http://mentalfloss.com/article/62431/16-famous-authors-tips-writing-better-poetry
William Wordsworth famously loved to set out on foot at all hours of the day to clear his mind, and even went on a walking tour of France in 1790.
Author: Katherine
Poetry writer and author
Wot?
They are waiting for our partitions.
Hail glorious St Brexit.so bad for our isle.
Say but the word and my sole shall be heeled
Popes all Polish get unreeled
And says God ,thou shalt Remain.
England needs a sovereign vagrant.
To God’s feat we will say naught.
My identity is being human.
I will wash your torn bare feet.
Jesus wants me to Remain here,
far from Brexits so displayed.
If I need to spend a penny ,
I agree that Jesus paid.
And f tell you in this country
You are free to get eggs laid.
Crazy,hazy,well It paid.
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Mary wants a corset
I am going shopping today,Mary informed Stan.I have decided to buy a corset.I am too fat.
I hope it’s not a whalebone corset,Stan teased her. gently
Are they still allowed to use the bones of whales? she asked.One whale must have massive bones.Why not use dog’s bones?
Well,Stan said,you may be plump but don’t torture yourself for beauty.I love you as you are,sweetheart.
Mary got onto her bicycle and rode into town passing some lovely magnolias and forsythia.She locked her bike to the church gate as sinners cannot be trusted especially just after Confession.
Hello,I’m looking for a whalebone corset,she informed the lady in the lingerie department.
What!We don’t have them any more.They ran out of baleen which is horny material in a whale’s mouth.
Was it their teeth ,asked Mary tremulously.
Eeh,I don’t know said the assistant.Anyway,now we have shapewear.It looks like underwear but it’s elasticated.So it keeps your curves in like those minimiser bras
Mary burst out laughing as she imagined wearing an elasticated vest which would push all her fat up round her neck or down onto her bum .Or an elasticated pair of knickers which push the fat upwards. onto her abdomen.And furthermore,how easy would it be to get them down in the bathroom? Worse still,if Stan took her to a restaurant and she could not pull them down for a wee…should she take some scissors?
Mary stopped laughing when she saw all the staff staring at her,
Are you alright,madam? one asked rather ferociously.
Yes, it’s my dwindling hormones.They make me laugh hysterically from time to time.It’s better than getting those hot flushes,in my view.
Why not have HRT? the lady replied.
Excuse me,said Mary,but I do not wish to discuss my health matters in public but thank you for your concern.She was rather pleased with that having just read
“A woman’s guide to compassionate self assertion.”
Although she did wonder why it was addressed only to women.Emile agreed when she discussed over milk and cat niblets which Mary had to eat when she ran out of food.
As Mary stood in the Shapewear department she remembered the time she tried on some denim jeggings as they seemed to be in fashion.They looked very nice but she had such a hard time getting them off she thought she would have to buy them and cut them off at home.
So all of a sudden she picked up her Mondrian pvc shopping bag and her green handbag and ran out of the door into the button and wool department.
My,you look hot, her friend Gail said.I am buying some merino wool for neckwarmers.Do you ever knit nowadays,Mary?
Only with whales bones,she murmured.And it’s so hard to find them now.
Well, whales must still have bones,dear,otherwise they would collapse.
Surely you don’t expect me to catch my own whale.Mary cried in fear having seena film on this topic.
And how about Jonah?Suppose I find a prophet inside the whale?
That could be just who we need,Gail said.Someone who can tell us what God wants us to do.
Would people listen,Mary asked Gail tremulously
Only if he went on Twitter I suppose.
Could Donald Crump be a prophet? Mary muttered
No,he’s too big for a whale to swallow even if the common people swallow his nonsense.He sounds as if he’d like to treat women the way they do in some countries like Saudi Arabia.40 lashes for taking the morning after pill.
It could be hard to have,”the night before” in a place like that.
The two women gazed blankly in front of them trying to remember their youth and their mad love affairs.
Let’s go into the Cricketer’s Arms and have a drink Gail said.
