https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/how-palestinians-keep-warm

Choose one word and say it over
and over, till it builds a fire inside your mouth.
Adhafera, the one who holds out, Alphard, solitary one,
the stars were named by people like us.
Each night they line up on the long path between worlds.
They nod and blink, no right or wrong
in their yellow eyes. Dirah, little house,
unfold your walls and take us in.

My well went dry, my grandfather’s grapes
have stopped singing. I stir the coals,
my babies cry. How will I teach them
they belong to the stars?
They build forts of white stone and say, “This is mine.”
How will I teach them to love Mizar, veil, cloak,
to know that behind it an ancient man
is fanning a flame?
He stirs the dark wind of our breath.
He says the veil will rise
till they see us shining, spreading like embers
on the blessed hills.

Well, I made that up. I’m not so sure about Mizar.
But I know we need to keep warm here on earth
And when your shawl is as thin as mine is, you tell stories.

The eye needs just a hint to see the whole
But there may be more than one…. as inhow people imagined Hitler to be a Saviour

Mary was up half the night suffering from diarrhoea which she could not even spell. Eventually she managed to get to sleep and woke up feeling drained of energy.She had had no meal the previous night ,please accept a pot of yoghurt.

when she got up she put her clothes on on top of her nightdress and did not even get washed which is very hard.  Her poor cats have been terribly worried. Yes Mary now has two cats as her old cat Emile  was feeling lonesome without his father Stan.

Are you alright mother they’re meows nervously.

I think so. I don’t know what brought that on unless it was my arthritis tablets. if it’s not one thing it’s another I don’t know where I’m coming or going. but never mind I will give you your breakfasts  and you can go out into the garden and learn about all the intriguing spots where spiders make their webs

Can we not go into the shed  mother?

how are you? could you ?it’s I don’t know what you’re going to find me in there it’s a long time since I’ve been in it mysel.I’m afraid of falling

What a pity that the two cats are so small they cannot lift Mary up if she falls over. what kind of animal would be the most useful in that respect?

perhaps a st. Bernard dog  but the cats wouldn’t like that very much.

how difficult life is Mary was weeping as she sipped a cup of weak tea.

 I will probably feel better in a few days. I have got to send a card to a sick friend today and I probably feel more sick than he does but never mind I am determined To live for another 10 years at least  by then my pension will be not worth very much. but on the other hand was the savings accounts giving so little interest is it worth not spending your money?

Life was hard enough before the referendum but now it is a nightmare

One of Mary’s friends shouting at her down the phone or where is a matter of fact  Mary did not vote because she could not bring herself to go for the polling station without her late husband  Stan. I will have to get married again she told herself otherwise I’m not going to be able to vote and that will be dreadful. although with this pride of idiots running the country does it matter who you vote for?

Democracy is not what we thought it was. if he says he’s stupid  and he’s been to Oxford what are we to believe? like he went to Eton and then to Christchurch and then into the city what on earth are there other people like you did not have these advantages. on the other hand it might be the very advantages which are making people stupid.
I often find the Sainsbury’s delivery men are far more intelligent than my friends who have been to university. at least the uneducated have not had their mind ruined by learning things they do not understand like calculus and non Euclidean geometry.

parrot learning  …….who was the man with rubbish  in his head …..why it’s bias can you believe it

I thought it must be Moses but he lived too long ago. if he did exist.

How do you know whether to believe what is in the Bible?

Oh for goodness sake mother, have some breakfast cried Susie. I know you feel unwell but it will pass

suddenly the door opened and in Iran Annie the ex mistress of Stan. she come up with a mistress of a ghost  and Annie was wearing some peach coloured trousers and a brown and orange striped woolen jumper  with matching hair screen from the Photoshop

I’m going up to London and she told  them.

why      shouted. Mary. what is wrong with knitting Ham?

I just feel like a change of scene and you do not look well enough to accompany me

that is so true said Mary. I am so weak I  can understand that

Would you like me to buy you a gift?

yes please I would like a rubber with  a Union Jack printed on it

and a flag of Ireland the Republic I mean.

are you going to hang yourself as a window.

no I am going to hang the flag out of the window

do you think that’s safe because Ireland will still be in the EU oh well  get a flag of Russia

they are not in the EU. is Russia in Europe or Asia?

