Doctor,I think my husband has something wrong with him.
Thank God,I thought he was dead.
Doctor,I have a pain in my groan.
Oh,do stop moaning.
Doctor,my head feels strange.
Can’t you just laugh it off?
Doctor,why don’t you do give examinations to your patients
They have  their degrees already.
Doctor,where is the receptionist?
She’s at a reception.
Doctor,you look worn out.
I shall take two aspirin and see myself in the morning.
Doctor,I feel ok today.
I must find out for myself.
Doctor,my husband is in the waiting room.
I’ll feel him later.
Doctor,I told the priest you were the worst doctor in town
Well, how do the others do it?
Doctor,I can’t sit here all day.I have to go to work.
What is it you do?
I train crocodiles to become vegetarian.
How about men?
No,they are very hard to digest.
Doctor,you look pale.
It’s my white blood.
Well, it goes with red blood and blue blood.

Doctor,what is my diagnosis?

It’s all Greek to me.

Like a piece of ground where bombs go off repeatedly,
my inner landscape is perpetually marked by these explosions of sorrow,
made all the worse by the lack of a listening ear,
a warm open heart or an outstretched hand.
I have constructed a map but it’s incomplete,by its nature;
so even now,I might stumble into an old hole or a new one,
created by reverberations underground;
the noise like distant music, a constant drumbeat.
We do not dance
I might call it the Liturgy of Loss,
a dance to the music of rhyme;
Patterns and shapes hold the feelings and express them.
The shape of these forms is a container for the grief.
In this way,I indicate that life will go on;
I hear the healing music and sing to its melodies
like a mermaid on the edge of the sea in winter
when the water is cold and green like his eyes,
and the rocks are hard like large fists.
Nature can be a symbol for such emotion
we cannot walk without a tear in each eye
and a softening of our hearts as tenderly we touch the world
and are touched in turn by each other.
Stretch out your hand to meet mine.
We can hold each other better than each can hold theirself. As in  bodily love,
the meaning is not  in the  frenzy but the giving and being given;
receiving and being received.
The sacredness of the erotic needs no explanation to a gardener or a fisherman
but may need it for the information saturated,postmoderns
who dwell in the fascist virtual reality we call life on earth today

When doubts and drawbacks struggle in the mind
And certainty seems but a demon dream,
When the faith to love is what no-one can find
For even when asleep, the mind still schemes

When darkness and defeat seem close at hand
And lights dim even as we pray for peace
when wrecks and ruins rile the native sands
When in this life we feel we’ve lost our place.

Then at the saddest depth we see the light
Surrounding with such warmth,with love adorned.
The path that seemed so wrong now leads us right
And in our hearts, warm feelings are new born

Within each storm there is a calm still eye
From there we see the loathsome clouds blown by

Gaze deep into the flower’s heart;
And let your healing vision start,
Lose yourself in shades of green.
What is life with might have beens?

‘Twas but a reptile passing by.
It flew across the deep blue sky
Why do reptiles fly so high?
I’ll love you till I die.

‘Twas but a cat under the moon.
Did you have a silver spoon?
Why can’t cats all waul in tune?
I’ll love you very soon

‘Twas but a wooden legged man,
Carrying a large brass saucepan.
Why can’t men do what women can?
I’ll love you better than.

Why are adverbs?
What are nouns?
why do circuses have clowns?
I’ll love you lying down.

Where do dreams go in the day?
What game can we adults play?
Can you or can you not say?
I’ll love you,in my way.

‘Twas but a verse that seemed so free.
It floated over my oak tree.
I have eyes but cannot see.
I’ll love you when I be

No depth is like the deepness of your eyes.
No warmth is like the comfort of your smile.
Yet sometimes love turns out to be unwise.
And joy can change to feelings dark and vile

Yet like blue glass your eyes compel my gaze.
Your lips invite us to to conjoin with mine.
Have I learned so little wisdom in my days?
Am I a fool top pass this warning sign?

