Not a clerihew

I went to university to study mathematics
The performance of my teachers was  boring not ecstatic
So then I   went to London to earn a little money
While living with my husband who as usual smelled of honey
Then we went to Portland Bill to study rocks and seaside forms
I took to writing poetry because I love the sound of rhymes
I would have preferred lyrics  of  the Leonard Cohen Anthem type
But  when he died  I grieved and wept, too late for us to meet on Skype
What a sad old life it is  when Donald Trump  builds up more walls
So sound the trumpet and ram’s horn, like Jericho  the walls will fall.
Oh,Lord.

Attention must be paid to each small thing

The air feel still and cool and nothing moves
The birds  have disappeared and do not sing.
Life  feels distant, love’s in interlude

As we age  when health  and wit we lose
What new  learning may our own life  bring?
The air feel still and cool and nothing moves

Are we present to  the life we choose?
Attention must be paid to each small thing
Life  feels distant,  heart feels un-renewed

Like the dough we must be left to rise
The hidden power of yeast the flour shall wring
Minute yet powerful,  how the grains collide

Hidden in the dark ,what myriad eyes
Insects scurry, wasps to nettles cling
Life  feels distant, lovers lost are rued

Now  we feel the breath of a small wind
A whispering voice, the holy dove descends
The air feel still and cool and nothing moves
Consoled by  darkness, we await its clues.

Seeing visions,hearing  that small voice

Were we created for the Shopping Malls
Or to ponder over weight and belly bold?
If  God approached would humans hear his call
As prophets did  in mystic days of old?

Seeing visions,hearing  that small voice
May be possible no longer while we spend.
 We look for  good advice on  what is choice
Not rosaries but money  fills the hand?

Instead of tenderness, below, above
We hope to find love handcuffed on the rug.
And  promises are lost as well as vows.
Vibrating dildos  surround us  like black  bugs.

The sacred has been hidden, we are  half disgraced.
We ignore our lowness and ignore the holy face

Visions serve us well

Depending on our power, we may be blessed
Hallucinations entertained and self confessed
Fill our world with wonder and delight
Unless our mind is filled with hateful spite

Seeing  the  Golden Light  may give us hope
Unless we are in Blackpool full of dope
Feeling warmth may comfort us at night
Unless a cigarette set us alight

Hearing soft sweet voices is  a change
When one is alone but not deranged
Love your spirits and you will be safe
Hatred cultivated   ruins hope

If we are kind and wish no-one ill
We live  well within the sacred will

Conative?

michelangelo-pieta-590x615https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/conative

Extract:

conative

adjective

UK ​ /ˈkɒn.ə.tɪv/ US ​ /ˈkɑː.nə.t̬ɪv/ specialized

connected with a wish, intention, or effort to do something:

There is a long-established distinction in psychology between cognitive and conative aspects of behaviour.
If we wish to describe the whole person, conative aspects must be included.
See

conation

Leaves dry and crack, the acers seem to burn.

First posted on March 23, 2019

The season alters imperceptibly;
No  point  exact which demonstrates  the turn.
Yet soon come changes which our eyes can see
Leaves dry and crack, the acers seem to burn.

And so it is with human beings too.
Each day our loved one looks the same to us
And yet their body alters like leaves do.
Small changes made with neither noise nor  fuss.

We change into  transparent ghosts of self
Thus totter down the avenue of life
Soon death approaches with  its common stealth.
And separates  the husband  and the wife.

In winter all is black and we despair
Yet  deep in earth,worms  silently repair

Tulip fever

https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/articles/springsummer2019/tulip-fever

 

Tulip Fever

Adrie Kusserow
Each spring, when the sun finally dragged its paw
across the mangy, battered meadows, I’d wander,
light starved into the 1,000 tulips my Dutch
father planted, just as they opened their gaping
red and purple jaws. What an indulgence,
the farmers said, as they bitterly whacked the caked
manure off their black rubber boots. Still,
how I loved the tulips with such desperate hunger. In their presence,
my brain began its frantic hunt, ravenous
pounce, an almost violent pecking of metaphors,
similes flocking in like a murder of crows. For it
was in the ritual of perfect description I thought
I could be closest to them: Burning Hearts, lipstick streaked,
brazenly splaying their thighs. Queens of the Night,
standing aloof, regal rococo ruffles the color of eggplant.
Orange flames of the Fire Parrot black-beaked and wild,
guzzling wells of ink down their necks. Double
fringed white Angeliques, like a whole squawk of geese
flapping and nipping toward sky. The giant red Darwins,
shiny clawed lobsters, underbellies bulging and blue veined. 
And yet it was a kind of torture to be separate from the tulips.
Hoping to swallow their beauty whole, I sucked on a petal, a mammoth
white lobe bringing nothing but a gagging fake communion.
Meanwhile, the squawking in the birdcage of my mind continued.
The shame and lunacy of it all. Didn’t I have
enough? Think of the farmers, forced to sell
their land, watching TV in the stuffy heat
of their trailers where I sheepishly delivered bouquets (on orders
from my father). As if this could make up for our glaring wealth,
I yelled at him one day. I didn’t know
that something mute and elemental would open,
as I sat throat deep in that field, and let the tulips
be, a kind of quiet softening in the bed
of my mind, that I would come to cherish for even
five or six seconds, when all the crows stopped pecking
and all the tender beauty of my father’s
last crop, by now pockmarked with such
desperate description, finally stopped bleeding.

Adrie Kusserow, MTS ’90, is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. She has had two books of poetry (Hunting Down the Monk and REFUGE) published by BOA Editions as part of their New American Poets Series. Her poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN, and elsewhere.

Pieta

To the mother holding her own son
His body dehydrated ,drained and dead
Who can imagine her emotion?

I feel  in my own depths , vibration  stuns
Though I lost the one I had once wed
Grieving with  the mother and her son

On this night ,the ambulance had gone
Woe had pierced me , drawn my blood
I  could never have imagined  what  began

Forgive my  hubris, my comparison
Mary’s pain eluded me till led
To mourn like she’d already done

The Passions wild and painful   were all done
Whether in the Garden or the Bed
I had not dreamed of such emotion

I heard the still small voice  and what it said
Despite  the hollows of my heart were filled with dread
With the mother weeping  on her son
Help us hold  our loss  until we’re done

 

 

 

A man waits, sleepless, anxious and unsure

In the Garden of  Gethsemane
A man waits, sleepless, anxious and unsure
Wanting to escape his destiny
From the Garden of  Gethsemane
Oh,Lord,oh God, have mercy upon me
Save me from the world’s barbarity.
Make my heart and motives clean and pure
In that Garden of  Gethsemane
Jesus sleepless, anxious, has endured

His human Cross

If God was murdered why should he help me?
He hung, an abject figure ,on the Cross
Some have labelled it a holy tree
If God was murdered why should he help me?
No-one can deny what all can see
From the Romans he could not be free
Thus the world endured his final loss
If God was murdered why should he help me?
He died forsaken on his  human Cross

Why I buy books from Amazon

I like  to go into Waterstone’s here but they do not sell more than a couple of books on computing/Windows/how  to do x y z/
They have no books about how to write poetry nor any other related topics
They have no lift.The shop is overcrowded with little tables
WH Smith’s manager told me to “shop online” when I  asked if he had a chair.They do have more computer related books and art books
I can’t travel into  a big city on the off chance I might find what I want.Time,pain, money
Amazon sellers often have old/second hand books on literary topics, politics and history and philosophy
I regret bookshops closing.What can we do?

 

Love in a mist

Western Scotland ‘s covered in sea mists
While Southern England dreams in  fragrant  heat
Today some Scottish  sweethearts kissed and kissed
In Western Scotland enjoying deep mist
While lovers touch their lips to inner wrists
Promoting in their hearts enlivening zest
Making love both holy and complete
Western Scotland bears the sea’s unrest
While Southern England’s racked by  Brexit’s heat

Emile climbs up the cupboard

Stan was happy for a few moments when he woke up.Then he realized Emile was nowhere to be seen.Mary had already gone out as she wanted to catch a very early train to London.She needed to visit the British Library.She  wanted to find evidence that Wittgenstein wore a hat in bed.
Stan went searching around the house but Emile had vanished.Usually at 8 am he would be dashing about pretending to chase flies and giving a balletic performance worthy of Sadler’s Wells.
I wonder who Sadler was, Stan muttered as he filled the kettle with fresh water and put some Earl Grey tea into the teapot.
Then, a strange feeling came over him.He looked up and there was Emile
crouched on top of the highest cupboard in the kitchen.
Emile, he cried, What are you doing up there?
I’m training to be a spy, Emile replied nonchalantly.
But how could this kitchen be of interest to the Intelligence Services?
Well, the cat murmured, I am practicing hiding.
You gave me a terrible shock, Stan said.I had this feeling I was being watched.I wondered if it was paranoia.Then I saw your gleaming eyes.
So, you need to get some dark glasses, Emile said.
No ,I would still feel that horrible feeling.And how were you planning to get down from that high ledge?
I’m not sure, the cat miaowed faintly
Well, the first lesson for a spy or even a detective is,
Never go anywhere unless you can make a quick exit,
As it is ,I may have to ring 999.
Just then the front doorbell rang.There stood a man with a white beard and moustache.
Hello ,he said holding out his hand to shake Stan’s.
I am called Peter Fried.I have just moved into one of the new flats across the road.I am a psychoanalyst.I have taken on another flat to use as a consulting room and a waiting room
A psychoanalyst! Do we need one round here? Well, Good morning, I have just brewed some tea.Would you like to join me?
How kind, said Peter.
I say, old bean, did you know there’s a cat on top of your cupboard?
Yes, that is Emile.Today he has surpassed himself in wickedness.How I will get him down I don’t know.
My training analyst used to say, What goes up must eventually come down.
That seems a bit weird for an analyst.To what was he referring… something to do with sex I don’t doubt.It’s all sex with you people.
Yes, some of us are very peculiar…that’s why we enter the profession.
What I meant was, if Emile got up he can get down.How did you get up, Emile?
I leaped, answered the tense animal.
Can you leap down?
I’ve lost my nerve, replied the poor creature softly.
Well, as it happens, being a therapist, I always carry few spare nerves with me.I’ll climb up this step ladder and pass you a new nerve.
And without waiting, Peter climbed the ladder.He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a golden thread.
Here you are,Emile, Catch this in your claw.
Emile caught the golden thread and wrapped it around his neck.
Can you leap down now? enquired Stan.
Emile leaped down and landed in a bowl of hot water in the sink.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t making chips, laughed Stan hysterically
Come here, Emile and let me dry you on this old towel.He put Emile
in front of the fire and he and Peter drank mugs of Earl Grey tea.
I have got a mistress, Stan told Peter.
Well, do you want therapy for your conflict?
Oh,no.I’m far too old for therapy or indeed for a  mistress. She likes helping a man,making tea, typing notes, calculating averages and calling the ambulance.. you know what I mean.She likes the paramedic, Dave ás well.
Is she not married?
No , her husband fell into the wheelie bin during the night and alas he was taken away with the rubbish.
That is a strange story.Are you certain?
No, it could be he grew tired of her and ran away.Then she invented this story,
Well , this may be a quiet suburb but I can see there is plenty of material here for me to write my next book:
Deceptive appearances and the fascination of apparent dullness.
Oh, that sounds very unusual.
Well, I’ve never believed in true dullness.There is always a story.
See, I’ve just met you a man of 98 yet you have a wife, a mistress and a crazy cat.. and I’ve only been here for one day.Imagine 6156119_f260
what else I may discover here.
They heard a siren.
Oh, no!We’ve not even rung 999 and here is the ambulance….
Mary will be so angry.You see Dave is bisexual
My goodness, are you having an affair with him.
No way, shouted Stan.My life is tough enough already.He can be bisexual or even trisexual but I’m not interested.
What does trisexual mean, enquired Emile.
I have no idea but I thought it sounded good, admitted Stan.
Peter stood up.
I think I’d better go home and start to see my patients.
Now Emile, put your nerve somewhere safe.We don’t want you to lose it again.
Thank you, darling cried Emile.I think I’ve formed an erotic transference with you already.
Peter rushed out.
Is it me or is it them?he wondered.
I thought it would be quiet here on the edge of Knittingham but I think now wherever you are there will always be something unexpected happening.But I hope Emile will not begin to follow me around.I shall have to buy a lady cat and then Emile might fall in love with her instead.So off Peter went whistling a Bach cello suite and wondering how to cope with life in a suburb.. clearly it was not as dull as he had imagined.

 

Pride?

img_20190529_143608

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Pride

 

 

 

photo1473-6

 

Image by Katherine

 

 

Dante’s definition of pride was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbour”.

Extract

Pride

Main article: Pride

Building the Tower of Babel was, for Dante, an example of pride. Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

The negative version of pride (Latin, superbia) is considered, on almost every list, the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: the perversion of the faculties that make humans more like God—dignity and holiness. It is also thought to be the source of the other capital sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek ὕβρις),or futility, it is identified as dangerously corrupt selfishness, the putting of one’s own desires, urges, wants, and whims before the welfare of people.

In even more destructive cases, it is irrationally believing that one is essentially and necessarily better, superior, or more important than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal image or self (especially forgetting one’s own lack of divinity, and refusing to acknowledge one’s own limits, faults, or wrongs as a human being).

What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, line 203.

As pride has been labelled the father of all sins, it has been deemed the devil’s most prominent trait. C.S. Lewis writes, in Mere Christianity, that pride is the “anti-God” state, the position in which the ego and the self are directly opposed to God: “Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”[39] Pride is understood to sever the soul from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving Presence.[5]

One can be prideful for different reasons. Author Ichabod Spencer states that “[s]piritual pride is the worst kind of pride, if not worst snare of the devil. The heart is particularly deceitful on this one thing.”[40] Jonathan Edwards said “[r]emember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan’s whole building, and is the most difficultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility.”[41]

In Ancient Athens, hubris was considered one of the greatest crimes and was used to refer to insolent contempt that can cause one to use violence to shame the victim (this sense of hubris could also characterize rape [1]). Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for the committer’s own gratification.[42][43][44] The word’s connotation changed somewhat over time, with some additional emphasis towards a gross over-estimation of one’s abilities.

The term has been used to analyse and make sense of the actions of contemporary heads of government by Ian Kershaw (1998), Peter Beinart (2010) and in a much more physiological manner by David Owen (2012). In this context the term has been used to describe how certain leaders, when put to positions of immense power, seem to become irrationally self-confident in their own abilities, increasingly reluctant to listen to the advice of others and progressively more impulsive in their actions.[45]

Dante’s definition of pride was “love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one’s neighbour”.

What is hatred?

 

img_20190529_180835https://www.definitions.net/definition/hatred

 

Extract

  1. Hatred

    Hatred is a deep and emotional extreme dislike that can be directed against individuals, entities, objects, or ideas. Hatred is often associated with feelings of anger and a disposition towards hostility. Commonly held moral rules, such as the Golden Rule, oppose universal hatred towards another.

So then you learned that you could hate as well

 

Was this the apple,then,your mother’s breast
Which father thought was his to oft caress?
And when ,in deprived rage,you bit to test.
In anger he would ever you harass.

So then you learned that you could hate as well,
For punishment struck hard in your small heart.
Your memory was wordless ,could not tell;
Though pain and anguish made your soft skin smart.

As unknown as the journey to your birth
As shocking as the grief of unmeant wrong..
As frightening as the gauging of your worth
As sudden as the ending of a song.

Impossible to foretell or to prepare,
The ambivalence of the heart starts here.

Into a little crack  a seed may fall

Hiding in between two  garden shrubs
A little  fruiting tree has grown unseen
Now it’s filled with blossom humbly borne
That decorates the patient garden green

I see it with delight from up above
The window gives me visions ,maps of space
I see the blackbirds, hear them sing at dusk
Now all nature finds its proper place

Into a little crack  a seed may fall
A tree grows up and cracks the paving stones
Thus are the mighty broken,scattered, scorned
All they leave are  heaps of whitened bone

The humble may be raised  without request
The proud  are filled with hatred of the rest

When I have fears by John Keats

img_20190529_143523https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/when-i-have-fears-by-john-keats

 

When I Have Fears

By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Source: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/when-i-have-fears-by-john-keats

Are we enlightened yet?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/09/dark-side-enlightenment-fleming-review

Extract

“The aim of Kant’s “critical” philosophy was to restrain the pretensions of philosophers to lay claim to knowledge of items – the soul, freedom and God – which lie beyond the spatial and temporal limits of human experience. But this wasn’t just a matter of upbraiding his predecessors – Leibniz and Spinoza principal among them – for their hubris. On the contrary, Kant also recognised that the tendency of human reason to overreach itself is ineluctable. “Metaphysics” isn’t just a regrettable episode in the history of philosophy; it is a “natural” disposition that can’t be eradicated.

