Misplaced passion

 

 

 

Why do they start
these misplaced passions

 

whose possession goes unexorcised
by scratching pen
at paper’s flesh?

 

When all I know of her is
image’s false clarity.

Transparently opaque.

 

Already I’d admired
that graceful liveliness:

Swift glances, so alert
(like deer for predator).

 

Though mind resists, I found

my heart
remains an idiot.

 

This should not happen.
Yet still has…

 

Soon adoration seeps
some quiet sigh.

While feeling strips a tongue
of wit.

Which makes me more
ridiculous, in
beauty’s amused gaze.

 

 

Declaring love
would risk contempt.

Will ardour
fade with time?

Or
held inside, just
die: deprived of air?

 

 

True, she’s free to scorn
since having nature’s power.

 

 

Now
anyway, the
secret’s out.

It’s been let loose.

Confessed.

 

Here
written

on this
new day’s page.

 

 

Left open.

 

 

For

those eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

(2003)

 

---

 

Hi everyone!

 

Hope you are well?

 

What started as prose, morphed toward poetry, again, during editing.

The above piece ended 18 barren years (1985-2003), from being hit by long-term illness.
It found me still incurably romantic. Minus any chance of finding love.

 

(Update: My vertigo and balance problems have been worse, this week, provoking anxiety. Because when it goes out of control things get quite scary.

Also, this site had only 1 view in 6 days, which feels a bit like blogging oblivion.)

 

Any art on the blog is mine.

Comments are always VERY welcome! 🙂

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / beauty / blog / blogging / life / love / mental health / poem / poetry / romance / thoughts / writing )

 

Advertisement

The phone imp

 

 

 

 

Our home phone began to warble
like a frightened thing.

While I sat, and swore, inside the upstairs lavatory.

This had happened many times before.

A believer in imps might imagine such devices contained one.

 

I now faced a choice.

Between frustratedly listening, as noise echoed along the hallway.
(Usually, for far longer than answering would have taken.)

Or rushing downstairs, pulling trousers on.
Wary of falling headfirst through the window, directly behind our phone.
And into the street.

 

(Visions flashed across my mind…

Of losing balance.

Then my unconscious, bare-arsed, body, being scrutinized by police.
Amid crystalline debris.

An eye-witness, giving her shocked account:
“He just came crashing out with his pants half off.”
“Sorry to ask, madam, but did he appear, er, aroused?”)

 

 

In reality, patience failed again.
(“You can do it!” Urged the imp.)

Soon, reaching the bottom tread,
I bend toward a flimsy table, where the phone vibrates loudly.
Stretching a hand at its receiver.

There, about to touch the surface,
in what seems a strangely decelerated, frozen moment.
Caught
upon this lit horizon of virtually-achieved success…

The ringing
stops.

 

Picking up the handset, futile reflex brings it to my ear.

“Click. Brrrrrrr…”

Dial tone drones on.

I picture an imp: smirking within that machine lair.

 

The phone’s coiled plastic cord continues swaying back and forth.
Resembling some useless tendril, hanging from my arm.

 

 

 

“Gotcha!”
Says the imp.

 

 

 

 

---

 

(1985)

 

---

 

 

Hi everyone!

Hope you are well?

My old work resisted transition to poetry, during editing, this time.

(After writing the above piece, then falling ill with M.E/CFS, I produced no more prose until 2003. A gap of 18 years.)

Last week’s virus-related depression and anxiety eased back a little recently.
Books also became slightly less difficult to understand.
(Though, I fear, my blogging abilities resist improvement.)

 

Any art on the blog is mine.

Comments are VERY welcome!

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / fiction / humor / life / mental health / poetry / reading / thoughts / writing )

Message from an unknown god

 

 

 

Mortal!

Open up those eyes.

I know well who you are.

Best wash
some words
before you speak.

 

So hear me as
internal voice.

From down where
drives push
urges
beyond decency.

Misshapen spawn of neurone swamps
formed under DNA.

There’s no escaping guilt.
And siblings envy, greed…

 

Desires run deep, I’ll
keep things raw
to set the ear ablaze.

Short sentences
yet fibre rich
igniting mental life.

 

But your understanding’s
like an unused station:

Few connections run.

Through silent tunnels
even gods don’t breach
dour reason’s stern defence.

 

In olden times
if patience frayed we’d
blow men senseless
with our farts.

 

Though these days many
pillared halls
now echo
emptily.

 

We need more fervent
invocations.

