I watched her in my silent way to learn

The matron of the Home made cakes for tea
Her husband helped by stoking up the fire
How happy all the residents would be
Home made cake was  very much desired

This Home  where men and women shared their meals
And went for rambles in the afternoon
The spirit of the Home  was made to heal
The grief of those just widowed felt its boon

The Matron like a mother showed great care
I watched her in my silent way  to learn
Now who makes cakes  to feed the old and scared?
What kindness  is there now for those who yearn?

Food  will help us live and keep our health
It makes a symbol  shared ,  our spirit’s wealth

Now I am  old and I have realised

pteroceras-semiteretifolium

Once I  cared for people who were old
Who wet themselves and  felt the winter cold
I gave them baths and washed their backs  and fronts
Helped them to get dressed and  zip their pants

I made them pots of tea and gave them cake
I gave them dinner  on a china plate
I listened to their stories of the past
An unknown world of war and  terrors vast

And if they cried I’d wipe away their tears
Talk to them  till sorrow disappeared
I’d   do the washing up and  clean the knives
The women missed their being someone’s wife

Now I am  old and I  have realised
I really had no feel for what it’s like.

Who could  think that work might be a sin?

Our narcotic is excessive work
Who could  think that work might be a sin?
Thinking numbs the heart in sadness stuck

Learning mathematics,feeling pert
Latin Greek and music, what a din
 Our narcotic is excessive work

I wonder if my cello I could pluck
Its metal strings  made grooves upon my skin
Abstraction numbs the heart in sadness stuck

If we feel, our feelings make us hurt
We kick the nearest person on the shin
Today’s narcotic is excessive work

With our government we  stay alert
We can’t be quiet inside when all’s maudlin
Exotic symbols numb the heart so stuck

We feel the pricks of many sharpened pins
The  conscience of the soul is wearing thin
Our narcotic is excessive work
Thinking numbs the heart in  angst now stuck

Is love a crime?

I have not had sex since I was born
Augustine said it’s sin to touch  those parts
Yet God gave us  vaginas, where’s the harm?

I thought I’d fall in love, is that a crime?
But I got laid by sickness,missed the start
I have not had sex since I was born

Some must procreate however torn
Others are  well pricked by Eros’ dart
 God  made our vaginas, where’s the harm?

Even poppies give out seeds  with charm
Opium  is the drug that warms the heart
I have not had sex since I was born

The Church  has uttered edicts  that deform
No Catholic child can sin however smart
God  made our vaginas, where’s the harm?

Are greed and lust less bitter than my heart ?
Is envy  and its death wish more refined?
I have not had sex since I was born
God gave some  vaginas, I’ve got corns

 

 

Flirt with danger

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Use an electric powered back brush in the bath
Take a boiling hot cup of coffee into your hand when you feel faint
Ride your brake-less bike along a dual carriageway. as fast as you can.
Warm your feet on the back of a tiger in the zoo then run for your life
Let a beginner take driving lessons in your new car
Never insure your house
Never  check your bank account
Never read this column
While making chips  smoke a cigar
When the cat is angry try to kiss her
Smoke in bed and charge your tablet under the duvet
Keep your i phone under the pillow and dribble.
Let a man you  don’t know   read your hand

 

 

 

I know, they know, we know,  how do you know?

Buy a motor-home  to Europe   go
Soon there will  be built a  British Wall
I know, they know, we know, you know

See the Concentration Camps,enjoy
Buy a reproduction of the Fall
Buy a motor-home,  to Europe  go

Go to France, where is the Maginot?
See the Europeans in our thrall
I know, they know, we know, you  know

See the Rhine and Rhone and how they flow
Hear the people  laughing at our calls
Buy a motor-home,  and to Europe  go

Churchill bombed out Dresden in the War
Even great men’s deeds  will us appal
I know, they know, we know,  who knows?

