Marmalade  of oranges  of blood
Jam made from tomatoes ,such good food
Braised  lambs’ tongues with onions and God

Strip the bones of all the pilgrims good
Make your bed and lie about on wood
Marmalade  of oranges  like blood

Martyr the old priest   and stew  the dude
Let the menstrual flow  be shown  to goad
Braised  lambs’ tongues with onions, he said?

Cannibals, we never understood
Yet we have warred sans pity when well fed
Oh,marmalade  ,oh oranges  of blood

In the trenches ,men died in the mud
Others drowned in grief as if they should
Braised  lambs’ tongues with onions,M’ lud?

Sheep may gaze,Hiroshima, the dead
Did you take brief notes of  all you read?
Marmalade  of oranges  and blood
The tongues of Babel made the world go mad

I  decided to make my manuscript in a darker bolder script and then republish it on kindle direct publishing.I added two poems at the front to make it less stark
Now it appears it need to be at least £26 for them as the printing is £16.I  am confused about  it especially as I will only get 10 pence instead of 27 pence
Does it seem they are doing it for their own profit? One would expect that but not to this extreme.So next week I think I will just delete it altogether.
Who  would pay more than £15 for  it.It is large and that is my mistake.I could have made 50 little books..

Still this blog is more important to me.I  couldn’t go out so I decided to learn how to do it but it’s not much use to authors who need to make money
10 pence  is worse than £0

“”My childhood – which I spent largely in London except during the Blitz – was full of soldiers, American, English, every other nationality. With National Service, we were all non-soldiers, we were just in for a couple of years. We weren’t going to kill people – we would have been terrified of killing people! – and the people in the regular army, our sergeants, did tend to despise us, and you could see why. So, yes, isn’t it interesting how many soldiers there are in my early poetry and how often I am the soldier and I’m not really sure what I’m doing? Not especially romanticised except when I think of Achilles or somebody. So it was a very ambiguous role, but it was a role that apparently I tended to see myself in, especially in that first book. And I don’t think it was that conscious or deliberate. I had to think about it afterwards to find out what could have been in my mind.”

He then spent six months in Paris, on a low-paying sinecure arranged by his father, before going up to Cambridge at 21. One of his friends there was Karl Miller. “Karl was my best friend for a while; I knew him very well: we were both rather difficult people, but he was very kind to me and he always had a very good mind. I’d show him my poems when I wrote them and he’d tack them up over his desk, which was very flattering.”

Miller recalls that Gunn “was a good student and critic, who enjoyed the degree. Leavis was sovereign at the time. Gunn was sympathetic to Leavis but not a Leavisite. We were both involved in the same discussions and clubs and so on. I wrote a lengthy profile of him for the student newspaper Varsity.” He adds, “He knew how to keep the ball in the air in terms of literary attention.”

At Cambridge, Gunn had begun publishing his poems, and wrote the bulk of his first collection, Fighting Terms (1954) in his last two years there. They are startlingly assured pieces, formally controlled, metaphysical, with a subtext that only seems obviously homoerotic in retrospect.”

Well,I’ve had a great time checking my kindle books.Imaginary Life has coloured images on my laptop but black and white on the kindle reader.I am removing the paperback option for Gravity and Loss.I know my eyes are a bit feeble but the print is too faint.Maybe I can eventually change that but even for 300 poems I doubt many people will pay £16.99 for a book by an unknown poet
Meantime I’ve spent hours trying to put a SIM card into a phone and eventually bought a cheaper phone in Argos which takes a nano card.Trying to put the micro-card into a Nokia Lumia was purgatory.The outer piece broke..I hate those three in one cards.But I had done it once before so….maybe it’s the antibiotics and UTI’s do affect the brain… poison in the blood [ a good story title?]
So I am going outside and looking at a tree.I have had to barricade myself in to stop those 5,6, or.7 dogs next door from coming in.But I can still eat outside.I didn’t mind the dogs so much…. it’s the owners who distress me.
How can an ordinary family cope with so many dogs?

http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=2200

he Way Through the Woods by Rudyard Kipling Next

They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove broods, And the badgers roll at ease, There was once a road through the woods. Yet, if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate. (They fear not men in the woods, Because they see so few) You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods. . . .  But there is no road through the woods.

