God is not a verb or noun
God is not a name
God is not a colour
God is not a form
God is not a posh white man
God is not a shape
God is what he says he is
As the prophets warn
God is the whole universe
We destroy and maim
God’s more fierce than polar bears
God cannot be tame
God may be invisible
But not blind nor insane
God may be a fire
With ever glowing flames
God may speak in thunder
God whispers to the lame.
Where is he in humans?
How is he portrayed?
He’s not inside a mirror
His image is his name
Oh,I can’t be an atheist any more.
The hand upon my tiller
Come back to me, my sweetheart
Don’t leave me all alone.
Come back to me, my darling
I can’t believe you’ ve gone.
I’m crying ‘cos I’m feeling blue again.
I’m crying’cos I’m falling like a stone.
Oh, let me tempt you with my beauty
And my voice forever young.
Let me tempt you with my spirit
My laughter and my songs.
I’m crying ‘cos I never did you wrong.
I’m crying ‘cos with you I still belong.
I thought maybe I’d follow,
To see where you have gone
But there’s a hand upon this tiller
That is not mine alone.
I’m crying ‘cos I wrote this old blue song.
I’m crying ‘cos I’ve been lonely for too long.
The hand upon my tiller
The mystery of the dark
The unknown one who lives in me
And sings like a skylark.
I’m singing ‘cos I wrote you a new song.
I’m singing ‘cos the cat ain’t got my tongue
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But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”
Sometimes when bereft I’d love a snail
Though it might wet my bed with silvery trails
Would snails be lonely living in my house?
Shall I be but fit to love one louse?
I hugged a rowan tree but now it’s dead
The council said they’ll give me oak instead
It stood upon the pavement by the gate
But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”
I wonder if self massage’s the thing
Some perfumed lotion stolen on the wing.
I stroked my arms with Cream E45
Now they say I’m not allowed to drive!
I was sad but now I am at peace
All I needed was some eggs in grease.
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A man whose face was smiling in repose
A man whose face was smiling in repose
His eyes gleamed with the lustre of a gem
He never said too much but had his woes
Carried with a good will, and great aplomb
Like the lights where people cross the road
He had a face that smiled in kindness sweet
He never said too much, he hid his woes
Despite his age he still had both his feet
Like a poem has metre,has a beat
Like the lights where people cross the road
Signals make us sensible when fleet
He never said but knew how gnosis grows
His company is kind and never awes
As a poem has metre,has a beat
He cannot tolerate my jangled flaws
Symbols that insinuate deceit
He never entered College can he read?
His company is kind,no stasis glares
Never would he plead for my defeat
He cannot bring his custom to my flaws.
And so he is an instrument quite rare.
Who will not snoop nor wander with wide ears
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Alive but why?
Photo by Katherine
Discharge notes:
Alive but cause unknown
A good talk cured this patient.Sent home with CD
Alive or a good actress.
Alive despite treatment.
Alive though humourless
Died laughing,cause unfound.Maybe doctors’s face triggered fit
Alive after eating the hospital food for a week.Sent home to lower risk
Said pain has moved to the third level.Sent to the Tower by lift
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As burn his lies
The sleeveless coat is wet and so am I
What made me buy such foolish,fashion garb?
Rain struck like sad lizards with bad eyes
From their poisoned blood some women die
Life in third world countries is damned hard
The sleeveless coat is wet, oh foolish I
But with the fire as hot as a Trump lie
My clothes have dried and I send my regards
Though rain fell like old lizards with bad eyes
The Walk In Centre is a blessing undenied
From my sofa I can watch the cars
The fire is warming me as burn Trump’s lies
I wonder if the doctors may be spies
Yet nothing I reported needs a guard
As rain fell like wild lizards bloodied eyes
If you dislike this, you may discard
And, on your mobile phone, block me,your bard
The sleeveless coat is wet and so am I
Rain flayed like hot lizards with bad eyes
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What is a pantoum poem?
