Category: Thinkings and poems
What a lot of tea,miaowed Emile.
Mary dreamed she was riding her bicycle.She was going up a hill and then approaching a very complicated roundabout.
How can I look at the map when I am riding my bike,she asked herself.Anyway I don’t have a map and I’ve never been here before.She looked down and saw she was wearing some dark blue denim culottes and red suede knee high boots with laces.
I don’t remember buying these,she thought.She felt quite hot even though she wore only an olive needle-cord coat over a Breton T shirt.
Goodness me, she cried.I look smart.
Her spectacles clouded over as she was sweating.How will I know where to turn off when I don’t know where I am or where I am going to.
When she woke up she filled Stan’s beer tankard with tea.
What a lot of tea,miaowed Emile.
I thought it saves carrying the tea pot. I’m going to go back to bed as I feel a bit peculiar.
You have got a fleece nightgown on.Maybe you are too hot,he replied.
I am trying to save money on the heating,Mary answered.I see I can save even more money by buying 2 pairs of Hotters sandals for £97.Usually they are £127.
That saves £30,the clever animal informed her.
I think it’s quite misleading,Mary answered.It only saves money if you were already planning to buy them.I have such strange feet I don’t like to bare them.
Do you wear shoes in bed with a boyfriend.Emile asked.
I’ve not got a boyfriend.Emile.
But if you did?
Well.you know, an older man might not wish to go to bed with me.He might like just sitting on the sofa holding my hand and kissing me.
OK said ,Emile.It sounds a trifle boring to me.
Don’t be so cheeky, Emile.Talking to me is not boring.
No, he said, but it’s nice running up and down your legs in bed.
I could hardly expect a man to do that.He might injure me.
It was just a kind of example,he replied nervously.
Suddenly the back door opened and in ran Annie from next door.She was wearing a mustard coloured track suit and orange trainers with matching lip gloss.
What a horrible colour,Mary cried.
It’s the in colour now,Annie said kindly.I am getting my hair dyed too.
Bright yellow is better,Mary told her.Except it attracts insects.
Insects,I don’t want those.How are you,dear.You look flushed, she responded emotionally.
No wonder. I’ve been cycling all night in my dreams.Why can’t I dream of motor bikes?
Don’t ask me,Annie told her.I am utterly ignorant.Do you need therapy?
I don’t think so,Mary answered.I need to know where I am going.Do I decide or is it my Inner Wisdom or Higher Power.I could use higher power on that bike.
Just take it one rotation at a time, Annie murmured.
I thought it was one step.Mary answered
You can’t take a step on a bike.
I suppose not.But I could ride up a step on the bike.
Don’t ride up a step ladder,Anne advised.How would you get down again?
Let’s have some coffee,Mary cried.Here we are ,the kettle is boiling.
Let’s just sit and brood.
But don’t ruminate,purred Emile.It makes you ill.
Just let your mind go blank.
And so I did.
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Take my hand
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We’re only passing through
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That in our schizoid age we cannot learn?
This poem is written in the sonnet form,
And yet I have my doubts about its shape
Though nearly to that structure it conforms
There may be holes where nightmare faces gape.
It looks and speaks just as a sonnet would
And talks of metaphysical concerns.
Do we conclude, as poets and readers should,
That in our schizoid age we cannot learn?
For humans now snarl with the teeth of wolves;
And lions are dressed in cuddly warm sheepskin
Thus sense is tricked and problems are unsolved,
So,hey, we dreaming blind just carry on.
It looks like one,it feels like one,it speaks;
Yet from my words, does human feeling leak?
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It is myself to whom I speak in sonnet form
Trapped in cultivated ways ,we may forget
That usefulness can also be a trap.
Am I the one who never makes a bet?
Am I the one who always has the map?
We are no automata, we are flesh.
And even older brains can be rewired
Maybe we need to do what may seem rash
Light ourselves more brilliant mental fires.
Reluctance seems to cage us with our fear.
Though ,despite our wishes, we each age and die.
Time goes and the end will soon be here
But is it ever too late for one try?
It is myself to whom I speak in sonnet form
Anxiety is fierce until we learn.
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Should we forget?