I’d rather have coffee,Mary replied.So off they went arm in arm humming
“I believe in angels “very loudly to frighten off any evil spirits from the lingerie department.We know the Devil loves bras and suspender belts with lace trimmings as he is ,in fact ,the god Pan who was a goatherd with a horn on which he played his music to tempt the weak;some even say he was half goat half human but we never did that in the maths department.
We only studied shapes and forms and symmetry.Well,I know it sounds suggestive but we only dealt with it in an abstracted manner.That’s why you see mathematicians with all sorts of undies hanging off them as it’s the geometry they need to learn and how better than on a field trip to a department store. Anthropologists go to Samoa and mathematicians go to Sex and Undie shops.They have no choice.They need to see those conical bras.Conic sections!My eye!
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We feel both joy and woe.
Oh,John Joe was a farmer’s son
They lived up in the hills.
When he went to tend his sheep
He gazed on cotton mills.
The rivers ran with water pure
And so provided power
Yet over these dark and ruined towns
The heathered hills did tower.
Mary was a local girl
She walked out on the moors
She wore a dress of silky cloth
Printed with tiny flowers.
John Joe saw Mary dear
When he was dipping sheep
She peered over a dry stone wall
And saw the new lambs leap.
Her hair was long.Her hair was gold
Her eyes singularly blue.
In John Joe’s eyes she was so fair,
What was a man to do?
He watched her walking all alone
Was she sad or sick?
He showed her how his dog behaved
He showed her shepherds’ tricks.
Then one day,he held her hand
As they walked to the Pike.
They stood up there and gazed all round
So John thought he would strike.
He bent down on his right knee
And spoke to Mary then.
I’ve loved you ,Mary, since we met
I hoped we’d meet again
Mary smiled with her blue eyes;
Her lips were pink and bright.
I love you too and love the hills
And. love the summer light.
The next year they were married
Mary wore white lace.
She looked so happy then
To know she’d her own place.
The church bells rang,the people sang
John and Mary wed!
And naturally, when the evening came,
At last, they went to bed.
When Mary lay in John Joe’s arms
She knew this was her home.
And so for many. many years
On those loved hills they roamed.
They cared for sheep and hens and goats
They cared for children three.
They never had a falling out
But talked beneath a tree.
From youth to age the years went by
But John still loved his bride.
And Mary too was happy
With her John by her side.
Their faces,lined, were full of cheer
Their hair as white as snow
And everywhere that JJ went
Mary too did go.
Until the day came for his death,
He lay down in the grass.
Mary ran and held him close
And thus dear John did pass.
The muffled bells rang from the tower
John Joe was carried in.
The parson prayed and hymns were sung.
The sheepdog made a din.
In the dark earth, John was laid
While Mary wept and cried.
What will I do ,my own sweet John ,
without you by my side?
So Mary grieved and wept and sighed
And thus she spent two years…
The loss was great and bent her back
with the weight of care.
For when we open up our hearts
We feel both joy and woe.
This is the pattern of our love,
Which like a river flows.
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On Richmond Hill,he made a pass.
On Richmond Hill,he made a pass
On Richmond Hill there is no path as fresh as a ram’s horn.
In Richard’s till he felt an ass.
On witches hill she baited breath
With quiches will she him impress?
She met him in the garden where the waiters glow.
He sat her by a hoarding where disclaimers show
Ye Hanks and Braids, your hairs in bloom
The Yanks and Knaves of sunny doom
Sundered by the churches, I sit and scream for Lou.
Charlotte’s wisdom tried her heirs.
Careless bliss, come by me soon
Harlot’s wisdom left him bare.
Speed bonny oath,like a swear on the wind.
She jumped off the hedge and came too in the corn.
She jumped up a ledge and roamed free with his horn
The fishing hens of England go out to pee and nip.
The clock rang.It says,please wind me up.Can’t it amuse itself tonight?
The clock rang twelve.It only does it to annoy me.After it finishes it’s nearly one.Bong.
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Almost good
The last time that he fell he broke our lamp;
The lamp which we had bought on honeymoon
I often sketched it, to my brain it clamped
Enduring sleepless nights in cardiac room.
The canula had torn my vein unseen.
