Noble emotions-shame and guilt

 

two orange tigers sitting beside each other
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Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.

Willard Gaylin

What is a poem?

BasildonHouse2018https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/

 

Extract

“There is at least one kind of utility that a poem can embody: ambiguity. Ambiguity is not what school or society wants to instill. You don’t want an ambiguous answer as to which side of the road you should drive on, or whether or not pilots should put down the flaps before take-off. That said, day-to-day living—unlike sentence-to-sentence reading—is filled with ambiguity: Does she love me enough to marry? Should I fuck him one more time before I dump him?

But such observations still don’t tell us much about what a poem really is. Try crowd-sourcing for an answer. If you search Wikipedia for “poem,” it redirects to “poetry”: “a form of literary art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonoaesthetics, sound symbolism, etc.” Fine English-professor speak, but it belies the origins of the word. “Poem” comes from the Greek poíēma, meaning a “thing made,” and a poet is defined in ancient terms as “a maker of things.” So if a poem is a thing made, what kind of thing is it?

I’ve heard other poets define poems in organic terms: wild animals—natural, untamable, unpredictable, raw. But the metaphor quickly falls apart. Such animals live on their own, utterly unconcerned with the names humans put upon them. In inorganic terms, the poet William Carlos Williams called poems “little machines,” as he treated them as mechanical, human-engineered, and precise. But here too, the metaphor breaks down. A worn-out part on an automobile can be switched out with a nearly identical part and run as it did before. In a poem, a word exchanged for another word (even a close synonym) can alter the entire functioning of the poem.”

Oxford

Gold stone from Cotswold quarries men brought

And built into a way of life for those who bought

Their lives so cheaply.And did not see

The children’s eyes, the ball, the game , the tree

Of life that grew in small backyards and gave all

To those who climbed into its arms

Why should this not be you?

Oh,Eden,I see that you are nearer now

In lowly homes where love is free

Than in the temple, grove,and soft set brow

Of those who worship God in churches built of gold.

Now we can see that this is easy to behold

When sun is setting,and escapes the ashes

Thrown up and floating in the watches

Of the days of voter’e eyes cast up to skies

and , wondering fearful, what will come

when all the secret deals are done.

So take the gold of life and let it fall

Into your children’ s growing souls

And let this Cotswold town and spires

Melt into sunset’s glowing orange fires.

Gods’

I saw some mobile foam coming out of the bathroom.Then I knew

She said, what a tart phone

She sai,d  about thy lines

I have a war in  my bed robe

I got some kosher vitamin D today.So then it might be my far wits are……

I have my own Tablet so all I need is God.

Can we have  more athletics free with our newspaper?

I forgot we need washing but I ironed my soul today ready for the knight

So we bathed in the River Mersey  and oil came free.

I  can’t bare to turn off my phone in town

I have been smart myself at rhymes.

So  we all have cameras,  who looks at the world? Is there any?

My IQ is like infinity… it gets bigger and bigger and suddenly is infinite before coming back to zero from the negative  side.

You say I’m unbalanced.Yet I have smashed the wide hopes of  the Langdale Bites

We are all human.But not Gods. We are Gods’.

Suffering our own sentences

Travelling down these sentences we find
Unknown,unsought, unthought, but always real
A home where we can rest our  fragile minds

The people  dropped,the habits left behind.
The good, the mediocre, what we steal
While travelling with the sentences we find

The hate that frees,the love that too close binds
The heart, the soul, the body, how we feel
For homes where we can rest our  fragile minds

The touch that chills, the distances unkind
Unwished for yet demanding all the soul.
Unravelling are our sentences unblind.

The freezing looks,the glories undermined
Ill timed,ill gotten, ills both new and  old,
Hedge homes where we could rest our  fragile minds

I have never dwelt in realms of gold;
But there are many stories never told.
Suffering our own sentences we find
A  home that welcomes, our more liberal minds.

