When we  don’t perceive, we duly fail

Sin may be invisible,  though real
Who  of us can judge another’s heart?
Admission of our faults has small appeal

Yet if we do not look behind the veil
We may kill .unknowing in the dark
Sin may be invisible,  though real

Walking onwards on our human trail
What ignites the spirit,holds the spark?
Admission of our faults has small appeal

 When we  don’t perceive, we duly fail
We have choices , they are here and stark
Sin may be invisible,  though real

We are weak , poor human acts prevail
Will alone can never  do what’s right
In the seas of love we set our sails

We buy ourselves the best place in the Ark
Our neighbours wrangle.struggle in the dark
Sin  becomes more  visible and real
Holding wide our arms we  hope love heals

Eliezer ha Cohen

This week on Who Do You Think You Are is Her Majesty  The Queen
Discover: The strange foreigners who rule the remains of the UK

And University Challenge  has been cancelled as they are all online following Johnson
Or The Pied Piper of Westminster as I call him

Desert Island Discs is  looking for a gramophone
Meanwhile use your phone

The Catholic Church hopes for more  vocations as people flee  life on  so called “benefits”

Discuss it all with the ghost of  Pope John 23rd  at 6 pm. He is in heaven.But it’s hell

The News is not being shown  till the day after it happens
Is it news?

Noone wants Boris more than Leonard Cohen
Well who could compete with Eliezer ha Cohen?~
How many meanings does that sentence have?

And if love‘s good enough, we may survive.

We need to self-deceive to stay alive
To function in this  terrifying world
And if  no trauma comes we may survive

If we watch the shadows in the cave
We have our  story ready  to unfold
We need to self-deceive to stay alive

We follow rules on how we must behave
As if into a void we might be hurled
And if  no trauma comes we may survive

The adages and  proverbs  satisfy
Unless we are attacked in our own world,
We  cannot self-deceive, are traumatised

We need the hold of  friends who’re kind and brave
We need this love that  rises when it’s shared
And if love ‘s  good enough, we may survive.

We will not scratch our wounds if we are wise.
We will not  rush to speech while wounds are bare
We need to self-deceive to stay alive

The words that mother said we can embrace
That we are loved,  despite fragmented face
We need to self-deceive to  function right
And if  no trauma comes we may survive

This Titanic  can no more deceive

The United Kingdom  disintegrates  by day
The Scots  are breaking off  at Hogmanay
Northern Ireland  colonised,remote
Will Ireland be united at a stroke?

We will have a smaller house of cards
Boris Johnson’s patience  brings rewards
He will be  in charge just of Soho
Where ladies of the night  rule men by blows

England’s not that big  nor of pure blood
I’m half Scandinavian ,see my head
The violent people Brexit has empowered
At  the bus stop they will on me glower

It’s time to get the lifeboats out and  leave
This Titanic  can no more deceive

My joints are  crackling,  roast me   in tin foil

My  knee joints  crackle when I  stand up tall
Bit by  bit the cartlilege has gone
The  disablement attracts , the people  call

Noone now will ask me to a Ball
I  liked to dance but my desire is done
My  knee joints  crackle when I  stand up tall

Instead of walking I would like to roll
The pavement is not fit to lie upon
The  disablement  an advert , my mind folds

The pain is so severe my muscles  brawl
When I go outside with my big bin
My joints are  crackling,  roast me   in tin foil

I have to write,  I’m mindless I’m enthralled
I try to smile with my lopsided grin
Disablement’s a danger people  wail

This is not a game that I can win
Save me from the  demons of  great sin
My  knee joints  crackle when I  stand up tall
The  disablement  is vile I cannot talk

Poems of anxiety and uncertainty

birds16-1
Photo by Mike Flemming copyright

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101584/poems-of-anxiety-and-uncertainty

Extract:

Poets are seekers and questioner They explore the unknown and help to give it shape. The insights and wisdom in the following poems below are hard-won; more often, it is simply the naming of the fear—personal, spiritual, or political—that offers solace, reminding us that people are connected by our worries and doubts as well as our joys. By resisting closure and easy answers and sounding out the darkness, these poems remind us that poetry has always been able to cope with uncertainties, ambiguities, and shades of gray.