I never knew my sheets filled up with blood;
Saturated by the god,morphine;
Had I died, such end felt almost good
Though why go to such lengths to get a high?
A paralysing pain ran down my neck.
I can rise just staring at the sky.
Without enduring such a savage wreck
The lamp is broken,shade propped up by wall
A painful memory of his fatal fall.
The lamp reminds me of his humorous love
Now my bony hands wear his dear gloves
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An interview with Nicholson Baker
http://hazlitt.net/feature/there-has-be-less-school-interview-nicholson-baker
This website has many interesting interviews and podcasts
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Winter time
I was very ill in 2010-2011 and that is what made me write as I could not lie down
In winter time we’re forced to give
Homes to naughty viruses
Because these little creatures
Have nowhere else to live.
Homes to naughty viruses
Because these little creatures
Have nowhere else to live.
They take up their abode
In our noses, in our ears.
I need some sunny weather
To make them disappear.
But we have had the coldest winter
For a hundred years.
I’ll have to hypnotise myself
Then visualise sunny days.
I bought myself a little book
From Amazon UK
You can learn self hypnosis
Just inside one day.
I dream I am reclining
On a beach in Italy
With a beautiful young gigolo
Lying next to me.
I dream of soft blue water
Reflecting sunny sky.
While lying on a mattress
Watching folk go by.
But when my trance is over
I come to in my bed
With a giant box of Kleenex
Right next to my head.
I am strengthening my diaphragm
Coughing night and day
And cursing all these viruses
You should hear what I say.
But is that very wicked
As God made viruses too?
Do they have some special role,
In enlightening me and you.?
So should we learn to love them
As our near neighbours.
Whilst our immune systems
Carry out their labours?
I hear the garbage lorries
Collecting stuff outside
I wish they’d collect my viruses,
And take them a long ride.
Because winter is so beautiful
The snow,the sun,the frost
If only I was feeling well
And was not fever tossed.
Viruses are not whole beings
They are just bits of DNA.
Nevertheless run quickly
If you see them come your way.
They carry information
They want to reproduce.
And if they get just near enough
They’ll put you to their use.
They are like selfish people
Who do not think of you.
Only think what need you serve,
What they can make you do.
They are egocentric
They want the central place
We are here to service them.
We’re just the human race!
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She won’t grow on the Sabbath,though.
Charlie Blogge had gone away to visit his aged parents for a few days down in Cornwall so Rosa Benchez was alone except for her three cats and four houseplants which she had just brought indoors.Though she could have writtena bit more in her book
Linguistics and Peace on Earth.
Can plants feel emotion? she asked her oldest cat, Lucy who was a pretty tortoiseshell
Definitely ,said Lucy.I have known plants to get depressed when in a dark corner.
Oh,dear,said Rosa,it’s the weekend so the surgery is shut.I hope these plants do not go into a downward spiral in their mood now that the days are shorter.I suppose I could ring 999 if they were desperate.
They won’t allow plants in the hospital,Lucy mewed.
Why not,asked Rosa angrily.That is sheer discrimination.We pay our contributions.
But the plants don’t pay ,do they.Lucy retorted cheerfully.Cats don’t get free healthcare either.
Socialism made a big mistake there, cried Rosa.Since the English prefer animals to people they would have won the Election if they proposed free pet care on the NHS
Imagine, it would have created more jobs as well, she continues academically.And plant care is needed as plants can feel ill at times.
Yes,we can, cried the Peace Lily.I feel ill knowing there is not much peace in the world.
Humans don’t realise they may win a war but the conflict makes their health suffer even if they are too old to fight.And within families it is just as bad.
You are so right,Peace,Rosa said thoughtfully.We always assume it is our inner conflicts that make us neurotic or physically ill,but it may be that at the back of our minds we are aware of all the wars, the refugees, the suffering.Outer conflict makes us all sick to some degree.And quarreling relatives and people who can’t apologise.
Do you have any rain water,Peace demanded.I feel thirsty.
Is that enough,Rosa cried.I can make you some weak tea if you like.
