The still, small voice unheard, the hunt is on
The best are timid, while the worst run wild
God is in their sights and they have guns

With the early setting of the sun
Moths by burning torches are beguiled
The still, small voice a whisper,  haunted, stunned

Few have pity as large phones they scan
While  computers  eye the unborn child
God is  put to flight,  he has no guns

We must  be happy, evil is such fun.
See Jesus  with his mercy, love has failed
The still, small voice is lost, the hunt is on

As we wash our hands, the blood still clings
And from the sea  we hear  unearthly wails
God is in their sights ;watch, bullets, guns

Pittsburgh,Belsen, Krakow, Auschwitz hail!
The good  are tortured, while  the worst rule fools
The still, small voice unheard, the hunt is on
God is in their sights ; they  raise their guns…………..

https://www.history.com/topics

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-science-behind-behavior/201604/the-little-known-downsides-mindfulness-practice

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144562/political-poems

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Too_Much_with_Us

“Wordsworth gives a fatalistic view of the world, past and future. The words “late and soon” in the opening verse describe how the past and future are included in his characterization of mankind. The author knows the potential of humanity’s “powers”, but fears it is clouded by the mentality of “getting and spending.” The “sordid boon” we have “given our hearts” is the materialistic progress of mankind. The detriment society has on the environment will proceed unchecked and relentless like the “winds that will be howling at all hours”. The speaker complains that “the world” is too overwhelming for us to appreciate it, and that people are so concerned about time and money that they use up all their energy. These people want to accumulate material goods, so they see nothing in Nature that they can “own”, and have sold their souls.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike /society, Wordsworth does not see nature as a commodity. The verse “Little we see in Nature that is ours”, shows that coexisting is the relationship envisioned. We should be able to appreciate beautiful events like the moon shining over the ocean and the blowing of strong winds, but it is almost as if humans are on a different wavelength from Nature. The “little we see in Nature that is ours” exemplifies the removed sentiment man has for nature, being obsessed with materialism and other worldly objects. Wordsworth’s Romanticism is best shown through his appreciation of nature in these lines and his woes for man and its opposition to nature. The relationship between Nature and man appears to be at the mercy of mankind because of the vulnerable way nature is described. The verse “This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon”, gives the vision of a feminine creature opening herself to the heavens above. The phrase “sleeping flowers” might also describe how nature is being overrun unknowingly and is helpless.^{[citation needed]”}

Hey Father,give me your hissing
Where do you think you are,on a stage?
I have a bad memory.
That’s not a sin.How long is it since your last Confession?
I’d say about the time Augustine confessed
Augustine who?
Don’t tell me you are so ignorant
Oh, you mean St Augustine.But he lived 1700 years ago
That is how I feel
I don’t care about how you feel
What would Jesus make of that?
I mean, this is for confessing sins.
Do sins often confess?
You are making me angry
Right,that is my first sin.I make people angry.
Well,maybe it’s not your fault.
I am not sure.I also lust after women
Youtoo!
Well,I don’t do anything to  them
That’s a relief
I am married but I do  like to look at women in the town centre
You mean  tarts parade down there?
I’ve no idea what their jobs are but they look so kind and caring.
Well, just keep your eyes averted.
I might walk into a lamp post
Any more sins?
Yes,I told my  wife I liked the missionary position
That’s unusual nowadays
Well as a child she was terrified of missionaries
Where did she live?
In Ulster.
I see what you scream. Did they allow missionaries?
It’s not illegal but it does cause fights and even killings
Well,apologise to her and ask her forgiveness,Then let her decide what position she prefers.Any more sins?
I lost my temper and threw a brick at the television
Why?
When I heard Trump say something vile
I’ll absolve  from your sins and for your penance stop watching the TV till Xmas
I can’t watch it now.It’s broken in half
The ways of God are strange
Do you really  believe God is in control?
On reflection, probably not.No-one is in control
Well a little self control comes in usefulMy worry is, if I stop watching the News because I get distressed, we could end up acting like the Germans in the 1930’s distracting themselves from looking at their Government’s actions  and on things like Kristallnacht they did not let themselves act to help the Jews
And Hitler was a Catholic…
So  how can I know what is happening without getting depressed?

The world is too much with us late and soon
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers

We must bear our depression as the price of being alive

The agent is the one who makes the choice
Who  are we  and how do we decide?
If we’re passive, we  will lose our voice

Consolation comes in many ways
The love of other  people is a guide
The agent is the one who has the choice

Consolation visits, cannot stay
Will not come if we are stiff with pride
If to power we’re passive, we  must  pray

A wife was once a slave, though well embraced
Her unique self and agency denied
The agent is the one who makes the choice

Now the unemployed dwell in disgrace
The monsters in the government deride
If by power  disabled ,find a voice

Christian armies  thought God on their side;
As if he cared what  they meant by their lies!
The agent  believes he’s in charge,has choice
We  feel   lost , where is the still,small voice?

Is this man your soul agent?
No,I don’t  have a spiritual agent
But is he your only agent?
No,I employ many detectives in my agency
Well, who is he?
I don’t really know.He  follows me not just on FB but here in the town
Is he spying on you?
Well, if he were, would he not try to hide?
This may be a trick.Unless  he wants to ask you out but is too shy.
What’s it got to do with you, anyway?
I was only asking.
That’s what they all say
Who?
Men, women, you know.They ask me to open their doors when the key gets stuck
And do you?
Only if I know them.
So how come you are so skilled at opening doors?
I’m just a genius manque.
Gosh, you speak French.
S’il vous plait
Ah,mon oncle est mort
Moi aussi
You don’t talk like an Aussie
I’m from Christchurch
You are a believer?
No, my parents  lived there
What, in a church?
No, in a bungalow.
How charming
It was horrible
I  am sorry.
It’s not your fault.You were not born then.
Can souls be guilty?
Only Dover souls.

The  agency for souls is in  its space
Sending new souls through to be well placed
I see it in the mountains ,shining lakes.

The water shivers with the rivers  underground
The babies enter life with   cry and song
The  agency for souls is  love gone strong

As the matter and the spirit wind
Interlaced with love and work and mind
We see might in the mountains grand designs

Each soul is an agent, human, kind
Brought to earth and  softly  held,defined
The  agency for souls is  love unblind

We  have our  own vocation, we have guides
Our talents  and our weaknesses beside
Sculptured are the mountains  dignified.

We are more in heaven on this earth
When souls are how we measure people’s worth
The agency is how we know his Mind

A soul must be embraced and brought to earth
Where there is love we hope there will be mirth
The  agency, the soul,  can  take its  space.
I see  love  by  the waterfalls, sun chased

Wurt’zmicat= where is my cat
Wurzmidinner= where is my dinner
Midadsmokes= my father smokes
Deyelikekippers= are you a maths teacher?

Avityeroanway= have it your own way
Amgointechurch =I am going to church
Yecanseesatanin’t mirror= one can see Satan in the mirror
Izzitrainin= is it raining?
adoantwant t’ gotoskool=I am menstruating
pizeanirrationalnumber=I am going to Confession
Izzgodtranscendental= can we pay the rent?
Amgoint’etbuzzstop=I am leaving home
Alostmibuzzfairmam=I am a thief

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/serious-art-thats-funny-humor-poetry

Extract

Carolyn Forché, someone who has never been accused of being a funny poet, has said “irony, paradox, surrealism . . . might well be both the answer and a restatement of [Theodor] Adorno’s often quoted and difficult contention that to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” But what did the philosopher and critic Adorno mean by this fatuous statement? No poetry? Or just a very, very serious and earnest poetry? Because, let’s face it–earnestness is almost always bad art. Good art makes us think; it has more questions than answers. Often, but not always, satire does this too. But earnestness almost never does this–that’s not its job. Earnestness is comforting. It wants to hug us. And we want to be hugged sometimes. But sometimes we want to laugh while poking holes in self-righteousness and oppression, whether it be literal political oppression or oppression of a quieter sort – cultural and aesthetic oppression. Irony and satire are such a good antidote to oppression because oppression needs to be earnest (or at least look earnest) in order to be feared by those it seeks to cow. Oppression cannot work alongside irony because it believes in its own righteousness and a monolithic concept of truth that must be asserted to the oppressed with a straight face. Irony and satire are the tools by which the oppressed get to make fun of the oppressors without the oppressors getting it.

