Category: Thinkings and poems

From the fiery corn

Like a child   past reason  waits for  return
A  hare jumping aghast from  fiery corn
Like an impotent singer  whose voice we spurned
What a child   losing Mother has  learned,has  learned
Like a sinner suffering   that pain which burns
Like  the   old and  lost and all  humans forlorn
Like a child  losing hope of  mother’s return.
A hare  leaps  up high,high from  the fiery corn
Blood red the sun; blow the ram’s horn

Stan teaches a class a sense of proportion

 
Normal Distribution Cumulative Density Functio...

Normal Distribution Cumulative Density Functions (CDFs) with standard deviation = 1.0 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Stan(d) Off

Stan(d) Off (Photo credit: cenz)

 

English: Example of two samples with the same ...

English: Example of two samples with the same mean and different standard deviations. Red sample has mean 100 and SD 10; blue sample has mean 100 and SD 50. Each sample has 1000 values drawn at random from a gaussian distribution with the specified parameters. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

Illustration of Standard deviation

Illustration of Standard deviation (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

]

Stan was teaching social statistics to a group of elderly neighbors.Since he was 109 it gave them all hope to see him demonstrating his prowess with various techniques.He was planning to do some logic and philosophy too.Annie was sitting by the door so she could answer the bell if any paramedics turned up for tea.
I’m not going to calculate ” the standard deviations” he murmured.”I just want you to grasp the general purpose.”
“Deviations,they’re not normal are they?” enquired his neighbor “Henry,an ex-English teacher.”So how can they be standard.It’s confusing..”
“Are you thinking of deviants?” Stan enquired calmly yet firmly.”Certainly not,at my age I’m a bit past that!””Still it adds a bit of excitement to the class.” he thought.
How do words in ordinary language relate to those in Statistics?”asked Henry kindly.
“They are just more precisely defined in statistics.To say someone is a deviant is a rather vague term.”
“No,it’s not!My neighbor is a deviant.He always dresses entirely in yellow.”
“Well,that must be hard to do.Certainly unusual.” Stan agreed boldly.
“But in another country that might be the norm.So it’s a matter of context.In statistics it’s more boring.There’s a formula.It’s totally independent of context.Have you ever wondered why so many mathematicians have more than a touch of Asperger’s syndrome?”

“No,it’s not something that wanders through my mind much”replied Henry
A shudder passed through the room at hearing the word “formula“,which perhaps they considered something of a deviant!Anything with letters and numbers mixed together is certainly not welcome in many people’s minds, along with their more unusual sexual tastes,desires and inclinations which were kept secret even from themselves in many cases.

“Time for tea.” called Annie,hoping to divert their attention.She carried in a platter of mouse sandwiches kindly donated by the local ambulance service and some iced Victoria sponge she and Stan had made
the day before.
“Just a quick word about next week.We’ll take a look at ratios and proportions and maybe see how that relates to the concept of rationality.”
“That sounds fun!” Annie called encouragingly.Henry decided to act on a deviant desire and fell onto her lap.”Oh,dear!” she gasped loudly as the chair collapsed under her.”Why can’t you be deviant at home?”
“My wife won’t let me!” He kindlily answered.
“And look,” Stan continued,”we’ll have to ring 999.This chair is in fragments.I thought for one day we’d be able to avoid calling them out!”
“Well,life is not controllable.” said a quiet but fierce looking lady with sharp green eyes.”That’s what makes it tolerable“
She then greedily consumed a large piece of iced cake .
“I can stand the thinking if the cake is good” she whispered to her shy friend Amy.
”That’s rather a feeble argument,”Amy retorted.”You can’t really compare cake and statistics.”
“I’ll compare anything I like!” the green-eyed woman snarled loudly.
“You do what you like but you must keep a sense of proportion!”
“Now then,have you rung 999?” Stan queried of Annie.”Yes,here they are,and they’ve got a stretcher for the chair!”
“Well,that’s certainly unusual,even deviant“,Stan thought anxiously to himself.”Where do they get their funding? Is there a fund for distributing money to help chairs which are not normal?

.To be continued..

 

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Speaking figures by Mark Doty

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/speaking-figures

“In her evocative memoir, The Names of Things, the Egyptologist Susan Brind Morrow points to the origins of letters in the observation of nature, how the scuttle of crab claws on sand, for instance, influenced the hieroglyph for “writing.” To use words at all is to use them figuratively; we breathe metaphor, we swim in metaphor, we traffic in metaphor—and the verbs in those three phrases illustrate my point.

