Enjoy,Endure

Enjoyment  is the happy side of life
Endurance is hard work , we hate the pain
In  the night the ghastly ghosts arrive

In golden sun the bees buzz round the hive
Enduring needed darkness , we see  plain
Enjoyment  is not attained   by Western lives

In  Bangladesh, our clothes are  made by slaves
We  choose deafness  as they suffer,groan
In the night  revenging ghosts arrive

Up the sea will rise in giant waves
It drowns the poor and weak ,does Darwin mourn?
Endurance  makes the poor  die under strain

The Jews   of Europe had no  holy graves
Now they are accused  of plots again
In  the night,  will Nazi ghosts arrive?


When we die what will of us remain?
Grenfell Tower and Brexit   leave their stain
By trauma  disenfranchised ,unadorned
The  ghosts of the unborn  will  scream in scorn

 

 

Die in debt  and  don’t pay rent

Don’t you die with money in the bank
Get  more  hard back books or dig up roads
Give a  beggar  what you’ve   left unspent

If your family’s full of knave sand cranks
Pay   for them  to live and learn abroad
Do not  die with money in the bank

Why not buy a waterproof small  tent
Camp on Dunwich  Heath with the wild birds
With what you earned but  you have never spent

Die in debt  and  don’t pay  any rent
Leave  your  children free to find the  Lord
You did not earn yet left a  curious dent

 

Ask for books that you ain’t never lent
Buy   new bedding, do not  clutch or hoard
Do not  die with money in the bank

I write  curious nonsense, does it bore?
Do not harm  your sullen  hidden core
Don’t you die with money in the bank
It’s  money  that you earned  so get it spent

Chesterton on Job

scillysunset

Introduction to the Book of Job

Extract:

When, at the end of the poem, God enters (somewhat abruptly), is struck the sudden and splendid note which makes the thing as great as it is. All the human beings through the story, and Job especially, have been asking questions of God. A more trivial poet would have made God enter in some sense or other in order to answer the questions. By a touch truly to be called inspired, when God enters, it is to ask a number of questions on His own account. In this drama of scepticism God Himself takes up the role of sceptic. He does what all the great voices defending religion have always done. He does, for instance, what Socrates did. He turns rationalism against itself. He seems to say that if it comes to asking questions, He can ask some question which will fling down and flatten out all conceivable human questioners. The poet by an exquisite intuition has made God ironically accept a kind of controversial equality with His accusers. He is willing to regard it as if it were a fair intellectual duel: “Gird up now thy loins like man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me” (38:3). The everlasting adopts an enormous and sardonic humility. He is quite willing to be prosecuted. He only asks for the right which every prosecuted person possesses; he asks to be allowed to cross-examine the witness for the prosecution. And He carries yet further the corrections of the legal parallel. For the first question, essentially speaking, which He asks of Job is the question that any criminal accused by Job would be most entitled to ask. He asks Job who he is. And Job, being a man of candid intellect, takes a little time to consider, and comes to the  conclusion that he does not know.

 

Trust the darkness

ashdown-house-2019-2

Trust the unknown force that grew you,
From the joining of two cells.
Act of love, of self giving,
Thus to grow a newer self.

Trust the dark,the unseen aspects
Of the life we all do live.
Trust that there is wisdom elsewhere,
To your emptiness to give.

Wait in patience for the time
When inspiration comes at last
Trust in darkness,silence,lowness.
Opposition forms the cross.

Pain is bearable in lowness,
Like the worm in earth I dwell.
When I look I see the sunrise
And I trust all shall be well.

The vertical absurdity of words

See children’s hearts lie flattened  on the floor
Like empty tins squashed down ,recycled, tossed
Raised  up  are the weapons  of  the State
Wish to  strike down  infants, what’s the cost?

This child was the third one, that’s been banned
The government   and people  hate to pay
For benefits, like food and drink  and  dress
Abortion the expected long delayed

A child is born like Stalin or the Christ
Like kittens in the kitchen  in their bed
Infanticide will soon be on the rise
This is where our policies  have led

Lost dimensions  what do you  prefer,
The vertical absurdity of words?

The hand upon my tiller

e

Come back to me, my sweetheart
Don’t leave me all alone.
Come back to me, my darling
I can’t believe you’ ve gone.
I’m crying ‘cos I’m feeling blue again.
I’m crying’cos I’m falling like a stone.

