Large  pseudo -marble church  with fake pews and psalter.
Politically  incorrect   and impassible
Players  suffered daily,weekly and yearly.
Free police thrown in and out as required
Curates  for hire,on fire with zeal
Confessionals closed but well polished to appear to be in use
Slate floor and inner walls.
Large fence  with barbed wire entrances.
Large plastic  needle with artificial eyes on show.

Air,bitter they call it,whispers to the sweet planes of my face,
Shrieks shrill to my cavities,ears,mouth and nose;penetrates all that’s open;
Probing like a surgeon’s knife,to see what healing damage it might do.
A frozen finger touches my heart;
Seems like the ice is inside me sending urgent warnings.

I thought our love was real , no more, I trust
Your persona was  of cleverness and  of lust
My judgment was  disabled by  my guts
I did not perceive as clearly as  I must
I thought  this love was real ,I gave my trust
You were biting and evasive  when I asked
You took your   blade and cut   us  both apart
I thought our love was real ,why did  I trust?
You acted  out fake wisdom and  fake heart
I  never  would have known that at the start
The meaning was of power stoked up with lust
In your heart you never took a guest.
I wish you peace,  be off Eternal pest

http://www.mortylefkoe.com/how-our-language-determines-our-reality/

“As Edward Sapir, a noted anthropologist, has said:

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of a particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. The fact of the matter is that their “real world” is to a large extent unconsciously built up in the language habits of the group. . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Language is far more than a tool for communication. The word “language” comes from logos, which means category or concept. With language we categorize, distinguish, and create the universe. Ultimately, we perceive the world according to our language. For example, when we think in English, we perceive a world made up primarily of objects: people, trees, and houses. These objects do things or have things done to them using verbs. We literally see everything in the world in this fashion. We don’t perceive “things out there” because there really are things out there. That just happens to be our worldview, because in our language there is a subject, which acts upon an object, which exists independently of the subject. In the English language, independent entities (subjects and objects) are primary, rather than processes or relationships. That’s not true in every language.

As Ralph Strauch points out in his book The Reality Illusion:

Some languages are structured around quite different basic word- categories and relationships. They project very different pictures of the basic nature of reality as a result. The language of the Nootka Indians in the Pacific Northwest, for example, has only one principle word-category; it denotes happenings or events. A verbal form like “eventing” might better describe this word-category, except that such a form doesn’t sound right in English, with its emphasis on noun forms. We might think of Nootka as composed entirely of verbs, except that they take no subjects or objects as English verbs do. The Nootka, then, perceive the world as a stream of transient events, rather than as the collection of more or less permanent objects which we see. Even something which we see clearly as a physical object, like a house, the Nootka perceive of as a long-lived temporal event. The literal English translation of the Nootka concept might be something like “housing occurs;” or “it houses.

In a discussion of this point, Nobel Prize winning physicist Werner Heisenberg said:

What we are observing is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. And how do we question? All of our methods of interrogating nature depend on language—and it is the very nature of language to refer to things. We therefore think in terms of things. How can we possibly think of nonthings, nothings, nothing? In our very forms of thought we instinctively divide the world into subjects and objects, thinkers and things, mind and matter. This division seems so natural that it has been presumed a basic maxim of objective science.

A dramatic (and sobering!) example of how language determines the distinctions we make can be found in the specific technical language that is used to describe nuclear weapons and arms control. Carol Cohn, a senior research fellow at the Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, Cambridge, Massachusetts, spent a year as a visiting scholar at a defense studies center. She published some of her experiences in the Summer 1987 issue of SIGNS: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society, ©1987 by The University of Chicago Press, in an article titled “Nuclear Language and How We Learned to Pat the Bomb.”  She wrote:

The better I became at this discourse [of arms control], the more difficult it became to express my own ideas and values. While the language included things I had never been able to speak about before, it radically excluded others. To pick a bald example, the word “peace” is not a part of this discourse. As close as one can come to it is “strategic stability’ a term that refers to a balance of numbers and types of weapons systems—not the political, social, economic, and psychological conditions that “peace” implies.

If I was unable to speak my concerns in this language, more disturbing still was that I also began to find it harder to keep them in my own head. No matter how firm my own commitment to staying aware of the bloody reality behind the words, over and over I found that I could not keep human lives as my reference point….

I was so involved in the military justifications for not using nuclear weapons—as though the moral ones were not enough. What I was actually talking about—the mass incineration of a nuclear attack—was no longer in my head.”