Poetry’s project is to use every aspect of language to its maximum effectiveness, finding within it nuances and powers we otherwise could not hear. So the poet needs to be a supreme handler of the figurative speech we all use everyday, employing language’s tendency to connect like and disparate things to the richest possible effects. In poetry, figuration is at its most sophisticated: condensed, alive with meaning, pointing in multiple directions at once.”

You’re my love

Kathryn

Trees swaying in the wind
Leaves
blow
down.

 

Birds flying through the sky
look
for
lorn.

 

Winter edges ever nearer.
Frost and fog will soon appear.
Cats sleep cozy by the fire
I clean the mud off my bike tires.
Trees swaying to and fro
sig
nal
love.
.
Birds flowing on air currents.

You’re my dove

 Acts of blindness unmind us

The Urn Burns (All Souls Procession)

The Urn Burns (All Souls Procession) (Photo credit: cobalt123)

Soul Music (novel)

Soul Music (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Father Brown stories by G. K. Chesterton, ...

The Father Brown stories by G. K. Chesterton, Penguin Books edition 1981 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You blot bummed bastard.You bit my bat on its blue bed and brought bread with no butter on it.I am bellowing to be sure you cannot bet on my blog being here for you to bait me with your blistering so called “criticisms”.
Get on board or I’ll beach you forever.Why Bless my bowl,it’sFather Brown.
Hello Father,I am blaming this bigot for berating my blog.
Don’t keep bad mouthing these Bible bashers.They have nothing better to woo.
A beautiful young lady would put them in the bin if she had any barbarism left in her.The inner child is now the inner bear… wild,beguiled and blooming like a buttercup
By the way,I can see your butt.Your zip is not buttoned!Shall I pass a bit of glue over?.
I feel so blue I don’t care if my butt shows.But ladies may be embarrassed
so do button me up.It’s bloody kind of you to bother with a bloke like me.
I am on bail you know for omitting acts of blindness,ignoring black  soled neighbors…I refer to their only  souls.I have been gifted to see inside you and I see your soul is in a glass bowl.What if it breaks into shards of glass?
Don’t keep blathering on.I have a bone to pick with the blacksmith…. about his brother.I am bemused
Don’t let me bother you.I am bone idle myself but accept your kisses willy nilly
Billy! Be off,you bloody bonkers bloke.Never look black,back or  better

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In kindly leaves

The sun is glaring hotly at the earth
And birds sleep deep in hidden, secret  leaves
Too much good we  know becomes a curse
The sun is staring fiercely at the earth.
Of fire and ice, which  is ,in truth, the   worse?
Which scientific theories  to believe?
The sun is glaring hotly at the earth
And birds have hidden  deep in kindly  leaves

 

A talk about why modern poetry is difficult

Grey Tube Shelter 1940 by Henry Moore OM, CH 1898-1986
Grey Tube Shelter 1940 Henry Moore OM, CH 1898-1986 Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05706

 

https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/what-we-do/madingley-lectures/why-is-modern-poetry-difficult

What he meant was quantity is not what we desire, one man is sufficient, unless he is a liar.

 

8282959_f520I used to love my mother
but then I got too old.
She didn’t want to feed me
Because I felt the cold.
My feet and hands were purple
which she told me was wrong.
I couldn’t change the colour
so had to change my tongue.
I used to love my father
Until he went away.
They said he’s with the angels
and small girls ought to pray.
And then I loved the cat we had
And all four kittens too…
Until my mother got fed up
and sent them to the zoo.
I said I am disheartened
Life is far too hard…
or else I’m hypersensitive
and must become a bard.
I loved a Spanish waiter.
A young man from Peru.
I loved a lot of others–
No more than ninety two.
That is just an estimate
An average, a norm.
It’s what I told the doctor

When he filled out a form

He said to me,You err,my dear
And I mistook his speech
I thought he meant he loved me.
But he just meant to teach.
What he meant was quantity
is not what we desire..
One man is sufficient
Unless he is a liar.
And in the darkness of the bed
What matters is their smell.
Some men smell like honey..
much more I cannot tell
for though these men pursued me
I had such poor eyesight
I didn’t  see them properly
especially at night..
I was more keen on Wittgenstein.
and whether I am real..
Maybe I’ve gone crackers

