While the priest annointed him with oils
I played in the gutter all alone
I hoped to find the marbles we had lost
Or from the melted tar to pluck a stone

The summer was so hot the cobbles baked
Looking like a row of fresh made loaves
There were no fishes in the millstream’s rush
Nor a place where bread and Saviour rose

I found a florin in the cobbled street
I found two marbles lying near a grid
I found a daisy squashed in a wide crack
I saw a spider hanged in its own web

To summarise ,my father went away
The Queen was crowned and we just tried to play

Ode to a lightbulb

Oh,light bulb foreseen by our God
Save us all from darkness’ rod
You are our Saviour as foretold
In prophecy by ancients bold.
We will worship you at night
When sunken is the sun so bright.
We’ll watch TV and Kindle fire
No more to play shall we aspire.
We’ll wear ourselves out watching screens,
As from a can we eat baked beans
We’ll send for pizzas with our phones
With which we never feel alone.
We might talk to our partner dear
Though to text is easier.
We see the neon street lights gleam
Where once we saw the moon’s cold beams
And in bed we read our books
With a kindle or a nook
We put beneath out pillows fair
I phones which we long to hear
Can one have too much new light?
From technology some take flight
For gone are seasons, and their fruit
As our computer we reboot.
New potatoes all year round
Avocados once quite rare
Now are seem ‘most everywhere.
Melons,grapes and fresh green peas
As the birds sing,life’s a breeze.
Oh light bulbs,fluorescent tubes
Electric candle, light is cubed.
We thank you for extended days
Maybe we’ll find time for prayers.
God is great in mystery
No light bulb can help us see.
In silence,darkness, meditate
Wonder what will be our fate.
As retribution for our wrong
Satan stabs us with his prongs
He needs no more light in hell
The fiery furnace cooks as well.

I’ll write a sonnet it’s not hard, is it

The hardest thing is how to begin it.

Once you start, it’s hard to stop.

One sonnet might be, in fact, a crop.

I used to write five poems a day.

I seemed to know just what to say

Yet too much talking can disturb.

The gentle angels are perturbed

In Suffolk is an ancient church

Above the altar small birds perch

The angels hang down from the roof

The faces grave convey the truth.

I tried to write but did it work?

Wisdom dwells where angels lurk

Your face is etched upon my heart.

I knew you in the morning light

Love is wise but never smart.

We have no need of others charts

In the mornings and the night

Your face is etched upon my heart.

As we waken sleep departs

To see your face is my delight

Love is wise and sometimes smart

Intuition, craft is art

Love is silent, hatred fights

Your face is etched upon my heart

Human Love can see in part

Face to face we’ll see aright

Love is wise love is not smart

Your face is etched upon my heart.

Love is wise but never smart

Is love blind? Who etched the lines?

Sacred, human, love is kind

Climbing up the hill  with a great Cross
The tortured God recalls his childhood days
Now he faces death and total loss

Did  Jesus  fear his  mission  and its cost
Would humans  ever learn to see his way
Climbing up the hill  with a great Cross

Crucified, beheaded, killed by us
John  the Baptist,Jesus,Jews  have paid
Did Jesus fear his Mission and its cost

How we love the baby, yet we’re lost
Was it ever true that we are saved?
Climbing up the hills  with our own cross

Where is God’s great spirit, Holy Ghost
Alienated from the human race?
Did Jesus fear his Mission and its cost

Shall we ever see that Holy Face
Onto  refugees it has been placed
Climbing up the hill  like Sisyphus
He repeats his actions, feels  his loss

 

 

Thanks for all those calls and letters
Thanks for caring that I’m here.
In my darkest, lonesome moments
These replies will keep you near.

Thanks for answering all my emails
Thank you for the hours you give.
Thanks for sharing heartfelt thoughts
And being so generous with your love.

Thank you for your wit and grace,
Thank for your funny face.
Thank you for your deep blue gaze and
Thank you for your warm embrace.

Thank you,thank you,thank you,thank.
Love you,love you,love you,Love.
Thank you,thank you,thanks to you,
Because,because,because.