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/pantoum-poetic-form
PostedSeptember 20, 2004 |
TypePoetic Terms/Forms |
The pantoum originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, typically made up of two rhyming couplets that were recited or sung. However, as the pantoum spread, and Western writers altered and adapted the form, the importance of rhyming and brevity diminished. The modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.
The pantoum was especially popular with French and British writers in the nineteenth-century, including Charles Baudelaire and Victor Hugo, who is credited with introducing the form to European writers. The pantoum gained popularity among contemporary American writers such as Anne Waldman and Donald Justice after John Ashbery published the form in his 1956 book, Some Trees.
A good example of the pantoum is Carolyn Kizer’s “Parent’s Pantoum,” the first three stanzas of which are excerpted here:
Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses
More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.
They moan about their aging more than we do,
A somber group—why don’t they brighten up?
Though they say they admire our youthful spontaneity
They beg us to be dignified like them
One exciting aspect of the pantoum is its subtle shifts in meaning that can occur as repeated phrases are revised with different punctuation and thereby given a new context
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Medical humour
My patient announced she had good news … and bad. “The medicine for my earache worked,” she said. “What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“It tasted awful.”
Since she was feeling better, I didn’t have the heart to tell her they’re called eardrops for a reason. —Murray Grossan, MD, founder of the Grossan Institute, Los Angeles
Find out what else you doctor’s really thinking but won’t say to your face.
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The character
What is that character on the blackboard?
t’s the headmaster trodden to death
No, it’s a number.
I think it’s a Greek letter
It’s just in your imagination
I can’t see anything at all.
What blackboard?
What is a blackboard?
How out of date
Throw it away.
Him not it
What a character he was.
Metaphorically speaking
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Outside in
The child too shy to join a little group
Or shamed by her old clothing and her shoes
The one who feels they don’t fit in or match
The one who suffered early from the blues
The barren wife, no virgin yet unused
The girl so clever yet she was well bruised
The middle age of suffering ends and views
The loneliness of age with none amused
The man too nervous to make any move
The man who cannot pass yet cannot love
The aging figure hopelessly bemused
The sperm still leaping,never to be used.
Some are in and others are outside
How few stayed with Jesus as he cried!
If we were more like him we would now mix
With the people who fall through the cracks.
A hint of suffering in the edge of eye
A hint of sadness by the mouth denied
A hint of being tired of one’s own life
A hint that maybe someone wants to die
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Etymology of “character”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/
“The meaning of Greek kharakter was extended in Hellenistic times by metaphor to “a defining quality, individual feature.” In English, the meaning “sum of qualities that define a person or thing and distinguish it from another” is from 1640s. That of “moral qualities assigned to a person by repute” is from 1712.”
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Mystery
I am a mystery mostly to myself
Others see my acts better than I can
And they see my face with its expressions
Again I see just the reflection in their face
So maybe we could ask, yet I feel afraid
As if I might see the head of the Gorgon
Or you might see me like that
You might say wounding words
Why do I fear that?
Mostly people don’t look at us so much as we fear and hope
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Character
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/character
character noun
B1 [ C or U ] the particular combination of qualities in a person or placethat makes them different from others:
Politeness is traditionally part of the British character.
It’s not in his character to be (= he is not usually) jealous.
[ U ] the quality of being determined and able to deal with difficult nsituations:
She has such strength of character.
More examples
- The area where I grew up has been all modernized and has lost all its oldcharacter.
- It’s very tasteful, their house, but I can’t help thinking it lacks a little character.
- Closing the factory would irrevocably alter the character of the local communityfor the worse.
- There’s a marked contrast between his character and hers.
