Category: poetry

A crack, a loud smack

I know that's how death will come, 
Suddenly flying into another orbit when I am photographing flowers
 It's not a gentle transition.
 No-one will know where I've gone. 
One step wrong and I'm off the high wire
 And plunging into the no safety net.
 Flying for a while 
Jumping into hyperspace,spinning electrons 
Startle my wide eyes. 
Transiting the new black sun 
I'm on a double gold helix, 
Spider on her web,
 Knitting furiously
 Into the future heaven on gossamer wings. 
Butterfly goodbye,
I'm off to see the stars.
 And the black holes.
No one will come with me.
 I'm shaking off,evaporating into mist.
 I'm a flying saucer on a circus mission.
 I can't say no to a new invitation. 
Make it fast and break with tradition.
 Time is passing smoothly till that break In the music,
I've been transmuted into a different key 
someone else will play me on their violin
 I'm a tune, I'm a thought, I'm a whisper in your vision. 
Goodbye,darling.
I'm under orders Ready to leave for my performance
 On the electric carpet.
 Death dancing to a tune on a violoncello,
 Arpeggionne sonata 
I'm playing your words upside down
 In a new foreign translation,
 Accompanied by solo artists,ice cracking 
I'm going in.
It's too sudden. 
I'm flying. 
Spinning faster to amuse the clowns, 
too many ups and no downs. 
I'm going right out of orbit
 I've broken the pull of gravity,
 And fly with pure equanimity
 Into my future life,
 I'm off at some moment
An instant,a crack,a loud smack
That was me passing

v

The liturgy of the birds

The force and beauty of the wild North Sea

The coast of Norfolk where we loved to be

The grief that rips the heart out from its cave

Throws it on the sea to ride the waves

The loss of you and love and all it means

With my inner eye I see these  scenes

The snow that fell on Cromer Easter Day

The lifeboat on the pier, the words to say

Ancient churches guard the holy space

And everything is right and in its place.

Eagles do not live here, but the birds

  Sing  from yellow gorse and know the words

What names might small birds  call us as they  watch?

The world is re created in a snatch.

The word gorse rhymes with norse

In 865 Ivan the Boneless a Viking  invaded East Anglia His army wintered in Thetford forest before heading North where they eventually conquered York

The birds singing in the yellow gorse is a reality but it’s also reminder of the history which the birds may remember more than the humans.

Also because the birds are singing for joy and they know the words it is akin to a liturgical offering

It’s not only humans who can praise. The way that the world is at the moment it may be hard for us to do that

Rhythm, meter, movement are our guides

Actors are the poets of the real.
They mould the air with bodily appeal
The body is the soul  through which we feel
Imprisoned bodies kill the soul ideal.

Dancers fuse with music stretching air.
They push and pull the freedoms that  live there
They play with Newton’s laws as they change gear
The bodies bend and flow with utter zeal.

Singers touch us deeply to the core.
As we listen with  our shrunken hearts  so sore
We  will cry out, oh, more,oh, more , yes, more.
As deep into our inner self ,they gore.

In every aspect of our human lives
Rhythm, meter, movement are our guides

They’ve offered me a job dry cleaning Hell

Hypothermia made me write so well
The pen froze to my hand and would not leave
They’ve offered me a job dry cleaning Hell

Just in case my head should start to swell
I made myself a hat from dried brown leaves
Hypothermia made me write real well

The government is giving us free bells
So they will ring whenever we’re deceived
They’ve offered me a job dry cleaning Hell

Hell is very fiery but with gel
I can get it clean from all disease
Hypothermia made me write,oh very well

I tell a lie, the cold invades my cells
I can’t clean out a bottle in a breeze
They’ve offered me a job dry cleaning Hell

My husband is asthmatic, he can wheeze
He has inhalers as his lungs will tease
Hypothermia made me write so well

They’ve offered me a column, what the hell

Five Reasons Why We Need Poetry in Schools | Edutopia

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
    The earth, and every common sight,
            To me did seem
    Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.          5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
        Turn wheresoe’er I may,
            By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

William  Wordsworth wrote the  poem above

Five Reasons Why We Need Poetry in Schools | Edutopia.

photo1043_001

The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written i...
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse and paragraphs, not in lines or stanzas. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I believe it’s very good to learn poetry by heart;I was lucky to study modern poetry in school.Poetry can express feelings and knowledge that ordinary language cannot.

