Category: poetry

I wonder who you are and feel for you

So many people read on WordPress blogs
Many write their own  words down as well
From different countries  all across the world
What the effect is nobody can tell

But  is  it  so  surprising that  all words
Written with a true and thoughtful heart
Can bind together  those of us who care
And  so from cruel Wars we may depart

From Vietnam and China  from Finland
From Maryland,Brasilia,Peru
From   Rome, from Jordan and from Palestine
I wonder who you are ,I care  for you

The mystery is the goodness  we can share
Yet always there’s a darkness in the air

 

Living in our daymares out of bed

Clematis-armandii-2020

Thanks to Mike for allowing us to meditate on  his images which aid the hearts of the suffering and add to the joy of life for all who gaze upon them

More dangerous than our weapons are our minds
The fantasied revenge will do no good
Some kill a neighbour even  when they’re kind

I never thought that I’d ring 999
But why wait  until I lose my only head?
More dangerous than our weapons are our minds

We have  eyes to see  yet we are blind
Living in our daymares out of bed
Some kill a neighbour even  when they’re kind

Though people starve, are tortured all the time
I must not be so  passive in this bog
More dangerous than our weapons are our minds,

Instead of fighting fantasies, let’s write
Slowly choosing words,combined for good
Though humans  torment   friends  and their own kind

Onto Jews we  cast  our shadowed bad
Then we killed our souls to shed their blood
Why were fascists not made into swine?
Where is the precious water and the wine?

I think what others  have suffered when I feel self pity

 

Small and humble

The clouds are large  like galleons on the sea
The sails are rounded swimming on the blue
The earth seems small and humble company

Some take  fright and into dark they flee
Blinded  by the size,ignored the clue
The clouds are whipped  like  icecream into goo

I see a dream that  hangs high on a  tree
A crow stands on its head, the small birds rue
~The earth seems small ,unreal yet company

God wrote us a  letter,that is key
We staggered to the fire,we burned with glee
The clouds  disguise  the sin of  our envy

The dying god hangs through eternity
Shall he be raised, shall we his promise see?
The earth seems small and humble company

Oh, do not  let us kill the sacred tree
Fragmented it wlll split  the Trinity
The clouds are  beads  upon a rosary
The Cross  beseeches.words are  heresy

 

 

 “Day  shall come again”

When red sun  drops and  cooling night  rolls in
Darkness masks both danger and our vision
Ancient minds fear   day won’t come again

Courage for the  delicate   seems thin
We  wrestle  with  our horrid indecision
When  sun  drops deep and  night  rolls  softly in

But now , new stricken by   a dread of sin
Who shall doubt  the soul’s   derision?
Our  ancient minds fear   day won’t come again

When  we sleep we’re entertained within
Dark dreams squander  sweet   illusion
When  deep sun  drops and   gentle night  rolls in

In reverie we’re loved  our hearts widen
Then  fancy turns to full communion
While ancient minds fear   day won’t come again

And so  it was that our own life began
When sperm leaped up in  proud confusion.
When  deep sun  dropped and  a   new night  rolled in
When  ancient  hearts cried  “Day  shall come again“

Fear of illness

The wasted years  of  our uncivil war
Continue as we fight for toilet rolls
All too soon will come the blood and gore
The bulls escape,we trained no matadors

Tins of soup and packets of  dried meat
Fly from shelves  to baskets as we queue
Fear has grasped  our throats  with its deceit
The faces of the old are  turning blue

Still there is a palace on the hill
A forest where the princes ride  each day
Doused by rumour,fear  that watchers kill
What worth is there in  turning now to prayer?

Stupid and corrupt  we miss our lives
Our children cry,  our  heartfelt anguish writhes

Where God’s in hell

The sadness of the television world
Where actors have no character to share
Where all is flat and perfect but unreal
Where God’s in Hell,  and yet it is concealed

The sadness of a toddler with a phone
Eyes near focussed like he is alone
Where he can see a Zoo in Montreal
Or hear hyenas  as they  make their calls

The sadness as we toss out ancient books
And never teach our children  how to cook
The imaged food is perfect in   young eyes
But when we live on that I think  we die

The sadness  when our neighbours  have blind eyes
The sadness as our culture slowly dies

I get drunk without a single drink

I did not  know my mind was strong a sin
My wickedness was choosing to be thin
My ringlets  seemed  far wilder than cats’ screams
The torture and the vividness of dreams

I picked up books and read them in an hour
How could I guess  the wreckage of men’s power?
I made pastry, I baked cakes of wheat
To honour God , my father, the elite.

