I have not absorbed my grief, my doom

I looked up at the window of his room
And felt a pang of grief  he is not there
As if I have awakened from a dream
Over me, reality now looms
I have not absorbed my grief, my doom
So little demons constantly reveal
I looked up at the window of his room
And felt my anguish that he is not here

The sky  is stark, the air is cool and still

The sky  is stark, the air is cool and still
The black cat’s  run, the birds unfold all day
I sit  down here and with my totty pray
Ye cast o’ foolish thoughts, you raped my will.
We’ve  each enraged the bureaucratic mill.
Oh frigid purse, I never meant to pay!
The sky ‘s  a’spark, the air is warm and shrill
The saturnine demoted  knelled their way
With this feathered pounce, my sample quill,
I  cite the cheque and date it for next May.
Oh, tit for cat, the Tiger’s bed ‘s astray.
Yer  life is settled by  a  harlot’s will
The sky ‘s a shark, the air is sharper still.

As little tear drops make a crystal stream

The  many teardrops falling from my eyes
Coalesced into a large one as they flowed
And so a little water may give rise
To a river ,then an ocean wide.

As I wept, the large teardrop fell off
And made a mark upon my brand new blouse
For my mascara made it  black and  rough
And thus with a black stain, I was endowed.

If you plan to  weep, then wear old clothes
So you can sob and cry as free as Eve
But it  you are hit, surprised by some old woe
Just pretend of cat you’ve been bereaved.

As little tear drops make a crystal stream
So random happenings turn into our dreams.

Around the splinter

 

Photo0010Around a splinter, inflammation grows
It seems to be the cause of  many ills
Scar tissue coalesces and may show

I  got a safety pin stuck in my toe
I had a shot of tetanus but not a pill
Around the splinter, inflammation grows

I  trod on this old pin, yet didn’t know
Yet it caused a risk that I’d be ill
Scar tissue coalesces and may show

If it is a bit of wood or claw
The body separates it by a wall
Around the splinter, inflammation grows

My father used a needle, poked  to draw
Until I screamed and uttered a loud wail
Scar tissue coalesces and may show

If no one helps, enormous grows what’s small
Until it brings about our human Fall
Around the splinter, inflammation grows
Scar tissue coalesces and may show

Coalesce

pen
https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day


Definition

1 : to grow together

2 a : to unite into a whole : fuse

b : to unite for a common end : join forces

3 : to arise from the combination of distinct elements

Examples

“Parties typically struggle to coalesce on complex legislative issues.” — Frances Lee, The Washington Post, 23 July 2017

“Their first gig was at the Kennedy Center. More gigs followed, … and the musicians coalesced into a working band, on the road three weeks out of every month.” — Fred Kaplan, The New Yorker, 22 May 2017


Did You Know?

Coalesce unites the prefix co- (“together”) and the Latin verb alescere, meaning “to grow.” (The words adolescent and adult also grew from alescere.) Coalesce, which first appeared in English in the mid-16th century, is one of a number of verbs in English (along with mix, commingle, merge, and amalgamate) that refer to the act of combining parts into a whole. In particular, coalesce usually implies the merging of similar parts to form a cohesive unit.

His face

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The face that was familiar is no more
Yet in my dreams, he is alive again
If, by a chance, his life could be restored
It would affect me like the hidden chord
That if were played, my own life would be o’er
That one must live and one must die is plain
The face that was familiar is no more.
Yet in my dreams , he is alive again

Passive or receptive

Nuneham_2016-3 1111[800x600]

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10509585.2014.899763?src=recsys,

Extract:

I argue that the oft-discussed connection between Wordsworth’s “wise passiveness” and Keats’s “negative capability” has led scholars to overlook Keats’s own notion of passivity as a persuasive, as well as receptive, force. I argue that Keats saw passivity as an embodied, and even physically demanding, attitude, that could prompt the interest and attention of others – an understanding that builds on the theatrical attitudes adopted by Romantic stage actors, who struck exciting poses to suspend dramatic intensity.

How peppermint boils

E82E

I’ll never love again, not whenever, never.
Her hands are always waving,her nose runs all day and her feet tweet nonstop.
Is it the New Exercise?
I made a witch profit by teaching her to blacken cats.