Oh,go on then, the plant told her.Give me a teacup full of tea with no sugar. nor milk How about you, she carried on turning to her sister Pax.
OK.Pax told her.Whither thou goest…
She’s Jewish,said Peace to Rosa.Her real name is Ruth.But nobody uses it as Pax is shorter.She won’t grow on the Sabbath,though.
Will you miss talking to the trees in the garden while you are indoors? Rosa asked, before any more Bible references were offered.
Yes,definitely.Can you buy a few tall,male looking plants like bamboo or even grape ivy?
We like a mixture.All living beings like a mixture of friends.
How about human friends or even cats,Rosa said tactlessly
Yes, as long as they talk in soft musical voices.And we don’t like to watch violent films on TV nor to see cats fighting on the sofa.,Peace informed her.Violence hurts our inner core
And so say all of us
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Xmas is coming
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Take now your bitter heart
I loved you once,and now you’re gone
Such grief,such sorrow.
I loved you once,but now you’ve run
Not back tomorrow.
I loved you once until I saw
Your bitter heart
II loved you yet you had a flaw
Inside you’re so sharp.
I loved you, now my heart is raw,
pierced by your dart.
Where has all the loving gone?
Such sweet emotion.
Where has all the loving gone?
I had no notion.
Your face was just a mask
Created for the task
Of winning hearts.
Your heart was steel and wire
Hardened by anger’s fire…
Where should I start?
Begone,false words and songs
You did me such wrong
I can’t forgive.
Be off you hypocrite
Quit this poetic writ
And let me live
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Save grief
Allen Frances: Last Plea To DSM-5: Save Grief From the Drug Companies.
Now even a disobedient child may be labelled mentally ill.And a grieving person can be called depressed after two weeks!I’d say two years is a more realistic estimate if you lose a spouse or a child.Even with a cat it can be at least few weeks of sadness.
I don’t know how we here in the UK will be affected but we tend to follow the USA.A good example is diabetes.They changed the level of blood sugar to a lower level so thousands of people became “diabetic” overnight.Then the newspapers report a “worrying increase” in people suffering from diabetes!I assume they do this as they think it will help people but no doubt it will mean handing out more drugs too.That’s one of our problems now.As we age we are given more and more medication
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Origins of poetry
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/october/poetry-troubadour-songs-101211.html
My heart takes root in her and grips with its nail,
holds on like bark on the rod,
to me she is joy’s tower and palace and chamber,
and I do not love brother as much, or father, or uncle;
and there’ll be double joy in Paradise for my soul,
if a man is blessed for loving well there, and enters.
– Arnaut Daniel, 12th century
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Berryman by W. S. MERWIN
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don’t lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you’re older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can’t
you can’t you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don’t write
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Singing
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The dream poet
Someone said that in our dreams we write plays like Shakespeare which we can’t do in real life.I think dreams are like poetry.They use images,metaphors, and puns.
I dreamed my husband has bought me a house in Ealing [Healing?].And even if we don’t remember them they go on in their hidden life sorting out our daily impressions and excitements.Making play with them.
And sometimes those who write poems will have an experience where there is more in their poem than they knew when they wrote it.Because the act of writing makes images come up from the dark fertile earth of our minds.I didn’t consciously think about the meaning of sleeping on winter leaves before I wrote the poem below.
I have sifted earth
|
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Annie’s sung
I fear you calling me
I fear you spoiling me
Underneath the heartache
Fanny’s ploy.
Fanny’s goy.
God didn’t bake those little green apples.
On Rich Man’s Hill.
The rich man’s pill?Cockayne
Lull her sigh angled flight
Singe a psalm with me.
Singed my pan again
This is no way to say good’s nigh.
Take this schmaltz
Make this false
Dance me to the band above.
Dance me with your hands of love
The pose of Tralee.
The clothes of a bee.
Annie’s rung.
Annie’s Jung.
Zany blung
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Leonard Cohen on depression
[Leonard Cohen] “… So one day, a few years ago, I was in a car, on my way to the airport. I was really, really low, on many medications, and pulled over, I reached behind to my valise, took out the pills, and threw out all the drugs I had. I said, ‘These things really don’t even begin to confront my predicament.” I figured, If I am going to go down I would rather go down with my eyes wide open.”
