If any man proposed,I’d feel a blow

I do not need a diamond ring I know
Once the final treasure of a wife
But wish to entertain with  trumpet show

But missing an engagement, I feel low
I’m down and out, I have no proper life
I do not need a diamond ring ,oh,no.

If any man proposed,I’d feel a blow
Here I see   young Hamlet and his knife
I   wish for grandeur from Chanel cologne

My long gone children haunt me as I sew
I mend  the world, I wish to do it thrice
We do not need a diamond -horn to blow

I shall be humbled by the summer snow
The ice upon my cake is thick and white
I   wish for heat , wish for the sun to glow

Shall Jehovah come to earth and smite
Those who hurt by envy and by strife?
I do  not need that ring but love  alone
I wish to entertain  with fun and groans

Sadness in its force has an allure

The memory of my loss still gives me pain
I do not wish to feel it  anymore
The butterfly is   battered once again

The waiting with its vigilance is strained
As if a monster shuffles to my door
The memory of my loss,  oh heart of pain

Who for love will risk this sadness named?
Who  is criticised  for spirits poor?
The butterfly, the storm will come again

Life is hard and  wildness can’t be tamed
Sadness in its force has  an allure
The memory of my loss still gives me pain

Leaving Sodom,  salt dissolves in rain
I must look forward with a vision pure
The butterfly find pleasure once again

The loss of movement  we may  each endure
The ills of age won’t have a final cure
The memory of my loss  will fade with time
The fluttering flower  gives joy  yet has no fame

 

The philosophy of poetry

parthenon athens greece
Photo by Josiah Lewis on Pexels.com

https://philosophynow.org/issues/114/The_Philosophy_of_Poetry

Extract:

In his introduction to this collection of essays, its editor John Gibson tells us that the emphasis here is on modern poetry. In modern poetry, meaning is latent rather than overt, or is put into question, and any sense of narrative or anecdote is fractured or subverted. For Gibson, any theory based on the concept of narrative would be inapplicable to poetry in the modernist paradigm. (It is pertinent to point out that most poetry, whether of the past or of the present, doesn’t obey this paradigm.) Yet, if we need different philosophical theories for each different genre, style, or period of poetry (which, after all, are scarcely watertight categories), this doesn’t say much for the scope of theory. We are led inexorably from the generalities of the philosopher theorizing about a particular artform, to the specifics of the literary critic giving an account of a particular poem. In practice, regardless of Gibson’s strictures, many of the contributors to this volume are happy to generalize about poetry as such.

 

Lonely blue

Cyclamen-2019

I bought sweet cyclamen and thought of you
Wandering through wild poppies  by my side
I don’t know where to put them,they might die.
Then I would feel so sad and lonely blue
All we read of pain and love is true.
Yet we let our hearts stay open wide
I bought sweet cyclamen,remembered you
Wandering through wild meadows  by my side.
I have loved not widely but a few
I have touched on bliss  and when it flies
I have touched the grief that truly  lies
I bought  these cyclamen,oh, where are you?

How to ruin a laptop

Eat your dinner from the  open keyboard
Drink beer while typing
For a touchscreen,use a fork to move the cursor
Hit  the keyboard if you are angry
Keep the teapot nearby and hold your cups over the laptop
Watch violent films and spit as far as you can before hitting your head on the screen
Never close the lid and never clean the keyboard
Keep it in the kitchen next to the microwave
Keep it in the fridge with  raw bacon in between the screen and keyboard
Use it as a doorstop
Carry it about with you without a bag or cover
Hit people on the bus with it and refuse to apologise.

I’d be afraid of  a nuclear accident in my chest

She thought she’d like to be a poet
Calculating her vocabulary was ironic
She wrote free verse in stanzas three lines long
With a short intermission
She learned innocent  and good people
Attract the Evil and that even people who have suffered
Are not less susceptible to wanting power or worship
She learned idolatry is rampant  in men of power
“Men” is naturally inclusive
As you will know if you went to Eton
Or even to Mass in 1956
Why would I want Jesus’s soul even if he is God?
I’d be afraid of  a nuclear accident in my chest
There’s danger around the sacred,we need to know
Satan did have the best lines
Jesus did not answer the questions
We had no right to ask.
I find it’s useful to work with abstract concepts
Otherwise I might suffer too much
Whatever “too much” is
It could be epsilon or delta, you know what I mean?
Isaac Newton.Mercury.The dentist.
Leibniz’ dots.Whatever

He sent the Word, but who can hear the Dead?

The evil  leader  wants to be our god
Controlling thinking, focusing our needs
He rules  us with  the fearsome gun and  rod

Hitler drew the adulation of the crowd
At Nuremberg his ego swelled in greed
The evil tyrant  wants to be a god

With distant face, God heard the violent sound
But from the human world he long has fled
Hitler’s people worshipped what they found

God dwells in his grave now, underground
He sent the Word, but who can hear the Dead?
The evil  man identifies as god

In Church they took Christ’s body in their mouths
Their souls were never present as He bled
Hitler’s human  sacrifices spread

From the Pulpit Jesus’ words were read
As gas destroyed the Jews, where was the threat?
The evil  leader  deigns to be our god
He offers Heaven,  Hell is made instead

 

Writing tablets?

1* Writing tablet
1* Stylus

Precautions:
1.Do not violent writing, will damage the screen affect the writing effect.
2.Products avoid water, avoid using sharp objects scratch the screen.
3.Clean with clean cloth when cleaning.
4.When replacing the battery, please use the battery that matches the battery.
5.Age of application: over 3 years of age.

 

img_20190510_163338-1

 

I’m over 3 years old, I must confess
Will violent writing help me to express
The rage of Brexit, Union Jack
The hatred of the Jew and Black
The Muslim woman answering back
The anorexic culture thwack ?
I’m over 3 years old ,  and nappyless
Are we depressed
I think you guessed

 

Spiritual poetry

36064355_1156369647836245_7488378942043193344_nhttps://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68606/spiritual-poetry

 

“The root of “spirit” is the Latin spirare, to breathe. Whatever lives on the breath, then, must have its spiritual dimension— including all poems, even the most unlikely. Philip Larkin, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams: all poets of spiritual life. A useful exercise of soul would be to open any doorstop-sized anthology at random a dozen times and find in each of the resulting pages its spiritual dimension. If the poems are worth the cost of their ink, it can be done.

But, no, I’ve been asked to choose, to recommend. The poems I suggest here are this moment’s choices, not “the best spiritual poems” (a phrase weighing nothing in so intimate and personal a context). The “gates” are an equally personal selection of entrance points into spiritual life. Some of the poems are well known, others less so. “

I see your face,  you disappear again

The blank paged notebooks where you  used to write
First with pencil then with ballpoint pen
The Freeling novels you read in the night

These special objects bring you to my sight
I see your face,  you disappear again
To blank paged notebooks where you  used to write

The reading lamp showed in its small clear light
Your telephone, your desk, your writing plan
The Freeling novels you read in the night

My heart feels strange, my feelings re- ignite
The fires of love quelled by the sudden rain
Oh, blank paged notebooks where you  used to write

I did not let you go without a fight
But once accepted, I endured the pain
I read the  books that you read in the night

The force that makes the  wheat produce its grain
Also kills   as freely as blood stains
In blank paged notebooks where you  used  to write
Where  do you read  now in  endless night?

 

Let me be the caller who is heard

Let me touch your mind with silk, with words
Let me feel your colour, let me sing
Let me be the artist who is heard

Let me see the  heartfelt  flight of birds
Let me catch you with my golden ring
Let me touch your mind with silk ,with words

Let my love be judged as wild, absurd
Let me see the lightness of your wings
Let me be the artist who is heard

Let me be stirred up by what occurs
Let the bee live even when it stings
Let me feel your mind with silk,with words

Let me be no noun,I am a verb
Let the sunset come and darkness bring
Let me be the caller who is heard

Let me hold you close and comfort bring
Let me love you little, let me long~
Let me touch your mind with silk,with words
Let me  wander  with the music heard

 

Lyric connections- Sarah Howes

img_20180224_172908
By Katherine

Essay: The Feel of Thinking – Sarah Howe on lyric connections and incisions

Extract

What might it mean for a poet to ‘feel’ his or her ‘thought’? Eliot championed the so-called ‘metaphysical’ poets of the seventeenth century for their efforts ‘to find the verbal equivalent for states of mind and feeling.’ Such poets are marked out, for Eliot, by their ‘rapid association of thought’, giving rise to a sensibility that can discern connections between such disparate experiences as falling in love, reading Spinoza, the noise of a typewriter and the smell of cooking. Eliot’s penultimate item always reminds me of those lines from Ashbery’s ‘Paradoxes and Oxymorons’: ‘And before you know / It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters’. It’s just like Ashbery to transform the sound of purposive writerly activity into consciousness’s white noise.

