Grief  and love are linked by  metal chains
Imagination cannot  foresee change
When love is killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

In our wanderings in our mind’s domains
The furniture of mind is rearranged
Rage and love are linked by a  steel chain

The mind itself can change the human brain
The one most strong may be the one insane
When love dies, its shadow will  remain

The hate of loss  is like the mark of Cain
The rational one can be almost deranged
Grief  and love are linked by a  steel chain

What is lost will  heal in its due time
Murderous love   comes from the most estranged
When love’s killed its  ghost will  cause  much pain

Suffering most acute is now in place
Chronic losses cause a pale strained face
Grief  and love are linked by a  gold chain
When love’s killed, its ghost will haunt  and blame

A (first line)
B (second line)
a (rhymes with first line)
A (repeat first line)
a (rhymes with first line)
b (rhymes with second line)
A (repeat first line)
B (repeat second line)

The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
Even cats and dogs  sit still as stones
Gone are early flowers with fragrance sweet
The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
The hot flagstones return my angry beat
As people  scurry by ears to their phones.
The summer weighs us down with sullen  heat
Even cats and dogs  sit still as stones

I made this from a photo

You were always running away
And I frightened could not keep up
I only wanted to play

I was run over by a bike one day
But you did not stop
I was six years old, I could not cry

I always missed the right moment
Perhaps there was none.Now you can’t say.

We think there is a future when we can repair
How time flies, does not delay

I ate my words but could not them digest
The cruel hint, the sentence over -stressed
As if I tried to pierce another’s skin
Which was already dry, and too,too tthin

Better edit what we say with care
Even those we love we must not scare
Take for granted nothing we adore
But walk in that pale sand, by sea, by shore

Do not sink into the mud and dross
Despite we each must carry our own cross
For aid is near but cannot reach the deaf
The silence speaks, it does not cause distress

On the sands, we watch small children play
Bringing blood back to our faces grey

The power of tiny gestures is immense
The nod, the smile, the wink, the thoughtful glance
That means we still exist, though we are lost
And now are forced to pay the total cost

The power of words when written on a card
Chosen with much care when loss has scarred
The little words which meant so much to me
I had them framed so I would always see.

The big romantic game, the winners stare
The losers slink away, will they not bear?
The weight of death and loss, the fear of shame
The onea who cut us dead, the ones who came

Forgive me now for all I have not done
Omission of good words, a smile, a pun

Katherine December 13, 2019

Boris Johnson  thrown out by his wife
Now he has a different tole in life
He has a  girlfriend will he have more kids?
Lucian Freud was  surely up for this
They say he might have had perhaps  thirty   two
With all that sperm what is a man to do?
He could take Precautions as they say
I  prefer icecream  but let’s go  stray

Lucian Freud  was not a man to  rule
They say he once burned down his own Art School
He married once, he married twice but no
He would not be captured  in Soho
Beautiful and strange he made his mark
Boris Johnson   has a  nuclear heart

Winter will come down upon us all
Europe we are sad, almost appalled
Sadness for the surgeon who cured me
The cancer  grew  like lightning hits a tree
He is Greek and no-one else was skilled
To leave me looking   better  than God willed


Will he  go back   to where  his grandad  came?
Say a little prayer for my dear face
I don’t want  to suffer but  all will
We’ll die sooner,  sadly Boris kills
The NHS is  going slowly  to its grave
Watched by men who  look  without a face

Fling up your plans like weapons in the sun
All I know is darkness overcomes

Why not keep a lid on your demands
Say they’re wishes not that they’re commands

The other person is as real as I
Where is sorrow when another dies?

Step out as bravely as a bull might do
The matador is here to provoke you

We must die but noone can demand
The time, the date, the love, the perfect plans

The needle’s eye is different for the blind
Easy threading needles, very kind

I learned my perfect vision was witheld
How much can we lose yet be ourselves?

Where the buzzing bee has sipped and spat
I shall sit and wear an old sunhat

We both had cancer, why did I live on
When the irreplacable has gone?

We do not know why we are living still
I hope I have enough to pay the bill

Silent and attentive as an owl
The tom cat is betrayed by his own yowl

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liber

In Bedzin and in Krakow they breathed in
What they denied in conscious thought or word.
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin

Penetrating lungs so deep within
The dead  unburied mixed, in air secured
In Bedzin and in Krakow, mortal sin.

The nearby people turned to burial urns.
The human dust by  breathing was allured
The ashes of the Jews, the shades of skin.

So  Europe took their human ash within.
A graveyard we became unknown, impure.
In Bedzin and in Krakow, more of sin.

And who they thought destroyed  lived on in them
Controlled their lungs, their hearts  their minds uncured,
The ashes of the Jews,  borne in their skin.