In my pram I gave the neighbours shocks
Electric was my verbal skill and luck
They asked me how to vote and who should win
I sucked my dummy as my thoughts all ran

 I  sit and listen by the kitchen sink
For I get drunk without a single drink

Over burned spaghetti and red wine

God has made men suffer making me
As beautiful as morning by the sea
Because I’m only interested in maths
I have long since left the garden path

I never look in mirrors  or deep ponds
Narcissus eat your heart out in ferns’ fronds
I  never used to wonder how I looked
When my eyes were glued on a textbook

What irony that men would love me so
I   thought myopia  would  make them shy
I thought they’d like to talk  of Wittgenstein
Over burned spaghetti and  red wine

But now I’ve learned how beautiful I looked
Lying on the sofa with a book
Alas it is too late for any more
I see the edge of Heaven by the door

God  may seem ironic, it’s a test
I may kiss you once if you insist

Before we have the words

The childish jealousy, the painful heart
The remnants of a past that live within
Which make my  skin  feel pain, that make it smart

Measured feelings  appear   on  noone’s chart
We hide our knowledge of our own dark sin
The childish jealousy, the painful heart

It  comes too fast, takes too long to depart
Before we have the words, can thought  begin?
Unthought knowledge,wordless,  makes skin smart

Can action makes us better deal with thought?
What protection helps the smarting skin,
The childish jealousy, the painful heart?

Can virtue, unlike love, be sold and bought?
Turn the phones off. numb the brain-made din
Unwanted knowledge peeves the soul and heart

Like the dangerous wall that cut Berlin
We defend ourselves,  don’t   let life in
The childish jealousy, the hating heart
Make my  very self  feel pain.I want no part

 

After him

The gravity of loss brought me to earth
Beneath the rotting leaves, I lay with worms.
I wondered if I were of any worth

No more to be enchanted by love’s mirth,
I  with unnamed particles was turned.
The weight of loss bears down the heart to earth.

The weight of  love has readied us for birth
The fragments moulded with the love that burns.
I learned we need  not wonder  over  worth

My sorrow brought no guilt nor fear of wrath
I am both  sharp eyed eagle ,twisted worm.
In my little grave, I  loved the earth.

Like the adder, shocked into rebirth.
I from silent underworld had learned
Not to judge my soul nor think of worth.

I shall not  fear the flames of hell that burn.
When blackness is accepted, may one learn?
The weight of loss breaks down the soul to earth
With dusty shredded leaves, we then convers

I suck upon this lump

I suck upon this lump, this errant growth
As if it were a sweet or tooth unbroke
It cannot be removed  but will it die
Ot getting spiteful ,will it multiply?

I suck on it though never on my thumb
Being deprived  by mouth will make me dumb
It’s cheaper than a cigarette or sweet
Next I’ll be a cannibal,my meat,

I suck it hoping I can make it die
And then the world will feel much less awry
I want back my own mouth as a clear space
Not this horrid monster of disgrace

Yet how divert my self from its own thoughts
Feeling toothless, humour can’t be bought

Little hands

Ten thousand words, a million diagrams
Noone can know others nor themselves
Nor the errant ways, the  wavering spans

Flee the fluttering of a diaphragm
Blind  the eyes and ears to all this wealth
Ten million days, a  thousand diamonds

Fifty million cells in a doll’s pram
Life is  touch and go and needs our stealth
Not the errant ways, the  wavering  plans

No matter how I speak I can’t command
The instant  of his death,his plangent depths
Ten thousand gasps,  the weight  about a gram

God below, with worms he understands
He needs no words, no pictures, nor  new hells
The trains to Auschwitz,  had no waving   hands

By  Dunwich Beach we hear submerged church  bells
Golden angels   fly  from one, Cromwell
Ten  mighty words show less than one diagram
See the watery   childrens’ little hands