Because

10th of March 2026

You have got an appointment with the consultant on Friday 3rd of April 11am

March12 

please confirm your ability to come to the appointment or rebook or cancel cancel using the following code numbers

March 13th

thank you for confirming

March the 20th don’t forget you have an appointment third April

April the first don’t forget you have an appointment Friday the 3rd of April

April 1st you have a letter from the hospital please click this link

1st of April dear madam we are sorry to tell you that your appointment has been cancelled

April the first later in the day

Don’t forget you have an appointment Friday 3rd of April

2 April

Notification you have got another letter from the hospital

You have got an appointment with the consultant

Notification

you have got a text message from the hospital please confirm your ability to come to your appointment to rebook or cancel

The sky in spring in autumn looks the same

In spring it gives us joy, in fall we’re glum.

And so we play on in our little games.

The inbetween is hard to give a name.

Transitions, changes, fear of what’s to come.

The sky in spring in autumn looks the same

Have the gods deserted, who’s to blame?

If we cannot share our hearts go numb.

So we play on in our little games.

The human heart and mind are often lame.

Angered by the movements of the sun

The sky in spring in autumn looks the same

Can the spirits of our hearts be tamed?

Obsessive thoughts will linger and rerub

So we play on in our little game’s 

In spring life starts again, then what’s to come

But summer heat the flowers the bees that hum

The sky in spring and autumn looks the same

Round and round we go, for life’s a game

The tulips pushed the primroses away

They took the pot from these innocuous plants Nature is not kind in such display The powerful plants can do just what they want. However, I admire their flowers of red

The shape is elegant, the colour clear.

And had they been in a much bigger bed.

Both flowers would give us pleasure without fear.

And now magnolias pink my eyes adore

Two of them I see from off the bus.

A visual parable, a story for

The short sweet life of all including us.

We deceive ourselves in order to survive.

But shallowness makes trivia of our lives

https://www.theurologyfoundation.org/urology-health/bladder-conditions/urinary-tract-infections-uti/

The flowers you brought me one day died.

And you died.

I am here alone.

Oh, where are you?

My tears are watering the grass.

The ants dance about in intricate movements

The flowers will die again

How insecure I feel now I’m bereft .

How grief feels more like fear than I had known

What can this world mean when you have left?

That panic grips the heart, I’d never guessed.

I wish my suffering  heart would turn to stone

How insecure I feel now I’m  bereft.

Through these awful thoughts my mind will drift

Alone, alone, unloved, alone alone.

What can this just world mean, when you have left?

The nonsense and the sense flow by me swift

How insecure I feel now I’m bereft.

In this my writing there is not much craft.

My fingers  shrink  and feel like corpse’s bones

What does this sombre world mean since you’ve left?

How can we live when all we love is gone?

We create it, live until we’re done

How insecure we feel when we’re bereft

The pillars of our world have fallen, demons laughed. 

I learned the maps of all the  counties here
The contour lines, the rivers   and  the meres
Then I learned  the street maps and  train lines
New golf courses built on old coal mines

I traced all of the A roads with my thumb
So I would  know the way  to kingdom come
I marvelled at  cross -Pennine Motorways
And   thought that our Lord God must be amazed

Then I followed coastline paths and cliffs
I gazed until my eyes became quite stiff.
Finally  the weather maps and clouds
And restaurants where cats are not allowed

At last I knew enough  to start to walk.
If only I had known I am  a hawk.

Some evenings, the sky turned pink

We were happy, lying in the grass

watching the sun set,

arms around each other.

Seemed like eternal life had come

Earlier than forecast
.
Those weathermen are often wrong!

They need new training.

I shall remember you

in that timeless moment

in between two raindrops,

in between two tears

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-negative-freedom-thirteen-poets-on-formal-verse/

Among the many reasons poets choose to write formal poetry in the 21st century is an intuitive distaste for the imitative fallacy. To write about chaos, one need not write chaotically. It’s only a minor paradox to say that discipline and constraint unlock freedom. Steele goes on to say that form-minded poets are assumed to believe that “the universe is a nice, neat, orderly place.” On the contrary, he says:

I suspect that most people who write in forms feel that the obvious disorder and chaos of the world afflict us intensely, coming 

Mary’s cousin John had come to stay for a few days. He had a view of life very different from hers.

People here are too lazy to work

he said.

You’ve been reading the Times again,she teased him.

He blushed with rage,People with colds or headaches can work.Women have to look after babies regardless of how they feel.

And look how Jews worked in concentration camps even when they were dying

That’s the most  horrible thing anyone has ever said in front of me. How can you even say those words?

I just meant to say that if the Jews could work when they were dying in concentration camps, people here could work with minor illnesses.

What happened to you John what happened? I’ve never heard you say things like this before.

Actually I’ve been made redundant and the manager is Jewish.

But he’s not making people redundant because he’s Jewish it is because his business is making much less money. It’s probably because of the pandemic.

If you are unemployed why are you not ⁰ sympathetic to others at the same position?

I don’t want people to know I’m unemployed.. so if I criticise them I don’t need to look at my own feelings.

Well do not say anything like that about Jewish people ever again.

It was an immeasurable unthinkable merciless crime and you seem to condone it. You don’t want our government however terrible it is to imprison because they have lost their jobs. How would you like it. You know quite well that prison is not the soft option that some people believe it is.

Mary was very worried by what John said and she realized that people were lookng for a scapegoat to blame for the state of the country.

Many of us know the truth.

The meek do not inherit the earth literally. They are given the lowest wages that the firm can get away with.

Sayings of Jesus are sometimes paradoxical and v hard to understand.

It’s a way of making us think by turning everything upside down.

Mary had several books about art including

On not being able to paint, by Marion Milner. And this is where Mary got some of her ideas from

But only the receptive will receive creative ideas. If you think you’re the best thing since fried bread you are not likelyto receive spiritual guidance from the Holy One

I wish I had some fried bread right now because I’m hungry

Once the Soviet troops were welcome there
In Auschwitz thousands.millions disappeared.
The Soviet Army came in winter’s chill
Nazis were advised to speed their cull

It was not just Jews gassed daily there
Gypsies,gays were disappeared.
Can Christian faith permit such genocide?
On this ground, the Holy Spirit died.

What God exists depends upon our minds;
When we choose evil, what God can we find?
The end of Christian practices came here,
As Christ was killed again in chamber bare

God is dead to us for we have sinned
Against the Holy Spirit whom we killed

The opposite of poverty isn’t property. The opposite of both poverty and property is community.
For in community we become rich: rich in friends, in neighbours, in colleagues, in comrades, in brothers and sisters. Together, as a community, we can help ourselves in most of our difficulties.
For after all, there are enough people and enough ideas, capabilities and energies to be had. They are only lying fallow, or are stunted and suppressed. So let us discover our wealth; let us discover our solidarity; let us build up communities; let us take our lives into our own
hands, and at long last out of the hands of the people who want to dominate and exploit us.”
― Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life

Climbing up the hill  with a great Cross
The tortured God recalls his childhood days
Now he faces death and total loss

Did  Jesus  fear his  mission  and its cost
Would humans  ever learn to see his way
Climbing up the hill  with a great Cross

Crucified, beheaded, killed by us
John  the Baptist,Jesus,Jews  have paid
Did Jesus fear his Mission and its cost

How we love the baby, yet we’re lost
Was it ever true that we are saved?
Climbing up the hills  with our own cross

Where is God’s great spirit, Holy Ghost
Alienated from the human race?
Did Jesus fear his Mission and its cost

Shall we ever see that Holy Face
Onto  refugees it has been placed
Climbing up the hill  like Sisyphus
He repeats his actions, feels  his loss

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/mar/25/partridge-boswell-the-gathering-wins-national-poetry-competition-gaza

I dream at nights of my old friends My husband and his loving hands

I dream of all the cats we had

Alfred who slept on the bed

He laid his head upon my foot As I wrote a poem of love

Jimmy who was small and black She bit my hand if I got up

I did not wish to wet the bed

She did not understand a word I said

The last night here she gazed at me

I think she knew she would not be Lucky was the nervous one

Black and white , apartheid none

He liked my husband’s shoulder dear

He draped himself and lost all fear Now the cats have all gone off

I am frightened by a cough

My husband comes to me at night

Fortunately he cannot bite

He touches me with tenderness Smiles and wished me,God Bless. When I waken I feel lost

So I have to wear a watch

I seem to have no solid self

I feel nervous of an elf

I don’t mind an angel sweet

He could rub my aching feet

I will have no other man.

