Happiness - How would you know...

Kiss Points

August 29, 2025August 29, 2025humanist55

Buy a proper bread roll
and it will have flat, crustless sides
where it swelled during baking
touched and melded with its neighbour
though not so hard that it
could not be separated
– bakers call this the “Kiss Point”

Do partners’ bums whose owners
both turned their backs to sleep
from argument or mild estrangement
– softly reach out to gently flatten
and warmly kiss their loves behind
baking a fresh start into
each beautiful new morning…

Kiss points in bread rolls courtesy of Christie the Baker

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, Grace in Poetics invites us to post a poem of our choice. As a salve to all the bad news and hatred in the world at present, which even we poets must do our bit to suppress, I offer you this gentle poem of coming togetherness…

Ubi Sunt

August 22, 2025August 22, 2025humanist55

Where are the days of our young passion
Where are the parts participated
In more than some or other fashion
In fact, in lovemaking delighted
Where are the springs in our eager steps
Crossing the threshold of our new doorstep
Painting our very special bedroom
Yet there it was came the cloud of doom
From early, unknown trauma, came down
To settle like blight on our good life
Occasional sunbeams and some strife
Now forty years and more gone around
Where are the lovers are they still there
Still searching for sunbeams, loving pair?

This is a carving I made for my late sister and brother-in-law for their wedding present – it is based on a drawing by Eric Gill.

Over at dVerse Poets pub, Laura Bloomsbury in Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft invites to write to the question UbiSunt… Where are they 0r Where oh where?

Title your poem with the question – where are the/they…
Use the questioning within your poem, even with repetition
DO NOT ANSWER it though – the questioning is rhetorical
Employ concepts of mortality, the transience of life, a sense of nostalgia
Suggested themes: Childhood; Youth; Lost Generation; Days of Yore;
Employ whatever poetry style of your choosing from free verse to sonnet

Love Is In the Air…

September 14, 2023September 15, 2023humanist55

Love is in the air
and is intoxicating
as the fumes
of brandy in a glass balloon
it wafts beyond the
happy pairs of lovers
rekindling memories
of a younger age
re-living and reeling
with heady recall

Three grandsons now perhaps
have found their matches
and you know when
talk turns to children
and which football tribe
they should be raised in
that these are keepers

I have never been to a match
and been drunk on shared
passion in a huge crowd
but watching a film
whilst waiting to meet
the latest and last to
join the set, we shared
the intimacy of lovers in
Portrait of a Lady on Fire

A camera takes us
to the heart of an orchestra in concert
with a closeness to each player’s
breath and movement
as they embrace their instruments
to pull on our heartstrings
and film likewise grants us
close-ups of couples
we would never see in real life
our neighbours love lives
hidden in semi-detached suburban rooms
separate, unknowable, ineffable
no matter how openly
the rest of our proximate lives
are lived
was it different in the
warm fug of tribal longhouses
lovemaking couples as close
as the next cocooning hammock?

Children don’t care to imagine
their parents making love
imagining they are beyond all that
however deep the love they daily show
and parents don’t dare to imagine
their children either
the perils of the heart
the baton passed
but when love is in the air
for those lucky enough to have
roots deep in the rich soil
of happy parents
there is the hope of
templating happy families to come

Such open-hearted boys
have not escaped without
venturing up blind alleys
at least two have had
songs of heartbreak
loss and bewilderment
plucked painfully
on their heartstrings
before finding their way
safely to harbour in
calmer but still deep water
after storm-tossed seas

I held those boys as babies
drew or close-up photographed
their sleeping faces
turned their living-room
into a fort, cave, nest
or whatever their imagination
could conjure from the
jumble of throws and giant cushions
taught them the love of the pun
witnessed tantrums and triumphs
watched football from the sidelines,
school and scout uniforms
gowns and mortarboards
how could I not be
drawn along in the
wake of their love lives
dropping away like the pilot boat
waving up to the after-deck
as I slow down
and they gather pace
on their own voyages of love

The calmness and Giaconda smile
of one, the bubbling enthusiasm of another
perfume from Morrocco the first impression
throwing one off the scent
of the depths of a doctor
the brightness and humanity
of all of them
grandsons and girlfriends alike
mingling as a family
dancing in ever closer union
my head spins and
my heartstrings resonate
simply on the fumes
as love is in the air.

