Author: Katherine

Poetry writer and author

My father knew me not or so he always says

Photo0498

Dr Adams was a very kind man

He never fried sprats when they were  soaked in jam

He apologised to the loaf when he cut the bread

And he wept many tears when his ants were found dead..

He was enamoured of spiders because he liked their webs

And even let them build one between his middle ribs.

He loved his wife and allowed  her to be free

So she met a jolly sailor and they went out to sea.

Suddenly he realised,  altruism’s bad

Unless it’s given to  those who really are quite sad.

So he  made a resolution to be a bit more stern

And gave up putting dinner out for   the  earthworms.

He met a kind fair lady and he began to hope

She would marry him and raise some antelopes.

He said she must be free but not quite totally;

Loving other men was not  permitted,you see?

Some  folk can live with a marriage and affairs

Some men even  keep many concubines and  bears.

But he and his new lady decided to be chaste

As loving any other folk was a sorry waste..

They had many off spring of whom I am one

I look like the  pussy cat when all is said and done..

And I like  being groomed and sitting on folks’ knees

Think whate’er you like but it’s fun running up trees.

My father was black and my mother is white

So I am rather grey ,except in a good light.

I have many patches in different shades of grey

I only wish my whiskers didn’t look like hay.

I am hoping to marry when the corn and barley’s ripe

Oh,what fun we’ll have in the middle of the night.

Too many miles to go

Image

Image by Katherine using Microsoft Paint

Feeling the sadness in my heart
and in my arms a tender feeling
as if the flesh is calling out;
My breath’s coming in gasps and
my throat makes a murmur
as if trying to speak.

Sensitive skin on my inner arms yelps
and my heart aches like
I’ve run too many miles .
My legs feel strong
My mouth is dry and my back
needs an arm around it
for protection.
My eyes are wet with the moisture
that might have made saliva.

My cat died
And then my other cat died.
Whatever.

The music takes me

garden 2

Our music is a late Beethoven string quartet.
Although I can’t see you,I know
You are listening; the arcitecture of my heart
Is structured round this form
alone.I sit here dreaming,hearing the bows
as they tenderly cause vibrations
sending the song of love through the air;
as also do the strong yet gentle bells ringing
on the collars of goats on a far away mountain.
I know it’s your music; I heard it
when I first looked into your  eyes
and knew who you might be.
A pebble is tossed languidly into a lake
yet ripples spread out across the world.
Such deliverances as we find will only
link us further,as we dance,the elegant dance
of the knowingly brave
who never give in,
but will always keep in step with the world
as it turns around and whirls past flashing silver stars
until its time has come.
Yet the music we create remains for ever
floating through the air,
like perfume of these late roses
as I walk down the garden
into the intolerable green newness of this tangled wood,
which startles me with its violent wistfulness.
Oh,come now…I hear your footstep on the road.
It’s the wind sighing eloquently,
knowing you have gone away
into the dark and the deep.where new life is formed
and I wait for you,fierce yet kind, with tender love.
I offer my heart to the world
and this music takes me.

I don’t like that they rhyme with onions

tiff infomation
tiff infomation

Doctor,doctor, it’s my bunions.

Why,what’s wrong with your bunions?

I don’t like that they rhyme with onions

Try boiling them  not rhyming with them

What ,boiling my poems?What would I put on my blog?

I am getting irritated now.

Did you know it’s a symptom of pernicious anaemia,sometimes?

Been on wikipedia again,have we.

I know more than you,doctor.

Is knowing it any help.?

Well it might increase one’s tolerance of other’s moods.

That is the rub.How do you know when a mood is caused by a bodily  malfunction or by some emotional upset ?

I think it exaggerates what is there  naturally to an intolerable level so we begin to go mad.

And if you were mad already would it make you go normal?

Of course not.It would make you even madder.

Well,anyway I have to go  now.

So do I.It’s those prunes.

Do they have  iron in them?

Only if you press them.

So about bunions…did Mussolini have them?

Why?

I just wondered.

It’s wondering that causes all your problems.

Well it gives me an  interest.

I wonder why we all want an interest..

Now you are doing it as well

it must be catching.

Cheerio then.I’m going to the bathroom

Aren’t we all?

I don’t understand you.

Me neither.

.

t

Look out, not in, and find salvation there

WatercolorPainting.com - Reference - Pigments

Now therapy usurps the place of faith

And into our own minds we’re told to delve

Whatever we now think , we have to say it

In that way Freud thinks we find a  truer self.

The therapist is like a looking glass

They   just reflect whatever we have bared.

But if we look to long,it comes to pass

That Satan and his devils are prepared.

They may enchant us  into false self love

To value pride  and then deceive  our souls;

Yet  to  humble people comes the  holy dove

And self forgetting is what makes us whole.

