By Mike Flemming 2018

Sentences are weapons:

We writers must write good sentences.
After reading your latest book, I feel I have been sentenced to death

I have been booked again after my  violin concert.
I told you  we were speeding .

The judge summed it all up:You  have gone too far, you are well past Coventry.I’d say 1,000 years in Greenland will keep Britain safe from men like you and the rest of the government.

If I cook the books, can  we ruminate tonight?

My sentence seems interminable
That’s only four words

I have not submitted,my thesis.
Well kneel  down and say,I give in.
But that’s not mathematics!
Neither is your comma.

We submitted all our plans to  the Government.
Don’t worry, their average reading age is 9.

I read the Guardian  nightly
That’s why you don’t understand anything
I do,I do
Look, we are married already
But not to each other.
Does it matter?
I feel odd.
It’s all this adulteration.
Stop, stop!
We’re not on  the bus
Well, in that case, the earth moved

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/phpBB//viewtopic.php?t=7459&start=900#p135110

Visit the link to see more.The photos are all copyright

Extract:
As the month ended, I decided I should see what was happening at Aston Rowant NNR. I prefer the south-western end of the reserve, at Bald Hill near Christmas Common, which is away from the incessant roar of M40 traffic but has similar hillside habitat. After all the hot dry weather, i was surprised to see how tall the grasses had grown and, since there was a stiff breeze blowing, few butterflies were to be seen, at first glance.

Soon, however, I realised that the slope was buzzing with Silver-spotted Skippers, keeping low as they zoomed between Scabious flowers.

There were also plenty of Chalkhill Blues, of both sexes, although these seemed to appear in ‘waves’ : for a while, nothing to be seen and then a group of 5-6 madly chasing around the slope. Their condition was very variable, with several looking very battered, while others were near pristine. Perhaps, this depended on how they had fared on the recent wet days.

I took several ‘regular’ shots but rather liked this one, where the butterfly took off at the end of a short burst of photos.

How to write a good sentence
How to give a good sentence
How to survive a long sentence
Should poets write  in long sentences
What is a sentence?
What is a bad sentence?
What is a lenient sentence?
What is a harsh sentence?
What is a harsh word?
How to write a poor sentence in the best way
How to write transparently  yet with dignity
How to survive writing sentences
How to survive writing
How to survive
How?

The Evening News  no longer is admired
Nor BBC to which the bright aspired
Now all the News is Fake ,there is no Truth
The logic of the heart can be a brute
The Evening News
The loss of  European links leads man to mires
Where sing no hosts of angels nor their choirs
But  only music made and played by liars
The death of civil life  is  loss acute
The nuclear power,the energy, the fire
The blazing torch, the ditch,  the dark quagmire.
The energy of life lost in disputes
The good ,like weeds ,is pulled up by the roots
Who can   kindle hope and new desire?
The Evening News?

We had the crime of our lives again.We killed Democracy.
Wish you were here in sunny  Holy Land …….in prison with Ahed Tamimi?
Come back soon…… will we be able to got abroad ever again?
Having a great time.Just have no idea where we are  or indeed who we are.Wrecked It
Come  to sunny Blackpool and avoid  foreigners while eating curry and chips and Italian Icecream on toast
It was great,kid.What was it?
I can stand on my head but I can’t think.Why?
BTW the British Empire has gone now and so has the Odeon in Tottenhan
I tried  to walk on my hands but I am uncoordinated.So can I walk on yours,please?
I never even did a cartwheel.What do you do to them? Square the circle?
Why do carts have horses?
Why do we lie prone  and upright?

I removed this poem because it was very poor quality

But remember charm is dangerous.Charmers are out to get you

I looked at my blog and saw there are the icons of visitors at the page bottom
So nice to see your faces.Thank you

Coma to Vienna for the summer and get a free deodorant on the subway…. it’s their way of coping with 30 degrees of heat!
I doubt if Britons will follow this path… sweat is a turn on for many of us…. although sex on the subway is not legal while the trains are functioning.In this heat you might die!

I am having some trouble writing.After an excision reopened I have got an infection in it so am  having to visit the hospital every 2 days.All the waiting seems to be exhausting me.I hope I can write better soon

My doctor cut off half my arm
I still have some nails and a palm
Jesus rode on an ass
Then crucified was
Be still, in the eye of his storm.