Fleming is interested in those who, during the Enlightenment assault on the claims of revealed religion and traditional metaphysics, were “unable to dispense altogether with ‘transcendence'”. All of which raises a number of rather profound questions – about the methodology of historical periodisation, particularly whether the Enlightenment marks a decisive and easily identifiable break with what preceded it, and the extent to which claims about an enduring appetite for transcendental experience are merely historical or in fact refer to certain permanent features of human nature. However, Fleming doesn’t seem especially interested in attempting to answer them. His approach, breezy and charmingly belletristic, is unabashedly impressionistic.”

You may be my saviour

With a Bible on one hand and a wash cloth in the other
I find that sex is difficult whatever  or whoever
My arms unable to embrace, I feel I am in danger
Despite that you’re my husband and not a total stranger
I guess you really cherish me , thank you most sincerely
If I  caress your loving face,maybe you will feel me
I only wish I might kiss you without  the microbes knowing
I cannot even wipe my nose,  I think it needs a blowing
I wonder now how we got wed, you must have been quite crazy
For wanting to get married to  a scrupulous  young lady
All too soon we shall be old and arthritis will afflict us
I’ll throw the Bible overboard  then God cannot detect us
And then I  shall be able to pull you even  nearer
For I sincerely  love you darling, you get  ever dearer.
Dearer for just loving me and all my weird behaviour
Are you sure it’s not Jesus but you who are my saviour?

Mary wants a party

acer-palmatum-shindeshojoStan was down on his hands and knees washing and scrubbing at the carpet with a new microfibre cloth and some shampoo for dry hair.He had a bucket of hot water beside him.
Happy, as always, when cleaning and
scrubbing he whistled
“The lark ascending” for his cat Emile, whilst sipping at a big mug of lager.
Mary was down in the town buying some new earrings to match her red dress from Phase 8 Sale.
Their granddaughter Flora had also gone to town but she wanted a nose ring not an earring.As she was a girl it was mandatory in the UK.

Suddenly, quite out of the blue,the doorbell rang.They always do don’t they.It was their Muslim neighbour Bert
.”We’re going away in the caravan.”He boasted gruffly.”Anyroad,the cat ,Nelsonia Mandelinaah, doesn’t want to come.Would you be able enough to feed her over the weekend without any politically correct remarks
being issued ,as it were?”
” Certainly” Stan responded jovially.”When are you off?”
“Well we went last week but we need a weekend in bed to recover from seeing Brent Cross Shopping Centre in Kettlewell right next to the old Post Office.[Kettlewell,Yorkshire’s idyllic village]
“Very strange”Stan said,”Mary was in it only yesterday ,she claims,in Knittingham spending all our minute
joint pension on new dresses and shoes.”
“I encounter women who have seen Brent Cross down the road all the time all over Britain.
Still they’re entitled to believe what they want!
” “But what will the consequences be?”
“Is there a flying Brent Cross?”
“That sounds rather religious,” Bert answered quickly
,”Is it an augury?”
“I’d say it’s an omen,myself”
“But of what?”
“The times we live in?
“But what’s going to happen?”
“God knows.”
“Well,does he though?”Stan’s hot water had gone cold.In fact it was frozen.”The laws of physics seem very mutable” Stan wrote in his journal,
“Also my spelling has deteriorated badly since I began drinking lager.
Would whisky be better?”
Meanwhile,he had cleaned only one third of the carpet.
He filled the bath with hot soapy water,stepped in fully clothed and then rolled himself around all over the carpet to pick up all the fluff.
When Mary came in she was amazed,
“What’s going on?”
“You look as if you’ve been having an orgy on the floor!”
An orgy was something unknown to Stan as yet.”Would you like one?” he murmured.
”Yes,”said Mary childishly
“Age has not beaten me yet!””Better have it soon before my knees get too bad!”So now Stan is cleaning the carpet again.It’s very soft and thick,just perfect!The list of invitees is posted on his blog.
Well,he’s been told to do something new every week.An orgy this week,the marathon later!
But why is Mary ringing 999?
Does she want to invite Dave,the paramedic or is it more sinister than I can tell you?
Yes,indeed,she wants to invite Mike Gove and Theresa May but she’s not telling Stan!.
She wants to give them her opinion of their politics before throwing a Bucket of cold water over each of them.Call it Baptism or Revenge.

And so say all of us

No man is an island

‘No Man is an Island’

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any Manor of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 


Olde English Version
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne