Triangle

Writing poetry is like trying to jump onto a wild horse as it goes by.
Or trying to get out of a  big vat of honey when the bees are angry
Or dreaming of wild tigers now tame for a moment
Getting a cat to wear a lead and go for a walk
It is unnatural, dangerous and mad
But I like it.
There.

I’ll sing like him all day,

 

I look up our small street,
To see if you are coming.
I don’t know what time it is,
But I think I hear you humming.

You sang sweet songs for us,
And you could whistle well.
You wore an old tweed jacket
You loved us, I could tell.

I look out there each day,
But I can’t see your tall, thin shape.
I saved your Woodbine packet,
It made me feel some hope.

What does death’s door mean?
Where has Daddy gone?
When will be the welcome day,
When we hear his songs again?

I’ll sing like him all day,
I’ll dream of him all night.
I hope he won’t be angry,
If his cigarettes won’t light!

He can’t write his own songs now.
He went too far away, too soon.
I’ll write down what I think he sang,
And I’ll invent the tune.

I hear him singing now,
He dwells inside my heart.
And though I still can’t see his face,
I recognise his Art.

Oh, culture,  joy, oh  friends,  oh fragrant air

Oh, culture,  joy, oh  friends,  oh  fragrant air
What delights our eyes and brings new life
Summer comes  with sun and visions fair
 Heat and leisure, trees all  green as May
Buds of flowers entice us each to spy
Oh, culture,  joy, oh  friends,  oh  fragrant air
Smiles and laughter, hands held, eyes that stare
Love  erotic, love  of friends, love ripe
Summer comes  with sun and visions fair
Skin to air and skin to skin  declare
From the inner feelings, none escape
Oh, culture,  joy, oh  friends,  oh  fragrant air
As the blackbird sings, so should we pray
Until we see at last  our  true landscape
Summer comes  with sun and visions fair
All our  thoughts  must now evaporate
Until the deeper Mind life illustrates
Oh, culture,  joy, oh  friends,  oh  fragrant air
Summer comes  with gold and visions fair

Shivering on the peak

Shivering on the top of  sheer hillside
The effort is made worthy by the view
Here where lambs  won’t play nor goats  make strides
Shivering humans  love a sheer hillside
My whole self rejoices, is renewed
As with body, so it is with mind
Shivering on the peak, I stand astride
The effort  makes me worthy of this view.

The triolet

LangdalePikes2019-1https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/personal-updates/triolet-an-easy-way-to-write-8-lines-of-poetry

 

“Today, we’re going to look at the triolet (TREE-o-LAY), which has 13th century French roots linked to the rondeau or “round” poem. For over a year now, I’ve been trying to find a way to use the repetitive line heard so often in airport terminals: “The moving sidewalk is about to end.”

The triolet is perfect for this kind of repetition, because the first line of the poem is used 3 times and the second line is used twice. If you do the math on this 8-line poem, you’ll realize there are only 3 other lines to write: 2 of those lines rhyme with the first line, the other rhymes with the second line.

A diagram of the triolet would look like this:

A (first line)
B (second line)
a (rhymes with first line)
A (repeat first line)
a (rhymes with first line)
b (rhymes with second line)
A (repeat first line)
B (repeat second line)

So for the construction of my triolet, I already had my first line: “The moving sidewalk is about to end.” So after some quick thinking I decided to make my second line: and I’m not sure where to go. Pretty good (and true), since I usually don’t know where to go in airports. At this point, my poem looked like this:”

When we cannot pray

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The cello has a tender singing voice
Allows the feelings which we cannot say.
Among composers,  Bach would  be my choice
The cello sings   rich lyrics  with her voice.
Rostropovich , Prague ; he wept of course.
Soviet armies  marched, the Czechs  were  flayed.
The cello has a sorrowing truthful voice;
Speaks our feelings when we cannot pray.

My car goes too fast for Lent

I’d love to gamble with the  lambs if only they had arthritis
He rambled on for so long  he got to Carlisle  before he noticed we were on a railway line.Dent  and Dent again
Dry your tears faster with  the new tumble-in dryer.
Save your tears to water the lawn.
Stumbling home took rages to achieve.
I did let my seat melt on once.
My car goes too fast for Lent
Ash Wednesday… we had ash every day in the fireplace!
I saw faces in the flames ………He burned all my selfies.Expensive to get a new laptop but he is my husband after them all.
We saw faces in the wallpaper.My father leaned on it often after being down the pit all day.He made a big impression on me.
I think confessing sins is a good idea, starting at the top with Mrs T May and Boris….don’t forgive them,Oh Lord am I evil?
Not really.
The cows don’t want us sucking their bladders all day. What did I say?
I’d like a  lion, say Judah?