Feel the woodland beauty as in prayer

The hurricane has turned into a breeze
The sun shines on a squirrel leaping high
The  birds are hiding in the holly tree

Every human being will agree
We’d better live, if soon we  knew we’d  die
The hurricane has turned into a breeze

Soon will come the butterfly and bee
And every little insect that can fly
The  birds are hiding in the holly tree

I like hills.my lover likes the sea…..
Different people different loves arise
The hurricane has shrunk into a breeze

Lilies hide, so deep, love’s mystery
Then  its offspring decorate our days
The  blackbird sings  atop the holly tree

Feel the woodland beauty as in prayer
Trust the unknown darkness at its core
The scary wind has turned into a  breeze
The  doves are  cooing from the maple tree

Touching

I let my entire being take you in
Surround you like  it were second skin
I made an astral cloak to give your peace
Where I could  share the burden and release

How hard it is to find the  words that say
How we live and die  afresh each day
When we  get a foothold on the hill
We must not hurry , pressed on by  our will

Every instant,every time we breathe 
Eternal life  is here, we’re not deceived
God appears and disappears ,he flames
The Burning Bush, the  prophet and their rage.

Enlightenment  comes after we  have crossed
The  avenues of suffering   and  the cost

I dreamed I rode a tricycle last night

I dreamed I rode a tricycle  last night
Large and painted blue without  a bell
Then I met my doctor,what a sight

He told me he had lately seen the light
And wished to be a monk inside a cell
I dreamed I rode a tricycle  last night 

Ted Hughes had gone out fishing for a pike
The army in my head was doing drill
Then I met my doctor,what a sight

I see the almond  blossom, what delight
My sister thinks I’ve left her in my Will
I dreamed I rode a tricycle  last night 

Yet I am weary with my oversight
I am rarely mad enough to kill
Unless I met a doctor  out on strike

Because of such a strike I lost my sight
The Eye emergency  was  left too late
They say  that if I sue I’ll feel a chill
Surgeons  with knives on my window sill

 

 

Eternal love and hate

Everyone wants to be normal
But nobody knows what it is
It must be ouside of us
Or we’d feel what it was
So is it that we are all God?

Why do we want to be normal
Instead of being ourself?
We want acceptance
For sure and not by chance
Not to mention we all want  more wealth

Maybe there is nobody normal
The median, the mean or the mode
We all need to deviate
From  eternal love and hate
See  here what the Greek Gods still owed

Quivering in the meadows of the heart

We saw the cows at Easter freed from barn
We were on a hill beside our lane  
They were running in the meadow’s  fresh green charm

Renting a small cottage on a farm
Dorset  has its literary fame
We saw the beasts at Easter freed from barn

Beasts will share their feelings  and their heart
Not for them the clever,wordy games
But dancing  in the meadow’s   alien charm

These images annihilate the harm
Suffered by the sick and by the lame
We saw the beasts at Easter freed from barn

The green of spring, the green thoughts, the great calm
Thus poverty brings us emptiness for gain
Running  to shelter of your arms

Was it not a right to be insane
Freed from prison  when the summer came?
We saw the cows at Easter freed from barn
They were  quivering in the meadow while I yearned

 

Your sacred smile

fritillaria_pontica2016-1

Embraced  entire , your sacred smile held me
Until we  both were one deep in  our souls
As still as a white dove  held tenderly

 

For a little time so warm and free
As if your smile contained  me, made me whole
Embraced and loved , your sacred smile  touched me

As  we  cross together the  dark sea
I wish this sacred love could  always hold
As  gently as a dove ,as tenderly

And if I felt the  brilliant light  touch me
My eyes would weep,my tears would turn to gold
Embraced and loved, oh sacramental  tree

Would that humankind were truly free
That in the darkness, we could find our home
As dies  the  fragile Word on Calvary

We fear  the Tempest and we hear the Storm
The still small voice  will whisper , not perform
Embraced  entire , your  smile   encompassed me
As still as a white dove, as tenderly

Take your love and in your arms enfold.