The future of poetry

2apples1
Image by Katherine

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jun/18/the-future-of-

Extract:

“The simplest and best answer I got at the event in Oxford was “for paying attention”. Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, echoes that phrase. “One of the things poetry gives all of us is a way of developing an attentiveness to life, a way of observing the world, of noticing things and seeing them differently,” she says. A good poem looks closely at the world; does that Martian thing of trying to see it for the first time. Everything else – the emotional charge, the lyrical delight, the intellectual pleasure – is secondary.

The Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes, who teaches poetry at the University of East Anglia, says poems try to capture a reality that is deeper than language. “You’re trying to say: I know what this thing is called,” he says. “It’s called a chair, and that thing is a table. I’ve got this word ‘chair’ and I’ve got this word ‘table’, but there’s something peculiar about this chair and table which using the words chair and table will not actually convey.” Readers, he says, may race through novels because they want to know what happens, but they should look to inhabit poems. “Nobody reads a poem to find out what happens in the last line. They read the poem for the experience of travelling through it.””

Blood tests

The  doctor  took my blood and said
Are you alive or are you dead?
I answered boldly,I don’t  know
See what the tests and samples show

Meantime give me food and drink
I like milk and apples pink
I need protein,I need wine
I  need cigarettes divine

Then the undertaker asked
When he could begin his task
I said I can’t pay in advance
So now I’m  in a deep dark trance

Surely someone else should pay
I was still alive today
But now I wait  enchanted here
Drinking guinness, that black beer

I ate beans and then  they grew
I see one has attacked my shoe
Sausages and steak are meat
I am feeling indiscreet

Now nothing is what anyone can say. 

Postmodernism’s the fashion ne’er manque.
We must study Foucault and his scribes.
Get reason trapped and do not court delay.
You need to find your intellectual tribe.

Where is the goose which laid the golden egg..
Invented meta-talk and fairy tales?
Which narrative is balanced on a peg?
Which philosopher was re-homed by a whale?

Where is the whole truth and nothing but?
Whose the eye which sees reality?
Who‘s the judge who makes the final cut?
Where is the God to  whom we owed fealty?

Now nothing is what anyone can say.
I understand it’s meaningless to pray

Little words

The little  words invented as we loved
Now have no other  speaker but myself.
Lost, unique, the husband, so beloved,
These humorous  words came from our deep, sweet love.
In my tongue , these words no longer live
I  cannot  use  our words, our loving  wealth.
The chosen  words  invented as we loved
Now have no other   listener but myself

If you see what I dream.

As all set out,storms set in,then we all fell out 
if you see what I dream.

I   am mean

You are as truthful as as a chorus of wrongs
 in rites of the Church choir

Don't leave me in the lurch.I'm a liar.

He’s as tense as a mournful frog in a bog in Ireland in wintery discontentll

It's all meant

As far as the wife can throw,I flew.

I shall  sue Sue.

I was flooded as a whole.
My emotions welled up and ran all over me like fairies’ hands..

Like elastic bands

I am honest as the day is wrong.

Give me a song

He was torn in three by tomcats with balls of steel

They will appeal

I have lost a whole stone and still no moss will grow on me.It grew on the stone!

Now I feel so alone

As Gluck would have it, music is heavenly singing by invisible choirs of cats.

He was bats

I sought him here,I sought him there.
I sought him with angelic flair.

But noone catches Tony Blair.

I am as snug as a lapdog in a bog
 with a brick on its head

Can I sleep on your bed?

She was as tender as an apple tart is round.

 and quite sound

As the crow flew,I had to fly as well 
to avoid it escaping me..I leave no crow alone

They usually get stoned but they won't share their drugs

Am I wicked?

He said he’d like to see more of me, so I took my gloves off.

He said he’d like to get married so I asked him, who to?

He said he loved my eyes.I said, I see

He said he’d like to treat me. I said, how?

He said which University did I go to so I said, at Cambridge

we don’t ask questions like that.

He said he went to Oxford.I said, what for?

He said he did P.P.P so I said he should see a doctor.

He said would I like to get married.I said no-one has proposed to me yet.

He knelt down and kissed my feet.I said while you are down there you could cut my toenails.