- The way he drives says a lot about his character.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
character noun (PERSON)
C2 [C] a person, especially when you are describing a particular quality that they have:
C1 [C] informal someone whose behaviour is different from most people’s, especially in a way that is interesting or funny:
More examples
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
(Definition of “character” from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
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At first it seems like summer
At first it seemed like summer once again
When cats curled up on cushions drowse and dream
Yet second seeing finds the sun estranged
Makes autumn bring out ancient colouring schemes
The world, intense, is full of new born dawns
At first it seems like summer still remains
We love the greeny grass of ancient lawns
Yet second seeing learns the sun’s disdain
While cats curled up on cushions drowse and dream
While little children play with whip and ball
Then autumn brings out ancient coloured schemes
As we begin to view the full filled Fall
So older people’s minds weave new and lost
And cats curled up on cushions drowse and dream
We notice how the sun has burned the grass
While autumn paints its ancient coloured themes
Round the wheel turns at a steady pace
Yet it seemed like summer had remained
Nature does not enter any race
Yet second seeing finds the sun estranged
In my end is origin and growth
For the racing hare and weary sloth
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God
If God knows everything, why should we tell our sins to a priest?
God must be stupid if he spends all day watching me or you or anyone.I mean he watched Hitler and what good did that do?
God must be cruel otherwise he would never have created human beings who kill animals,birds.trees and each other.I mean,why?
If God know everything, we might be just a tiny part of that.We are like flies buzzing round his kitchen.One day he will buy some flyspray.
Well, not buy it!
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The voice of God
“When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, “Why god? Why me?” and the thundering voice of God answered, There’s just something about you that pisses me off.”― Stephen King, Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay
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Poetry and history
http://www.warscapes.com/poetry/poem-history
“Brenda Marie Osbey’s long poem, “History,” from which we have published an excerpt here, comes from her recent collection History and Other Poems (Time Being Books 2012). The subject of these poems is colonialism, the slave trade, but also, the telling of history itself. We have asked Brenda Marie Osbey to discuss the relation of poetry to history, and to discuss the relation of history to the literary symbol, and we have transcribed this discussion below:
Noam Scheindlin: Your poems engage with a long tradition of the poet as historian. Your poems also seem to manifest something of the impersonal thrust of history: the disembodied voices, snatches of songs, unattributed quotations could be understood to perform the way history creates subjects. But there is of more than this: there is a counter-thrust; an opposition not just to the way things happened—but to the way-things-are-told. How do you understand the function / phenomenon of poetry in relation to that of “history?” Can a poem be history?
Brenda Marie Osbey: There is a longer tradition of the poet-as-historian than we readily admit. Isn’t history always the way/s in which things are told, who does the telling and on what authority? Antar ibn Shaddad, the Black Raven of Saudi Arabia, wrote that three things define man: “to make love, to make war, to make verse.” Long before his 6th century epic of war and love, the Gabon Death Rite Suites and hunting poems were composed, and the Khoikhoi lyric poems on the nature of the universe, all of which tell such a great deal about ancient sub-Saharan African social and political life, religion, mythology and warfare. The teachings of Lao-Tsu come to us in verse. Much of the accepted history of Western antiquity comes to us from Homer. And, of course, the Nahuatl philosopher-poet-king and master craftsman Nezahualcoyotl recorded in poems and songs much of what we’ve come to understand about life in the pre-Columbian Americas. Indeed, much if not most of what we know (or claim to know) about the ancient worlds of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, we know through poetry anyway. What ancient societies can we claim to know that didn’t have generations of peripatetic bards carrying news and history in some combination of song, lyric and narrative poem? More recently, so much of what we’ve come to understand about the experience of the Middle Passage we know from Robert Hayden’s brilliant narrative poem of that title. In the words of the late Audre Lorde, poetry is not a luxury. Literary critic Deborah McDowell writes passionately about “the myths, the fables, the abridgements, the approximations, and the outright lies that masquerade” in the name of history. This presumed divide between history and poetry really is a relatively recent one, and one that seems to underscore the recent need to segregate intellectual and creative work into neat and exclusive categories. Hence, the notion of history as the serious business of historians and, more and more, of journalists, and of poetry as an art form concerned primarily with personal identity and craft, precious, interesting perhaps, but signifying nothing. My own practice has always been to think of poetry first, foremost and always as a way of engaging and interacting in and with the world.”
