Potential ecstasy

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (77)

 

 

 

Many grow dissatisfied with partners

yet fewer doubt their choosing skills.

 

I fail beforehand
since unhappy circumstance prevents
my attaining coupledom.

Plus often getting drawn to those
by whom I was disliked

or others
unapproachable
glimpsed crossing city streets
heedless of a stranger’s eye.

Perhaps the most attractive
seeming colder
in case kindness lit
an unjust hope?

 

Beauty making spirits rise

but remembering, also,
such good looks
could render less articulate
certain crucial moments
where my words had wished
to shine.

 

Hence dates resembling interviews
adding unexpected tests
when emotional nakedness felt stark
as sitting nude
while missing a CV

dreading brutal
judgement

or bare indifference
showing plain
full absence from desire.

 

 

Once daydreaming
a far-fetched notion
near conspiracy
occurred
around unspoken female union acting to ensure
this continued isolation.

(Paranoia at least dramatised
the banality
of low status.)

 

 

However
being fairer

women do sometimes talk to me
about their lives

on the understanding
that I’m not
involved in them.

 

Then later
all too soon
they leave
in search of love
and don’t return.

 

Lost like muses
passing beyond sight

 

each one potential
for an ecstasy

which I

shall never know.

 

 

 

 

(2003)

 

 

---

 

 

 

(Art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it. / Comments welcome!)

 

 

---

 

(depression/drawing/life/lostness/mental health/poem/poetry/relationships/thoughts)

 

 

 

 

Advertisements

Temples for the lost

 

 

 

Lostness   (74)

 

 

They felt like temples for the lost

 

Those second-hand bookshops
now long gone
toward which I set off
on textual pilgrimage
in hope of serendipity
or hidden wisdom.

 

Usually able to browse alone
apart from occasional fellow
maladjusted specimens.

 

Rarely diverted by the attractive

They were probably busy
living
perhaps even having actual sex?

Something inconceivable in my case
after so many futile years
cast around
through lust’s hormonal puppetry
seeking that non-existent one
who would allow me to love her.

 

Still stuck on biology’s rack
though aching desire made way
for muscle pain
and stabbing kidney stones
growing their cruel
little spines.

 

Reading retains its wonder
yet fails to suffice.

While any shreds of happiness
are side-effects once journeying
not an arrival.

 

Yearning for stamina
to make the art I want to view
and play music
heard internally
thus breaking loose
from illness.

 

Past creative output
unused
weighs upon the mind
as a responsibility
needing work
to satisfy.

Its words left unseen
in cupboards
paper yellowing
with mute reproach at conscience
for such neglect.

 

But self-promotion requires energy,
belief, luck, or friends

Finding none of these
I fret about
my ruined life
here
regretting everything

 

including
the fact
that

 

I regret everything.

 

 

 

 

(2002)

 

 

---

 

 

(Art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it. Comments welcome.)

 

 

---

 

 

(beauty/blog/books/depression/drawing/loneliness/lostness/mental health/poem/poetry/thoughts)

 

 

Idol of the book

 

Lostness   (72)

 

 

 

Saying “No” to so much
yet missing a “Yes” in its place

 

yearning for transcendent events
as life stays drearily normal

 

a spectre haunting modernity
is nihilism

unexorcised
by abundance.

 

 

We lack replacement consolations

while old beliefs survive
on more than truth.

 

Tired from logic
religion can traverse
ghettoes of the inexplicable

where hearing: “God told me to do this”
people don’t ask
how one knew that was him

or beings get defined as existing
in teaching set
against critique.

 

Now
assuming
superior entities
would feel
any need to create

should flaws be excused
such designers

depicted greying with age

when images of a playful child
may fit the role instead?

 

Idolatries
of the book
can occur

certain infallible words
preserving ossified hate
still able to damage

there
though killing transgresses most doctrines
a few might be sought it fulfils.

 

 

Our reaching an end
justifying

leaves only bias
plus faith.