He said I was cute.I said, I can’t believe it. I’ve never been so insulted in my life

He said, I just can’t say how much I love you.I said, why not?

He said, you seem cheerful
So I apologised

He said, are you Jewish so I said, no but my mother was.

Attend

Langdale_frmBowfell2
attend
/ə
verb
verb: attend; 3rd person present: attends; past tense: attended; past participle: attended; gerund or present participle: attending
  1. 1.
    be present at (an event, meeting, or function).
    “the whole sales force attended the conference”
    synonyms: be present at, be at, be there at, sit in on, take part in; More
    antonyms: miss
    • go regularly to (a school, church, or clinic).
      “all children are required to attend school”
  2. 2.
    deal with.
    “he muttered that he had business to attend to”
    synonyms: deal with, cope with, see to, address, manage, organize, orchestrate, make arrangements for, sort out, handle, take care of, take charge of, take responsibility for, take in hand, take forward, take up, undertake, tackle, give one’s attention to, apply oneself to

    “their father attended to the boy’s education”
    antonyms: neglect
    • give practical help and care to; look after.
      “the severely wounded had two medics to attend to their wounds”
      synonyms: care for, look after, take care of, minister to, administer to, keep an eye on, see to;More
    • pay attention to.
      “Alice hadn’t attended to a word of his sermon”
      synonyms: pay attention, pay heed, be attentive, listen, lend an ear; More
      antonyms: disregard, ignore
  3. 3.
    escort and wait on (a member of royalty or other important person).
    “Her Royal Highness was attended by Mrs Jane Stevens”
    synonyms: escort, accompany, guard, chaperone, squire, convoy, guide, lead, conduct, usher, shepherd, follow, shadow; More
  4. 4.
    occur with or as a result of.
    “people feared that the switch to a peacetime economy would be attended by a severe slump”
    synonyms: be accompanied by, be associated with, be connected with, be linked with, go hand in hand with; More
Origin
Middle English (in the sense ‘apply one’s mind or energies to’): from Old French atendre, from Latin attendere, from ad- ‘to’ + tendere ‘stretch’.

To understand

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

Extract

Old English understandan “comprehend, grasp the idea of,” probably literally “stand in the midst of,” from under + standan “to stand” (see stytand (v.)). If this is the meaning, the under is not the usual word meaning “beneath,” but from Old English under, from PIE *nter- “between, among” (source also of Sanskrit antar “among, between,” Latin inter “between, among,” Greek entera “intestines;” see inter-). Related: Understood; understanding.

That is the suggestion in Barnhart, but other sources regard the “among, between, before, in the presence of” sense of Old English prefix and preposition under as other meanings of the same word. “Among” seems to be the sense in many Old English compounds that resemble understand, such as underniman“to receive,” undersecan “examine, investigate, scrutinize” (literally “underseek”), underðencan“consider, change one’s mind,” underginnan “to begin.” It also seems to be the sense still in expressions such as under such circumstances.

A stranger meeting

A stranger, meeting us, who shares a glance
A moment almost gone before it’s here,
Trusts the understanding ,trusts balance

A separation crossed by happy chance
Indicating how we  may now  bear
A stranger meeting, one who shares a glance

Strangers in a sense, but now we dance
The pattern is  alive whoever’s where
Trusts the standing,moving keeps  balance

Is this prearranged or is it chance?
All that’s human lives in how we care
For strangers meeting us  and how we glance

Shall our human dignity advance?
Shall we look with kindness, shall we stare?
Trust the changing  mood, the deep  balance

Shall we  look again, how  do we dare
To see the stranger who is standing there?
A stranger meeting us who shares a glance
Trusts the understanding , trusts the stance

When true love’s gone

When true love’s gone and doom hangs over head

When life runs like a river to the sea

Then shall I take new lovers to my bed?

And with their carnal touch consoled be?

When my love lies,so breaks my tender heart.

When life seems grey and rocks bestrew my path.

Then, shall I my life of evil start?

And on the world shall I bestow my wrath?

When true love lies and wrecks all loyalty.

When puzzlement makes all my world seem mad.

