Well,I’ve been out and collected some new computer spectacles.Since I’ve been ill for 2 weeks I wasn’t able to go before.They are wonderful.A big help to someone with visual problems.They are sometimes known as office glasses,apparently.
Then I had to have a SIM card blocked as I lost a phone.So I’ve been busy without really doing anything.The weather is so cold my feet are numb.I am putting the heating on.The air from the Carribean has not arrived.Yet!
I  hope summer is not over for us so soon.Still,we adapt.I am now trying to make a Voice Tablet work and might hit it with a stick in a minute.It is frozen but no oven will thaw it out

I never knew what winking really meant
Especially if from someone soon to die.
Everyone said my husband was a gent

We  never spent a hot week in a tent
But on the shore we loved to read and lie.
I never knew what winking really meant

He used to pray but seldom during Lent
He did not like the eye of God to pry
Everyone said my husband was a gent

When we met he said I was a saint
But little did he know that I’m a spy
I never knew what blinking really meant

In his arms, I felt I’d  like to faint
But I cannot faint  near ICI
All agree my husband was a gent

His dad was ICI’s astonishment
In Billingham asthmatics  used to cry
I never knew before what stinking  meant

If he died no-one could pay the rent
So mother used to keep him nice and dry
All agree  my husband really spent

If he had to die then so do I
But I have other fish I long to fry
I never knew what winking really meant.
But does it matter since he was a gent?

https://www.udemy.com/beginners-guide-to-writing-poetry/

Martin Luther’s Anti-Semitic Legacy—500 Years Later

Quote

The 500th anniversary, which numerous conferences, museum exhibits and special events and publications are commemorating throughout 2017, has a much darker significance for Jews. While Martin Luther initially had a relatively positive relationship with German Jews, he eventually adopted vociferously anti-Jewish rhetoric and promoted violence against Jews. His views helped shape centuries of anti-Semitic attitudes in Western Europe, and the Nazis later used his writing to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment.

Now dress is to be gender free at last
And fluidly the boundaries shall run
Wear some leaves like Eve and  smoke the grass

Watch the  legs of maidens as they pass
Eating apples,having lots of fun
Now dress is to be gender free at last

Every rule  is broken and debased
The police are armed and we can smell the guns
Wear some leaves like Eve and  smoke the grass

Let the memory of our loves be not erased
As rapidly the rules melt with sense none
So dress is to be gender free at last

Let not our heart’s love be torn, defaced
Let us live with humour and wisdom
Wear some leaves like Eve and  mow the grass

Is our Big Society a con?
Clothes are not important to the Sun
Now dress is to be gender free at last
Wear some leaves like Eve and   break the glass.

Ah,did you throw away the ripened fruit
Because inside it hid a hardened stone?
As anything not total does not suit
Love’s ambivalence seems to you a crime.

Confirm yourself by getting a phone text
You cannot live today without that cell
When I was young , the  Bishop confirmed best

Do you wonder if you’re a mite obsessed
Well if you are, perhaps noone else can tell
Confirm you’re me by getting a phone text

Do you think  that I  have passed a test
To prove I’m real and feeling really swell?
Then I was told , the  Bishop confirmed  least

My mother always  seemed inclined to vex
And added further children to our hell.
Confirm yourself by sending you a text

I wonder if we had too many checks
I suffered with my” nerves” when Mother yelled
When lips were cold , the  Bishop  preferred breasts.

Well soon I shall find what cometh next
The priest was absent from my burial
Confirm all first by sending God a text

So then we hear the tolling of the knell
Elegaic music with dark thrills
Confirm yourself by reading holy texts
When I  sung , the  Bishop cried “Arrest.”

Old wall by Katherine

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/111710/when-i-connect-via-usb-android-to-pc-it-automatically-starts-charging-how-do

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-housden/importance-of-poetry_b_884319.html

“Poems are necessary because they honor the unknown, both in us and in the world. They come from an undiscovered country; they are shaped into form by the power of language, and set free to fly with wings of images and metaphor. Imagine a world in which everything is already known. It would be a dead world, no questions, no wonder, no other possibility. That’s what my own world can feel like sometimes when my imagination has gone into retreat. I have discovered that poetry is the phoenix I can fly on to return to that forgotten land.