Did anyone believe blind rage expressed
Could benefit the agent without harm?
Did anyone read Freud and then digest?

Feelings need the heat of blacksmith’s fires
Held inside until they find their form
An image worthy of our right desire

As well as rage, we should mistrust love too
Be backward in expression till more’s known
Or risk an avalanche of cruelty.

Take care of others, they are not our fools
From sacred meetings all mankind has grown
We misuse folk to test our worth and tools

Holding in the inner fires our wish
The blackness of the heart can turn to gold
No contradiction hides such sacredness

Take your love and in your arms enfold.
The future of the world is growing cold
We liked to have the choice for rage and death
Until we found the charred remains of bliss

No words

If we had no language,we’d be good
No communication but by sense
What devil conjured up the  demon word 
Made our dealings complex and intense?

No Tower of Babel, nothing but mud huts
Caressing,kissing,kicking,  real contact
Boxing,wrestling,killing the unjust
No law except the fist. no guilt.no wrack

No religion but  a sense of awe
The rising sun, the moon, the distant stars
Oh,bow before the Cedar and the Oak
Anything that is taller than we are

No  books, no news no media,no war
It makes me wonder what live words are for

Happiness was like a golden shawl

The pebbled beach  on which we walked at dawn
The sun was dancing  singing  stone to stone
The sea was pale as silk and gently ran
The tide was coming in, the day began

Why is my memory so deficient here?
I remember little but you near
I remember Portland Bill at dusk
The sea was wilder then with many thrusts

Happiness was like a golden shawl
A  world like Eden, man before the Fall
Today they say, illusion, I say, no
What matters  is where this insight makes you go

The fruits of meditation are its test
May we be generous, may our souls be blessed

The astral body

Tenderly I held him  took him in
As though we touched each other skin to skin
Dying is what everyone must do
Even when it splits the Me from You

What we took for granted  every day
Had its end like any mortal’s play
The length of life is just enough to lie
It’s not here forever, don’t you cry

We are on no plateau   but a slope
Slight at first, so we don’t  see and note
Gently we are led to where it ends
Beautiful and foolish  like ourselves

How can we be split when we are one?
In deep darkness dies the winter sun

Like babies

Sunday dinner. roasted  spuds and meat
Yorkshire puddings, gravy,pepper,salt
These are what the English like to eat
Though microwaves  may bring it to  a halt

Roly poly,syrup sponge and cream
Apple dumplings,marmalade on toast
Men adore hot puddings gently steamed
Though who will  have the time to be a host?

Now we buy sponge puddings ready made
Bread and butter custard ,raisins,hot
How did  women manage in past days?
Spotted Dick, brown sugar,that’s the lot

We seem to love the sweet yet we are rude
Still like babies, ignorant  and confused

The labour and the  hurt that life will cure

I found a pair of knickers on the chair
They must be mine,oh dear, that is bizarre
I did not take them off,I am quite sure
They make the entire room seem quite impure

Yet why are knickers   thought to  be like porn
When they adorn the  place where life is born?
If you  hung the washing out to dry
You might see an angel in the sky

Most of us traversed the  holy path
We suffered pain but hope it did not last
Mothers too have struggled and endured
The labour and the  hurt that life will cure

The simplest items, pretty, well designed
Tomorrow I shall hang them on the line

Fortunately, he cannot bite

I dream  at nights of my old friends
My husband and his loving hands
I dream of all the cats we  had
Alfred who slept on  the bed
He laid his head upon my foot
As I wrote  a poem of love
Jimmy who was small and black
She  bit my hand if I got up
I did not wish to wet the bed
She did  not understand  a word I said
The last night  here she gazed at me
I think she knew  she would  not be
Lucky was the nervous  one
Black and white , apartheid none
He liked my husband’s shoulder dear
He draped  himself  and lost all fear
Now the cats have all gone off
I am frightened by a cough
My husband comes to me at night
Fortunately he cannot bite
He  touches me with tenderness
Smiles and wished me,God Bless.
When I waken I feel lost
So I have to wear a watch
I seem to have no solid self
I feel nervous of an elf
I don’t mind an angel sweet
He could rub my aching feet
I will have no other man
They  are frightened of women
They don’t like to lose at Chess
They don’t like  to wash my dress
They will brush my winter coat
Never ask me what I wrote
I do not wish to anger men
They might shout  and bawl again
I think maybe I will turn gay
Ask a lady, what to say?
They may not understand my needs
Killing flowers to  help the weeds
Talking all the weary night
On the whole they’re parasites
Also they may menstruate
I can’t  give them seeds  to  take
So they will leave and  get a man
This is where it all began
Eve and Adam,God and man
Cain and Abel, apple flan
Noah and his Ark so fine
I wish I had one in the rain
I wonder when the world will end?
I am old so be my friend