 

 

Meanwhile

sidelined

I persist:

agnostic in intellect
atheist at heart
but usually seeking
escape

from reason’s empty hallway
past humid bathrooms
of metaphysics.

 

Dreaming toward closure

lured around libraries

stacked titles
gleaming
before me

already suggesting
anew

untrodden paths
for
wandering

among
these printed
forests.

 

 

 

 

(2001)

 

 

---

 

 

(art on the blog is mine: hope you like it.)

(I try to post each Sunday.)

 

 

---

 

 

(beauty/books/drawing/life/lostness/mental health/opinions/poem/poetry/thoughts)

 

 

 

This sense of beauty

 

 

 

Lostness   (71)

 

 

This sense of beauty
leading to a fight

an unwinnable war
against nature.

 

Picture the cosmetic surgeon’s blade
slicing through surfaces
beyond rhetoric
inegalitarian
as people vote with bodies
plus their cash
showing true
symmetric bias.

 

Then
imagine androids
reflect desire

to escape
restrictions
by original skin
from mucus and mortality
rising above limited potential
on earth-bound fields of play

 

(art versus the eternal)

 

There
envisioned
wounded reason has its dream
transfigured
into pureness
via digitality
attaining full creativity without
infinities required

merely letters, numbers,
colour, tone.

 

Yet
which parts of freedom
could I claim?

Being incapable of doing much
except observe my own decay.

So
once standing
clearly lost
before the mirror’s reproach

“With genes like mine, who needs enemies?”
I murmured
at its polished glass

across an inner emptiness
amid
insignificance-haunted solitude
where all experience ends
unshared.

 

 

Next
I also failed
to console loneliness
by doubt

Hence
while questioning romance
I wondered:

“Can one be in love, and not dependant?”

 

But answered:
“What joy did “independence” bring?”

 

Would “autonomy” become my latest
euphemism
for aloneness?

 

 

 

Thus
I began thinking
about that fragile moment
when a person calls us
“Darling!”
the first time.

And whether it
will ever happen
somehow

here.

 

For me.

 

Again.

 

 

 

 

 

(2001)

 

 

---

 

 

(All art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it.)

 

 

---

 

 

(beauty/blog/depression/drawing/love/mental health/poem/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

Morphing

 

 

 

Lostness   (70)

 

 

The loud persons pleasure
can be a quiet persons pain.

 

Some move within a noise-cloud
in sounds of self forgetting
creating asymmetric stress.

 

Fragile equilibriums
are easily disrupted

even
by love.

 

(And one achieving parity
may no longer marry up.)

 

But my thoughts diverted here
toward fresh questions…

 

Whether half-truths could be harder
to refute than lies
hence
comparably dangerous?

Or eternal vigilance might also form a price
for falsity?

Would relativists: accused unfairly
appreciate a unitary view
that acts against injustice?

 

 

Next

recalling

where certain writers use
impenetrable complexity
as if mere clarity
were too vulgar.

How critics resembling
intellectual porcupines
of cerebral hostility
root irritably after faults.

 

Should we prefer art
standing free
from explanation’s crutch?

 

 

Abruptly

then

a story concept
came to mind

about morphing text
altering
each time it was read.

 

Yet
isn’t that what good books often do:

keep opening
new views through their words

showing memory’s
elusive flaws?

 

Consequently
I abandoned the idea
(fantasy scarcely being my genre)

 

Though suddenly
the beginning of a different tale
spoke clear

Saying:

 

“Boredom pressed upon him like a misshapen hat.”

 

 

Now I waited
watchful
for the rest…

 

…Which

did not emerge.

 

So I stayed

Vainly feeling aspirations
while the muse
had other calls to make.

Thus
that supposed
first line
remains.

Alone.

Like me.

 

 

 

 

(2001)

 

---

 

 

(Art on the blog is mine. I hope you like it.)

