Category: poetry

Harass and intrude

The day is passing as our days must do

The sun  shines on the holly  berries bright

Soon it will be time for me and you.

We must accept the dying of the light.

To fight is not what nature needs

Surrender is the  better way to go.

The cat lies hidden in the thickest  weeds.

For they have knowledge we folk do not know

At times in life, we fight so many foes

Threats and needs harass  and intrude

And as we age we observe highs and lows

In our free time, we suffer and we brood.

Consciousness gives rise to  anguished hearts

Yet into death we go and thought departs

For dreams can work in harmony with will

Autumn 2013 008

I only began to write sonnets a few months ago.I was afraid to try as I imagined it was very hard,but eventually I wanted to try.I sometimes do find it difficult but I am enjoying it now.I was reading a book by Leslie Farber called,The Ways of the Will.In this he says that anxiety neurosis is caused by, “trying to will what cannot be willed.”I found that idea fascinating.

We can make ourselves lie down,but we cannot sleep by will power.

We can sit at a desk all day but cannot will ourselves to get inspiration.

I am sure you can think of many examples yourselves.So we need will sometimes but also we need to allow things to happen;we are not always in control.. we cannot be but we wish to be.

Think of our brains and bodies… it’s all outside our control…as is most of the Universe,God and all… despite our technology and science.

IMG_20130820_072103 (2)

The daydream is despised by many folk
who feel that willpower is the better way.
Yet daydreams often bring creative thoughts
and teach us what to do and what to say.

I fear it is the modern curse to will,
When will cannot achieve the wanted end.
And trying too hard is effort and may kill,
where reverie and dream can make us mend
.

The emptiness of mind is too much feared
As if we do not trust in God nor man.
Yes,take the tiller, and with perception steer…
We do the little that we should and can.

For dreams can work in harmony with will,
As long as we can make our minds quite still.

From the News

Whatever evil  humankind may do,

The sun will rise and shine  on  one and all.

Mercy ,grace and love are spread  anew

As apples ripen and the  sweet birds call.

What is the mystery of the world we know;

That God looks with dispassion on us all?

And what his  wondrous virtues are to show

When  wolves attack and murder does appall.

Will heaven compensate the refugees

Who starve in camps  when money is withheld.

From those who gave us prophets and great seers

We see  confusion,fear  then ethics felled.

 So often we are blind to wider views

And  get mere  entertainment from  the News

Than the song of birds,he had the words

He ‘d held me in his arms and said,
what I had never read,
That life is more than learned discourse.
So as he spoke, I watched his face
And his rich dark eyes;of course
His eyes gave out such natural force
More strong and subtle than the song of birds.
Yes,almost like a poet’s words
In how he moved me like no other man;
No matter how they think they can,
They lose the step and do not dance
And never ever chance
A leap when they might lift me high
Above their head. I’d want to fly.
Yes,the form and feeling give an extra note
To express those feelings more remote…..
We do not need to speak or write
We have both touch and our eye sight.
And yet our human discourse is a need
An anchor,lest the current’s speed
Should crash us down on Coniston,
And we’d be gone.
Just write it down
A verb ,a noun..
A string of sighs,our mouths,our eyes.
A paragraph that never dies,
within your finger tips and cries
For pen and paper and my wish to save
Some part of you,some heart some art

far beyond your grave.

Your gaze.

My days

Durham owl

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.

Prickles

Butterflies can  light upon a rose

And sparrows miss the prickly holly leaf

So   thorns deter most  larger, useless foes

And safety bring to birds instead of grief.

The butterfly is symbol of the power

That weakness has in entering sacred ground.

A  butterfly can fly through hail stormed bowers

His wings send waves across the world by sound.

A cat too has its claws as well as fur

Yet they  do have a a modicum of choice.

For those of us for whom they have a care

Claws are held ; mioaws  or purrs given voice.

Am I a holly tree or  fragrant rose?

Am I the cat who may unsheath her claws?

Old roses and their thorns

Could  any be more frenemial then a rose

For as we reach to sniff its fragrant scent

It digs its thorns into  our hands and clothes

And tetanus is a menace where we’re rent.

And yet this flower is   judged to be the queen,

As fragrantly it opens in the sun.

And for a while, we enjoy what we’re seeing

Until its time and purposes are done.

May it be so for people whom we know?

The more they grace, more the harm  that’s done.

Attracted by a sweet and charming glow

Our heart  is torn and we then  beauty  shun .

And yet we would not banish flowers like these.

The pain is offset by the ways they please.