Like a mass communion without words
We ate and breathed the Jews, the gays, unheard
In Bedzin and in Krakow  we walked in
The ashes of the lost, the glades of skin

My doctor is God
Why can’t he heal you then?
I don’t believe in him
Make the leap of faith
Which direction?



God is my doctor
Where did he train?
He did not train
Good, he can’t charge you

The doctor wants a urine sample
I hope it’s a random one
Stop showing off
What’s the problem?
My bladder is full
Well,empty it
I can’t find the key
Are you deranged
If I were I could not reply
Thank you


The doctor wants to take my temperature
Where to?
Maybe the oven

The doctor says it’s a systemic infection
Can’t he install a new system in you ?
Like a plumber?


He wants me to take it easy
Fake it.

He talks in paragraphs
No, you idiot, parables!
I mean paragraphs and sentences
We don’t need those for oral communication
Well,I’m blessed.That’s brilliant

My doctor is very odd
Get even with him somehow
I can’t harm him
Then arm yourself

Are numbers very odd?
Yes, the odd ones are even odder than the even ones
No wonder you are a geek

Are doctors real?
Yes, if you think they are

Are doctors useful?
They are necessary but not sufficient

Do doctors understand patients
No, only statistics
Are they vital?
Definitely

Paying Attention with Simone Weil

For Weil, attention (attention) means to suspend thinking, leaving one’s mind detached, empty, ready to be entered by the other.  Attention means not always trying to know, not categorizing, but waiting, as though the other could participate in forming the idea we have of it.  “Attention is the highest and purest form of generosity.”  Attention is the opposite of a thought that has seized upon some idea too hastily, and thinks it knows (Weil, Reflections, pp 48-49).  For Weil, attention requires self-emptying.  

A silence rich with love and filledl with joy;
The silence after waking at the dawn,
May be both  anchor and a steady buoy 

Yet often we don’t know what we seek for:
The latest dress, the perfect English lawn?
We forget this marvellous essence, full of joy

We murder by ignoring  love’s own core
We do not see the buds which are new born.
We want an anchor yet we want our toys.

What is most arresting is the awe
We feel when we survive deep grief again
Find  silence rich with love and full of joy

Out of Nature, its Creator calls
Taking in her arms what caused us pain.
Being both an anchor and a buoy.

The silence underneath the silence calms,
Stills our breathing with reviving balm
Perfect silence rich with love and  joy
Shall be our an anchor and shall be our buoy.

I sometimes do go out it is a treat
Your number was witheld on my smartphone
I thought that it was spam,I did not speak
Now it’s like we’re vultures on a bone

I’d been with a widow who went mad
Threatening to hang herself again
Or gas herself like poor old Sylvia did
I know too well the anguish and the pain

When I came in I found my ansafone
Full of messages you left that afternoon
You thought that I was loth to hear your moans
Immediately would not have been too soon

You answered saying that you wished to die
The pain you have was too much to be borne
I understand your expression was no lie
The agony that comes before the dawn

But now you don’t believe that I went out
Of my ill intentions you don’t doubt
You think that I was feeling full of scorn
Taking sadists’ pleasure from you torn

I know we all want help with our deep pain
Making threats too often is insane

You don’t like to see my face so wet
Tears annoy you, though you are now dead
My eyes look like a jelly that won’t set
You don’t like to see my face so wet
What a pity that we ever met
Decoding faces like an alphabet
Why don’t you leave my messages unread?
You don’t like to see my face so wet
Tears annoy you, once alive now dead

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humiliate

Definition of humiliate

transitive verb: to reduce (someone) to a lower position in one’s own eyes or others’ eyes : to make (someone) ashamed or embarrassed : MORTIFYhoped they wouldn’t humiliate themselves in their next gameaccused her of humil

 May 7, 2019

Eeh, it were right crackin’ at school t’day
Wot wur thi sayin’ this time?
Thi said wi can do Greek next year
Ye’re not doin’ Greek
Why not,our Mam
Ye can’t even spek English
Why,  am I not canny enough?
No, we don’t spek English eether
Well, ye shud a thought eh that before y’ad me
Ye mean only  people with BBC eksents can bear childern?
Well, we reckoned if we learnt English we’d lose our desire
F’wat, Mam
F’ that! Ye know… It, ye get what ah mean
No,Mam.Can ye not spell it our a bit more?
Spell it out, t’dad would tan me hide!
Still he must a dunnit,Mam
I dunno, it wer dark.Mebbe it wer the cat, ah thought
Surely the cat’s not mi  dad, is  he?
It weren’t this cat, it wer another called Billy.
Well, how come ah’m human?
You think ye’re human, but  am telling ye,ye got  t’cat’s eyes
Just his eyes? How abaht his whiskers
Don’t be so daft, our Kath,Ye’ve got his hair
But only on my head so far.Willa bi changin’ into a cat as ah mature?
Wi’ll have te wait and see.Put ‘t kettle on.We need some tea.
Why, what difference will that make now.I’m a cat,I’m a cat…. oh, what’ll  ‘et nuns say  ‘et Convent when ah tellum?
You keep away from ‘et Convent~
Why, our Mam?
Do as I tell you.Never confide in a nun
Well,Ah shan’t let ‘et cat fettle me.Ah’m not that daft
Well, yi can’t do Greek and that’s final
Kyrie Eleison,Kyrie Eleison
Wot’s that?
Oh, nothin’ at all
Christie Horizon
For God’s sake speak English!