 By the hands of   politicians mauled
Beetles on our breasts will shortly crawl
Buy a motor-home,  to Europe  never go
I know, they know, we know,   he knows?

In the Ball, he think he is the belle

Politicians come in many grades
Oxford Cambridge,Eton,Harrow Hill
But with Johnson miming humour I’m afraid

With a merry smile, he must get laid
Are his ladies ever on the pill?
Politicians come in many grades

What we do confuses what we say
Does he pay his mistresses and  tell?
With him miming humour I’m afraid

See him looking angry on the dais
No-one likes his jokes, they make us ill
Politicians come in many grades

He  conquers but now so much  is displayed
He is not so jovial on his hill
With his  so called humour I’m afraid

In the Ball he think he is the belle
Britain has no comedy, it’s Hell
Politicians come in many grades
With Johnson’s antic humour I’m dismayed

 

 

An early work

Come live with me and be my help-meet now
I’ll share my bed with you and how!
If you let me love you
I’ll darn your old gloves for you..
If you come and meet me brow to brow.

Come live with me and teach me all you know
About poetic licence and Soho
I’ll mend your vacuum cleaner
And learn expressions meaner.
How cheerfully the hours to come will go,

Come live with me and be my lover true
Without one,how will ever we do?
I’ll set up model railways
And learn the Jewish weekdays
Come live with me and I will sweep your flue.

Come live with me in Norway on a fjord
I’ll mend my Canon Powershot if I’m bored.
I’ll watch the ice flowers growing
And then we must be sowing.
When  will Newton’s apples  strike a chord?

Your love mine and  all the earth’s divine

When we think of what’s inside  our skin
The sacred heart and the  most precious blood
The fire that burns alone without  new wood
The still small voice, the  mind and soul within

The systematic violence  of our kin
The  burning  church, the  holy books in flames
While  the leaders swagger  and play games
Unmoved, they kill  our culture as  protection

Yet the mother  will protect her child
Would that we could do the same for all the world
Your love mine and  all the earth’s divine
Would that we  had not  so long defiled.

And as the curtain falls across the stage
Would that  life was real and we engaged

The people are enraged  about our Play

I dare not watch the News again today
The House of Commons  deep in its own fray
Our leader is as stupid as an ox
Who thinks that he’s as cunning as a fox

We the people are at Civil War
The regime has  split and rotted all our cores
Like Blake’s rose which had its sweet decay
The people are enraged  about our Play

Shakespeare   could not write one apposite
We  cannot find a good enough play-right
The  people nondescript  because unknown
Biting their thin fingers to the bone.

Let somebody rid us of this rogue
Before our weak “democracy” erodes

He wooed me with a paucity of tact

He wooed me with a paucity of tact
Assumption is the enemy of gain
Good manners were a quality he lacked

He teeth were yellow, more,  his brain was cracked
He did not leave and neither would remain
He wooed me with a paucity of tact

He did not know his fantasy from fact
Upon this earth his face would bring all shame
Good manners were a quality he lacked

For my boundaries ,he’d no respect
He  did not even try to entertain
He wooed me with a paucity of tact

Keep a little mystery ice packed
Never tell the time  nor give your name
Good manners are a quality most lack.

As Wittgenstein  has mentioned, life’s a game
But time flows on so we can’t play again
He wooed me with a paucity of tact
His manners turned to malice , Facebook tracked

 

Life is not what’s said but what we heard

Life is movement life is song and word
We try to capture life in all its forms
Life is wild as tigers,sweet as birds

Life is what we get yet don’t deserve
The birth of infants and the  food of worms
Life is movement life is song and word

Life is not what’s said but what we heard
Grace comes down like leaves as Autumn turns
Life is wild as tigers,small as birds

Like a boiling pot that must be stirred
We need to watch  for only then we learn
Life is movement life is song and word

Love comes to the empty, is not earned
The heart   like Joan of Arc  is made to burn
Life archaic , everlasting curves