Then I shall upend causality

And let myself do deeds which make me glad.

For I have love’s sweet child inside my soul

And I shall tend her till at last she’s whole

The invocation of the spiritual

,” Prayer,Auden wrote, “is to pay attention or, shall we say, to ‘listen’ to someone or something other than oneself. Whenever a human so concentrates his/her attention—be it on a landscape, or a poem or a geometrical problem or an idol or the True God—that s/he completely forgets his/her own ego and desires in listening to what the other has to say to him, she/he is praying.” This may seem a denatured idea of prayer, but Auden took it seriously, and seems to have prayed in exactly this sense”

I sent this article to a few friends.One sent  back an elegant and beautiful  description of his view of the world and what it has within it though  being an atheist he may not pray in the [old fashioned] Christian sense.He may pray in the above sense but to him  it’s not prayer it is being alive and experiencing that

Another lapsed Catholic sent a short note saying  she wasn’t interested in God
She didn’t ask me what it meant to me or why it had seemed interesting enough to send to her.She may like me have suffered the utter boredom of a convent school

Are some of us living in a complete and enclosed world so we don’t care what interests  others? And we feel safe.After all, the boredom of the Rosary nearly drove some of us insane.That was no prayer that was rubbish to me.Yet some people have found it a help in times of trouble/Maybe just feeling the beads is nice?

I suppose in Auden’s piece he wants to be involved in humankind and the world of nature, the Universe of some aspect of that.And he also liked the invocation of the  spiritual by means of rites and rituals which has been part of our history from the start……

A bit like music or an art show….?

Pay attention

Pay attention to the feeling heart
Do not crush yourself   before you start
What seems mad and stupid may be wise
A new world may live just beyond our eyes
Revealed by  pen,constructed as  is Art

Be uncertain, like Rene Descartes
Live through moments unseen on the chart
 Self deception can be caught,  surprised
Pay attention

We learn to see what is ,despite the dark
Yet we need  our friends when truth’s too stark
From hesitation ,truth at last arrives
Never total, never undisguised
A whale may seem at times a deadly shark
Pay attention

What kind,wise and lovely people in my local hospital

I have to say, you would never know the NHS was struggling if you visited the gynacology department or indeed other ones  in our rebuilt hospital.
To be with such helpful people is a true balm in these days when the world is  so troubled and politicians don’t seem very wise or  determined to help  the poor. the struggling or the sick nor  try bring a better world  for our children and those around the world.
We are very fortunate, we don’t alwaysphoto01891ys realise that

As spiders spin

A needle, pen or life itself  have points
To sew, to write, to beautify or haunt.
Our hands and minds, creative in intent
Give our lives their  point, their way. their bent.

The long hands of the clock  to numbers guide
The  fingers on the the gun can life deride.
The hand of fate without our will can point
The demons in the dream will rudely taunt.

Our lips may tighten when we are enraged
When others in our lives direct our page
Our words are stuck, we cannot let them out
So we never learn the truth ” about”

Fingers pull the trigger on the gun
Who will say enough as spiders spin?

Which half ?

Melania Trump is asking Germany which half of Donald they want.Apparently he’s split.But not down the middle.

A Rabbi  says the Jesus prayer in Pittsburgh.What? The Pope is saying Kaddish in Tel Aviv… when  is the Second Coming?
After the First.

I’ve got pre-traumatic stress.I’m going to die.

Why don’t we have two hearts? One sweet and one  beat

The police want me to question them. Why?

I’m  a spy but for whom?

I can’t write any more.It’s the Apocalypse when I can spell  lapse.

