Dear Hugh

This poetry is amazing and seems especially insightful to me because it talks about the problems I struggle with a lot, anxiety and anger.
Your comment on my latest work 'Home' brought me to your account and I see that you too acknowledge the importance of emotional stability. Thank you for sharing your views with this beautiful piece of work and for your encouraging comment on mine.

Comment is about Emotional health (blog)

Original item by hugh

This has a familiar feeling without being overwrought--excellent )

Comment is about Sven's soul funk (blog)

Original item by Red Brick Keshner

Thanks kindly @Aisha Suleman 🌷very much appreciated 🙏🏻🕊️

Comment is about hair in the wind (blog)

Original item by Wimpole Street Devils

Thanks to all for the kind reception of this poem. You are all much appreciated 🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷
🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷
This means absolutely so much🕊️🙏🏻

Comment is about flight ready (blog)

Original item by Red Brick Keshner

So late...

I think there is an argument for angst.

Simply stated it says that clearly expressing a problem in words is the better part of the battle.

Clarity is the trick, though. Otherwise, it's lip service.

Comment is about Harm (blog)

Original item by David RL Moore

Next Exit, Interpol--

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1hkLiB4MBkU&pp=ygUSaW50ZXJwb2wgbmV4dCBleGl0

"it's not for lack of love of the language that these films have no words. It's because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live."

--Godfrey Reggio on the film, Koyaanisqatsi

Comment is about flashlight (blog)

Original item by Landi Cruz

Thank you, Greg.

I will always remember the conclusion of his pithy tribute to Arnold Ridley, aka Private Godfrey of Dad's Army :

'You were the old one,
Who always wanted to go to the toilet.'

Farewell, and much missed.

Comment is about Farewell to Barry Fantoni, creator of Private Eye’s EJ Thribb (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman

I'm not offended; mine are massive.💗

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

You have certainly written yourself back to wellness.A poem briliantly writen.Well done .

Comment is about Home (blog)

Original item by Mahira

This is such a beautiful poetry, Helene! I am very glad I came back to this site and visited your account particularly. In today's world, where there's so much hatred and animosity, these are the very words the heart yearns for. Words that assure one that love still exists, and is still thought of as the purest feeling by people.
Thank you for this assurance and thank you for your encouraging words on my latest work! Looking forward to reading more of your work.

Comment is about Intention (blog)

Original item by Hélène

Thank you, Aisha! Your poems are like a savory cup of coffee or tea. They pep me up!

Comment is about Ready, Set, Rise! (blog)

Original item by Aisha Suleman

Mental health challenges are daunting. Can we breathe, sing, and write our way back to wellness? Welcome back to poetry writing and reading, Mahira, and thanks for sharing your heartfelt poem. Poems live inside of us, and we are all connected. Sending love and well wishes.

Comment is about Home (blog)

Original item by Mahira

We truly have lost so much in our quest to urbanize. This poetry is a beautiful depiction of the gruesome consequences human greed and ambitions. Love it!

Comment is about HERE'S TO THE GREENERY (blog)

Original item by M.C. Newberry

Thanks Graham,

David RL Moore

Comment is about Moses meets Mo (blog)

Original item by David RL Moore

Thank you for sharing your thoughts RB - cheers!

Comment is about Dauntless (blog)

Original item by Mike McPeek

Thank you, once again, Rolph.
“This is not defence or right,”.

It never has been about that…and it didn’t begin on October the 7th 2024.
In the same year that the National Health Service appeared to resurrect the trappings of civilisation and social justice in UK society, saving both my mother’s life and my own, a descent into barbarity began, in the name of Western / USA colonialism, signed off by Balfour.
The project that was the Palestinian Nakba, continues to be enabled by abject cowardice, hypocrisy and lies on the part of the British establishment.

Comment is about No Land For Peace (blog)

Original item by Rolph David

Says it all David! Bang on! One of your best, succinct and clear!

Comment is about Moses meets Mo (blog)

Original item by David RL Moore

Very effective and a little disturbing, Clare. The addiction or obligation to write has not caught up with me yet, not quite, but I see exactly what you mean.

Comment is about Succubus. (blog)

Original item by Clare

Those were the days when being a signalman was a career choice, Graham.

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Once upon a time it was a job all dads did themselves. The rods were handed down through the generations like Trigger’s Broom!

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Now in all Quality High Streets!
Welcome to the UK 2025.

Comment is about Introductory Matter (blog)

Original item by branwell kent

Carbon Removal Technician, I shouldn't wonder, Stephen.

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Not being a football fan, I jokingly complain in the pub: "all that fuss over a bag of wind"!

Gary Lineker, famous for his skill in kicking said bags of wind, has now upset the bags of wind / lies at the BBC known as "Auntie".

What qualities does a football player such as him posess which qualify him to give an honest, principled and accurate opinion on the current genocide in Gaza?

..................................................💗He's human!💗.................................................

Comment is about Haiku for 2025 [No.16. What Genocide?] (blog)

Original item by Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh

'your poem inspired me to type this comment:'


Takes you to another place.

Bear withness to the mysterious humamind.

Painthings, poetick pixars.

Noetic nodes to blind.

Comment is about Farewell to the Presence (blog)

Original item by Rolph David

Suburban erotica of the best kind, Nigel.

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

Thanks for your likes
Red Brick Keshner
Reggie's Ghost
Uilleam
Holden
Hugh
Stephen A
Manish
John Coopey
and
Aisha.

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

Well done, John. We had a chimney sweep who calls himself an 'entrepreneur artistique'. I expecting he's got sidelines, which probably don't include levitating with an umbrella.

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Thank you, Uilleam and RBK. Nigel Farage once said, gloatingly, "you're not laughing now, are you?". On that basis, it's important to keep laughing!
And thanks to everyone who liked this poem.

Comment is about Giggle (blog)

Original item by Stephen Gospage

Rolph, your poem 'Farewell to the Presence' highlights the imagery of silence and loss in a deeply profound and consistent way. Your poem offers a strong sensory experience that truly made me feel the emptiness. Thank you, Rolph, for sharing that piece.

Comment is about Farewell to the Presence (blog)

Original item by Rolph David

Thanks Uilleam
Thanks Reggie's Ghost
The heat is on even for poetry!

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

It seems I got off lightly, Rolph. (Don’t tell anybody, Uilleam, but I made up the story!)

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

The cutting down of olive trees - part of the ethnic cleansing operation euphemistically known as "mowing the lawn".
The architects of this monstrosity never wanted peace; that's why Netanyahu helped finance Hamas.
"Handing an olive branch" never was and never will be in his vocabulary.

Comment is about Insane. (blog)

Original item by Holden Moncrieff

Ha ha, yes theyre pesky characters!

Comment is about The Extra Terrestrial Poets (blog)

Original item by Rick Varden

I too, have been having trouble with those aliens; the beer's not too bad; it's when they get on the top shelf that things get scary - they've got a thing about Glenfiddich, I think they're going to start a colony there!
😧

Comment is about The Extra Terrestrial Poets (blog)

Original item by Rick Varden

He blacked your carpet? Did he not put down salvage sheets?😕

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Thanks for your likes:

Tom Doolan
hugh
Aisha Suleman
Yanma Hidayah
Naomi

Arrogance and Ignorance in equal measure.
Ignorant = "he knows nowt,"
in Lancashire usage, = "He has no manners".

Comment is about Speyk Lanky Twang! [ Fascists Eawt! English not Spoken Here!] (blog)

Original item by Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh

Hi John,
Great poem, but eventy pounds almost sounds like a bargain when I recently paid 168 euros just for the heating and chimney sweeping here in Germany.
Regards,
Rolph

Comment is about CHIM CHIMINEY (blog)

Original item by John Coopey

Oh the lunacy!
It's hardly rained for several months, yet grass verges, lawns and parks are being mown down to their roots...for what? The boys must play with their toys, I suppose.

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

Some people might be offended, but hey...it could be a bloke.

Anyway, I like the overall feel of this.

Comment is about The Heat is On (blog)

Original item by Nigel Astell

Can't wait until he chortles and guffaws🕊️🙏🏻

Comment is about Giggle (blog)

Original item by Stephen Gospage

A very enviable trait we see in others - confidence and completely at ease in their skin 🌷🕊️🙏🏻

Comment is about Dauntless (blog)

Original item by Mike McPeek

Thank you for the likes on this folks.

David RL Moore

Comment is about A longing (blog)

Original item by David RL Moore

Thank you, Tom, Holden and Stephen for both reading and the flowers. 😀

Comment is about Year of The Dragon (blog)

Original item by Frances Macaulay Forde

Wow, just noticed so many flowers - thank you all. 😮

Comment is about Elephant's Walk (blog)

Original item by Frances Macaulay Forde

Thank you all for the flowers... much appreciated. 😊

Comment is about Mr Bojangles (blog)

Original item by Frances Macaulay Forde

Thanks, Stephen, "many a true word..." etc; but there's no cure for stupidity...unless of course, one is willing to learn!
Until then, the order of the day is: "I'm all right Jack!"

Comment is about Giggle (blog)

Original item by Stephen Gospage

Pardon.

It wasn't as intentional as it was neglectful of the hidden formatting...

"What seems to be your trouble, my child.”

“It’s Irving Loon,” she said, sitting on the bed and playing with the empty highball glass she had brought in with her, ignoring the irony, “he was so happy back in Ontario. At ricing time, you see, all the families are together, everyone happy, Togetherness in Ojibwa land. Blasts, brawls, sex orgies, community sings, puberty rituals. All kinds of wonderful local color to fill up notebook after notebook with. And Irving Loon, ten feet tall with fists like rocks and enough to make even a jaded heart like mine uneasy.” Then, surprisingly—and, for Siegel, embarrassingly—she began reeling off a list of the affairs she had had in all the underdeveloped areas she had visited for the State Dept.; several pages of unofficial statistics which sounded a little like the Catalogue aria from Don Giovanni.

It seemed she had this habit of picking up male specimens wherever she went and bringing them back with her and dropping them after a few weeks. Her exes either assimilated in with The Group or found a niche in some other group or dropped out of sight completely and forever. But Irving Loon, she insisted, was different. He had this brooding James Dean quality about him.

“He’s been standing in the same corner all evening,” she said. “He hasn’t spoken a word for two days. I feel”—and her eyes gazed over Siegel’s shoulder, out into God knows where—“that it’s not only nostalgia for the wilderness, but almost as if somehow out there, in the hinterlands, with nothing but snow and forests and a few beaver and moose, he has come close to something which city dwellers never find all their lives, may never even be aware exists, and it’s this that he misses, that the city kills or hides from him.” I’ll be damned, thought Siegel. This broad is serious. “And this is just what I can’t tell Paul,” she sighed. “He makes fun of Irving, calIs him ignorant. But it’s a divine melancholia and it’s what I love about him.”

Good grief, that was it.

Melancholia. Just by accident she had used that word, the psychologist’s term, instead of “melancholy.” Little Professor Mitchell, perched like a sparrow on his desk in anthropology lecture, hands in his coat pockets, a permanently sarcastic smile twisting one side of his mouth, talking about psychopathy among the Ojibwa Indians. Of course. The old memory bank was still functioning after all. “You must remember that this group lives forever at the brink of starvation,” Mitchell said in that deprecating, apologetic tone which implied that for him all cultures were equally mad; it was only the form that differed, never the content. “It has been said that the Ojibwa ethos is saturated with anxiety,” and simultaneously 50 pens copied the sentence verbatim.

“The Ojibwa are trained, from childhood, to starve; the male child’s entire upbringing is dedicated to a single goal: that of becoming a great hunter. Emphasis is on isolation, self-sufficiency. There is no sentimentality among the Ojibwa. It is an austere and bleak existence they lead, always one step away from death. Before he can attain to the state of manhood a boy must experience a vision, after starving himself for several days. Often after seeing this vision he feels he has acquired a supernatural companion, and there is a tendency to identify. Out in the wilderness, with nothing but a handful of beaver, deer, moose and bear between him and starvation, for the Ojibwa hunter, feeling as he does at bay, feeling a concentration of obscure cosmic forces against him and him alone, cynical terrorists, savage and amoral deities”—this time a smile in self-reproach—“which are bent on his destruction, the identification may become complete. When such paranoid tendencies are further intensified bv the highly competitive life of the summer villages at ricing and berry-picking time, or by the curse, perhaps, of a shaman with some personal grudge, the Ojibwa becomes highly susceptible to the well-known Windigo psychosis.”

Siegel knew about the Windigo, all right. He remembered being scared out of his wits once at camp by the fireside yarn image of a mile-high skeleton made of ice, roaring and crashing through the Canadian wilderness, grabbing up humans by the handful and feeding on their flesh. But he had outgrown the nightmares of boyhood enough to chuckle at the professor’s description of a half-famished hunter, already slightly warped, identifying with the Windigo and turning into a frenzied cannibal himelf, foraging around the boondocks for more food after he had gorged himself on the bodies of his immediate family. “Get the picture,” he had told Grossmann that night, over mugs of Würtzburger. “Altered perception. Simultaneously, all over God knows how many square miles, hundreds, thousands of these Indians are looking at each other out of the corner of their eye and not seeing wives or husbands or little children at all. What they see is big fat juicy beavers. And these Indians are hungry, Grossmann. I mean, my gawd. A big mass psychosis. As far as the eye can reach”—he gestured dramatically—“Beavers. Succulent, juicy, fat.”

“How yummy,” Grossmann had commented wryly. Sure, it was amusing, in a twisted sort of way. And it gave anthropologists something to write about and people at parties something to talk about. Fascinating, this Windigo psychosis. And oddly enough its first stages were marked by a profound melancholia. That was what had made him remember, a juxtaposition of words, an accident. He wondered why Irving Loon had not been talking for two days. He wondered if Debby Considine knew about this area of the Ojibwa personality.

“And Paul just won’t understand,” she was saying. “Of course it was a bitchy thing to complain to the police but I’d lie awake nights, thinking of him crouched up in that tree, like some evil spirit, waiting for me. I suppose I’ve always been a little afraid of something like that, something unfamiliar, something I couldn’t manipulate. Oh yes,” she admitted to his raised eyebrows, “I’ve manipulated them all right. I didn’t want to, Siegel, God knows I didn’t. But I can’t help it.” Siegel felt like saying, “Use a little less mascara or something,” but was brought up short by an awareness which had been at the back of his mind since Lupescu had left: a half-developed impression about the role Lupescu had occupied for this group; and it occurred to him that his double would never have said anything like that. You might give absolution or penance, but no practical advice. Tucked snugly in some rectory of the mind, Cleanth Siegel, S.J., looked on with approval. “Changing the subject for a moment,” Siegel said, “do you know, has Irving told you anything about the Windigo?”

“It’s funny you should mention that,” she said, “it’s a nature god or something, that they worship. I’m not on the anthropology end of things or I could tell you more about it. But the last time Irving was talking—he speaks English so well—he said once ’Windigo, Windigo, stay by me.’ It’s this poetic, religious quality in him that’s so touching.” And right about here Siegel began to feel really uneasy, to hear this tiny exasperating dissonance. Poetic? Religious? Ha, ha."

Comment is about life is absurd, indeed (blog)

Original item by Landi Cruz

Good morning Graham,

Thank you for your reading and the comment.

I'm not sure which form gives me more satisfaction, the rhyme or prose.

The pitfall with rhyme for me seems to be the temptation to use the easy path, take a word that is so obvious that the reader has completed the line before they have read it. That type of error leads to disappointment.

As with most writing, life experience counts for quite a bit...that and a good imagination coupled with an amount of empathy and compassion might get us some of the way.

Thanks again,

David RL Moore

PS. It seems unusual these days to not find many similar poems on this subject/of this tone written by men, why is that I wonder?

Comment is about A longing (blog)

Original item by David RL Moore

Thanks for extra likes: Naomi, Stephen G & John C. 👍

Comment is about How Long Is Forever (blog)

Original item by Tom Doolan

Thank you for stopping by Marla - cheers!

Comment is about Every Hack Has Their Rose (blog)

Original item by Mike McPeek