Of our empty fantasy we’re shorn
Like the fields of wheat and barley corn
Life is movement life is song and word
Life is a wild melody   lovelorn

 

Another Autumn comes with spiralled snails

Another Autumn comes ,I see damp snails
Boris Kemal Johnson hits the  roof
Brexit  and its battles , he may fail 

A carnivore, he leaves  bloody trails
And he rarely tells the honest truth
Another Autumn comes with spiralled snails

Is it just bad luck  we should bewail?
He does not seem a  leader but a spoof
Brexit  and its battles , he may fail 

Now the  media float in Autumn gales
The people read  but  is there any truth?
Another Autumn comes  with flying snails

Jews attacked in Hertfordshire,I pale.
The baby’s pram was knocked about,  oh grief!
Brexit  and its battles   let them fail 

Anger,rage and violence  hard to soothe
Jesus  is a shadow, evil looms
Another Autumn comes , are we the snails?
Brexit  and its battles , will we fail ?

 

Sexism in my advice

person standing in snowy field under white and orange skies
Photo by Sam Kolder on Pexels.com

 

I realise it did not tell men how to keep warm in winter.It might be easier for them if they can buy trousers made of wool or thick cord.And we have heard that policeman wear tights under their trousers! You can get long legged underpants and woollen vests
With a shirt and jumper and a warm coat,you will be quite hot.
That is the problem.If you have central heating and a car you don’t have to stand at a bus stop in icy winds.
If you dress warmly and then go into a shop like M&S it can be uncomfortable.I nearly fainted once.
Don’t wear a balaclava especially if there is no backstop

Even if they are from Europe

I wanted to knit a boiled wool coat but the wool  would not fit in my pan.
I see all the trousers are 7/8 th long this autumn.I measured mine but the length was not divisible by 8.But if say they were 32 inches I would have to cut off 4 inches,But then  I’d have to make a hem.So better cut off only 3 inches
I can’t see very well.I use easy thread needles but if only they could thread themselves
Then once your trousers are shorter it highlights your ankles.
So you need ankle boots or some beautiful socks.
So I shall not be bothering with this.
Then orange is the “in” colour.Well, it does nothing for me unless it’s the sky at sunset
I saw a nice  looking winter coat for £79.But it is polyester.Will it keep it   keep me warm?
My central heating is not working.I have no car.I need a coat made of wool.Or down filled
I have my  fab coat from 2005.That is  that.
Yet in  autumn women seem to need a new garment to mark the new school year.Also it’s when many couples decide to divorce
You need something suitable for collecting a child from school and also for seeing a solicitor.
Well, athleisure seems to be in but I doubt if solicitors know that.And don’t buy a cheap suit.Just buy a gigantic  colourful scarf from TKMaxx and wrap it round your head, neck and chest.They may think you are a Muslim trying to hide your ethnic dress.
But it covers  up your worn  out clothes.
Is it a good idea? I don’t know as I can’t get a divorce now.
Don’t you think it’s cruel to stop widows from divorcing before they go to heaven?
It is only when men die you see all their flaws.Like dying before their wives!
And remember this.You may buy a coat and shorten your  trousers
but Boris Johnson is still PM of a cruelly divided UK
And he’s made it infinitely worse in the last week aided by his henchmen
So get warm clothes and pray.And help your neighbours.Even if they are from Europe/