Dreams, the Powerful Ways They can Affect Our Realities

“We’ve already identified dreams as an amalgamation of new and past memories. Engaging in an activity right before bed is likely to lead to it becoming part of our dreams as it flashes right before our eyes.

Researchers have found an interconnection between activities we dream about and our improved application in the activities. For students, it is recommended to study about a particular topic right before bed in order to aid in the comprehension.

The same can be said to just about any other activity like playing the piano. The harmonious connection in how our minds process music also helps greatly. Doing such activities right before naptime is bound to create an associated feeling of familiarity. Thus, when musicians get to practice, later on, they find that they can easily strum up chords with greater accuracy and pattern as if they were embedded in their nature.

RESEARCHERS

Antti Revonsuo, a neuroscientist at the University of Skovde in Sweden, proposed the Threat Simulation Theory. He argued that the brain tends to prepare for mechanisms to deal with future situations. By reenacting scenes like these in dreams, we get to come up with methodologies to cope with such situations which can be present in real life as well. By doing so, we can stay sharp and focused once we awake.”

Mary cut her own toe nails
With her scissors she won’t fail
Sharp as Shap in winter snow
The scissors have a deadly glow

Today she never combed her hair
It’s so  short  she looks quite bare
Yet despite  her bald long head
She has had some fun in bed

Maybe it was long ago
Never mind, her lover purred
Yes, she married Emile  sweet
This dear cat makes her complete

But what is Emile’s second name?
Is he French  or perhaps germane?
She is Mrs Nom de Plume
Emile saved her from  her doom

Sometimes they ring 999
Her new doorbell is divine
In runs paramedic Dave
See his long curls as they wave

He is wearing a new skirt
With Emile he tries to flirt
But Emile is full of faith
To his new wife who is no wraith

See them eating creme brulee
So that they won’t fade away
One for Mary and Emile
Two for Dave , he had no meal

Here comes Annie with a bat
Look  at this,’twas in my hat
Shall I tell it   Jesus saves
Oh! what ridicule she raised

Bats can never  go to Mass
They are free to sin en masse
Emile likes the Psalms and prayers
At the  parson he will glare

Where is Stan, that dear old man?
He’s  with a whore  in hell, oh damn

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/oct/04/sel-help-books-boom-”

But what de Botton calls “elite culture” has, he says, “abandoned a project on which it was engaged for most of human history. English literature, philosophy, history, they used to understand their role as basically being about the nourishment of the soul. But they’ve abandoned that field, leaving the area open to what are largely second-rate minds.””

“Finding myself as a lone traveller, I couldn’t help but notice your advert “tours curated for the solo traveller” (5 June) and the small print below where it says that “prices are based on two people sharing”.
Bill 
London”

Sue

Can  share with a man I’ve never met as I am a lesbian.On the other hand some men like lesbians….. I think I’ll go back to normal and get married so won’t need solo holidays.Or I’ll stay in the garden reading and eating fruit all week.

The erasing of distinctions ,0 and 1
Makes for much confusion and unease
Am I male or female, am I none?
Gender shifts  as sinking sands might seize

The subtle ways  of wisdom are now  ghosts
We fear  we may be wrong and what is where.
The souls of men and women wander lost
How to navigate the deeps without despair.

Swapping places does not end the game
We must  judge from higher states  of mind.
We are not and never shall be same
Yet we fear the words of  blind mankind

“No one is an island” may be true
But how shall I relate my love to you?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/sep/03/sad-summers-over-18-ways-to-keep-the-health-humour-and-happiness-of-your-holiday-alive

4 Take a detour on your commute

Emrah Düzel, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London, is studying the health benefits of combining novel experiences with physical activity, particularly in relation to dementia and cognitive decline in old age. Combining physical activity with the exploration of novel environments or novel social interactions – even something as simple as walking around a new city – “stimulates a lot of plasticity in the brain”. Think of this as holiday plasticity, which gets lost when we return to work. But even small changes could help to keep that sensation active and let you capitalise on your “new neurons”. Try walking or cycling to work a different way, or leave home early and break your journey for a walk in a park.

Three poems on peace and war

Poems by Adrian Mitchell

I will get 27 pence if you buy this large book .So  read my blog

Where’s your cursor~
Oh,we all curse here.

Is that a vertical rat?
No it’s a sculpture.
Of what?
A vertical rat

I’ve lost my chromebook
Don’t worry, the library has loads
But are they chromes?
Maybe chromosomes
I can’t  type on a chromosome!
Try a fountain pen then

Why  are you sitting on a laptop?
To show it it is not what it thinks

A laptop is nice for humans as well
But you may need a big one

Through my salt, through my grievous assault
On what?
My dinner
It’s not even human
We’re cannibals here, you know.
I never knew that
You are not our type

Bay, Father.
No, it’s dogs that bay
On the moon!

I went to Whitby and asked for fish and chips with no fish.
Why bother to travel all that way just to to eat chips?
It’s the thought that counts, besides my old man loved fish… that is to eat, not to marry.
Whitby had a smokery where they  made kippers.What they made them from I have no idea but my husband liked them
They also had a wonderful pork pie shop.
When I was a child and we went to Blackpool, we passed cafes with pork pies in the windows and I longed with utter depravity to eat one.But we always took sandwiches.Then when my Dad died, we had little pork pies after the Funeral.But did he really need to die just so I could eat a pork pie?
I don’t see any that look edible these days and I am not going to make one.
Sausages are alright though.

The phone rang and a voice said, is that you?
I said, it’s me.
He said, who are you?
I said,I’ve not figured that out yet.
He said, are you  pulling my leg?
I said, I can’t even see your leg!
He said, do you fancy eating owt tonight?
I said, eeh, you’re from Manchester!
But it was just a spelling mistake.
He was trying it on.
Whatever it is

On “Arrivals” you may   see “Heaven”
Follow not Hell’s flames
Go  sing and hum
When  the manic are dumb
We give will  a wide berth
As it is so self centred
Weave us  new prayers
For our failing hearts
And forgive us our restlessness
As we forgive thus who are restless with us
By rivers and sea shores
On grass and on gravel
On sand and on rocks

Amen
Oh, women
What then?

http://www.oliverburkeman.com/blog/posts/patience-is-more-than-a-virtue-it-s-a-superpower

“And it’s hard to believe this inability to endure discomfort isn’t growing worse, as technology speeds up our lives. It’s more aggravating to wait 30 seconds for a microwave than an hour for an oven – just as it’s worse when a web page takes 10 seconds to load than when the reference librarian tells you it will take three weeks to track down a book. Perhaps it’s because in a world of almost-instant gratification, truly instant gratification starts to seem like our birthright.

Historically speaking, as Roberts points out, patience was a matter of “conforming yourself to the need to wait for things”; it was a way of accepting one’s lack of control over the world. But now we don’t need to wait for most things, patience has become a form of control over the world and, as she puts it, “over the tempo of contemporary life that otherwise controls us”. In this new environment, there’s nothing remotely passive about standing in front of a painting for three hours. On the contrary, it’s a subversive act. On the other side of impatience – if you can learn to wait out that jitteriness – lies power.”

(First published in Guardian Weekend magazine. Photo by Lux & Jourik on Flickr.)

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/29/marriage-could-help-reduce-risk-of-dementia-study-suggests

https://notjohnkdp.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-wide-image.html#comment-form