Read the poems by clicking the link

 

What time  is left, has Palestine grown roots?

Oh,Mandy’s   here displaying   her white boots
She  sees disintegration,loss   and new despair
Douglas-Hume  starts  wincing on my roof

My eyes were open, dignified, aloof
Edward Heath, man, give me my  bus fare!
What time is right for  docketing the truth?

I knew there were strange numbers on the route
Take pi and e and i and  stop just there
Harold Wilson  tried in Downing Street

John Major  felt my brain , he was  astute
We see  straight through your eyes into you, bare.
When day was night, the Bennites spoke the truth

I bought the book, I ‘ll soon be destitute
Iraq has  made much wealth for Tony Blair
The bombs fell on  the children , ain’t they cute?

 

Graham Greene, the end of the affair
Netanyahu is leading but to where?
What time  is left, has Palestine  grown roots?
Asylum seekers die  for lack of roofs.

EU money and child poverty UK

 

 

 

dsc00106-1-1
I took some photo of Leonard Cohen’s Joan of Arc  song.This is one

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49131685

Extract:

Child poverty cash handed back to Europe unspent

  • 27 July 2019

More than £3.5m intended to alleviate child poverty and homelessness is at risk of being wasted because the government has failed to spend it, says a House of Lords committee.

Peers have written to the Home Office saying it is “extraordinary” that the EU funding has not been used.

They warn that some of the cash has already been forfeited and are worried about the rest being handed back.

The government said there had been “barriers” over spending the money.

But peers have written to complain that after almost six years, the government has failed to deliver spending aimed at addressing “the worst forms of poverty”.

About £580,000 of unspent cash has so far been taken back – and a further similar amount is at risk of being deducted at the end of the year.

Read between the lines and then translate

The    glances we exchanged without a word
Sympathetic humour , sometimes hate
The understanding heart , the  mind  unblurred

The hidden world  which lovers  make and share
To be one whole unhinderd by   grim fate
The    glances are exchanged without a word

We sense a meaning, sense if others care
Feel the lost love and the husband late
The understanding heart , the  words unheard

Who can we trust to  view our feelings rare?
Who will open doors,  unbarr the gate
After   glances  flash and red eyes glare?

Did you ever marry, did you swear?
In sickness and in health   how did your mate?
His understanding heart   is  hidden  where?

Read between the lines and then translate
The culture and  its meanings delegate
The    glances we exchange  beyond all words
The understanding heart , affections shared

 

 

The face  shaped by refinement of the heart

 

The face  shaped by refinement of  the heart
The love and  what we suffer   as we grow.
Our features form a map, a place, a chart
The face dispiays the   comeliness despite
The hatred  overcome, accepted, taut
The wind  blows on our inner seas and shows
The  countenance, the  dignity, the heart
The love   we give , we take , we live ,enjoy

From our eye, a tear  springs with relief

A word  that’s spoken by a friend can  reach
Can touch, can move, can  embrace in its sounds
The inner soul where its vibrations teach.

When cut off, silent,after   sad defeat
Such gentle words can break our sullen bonds
A word  that’s spoken by a friend can  reach.

We must not  torture nor torment  in speech
Our heart, the centre of our  morbid wounds
The inner soul with its vibrations speaks..

From our eye, a tear  springs  with  relief
From imprisoned sulking, jump with a great bound!
A word  that’s spoken by a friend can  reach.

Muscles weaken,but the mind stays fleet
Humour and its cousins are our clowns
The inner soul  by its athletics speaks.

I smile and smile  yet rarely do I frown
For I will rise up, even when low down
A word  that by a friend can  reach,provoke
In  our souls ,deep  memories  will evoke

The universal heart  dies in such games

When the sun feels violent  in its heat~
We learn the world’s not ours nor is it kind
As   skaters on  thin ice   find love’s deceit

So the heart  must struggle with its beat
As panic bites  like   cobras in the mind
If the sun feels violent  in its heat

Our knowledge and our will power  incomplete
We cannot know the future, we are blind
 As skaters on  the ice   may be  deceived

Can we trust the darkness  and the ghosts?
Some  have found their souls in such hard times
Why is  the sun   so violent  in its heat?