No don’t bother about that  let me make your bed so you can lie down again until I return

goodbye

Hello how is this the microphone is not working I mean the external microphone because I’ve got the cold and the Jack but I think there’s a little piece that should keep on to it and I’ll put it on my table  on the keyboard of a laptop but unfortunately it must have fallen off and I can’t find it but it must be near me somewhere so I don’t understand why I can’t find it but maybe because I’m feeling sad maybe my eyes are not working properly and I should leave it until another time

I was talking to my sister about poetry and it was really interesting she mentioned that her husband have been called for jury service in March but he constantly falls asleep she was wondering how he would manage listening to the lawyers and the judge I will just have to wait to see

New line I wish I wish that we were going away somewhere although when I say we take for letting that I’m on my own now so I should listen to

Thank you very much for suggestions  voice technology. I fit all Boogie Documents although I may need an external microphone especially to the Chromebook as the microphone does not have settings which can be altered it only has the level of the sound produced . … it’s  only a wooden Windows laptop there are more options and settings but even now it says we are having trouble hearing you try and move into a fireplace hole using an external microphone and I my voice sounds quite loud to me so I don’t know why they can’t hear it however I have discovered that I think speak more quickly um this technology seems to prefer it because it doesn’t simply try to type in Word that you say but it tries to make sense of it after work located in a sentence and what its relation to you and then that is something really you mention anything that sounds alright iPhone then it will put iPhone evening you say my phone my sister that will put iPhone my sister quite often I supposed it may be programmed with the most commonly used words or the most modern words um I don’t know how it was very is one was to buy some special software a bit reluctant to spend a lot of money when I don’t know if I still use it but it’s only when it’s working this is very good
It’s scene some surprises about people alone

She was built like a brick shithouse

Ya, born with a silver spoon in her mouth

Her momma was like an old brown mouse

And her pa was just a slimy stuck up louse.

She was built like an old doghouse

On the top, sharp eyed vultures used to roost

Her brother has gone for a Dead Sea cruise

Her sister wants to let all hell break loose.

She was in for life with those smart  sharp spooks

A creepy horror in every nook

Her ma never learned her how to cook

She ain’t never even read a single book.

No aphrodisiac ain’t of much use

When the true Furies are on the loose.

Do what you can to cook thet goose

Ain’t so good to blow your own fuse.

No,those Furies are on the ball

They come looking for us one an’ all.

Keep  face hid and ego small…

What’s thet dark shadow on your wall?

The door was open.I saw her body in the freezer.
I  knelt down and pulled her out gently
She was still conscious.
The day before she read you can avoid washing your jeans for a year if you kill the germs by freezing
I felt guilty.I had thought she was intelligent enough to realise she should have put herself through a wool wash  with Silk and Wool detergent
As she thawed out I admired her  body freely.She has never let me see her whole self before.
Then she came to and said she was going to do a degree at Oxford
What in? I gently asked
Theology, as nobody wants to do it, it’s the easiest way to get in
What a thought.The end of Western civilisation.
Are you sure? Why not do mathematics?
Thanks for the compliment, but no.
I kissed her cold cheeks and proposed
Now we are  married and live in Arnside selling  rock

I never lie,I protested.
But can I believe that? You don’t look so innocent to me
That may be because I am  a hooker.
A truthful hooker
And what are you? A man of virtue paying for a woman.
I’m looking for material for a book.
I thought they were written on paper.
Blimey,I thought I was on the spectrum
No, it’s my sofa bed, so handy for my job
Why not train for something?
Aha, go to University?
Don’t mock me
I see you are no masochist
No man has kissed, that is true
How mean! They might be kinder.
What , in this post modern era
I can’t hear anything
Do you mean anyone?
What do you mean?
I can’t express it in words.
But you seem  so bright.
It’s just like I swallowed  Wikipedia
That is hard to digest
Well,it gives me a chance to learn  by reading it when men are in bed with me
Do they not mind?
It’s my mind!
But it’s in your body
Whereabouts?
That’s  like asking where God is
Make a start by asking where God is not.
He’s not in Britain.That’s not hard to see
But would we recognise him?
I can’t imagine it.
But he can
Is that true?
Would I lie?

If you plan to make love in the night time
If you plan to make love in the day
Have you got medicine near you?
Where is your GNT spray?

How off putting it  is with a lover
If the pain hits you when you have kissed
Grab hold of that spray and  then use it
Under your tongue is the best

I hope it won’t happen tomorrow
For I am getting married at last
What will the bridegroom  be thinking
If I lie down on the floor  and then gasp?