 

 

---

 

 

(anxiety/beauty/depression/drawing/life/loneliness/lostness/mental health/poetry)

 

 

 

 

Sadness tax

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (69)

 

 

Lottery tickets were my sadness tax

 

allowing dreams of riskless generosity
and seeing altruism shine, at last,
beyond this anxious poverty, while
stuck in rented social housing
lacking sound-insulation
thus ensuring peace
will not
break out.

 

Soon questions start their nagging:

 

About whether
(setting aside ill-health)
I ever headed toward success?

Or when brooding over
“Where did it all go wrong?”
becomes just more self-reproach?

 

Perhaps trauma
plus biology
always marked me as
eventual human wreckage?

Lying here
unable
to gain quietude
in the soul-gloom

 

Seeking light
I found darkness

Needing love
I was betrayed

 

Where is safe exit
from such muck?

Can I reach belief without dishonour?

Noticing
once life is soiled by misery
how melancholy may fetishise
an unknown.

 

If reality leaves parched the thirst
for a sublime
what remains but magical thinking’s
temptation
to those
nature flawed?

 

Some lured then follow visions
like apocalypse:

which totalise
a mean end
surmounting private ordeals
that pass generally unseen

and there
any who possess
the effrontery to outlive us
get conscripted
under fatal equality
shared through righteous fire
imagined
in gratifying flame.

 

 

So my poetry
could be another
side-effect
of suffering

Its word-steam
spouting from pain’s
warm vessel

Easing off, now
after writing
yet
still persistent

rising
cycle
upon cycle
until whatever stokes
this heat

finally

turns cold.

 

 

 

 

(2000)

 

---

(All art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it.)
(Comments are welcome!)

 

 

 

(anxiety/art/beauty/blogging/depression/drawing/health/life/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

Restlessness

 

 

 

Lostness   (67)

 

 

 

This pen, urged across a page
by underlying restlessness…

 

Wrote:

“Is my needing to create, another form of bondage?”

 

If writing springs from lack
one could attempt a floating-free

leave laden bookshelves to the intellect
move through uncluttered psychic space
not chained in data’s thrall
with knowledge indexed and textual
fortified
against mere being.

 

Supposing only heart heals heart
hence words, alone,
fail to suffice

So
fearing the day
we must release
safe grip upon
our guarded selves

yet feeling fully unprepared

missing any surety
to compensate such doubt

 

Here, atheism can spread
an elemental isolation

while believers sense
non-visible observers

risking judgement
via unseen eyes.

 

 

 

(Might it shrink life’s dignity:
providing brief distraction
for imagined deities?)

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

Does “god” explain
if we cannot explain god?

 

 

Religion correctly identifies
problems of existence
but gives
those certain answers
many struggle to accept

where notions act
as sustaining
cultural glue
absence seems both actual
and conceptual

 

Easily mocked
are stories people tell
helping rouse their tired souls
to try again

How well, then, may
questioning enthuse
or scepticism motivate?

 

 

 

When time is all we have
comes dread at wasting it

Anxiety
about a fruitless search
for purpose

Remembering
some lost interest

(perhaps obsessive,
even held essential)

which led nowhere

now discarded

 

 

Like old things
left broken

that once

were loved.

 

 

 

 

 

(2000)

(Artwork on the blog is mine. I hope you like it!)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/lostness/love/mental health/poetry/thoughts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tortured reason

 

 

 

Lostness   (66)

 

We can torture reason in the name of spirit

 

Once doubt begins to doubt itself.

 

Am I on a path already
or only lost?

Does depression cloud my sight
through defensive negativity?

 

That charge appears unfair
when striving at belief
not for comfort
but for truth

and trying to add beauty
rather than
be a dark
in darkness

 

Yet
after words fall away
what remains, except
this void from letting go
of everything
while lacking faith
in anything

unless, perhaps,
Buddhism
minus rebirth
equals more than emptiness?

 

If religion gives no consolation
why make those efforts
it demands?