Leonard Cohen On Psychotherapy
One notes that psychotherapy is not part of the joke. As Cohen told Stina Lundberg in a 2001 interview:
I don’t trust them [psychological explanations]. As I say in that song: “I know that I’m forgiven, but I don’t know how I know; I don’t trust my inner feelings, inner feelings come and go.” I think that psychological explanations can be valuable and that psychotherapy can be valuable for some people, but the fundamental question of how and why people are as they are is something that we can’t penetrate in this part of the plan, that we simply cannot grasp, and the feelings that arise – we don’t determine what we’re going to see next, we don’t determine what we’re going to hear next, taste next, feel next or think next, we don’t determine, yet we have the sense that we’re running the show. So if anything is relaxed in my mind it’s the sense of control, or the quest for meaning. And my experience is that there is no fixed self. There’s no-one whom I can locate as the real me, and dissolving the search for the real me is relaxation, is the content of peace. But these recognitions are temporary and fleeting, then we go back to thinking that we really know who we are.
And he told another interviewer in 2001:
For one reason or another, I didn’t have any confidence in the therapeutic model. Therapy seems to affirm the idea unconditionally of a self that has to be worked on and repaired. And my inclination was that it was holding that notion to begin with that was the problem — that there was this self that needed some kind of radical adjustment. It didn’t appeal to me for some odd reason.9
Asked if he had tried psychotherapy, Cohen told another interviewer,
I preferred to use drugs. I preferred the conventional distractions of wine, women and song. And religion. But it’s all the same.10
For the record,
Cohen did go to a therapist once, actually — out of desperation. He was so depressed that he called a friend and asked if she could arrange for him to see her therapist straightaway. Then he drove to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica “at about five miles an hour,” barely able to negotiate the traffic. When he got there, the therapist asked him to describe his feelings. After Cohen had finished, she said, “How can you stand it?”11
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I hear you calling me
Samsung and Delilah
Sam sung it by her.
Eve and the Apple
She gave him her nipple
Believe me,he’s supple.
Sony at times with intermittent towers
Sony wonder I am mad after living with UHU all my life
Nokia than thou? I’ll goggle later
Nokia or ring the bell below
Nokia or we will not hear you calling me
Nikon,babe.I am all fears
Nikon my door anytime.
Microsofter by a thin layer of molecules
Google with fluoride mouthwash
Frugal by nature.
Alcatel it off and then what will you do?
Alcatel something was wrong.
Motorola the lawn for me
Motorola for the Sabbath meal
LG needs you.Say when.
LG is the son of BG
Siemens they never met after all
Siemen don’t see it like women.
RIM is grim says Finn.
Sorry, I can’t answer your call.My Samsung has over-deleted itself and I am hot with fury.
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Write about your insecurities
Why poets write
http://www.writermag.com/2015/02/18/poetry-quotes/
“It’s tremendously important to me to read the work of my peers, especially women writers and especially women writers with children. Reading contemporary work makes me feel like I’m writing in conversation with other poets, that I am not alone. There are also many older poets whose poetry has been essential to my work (and my life). I wrote a memoir, MOTHERs, about my relationships with other poets. James Schuyler, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Jorie Graham, Brenda Hillman and Alice Notley. I love the strength, confidence, strangeness of Notley’s work. The bigness of it. I also admire her long, intense writerly life. I am currently rereading all of Louise Gluck and Anne Carson. I love language and can’t love poems that don’t do something incredible with language, but poetry, for me, is also about how to live a life. Poetry helps me live my life.”
—Rachel Zucker, The Pedestrians
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Thanks for the dance
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The eye is not a camera
The eye is not a camera taking shots
Our mind affects the aspect we perceive
And what it feels important it allots
Gives grace or hatred ,causes us to grieve
. When we are afraid ,we see the worst
We see disgrace or ruin as our fate
As if our self for horror has a thirst
So all the little details we collate
Yet when we love we see before us joy
The flowers sing, the birds dance in the air
We see no evil nor with hatred toy
All aspects of our world appear more fair.
