On the Pennine Way

On the Pennine Way, they kept a bull
The farmer didna like the walkers there
On the Pennine Way it wasna dull
On the Pennine Way ,ain’t no seagulls

On the Pennine Way, there were a stile
The  farmer coulda  maybe got a bear
On the Pennine Way we walked 6 miles
On the Pennine Way  and  disused rail

On the Pennine Way  there was  green grass
The farmer heard it singing with no care
On the Pennine Way there was a lass
On the Pennine Way,she had to pass

On the Pennine Way the bull was large
The farmer   claimed he’d  done it for a dare
On the Pennine Way the walk was hard
On the Pennine Way,the House of Cards

On the Pennine Way we walked right by
The farmer said he  liked  my golden  pear
On the Pennine Way we coulda died
On the Pennine Way,  Lord we’d abide

On the  Pennine Way  our courage held
The farmer said he’d cross the bull and hare
On the Pennine Way there was a field
On the Pennine Way, a mirror shield

On the Pennine the bull turned round
The farmer he was  muttering as he stared
On the Pennine Way in cap and gown
On the Pennine Way in study brown

On the Pennine Way we won our spurs
The farmer was enraged, the bull don’t care
On the Pennine Way the ghosts are fair
On the Pennine Way,my love and I

O bird surprised,  how you glared!

O bird surprised,  how you glared
Cruelly eye to eye
Over a dry stone wall
The force, the killing gaze
How could a human defy
This fascist force and power?
You judged like a god
By no human commandments
We stock still on the lane,frozen
A clock ticked
A hand moved
You rose like a  demon chimney sweep, straight and up
We could not  lift  our feet
From the earth
A strange kind of birth

The Wild Swans at Coole 

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)
  • Related

A life of one’s own?

Orchid_2017-1

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/10/11/a-life-of-ones-own-joanna-field-marion-milner/

 

“In 1926, more than a decade before a team of Harvard psychologists commenced history’s longest and most revelatory study of human happiness and half a century before the humanistic philosopher Erich Fromm penned his classic on the art of living, the British psychoanalyst and writer Marion Milner (February 1, 1900–May 29, 1998) undertook a seven-year experiment in living, aimed at unpeeling the existential rind of all we chronically mistake for fulfillment — prestige, pleasure, popularity — to reveal the succulent, pulsating core of what makes for genuine happiness. Along her journey of “doubts, delays, and expeditions on false trails,” which she chronicled in a diary with a field scientist’s rigor of observation, Milner ultimately discovered that we are beings profoundly different from what we imagine ourselves to be — that the things we pursue most frantically are the least likely to give us lasting joy and contentment, but there are other, truer things that we can train ourselves to attend to in the elusive pursuit of happiness.

Art by Jean-Pierre Weill from The Well of Being

In 1934, under the pen name Joanna Field, Milner released the results of her inquiry in A Life of One’s Own (public library) — a small, enormously insightful book, beloved by W.H. Auden and titled in homage to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, published three years after Milner began her existential experiment. Milner would go on to fill her ninety-eight years with life of uncommon contentment, informed by her learnings from this intensive seven-year self-examination.

In the preface to the original edition, Milner admonishes:

Let no one think it is an easy way because it is concerned with moments of happiness rather than with stern duty or high moral endeavour. For what is really easy, as I found, is to blind one’s eyes to what one really likes, to drift into accepting one’s wants ready-made from other people, and to evade the continual day to day sifting of values. And finally, let no one undertake such an experiment who is not prepared to find himself more of a fool than he thought.

This disorienting yet illuminating task of turning the mind’s eye inward requires a practice of recalibrating our conditioned perception. Drawing on Descartes’s tenets of critical thinking, she set out to doubt her most fundamental assumptions about what made her happy, trying to learn not from reason alone but from the life of the senses. Half a century before Annie Dillard offered her beautiful lens on the two ways of seeing, Milner writes:

As soon as I began to study my perception, to look at my own experience, I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw. And I found that the narrow focus way was the way of reason. If one was in the habit of arguing about life it was very difficult not to approach sensation with the same concentrated attention and so shut out its width and depth and height. But it was the wide focus way that made me happy.

