Virtue

 

 

 

Blackcap2014https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/virtue

 

Definition of virtue

1a: conformity to a standard of right : MORALITY
b: a particular moral excellence
2: a beneficial quality or power of a thing
3: manly strength or courage : VALOR
4: a commendable quality or trait : MERIT
5: a capacity to act : POTENCY

I thought  I’d write the end before I start

I thought  I’d write the end before I start
The intimations come from my own heart
And also from the words   of loving friends
Who help me on my journey to the end

Our minds grow  from the words of loving friends
Or from their letters if we are apart
They travel with us till we reach the end

Friendships can go wrong, let’s make amends
A word, a look, they  let the process start
Our minds grow  from the words of loving friends

I feel it is  danger to pretend
For then we are at risk of breaking hearts
They cannot travel with us to the end

At  times fine grace and joy  may each descend
Never try to make a map or chart
Our minds grow  from the words of loving friends

Do not end your life with loud lament
Every cell is of  the whole a part
We are one despite the  great torment

 

 

In the road, we played our ancient games

The summer heat made cobblestones like stoves
The Coronation happened, I know now
We played with melted tar, industrial bairns.

My mother’s hands were black and much beloved
The coal and coke had tattooed her, we sa
The summer heat made cobbles hot as stoves.

In the road, we played our ancient games
The older children passed the knowledge down
We played with melted tar, industrial wains.

The bully boys were cruel , did not heed love
A little boy had tried to be a clown
In summer heat, they beat him on the stones.

We were  quiet they flaunted power again;
But in our hearts, we knew we’d let him down
We threw warn melted tar, industrial wains

And in our fantasy, he was alone.
No-one knew who threw the vicious stone
The summer heat made cobbles feel like flames
We played with melted tar, Christ  died again

For we resemble,love, the annual flower

The red leaves of the tree are its last fling
Pretending to vitality and  power
Yet soon  the tree  is bared by  autumn winds

Winter waits, the blackbirds do not sing
The sunset is now earlier by the hour
The red leaves of the tree are its last fling

The tree will grow new leaves in sunny Spring
Showing  death and rebirth  in the bower
Despite   the tree  now stripped by the  strong wind

Like  the red leaves we   must never cling
For we resemble,love, the  annual flower
The red leaves of the tree  oh,let it fling

We fear the darkness,fear  demonic power
We falter  as we age , yet will not cower
The red leaves of the tree are its last fling
For soon  the tree  is undressed by the wind

 

Am I wicked?

Why did Jesus spend 40 days in the wilderness?
God only knows

Why did Jesus come down here?
That’s what  he was thinking

Why did Jesus have no wife?
He had no home on earth so he was unable to provide

Why does God not kill the wicked?
Why did he make them in the first place?

Am I wicked?
We all are potentially.Can’t you judge yourself? 

Why are so many people ill?
Why are some not ill?

Should we  pray before meals?
It depends  who makes them

Why do we eat chickens?
We are bigger otherwise they might eat us!

When my voice trembles  

 

When words no longer work

wonder

wish

want

When words won’t come

compensate

contrive

When my voice breaks

snaps

sunders

strains

When I want to talk

touch

tenderly

towards

But you are not able

about

abandoned

absent

You are no longer

listening

live

longing

When I need to find a meaning

In the shape

form

structure

But I ‘m stranded

Stuck

Sucked under

Swallowed

Then I reach out to you

I want your touch

tenderness

tranquillity

temerity

Sometimes words don’t seem enough

endless

empty

emotive

ejaculatory

Yet words can console

conjure

quilt

charm

captivate

cover.

Stretch out your hand

across the emptiness

and touch me with your fingers

friendship

faithfulness

forgiveness

frailty

fever

touch my heart with words

and I will hope

expect

await

be grateful

grave

garbed in joy

When words don’t feel enough

When all we want is touch

Or to see

sigh

sob

sing

Words can be shaped

changed

contorted

controlled

challenged

Words are all we have

To make us love

To make us live

To make us alive

To make us sing

To make us stand up

To console,words may be

Enough

Don’t let them due you

A Conservative MP was  suspended for using the phrase “The nigger in the woodpile”.

