Better days

 

 

 

I stopped to hear the wind
sound its pursuit
around my ears.

And stood
a while

(mouth tingling vaguely).

Thinking back
on being young

As one who’d
dared imagine
love

might soon
dislodge

life’s lonely treadmill
from

its
confined course.

 

But
then
(even in their emptiness)

perhaps

just these
remained

my
better days?

 

Though
yet such times
were still

suffused

by
trauma’s shadow

through

the memory.

 

By
darkness

 

through

 

the blood.

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

---

 

(The poem above sprang from a few unused old lines.
Left on scrap paper when I was 21.

They reasserted themselves before me:
as if discontented with their 42 year oblivion.
Seeking a return to the light, at last.

I felt driven to rework them, into this.

Strange being a poet sometimes.

I hope you think it works?)

 

---

 

 

---

 

And Now

it’s time for…

 

Blogstars 2020!

 

 

I discovered many excellent new blogs in 2020:
and wanted to share a selection with you…

 

Poetstars!

 

Leila at Leila Samarrai

Holly at House of Heart

Ra’ahe at Fallen Alone

Vallia at Vall.Grey poetry

Kim at The Cheesesellers Wife

Kristiana at My Screaming Twenties

Ai at The Vague Thoughts

Nikita at The Purple Hermit

Betty at Seasonings

Aneurin Gwyn at Into the Unknown

Melody at Melody Chen

Upashna at Upashna

Kaylie at A Whole and the Moments

Liv at she wrote

Viktoria at weird and white

Robin at WriterGrrlRobin

Euphrosyne at It’s Getting A little Dark Out There

 

 

Artstars!

 

Ritva at Art by Ritva

Monica at Monica Aissa Martinez

Hinglaz at Art by Hinglaz

Isadore at Isadore Michas

Vivien at Vivien Art & Design & Tutoria

Elaine at Elaine Fox Art

Anna at Anna’s

Rachel at rachel tremblay

Heni at Heni’s Happy Paintings

Marisa at Abstract Reception

Damian at Visual Faire

 

 

 

Photostars!

JJ Raia at jjraiaphotography

Angela at My Creative Wayz

 

 

Gothstars!

Jennifer at Vamp Jenn’s corner

Kelly at Twisted Libra Cemetery

 

 

 

I hope you will enjoy some of these?

 

 

(Also, a big “Sorry”
to those not listed!

As I currently follow 275 blogs,
putting them all here, would make this post overlong.)

 

Please visit my previous “Blogstars“

(from 2019)

For 26 more fine Bloggers.

(Including Candice Louisa Daquin; Devika Mathur; River Dixon; Gary J Steele; etc.)

 

I’ve only linked writers found since publishing the first version, in this piece:
to avoid duplication.

 

---

---

 

Did you find great new blogs in 2020?

Do you agree with any of my choices?

 

Comments are always very welcome. 🙏

 

Wishing everyone a

Happy New Year!

 

Thank you
for reading. 😊

 

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

 

 

---

 

(PS:

Meant to publish this during December, but got hit by another flu-type virus
(alongside my usual chronic illness) through the festive season.🤒

Totally sapped energy for contacting others.
And when the phone actually rang, on Christmas day, I felt too unwell to answer it.
Reinforcing the isolation.

So passed my 28th Christmas alone.

Anyway, with luck, none of you can top that,
for sheer dreariness?
LOL! 🤞🏻)

 

---

( art / blog / blogging / depression / drawing / life / love / mental health / photography / poem / poems / poetry / reading / writing )

Advertisement

Pale mistress

 

Awake in velvet.

Blackness framed her nails.

 

Then I fought desire
but
(captured by those eyes)
lost force.

 

Resistance gone
she drew me down
toward both hungry lips
and sharp
white

teeth.

 

“Dear Lord, preserve my soul…”

I grasped at words
which fled away.

They drifted
through dead air
like falling snow.

 

Too late for escape

I noticed sounds

as if small
flapping wings
evaded sight.

Or strange
melodies were
(somehow)
produced

by tiny hands

on glinting stabs
across piano
keyboards.

 

While feeling
coldness
stretching
wide as night

over
distant trees.

 

(O life: where is thy warmth?)