Oh, let me tempt you with my beauty
And my voice forever young.
Let me tempt you with my spirit
My laughter and my songs.
I’m crying ‘cos I never did you wrong.
I’m crying ‘cos with you I  still belong.

I thought maybe I’d follow,
To see where you have gone
But there’s a hand upon this tiller
That is not mine alone.
I’m crying ‘cos I wrote this old blue song.
I’m crying ‘cos I’ve been lonely for too long.

The hand upon my tiller
The mystery of the dark
The unknown one who lives in me
And sings like a skylark.
I’m singing ‘cos I wrote you a new song.
I’m singing ‘cos the cat ain’t got my tongue.

 Most sensuous, most tangled with love’s grace

Could it be despair  that held me tight

in the wintry evening and the night

I could not see a way to  carry on

Everything  was wrong and I was done

 

I saw great blackness all around myself

I could not be restored, I had no health

I   had reached the end of seeking aid

G-d alone  knew all the coins were paid

 

Inexplicable, the  golden light

That made a sweet shawl round me on that night

Impressing me with kindness and goodwill

Holding me until I ‘d had my fill

 

Most sensuous, most tangled with love’s  grace

Surrounding me,  protecting my lost face

As if the arms of love were something real

That anyone  who knew this  must reveal

 

Only when we reach the very end

May the force of love on  us descend

It’s your funeral

 

 

I have a very Lancashire accident most days
People in London ask  where are you from , Denmark?
If I claim to be  Englsh ,they don’t like it
So I wave my Viking sword and say,remember we conquered you !
Now and then, I’ve cut off someone’s head
Well,  that’s what Elizabeth 1st did to her cousin.
And they say we  have problem families now!
Her grandad Henry V111  killed most of his relatives, especially ones who had a good claim to  the throne,
Well, it’s only natural.Every week a woman here is killed by her partner
You’d not be surprised if we all became lesbians.And  borrowed sperm ,as it were.

Talk about accidents.I am an accident.How fortunate for the human race.
Where would you be without me?
That is one question nobody can answer
I sometimes get stuck in the Town.I realise if I cross the road 2 minutes later,  the rest of my life will be completely different.I can’t decide whether to carry on.Then I am superglued to the ground until some religious sect try to talk to me.
Then I run across the road and wait for  a bus
There are 6 bus routes  so 6 buses might come and I feel an urge to get on the firste ven though it is going to Walthamstow and I live in Watford Heath or Peckam,;wry isn’t it?
Does anyone else share this strange urge?
So if I don’t post ,I’ll be walking for 12 hours trying to get home free.
Enough of me.How do you like my mac?~
It’s waterproof.So if I wet myself  it won’t show.I think it’s plastic!
It will last forever.Unfortunately I won’t.Shall I  leave it to you in my Will?
Plastic mac to my  niece Evangeline
Crocs to her as well
Plastic cutlery… who might want that?
My money to the Samaritans and  my house to the R.N I B if they can see it
My clothes to Oxfam and my 50 handbags to my sister.
My apron hand made by my sister,I leave to my brother.Let him wash up now!
The music at my  funeral is Joan of Arc  sung by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warne
I feel it is very  apt
Then as they walk out I want LC singing  The Future
It’s not Christian but neither was Jesus
The hymn will  be “Jerusalem” as people know it,

Shush I hear a fragile whisper
Bonjour

 

Spots of British fun and gun

I realised that the list of names rhymed  and had metre so I wrote this poem

 

Afghanistan, Iraq,Iran
Can “Democracy” be “forced” on them
Somalia,Yemen,Pakistan

The war on “others”,rights of Man
The  grief of  infants, war goes on
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran

Made in Britain,  torture ,gun
Electric, fearsome,profit, spin
Somalia,Libya,Pakistan

Europe, Jesus ,Vatican
Where does Revolution win?
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran

Egypt,Palestine,Jordan
Old Man River,death and Sin
Libya,Yemen,Pakistan

From five or six  or maybe ten
The Arts of War, the nuclear ban
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran
Somalia,Yemen,Pakistan

 

 

 

Trust, itself, will widen gaze

Inside my heart, this sacred place
Where freely mingle truth and grace
Where friends and enemies alike
Are viewed as equals for love’s sake

Inhabited by deeper self
In touch with  soul that in me dwells
I leave  my failures  gladly here
I will not live in morbid fear

I don’t insult the force divine
By pride in any good that’s mine
For willpower cannot birth virtue
But  can  attend to the eye’s  view

By trusting in   the vast unknown
Attention  spreads, fear’s overthrown
Our eyes relax and  gaze without
To  bring proportion  to our doubts

Trust, itself. will widen gaze
Enable us to find our ways.
With terror, fear or loss of pride
Constriction comes to human eyes.

