Do not knock on my back door tonight
Your face in dimness evokes dreams denied.
I only want to see you in daylight

I saw you on the town hall steps that night
Your makeup was too lush, though well applied
Do not  block  up both my ears tonight

I find your  touch gives me a rare delight
I said I hate you but, in truth, I lied
I only want to see you in moonlight

I have heard the signs and welcome any spite
My  goldfish ate my cat and then it died
Do not kick in my front door  when tight

My father told me men must never bite
When they lie in bed with their new bride
I rarely want to see you in daylight

The evidence is here that God has fled
He wanted us to think that he was dead
Do not snog alone with me tonight
I only have to touch you to ignite.

As wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves
We can love, despite our grieving hearts
Think not of the time nor of the place

Sorrow , opened up, creates new space.
Despite the pain  that comes in sudden darts
So wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves

A flower seed needs  little,  but its grace
Will help the heart that sees alas blank charts
Thinks not of time, just where there may be space

So an  Eden may be begin, embraced
Although our feet stand on this ground apart
For wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves

In love, the splits will heal at their own pace
And hatred held, contained will breed no shark
Think  of any time or any place

We look out today at visions stark
Yet sings the immemorial skylark
As wildflowers grow on bomb sites  and on  graves
There is no “right time” no “perfect place”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29538180

“Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary. What we very badly need to remember is that the things right under our noses are extraordinary, fascinating, irreplaceable, profound and just kind of marvellous.

Look at the things in the foreground and relish stuff that can lose its glow by being familiar. In fact, re-estranging ourselves to familiar things seems to be a very important part of what poetry can do.”

If you can, be choosy about what you do, so that the things you do write are the things that you do best.

The little cat from Grenfell Tower
Looked more confused than frightened.
Unless it had lived in Syria what could have prepared it for
A night illuminated in its heart by burning stuff
Some madman had wrapped around the tower
Like Xmas paper.
There,  looks nice, they said when they finished
What would become a crematorium, an inferno
Near the homes of the rich , and as they say, famous
A pity they don’t believe in the Last Judgement.
That doesn’t mean there is none, of course.
What we choose to believe makes no difference to reality
Only in our perception of it.
It wipes some stuff  off the blackboard but  the  truth remains
The little cat knows something is wrong.
It has a black smudge on its nose.
Looks so young.

http://www.creative-writing-now.com/how-to-write-a-poem.html

“In his book Poetry in the Making, the poet Ted Hughes talks about how to write a poem about an animal. The key, he says, is to concentrate hard enough on the animal, to choose the words that best capture the animal you have in your mind. You can use this approach with any subject matter.

In the beginning, you don’t have to worry about “style,” about writing in a “beautiful” or a “poetic” way. In fact, if you start to think about “being poetic,” it can distract you from what you’re actually writing about and hurt your poem. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who was trying to impress you? Then you know how boring this can be. The person is really thinking about himself or herself, not about the conversation. Similarly, if your attention is focused on “being poetic,” if you are worrying about what impression your poem will make, then that takes your attention away from the animal or weather or whatever the subject of your poem is. “

Good Writing vs. Talented Writing

Extract:

Virginia Woolf knew subtlety was the key to craftsmanship when she counseled that “we have to allow the sunken meanings to remain sunken, suggested, not stated.” “All bad writers are in love with the epic,”Hemingway admonished. The talented writer, Delany reminds us, is a master of induction, suggesting the general through the deft deployment of the specific, and in the process producing an even greater dramatic effect than the bombast of sweeping statements ever could:

The talented writer often uses specifics and avoids generalities — generalities that his or her specifics suggest. Because they are suggested, rather than stated, they may register with the reader far more forcefully than if they were articulated. Using specifics to imply generalities — whether they are general emotions we all know or ideas we have all vaguely sensed — is dramatic writing. A trickier proposition that takes just as much talent requires the writer carefully to arrange generalities for a page or five pages, followed by a specific that makes the generalities open up and take on new resonance. … Indeed, it might be called the opposite of “dramatic” writing, but it can be just as strong — if not, sometimes, stronger.

“Words have their own firmness,” Susan Sontag reflected in her diary. “Use the right word, not its second cousin,” Mark Twain famously advised, but great writing isn’t just a mere matter of concision. As E.B. White reminded us, “Writing is not an exercise in excision, it’s a journey into sound.” Delany bisociates this dual requirement for precision and eloquence, with precision and eloquence:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/sep/21/poetry.writing.wendycope

Extract:

t seems odd to me that anyone who hates reading poetry should want to write it at all. Are there amateur painters who never go to an art gallery? Or amateur musicians who never listen to music? Sometimes non-reading poets explain that they are afraid of being influenced. They don’t understand that being influenced is part of the learning process. Some of my earliest (and unpublished) poems read like poor imitations of Sylvia Plath. Others read like poor imitations of TS Eliot. I was unaware of this at the time. Gradually I worked my way through these and many other influences towards finding my own voice. Nowadays I hope I sound like myself in my poems but I am still influenced by what I read, still learning.