 

God is an answer
breeding questions…

 

upon originating origins

whether malign outcomes
excuse a cause

people still worship higher powers
without responsibility
keen to punish weak mortals
over almost universal faults.

 

How often are we willing
to put aside
hard-won convictions

even briefly
sense them teeter
at a brink of chaos

recoiling from imagined shame
before life’s enigma
like cryptographers who
forget their key

 

Doctrine and rationality
might both prefer
leaving flesh behind
one to be pure soul
the other to be pure mind

 

Urges for transcendence
revealing alienation

 

Melancholy
also shown uncertain
noticed by an ebb and flow
where moods change faster than
philosophy

 

just as daylight
now grown brighter
across my room
cuts around these
half-closed blinds

 

so

thinking it was dust

I tried to wipe a sunbeam
from the tablecloth.

 

 

 

 

(2000)

 

 

(Any artwork on the blog is mine: I hope you like it.)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/life/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some slight romance

 

 

Lostness   (65)

 

Belonging: arisen by separation
from what does not belong.

 

Inclusion that excludes.

 

Identity involves division.

 

Though minds may meditate over
problems of personhood
immune systems must decide immediately
between self
and other…

as, at tribal levels, xenophobia
might protect a culture
against outside influence.

Nerves aroused in fear
attend to threats;
hostility defending
survival
under stress.

 

For anger
the world is full
of opportunity.

 

Talk being often democratic
feeling tends to bias
seeking affirmation
until a story sets
or grows mythic
exaggeration aiding recall
hence, perhaps, our ancestors
built memories around past glory
then those exemplars
gained rank
among heroes
turning, later, into gods
with legends read
toward heaven
and marked across stone.

 

 

Amid conflict
some attempt neutrality
though sitting on the fence
extensively
can make it harder to stand up
for anything.

Like learning ways to doubt
while lacking any method
of belief.

 

 

Even romance has downsides
reflected in my slight experience
on dates
where her needs seemed met
yet mine remained postponed
when she took a certain pride
at how much had been withheld.

 

Thinking back
the great reward of sex
for me
was assisting female pleasure
sharing which
to my surprise
(after such intense aloneness)
could still be done.

 

And thus I
went on clinging
to an idea
of love…

despite its long
continued
non-occurrence

here.

 

 

 

 

 

(1999-2000)

 

(All artwork on the blog is mine. I hope you like it.)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/drawing/life/loneliness/lostness/love/mental health/opinions/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

My mirror is an enemy

 

 

Lostness   (63)

 

 

My mirror is an enemy…

A zone of continual dissatisfaction
for someone humiliated by their own appearance.

In maleness
I already sensed myself
on eternal probation
under wary female scrutiny.

While, by beauty’s natural aristocracy,
fated to remain
hopelessly lower class.

 

---

 

 

Scanning a newspaper
next to the bed
it struck me how modern liberalism
looked aberrant amid history’s cruelty

(where “forgive, but remember”
seemed more prudent
than “forgive and forget”)

Much politics involved an imposition of will
by one group upon another
via law or force
as media stirred up complacency,
anger,
and impotence.

 

 

---

 

 

 

In illness-prone lives
biology
may assume greater interest
than missions to the stars.

Given my current
exhausted state
going out has a value
above staying put;
like hunting over gathering
(though these days women also get to hunt,
men stuck at home might still
lose status and esteem).

Here I cope with exclusion
from normality
but since sexuality
refuses to die
peace
proves elusive.

When loneliness drives me,
pushing through symptoms,
to social events
at times I experience an inkling
of being selected against
by evolution.

 

 

One recent challenge
to say something positive
about my life
almost provoked this reply:

“However submerged with uselessness
I have not entirely spared myself the effort
of attempting to think.”

 

Yet, that sounded a little too grand
so, instead,
changing the subject
by counter-question

I obtained a refuge
in silence.

 

 

 

(1993-1996)

 

(art/beauty/blogging/depression/drawing/illness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)