Perception is the highest good
By what we see, we choose our road.
The blind rush like the swine to hell
In patient, watchfulness let’s dwell.

We cannot see

Giving up desire makes glad  our hearts
The weather will not change for human wish
Buy a raincoat , in the puddles splash
Get your feet wet, see the rainbow start

The world  is not  created for our whims
If we weep and scream  who will respond?
Perhaps the geese who’re swimming in the pond
They may bite you,peck at lower limbs

Best  avoid the arrogant and proud
Stupidly we pray  for  gold , for more
Our views are narrow, angry is our core
God died on a Cross, where is our ground?

What kind of creatures are we human souls
We cannot see  the greater world as whole

They can’t know that

Once I passed an old woman climbing the stairs one step at a time
In my heart I felt I despised her;I was shocked
A spontaneous emotion I despised in myself
Now I have become her
Can I complain if people look down on me
Ask if I need help when I am going down the stairs in a shop with no lift
Can they carry me down?
Sometimes people stop me in the High Street
Tell me I look dreadful
What can I say?
Do we still feel as we did towards lepers?
I can’t grumble and if I did, I remember I was one of despisers
Though I pushed away the thoughts
I suppose it’s like  when we say all black people look the same
Or maybe all white people look the same
I take pleasure in the young with their shining hair and vitality
Then I remember it’s not far to  being old, but they can’t know that

  What photos make good subjects for digital art?

???????????????????

A first I  drew with Microsoft Paint Program.I did cats,apples and abstracts

I found Microsoft Paint by accident.I had not heard of, knew nothing  such things.I spent about a year and a half playing with it  especially when I had a few months of illness.I  made some abstracts and then a great many cat pictures.It made me realize it o.k to simplify.to do so;you have no choice with Paint And that what I really like drawing is two objects in relation like two cats or apples.I tried three cats as well.It has that advantage… you discover what you personally like to draw.Ideally I’d prefer watercolor or pastels but I had no class I could manage then,

Arty party

cat2 alone

 

??????????

What will happen?

Naive art!

This is the family of three… a child has arrived

Cat is cross

 Moving on from Paint,I discovered Artweaver and Paint.Net both free.I experimented and found for transforming a photo  it’s good to use  photographs  with  strong shapes and pattern  like trees,cracks in the pavement,gates,fencing,certain buildings,climbing shrubs  on a wall…..natural patterns

bus stop 6A tree trunk

Cracks in the pavement 3

Cracks in our pavement down the  end of the  street

Cracks in the pavement

Cracks in the pavement.It looks better in color

 

Here I used Paint to add birdlike shapes to the  previous image

The top image below is from a photo of a mosquito  bite on my thigh after I scratched it so there was a little blood

another insect bite 3

From my trees collection

6804453_22abec948f_a 2

6819924_f1126074c2_m brighter

What not to use.. don’t use photos with a large area in one color…even if it looks ok as a photograph

I found ignorance quite helpful in a way as I had no expectations…..which is very important I believe.

:)

Do people hate poetry?

mint-mothhttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/why-poetry-misses-the-mark/497504/

Extract:

The Romantics, faced with a disenchanted universe, attempted to discover a new source of enchantment in the human imagination, and poetry became a metaphor for that creative, life-enhancing power. Poetry used to mean poems. Now poems began to seem like just one habitation, and far from the grandest, of the force that is poetry. Naturally, this fateful division between poetry and poems had enormous consequences for the way poems were written. After all, if poetry is ineffable and infinite, there is no reason it should be bound by the mechanical laws of meter and rhyme. In the modern age, poetry became antinomian.