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Waiting
Waiting for a sign
Shall I see or hear
Where is the design?
Why do I shed tears.
How can I bear pain
Alone and paralysed
Sitting in the rain
Tears I should have cried.
Why do I hide here?
Why do I feel shame?
God I do not fear
Bless that unnamed Name.
Dissolve me into earth
Let me fertilise
Who decides our worth?
When shall love arise?
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A sentence or two
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/03/first-you-write-sentence-joe-moran-review
“In the first page of this book, Joe Moran quotes Gustave Flaubert’s claim (in a letter to his lover, Louise Colet) that his mind is always “itching” with sentences. Flaubert is Moran’s natural literary authority, because for him literature was style, and style came down to the shape and wording of sentences. Later interpreters might read Madame Bovary as an anatomy of sexual hypocrisy or class conflict or the pains of bourgeois marriage, but what the novelist really cared about were its sentences – their rhythm, their wit, their beauty.
Moran shares Flaubert’s values. His book recommends the pleasures of the well-made sentence, to writers and readers. For both, the sentence is the essential unit of expression. Moran remembers the Struldbruggs, the cursed immortals in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, who as they age lose even the solace of reading, “because their Memory will not serve to carry them from the Beginning of a Sentence to the End”. A sentence is what you hold in your head, whether it be Ernest Hemingway or Marcel Proust. A sentence is where you make sense of the world.”
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Short of friends?
“Or, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth put it more succinctly: “If you can’t find anything good to say about anyone, come sit next to me.””
“Lack of friends can be a result of reading signals incorrectly. Many people think other people don’t like them, so they don’t like them in return and thus it goes on and on and before you know it, you hate that person, before you’ve even spoken to them. What I’m about to say sounds tremendously trite, like something you’d find printed on a tea towel in a seaside shop selling awful scented candles, but smiling at someone can be the first step to friendship. It can make someone warm to you, make them like you, because they think you like them.
Friendship favours the brave. Those who aren’t afraid to smile or put a hand out first.”
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Will it sell?
I’m far too old to write a villanelle
A sonnet or a roundeau or free verse
Besides I know my poetry won’t sell
I have my life and living now to tell
But maybe you would like it better terse
I’m far too kind to write a villanelle
I need another life time just to mull.
How I can avoid the writers’ curse?
I suspect my sonnets just won’t sell
Is the mind complete, might it be full?
I’d hate to have to write when in my hearse
I’m far too daft to write a villanelle
Get the knitting needles and some wool
I feel as if my brain is going to burst
Writing sonnets when they never sell
Yet writing of all options is least worst
Acting like a midwife or a nurse.
Am I too grey to write a villanelle?
Can I be sure my poetry will not sell?
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Why not eat in?
1.
Soup of the fray
Jellied heels
Vice on toast
Roman numerals in ice
Mixed leftover vegetables with free green mould
2.
Grass green chicken with chips and baked cream
Beef in butter with red eyed bean in potatoes
Curried toad with pasta and wholemeal bread
Macaroni , fleas and sauce with home made dread.
3.
Diabetic ice cream and insulin
Gooseberry tarts with insulted maidens
Custard creams with vengeance of fruit over-ripe but not rusty
Very rude blue cheese and no biscuits either
And finally
make your own pudding from anything in the fridge,except sausages [raw]
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Affect
“Those sentimental radio hits, with their artificial naivete and empty crudities, are the pitiful remains and the maximum that people will tolerate by way of mental effort; it’s a ghastly desolation and impoverishmment. By contrast, we can be very glad when something affects us deeply, and regard the accompanying pains as an enrichment.”
