Missing the chair

Many years ago we bought a pine chair for the kitchen.

It was larger and taller than the average dining chair and reminded me of the chair in van Gogh’s painting. My husband like to sit in the kitchen with the door open to look at birds also listen to the radio and that is why I decided we should get this special chair

After he died I didn’t think about the chair very much and I rarely sat on it. So a couple of weeks ago I decided to move it out of the kitchen where it was taking up space.

The next day as I was walking into the kitchen my hand reached out to hold the chair back but it wasn’t there.

I nearly fell over. That kept happening for several days and even now I have to be careful. I’m missing it. It takes a long time for the brain to adjust when you move the furniture so imagine how long it takes to adjust when you lose a beloved person

No matter how many times you tell yourself they are not here you still reach out for them or pick up the phone to phone them before you get the pain of grief. They are not there:they are missing

A smile played long

A smile played long upon her face

As I held her in close embrace.

There was no bed on which to lie

Nor yet  a bed on which to die

A little death, a little grace.

I could not stare enough to feast

My wanton eyes upon her breast.

My hands tormented me with lust

As they played  and on her fussed.

A smile played long.

And so it was, we made our bed

And at our table friends were fed.

She sang and murmured like a bird.

And I was hypnotized by words

A smile played long

‘I’m a CBE, I’m poet laureate so I’m clearly not a republican am I?’: Simon Armitage on his radical roots and rock star dreams | Simon Armitage | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/08/simon-armitage-poet-laureate-radical-roots-rock-star-dreams

Writing makes me breathe differently

Sometimes writing makes me breathe differently.
I can feel the silence settle around me,
Like a prayer shawl.
i accept it gratefully.
There’s a thin feeling to the day
As if the sun might have tried harder
to come through
But it had a blue feeling
And the clouds were greedy,
Wanting too much to melt
And shed their moisture.
Some perfume please.I think it was £27.99
Yes,I like that one even more than jasmine oil.
Pour it down over London
Like a blessing.
A black woman laughed and patted my arm,
You’re so funny, she cried.
And I smiled coyly
As if someone hidden was taking my photograph.
Sometimes life’s too sweet
And needs a little pepper.
The chair creaks as I lean forward
Trying to see everything at once
As if it all happened now, not yesterday.

A change of heart?

A change of climate shocked my soul and heart

Foul moods unstable blew me off the chart

I had no map, how should I plot my course.?

I called for help until my voice was hoarse.

Cold winds blew rain clouds over us each day

The weather  fluctuated gold to grey

And in my heart I feel the same odd change

.My soul is not my own to rearrange

I cannot see a pattern, feel a rhythm

Between me and the world there is a chasm

My feelings are in chaos,like wild beasts

I fear the devils hoping for a feast.

What can we do when w have lost  the way?

Where is the light, where is the will to pray?

When they were soaked in jam

Dr Adams was a very kind man

He never fried sprats when they were soaked in jam

He apologised to the loaf when he cut the bread

And he wept many tears when his ants were found half dead..

He was enamoured of spiders because he liked their webs

And even let them build one between his middle ribs.

He loved his wife anheed allowed her to be free

So she met a jolly sailor and they went out to sea.

Suddenly he realised, altruism’s bad

Unless it’s given to those who really are quite sad.

So he made a resolution to be a bit more stern

And gave up putting dinner out for the lost earthworms.

He met a kind fair lady and he began to hope

She would marry him and raise some antelopes.

He said she must be free but not quite totally;

Loving other men was not permitted,don’t you see?

Some folk can live with a marriage and affairs

Some men even keep many concubines and bears.

But he and his new lady decided to be chaste

As loving any other folk was a sorry waste..

They had many off spring of whom I am one

I look like the pussy cat when all is said and done..

And I like being groomed and sitting on folks’ knees

Think whate’er you like but it’s fun running up trees.

My father was black and my mother is white

So I am rather grey ,except in a good light.

I have many patches in different shades of grey

I only wish my whiskers didn’t look like hay.

I am hoping to marry when the corn and barley’s ripe

Oh,what fun we’ll have in the middle of the night.

Because it was so hard

Why did Jesus walk on the water?

Because it was really hard.

Why did Jesus feed the 5,000?

That was the biggest number they could think of when writing the New Testament

Why did Jesus cross the road?

Because the other side was flatter.

Why do we learn arithmetic in school?

Because it would be boring in school with nothing to do

Why do we have to learn to read in school?

