My new doctor  can meditate for hours
So she sends the patients out to pick her flowers
When they come back their ailments have been cured
I guess it’s something in that horse manure.

Now she’s learning how to hypnotise
By hooking onto  other people’s eyes
We all pretend that we’re not really here.
But damn it all, she is so very dear.

We formed  a patient group to give advice
To doctors, which is never ever wise.
They must at least appear omnipotent
And also  be  both nasty and  pleasant

This paradox makes me hallucinate
The hand I see before me holds a plate

My doctor was a lady of great skill
She  cut my head off with a type of pill
I still miss   those  kind voices I once heard
Till she convinced me they were only birds.

My doctor had got malice in her eye.
As she demanded one patient must die.
I said to her that Jesus was enough
And it was a  mortal sin to call God’s bluff.

I told her  how a voice had said clearly
That love but not great wealth would come to me
She said “you’re bordering on offence .”
So I told her that  real numbers are quite dense

My doctor was so good at curing ills
When she died, they made her into pills.

This photo is from Twitter

The confusing swirl of violence broke down walls
And panic rushed  like lightening through the  gaps
I saw folk taking photos, checking maps,
Their phones gripped like a weapon that appals

We visualise what makes up our defence.
The connection to  our absent, kindly friends
The need to make a record of the end.
The need to look again till it makes sense.

A well-known numbness tries to swallow me.
My heart needs its own time to feel the pain
The world I live in is not safe, that’s plain
Say Al Jazeera and the BBC.

Our mask of vapid innocence deceives.
Hatred of this kind is misconceived.

In childhood, we rely on  love serene
The security of place and people makes our world.
With luck, we will not feel like babies hurled.
Into a change that shatters  what we’ve been

To see familiar places newly strange
With bloodied bodies injured or now dead.
This is not the  tale that we were read
Our inner maps  whirl, minds  flung, rearranged

Bridge, beauty iconic, loved by me.
Met old friends, we sauntered by its side.
Catastrophic  visions are poor guides
Thoughtful and attentive we will be.

Europe’s hit by  enraged fear  from men
Who feel we are the ones who injured them.

I did the wheelie bins, I wrote a poem
I made the beds and turned on several lights
I heard the News; my head feels like it is foam
What will happen next?Who has foresight?

The Bridge of Westminster is very fine;
But not when men fire guns at passers-by
Wordsworth wrote a poem; read it online
We thought  we  were well read; it  is a lie

By   killing two and wounding many more
The agents  wrecked their lives in evil’s thrall
They have closed again the  darkening door
Politicians  rise and evil calls.

Like Icarus fell  and no-one stopped to look
I  backed up my computer, read a book.

 From hair fashion displays 2017

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

Quote:

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.

Photo by a friend.Copyright

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The space dividing  rage and fear is small.

Vision is attenuated there.

Emotions tangle, stutter, are appalled

Homo sapiens, how wise a call?

Vision is restricted, eyes are bare

The space between the mind and fear is small.

The English are rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall.

Scottish Muslims  enter England here

Emotions jangle, stutter, are appalled

Historic acts return as do old brawls

Roman villas, altars, were they here?

Vision is restricted, eyes are shields

Why not put a  barbed wire fence around Whitehall?

Let’s divide off Wales, they asked for more!

Emotions rise and  angry are our  calls

The Scots must raise their taxes, we’re the whores.

How about a war to fund all wars?

The English are rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall.

Emotions rise as anger takes us all.

I have  filled my mind   with  dreams   and thoughts
I have drawn conclusions  that seem real.
What’s of  value’s not by effort bought.

As Ted Hughes said,his fishing was the sport
Which brought both meditation and a meal.
I have   studied minds   and  dreams   and thoughts

We see ,like that,new images are caught.
In silence and in noticing  the feel.
What’s of  value’s not by effort bought.

What we find may not be what we sought.
At  first ,it may not show its wise appeal
I have  found  my mind through  dreams and thoughts

In the night the images  take flight.
God’s lioness  destroys what  is  congealed
What’s of  value’s not by effort wrought.

Like a butterfly, a flowering dart
Of love and beauty  which was once concealed,
I have  found my mind  by  dreams, my  wordless thoughts.
What’s of  value’s not by effort bought.

Can’t afford a vibrator?Get a nervous tic or tremor free on the NHS
Gone off sex?Try love instead
Impotent? You have diabetes.
Too lustful.Go ape.
Too shy? Become a creative genius like Newton.
Too selfish? Believe them.
Can’t afford birth control? Learn how to breastfeed in public.That  works as lomg as you never go to bed.

Writing may reveal  our thoughts to us  but it is debatable whether that is a good thing

Lancashire coastal space

Between the world and how we represent
The nameless by a name and  even  place
There is a space or void in our intent.

What mother saw, what father really meant
How love and hate might intertwine in space?
In our own world, what can we represent?

In writing, there is lack and letters bent
For  ancient writing often  scholars traced
There is a space or void in our intent.

Today the sun is golden,  gods descend.
With love, for moments, we are all embraced
Of  the felt, what can we represent?

Our willingness unblinds the heart so rent
And then we see the face within his face
The space or void is in our   own intent

I cross my eyes with fingers interlaced:
The crucifix, the love, the death of Christ
Between the world and what we may attempt
There is a space or void where he was sent.

When of the world of doctors,I am sick.
When diagnosis is not any aid
When from the choices given, I cannot pick
Although I feel my deepest debts were paid.

