Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Let’s go baby

IMG_0020.jpgDearly beloved,we are gathered here together to thank God for making us the best people on earth.And to say, we don’t need him any more as we have got some very artificial intelligence, thousands of spies and almost all the people in the world carry devices which have microphones,cameras and location  and moreover they read the News online and believe every word of it.Let’s go,baby

I wasn’t one of the six million

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52937/i-wasnt-one-of-the-six-million-and-what-is-my-life-span-open-closed-open

I Wasn’t One of the Six Million: And What Is My Life Span? Open Closed Open

TRANSLATED BY CHANA BLOCH

 

    6
I wasn’t one of the six million who died in the Shoah,
I wasn’t even among the survivors.
And I wasn’t one of the six hundred thousand who went out of Egypt.
I came to the Promised Land by sea.
No, I was not in that number, though I still have the fire and the smoke
within me, pillars of fire and pillars of smoke that guide me
by night and by day. I still have inside me the mad search
for emergency exits, for soft places, for the nakedness
of the land, for the escape into weakness and hope,
I still have within me the lust to search for living water
with quiet talk to the rock or with frenzied blows.
Afterwards, silence: no questions, no answers.
Jewish history and world history
grind me between them like two grindstones, sometimes
to a powder. And the solar year and the lunar year
get ahead of each other or fall behind,
leaping, they set my life in perpetual motion.
Sometimes I fall into the gap between them to hide,
or to sink all the way down.
    7
I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment
millions of human beings are standing at crossroads
and intersections, in jungles and deserts,
showing each other where to turn, what the right way is,
which direction. They explain exactly where to go,
what is the quickest way to get there, when to stop
and ask again. There, over there. The second
turnoff, not the first, and from there left or right,
near the white house, by the oak tree.
They explain with excited voices, with a wave of the hand
and a nod of the head: There, over there, not that there, the other there,
as in some ancient rite. This too is a new religion.
I believe with perfect faith that at this very moment.

4 pints of whiskey and a flea, s’il vous plait.

Our so called leaders could  barely get a flock of sheep to fall off a cliff without using a nuclear missile.
Theresa May or May Not ask the House of Commons to vote on anything more importantthat whether milk should be in bottles like whiskey.Or in view of our anxious condition, whether whiskey should come in  4 pint cardboard containers saying:Use with 24 hours.
In Britain we claw and bite  tourists speaking Spanish on the Tube while we gladly go to Spanish restaurants [ 2 women are charged with assault on he Underground]

If you  miss the sense of community engendered by War,why not move to Gaza City? It might be hard to get in but ,boy, is it hard to get out… alive.

If you feel bad, just thank God you are not a farmer in Gaza.

Israel, where  tickets to the Theatre are free.Bring your own wooden tower.

Ever wondered what it would be like to have a lunatic in charge of the world? Wonder no more.

Are adverbs bad? Not if you like crossing out with a red pen

My son passed out after receiving Communion.I thought Jesus being Jewish it would have been unleavened bread but it was a sponge from Tesco’s  or an india rubber from, possibly, India.Well ,talk about constipation.They should have put detergent in the wine.

I’ll never fall in love again.I’ll swim.

Make your own quotes with 26 letters and a few commas.And a full stop.

All the words enraged.

My writing career ended at the bus stop.The brakes came on too suddenly and I ripped my notebook in half.Which half I can’t tell.

I used to write lyric poetry until I realised I didn’t know what lyrics are.So no I mimic instead

The curlew rolled the bell into the hay
The flowing bird ran boldly  up a tree
I bought its lovely nest from off Ebay
It  left  me soiled in dark pests, what a flea!

Alexander Woollcott….read and laugh

pexels-photo-66400.jpeghttps://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexander_Woollcott#Quotes

 

The two oldest professions in the world — ruined by amateurs.

  • On actors and prostitutes, from his column, as republished in Shouts and Murmurs: Echoes of a Thousand and One First Nights (1922), p. 57.

Stephen King on how to write

JGBallardbyFayGodwincreditBritishLibraryBoard.jpghttp://uk.businessinsider.com/stephen-king-on-how-to-write-2014-8/#3-dont-waste-time-trying-to-please-people-3

Extract

6. When writing, disconnect from the rest of the world.

Writing should be a fully intimate activity. Put your desk in the corner of the room, and eliminate all possible distractions, from phones to open windows. King advises, “Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open.”

You should maintain total privacy between you and your work. Writing a first draft is “completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.”

7. Don’t be pretentious.

“One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones,” says King. He compares this mistake to dressing up a household pet in evening clothes — both the pet and the owner are embarrassed, because it’s completely excessive.

As iconic businessman David Ogilvy writes in a memo to his employees, “Never use jargon words like reconceptualize, demassification, attitudinally, judgmentally. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.” Furthermore, don’t use symbols unless necessary. “Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity,” writes King.

8. Avoid adverbs and long paragraphs.

As King emphasizes several times in his memoir, “the adverb is not your friend.” In fact, he believes that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs” and compares them to dandelions that ruin your lawn. Adverbs are worst after “he said” and “she said” — those phrases are best left unadorned.