So you can go on the internet on your phone and get into trouble arguing on political forums.

Who could have been the first person who learned to read?

It must have been the first person who invented writing because until there was writing there couldn’t be any reading

Did Adam and Eve have a library?

Nobody could read what God had written.

Did Cain and Abel go to a comprehensive school?

Well it didn’t teach morals did it?

What would God think of  VAT on private school fees?

Jesus didn’t need to go to school.

Why are rich people averse to paying more tax?

Because they don’t want to get through the eye of the needle.

If you are forced to give money to the poor it’s not an act of virtue.

Well it still helps the poor.

My husband has a rubber face

  • My husband has a rubber face,
    A subspecies of the human race.
    Some men have faces fixed and set;
    My husband’s face is not like that.
  • He imitates our politicians,
    Just like Rory Bremner can.
    Though he has no wig or hair piece,
    He can look like anyone
  • .Some nights I waken for I’m laughing
    While I am quite sound asleep.
    I am dreaming of his mobile features,
    Contorted to a different shape
  • .He is skilled at telling jokes.
    And he loves a good cartoon.
    If I am feeling flu type blueness
    he can get me up again
  • .He has a rather noble visage.
    He gets attention he abhors.
    In the bar on King’s Cross Station—
    I was asked was he a Lord!
  • He’s a Lord of Fun and Humour.
    He’s a Lord at Listening Well.
    He’s unique, but so are you,
    And all creatures that on earth do dwell

Surrender to the otherness of all

Tact and subtle actions  create life
Assertive force destroys  another’s soul
To the High and  Holy One, we’re wife.

The way we go seems but a throw of dice
Yet destiny will beckon, though we crawl
Tact and subtle actions make a  life

Into every heart, there comes the knife.
Surrender to the otherness of all
To the High and  Holy One be wife.

In his shadow, we look down, we cry.
We listen to that voice, so  still, so small
Tact and subtle actions shape good lives.

As a mother births her child, she sighs
All lives and coming suffering must appal.
To the High and  Holy One, we’re wife.

Here we seem like prisoners on bail
May we live with love in this, our world
Tact and subtle actions  create life
Surrender humble to God and his wiles.

 

 

 

My heart was in my mouth all day which made it difficult to eat

My heart was in my mouth [so I had to eat suck it all day which gave my thumb a rest]
My heart sank [ to the bottom of the pond in Barrow Bridge]
I fell head over heels in love with a cat.[That’s why I had no children as inter-species marriage is not yet allowed but soon it will be here]
I could not swallow his excuse as my mouth was full of chocolate buttons I had torn off my uniform..well they looked like chocolate]
That is hard to digest.[So may I please spit it out?]
I spat him out [but he came back as he was on an elastic rope]

I was wondering if new phrases come into existence now and I don’t recall any.Is it because we are no longer so involved in creating our language or because there are experts in academia who study it.At one time ordinary people made buildings etc and m ust have developed skills in geometry etc from a practical point of view.And it was they who invented writing and numbers etc not people in Universities who do not create but analayse and criticise and study signs and connections.
So has the rise of experts made us stupider than people were in the past?Is it poets who invent new idioms?

My eyes nearly leaped out of my head when he passed by…
Luckily I had put superglue down the sides of them at breakfast time.
My hands grasped the nettle and I almost threw the flowers at his head.Then he said:
You are the hoover of my soul.
Walls have fears,you know.
A rolling brick gathers no floss.
I patted him on the wreck and we parted with no acrimony and no real money either.What is acrimony?
I’m a pharisee and ‘i’m ok.Jewish by right and a whirling prayer.
I can’t live without hue or colour
Tint me this day.oh Lord.
Does God sell salt on the internet.He has a Lot.Sorry Lot’s wife.Does it clatter?