 

 

 

Beside me, now
she lay
content.

Yet said

“Past victims haunt our rest.
Old wounds pollute
the psyche with
dread
mortality.”

 

 

I trembled:

Sensing

that voice

rise.

 

 

From a
void

 

 

which had

 

no

end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

(Above is a revised version of poem written at the age of 21.

As a lonely young man I secretly longed to meet a seductress.
Of course, I didn’t really want her to be undead or soulless.
(Though, many people I met in daily life showed little sign of having a soul, either.)

Anyway, I was always attracted by goth looking females.
So went a bit “full vampire” with this. 🧛🏻‍♀️)

 

My post-flu depression has eased, yet left me still unable to write poetry, at present.

 

Art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it? 🙏

 

Comments are always VERY welcome! 🙂

 

Has anyone else spent more time on WordPress than usual, recently?

(I’ve found many interesting new artists, poets, writers, and photographers to follow.)

 

Thank you
for reading.

 

---

( art / beauty / blog /depression / drawing / fiction / goth / love / mental health / poem / poems / poetry /  romance / writing )

Unvisited

 

 

 

They were wrong.

All those who claimed
that love would
seek me out
in time.

I lived no bright lit moments.

No great days.

 

She went unfound.
The longed-for one.

 

I searched on.
Though with
shrinking hope.

Through painful years
while ill.

 

Now old
I’d best
just shun desires.

Or lock them from
my heart.

Then sit here
quiet.

Resigned
at such
familiar
emptiness.

 

This place
I rent.

Unvisited
for over two decades.

 

 

 

It’s getting late.

I need to sleep:

So reach, and close
the blinds.

 

Once truth recedes
perhaps
I’ll gain

companionship

 

in dreams.

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

---

 

 

Update

Following an internal haemorrhage (melaena) in January:
I surmounted anxiety, and arranged a gastroscopy.

After my refusing sedation, hospital nurses warned me patients retch when the long tube (containing a camera) is pushed down their throat.
But I surprised them, by enduring the whole procedure silently.

(It feels nice, as a sad old poet, to occasionally master ones oversensitivity.)

Fasting (18 hours without food) made things tougher.
Yet going six hours on zero liquids was worse.

Anyway, I’m glad that’s done, now.  🙂

 

Comments are always VERY welcome!  🙏

Art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it?

 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / depression / life / love / mental health / poem / poems / poetry / reading / relationships / thoughts / writing )

Last love

 

 

 

There’s no-one here to tell.

Of
still remembering

my last full love.

 

How

after she was gone
the same old places
seemed so empty.

 

Or

out walking those
familiar paths

(their gravel sounding
its low crunch

compressing
underfoot).

 

Aware of others
looking on.

Who saw my
downcast steps
raise dust:

Not knowing that
I felt as if

some windblown ash

now lodged
inside

 

this

 

desolated

heart.

 

 

 

 

---

 

(2018)

 

---

 

 

(Please note

 

Hello everybody!

My New Year hasn’t started too well.

Am feeling quite drained, anxious, and low, since suffering an internal haemorrhage (melaena/black blood), on Jan 2nd.

Struggle to focus on blogging.

Doctors told me I should’ve headed straight for A&E (it’s classed as a medical emergency).
Instead, experiencing no pain, I just went food shopping!

Saw a GP next day.
Being informed that I could die, if bleeding recurs, left a weight upon the mind.
(From lack of clarity about cause, source, or state any wound may be in.)

Also had a fall, at home. Which shook me up.

I’m due for an endoscopy.
This sounds rather stressful, given my poor health.
Going without food, and especially drink, over many hours, is hard when one is already very weak.

I hope you might wish me luck?)

 

Comments are always welcome!

(Art on the blog is mine.)

 

Thank you for reading.

 

---

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

Losing my uncle

 

 

 

A phone rang through my dream.

I woke to darkness, hearing sound persist.
Reached the living room too late.

No message. Number unknown.

Who’d call at one a.m.?

I fell asleep, again.

By dawn, a recording has turned up, after all.
My uncle is in hospital.

 

I arrive on the ward. A nurse asks our relationship.
“Nephew: next of kin.”
“He’s been telling us what a lovely person you are,” she says.
“Must be taking strong meds!” I almost quip; but,
unsure humour is appropriate, only emit a subdued
“Really?”