Awesome  now means  medium at best

Rubbish is  just something we don’t need
Or something  not worth mending   we believe
Where nonsense may be foolish talk or jest
Or English humour at its lethal best

There is no Judge, it’s people who decide
Whether it is nonsense to deride
The  message of the media  online
Which like the Consecration, is divine

Awesome  now means  medium at best
That is, you have barely passed the test
What a lot of stupid people say
Appears on someone’s T shirt the same day

Nonsense can give pleasure,make us loose
Sometimes it can make us feel confused.

What is nonsense in the modern age?

To write nonsense one   must think it first
Then translate thought into a  little verse
But what is nonsense in the modern age?
The more I hear, the more I feel enraged.

Yet Lewis Carrol made a lot of notes
Jabberwocky is a  poem he wrote
Where  time was always brillig  in his day
And mimsy was the passion for the stray

And Alice went behind a looking glass
She got trapped and missed the IT class
When she saw the minus and the plus
She said, Oh, my,I thought it  merely glass

Mirrors are a vital  need  we  have
Especially when we lead a  dog to bath
Lacan and Winnicott each  state
The mother’s face will mirror  and emote

So if  your mood swings  are too much
It never helps to go inside a church
Try  a  little dose of opprobrium
The shock is less  if you have  got a chum

I wonder why  the  head is so attacked
Electric shocks, brain surgery from quacks
When massage with essential oil of rose
Curies hysteria and warms the running nose?

I  hate the doctors and their ignorance
I really  ought to  learn to love a  dance
For it’s the entire body that needs aid
It is for this that many people prayed

What is nonsense but a better world
Where babies laugh and little girls have curls?

 

 

 

 

O wounded heart

O wounded heart,I cannot heal your pain
I shall bear it  as it still  remains
But why should I forgive  the one who broke
My tender  heart, my love and all I wrote/

The pride of men, the  anger soon provoked
The  cruel emails and  the  words he spoke
Why can’t we be kinder, more aware
Yet God himself was  killed,  who can compare?

The sadist drawn to those  who seem less strong
Will find  a dozen reasons  to do wrong
They  know their own pain not  the pain they cause
Some will kill  despising land and law

We  choose life despite these cruel  acts  
We ‘ll do well if we can live with tact

The more we hide

More defences make us feel more pain
As if by building walls we  make more real
The  fantasies  we’ve formed in our own brain

The murderers and the thieves all know our name
They  watch our door to enter and to steal
More defences make us feel more pain

We need a  lock or two but more won’t gain
The peace of mind, the peace we wish to feel
Not  fantasies  we’ve formed in our own brain

Ten locks on a front door might break the frame
Send the message we’re well heeled
More defences make us feel more pain

The more we fear, the more  fear we obtain,
The world is our perception ,it seems real
Not  fantasies  we’ve formed in our own brain

The less we try, the less we learn  to feel
The more we hide  more  poignant is our shield
More defences make us feel more pain
Those little  fantasies  we’ve grown in our own brains

 

 

What nonsense

Writing nonsense is extremely hard
Writing rubbish verses can annoy
Nonsense has some style, some meaning too
Gyre and gimble till the spies  find you

Read aloud it makes me laugh and cry
Borogroves are woods where mancipes die
Wabe is like  the sea, its rappling  gorm
Please put  your wrong name upon  a form

Why not  stroke A Rest for Oxford now
Lie down in a stunt without a cow
The rivers   bring  down water from  the  hills
Why God put the springs there, we can’t tell

Read a little Alice for your heart
Through the mirror is the wiser part