You should also pay attention to your paragraphs, so that they flow with the turns and rhythms of your story. “Paragraphs are almost always as important for how they look as for what they say,” says King.

Rondeau as poetic form

Bellevalia_cyanopoda2018.jpghttps://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/rondeau-poetic-form

 

“The rondeau’s form is not difficult to recognize: as it is known and practiced today, it is composed of fifteen lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided stanzaically into a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the music of the rondeau, whose rhyme scheme is as follows (R representing the refrain): aabba aabR aabbaR.

Where the rentrement appears in its traditional French form, it typically does not adhere to the rhyme-scheme–in the interest of maintaining the line’s buoyancy and force. But when nineteenth-century English poets adopted the rondeau, many saw (or heard) the rentrement as more effective if rhymed and therefore more assimilated into the rest of the poem. An example of a solemn rondeau is the Canadian army physician John McCrae’s 1915 wartime poem, “In Flanders Fields“:

     In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The challenge of writing a rondeau is finding an opening line worth repeating and choosing two rhyme sounds that offer enough word choices. Modern rondeaus are often playful; for example, “Rondel” by Frank O’Hara begins with this mysterious directive: “Door of America, mention my fear to the cigars,” which becomes the poem’s refrain.”

Be negative

 

IMG_0122
I saw the light by Katherine

https://www.fastcompany.com/3038199/the-positive-results-of-being-negative

 

Quote

NEGATIVE THOUGHTS PROVIDE A HEALTHY BALANCE

In a study called “States of Mind Model,” University of Pittsburgh researchers Robert Schwartz and Gregory Garamoni explored positive and negative thinking as it relates to anxiety, depression, and stress. While too much negative inner dialogue can bring about depression and panic, the pair found that a “golden section”–two-thirds positive and one-third negative–is the healthiest state of min

Is it  not idolatry to graze?

Drifting in a state of reverie
Safe within the spheres of  endless grace
The images within will speak to me

In imagined boat on inner sea
The sky and sea ,intense the glowing space
Drifting in a muse, a reverie

Those who  have been  blessed will each agree
All we are  and do will  leave a trace
The images within will speak to all who see.

Love united is community.
In  creation ,we will see God’s face
Drifting in our will -less reverie

Yet on the News we see the people flee.
The Holy Land  is filled with anguish base.
The images within will show ,.but can  we see?

Is it  not idolatry to  graze
Where  the still small voice itself amazed?
Drifting in a state of reverie
The images within will speak to me

Rewrite your own life?

DSC00069 (1) 22.jpg

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/15/how-to-rewrite-your-own-life-story

 

Quote

 

“The final layer of understanding what her own purpose was, and the spur to write her book, came in 2016 when she was caring for her father, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“I’d spent my life trying to control what happened to me. But this was something I couldn’t control. I had to surrender. That taught me an important lesson, which is that it’s not by seeking to control the world that we get the best out of it. So, in the final moments of my dad’s life, I realised the true purpose of my own.””

Instead of a husband

Photo0317.jpg

An electric carving knife… if you afford a joint of beef!
An electric tin opener.For those nights when baked beans are all you have left and your hand’s are not good
A giant size teddy bear.Something to hug.
Money.
A masseuse.
A friend who can climb a ladder.
A dog to bark at you.
A cat to cuddle up to you.
A parrot to repeat the words you said when you dropped a Le Creuset pot onto the floor to your guests.
A person who enjoys conversation.

Not a lot really.

He doth protest too much

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-trump-russia-guilty-20180222-story.html

 

“In other words, Trump’s furious claims of spotless innocence could be entirely consistent with the truth. But as Queen Gertrude observed to Hamlet, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Surprising as this is in a veteran of showbiz, Trump seems not to understand how a close-up magnifies every gesture. His jumpiness around the subject of Russia; his hand-wringing over ways to end the investigation; his rhetorical flop-sweat at the mention of the letters F, B and I — all these and more have his audience thinking: Gee, for an innocent man he sure does act guilty.”

The Holy Land

The weather of the world is growing wild
Sacred values constantly defiled
Where are we to find a different way?
Who will have the special words to say,
The weather of the world is growing wild

Where are now the virgin and her child?
The Holy Land by strife has been beguiled
We will pay the penalty one day
The weather of the world is growing wild

In my mouth I taste the bitter bile
The storm clouds bundled, yellow,deep and soiled
Battering with anguish we  who pray
For what we ask is,”give us our own way”
Who can impart grace to hardened souls?
The weather of the world is growing wild

 

 

Why me,god?