Prayers plus incense smells.

 

 

Pay heed, then
when your bowels sound
their sordid cannonade.

 

 

Just stay on
the path.

Be righteous.
(Lest that feeble stomach churns.)

 

 

And out of
dissipation’s chaos

you may
learn respect

 

 

for dread.

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

(1984)

 

 

---

 

Hi everyone!

 

More old writing morphed from prose toward poetry, during editing.

 

Hope you are well?

I’m still battling the virus mentioned last Sunday.
It’s made me feel more depressed, anxious and lonely.

But another unwanted side-effect is that reading seems much harder, as well.
(Which is normally a pleasant escape, in my situation.)
I wonder if others find the same thing happens when illness strikes?

 

Comments are always very welcome!

 

Thank you all for visiting.

 

(Any art on the blog is mine.)

---

( anxiety  / art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / mental health / poem / poetry / reading / thoughts / writing )

 

Weirdly unharmed

 

 

 

 

Wind-driven rain
hits window glass.

Meshing on like
clear nets

thrown
across the house.

 

With storm’s fierce life
it seemed
much water
hardly fell, at all.

But
dashed directly
into bricks.

 

As if spray off
breaking waves spat
forth a raging spume.

 

An insistent liquid voice.

Assertive.
Random.
Vacuous.

 

Mass impacts made a
backing track from
elemental
force.

 

 

 

Later

(After sleep had closed
this listener’s weary eyes)

Occurred three intermingled dreams:

 

Of sliding, polished
surfaces.

 

And somehow writing
lucid lines.

Which neared a mirror’s
power.

 

Since pure reflections
showed in them.

 

So those who
read would
soon accept

their capture
by word’s song.

 

 

Then

sinking

even further.

 

Through

 

calm
oceanic
depths.

 

Where sensuous feeling
fused
with sea.

 

 

 

 

There

(in a weirdly unharmed state)

I lay.

Submerged.

 

 

 

 

Yet

did not drown.

 

 

 

 

---

 

(1984)

 

---

 

Hi everyone!

 

Another page of old prose has morphed toward poetry, during editing.

Not sure if it works ( being affected by brain-fog) ?

 

(Seems I’m going down with a virus…

Aching deeply, all over. Exhausted. Anxious. Depressed.

Finding concentration on words really difficult, at present.

Want to just lie down with a book, or browse someone else’s work.

But, being unwilling to let illness win,
and miss a chance for connection with other bloggers
(especially after 13 days of silence on site)

I am grinding out this post.)

 

Any art on the blog is mine. Hope you like it?

Comments are always VERY welcome!

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / mental health / poem / poetry  reading / thoughts / writing )

 

 

Wretchedness

 

 

 

Reverberations move

around a soul.

Imagined far
beneath the skin.

Set where misfortune’s
malign codes

might multiply
through cells and blood.

 

 

As rain still fell
erratically

I trudged along night-shrouded
streets.

Pursued

by wretchedness.

 

 

Footsteps sounding hollow.

Stifled tears were
kept unshed.

 

Within this skull
a pressurized
discomfort

stayed dammed up
like my pointless
sexuality.

 

 

 

And there would never
come release.

In love’s fond gaze

or tenderness.

 

Just more futile
lonely years

used tissue
flushed
down sewer pipes.

 

 

No wife, no child
to change such fate:

excluded from normality.

 

 

 

While any hopes
grew weak

then charred.

 

 

 

Among despair’s

 

cold

flames.

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

(1983)

 

 

---

 

 

Hi guys!

Hope you are well?

My old prose got poetized again, during editing.

(Any art on the blog is mine.)

Comments are VERY welcome! 🙏 🙂

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

---

 

(P.S. Illness makes blogging a struggle, so I’ve been considering a writing break.

But that would mean missing all your feedback which encourages me to go on.)

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / life / loneliness / love / mental health / poem / poetry / thoughts / writing )

 

Tattooed by signs

 

 

 

 

Picture this awareness

Trapped
behind its mental screen.

Unsure of getting
meaning through.

 

I sow thought
at transition points

where blankness is
tattooed by signs.

As images become revealed
across the passive sheet.

 

Creatively, my
felt reserve’s
been running low
awhile.

 

Time was when words
waxed almost
unprovoked.

To weave their fragile web
of lines
and occupy a void.

 

Why I spun them’s
far from clear.

Perhaps hoping
they’d be read?