We see not what is there,we see our self
To learn ,we must employ our own mind’s wealth
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The cello has a tender singing voice
The cello has a tender singing voice
Allows the feelings which we cannot say.
Among composers, Bach would be my choice
The cello sings rich lyrics with her voice.
Rostropovich , Prague,he wept of course.
Soviet armies marched, the Czechs were flayed.
The cello has a sorrowing truthful voice;
Speaks our feelings when we cannot pray.
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That in this world there is an empty space,
|
Underneath the weight of knowledge learned For a moment, we may often ask That in this world there is an empty space, I feel inert like marble on a beach |
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Kindness
“Picking up where Rousseau left off a quarter millennium ago, Phillips and Taylor consider what it takes to nourish our natural benevolence, asserting that it must begin with embracing the very vulnerability from which kindness springs:
Everybody is vulnerable at every stage of their lives; everybody is subject to illness, accident, personal tragedy, political and economic reality. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t also resilient and resourceful. Bearing other people’s vulnerability — which means sharing in it imaginatively and practically without needing to get rid of it, to yank people out of it — entails being able to bear one’s own. Indeed it would be realistic to say that what we have in common is our vulnerability; it is the medium of contact between us, what we most fundamentally recognize in each other.
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Walking or sauntering
A passport to love
While her potato was baking Rosa decided to wash her hair.The first thing she found was Persil Silk and Wool wash.She poured it over her head and rubbed it in.Just then the new doorbell rang.Today it was playing Puppet on a string ,made famous by Sandy Shaw.She opened the door and found her fellow academic Charlie Blogge outside.
What is that strange concoction on your head,he asked?
I am waiting for a thunderstorm to rinse it off, she admitted shyly.
Have you no piped water,he asked furtively.
Yes,but I am on a meter.I save money by bathing in the rain, she said softly.
That explains a lot,Charlie thought
Do you use an antiperspirant?
Why are you asking questions, she said sheepishly.Do I smell?
He approached her gingerly and sniffed loudly.Delightful ,he cried.What is it?
Rose and wisteria water in a bed of lettuce…sorry, that is the menu for my dinner party.
Am I invited ,he asked gently? I can lay the table
It is not a carpet, she said humorously.I am doing mock turtle soup which is a jelly and then lamb chops with mushrooms and garlic.After that ,I have decided to make a Russian cheesecake with almonds.
Why,can’t you buy any Russians in Waitrose ? Why did you decide on that?
I said,Oh Lord, where is the Penguin Jewish Cookery book and immediately it fell onto my head.It is quite small,luckily.
Wow, that’s odd he said curiously Why did God do that yet not kill Hitler?
We don’t understand.Maybe we can’t understand however he would not have dropped the North Korean cookery book onto my head.
What sort of food do they eat? Charlie asked
I imagine it’s rice and veg ,she murmured.
What a lovely voice you have, Rosa.It reminds me of High Force Waterfall in Upper Teesdale in a drought
That is a very unusual compliment,Rosa cried anxiously
He bowed politely.It’s no more than you deserve, he responded.By the way, I have decided to get married.
To whom, she asked curiously?
Can’t you guess, he teased her.
Animal,vegetable or mineral?
He took her in his arms and whispered, will you be mine?
As long as I don’t have to boil your hankies I shall accept on one other condition
What is that?
We buy a very big bed
Don’t you want to snuggle up to me? he asked rashly.
No,I want an electrified fence down the middle!
By gum, she’s gone mad, he told himself
You must stop following Donald Grump. It’s all walls and fences
You are right she said, we’ll build a wall down the middle and then we’ll need passports before we make love.
Well,said Charlie,you certainly have some unusually creative ideas.
And so say all of us.
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Mary reads a manual and admires L.Cohen on youtube
Mary sat by the window ,which she had meant to clean, reading Windows 8.1.The Missing Manual.The one great advantage of this new Windows system was that it seemed one no longer needed to instal anti-virus programmes.So much time is taken up by looking after older versions that Mary was not surprised that Chromebooks were now very popular.Yet even so,she enjoyed learning new skills and it’s not as if they are like the theory of quantum physics or even studying nonlinear algebra and baking cakes.