The cows are  pure, the vegetation’s lush

I have got a cottage in Iran
At least that’s what I read on my house plan
Maybe there is some mistake or joke
If I go   I  think my heart would break

I don’t know where  my passport is right now
I think I lay down  much too near a cow
My passport must have tasted very good
Now it’s in a cowpat in the mud

If I  try to get a new one  very fast
They’ll think I  am a terrorist  at last
I know that they are watching me right now
Unless  it’s  just  the eyes of that brown cow

I’d prefer a house in Shepherd’s Bush
The cows are  pure, the vegetation’s lush

Lamb chops bring the devil out in me

My man has gone to heaven on his own
Now I’m  down here gnawing on a bone
Lamb chops bring the devil out in me
That’s why I  still eat them for my tea

He said he’d  had enough as he was old
He   felt angry ,all his friends were gone
He asked for  cigarettes and for champagne
I got it though it went against the grain

He even  ate a meal   before he died
Mashed  up fish with carrots on the side
They did not  bring  dessert which  angered me
I was going to have it for my tea

I do not  want to find another man
For gender fluid people I shall scan

 

Midsummer days

midsummer days evoke the trance-like past
where children played in joyous, daisied fields
with buttercups so bright the memory lasts
a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.

those stones and leaves and many coloured flowers
were gathered into images that glow
yet later we forget those treasured hours
when for a while we lived in life’s deep flow

we did not look and see,but felt at one
we lived as did the birds high in the trees
now we see and write yet experiencing has gone
we no longer live like flowers filled with bees

to lose ourselves in nature is a joy
which to our adult selves we must restore

Putting it off

They urge us to eat well and exercise
So swallow mini aspirins every night
Since we have the choice to live or die

Money is quite handy  for good life
I might win the lottery at first try
They urge us to eat well and exercise

But poverty though relative ignites
The pain of  being seen as people slight
Do we have the choice to live or die?

What is illness has to be defined
What sugar level is the danger point?
They urge us to eat well and exercise

We swallow drugs and meditate online
We do  our work, ignore our painful joints
Should  we have the choice  on when we die?

With the holy oils shall we annoint
The living and the dead   whom love has caught
They urge us to eat well and exercise
Does even God  have mercy when we die?

Trial and horror

In the land of grief and tears I float
I can’t swim so will you send a boat?

My sorrow is as deep as love is high
I’ll crawl out when the sun has made my dry

I  heard her singing “Help me through the night”
I bought some  ear plugs , it was  that or flight

Leonard Cohen helped   me  in my woe
Then he died, it’s just my luck,I know

Imagination and good sight   are key
To perceiving well   the bleeding heart of me

I can’t be British,I am very warm
I cry with babies and with all who’re scorned

I’m just a foreigner  from Blackburn Lancs
We’re almost civilised, we have a Bank

The English people seem so very cold
They say, hello, please cross my palm with gold

I wept into my pillow in the night
The cat has emigrated,  it’s pure spite

I cried when I got washed and  then I dried
Saving water,I’m  preoccupied

The kitchen is  much  quieter  than a grave
My husband does the cooking, he’s my slave

I never ate a meal  all by myself
I’m in a restaurant ,  but there’s no-one  else

I went inside McDonalds for a test
Don’t go there if you wear woollen vests

I think I feel  my salty tears will flow again
I’ll find my hanky, breathe and eat my pen

I’m never going sad or mad again
The clock hands  move but where  is my old man?

 

 

Competitive grief

 

Is that a game we play in public?

I’ve lost six friends this year

You lost only a cat,

She lost her husband.

Somethings we’d never share anyway

I lost my pride,my job and my eyesight

You’d  never know but for the white stick

And my coat is five  years old.. or maybe ten

She got married  just a year after her husband

fell off the roof  onto the concrete yard

So what’s her claim to mourning?

It was just another topic to write about.

She made money.

Think of that.

Surely, in the USA , nobody would object to it

We know how important numbers and measurements are

In this society

We ourselves  are numbers to the government

So much easier to deal with.

But how can grief be measured?

Good actors can play the part

Others are more circumspect or shy.

In this society we forget

Not everything can be measured except metaphorically…….

Like,I’ve got your measure.

Competitive mourning,,,

Why not have a Game?

Why not have it in the Olympics?

Why not have it on TV  nightly.

Why not get the Queen to give us  medals?

Just  passing a remark,as it were.

No offence intended.

But it was taken like a dagger to the throat,

Then they blame you for having  such thin, thin skin

The Sermon off the Mount

8342227_f520 (1)https://fourminutebooks.com/the-courage-to-be-disliked-summary/

Extract

Lesson 3: A competitive mindset destroys your mental health.