At least tantalize me till it’s light tonight.
He gave me a laugh and many sinful emotions I’d never imagined

He laughed all the way to the bonk.
I generally lay my bards on the table before work
l left my mark on his back…..mud sticks and I cling
I leave no home unconsumed.
I’m just a devil in my own lifetime
I was left by his falter at the altar and I forgave him everything.
She’s a legend so well defined…she’s never out of her own mind
It was the fleeter of my two feet which arrived at the finishing post.I’ll catch up with it later.
Is that a crutch or are you Blimping to meet me?
Will they make my groans into groceries?
Let sloping fogs lie freely over all the elastic lands.
I let the flat out to an old hag.She had bags under her eyes and a broomstick under her charms.
Let’s never poll again.
I’ll never be a  glove again.
No, I’ll never write a double negative for you.No, not ever
She said, let’s spit now..but I refused, so she bit my head off with a word.She’s digested the dictionary and needs practice, you see.

His blinkers are perfect.His winks are a pleasure to behold.
Let’s love again before the next millennium ends
You keep me mating all of the time.What did I do, was it so wrong?
Was it my song?
You keep waiting till the end of the rhymes;
And longer, sometimes.
Let’s prance again while the potatoes simmer
and as our eyes grow much more than dimmer.
Grammar.. who weeds that?
Cast your spellings onto me and I’ll import them into my head with the aid of a nail file.
What did I do? What was so bling?
I have your number here in my diary … is it 999?
I’ll sentence you tomorrow.I give you my word and this full stop as I have few colons free.
Let me charm you again all night
Now you do what they did do to me!
I’m just a poppet on a wing.
My mother was a demon with frustration.
I ate 4oz of peppermint cremes once.When I got my grant to go to University.Just to prove I could.Then I improved and was glad.I owe it all to peppermint oil

Hebrew for the Chinese

nz_paradiseshelduck

http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/

 

I am suffering from this man over here
I think it’s  your manstruation again.
How many bloody times do we have to have it?

Have you brought some protection?
5  loaded guns and a box of super-large tampons

I’m afraid I bit the bucket again.
Why have you no WC?

I hate that pain in my crutch.
Not as much as the crutch does,though.

Doctor, I have 15 crutches.
Good grief, you need more rapport!How do you juggle them all?
They juggle me.

Have you still got this man over here?
The agony is so bad I don’t recognise any country of the world.

My friend has irritable vowel syndrome.
Try him on consonants.Hebrew is also an option.
Why?
They have no vowels.
How do they manage?Not many here understand it.
Well, it’s His Voice!
I thought it was H M V
Oh, Lord. Really want to be you.
My sweet crowd

See sunlight dappled through their leaves.

  • Photo0690

 



When wanderings take my restless mind
To places peace can never find,
When imaginations linked to fear
Push tranquillity away.
To my green garden I must go
And let my mind and thoughts go slow.
I look  at maples in the breeze,
See sunlight dappled through their leaves.
I see the apples hanging down
And blackbirds peck them on the ground.
I see the hawthorn berries ripe
Upon the hedge in gold sunlight.
And then my soul is brought to earth
Peacefulness is given birth
I feel at one with nature green,
And all that is just now unseen
So back to everyday routines
Without “what for?” and “might have beens”
All is well and shall be so
Wherever we may go.

Skin

7134238_f520
My skin, blurred edge of the ineffable,
felt but not seen;
guessed at but unprovable;
faith guides in the darkness
hands reach out
say, this is love. to touch
to hold, to sense.
more sensible than logic;
wait, for love will come;
the world grasps and loses;
be still, be silent,
listen.
by Katherine 2012

Ode to a crutch

Oh, crutch you are a help to my bad  knee
Since cycling down the A1 injured me.
I never knew I should have bought a car
And spent my money on a stunning bra.
I only drove at 70mph
The teacher said, why don’t you learn to steer?
And if you go as fast as this you’ll fail
The police will come and you’ll end up in jail
So I never took a driving test
As riding bikes or donkeys seemed the best
But now my knees are giving me some jip
I sometimes weep and bite my bottom lip
With a crutch, I can negotiate
The steps my eye can’t see, the fallen plate
For  my sight is not creating in 3 d
Steps are dangerous to the half blind ones me.
But with a stick, I test the steps descent
A stick or crutch thus accidents prevents
Yet  suddenly I am a crippled fool,
Though other folks like me send out a smile
From young to old in one astounding leap
As with my crutch along the road I creep.
It’s better for my health to take a walk
Or to my crutch I have been heard to talk
I say switch off the laptop close the lid
And answer, who are you talking to, our kid?
Sometimes I say, oh, we need meringues.
That’s me and all my  numerous inner gang

 