PS I invented the word frenemial based on the word frenemy which I posted on yesterday

Different points of view

The old red wall is dressed in stems of wood

In wintertime, we see the ancient bricks.

But in the springtime come the flower buds.

We see no more of  Jack Frost and his tricks.

Which vision is the true one, we may ask

Just as with the faces we each show.

But is there any virtue in that task

Reality is impossible to know.

Each perspective gives a vision new.

The more we see , the more we realize.

Other cultures have a different view.

The argument is futile and unwise.

As when and where we stand gives us our view.

l perceive life differently than you

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

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

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

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

The Seasons

The season alters imperceptibly;

No  point  exact which demonstrates  the turn.

Yet soon come changes which our eyes can see

Leaves dry and crack, the acers seem to burn.

And so it is with human beings too.

Each day our loved one looks the same to us

And yet the body alters like leaves do.

Small changes made with neither noise nor  fuss.

We change into  transparent ghosts of self

Thus totter down the avenue of life

Soon death approaches with  its common stealth.

And separates  the husband  and the wife.

In winter all is black and we despair

Yet  deep in earth,worms  silently repair

Translated into melody and song

My faults are now the opposite of sin.

For I was taught that women  never swore.

Yet is this  but a private world I’m in,

Where women love and  men, at least ,adore?

No language Anglo-Saxon did we  hear

Ensuring we thought  not what “fuck” might mean.

Was it related to good luck yet  freer?

My mind throws up a lark in moorland  scene

The man who was my father greatly loved;

And  often sang us into sleep and dreams.

But sadly from this life he was removed.

Leaving   me accursed  wtrh blocked out screams .

Today I tell my tale in my  own tongue

Translated into melody and song

Biting

77be5-photo0383An apple bit by woman caused our grief

So ordinary yet an act of will.

To  think if she had merely bit the leaf

Sweet  holiness would surround each human still.

When Sylvia  bit  Ted  Hughes upon his cheek

She marked him for her future appetites.

Consciously she   looked for  kind love  sweet

But marked him more for  evil  in her rite.

Jonah was not bitten by the whale

Which let him hide inside her womb-like form

And so he was allowed in her to sail

Until his calling  hearkened him go home.

Biting wit and words can also cause much grief,

As caterpillars feast upon a  leaf..

Accepting that perfection is remote,

What love and friendship must at least entail

Are boundaries both elastic and firm.

Yet even that is but a mere detail

Less subtle is the need to do .no harm

For in the flush of youthful spirits strong

We do not like to know that all love fades

For when it does we lovers may do wrong

To wickedness we may find we’ve paid

And with the stone faced demons we belong.

Thus friendship love and joy involve the will

To take the other as she comes to be

For such allowing there’s a constant bill

Acknowledging such truth we’ll  surely see.

Accepting that perfection is remote,

We’ll play our tunes and suffer every note

Love knows what to do

Some folk are made of rubber

Some folk are made of glass

And when the stormy winds blow

Rubber lets them pass.

Bela Bartok using a gramaphone to record folk ...
Bela Bartok using a gramaphone to record folk songs sung by Czech peasants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

i

Some folk have eyes like water

Some folk have eyes like ice.

And when we’re introduced

We do not look there twice.

Some folk have learned to use us

Some folk give us respect.

With those who will not

Old Town School of Folk Music
Old Town School of Folk Music (Photo credit: life is good (pete))

see us

We cannot  connect.

Some folk where born  to sunshine

Some folk were born to storm

And fears imagined in the mind

Can cause such dreadful harm

Oh,hold me to your bosom

Oh.hold me close to you

Some folk were made to hate and fear

But love knows what to do

Related articles

If this be love then

If this be love,then let me have your hate.

If speak you  true then I prefer your lies.

For this, my heart, your message comes too late.

As  now my need is  for the  thoughtful  wise.

If this be marriage,let me have divorce.

If this be holy,  hasten I to  hell..

For love comes in its time without such force.

And of its message ẃho am I to tell?

If this be love,then let me dwell alone.

If this be love, I ‘ll be forever chaste.

Your  love flew like a brick.that broke my bones

The love that lays your world and mine to waste

.

Love can shake us to our inner core.

Hence of your love I wish to hear no more

Cherry tree branches

Cracks in the pavement
Look like rivers approaching
an estuary.

Natural beauty,
the shapes and forms wandering,
sanctifies the road.

Cherry trees branches,
A wide canopy of leaves,
Blossom blows away

Sung geometry,
held still and made eternal,
Catches at my throat.

