From Theresienstadt they came to Windermere
The orphaned children, starved and ill with fear
Brought back to enter childhood, Eden’s sphere
I never knew before they had lived here
Loved lake water lapping at the shore
I climbed up Orrest Head to see the view
But much was missing,this I never knew
I saw the natural beauty, no plane flew
From Theresienstadt
We see the children coming from the plane
That is, we see the ones who still remained
Did they visit where they lost their chains?
Might I have seen them walking in the lanes?
From Theresienstadt
Mary went into the bookshop and as usual knocked all the books of the table by the door.Emile was in her old Polish leather journalists’ bag.
Oh, mother for God’s sake,why are you so clumsly, he mewed
Maybe I’ve got dispraxia, she smiled imperviously
At least you’ve not got discalculia,Emile murmured wickedly
I think it is coming on, she pertly responded,I find it so hard to keep my accounts now.Maybe it’s because I hate dealing with money.
I am sorry I am not a man,said Emile.I could get job and give you housekeeping money and a dress allowance
That is sweet but I do have enough to manage on, she cried wilfully
Then they saw Annie coming in the door wearing a yellow blouse and skirt which had attracted a huge cloud of wasps and bees who believed she was a giant buttercup
Luckily her foundation was not yellow but deep pink ivory by Guerroad of Paris and Wigan
Her lipstick was called Red Vice and was made in Southport for Yves de Pourrant
Her eyes were invisible behind her cyclists’ sunglasses from,Milletts but she had bought contact lenses which made her eyes look like lapis lazula
What are all those bees doing in here, cried the manager
They are with me,said Annie in a nasty tone of voice
Will they not stay outside, he muttered shamefaced
Unfortunately they have not learned English yet, she told him.The Government have stopped English as a foreign language lessons for immigrants, you see.
Don’t tell me they are immigrants, he shouted.That is absolutely ridiculous
Well swallows are immigrants, she informed him,
Do you mean the government is paying their rent and buying them all new cars like they do to Romanians?
I didn’t know Romanians got free brand new cars from the government.They must have got some incriminating photographs of Theresa May eating trifle with her bare hands while delivering a rebuke to Boris Manson.Or maybe Boris Manson had done something terrible!
You can say that again, shouted Annie.He’s an ace at doing stupid things.
He went to Eton,Mary told her
What’s that got to do with it,Annie asked her
Well, just recalled when I was teaching at Cloxford there was a youth from Eton in the seminar group.He managed to get a third class degree
I bet his parents didn’t know a 22 year old working class girl was teaching him
Well, he didn’t know my age but I could still get half fare on the bus.He looked older than me but his parents were never around.As for being working class I did work very hard with that class and all tnhe others got decent seconds,Mary reported.
The manager appeared and threw a bucketful of hot water over Annie and the bees
Eeh,I am in hot water.Ring 999 and get Dave the transvestite paramedic and some towels
But who will dry the bees,asked poor Emile?
God dries bees who dry themselves.said Mary
In to the shop came Dave running as fast as he could.He knocked down all the books on the tables.
What’s happened ,he trilled?
It’s the manager.I think he is dead, Annie said.I hit him with my handbag
I can resuscitate him,Dave wept.But keep mum about your blow
The manager came to and looked bewildered.I thought I had died and gone to heaven and here I am in this horrible shop again.
Annie went over and dried herself on his jacket
.Thanks for the free wash, she whispered.Meet me tonight in the pub
I am a married man, he told her
That’s what they all say,Annie said in her inimitable manner
And so say all of us
The poetry world would hardly seem a likely place for a “race row,” the phrase The Guardian applied in 2011 to a blunt exchange of literary verdicts. The celebrated (and white) critic Helen Vendler had disparaged the celebrated (and black) poet Rita Dove’s selections for the new Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. Dove, Vendler wrote, had favored “multicultural inclusiveness” over quality. She’d tried to “shift the balance” by choosing too many minority poets at the expense of better (and better-known) writers. The poems were “mostly short” and “of rather restricted vocabulary,” the presiding keeper of the 20th-century canon judged. Over at the Boston Review, the (also white) critic Marjorie Perloff, the doyenne of American avant-garde poetics, weighed in too. She lamented what she saw as new poets’ reliance on a formulaic kind of lyric already stale by the 1960s and ’70s—a personal memory dressed up with “poeticity,” building to “a profound thought or small epiphany.” Her example: a poem by the acclaimed (also black) poet Natasha Trethewey about her mother’s painful hair-straightening routine.T
No other person in the land
Has got a sense of humour
I send you this elastic band
To play with when you’re gloomier
I send this card to show I care
I love you sweetest when you’r bare
Yet you have got a wardrobe filled
Not with lovers you have killed
No, you have such taste sublime
The nighties in there are divine
Thank you for the forty years
Making breakfast when you’re bare
Thank you for your saving grace
We’ve got money, undebased.