The paradox  with which Russell  made play,
Is a trick of language ,not the world
For in Jerusalem, the men don’t shave
And as we know, each spectrum has its wave.

The barber was a Jew  quite orthodox
And to his salon, all the rich men flocked
He trimmed his  beard   with my old pinking shears
So he would have waves around his ears.

As  over-educated men made argument
He listened to them with his ear well bent.
But told them not that they were silly fools
For on this earth, the madmen make the rules.

A paradox, a wonder that we love.
When men so cruel will thrash the holy dove.

I  got a card declaring  love entire
For now and for the future, fiction yet.
As long as   I’d accept he was a liar

My heart was touched and so was my desire
I stepped into his outstretched fishing net
I had card declaring love entire.

Oh, how we burned in love’s delicious fire.
On marriage then my heart became quite set
As long as   I’d accept he was a liar

We made love in the fields and in the byre
My peachy face by kisses was beset
He sent a  card declaring love entire.

His car had wheels but never knew a  tyre.
For quicksands  are too soft to navigate
I did accept but wished he’d leave these mires

If he said he loved, he loved me not
If he  burned with hate, his love was hot
I  got a card admitting he’d been wired.
I tapped him and enjoyed his well played lyre.

New hairstyle 2017 

I notice Trump did not hold Merkel’s hand.
Despite that they both come from the same land.
Their ancestors were neighbours
And shared their load of labour
But now Drumpf seems to be another hbrand

Their chairs were set quite far apart, I saw.
Did she ask for that or was it he?
Or one of his advisors
Who did a silent favour?
By walling off their private territory?

I wonder such men find women equals?
Usually, women are   to them a sequel
Two days   of argument
And lots of money spent.
I bet seeing Merkel was a prequel.

Theresa May seems to have no valid weight
She may attempt to set all Europe straight
But Trump broke her defences
She needs a wall, not mere fences.
If she gambles, she will face sure defeat

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/articles/detail/92637

“Effort at Speech Between Two People”
Rukeyser was only 21 when she won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets prize for her first book, Theories of Flight, but this poem from that collection demonstrates just how fully formed her poetic vision already was. For Rukeyser, poetry really is speech between people—even her most abstracted, experimental work genuinely attempts to connect readers and writer, to employ verse not only as a means of expression and transformation but also of listening. At once intimate and anthemic, urgent and quiet, this poem repeatedly asks “what are you now,” inviting us to find ourself

“Käthe Kollwitz”
Rukeyser was a master portraitist, capturing figures ranging from the composer Charles Ives to Jewish sage Akiba over the course of her career. This poem from the “Lives” section of The Speed of Darkness pays homage to another portraitist, Käthe Kollwitz, whose paintings and prints depicted “the faces of the sufferers / in the street, in dailiness.” Its five sections are often ekphrastic, drawing on the German artist’s expressionist images of weavers. But Rukeyser was also interested in the artist herself, whose frank ideas about artistic process, sexual desire, and gender fluidity mirrored Rukeyser’s own.

http://www.holistichelp.net/dysautonomia-autonomic-nervous-system-dysfunction.html

Get Lots of Rest

Unfortunately in our society we tend to frown upon people who rest and take naps. We are expected to be doing something all the time, and if we aren’t then we are often labeled as lazy or lacking in motivation. This attitude contributes greatly to autonomic nervous system conditions, because basically the norm in our society is to run yourself into the ground. Taking time to rest and nap is very healthy and getting plenty of it is a crucial part of recovery for an overactive sympathetic nervous system. This includes insuring that you get your 8 or 9 hours of sleep each night. The adrenal glands, as well as the body in general, does its regeneration while we sleep.

Cholesterol Level

Dr. Charles Gant tells us that a cholesterol level of below 160 is very hazardous to your health. Cholesterol is needed for the synthesis of all our steroid hormones. If you don’t have enough cholesterol, you can’t produce your life sustaining hormones like dhea, progesterone, estrogen, aldosterone and testosterone and most importantly in regard to the autonomic nervous system, cortisol. Cholesterol is converted to pregnenalone, which is converted to progesterone, which is converted to cortisol. If your cholesterol levels are too low, then they need to be increased.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2692/w-s-merwin-the-art-of-poetry-no-38-w-s-merwin

INTERVIEWER

Is it some profound connection to the natural world?

MERWIN

The connection is there—our blood is connected with the sea. It’s the recognition of that connection. It’s the sense that we are absolutely, intimately connected with every living thing. We don’t have to be sentimental and pious about it, but we can’t turn our backs on that fact and survive. When we destroy the so-called natural world around us we’re simply destroying ourselves. And I think it’s irreversible.

INTERVIEWER

Do you see a connection between poetry and prayer?

MERWIN

I guess the simple answer is yes, if only because I think of poetry as an attempt to use language as completely as possible. And if you want to do that, obviously you’re not concerned with language as decoration, or language as amusement, although you certainly want language to be pleasurable. Pleasure is part of the completeness. I think of poetry as having to do with the completeness of life, and the completeness of relation with one’s experience, completing one’s experience, articulating it, making sense of it.

INTERVIEWER

How about the influence of Zen in your work?

MERWIN

When you talk about prayer in Judeo-Christian terms, prayer is usually construed as a kind of dualistic act. You’re praying to somebody else for something. Prayer in the Western sense is usually construed as making a connection. I don’t think that connection has to be made; it’s already there. Poetry probably has to do with the recognizing of that connection, rather than trying to create something that isn’t there.

My mother was so tactful.She introduced my husband to her neighbours:
This is my sin-in-law.