Stan her husband had taken Emile ,their naughty cat for a spin on his old sports bike which he still used when the feeling came over him and as they were only a mile from the edge of the mysterious town of Knittingham they were soon cycling through a deep green, quiet forest where Kings once hunted deer and no doubt chased women… or was it “hunted chaste women”?
Mary had decided to stay at home as she was expecting a new vacuum cleaner to arrive.She kept one eye on her book and the other on her neighbour Rick who was very handsome despite being 113 years old.He was hanging his washing on his large front hedge which was unusual in winter.Most of the people in the road had tumble dryers or heated rails.Some even hung their washing outside on lines to let the blustery winter air dry it and kill the germs which might survive in a low temperature machine wash
Maybe I should do some washing ,Mary thought.How about I do my annual sheet changing.I made a big mistake deciding it was to be in the winter,but,alas it is hard to change a routine.Am I a cyborg,she thought nervously,licking her lips till they were damp and red.
Maybe I should clean the kitchen floor too,she thought as she drew an elongated ellipse with some mud that had fallen of Stan’s shoes as he passed by.She looked down pensively at the pattern the mud had made on the lino.I wonder if I can predict our fortune by studying this pattern deeply,she wondered.Some people do it from the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup,so why not from mud.There seemed no logical reason why mud splatters should be worse than tea leaves.It is simply a pattern through which the Unconscious can send a message to us.
Why it could not speak in ordinary language nobody knew and nobody ever will.Not all questions have answers.How strangely dull life would be if that were so.Don’t you agree?I don’t.Not always
.Mary had just seen a short story relating a dream a woman had that she had fallen in love with a strong healthy hippopotamus and taken it home.Unfortunately when they went to bed the weight of the animal had made the solid oak bed collapse onto the purple and orange carpet.Unable to give up her love,she had spent the rest of her life trying to build a new bed out of sawdust.It seemed not unlike the labours of Hercules in a new form
Mary was sceptical.I can’t believe a woman could love a hippopotamus,even in a dream,she murmured.But even if it was not a dream but a conscious invention,what did that say about the person writing it?That she always fell in love with men who were too heavy for her and who pulled her down onto the carpet to make love whenever they felt the urge regardless of whether she was as flat as a pancake or even dead
A lion,yes, Mary mused,but never a hippopotamus.I mean,they have no expressions on their faces and could they drink tea in bed and chat?Unlikely.Still, other people’s dreams are a mystery.Even our own are but we can sometimes take the hint.
Suddenly she heard the doorbell ring.Who could it be now?
Alas it was only a Mormon trying to convert her which was no good as Catholics can’t be Mormons as well.They are what one might call mutually exclusive groups.As I have no wish to teach algebra I shall stop here.However if that disappoints you,why not read
“A survey of modern algebra ” by Birkhoff and MacLane.I did and see what has happened to me!
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Occasionally, some of your visitors may see a monster here
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How else explain that man in Cohen’s suit
I eat my egg and chips whilst wise men frown
They give advice and rush to bring me down
An Oxbridge educated woman can’t eat fries
So in McDonalds ,they have placed their spies
How else explain that man in Cohen’s suit
And on his feet, black polished Chelsea boots?
Such men would eat in foreign Restaurants
Not linger in Mc Donald’s penitent
Yes, all these people here must be sent as spies
From Oxford,Cambridge, even MI 5.
Yet I do not abandon my fried bread
Despite the Quantum Theory wandering in my head
It’s probable that they are eying me
Come ,thou loon , Len wants a cup of tea
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With strange dejection, people stare dismayed
What strange selection have the parties made
That Trump and Clinton are the chosen two.
In disbelief ,we stumble, thinking frayed.
Such strange selection have the people made
Their Presidential choice ,discussed, displayed
The Reign of Night,Oh Hell, what can we do?
With strange dejection, people stare dismayed
That Trump and Clinton seem the chosen two.