Life  can be  much  gentler  in a groove

How to sort your life out in three  moves
Begin by  writing  wisely of  your aims
Life  can be  much neater  in a groove

Don’t keep wondering if  your   friends approve
Do not  give your life  up to get fame
How to sort your life out in three  moves

String quintets on records will disprove
Old collections are just for the  lame
Life  can be  much  gentler  in a groove

Should we give up fantasy too lewd?
Is it better to admit what is not tame?
How to sort this life out  while it  moves

Sadness  may be joy, oh blues imbued
Do not let depression steal  its name
Life  can be mute misery in a groove

Look into the mirror, be amazed
See the lines where  laughter  has long grazed
How to  turn  life over  with  a heave
Life  can  turn too black stuck  in  that groove

 

Writing

When you wrote your book
The cat  lay across your shoulders like a prayer shawl
Through your window, you saw the trees
The Blackbird sang.
Now the chair is empty and   our cat has died
How could you leave me?
I’m lonesome  in that room
The birds are nesting again
The sun is hot
I’ve not opened the desk drawers
But I found your tie on my bed
Where can you be?

Dave is creative

white brown and black med coated cat laying on gray ottoman
Photo by Buenosia Carol on Pexels.com

Mary was making a beef and beer casserole.But her casserole dish lid was too high for the small oven on her gas stove
What shall I do, she asked Emile.her cat?
I don’t know, mother, he told her.I never cook
I’ve told you before,I am not your mother.
Well, you feed me and wash me and keep my bed clean
I did that for Stan.I hope he didn’t think I was his mother
He was older than you, the cat informed her boldly
Yes.indeed he was 50 years older than me!
I know what to do, Emile mewed.He  stood by the phone and pressed 999
Soon the bell rang. In ran Dave, the transexual  transvestite paramedic dressed all in white as if for tennis
What’s wrong now, he enquired?
I can’t get this casserole dish into the oven, said Mary
I know what to do. Have you got either a pyrex plate or a cake tin with a loose bottom?
Mary looked into her cupboard and found a 6  ” plate
Dave put it on top of the dish having removed the high domed lid.
There we are, he cried. What number shall I put the oven on?
3 please, said Mary. You are so creative, Dave. Brilliant
Would you like to come back in 3 hours for a meal?
I’d love to, Dave cried. Unless I get called out by someone who needs me to find a knife and fork so they can eat their dinner
Would people really do that,Emile whispered?
You would not believe what people do

And so say all of us

 

Allergy to dusk

With my broken-hearted syndrome and my allergy to dusk
With my head inside a bottle and my body  still unwashed
I don’t know my arrival time;my soul’s got  a new desk

I need a  pile of money, I wonder should I busk?
I need a sturdy saviour  as  Jesus  has got lost
With my broken-hearted syndrome and my allergy to dusk

I saw a few pink elephants but none had any tusks
I  need   a lot of money and a salad that’s been tossed
I don’t know my arrival time nor if my soul’s got  frost

We used to go to cinemas and consume  big bags of  crisps
Now that we are ancient we need a defter wrist
Mend our  potty syndromes and  the fear of  musk and dusk

 

The hair once long and silky  has  matured into small  whisps
The eyes so blue and singular   turn red when I am pissed
I don’t know my survival times nor if my soul loves rust

I  was looking for a husband but I found an  iron fist
Oh, men, you don’t need armour in the bedrooms of the lost
With my broken-hearted syndrome and my allergy to facts
I don’t know my arrival time, the timetable’s been wrecked

 

Oh silence hissing

Silent, arms and legs  akimbo, floating
In a cloud of photographs and files
I must not think there  is no solid  ground below
The act goes on but I ‘m not reconciled

 

No one speaks to me, the alien woman
I see the fence, invisible the door
Floating with my feet like hands  contentious
I   must not think there is no second floor

Silent with constriction in my larynx
Flying  with the wind an awful presence
Where the edges. where the strapped up artist?
Where the place such silence starts to lessen?

 

Floating through detritus, not existing
Not the journey ‘s end, oh silence hissing
,

Much more flippantly

The wind blew fresh leaves
Across my pale countenance
I did not need that

The trees are swaying
Not as ballerinas do
Much more flippantly

They do not keep time
With human clocks and watches
A different drummer

The storm hovers here
Like an eagle on a cloud
Deciding on prey

Why use tarot cards
When we have sky and sunshine
When we have neighbours?

Sylvia saw a yew
Sylvia , a rook, the rain fell
Feathers gleamed like coal

Oh, Ariel  runs
Sylvia  becomes a myth
Knee and heel, the ride

Into the hot sun
Into the ennobling flame
The alchemy of  fire

Gold from coal dust comes
What good is this to children?
The cauldron bubbles

The orchestra played

I am fortunate
If I can find two gloves now
One left and one right

The other problem
My hands are misshapen too
Ladies’ gloves might not fit me.