The country has 2 minutes silence for soldiers killed in wars but how many minutes for Romany,Jew and political prisoners who died in the Holocaust.Yes, maybe we need to forget and yet it happened once……And someone who seems out of control is riding the world with his enormous power.
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And where was God?
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The children of Auschwitz
Did we think Hitler was the last evil dictator and demagogue?
If they starved children,was it because they were identified by the numbers tattooed on their arms and not by the names their parents called them?
Many children have died since in Cambodia,Africa………..so are we still human?
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Because we have acted rightly.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We
do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence,
but rather we have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an
act but a habit.
Aristotle
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The future
If we are alive now……
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From the skies of heaven falls one black star
A choice is not a choice when both are marred.
A name that shrieks, a face consumed by rage
From the skies of heaven falls one black star
Who flung down the invalid Mastercard?
Whose hand stirred to open a flawed page?
Whose will be the bodies burned and charred?
Welcome, to the bored, is a new war
Like Nero burning Rome, life but a stage.
Though, with Macbeth, perhaps Shakespeare went too far.
Sweeten riots and smoke a large cigar.
Let the shops burn down, oh,more damage!
Do we care now who the villains are?
Let the houses fall, blow up the cars.
Let the world see how the West is crazed.
Light the torch apocalyptic with despair
Tell them that “Christ lovers” are deranged
Jesus spoke of peace not hate savage.
A choice is not a choice when both are marred.
Even cloudless skies hide evil stars
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Slant sun
With winter frost, the sun beguiles our eyes
Making diamonds gleam to engage hearts.
In slant sun, the patterns solemnise.
With eternal frost, the sun makes sharp our eyes
Makes us look when we might compromise.
Making diamonds gleam to engage hearts.
In slant sun, the patterns solemnise.
With eternal frost, the sun makes sharp our eyes
Makes us look when we might compromise.
To be in focus, broad enough yet sharp.
This winter lost, a card disturbed the wise.
Whose drawn weapons gleam; who evil starts?
This winter lost, a card disturbed the wise.
Whose drawn weapons gleam; who evil starts?
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The Wild Swans at Coole
William Butler Yeats (1919)
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
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Mainly struggling
About the journey, what to say,
That the infinite task was finite,
That what seemed impossible is almost done?
Mainly struggling with interior problems
Projected onto this heap of clothes and books
Maybe I took the wrong path, made a detour I didn’t need.
Maybe the struggle itself made me strong enough.
Now I sit weary, with a mug of tea by my side.
A channel opened and I was able to receive your gifts.
Now it’s not dark but a grey cloud is hanging low.
It feels like spring again
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About sonnets
Why did they not tell us?
Playing on the high wires of space-time
Holding time back for an instant then diving
Into the unmapped depths and deeps
Pulling space here and there
Why did they not tell us, music has its own geometry
Like on the Spanish guitar , one second is not the same as another
One holds back then runs, another steps out and waits.
It’s the mild tension and music in our bones that makes us sing and dance.
And they try to capture this on graph paper, oh so neat!
Maybe that is just to stop us falling off the edge of the world
As we gyrate.And is this not what the birds say in their whirling?
As we trudged home from school was it not this we longed for?
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Body and spirit
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To use the strength of anger to create
True love or hate, not sentimental gush
Are feelings that can energise and warm.
The words on birthday cards seem much too sweet
No rushing love ; no hatred or hot fear,
To use the strength of anger to create
A book or child if we are blessed with mate.
Far better this than killing for release
Which cuts away the simple growth of peace.
Sentiment is cruel and perverse.
Claims to love but its brief is too terse.
Under sugared words we find dark rage
So hesitate before we turn the page
Hit the ball of life with all your strength.
For our life is not measured by its length
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Carnation,orchid ,daffodil and rose.
How softly sweetly,gently flowers pose
Carnation,orchid ,daffodil and rose.
Their intricate petals form a shield
Yet bees with striped force shall make them yield.
Their intricate petals form a shield
Yet bees with striped force shall make them yield.
Appearances, both natural and contrived,
Mixed with the wiles of human nature thrive.
As, knowing not, we pluck the apple rare
And bite its flesh,with teeth we have to bare.