She reflects on the sense of extreme alienation and the terror of missing out she felt at the outset of the experiment, at twenty-six:”

A living spark

When those we loved are gone into the dark,
From where we come and so will also end;
Then mournful we await a living spark
To light  the fire within and sorrow mend.
Reality is not absorbed  whole;
Though we have seen, we cannot yet believe.
And pain torments our  jagged heart and soul
Until in time the grace  comes to receive.
We must believe that we can bear  this load,
Even when we fall and lie forlorn.
Help may come  or pain may be a goad.
Love may come from those we used to scorn.
To willingly accept  may seem too hard,too grim.
Yet when we do ,the spirit grows within

The paper blew away

As I wrote the paper blew away
Despite the season I was on the  grass
I need a weighty topic for  today

I believe our words and writing  pray,
Passwords should be  sacred words embraced
As I wrote ,the paper blew away

Prayer,  like walking, can maintain each day
A moment is enough  to give heart ease
I need a weighty topic for  today

Salvation will be ours  though deep the fray
When we take   within a human  face
While I wrote, the paper blew away

Look into the eyes of  one who’s pained
So both souls are gently  interlaced
I need a  holy topic for  today

My fingers on the pillow   tranquil trace
The dent his head made in our last embrace
As I wrote the paper blew away
I  saw the light and  lost my dark despair

Or send me an octave

I went to a Salon
They cut off my hair
I saw it was raining
As I ran away

If you still love me
Send me a note
Or send me an octave
For I love men’ who smoke

If you are jealous
It’s not my affair
We never married
Unless we  in a lair

Give me your money
Give me your clothes
I’ll be your banker
And hear all your woes

The News  drives us crazy
But it gives us a thrill
It’s free and it’s cheaper
Than swallowing a pill

When Harry gets married
He will wear a suit
We will be happy
And wait for his fruit

Meghan is lovely
Pray for a child
If it is black
It will cause no surprise

Perhaps Fergie’s daughter
Will marry a Jew
They are not Christians
So Jesus ain’t too.

Then her dear sister
A Muslim will wed
So for a long time
They will all be in bed.

That’s why it’s better
To marry at night
You can be bedded
Before it gets light

 

 

 

 

Hit the bed

Helleborus_EricSmithii2018.jpgHumour usually helps us,It helps physical illness,tension,depression,stress.It helps people to forgive each other and it helps our minds to function better,There are lots of books with collections of humour from different sources, different people and different cultures even religions.You can also get good sources from the internet if you want to save money.
Then,think about games we played as children.They were often funny although children can be cruel.Why not make up some jokes yourself as a kind of game.That can be more beneficial than just reading them.Writing also helps when we are ng online.On Penzu you can share too if you wish.
I find my own humour makes me laugh even though I made it up myself
Scientific humour
When you are courting a  handsome man an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
Alberta MacEinstein [Ms]
When you are making her tea with parboiled water, remember that she might empty the pot on you and then where would you be?
That’s uncertainty.
Wendy Heisenberg.{Dr}
I was raised as a Catholic,taught always to commit at least one sin prior to Confession,never to eat before taking Communion and especially never to Confess before or after eating left over Communion wafers whilst having sex with a rubber man.
Pope Jane 1
A minute reading some blogs seems like it’s been raining for a year, and a minute reading a naughty joke makes women wet themselves in seconds.
That’s uncommon sense
Tea Leafe.[Mrs]
A man and a woman make love.Then there are three.That’s family life.

They say using your hands is good for you so I hit the bed with a stick and ten mice ran out and asked for asylum.They  already spoke English and knew who Meghan Markle is so I reckon they are British.

7 am

It was dark this morning when I opened my eyes
Seemed like the trees were coming to get me
They hit the windows of that empty house
Showing me what they could do.
Storm warnings erupt from  newspapers
Like firecrackers
I gave away my raincoat
It’s been raining ever since
Though no Rabbi here  prayed for it
Palestine is burning
They need more than rainwater.
More than a Flood
The Tsunami might be almost there
I was glad it was 7 am
It’s raining

Hard to write?

