RLD 1978-2007


 
Before the joke was made, usually I was scolded for being base

When assembly was in full flow, a glance would have us both in stitches

Time shared and psyches formed.


Days pass, as days do, some relationships need time and effort

Fallen comrade, do you want me to help you?

“No Mois.”


You were sure, the many gathered were in shock

Words were read, somehow read aloud

In the still silence.


Partners left behind, a villain stalked the scene

An angel chose to make a point

This is not a life.


Underlying pressures, super-servient intuition

No way of reversing, in these dimensions

Our choice appears made.


Without you that part of me is gone

I would have showed them who was wrong

For it wasn’t us.


No knight ever made their excuse

No hero ever had to turn recluse

No mate, you’re not alone.
 

The words that go in lodge somewhere for ever

Given two choices, would you do the same again?

What becomes of false dichotomies in the man.


With your best clothes on, the one who found you

Was not the ones to who you were lost

Nor the ones to who you were betrothen.


Extended family, bredren

No more violence, that stopped with you

How the thought stings, how a hero couldn’t be.


Lucky to be alive?  The coward talkers may be


The villain, not so much

The friend?


Those days we know your loss recur; two gross, three score and more -

each orbit, until the hero’s tale becomes folklore

To have the courage.
 

Mate, ffs.  Are you sure?

“Goodbye Mois”

Deep voice, say no more.
 
 

Anger



Confusion in the ranks, lack of assertiveness in the rear

Overwhelmed in the frontal lobe, voices chattering in the ear

Coming across as strange, feeling so more than usual

Lacking in confidence, situations bring over perusal


Repeating back words, twisting ones half caught

Making up scenarios, enjoying being distraught?

Mind racing, body moving, senses exploding

So many subliminal messages, there for the decoding


Tormentors are so near, conspiracies will abound

Now nothing real, has the capacity to astound

In the way the things I know can, the way I think

Forcing oneself further, all the way to the brink


Push-ups of the mind, a daredevil of the soul

Feeling extra special, until it takes its toll

Existence seems to centre on me, how bizarre

One person, on one planet, orbiting one star


Doctor gets involved, pathology starts his talk

F you doctor, I simply walk the walk

“Take these twice a day, they’ll stop you from thinking”

No hint of irony, all said without blinking


But, erm, ten years on, if you can’t think hasn’t tormentor won?

If you can’t feel why leave the life support on?

“We can look at other options, thanks for your feedback

We wouldn’t want us to have to deal with a relapse”


So slowly go the days when the tablets start to get smaller

Longer draws the stride as the innate starts to grow taller

Quickly go the thoughts as sensitivity starts to build

But less realistic are the dreams, yet to be fulfilled


Waking from the slumber with just a metaphorical sword

No longer noticing ire, just hammering on the keyboard

Day after day, boredom bites the hand on which it feeds

Turning up to work, being treated like those with special needs


But not ungrateful, to the lifesavers, the Samaritans and the few

Or for the family, the countryside, and the illusory pew

That was knelt at in the darkest hours, of inner reflection

When made to turn up to appointments, for inspection


But not support, nor therapy, nor rehabilitation

Just the same old drowsy medication

Hunch; 1912



If positive affirmation of an external quality is what you seek

Look both nearer and further away

If you want solace and conversation from someone who’s meek

There’s plenty I can say


Your mind is vibrant, your form in perfect place

There’s a soul which is rooted

And a tale of hope for the human race


Whilst my forte may be prose, and you know little of me

Company and wit are both for you

If you allow a moment for this soliloquy

One compliment can be paid, to which you are due


In a few short minutes the interest which was instilled

Has invigorated things once dreamed

Never mind that practicalities can’t be fulfilled

Your voice sang out and your smile beamed


Words may be feint, expressions moreso true

I always try to be honest

And I'm happy that I spoke with you


Yesterday I didn’t realise, how complex things really are

Neither could I remember what instigation felt like

Soon I hope, we can bridge the thought afar

But not hope twice that lightning could strike

 