I love you second to my cat
What will you say when you read that?
I love men and I love cats
How to choose? Don’t answer that
Like Jerusalem of gold and age,
With your beauty I’m engaged
Let me worship by your Wall
Facebook lovers are appalled
A sense of humour is a useful aid
Especially to old lovers in their bed
Their joints arthritic make their union hard
Even with the aid of pure white lard
The sound of laughter proves they are not dead.
As they drink their coffee,whose the tread
Upon the stair, a footstep can be heard
Let Death come, accept and be not scared
Play the game until its final card
A sense of humour
All debts honoured, all the bills are paid
So, old folks get meeting, then get laid
Love the dance and love the swift white bird.
In the sky the swallows make their curves
Wonder to the end, the final words
The glint of humour
Mary woke up in her bright sunny bedroom stacked high with books and spectacles like Emile dancing in front of her mirror.She looked at her arm where she had some stitches removed the night before.
Oh.dear.Her arm was bleeding and as she gazed the surgical wound opened up more and more and some blood ran out,just like Dave, the paramedic would run into her house, if you get my point
Picking up the phone she rang her doctor and was told by the receptionist
Why not put some elastoplast on it?
Fortunately Mary was so intelligent and brilliant after her lengthy education on deferential equations, she deduced that after a large biopsy,elastoplast was not sufficient.She phoned 111
Hello NHS here,are you the patient?
Yes,Mary cried,
Where are you ?
I am in bed
After a few more questions the computer told the NHS aide to send Mary to the hospital A and E within one hour.What a pity she could not ring 999 and get Dave to help her as it was not an emergency
.She phoned for a minicab after putting one some clean undies and an old blue dress.
Now Emile,I think you’d better stay here so you can watch out for Annie and tell her where I am
Whatever, the surly cat replied like a teenage boy asked to get out of bed to go to school when he was happy lying and dreaming of girls and their silky hair and wondering how soon he could get a real live girlfriend to take to the cinema on the back row.Or better still, undo two buttons on her blouse and kiss her
Here, there is some fresh food,Emile.I should be home soon
The phone rang.
Hello, this is Mischa your cab driver in my green and blue striped car
I am ready,Mary murmured as she locked the door and rushed down the path.
What has happened,asked Mischa
Don’t look,said Mary who had stuck 6 dressings over her wound
When she arrived she was soon seen by a nurse
She lay down on a nice soft bed while a handsome and serene man applied various sticky things to her arm topped by a big white dressing
Please come back on Saturday, he cried
Why, is there a dance, she enquired saucily?
No, you need to have it checked!
So this is not enough?
I can’t say, he cried
Little did Mary know she was going to spend £100 on minicabs in the following week.
Annie was in the orange and yellow bijou kitchen extension.She was wearing pink and purple leggings and a black tunic, her face bright as a diamond in Max -Packed-Her long lasting foundation, her lips glowing like Wigan Pier at sunset with her new lipstick which matched Mary’s cupboard doors.
It was called,New Dawn by Pierre Moulin of Rome and Taiwan.She had seen it recommended by the Guardian beauty editor who was rather a strange looking young lady by past standards.
Still we all need advice now and then and cosmetics cheer us up for a little while especially when we have just seen Boris Johnson on TV claiming he loves women who look like letter boxes or was it pillar boxes?
Whatever.
Here,Mary,I’ve made some strong tea.How did you get on? cried Annie in her warm Knittingham way.
Wonderful,Mary whispered.I saw this awesome male nurse.
Will it heal?
I suppose so, doesn’t everything , Mary said, her view based on total ignorance of surgical wounds and failed stitching,I think that nurse should have realised it was too early to remove the stitches as they were near my elbow.They don’t stitch them up again apparently.
While she spoke a few irate bacteria were searching for a ladder so they could clamber into Mary’s wound
You’d think they would put steps in. said one bacterium to another
.I think it is cruel to have such a deep hole with not even a rope to climb down.He had been watching rock climbers on the Langdale Pikes who had unknowingly been accompanied by a thousand bacteria and their friends the viruses.
Do stop moaning. said his wife,Annabelle.Let’s just dive in
Mary drank her tea and looked at Annie who was a little pale
I’m sorry to cause worry, she said shyly.I expect I’ll be better by tomorrow
And so hope all of us
Hello,you must be the expert the police send to see if our alarms work
Oh,I am so lonely I am glad you came.I’ll give you a key to save trouble
Would you like to take this jewellery to the Charity Shop?I can’t ride my bike any more so I’d be delighted
Can you make me some tea while you are here.I have got insomnia and the heat makes me feel thirsty
Help yourself but please leave the duvet.I have too much stuff in here
I have 2 coats downstairs you might like.