Confused,alarmed and  reckless with  despair

Look out, not in,  and find salvation  there

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With my mind,I thee wed

  • Doctor,I think I have got my head screwed on the wrong way.
    Did nobody tell you it is a bayonet fitting? How sad.

    Doctor,I have lost my mind.
    Then who is speaking?

    Doctor I really have lost my mind.
    I’ll write you a prescription.
    What for?
    It’s a new drug.It will stop you caring you have lost your mind.
    But is that right?
    No,but it’s easier than re-minding you.

    Doctor,I feel very blue this morning.
    Well,you look like a ripe peach.
    What’s the use of that?
    I could pluck you.
    Buy a guitar and pluck that!
    Are you always like this?
    I don’t know,I have lost my mind.
    We found one in the waiting room.
    Can I have it?
    Suppose it’s not yours?
    Well,any mind is better than none….
    False….who would want Hitler’s mind?
    I see what you scream.
    Thank you very clutch.

Another way,a place,another mind

From   time and place  and  season I am  lost,

Disorientated ,missing  tracks well worn

Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost

Nor label me with epithets of scorn

For usual paths lead to the  usual place

The safest way to live and perhaps to die

But wandering through the woods  I find new space

and in the  wild flowers  with the fox I lie.

Through  dark trees, i see a way to go

as narrow as a slit in pallid stone

This is my destined way, I seem to know

and courage rises even as I moan.

Remember when we’re lost ,we  may then find

Another way,a place,another mind

a

After watching the film Lincoln

If I followed the advice below I’d have to close my blog!!
Legs
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Abraham Lincoln

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/abraham_lincoln.html#6x75Yp5CZexfkSWt.99

Please keep your seats upright

Please leave the Church when the bull springs.

LC3_3932

Please keep off the yawns till done

Please sleep in your own ruins tonight

Please deceive the women mindfully/

No men followed her dogs sailing

Men must  lift their  gnats as a sign of universal politeness

Please do not lust after sinning.

Please always leave the seat up so the cat can wee by itself.

Please swish your hands after using the glue.

Please develop a sense of amendment.

Please stup making ale those typos and be snore loke me.. perfect ,all boast/.

Does still power really not exist?

We all need a tortoise for  our life.

Life’s unworthy of our evil plays

My New Year Resolution  has resolved,revolved, and dissolved.

No sex until you join the union.

You must pass a beast before driving in the UK

The Government seem cleverly confused over child poverty

Do men love hugging women?

Free blank cheques for billionaires given out daily.

I just can’t scalp it.

Do you leak any languages  properly?

Protect your mattress,Sleep on the door.

Why not hang yourself tonight?

She kept men in the wardrobe and clothes on the floor.

Related articles

As if on stalks

I’d like to have a sausage for my tea

I’d like a roast potato and some greens

You can share my portion for a fee.

Or bring along some tender runner beans.

I know my  home is modest but it’s mine

My headboard broke off during a cold night.

Of what despair may that  be a   dim sign?

My hope of mending  myself is very slight.

Still I’ll  make a date with you today

Shall we eat our meal with knives and forks?

Chopsticks are de trop,what do you say?

Your eyes are following me as if on stalks.

Some days I feel I should not rhyme  again.

But better that than dwell on  long dead men

Will irrational lovers drive us wild?

Oh,take me hold me,love me like you do

With kisses sweet commend me  to your heart

Love me like  a tea of finest brew.

Love me like a coxes pippin tart.

oh,dance  me,swing  me, let me feel alive.

And let me feel your melody anew.

We get what we desire yet don’t deserve.

When one  is made from  love between the two.

Oh. lend me your  maths textbooks for   a while

I love  irrational numbers like a child.

and transcendental  pies do me beguile

i  feel tonight  my numbers dancing wild.

So ambiguous is  my attitude to men

I wave and then I particle again

The selfish crowd

Lonely - Touching SpaceSome men are absent from their  heart and flesh

They  inhabit not their  feelings nor their breast

To dine with them is   never  what we wish

I’d rather eat with  genuine holy ghosts.

if we fail to enter into being;

With accident and trauma felt too soon

Or. with a mother tortured and unseeing,

We linger sadly, helpless as her moon.

Is it possible to come home to ourselves

When failure marked our earliest attempts?

Will   love spontaneous ever us dissolve?

When often forced back by our own dissent?

Will night’s darkness  be  more than a  death shroud

Covering  with its cloak the   selfish crowd?

Will without desire

As altruistic as a hunting wolf

As kind and caring as a starving rat.

Some he traps with words and some by stealth;

And some he gains by psychic aegrotat

his needs are great ,and stubbornly he looks

for women who might fill his vacant heart

Yet love comes down by grace and not by will

His lovers  be bohemian  yet smart.