Yet hope is ever rising in the heart.
Despair is not to be embraced too soon;
and if God wills that our two ways must part
I’ll face the error and receive my doom.

For humans need to give and take of love.
With tenderness that rivals turtle doves

 Postmodernism’s the fashion ne’er manque.

We study Foucault and his glass eyed scribes.

Get reason trapped and do not court delay.

You need to find your intellectual tribe.

Where is the goose which laid the golden egg..

Invented meta-talk and  fairy tales?

Which narrative is balanced on a peg?

Do prophets gets re-homed now by a whale?

Where is the whole truth and the nothing but?

Whose is the eye which sees reality?

Who is the judge who makes the final cut?

Where is the God to whom we owed fealty?

Now nothing is what anyone can say.

I understand it’s meaningless to pray

Photo  of Wych Hazel by Mike Flemming.Copyright 2015 [Wisley Gardens]

Alas I have never used my post office credit card…. so I had to go shopping.Unfortunately I am in  more  pain  than usual so when I was in W H Smith’s I wanted to sit down.I saw no seats.I then saw a big pile of books in a corner so I sat  there.I was right next to the Jewish Chronicle  so I took a look at that.I once sat down on a self service till.They didn’t like that!!Well,I only wish they had a few chairs.I then purchased the Times and a computer magazine which was meant to spread the good news about cloud computing.I find Google Drive is ok but OneDrive is not so good probably because I am not used to  sending  photos from there.So I began to wonder if I should spend hundreds of pounds buying a computer with a large memory.I see HP Pavilions  are reduced by £200 in Currys,but why?Luckily there are no such shops near me.After drinking some coffee,i had a bright idea….. why not write on paper with a pen.Luckily my memory was ok and  the card went through the machine.I bet the bank will wonder what I am doing.Why can’t I buy something feminine like lipstick?Well maybe I shall if Boots have a chair in their store.And anyway lipstick wears off me too soon.How about having one’s lips tinted green?Well,I am a sprite

I got married so that it would be legal to iron  a man’s underpants weekly.
I got married so I could pick cake crumbs out of the carpet as free exercise .
I only got married for sex as the forbidden would be a duty then.Still it felt very sinful so that was ok.
I was so shy my husband thought I was dumb until I cried,Do it again,Sam.Alas he is called John.Still I was a very technical virgin who loved pulling the gas stove to pieces  to see how it worked.One day I shall mend it but for now we live on fish and chips.
When you think about it,getting to know the opposite sex is very dangerous.Getting to know anybody is dangerous but women don’t usually rape you while you are drunk or while you are sober either.Still ,worse than rape is emotional betrayal or spiritual invasion.
The only safe way to live is to commit suicide then noone can hurt you any more.Is there a logical error there somewhere?
I think,take a cat or two to bed, have a baby by artifical means and have hundreds of friends.Why limit yourself? I do and look where it’s got me!

short-eared durham owl
meditating over the dale’s edge,
shadows the fields and folds
in elegant diurnal flight.

on windside,careful sight
may swoop to prey
and away.

your yellow broad-eyed look,
at once both sharp and distant,
holds me.
oh,silence,
oh ,wind on green,
oh. earth,
sky.

immense your held vision,
sphere without centre,
pied geometer of flight,
sketch your descent and ascent.trees bunched by dry stone wall
call heart home.

Anguish is a word I don’t hear very often.Today I saw a synopsis of a biography of Henri Nouwens,a Dutch Canadian priest and writer of many much loved spiritual writing.Yet the title included the word,anguish.
I wonder if nowdays we are allowed to be anguished.First of all,it’s very painful and we ,ourselves ,may try to obliterate it and if we don’t friends may advise us to see a doctor as if all anguish,grief and woe are a mental disorder.Yet surely being humans leading a puzzling fragmented life in a strange consumerist society where death is hidden and illness blamed on the sufferer for being obese,drunk,lazy,manic,frantic,stupid,oversensitive then it’s not an easy task to allow our anguish to have its time and to convey to us and maybe others that something is going on in us that is important.Of course,taking time off work is frowned up on and sitting idly all day is thought lazy.But work may be going on in our psyche/soul which matters. Many people now deny the existence of a soul but we do need a name for the unknown self within which may try to reach us in our night time dreams.