I sang  Oh, little town of Bethlehem

Mother, it is great to be up North
Can we take a trip to see High Force?
I don’t think we can manage that,I said
Why ever  not,I need to leave my bed
Well,I can’t drive for I can’t see so well
He looked at me with pity, it was hell
Shall we take a cab, he questioned me
I don’t think  they can get there before tea
We can take a flask and  your  fruit cake
I knew his mother well, and  could she bake!
I did not like to say it is too far
Two hundred miles or more from  where we were
He asked again about my honeymoon
Did you find it over all too soon?
I felt a blush spread over  my  fair skin
He was my husband, I spent it with him
But yet I could not take away his joy
He loved his mother  much when a small boy.
Judging by the smile on his dear face
Freud was right, he wished to me embrace.
Is it wrong to let  a man   mistake
His wife for his late mother, that is fake.
But since he was so sick and suffered long
I had to keep him going with her songs
She sung in her church choir the hymns of praise
To overcome that  strange weekend malaise
So valiant as ever in my work
I sang O Praise the Lord as in  the Kirk
I sang  Oh, little town of Bethlehem
Of course there was no wall there way back when
He still read the paper every day
And in the night when sleepless he would pray.
I would have  lifted rocks and cut through steel
If I could have made his old heart heal
Yet still our  masquerade was to him real
He held my hand and smiled with great appeal.
Then he said he’d like to go to bed
With his own mother, what could I have said?
I made some tea and  he smiled even more
I guess that’s why he lived to ninety four.

Winter woollies,hats etc

I looked at some catalogues that came in the post.”Poetry” has some interesting clothes.Unfortunately I have not that much money.I  can perhaps get a leopard print nylon scarf  from New Look or stop eating and return to when I ar 24 was wearing  teenage dresses and getting half fare on the bus.Of course, it’s free now.
I’ve gone from adolescence to old age without the middle part.I didn’t eat much.
The  kind University Chaplain invited some of us round for a meal.After eating I realised why I had felt so odd before…I was starving.I  didn’t know how to cook except for cakes.Now and then I went i to Lyons and ate a meal rather like a school dinner.We have no cafes like that now
Anyway, a sheepskin coat will be £499.A down one £299.I don’t think we have winter
made of wool anymore because most people drive.I have my best coat I bought it in  2005.It is made of very fine wool, it is dark brown and still fits me.
I have a few ideas for keeping warm:

Wear 2 nightdresses in winter.Use an old  cotton summer dress as the top layer
Partner it with some men’s woollen socks/Which  men, you may ask.Or not

Wear  the dreaded leggings under trousers.Last winter I wore 2 wool skirts when we had the snow and ice in January.I suppose I should have put a sweater on as well.
Still, you win some, you lose some.
Wear numerous petticoats as layers to trap air.In other words,  try anything./
Most of us have an old pair of boots.With luck you may find some shoe shops are still selling last years winter shoes /boots in their Outlet.

I suppose all the fancy clothes are for the rich.
But many of us have things money can’t buy.Like love,affection and generosity of spirit
As they say, a friend in need…..

You do

Introspection   makes most people ill
To find yourself, observe the things you do.
Keep eating stuff ,keep warm and pay the bill
Introspection   makes most people ill
Hit your head with bricks until you’re still
Most of us don’t really have a will
We have no power to learn  from any clue 
Introspection   makes some people kill
To stop yourself, don’t ruminate,catch flu.

I dreamed of Portland Bill

I realise I’m waiting for him still 
I have his old green cap; I have his keys
I cannot make myself write a new will
I realise I’m waiting for him still 
We went here once,I dreamed of Portland Bill
The black cat in the garden  still loves me
I realise I’m waiting for him still
I have his ancient cap; I have his keys