Curtains down,

I had never seen the light before

 

Turn back, live again, he  said to me
Do not struggle  with the darkness anymore
One more move might give  hate victory

We are each connected to that tree
The sunlit top, the roots hid in earth’s floor
Come back, start again, he asked of me

While we live, we’ll live with dignity
Not scrabbling for the gold in blood and gore
One more thought might give  hate victory

The kindness of the golden light was  clear
And left an image in my mind’s deep core
Come back with new life, he asked of me

Do not wonder  now why you are here
We’re here to live and living shall restore
What  our suffering self  has found so dear

I had never seen the light before
Only Christ the tyger with his roar
Come back,  live  through darkness, he  told me
Feel the blackness,feel love's victory

I am only happy when you’re sad

It seems I can’t feel good unless you’re bad
We have to   see things clear, to draw a line
I am only happy when you’re sad

You’re not me, so ,oh,I’m deeply glad
I don’t want any grey in my domain
It seems I  don’t feel good unless you’re bad

If there’s sin  and evil we applaud
You’re  the Jew, so bear the tragic stain
I am only happy when you’re sad

Jesus is called Shepherd and Our Lord
I forget he was a Jew again, again.
It seems I can’t feel good unless God’s bad

You’re my shadow I will kill your kind
Then I can be in charge of the  whole world
I am only happy when I’m blind

Why can’t we use our own hearts and our  minds
To  simplistic theories,foolish, undermine
It seems I can’t feel good unless you’re bad
I am  joyful when  I drive you mad

 

The human mind creates both good and ill

The human mind creates both good and ill
A chimpanzee is harmless, unlike man
Where is  our acceptance and good will?

The hatred of the other lives on stilln.
We see  both plots and evil where we ca
The human mind creates both good and ill

By word  and action, evil is instilled
Do we need  more laws  and legal bans?
Where is  our acceptance and good will?

The scapegoat dies  for our sins, pays our bill.
The massacres and pogroms ,oh  they’re grand!
The human mind creates both good and ill

As Jesus walked up Calvary, that hill
His  burden heavy, did we understand?
Where is  real acceptance, where good will?

Comes the  legal killer ,head in hand
The flesh and skin and bone  he nowl demands.
The human  heart  should  shudder,  feel the ill
Would toleration  and acceptance  kill?

 

 

The tragedy of Jesus for the Jews

architecture black and white brighton building
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/

EXTRACT

The Church itself functioned as the centrifuge of anti-Semitism from the time it rebelled against its mother religion until the middle of the 20th century. As Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, has observed, Europe has added to the global lexicon of bigotry such terms as Inquisition, blood libel, auto‑da‑fé, ghetto, pogrom, and Holocaust. Europe has blamed the Jews for an encyclopedia of sins. The Church blamed the Jews for killing Jesus; Voltaire blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity. In the febrile minds of anti-Semites, Jews were usurers and well-poisoners and spreaders of disease. Jews were the creators of both communism and capitalism; they were clannish but also cosmopolitan; cowardly and warmongering; self-righteous moralists and defilers of culture. Ideologues and demagogues of many permutations have understood the Jews to be a singularly malevolent force standing between the world and its perfection.

Despite this history of sorrow, Jews spent long periods living unmolested in Europe. And even amid the expulsions and persecutions and pogroms, Jewish culture prospered. Rabbis and sages produced texts and wrote liturgical poems that are still used today. Emancipation and enlightenment opened the broader culture to Jews, who came to prominence in politics, philosophy, the arts, and science—Chagall and Kafka, Einstein and Freud, Lévi-Strauss and Durkheim. An entire civilization flourished in Yiddish.

Hitler destroyed most everything. But the story Europeans tell themselves—or told themselves, until the proof became too obvious to ignore—is that Judenhass, the hatred of Jews, ended when Berlin fell 70 years ago.

Events of the past 15 years suggest otherwise.

Poems on hard times

dsc00076https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/04/your-favorite-poems-on-hard-times/523191/

 

Extract

 

 

I could never take Charles Bukowski seriously. His books always seemed to be props for a certain type of guy I was endlessly attracted to. These guys were never into Wallace Stevens, say, or Lucille Clifton, just Bukowski. So Bukowski ended up being shorthand for pretentious guys who wanted to seem cool, and edgy, and arty.

