Wiles

I DO ENVY YOUR TALENT...UNLESS OF COURSE YOU TELL ME THAT THIS POEM TOOK YOU A FEW YEARS TO FINISH. I FEEL LIKE I AM IN THE MIDST OF GREATNESS AFTER COMING TO TERMS WITH THE EMOTION YOU INSTILL IN YOUR WORK...ITS AS IF YOU ARE THE WISE MAN (WOMAN) ON THE MOUNT, SENDING DOWN MESSAGES ON A SCROLL TO WE AMATEURISH PEASANTS. YOU INSTILL A SLIGHT OF AN OLD ENGLISH TEXTURE TO YOUR ART AND, IN THIS WORK, YOU DRIVE YOUR POINT HOME. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST I'VE READ OF YOURS VERY NICE PINT

the world stumbles and rights itself and for our short few decades here we place with us whom we love desire cherise share capitulizing security for modest endevour of dreams like smokey mists on waters warm hot morning great poem as always Ann

Dearest Ann, I fell asleep with Neo on (at 2am tsk tsk) & woke to find this gem!!! Love your responsive expressions... We are kin in our "tumbling" of words, my precious friend, & I know how that is, you do it with such wonderful abandonment. The dangers of loving, wonderfully illustrated Ann style... Yay. xxx~ Anni ~~~ "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, it's what you are expected to give -- which is everything." -Anon

Another great one O'Queen! You do indeed bring forth such grand emotion and bits of wisdom for us all. I love the line;"to disturb the flow of cups of tea" it makes me think of a comfortable relationship,that could be lost through the pursuit of something not good as... in the end. Your metaphors are so wonderful! Loved it! Gee. p.s. I think the wiles of which you speak,is spelled without the 'H'.

Oh ann this is lovely poignant and sad ... my favourite lines are for personal reasons more because you reminded me of someone long passed on but somehow her words found themselves into your mind and into this poem .... Beautifully done as always ... off to try and catch up on everyones work I've missed over the last few days much love and regard Jayne x x

I owe you a number of responses which I am working on in my ponderous way. You have raised good ideas and issues. Affectionately, Brian

we can't help but be interested in the goings on around us, and be tempted to join in the festivities of flesh on flesh... disturbing the cups of tea that fit so wonderfully... you drove it home with this one! Richard

This poem has great perspective. Each stanza is a little philosophical gem, a sage of smokey advise. Why does love make me receptive and ready to be unwise These lines link you with the ordinary human experience and therefore the mass of us. when we all know how deceptive its a happening in disguise The use of the word "happening", coming as it does from the sixties (with Alan Kaprow) and the age of performance art, is perfect for these purposes. and the wiles of men and women reach the zenith of their powers with their chocolates and their flowers their fancy dress and showers These images remind me of my insecure teenage years, when I actually asked a young lady of greater maturity to go on a practice date so I might find my confidence. to disturb the flow of cups-of-tea when there’s probably poison there for me These, the most telling lines of the poem. Here, I think, you are speaking for all. When 50% of marriages end in divorce, 65% of second marriages, and greater percentages for all other forms of pairing, poison may be the normal content in an erotically engaging cup of tea. and the captive gem, the diamond true is sitting there right next to you how can we be so blind And this is the social truth. We tend to under-rate the familiar. Part of that habit may be our desire for the orient; spice and adrenaline on tap. Part, a kind of laziness about initiating our own entertainment: not many folk songs sung in the family anymore to compete with the septic blase-ness of the news or the sexually hyper-inflated shoulders of Monday Night Football (kind of like rugby while wearing a shapely plastic prophylactic). Part, we may feel that we have run out of things to say that have not already brewed their way into a music-less chant through the local eves. But poetry is such a cure to all these things. and chase these straws it is life’s fine wine the great seductive drug divine and when we count the cost its all a dream that now is lost That is certainly a fear, although I look at it a little differently. We have at least the poetry and perhaps the loveliness of the shared moment; and as each shared moment's beauty shapes the view of this world of ours, perhaps too we see just a little more grandeur in it's sunrise, and the people who are the pregnancy of this planet. I need and shall write again. As always, with affection, Brian

a truly enjoyable read here. And I thought I had already commented, read this a few days ago and typed a long comment. Must have forgotten to hit submit. Now I have quite forgotten all the words that had come to me while reading this for the first time, but still wanted to let you know that I love this poem. Yours, ~Nina

here I am. Haven't looked at you, Ann of Norway, and your "stuff" here, so good it is. I'm particularly struck by the poetry circulating through virtually all your prose. Your comments so rich like gold, solid like trunk of a Pacific Coast Highway redwood. What a pleasure to read them. For me. I need to come back alert so I can soak up more than can be available to me now. So sleepy. --- I took too much insulin a bit ago. (Oops!) Forgot the units required. The appropriate amount changes, sometimes rapidly, in a sort of rough tandem with the change of season. As now. So. Overshot. Too much punched in. Realized it early after eating. So checked, you know, the BS. So then chewed a couple of four-gram glucose tabs. I think it's past time now I nap. Perhaps at its end I'll need to take another blood check. Tricky this is. This diabetes mellitus. --- Be back. Just wanted to register I'm here and looking. And appreciating. Yours, Chuck