If  we fight and squabble, what will break
The universal heart  dies in such games
So  thin the  ice  , sadistic  are the stakes

Time is measured out by hearts and rhymes
But nothing’s clear when fantasy  designs
When the sun feels violent  in its heat~
So   skaters on  thin ice   learn love’s deceit.

 

Yer no quiero ser tu enemigo

5432DSC00144Oh,Lord someoene’s turned the light out on this dark and misty day
Well,Lord,I am complaining but I don’t know who to  blame
I turned back for my sleeping bag and my convertible laptop
When I started out again God hit me with his mop
I  knew it had been raining though I didn’t see a drop
I  don’t wanna go on  drowning anymore

Oh, the sun was shining wetly as we  put our trenchcoats on
We were off to Marks and Spencer’s to buy   two smart  old phones
They sell coats  stuffed  with  eiderdown  but though that is quite light
If we put the red ones on it won’t make Britain bright
I don’t wanna  pass for English ever more

Half the sky  looks dirty and the  other side is   black
I’ll ask God for his bill of rights and put it in my sack
We are greedy we are selfish, we are generous at times
We love to cook for children and to write them  funny rhymes
We envy and we hate and yet we do our  good  deeds too
We listen to our  hearts and souls  and fix them  up with glue
I don’t wanna to be your enemy no more
I don’t want to be your enemy no more
Ich will nicht mehr dein Feind sein
Yer no quiero ser tu enemigo

Vreau să fiu prietenul tău pentru tot mai mult

I want to be your friend for evermore

Sulking

As respite from  my work, I tried to sulk
I  practised ,  it became my  art and life
I never spoke but glowered like a pike
Till  the  cat’s claws lit up like street lights

You  cannot sulk  alone, so get a mate
Then sulk  all day  and sulk all through night
If they do not notice,  you ‘re becalmed
Unless the wind  of change  bring new insight

Sulking   draws us on  to sinking sands
The risk is not apparent when we start
An estuary’s currents   brings  us great alarm
In our breast, we feel the thumping heart

Sulking is so tempting  when morose
With our better angels let’s converse

With our inner demons, let’s get worse

If we see our partner,  does it hurt?

With our blackened souls we feel the curse

Man United won and I am bust

I never liked board games  and this worse

If you’re writing ,aim to keep it terse/ aim to write in verse

 

The alphabet convicts us by its charm

The noises we can make with  mouth and throat
Make patterns  like  the music of the birds
The graphic line, the new emotion caught
Expressed by sentence and by  the true words

No teacher or professor made our tongue
A gradual evolution  done with art
Before the prose there was the evensong
As home the little sparrows want to dart

Yet with  this  language we can   commit fraud
Lies are   hidden   even in our bones
Then we have the enigmatic code
What translates and what  is  lost,alone

The  fractured   chaos  of the world takes  form
The alphabet convicts us by its charm

Post modernism and poetry

 

 

low angle photography of notre dame
Photo by Ashley Elena on Pexels.com

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/postmodernism

Extract:

It includes other 20th-century theoretical movements such as poststructuralism and deconstruction,mainly through a common emphasis on discourse and the power of language in structuring thought and experience. Because it attacks traditional concepts of history, knowledge, and reality itself—arguing that “truth” is culturally and historically specific—postmodernism has often been accused of relativism.

Glower again

new-cats-today-1https://www.dictionary.com/browse/glower

 


verb (used without object)

to look or stare with sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.

noun

a look of sullen dislike, discontent, or anger.

RELATED WORDS

ORIGIN OF GLOWER

1350–1400; Middle English (Scots) glowren to glower; akin to Middle Low German glūren to be overcast, MiddleDutch gloeren to leer

 

Who was William Blake?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/blake_william.shtml

Extracts

1.Considered insane and largely disregarded by his peers, the visionary poet and engraver William Blake is now recognised among the greatest contributors to English literature and art.