Fast forward a few years: I’m done with those guys, living a life I hadn’t planned on—my choice, yes, but still difficult. I woke up this morning wondering how to keep going today with my responsibilities, with the to-dos, with all the work of a life that feels at this moment so constricted. I opened YouTube and “The Laughing Heart” appeared as a suggestion. I’m not sure why I clicked on it, but I did. It was the poem I needed—the poem that told me why and how to be today.

The opening lines:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.

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KODAK Digital Still Camera img_20181029_203426447

Quatrain for Robin Hood

When Robin Hood hides in our wood
I shall not turn him out
I'll let his merry gentlemen
Hang all their bows about.

So when a swaggering M.P.
Comes riding by alone
The arrows of the hidden host
Will ring against the stones.

The horse rears up,the man looks round
To see what's caused the stir
And what he sees amidst the trees
Is green men everywhere

Let him complain to Sheriffs all.
The green men will be gone.
When soldiers come to hunt them out
They've vanished every one.

The forests of England are the home
Of rabbit,deer and game.
The green men live their natural life
And we should do the same.

let us all take to the greenwood life
And feel the strength of trees
They do not change at every poll,
Nor do just what they please.

In Nature all is linked to one
And one to all extends.
If we could change our cut throat ways
Maybe all could be friends.

The hearts and souls of all of us,
Form a great human wood.
So let the love we feel be shared,
And heard for the common good.

If everyone is given their place
Then Robin could go home
His men would not be in my wood,
And M.P.'s could safely roam.

Let us all sing,"Robin for King,"
"We all want Robin Hood."
"He took the money from the rich
To be spent for the common good.

Copyright © Katherine Braithwaite | 

A beam of light

A beam of light passed through my eyes
And showed to me a world disguised
So near,yet far,we do not see,
Unless by gift of grace redeemed.
That world is full of peace and calm
Its colors mingle,like a balm.
In such a moment all thought dies,
Revealing Love which underlies.
Colors caress my naked eyes.
Sunlight blesses new designs.
I stand enthralled,and do not wish
For one delight,other than this.
My breath slows down, and filled with joy,
I rove my eyes with bliss to toy.
Everything is just itself.
This is now my living wealth.
Beneath the noise of city traffic,
This mellow joy,love soporific,
This depth and peace, is always near
When we choose Love and turn from fear

Copyright © 

Love too great

Love too great can drown the one adored.
As if Jove sent  tsunami as a gift
Overwhelming all her personal choice.

Little offerings gentle and deserved
Will  not frighten either be too swift
Love too great can drown the one adored.

Speaking kindly as we find our  voice
Not shouting love, when we ought to desist
Overwhelming other’s personal choice.

At other  times a lover’s been devoured
By that selfishness, we’re not impressed
Love too great can drown the one adored.

God alone can speak in such a voice
By his truth, all other is expressed
Overwhelming, merciful and right

Eros, selfish, sacred, who resists?
Keep your love in bounds, may it be blessed
Love too great can drown the one adored.
Overwhelming all their personal, unique worth

Copyright © 
 

He whom once I loved

He whom once I loved I now do hate
His words and actions shared a harsh disdain
Refusing to allow this bitter fate
My boundaries now exclude his bleak terrain.
To win me, he displayed a tender care;
with courtesy and flattery he disarmed.
Then when my heart was opened up and bare.
he suddenly removed his wondrous charm.
His harshness ,rigid mind and steely heart
Showed him a terrorist in my own sweet lands;
For, suddenly, our love he broke apart
And empty was my once outstretched hand.
Beware of charm and love bestowed too soon
Or you may likewise suffer dread and doomCopyright 

And cultivate my hatred with my tears

Shall I give home to grievance and  to woe

And cultivate my hatred with my tears?

Shall I remember  carefully each blow,

And add this sorrow to my anxious fear?

 

I  thought by hating you I would have peace

And surely I had reason without doubt.

Yet  rumination  gave me no  release..

For wisdom and compassion it did flout

 

I remembered then  past love and  shared sweet words

I gave  them freedom in my anguished heart.

I did it for your sake, yet then occurred

A sweetness, joy and gladness in all parts.