 

 

12400882_652413144898567_4705160818866933056_nhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/69120/why-is-the-great-american-poem-so-hard-to-write

Extract

Poets are persons aware of aloneness and competent to speak in the space of solitude—who, by speaking alone, make possible for themselves and others the being of persons, in which all the value of the human world is found.

This belief in “the being of persons” is so unfashionable it’s almost refreshing. But if Graham’s speaker is too incoherent, Grossman’s is all too coherent, the voice of someone who—having long ago decided that he’s a poet—apparently feels no need to revise awful proclamations like this one, from “The Famished Dead”:

Now look! That other shadow is Pat, my
old nurse.
She had no body even then. She wore what
nurses wore instead of bodies in those days.
That’s why her being dead now makes no difference
to me. What’s important is still her body.
“Take it off, Pat.
Instead of breasts to suck, you wore two pins.
Instead of a cunt, God knows what you had there.”

There are humanists, and then there are hams. Grossman, here, isn’t after the choppily well-separated thing, the self-contained poem. Rather, he’s a good example of those contemporary poets who, to borrow Paglia’s words, “treat their poems like meandering diary entries and craft them for effect in live readings rather than on the page.” Certainly, Grossman’s use of exclamation points, italics, and lurid words makes his work ready made for the podium.

Of course, whether Grossman actually reads Descartes’ Loneliness at live readings is beside the point; throughout the book, the speaker, frequently referred to as “Allen,” booms his voice outward as if the reader’s skull was an auditorium. He begins one piece with the proclamation, “O Kid!” Another one starts with “Look!” Here’s a megaphone of a stanza, from “The Invention of Night”:

Song is extreme work. Help me, river sister!
It’s getting dark. Hey, sweet water! Flow fresh
through ocean’s salt. Give me some words for him
I love, so he can give words to someone else.
Start love’s gift once more:—WORDS FOR
ANOTHER.
So everybody will have something to give someone.
If not, I’ll drown you in oceans of salt tears.
Then you’ll be indistinguishable from tears.
This is Arcadia.

Expensive life

11165327_652321328241082_7567875285690634624_nI read the Guardian and the Independent.I looked at the Fashion pages where I found I needed
.Special pyjamas for Xmas
A new dress and shoes for Xmas
Guidance on how to dress fashionably in January while keeping warm
To know that clear plastic is the thing for Spring
What to wear at parties? What parties?

If I got what they recommended ,I’d be £1000 in debt

I know how to survive January in style. :a long wool coat because down coats are too hot inside shops
A scarf which I made myself
Boots or shoes.
A warm nightdress and an electric blanket
For Xmas I have  clothes in my wardrobe already.I won’t buy a dress.The heating would need to be higher.I can’t afford that.

Blackcap2014
I expect they run these articles to get advertisements.

Bitter is the taste and dark the eye

After death has overwhelmed our life
We cannot waste our time by reading tripe
We care for goodness,beauty, without strife

Severed is the husband from the wife
And in escapism she has found no hope
After death has overwhelmed dear life

Savaged is her bosom by the knife
Bitter is the taste and dark the eye
We care for goodness,beauty and not strife

The first part of the loss is just a half
Yet many wish that we should tell them lies
After death has overwhelmed our life

How can it be he’s here,but not alive?
Through the plangent darkness I must grope
We care for beauty, wish to calm the strife

Give me back my lover for one night
He will understand this sabotage
After death has overwhelmed our life
We make love with pain and dark,dark strife

The way into truth

The only way into truth is through one’s own annihilation; through dwelling a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation. Simone Weil
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/simone_weil_403834?src=t_humiliation

The Error

I think WordPress is very rude to folk
As on the page was,Rubbish, and be damned
Who is the demon who to me out-spoke
It don’t like the crap what I have wrote!

