Please avoid thrilling people on the road Please wave woefully Please weep to yourself and do not bend Please do not walk on the toad. Please do not grow balls here. Please lie off the band Please tell the youth always Please weep quieter. Please tell the tutor if you feel dumb Please note the dawn is for Dons only. Please leap off the chimney breast Please pass your zest and drive yourself round the clown Please pay the piano on arrival. Please plea before coming here. Please bring your own oily paper. Please let all bones knit before retrieval Please keep all secrets in your bed. No pies enrolled here.
If you want to learn anything new you have to be prepared to be a beginner, to feel ignorant. You have to be prepared to to not feeling in control of everything
We have to trust in the unknown and that might be very hard for people who have suffered trauma starvation cruelty etc
If you want to feel powerful and in control and knowledgeable without doing any work you will refuse to look at anything new and that is a very bad sing for most of us. That’s why we all need support from the teacher or a parent or a friend whom we trust enough to show them our vulnerabilities.
To write a poem will take our entire heart Our mind and soul, our body and our dreams. With trepidation,take a pen and start
Let preconceptions , though well meant, depart Creative work evades such plans and schemes To write a poem will shake the entire heart
We travel lands unknown without a chart With our courage, trust the dark unseen For inspiration,take our pens and write
We bite the apple, bitter, hard and tart Knowledge enters in its dream -like streams To write a poem will move each living heart
No logic, reasoning, signs, however wrought Will bring to life the holy pattern’s themes With each image, still your dreaming heart
The earth ,the oceans, seas, the sacred scenes Where humans live out daily what life means To write a poem , we need a mystic’s heart We fill our empty pens,we make a start
The grey cloud of unknowing held me fast
I knew reality unsymbolised
I gaped at trees with blossom till it passed
I would have paid no heed to stinging wasps
The strange, lost feeling blinded heart and eyes
The grey cloud of unknowing held me fast
Is this why girls self harm to feel at last?
Inner pain too deep to make us cry
I look at trees with blossom, this shall pass
Numbness,nothingness,the human test
To try our being ,show our hearts can die
The grey cloud of unknowing taught me fast
Who owns life and whose forefinger traced
The universe, the stars, the earth and sky?
I look at trees with blossom,self effaced
Our words are maps,our sentences are lace
That weave us into being, all engrossed
The grey cloud of unknowing held me fast
What I did not know held me in trust
Posted on May 14, 2017 Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough For widows and their masculine counterparts. Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
No arms left now, that never will rebuff. No eager lips which whispering love impart Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough
People say, of course, the going’s rough The coming’s gone and nothing shall gestate Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
Never more to share cartoons and laughs. Never more to be a chosen mate Loneliness, the word’s not wrong enough.
Did we know the heart of what we had? Did we learn the art of love. of fate? Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
You have gone and closed now is the gate In a mad ball, I dance with love and hate Loneliness, the word’s not strong enough! Ripped in half, that’s more the phrase; like, tough.
She showed me a very different approach to dealing with a professional or personal setback: she doesn’t fight, she accepts. She regroups to heal and focuses on restoring her inner strength instead of allowing outside forces to suffocate her. At first, I couldn’t understand what seemed like emotional surrender, but as I got to know her better, I began to appreciate and eventually to emulate her Korean ways. She has taught me that everything is not always a battle.
Mary and Annie went on the beach at Aldeburgh. The beach is mainly shingle. At dawn they have seen the fishing boats going out
I don’t like walking on a shingle,Mary announced it was a truth as if it was a truth like the discovery of gravity
Well Annie said, we both need some extremely good trainers. But we can’t get them here and anyway we’re going home soon. Why don’t we walk on the promenade instead of on the beach?
Well I like to walk along the very edge of the sea and hear the pluck and knock of the tide.
Do stop showing off. I have read Look stranger on this island now by WH Auden.
So have I said Mary and it’s one of the few poems I can remember by heart.
That’s fortunate said Annie because you might get sent to prison for plagiarism.
Apart from you no one else has heard me saying the pluck and knock of the tide.
I expect they’ll see it on your blog.
Who knows that I’ve got a blog Mary asked foolishly?
