Category: sonnet

Mary meets her neighbours

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Sitting on the high backed,v Ercol sofa in the large sitting room of her new neighbours Tom an n jn n n nnnd Edina, Mary sipped at the PG Tips tea she had been given in a pseudo-art deco mug.The tea tasted pseudo as well!

Would you like some delicious cake,Mary? Edina asked her rather loudly
Mary jumped.
Oh excuse me, my nerves are all on edge, she cried.I’d love some home made cake
Edina took out a penknife and cut a slice of the large cake.Alas it was coffee flavoured and Mary was not fond of that.This was agony to her especially coffee flavoured butter cream filling as she liked all the other flavours..Suffering from this is a new psychiatric disorder called uncakeophilia disorder
Why are you using a penknife in here ,Tom asked his wife angrily.We have lots of kitchen knives and other silver ones
I found it on the floor,Edina said pensively
I don’t suppose you washed it, Tom answered wildly
Mary leaned back and shut her eyes for a moment.

I hate noise, she thought.
No, dirt is good for the immune system, Edina murmured
What rubbish, you are so lazy I can’t believe it! her husband told her.
After 39 years you should be used to it,Edina told him sensibly.

Who made all these new curtains and vacuumed the roof? she went on languidly
Did you vacuum the roof in your last house,Mary asked her?
We lived in a flat before so I never had to do it.
Well, it’s unnecessary,Mary said , why not learn Esperanto?
Where do people speak that?
I have no idea but it’s a language,Mary cried decisively
But can it really be a language if it’s not the native tongue of any country?,
Well Yiddish is a language yet few people speak it, Tom told them
It would be difficult for the dead to speak,Mary said in a sad voice
It used to be spoken by millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe.
Why didn’t Hitler teach them English,asked Edina?
You think he only hated their language,said Tom in surprise.I’ve never heard that before.
It is bloody ridiculous,Mary said in her soft yet vibrant voice…he didn’t kill them because of their language and they spoke German as well,Maybe even French,Polish and other tongues
Just then they heard a strange choking sound .It was Emile the talking tomcat trying to get out of Mary’s large plastic handbag
Good grief ,Tom shouted.

Did we invite this cat? Does he drink tea from cups? Is he real?
Well, yes , I love tea, Emile mewed.And don’t shout at Mary like that!
I am not letting a cat order me about,Tom screamed like a lunatic
But it’s not nice for Mary.She is a highly sensitive person and I love her
Now, they tell us,Edina whispered.She is married to her cat
I didn’t hear you,Tom said,Is she harried ,did you say?
No I said married
But her husband is dead
Well, now she has taken the cat, for better or for worse.Edina said in a humorous yet angry manner.

For richer for poorer… a cat can’t earn a wage
Edina and Tom were shouting at each other not realising what impression they were making
Mary called out,
Why invite me to tea and shout like this?
Did you never shout at Stan?
No,I didn’t need to.He listened to me.
Well, you are very quiet, said Emile, so Stan had no fear you might shout
I might have shouted when I read Fermat’s Last Theorem.Mary admitted furtively
Was Fermat your teacher,Edina asked?
No he died a long while ago
Fancy dying and all you have to leave is a theorem
Well, it stops the family fighting,Mary said wisely
Suddenly the door opened, and in flew Annie, the flame haired mistress of the late Stan
Why was I not invited to this tea party ,she asked rudely?Are we in Boston?
Sorry,dear,said Tom.

Not many people like to come here because Edina has a bad temper
No I don’t she shouted.

You have a bad temper
I get so tired of all these projective misperceptions,Emile said in his intelligent voice
My therapist was not a cat, but I kept projecting on to him and he looked just like a cat to me until he barked one day.He was in fact a dog.I realised
Was that the end of your therapy?
Yes, I stole all the money from Mary’s purse and there was none left.And I learned about projection, that was enough
Good heavens,Mary murmured.