I can be a man
If I decide I want to be
There! I wear your gloves now.

But I prefer scarves
Made for women, with flowers
Embroidery, silk, cashmere.

My taste is quite good
I know  I like your image
You stand on the bridge in Prague

In Wenceslaus Square
The orchestra played Ma Vlast
The Elektion

Holocaust Museum
Children’s coloured drawings are
Butterflies for God

He died too with them
So we have no  floor to stand on
Everything’s trembling

I forgot I am.
I was lost somewhere other
How I stand on air.

As I rise enriched

As I rise enriched  from deeps of grief
I feel alone as  if my old  world’s gone
Though trees still  flaunt their  newborn coats of leaves

The passing of the years, our  life seems brief
Oh, love, oh death, oh fear, oh lost my own
Must I retreat from darker depths of grief?

What new space must you and I conceive?
How shall I live where  my love was  undone
While trees will   haunt with   summers of green leaves

Our latent wishes, frozen,   must deceive
Oh, Freudian world, oh, Foucault, oh Lacan
Must I leave the holy depths of grief?

Like the flowers, most die  on graves of  grief
Oh, Shakespeare, elegaic, oh John Donne
See trees still    image life  in   shining leaves

 

Misfortune strikes, still love  and heart shall win
As we cling to life with threads so thin
When we rise enriched from depths of grief
The  trees   delight  in  mantels of green leaf

Discord or harmony

Clematis-macropetala-Wesselton

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/discord

Extract

    1. 1.1 (of things) be different.
      ‘the party’s views were apt to discord with those of the leading members of the government’
      More example sentences

Origin

Middle English: from Old French descord (noun), descorder (verb), from Latin discordare, from discors ‘discordant’, from dis- (expressing negation, reversal) + cor, cord- ‘heart’.

Pronunciation

discord

NOUN/ˈdɪskɔːd/

discord

VERB/dɪsˈkɔːd/

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
We turn attention from the known.
Our eyes relax and  gaze without
To  bring proportion  to our doubts

Trust, itself. will widen gaze
And 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.

Life  may  be the flood plain and the flow

He has done  with me, his earthly woman now
Gone away as dust motes dance in air.
I must live, I wonder where and how

To the fiercer visions, my eye goes
All is snatched while we  seem mute and  bare
He has done  with me, his earthly woman now

What is this killing Nature, it does cow
The mighty King, the princess blue-eyed, fair
I must live, I wonder when and how

Life is  may  be the flood plain and the flow
Emperors are killed by   those who dare
Who has gone from me, a widow now?

The Ouse drops from the Pennines and it grows
Until it  drowns the earth,  the Minster’s prayers
Must I   stay  on grievous tears afloat?

Oblivious to the people and the stares
Oblivious to  this   sleep and its nightmares
He did  for me, his earthly  female spouse
I  could not swim, my heart  sank from the blow

 

The tarmac heats as if it wants to leave

Near my destination my mind swerves
The object of my  passion’s hard to catch
In a fast car   bending roads to   curves

Do we ever  overcome our love?
Do we think the next one  is our match?
Near my destination my mind swerves

I am thinking of the words I heard
When the door was left upon the latch
Shall my car  grind roads into deep curves?

With the passion my  heart  leaps and heaves
The Sacred Heart was mentioned , a faux pas
Near my  start and  end ,my mind  will swerve

The tarmac heats as if it wants to leave
The rubber on the tyres  screams at last
In a fast car   bending roads to   curves

We mix up the future and the past
The future is not written nor surpassed
Near my destination my mind swerves
In its fast car   bending roads to   curves

 

 

Then the  creatures wild may be allured

Sitting in the garden with no thoughts
Empty minded,listening to the birds
Ideas rise up like fishes to be caught

Activity and purpose may be taught
Not silence and deep listening  beyond words
Sitting in the garden with no thoughts

Creative moments  cannot yet be bought
We think upon the  conversations heard
Ideas rise up like fishes to be caught

The mind is best when muscles are not taut
Then the  creatures wild may be allured
Sitting in the garden with  these thoughts

What  arrives is rarely what we sought
Pain and feelings darker may occur
Ideas rise up like fishes to be caught

Relaxation  makes the  visions blurred
This is not the end of the affair
Sitting in the garden with my  thoughts
Ideas rise up and dance and then are caught.

 

 

Jacquiline Wilson

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/06/jacqueline-wilson-interview

“It is strange,” says Wilson as she gets up to leave, “that sometimes people assume the worst of children if they come from poor families. I remember being astonished when I took my daughter to a party given by her schoolfriend’s parents. They lived in a lovely, big house very near the block of council flats where I grew up. The mother was very friendly to me, and said how pleased she was that our daughters were friends because obviously she could have nothing to do with ‘those dreadful scary rough children from the council flats’. I didn’t want to embarrass her by saying that I had once been one of those very children.”