Why did Dad die,our Mam? Did God need ‘im, Mam? What for?
Oh,be quiet our Kathryn an’ stop blatherin’ an’ ‘arpin’ on at mi like that…Am tired mekkin’ ye dinner an’ tea an’ our Annie’s comin’ too
Will we have petato cakes?
Y’ll have nowt if ye keep on yappin’
.But, mam,I like talkin’. Why don’t you like it, mam?
Curiousity killed et cat.
No,mam it was you.You sent for’t man from Vernon Street and ‘ad the cat took
Now, stop tellin’ lies and do the washin’ up.
Am not tellin’ lies…A saw it
Ye’r a very naughty girl.. I’ll slap ye if ye don’t shut ye trap now
.Oh,Mam, don’t ‘it me.
Well,shurrup then.. do as yer told.. be a good girl.
Awlright,Mam.Shall A wash up fe ye?
That’s right, yer a gud girl really.
Just behave yerself and keep quiet.Ye nearly grown up now.A’ll show ye ‘ow to knit socks soon.. yr 9 now aren’t ye?
I am,mam.Am a big girl
An’ ye brain’s too big…. go and mop the steps now and put the white stone on… it’ll be the toilet next.Clean it before Mi Dad comes
Why,mam?
He thinks it were a waste a money.
Well,I love it,Mam.I hated looking down the other one.
So that’s where you were!
When?

Oh,doctor I am in a flap I cannot turn this childproof cap I cannot take my medicine So I shall toss it in the bin The beta blockers make me down I am in a study brown. The mini aspirins make me bruise And my mind is quite confused. The ibuprofen hurt my heart Yet without one I cannot start. The thyroxine has no effect So now I feel my life is dreck. The codeine fails to make me high I’m not addicted, though I try. I’ll have to take a shot of gin And alcohol will make me sin . I’ll go to parties in a dress That makes men’s hormones more or less. I’ll take a big one home with me, And give him poison in his tea. And when I am in jail at last I’ll feel remorse for all my past. For as I suffer dreadful pain God has hit me yet again. It’s not enough that I go blind And suffer terrors in my mind Not enough that lovers cruel Give me stick instead of jewels. Or maybe life does not make sense Especially when we feel too tense. Maybe random are my days and my life has gone astray. I think that I shall buy a cat And love it tenderly and chat. But if my cat gives me a scratch.. I’ll light its tail up with a match. All the world must me obey Else I’ll be enraged all day. I want my own way all the time. Other people must conform. I am here and full of ills What do you think of these blue pills? If they take away my heart That at least will be a start. Then they can remove my brain To help me with this damned pain. Why not kill me right away Then I’ll be from pain astray?

God designed our organs very well
Bu if we touched them we would go to Hell
Unless we married in a Catholic Church
God would beat us with a Silver Birch
The Bishop said that Tampons were a sin
No longer were we virginal within
We must not let a man know when we bled
We burned the towels before we went to bed
Yet Hitler was a Catholic like BoJo
What Carrie did then, noone else can know
Excommunication was a threat
Underneath the arches there’s no debt
God is watching everything I do
Ask him where I left my other shoe
What a shame he can’t talk to us folk
Still we have the Bible, pas the Coke.

The still small choice
Samsung and Delilah
If only Eve had not bought an iPhone
Yahoo punished Adam severely
Was Asus the son of God too?
God said, why are you here, you liar?
Elijah invented Intel,computers and chips. but not pizza
G-d on trial in Google Dock
I’ll be judge and I’ll be jury,said cunning old Fury
I have seen the Light on Google Drive
The Cloud of Unknowing is not a good place to save your poetry on.
He filed me under “wonder” on One Drive
One Drive,One G-d, One World
Where is Ogle Drive?
Yeshua did many lyricals.He was Leonard Cohen,we have found
Go over to Rome and be saved into the Angelic Host
He did raise my spirits but he didn’t say how many.

Killed by maxi-dress?

A hardworking internet writer fell over the hem of her dress while getting onto the downward escalator at Warren St tube station.
Her last words:“Should have gone to Foyles.