I thought Annie had taken the money
What!You thought I was a thief.Annie bawled

What next?
Well, you’re more like a sister and I didn’t mind as I know it’s so demeaning to ask for money.
See, said Tom to Edina,I said you should not ask me for money after we make love
Why not, she enquired? I need some new art materials
Can’t you use the housekeeping money?
Well, if you are happy to starve,Edina said sarcastically
Don’t use sarcasm.Only prostitutes take money.,Tom added.I did say you can buy whatever you like in the way of clothes and so on on our credit card
How do you know it’s only whores? Many women do need the money as they may be single mothers trying to feel their family and not getting Universal Benefit on time,Edina told him But other women might demand jewellery, and expensive houses like Wallis Simpson
That’s a fair point,Tom muttered.

It’s more complicated than I realised.
Money is a big problem in many marriages,Mary called
But I earned my own and Stan retired early and got a pension so I had no need to
beg him for money
But did he beg you,Edina asked?
No, we just kept in the bathroom under the soap.So it was clean.
I wonder if viruses can spread on money? Tom said
I feel sure it is possible but how would we test that out. his wife asked
Best to wear gloves but when you take them off the viruses might fly all over the place
I didn’t know they could fly, said Emile.Are they invisible?
Well, we don’t really know but people often get bad colds when they go on aeroplanes
Annie turned pale.
Are you ill, Annie? asked Tom
I am having a nervous breakdown.I’ve caught paranoia from a £5 note.
You can’t catch it,Mary said in her kind voice.

It’s not a physical illness and they are plastic nowadays so they can be wiped down
Well where does madness come from? It is horrible feeling to be so anxious.
This is not much fun, said Edina.

I thought it would be lovely meeting the neighbours but we go from tarts to paranoia and back.Is this wise?
They all sat looking glum,Then Annie revealed all
I am a Russian agent sent here by Putin.I befriended Mary on Putin’s orders
He must be stupid.Why spy on Knittingham?
Well, you will be surprised.Mary is an expert on differential operators
On bicycle chains, asked Tom?
How ignorant people are.Annie shouted.Did you never see anything odd about calculus and little things appearing and disappearing?
Well, to be frank, no!
I don’t believe we learned calculus said Edina
We learned quadratic quotations
Do you mean equations,Mary asked?
I don’t know what I mean,Edina said nervously
And neither do we, said the others
Calculus is a bit like the Mass.Important things happen but we can’t see them.Everything looks the same but it’s not
Then they heard a siren.In ran Dave, the heroic paramedic in his new pink dress. and coat
Don’t drop the bomb, he told Tom audaciously
I’m not President Trump,Tom informed him gravely
That’s what they all say,Dave said to Annie
Who can we trust
Just Emile,said Mary.And Annie.
Why don’t you trust me said Tom?
I am waiting to see how you behave,she replied
Like a kind of exam?
Yes, it’s called
Trust your neighbour and yourself? How to know the people who might be dangerous
to your life and mental health
There’s not much mental health in Britain now,said Tom.I’m a doctor!
Well, don’t shout at the patients, said Annie
I only shout at home,
That is horrible, surely those you love need kindness?
Tom burst into tears and Emile lent him his hanky
I don’t think we’ll meet any more of the neighbours Edina said
Enough is enough.Kindly go home
Pleased to meet you, said Dave.

Do call me when you need coal bringing in or have a heart attack
No way,thought Tom as he drank a bottle of brandy in the bathroom
I feel we made a mistake… we will have to move as soon as we can

And so say all of us

To the tapping bird

A bird taps on this window every day,
Frail as flying leaves are in a gale.
But now he perches on the potted bay.
He feels the weather like the blind do braille.

This bird is faithful and I hold him dear.
He’s fearless as he pecks upon the glass.
We hope he has a modicum of fear,
For who knows when a sparrow hawk will pass?

I see him like a human soul forlorn
Struggling to discern his fateful way.
For soon he may be taken by a storm
But blithely he will eat, and after play.

The smallest bird has trust in the Unknown
By his example, our own way is sho

Reverie is feared

So much depends on mood and time of day

We interpret or mis-shape what we perceive.

The sun may shine to show a better way

Or absent that,  a transient cloud deceive.

 

No lowing herds wind down our oil fumed  roads.