Well, I have to keep quite busy as I do not like to think
I have 59 new credit cards  and I   wash them in the sink
I take each one quite carefully, rotating them in use
Or they may be jealous and accuse me of abuse.

Then I have to pay them off or  they incur interest
Not like handsome men might do when they don’t wear a vest.
Interest is money which the banks demand  be paid
If we spend just pence more than the limit that they gave.

I do it on the telephone so I can have a chat
Sunday is the best, I find, if you decide on that
Enter all the numbers that  run straight across the card
A pity there’s no hurdle and that gambling has been barred.

Also, you must tell them then, just what you want to pay
Make your mind up when you start or you’ll be there till May
And 59 in total is more than there are months  per day
My head is reeling from the bills, my canary has gone grey!

It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread
A hear oppressive like the fires of hell
London smothered in air dull and dead.

Flames that slobbered with a passion red
Water that  the sun burned up too well
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread

God permitted Satan with his dread
Britain quarrelled, split , prepared to kill.
London smothered in air dull and dead.

A referendum showed us all ill-bred.
Neighbours spoke in words that I call vile.
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread

By what person is our nation led
who fills our stomach with acidic bile?
The PM spoke in words both dull and dead.

Tempers raged  like fires all fresh and wild
Evil was to emptiness beguiled
It seemed the fire of Grenfell Tower had spread
People smothered in the fire lie dead.

Picked like a red flower,  smitten by  red earth
Invisible  at sunset, shaded at soft dawn
Hear a word made flesh, see a being but no birth.

What were blue and red saying, was it a curse?
As the graduates crossed, in red gowns , the green lawn
She picked  a red flower,   tore the  red earth

In the immeasurable ellipse, drawn into the next verse.
The sign of the cross broken, the illuminations torn
Hear a word made to be spoken, see a being of no birth.
Were the strangers forsaken, were their minds cursed?
See the decorations of fire, see the scars new born
Lit by  red flares, buried  with new  baptised earth

Oh,sweet-bitter eros  dying,  hanging gardens of death
Shall Babylon be summoned by the ancient ram’s horn?
Hear a word made dross, see a being but no worth.

Where is my silver needle, my  thread long and forlorn?
Where can we acknowledge the dead, the never to be born?
Picked out like a red flower,  shot down in  red earth
Hear his  flesh die wordless ; give a Bible a  slow birth

When marriage was a sacrament and life was  lived as prayer
We lived inside a structure; we knew  anatomy
The living hands of  God were there to hold us from despair

Each event had its rituals when ritual was pure.
Birth was baptism, death expected, Royal poverty.
Marriage was a sacrament and life was  lived as prayer

Meaning leaked  like ink runs down the page that is no cure
For those who cannot read the word  must live in gravity
Yet feel the living hands of  God  to hold them from despair

When angels dwell in gold serene and stars look far and bare
There may be cruel reckonings  as boats cross the dark sea
Yet marriage was a sacrament and life was  lived as prayer

But now it is the government who hear no poor man’s plea
Thus  hell is made by laziness, ignited  is  the Tree
If marriage were a sacrament and life a piercing prayer
The living hands of  God would  come to hold us from despair

They said she was too hot to hold
She was on fire, all night
But her ashes now have gone so  cold

Her  plastic dress was  a sight to behold
Yeah, she looked so good, so right
They said she was too hot to hold

They were waiting for the  night to unfold
She  wore a coat of imitation gelignite
All their ashes now have gone so  cold

She was big, she was dashing in silver and gold
They said they didn’t expect her to ignite that night
They knew she was too hot to hold

She was poor but she pretended to be bold
She had little self-esteem but the governor thought she might
All their ashes now have gone so  cold

They don’t need the Crem since they burned so bright
It reminded me of Poland and the Jewish night
They said she was too hot to hold.
But her ashes fell  to earth and we all felt so cold

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

If you have an enemy, pretend to be friends with them instead of openly fighting with them. That way you can watch them carefully and figure out what they’re plan

Ne’er cast a clout till May be out!

The hot sun seems like the fire of hell on earth
And London  is a sinful place we know~
What monster will this horror bring to birth?

Well, the government  will pay for what it’s worth
We’ll send them on a ramble down Soho
The hot sun seems like the fire of hell on earth

England is now visited by death
A baby thrown from Towers of Camelot
What rough beast will this horror bring to birth?

The good will die, the evil have them cursed
What will follow on from this horror?
The hot sun seems like the fire of hell on earth

Is life a  generous gift we are not worth?
We  have no ethics, love, we have no courage
What rough beast will this horror bring to birth?