He searches endlessly without much trust.

Unsure if he will recognise a mate

Into torment   former  loves are tossed

Ambivalent,uncertain,how to wait?

We cannot live by will without desire

For  old flames turn into a hellish fire.

..

The fear of giving pain to those we love

Can  kindness be an enemy  to love

When criticisms wither before birth.

And fit can be too close,like hand in glove

As criticisms withheld have little worth.

For kindness may be cowardly at times

we do not wish to risk a sudden breach.

We hesitate to read between  the lines

Despite that context has so much to teach.

The so called virtues may at times be vice

Evasions of the need to be more plain

We cling to self deception as for life.

We err because we fear   our bitter pains.

Love and truth may never be fast friends

For each one differs in its fragile ends

t

The Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling

 lighter tree

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods …
But there is no road through the woods.

He almost wept

Photo1139 8 (1) Photo1240 2I had to go twice today to the Sorting Office so I got a cab the second time.The driver said on returning he had not seen my husband lately.When I told him he had died he was distressed..My husband had used them a lot as he got slower walking to the station but thus man had taken him to the hospital too.

We sat in the car for a few minutes and I said  he had had a very peaceful death holding my hand.But this did not comfort the poor man who was definitely  not a native of England as most of the southern  ones rarely show a feeling.Then he accepted some money but not enough as he had been kept waiting  by me for a long time.He had a very moving expression on his face.Fortunately I did not fling myself into his arms as that might have given him a shock.I felt sad too but happy as well because I managed to do a lot of things … maybe my haemoglobin is rising.I saw  that it was almost low enough for me to need a blood transfusion in May but I didn’t know…I am  hoping it has risen now and perhaps I am getting more done.

Then I can sit and look at my acers if the sun shines again.

Photo1240 3 Study in blue by-the-lily-pond-in-a-wood-brighterPhoto1143

Ironical thoughts

Well,you know,we could not have saved the European Jews  from the Holocaust because how could we have fitted 6 million people into Britain? Or even one million?So we had no choice.And if Jesus was there… tough!

Sometimes we are talking at different levels of discourse.Life is sacred yet especially  since 2001 we have seen much that has horrified us and terrified the suffering masses in the Middle East.

Now, if God wanted those refugees to live would he not have sent  them help?

God:I did send help.. it is US

Someone told me that if we let these in it wil encourage more to come ; the ones who are coming have little choice as the refugee camps have no more food in Jordan and Lebanon…But is it right to turn our eyes away?

That sweet embrace

Though love is welcome when at first it dawns

And even when it ripens in the sun

Soon  may  come sensations  all forlorn

A dread that asks us what  love might become.

For yearning as we do for hope and care

Yet also don’t we fear to lose our self?

And so to wonder fearful how we’ll fare

Blighting both our spirits and our health.

The risks of loss and gain are  not yet known

A judgement must be made on partial facts

To be at once too  trapped  and  too alone

To treat the other with  both truth and ttact

With faith and trust we show  our human face

And hope we each survive that sweet embrace

Solace

The comfort of another’s kindly glance

The solace of a writer”s l voice.

These may arrive as if    by chance.

To be responsive   is in part our  choice.

Some days our shell is closed,  and all rebuts.

Not even  loving arms   or lips are felt.

So little on this earth will bring comfort

Until  this hardness wants itself to melt.

Be wary as  it may not  yet be  time

Far better hide until right days are born.

To let our soul reject the dagger fine.

We  needs respect a fear of  ruinous scorn.

Though  isolated,lost, uncertain we  may feel,

These  dream wrought symbols make the soul to heal

Worn teddy bears

Image

I try to feel through dark and distant space
To where you dwell in a far off  “heavenly” place.
And you are far from those of us, who care.
Our hearts are dulled with loving thoughts not shared
Your absence has so distanced us in grief.
We can neither share our loss, nor gain relief.
I  watch  the star filled sky  in lonelt silent night
And see a space almost devoid of light.
I feel into the edges of my soul
I sense,somewhere, a  brokenness once whole.
Would   a  powerful  modern  telescope aid my view,
As I search  this aching world for a ttrace of you?
How would one  vanish  deep in  silent night,
And so forever  tehn be  missing from my sight?
I wish that I’d been there when you went off,
I could have expressed , through touch,my heartfelt love.
Shall I never hear your gentle tenor voice
Enchanting me once more with your sweet choice?
Shall I not  even  find the laces from your shoes,
Floating gently back to earth through these  elm trees?
I see more flocks of gracious geese flash by.
Are those your fingers tracing lines across the sky?
Do you too see these geese from up above?
But you’re on the other side, too far from love.
And even with the very new best technology
There’s no way back now , so you won’t ever be
With us again,Goodbye,Goodbye Goodbye
I’ll turn away my tear filled  reddened eyes,
And look at all that’s near,as I’m still here.
I know now you’re too far away ,too far away, too far away ,my dear.
I know now that you’re too far away,my dear.
How can we learn to live with love, not fear,
As we go on ,now, down these coming years?
So sad that you’re not near,not here,not here,my dear.
Shall I sometimes, in the night pretend, you’re  near,?
Oh,that heaven were not  so meanly set so far

And earth not feel so barren from despair
We must slide down the escape chute of the years,
Like children clutching at worn teddy bears.