Written unprompted and posted for Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Live, OpenLinkNight over at dVerse Poets Pub

Spies

June 16, 2023June 28, 2023humanist55

What is a spy if not a cursed liar
Who for love puts hand in fiercest fire
But not the love given to a sweet woman
The love of country is inhuman.

We watched a French, great tragedy conclude
Where agents of The Bureau were deluded
Believing they could steer their star-crossed fate
Clinging to the happy ending till too late.

For once your life is built on falsehood complex
The web you weave the fates will always vex
And you must pay for secrets stolen, finally
No matter how handlers and bosses rally

The cause of saving hapless agents’ lives
Is hard on lovers, colleagues, friends and wives
All pawns in what is known as the Great Game
The spy is destined for a life without fame

And if their life of infamy be revealed
Be sure the fates no happiness will deal.

This poem was written in response to a challenge from Posted by Björn Rudberg (brudberg) in Poetry Forms on dVerse – The Poet’s Pub, to write a Heroic Sonnet in iambic pentameter – you can read about it here.

My partner and I have been binge-watching a five-series drama made by the French company Canal called The Bureau. Since the French are famed for their interest in love, this drama, whilst being a cracking, edge-of-your-seat tale of the life of spies, also examines the philosophical implications for the loves of those who make their living by living a lie – can they find happiness? Since the poem might be spoiler enough, I will say no more…

This is the first time I have attempted a Sonnet in Iambic Pentameter – something I vaguely remember being taught in school but had to resort to Wikpedia for the finer points, including all the exceptions to the rules which make lines memorable – I hope I have done it justice. I guess that we many of us have this poetry form flowing through our veins with so many great poets and playwrights having embraced the form.

What if Chess were about Love?

December 3, 2022December 3, 2022humanist55

What if Chess, instead of being a metaphorical game of war and strategy, were instead, the pursuit of love? Instead of trying to get with the King in order to kill him, moving to the same square by the opposite Queen – or King was the attainment of bliss. Queens may rush about the board whilst hubby is stuck at the office, out bringing home the bacon and should it prove that they swing the other way, then they may be cloaked in the invisibility that Queen Victoria’s disbelief in sapphic love affords them and the game may be quickly concluded if both parties are willing. Kings, on the other hand, are slow movers when it comes to finding lasting love, for all their possible willingness to philander and play the field, whether hetero- or homosexual, a lasting love is hard to find…

What of the other pieces on the Chessboard – who might they represent and how might they come into play? The pawns are clearly children – they are small and can only take correspondingly small steps – unless they reach the other side of the board, by which time they are suddenly all grown up and can be whoever they want to be! They may be the children of the King and Queen or perhaps nephews and nieces yet despite their diminutive stature they may have important roles in the game – how many friendships have begun over the heads of children at the school gate? Children’s parties, babysitting, children as go-betweens – many are the opportunities afforded by children to adults in the pursuit of love…

who is to say that a King or Queen cannot use their partner’s bestie to further their cause

Then there are the other adults divided, according to whose shoulder they stand at, King or Queen, into his or her friends and relations. Bishops are the moralists – always ready to jump in and pour cold water on one whose fires have been lit by lust for another but even they, with their decisive, diagonal strikes, can be manipulated into furthering their besties, nephew or nieces, son’ or daughter’s cause. Rooks are those stalwart friends whose loyalty can always be relied on, even if their movement is limited to left and right and who is to say that a King or Queen cannot use their partner’s bestie to further their cause – after all, they are on the same side, aren’t they? The Knight though, is the real best friend, for even though their moves are complicated, they offer great utility and are the ones to watch out for once sent forth to do the King or Queen’s bidding.

