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

https://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.

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

https://fourminutebooks.com/the-courage-to-be-disliked-summary/

Extract

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?

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

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

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

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201305/5-reasons-why-some-people-will-never-say-sorry

Extract

1. By refusing to apologize, non-apologists are trying to manage their emotions. They are often comfortable with anger, irritability, and emotional distance, and experience emotional closeness and vulnerability to be extremely threatening. They fear that lowering their guard even slightly will make their psychological defenses crumble and open the floodgates to a well of sadness and despair that will pour out of them, leaving them powerless to stop it. They might be correct. However, they are incorrect in assuming that exhibiting these deep and pent-up emotions (as long as they get support, love, and caring when they do—which fortunately, is often the case) will be traumatic and damaging. Opening up in such a way is often incredibly therapeutic and empowering, and it can lead them to experience far deeper emotional closeness and trust toward the other person, significantly deepening their relationship satisfaction.

Many of the British people don’t  live by these values!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/19/baby-taught-british-values-childminder

“The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness.”– Alain de Botton

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/19/adam-phillips-boredom/

A century and a half ago, Kierkegaard argued that this impulse to escape the present by keeping ourselves busy is our greatest source of unhappiness. A century later, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary about the creative purpose of boredom. And yet ours is a culture that equates boredom with the opposite of creativity and goes to great lengths to offer us escape route.

https://www.mentalhelp.net/blogs/feeling-bad-about-being-sad/

“When we feel bad about feeling sad, we often have internalized these social expectations to feel sad only briefly and to value and therefore be happy. A recent study in Emotion suggests that this social pressure not to feel bad can actually intensify sad feelings, increase levels of depression and reduce life satisfaction (February, 2012).

Studies on our judgments of social situations highlight that when we think about events in our lives, we rely heavily on the reactions of the people around us. How we believe others might respond to us has an impact on our emotions and how we feel about and express our emotions.

Believing that others expect us not to feel sad in any given situation sets us up for negative thinking and unhealthy responses that can intensify that bad feeling. For example, when we fail to meet others expectations, even in the way that we feel, we may tell ourselves that we are failures. These thoughts only intensify negative feelings.

So what can you do if you’re stuck in a cycle of feeling sad and feeling bad about feeling sad? There are a number of interventions that can be helpful, but you may want to start simply by recognizing your emotions. Understanding, naming and describing emotional experiences can reduce their intensity.

Untangling feelings of sadness that originate in negative life events from feeling bad about feeling sad can, in itself, begin to make you feel better. Beyond that, changing the messages that you tell yourself from “I shouldn’t feel this way” to “It hurts to feel this way, but sadness has a purpose” can help.”

I wish you were still living
I wish you were still here
I was making you a cup of tea
You were sitting  near

I put it down beside you
On the table top
But before we could drink it
We heard a heavy knock

The woman  came in boldly
With a  spirit black and sheer
She wanted to assess you
But Death had come with her

Death was dancing like her shadow
She was its chosen host
You never drank that cup of tea
That loss hurts me  the most

For a married couple
Sitting side by side
Having a nice cup of tea
Is nothing to deride

Meals and drinks  form  structures
For the sick and frail
You were happy in your old brown chair
I feel that I have failed

I  should have kept that woman out
I see her mocking face
Death hid itself  just by the porch
She  left me  here defaced

Eight days later on the phone
She heard  my quivering voice
Told me to get therapy
Mourning is for ghosts

We cannot grieve and weep these days
For all emotion’s wrong
We need to be schizoid
Our affect flatly flung

Now they say I have spare rooms
They cut my  benefits
I cannot sell my body
I’ll have to use my wits

Come back,John, and have your tea
I’m still warming the pot
If that woman comes again
I’ll baptise her with the lot

I miss you, how I miss you
I only have your dust
I keep it in the window
I ‘m lost in a grey mist

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/jun/12/hermes-birkin-bag-sells-for-162500-in-london-auction

Hermès Birkin bag sells for £162,500 in London auction

Birkin 35 sells for over double its estimate at Christie’s sale which fetched £3.4m

Leah Harper