Mixed with the wiles of human nature thrive.
As, knowing not, we pluck the apple rare
And bite its flesh,with teeth we have to bare.
We too deceive the innocent who pass
Not seeing watchers hid behind the glass.
The windows break,the deep earth quakes;
Seized is the maiden ,he her virtue takes.
Not seeing watchers hid behind the glass.
The windows break,the deep earth quakes;
Seized is the maiden ,he her virtue takes.
Beneath the surface,force and fierceness thrive.
What fearsome, burning God enjoys our lives?
What fearsome, burning God enjoys our lives?
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Mo Farah Facebook entry
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On 1st January this year, Her Majesty The Queen made me a Knight of the Realm. On 27th January, President Donald Trump seems to have made me an alien.
I am a British citizen who has lived in America for the past six years – working hard, contributing to society, paying my taxes and bringing up our four children in the place they now call home. Now, me and many others like me are being told that we may not be welcome. It’s deeply troubling that I will have to tell my children that Daddy might not be able to come home – to explain why the President has introduced a policy that comes from a place of ignorance and prejudice.
I was welcomed into Britain from Somalia at eight years old and given the chance to succeed and realise my dreams. I have been proud to represent my country, win medals for the British people and receive the greatest honour of a knighthood. My story is an example of what can happen when you follow polices of compassion and understanding, not hate and isolation.
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Force unwithstood
A wonderful word is coercion.
On it ,I cast no aspersions.
But to coerce is not good,
Force unwithstood
Never grew much but nasturtiums.
Sometimes our will is a force,
But virtue can’t come just by choice.
Like a flower from a seed
Our virtues we breed
As we listen for that still,little voice.
In school, we were given an impression
That knowledge implies good decisions;
So we learned virtues and vice
The wrong and the nice
The existence of hell as a prison.
Believing that terror is a good,
They frightened us with their cold blood
In the Confessional we shivered;
And the wood round us quivered
They’d have tortured us more if they could.
So this education itself was a vice.
The nuns and the priests hit us twice
Once in the class
And again during Mass
Where we wondered if the Wafer was Christ.
And having this question in mind
Was a sin of a serious kind
We sinned against Faith
That delicate Wraith
So no personal truths could we find
I have found God in the depths
Where with kindness he surrounds those who’ve wept
But he makes no demands
As his Love understands
To the paths of our own truths we’ve kept
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I see that Satan’s lighting his cigar
Where were we when God fled from the world?
Where was Jesus Christ., the only son?
Where were we ,when fearsome words were hurled?
Don’t blame refugees, for Christ was one
Where was truth before Election day?
Where was heart when Donald Trump came in?
An Empire blinded to its own decay
A President heard raving from day one.
Ok ,you hate the Clintonesque elites…..
But who has jumped cross this dangerous gap?
Things done from resentment are not sweet
And truth will hit us all with dangerous slap
We cannot go back now, we’ve come too far
I see that Satan’s lighting his cigar
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Cor blimey
There were two left shoes and both were black
I could not wear either on my right foot.
So I went upstairs and moved my stuff!
I found their partners soon enough.
But, where did I put the two left shoes?
Oh, cor lummy, it’s bad news!
I can’t go out and I can’t go in.
I’m sitting outside in the wheelie bin.
I think I’ll leave these right ones there
Then I’ll see the others rolling down the stairs!
My shoes are unfaithful I declare.
They refuse to settle and be a pair.
The left ones scheme and the right ones run.
Ain’t real life such glorious fun?
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Doubt
doubt
daʊt/
noun
noun: doubt; plural noun: doubts
-
1.a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction.“some doubt has been cast upon the authenticity of this account”
synonyms: uncertainty, lack of certainty, unsureness, indecision, hesitation, hesitancy, dubiousness, suspicion, confusion;More antonyms: certainty, conviction, confidence, trust
verb
verb: doubt; 3rd person present: doubts; past tense: doubted; past participle: doubted; gerund or present participle: doubting
-
1.feel uncertain about.“I doubt my ability to do the job”
-
disbelieve or lack faith in (someone).“I have no reason to doubt him”
synonyms: disbelieve, distrust, mistrust, suspect, lack confidence in, have doubts about, be suspicious of, have suspicions about, have misgivings about, feel uneasy about, feel apprehensive about, call into question, cast doubt on, query, question, challenge, dispute, have reservations about; archaicmisdoubt“they did not doubt my story”antonyms: trust -
feel uncertain, especially about one’s religious beliefs.