2.“In 1789, he published his Songs of Innocence, the gentlest of his lyrics, but the collection was followed by Songs of Experience, containing a profound expression of adult corruption and repression. His long list of works shows relentless energy and drive. As one of the most complex writers known, it is impossible to summarise his career – he was a combination of extremes. His vision of civilisation as inevitably chaotic and contradictory mirrors the political turmoil of his era. It is only in retrospect that we can begin to appreciate his work and unravel its complex and allusive sources.”

BBC weather photo

_92867996_0112sunset-cliftonsuspensionbridgebristol-laurendunn

The sun as hot as tempers and our rage

The sun as hot as tempers badly frayed
Makes little lamps  gleam on the holly leaves
While adults quarrel , children cannot play.

We are nervous who can  we believe?
No-one knows  for sure how we should live.
The sun’s as hot as tempers lost or frayed

We flinch   at seeing  leaders more war wage
Virtue and   its family  all deceased
The foetus is aborted, has no grave

On the other’s heart,  lies make their raids
The MP’s strut about like children peeved
The sun as hot as tempers badly frayed

Wisdom’s not genetic, not innate
We learn from those around us  only if
We   dwell within the dance of love  and hate

Why have  madmen triumphed , power seized?
Lives are  almost worthless  to these thieves
The sun as hot as tempests, storms of rage
We need to move, to wander, re-engage

Why not grow your own?

rosa-cornelia

 

Never make a phone cry.
Can they love?
Avoid mobile groans
Sponge yourself down after sinning
Always use a pen  when you scream
Have you got Munch’s screen?
The word nice is overused.Be sparing.Be nasty.Be  yourself
The rod broke the fish’s heart
Being eccentric is now a psychiatric disorder.Ring 999 and ask for Dave.
The nuns used  our rulers to hit our hands when we forgot how to do compound interest
My husband’s eyesight is nothing to write home about.So he doesn’t. I ll kill him
Always eat something green at  dinner.If all else fails, is there a pelargonium in the room? In the window box.
Why not grow your own cress from  seed [ buy it]
Why not turn  into a pillar of salt?
Why not rewrite the Bible in Esperanto? Why?

We do not act,then love itself turns pale

Abba, I have come to you  for aid
The threads of life untwist around my heart
I  must catch them else I’ll fall apart
I  a creature  grown from what you made,

Abba, do you answer when we call?
We ignore you  till it is too late
I see why you abandon us to fate
The loss of Eden  follows from the Fall

Abba, we are here why do we fail?
Intentions  made, we do not have the will
The speed of living, and the grinding mills
,We do not act then love itself turns pale

Abba, is a prayer a word or deed?
We see the children  fenced,  the Wall , the blood

All we need to know about sonnets

 

 

Wakehurst place mike flemming

Mike Flemming copyrigh

https://poets.org/text/sonnet-poetic-form

 

Extract:

Sonnet Variations

Though Shakespeare’s sonnets were perhaps the finest examples of the English sonnet, John Milton’s Italian-patterned sonnets (later known as “Miltonic” sonnets) added several important refinements to the form. Milton freed the sonnet from its typical incarnation in a sequence of sonnets, writing the occasional sonnet that often expressed interior, self-directed concerns. He also took liberties with the turn, allowing the octave to run into the sestet as needed. Both of these qualities can be seen in “When I Consider How My Light is Spent.”

The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth century English poet Edmund Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of “couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. The Spenserian sonnet, through the interweaving of the quatrains, implicitly reorganized the Shakespearean sonnet into couplets, reminiscent of the Petrarchan. One reason was to reduce the often excessive final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet, putting less pressure on it to resolve the foregoing argument, observation, or question.

Never end a word with a letter.