 

To  forgive,repent and  let go of such grief

Helps us more than hatred’s legal brief

In my dreams he is alive again

The face that was familiar is no more
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again
If ,by a chance, his life could be restored
It would affect me like the hidden chord
Which played, my   own life  force would   go.
That one must live and one must die is plain
The face that was familiar is no more.
Yet in my dreams ,he is alive again

Copyright © Katherine Braithwaite | 2015

She loved her adverb more than me

My wife has left me for an adverb.
I don't know which one it is!
Is it slowly,quickly, nearly?
Life should not be like a quiz.

She told me that she "nearly" loved me,
When "dearly" was what I had hoped.
Life is full of lost illusions...
How do we 'reaved lovers cope

I think I should have kept it secret,
For now I sit and sadly grieve.
Do you think my wife is cruel?
What a strange excuse to leave!

Would she leave me for a pronoun?
Would she leave for a full stop?
Would I leave you for a quote mark?
Would I fall down in a black dot?

Come back,darling for I love you.
I have learned I must take care.
I will go for grammar lessons.
I am sure I can learn flair!

We can write a poem together,
You can choose the topic,dear.
I will hold my pen and write for
They say true love drives out fear.

Did I fear her? Did I love her?
Was she worthy of my heart?
Did she dislike my hairy nostrils?
Was that why we had to part?

Come back Mary,come back Mavis.
Come back Sunny, come back Sue
Without my wife I feel so lonely.
What is a left man to do?

Shall I vote for love or money?
Shall I throw my self away?
Shall I get a new agenda?
Will a new life start today?

Come back Miriam,come back Sarah!
Where have all the women gone?
Come back Rivka with your grammar.
I can feed you a cheese scone.

I work hard and I can cook.
I put fresh linen on the bed.
I can pay my bills in full.
But without my Love,my heart is dead

 

Reverberations

Like a piece of ground where bombs go off repeatedly,
my inner landscape is perpetually marked
by these explosions of sorrow,
made all the worse
by the lack of a listening ear,
a warm open heart
or an outstrerched hand.

I have constructed a map
but it's incomplete,by its nature;
so even now,I might stumble into an old hole
or a new one,created
by reverberations underground;
the noise like distant music,
a  constant drumbeat.

We do not dance
I might call it the Liturgy of Loss,
a dance to the music of rhyme;
Patterns abd shapes hold the feelings
and express them.The shape of these forms
is a container for the grief.

In this way,I indicate
that life will go on;I hear the healing music
and sing to its melodies
like a mermaid on the edge of the sea in winter
when the water is cold and green like his eyes,
and the rocks are hard like large fists.

Nature can be a s ymbol for such emotion
we cannot walk without a tear in ech eye
and a softening of our hearts
as tenderly we touch the world
and are touched in turn by each other.

Stretch out your hand to meet mine.
We can hold each other better
than each can hold theirself.
Like in sex, the meaning is not the climax
but the giving and being given;
receiving and being received.
The sacredness of the erotic needs no explanation
to a gardener or a fisherman
but may need it for the information saturated,postmodern
who dwell in the fascist virtual reality
we call life on earth today

Copyright © Katherine Braithwaite | 

When life seems grey

When true love’s gone and doom hangs over head

When life runs like a river to the sea

Then shall I take new lovers to my bed?

And with their carnal touch consoled be?

When my love lies,so breaks my tender heart.

When life seems grey and rocks bestrew my path.

Then, shall I my life of evil start?

And on the world shall I bestow my wrath?

When true love lies and wrecks all loyalty.

When puzzlement makes all my world seem mad.

Then I shall upend causality

And let myself do deeds which make me glad.

For I have love’s sweet child inside my soul

And I shall tend her till at last she’s whole

 

Watercolor love

Like watercolor pictures left out in the rain
Our colors have mingled,yet the originals still remain.
Two watercolor paintings without frames,
Became one picture over time,
Yet two of us still there.
Our colors blended naturally,
Now all the hues are shared.
I love your colors intermixed with mine:
Together they have made a new design.
A Watercolor picture painted by the rain,
We may go, but our Watercolor Love will still remain

Copyright