Safety lies in my grey cowl neck dress
It has no openings except for the head.
Grey is not a colour to impress
I shan’t wear grey  qowns when I go to bed.

The cowl neck covers me in decent form
A pure old maiden I shall now become
But now i see the fabric’s thin ,not warm
It clings to me,my peace of mind’s undone.

I see I must return to trousers black
And tunics that are thick and long  and warm
My venture into dress had pushed me back
And made me shyer than a lamb just shorn.

Oh,women waste no time in dresses  fine
Cover up and   you will look divine

https://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/fractals-poems-and-photos.html

”     Marc Frantz and Annalisa Crannell have written about mathematics and art (Viewpoints:  Mathematical Perspectives and Fractal Geometry in Art: Princeton University Press, 2011) and now Frantz (who is both a mathematician and an artist, a painter) has collaborated with a poet — Robin Walthery Allen —  to develop a collection entitled Dance of Eye and Mind (not yet published).  I am honored to present a poem-photo pair from this exquisite collection.

What is in us that must reach the top,
that longs to look down upon the world as if a god?
Don’t we know that in this infinite space
the same rocks at the seashore know the secret of each peak?

Underneath the surface are caverns, caves
soaring cathedrals the earth has made.
What arias does she sing to dripping water, bats
and other seekers of wisdom?
What prayers echo
while the ceilings reach slowly to the floor?

The open window houses everything:
a cat lounging in the sunlight, the call of neighbors,
the breath of possibility.

(poetry by Robin Walthery Allen)”

A Fractal Poem

    A fractal is an object that displays self-similarity — roughly, this means that the parts have the same shape as the whole — as in the following diagram which shows successive stages in the development of the “box fractal” (from Wolfram MathWorld).

Michigan poet Jack Ridl and I share an alma mater (Pennsylvania’s Westminster College) and we recently connected when I found mathematical ideas in the poems in his collection Broken Symmetry  (Wayne State University Press, 2006); from that collection, here is “Fractals” — offering us a poetic version of self-similar structure:

       Fractals    by Jack Ridl

On this autumn afternoon, the light
falls across the last sentence in a letter,
just before the last movement of Brahms’
Fourth Symphony, a recording made more
than 20 years ago, the time when we were
looking for a house to rehabilitate, maybe
       take out a wall and let the kitchen open
up into the living room, put in a window
so the morning light could fall across
the bed my wife’s grandmother made
the canopy for, the bed she slept in for
forty years. She was a doctor looking
for a town close enough that we can
drive past where she practiced, imagine
her picking up her violin when there
was time between patients, settle
it under her chin and play, looking
out the window into the same street we
drive down on our way to visit our
daughter in her studio. She creates
dresses, stitches turning into lines,
fabric turning into sculpture hanging
under her skylight, the dresses’ threads
knotted, their edges frayed. When
we knock on her door, she welcomes
us with cups of steaming tea, turns
down the jazz and kisses us. She
is happy in this light and later she
will ask us how we like our new place,
laugh when we begin to tell her all
our plans for tearing out the kitchen,
knocking out a wall so we can see
deep into the wood, along the creek
that twists itself around a pile of rocks
and through the trees. She makes us
dinner as we listen to Miles Davis,
“Birth of the Cool”—I always wonder
why he ended with a vocal, one
that sounds recorded twenty years
before. Its notes are sleepy,
the voices like smoke. At home
the dog and cats are sleeping. We
forgot to leave a light on for them,
but the radio is playing, and when we
get there, they will want to go outside.
The dog will pause for a scratch behind
his ears, his tail wagging as the cats
jump off the couch, hurry out the door,
disappear into the dark.
We’ll tune the radio to a symphony,
watch the moon harvesting
its light through the back window.

I  discovered Ridl’s collection while doing some background digging for other recent postings on fractals  —  16 December 2014 and 18 November 2014.  Fractals also are found in these earlier posts: 10 April 2014, 17 October 2010, and 14 May 2010.

https://poetrywithmathematics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/a-fractal-poem.html

This dress called “wrap” has failed to enwrap me.
It  has  a mere two ties to hold its place.
The fashion page advice has  entrapped me
I might as well go bare or wear pure lace.

As I walk the skirt reveals my thighs
Magnificent in size and  perfect shape
Yet I did not wish to show my body  and its size
I need to buy a silken over-cape

For assuming that some buttons  or spare cloth
Would hold the fabric in to cover all
I failed to try it on and now feel wrath
I’m freezing and the men will not play ball.