Intelligence by itself is not enough

Photo0011
Mary has a dear friend who lives, alas , nowadays in northern Scotland. Clare moved back there when her mother became unable to manage at home. Then Clare developed very severe problems with her feet and legs and had been offered psychotherapy by the pain clinic.
After Mary had  been talking to Clare on the phone she thought to herself,
I wonder if I should speak to a therapist because I am still grieving for Stan and it’s possible therapy might be able to tell me whether what I’m feeling is normal or whether I am going round the bend.
Mary found several counsellors near where she lived by looking on the Internet; she had interviewed five and decided on one called Margaret  Slipknot, Dr Slipknot had a room in a private hospital in the best road of the entire City.
Good morning, please take a seat over here, Margaret said to Mary.
Now you can tell me anything you like; it is completely confidential except that if you tell me you are going to kill somebody or commit suicide, I am obliged to tell your doctor or the police. Is that alright with you?

Oh yes said Mary that seems quite sensible because I understand the motivation behind it all, knowing several widows ; they have mentioned that they didn’t want to go on living alone.But I did not tell their doctor or the police because sometimes everybody feels like that and once they realise it they are quite happy, in a sense.They can accept it.I have got a very good friend next door call Annie and I know many colleagues at the university but since my husband died I feel as if there is a void at the centre of my being and whatever I do will not fill it.
Margaret. said, Perhaps this void has a role to play in your life.
What kind of role could a void have?.Mary gasped
Just say whatever comes to your mind.
A void is not something that people talk about very much and I’m not sure if it’s just the right word to describe what  I am sensing but it is more than just a little emptiness.
Stan used to make my dinner every night when I came home from the University and he also used to feed the cat and put the rubbish out not to mention listening to my thoughts about what happened to me while I was at work,  and all the people that I have met. So when I come home now feeling weary and tired I have to make my own dinner.
And do you make yourself dinner?
Not always. you see when Stan was alive I had a certain motivation to be a good and loving wife. I used to do a lot of planning to make sure that, even though he was going to do the cooking, that there were all the required ingredients in the cupboard plus also spices and herbs and garlic. I realise now that I have not bought any garlic for the past year.
People don’t usually come to see me just because they have not bought any garlic lately, the therapist cried.
When Mary heard the word lately she began to cry because late is a word used to denote people who are dead like the late Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.
I see that you are still feeling sad and there’s nothing wrong with that but I am a little concerned about how you will cope with all your new responsibilities as well as continuing your work and life with students, Which all the things you mentioned about your husband do you miss the most?
I think the thing I’m missing him most for is putting out the rubbish. He always insisted on doing this even when he was very ill and I find it hard to remember to do it when I never did it before.It seems to me that a woman needs a man to put out the wheelie bins out and collect big cardboard boxes which need crushing.I feel bad putting the wheelies out by myself in the dark.
That doesn’t seem very nice, Margaret cried, that you only miss your husband because you have to put out the rubbish now yourself. I know that I’m not meant to give you advice.I want to listen to you but I cannot really believe that the main thing that you miss him for is this.
Well said Mary, don’t push me; this is the first session we’ve had and I am still testing the water.In other words don’t you realise that I’m not going to tell you the most sacred aspects of my being until I feel like I can trust you.
I’m not implying that you are an irresponsible,  foolish person, but don’t you think after working for 20 years as a psychotherapist that you should know that even in normal life we don’t tell someone we’ve never met before the very intimate and secret aspects of our being. There are some people who do this when they are not taking into account the person who they are speaking to, who they have never met before.Except people do it on trains.
I see, said Margaret. I will wait until you feel able to tell me what you miss the most. I don’t suppose it’s sex because you are much too old for that, although that is one way that some people fill in a void.
Do you think that women feel that their womb is an empty space inside them and wish to put something into it, asked Mary
Everybody’s different; now even if you have sex it won’t fill your womb now as  I already mentioned I think you are too old to have sex.
Mary felt very angry,
How dare you say I am too old to have sex. Stan used to teach classes of pensioners about statistics and other topics and he told me that many of them said that they were still involved in a sexual relationship.Now we don’t know quite how far they would go in that way but they have an interest.I thought that therapists were not meant to make judgements about what their clients say to them.
Are you really a trained psychotherapist? You must be earning a lot of money to rent this room in a private hospital and as far as I can see you do not seem to have any common sense, let alone uncommon sense.
Margaret’s face went bright red,
I am sorry she cried, I was a little bit nervous when you told me that you were a mathematician And it threw me off my stride because I thought that you might be more intelligent than I am.
Intelligence by itself is not  enough;it can be used to make nuclear bombs; to start Wars ;to gather information about your enemies what you really need  is  time and care and the ability to listen without criticism or judgement for the person who is with you ;you must have met some other people who were quite intelligent .It seems to me that you need more Training so that you are able to deal with your issues of fear of the highly intelligent person. You don’t need to have a fear of them and we are just the same as other people except that for some reason we preferred the geometry of the spheres to dating boys when we were 16.
In my case, it was after I had an operation to remove my appendix and was convalescing for several weeks. I came across a book called “Mathematician’s delight” by W.W.Sawyer And I read it about imaginary numbers and complex numbers so then I realised that mathematics was not just arithmetic and quadratic equations.
I don’t know whether I will come to see you anymore. What you said has taken away my faith in my judgement of people. You seemed the best therapist that I interviewed but now we’re starting I think I might have made a mistake.
Please don’t stop, said Margaret, I need the money!
So you think that I should continue seeing you here when you already proved yourself a little inadequate, merely to give you money. I am afraid I am not rich enough  to see you if I will have to see somebody else as well, since you are no good
I’ll tell you what said Margaret, let me give you another session completely free and see how we get on then.If you are still unhappy with me then, of course, you must find a different person. I realise my training was incomplete because we are all graduates or doctors and then we do five years training so we believe we are superior to most of the people who come for treatment but when I speak to my supervisor I will tell her that I think we all need to look at this question of superiority because neither you nor I  is actually morally or ethically superior to everybody else ;it can sometimes appear that we can see somebody is very inferior morally like  Hitler or Pol Pot but it’s now obvious most of the time
I’ll give you a call, Mary said when I have made my mind up; it is very kind of you to offer me a free session when you are so short of money. if I were your therapist, I would tell you that you were short of money because you are not very good at your job and therefore you will not have enough patients to make a living.On the other hand, it may be that you need to take an extra job, stacking the shelves in the supermarket to give you enough money to live on without exploiting human beings like myself.
However, I am glad that I realised that I feel this  void inside me because I now realise that I felt it long before my husband died and it must be linked to something else in my life, not just to him
Alright, said Margaret thank you very much for being so honest I hope you will come again.If not, I wish you good luck in finding someone who can travel with you on your journey into your new life.Thank you, said Mary. I will phone you soon, goodbye.
When she got home she told Emile, her cat.He said he wished he had gone with her to see how beautiful Margaret was.
That is very selfish, Emile.You need to hear what she says!