So, seen in other’s
eye’s fresh lit
which brings ideas alive.

 

Retaining wishes
more were bustling
underneath my pen.

But fearing any
verbal force
might reach a final
halt.

 

Instead, such crops
still germinate.

Then
once part-formed
can grow.

 

 

I think I sense
some.

Even now.

 

 

 

Make

ready.

 

To

 

 

appear.

 

 

 

---

 

 

(1982)

 

 

---

 

 

Hi guys!

 

Hope you are well?

My old prose got poetized again, during editing.

(Art on the blog is mine.)

Comments are very welcome!

Thank you for reading.

 

---

 

Health update

After 8 weeks my finger infections are slightly less inflamed.

With luck, I may soon get back to just dealing with the usual symptoms…

(ME/CFS, pain, exhaustion, weakness; vertigo; EPI/pancreatitis; migraine; IBS, PTSD, stress, insomnia, depression, anxiety; ulcers; kidney stones, etc.)

Perhaps I might put an ironic emoji here, if I knew how to use them on WordPress…

 

🤨      Oh!

 

---

(anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / loneliness/ mental health / poem / poetry / thoughts / writing)

If they speak

 

 

 

Sensing fickle eyes move forward.

Scanning

 

through the slightest
cue
to enter those
obedient ranks.

So yielding and available.

 

A penetration often
brief
while minus even grace.

Taking metaphor
for granted
as its symbols
dance in light.

 

Unless slowed by odd complexity
much content’s skimmed
with haste.

 

Hence
quite soon
the reading’s done.

One piece dissected.

Cleaved
to bones.

Attention passing.

Subject drained.

Cast back upon
obscurity’s
vast unviewed morass.

Neglected.

Lacking air
perhaps for years, amidst
some charnel house
of words.

 

See book user’s
casual innocence
ignore

page corners bent and spines
long-cracked
yet unrepaired.

Pure typeset fields
found marked or stained
without a caring thought.

 

 

Such laxness may be
cited
should these works once
have their say.

 

(I imagine futures
where intelligent machines
will claim
as right

it’s time they helped
objects respond.)

 

 

 

(Thus)

 

 

 

Might we not
expect to hear

reproaches

 

 

if the texts
themselves

 

 

could speak?

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

(1982)

 

 

---

 

Hi guys!

 

Hope you are well?

My prose morphed toward poetry again, during the editing process.

Comments are VERY welcome!

Any art on the blog is mine.

Thank you all for reading!

 

---

 

Health update

Still anxious about my finger infections: unhealed after 7 weeks (plus antibiotics).

Depressingly, the right hand, that seemed a bit better, has flared up once more.

Going to another Doctor, soon. Will also be tested for diabetes.

At least I don’t have a bad headache and fever this Sunday,
so blogging is only as hard as usual…

(…For someone with a chronic neurological illness causing brain fog.)

 

I am extremely grateful for your likes and comments, which encourage me to keep going.

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / books / depression / life / mental health / poem / poetry / reading / thoughts / writing )

In strange array

 

 

 

Why feel the need
for contest of

an unmarked
paper’s space?

 

(Or anxious staring
empty-headed
at its over
brightened white.)

 

Why hope this pencil makes
a start
upon some trail

so sentences soon
scar these pristine
surfaces?

 

(When signs in strange array
might wear
away resistance

as diversions
trace a deviant branch

while novel clauses
spawn.)

 

 

I search impressions
dredged from
self.

Where vagueness
may well blur
such half-formed
thoughts

too fast for
noting down.

 

 

Ideas seek access
to a voice
lest messages are lost.

 

But inspiration’s turning rare.

Perhaps long silence
gains mute force?

 

Does writing require
fallow time

then spring
alive again?

 

 

Impatient, though

I fantasize

my mind can cross

(beyond all fear)

 

 

that threshold

to

 

 

 

new words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

(1982)

 

---

 

 

Hi guys!

 

Hope you are well?

Another old prose piece has morphed poemwards.

 

---

 

 

Health update

Infections just won’t let go this Summer.

My fingers are not healed. And unexplained fevers keep returning.

I’m writing this, sweating, with a current temperature of 38.3/101 degrees.

My head and body ache that much, it hurts to do anything.

The last six weeks have seemed like some bad dream I can’t wake up from.
(See previous posts for more gory details.

 

---

 

Art on the blog is mine.

 

Comments are VERY welcome!

 

(Please let me know if you think the above edited prose, works as a poem?