Ar least they could send email just to me
I don’t want “garbage” for my folk to see.
“Rubbish, you are nothing” was the line
It sent a horrid tingle up my spine

I don’t mind a tingle in my heart
Just because we’re old, love don’t depart
But fear and loathing are too much for me
I shall have to go and brew some tea

I looked again and “publish” did I see!
The Freudian errer was entirely me

Rubbish

Scilla_aristides2018-2.jpgToday I fill the bin with ten dead leaves
A tree that perished in the wintry breeze
A plant that died  inside the house called mine
But nothing that I read about online

Today the kitchen bin is taken out
Kleenex tissues, dirty  little thoughts
So confessing sins was that as well
Clearing out the smut that in us dwells

Boundaries round the purified,the good
Separate it from what we  think is  bad
We must not let two become confused
Holy Smoke, the lines symbolic muse!
!
I throw out stuff that should not linger here
Transgression makes the sinner feel impure.

The kettle boils and  fuses all the lights

Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types
The steam iron kills the germs and then ignites
Babies use ten thousand paper wipes

 

We gnaw the fruits of nature,tender, ripe
The kettle boils and  fuses all the lights
Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types

 

Grandad used to smoke a polished pipe
The house flies danced and mother lost her might.
Babies use ten billion paper wipes

Are my sins all mortal, do I lie?
Will the devil die and  leave me right?
Anaemia comes in fourteen  hundred types

Evil is immortal. god is blithe
He thinks,he calculates and then he writes
Babies use ten trillion paper wipes

People  queue for sales all through the night
As angels  scatter from the orange lights
Anaemia comes in fourteen hundred types
But porn  is like a nuclear bomb online

Who  creates and who if unfulfilled….

The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled
A blind and natural force  cared not for me
A hint that I was soon to pay my bills

First consider death and make a will
There are  no autumn leaves.not much to see
The  wind  of age cracks minds as if to kill

No more  shall we climb  in  the  Cleveland hills
Not lie in heather,drowned in honey bees
The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled

How we’re ground in Nature’s  deathly mills
A hand, an eye, an ear, we watchers see
A hint that we are soon to pay  our bills

Who  creates and who if unfulfilled
Shall make a war and set no prisoners free?
The cold wind strikes the soldiers’ eyes  like drills

 

To God, the orphaned infants make a plea
I look,I see those  Auschwitz silver trees
The cold wind slapped my cheeks with hands well chilled
The ovens burn, the blackbird sings its trills

Each dawn brought the moon out.

I was unready for anything,
with no alarm like a bee.
Each fresh day is torture..
If you don’t hate me.

I was as tame as a quango
I was right  far in my mind.
Each night  had its daydreams,
Oh  wish you were kind.

I was charmed by your molars.
They were sharper than braille.
Each dawn brought the moon out.
As you cut your nails.

Rolling stones gathered
Your heart was not mine.
I’ll give you what you wish for.
It is by good  design .
.
As long as the clock speaks
As long as the rose.
As long as the bike pumps..
I’ll remember your nose.

As long as my patterns;
As brief as they are;
As long as my brain’s dead
I shall parsnip a star.

I love a good proverb.
I love no cliches.
When you find some Wisdom
Do not sever my pay.

Justice long as a ruler,
Sharpened to a screw.
When you are more kind,then
I may leak what I brew
.
As long as the flat Earth
As wise as it’s broad.
The moon in the water
Heard the crow caw.

Please hear my tall story
Sing  beside my cello.
I may fail at  the knife Class
But I can  say , oh blow

I went to the Church belle,
And asked for a clue.
The finger on the dial
Kept pointing at you.

As long as the moon’s lined
As wise as a toad
As quick as a stencil
I  have wrought what I ought.

I asked for a doctor
I asked for a nurse
They said you are dead,dear
Where  does it hurt?

The rites of the dead ones
The wrongs of our lives
All will be well when
We can marry our wives.

I ask Leonard Cohen
To sing Joan of Arc
He can’t  do it  proper
Except in the dark

So in my way, I have been rather tried.