Beware of these wrap dresses ,my dear friends.
For if you touch me, you will meet your end.

The street seems lonely,empty, bleak.
Deep silence,  like a cloud, envelops us.
And if I met a person, would they speak?
Or merely through their posture let thoughts leak?

We give ourselves away by how we talk
And by our facial muscles ,loose or tight.
Some folk like a  stealthy cane  may stalk.
Some folk emit a gentle,glowing light.

Most communication is not made in words
But clothing,speech and  movement each can talk
And by these images  our hearts are  stirred
Supreme importance hangs on how we walk!

So if I answer you in hastiness,
Be sure deep in my heart I wish to  bless

After the funeral was over

Anger is a dangerous emotion
Yet we need it for our protection
If it turns into rage
then disengage
For exploding will cause great commotion

Words when someone injured my cat
Created a scene of mishap
It was during a heatwave
Which often causes outrage
So beware ,in the  tropics, of  that

 
In any case Rage is distinct
For babies it’s a vital instinct
They feel they will die
Without mothers I
But for adults it’s a mistake, so we think

When I say it’s a mistake ,that is wrong
For that assumes control quite prolonged
And in this terrible state
Some folk kill their mate
They’ll never  get back where they belong

http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/explore-text.html

The red sun rising burns  this  day with fire
The terrible,  so strong it   burn  the sea
It torments   human fuses  s on  that wire

What would be  of service in a pyre?
Bring your wood, I am a witch,no plea.
The red sun rising burns  this  day in fire

I tell the truth as much as I aspire
Inconstant to my  feelings I shall be
I feel tormented ,fried by copper wires

The brightness of the sun hits at desire.
I long to feel   great loving arms  snatch me
The red sun rising burns  each day in fire

Read as  message from a  new Messiah
Or prophet in the wilds of history.
I feel afraid   for who plugs in   the wires?

What will come,a slouching beast  we see.
From Bethlehem he  slithers as  we flee
The red sun rising lights this   world in fire
Now, every day ,we’re scorched by funeral pyres.

I once had a doctor call  Jones

he’s stole all my money for loans

he gave to the poor

then he gave them some more

for the pity that he could not  endure

then I had a  doctor called Brown

he lived near the centre of town

but the rent was so high

it made his wife cry

and it almost got Dr Brown down

not all  our doctors are men

some of them are female,  d’ye ken?

I prefer women myself

to look after my health

 but I shall take a man  too as and when

I am cooking my dinner right now

I have to boil a pudding  somehow

I have done it before

but I can’t  remember no more

so I’ll leave you  and love you ,I vow

As Mary walked down the stairs on  Friday she felt her beautiful  skirt of many colours  slipping off her body and almost reaching the floor. Mary wondered if she had been losing weight but she could not see any difference when she looked into the mirror Maybe it has stretched at the waist .I hope it won’t fall off when I am walking down the street, said  Mary,  especially when I’m in the town
What are you doing ,mewed Emile her little black cat?
I’m not doing anything,she replied .I’m just trying to walk down the stairs and my skirt is slipping
Pull it up said Emile an unkind  tone.