Dust Cursed when Father’s Cross hung in outer Banach space
Deeds were heard.He left.
No insight.Graphs discontinuous
Both sides toasted at once please with old  jam  and whipped streams
Bath and laugh.Pay as you gloat.Pray and demote.Exam with no notes

Pensive Frenzy Penis Wednesday
Died or laid beside. Decide.Deride.Derrida deceived her
Deconstructed destructured destabilised, de-lied de truth sat on me
Too wide.She implied.What a bride.All undenied
She was beside herself.Disassociation.Double woe man

Logic’s no magic
Tragic sentences deliberated in the Tower.
Heads off trouble
Inferno detered her.He went up in flames.Boy’s games
Paradise crust over minced groats on brown pies
Dante ilio braganzi.Fancy?
Beowulf organza dress for wild dancer
Prise before Fall.
Salvation deterioration.
Golden letter.Feel better.
Godly  rites .Music
Sleights of Sand
The Tide came in

1.Cadbury’s  chocolate biscuits  made with real butter
2 M and S Choc chip cookies or any other biscuits
3.Tinned marrowfat peas to  eat with fish and chips
4.  Earl Grey Tea
5.Fudge made with real cream
6.Harrogate toffee extracts teeth free of charge
7. Chocolate almonds

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/death-death-poetry

“Poetry, then, appears to be:

1. a vacuous synonym for excellence or unconsciousness. What else is common to the public perception of poetry?
2. It is universally agreed that no one reads it.
3. It is universally agreed that the nonreading of poetry is (a) contemporary and (b) progressive. From (a) it follows that sometime back (a wandering date, like “olden times” for a six-year-old) our ancestors read poems, and poets were rich and famous. From (b) it follows that every year fewer people read poems (or buy books or go to poetry readings) than the year before.
   Other pieces of common knowledge:
4. Only poets read poetry.
5. Poets themselves are to blame because “poetry has lost its audience.”
6. Everybody today knows that poetry is “useless and completely out of date”—as Flaubert put it in Bouvard and Pécuchet a century ago.

For expansion on and repetition of these well-known facts, look in volumes of Time magazine, in Edmund Wilson’s “Is Verse a Dying Technique?,” in current newspapers everywhere, in interviews with publishers, in book reviews by poets, and in the August 1988 issue of Commentary, where the essayist Joseph Epstein assembled every cliché about poetry, common for two centuries, under the title “Who Killed Poetry?””

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/survivor-guilt

“It’s all your fault, anyway, and it always has been—
the kind word you thought of saying but didn’t,
the appalling decline of human decency, global warming,
thermonuclear nightmares, your own small cowardice,
your stupid idea that you would live forever—
all tua culpa. John Phillip Sousa
invented the sousaphone, which is also your fault.
Its notes resound like monstrous ricochets.

But when you wake up your body”

Follow the link for more,please

” To be continually surrounded by language used exclusively for utilitarian purposes is a threat to the disinterested yet sacred attention a poet must have to words. Also, poetry has an intimate, necessary relation with silence. The work of poets is impaired by too much noise and language, a scarcity of silence.”

Matthew Zapruder

The face that was familiar is no more
Yet in my dreams he  is alive again
Without his presence, I feel lost and sore

The truth of loss, no human can ignore
It tears our  heart  to pieces with its pain
The face that was familiar is no more

Yet sentimental offerings I abbhor
When parted from the love with whom I’d lain
Without his presence, I feel lost and sore

No give and take of love, the shore is bare
The tide is out  so far the waves complain
The face that was familiar is no more

On the sea’s edge, we would walk and stare
Now I walk alone is this  my shame?
Without his presence, I feel lost and  bare

By my write the inner rhythm’s regained
The art of losing well  may be attained
The face that was familiar is no more
With him I   found sweet sea shells on  the shore

Art by Katherine’s Unconscious Mind

• You shall have no other Gods for tea ever
• You shall not make for yourself any  mind doll nor sit down with it nor versify  nor terrify it nor me
• You shall not misuse the Home of the Word.
• You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day  wholly free
• You must not commit murder nor fantasise  it nor pretend war is just harmless fun
• You must not commit adultery even with uncivil partners
• You must not steal  benefits from the poor nor deride them
• You must not give false references  about your Saviour
• You must not be envious of your neigbour’s goods. You shall not be sensuous with his mouse nor his wife, nor any cat that emits  love with right behaviour

Whatever we can say God is, God is not.” Meister Eckhart

Photo by Irina Anastasiu on Pexels.com

“God as an experience” A Stephanie Dowrick talk

Psalm 46

A plaster figure
Stands for my identity
Virtuosity

The door swings like rope
I am loosened from myself
Gape like a wide mouth

The kettle looks dead
Where is the kitchen fire
Where  are all of you?

I keep alive by thought
What day is it,I ask him
But he is absent

I put the bags outside
Let’s pretend we are here now
Will someone collect me?