Rebooting Mondays

Flat-As-A-Pancake Day, bereft

Of froth and babble full of dread Mundane work-a-day

SOMETHING must be done!

Let's do it!

Smile. At everyone, some will stick ... And come flashing back.

Run up the stairs

Make coffee and

Hand round a crisp, white paper bag

Full of very sticky toffees.

Tip a beggar

Listen to a concerto

Or a rock band and

At the beginning of every email

Say something ...

Different. Kind, perhaps.

Remember, when you

Actually finish something,

How it felt when you were in the Juniors and your teacher

Pressed a gold star on your

Careful scrawl.

Good eh?

Pick a moment when everything

Would otherwise be too tedious to bear

Take yourself off to tthe Caribbean

Lie on on a beach with your lover

Let the surf nibble your toes ...

Or, if this is too much,

Be ten again and play

Hide and seek in a bright Spring wood

With your sister ...

See! It's working isn't it?

Already you're looking forward to Monday,

And have change jingling in your pocket

To buy toffees

And tip a beggar

Posted with Blogsy

Going To The Pub:1

 My earliest memories of a Public House are of family outing to the King's Head in Upton St Leonards.

It would have been a warm summer evening. Kids are not allowed in the pub, but there is a garden, with a wooden shelter and a grassy playground. A bottle of pop a bag of crisps (Smiths, in a blue and white packet that comes with a twist of oiled paper containing salt.) Mum and dad drink Watney's Pale Ale.

Supper was a Melton Mowbray pork pie, with cold pickles.

There were games to be played 'Grandmother's Footsteps', 'Hide and Seek', British Bulldog', 'In And Out The Bluebell Windows', 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', and 'What's The Time Mr Wolf'?' I teach them to my grandchildren now. 

And there were chants and rhymes, running and laughing ... lots and lots of laughing.

Ball games, skipping games, handstands, cartwheels and Tag. 

Always sunny, always suffused with joy. Evening falls and I can see Dad lifting a tired brother Mervyn over his shoulders as we trudge home down Winneycroft Lane and to bed.       

I Haven't Written A Poem About Damon Runyon

I haven't written a poem about Damon Runyon

This, is an omission, so

Without his permission, (being impossible to obtain because

Nothing remains except, this figure in my head:

In short, he's dead)

 

I am thinking, as would he, eternally, In the present continuous, of mobsters

And their molls. Those Guys and Dolls, who are singing and dancing and murdering each other

With rampant inhibition - it being Prohibition - through

The highways and byways of New York

Through Speakeasys and Vaudeville,

Racetracks, playhouses and

This and That on Broadway:

Anyhow: here and there.

 

Cheesecake at Mindy's, out of town hucksters

Young ladies with high hopes,

Dealing them off the arm -

 

Safe-crackers. Pie-eaters, old ladies with attitude

Babies with Pop!

 

I

 

Love 'em all. New friends in a New World.

Delightfully, deliciously, sailing close to the wind

In a world of Romance and Danger. To which

I remain,

 

A stranger.

 

(Funny, where inspiration comes from.

 

Don't you think?

 

And now

 

I HAVE written a poem about Damon Runyon.)

Postscript:

I have also made the cheesecake. All the better for having ' a story that goes with it'. So this is for the cheesecake experts out there:

http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Lost-recipe-for-legendary-cheesecake-found-3631242.php

:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Feeding The Beast

I am enjoying the second half of life privilege of examining the baggage of my life with a critical, if not unsympathetic, eye, and deciding what to tip into the dumpster.

 

Once I took hold of the fact that you can believe anything and get away with it (and possibly make money from it too: which is the ONLY explanation there is for Scientology) everything became clear. So away with all the stuff in religion that invites me to despise, judge or exploit anyone else. Amazing how much of a drag THAT was! Away too, with any kind of pretence that I am either better or worse than anyone else. I take my seat between heaven and earth and touch the ground in acknowledgement of my divine right to be here, and courteously invite everyone else to do the same.

 

Religion sorted. Politics, not so easy. I fell into the Twitter trap of throwing out an insult in the heat of the moment with no thought to the consequences. I denounced a politician, on my own side, as a snivelling cheat, and he called me out on it. Oh dear. Caught trolling.

 

I apologised at once for being rude, though I thought the comment may have had some merit, and immediately put myself in social media purdah for a week and went off to write poetry.

 

The point of this ramble is better made in the First Nation fable of two wolves at war in the human heart. One embodies all that is good, the other everything evil. Who wins? The one you feed of course.

 

So, the battle to make sense of this one beautiful life continues. I have no idea which of my wolves will win out today, but I do have a preference ...

Posted with Blogsy

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

I'm on holiday with my amazing family in beautiful Wales!

Happy New Year!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy