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B (second line)
a (rhymes with first line)
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The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
Even cats and dogs  sit still as stones
Gone are early flowers with fragrance sweet
The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
The hot flagstones return my angry beat
As people  scurry by ears to their phones.
The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
Even cats and dogs  sit still as stones

I made this from a photo

You were always running away
And I frightened could not keep up
I only wanted to play

I was run over by a bike one day
But you did not stop
I was six years old, I could not cry

I always missed the right moment
Perhaps there was none.Now you can’t say.

We think there is a future when we can repair
How time flies, does not delay

I

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 indecision
When  sun  drops and  the night  rolls in
But now , new stricken by   a dread of sin
Who shall aid  the soul’€™s   derision?
Our  ancient minds fears   day won€’t come again
When  we sleep we ’re entertained within
Deft dreams squander all illusion
When the sun  drops and  the night  rolls in
In reverie we’re loved  and  so  open
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”

I ate my words but could not them digest
The cruel hint, the sentence over -stressed
As if I tried to pierce another’s skin
Which was already dry, and too,too tthin

Better edit what we say with care
Even those we love we must not scare
Take for granted nothing we adore
But walk in that pale sand, by sea, by shore

Do not sink into the mud and dross
Despite we each must carry our own cross
For aid is near but cannot reach the deaf
The silence speaks, it does not cause distress

On the sands, we watch small children play
Bringing blood back to our faces grey

The power of tiny gestures is immense
The nod, the smile, the wink, the thoughtful glance
That means we still exist, though we are lost
And now are forced to pay the total cost

The power of words when written on a card
Chosen with much care when loss has scarred
The little words which meant so much to me
I had them framed so I would always see.

The big romantic game, the winners stare
The losers slink away, will they not bear?
The weight of death and loss, the fear of shame
The onea who cut us dead, the ones who came

Forgive me now for all I have not done
Omission of good words, a smile, a pun

Katherine December 13, 2019

Boris Johnson  thrown out by his wife
Now he has a different tole in life
He has a  girlfriend will he have more kids?
Lucian Freud was  surely up for this
They say he might have had perhaps  thirty   two
With all that sperm what is a man to do?
He could take Precautions as they say
I  prefer icecream  but let’s go  stray

Lucian Freud  was not a man to  rule
They say he once burned down his own Art School
He married once, he married twice but no
He would not be captured  in Soho
Beautiful and strange he made his mark
Boris Johnson   has a  nuclear heart

Winter will come down upon us all
Europe we are sad, almost appalled
Sadness for the surgeon who cured me
The cancer  grew  like lightning hits a tree
He is Greek and no-one else was skilled
To leave me looking   better  than God willed


Will he  go back   to where  his grandad  came?
Say a little prayer for my dear face
I don’t want  to suffer but  all will
We’ll die sooner,  sadly Boris kills
The NHS is  going slowly  to its grave
Watched by men who  look  without a face

Was this the apple then, your mother’s breast
Which father thought was his to oft caress?
And when, in deprived rage, you bit to test,
he vowed to ever you harass.

So then you learned that you could hate as well,
The punishment struck hard in your small heart.
Your memory was unworded, could not tell;
Though pain and anguish made your soft skin smart

.As unknown as the journey to your birth
As shocking as the grief of unmeant wrong.
As frightening as the gauging of your worth
As sudden as the ending of a song.

Impossible to foretell or to prepare,
The ambivalence of our hearts starts here.

Fling up your plans like weapons in the sun
All I know is darkness overcomes

Why not keep a lid on your demands
Say they’re wishes not that they’re commands

The other person is as real as I
Where is sorrow when another dies?

Step out as bravely as a bull might do
The matador is here to provoke you

We must die but noone can demand
The time, the date, the love, the perfect plans

The needle’s eye is different for the blind
Easy threading needles, very kind

I learned my perfect vision was witheld
How much can we lose yet be ourselves?