In a fascinating essay on Donne and modern cognitive science, AS Byatt argues that Donne does indeed feel his thought, but what he makes his readers feel is less Eliot’s odour of the rose than ‘the peculiar excitement and pleasure of mental activity itself’. She wonderfully dubs Donne a ‘glassy’ poet, since glass is something you can look at and through simultaneously (incidentally the very property of glass that makes it such a choice vehicle for metaphysical conceits). Among the moderns, Byatt attributes similar qualities to Wallace Stevens – think only of the perceptual conundrums of ‘The Glass of Water’: ‘In the metaphysical,’ that poem claims, ‘there are these poles’. For her, what the poems of Donne and Stevens offer is not sensations per se but the ‘process of sensing’, not concepts but the ‘idea of the relations of concepts.’

Can true love be gained by deception

Can true love be gained by deception?
Will rage never change our perceptions?
Be thoughtful and pray
Be aware of today
Then  you may need  no correction

Can true love bring harm  in its wake?
Can lovers live purely in cake?
There are no general laws
But think and give pause
We are what we love and we hate.

Does hatred exist  before love?
The eagle may kill  the  white dove
The  child uncaressed
Will never be blest
Oh,God, send sweet rain from above

Stan and logic

  • 5448fbf9-936c-45bb-9894-c05d6e6bd2b0Stan was leaning over, cleaning the  new bath.When the doorbell rang,he rushed downstairs and opened the  double front door.
    “Will you take this parcel in for the lady next door?” The postman asked wearily.
    “Oh,fine Stan stuttered.He was trying to avoid Annie but here she was,coming down the road of superior semi detached houses suitable for ex-headmasters ,small businessmen,econometricians,surgeons,pie salesmen and  theologians.
    She was wearing perfume, and green sandals from TK Maxx,light khaki tencel cropped combat trousers with a purple silky over-blouse, not to mention her matching raspberry  and cream underwear .Round her neck hung a miniature grandfather clock on a solid gold chain,and she had three  imitation gold and silver watches on each  of her three wrists making a total of 333 watches according to Carnap’s theory of logic and Russell’s terrible handwriting. Stanley didn’t know that she had a mobile phone stuffed into her bra—one advantage for the larger sized woman.In fact she had 4 down there in her raspberry coloured glamour bra,as she had a phobia about their batteries running down all at once
    The more she had the lower the probability of her being without a phone whilst out and about the town and countryside.So she reasoned in her womanly  way. Just then one  phone rang.She rummaged around to the consternation  and turmoil-uation of Stanley and the postman.She plucked out a pale blue phone.
    “Hi,it’s Annie” she murmured.
    “Hi Annie it’s Dave the paramedic with  carpentry skills. You’ve not rung 999 lately so we were wondering if all was well!”
    “Oh,I’m terribly sorry.I’ll try to phone later on.Thanks,Petal.That was Dave,our ex-transvestite converted paramedic”,she informed the men.The postman galloped off on his donkey, his bags full of undelivered males.It’s a tough but interesting life in Knittingham. Would you like a male delivery?Contact Parcel Force without delay.
    Annie went into Stan’s house and demanded a cup of coffee.
    “Won’t it make you put weight on” Stan quipped ironically.
    “Do you think I’m too plump?” she responded anxiously..
    “Too plump for what?” he quipped amiably.
    “To attract men,of course!”
    “No,my angel,you are just perfect”he quacked definitively.”Nor are you an angel,strictly speaking,as I have good reason to know.Thank you,my beloved for services rendered so generously and freely.”
    “Oh,my goodness I must get home to render the fat from the beef and to make some gooseberry jam.” Stanley looked uneasy.
    “I wonder why babies are left under gooseberry bushes?
    The thorns are so big it’s quite dangerous getting them out,or so Mary told me when Lyra was born. She was covered in scratches and wouldn’t come near me for months.”
    “Why don’t you come upstairs to look at our new purple bathroom suite.Since the Royal Wedding it’s the in colour.The gold taps were expensive but they do go well.”
    “My God,let me out.” she bawled,”It reminds me of the Vatican and that’s no place for a lady”,
    “Not even a gay lady?” Stan muttered parsimoniously, as he licked her eyelashes gently.
    “Stop that.I’ve got my Yves St Laurent mascara on.”
    “I prefer the taste of the Chanel,”he disclosed privately in an internal  secret memo.[available on 50 years]
    “Why not lick my neck instead?” she enquired curiously as she tripped over Emile the cat, who had slipped into the bathroom as usual  to see what they were up to,you know what I mean, you catch my drift?
    She fell floppily into the bath and banged her head on the taps.
    “Oh,gosh,better ring 999” Stan said to Emile.
    “Have you got your catphone warehouse mobile on you?”
    “Yes ,it’s in my y-fronts”, the cat amiably miaowed.
    “Hi Dave,this is Emile.Can you come quick.Annie is unconscious and what is worse,she has scratched the new bath.”
    In fact it was Emile who had scratched the bath that morning but since Stan had not noticed he hoped to, callously, pass the blame onto poor  Annie.How cruel can a cat be?  Ask any mouse! Still in the end God made all of us and what a  terrifying and beautiful world it is.