And don’t know  I’m surreal

I don’t want any lovers now
for love brought so much pain
I’d rather be a jellied eel
than fall in love again.
But friendliness and welcome
Are what we humans need…
And cats and dogs and willow trees
Which don’t make our hearts bleed.
One man is sufficient
And necessary too..
Without my own sweet husband
whatever would I do?
He listens with his heart and soul
And he is never harsh…
He likes to hear me singing
Across of Southwold Marsh.
He likes to take the ferry boat
Across the River Blythe.
But now I hope the ferryman
will not yet arrive..
We have to cross that river
We have to let life go…
We have to be untied and freed.
We think,but do we know?
In the silvery moonlight,
Time gets her own  way
In the darkness of the night
Time will have her say.
Time has come and gone again
And so the hand descends
So I bid you fond farewell,
We have reached the end.
Oh,wrap me up dear mother
in my winding cloth
Take me in your ancient arms
for I have had enough.
I’ve loved and loved and loved again.
I’ve puzzled and I’ve pained
but all I want’s a writing tool
To write down words again

The Hummingbird Nest

BY PASCALE PETIT
I bring you a hummingbird’s nest, woven
from seed-down, thistle head,
bound with lichen and spidersilk,
shaped by a mother who presses her breast
against the cup, uses her rump, chin,
the curve of her wing, who stomps
her claws on the base to check it’s
windproof under this leaf porch.
The male gone, she works alone,
hurrying back and forth thirty times
an hour, before the eggs come.
She lays them in a home small as a nutshell,
the rim turned in, the sides pliant
so they’ll stretch as the chicks grow.
Little mother, I’ve read your file
filled with letters to the mairie, begging
for a place where we could live together.
I know now how hard you fought the powers,
like a jeweled dart stabbing at their door,
before you fell prey to the jungle mantis.
Instead of flowers, I leave you this nest
on your grave, in case you make it
from your migration — only a wisp
of feathers, no flesh left on your bones.

I see a light fuzz of hair

 

  • I see a light fuzz of hair on your head

    like the softness of just opening leaf buds in spring.
    The chemo is over,and you wait relieved and letting that
    take you for a while before you start to face the next stage.
    Will your Spring turn to a warm enchanting Summer
    or has the cancer,as they say “spread.”
    Just for now,you’re in that lull
    so in three weeks time you will not be
    arriving for another session of drugs
    and days of sickness.

    I see the light fuzz which reminds me
    of how the cat’s fur grew back after her surgery
    and she,being unable to reflect or question,
    leaped from the fence top onto next door’s kitchen roof;
    no thought in her mind of stitches breaking.
    How beautifully the patterned fur returned
    and the vulnerable skin was covered again.
    Oh,to look into those eyes and see you dream
    about mice that live behind the shed
    and how you sat watching for hours
    and how you were alive till the very last moment.
    Then , all of a sudden,you were gone.

    Pray it will not be so forthe fragile,loving human
    now waiting and living,hoping for what you took for granted…
    a “normal” life span Or maybe just three quarters of one
    would be satisfactory;would be a beneficence
    such as trees feel when the sap turns and begins to flow back.
    bringing life out of the darkness of earth and soil.
    And another Summer comes at the right time
    and we find it,shall we say,satisfactory?

Fear of poetry

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https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/mar/21/world-poetry-day-student-occupy

Quote:

It strikes me now as singularly and politically prescient that Harrison chose to express his determination to write poetry as a form of occupation: he declares he will “occupy” the “lousy leasehold” of an elite literary tradition.Harrison’s statement anticipates the contemporary Occupy movement, with its targeting of political and social inequality, exclusion and hierarchy. The occupation of spaces of power is an attempt to level the playing field, enacting change from the bottom up.

Harrison refuses to ‘squat’ in the space of poetry, a phrase that would acknowledge his unbelonging. He occupies; he makes the space his own. And what is more, having read the poetry of Tony Harrison, my 18-year-old self was no longer frightened of this supposedly difficult form with its metrical lines, suffused with metaphor and locked in rhyme. Instead, I was also determined to wrest back and occupy poetry.

The corner of the eye

Subtle emotions ; sidelong glances
The  corner of the eye, the view of you
Noone else can see.
The rolling ego,the raising of the brow
The humorous glimpse, the grasp
The  network of our eyes
We’re spies
We’re in touch already
Some poet introduces you.
A sign of being ,say,  a late reactor
But the explosion is  on the way
We don’t know ;  our eyes work
Some  are lit ; candles in a window
I think you know; stop it and start; again

“I have never needed God”

BY MIRI BEN-SIMHON
TRANSLATED BY LISA KATZ
I have never needed God
as a personal savior
in my practical life
syllogisms about His existence
were never music to my ears
but always seemed vague
missing a dimension although I didn’t know how to say this.
Neither a philosophical God nor a biblical God
suddenly appears among His creations
amid revelations of wisdom in Jerusalem, His city.
And certainly not in disclosures of pious inner principles
and also not among poets, unfortunately.
Astronomical bodies at night and mystical landscapes in Sharafat for example
and Beit Jala
bear His between-the-lines existence,
His inklings.
The expression of an ultra-Orthodox man’s eyes in Mea She’arim —
this too —
and even the purifying surrender of a sly and seasoned merchant, irreligious now in Geula,
when you reproach him.
Something like “Reprove a wise man and he will love you.”
And you, when you cleanse yourself of anxious constraints about your environment
after taking hash or grass.
Springs of purity whose origins you’re unaware of
bubble in coursing blood, in glands, in milk
and some paradisiacal primeval revelation,
and your almost subconscious innerness
your being suddenly revealed —
Is this clear enough to you, heredity? Genes?
Or existential uniqueness, a maintained infancy that knocks you out with a sense of a refreshing genesis.
Everything becomes clear in a great light.
You shed revulsion and resistance,
a great love germinates within you —
this gloriousness this wonder
comprised of
absolutes of —
objective truth, complete justice, decency
honor internalized
honesty and complex wisdom enhanced down to the last detail.
Ho, complete, divine purity.
Suddenly you polish a syllogism of your own
for decisive proof of His existence:
God is an idea —
ideas don’t have material existence
but they exist nonetheless
so God exists definitively as the spirit of an idea,
the biblical assertion “He has no body and no bodily form”
is clear to me now as an exegesis
that sits well with philosophy.
Translated from the Hebrew

The History of Ideas, 1973-2012: Authority

BY BRIAN BLANCHFIELD
Where the correlative of reason was conviction and where the correlative
of power was obedience, the correlative of authority was trust
Your job—she gives another to the child
hip-high—is to heat the money in your hands
to the optimum warmth for purchase. Cagey,
the diversion in the same coin as his want.
It buys her time, enough that once
they round the corner, she might break into a sprint,
as one might with a pet who can keep up. But
the prophet makes eyes in his open fists
of the nickels’ glint, and we see he forbears
our guess her hector gets lost in the flash
when as if by swale we all give way to expel
a customer from the clench of us without her.
For what beneath the moths who have all night
to live do we brace ourselves as we approach?
We lean to find again the boy’s outguess of us.
Demand is double at the walk-up window, where
punishment for paltry want is to tell it again
into plexiglass the color of slobber, so others
in the bleach of halogen light may deal
their disparagement forward. For what if not
dishonor are we braced, rehearsing what to ask?
Repetition is a machine, a machine
for converting request into appeal; and
commerce, then, the window’s byproduct or
balm, depending. Red hot cashews, yellow bag.
Only because we visit by day do we know
at night what to call at the walk-up window
where two aisles of open merchandise end at
the sacral plates of clerks before us who, if
on pulleys they were carts instead or vending claws,
would be by now concussed and dented by
lever malevolence outright.
                                                    The prophet stands eye level
with the vending plunge, a here and now mechanism
he would need to invent to operate, and stands
between it and his mother. Yellow bag.
                              Because there is not enough money in the world, people steal;…                                                           because there is not enough recognition, they make art

Exra Pound’s 23 don’ts

Showgazae

 

http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/read-ezra-pounds-list-of-23-donts-for-writing-poetry-1913.html

This is excellent

Beginning

 

  • Direct treatment of the “thing” whether subjective or objective.
  • To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
  • As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

 

Fact or fiction?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201608/new-book-why-knowing-fact-fiction-really-does-matter

 

“William Poundstone: One of the things I’ve found is that, in a survey, there is no clear distinction between facts and feelings. When you ask a purely factual question, the answers reflect not only what the person knows, but a complex of feelings and culture. This is certainly true when you ask about a factual topic that has been politicized, such as climate change. In these cases people tend to answer the way that the leaders they trust do. And if you trust those leaders more than you trust the scientific experts or the media (as many do), it may not matter to you that some fact-checking article ticks off eight ways your leader’s statements are wrong.