Mary is cruel to her shoes

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When Mary  got home after her Autumn shopping trip. she went into the kitchen where her cat was waiting anxiously
What have you bought,Mother, Emile  miaowed
I got some black patent Mary Janes in Clark’s Sale
You had some like that before.You said they were tight
Mary put the kettle on.It was copper coloured and cordless
Are we having our coffee now, the cat enquired?
Yes, but also I have read about a trick with tight shoes.Watch this.She  laid the shoes on newspaper and poured boiling water into them
Oh,mother, that seems. cruel he phoned 999
Hello, my mother has poured boiling water into her shoes
Why?Is it to wash her feet?
No, but I am worried the shoes might be hurt.
We’ll send the  ambulance immediately
Meanwhile Mary had emptied out the boiling water.She took off  her socks and put the new shoes on.
There , you see.They will  fit now
The  doorbell rang.Two policemen  ran in.
We hear you are causing suffering to your shoes
Is that illegal ,Mary murmured?
Almost.When Boris lets Parliament begin we believe hurting leather shoes will become a crime
Is it  because we are in the EU?
No, it’s only we British people who care about the pain of objects made from  dead animals.So as soon as we Leave Boris will pass a  new law
Is he a dictator,Emile miaowed?
We can’t answer that,Sir.You speak good English but where are you really from?
What is your first language?
Are you implying I am an illegal immigrant?That I swam in up the Humber or swam with seals off North Norfolk before coming to Weybourne a well known way for Conquerers to enter England? I am not Julius Caesar and he landed near Deal.There is a big plaque there.Not put there by him!
Yes, are you from the Ukraine or   anywhere in Eastern YouRup?
Are they like YouTube?
Don’t mess with us.We can arrest you.We are the Police and soon we’ll have our own State!
But you have no paw-cuffs. have you?
We can use string, the policeman said creatively
That sounds much  more cruel  then putting  hot water into my shoes,Mary said politely but with a certain edge to her voice.
The policeman looked foolish.Yes,madam.
And cats can’t have passports, as yet.They go  to a Cattery on the North Yorkshire Moors for their holidays.Some go to Cornwall.
Am I going, asked Emile? I don’t want to go  all by myself.
No,I am renting a cottage in  Hunstanton where pets are allowed.And the sands are white and the cliffs coloured in three layers
Thank you, replied Emile.I am happy to hear that.Can I have a bathing suit,Mother?Are there rock pools?
Ask LP Hartley

The still small voice  will whisper , not perform

 

Embraced  entire , your sacred smile held me
Until we  both were one deep in  our souls
As still as a white dove  held tenderly

For a little time so warm and free
s if your smile contained  me, made me whole
Embraced and loved , your sacred smile  touched me

As  we  cross together the  dark sea
I wish this sacred love could  always hold
As  gently as a dove ,as tenderly

And if I felt the  brilliant light  touch me
My eyes would weep,my tears would turn to gold
Embraced and loved ,  oh sacramental  tree

Would that humankind were truly free
That in the darkness, we could find our home
As dies  the  fragile Word on  Calvary

We see  the Tempest and we hear the Storm
The still small voice  will whisper , not perform
Embraced  entire , your  smile   encompassed me
As still as a white dove, as tenderly

Love can’t take control

Religion has been privatised like gas
I know in church we still can hear the Mass
Yet  no Chaplain comes to dying men
I did my best alone without a plan.

Inside the  holy sanctuary  bare
I became the priest and comforter
I sang the sacred songs and  gathered crowds
Outside our little cubicle they bowedL

I saw a canopy of golden cloth
Hanging down from heaven, as it does
It came nearer till it touched his soul
I was silent, love can’t take control

For a moment everything was still
A little bird sat on the windowsill
Then the cloth of gold was lifted high
I wept  the precious tears for those who die.

That one eternal moment gave us grace
I see your  sunny eyes, your smiling face

We did not “understand” the “love” of God

I saw the lines of suffering in your face
Suffering held  until  you understood.
They made a beauty nothing could erase

There is  the empty palette in its place
Through our lives we  hope to choose the good
I saw the lines of suffering in your face.

What we each perceive cannot be traced
The artist in us may choose out of love
To makes a beauty nothing can erase.

Some of us as children were debased
We did not “understand” the “love” of God
Who saw the lines of suffering in your face?

Were we  born into an unsafe place?
Like Jesus  who was killed by Romans “good”
His face  still  has a  beauty unerased.

The holy cross was made of humble wood
We   carry ours but need the help of God
I saw the lines  pain with in your face
And inside that , beheld  your  inner grace

 

 

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