I found out after writing some poetry myself that it made reading poetry much easier.So I recommend writing poetry even if it’s terrible because you learn so much and it opens a door into a new world

I love the Ode by Wordsworth.I never tried to learn it.It learned me!

Related articles

Lest we should forget

Though the sky glows gold
There’s something cold about it
A hint of silver.

Before midsummer
A hint of autumnal dark
Lest we should forget.

Now a wind blows up
The sky is deep pink-blue mauve
And the leaves are dark

A threat or warning.
Don’t miss those important days
When life slips away

Now the sun has gone
A moment before night falls
I send all my love.

But   out in Warsaw
The last train for Moscow leaves
Ghetto life begins

Time is a circle
Elena will not die yet
In the promised land

 

The art of doing nothing

The art of doing nothing’s hard to learn
To sit and daydream till we get new thoughts
It’s immoral, say the Puritans reformed

Harder to accept the need to mourn
So many ancient losses strip our hearts.
The art of doing nothing’s hard to learn

The feelings  that seemed hardest to be borne
We could have looked for maps or sought out charts
It’s immoral to seek help  so we’ve been told

Here we weep when our skinned hearts are torn
We fear we may have forfeited love’s balm
The art of doing nothing’s hard to learn

We only know our self when love is born
In another’s eyes we find our calm
Reject the harshness of old Luther’s forms

Fear not death, for there are strong wide arms
God is not a monster who wills harm
The art of doing nothing will prepare
For when we meet one day his welcome stare

Then I shall upend causality

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The image was made by Katherine

When true love’s gone and doom hangs overhead
When life runs like a sewer to the sea
Then shall I take new lovers to my bed.
And with their carnal touch consoled be?

When my love lies and breaks my woman’s 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 loves lie and wreck all loyalty.
When puzzlement makes all the world seem mad.
Then I shall upend causality
And let myself do deeds which make folk glad.

For I have love’s own child inside my soul
I shall care for her until she is grown

· Daddy’s coming home

At three o’clock, we ran across the park
Then up the Wigan Road, we children roamed
Past the houses and along the fields
Looking for our daddy coming home
Looking for our daddy coming home.

I was only  two or three  at most
We passed our church and saw the Pope in Rome
We climbed a fence and walked by fields of wheat
Looking for our daddy coming home
Looking for our daddy coming home.

From the distance came a tall thin man
A ladder on his shoulder, hair well combed
A bucket full of paints and all his tools
Look, Paul, is that daddy coming home?
Bernard, I think daddy’s coming home!

A look of shock, a smile, a cry, my loves!
He rushed towards us, happy and transformed
What about your mammy does she know?
Yes, yes, yes it’s daddy coming home
Yes, yes, yes, it’s daddy coming home.

Oh,Mammy had no idea   of  it at all
She thought we were just playing by the wall
Children were much bolder and more free
 But Daddy  went to Heaven after that
Mam was   so depressed   she killed the cat

 

Happy in the golden fields  of joy
Happy with no money  with few toys
 Daddy never walked that road  for long
I missed him so I  cut   off my own tongue

Cobblestones and weeds

DandelionClocks

Image by Mike Flemming.Copyright,

Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds
In the little street we children played
While nature fought back, spreading out wild seeds

Old women reached for grace with rosary beads
When I call. I don’t know what to say
Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds

Neighbours borrowed eggs and helped in need
What was my entire world has shrunk, decayed
Still nature fights back, flinging out wild seeds

The cobbles have been tarmacked till aggrieved
Here we once enjoyed school holidays
Cracks for insects,cobbles,gutters,weeds

Girls played with doll’s prams,boys disagreed
All the world was here, where’s left today?
While nature blackened, blasting out her seeds

Where are mother,father,oh dismay
I am old and they lie in the clay
Cracks in pavements,cobbles,gutters,weeds

Nature acts still, spreads out flying seeds

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Our conjoined self, dismembered, broke apart
Give me courage on the journey slow

In good times , we may lose our self in flow
To be self-conscious makes shame rule my heart
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Do we have no self when partners die?
Bewildered, can I find the way to start
Give me courage on the journey slow

Where is my best path to discover
The way to mend a self, holed by grief’s darts?
Without your gaze, I’m nobody I know

Like a ship strikes rocks deep down below
I risk getting hit without some charts
Give me courage on the journey slow

Will I know myself when new betrothed
To mirrors unfamiliar to me old?
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Give me courage in the darkness gross.

Underground

On a whim I went to Downing Street
They charged me fifty pounds for both my feet
Then  no-one anwered when  I rang the bell
I looked in through a hole, the penny fell

I claim I saw the tide was coming in
Riding high with whales, oh they were thin
What next , a  golden galaxy implodes
Stars shoot out like sparks  from other worlds

Jonah rode a whale to London Town
Still  in shock, he   did not hear a sound
All tongues will  dry until we see the flames
The burning bush, the prophecy, the Name

For  Sophocles I  spent a million  pounds
My credit card’s still bouncing underground

He is alive

In my dream, I gave birth to a child
The doctor said that he would die quite soon
My feelings overwhelming made me wild

The Nazi doctor threw him on a pile
I lay nearby unmoving as I keened
In my dream,I gave birth to a child

A week passed by,I knew that death beguiled
Frozen lips made no sound, song or tune
My feelings overwhelming made me wild

I had to rise and say my black goodbye.
My baby with the others;horror loomed
In my dream I gave birth to a child

I picked him up , when suddenly he smiled
I held him to my breast, my songs I crooned
My feelings overwhelming drove me wild

I had to carry him, the landscape gloom
A desert grey aand rocky like some moon
In my dream I gave birth to a child

In terror I had walked yet love consoled

Anne Lamott’s writing tips

rosaalchemyst2019https://writingcooperative.com/anne-lamotts-top-13-writing-tips-7577eb5d5c24

 

8. Writing is fueled by hard work rather than innate talent.

“I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts…For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” -Anne Lamott

Lamott’s line about “shitty first drafts” has gotten a lot of airtime in the writing community. Many writers seem to use it as a rallying cry.

To me, this quote is a great reminder of the fact that authorship is not a land of “haves” and “have-nots.” The world population has not been divided into capable writers and hopeless wannabes.

If even the best writers in the world struggle to write beautiful prose, we know that writing is a learned craft — one in which we can all improve over time.

We earn the blessing of the Muse by putting in writing time — not by being born with a golden ink pen in our hand.

Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

A day with my own self, such peaceful hours
The inner seas make music as they roll
And in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

The rain comes down in cold but gentle showers
Desiring  to  give moisture to all souls
A symbol of  the value of quiet hours

In Northern hills we looked for  Durham owls
They hunt by day to keep their bodies whole
While in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

My loved one was a native of those towers
Highcliff Nab and Hasty Bank  called home
My days with him a-wandering there for hours

As he died , deep in my heart I howled
I held his hands, remembered , paid the toll
While in the ground the worms digest  the sour

Lying in the heather  we had roamed 
May God  have mercy on his  homing soul
Now I enjoy   in reverie our hours
Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

 

 

 

Oh, gentle Light

I ‘ll try to get it right for one more time
You did not converse with me in words
You were simply present in your Light

Nowhere did I feel your power and might
You were no eagle, but a strong wild bird
I ‘ll try to get it right just one more time.