Agnostic



If you ask a person what they believe

Perhaps they will give to you some clue

On how the great universe was conceived

And what it reveals to us we should do



If that person tells you they truly know

What lies beyond or how things all started


Although what they say may be apropos

Simply question all knowledge duly imparted



It’s not that I cannot make up my mind

For to discuss things is to comprehend

More importantly than leading the blind

Is to draw out what we seek to transcend



On the scale from sceptic to believer

The only position would be neither




Decorum


 
Decorum’s of the essence, it’s something we achieve

Somehow we behave, leading others to believe

Within lies all experience, many years of knowing

From outside all seems well, until the thought starts flowing

 

Conforming to the usual ties, of language, sign and meaning

But lost inside the cavern, of a mind overtly teaming

-Stay quiet and be still, do not speak until your cue

Who knows we’re oh so fragile, but an ‘I’ that looks at you?

 

Keeping to the norm, to the everyday, what’s true

Will mean years of confiding, but only in the few -

Or no-one, trusting nobody, but an unrestricted force

That thing that stays inside, as each day hides remorse

 

Without comfort, solace, hope, or re-invented dream

Those ways you can become once more, pursuing the serene

We’d surely have no manners, could not hold back the years -

we spent detained elsewhere, by the deepest set of fears

 

If we don’t grasp the common err, which simply bears no name

We only know the precepts, the stigma and the shame

And replicate by silence, the state of malcontent

Perhaps we can encourage, others not to repent -

 

Of things we share in common, of confusion now and then

Mistaken that you are unique; if only you knew when -

to say what seems unusual, to civility ensouled

In the mix of fellow beings, where stories should be told

 

Blame the immigrants


 
Blame the immigrants, our past is longer than theirs

Blame the immigrants, coming over ‘ere, meddling in our affairs

Their stories are shorter, their working day less intense

Say no to Brussels, and let’s just build a big fence

 

Our Britain is great, the clue’s in the name

Our culture is sacred, this is not just some game

Some of us pay taxes, some of us pay for schools

There are just too many people- do they take us all for fools?

 

No wonder they all want in, through the world we once had clout

We’re too good to even talk to them, just start slowly and then shout

How many Polish nationals can we encourage to elope?

How long before, we see the first Muslim Pope?

 

Take a look around you now, the tv tells it all

They mean us harm you know, they want us all to fall

Once things were simpler, when few of us could read

We’d venture off to foreign lands – to plunder and to bleed

 

Facing backwards is the life for me

For now and for eternity

Our island race of pomp and splendour

Home to rich man and money lender

 

The news confirms all we need to know

That doom and gloom can be the only show

I want a place all my own – I don’t love my neighbour

And if you agree, vote Tory, UKIP or Labour
 
 

Solomon


His world too is one where time and space appear as oddly chronicled malaise, broken up by only momentary pleasures.  For a sophisticated, sentient being, would he be forgiven for not pursuing either love or joy and now just wishing for peace of mind?

In a real way, although there’s no small level of paucity in what we know of the universe beyond us, neither any small sorrow in whatever would be left behind after any individual’s passing, elements of a materially comfortable youth and prospects for a passable maturity would not stop Solomon from rocking gently in his own well sofa’d suburban haven.

A certain new-age preoccupation gripped what was left of his soul and inchoately scrambled his life’s quota of tears into something else.  Now, the only way his former sorrow would be expressed was, little by little, piece by piece, by no more than this- the occasional but audible inhalation of breath and exhalation of hope.

To sigh with many years left to serve on a mortgage was very different to the enthusiasm he’d known when he first signed up.  That other moment could be noticed as far gone now in his change of voice, so as it used to rise, fall and lilt as any voice should.  Not that Solomon thinks anyone owes him a place in the sun, or that the requisite dedication or grand servitude should be objected to per se.  