Oh, handheld vacuum cleaner I love you
For one day I can clean the stairs if blue.
You  have power and good design I see
As if your maker was an artist too.
I  had a cordless vacuum once before
It  emitted smoke, I chucked it out the door
As dying is no way to clean a floor.
Even if you are extremely poor.
The makers gave me all the money back
And then a newer cleaner, what good luck!
They charged me nothing for the second one
Because I was so humorous on the telephone.
I’d just got in from a biopsy then.
It was nothing major though, you ken
The taxi driver liked intriguing chat
And so refused to charge me, fancy that!
It seems my humour  is a great asset
As I had cancer   thrice then  lost the cat
Not to mention my old man had died
So in my way, I have been rather tried.
But I do not grumble when I wet my pants.
Nor when the kitchen’s conquered by the ants.
For coughing  is a dangerous thing to do
Wait until you’re sitting on the loo!
The anxiety I feel is of the moral type
Like who’s my neighbour, and what shall I write?
And is it bad to write about old Stan
And his mistress, neighbour, Lady Anne?
For we are told adultery is wrong,
Though not as bad as writing bawdy songs.
Yet here I am with meatballs inside me.
I think I’ll wash them down with some hot tea
I’ll say a prayer inside me for the pain
Of all the refugees and what they feel again.
It seems that empathy is getting low
And we’re more wicked than we ever know.
But soon I shall sort out the mess of years
When I wandered, weeping, down the vale of tears
I shall eventually reclaim all my bed
The empty space is full of books I read.
But then it’s very hard to get inside
Next to the place where someone loved has died.
And so my entire house is filled with books
Or clothes and shoes and radios, please  don’t look
As bit by bit ,I let in emptiness~
By gum, life’s much harder than a game of chess
And when I’m empty I can wait for grace
Or find another man, but not in haste
As I  may be gay for all I know
It never rains but sometimes we get snow

Enchanting you by stars hung from her tree

Without your presence ,I ‘m no longer me.
My life of  memories cannot be shared
I feel like   dreadful  driftwood   on  the sea

Who was I and who can I now be?
Are there any  people left who care?
Without you here , I seem no longer me.

I was just about to give you  that fresh tea
This  woman sprang out boldly  from her lair
I feel inside like  driftwood   on  the sea

 

That cup of tea was never, then, to be
She took you off as if it were a dare
Without you here , I am no longer me.

She put you into rehab misery.
She brought  death with her like a  demon’s prayer
I feel  just like I’m  drifting, all at   sea

They made you go to gym and could not see
That you were really  dying  standing there
Without you living, I ‘m no longer me.

 

Quite soon  your vital signs  had disappeared
You   had not eaten, you were jailed unfair
I feel inside like  driftwood ;I’m  at sea

Resuscitation  was  to be the  key
I see  no wisdom in a fool’s idea
Without your presence ,I’m no longer me.

Enchanting you by   stars  hung from her tree
The  angel took your  hand , as it was bare.
I feel inside like  driftwood , all at   sea

You left so fast but  gave a smile to me.
Happy to escape  the  carer’s  glare
Without your  being here ,I am not me

I feel myself like ape or refugee.
Floating on a raft, I know not where
Without your presence ,I’m no longer me.
I feel inside like  driftwood   on  the sea

Our common heart  is almost out of reach

We saw a  piece of driftwood on a beach
Purified and purged by lashing waves
The memory  is almost out of reach

At Brancaster, the sun  sometimes had heat
We walked too far and risked a watery grave
We might have   been two bodies on the beach

The confidence of foolish men is deep
We imitate them and how they behave
Our common sense  is flying out of reach

And I myself am now an ancient witch
In the sea pools ,I will, salty, bathe
I took a  piece of driftwood from a beach

Inspection of the wood had much to teach
It showed a gentle beauty as it lay
Our common heart  is almost out of reach

Oh,like the step of Blythburgh church  pale grey
Broken stones  with cracks where   beetles play
We saw a  piece of driftwood on the beach
So pure and pale, it made the  white sands speak