But to label all our inner pain as a mental illness is a mistake,I feel.Indeed the term mental illness can be misused or may be a metaphor.
Suffering is going on all the time as we walk down the street and through the city.We may be wrapped in grief like mantle or if we know the signs we can read the faces of others around us and see the eyes and the lines of anguish mapped on their pale faces.And do we accept this in our friends or do we push them away? We may not need to speak,just to be present.

I had a dream last night.I was trying to install Windows 8. the square root of 2.

Well,that’s nothing.I was installing Windows 8.e.

Have they made it yet?

Apparently not.They are stuck on 8.pi.

Weird dreams.What are they telling us? That we should have danced all night!

Still it is amazing that there is more than one type of infinity, apart from the number of handbags I have owned.

Why,how many is that?

I don’t think anyone can calculate it.

But surely it must be no more than aleph null.

Aleph null   times aleph one.

Can you multiply infinities?

Yes,in my dreams!

Mihaly was a saint of sorts;

he improved, with his search for understanding,

the lives of so many yearning writers;

the lame in spirit heard his Zen like words.

He could not have imagined the journey

From Hungary to Zurich to Chicago

A glimpsed mandala led to the heart of the impossible image

How did he learn to trust the flow?

The Rhine flowing down to the North Sea

May start as some minute spring

At the confluence of the gravity of water and earth.

And those then who have cast their nets into that sea

May bring in treasures not found in the business of cities.

At the first sighting,the image seemed hazy

Then the words began to flow like current through a wire.

Like a river cutting slowly through rocks of marble,

like an unknown sage from the Himalyan Alps

who had kissed the lips of his muse more than once

As she floated like a ghost,

No,no,more like music

Tracing concentric spheres into the air

Till the universe was singing.

What was most human was his appetite,his love.

Touch the hem of his garment,follow your flow

Cut your path through the hard darkness until you find

The sunlit sea you were made to swim in like a fish in its own sphere

The widdle on the sands, a war time missed take of a film about food
Caught between the devil and a deeply rooted tree,she submitted with resignation.Then she got a job in the swivel circus which paid as well but men never let her moan.
His mark is worse than  blight.
After marriage, they made love lightly in full colour.
When in doubt,play with trout.
Curiousity thrilled our chatterboxes.
Gossip makes me shy with horror.
I have a deep sense of shame about being a wife and livewire.
Why does cricket seem so monocular?

When was Britain so trite?
We once believed we owned half the world but was it the top or bottom?
We have nothing to fear except leering elves.

I am writing this before reading what others think about the topic.so as  not to copy.
There is no simple answer  to this questionbut on the whole it is not. for me.However poetry is not mathematics and is to a large extent written from a place of deep feeling within;an event, a memory, a sentence,the vision of a sad person in the street… all these can touch the heart.And of course it is not possible to write without some feeling,unless you want to be a postmodern poet akin to th musician writing “60 Seconds” or the artist exhibiting a lavatory bowl.
The  writing in progress  seems to have its own life and demands;furthermore the form the writer chooses will affect what can be contained within it.So although the initial feeling may be based on the writer’s life,the development is not.
Many other things help to create the work;the context of the life of the poet,the culture they came from and now live in,whether they are male or/and female,their reading and education…their interaction with other poets in reading or listening,their loves and hates.Their broader reading and conversations
But it’s a mistake to take poetry as straightforward sharing of someone’s life.Somehow it can seem just as mysterious to the writer as to the reader.Yet poetry has an imprint and it’s easy when one has a bit read to tell Hopkins from Hardy,or Auden from Spender.
It’s a bit like handwriting…we have our unique patterns which is intriguing as we were taught the same way [though now teaching joined up writing is dying out,which says a lot about our culture… if one can call it culture nowadays].