You will be surprised said Anna.
Last week someone in Iraq was reading it. I don’t suppose they have read Auden unless they are a professor of English literature. That’s a possibility. Will I need to issue an apology?
Yes or the Conservatives will put you in jail.
Well I’m definitely not going to vote for the Conservative party at the next election.
Mary saw the bus was due in five minutes.She applied some sunscreen and combed her hair gently with a cake fork while she wondered why she was going out.She looked into her phone camera to get her hair in order Alas, the familiar footsteps of Annie were heard on the patio.In she flew dressed in red and brown like a robin in winter except she wore pure wool and nit feathers How do you like my outfit, she cried girlishly Mary stared at her, noting the pale beige face makeup from Max Tucker and brick coloured lipstick from Wigan’s Makeup Outlet Store where Annie loved to browse for days on end. I think the brick coloured lipstick does not go with the scarlet jacket,Annie. Oh, don’t worry.It’s the in thing now to clash That might be true but men won’t know it’s a fashion unless they read Vogue.Most don’t. Never mind all that. I’ve brought Emile a new blanket He’s not a dog,you know.Do cats need blankets? If you drove it would protect the seat. I might go round the bend.If we drive we almost certainly would meet bends Do fish get the bends,mewed Emile? We don’t know that.It only proves that a question can be asked in a human language but within that system there is no way of answering it,Mary told him quietly, thinking of Wittgenstein her husband’s former tutor. First of all, fish probably can’t speak English or understand it. How amazing, the little cat replied.How stupid can you get? Well a fish would think you were stupid for not being able to live in the sea. So true,Emile sighed.Shall I try? Don’t be so ridiculous,Annie whispered.The sea in not near Knittingham. Mary can’t drive and you may drown. Then St Peter will be reading out all your sins Can cats commit sins, asked Emile with surprise Yes, because you know you have a choice.You can bite my hand or resist the temptation I don’t feel like biting it now so if I did it would not give me pleasure. For God’s sake, stop arguing.Anyone would think you’d been to the Synagogue, today Mary shouted But in a Synagogue men argue about the Torah not about cats swimming,Emile replied But then it gets to be a habit,Mary finished. Still many other people argue,Annie reminded her. But God does not want it,Mary said How do you know? He/She may love to hear it.It will provoke thought And it may provoke a Flood or you being turned into a pillow of salt,Mary screamed Pillar of Salt,Annie corrected her Why do people not turn into pepper, the cat asked wisely. There is no pepper in the Dead Sea, the women agreed.~And black pepper/white pepper could be PIC They have red peppers in the Market.Annie mused.And yellow too But where does that leave us?Where was Mary going to and why has she not left for the bus stop? Was it something wicked that she was trying to do in secret? We’ll see tomorrow I expect
Let me give Colvile one explanation for the fact that waiting lists have stopped rising. My wife recently saw her GP with a view to being referred to a consultant. She was told that local hospitals have closed their lists for the type of procedure she required, thus preventing the numbers from rising
Like a piece of ground where bombs go off repeatedly,
my inner landscape is perpetually marked
by these explosions of sorrow,
made all the worse
by the lack of a listening ear,
a warm open heart
or an outstrerched hand.
I have constructed a map
but it's incomplete,by its nature;
so even now,I might stumble into an old hole
or a new one,created
by reverberations underground;
the noise like distant music,
a constant drumbeat.
We do not dance
I might call it the Liturgy of Loss,
a dance to the music of rhyme;
Patterns abd shapes hold the feelings
and express them.The shape of these forms
is a container for the grief.
In this way,I indicate
that life will go on;I hear the healing music
and sing to its melodies
like a mermaid on the edge of the sea in winter
when the water is cold and green like his eyes,
and the rocks are hard like large fists.
Nature can be a s ymbol for such emotion
we cannot walk without a tear in ech eye
and a softening of our hearts
as tenderly we touch the world
and are touched in turn by each other.
Stretch out your hand to meet mine.
We can hold each other better
than each can hold theirself.
Like in sex, the meaning is not the climax
but the giving and being given;
receiving and being received.