By  love enacted falsly, some are raped

Should we write in form to make a shape
Or let our minds run free, associate?
Such tangled webs within the mind  are draped

Oh, to run as free as antelopes
But from sharp tigers noone will escape
Can we  control , disarm  within a shape?

Love’s enacted falsely , making rape
Inside our  hearts shall we recover hope?
Such tangled webs the curtained mind  creates

Round the  marbled minds we  half dazed traipse
Wherever we go hunting, we’re too late
Can we  control  our fear  within a shape?

Collapsing faith cracks , can we concentrate
Or  from the deal , do we dissociate?
Such tangled webs  of mind  make ripe our hate

Now sex  compels but will can’t procreate
Can kindness smile  and friendship instigate?
Should we write in form when we love shape?
Our mingled maps  of  mind   might mangle   fate

Can love be obtained via injections?

Perspective ,proportion,projection
We need these for our own protection
But sometimes we fail
We are too frail
Can love be obtained via injections?

We  talk to our friends and our foes
Share our insights and our woes
Their point of view
Our thought will renew
We  learn   to  be kind when we’re low

 

 

Humour and poetry

img_20190510_163949https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2010/04/humor-and-poetry

Extract:

In 1993, I took a left turn one day out of my MFA program and found myself at the National Poetry Slam in San Francisco. There I discovered several poets who were funny for the sake of being funny. Particularly Hal Sirowitz from New York (“don’t stick your arm out the window, mother said” and Matt Cook from Milwaukee (“it was easy to write the Great American Novel, back when there were only five American novels”) Both poets initially delighted me and confounded me: There are no similes, a voice in my head said. What would Tom Lux (my first teacher) say? the voice continued. Despite my resistance, I believe those poets gave me a kind of permission to explore humor a little more vigorously in my second book, The Forgiveness Parade (1998), for “I thought the word loin and the word lion were the same thing. I thought celibate was a kind of fish”. Perhaps in that book there were places where I was too vigorous in my pursuit: looking back there are a few poems that are just a little too jokey somehow, a little one-dimensional.