Bored,have mercy.
The Law’s gone tepid
For leather and feather
My bloke is sweet and my curtain’s light
The Ten Dependants  were found
The Fuse   crossed the Desert and blew off unleavened heads
The High Yeast  was missing
The Romans  struck water
After the sins, a still,small choice.
Is purgatory good news?
Why are you here, Terry Myers?
Have Percy, my cat,oh Pawed!
Sod ’em? Tomorrow.
The Shower of Mable
The power of song
Power and the Lark

To the man from Indonesia,to the woman next to me
Sitting on a metal chair, in our A and E
To the former nurse at 80 who helped me when I wept
Thank you to the company I’ve kept

To my sister  on the telephone asking how I feel
To my friends who read my writing and care what I reveal
To the man who came from Argos with a Nokia 216
Thank you for the courage and the kicks

To  my friend who came to see me, though she’s been bereaved
To the doctor  who cut off  that lump  which my body had deceived
To the blood that clotted quickly so I did not bleed to  death
Thank  you for the gift of breath.

Thank you for the sunset and thank you for the dawn
Thank you for the the sparrows that I see on the lawn
From Vodafone  and Argos,from  ancient Greece and Palestine
Thank you for the love and lines

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-devine/stages-of-grief_b_4414077.html

The gong sounds deep and  mellow as it shakes
Polished  like the candlesticks we  used
And deep inside my secret soul awakes

Strike with all your  present force to  make
A  bang to sock the sleeping and confused
The gong sounds deep and  mellow as it shakes

Hit it like a  cricket ball that speaks
We’re the humans who the world misuse
While deep inside a secret soul awakes

The sins of all the ages froth and leak
Despite the store detectives in the queues
The gong sounds deep and  mellow as it shakes

Fire it like you want to kill  with nukes
After this what rubbish can we lose?
Oh, deep inside a sorry soul rebukes

Put it on the late night evening News
Tell the congregation in their pews
The gong sounds deep and  mellow as it shakes
And deep inside the world  our soul  is trapped

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

https://io9.gizmodo.com/rip-doris-lessing-one-of-science-fictions-most-indis-1466329614

The beginning:

“Doris Lessing, who died today aged 94, wasn’t just a Nobel Prize-winning literary author — she was also a major hero of science fiction. She was one of the first authors with mainstream acclaim to embrace, and her fiction is worth more than a hundred writing workshops, for aspiring SF authors.

Image via OzSo

Seriously, if you want to write science fiction or fantasy, and you’re interested in learning how to capture the difficult niggly bits of people’s inner lives and their interactions with other people — then you absolutely must read Lessing, both her science fiction and her other stuff. We talk a lot about the importance of worldbuilding in making readers believe in the setting of your story — and Lessing was a master of drawing you into a world and making it feel urgent and real.

Lessing’s writing meant a ton to me, personally — I read her 1962 classic The Golden Notebook for a class when I was 18, and its trippy, intense take on subjects ranging from body-image anxiety to weird social interactions made a huge impression. The Golden Notebook is an astonishingly beautiful book, but it’s also intensely strange and jarring — Lessing takes the “novel of self-discovery” subgenre and twists it into strange, fascinating shapes.”

It doesn’t matter if you seem depraved
It doesn’t matter how you roll your eyes
One fine day you’ll be in your own grave

What about the millions we have saved
Will God judge us with an eye still wry?
It doesn’t matter if you feel deprived

When you’re dead, you need  no bedded cave
No longer in deep sorrow will you cry
One  dark day, you’ll be in your own grave

Will it matter how much time we’ve saved?
Will the new dress fit you like a lie?
Noone else is worried   or dismayed

Don’t just stand there, get your eyebrows razed
Then wonder why the  midges  love the flies
One fine day we’ll share our bed with knaves

Is being human now an alibi?
What’s the crime and does God never lie?
It doesn’t matter if  the end’s delayed
One fine day we’ll   have our name engraved

Art by Katherine

I am having problems with my arm which is more painful.GOK when it will heal.Then if the lab gets a negative report I’ll have to have another operation.
On the upside, the terrible heat has gone…. so we’ll be moaning about autumn!
Humans….  never satisfied.
I didn’t know stitches didn’t always work  but as my husband used to say

Ye ken the noo.

[You know now]

Aye,I do.

The Best Poems About Climate Change

A language of change by David Sergeant

Why do you tell me it’s better this way
Better than dying  just after a prayer
It’s only my skin and there’s nothing to say

Life is a wave and it comes every day
Dreams  of great beauty , the lessons are clear
Why do you tell me it’s better this way?

You used to like saying, wanna get laid?
But when we grow older these feelings grow rare
You were biting my skin and there’s lots I might  say

I liked that some people thought I was staid
When I’d do whatever, if it was a dare
Why do you wonder ,is it better this way?

Skin is so fragile, we touch  our dismay
The in and the out are nearer by far
It’s  my only  skin and that’s all I ‘ll say

Sand in my eyes and smoke in my hair
You are the wolf who keeps his own lair
Why do you tell me it’s better this way?
We’re thinner than skin but there’s nothing to say

Out of the blue,the doorbell rang.It was Annie their widowed next door neighbour.She was wearing a long blue satin dress with a built in train.”I’m off to London now” she simpered.”Can I give Lyra a lift in my train?”
“I believe unless I have strong disconfirmatory evidence, that my daughter is still in the bath.”Stan said defiantly.
Anne entered the house and ran upstairs.There she saw Lyra wrapped in a large blue towel like object.