In one of my most popular posts, I wrote:

Mark Twain remarked that “comparison is the death of joy.” But, and this is worse, it’s also the birth of misery.

This is something Adler would agree with. He saw competitive societies as detrimental to our mental health and well-being. Today, this is a prominent topic in debates around Western vs. Eastern culture. Countries like Japan and China also have competition, but are, overall, more focused on cooperation, whereas nations like the US and Germany really focus on individual winner types.

The problem is that if you believe in order to be happy, you need to come out on top of some game, like earning money, getting likes, or having friends, you’ll be sad and stressed either way. The losers feel bad for losing, the winners constantly worry about their success.

Adler sought something much more productive to be the purpose of psychology: to help humans be courageous. Once you let go of a narrow, competitive mindset and embrace abundance, you’ll never feel like anyone is holding you back. After all, there’s enough to go around for everyone and as long as you work on yourself, you can achieve anything you want!

I’m not addicted, though I try.

tresco_2019-2

 

 

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 am 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 I feel so 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?

Come my tigers, tell me of your names

Maybe there are senses  humans lack
Another world  where this world is reframed
To the blind, reality is black

In the midst of tragedy, the rack
The  outstretched hands of god   do seem  forlorn
Maybe there are senses  which we lack

But while we are out ambling  well known tracks
We   may not see  our morals stumble lamed
To the blind, reality is black

The paranoid, the people,  madly  wreck
The natural law, the tablets, the  whole game
Maybe there are senses  which we lack

The albatross may hang around our necks
Yet we must feel  positive these days
To the blind, reality is black

Come my tigers, tell me of your names
Sit beside me, summon up my dreams
Maybe there are senses   people slight
To the deaf, reality is bright

 

About the Natural Law he is a berk

He may  scream at dogs and hurt his wife
Harass his girfriend in the summer night
He drinks red wine  and slops it all about
Is he the PM  we all await?

Worse, he lies so blatantly it stinks
He has charisma like the psychopaths
He feels he is superior to us folk
The carers struggling  daily  with our wrath

He supports  harassment of the  poor
The dying man who’s told he has to work
He cuts tax for the wealthy making clear
About the Natural Law he is a berk

Aquinas must be trembling in his grave
The Natural Law is  dying ,killed by knaves

I thought of crazed wasps

I wonder what rhymes with pedantic

Without being excessively frantic?

I thought of crazed wasps

Whose teeth I would floss

Yet that is  not really romantic

Pedantic seems related  to feet

In poetry that might be quite neat

Pedes obscuro

Might made a detouro

In search of a very fine beat

Podiatry’s a  useful profession

Especially combined with Confession

The priest cuts toe nails

While with sin we regale

We get   rid of out corns with a Blessing

Psychiatry is not for the weak

Stick your finger in a hole in the dyke

We try to contain things

Until we are bursting

Then our madness comes out in one leap

Prayer is  essential these days

Job  comes to mind  in this fray

But why would God help  us

More likely he’d scalp us

Electing  Gove, Johnson and May

 

Love and Friendship BY EMILY BRONTË

 tresco_2019-8
To  my friends/ readers with gratitude

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?
The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

I wonder now if this was sacrilege

Note to readers

I realise now what made me write this.I was recalling a viaduct where the railway crosses the River Kent  and the train then goes to Carlisle.From  this side  one can see the mountains of the Lake District.That makes me think of

I will lift up mine eyes to the hills
From whence cometh my strength

And also it must in my unconscious mind be associated with Calvary as well.But I didn’t realise until I began writing.
As a  child I remember being on a train crossing the wide river.I loved it

 

I saw Jesus on a wooden bridge
Carrying his Cross while all alone
I wonder now if this  was sacrilege

In the past no doubt I was a witch
People hit me, mocked me with their stones
I saw Jesus on a wooden bridge

He looked so sad but did not bear a grudge
Soon his flesh would wither on his bones
I wonder if  my writing’s sacrilege

On ward to the mountains Jesus trudged
I think I heard a sound like a slight groan
I saw Jesus on a wooden bridge

With many  tears  his human face was smudged
What was wrong when this world was designed?
I wonder if  my writing’s sacrilege

His  holy spirit   is now unconfined
Where  will we hear the whisper,small, divine?
I saw Jesus on a wooden bridge
I wonder now if this  was sacrilege