Neither fall nor winter

The sky is distant,cold

Neither Fall not Winter

Colour light mauvey yellow

No birds àbout, full silence

hangs like a dead bell

No thoughts,no emotion stir my

mind

This does not flatter

Death hides in the shrubs

Chased out by a cat,it floats

away like a coat someone hung

there for a moment

To smhug on the dead leaves

Leaving mistletoe weeping in old

jealousy

We will have to kiss

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I apologise for loving you too much

I apologise for loving you too much 
We never learned to balance the see-saw
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

Two lonely   lovers with  a single crutch
Each one having many curious flaws
I apologise for loving you too much

What ever did I do to merit touch?
Then I was too careless with the salt
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

We should measure what we speak at lunch
Then we weigh the sentences that spilt
I apologise for loving you too much

Maths and stats are useful in the lurch
Equality of signs and numbers,bills
In modern times the lovers should go Dutch

,

Let the mouth be silent, keep quite still
Love is rarely used when writing Wills
I apologise for loving you so much 
In modern times  we lovers cannot touch

A is not aggression

A  is for the axioms we use
B for Brownian motion in a glass
C is for the circle  that  found pi
D is for the dots  that we combine
E is the ellipse that I adore
F is for the fraction I deplore
G is for geometry and art
H is for the hidden and unknown
I was once for inkwells  filled each day
J is    a close relation here of G
K is my own name, I do declare
L is  for the loops that string can make
M is mathematics as an art
N is for the numbers  that transcend
O  might be for zero or the mind
P is for the problems we all meet
Q  is for the quality of life
R is for the  random numbers  here
S  must be statistics, I declare,
T is for topology, that’s clear
U is understanding  what we read
V is  for the vacuum in the heart~
W is  the will power to succeed
X is still  unknown but we’ll give in
Y is  Yes we understand the game
Z I’ll  leave to you to make or maim

How to become a better poet | BBC Maestro

https://www.bbcmaestro.com/blog/how-to-become-a-better-poet

All the advice I’ve read so is that you must read a lot and in particular read a lot of poetry.

If you write poetry even if it’s not very good it makes it easier to read other people’s poetry and when reading a novel I am much more aware of how they describe people nature etc the kind of language that they use. P d James seems to have a poetic gift though as far as I know she did not write poetry as such.

My heart is like a rowing boat adrift

My heart is like a rowing boat adrift
Whose occupant has fallen overboard
The empty vessel drifts through deep sea mist.
And in those pearl filled ears the deep sea roars.
Just as the boat drifts mapless,so do I.
My maps were drawn for quite another sea
My captain’s taken leave and now I cry
As if that drowned soul might just be me.
Yet on the sea bed mysteries abound;
Such wonders and such magic there displayed.
I wonder if it is my lot drown
And to a memory then quickly fade.
Maps are no more certainties than hints.
Between the lines hides gold from other mints.

Why bother?

How short a time we mould our universe 

We learn to walk, to talk and then to curse. 

We pass exams,or fail l,and get a life 

Any one must work and have mate

Then we age and one day we are late

We must submit though often we deny.

The time we are a boss is very short. 

Then then things slip away, and in gods net we’re caugh

 

But while we are alive we can’t despair 

For always there is nature.love and fear

In the end we fade away to death

Happy to be childish as God laughs

Houses built of gold and sin

Ante mortem let us trust
For in the grave we turn to dust
Yet in life the poor are cursed
Our treatment post mortem is just.

The worms and beetles care no more
For the rich than for the poor.
They are happy to devour
Bankers,despots,every hour.

Ante mortem, greed does win
Houses built of gold and sin
But God,who lives in each within,
Cares no more for gold thann tin

If post mortem we are judged
Why does the rich person grudge?
Why do we refuse to budge
Up until the final nudge?

Throw away your heavy goods
Live like daisies by the woods..
Fear not hurricane nor floods
As daises grow even in mud.

More dependent on all power
We trust in madmen’s city towers.
Yet God told us to live like flowers…
To enjoy life for an hour.

Perception is no privilege.
We each have the wits to judge.
See and note where you have smudged
What your creation would allege.

Post and ante, even now
The currents of our hearts allow…
The inner sea which has its flow
To take us where we need to go

When after death I lie deep in the earth

O happy worm that of  my flesh might eat
When after death I lie in deep in the earth
My bosom,hands and eyes  become your meat

You have no sun as you enjoy your feast
And none is  chosen as we were at birth
O happy worm that of  my flesh might eat

All of us are equal in defeat
None are high or low , what are we worth?
My brain,my hands,my eyes  become worms’ meat

In the soil, we rest  in comfort sweet
Let us all be blessed,God  make no curse
You made the happy worms who   will  us  eat

O  remember the deep  ash from Auschwitz’ heat
The little children killed without Kaddish
Those  hearts ,those hands, those eyes   no worm   could eat

,
Why should we  be satisfied by wish
When  people burn or starve  beside our dish
O Godly worm that of  my flesh might eat
Let my very self  become your meat

Like wet paint from the artist’s brush

My old blue fountain pen allows
The ink across the page to flow
Like wet paint from an artist’s brush;
And words come in a rush.

Enchanted by the hand that writes,
Bewitched by art, beauty alights.
The script is like a music score
Through which you pass as through a door.
Imagination’s home.

As,mysteriously,to you,to me,
The spirits of our hearts are tamed,
By rhythms of pen,of brush,of mind,
They enter vision quite unplanned,
Like moths to flutter softly round
Fire joined heart and hand.

The pen slows down,the hand goes still
And just as dreams at daybreak will,
They shrink,they disappear,they’re gone,
I almost caught that one.

Courage

From time and place and season I am lost,

Disorientated ,missing tracks well worn

Do not suppose I’m unaware of cost

Nor label me with epithets of scorn

For usual paths lead to the usual place

The safest way to live and perhaps to die

But wandering through the woods I find new space

and in wild grasses with the fox I lie.

Through distant trees, i see a way to go

as narrow as a slit in pallid stone

This is my destined way, I seem to know

And courage rises even as I moan.

Remember when we’re lost ,we may then find

Another way,a place,another mind

Walk in ferny woods. exchange a glance

Rosa-Morning-Mist-2020

Wasting life when we would like to dance
Walk in ferny woods. exchange a glance
Can we have a decent person at our head?
Jesus Christ,no b*gger understood

Why be happy when you could feel mad?
Glad that Donald Trump is not your dad
Don’t let logic, reason or plain thought
Sell you something Mother never bought

Why not let the police take all control?
They know how to score a self made goal
They can kill a man and wound a child
Yet kneel down in Church along the aisle

Holding a black Bible in one hand

Will not take you to the Promised Land
Cain and Abel,Jacob and Esau
Does he hope to start another War?

As the old man fell towards his death
They offered us a handrail for the bath
I was so shattered by their wilful lies
I could not speak, my saliva had all dried

He was walking albeit slowly when at home
When they took him off I heard the groan
Lost inside his head, no wife nearby
Even Satan would have wept that night

Gabriel and Satan, hand- in -hand
Neither one will ever understand
We humans waste so much,we’re almost blind
Full of envy,hate and so unkind

G

Grief’s 7 Stages Don’t Include Envy and Resentment

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/style/the-seven-stages-of-grief.html

Reading the letters we receive, I’m always struck by how much, and how quickly, people convert their pain into self-loathing. My first thought when I read your letter, Heartless, was: Oh my god — you’re in pain. Your grieving isn’t over. The public ways in which your fiancé’s mom is grieving have reawakened the more private sense of shock and paralysis you felt when your father died. Your instinctive contempt for her displays of sorrow, and how she’s been able to elicit comfort, raises questions about whether you received what you needed 10 years ago, when you were so young and less equipped to ask for support, or even understand how to grieve.

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Re-experience your own sorrow and be overwhelmed

The joy of trauma.

Born to die.

Be your suffering self.

Born to sin.

Kill your real self.

Detach your own retina.

Scramble your own Brain

How to go to hell.

How to see Gaza

Born to hate.

Do a degree in suffering and win

Your boundary is also my boundary

The world’s hollow like a shell

I’m in deep now,never been this deep before
The world’s hollow like a shell and I’m out its door.
In so deep, the ocean has its own startled floor.
I’m down,down.down.never been so dark , so more

I can’t rightly tell how I got where I am
I think I had an accident,fell over, then I swam.
Sometimes it’s a loss, be times it’s my man.
I guess I only do it cos I know some folk can.

I don’t know if the joy is worth the pain
Would I choose to relive if, I was born again?
The deep joy is the amazing gain.
But the sorrow is damn sad, let’s admit it plain.

I’m in deep and it’s over my head
What was I thinking of,when I fell out of that bed?
I look up and the sea’s so turquoise like that mist is red
When we get good and mad and wish some loon was dead.

At first, it was all just black,black pain
But from the bottom of the well, I looked up with awed love again.
That’s when I recalled,feelings are deep and sane
Joy is much greater when we’re in the deep,deep zone.

I dunno if I’m ever comin’ out.
We can’t control it,ain’t that what life’s all about?
I’ll never love with innocence again,nor not feel doubt.
But I’m no teapot and the devil ain’t got my spout.

I’m swimming and the ocean’s so mysteriously bright
Down here we don’t have no day nor no night
Fish nudge me with big grins and teeth white
Sea flowers fondle me and whisper,turn off that light