synonyms: be undecided, have doubts, be irresolute, be hesitant, be tentative, be ambivalent, be divided, be doubtful, be unsure, be uncertain, be in two minds, hesitate, shilly-shally, waver, falter, vacillate, dither, demur; informalsit on the fence“stop doubting and believe more firmly!”antonyms: believe
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2.archaicfear; be afraid.“I doubt not any ones contradicting this Journal”
Origin
Middle English: from Old French doute (noun), douter (verb), from Latin dubitare ‘hesitate’, from dubius ‘doubtful’ (see dubious).
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Why is free verse so popular?
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/free-verse-poets-glossary
“Free verse is a form of nonmetrical writing that takes pleasure in a various and emergent verbal music. “As regarding rhythm,” Ezra Pound writes in “A Retrospect” (1918): “to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” Free verse is often inspired by the cadence—the natural rhythm, the inner tune—of spoken language. It possesses visual form and uses the graphic line to differentiate itself from prose. “The words are more poised than in prose,” Louis MacNeice states in Modern Poetry (1938); “they are not only, like the words in typical prose, contributory to the total effect, but are to be attended to, in passing, for their own sake.” The dream of free verse: an originary verbal music for every poem. Jorge Luis Borges explains: “Beyond its rhythm, the typographical appearance of free verse informs the reader that what lies in store for him is not information or reasoning but emotion.””
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The rebellion of the “vulgar”
My most vulgar piece of art.Must try harder
Some of us thought that despite his attending the most prestigious university in the universe and having much wealth there was something vulgar about Trump which would not be appropriate for a President
However,after aeons of being put down, the common people have got fed up and they want a President who is like themselves even if he is a caricature of himself and according to those who know him there is not much under that mask
I saw him being interviewed a few minutes ago.He was still going on about the crowd at Inauguration being the biggest ever, pointing to large photos on his wall.This shows insecurity to me.Some of us hide it.Few show it so openly.
I thin it may be dangerous.
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Vulgar?
vulgar
Someone who’s vulgar has bad taste, and could also be called unrefined or unsophisticated. Your snobby neighbor might mutter about your family’s vulgar taste if you paint your house with rainbow stripes.
From the Latin vulgus, meaning “the common people,” vulgar is an adjective that can describe anything from the sexually explicit to the merely ugly and crass. Many people believe that there’s an important difference between things that are sexually frank and things that are vulgar. “Erotica” can be beautiful and even highbrow, while “pornography” is crude and vulgar. My friend Arnie loves the lights and glamour of Times Square, while Cintra finds all the bright-colored, corporate logos to be vulgar.
1
adj being or characteristic of or appropriate to everyday language
“the vulgar tongue of the masses”
“the technical and vulgar names for an animal species”
- Synonyms:
- common, vernacular
- informal
used of spoken and written language
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Her body bends
Her grief so palpable, it seems to speak
Her vocal chords once soft are stiff and pained
Her face so hurt, her body taut yet weak
Her grief so palpable, ah, please, please speak
Ill-tempered men have pleasured in her shrieks
Yet when such grief ‘s been tempered and refined
The vocal cords might be enjoyed again
Her grief so palpable , why don’t we speak?
Her body bends, we should have taken pains
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I offer up my words to you
-
Living life in all its fierceness,
Birth and death and joy and pain
We struggle on our unknown journey,
Sometimes lost and found again.We are indeed like lambs to slaughter
Death will be our final goal.
But while we live, let us live bravely.
Let us not destroy our souls.Climbing in the hills and moorlands
In the heather, children play.
The sun half blinds me with its light
Yet ,still I see the given way.I received a call to climb.
These hills are my essential home.
My vocation is to dwell here
While in the silence, mind may roam.Noise in cities is destructive.
Though nature’s fierce, it’s also true.
Struggling on life’s craggy slopes
I offer up my words to you.