― Letters and Papers from Prison
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A moment
How white and blue together recollect us to the summer sky and the imagined swallows darting in exquisite geometry under the great domed space of the heavens, like the Basilica in Constantinople containing and giving space. And how you held me for a moment that was infinite and then you were gone like an angel fearing enchantment into some finite boundaried world
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What to write about
https://thinkwritten.com/poetry-prompts/
My ideas
How language can never fully describe the world
The
Here are a few from the link
1.The Untouchable: Something that will always be out of reach
2. 7 Days, 7 Lines: Write a poem where each line/sentence is about each day of last week
3. Grandma’s Kitchen: Focus on a single memory, or describe what you might imagine the typical grandmother’s kitchen to be like
4. Taste the Rainbow: What does your favorite color taste like?
5. Misfits: How it feels when you don’t belong in a group of others.
6. Stranger Conversations: Start the first line of your poem with a word or phrase from a recent passing conversation between you and someone you don’t know.
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Robert Louis Stevenson
https://www.bartleby.com/360/1/185.html
| Poems of Home: V. The Home |
| The House Beautiful |
| Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) |
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Grace
Deferential, I Eternity await Submit to your grace In my patient state. None but God can judge; None have his pure gaze. Write me not your wish. Tempt me not with praise. Timeless as the heavens Eternity is now Mindful of this lesson Grace will show me how
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Poetry and music
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/07/cerys-matthews-poetry-and-music-closely-think
“The Welsh word “cerdd” can be translated as either “verse” or “music”. It covers both meanings, because, as we know from history, when the great bards were performing their poetry it would be accompanied by music. The two were always intertwined and music, poetry, spoken word and performance have been a part of our society for centuries. The festivals called “eisteddfod” combine literature, music and poetry. These cultural competitions were not just for the rich or educated, but were held in pubs and other meeting places and brought everyone together. They are part of an oral tradition entrenched in Welsh society as it is in many other cultures, as diverse as the Somali tradition of oral storytelling or praise poetry in India and Pakistan.”
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How to look
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
― Letters and Papers from Prison
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Emile sweeps the streets
Mary was making her supper.She put a pan of chickpea dahl onto the stove
Fortunately the heat was low
Emile decided he must watch the pan as Mary had burned eight in the last three years
He wondered what to do if it began to smell odd.
I suppose I could bite Mary’s ankle ,he thought.But she might kick me.He decided to ring 999
Hello, my mother has set a pan on fire and I have burned my foot.Can you send Dave please.
You have a strange accent.Where are you from?
I’m Albanian ,he boasted
So is your mother Albanian?
No, it was my father and we don’t know his name.
Well, it sounds suspicious.Are you an illegal immigrant?
No,it was all legal.Except they weren’t married and as mother is English I believe I have the right to stay
Oh,I wouldn’t be too sure of that.When Jesus applied for asylum they sent him straight back.
Where to?
Wherever his father lived.
So that’s why we never saw him again!
I can’t keep talking like this.I’ll send an ambulance.
OK, said Emile.
Dave the paramedic ran in wearing a trench coat and trainers.
What’s happened?
Mary has left this pan on.She’s writing again
Well, it seems she has also left some bacon cooking.Good thing she has you , Emile.
Mary walked in
What’s happened?
They are threatening to deport me to Albania,Emile purred.I told them my father was from there.
Well, it is possible,Mary agreed.But they can’t prove it
Let’s hope Emile is not made to wear a yellow star on his collar and sweep the main road with a toothbrush. said Dave.
It would take a very long time unless all the cats in Knittingham were sent there as well.
Why doesn’t the Council buy a vacuum cleaner,asked Emile?
That is the least of our troubles, muttered Dave.
And so say all of us
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The shift to Autumn
The shift to Autumn comes as a surprise
Summer was extreme yet it has died
The intense sun, the air on naked flesh
The sweat and strain, the heat, the thirstiness
As in the meadows we were walking by
Forgotten were the worries of past days.
We had knelt and wept and wished to pray
Words came very hard and with delay
Or suddenly like hailstones in a rush
A strange Autumn
We do not want revealed the unknown way
We wish to be the same and life to stay
Yet like blood, the sudden tears will gush
As if the poison of the grief will flush
And we the final bill must surely pay
In Autumn
we