And so say all of us.

16425956_855594144580465_2247767998034181588_n

Our eyes will melt and souls combine.

Down daisied fields, sweet grasses grow
Down these green fields, I know, I know.
In unploughed, fields where wild flowers blow
We’ll meet again, I Iove you so.

It was in the first soft summer light
I saw you standing, face so bright.
I saw you by the drystone wall.
I never doubted you at all.

When Meadows bright all bloom again
I know we’ll see you coming then.
in sunny fields where wildflowers hide
I know my love is by my side.

Oh,come, dear heart, do not delay.
We are not long till in the clay.
I’ll stand upon the beacon here
And never rest, till you are near.

When flowering buds all open wide
When bees to poppies swiftly glide.
When your dear heart is pressed to mine
Our eyes will melt and souls combine.

Oh, where are you, my dearest one
All too soon our lives are gone
I gaze across the fields and hills.
As sunset-sky with flames is filled.

When buttercups and celandine
Beckon to me in my dreams.
When apple blossom fills the tree
I believe, with love I’ll see.

The  silence aches with menace  and hot hair

Are we bristling with an untold rage?
The  silence aches with menace  and  hot hair
I feel our minds and hearts are disengaged

Why do we blame God for our steel cage?
The glass around it mists with such despair.
Are we filled with old, unholy rage?

We don’t recognise the players on our stage
And what is worse, we feel we do not care,
As our minds and hearts are disengaged

The scriptwriter was not named on the page!
They told  it all  and left our feelings bare,
So we bristle with unruly rage.

Are we in need of ethical  triage,
Assessed by saints and demons of despair?
While our minds and hearts are disengaged

Would we were in  gardens, unknown, fair
As Leonard Cohen’s songs drowned out our fear
Are we condemned to tussle with our rage?
I sense our minds and hearts awry, dismayed.

 

 

 

 

Who is a hypocrite?

photo0955-3

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/philosophers-are-hypocrites/392087/

“…..as the cliché goes, people don’t always practice what they preach—particularly in some professions. Take the police: when Florida’s Sun Sentinel examined the records of 3,915 officers who had traveled on toll roads in 2011, the paper found that nearly 800 of them had driven at speeds of 90 to 130 miles an hour, many either while off duty or in violation of department rules that barred excessive speeding even in emergencies. Or consider physicians: one study of 500 doctors found 38 percent of them to be overweight, versus 33 percent of American adults (to be fair, the doctors’ rate of obesity was lower) [1]. Or those in retail: according to the security company Checkpoint Systems, the people who steal most from North American stores aren’t shoppers, but employees.”

 

“Another study shows ethicists to be especially delinquent library patrons:compared with other philosophy texts, “contemporary ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy” were roughly 50 percent more likely to be permanently missing [3].”

The ethical

leg 2

Can the Ethical be Primary?

An extract:

“Ethics is kind of ‘in your face’ in a way that things-in-themselves are not.  You can start the ethical endeavor from someplace other than ontology – in experience perhaps.  It is possible that ethics is primary:  ‘What should I do?’ comes before ‘What is there?’

This question put me in the mind of Emmanuel Levinas, who I was studying for my dissertation prior to going from fully to partially examining my life. His Wikipedia entry has a nice succinct section on this point:

[Levinas’] work is based on the ethics of the Other or, in Levinas’ terms, on “ethics as first philosophy”. For Levinas, the Other is not knowable and cannot be made into an object of the self, as is done by traditional metaphysics (which Lévinas called “ontology“). Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the “wisdom of love” rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word “philosophy”). In his view, responsibility precedes any “objective searching after truth”.

Levinas derives the primacy of his ethics from the experience of the encounter with the Other. For Levinas, the irreducible relation, the epiphany, of the face-to-face, the encounter with another, is a privileged phenomenon in which the other person’s proximity and distance are both strongly felt. “The Other precisely reveals himself in his alterity not in a shock negating the I, but as the primordial phenomenon of gentleness.”[3] At the same time, the revelation of the face makes a demand, this demand is before one can express, or know one’s freedom, to affirm or deny.[4] “

In short, the Other comes before any Object.  There is a sense in which this view makes a category claim about Others vs. Objects – they are wholly different.  This doesn’t entail that one is prior to the other (and I suspect that at some point Derrida probably deconstructed that opposition).  If we at least grant the distinction between the two, I read Mark’s comment as saying there are practical reasons for spending our energies on ethics instead of ontology and I am sympathetic to this view.  You can live your life never knowing what is-in-itself, but you will at some point in your life have to make a moral decision.  It’s worth giving that some thought.

Levinas’ ultimately will claim that responsibility for the Other is the foundation of our Subjectivity, taking Heidegger’s notion of Sorge (Care) to it’s logical conclusion with respect to other Dasein.  While I won’t claim to understand what Levinas is really all about, listeners have probably caught on to the fact that the Ethical is of much more interest to me than ontology.  Metaphysically or practically ethical questions take priority for me.”

 

What truly human means

“I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is -and don’t be afraid of this word- love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, i could say it better, responsibility is actually love, as Pascal said: ‘without concupiscence’ [without lust]… love exists without worrying being loved.”
― Emmanuel Lévinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind

 

http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Levinas.html

I burned my bottom on a plastic seat

I burned my bottom on a  plastic seat
My legs were aching so I just sat down
What a danger in this nauseous heat!

I gave a cry that sounded like a bleat,
Which caused the nearby folk to turn and frown
I burned my bottom on a  plastic seat

With cystitis, I felt rather weak
The  plastic fire  may help my bladder round
I might linger in this healing heat.

At least it will have dried up any leak
And thus the odour will my seers confound
I burned my bottom on a  plastic seat

What a way to end this furious week
If I were younger, I might feel let down
I’ll  have a smoke   to convey my conceit

Where are my tiara and my crown?
They are made of plastic like my gown
I burned my bottom on a  plastic seat
What a rude shock in this  fracking heat!

Eating in the garden in the rain

Eating in the garden in the rain
Denying what his senses felt and saw
November came and he crept in again

A look  of anguish with a heart so pained
He wished he were beyond the natural law.
Eating in the garden in the rain

Once we   were to weather quite immune
We lived as if our bodies had no flaw
November came and  we ate in again

I heard the blackbird spring its built in tune
Hoping that his misery would thaw
While eating in the house where it can’t  rain

To him the winter dark made very plain
We must eat indoors and find some joy
November comes and  we are home again

Every husband has at least  one flaw
And it ain’t what that damned butcher saw
Eating in the garden in the rain
Autumn comes and I still vote remain

 

Our roots are in another kind of earth

Our roots are in another kind of earth
Invisible,  yet felt in guts and heart
Unlike the trees that bow down at our birth

Ignorant of our roots, now torn  and worse
We come to grief and all its  little parts.
Our roots are in another kind of earth

Our conception,  to the sperm, is merry mirth
The egg is eager for her life to start
Unlike the trees that, windy, flounce and curse.

We do not know what our deep roots are worth
Till sad we see our angels each depart
Our roots are in  some other kind of earth

We grow,enlarge, and learn a language first
Then in our home grown  narrative we star
Unlike the trees that bowed down at our birth

Creating love from endless tiny sparks
The form of every universe  must start.
Our roots are in another kind of earth
With fabled  trees entrancing every birth

Learning image and description in poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70212/learning-image-and-description

This is an extract from the above article

“A Few Ways to Begin

The poetic definition of the term image is broader than our everyday one, and this is important to emphasize: the poetic image is not just visual but an activation of any of the five senses. Although in our highly visual culture we tend to think of the visual by default, in fact some of the most evocative imagery engages the nose, the ear, the sense of touch or taste.

Another way teachers often present this subject is to discuss the appeal of showing (as opposed to telling or explaining) the object at hand. Again, in using the word “show” we are limited by the language of our culture—showing seems to refer to sight, but can also encompass other senses. In a poem one can show the sound of the neighbor’s cough, or the feel of the cotton of a lover’s shirt against the speaker’s face, or the smell of the pond in a Vermont town in winter. You can start by listing such sensory evocations, to become more aware of the imagery you come into contact with every day, as well as the images contained in, or as, your memories. Try this preliminary two-part exercise:

1. Sit in a public space for at least 30 minutes. Choose a place others are passing through (a school quadrangle, coffee shop, library, bus stop, etc.). Try to observe, using all five senses, what is happening around you. Record, in list form and in as much detail as possible, at least 20 different images that catch your attention.
2. Then, spending at least 30 minutes on your own in a quiet space, go inward. Think of strong sensory memories and try to capture—again in list form, and without worrying about providing explanatory context for a reader—those memories in language, conveying the strongest sensory details.

To take imagery deeper, and explore its potential for catalyzing new poems, you could expand upon the observation exercise above. For example, try taking one image from your observation and writing a page about it, not limiting yourself to what you see and hear and smell directly anymore, but allowing the sensory input to spark other thoughts, memories, images, story, and emotional weight. Robert Pinsky’s “Shirt” seems to do just this, beginning as it does with a physical examination of how a shirt is made: “The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, / The nearly invisible stitches along the collar …” We imagine the writer may actually be looking at a shirt as he begins writing this. But then the imagination takes over, and the shirt’s journey comes to life: “the collar / Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians / Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break.” By line 10 of the poem we are in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911. Then a jaunt through Scotland, and finally the modern-day factory in South Carolina where this shirt has received its inspection by someone named Irma (a detail we presume the speaker knew from finding the inspection sticker on the inside of the fabric). The poem takes us on a high-speed, higher-intensity whirl through history, reimagining its scenes, and ends back where it started, in close examination of this shirt’s physical features, but with new import: “the buttons of simulated bone, / the buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters / Printed in black on neckband and tail.””

Not his honey, not his little hin

When you are here,I feel his absence more
The empty cocoon, no one live within
Since he has gone,I wonder what life’s for

When you are gone,I  close the heavy door.
The silence supreme, glacial will begin.
When you are here,I feel his absence more

Without  his arms I feel I am estranged
Not his honey, not his little hin
Since he has gone,I wonder what I’m for.

I feel a hatred rising,dark, deranged.
Yet ,is there not that  Other deep within?
When you were here,I felt that absence more

We must grieve  and let our tears down pour
We fend off  bleak despair,  so cold, malign
Since  he is gone,I wonder what life’s for.

Is this love gone off a cancer or a sin?
May I hope the better side will win?
When you were here,I felt his absence more
Since he has gone,I wonder what I ‘m for.

 

 

 

Can you write a good poem fast?

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https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/blog/entry/can-you-write-a-good-poem-fast

Extract:

‘Un poème n’est jamais fini, seulement abandonné. A poem is never finished, only abandoned.’ The words are Paul Valéry’s, though I first came across them elsewhere – quoted by Philip Larkin, I think.