Who made our language with its subtle rhymes?
The ancient people had their well trained Scribes
You were always there,oh gentle Light

You gave me warmth, you changed my too fixed sight
A comforter , a Spirit, how describe?
I ‘ll try to get it right a final time.

The agony inside me lost its bite
I wanted to go on, to be alive
You do not always show your golden Light

We do not know when we at last arrive
We do not reach this meeting place by strife
I ‘ve tried to get it right this final time
I never saw such Gold until that night

THE MEMORY LASTS

midsummer days evoke the trancelike past
where children played in joyous, daisied fields
with buttercups so bright the memory lasts
a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.

those stones and leaves and many coloured flowers
were gathered into images that glow
yet later we forget those treasured hours
when for a while we lived in life’s deep flow

we did not look and see,but felt at one
we lived as did the birds high in the trees
now we write , experiencing has gone
we cannot live like flowers filled with bright bees

to lose ourselves in nature is a joy
which to our adult selves we must restore

Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

A day with my own self, such peaceful hours
The inner seas make music as they roll
And in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

The rain comes down in cold but gentle showers
Desiring  to  give moisture to all souls
A symbol of  the value of quiet hours

In Northern hills we looked for  Durham owls
They hunt by day to keep their bodies whole
While in the ground the worms air roots of flowers

My loved one was a native of those towers
Highcliff Nab and Hasty Bank  called home
My days with him a-wandering there for hours

As he died , deep in my heart I howled
I held his hands, remembered , paid the toll
While in the ground the worms digest  the sour

Lying in the heather  we had roamed 
May God  have mercy on his  homing soul
Now I enjoy   in reverie our hours
Deep in the ground the worms  drowse mixed with flowers

 

 

 

The northern hills

I wish I were in Arkengarth again

The fierceness of the sheep, the ancient dale.

I want to be with you and it will  rain

I want the pale gold sun, I want the gales.

The earthen privy with  its own two seats

The herbs and flowers growing all around.

The music in the pub, its⁰ Northern beat

It’s good to set the feet on Northern ground.

We went across the Pennines in the car.

The Western side is fiercer in its threat

Here we are in Kendal with its stone

Where’s Penrith with Ullswater beside?

I’d like to sail by steamer waterborne

I’d like to see  Helvellyn, but not stride

Here I am in London in the sun What is ending here up there began.

Before my husband died he kept wanting to see the sea or the northern hills and could not be comforted.

He had a very peaceful ending despite that lack

Anne Lamott’s writing tips

rosaalchemyst2019https://writingcooperative.com/anne-lamotts-top-13-writing-tips-7577eb5d5c24

 

8. Writing is fueled by hard work rather than innate talent.

“I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts…For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” -Anne Lamott

Lamott’s line about “shitty first drafts” has gotten a lot of airtime in the writing community. Many writers seem to use it as a rallying cry.

To me, this quote is a great reminder of the fact that authorship is not a land of “haves” and “have-nots.” The world population has not been divided into capable writers and hopeless wannabes.

If even the best writers in the world struggle to write beautiful prose, we know that writing is a learned craft — one in which we can all improve over time.

We earn the blessing of the Muse by putting in writing time — not by being born with a golden ink pen in our hand.