Never finish a sentence without  ending it all
Never write too clearly; post structuralism gapes.
Never begin a sentence without a word
Never end  one with but.
Never free associate in writing  nor in speech
Never take  a horse to  bed.
Never mention Adam Phillips unless in  the LRB
Never be  over-cautious.
Never end a word with a letter.
Never give your name to the papers
Never menstruate during working hours
Never fall in love with a duck.
Never pass water.Have a drink.
Take a random sample of  your dreams to  the OUP
Never cut your own hair while typing
Never believe anything you read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ne

Until the birds fly higher in their song

I am engaged, the crystal is my eye
An amethyst, a diamond ,how they ring
The  ceremony happens when   I die

The sunlight is refracted till I’m blind
Until the birds fly higher in their song
I am engaged, the crystal stings  my eye

What god is it that stuns me till I cry
That makes me weep  when I would wish to sing
The  ceremony waits until I die

We find there is no answer to a why
But there are problems we must live among
I’m engaged, the crystal hurt my eye

All around the old men walk awry
One kissed my hand  as if he were a king
The  consummation waits until we die

Blow the ram’s horn till the old wall’s flung
To  fiery ground  where angels speak in tongues
I ‘m  engaged,  so crystalline  my eye
I want a  pure gold ring before  I die

He ate my  buttered toast like it was prey

He kissed my hand,I knew what was afoot
He followed me on Facebook every day
I get these butterflies inside my gut

I never fall in love with porn or smut
Or men who ask me out and make me pay
He kissed my hand, I knew what was afoot

We went to Lyons cafe, it was shut
We  fried an egg and ate it in our way
I got those butterflies inside my gut

I could  have made it funny, should I flirt?
He ate my  buttered toast like it was prey
He kissed my hand, I knew what was afoot

I did not lead him on, for it might hurt
He had to be the one who led the way
I got no butterflies inside my gut

 

He kissed my hand and asked me to a Play
He wrote it all himself, my fiance!
He kissed my hand,I knew what was afoot
I tell a lie, I never said I would

 

 

 

 

If our outer shell encloses, it deforms

The books he wrote were solid like good oak
Giving him a structure that he lacked
A skeleton outside his flesh and bones

 

A fortress made of words and printed thoughts
To hide  behind when torture broke  his back
The books he wrote were solid like good oak

 

If our outer shell encloses,  it deforms
Even brings our death,  unless   it’s cracked
A skeleton outside  but not of bone

 

The books  gave shape to his still  half numb heart
He felt he had no  being, was no fact
The books he wrote  gave breath like leaves of oak

 

Some use crutches, some crawl slowly home
Wandering by  the  shoppers  with  some tact
Oh, skeleton outside, how dry our throats

 

I wonder is  all this by Google tracked?
They watch us, not to help us  nor   perfect
The books he wrote were solid, real  and  taut
A  crucifix  of  words , expressive thoughts

Teach yourself English by trial

Never begin a sentence
Be careful with apostrophe’s,semi- colons and death
When in doubt, leave [it] out
Don’t end at an adverb,generally.But  it’s ok if not too frequently
Don’t invent  new  words.They might mean something in another language
Think about sentences then they will think about you,possibly
Learn with leisure  using audio books.

Pray before the beginning of a thought
Never forget brevity.Nor levity.
Be natural.
Leave out ad hominem, QED and ipso fracture.
A fraction of infinity is as big as infinity.That’s what infinity means  , honestly!
If you are a genius,  write what you like,  but warily
Chance favours the double bind as Gregory Bateson might have said.
Prepare your mind before  deleting.
If your spelling is bad, vote to leave the EU and learn proper English properly.
Never use a nom de plume if you  like Brexit
Croissants are being withdrawn from the UK asap.Can you spell croissant? Well forget it!

Many coloured love  brings a rebirth

Oh, to be  hermit when life bites
 loss of love, a failure of the heart
When all we get are answers full of spite

Retaliation, shatters  or  incites
More evil words released in  vicious  spurts
Oh, to be a hermit when  life bites

The faces of the enemy are tight
Eyes are narrow, fantasies or worse
To give us fresh new  answers full of spite

Eyes so held will never see the light
They cannot be redeemed by lifted curse
Oh, to be  hermit when life bites

Yet  life is not composed of black and white
Many coloured love  brings a  rebirth
Ignoring human flaws and un-thought spite

I remember sitting round the hearth
A little child. I loved  the gift, the warmth
Oh,  we must  not be cut off when love  may start
Untouched by  eager  viciousness, by spite