The sacredness of the erotic needs no explanation
to a gardener or a fisherman
but may need it for the information saturated,postmodern
who dwell in the fascist virtual reality
we call life on earth today
The very next day Mary and Annie went back went back to Rose house to see Maggie. I hope that Maggie believes that we were genuinely unable to come in yesterday because of the beautiful bottom competition, st Mary thoughtfully. Don’t worry about it Emile said it was your fight or flight reaction which senf adrenaline rushing through your blood. I think flight was the sensible mature response to what you heard.
Thank you, baby said Annie softly now come on let’s go let’s ring that doorbell and speak to the receptionist
The women and the cat were soon in Maggie’s room on the ground floor of Rose House. What are the stuff brought them some lovely tea in China mugs But suddenly they heard somebody scream. They carried on with their chat.
But soon they could hear another scream and then the words
helpe me help me help me
Then Annie said to Maggie is nobody going to her?
Maggie replied saying that this lady screams all day sometimes and even all night and they can’t go to her every time. There are not enough staff.
Ida has got vascular dementia and she can’t walk so she’s totally dependent on the Carers. She has no hobbies or interests which is not surprising because she is 100 years old.
0h my God said Mary I thought they would get looked after very well in a nursing home.
I ho in and read her stories said Maggie. But the day is very long when you’re in bed all the time or maybe occasionally you get into the lounge in a wheelchair.
Some of the United people will start shouting or asking for help while they’re in the lines doing flower arranging or listening to the music therapist singing their favourite song. Is there a coupon show soon we have to take them back to their rooms and then they shout more because they are disappointed.
It must be trying for you Maggie trying to read or learn another language. Annie had spotted teach yourself Latin on the bookshelf.
Yes I think it’s affecting my blood pressure said Maggie dolefully.
I am able to walk now so I could go back home if I can get some help.
I love being near the sea and seeing lg the fishing boat go out at dawn. But it’s very small place so I think I will go back to knittingham once I manage to arrange the help in the house are possibly a few other things so I’ll let you know when I come back it will be great if I can meet you more frequently. It’s very lonely here because I couldn’t walk for a long time and it’s quite depressing you know that the other people are here mainly because they have no one to look after them at home and in some cases just waiting to die. We need a campaign especially after the effects of lockdown. Would you like to be here when visitors weren’t allowed. And you couldn’t really go outside. So far this spring has been very cold too.
Maggie we haven’t really talked to you very much we’ll come again before we go home and make sure we keep your details on our phones so we will not lose them. We’re coming to see you again on Sunday because we are going home on Monday. Is there anything that you would like us to bring? Visit my phone number and tell me anything from fruit to 5 pairs of frilly knickers.
Oh that’s so kind said Maggie her eyes filling with tears so since my husband Len died three years ago I I didn’t have anyone I could ask to bring with things I know I could order from Amazon online but it’s not the same having someone there to help you when you remember you’re running out of something important
Emile put his head off of the rucksack and he said to Maggie, if you are running out of love I will give you my personal phone number but you can bring me anytime and I will send you loving and friendly text messages. I like this town because you can buy fresh fish on the beach. Yum yum yum he cried humorously before himself back into the soft cardigan the bottom of the rucksack.
8He was a picky person with a penchant for piss artistry He liked to excite women with his studied impropriety. He often went to bed with a woman of society Then she would be troubled by her sudden notoriety. As demanding as a pigeon with one eye and no stability; Although he had been gifted with a wide range of abilities. He always told the truth in a manner Jesuitical It gave rise to deep wounds and to curious thoughts inimical. He read between the lines and fantasised romanticly He knew his Greek and Latin and corrected folk pedanticly. He liked to drink ripe brandy and practise tantric gallantry. Until it led to arguments and words fired off too franticly. He said he felt real lonesome even when he was in intimacy Wished he’d never bothered to lose his own virginity He did too much for others and got stressed out by an accident Until his control broke and gave rise to a grave incident. So now he is in prison and finds it suits him perfectly. He was made to be a hermit and he lives his life less jerkily. All he misses now is the ladies so beloved of him… He wonders if they can be jailed and share his cell and comfort him?
How my heart speaks 