 

 

Quote:

“There are circumstances in which poems arrive fast and finished. Re-reading some of Gerard Manley Hopkin’s darkest sonnets, and in particular ‘ I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’, I see James Reeves’ note at the back of my edition: ‘This and the three following sonnets are probably among those referred to in a letter to Bridges in which Hopkins says, Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will.’ That sounds fast to me, although the final sonnets may be some way from their original manifestations.

 

Perhaps poems should be written in these conditions – only when they are inevitable. Much ink might be saved, and every poem would have the necessary ingredient of desperation in it. It would be something found, not something sought. True poems come into being at the top of an experience chain, as people and birds of prey are at the top of the food chain. But some links of the experience chain may be the writing of manufactured poems, or a poem hunt, and the dark night of the doggerel. Rubbish-writing and despair. It is necessary to work, providing one’s own waves of energy, until, suddenly, the poem is given. It may be a line or a word only, but it slots into place like a keystone, locking words together.”

…………..

“So there is a case for poems written fast, hurriedly, uncooked. They may be the necessary experiences in a chain.

James Reeves would not have agreed. He thought the hardest (but most important) thing for a poet was to know when not to write. In ‘What is it to be a poet?’ (in Commitment to Poetry, 1969), he says: ‘It is up to every poet to know his creative power, and not force it. I know mine to be small and I say this without complacency. I never cease to wish it were greater.’ And he goes on ‘One must accept the gift one has; one must accept the necessity for silence, for doing nothing; it is the hardest thing to be a poet and be unable to write poems.’”

 

Mary and the underpants

Mary was sitting down feeling quite lonely in the waiting room outside the doctor’s office when she saw Emile her cat hiding under a chair..

What are you doing,she whispered.I’m glad of your company though.

I jumped into your cab, the cheeky cat informed her proudly

I want to be there when he examines you in case he makes vulgar remarks

Don’t worry,she answered,they always have a chaperone nowadays.

Just then a pretty young black nurse took Mary into a room and said to her

Take off your underpants!

I don’t wear underpants,said Mary,but I can go home and get my husband’s if you want me to.

We use underpants as a generic term,the nurse informed her in a kindly yet menacing voice.

Wow,they are so intelligent nowadays,I don’t think I knew what generic meant till recently Mary told herself stupidly

I have no underpants,Emile mewed. crossly

No and I am not making you any.I have quite enough washing to do already.Mary responded like a mother.

It’s not fair, said Emile.All my friends have underpants and T shirts too.

Soon the doctor came in and looked nervously at Mary and then at her female parts.

Mary was used to this but all of a sudden she got a nasty pain

Ow,ow,ow,she shrieked,what is that?

It’s ok,said the nurse,just old ladies are not used to this sort of thing.

I’ll have you know many older ladies are very used to it but not when they are unaroused.Besides men’s organs are kinder than metal or plastic if the lady is willing.Can’t you put more lubricant on the damned thing

The doctor tried to remove the speculum but was clearly somewhat agitated.

Ouch,cried Mary.Ouch.Ouch

Thank goodness I didn’t know it would hurt.Do you think we should be shown a romantic mildly arousing film in the waiting room to make it easier?

We can’t do that,said the nurse.We might be accused of running a brothel.Still we could use more money in here.

But the doctor is not paying me,said Mary.
I am paying him, in a sense,as a taxpayer.And you too,dear.

You are too clever for me,said the nurse sharply as she admired Mary’s tan leather handbag from TKMaxx stuffed with set squares and cameras

I shall bring a vibrator next time,Mary told her,though she had never even seen a vibrator except in a picture.Still.she had to say something.And why should she not benefit from modern science?Boots sell them,she seemed to recall…

You can’t bring a vibrator in here or the doctor will be angry ,as he might be accused of misconduct if you enjoyed yourself, the nurse whispered, though why should you not enjoy it,she said in a puzzled tone as if she had never thought like this before.

I thought it was only misconduct if he enjoyed himself,Mary cried loudly and plaintively

He has seen so many ladies, it is just like seeing into a mouth for him,said the nurse churlishly thus taking away Mary’s pride in her unique anatomy.

I expect one gets used to anything in time,Mary murmured,but I hope he will not need to do that again to me.

No, you seem ok,the doctor said,but I seem to imagine I can see a cat under the table.What is he doing?

I am just keeping an eye on you,mewed Emile.I live with Mary.

No animals are allowed in here ,the doctor shouted in a paranoid manner.

A bit late now,mewed the cat.Are you sending for the cat police

Dr.Grey picked up a very large speculum and threatened to strike Emile with it

Now then,said the nurse, he might scratch my legs.Leave him alone.He’s just protecting her.And I had just sterilised that.