Where the buzzing bee has sipped and spat
I shall sit and wear an old sunhat

We both had cancer, why did I live on
When the irreplacable has gone?

We do not know why we are living still
I hope I have enough to pay the bill

Silent and attentive as an owl
The tom cat is betrayed by his own yowl

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liber

In Bedzin and in Krakow they breathed in
What they denied in conscious thought or word.
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin

Penetrating lungs so deep within
The dead  unburied mixed, in air secured
In Bedzin and in Krakow, mortal sin.

The nearby people turned to burial urns.
The human dust by  breathing was allured
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin.

So  Europe took their human ash within.
A graveyard we became unknown, impure.
In Bedzin and in Krakow, more of sin.

And who they thought destroyed  lived on in them
Controlled their lungs, their hearts  their minds uncured,
The ashes of the Jews,  borne in their skin.

Like a mass communion without words
We ate and breathed the Jews, the gays, unheard
In Bedzin and in Krakow  we walked in
The ashes of the lost, the glades of skin

My doctor is God
Why can’t he heal you then?
I don’t believe in him
Make the leap of faith
Which direction?



God is my doctor
Where did he train?
He did not train
Good, he can’t charge you

The doctor wants a urine sample
I hope it’s a random one
Stop showing off
What’s the problem?
My bladder is full
Well,empty it
I can’t find the key
Are you deranged
If I were I could not reply
Thank you


The doctor wants to take my temperature
Where to?
Maybe the oven

The doctor says it’s a systemic infection
Can’t he install a new system in you ?
Like a plumber?


He wants me to take it easy
Fake it.

He talks in paragraphs
No, you idiot, parables!
I mean paragraphs and sentences
We don’t need those for oral communication
Well,I’m blessed.That’s brilliant

My doctor is very odd
Get even with him somehow
I can’t harm him
Then arm yourself

Are numbers very odd?
Yes, the odd ones are even odder than the even ones
No wonder you are a geek

Are doctors real?
Yes, if you think they are

Are doctors useful?
They are necessary but not sufficient

Do doctors understand patients
No, only statistics
Are they vital?
Definitely

Paying Attention with Simone Weil

For Weil, attention (attention) means to suspend thinking, leaving one’s mind detached, empty, ready to be entered by the other.  Attention means not always trying to know, not categorizing, but waiting, as though the other could participate in forming the idea we have of it.  “Attention is the highest and purest form of generosity.”  Attention is the opposite of a thought that has seized upon some idea too hastily, and thinks it knows (Weil, Reflections, pp 48-49).  For Weil, attention requires self-emptying.  

Katherine poetry, Thinkings and poems, villanelle  August 24, 2016 

Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique
From  peaceful green of  trees where small  birds  hide.
The work within the mind  may be complete

About our souls, we each must be discreet
Even to those  living by our side
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique

Happy to do nothing,nothing seek
Innocent as  young, beloved bride
The work within the mind  may be complete

Ignorant of Latin,Hebrew,Greek,
The heart needs no such learning to decide
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique

I listen to the  world around me speak
Underneath the turmoil,love’s alive
The work within the mind  may be complete

In our world  the sensitive may writhe
Yet, by our intuitions, we may guide
Rich deep silence brings pleasures unique
The work within the mind  may be complete

A silence rich with love and filledl with joy;
The silence after waking at the dawn,
May be both  anchor and a steady buoy 

Yet often we don’t know what we seek for:
The latest dress, the perfect English lawn?
We forget this marvellous essence, full of joy

We murder by ignoring  love’s own core
We do not see the buds which are new born.
We want an anchor yet we want our toys.

What is most arresting is the awe
We feel when we survive deep grief again
Find  silence rich with love and full of joy

Out of Nature, its Creator calls
Taking in her arms what caused us pain.
Being both an anchor and a buoy.

The silence underneath the silence calms,
Stills our breathing with reviving balm
Perfect silence rich with love and  joy
Shall be our an anchor and shall be our buoy.