I am becoming aware of how some humor can set a roadblock for the poetic speaker, making it impossible for the speaker to get back to a serious place. And how some other (less frequent) uses of humor can leave that door open. I want to leave that door open

Euro -vision

img_20190510_163705-1Tonight I am watching the Eurovision Song Contest without the sound on
There is a certain decadence about the performances
Like end of the Roman Empire
I can’t understand  how money is wasted  like this
When will Nero play his fiddle?
Still, good to see Northern Macedonia.At least I know where that is!
Maybe  Theresa May might like to Remain there
Or make a quick Exit, forensic?
Boris might like to  Trump all
Be careful what you wish for

With each image ,still your dreaming heart

 

To write a poem will take our entire heart
Our mind and soul, our body and our dreams.
With trepidation,take a pen and start

Let preconceptions , though well meant, depart
Creative work evades such plans and schemes
To write a poem will shake the entire heart

We travel lands unknown without a chart
With our courage, trust the dark unseen
For inspiration,take our pens and write

We bite the apple, bitter, hard and tart
Knowledge enters in its dream -like streams
To write a poem will move each living heart

No logic, reasoning, signs, however wrought
Will bring to life the holy pattern’s themes
With each image, still your dreaming heart

The earth ,the oceans, seas, the sacred scenes
Where humans live out daily what life means
To write a poem , we need a mystic’s heart
We fill our empty pens,we  make a start

The ants upon my rowan tree had faith

The bees   are humming by the garden gate
The  dampness  makes the leaves  more green , more rich
As summer comes too early and too late

The ants upon my rowan tree  had faith
Busily they ran,  as if bewitched
The bees   are humming by the garden gate

The rowan tree has died, leaves not a trace
When it was felled, it left an empty pitch
Come  oh  wild flowers, leave no summer base

I watch  more ants, they seem to have no face
The rain leaves puddles in the empty ditch
The bees    will hover by the garden gate

The ants will help  their wounded  under threat
But having not a doctor, they’re  not stitched
Will summer come before it is too late?

From this world, we must try  not to flinch
When we leave it will be with a wrench
The bees   are humming by the garden gate
As summer comes too early by mistake

 

 

Adam Gopnik interviewed

The Observer, Observed

“For Winter, Gopnik divides the season into five modes: Romantic, Radical, Recuperative, Recreational, and, finally, Remembering. “Romantic Winter” charts the transition from winter as a brutal, dangerous reality—people can freeze to death, after all—to one we can admire as picturesque and stroll through with pleasure and wonder. Throughout, he reflects upon poems by Samuel Johnson, paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, scientific treatises on snowflakes, and the differing ideas about reason from the Enlightenment and the counter-Enlightenment. “Radical Winter” investigates the obsession with reaching the Arctic and Antarctic poles. “The search for that spatial winter, the search for the poles, has become an obsessive subject for modern people. It’s the model of all exploration for exploration’s sake, exploration undertaken with a minimum of national advantage, a marginal economic purpose, and a maximal amount of adventure taken for adventure’s sake.”

If polar travellers are, as Gopnik puts it, “a kind of ecstatic monk of nature,” Christmas, which he explores in “Recuperative Winter,” is the paradigmatic secularized winter holiday. He uses “Recreational Winter” to briefly review the history of ice skating—ice skating paintings, ice skating poems, including a sublime passage on the subject from Wordsworth’s The Prelude—as well as hockey and his beloved Montreal Canadians”

Who is Sylvia?

Do you take this battery operated tin opener to be your lawful wedded mate?
I feel sick
That’s not in the script
I don’t think much of this dream
Just carry on
Yes, alright I’ll marry the  tin opener
In sickness and health
Will it know?
Do you know?
Can’t I marry the fridge instead?
Why?
What’s so special about a tin opener?
It’s possible to put it into your handbag~
With the cake fork I used to comb my hair?
Oh,no.They might get on too well~
Are they magnetically drawn together
Only if you have an induction hob
Where?
In your handbag
Let’s just stop
Why?
I can’t believe it even as a dream.
I’ll try a leopard next time
But not a panther,please.Sylvia Plath has written of that
You are so conceited
Why?
Who is Sylvia?
That’s what we all wonder
Sh might have been better off with a tin opener