As a  child I heard people say when going shopping, Don’t let them dew you.I didn’t realise they meant “Jew.” I don’t know if adults did but I am ashamed to say it was used very frequently.As a woman, I know all who are not white  anglo saxon men are considered defective is some way and even men don’t have it easy if they are poor, shy or nervous.
As a teenager my brothers refused to let me read the Sunday paper as ” women shouldn’t need to read about politics”, they refuse to let me put a record on  the hi fi as
” I would probably damage it”.I had to iron their clothes while I was doing exams at school.Of course an adult could have intervened but they didn’t and it does have a bad effect.I was 25 before I could afford a  gramophone and play my own 2 records!

While we did homework in the front room one of my brothers played Wagner all the time very loud. I’ve hated it ever since.I was glad to  be able to go to college where I was treated well by everybody.It was wonderful.
And it’s not as bad as what some go through but we don’t reflect enough.

Learn to be alone

img_20190620_180938https://aeon.co/ideas/before-you-can-be-with-others-first-learn-to-be-alone?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=a9f773068f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_11_04_05_04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-a9f773068f-70520193

Extract:

In the 20th century, the idea of solitude formed the centre of Hannah Arendt’s thought. A German-Jewish émigré who fled Nazism and found refuge in the United States, Arendt spent much of her life studying the relationship between the individual and the polis. For her, freedom was tethered to both the private sphere – the vita contemplativa – and the public, political sphere – the vita activa. She understood that freedom entailed more than the human capacity to act spontaneously and creatively in public. It also entailed the capacity to think and to judge in private, where solitude empowers the individual to contemplate her actions and develop her conscience, to escape the cacophony of the crowd – to finally hear herself think.

Do sell me gore

bottles-in-art-class-21
Made from a watercolour of bottles by Katherine

I want  much floor from you
I want you to spell  the youth 
Please say what’s  on your  behind
I want to get to ignore  clues better
I’d   cup of sea  and a   dice of  snake  home slaked
Can we have a  Sunday sinner  after  owing the gas?
Where  did blue shrink?
I know nothing but  do descend.
She  destroys me
I’d like to be harried again
Where is my Cartier?
Am I a rule?
Do fell me now.
Please don’t grow yet

Knit of fear

Suddenly  the winter snow is here
What we desire  does not have any weight
Britain is now covered with new fears

At least the men are far too cold to leer
Wearing shoes that don’t protect their feet
When  the winter snow is  resting here

Babies shiver  as their mothers steer
Down the   unkempt homely little streets
Britain is now covered with new fears

Do I look a clot in  padded gear?
Shall I savour  friends   who’re bittersweet
As the winter snow is  resting here?

Am I  a racist, do you hate  the  Jews?
Shall we drop a bomb  on ghostly fleets?
Britain  revives madness old and new 

In the hills  we hear forlorn sheep bleat
Disappointed. where’s the Paraclete?
Once again  the winter snow is here
Britain  wears a blanket   knit of fears

 

Don’t say I am going to swell

2013-04-23 17.21.25

Made from part of a painting I did at my Art Class

My desires

 

Don’t cast nasturtiums on me
Don’t lie by me again
Don’t cross my hands with Gilbert’s
Don’t worry, it’s only  sea.
Don’t throw  me  doubt again
Don’t sell anyone,please.
Don’t say I am going to swell
Don’t extension it again
Don’t say it’s a tin on Fridays
Don’t believe all your ears
Don’t say you  awe me
Don’t remove my slight to privacy
Don’t see like that
Don’t say you ever loved me at all
Don’t admire my pain
Don’t mention I tease
Don’t  join the gravy
Don’t join the Air Coarse
Don’t do coppergate  sand writing
He joined a Liary after the War
Don’t go to Church on Fundays
Don’t bite the host
Don’t mention my ten thumbs as a wobbler

While we live, we’ll live with dignity

Liv

Turn back, live again, he  said to me
Do not  wander in the darkness anymore
One more move might give death victory

We are each connected to that tree
The sunlit top, the roots hid in earth’s floor
Come back, live again, he asked of me

While we live, we’ll live with dignity
Not scrabbling for the gold in blood and gore
One more lie will give  sin victory

The kindness of the golden light was  clear
And left an image in my mind’s deep core
Come back, live your life, he then soothed  me

Do not wonder  now why you are here
We’re here to live and living shall restore
What  our suffering self  has found so dear

I had never seen the light before
Only Christ the tyger with his roar
Come back,  live  through pain, he  asked of me
One right step will give love victory

Cat eats curry

I left a pan  of curry on the stove
Hot as  ash combined with burning coal
Yet when I  went back in  a cat stood  there
Eating this strong curry  with no care.