And yet for all its magic, poetry uses the common currency of our daily speech. It uses words that are known to all of us, but in a sequence and order that surprises us out of our normal speech rhythms and linear thought processes. Its effect is to illuminate our lives and breathe new life, new seeing, new tasting into the world we thought we knew. Poetry bids us eat the apple whole.

To eat the apple of the world whole, we have to learn to pay attention; not only to the inner promptings of the imagination, but to the physical world around us. Poetry is a way of rescuing the world from oblivion by the practice of attention. It is our attention that honors and gives value to living things, that gives them their proper name and particularity; that retrieves them from the obscurity of the general. Poems that galvanize my attention shake me awake. They pass on their attentiveness, their prayerfulness, to me, the reader. And especially when I read them aloud, and shape the sounds on my lips and the rhythms on my breath. This is why poetry can make us more fully human, and more fully engaged in this world.”

I have walked the silent paths of grief
Sunless,dreary,cold and all alone.
I have slept on beds of winter leaves.

I feel that death’s a cruel,mysterious  thief.
Although my heart weeps and my joy has gone,
I have never felt I was deceived.

I have learned that human life is brief.
I have learned by sorrow we’re undone.
I  have sifted earth and what’s beneath.

I have felt my dark emotions seethe
While I'm cruelly mocked by glaring sun.
I have learned the geography of grief.

I wait in patience for my life to cease.
Will  I know when my last supper's  come?
Will my tale be written on a leaf?

Unconsoled  grief  can make   us dumb
Into  our  hearts, we drag the ice  that numbs
I have walked the silent paths of grief
I have made my bed on winter leaves

Oh,steam iron how I love your heat
And how you make my clothes so neat.
A flat iron is no use to me
For  no open fire is here,you see.
And thought I liked the flickering coals
I feared those faces that looked droll.
They were in the flames and peered
At anyone who ventured near.
I wonder how the people past
Kept their trousers neat and pressed.
Now I’ve bought a hand steamer
To keep the germs  off my femurs
I didn’t like to say,my crotch
In case the devil is on watch.
I never ever used to think
My body perfume was distinct.
And yet it may appeal to men
I don’t want to try again.
One dear husband is enough
Though he did enjoy a cough
He had asthma and bad eyes
Looking out with wild surmise.
He saw my golden hair float by
As by his window it did fly
All at once he fell  for me
And we sat by an apple tree.
His clothes were wrinkled so I thought
I would iron them for a start.
He could darn and polish floors
Cook lamb chops and apple cores.
So my steam iron sees much use
I wonder if it’s self abuse
For  as a woman feminist
I’m not meant to iron vests
I’m not meant to  boil  mens’ socks
Nor their pants of interlock
I’m not meant to make them tea.
What a naughty person,me!
I must  confess these wicked sins
Then I’ll polish my cake tins.
Satan wants me down in hell
Don’t say he needs my  iron as well
As he was an angel proud
I’ll save him into One Drive Cloud.

A bird’s gifts are its vision and its wings
From eagles to the sparrow  on the lawn
Instant sight, then flight their safety bring

O little trembling robin ,shivering heart
I rescued you, the stray cat did no harm
But your predicament had made me start.

Then missing your sweet breakfast from my spouse,
How he loved to watch and hear your call,
You  hopped inside the kitchen and the house

After seeing no man was inside
You flew away as I stood in the hall
I had not seen you since the day he died

And now I do not feed birds  by the door
I place their water by the garden wall
And there are berries from the autumn’s store

As  on the tree high up a blackbird calls
A single apple from my tree shall fall
A bird’s gifts are its vision and its wings
Instant sight, then flight their safety bring

I try  to rule out cliches when I can
At the  exact moment they begin
For if I let one get in here
It will ruin my new career
And then I’ll be  once more an also  ran

“To be or not to be “is Hamlet’s thought
As if the doubting illness he has  caught
So don’t get scruples on the brain
Or you’ll be feeling sick again
And we know how it is when life is naught.