They are frightened of women

They don’t like to lose at Chess They don’t like to wash my dress They will brush my winter coat Never ask me what I wrote

I do not wish to anger men

They might shout and bawl again

I think maybe I will turn gay

Ask a lady, what to say?

They may not understand my needs

Killing flowers to help the weeds Talking all the weary night

On the whole they’re parasites Also they may menstruate

I can’t give them seeds to take

So they will leave and get a man This is where it all began

Eve and Adam,God and man

Cain and Abel, apple flan

Noah and his Ark so fine

I wish I had one in the rain

I wonder when the world will end?

I am old so be my friend

No  countenance, no   face,no smile no joy.

Without your face the world’s an arctic waste.

How can I my need to love employ ?

No countenance no face no smile no joy.

I cannot play, the world is not my toy.

I swallow food, no longer can I taste.

No countenance no face no smile, no joy

Without your  love, the world’s an arctic waste

Pray Father,give me some washing.I’ve got Wikileaks and a new obsession.
Tell me more,my child.I am feeling bored.
I think someone has been inside my computer.
They can’t be human. so why worry?
Why not,Father?
Well, we are not thin enough to get into the computer.
Ah, they turn themselves into particles and come in with the current..
when it’s high tide.
Do you mean tied?
No,Father.I’ve not been reading that book.Fifty Blades All Gay
Neither have I but in the confessional I’ve heard it all and more.
And how does that make you feel,Father?
Why pay to read a fantasy when you can dream up your own?
Some are born dim… others become dimner by choice
Well,any sins tonight,my dear?
I’m so sorry.I was planning to tell a lie but I forgot.
There’s a list of sins in the Missal…have you read those?
Yes,I’ve not tried most of them yet… though I just got a slight pang of anger
when a brick fell onto my head from a clear blue sky.
That’s natural anger,my child.but I feel it was odd for a brick to fall like that
Has a brick ever fallen on your head,Father.
Not yet but I’m only 97.I must buy a hard hat
Wow,you look much olde than 97 r.Are you longing to diet?
Why, is there no food in heaven?
I wonder who cooks if they eat up food
Maybe they live on manna.
Does God eat food?
That was one topic we never did in the cemetery.
Do you mean the seminary.
At my age, they are all one.
You have reached Nirvana….congratulations.
Well.I’d prefer a cup of tea.
You English!
What are you?
I’m a great Dane.
Did you say a grey Dane.
That too.
Well perk up;the show’s not quite over till the gnat really stings.
Do gnats eat string?
String… it’s my passion.Love it or mate it…get involved.
Live a little.
And for your penance… you must have a bath…
Why?
I don’t like the way you smell.
Well,I am a dog.. we like to sniff.May I borrow your hanky?
Definitely,I shall dry your tears for you and please try to commit few intriguing sins before you come back here.
I’ll wash it for you.And dry it out of doors
Well,it’s not over till that gnat gets its sting and the phone gets a ring

My doctor was a lady of very great skill

She cut my whole head off with a new green  type of pill

I still miss those kind voices I once nearly heard

Till she convinced me they were only birds.

My doctor had got malice in one eye.

As she demanded some patient must die.

I said to her that I thought Jesus was enough

And it was a mortal sin to call God’s bluff.

I told her how a voice had said clearly,

That love but not great wealth would come to me.

She said, “you’re bordering on offence .”

So I told her that real numbers are very, very dense. My doctor was so extremely good at curing ills

When she died, they made her into millions of pills.