Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

Tools for formatting poetry or other writing

ReadingMuseum

This has information I did not know so is very useful not just for poetry but any writing

https://discover.wordpress.com/2018/03/29/poetry-tools/

One example:

Indent or outdent your text

When creating a post, you can indent or outdent text, pushing it further to the right or left. It’s another way to play with formatting and space:

Don’t you love the dance of words on the page?

Click increase indent once to move your words forward

and twice to jump even further

and even more, into the future.

Or click Decrease indent to return to where you began

and stay calm in this place

for another quiet moment

if you prefer.

Leisure, the basis of culture

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https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/

 

“Leisure lives on affirmation. It is not the same as the absence of activity … or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.”

BY MARIA POPOVA

“We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come,” Alan Watts observed in 1970, aptly declaring us “a civilization which suffers from chronic disappointment.” Two millennia earlier, Aristotle asserted: “This is the main question, with what activity one’s leisure is filled.”

Today, in our culture of productivity-fetishism, we have succumbed to the tyrannical notion of “work/life balance” and have come to see the very notion of “leisure” not as essential to the human spirit but as self-indulgent luxury reserved for the privileged or deplorable idleness reserved for the lazy. And yet the most significant human achievements between Aristotle’s time and our own — our greatest art, the most enduring ideas of philosophy, the spark for every technological breakthrough — originated in leisure, in moments of unburdened contemplation, of absolute presence with the universe within one’s own mind and absolute attentiveness to life without, be it Galileo inventing modern timekeeping after watching a pendulum swing in a cathedral or Oliver Sacks illuminating music’s incredible effects on the mind while hiking in a Norwegian fjord.

So how did we end up so conflicted about cultivating a culture of leisure?

In 1948, only a year after the word “workaholic” was coined in Canada and a year before an American career counselor issued the first concentrated countercultural clarion call for rethinking work, the German philosopher Josef Pieper (May 4, 1904–November 6, 1997) penned Leisure, the Basis of Culture (public library) — a magnificent manifesto for reclaiming human dignity in a culture of compulsive workaholism, triply timely today, in an age when we have commodified our aliveness so much as to mistake making a living for having a life

What can we do about fear of aging?

 

Image by Katherine

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While we are  alive  and mentally active we must make the most of it by being creative in some way
My sister took up art and sings in a wonderful choir

 

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My sister  took up art in later life as did I,.
Art is very absorbing though I find it difficult being more used to words

 

 

As we get into middle or old age many of us are afraid.We retire and  have no hobbies. Housework and shopping are of  not enough,Having  a hobby  or serious interest takes our mind off  ourselves and  the bad news about dementia and  other problems,?But we are not helped by being afraid.Some of us have cancer.More are terrified of getting it.But do we want to waste what time we have torturing ourselves with fear? But some like my sister take up new hobbies and others take on voluntary work

 

The weeping of Lord Jesus on his Cross

The  death of self , the emptiness, the loss
Make a space where new works may be born
Like the dying of Lord Jesus on his Cross

The more the loss, the  more space  dispossessed,
The more may be the harvest of the corn
The  death of self , the emptiness, the loss

The creative must most freely their wish toss
Though pain like this is hard to make  welcome
Like the dying of Lord Jesus on his Cross~

In the soul, the  sharp thorn is  embraced
God himself from poor hearts  has been torn
The  death of self , the emptiness, the loss

The good, the holy, even love’s defaced
As we wander in the wastelands all forlorn,
Feel the death of Jesus on his Cross

Absolute,we lose our wealth and home.
In spaces deep as hell new life  is born
By the  death of self , the emptiness, the loss
The weeping of Lord Jesus on his Cross

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing is as beautiful as spring

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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51002/spring-56d22e75d65bd

 

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Oh,Francine Pose,Youtoo!

It] began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world’s least interesting human being who happened to have a penis.”
― Francine Prose

Related articles

Perfect love will castrate perfect fear

There is humour in the Bible we revere
Soles are heeled,partitions sent to God
Perfect love will castrate  perfect fear

Five thousand people shared a single deer
The meat was cooked by a fast lightning rod
There is humour in the Bible, we can hear

There’s nothing much to buck up  the impure
But plentiful the ways to cut off heads
Perfect love can escalate  one’s fear

God made  Jonah subtly disappear
And caught Elijah when in caves he hid
There is humour in the Bible if you peer

 

With a wail from Jonah,God  appeared
His still small voice  got louder by  the Flood
Perfect love will castrate  perfect fear

After many liars are turned to wood
I hope Gomorrha you will all be good
There is  guidance in the Bible, but laugh here.
Perfect love will castrate  perfect fear

Well,I got my hair  cut on Good Friday,yeah

Well,I got my hair  cut on Good Friday,yeah~
Should folk  be working then d’yah think?
I look like I’ve had chemotherapy

So cancer,I am ready, if you prey
I’ve had a cut and now it’s dyed  and punk
Well,I got my hair  cut on Good Friday,yeah~

Once we had more order in our ways
We got married and had sex  when we were drunk
I look like I’ve had psychotherapy