 

Ray halts eating dinner. Complains about stress.
“Finish your meal,” I say, “I’ll go and have a word.”

Staff wheel his bed to a single room, I’d noticed.

“Wow! This is more like a hotel. Own lavatory. Lots of space.
How did you manage it?” he exclaims, delightedly.

Being intense in his enthusiasms, future visitors would endure
loud praise of my resourcefulness.

I imagined their eyes glazing over.

 

 

Discharge dates revised, his stay extended toward seven weeks.

One evening, as I readied to depart, Ray’s face changed.
Looking oddly young and vulnerable.
A small, unfamiliar-sounding, voice implored:
“You won’t forget me, will you?”
“Of course not,” I answered, tenderly.
His hand, that had clutched mine, relaxed.

A strange impression rose, of having glimpsed some inner child.

 

A few days later, gripped by an abrupt urge to visit, I suddenly stopped.
And found myself talking softly, as if he could hear me.

“Ray, I don’t want you suffering any more. I know you have to leave, soon.
There’s no need to hold on, just for me.”

Ten minutes passed.
The phone rang.

A matron from the Cardiac unit says Ray has died.

“When did it happen?”
“Ten minutes ago. He quietly slipped away.”

 

Blue curtains surround the bed.
Behind them a nurse declares,
“I’m going to give you a nice wash, Raymond. Is that OK?”

I felt briefly disconcerted.

“Excuse me!”
She peeks out.
“I’m Ray’s next of kin.”
She allows me private moments.

I kiss his cold forehead, one last time.

“So sorry not to get here sooner for you, mate. Late as usual. Hate to say goodbye.”

I lift his lifeless hand.
Then place it, carefully, back upon the blanket.

 

I walk down shiny corridors.
With Ray’s belongings stuffed in carrier bags.

Trudge out, to chill November air.
Squinting at car headlights, amid bustle and noise.

Irredeemably alone.
In a city full of people I don’t know.

 

 

 

 

I had four weeks to clear his flat.

“Here I am again, Ray!” I say, stepping inside.
Light fell on his favourite chair.
I half expect to find him sitting there.
Everything is as it was.
Yet he is gone.

I kiss the spot his head would rest.
It has no scent.

 

Before obtaining a death certificate, I detour.
Along St Thomas Street, where he was born.
This day’s for him.
I brush each post and wall with fingertips.
The road’s deserted. No one sees.

I am hallowing the ground.

 

As I exit the register office, rain begins.
Seeking shelter in a covered market, I scan local papers.
“Day of the dead,” their headline reads.

Ray sought coincidences. I cannot show him these.

 

Back home, my mind replays our conversations, on the ward.

“You’d hold my hand all the way to the shops,” he said,
“and talk to everyone. Full of life. A joy to be around.”

“I thought I’d always been depressed?”
“Not til your teens. Once you gave up art.”

I asked his earliest memory of me.
“I came in from work, and there you were.
A baby. Lying, peacefully, on the sofa.
It was love at first sight.”

 

Thus, hand in hand, we neared the end
of our long togetherness.
As he moved beyond my grasp.

 

(Meanwhile, I could now anticipate
a bleak decease
without shared family stories.
No bedside visitors.
Nor human touch.
Or child.

Having failed to win a woman’s heart.

An experience for others.
Never mine.)

 

Next, recalling when
he’d gazed into the distance,
sighed, and said,
“I wish you’d been my son”.

At which
we both fell silent.

Ray, who often talked profusely
lay, just staring upward.

 

Here the silence seemed
quite beautiful to me.
I didn’t want to break it.

Then Ray gave my hand a gentle squeeze.

 

And this is how
I’ve chosen

to remember him.

 

 

 

---

 

 

R.C.H. Webber (1923-2017)

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

Hi everyone!

I’m blogging the above work to mark the second anniversary of my uncle’s death,
this week.

Apologies for writing an unusually long post.

Comments are always VERY welcome!

(Especially on such a personal piece.)

 

Thank you all for reading.

 

---

( anxiety / art / blog / blogging / depression / life / love / mental health / photography / poetry / reading / relationships / writing )

 

Nympho Nazi?

