oscar Wilde

https://www.etymonline.com/word/understand

Extract

Old English understandan “comprehend, grasp the idea of,” probably literally “stand in the midst of,” from under + standan “to stand” (see stytand (v.)). If this is the meaning, the under is not the usual word meaning “beneath,” but from Old English under, from PIE *nter- “between, among” (source also of Sanskrit antar “among, between,” Latin inter “between, among,” Greek entera “intestines;” see inter-). Related: Understood; understanding.

That is the suggestion in Barnhart, but other sources regard the “among, between, before, in the presence of” sense of Old English prefix and preposition under as other meanings of the same word. “Among” seems to be the sense in many Old English compounds that resemble understand, such as underniman“to receive,” undersecan “examine, investigate, scrutinize” (literally “underseek”), underðencan“consider, change one’s mind,” underginnan “to begin.” It also seems to be the sense still in expressions such as under such circumstances.

A stranger, meeting us, who shares a glance
A moment almost gone before it’s here,
Trusts the understanding ,trusts balance

A separation crossed by happy chance
Indicating how we  may now  bear
A stranger meeting, one who shares a glance

Strangers in a sense, but now we dance
The pattern is  alive whoever’s where
Trusts the standing,moving keeps  balance

Is this prearranged or is it chance?
All that’s human lives in how we care
For strangers meeting us  and how we glance

Shall our human dignity advance?
Shall we look with kindness, shall we stare?
Trust the changing  mood, the deep  balance

Shall we  look again, how  do we dare
To see the stranger who is standing there?
A stranger meeting us who shares a glance
Trusts the understanding , trusts the stance

,” Prayer,Auden wrote, “is to pay attention or, shall we say, to ‘listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a human so concentrates his/her attention—be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God—that s/he completely forgets his/her own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, she/he is praying.” This may seem a denatured idea of prayer, but Auden took it seriously, and seems to have prayed in exactly this sense”

I sent this article to a few friends.One sent  back an elegant and beautiful  description of his view of the world and what it has within it though  being an atheist he may not pray in the [old fashioned] Christian sense.He may pray in the above sense but to him  it’s not prayer it is being alive and experiencing that

Another lapsed Catholic sent a short note saying  she wasn’t interested in God
She didn’t ask me what it meant to me or why it had seemed interesting enough to send to her.She may like me have suffered the utter boredom of a convent school

Are some of us living in a complete and enclosed world so we don’t care what interests  others? And we feel safe.After all, the boredom of the Rosary nearly drove some of us insane.That was no prayer that was rubbish to me.Yet some people have found it a help in times of trouble/Maybe just feeling the beads is nice?

I suppose in Auden’s piece he wants to be involved in humankind and the world of nature, the Universe of some aspect of that.And he also liked the invocation of the  spiritual by means of rites and rituals which has been part of our history from the start……

A bit like music or an art show….?

I have to say, you would never know the NHS was struggling if you visited the gynacology department or indeed other ones  in our rebuilt hospital.
To be with such helpful people is a true balm in these days when the world is  so troubled and politicians don’t seem very wise or  determined to help  the poor. the struggling or the sick nor  try bring a better world  for our children and those around the world.
We are very fortunate, we don’t alwaysys realise that

Melania Trump is asking Germany which half of Donald they want.Apparently he’s split.But not down the middle.

A Rabbi  says the Jesus prayer in Pittsburgh.What? The Pope is saying Kaddish in Tel Aviv… when  is the Second Coming?
After the First.

I’ve got pre-traumatic stress.I’m going to die.

Why don’t we have two hearts? One sweet and one  beat

The police want me to question them. Why?

I’m  a spy but for whom?

I can’t write any more.It’s the Apocalypse when I can spell  lapse.

Curtains down,

Turn back, live again, he  said to me
Do not struggle  with the darkness anymore
One more move might give  hate victory

We are each connected to that tree
The sunlit top, the roots hid in earth’s floor
Come back, start again, he asked of me

While we live, we’ll live with dignity
Not scrabbling for the gold in blood and gore
One more thought might give  hate victory

The kindness of the golden light was  clear
And left an image in my mind’s deep core
Come back with new life, he asked of me

Do not wonder  now why you are here
We’re here to live and living shall restore
What  our suffering self  has found so dear

I had never seen the light before
Only Christ the tyger with his roar
Come back,  live  through darkness, he  told me
Feel the blackness,feel love's victory

https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/04/your-favorite-poems-on-hard-times/523191/

Extract

 

 

I could never take Charles Bukowski seriously. His books always seemed to be props for a certain type of guy I was endlessly attracted to. These guys were never into Wallace Stevens, say, or Lucille Clifton, just Bukowski. So Bukowski ended up being shorthand for pretentious guys who wanted to seem cool, and edgy, and arty.

Fast forward a few years: I’m done with those guys, living a life I hadn’t planned on—my choice, yes, but still difficult. I woke up this morning wondering how to keep going today with my responsibilities, with the to-dos, with all the work of a life that feels at this moment so constricted. I opened YouTube and “The Laughing Heart” appeared as a suggestion. I’m not sure why I clicked on it, but I did. It was the poem I needed—the poem that told me why and how to be today.

The opening lines:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/05/21/joan-didion-on-self-respect/

After sadness may come  joy  and peace
The knowledge that the loved one is now safe
The burden of the tears ,the  loss, the grief

Do any trees mourn for their lost green leaves
Which made a bed for me, almost my grave?
After sadness , cry for  joy   and peace

At first the death seems  like the work of thieves
And in wild madness  widows  weep and rave
The burden of the tears, the loss, the grief

Even in old age we find release
Arms around the shoulder, touch we crave
After sadness  may come joy   and peace

After so much woe, the face is creased
Courage  will come swiftly  like a wave
After shedding tears,in loss, in grief

How do  the sad with no  known ritual behave?
The loss of spirit, lonely ones betrays
After sadness   pray for joy  and peace
Such grave burdens, tears,  loss,  and deep grief

https://health.ucsd.edu/specialties/mindfulness/resources/Pages/poetry.aspx

Keeping Quiet

–by Pablo Neruda (May 28, 2018)

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

This was written after LC learned about the orchestra  at AuschwitHis father died when he was a   boy.The following year WW2 ended and he learned about the Holocaust.He suffered from severe depression all his life

As a poet, he says he cannot tell us why this song came out the way it did.But maybe it is affirming love and children,Unlike Christianity Judaism values human sexuality and the body.And they wish to replace the dead.