Believing certain things, even if they’re wrong, can be an expression of community.”

“WP: We’re dealing with a lot of complicated issues in the world today: immigration, terrorism, changing climate, outsourcing of jobs. Unfortunately the people who know the least about these issues often feel they’re pretty well-informed. They may believe in “simple solutions” whose flaws they are unwilling to examine. I ran a survey in which people were quizzed on general knowledge and then asked about how they felt about the proposal to build a border wall. The less general knowledge people had, the more they supported a border wall.”

Mary buys x pairs of trousers except she has actually bought a kilt

kiltLet number of prs of trousers bought = x
If Mary has £60 and price of trousers=£12
How many prs of trousers can Mary buy
12x =60
6x=30
3x=15
1x =5

Usually we leave out the 1 and write x=5 QED

So Mary can buy 5 pairs of trousers.This is algebra
Is it sensible to buy 5 pairs of identical trousers? That is not mathematics.It might be common senses,ethics,foolishness or wisdom.
That is a more complex question like” buy 2 get one free” when you don’t even need one!

Further,should Mary draw her life savings out and buy 1,000 pairs of trousers?
Clearly not so where  should she draw the line? Because ladies get tired of their clothes and how long is Mary going to live? And she is depriving 999 other ladies of a pair of trousers as well.That is  worth thinking about but it’s not mathematics,is it.
From this we can conclude that  algebra is easier than other problems we deal with/Amen

No music

I’ve lost all  the music again.
Sabotaged by  the lack of a pen
I’ll  extemporize faster
With my brain in   dried plaster
If it sets, I’ll be perfectly Zen.

I broke my leg but it  wasn’t too bad
A leg never thinks or feels sad
My brain needs a glove
Of gentle, kind  love.
Is it me or is everyone mad?

I saw my old man on a bus
It was pulling away,how I cursed
I only glanced sideways
On the streets and the highways
I’m almost fatalistic or worse.

 

 

 

Cut apart

Since you died ,my language  is curtailed
Can one cut a part,  and not kill all?
Since  you  left, my  wish to speak has failed.
Since you died ,my language  is curtailed
I have lost the main,not mere detail.
As Eve lost Eden after the great Fall.
Since you died ,my language  is curtailed
Can one cut just part, yet not kill  all?

Now have no other listener but myself

The honeyed  words invented as we loved
Now have no other  speaker but myself.
Lost, unique, the husband, once beloved,
And radiant  words  gave forth  this married love-
In my  speech , these words no longer live
I  cannot  use our words, our loving  wealth.
The chosen  words  invented as we loved
Now have no other   listener but myself

Now the Devil’s comin’ out as grey.

 

There are no hours and minutes in a day
Whatever Nokia Lumias  might display
Babylonian  clocktowers hover;
Cracked a wall , now built in Dover,
There are     sixty cuckoos to gainsay.

Day and night, or hey, what black and white
People range in hues of  fruits delight
I like  olive  and    Greenpeacers
Wearing  hats  from crowns off steeples
Day and night,oh  shall we take a  flight?

I see the Berlin Wall is coming back
Mexico   has  ordered   ten sick    plaques
Trump has  promised work forever:
Dangerous walls  from Hell to Dover
Even God has  been electro-shocked

No ,these demons cannot get across
They’re stuck in an inferno; what is worse……….
God  now  can’t  be  omnipresent.
He has  high  walls   around Grace Crescent.
Holy Moses,who  can take this flak?

If you miss yer dinner,don’t it hurt?
Same as if yer finger gets a cut
Refugees with their  feet   bleeding–
Christ,we’re underwhelmed in feelings
Get a barbed wire fence, and kick them back.

The Lord’s THEIR shepherd, so we’re gonna pay.
He  watches  US  like  NEVER  from today
We’re   ex-colonial criminals
We’re Self-esteem Unlimited.
Now the Devil’s comin’ out as grey.

Oh,someone jumped the Central Line today
Could not take this life so  full  of play
Oxford Street was blocked by walls
Of vehicles  sent to the Call.
What is my vocation,what my Play?