The cat’s mother

Photo0292 3

After Mass on Sunday Mary decided to visit Stan, her elderly, gentle and frail husband in the Rehabilitation Unit where he had been sent recently by a strange physiotherapist…He was unhappy as the diuretics made him pee even more often than he used to do and he got very worried about it because his bad heart made it extremely hard for him to walk.
When she went into the small four bed ward she saw Stan sitting on his chair without any pyjama trousers on even though it was visiting time from 3 to 8 pm.
Why has he no trousers on? Mary asked a nurse angrily, her singularly blue eyes full of unshed glistening tears which almost washed off her turquoise mascara and made runnels in her honey beige foundation by Rimmel of London and Paris
He keeps wanting to go to the toilet so it’s easier for us all if he has no pants on, the nurse told her haughtily.He’s on diuretics, you see as he has water in his lungs and other inner organs and the water has to be removed from his body, Sheila ,the nurse announced in a cold voice
What about the lack of dignity in baring him to the world, Mary enquired softly yet piercingly her eyes dripping tears again.
Dignity ,what’s that? the nurse said insolently.He is just a pest. And old men don’t deserve any attention.We are tired of them.They should all die now.That’s government policy it appears
Emile who had hidden in Mary’s old, but good olive green Radley leather handbag let out a sound like a banshee in Cork or a demon in a nightmare.
The nurse looked quite frightened
What’s that? she whispered to Mary behind her hand.
It’s probably Satan coming to say ” hello” to you as you seem very wicked to me.Mary informed her politely yet honestly in her Northern way.
Oh my,what shall I do? the nurse asked in a trembling voice.I am so upset now.
You could try reading the Ten Commandments, Mary riposted jocosely… if it’s not too late.
Or recalling the Golden Rule………
I’ve never heard of the golden rule, said the nurse.Is it a measuring instrument of some unusual type?
Yes,in a sense it is, Mary said.It measures us by our compassion towards others.And you seem to have none for Stan.Can you not imagine what it’s like being a man sitting half naked in a public room with no recourse?
What’s a recourse, Sheila, the nurse, asked her thoughtfully,Is it a garment like a dressing gown?
No,it’s a a source of help in a difficult situation.It’s a remedy or an option
I have a higher degree in nursing,Sheila boasted stupidly.
I don’t care if you have a doctorate in nursing and philosophy,Mary cried.It’s what you do and say to the patients that counts.And going to an evening class in English would do you no harm.Your vocabulary is limited,to say the least.And words are useful whatever job you do.Or even if you are unemployed it helps you deal with bureaucrats
Oh,dear,said the nurse,I am sorry for being so thoughtless.I am always thinking about sex,love and clothes instead of the patients.I see now I have fallen into evil ways and hope I can improve a little.
You have been cruel, said Mary.And seeing my aged husband like this is breaking my heart.
She went over to Stan and sat by him.He fell against her bosom hungrily.Alas it was not for erotic reasons.His blood sugar was only 2 and his BP was 60/40.He was dying there with no trousers on and with no-one but Mary to help him… and Emile, their small intelligent black cat ,of course.Unfortunately Emile’s trousers were too small for Stan.Mary wrapped a bath towel around Stan and held him in her arms.

Stan tried to speak but Mary could not make out what he was saying.Tears ran down her beautiful lined and wrinkled face and dripped onto Stan’s head.I suppose one might say it was a kind of baptism by love.Now Stan will soon be entering a new dimension and will be given a new and better name by One who cannot be named here.But you catch my drift?

Judgment is mine says the Lord.

Stan collapsed, his face went black.Only then was he sent to a real hospital with full equipment.He died, looking happy, the next day.His last words
“So many lovely friends”
Emile was crying on Mary’s lap.
Don’t worry Emile.He was very unhappy.
So am I, Emile wept
Then Mary wept herself.What a pity Emile is a cat and so cannot embrace the person he calls “Mother”

Wondering how to export Johnson, May

We’re living  with the lunatics today
Half the population  burns with rage
Wondering how to edit Theresa May

No longer do the anxious kneel and pray
We hear the verbal missiles wildly  staged
We may be the lunatics today

For this civil war, we all will pay
The British  voters ‘ anger is a plague
Wondering how to  infect Theresa May

Is this a stage and who  has made this Play?
Of the facts we seem to be quite vague
We may be the lunatics today

The stage is set, the tyrant has his say
Who will give the poor a living wage?
Wondering how to   question Theresa May

 

Shall we too see  immigrants be  caged
They are merely animals despised
We’re living  with the lunatics today
Wondering how to export Johnson,May