I am too old for sex but you might like to hold my handfor a minute
I have to see the shrink tomorrow.Are you real or an hallucination?
My cat is very bad tempered but her mioawing is not as bad as her bites and scratches.
I am sorry.Are you Welsh or Lithuanian?
My husband is in that box.He’s called Jack.He is dead, actually but we still share the bed.Is that a sin?
I’ve had some odd dreams but this is the worst.Shut the window and go out by the door. like normal people do
I know normal is a word with several meanings I don’t teach unpaid any more.
You want to know what the average is? Not Boris Johnson
“Unlike the flat data of the internet, books are multidimensional; and they engage and nourish all our mental faculties—our whole selves. There are books that answer the basic impulse of curiosity; and for people of a certain temperament—or perhaps for all of us, if it isn’t stifled—intellectual and imaginative curiosity can be as strong as libidinal desire. In various studies of such things, the urge to know has been shown to be deeply raveled with erotic energies, and following its direction and urgency leads to the best kind of reading. We may want to read a book about the latest discoveries in cosmology, or the latest studies of ant colonies, simply because such things are fascinating, and worth knowing; and because they reawaken our sense of wonder about the world. Or we may want to read a biography of a person we admire, or a history of a period which is of interest to us. Such books not only satisfy our desire for “objective” knowledge, but they give us a wider personal lens through which to view and understand the world, and our own location within it. They literally broaden our mental horizons and our perspective—and there is great enjoyment, as well as an intrinsic value, in that.
But it is imaginative literature—fiction, memoir, personal essays—which provides the fewest pragmatic answers to the question “why read,” and gives us the richest reasons. To make a rather sweeping proposition, imaginative literature is the art form most capable of encompassing all dimensions of human experience: the outer and the inner world, specific facts and the elusive textures of consciousness, the stories of individual selves and of the self within culture and society. Unlike factual texts which, at a pinch, can be summarizedon Wikipedia, fiction and personal writing cannot be so condensed without losing something of their essence.”
“Humans do not have a basic, fundamental,
pure human nature that is transhistorical and transcultural.
Humans are incomplete and therefore unable to
function adequately unless embedded in a specific cultural
matrix.
Culture “completes” humans by explaining and interpreting
the world, helping them to focus their attention
on or ignore certain aspects of their environment, and
instructing and forbidding them to think and act in certain
ways (Heiddeger, 1962/1977). Culture is not indigenous
clothing that covers the universal human; it infuses
individuals, fundamentally shaping and forming them
and how they conceive of themselves and the world, how
they see others, how they engage in structures of mutual
obligation, and how they make choices in the everyday
world.
The material objects we create, the ideas we hold,
and the actions we take are the consequences or “products”
of the social construction of each particular era.
They are cultural artifacts. However, these artifacts are
not only the expression of an era. They are also the immediate
“stuff” of daily life, and as such they shape and
mold the community’s generalized reality orientation in
subtle and unseen ways. Consequently, they inevitably
reinforce and reproduce the constellations of power”
“3. I’M NOT INSPIRED. Inspiration comes from action, not the other way around. Our friends at Red Lemon Club shared this insightful tidbit from leadership guru John C. Maxwell: “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.””
What to say to a bank robber:
Lay off and get a real job
I love your gun.Where did you buy it?
Can you lend me 5 pounds from what you took?
Where did you buy those jeans, they are just what I want?
Have you got time for a coffee? I like that cafe in Golden Lane.
Thank you for being so articulate
My mother had an accent just like yours.I feel good listening to you
If your debit card won’t work,phone the provider.
Would you like a glass of wine?
Have you ever thought of studying as a mature student to get more qualification?
Could you give me a bit of the money back or my boyfriend will kill me if I tell him I have none
You remind me of Paul Newman in High Noon
Do you come here often?
Do you wash your hair every day?It looks good
Although some may be averse to reading books on the computer, this is a great option for reading ebooks.
Google’s Internet browser, Chrome, offers apps that you can download for free and access directly from the browser. (Other browsers may also support ebook reading).
Google Play Books and the Nook Reading App are two apps available on Chrome. These apps access e-books and allow you to read them directly in the browser. Readers only need an account with Barnes and Noble or Google to read books using the browser apps. An ereader is not required.
For both apps, simply search the Chrome Web Store for the app and install it. Again, once you’ve downloaded a book, read it in Chrome.
Readers can also access the Kindle Cloud Reader on their browser; it’s a website that syncs with your Amazon account and showcases your ebook library. Because it is a website it works on every browser. You can start using it by visiting https://read.amazon.com/. Readers can “download” Kindle ebooks they’ve purchased and start reading”
There is no absolute way of determining how vigilant we should be.It depends on where we are, as ,say a battlefield or a buttercup meadow.It will depend on past trauma or disturbances and no doubt on our personality.But on a battlefield or a violent home it is normal to be more vigilant
But maybe we can’t turn if off………
Our DNA—specifically the 25,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project—is now widely regarded as the instruction book for the human body. But genes themselves need instructions for what to do, and where and when to do it. A human liver cell contains the same DNA as a brain cell, yet somehow it knows to code only those proteins needed for the functioning of the liver. Those instructions are found not in the letters of the DNA itself but on it, in an array of chemical markers and switches, known collectively as the epigenome, that lie along the length of the double helix. These epigenetic switches and markers in turn help switch on or off the expression of particular genes. Think of the epigenome as a complex software code, capable of inducing the DNA hardware to manufacture an impressive variety of proteins, cell types, and individuals.
I spread my body like a summer mist
To cover you and hold you with my joy
Recalling days when we were both well kissed
And how our gentle hands were sweet deployed
Eternity is here if we can feel
If we are open to the singing air
In that place our love is much more real
And all the world is smiling and is fair
The sword of love will run us through and through
The agony of love is also fierce
Yet who would wish to live untouched and new
No love, no pain,no torment,nothing pierced.
Then living with hearts open and reclaimed
Indifference cannot wrap us in its chains
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they’ve been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest-
And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.
The gramophone, the records and the sound
The music was my essence and my ground
The needle and the groove were made with skill
What artistry, what craft,what vital will
When money was in short supply. how found?
The cat was watching as the disc went round
A gentle paw extended till we frowned
She was the softest cat we ever owned
When she died we heard our hearts grow still
The gramophone
When we lost another cat, we groaned
As the pebbles on the seashore moan
We hear the sound of laughter, high the hill
The children that we were will play there still
The music lingers where we children roamed.
The gramophone
I said , here is the lemon mousse.
Just what I need to rub out my pencil marks
Here is the Vindaloo!
Can’t I use the toilet?
I roasted the potatoes
So it wasn’t just me!
The dinner is hot
How about you?
I’m still cold
The meat is well browned now
That’s racist
Alright, it’s black.
You idiot!
The sprouts taste like strawberries
I wondered where they had gone.
I’ve lost the shopping.
It’s in the kitchen
And I lost my dress
Mmm come over here.
Why are you licking my head?
To see if I need to put salt on you.
It’s sweet and sour chicken
Chinese?
Do they export chickens?
Dead right!
I saw a bull in Dublin
Ireland’s green and pleasant land
There was a bullfight
I blame the EU.
Why,is it compulsory?
No, but Boris Johnson seems to be.
Put him in the ring!
A matador is hard to find
I’ll take a pot shot.
But is it British?
There is a scientific system of politics which includes many important departments. One of these departments—a large and important one—is eloquence based on the rules of art, which they call rhetoric. For I do not agree with those who think that political science has no need for eloquence, and I violently disagree with those who think that it is wholly comprehended in the power and skill of the rhetorician. Therefore we will classify oratorical ability as a part of political science. The function of eloquence seems to be to speak in a manner suited to persuade an audience, the end is to persuade by speech.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1872-73):
What is called “rhetorical,” as a means of conscious art, had been active as a means of unconscious art in language and its development, indeed, that the rhetorical is a further development, guided by the clear light of the understanding, of the artistic means which are already found in language. There is obviously no unrhetorical “naturalness” of language to which one could appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts. The power to discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing, a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is, at the same time, the essence of language; the latter is based just as little as rhetoric is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things. Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, p 21.
Steven Mailloux (1989):
[Rhetoric is] the political effectivity of trope and argument in culture. Such a working definition includes the two traditional meanings of rhetoric—figurative language and persuasive action—and permits me to emphasize either or both senses, differently in different discourse at different historical moments, in order to specify more exact
“In Townsend’s compelling performance, it certainly can. He glides through Muldoon’s torrent of wordplay and allusions, before slowing to a low growl of fury with his lover for her refusal of medical treatment in favour of herbal remedies, through a sense of fatalism: “The fact that you were determined to cut yourself off in your prime / because it was pre-determined has my eyes abrim.” The rush of tiny memories that catch him off-guard, the snatches of music from their shared past, the truths about the ways in which they could hurt each other – all flash across his face as his deep voice falters. He captures the one-step-forward, two-steps-back experience of grieving, its iterative nature reflected in his physical process of creating the rows of shapes, imprinted on paper.
With its recapitulation of the poem’s lines throughout, and in voiceover at the end, this performance beautifully suggests that the processes of printmaking and of composing the poem have become one. Here the poet salutes the artist, both of whom have their “ink-stained hands”, and the production becomes a celebration of the ways “art can be made” from pain”
Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader’s experience. If it’s a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it’s a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant.
I said , here is the lemon mousse.