---

      Please do not read if easily offended!

---

 

 

Recognising my desperation, the guys at chess club suggested dating sites.

Being a pessimist, I was doubtful about joining.
But still signed up.

 

Sole success came in the form of an improbable beauty.

Her profile picture drew me.
I’d always adored blondes.
Incurably.
Hopelessly.

“Far too young. Way out of your league,” my inner voice judged.
Then I read she sought “Hot times, with older men.”

Hmm?

 

After messaging her, surprisingly, I soon received a contact number.

Our initial conversation followed an unexpected course.

“Hi Magda.”
“Hi Ken.”
“The bio says you’re pansexual.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask a related question?”
“Ooh, go on.”
“Is there a role you especially enjoy?”

“Nazi slut.”
“Meaning?”
“SS uniforms. And cock!”

 

“I noticed your rune-shaped earrings.”
“Very good. Did you also fancy pounding me with your hammer of Thor?”

“I planned on going for a meal, first.”
“Sounds rather lame, Ken. The only thing I want to watch you eat, is me.”
“Hey! I could be vegan.”
“No need to play innocent. I’m a dirty girl.”
“Dirty?”
“Yes: I swallow. And I take it front and back.”

“I shall bear that in mind.”

“You’re a funny guy. Which is why I gave you my number.”
“It’s easy for me. If I need a laugh I just stand before the mirror.”
“Aw! You look quite distinguished, with your grey hair.”

“I’m starting to like you already,” I said.

 

“We live in the same city, Ken. Are you free tonight?”

 

 

My penis urged my brain to drop its qualms.

I paused.
Remembering the last sixteen, lovelorn, years.
Five thousand four hundred days:
yearning for a woman.

Unending physical loneliness.
So intense, it felt as if I wore my own touch deprivation,
in an unseen suit of aching body armour.

Why reject this unique chance to gain relief?

 

Magda was pleasant enough, allowing for her provocative style.
Might she be giving me a kind of female “test”?
I’d surely often failed those, in the past?

 

Would I ever get such an opportunity again?

 

 

 

“You’ve gone all quiet on me,” she said, softly.
“Sorry, Magda. I got distracted.”

“Can you make it, tonight?”
“Umm…”

“I have some videos, to get you in the mood.”
“That may not be necessary.”

“Are you coming, then?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Guess you’ve talked me into it”

I heard myself say.

 

 

 

 

 

---

 

(2011)

 

---

 

Hi everyone!

 

This is almost the last of my old prose.

I was anxious over how much to self-censor?
While reluctant about excluding such work altogether
(as I’m blogging all types of past writing, not just musings and poetry).

 

Art on the blog is mine: I hope you like it?

 

Comments are always very VERY welcome!

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

---

( art / beauty / blog / blogging / fiction / humor / love / mental health / reading / relationships / sex / story / writing )

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 )

 

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 )

 

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 )

 

Piercing through

 

 

 

Lostness    (102)

 

 

X million sperm had swum for life

and to the quickened one
who won these
years
in light

existence
started with a race
gestated vague survivor guilt.

 

Then thoughts it might be best
to go back
dreaming
snug
inside a scarlet cave.

 

But fear already
sank so deep
this stomach didn’t rest
from turning.

Hearing sudden noises round me
piercing through unshielded walls
pressed all concentration hard
which rendered calmness
something lost

though found by others
(duly envied
in their
peace).

 

 

My body’s now
a futile site
where nature
slowly erodes hope
of chance for sharing
beauty’s grace.

While sensing women formed
the gateway that
will always remain
closed.

And being shamed
I shall not
enter
feeling manly
(let alone become
a father)
since
long illness leaves
me sticking fast
in stasis.

Lately grasping
after somber
themes.

Exploring

just how
truly stuck

I am.

 

 

 

(2011)

---

 

(Art on the site is mine. I do hope you like it?

Comments are extremely welcome!

Interaction is one of the best parts of blogging.

It’s such a nice break to isolation: hearing if anyone has got something from a post.

Thank you for reading.)

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / beauty / depression / drawing / life / lostness / love / mental health / painting / poem / poetry / thoughts )