We used to feel that through our life we grow
We’d leave seeds for someone else to sow
The hot sun seems like the fire of hell on earth
What monster will this evil bring to birth?

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/07/therapy-wars-revenge-of-freud-cognitive-behavioural-therapy

Psychoanalysts contend that things are much more complicated. For one thing, psychological pain needs first not to be eliminated but understood. From this perspective, depression is less like a tumour and more like a stabbing pain in your abdomen: it’s telling you something, and you need to find out what. (No responsible GP would just pump you with painkillers and send you home.) And happiness – if such a thing is even achievable – is a much murkier matter. We don’t really know our own minds, and we often have powerful motives for keeping things that way. We see life through the lens of our earliest relationships, though we usually don’t realise it; we want contradictory things; and change is slow and hard. Our conscious minds are tiny iceberg-tips on the dark ocean of the unconscious – and you can’t truly explore that ocean by means of CBT’s simple, standardised, science-tested steps.

This viewpoint has much romantic appeal. But the analysts’ arguments fell on deaf ears so long as experiment after experiment seemed to confirm the superiority of CBT – which helps explain the shocked response to a study, published last May, that seemed to show CBT getting less and less effective, as a treatment for depression, over time.

Examining scores of earlier experimental trials, two researchers from Norway concluded that its effect size – a technical measure of its usefulness – had fallen by half since 1977. (In the unlikely event that this trend were to persist, it could be entirely useless in a few decades.) Had CBT somehow benefited from a kind of placebo effect all along, effective only so long as people believed it was a miracle cure?

The British state is cracking, I perceive
The government is full of idle fools
The people here are lied to and deceived

You can’t keep hurting the poor and those in need
There is a point where chaos over-rules
The British state is cracking, I perceive

We know that some  economists   believe
To tax the wealthy  is extremely cruel
The people here are lied to and deceived
Thatcher said the wealth would trickle through

The cult of economics is derived
From axioms sent by  sharks who never grieve
The British state is cracking, I perceive

The bias goes against those who can’t plead
But Grenfell Tower broke all the frigging rules~
The people there have died because deceived

The crack will escalate and thunder roll
Theresa May has made her first & last own goal
The British state is cracking, I perceive
The people here once passive , roar displeased

As London weeps Theresa May begins the talks about us leaving the EU.
The Tories have given us 7 years of austerity but who has suffered most from this?
The poor, the old, the refugees, the unemployed, the disabled.
A man with terminal cancer was labelled fit for work
All but the rich tremble

Mary went into the bathroom and looked into the mirror.She no longer feared to see Satan, as compared to many living and  dead human beings he seemed almost an angel.
Her hair was standing on end and she realised that it was one thing to buy a box of 24 combs from Amazon but quite another to use one.
Ah, well, Stan preferred it wild, she told herself.But that was a long time ago.It was no longer thick and wavy.That stopped men singing,”O Sole Mio”  when she passed them while they were painting the outside of a neighbour’s house.They probably didn’t know what it meant and neither did she.
Why am I looking into the mirror, she wondered? Maybe I am lonesome.But who to visit?Who to invite for tea?
Emile pushed the door open.
Are you alright, mother, he mewed?
I am not your mother, Emile, she said to her little cat, being overly pedantic about every aspect of human life.
Ok,grandma,he continued.I see the Yodel van outside. He probably has something fo you or me.
Now, Emile, I’ve told you before you can call me Mary even if I am your grandmother.
Who was my mother, he asked?Did you adopt me?
Your mother was my mother’s cat “Arabella Stuart”.We called her Bella.Your father was a total mystery.
Presumably a cat, Emile pondered.
Why, did you think it was an animal of another type?
How about Stan.Was he my dad?
In a metaphorical sense, she murmured shyly.He loved you very much.And so do I.
When we watched the dreadful news on TV I was wondering if any animals had been killed by the fire.Nobody has said.I doubt if they would keep dogs up there but cats might have been allowed.
Oh,dear, I admit I have not thought of that.It was so terrible seeing people waving from their windows holding their phones.Saying,  I love you to their parents or children.And now the Chancellor says it is illegal here to use that aluminium cladding.
I bet he is going to try to oust Theresa May, Emile told her.
You men, you only think of one thing! Politics and fighting.And sex and hot sinners.
Do you mean dinners, that cat asked her?\
No , hot sinners are harlots.
But how do we know it is a sin.To cats it is normal.
I don’t know.The word  sin is no longer heard as it is not politically correct/
Whereas letting 58  people burn to death is politically correct as long as we don’t call it sinful.And all the others will be sick for years.
My God, you are getting clever, Emile,maybe you should run  the country!
And so say all of us

http://www.lastampa.it/2017/06/12/vaticaninsider/eng/comment/theresa-may-risks-inflaming-irelands-religious-tensions-AF1zL5IwnBhxTiBpmz5B5N/pagina.html