A crack, a loud smack

I know that's how death will come, 
Suddenly flying into another orbit when I am photographing flowers
 It's not a gentle transition.
 No-one will know where I've gone. 
One step wrong and I'm off the high wire
 And plunging into the no safety net.
 Flying for a while 
Jumping into hyperspace,spinning electrons 
Startle my wide eyes. 
Transiting the new black sun 
I'm on a double gold helix, 
Spider on her web,
 Knitting furiously
 Into the future heaven on gossamer wings. 
Butterfly goodbye,
I'm off to see the stars.
 And the black holes.
No one will come with me.
 I'm shaking off,evaporating into mist.
 I'm a flying saucer on a circus mission.
 I can't say no to a new invitation. 
Make it fast and break with tradition.
 Time is passing smoothly till that break In the music,
I've been transmuted into a different key 
someone else will play me on their violin
 I'm a tune, I'm a thought, I'm a whisper in your vision. 
Goodbye,darling.
I'm under orders Ready to leave for my performance
 On the electric carpet.
 Death dancing to a tune on a violoncello,
 Arpeggionne sonata 
I'm playing your words upside down
 In a new foreign translation,
 Accompanied by solo artists,ice cracking 
I'm going in.
It's too sudden. 
I'm flying. 
Spinning faster to amuse the clowns, 
too many ups and no downs. 
I'm going right out of orbit
 I've broken the pull of gravity,
 And fly with pure equanimity
 Into my future life,
 I'm off at some moment
An instant,a crack,a loud smack
That was me passing

v

Peace

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4360438_f260

When wanderings take my restless mind

To places peace can never find,

When imaginations linked to fear

Push tranquillity away.

To my green garden I must go

And let my mind and thoughts go slow.

I look up at maples in the breeze,

See sunlight dappled through red leaves.

I see the apples hanging down

And blackbirds peck them on the ground.

I see the hawthorn berries ripe

Upon the hedge in gold sunlight.

And then my soul is brought to earth

Peacefulness is given birth

I feel at one with nature green,

And all that is just now unseen

So back to everyday routines

Without “what for?” and “might have beens”

All is well and shall be so

Wherever we may chance to go.

A white petal

May Sunday again;
Hailstones rush sideways,
striking the windows
with small fierce blows.
In the gaps between
two white butterflies zig zag
like motorized wild flowers;
One colour,two forms. I see now
two aspects of Nature:
hard,destructive,stern;
frail and delicate.
Both are coloured the same white.
Hard to tell sometimes which we are seeing
But we can all distinguish between a gentle touch
and a bitter blow.
As the day dips into night my heart falls too.
In these dreams I look for the lost
in the snowy steppes and the ices of the heart.
A white petal falls.
Cherry trees bloom again

Russia in love.

Dream like memories

Hollyhocks,delphinium and phlox
Foxgloves,cat mint, nettles,near by docks
The blind man breathed in air full of wild scent
His daughted named the colours now absent

High up on the Kentish cliffs we sat
Capel-le -Ferne I found it on a map
We listened to this girl, we did not speak
Absorbing by our senses,proud and meek

Now I recollect the details very well
In those dream like memories I dwell
Snapdragons growing just beside my chair
I smell the scent as if I were still there

I may be blinded by the tears of loss
But I remember, love, our happiness

Marbles

Rolling marbles made of coloured glass  
Skipping rope and learning ancient rhymes
Filling inkwells , polishing the brass
With dip-in pens we  wrote  upon the lines

Licking out the bowl where cakes were mixed
Running wild with brothers  and their  friends
Wonder at those fireworks Daddy fixed
Catherine wheels  rotating, transcendent

Mother  smiling in her   flowery dress
Little rocking chairs  where we placed dolls
Daddy saying,Good night and God Bless
Teddies with no fur left, ask our Paul

Little sisters, brothers’ cricket balls
Hot coal fires where kettles used to boil
Old gas cookers, scabbed knees from our falls
Fuses blowing, making light bulbs   fail

In our bed , we whispered little tales
In the morning  feeling warm and dazed 
Love was  in the air, the baby wailed
Dad  so pleased with Mother’s  happy face

I see the cobblestones  all hot with sun
The Street Party , the Coronation

Love will need no trick

In my despair I felt that I was stuck
Paralysed by  grief and guilt I failed
By the end I had tried every trick

From prayer unthought to deeps of logic black
My  life, my engine ,juddered off the  rails
I hated God and of “his” Church was  sick