Fat lot of good Emile was,Mary thought.

The doctor approached Mary and told her she would be seeing a consultant soon… in the meantime should she do anything to prepare… she asked.

Well, do try to relax if you can, he told her gently.It is trying for ladies of riper years to attend hospitals but we only want to help you.

I’ll have to help myself,Mary thought wryly, lauging inside as she got down off the table and put on her red and purple knickers or “underpants” as they are now referred to as.

Thank God,that is over,she whispered to Emile.Let’s run out and get a cab.

She hobbled to the door and phoned the taxi firm with her mobile.I just want to get home she told the driver.

Don’t we all, he said in an Eton accent.Surely it’s not David Cameron in disguise canvassing patients?Thank God he’s not conducting pelvic exams on them!That would lose him the election whether he was any good or not… in my view,but then what do I know about the British electorate?It might be the key to our future as a nation.Think about it! Now we know it’s worse than in 2015 for sure
And so say all of us

I think it’s funny

  • 4343717_f520Well.Margaret,I am the doctor.Have you had sex recently?
    I didn’t realise we could have it on the NHS.Do we have to  ?
    Sorry ,dear,I am the gynaecologist.
    Do stop showing off and speak English.
    I mean I am a doctor who studies lady’s private parts.
    You get paid as well!
    Please let me conduct the interview.
    Where is your podium?
    Are you always like this?
    No,only with men or women.
    This is what I need to know.When did you last engage in intercourse?
    Does self pleasuring not count?
    No,you can keep it mum.I am merely wondering if the speculum might hurt you as you are so old,dried up and withered looking.
    How extremely thoughtful of you.My boyfriend never calls me withered looking,
    How old is he?
    Mind your own business.
    Well, are you ok with an internal?
    I want a good one
    Sorry ,dear, we are all wicked here.
    I mean a chaperone.
    OK I shall get a nurse.
    You can nurse me if you like.
    Now, please don’t be impertinent.You are still attractive you know.
    I know.Men follow me like bees to a honey jar.
    What do you do?
    I  have my fun them or tell them to buzz off.
    Are you free Saturday.-
    No, it’s the day for my bi-opsy
    Or is it bio-spy?
    That sounds suspicious!
    Well,we sometimes do get people spying on us.
    Or are you just feeling left out because you can’t bear to think nobody cares about you one iota?
    What’s an iota?
    I can see you didn’t do PPE at Oxford.
    Well,I did my medical studies at Imperial.
    I say,how absolutely fantastic.You must be bright.Are you doing anything on Sunday?
    No, because I believe we should only worship then.
    You can worship me, although after that speculum I shall be unwilling to have sex.
    Do you usually do it on the first date?
    No.I am still a virgin, really.
    What do you mean,really…?
    In my heart,I am a virgin but in my body I am a widow.
    O M G, let mioaw ‘t of here…
    I knew you were a cat.. I have seen those eyes at night in the dark.
    Nobody has ever said that to me before.
    Thank you.OMG I never examined you.
    I’ll have to come back next week…
    But now we can’t get it on the NHS!
    What do you think of that?

He said he was ill but not that he was dead.Men!

Sorry, I can’t answer the phone.I’ve gone out for a stalk or a flower
Sorry, I am not here.They gave me too many injections and I’m not whole yet nor am I partial to your moaning
Sorry I can’t take your call.I am planning to shoot myself tonight but if I  survive I’ll write you an email tomorrow.
Sorry I am not in.I’ve been arrested for writing  low quality verses.Is it a crime now?
Sorry we are off to the pub to get arrested for drunk driving so we can spend the New Year in jail…. it saves money for us but not the taxpayer
Please stop phoning;my head is ringing……  how do I take the call?
Sorry I am out right now as I’d love to  clear your voice again.Please growl back later.
Fancy you ringing,I love your rude message and return it redoubled in strength.
Yes,you did love her but it was a wrong time ago and besides she is a dead  ringer for  the Queen
This is a telephone answering service.If you are human try meeting face to face.
Honesty can get very wounding so please take care about leaving a message after the tone
Silence and telephones are incompatible.So take your kick and konk off.
Why are you phoning.I saw you today.Please do not leave a message as I am feeling moody and mean like a film star on a horse’s back
He said he was going out for a bark.Can I fake a message?
He said he was ill but not that he was dead.Men!
He said he’s had enough but  I am still alive.
Where am I? I’m not here.So stop phoning