An Irish form – ‘Ae Freislighe’
Symbols of love requited Climbing from beds of manure Hues and fragrance delighted Vigorous thorny splendour A gift for my Valentine Fated emotions arise Bodies and lives intertwine Floral power we summise
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Here's the really amazing thing There's nothing to lose, nothing to win Sunday morning silence surrounds A realisation profound Listening to Jeff Buckley's 'Grace' This is the time, this is the place Coffee aroma, birdsong abounds Releasing confusion unsound Beauty in its simplicity Letting go of complicity I'm never going back underground Life once more conspires to astound He's now singing Brook's 'Lilac Wine' But his melancholy isn't mine I'm alive and on the rebound In this moment, acceptance crowned
So my wife made me a poetry scrap book – inspirational titles collaged into a notebook. I’m planning to investigate a different poetry form each day, and try to produce something vauely relevant to the titles she has proposed. So this offering is not an indication of my current state of mind…
The poetry form is a Glose, or Glosa – a Spanish form which takes a famous quatrain, and uses each line as the end line in a 10-line stanza, traditionally with four such stanzas. Oh, and alternating line rhymes and rhyming ending couplets…
My prompt was ‘Pain’ and the quatrain I’m quoting is by W.H.Auden, from ‘Funeral Blues’:
"The stars are not wanted now; put out every one Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood For nothing now can come to any good."
So with apologies to any purists out there, here goes…
Investing in ultimately impossible dreams Grasping at any likely-looking hand-hold But nothing is quite what it seems Solid ground and certainties get old To get back up and sportingly finish the race Brush off broken bones and worse A smile worn in deceit upon my face Too bone-tired to even utter a curse There's nothing left, the will is gone The stars are not wanted now; put out every one This joyride careers to its inevitable end How likely that I choose to ride again? No dusting off now, it's too broken to mend Walk away and refuse to play, what then? Melancholy drains the colour from flowers Insipid greyness pervades every corner Climbing down from crumbling ivory towers The spirit and demeanor of a mourner Nowhere now to hide, nowhere to run Pack up the stars and dismantle the sun The sweetest melody transcribes to dirge The simplest plan failing at birth No desire, no hope, no future, no urge Unimaginable that anything could have worth This is beyond defeat and giving up A withdrawal from a reality too hard Take from me this bitter cup Pluck from me this broken shard Nothing can change this, and nothing should Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood Slowly dawning consciousness reveals its trick Here again this never-ending now The joke's not a good one; the joke is sick This has to stop, but I can't see how Another pointless drawing of breath For what purpose do I fuel this soul? No solution offers less permanent than death Nothing matters, existence an empty whole I wouldn't stop this now, even if I could For nothing now can come to any good
Have smartphones really destroyed a generation? We don’t know. But here’s how to find out: Scientists need to ask better questions — and big tech needs to help. Full article here
The 2017 Twenge study reported that in one of the surveys it analyzed, the correlation between social media use and depressive symptoms was .05. Among girls, the correlation was slightly higher, at .06. Include only boys and the correlation dropped to .01 and was no longer significant.
Correlational relationships, in social science, are scored between negative 1 and 1, with negative 1 meaning there’s a perfect negative correlation (as one variable goes up, the other goes down) and 1 meaning a perfect positive correlation.
So .05 is a pretty small positive correlation.
And from The Guardian in January….
“We would, in the light of this paper, reiterate our advice that families spend time interacting as a family, that screens are not allowed to interfere with sleep, and that screen-based interaction is no substitute for in-person contact.”
Screen dims young minds – Frequent use of screens by children aged two to five has been linked to developmental delays by researchers in Canada. The more time children were reported to be spending in front of screens, the worse they did on development tests. The researchers say parents should be cautious about time spent with devices – on average, the 2,400 children they studied spent about 17 hours a week in front of screens at two years old, increasing to almost 25 hours a week at three years, before falling to 11 hours a week at five. Meanwhile the electronic bullying of young people has grown significantly worse in recent years, according to the UK’s media watchdog. Ofcom says 9% of 12- to 15-year-olds report being bullied via text messages and apps.
An absence, a deep rest, a re-birth and a renewal
A renegotiating with myself
Whatever ‘self’ might mean
Modular-mind theories revising our essence
Darwinian prerogatives running out-of-date drivers
For obsolescent software
A return to study
The mind, psychology, mindfulness
And a recognition of the physical
This imperfect perfect body
As optimism peeks out, seeks out, speaks out
The first sip of the first coffee of the day
A knowing smile – nothing to say
Moments of peace before others awake
Ingredients, time, a meal to make
An old friend’s handshake turned into a hug
An afternoon tea from a favourite mug
A new scale mastered, the first page of a book
Simple pleasures everywhere, when you know where to look.