Tranquillity at dusk has disappeared.

With artificial light the daytime mode’s

 Prolonged and reverie’s  feared.

 

To truly live we must be incarnate.

God himself  has paid this price alone.

For time misspent we do not get rebate.

As ,like the leaves in wind, away we’re blown.

 

To live  aright perception must be clear

Including in its breadth all that we fear.

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

The alphabet convicts us by its charm

The noises we can make with  mouth and throat
Make patterns  like  the music of the birds
The graphic line, the new emotion caught
Expressed by sentence and by  the true words

No teacher or professor made our tongue
A gradual evolution  done with art
Before the prose there was the evensong
As home the little sparrows want to dart

Yet with  this  language we can   commit fraud
Lies are   hidden   even in our bones
Then we have the enigmatic code
What translates and what  is  lost,alone

The  fractured   chaos  of the world takes  form
The alphabet convicts us by its charm

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

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

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

Do not go

Those I thought were friends now slide away

Hiding in the shadows with no light

No mirror can reflect the sun today

Maybe it’s my eyes that cannot see

Blinded by the shock of what I read.

I thought that we were lovers you and me

The looks and glances, what you nearly said.

As for all the others let them lie.

I shall not hear their words my ears are shut

My heart has shrunk, and slow the time goes by

I feel the knife blade but I cannot cut.

Do not cast your friends off with no word.

We do not like to feel the world’s absurd

And dancing is  the music of the soul

Silence broken by the sound of apps
Telling me that someone somewhere laughed
The washer makes its usual gnomic cries
Will the clothes be wet before they dry?

Silence full of peace enhances life
So we will happy without strifel
Music is a silence all its own
The space between the notes is a good home

Silence in the company of friends
Speaking when we need to make amends
Poetry is music too I feel
And dancing is the music of the soul

Silence in the centre of our soul
Silence in the love that makes us whole

Shall I my life of evil start?

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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 and breaks my human heart.
When life is 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 own child inside my soul
And I shall tend her till at last she’s whole

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

And with a swollen head, I can’t complain

A copper  pan with silver tin inside
Is useful to a cook and to a bride
They heat up fast and if they are boiled dry
They soon clean up and light my gloomy eye.

I do not polish mine with Duraglit
But that maybe because I have no wit
For it is black and does not shine at all
And when  it’s on, the phone will take no calls.

I use the oven for a Sabbath roast
And use a toaster when I make men toast
I have a grill pan larger than a flame
And with a swollen head, I can’t complain

Get out and buy a copper pan todayl
For ,to be saved, you need this vessel gay

No defeat

Letting go of all my self defence
As if I might touch all of you at once
I opened up my body to the winds
And covered you  by lying skin to skin

In the cradle of my  being held
Like an infant  needing mother’s aid
I did not move to break the chysallis
Both of us were melting in that space

Whose the hand and whose the mind  that work
Metaphors may  guide  and also hurt
Remorseless is the process that goes on
Until the new forms break this one to one

At last the work is done,  the task complete
Dead or living, this is no defeat

In the sea of grief, we swim not drown

The grieving one who never looks outside
Suffers like a prisoner in a cell
Yet we has some freedom to decide
To grieve yet view  our real world here as well.

To turn the eyes back to the lost and dead.
Is what we all must do  in painful  times
But to this natural world, we must be wed
And under suffering draw a heavy line.

From despair, we rise to be renewed;
To see our friends and make our hearts feel glad.
And  look behind  us with a gentler view
See the joy and love and all the kindness had.

In the sea of grief, we swim not drown
Cast away the weights which pull us down.

Coming back to earth is very hard

Coming back to earth is very hard
When a loved one’s gone, the heart feels charred
You took them to  the gate but had to leave
And now you know at last you are bereaved

Why get better, what is there left now?
The Holy One has vanished,gone somehow
Should there not be sentries of the heart
To pull one back  before it is too late

Maybe cruelty’s kinder to those left
To punish us when we feel we’re bereft
Is there noone else when God  has gone
Taking in his arms your most loved one?

The form  may be grammatical and  right
Yet what it says is nonsense  in daylight

Trust, itself, will widen gaze

Inside my heart, this sacred place
Where freely mingle truth and grace
Where friends and enemies alike
Are viewed as equals for love’s sake

Inhabited by deeper self
In touch with  soul that in me dwells
I leave  my failures  gladly here
I will not live in morbid fear

I don’t insult the force divine
By pride in any good that’s mine
For willpower cannot birth virtue
But  can  attend to the eye’s  view

By trusting in   the vast unknown
Attention  spreads, fear’s overthrown
Our eyes relax and  gaze without
To  bring proportion  to our doubts

Trust, itself. will widen gaze
Enable us to find our ways.
With terror, fear or loss of pride
Constriction comes to human eyes.

Perception is the highest good
By what we see, we choose our road.
The blind rush like the swine to hell
In patient, watchfulness let’s dwell.

Coming back to earth is very hard

Coming back to earth is very hard
When a loved one’s gone, the heart feels charred
You took them to  the gate but had to leave
And now you know at last you are bereaved

Why get better, what is there left now?
The Holy One has vanished,gone somehow
Should there not be sentries of the heart
To pull one back  before it is too late

Maybe cruelty’s kinder to those left
To punish us when we feel we’re bereft
Is there noone else when God  has gone
Taking in his arms your most loved one?

The form  may be grammatical and  right
Yet what it says is nonsense  in daylight

Spent a lifetime hanging off a ledge

Ah,rebellious spirit wanting space
With my finger on the map I paced
I climbed Helvellyn, fell off Striding Edge
Spent a lifetime hanging off a ledge

Meanwhile our kind teacher twittered on
Thomas Hardy, Hopkins., we were numb
She never mentioned she saw my escape
The way the nuns  hurt me, the bitter rape

I slipped  on High White Stones and almost  dropped
My feet were dangling off the  fearsome rocks 
No-one knew for I was climbing last
Know me  please but never learn my past

How quickly life has  run since I could climb
Now I merely sit here draped in rhymes

Fiery air

Autumn time in Essex  where we drove
When farmers burned the stubble of the corn
The earth itself was  fiery  like young love
The smokey air rose like a  cloud  new born

The Kentish  landlocked   cliffs  are  wide and steep
The farmers grow  their grain on land beneath
And there too we  have seen the holy fire
The flames  and smoke arrest me with desire

The earth and soil, the  harvest  we find there
Give me joy  both full of wheat or bare
Why did burning stubble   make me glow?
These images affect the heart’s deep core

Now  fires are banned., they damage our pure air
And I   did not like the murder of the hare

Coming back to earth is very hard

Coming back to earth is very hard
When a loved one’s gone, the heart feels charred
You took them to  the gate but had to leave
And now you know at last you are bereaved

Why get better, what is there left now?
The Holy One has vanished,gone somehow
Should there not be sentries of the heart
To pull one back  before it is too late

Maybe cruelty’s kinder to those left
To punish us when we feel we’re bereft
Is there noone else when God  has gone
Taking in his arms your most loved one?

The form  may be grammatical and  right
Yet what it says is nonsense  in daylight

Fiery air

Autumn time in Essex  where we drove
When farmers burned the stubble of the corn
The earth itself was  fiery  like young love
The smokey air rose like a  cloud  new born

The Kentish  landlocked   cliffs  are  wide and steep
The farmers grow  their grain on land beneath
And there too we  have seen the holy fire
The flames  and smoke arrest me with desire

The earth and soil, the  harvest  we find there
Give me joy  both full of wheat or bare
Why did burning stubble   make me glow?
These images affect the heart’s deep core

Now  fires are banned., they damage our pure air
And I   did not like the murder of the hare

Its lack of elegance  offends my eye

Loneliness is only known to man
When he burns the  copper  frying pan
From the marriage bed he’s tossed  aside
For pans are more important to a wife

Yet if she  breaks  their  lovely china plates
He is not allowed to castigate
Oh,men! That is a phrase I hate
Generalising is a crude mistake