A limerick or two

Cats on the hill Does

Does “Euripides”rhyme with” bad knees”?

Does obesity cause one to sneeze?

These questions oppress me

As they really test me

So answer me now,if you please.

Do you listen to 100 best tunes?

Do you like reading riddles or runes?

I prefer novels

When I feel a wobble.

So I’m off to the librrary soon.

Graffiti

A film

In my end is my beginningIMG_0004 (2)

Can  I afford to light the fire?
True it’s not a coin in a slot
Just that worrying bill on the ma
I could wear a coat indoors like my mother
Now they have demolished the quiet reference library
there’s nowhere to sit and hide and keep warm.
I’ve stopped singing now
I realise I need an audience.
I  can hear a thrumming sound in my ears
And a whistling in the air,faint but obvious.
I get phone calls telling me my computer has problems
During one, I spilled a pan of hot water over myself
Then I screamed  really loudly
That seems to have deterred them…
Nobody heard me but the cat and this conman.
I was  cooking vegetables appropriate
for someone with  this auto -immune type of anaemia.
oranges too are good.
Broccoli.
You can get little packs now of florets
They have instructions on as nobody now recalls
how to do it nor how to look it up in a cookery book.
Next it will be how to boil a potato… or an egg.
People laugh and say I will have to eat raw liver
as if they enjoy the thought of my bloody face and the horror
There are 400 kinds of anaemia
Maybe it makes one feel cold…I might wear a down coat
Go to bed in my husband’s pyjamas and his hat.
That  leads to strange dreams of being an hermaphrodite
I could pretend to be  a man but  it’s not clear how one would know quite how they feel
As they don’t often know anyway!My husband was here one day but when I touched him
My hand went through him like a knife through air.
He wasn’t solid enough.
Not to hold or be held.
I suppose there may be other ways of loving  the departed
Some say they feel them in their heart,giving instructions and help.
I always liked to touch and smile.
I’ll ask him if it’s ok  to light the fire
And what way of being might suit him
but I think his path lies somewhere else.
Meanwhile I am supposed to be dating  rich and kind old men
With Mercedes[,whoever she is.. perhaps a maid.]
Well, it’s not the same now.
We’ve all grown into our shape like rocks battered by the sea
I fell off the step before putting out the rubbish
My sister hints that I  could try a white stick
But how would that help me on the step?
Anyway,my vision is perfect for the state of my eye.
It looks singularly beautiful
And singular is what it is
It shows me the world divided by a thick black line
I hardly notice it now.
I thought I saw that black shape today in the hall
Shall I die too?It’s an imp.
I feel strong as if I could kick something into play.
After that I’d fall over but it’s the kick that count
Aleph null of them I’d say…. they are discontinuous, you see.
How clever of those ancient people to develop an alphabet
While we can’t run a country
It seems  we may be getting more stupid, but keep it quiet
It’s better to sing and pla
Remember the Titanic and all who flew in her?
It’s like a film running very slowly but it is all just a film reall
I know because I saw it after a bike accident…
but don’t tell the others or they might want one too.

My mind unfocussed

How like a dream this world appears to me
My mind unfocussed spreads itself about..
No details, just an outline I can see.
And vagueness dimly fills me up with doubt.

The early sun made joy rise in my heart
As I looked out upon the gardens gold.
Of nature and each season we’re a part.
As with patience we let all our self unfold.

We are as nothing in the vast space of this sky
Where stars send light from deeps of long ago.
And yet despite my nightmares I shall try
As fears make fences if we don’t say No.

We have to make our dreams a home on earth;
from where creative thoughts are given birth

Our sacred space

In sweet darkness, love calls down a soul 

To be embodied in its mother’s’ womb.

Our growing pains by her are soon consoled

In this way we make an inner room.

Our sacred space is where our spirit lives

God alone can enter  that deep place.

We touch  a shining   blackness  which  so gives

Life itself  through  fruitful dark ,rich space.

For those  whom   fortune has  too soon betrayed

Whose mothers  lacked protection  and kind care.

Lack of such a space may soon degrade.

And  lead the lost to live in  blank despair.

If we have fortune ,let us aid the weak.

And in vain quarrels,silence let us keep