I am not cynical and have much hope for the future.

When true love’s gone and doom hangs over head

When life runs like a river to the sea

Then shall I take new lovers to my bed?

And with their carnal touch consoled be?

When my love lies,so breaks my  tender heart.

When life seems grey and rocks bestrew my path.

Then, shall I my life of evil start?

And on the world shall I bestow my wrath?

When true love lies and wrecks all loyalty.

When puzzlement makes all my world seem mad.

Then I shall upend causality

And let myself do deeds which make me glad.

For I have love’s sweet child inside my soul

And I shall tend her till at last she’s whole

Read more at: http://www.poetrysoup.com/poem/when_true_loves_gone_543974

In the land which dreams dwell in

where love and joy and woe begin;

where swiftly the deep rivers flow

from those lost lands of long ago.

I wander through wild poppy fields

Underfoot the dark earth yields….

I see the flowering fruit trees start

Their blossoms gather round my heart…

I hear the sparrows sing with joy

And bees their busy wings employ

. In those lost lands I saw your face

And now I long for your embrace.

Are you real,am I deceived?

From this earth we all must leave

. Earth to earth and ash to ash

Glory,pride and boasting pass.

Leave me now,my dearest one

Soon I too will be called on.

Nothing lasts but truth is real

Keep the truth and your ideals..

Earth to earth, we rest in clay

We must give all self away

Softly on this earth I roam

Seeking still my own true home,

for until the very end

grace and love may  still descend.

Soft as wings of butterflies

Tears well up and wet my eyes.

My heart has melted into yours

Thus we grow and die like flowers

Dear Aggie
My boyfriend is working abroad for seven years to save for our wedding,so he says.He never writes letters but sends photos of  women  cooking boeuf en daube in his kitchen.Should I be worried or is this common overseas?
Morwen

Dear Morwen
I think it would be wise to send him some photos of hairy chested,handsome men in your bedroom and ask him how he rates them.
If he seems interested you will not need to worry about the women any more.

BTW love your avatar,darling
Aggie

Dear Aggie

When I visited my new boyfriend’s home,I found he has eyes in the back of the bed.He said it stops mice or other creatures from mating there but I have my doubts.What do you think?
Worried of London

Dear Worried
Whatever made you look at the back of his bed? Leave that till he proposes or he might make you hoover the entire room.
I suggest that you have a semi-Platonic,more romantic relationship for now and should you eventually marry insist on moving into a brand new home with a new bed.
However,it does seem a bit odd.Where did you meet him?
Are you ever subject to hallucinations? Maybe you need to break away before he has arms in the bed and a gun at your head…
Remember that,when older,many ladies are becoming gay these days.Think about it.Do you really prefer a man? How about a rabbit in bed instead plus some companions and friends in the day time.
Aggie

As I waited for the bus I thought of some phrases that are in common use to describe our feelings in a manner relating to our bodies or our organs .

My heart was in my mouth
My heart sank
I fell head over heels in love.
I could not swallow his excuse.
That is hard to digest.
I spat him out.

I was wondering if new phrases like that come into existence now and I don’t recall any.Is it because we are no longer so involved in creating out language or because there are experts in academia who study it.At one time ordinary people made buildings etc and m ust have developed skills in geometry etc from a practical point of view.And it was they who invented writing and numbers etc not people in Universities who do not create but analayse and criticise and study signs and connections.
So has the rise of experts made us stupider than people were in the past?Is it poets who invent new idioms?

My eyes nearly leaped out of my head when he passed by…
Luckily I had put superglue down the sides of them at breakfast time.
My hands grasped the nettle and I almost threw a flower at his head.Then he said
You are the hoover of my soul.
Walls have fears,you know.