See, I look at this life  somewhat differently
I have the treatment backwards  to show spunk
Well,I got my hair   trimmed on Good Friday,yeah

I’ll have no chemo  and the illness may
Be upended like a ton of flying junk
I look like I’ve had vinotherapy

 

When you get that  letter, have  a thought
This is not the fish our Saviour caught
Well,I got my hair  cut on Good Friday,yeah
I look like I’ve had logotherapy

 

Mysterious is the Fire which needs no spark

At the entrance to the tunnel of the dark
An angel warmed me in  soft golden light
Mysterious as that Fire which needs no spark

On dangerous journeys we unknown embark
Stricken by a grief, we are in flight
To the entrance to the tunnel of the dark

As hesitantly as a  babe will walk
Who has no mother nor love’s proper sight
Mysterious as that Fire which needs no spark

As strange as what makes silent people balk
When failed by humans,with no rest, respite
We reach the entrance to the tunnel  dark

 

Gathered in by angels  of the heart
No false pride  in me led to  a fight
Mysterious is the Fire which needs no spark

The body is  the home to sacred rites
Love erotic,humble in delight
With a golden net, I had been caught
Mysterious is the Fire which needs no spark

No arguing

When they find they are wrong
Don’t expect them to be open
They will fling more excuses at you
Justifications
If you are argue, it pushes them back to find more
They already know, but they are afraid
Or proud.Gradually truth will come to the forefront
They will be either modest or bitter
But don’t sit there waiting for them to confess
Only let them fling themselves to the ground weeping
As in their sorrow they will find the truth
Some will accept and others become evil.
But that is  mere self-importance.
Just let it be

Then we rise up and our songs float out.

5 · 

I learned a hymn in our old kirk.
I realized then that God is black
I think he sometimes laughs and cries.
When one thing grows,another dies.

We went to church and we all sang.
The organ played and the big bells rang.
But we never heard the answer then
till a strange loud voice called out,”Women”

I’m not sure  we were fit to sing.
Yet, what but joy can we each bring?
The psalms will comfort us at night.
And in the dawn we see the Light.

Then we rise up and our songs float out.
The cats miaow as they run about.
The dogs join in to bark and growl.
And from the sky we hear God howl.Amen

R.T is  ¨Russia Today¨ and not the Radio Times

 

pear-and-apple-2.jpg1.All flights were cancelled from Tottenham Airport owing to cats on the roof of the departure lounge and the runway has not been barnacled yet.
2.After a fire in a waste bin, the ladies´ toilets are very warm.Please sit carefully
3 A woman in Chingford has been fined for selling hot cross buns outside  Marks and Spencers on Maundy Thursday when they are only legally sold on Good Friday and we should not be profiting from them or God
4. R.T is  ¨Russia Today¨ and not the Radio Times.Do not expel any Russian lodgers from your house as the airport is already full and we are expecting a lot of British dipsomaniacs to be arriving tonight from Moscow and  other cities.
5.Night is cancelled owing the the sun not going out when we pulled the cord.Please read your books and phones and refrain from screaming blue murder.We hope to turn the sun off tomorrow

[signed] H M ‘ s Government liars

Tell me your sins

Say,Father,may I make a confession?
No, the confessional box is broken
I want to tell you ,not a box
Are you a Catholic?
What kind of a question is that?
Fairly simple.
Well ,do Protestants have to use a box?
For what?
You are so evasive
We have to be in case you are a spy.
Who for?
That´ś what I am wondering
I might be a double agent
Oh, for goodness sake,tell me your sins
I thought you would never ask!

But God himself is killed  and killed again

The wicked  men might pay the price of sin
Execution by the State was law
But God himself was killed outside and in

Impersonal ,the State judged  guilt and then
For its sentence, history recalled
The wicked who had paid the price of sin

No-one sees why murder had begun
Cain and Abel´ś story then evolved
But God himself was killed outside and in

Only God knew sin and act were   twinned
Since someplace sacred there had been a Fall
The wicked self might pay the price of sin

Jesus loved, and learned our human pain
Good was murdered,love itself dissolved
As  God  was killed  with  cruel,cold disdain

Who was Jesus, what did he stand for
When armies took his  ensign into war?
The  high and wicked  hide their guilt and sin
But God himself is killed  and killed again

Elected Silence by Gerard Manley Hopkins

https://genius.com/Gerard-manley-hopkins-the-habit-of-perfection-annotated

 

3 The Habit of Perfection

ELECTED Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.

Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you remark
Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight.

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust,
Desire not to be rinsed with wine:
The can must be so sweet, the crust
So fresh that come in fasts divine!

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend
Upon the stir and keep of pride,
What relish shall the censers send
Along the sanctuary side!

The Lamb by Wm Blake

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43670/the-lamb-56d222765a3e1

 

The Lamb

Little Lamb who made thee
         Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
         Little Lamb who made thee
         Dost thou know who made thee
         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee.
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

The Tyger by Wm Blake

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger

The Tyger

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water’d heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
  • Related

God’s grandeur

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Photo by Katherine

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur

 

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.