Poetry Day UK

Today is #PoetryDayUK apparently, and my friends that tweet on behalf of WoWPetition suggested a WoW Petition Poetry book.  Good idea, if it gets people using poetry.

Poetry is a much maligned form of communication, it takes a lot of thought and a fair smattering of vocabulary.  It can't take a lot of brains as Rappers do it (sorry Rappers).

So I thought I'd better get started, and, as a fair shot, I decided to blog a one-hit poem about disability.  I promise you the poem below came out in one go, no editing and re-editing like I have the first few paragraphs! Oh, I will come back and add a title, the poem will suggest it.

Hidden Pain

It can't be seen or measured up,
It can't be cured with a click,
It can't be fixed by a suture's stitch
Or by visiting a local witch.

The government think it really simple,
You can see it like a dimple.
Pain comes upon a simple scale
Like a colour dark or pale.

Now think real hard just for me
About some pain that used to be
Now on a scale of one to ten
Say how it hurt and when?

So if I walk for twenty yards
Tomorrow's pain is on the cards
But I can do it so you see,
DLA is not for me!

Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...

Reblogged from: Funky Mango's Musings: The Impossible Girl (spoilers) #DoctorWho #Spoonie...:

Last night was the season finale of Doctor Who. I  thought it was one of the best episodes for quite some time, certainly the best of the season. But it also got me to thinking. A major theme was losing and gaining control - both for the Doctor and his current companion, Clara. And that's also a huge issue for spoonies, people with long-term illnesses that cause crippling fatigue.

The baddies in this episode were the Whispermen, who kidnap the Doctor's friends Clara, Vastra, Jenny and Strax to lure him to the one place he must never go: his grave, on the planet Trenzalore.

When we become ill, it's as if we've been kidnapped and taken to a different planet. We are snatched away from our everyday lives, held hostage by the limitations of our conditions.

There is no body in the Doctor's tomb. Instead there is a time tunnel, made of scar tissue from all the Doctor's travels through time and space. The villain of the piece, the Great Intelligence (hammed up wonderfully by Richard E. Grant) enters the time tunnel, aiming to split itself into fragments scattered throughout the Doctor's timeline and corrupt it absolutely, undoing all the good he's done.

Clara follows it into the time tunnel in an attempt to reverse the damage. Things take place around her. Previous incarnations of the Doctor run by. At first she feels out of control. She has no idea what's going on.

Gradually she works out her purpose. The Doctor is always there, though not always in the same form. She can recognise the best thing for the Doctor to do: she saves his life.

It's the same for us. At first, everything is confusion and feeling out of control. Fatigue, pain, brain fog. But gradually, a pattern emerges. We work out what to do. How to live our lives in the best possible way for ourselves and those around us. Maybe we're not saving the Doctor (or maybe you are?) but in our own way we're time lords, pacing and resting so we can do the things we really want to do.

We're the impossible girls and boys. We learn our purpose. We regain control over our lives.

We're spoonies. 

Posted by Funky Mango at 09:27