Starving  and alone I was in shock
The death of one I loved   had made me frail
By the end I had tried every trick


I felt  Love’s arms around me, death was blocked
I knew   this goodness,  why else would I wail?
I   thought I hated God  but Love had struck

Warm and golden light  that  did me hold
Where are you now when Evil has grown bold?
Kind despair  that  made me long time sit
By the end I learned Love needs no trick

A crack, a loud smack

I know that's how death will come, 
Suddenly flying into another orbit when I am photographing flowers
 It's not a gentle transition.
 No-one will know where I've gone. 
One step wrong and I'm off the high wire
 And plunging into the no safety net.
 Flying for a while 
Jumping into hyperspace,spinning electrons 
Startle my wide eyes. 
Transiting the new black sun 
I'm on a double gold helix, 
Spider on her web,
 Knitting furiously
 Into the future heaven on gossamer wings. 
Butterfly goodbye,
I'm off to see the stars.
 And the black holes.
No one will come with me.
 I'm shaking off,evaporating into mist.
 I'm a flying saucer on a circus mission.
 I can't say no to a new invitation. 
Make it fast and break with tradition.
 Time is passing smoothly till that break In the music,
I've been transmuted into a different key 
someone else will play me on their violin
 I'm a tune, I'm a thought, I'm a whisper in your vision. 
Goodbye,darling.
I'm under orders Ready to leave for my performance
 On the electric carpet.
 Death dancing to a tune on a violoncello,
 Arpeggionne sonata 
I'm playing your words upside down
 In a new foreign translation,
 Accompanied by solo artists,ice cracking 
I'm going in.
It's too sudden. 
I'm flying. 
Spinning faster to amuse the clowns, 
too many ups and no downs. 
I'm going right out of orbit
 I've broken the pull of gravity,
 And fly with pure equanimity
 Into my future life,
 I'm off at some moment
An instant,a crack,a loud smack
That was me passing

v

Wild Geese

Leaves have gone so suddenly
Small birds float on the wind
Like boats astride a choppy sea.
Their swaying soothes my mind.

Wild geese fly past at dusk again,
They head towards the North.
The holly berries glow in sun,
Nature death and birth.

I gaze intently at the sky,
The clouds hang dark and low.
If I too were a wild goose
I’d know which way to go

But I am left with only words
To find my destination.
Yet words do carry down to us
Wisdom from past generations

We use old words in unique ways.
We structure them to form
A new design not seen before
A new sentence is born

I send my words with love to you
I hope you safely catch them.
Give me answers from your heart
And I’ll do my best to match them.

Our Father

Our Father,Stars in Heaven,
Spell out thy Great Name.
Thy wisdom comes
And Angels’ sums
Add up our human pain.
Thy love is felt,
Though we live in doubt
About the human game.
Give us delay
On bankers pay,
And forgive us our lackluster efforts
As we forgive those who lack real involvement with us,
And guide us into a Demonstration
To make plain to the Nation
The evil done to the Poor,
The Disabled,the Mentally Ill,
And their Carers.
For Thine is the Trial
At the Hour of the Bible Story
We hope but are nervous.Amen

The pillars of the Western Mind have cracked

The end of values, kindness, earned respect
The loss of wisdom,history and truth
The pillars of democracy are cracked.

The centre of the heart,who can protect?
Conspiracy and madness unseat proof
An end of values, kindness, earned respect

Violence is admired though lives are wrecked
The lasting triumph of the folk uncouth
The pillars of the Western Mind have cracked

Their minds unfurnished seem bereft of tact
They tread on others words like horses’ hooves
The end of values, kindness, earned respect

How can such opponents make a pact?
The calculating crucify our youth
The pillars of the Western Mind have cracked


Yet Western Empire builders had no ruth
They tortured those they conquered group by group
On such ground just madmen earn respect
The altars of the Western Mind have cracked