He also agreed with his mother and father that renting would be dead money.  His own panoply of modest achievement did sound quite good on the weekly phone-call with said parents.  “How are you?” Check.  “How’s the job going?” Check.  “How are your friends?”  Check.  But it was a vast chasm between the outer world of survivable circumstance and the inner world of intolerable silence that now seemed unbridgeable.

For meaning to soon arise through crisis could have brought a solution.  And, when, as it seemed to him, prior human centuries competed for which were the most replete with total warfare, what did he actually have to complain about?  Flicking between televised news and sardonic comedy reminded him of the ways in which he could be seen as taking for granted the late night solace, in between sirens, that his own small place in history was affording him.

Although being awake past midnight on a Friday wasn’t seen as such a bad effort at 32, the grand enactment of pseudo-energy the week had entailed seemed to leave his body worn but mind unchallenged.  Ok, so to separate them out like this may be somewhat artificial, and it’s not like he could go on in the third sector forever and never feel satisfied at what he’d done. 

But to say there was a piece missing from the jigsaw of components that would make for a content life would be too simple.  It was more that the tapestry from which his existence was woven was in part too loose and in places too tight.  Issues, his friend Tom sometimes said, “Solomon, you’ve got real issues..”

If he’d cared as much for himself as the next person perhaps perseverance through adversity wouldn’t be so awkward.  When asked how he was by peers, the standard refrain of “not too bad” was passable in terms of common parlance, but the positive exaggeration was only really due to the kind sentiments perceived from those who bothered to ask.  What was it they really wanted to know?

With pharmaceutical medication on board, or magic beans as he wryly referred to them, a certain dullness to the extremities of existence pervaded each part of each day.  Sure, his thoughts and feelings seemed to be his own once more, but if the exquisite and enduring suffering he’d known in the darker years weren’t elements of a natural response to complex man-made circumstance then the struggles that were now of years gone by, even if less intense, were neither over nor still there, neither dissipated nor integrated into how things were now.

From such a vortex in alternative existence ran few parallels to what he’d known back then.  When Tony waxed lyrical about the potential of parallel universes based on a keen layman’s grasp of quantum physics, this seemed interesting to Solomon, who experienced a life from maturity as if born anew.  Same body, same known boundaries of sorts, but when each tomorrow was suddenly torn asunder from what had happened yesterday, or yester-year, the enthusiasm of even a simply rooted joie de vivre went missing.

Pleasures were still there in his life.  Company was not really avoided nor did shared joy escape him.  The coalesced normality that he could be part of regularly took hold, and on nights at various bars the escapism brought from too-strong-for-session ale and free flowing chatter heightened awareness as normality dictates.  Feeling worse often lifted Solomon from a previous better, or status-quo, such that the temporarily new neural beginning and florid enthusiasm pointed to limitless possibility and oncoming unbridled achievement.

If it was the case that being happy enough three fifths of the time was all that mattered, and realising that the other two fifths could be but an exception, then he might have been alright.  But of joy in all that was simple and his own, of an understanding of how his choices altered each time he chose anew; this was what irked him in the most targetedly painful way. 

Neither was the point to do with contentedness in a personal misery that he controlled and dispensed when needed.  A brain perhaps, that has evolved over millennia in human co-existence now only perked up when doused in alcohol, re-creational narcotics; when monitoring a heart on edge with the turn of a computerised playing card linked to his bank balance or, dare he say, when faced with the still exacerbated sins, as they once were, of flesh.

Looking down on those who were more addicted to any one of these vices than to any other wasn’t his style.  A mixed outwardly-apparent effort at normality was manageable, on most late starting days, and with breaking points being too far off with any of his petty squabbles with straight –lacedness, the escapism sometimes felt right, and sometimes didn’t appeal.


As the images of television now flickered before him some of the accompanying sound registered and some didn’t.  For bed to come on a night when the mind is racing with what could have been seemed like a retreat to retirement before a task of unknown magnitude was complete.