She replied tactfully,yes I will when I get to the bottom of the stairs but before Mary. got to the bottom her skirt  fallen off completely and she was only wearing a brown silk petticoats and a pair of teal coloured tights.
You  look nice Emile said. Maybe you don’t need to wear a skirt you  can wear  a  petticoat instead,
Thank you very much ,said Mary but the weather is very cold and a silk petticoat is not warm enough for going into the town although I suppose I could put a very warm long coat over the top. Suppose I went into a restaurant and felt too hot then I would have to take off my coat and then everybody would see my petticoat.
Life is made up of Conundrums like this and the secret is not to start thinking this way in the first place;once you do this is very hard to stop.
Some of Mary’s friends say to her. Are you sleeping alright or how are you sleeping?
Mary never answers because  she knows that if you start  thinking about that this a lot it’s not good for you as you can spend all day worrying about whether you are going to be able to sleep that night.
We have no control over our sleep, she pondered , but we can’t afford ruminating  as it causes mental illness according to some scientists and doctors. Rumination cuts people off from the world as they are always looking inside themselves.
Similarly being a perfectionist is very bad for you because again you’re not thinking about the work that you’re producing and  enjoying it you are always wondering is this good enough or shall I start again oh I am so stupid etc
It is possible ,Mary has found,  to control what you allow yourself to think about.You can cut you thought off before it gets going.
Anything that makes you keep thinking about yourself all the time will create a wall around you and other people can detect this wall; it makes them avoid you.
In general, we should have a few  walls as possible both internal and external
Just then the doorbell rang. it was  Annie the ex-mistress of Mary ‘s husband Stan.
Hello she cried, how do you like my new coat
Don’t tell me you’ve got another one ,Mary  sighed
 I didn’t buy it Annie  murmured. That  sweet lady who lives opposite told me that she has put on a lot of weight and she can’t wear this  anymore ; she asked me if I would like it
But you have already got about 20  Mary said, but I like this one .It’s a lovely colour; is it what we call teal or is it Kingfisher Blue?
I don’t know  but it seems to match  my other clothes and and you know I do like a change.You prefer just to have one coat and wear it all the time, unless you are going out to your special functions, hen you might wear your  best coat ,which is the brown one isn’t it which Stan used to liket because he said it hung well
Yes he did like that very much and I was wearing it only yesterday as it is very warm. I would like to have more clothes like you do but I seem to be too busy to go shopping
Annie gazed  up with  her large round eyes   upon which she was wearing turquoise  and magenta eyeshadow and bright  blue mascara which clashed with her purple lipstick from East Saint Lawless.
That purple lipstick  does not match your coat nor your eyeshadow Mary told her
Well I think that a perfect costume puts men off .So it’s better to do something wrong and anyway a lot of men are colour blind so they won’t know that it’s the wrong shade of lipstick. I think that coral would look better and I shall buy some next time I go into the term because teal and coral look very nice together .Purple is good with blues
Actually, Mary said ,purple make  you look as  if you’ve got heart disease or anaemia.
Thanks a lot , shouted Annie. What kind of friend are you
I am an honest friend ,Mary replied  in  a warm voice.I think that I don’t often say things which distress you but sometimes knowing that you would like to meet another man I  feel impelled to give you my point of view.
That’s very kind of you said Annie but I think now I am too old to find a man who wants a mistress because a younger man could get a younger mistress and an older man maybe past bothering about mistresses and love and such things.And where can I find one,anyway.
I don’t agree, said Mary I think if you look very nice   a man may be very proud to take you out and have you hanging from his arm like a trophy even if he is not able to proceed  very far  with bodily love. After all ,everybody likes someone to talk to and  some companionship ;someone to help them out when they are feeling unwell
As long as that is it is mutual I don’t see anything wrong with it.
The two women stared out of the window and saw a wood pigeon on the shed.Maybe it’s better to be a bird,Mary thought aimlessly before she put  on the kettle for a lovley cup of tea and some chocoate fingers
Tea is the best drink in the afternoon.
And so say all of us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riane-eisler/empeaceful-revolutionem_b_108158.html

If our  winters never had an end
And flowers no longer bloomed in ecstasy
Into hell my soul would then descend

In these harsh winds the little branches  bend
Birds hide in  trees ,deep where we cannot see
Into blackness my soul would descend

So gone would be the  sunflowers which we tend
Gone would be the person we call  me
If frosty winter never had an end

We would mourn and our own garments rend
To fantasy  we  might  all  blindly flee
Into shade our souls   would descend.

We mus confess our sins and make amends
And reconciled with fellow humans be
For   eternal winter , we have made no plans

Hear the sacred earth,its symphony.
Music, art and spirit all agree
If fierce  winter  calls us to attend
In acknowledging   our  errors, we  ascend.

When I saw you waiting in that cafe
I knew you would be mine.
You were handsome, smiling,funny..you were specially designed.
You looked like men I’d only dreamed about in all those years before.
I’m so broke up,so broke up;you don’t love me anymore.

I saw you on the station as I came from out the train.
You wore an old green parka to protect you from the rain.
I wanted to be one with you,to make our Love entire;
But What you did was give me pain too bad be endured.

You walked away so quickly,I could not see you long.
I wish I had a big guitar to draw you back with song.
I looked at where you disappeared;what loss has love revealed?
I wish I could  lay down right here and keep my face concealed.

Railway stations sadden me,for I know we’ll never meet .
I won’t cry more,for tears are falling straight down in a  sheet
I walk fast looking straight ahead, past that entrance gate.
I pretend that you have missed your train,that work is running late.

I count from one and one up to a thousand and then more–
But I know for sure it's far too late; you have closed that heavy door.
You are hiding in a dungeon
You are covered with white steel
But I know you had a heart and you must surely feel.

I lost all my illusions, and then I lost some more.
I wish I could lay down and die,right here on this floor