His mother is 90 on Sunday
She’s glad he has got a new wife
I hope I   can  treat her politely
Without sacrificing my life

300 mg of aspirin
Are stashed in my  handbag so white
As well as my  Nokia smartphone
My book and  a candle to light

But God may decide I am ready
To join in his  games up above
If I don’t see you tomorrow
Remember it’s all you  I  have loved

She threw his ashes  off the old bridge in Ponders End at exactly 3.15 p.m by her gold watch with its quartz battery
Thank God, that’s over, she thought  but hell, she saw a police car drawing up
Excuse us,Madam the taller blonde one said carefully
What now? she snarled with fire  on her cheeks that was partly   Boots own brand of blusher Red Glory Creme Blush (£3.99)
The mortuary got the ashes mixed up and your husband is still there in his birthday suit
You mean after I’ve just paid £2,00 pounds to the Co-op Funeral Parlour to cremate him
Just give us the casket back and we  will pay for re-burial.That is the ashes of a murder victim unrelated to you,we believe
As she looked down she could see the casket stuck between 2  huge rotting bags of Flour  from the nearby  antedeluvian Wright’s  Flour Mill by the River when at  the Indistrial Revolution  we began to use water power instead of horse power
She pointed to it her face red and angry with more fury than seemed human or even satanic
The policeman took  out a Warrant on his credit card
We are arresting you for fly tipping in a place of unnatural ugliness
But how did you know where to find me? she whispered fearfully
That’s what they all say, he murmured.
This is where all  the hated relatives of the widow are flung,;in your case it is your husband or so you believed
No, he was not.We never got married legally
We’ll see what we can find, but in any case choking a man to death in A and E is no accident.You should do it at home if you have to
Next time I’ll  do it in the Cardiac Unit, she said wisely
.And I plan to marry a woman as soon as I can.
As they took her away, her purple velvet coat opened  to reveal she was wearing nothing but her silked underwear in light cerulean blue.Make sure your coat has buttons that fasten in future
Oh, I should have listened to Mother.I would  have felt better in a woollen vest especially in jail.
Will they give me some clothes?

A bit late to think about that now, say all of us

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/why-stephen-king-spends-months-and-even-years-writing-opening-sentences/278043/

Extract:

Stephen King: There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It’s tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don’t think conceptually while I work on a first draft — I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.

But there’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.

How can a writer extend an appealing invitation — one that’s difficult, even, to refuse?

We’ve all heard the advice writing teachers give: Open a book in the middle of a dramatic or compelling situation, because right away you engage the reader’s interest. This is what we call a “hook,” and it’s true, to a point. This sentence from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice certainly plunges you into a specific time and place, just as something is happening:

They threw me off the hay truck about noon

I went into the Jesuit Church each day
But I was not there to praise nor there to pray
I hate you,God,I said inside my heart
From this holy place I shall depart.

But God was not made angry by my rage
He stayed quite silent, almost unengaged
So I went there more often and declared
That for his lack of help, he was despised

Then I went to other churches too
Repeating my performance in a few
Unsatisfied and broken by despair
As a pray-er I was  of love bare.

But God reveals his love in other forms
He whispers  while the world is lashed by storms

From today’s Times Newspaper

“Pornhub has more visitors than the BBC, CNN and Amazon sites put together. Those aged 18-34 make up 60 per cent of the site’s users.”

The doctor tells me I’ve  got cancer
It’s not urgent he told me today
There are thousands of people all waiting
Is chemo  on sale at Ebay?

Our shopping list would be longer
What with radiation , the  lasers and knives
But men could lie down in the car park
Leaving the work to  their wives

They give you a  leaflet  on carving
And removing the  moles from your arms
It’s not clear about stopping the bleeding
We might die there and then from alarm

To get more radiation than normal
Walk nude in the sun at midday
It will   help men who  like to be prostrate
But give melanomas  more chance to display

Brexit has caused nervous breakdowns
But stitch yourself up with this wool
Cancer is now the new normal
As the hospitals are  always full

There’s a vacuum inside my fridge freezer
I just cannot open the door
I’ll freeze all my jeans and my knickers
Then the vacuum will be there no more

I put Vaseline  all round the edges
So the door may well slither and glide
I could try hair condioner and hand cream
Or some olive oil I have espied

We’re starving to death in the kitchen
Because we have got weaker hands
Surely there must be a method
For helping the stiff,weak and  blind

I wondered why God does not help us
Then remembered Creation’s no joke
Who made the gazelle and the tiger
And Sodom go up in grey smoke?

I forgot to cook  any dinner
As I  in my notebook did write
Now my husband’s gone off with a sinner
It was. as they say,fight or flight

I don’t mind a fight in the  bedroom
To see who can grab the duvet
A slap or a tickle   is cosy
Afterwards we used to pray

We prayed for an end to our marriage
We prayed that our children would leave
We prayed with the fervour of Satan
We almost got the grace to believe

The oven won’t light and the fridge won’t shut
To think I voted Democrat
The eggs went off and the bacon rhymed
The milkman got here just in time
The freezer is jammed and I need the peas
At least the cat ain’t got no fleas
I always voted for  the Right
To be a human parasite
But now we’ve got a crazy man
Where have I put my copper pan?
I lost the lids and burned the plates
I’m wondering how to  emigrate
But you can’t beat Satan  as he flies
To sites all numbered by his spies
I can’t make the dinner and my wife is ill
Should she stop those yellow pills?
I suppose I’d learn if I were young
I am 95 this Spring
I’m off to buy some ready meals
Otherwise it’s tins of gruel
I can’t make  puddings or even cakes
I fear I’ll make a bad mistake
Women know when they are born
How to put cream in a  horn
They know how to make a sausage roll
Down the hill into the Croal
From Spion Cop we saw it run
Faster than an horizon
Men can’t even grate the cheese
Yet they know just how to please.

Make your arms stronger by hitting a big heavily stuffed doll  called Political Leader ten times an hour.Don’t shout No Brexit

or

Do arm raises with a tin of  beans in each hand.Do not eat the beans first
or

Become a librarian.I know they have shut many  libraries

Even arm raises with no weights can make your muscles stronger

If you have weak hands a fridge with a D type handle is better but they are not made frequently

There are small table top fridges that are lighter so maybe the door is easier to pull open.
If you have someone else living with you they can use the big fridge and put milk etc into the little one for  you/the disabled person

Some food can be kept in a cool place in the kitchen… eggs,milk,butter.

Any other ideas welcome.Do not say: move to Finland  much as I love the Swans of Tuenela anf their families

Disgrace and sorrow
Intellectual distaste
Feeling your own thoughts

Thinking with feeling
Beauty cold or hot  as hell
Freeze or burn with Frost

The road is hidden
The trees are hieroglyphic
I can’t see Others

I am not unique
I know you now as real
But where are you?

The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
Its liquid centre thrown up wild and bright
Enigmatic  like a midday dream

The  pinky edges shift in  sun’s bent beams
Do they convey the aura of the light?
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean

I wonder where my haunted eyes have been
In the forests deeper than the night
Enigmatic  like a midday dream

Schizoid, lacking affect,  a  slit scream
Destroying what is left of love and sight
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean

Here we saw wild primrose by the stream
The castle of the Tudors soft in  blight
Enigmatic  like a midday dream

Bewildered people  kill their own insight
Toss their fears , into the weak to bite
The failing sun as pure as  boiling screams
Enigmatic  are our midnight dreams

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-bolemanherring/my-longoverdue-love-lette_b_1638724.html

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

Dis-Mayed again
Maya culpa,maya culpa,maya maxima culpa
If only the Campbells were coming
Or even Gordon Brown
What May happen
May we know?
Up the Maypole
Here we go round that blasted Bush
I hate those Blairing voices in the night
Oh,Millibank,oh Millibank,Ed and Dave are blanker
How depression bleeds your   Branches
Foolish MPs linger
I hope we’re not coming up Trumps.
Never give in to fresh air
May we complain, about May?About Time

Stan and Mary went in town
To buy Stan a new dressing gown.
But he wanted a woollen one
In March that is not on.

The shops are full of summer clothes
But Stan’s not warm enough for those.
Mary likes to look around
But see how old Stan frowns.

So Mary says,I’ll go online
I’m sure I’ll find some fully lined
Made of wool and acrylic…
Them you can make your pick.

Thank you,Mary,you are kind
despite that brilliant,anxious mind.
I am the best dressed man in town
And soon I’ll have my gown.

Would you like cafe au lait?
I have my pension,I shall pay.
Very nice,dear Mary said…
I’d like a piece of bread.

Won’t you have a slice of cake?
I know it’s not quite what I make.
No,just plain bread,sweet Mary said
She then turned very red.

Mary,you look very hot
Is it healthy in this spot.
The central heating is too high.
She gave a weary sigh.

They drank their coffee and made jokes
About old folk who never spoke…
They bought some fresh fish for Emile..
They alway shop with zeal.
..
When they got home.Stan dialled Dave
Who told him he was very brave
and not to stand near a bus door.
Or he’d fall on the floor.
.
Oh,how I’d like to lie down there
With my mistress Annie fair.
but Mary is at home today
So i’ll just have to pray.

If you’re in pain and can’t have sex,
They say that prayer is second best
Morphine is so hard to get…
and it makes me feel sick.

So tomorrow Mary works
Stan and Annie have their perks
Dave calls round to bath the cat…
How obscene is that?

If you would like your cat washed
Or if your shopping has got squashed
Just dial 99999
The service is divine.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nondiscursive

By Norah Carlin.Copyright

Basic mistrust helps
To forestall  those psychopaths
Politicians

People who curse and swear-
They are easy to notice
Beware the charming

They are greedy pigs
Have grandiose ideas
Is that a surprise?

Trust  must be earned
Let’s  all go  much more slowly
Use uncommon sense

Let’s protect ourselves
Enjoy our days here fully
Before our time comes

For we all must die
Like the flowers in autumn
And the little birds