Whether you frame the game in terms of High School trysts ( a whole cast of friends, besties and teachers), singletons struggling to find The One, extramarital hanky-panky or the ongoing search for love and companionship in widowhood, Chess could be re-imagined as the Game of Love not War – you may never look at a Chess piece the same way ever again…

Some Grand Master games worth studying:-
Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew
Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Boris Pasternak – Dr Zhivago
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
Nicola Griffith – Ammonite

H is for Happiness

April 9, 2020May 14, 2021humanist55

This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Happiness is a Warm Gun…Momma

This song penned by John Lennon is full of double-entendres. Lennon explained that he got the title from an article in a National Rifle Association magazine and he divided the song into three sections, “the Dirty Old Man”, “the Junkie”, and “the Gunman (Satire of ’50s R&R)”. By the last, he meant his sexual desire for Yoko Ono. That there are those for whom a literal warm gun is happiness, that some apparently find happiness in drugs whilst sexual love is yet another form of happiness shows what a complex thing is our “pursuit of Happiness”.

Getty Stock Images

Can we be happy all the time?

In the practice of Zen (and bearing in mind that those who know don’t say and those who say don’t know) it is said that there is constant attention to carrying out the simplest task of living with perfection. Does this bring happiness? It doesn’t sound full of highs nor lows and most people believe that without the lows, we cannot have the highs of happiness. If this present crisis is doing anything positive for us, it is to give us the chance of reflecting on what makes us happy, either because we are deprived of it, thinks lovers separated by social isolation, or because we are with the source of our happiness – oh to be young and in love and in lockdown – would you ever leave your bed! And no, its not just the young who are happy to be locked down with the one they love…
In nine months time, there is likely to be a baby boom whilst it is from the post-war baby boom that many of the victims of Covid 19 are drawn. Whilst this will undeniably reduce some of the future costs to health services for whom the preponderance of older patients, living longer with increasingly solvable but expensive conditions, it will give civil servants no happiness any more than the loss of migrants and the very poor who are also more susceptible to the disease will give no happiness except perhaps, to the vilest of right-wing politicians.
Meanwhile, we take our happiness in lockdown as we may…

Is Happiness an Instinct?

A friend of mine once told me how, during a search for a friend who it was thought, had drowned himself in a local lake, she went in a rowing boat with her lover, and after a time, they wordlessly pulled into the shore and made love. She described it as somehow instinctual, driven, and it puzzled her that in the midst of sorrow and dread, that this should have been their reaction. Many young women gave themselves to young men about to depart for the fighting during the Second World War (perhaps all wars) and if there was a moment of happiness for each of them, did it result in a happy event nine months later. (Imagine the psychologists trying to devise an experiment to test that hypothesis!) Happiness can be mixed with poignant sadness if the father never made it back or perhaps was not even known – so maybe the urge to procreate in the face of disaster is an instinct rather than the pursuit of momentary happiness. If we are driven by instinct, then where does happiness fit in? We human beings need to stay together for perhaps 21 years in order to raise a family, so the joys of sex are but rarely resultant in pregnancy but can form the glue that holds couples together – if they are lucky, and that is why it is not just the young, who may be enjoying the lockdown in their empty nests.

Do animals feel happiness?

It’s so hard not to be anthropocentric when looking at animals, to see the dog with its head on its master’s lap, to watch seagulls shooting the breeze or lambs leaping as they are in the fields here, and not imagine they feel happy – who knows. When I watch lambs playing, I simultaneously feel happy for the moment and sad because I know that very soon they will no longer be frisky but head down grazing for the rest of their lives with no great appearance of happiness ever again…

So there are my thoughts for the day – gather ye rosebuds in whatever ways you can at this sad/happy time. Listen to the bird-song without the roar of traffic, bask under skies not crisscrossed with con-trails, breath deep in the less polluted air, love the one(s) you’re with, practice Zen or whatever floats your boat (within the confines of the lockdown) and if you haven’t got a boat, your mind can imagine whatever you like and you can be happy with it…

What has made me happy? Last night I took my new telescope outside for the first time and looked at the moon, large and even though slightly hazy, pure magic and wonder!