“Is this a towel?” Lyra asked pertly

.”I have no evidence either way.”Annie announced.

“Where did you get it from?”

“That big blue window”replied the rosy cheeked girl ironically.”It may be a curtain”
“Oh,dear.Have I erred?” she pondered.
“No,you look very clean to me,though one can never be absolutely certain.” Anne said thoughtlessly as she was aware viruses are not black
“I suppose all one can do is to keep the dirt between certain parameters that each must decide for themselves.The Tudors only bathed once a year. And King Henry Vlllth founded the Church of England just so he could get a divorce from himself,not to mention a little gold too.”
Lyra worked for a publisher in Oxford Street,They were always on the look out for new titles and for money.
“Would you ever consider writing a new self help book,Anne?”
“You can make a good deal of money that way.Self help is in vogue now. I was thinking of:How to divorce yourself in three easy stages using self hypnosis.

We already have :How to found your own Church.” and “How to steal somebody else’s Church in three steps.”
Anne was keen to get an interest as since killing her husband for his money,she was feeling lonely,remote and schizoid, and her affair with Stan was proving a bit slower to take off than she had narcissistically expected.
“I am already a unqualified hypnotist.”she lied agreeably
Just then they heard a strange crash.Stan had been standing on his Habitat chair trying to eavesdrop on the women’s conversation,and it had fallen apart under the weight of his hiking boots.He lay on the carpet looking pale with blood running down his aged head.”Can you ring 999 please ?” he yelped .
Lyra looked at the chair.”No,Dad it’s o.k.I can fix this with some U.H.U glue.I have some in my purple tote under all my medication.
She whispered saucily to Anne,”I’ll text you tomorrow,my darling angel.Love the dress.”Lyra was a trans sexual lesbian paramedic you see,as well as a publisher‘s clerk and also did not have other intriguing money making jobs into the bargainas the English say now and then.
Mary was in the kitchen finishing off her baking.She lived in a world of her own mainly focussed on her second hand Raleigh small wheeled shopper bicycle and its wicker basket that she bought in East Anglia or, to be exact,in Wells-next-the sea.It was now grey but still functional like many other towns in Britain and their inhabitants.She put the cheese scones and butter onto a large elliptical plate and went into the dining room followed by Emile her cat ,who was partial to a knob of butter on a Sunday teatime.
Where was his sister Emily, he wondered blankly? Shouldd feline siblings be separated?It seems very unfair

I can look inside my arm now and it’s red
The blood  is glowing like a  brilliant jewel
Oh, better being red than being dead

By this blood the body parts are fed
So it’s  full of love, it is not cruel
I  look inside my arm now and it’s red

Luckily it’s not on my   big head
I might feel I was a  holy fool
Oh, better being red than being dead

My brain feel full and heavy ,is it lead?
No longer can I  study poetry school
I  look inside my arm now and it’s  red

Once a cure for ills was being bled
It killed more people  than a manic mule
Oh, better being red than being dead

I wonder if I broke   our Nature’s rule
Improvising with no proper tools
I can look inside my arm now; it is red
When it’s white I’ll know that I am dead

https://www.writerswrite.com/journal/dec00/mothers-who-write-amy-bloom-12002

Extract:

“What inspired you to write? 

I don’t really know, and don’t care if I ever find out. Originally, I wrote mysteries, but then a short story just came to me so I wrote it out and ended up publishing it in an obscure Canadian feminist journal. Later, it was selected to be in The Best American Short Stories. My second and third stories were in Story and The New Yorker, so I was successful in continuing to publish. I had the needed equipment: a typewriter. I didn’t have an MFA (Master of Fine Arts), but if you look over the last 400 years, most of the good writers didn’t, either.

How old were your children when you started to write? 

They were 8 and 10, and my oldest son was grown. When I started, I wrote late at night, after they were in bed. I could do that and get away with it because I’m not much of a housekeeper and I didn’t need much sleep. I liked my kids and didn’t care much about my house, so it worked.

From a practical standpoint, how has being a mother affected your writing?

Initially, there was nothing convenient about writing for me, and there were points when writing even interfered. I’d be in the middle of a sentence and someone needed to go to mall for new shoes, so the sentence would be lost, but I felt my primary, most important job was to raise my kids. I did the writing if I had the time, and if I didn’t, I would come back to it. My attitude was: “Sooner or later, I will get this page right.”

If I had to do it again, though, I’d try not to work full time. In the beginning, I had a lot of energy and a belief in writing, so I could do it, but I’ve never had unlimited time to just write. There were always limits and deadlines, but it’s what pays the bills. “

On Semicolons and the Rules of Writing

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