“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, “Why god? Why me?” and the thundering voice of God answered, There’s just something about you that pisses me off.”
― Stephen King, Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay

The Alphabet by Karl Shapiro

The letters of the Jews as strict as flames
Or little terrible flowers lean
Stubbornly upwards through the perfect ages,
Singing through solid stone the sacred names.
The letters of the Jews are black and clean
And lie in chain-line over Christian pages.
The chosen letters bristle like barbed wire
That hedge the flesh of man,
Twisting and tightening the book that warns.
These words, this burning bush, this flickering pyre
Unsacrifices the bled son of man
Yet plaits his crown of thorns.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-alphabet-5/

Where go the tipsy idols of the Roman
Past synagogues of patient time,
Where go the sisters of the Gothic rose,
Where go the blue eyes of the Polish women
Past the almost natural crime,
Past the still speaking embers of ghettos,
There rise the tinder flowers of the Jews.
The letters of the Jews are dancing knives
That carve the heart of darkness seven ways.
These are the letters that all men refuse
And will refuse until the king arrives
And will refuse until the death of time
And all is rolled back in the book of days.

Can feeling bad be good for us?

Narcissus_Xit2018https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/201009/emotional-acceptance-why-feeling-bad-is-good

 

“Third, acceptance is implicitly akin to saying, “This is not that bad.” Which is the truth–negative emotions may not be fun, but they won’t kill you; experiencing them as they are–annoying but not dangerous–is eventually much less of a drag than the ongoing (failing) attempt to avoid them.

Finally, when you accept a negative emotion, it tends to lose its destructive power. This is surprising and counter intuitive to many people, but if you think about it for a while, you will see the logic of this approach. Swimmers who are caught in an undertow and feel themselves being dragged out to sea often panic and begin to swim against the current with all their might. Often, they fatigue, cramp and drown. To survive, such a swimmer should do the opposite–let go. Let the current take him out to sea. Within a few hundred yards the current will weaken and the swimmer can swim around and back to shore. The same with a powerful emotion: pushing against it is futile and possibly dangerous; but if you accept the emotion, it will run its course while allowing you to run yours.”

Continue Reading

The God of metal

How interpret actions that seem mad
And how do Syrians “live” in their cruel  state
Will these missiles change the vile Assad?

It’s paranoid to see just good and bad
A mix of feelings of both love and hate
How interpret actions that seem mad?

Should we pray to God to send his flood?
The God of copper,iron and steel breastplate
Will holy missive change the cruel Assad?

Copper in the kitchen,there  it’s good
But metal’s used in weapons by the State
How interpret usage that seem mad?

If the war ends,Syria soaked in blood
Who is left to think and  to reshape?
Can any missiles educate  Assad?

When we’ve finished death,destruction,rape
What will spring up from that mute landscape?
How interpret thinking that seems mad?
No human act  can  make this world be good

The unusual life of J G Ballard

FG2744-3-14ahttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/14/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianreview10

 

“I came to live in Shepperton in 1960. I thought: the future isn’t in the metropolitan areas of London. I want to go out to the new suburbs, near the film studios. This was the England I wanted to write about, because this was the new world that was emerging. No one in a novel by Virginia Woolf ever filled up the petrol tank of their car.” The proximity of Shepperton film studios was important. “They were why I picked this place. The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.”

Ballard claims that he has “always treated England as a strange fiction”. The real world, in which he was formed, was Shanghai, where he was born in 1930 and brought up as a typical privileged expatriate boy in the city’s International Settlement, without learning Chinese or tasting a morsel of native cuisine. “I didn’t have a Chinese meal until I returned to England.” In 1943, his world flipped upside down when he was incarcerated with his parents in the Lunghua detention camp. In his collection of memoirs, Miracles of Life, published earlier this year, Ballard writes that he was “largely happy” in Lunghua, finding there “a relaxed and easygoing world” that he had not known in everyday life. He claims that he thrived during his two and a half years in detention, “even when food rations fell to near zero, skin infections covered my legs, “

I carry a  knife and fork in my handbag

IMG_0114.jpgDear Aunt Aggie

I am worried about dating.I am not concerned with whether they want sex on the first date as I carry a  knife and fork in my handbag.No,I worry about whether they will want to get married and expect me to boil their hankies every week.My reason is,it’s hard to feel sensual when you have seen their oil stained,inky,damp and mouldy  100% pure cotton hankies.We were taught in the convent how to iron men’s hankies but I can’t see anything in St Paul’s letters about it; nor in the Gospels.And actually I no longer call myself religious.
Ever yours,
Cecilia

 

Dear Cecilia

You seem a rather violent lady.Are you sure you can develop empathy for anyone.There is no need to stab men with a fork if you are not feeling sexual.A few words will suffice like,maybe when you have bought me a diamond ring and taken me to Harrods for a handbag.Or whatever turns you on.A new  novel, a pair of shoes….
You seem obsessed with hankies.Just be grateful someone invented sanitary towels.Come to think of it,Tissues! Why don’t real men like tissues? Are their noses going to need blowing so hard that the tissue will tear? Or is it because tissues are no good for cleaning bicycles with?
Tell them blowing your nose hard is dangerous [It’s true[
In particular,  don’t blow your nose hard after Moh’s surgery.My late husband did and it took me a week to clean the bathroom let alone his handkerchief.

Your ruminations will end if and only if you truly love someone and by good luck, he/she loves you.You are using these thoughts to get away from others./
Most men can use a washing machine and some Oxydol detergent.But maybe he will polish your shoes while you iron his tie and his hanky.Be careful.Sometimes it’s safer just to daydream

Good luck,Aggie