Now I  am alone, I’ve burned  eight pans
I broke the dinner plates with  careless plans
I broke the special mugs we  loved so much
All because I missed his soothing touch

The memories fill my heart with  love and light
In  my dreams he comes into my sight

Fiery air

Autumn time in Essex  where we drove
When farmers burned the stubble of the corn
The earth itself was  fiery  like young love
The smokey air rose like a  cloud  new born

The Kentish  landlocked   cliffs  are  wide and steep
The farmers grow  their grain on land beneath
And there too we  have seen the holy fire
The flames  and smoke arrest me with desire

The earth and soil, the  harvest  we find there
Give me joy  both full of wheat or bare
Why did burning stubble   make me glow?
These images affect the heart’s deep core

Now  fires are banned., they damage our pure air
And I   did not like the murder of the hare

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

Into a little crack  a seed may fall

Hiding in between two garden shrubs
A little fruiting tree has grown unseen
Now it’s filled with blossom humbly borne
That decorates the patient garden green

I see it with delight from up above
The window gives me visions ,maps of space
I see the blackbirds, hear them sing at dusk
Now all nature finds its proper place

Into a little crack a seed may fall
A tree grows up and breaks grey paving stones
Thus are the mighty broken,scattered, scorned
All they leave are heaps of whitened bone

The humble may be raised without request
The proud are filled with hatred of the rest

Theatre forms the soul

When the fruit has rotted on the stalk
Bruised and broken like the poor in need
When leaders meet but rarely truly talk
When children caught in cross fire lie and bleed

Don’t we see God’s Kingdom is a joke
Ones hundred million lj bodies broke
They lost once and love dies in ktheir gore

Utopia, evolution, grandiose plans
Sacrifice yourself for those to come
We saw the little children hand in hand
Ground mines blow them up, they could not run

One thing’s clear, God’s here or not at all
The future’s fiction, yet I hear its callt

rvr

Into a little crack  a seed may fall

Hiding in between two  garden shrubs
A little  fruiting tree has grown unseen
Now it’s filled with blossom humbly borne
That decorates the patient garden green

I see it with delight from up above
The window gives me visions ,maps of space
I see the blackbirds, hear them sing at dusk
Now all nature finds its proper place

Into a little crack  a seed may fall
A tree grows up and cracks the paving stones
Thus are the mighty broken,scattered, scorned
All they leave are  heaps of whitened bone

The humble may be raised  without request
The proud  are filled with hatred of the rest

Who commands these viruses like flu?

 Who commands these viruses  like flu?
Consternation makes our hearts feel blue
Do we have a lifeboat or an Ark?
The situation does feel rather stark

Who  decided we could work while sick?
Our energy depleted , brains feel think
Decisions  so important  need clear minds
Not one both  unravelling and blind

We  travel  round the globe, a virus ride
Our garments are as louche as fratricide
We snap some photos of the Golden Dome
Then jump on a plane and turn to Rome

Why not stay in Britain  or in France?
The piper plays but  only demons dance

Just watch a single leaf as it unfurls

What kind of camera shows the changing light
Upon the yellow blossom as it waves?
The wind has dropped ,the breeze is here, but slight
And on the flowers I in languor gaze

The red leaves of the acers now unfurl-
Two side by side but different in their glow.
The light accentuates  them as they curl
Gives them time to unwind  and be slow.

Without the breeze the colour  varies less.
It’s flatter, less like Monet, yet still bright.
And as a grey cloud  sags across the West
It puts my dreams of colour into flight.

Yearn not for special tools to catch the world.
Just watch a single leaf as it unfurls

Wandering   with no haste we see far more

In the pools, reflections , colours, gleam
Like watercolour paintings in a stream
Another world, a mirror to our lives
A way to extricate us from the cave

People have distinctive motions,shapes
When vision’s poor  the curve, the back, display
I recognise you not by face alone
But by the  pictures you make in the rain

Wandering down the avenues and lanes
The eyes are open wider, vision’s gain
The little muscles  slacken round our eyes
We see the broader images come by

Wandering   with no haste we see far more
Our inner eyes have opened like a door