It must have had  thick skin inside its mouth
Before I looked ,it ran out of the house
To think it  gobbled up our supper  so
Leaving me  with nothing  but a glow

So then I made a chilli  beef and beans
My heart  ached as I listened to  puss scream
Can cats learn  that pans are out of bounds?
I’d hate to hear again its anguished sounds

Be  sure to close  the kitchen door  or else
You will suffer torment  from cats’ yells

The holiness of slow

The thinner branches wave  like fragile grass
Bewildered by the wind so strong and cold
Like prisoners suffering from a cruel lash

The cat walks by ,the  little hedgehogs pass
So in my winter coat I could be bold
The thinner branches wave  like fragile grass

If only winter travelled very fast
But time is needed for the seeds  to grow
As humble as a  snail on its own path

We humans  too need silence without rush
We must earn the holiness of slow
While thinner  trees  still wave  like fragile grass

In the soil, the worms  pursue their tasks
Eternities of beetles move below
Humble as the  snails on  their own path

Why we’re here  this day we cannot know
Our souls soak in the  silent world below
The thinner branches wave  like fragile grass
We’re not gods. we suffer  from the lash

 

 

My sweet fate


The roses by your gate
Revealed my sweet fate:
That I would love you in summertime,
That my poetry would always rhyme,
That a dream of petals falling from above
Would drench us both with sunshine’s golden love;
That we would fall into deep grassy meadows
Full of daisies,lie on our backs.Swallows
Darting across the sky would see
Our shapes intertwined with bright buttercups.
Who knows when love will erupt
And carry us on its flowing waters
To places unreachable in summer saunters?
Into the eye of love itself

Jokes from the past

 

Why did Jesus cross the road?

To look back with anger.

Why did Jesus  save us?

Because his  64 GB SD card was empty.

Why did Jesus curse that fig tree?

It stopped him seeing across the road.

Why did Jesus not  use a bus?

He said it was unfair to asses and donkeys.

Why did Noah leave the Ark?

Because the two animals had become twenty  two.

Did Noah read books?

No he just scrolled.

Why do roads have two sides?

Because they are flat.

What is an enigma?

Ah,if only I could explain it!

Why did ancient people believe in salvation?

Because they couldn’t cross  a palm.

Why did the Pope sell indulgences?

Because there was a market.

When we say we repent,how do we know we mean it?

I’m stumped.?

If I go to Confession,will it be private?

As long as you don’t tweet it later.

May I receive Communion?

Don’t ask me.

My own jokes

36064355_1156369647836245_7488378942043193344_n-1Why did Jesus walk across the road?
Because there was no water.

Why did Euclid cross the road?
Because it was flatter on the other side

Why did I cross the road?
I was looking for the word

Why did the bus stop?
Because it couldn’t wait.

Why did I take a photograph?
There were no parabolas.

Why do we  have problems?
Because  not  many things are made of rubber

Why do we laugh?
Hysteria

Why are atheists so certain?
They have no doubt

Why do people go to Church?
It’s still free and they save you onto the Cloud of Unknowing

Why are mystics  unpopular?
They see things we  don’t want to know about

Is it God or am I schizophrenic?
Or both?

Why is it dark at night?
So we can  go out in  moth-eaten clothes to dance  the knight away

Late,late roses on the ancient barn

Once you drove me out to that old Farm
Before the Crab had caught us in its claws
We saw late roses on the ancient barn

We saw cars faraway like ants that swarm
Late October, nature takes a pause
Once you drove me out to that old Farm

What are the new lessons I have learned?
That cancer  changes lives,oh, what we saw
The late, late roses on the ancient barn

Grace is freely give, it is not earned
The  fingers of the clock   move with  time’s  laws
Once you drove me out to that old Farm

Take what’s offered, even though you yearn
For  other people, love, and  holy awe
 Become  the late rose on   this ancient barn

As we wander  here, no doubts can gnaw
Nor the tiger slash us with his claws
Love once   took  us out to that old Farm
We  worshipped roses on the ancient barn

 

My beloved jacket

14907087_802543296552217_5194649836108635800_n (2)I wish I’d kept that jacket
It might have fitted me
And underneath these arches
I still long to be

I know you liked the colour
You did not like plain grey
I hope your are in heaven
Dressed in colours gay

There the folk drink whiskey
And don’t need any food
But as we are still on the earth
We shall no more intrude