The inner sea will comfort me

Inside my shell, I dream of pearls,
Caterpillars, snails with whorls.
I dream contented, all enwrapped
With reverie and dream, I’m lapped.
The inner seas will comfort me,
While gods allow my eyes to see

Oh, sweeter than confectionery
Is my worn old dictionary.
The words whirl round and fall to shape
The sentences, which my world drape.
This furnishing is rich and strange
Yet magically self-arranged.

Oh, sweeter than the love of man
Is reading works of poets long gone;
And feeling deeply their dark tides,
Upon which our boats may glide.
The sea infinite we float on
Is the same warm sea that ancients swam.

Sweeter still is this spring air
And the blossom spreading fair.
We’ll drown ourselves in deep green fields
To the gods of poetry yield.
We’ll rise again and spring up tall
To grow more rich until we fall.

Sweet it is to live and die
And to write my poetry
Touch me with your ardent souls
My mind and yours shall all be whole

Evensong

Evensong

Evensong evokes another state
A world of beauty, peace and mental calm
Where all is still and thoughts do not gyrate

The breath slows down and evil does not mate
Indeed it flees before the holy psalms
Evensong evokes another state

In the quiet, we each can, happy, wait
Assured by songs of good, of healing balm
Where all is still and thoughts do not gyrate

Soothing rhythms will help the mind create;
To bear the emptiness unfilled and do no harm.
Evensong evokes this cultured state

Frantic notes of music irritate
And minimise all goodness and all warmth
Let all be still and let thought emigrate

Let us lowly creatures slowly learn
To love each other as we take our turn
Evensong evokes another state
There all is calm and thoughts are sweet as fate

I am a CD

Digital art by author

I’m a loud speaker
Are you really? I’m a gramophone needle

Can you speak?
If I couldn’t I wouldn’t be able to answer

Your clothes are very gay
No, your eyes are too sharp

Can you turn up my hem?
That’s a change from looking at your etchings

Where is the button off my shirt?
It can’t speak or phone

Is public speaking easy?
Nothing public is easy.
Even silence.

What is the agenda?
We didn’t do Greek at my school.

Why is weird right? Should it not be wierd?
It used to be wyrd before the Normans
That’s a relief

The churchyard wall

The bricks of the old wall while crumbling live
Five hundred years of history passed them by
While plants grew in the cracks below, above

Apart from people, this is what I love
That ancient structures stand and do not die
The bricks of this old wall while crumbling live

A little beauty will do well enough
This cheers my heart and lifts my spirits high
Wild flowers grow in cracks below, above

We fill our minds and homes with shop bought stuff
Gaze on bricks and cracks, what will we spy?
The bricks of this old wall while crumbling live

Like old complexions, older bricks are rough
The Vicar cannot smooth them though they try
Holes for plants inscribe these cracks with love

From generations past, ghosts wander. shy.
Looking for their graves, they whisper,sigh
The bricks of the old wall still crumbling live
Tenacious weeds shall wave below, above

Requiems need scores

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Posted on January 22, 2019
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
Tinged with grey from lack of proper care,
While from the Channel sing the dread foghorns

Sailors in the night long for new dawn
Fear boats of refugees may still sail there
Snow clouds hang like canopies well torn

A dinghy holds the Saviour lately born
There is no space on earth safe from great fear
F rom the Channel sigh the families drowned

From maternal’ space, Jesu is torn
His father holds his arms around those dear
Snow clouds hang, are lacy wings no more

The hearts of British ” natives” have turned sour
Into Jesu’s side we thrust our spears
Tune the channel.Requiems need scores

All lives now, and all of time is here
Do not mistake the song of silent choirs.
Snow clouds hang like canopies forlorn,
While in the Channel, reckless are the horns

Everyone should heed my music teacher’s advice: ‘When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me’

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/18/everyone-should-heed-my-music-teachers-advice-when-you-assume-you-make-an-ass-out-of-you-and-me?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Writing a poem

With trepidation

Let preconceptions, though well meant, depart
Creative work evades such plans and schemes
To write a poem will shake the entire heart

To write a poem will take our entire heart
Our mind and soul, our body and our dreams.
With trepidation, take a pen and start

We travel lands unknown without a chart.
With our courage, trust the dark unseen
For inspiration, take a pen and write

We bite the apple,bitter, hard and tart
Knowledge enters in its dream -like streams
To write a poem will move each living heart

No logic,reasoning, signs,however wrought
Will bring to life the holy pattern’s themes
With each image, still your dreaming hear

The earth,
the oceans, seas, the sacred scenes
Where humans live out daily what life means
To write a poem, we need the mystic heart
In emptiness, we fill our pens, we start

An interview with Joyce Carol Oates

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3441/the-art-of-fiction-no-72-joyce-carol-oates?utm_source=The+Paris+Review+Newsletter&utm_campaign=5a6e53ddcc-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_01_19_10_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_35491ea532-1ba85b6ef5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&mc_cid=5a6e53ddcc&mc_eid=552ffa9eef

Pater Nostra

Our Father,Aneurin Bevan,
Exploded is thy game;
Why,Kingdom come,
Before thy will be done.
No N.H.S.No Heaven.
Give us fair pay,our daily bread;
Don’t leave us with PTSD
As we confront those who legislate against us.
And feed us not with deprivation,
But deliver us from Weasels.
For thine was the Fair Game,the Hour and the Story
Maybe once but will it be ever again?
…

God can’t NEED our worship

photo0227.jpg

A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell. C. S. Lewis
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/worship_2.html

 

If we knew a human being who demanded constant praise and admiration then we would think they were a bit odd..mayube children need it  and it’s nice to get a litttle but if God needed it all the time he’d be  a narcissist which is illogical with regard to God

We worship God because it’s  in our nature to worship and so we  need to worship someone  or something which is good.Otherwise we will worship the Queen new kitchens,copper pans, handsome men,lovely womem,loft conversions.expensive food…my calves,my eyes,my mind,your mind,arguing,war,sex,drugs etc,halogen cooking hobs, washing machines,

Better to worship trees if God is not your  cup of tea

And I believe many people feel being grateful for the beautiful world is good for us instead of complaining all the time.Gratitude and  making up quarrels is good for our spirit.I think it must be terrible for people who commit murder especially because even if they are sorry they can’t bring their victim back.In such a case  praying and meditating might help.Sadly most murders take place at home and it seems children are often victims.That is something I  don’t know enough about but povery and lack of work  for men seem factors..Husbands and wives always quarrel and it’s not beyond imagining we might pick up the bread knife and wave it about.
If I were God I’d  prefer people to try to get on with other people instead of worshipping me.In the past the idea we might go to Hell was meant to stop us doing bad things but I don’t think it worked as people in difficult situations lose control and now it is never mentioned.

What is most puzzling is why Christians like the Crusaders thought it was alright to murder  hundreds/thousands  of Jews and Moslems as they approached the so called Holy Land.You don’t have to be THAT  intelligent to see that  if God exists he made them as well  as us.So why would he want  us  to kill them?I don’t know whether on balance Christianity has done more harm than good.I fear it may be so….Jesus would be surprised if he saw the Vatican… he is surprised,he told me just now… why not sell it?Give the money to the poor… well,it’s there in the Bible.. the still,small,voice

Jeremiah,why are you here?

The darkness at birth

Going into the darkness of the dream

Afraid to sleep in the world

Where dark Satan stands smiling by Jesus cradle

He couldn’t wait for the holy wars but how to have Jesus put to death as soon as it was clear who he was

Then his people were degraded and sent into the dark

The demons outnumbered the angels and we didn’t know because we couldn’t see them

But when we’re old we get second sight and we know the Shadows and the darkness.

We bear all this because we don’t want our children to know

Now even my children are old but no wiser

Learning is so slow and shedding blood so easy

No more will the Bedouins dwell in the desert

Evoking the beauty, the stars so far away,
I like to watch geese at the end of day.
Patterns and poems disclose other worlds.
Feel the hand of a baby with the fingers all curled

See the trust and the smile when the mother is home,
To create entire worlds for the one she has borne.
For chaos and panic or not far away
Even in adults who don’t care to say.

The little hands touch me so deeply, so well;
How come the world is diving to hell?
How can we kill little wains by the score
Was it for this that I opened your door?

Was it for this that love electrified us,
And we were lost in each other, in the holy white dove.
Was it for war that we gave love our wombs
Making more soldiers and filling more tombs?

The bombs are a-loading they’re having parades.
It’s not North Korea, it’s Washington, dude.
Let the tanks roll on Corrie and the Bedouin tribes.
Let the allies laugh blindly as the Lord Jesus dies.

O take me, dear mother.Please take me away
I can’t see no point in saying my prayers.
The leaders’ religions are making God frown.
The desert is empty, the tents all dragged down.

The centuries of living so free , so mobile;
The holy land blessing as they pause for while.
The little black tents like wombs of the night
Are all gone to shredders as we sing, Silent Night.

Anthony Hecht

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/161844/more-light-659ec46913f0a?utm_source=Poetry+Foundation&utm_campaign=b8ff92e6bb-POFO%E2%80%93JANUARY_19-2023%3A_MORE_LIGHT%21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff7136981c-b8ff92e6bb-185545637&mc_cid=b8ff92e6bb&mc_eid=548544474a

Without your love

Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Our inter-self, dismembered, broke apart
Give me courage on the journey slow

In good time , we lose our self in flow
To be self-conscious makes shame rule the heart
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.

Do we have no self when partners die?
Bewildered, can I find the way to start?
Give me courage on the journey slow

Where is my best path to discover
The way to mend a self, holed by grief’s darts?
Without your gaze, I’m nobody I know

Like a ship strikes rocks deep down below
I risk getting hit without some charts
Give me courage on the journey slow

Will I know myself when new betrothed
To mirrors unfamiliar to me old?
Without your love, I’m nobody I know.
Give me courage in the darkness gross.

1939:Last train out of Warsaw

Photo by Josh Hild on Pexels.com

Elena,a baby wrapped in woollen clothes.
On the last train,Warsaw to Moscow,
[ change Niegoreloje.]
1939.Father,mother,brother
You passed through the Arctic Wastes of life.
Still as if travelling on a train
To an impossibly far destination.
As you left the German Army crashed into Warsaw
Lost,your aunts
Your cousins.
Your culture.
How does God select the damned?
You had your own baby,here in England,
Not lost like all those others.
Your father died by his own hand,
The hand of history;
The fingers twitching,
Not sure where to point.
Then settling into frozen grief
A sculpture only your mother saw.
You saw too,Elena.
You always saw,though you can’t remember;
The long journey, your mother’s breast,
Your father’s silence.
Only the dead know that silence.
Only the dead weep
With the rocks and stones .
And the ice in each eye
Fell like snow down your cheeks
As you held your own infant.
Warsaw to Moscow,
Moscow to Jerusalem.
Always journeying
Looking for what they can never find:
The home they left behind
The presence of the dead
Lying in gaunt heaps
Like rubbish
Your aunts, Elena.
Your cousins.
You never knew them.
But there’s a hole in your mind
Through which the Polish wind forever blow