What the Dickens does my boyfriend think
He will not supply my pen with ink
He says handwriting’ s obsolete
We’ll soon be writing with both feet
Yet my old pen  creates no missing links

They told me I was so hypothroid I was going into a comma.More like a full stop, I’d say.
Anyway, what’s so bad about commas?
My anemia was so severe, I baptised myself and now my name is Holy Moses ,which  is odd as Moses predated Jesus.I should not have used hot water but my hair needed washing.
My migraine was cured by  detachment.I wanted to cut off my own head but my mother said she couldn’t live without it.So I disengaged.Then got harried.
It’s all one  to me.
I used to get pre-vestibule tension when I first menstruated.Would you like a vestibule in your body?
The Bishop forbade Tampax.He must have had shares in Dr Whites unmentionables.What was my hymen to him? I don’t believe I  ever had one.So there!
I never had flu till I  began explaining why  e is not an algebraic number.Don’t say ,it’s a letter! It was the lectures that made me ill.I don’t like the sound of my own voice
What puzzles me is I became mute when I was 17  and 5 years later I was  a tutor at a University.I never realised I’d have to talk till it was too late.Tell Freud that one!Still it was mainly:

For every number delta, however small there is a number epsilon ,which is less than delta.Maybe it’s the other way round but I can’t type it again.So it’s not as if I had to make small  talk about Wittgenstein and Serge Diaghilev.Or the weather.We never spoke to the undergraduates.They looked terrified already.Maybe they were mute

So to conclude, if you are mute, become a teacher.Or even a professor.That will make you talk again and again….but I’m still quiet I am told.When I stop talking.

It’s a bit late in the day for a poem
I’m only human you know!
but if you feel like a-knowing
Then to your bookshelf you go.

Take out a volume of Shakespeare
He was my ancestor too.
Then if you need a short break,dear,
A sonnet should do it for you.

Take out a clean piece of paper
And your pen and some ink.
Make up a poetic caper,
Then you can have forty winks.

Take out a volume of Homer.
Read it instead of the News.
Then if you fall into a coma
We shall all be completely amused!
The Government will be bemused.
Do you hire one or have your own Muse?
This is all a very fine ruse.
I want to blow my own fuse.
I love to write in canoes

With his blood sugar and my thyroid gland
Not to mention gout and heart attacks.
Our marriage was   detested by the grand

Sometimes he looked  mad and could not stand
My feebleness in falling down the cracks
Between his  sugar and my thyroid gland

I held my soul together with a band
Elastic in its way thus not too slack
Our marriage was   arrested   by hot hands

Yet often we would saunter hand in hand
Go on the towpath feed the swans and ducks
Despite low  sugar and low thyroid gland

He loved the sea and loved the long white sands
But as for me I could not  muster luck
Our marriage was so trying it was banned

I lost my heart  and seemed to lose my luck
So kindly  he bought geese for me to pluck
With his blood sugar and my thyroid gland
Our marriage was  disfigured by demands

I am  not talking about accepting violence and abuse from partner’s or friends
Similarly to Gandhi’s peaceful resistance, I  think we need to avoid immediate retaliation when a person is angry while maybe removing ourselves from the scene for a while.
Because a number of health matters can make people fly off the handle.The one I know best is diabetes.But the angry person might not yet be diagnosed.Depression can make people irritable too.Fear can display as anger in men.A problem at work  can make people desperate
My husband was diabetic and at one time when we were eating, he would begin arguing or even shouting.After studying diabetes in depth I found he was having hypos; very low blood sugar.So I started giving him some light food at 4 pm.Then he was back to his usual self.But I do think doctors do not inform us.I bought many books and even a glucose monitor.I practised on my own hands for 2 weeks [ somewhat painful]  and then I began to test him.He said I was better than the nurse.
The little instrument with which you pierce the skin has a small sharp point.I got fed up with it being hard to work, so I took the needle out and just stuck it into my finger! That got some blood out to test,
Don’t do this unless you are desperate.

I wear red leggings underneath my dress
My legs are cold and turning slightly blue
So I dress like the Muslim ladies do
Is it sinful, must  I now confess?

You see, I don’t like wearing denim jeans
And yet the summer is not very warm
So to keep my legs and bladder calm
I’m brighter than a can of Heinz baked beans

I like to wear  bright colours like the flowers
But English summers are not trustworthy
And my weak bladder  is a curse to me
The germs get in and I go twice an hour. [or more!]

Antibiotics do their work slowly
And on the sofa, I lie with a book
It’s much too narrow as a lover’s nook
So with my Keats contented, I must be.

The post man looked a little bit surprised
But though I’m 89 I still like clothes
Does he think that I am one of those?
Or maybe I’m a mugger in disguise?

So see  me in your mind’s eye looking bright
And then like me, perhaps you’ll see the light

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/what-makes-poetry-poetic/377508/

sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

https://qz.com/896463/is-it-ok-to-punch-a-nazi-philosopher-slavoj-zizek-talks-richard-spencer-nazis-and-donald-trump/

“Quartz: So, is it OK to punch a Nazi?

Žižek: No! If there is violence needed, I’m more for Gandhian, passive violence……………

—while Gandhi really wanted to bring down the British state. But his violence was symbolic: peaceful demonstrations, general strikes and so on.

If a guy talks like that jerk [Richard Spencer], you should just ignore him. If he hits you, turn around. Don’t even acknowledge him as a person. That’s the type of violence I would call for. Not physical violence. Because, you know, people say symbolic violence can be even worse, but don’t underestimate physical violence. Something happens when you move to physical violence. I’m not saying we should greet everyone, embrace them. Be brutal at a different level. When you encounter a guy like the one who was punched, act in such a way that even hitting him, even slapping him is too much of a recognition. You should treat him or her or whoever as a nonperson, literally.

In other words, leftists should “go high?””

“It’s much more complex than that. I think that’s their biggest mistake. Isn’t is sad that the best left-liberal critique of Trump is political comedy? People like Jon Stewart, John Oliver and so on. It’s nice to make fun of him, but you laugh at him and he wins. My God! There is something terribly wrong with playing this game of ironically making fun of Trump. You know, in medicine they call it symptomatic healing when you take some things, they just neutralize the effects, like you have this pain, but they don’t heal the disease itself. Criticizing Trump is just symptomatic healing. Trump is an effect of the failure of the liberal-left. Everybody knows this knows this now. The only way to really beat Trump is to radically rethink what does the left mean today. Otherwise, he will be getting ordinary people’s votes.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69384/selections-from-keatss-letters

“Tell George and Tom to write.—I’ll tell you what—On the 23rd was Shakespeare born—now If I should receive a Letter from you and another from my Brothers on that day ’twould be a parlous good thing—Whenever you write say a Word or two on some Passage in Shakespeare that may have come rather new to you; which must be continually happening, notwithstand that we read the same Play forty times—for instance, the following, from the Tempest, never struck me so forcibly as at present,

                                                       ‘Urchins
Shall, for that vast of Night that they may work,
All exercise on thee—’

How can I help bringing to your mind the Line—

In the dark backward and abysm of time—

I find that I cannot exist without poetry—without eternal poetry—half the day will not do—the whole of it—I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan—I had become all in a Tremble from not having written any thing of late—the Sonnet over leaf did me some good.  I slept the better last night for it—this Morning, however, I am nearly as bad again—Just now I opened Spencer, and the first Lines I saw were these.—”

‘The noble Heart that harbors virtuous thought,
And is with Child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest, until it forth have brought
Th’ eternal Brood of Glory excellent—’”