Keats’ life

https://www.biography.com/writer/john-keats

 

“Keats’ daring and bold style earned him nothing but criticism from two of England’s more revered publications, Blackwood’s Magazine and the Quarterly Review. The attacks were an extension of heavy criticism lobbed at Hunt and his cadre of young poets. The most damning of those pieces had come from Blackwood’s, whose piece, “On the Cockney School of Poetry,” shook Keats and made him nervous to publish “Endymion.”

Keats’ hesitation was warranted. Upon its publication the lengthy poem received a lashing from the more conventional poetry community. One critic called the work, the “imperturbable driveling idiocy of Endymion.” Others found the four-book structure and its general flow hard to follow and confusing.

Recovering Poet

How much of an effect this criticism had on Keats is uncertain, but it is clear that he did take notice of it. But Shelley’s later accounts of how the criticism destroyed the young poet and led to his declining health, however, have been refuted.

Keats in fact, had already moved beyond “Endymion” even before it was published. By the end of 1817, he was reexamining poetry’s role in society. In lengthy letters to friends, Keats outlined his vision of a kind of poetry that drew its beauty from real world human experience rather than some mythical grandeur. ”

More from Keats’ letter

huttonroof2017-1

SpringFlowers2019

“It has been an old comparison for our urging on – the Beehive; however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee – for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving more than giving – no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee – its leaves blush deeper in the next spring – and who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted”

Diligent indolence

img_20190311_170607http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/190218.htm

Extract  from  a Keats’ letter

When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all ‘the two-and-thirty Palaces.’ How happy is such a voyage of concentration, what delicious diligent Indolence! …Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers – for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great works to the ‘spirit and pulse of good’ by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge – Many have original minds who do not think it – they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel – the points of leaves and twigs on thich the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful ciruitin

Mysteries

epimedium-dominoWhy is Pythagorus’s theorem not mentioned in the Bible?
Was Homer acquainted with grief?
What pen  did St Paul use?
Why did the Jews not discover Logic? It was all Greek to them.
Mythos is the Hebrew Way.
Futility is British now.
They used Word 365 to write  the stories down, no doubt.
Microsoft  wrote the Bible? I can’t believe it! Did Jesus know?
Well, what will Google write?
We await Revelations
Facebook is waiting to show the Apocalypse the door,Now!
Spelled wring again
I’ll wring your neck in a minute.No hands!

Was it for this   that God endured the Fall?

At midnight I was tidying my room
Oh,not feeling tired, can’t sleep in tune
But in the morning I feel  tired as hell
After sixty sinners burned  pell mell!

My room looked even worse than I believed
I fell sideways,  then I was relieved
My head cracked on the mirror on the wall
Was it for this   that God endured the Fall?

I thought the wardrobe door was my  way out
It would not open even with a clout
Where’s my husband with his  soothing touch?
I lost him once so I’m  not very rich.

Noone  here to listen as I sob
Nothing like a  kiss on Lyme’s old Cobb
Noone to be happy if I laugh
None to phone the doctor  when I cough

I fear to go upstairs in case I dream
I’m giving birth  too  early with  no screens

How  shall we  sanctify our little hour?

What meaning has a buttercup in flower?
So many  trodden down in meadows green
How  shall we  sanctify each little hour?

The celandine ‘s no warrior full of power
Underneath my apple tree they bloom
What meaning has  the life of any flower?

Their very being brings grace, disgusts the dour
They live so wisely  while by sun consumed
Melodious is their  soul song for an hour

We saw the princess  followed from her tower
Was her life superior in its doom?
What meaning has  the life of any , even flowers?

Diana hunted,  shot,  her image ours
She consumed herself ,was her own food
Her funeral -leaded coffin we endured

If we are intent we hear  life’s tunes
Standing on  cracked paths, with stiff  old brooms
What meaning has a buttercup in flower?
Do not  demand meaning, it’s no cure.

Chagrin

NewRiver_rev

https://www.etymonline.com/word/chagrin

 

chagrin (n.)

1650s, “melancholy,” from French chagrin “melancholy, anxiety, vexation” (14c.), from Old North French chagreiner or Angevin dialect chagraigner “sadden,” which is of unknown origin, perhaps [Gamillscheg] from Old French graignier “grieve over, be angry,” from graigne “sadness, resentment, grief, vexation,” from graim “sorrowful,” which is perhaps from a Germanic source (compare Old High German gram “angry, fierce”).

But OED and other sources trace it to an identical Old French word, borrowed into English phonetically as shagreen, meaning “rough skin or hide” (the connecting notion being “roughness, harshness”), which is itself of uncertain origin. Modern sense of “feeling of irritation from disappointment, mortification or mental pain from the failure of aims or plans” is from 1716.