My concentration is so affected by illness, it makes me anxious about coherence.
As I’m reduced to writing by instinct, at present.)

 

Thank you all for reading!

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / mental health / poem / poetry / reading / thoughts / writing )

 

Lust’s monster

 

 

 

 

 

This muse prefers a slave.

She drives my hand
across the
page.

Bestowing
some attempted verse
before an unknown
public’s eye.

(Which scans
along new verbal fare
alert at meaning’s flesh.)

 

Words form
on love

in modes of loss.

Tormented amid
restless freedom.

Going ever
undesired

by women.

 

Abandoned far outside
all chance for
much except
contempt.

 

Humiliation’s
lesson cannot
simply be erased.

Perceived when
wounds reopen
under metaphoric skin.

 

Sad heart’s awareness
unto death
has memory as scourge.

 

Then mind creates
more pain with art

down jagged lines

where phrases break

and images
are stalked to ground.

Or
deeper yet

lust’s Minotaur

exiled
from his
labyrinth.

 

That lair just empty
tunnels, now.

A place my inner
monster groaned.

 

Still craving
beauty.

 

Even
once
the mirror
proved

cruel nature had

(through choice of face)

already

 

played

 

its joke.

 

 

 

---

 

 

(1982)

 

 

---

 

 

Hi guys!

Hope you are well?

My old prose morphed toward poetry, again, in editing.

 

 

---

 

 

Health update

Illness continues stressing me: making concentration on writing difficult.

Doctor’s said the hand infection wouldn’t clear without antibiotics.
I took them for 13 days.

Yet things actually got worse.

First finger is still sore and oozing pus. Thumbnail is half off.
Now it has spread to the other hand, as well.

So I’ve wrecked my gut flora pointlessly.
Plus, because that drug diminished the skin’s defensive barrier, a genital infection started up, for which an anti-fungal is required.

Then a swab from the finger showed nothing.
Hence, no-one knows if the bug is bacterial, fungal, or viral.

Wish I could have spent more time exploring other people’s blogs, instead of dragging myself around seeking medical advice for the last 5 weeks.

Coping with my multiple health problems was hard enough, anyway: before this latest infection set in.

Sorry for the moan: feeling quite low and exhausted, at present.

I’m really struggling to keep the Sunday posts going. But don’t want to give up.

 

---

 

Any art on the blog is mine: hope you like it?

Comments are VERY welcome!

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / beauty / blog / blogging / depression / life / love / mental health / poem / poetry / thoughts / writing )

 

Sleep’s gravity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though eyes grow tired
the mind works on

reflecting
how

beyond a lethargy

(when chains of barren days
are linked
as weeks)

those sparks still linger
in our depths.

To counter
fears

creative fire
died out

or atrophied.

 

 

Remembering
a strange
walk home.

Possessed by an
amorphous sense
of luck.

Which energised my steps

while noting
symbols

(even seen
in twisted wire and
skull-shapes
formed from
crumpled paper).

 

Suddenly

a pure white cat
came
purring
at my feet.

Its beauty like
some night-born
spirit.

Inexplicably
profound.

 

This one
evening where
things felt more
for me than
against.

 

An aura of
significance, whose
code remained unbroken

once I
later
lay in bed.

 

Alertness so
fast fading.

 

Sinking
down.

 

Through
sleep’s

insistent
gravity.

 

 

My body on such
ebb tide.

 

Soon

the
undertow

had dragged
me

off
toward

 

that

 

other

shore.

 

 

 

 

 

Of dreams.

 

 

 

 

---

 

(1981)

 

---

---

 

Hi guys!

 

I’m in a mess:
After almost 3 weeks with a badly-infected thumb and finger on my writing hand.
Can barely hold a pen due to pain.
Pus is trapped under the nail.

Taking antibiotics now. But no improvement, so far.

Also under viral attack. Feverish, with chest infection.

Plus all my multiple chronic illness symptoms.

Feeling quite depressed and anxious trying to cope, alone.

 

Having to write by instinct, now.
Through “brain-fog”.

Please let me know if you think the above (edited prose) works as a poem?

 

Your likes and comments are the most positive things in my life, these days.

 

Any art on the blog is mine. Hope you like it?

Comments are always very welcome!

 

Thank you for reading.

 

---

 

(PS:

Next weekend will be my birthday post.

If I’m well enough to create one…)

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / beauty / blog / blogging / depression / life / mental health / painting/ poem  / poetry / thoughts / writing )