To you who are not here

How like a prison is my cubicle
How wary is  my body on this chair.
How still my heart and yet how strangely fickle.
How fast it flies to you who are not here.

How elegant your letters and your thoughts
How gentle was your touch upon my throat.
And yet you killed  my words and all the sense  I brought
You loved me not,but like a wasp did gloat

As in this mental jail I'm  tightly  trapped,
I'll use my time to write and make my prayer.
Perhaps my mind can extricate a map..
From which I'll plot the route to get away.

The prisons which seem external are inside
Yet in such captive grief so many  die.

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I love my own image

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

I love to look into a mirror

My face glows with  bright yellow skincream

I love my own image

Even  time ravaged

I wonder when I’ll be made Queen.

I  bought some shapeware for fat women

As my  round  bits are  all falling down

Now my bum  protrubes off the cuff;

And  my  breasts  look like a stiff ruff

I bought chafeless  cycling shorts last week

And went for a ride in the woods.

The gynaecologist saw  my shorts

She  made sardonic remarks.

So my cheeks are all  reddened with blood.

She told  me that I’ve got anaemia

Yet my irony  level is high.

There are 400  different types

Pernicious sounds just  right.

I must go and tell my old Guy

My dead husband does not know nothing

He’s in the front room in a bag.

i had him cremated

Rght after we mated.

So now I’m a lonely old hag.

i could have got married to a doctor

And lived in a big detached house

Yet though he loved me so much

I left him in the lurch.

I now live with the church mouse.

P1000261

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A map’s a guide to find a world

A map's a guide to find the world

Knitted by angels,plain or pearled.

Yet though you need a map as guide,

Keep your own eyes open wide.


I spent a year caught in a map

Until I found a big enough gap

I crawled out through this exit slit,

So here I am,like some half wit.


Words can act like heroin,

You live so high,where I have been.

But onto earth I gladly fall.

The air, the sun, the rain, is all.


My senses are my lovers long-

My ears,my eyes,my skin my tongue.

The winds caress my naked flesh,

To dwell on earth is all I wish.


I'll live with mice and birds and plants,

I'll share my food with miscreants

I'll keep my words inside a tin,

And only,now and then,go in.


I'll live with cats and spiders three.

And like a wild flower grow quite free.

I' ll give my words to those who hear,

And eventually I'll disappear


Earth to earth then ash to ash

When soaked with rain I shall disperse.

My atoms wing like butterflies,

And to the Flower I'll fly,disguised

Missing

I ‘m missing him like we miss  that lost tooth till the gum heals.
I ‘ve been in the dentist’s chair
Had the anaesthetic but  still  felt the tug  and force.
And the dentist yelled,look at this,
I got it all out in one
You see,the root was very twisted and tangled
I told him,take it away.
I’m missing my other because his absence makes a hole
like that bloody hollow in your jaw but in the soul.
Came home alone from the clinic
Felt that  soul hole.The first time
when he wasn’t here.
God doesn’t do anaesthesia, just burns the bush
I’m missing him because he needed me so much
Now nobody needs me nor notices if I am here except Alfred
Or if I fall over in the garden,will I die and rot down to the earth before
my neighbour recalls he’s not seen me for three weeks.Or maybe five.
I miss J the way you’d miss your flesh
if someone shot you with a rifle and made a tunnel through your body;
took out a lump which would hurtle away and fall to earth.
I’m missing his honey smell.
the knowledge,the feeling  he had of me.
The hole in my space is almost tangible
in this room.
I wake up and wonder what he’d like to eat today.
But the dead don’t eat at our tables do they?
I remember I  am alone at the table and I can eat whatever I like.
Oh,love,why did you down so fast?When you were the one,solid I leaned on.You were my man and you are gone

We don’t know ourselves

Photo0781Oh how I long,I long  to meet with you

Beside the lilac filled with honey dew.

I’d hold you gently in my arms and say

You are me and I’m in love today.

Where is the wickedness in l oving all our self?

Even in the night and when it’s done with stealth?

I dream, I speak and understand myself

Enriched forever with this new and  precious wealth

And then I’ll love my neighbour if he’s very kind

And if he has a free and open mind.

For if we love ourselves we are relaxed

And so we need to make no cold attacks.

was in fragments lying on the ground

Until these bits a passing angel found

I was put into a kiln to bake

Thus now I am a brick or maybe a sponge-cake.

Let’s enjoy our humour as we come and go

And as the laughter starts yet tears may flow.

For I was you and you were me not long ago

Accept our losses as we onward flow…

The river runs,the clouds blow by

The heavens open yet my mouth is dry.

Don’t ask a question that begins with why.

Remember just we live and then we die.

Oh,send me roses and your orchids wild

I have loved flowers since I was a child

So when I die, let them die too

First covering me in scent and fragrant dew.

To mystery and darkness we are sent at last

As nightfall comes and our day has passed.

To dreams of heaven and the long ago

When Eden was on earth and gentle winds did blow

A sentence is heard,

Is the mind quite distinct from the brain?

I ask myself over again.

But answer comes not

To this London hot spot….

I avoid metaphysics in vain

We need to boot up our  own brains.

Limericks can take out  some strain.

Write a cute line

Or a sentence divine..

Then  keep writing   until  you’ve no pain

THOUGHTS

WORDS ARE LIKE BEADS ON A CHAIN

1.
Words are like beads on a chain

Alone they can’t take any strain.

But joined up in gold

A sentence can mold

A prayer is repeated again.

2

Words cluster in larger groups

Waiting for writers to stoop..

Then instead of one word

A sentence is heard,

Some call this poetry soup.

3.

Professors do not create words,

which from the unconscious are lured

They only critique

What you and I speak.

After conversing and writing,that’s third.

In this the world of war

I’m afraid  to read what’s happening

My spirit cries and wails

We can’t go on to war,

Might they read the  News in braille?

I am tired of talk of foreigners

Aren’t we  passengers inone boat

So  why  not work with our  love and hope

To keep our sacred world afloat.?

We  shout out prayers and litanies;

We fast and we abstain;

But God is looking down his periscope

And he  says  the Way is plain.

I saw the soldiers  ready with their weapons cocked

For millennia and aeons

For men must prove their potency

Again,again,again.

Now the women have to fight as well

And we wear  big plugs inside  our ears

We restrict our gaze without  the need for scarves

And we deny our fears.

Let them read the News in Babylon

Let them collapse in Jericho

Let the walls be ever built anew

To make old animosities re-grow.

Shout the News in Cyber space

Type it on your blog

What worth is this old human race

In this unholy bog?

I  once held my hands out to you

Across  seas and oceans wide

I sang and told my stories

But your  fighting won’t subside.

My hand is getting weary now

I cannot hold it out much more.

I never felt the warmth of you

Saw an image of closed doors…

So,go  shout it in Jerusalem

We  have so many  Wailing Walls

Go shout it out in Syria

Where was man before the Fall?

The lions lived on weetabix

And the tigers  leaves of grass.

The zebras got  their stripes re-done

But all that men surpass.

When I was a  puking baby

They atom  bombed Japan

Already, Europe’s Jews were gone.

Who was it walked  the Walk of Man?

Read with doubt and look for hidden clues;- Then one day you may find The Real News.

A little knowledge cannot cause us harm

So on that base with certainty we build

For learning has a wonder and a charm

As with new words our avid mind is filled

Poetry and songs can  give us voice

For others who with us share this strange earth

To dwell in silence is a  thoughtful choice

Yet sharing may lead on to  creative  birth.

The news is filled with death and with wrong deeds

Our hearts lurch as we read   cruel sentences

Our minds spin with  a  ghastly , whirling speed

Unable to accept these     pretences

Read with doubt and look for hidden clues;

Then  one day you may find out The News.

Love must be so pliant

Love must be so pliant ,
like a blade of grass,

Bowing to the wind,
till the storm has passed.

Love is enigmatic
Like the sphinx’s smile.

Waiting for an answer,
Nothing is on file.

Love is often near us
Yet we do not see.

Sometimes where we are
Is just the place to be

Be an Other lover,today

  • It seems we all have a touch of narcissism
  • As well as paranoia
  • And grief.
Sometimes it’s hard to realise
that other people are our equals
in this existence game;
that they each have a mind and world of their own.
But now I think of this,
Isn’t it wonderful that there are all these worlds
And that I’m not the centre of the universe.
And if God cares for a sparrow
I like Him.
Though what He is
Is not expressible in our language.
How dull life would be
If I were the only real person in it
And if I wanted every one to admire me
And think well of me.
And how sweet it is to love an other,
Eye to eye,
Skin to warm skin.
and how the sun was so red at daybreak
and the bare twigs gleamed in its light.
and how precisely you are different from me
Yet I can understand you, at least in part.
We are all absolutely important
And yet paradoxically unimportant.
And how sweet it can be to lose oneself
to become entranced by creation,
Or by a loved one;
By being with children.
Worlds and worlds unfold.
All we need is respect.
Be an other lover,today
.