The summons

 

 

Hear our call!

Come journey
into dark.

 

Where those dead
seem closer.

And the live
more lost.

 

Sense furious spirits

Curse chasms
of extinction.

 

Feel your flesh
watched

by some inhuman
eyes.

 

Let us stalk
ruthless

and empty.

 

Through echoing
passions

 

grown stronger

 

than
minds.

 

 

 

 

---

 

(I created this piece on the same evening as Pale mistress.

Conceiving both as “Vampire poems.”

A similar mood recurred, decades later, when City night arrived in my head.

Yet the muse has deserted me, again, since it was written.)

 

Behind such works, lay youthful dreams of romantic adventure.
A painful time: when I adored women, with no idea how to attract them.

I remember a Bauhaus gig in 1979. Then wishing for a goth girlfriend.
(While feeling they had zero interest in me.)

One photograph from around those days is on the (May 2019) post A reject.

 

Due to illness, I’m even paler and thinner, now.
Though a bit old for studs or leather!

At least I can still wear black.

🖤  🙂

 

 

---

 

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

Were you ever part of a musical subculture?
Or drawn to a style connected with one?

Comments are always VERY welcome! 🙏

 

Thank you
for reading.

 

---

( art / beauty / blog / drawing / goth / mental health / music / photography / poem / poems / poetry / reading / vampire / writing )

Advertisement

Horny toad

 

 

 

“The night had gone OK, until Dave tried getting his knob out.”

“Cringe!”

“Where was this?”
“The Horny Toad.”
“Crap pub.”
“Yeah, he knew somebody in the band, though.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
“Was it The Tampons?”
“Who?”
“They got a fit bass player: she’s proper stacked!”
“No. And I prefer flat-chested.”
“Wuss!”

“Do you wanna hear the story, or what?”

“Alright.”

 

“The group were late…”
“Hey, was it Sword of pork? They just released Wedding tackle.”
“Can’t remember. We mainly scoped the local talent in there.”
“Thought you preferred The Newt & Gherkin for that?”
“Well, he’d told me their singer attracted women like flies round shit.”

“You felt up for some rock chick style poon?”
“Full tattoos and chlamydia, mate!”
“Lol!”

 

“Six pints on board, Dave’s messing about in front of these girls.”
“Are you pretending he isn’t with you, by then?”
“I’m looking the other way, as he gets hit.”
“Bit of handbags?”
“I only saw him fall across a table, hand down trousers.”
“Did they have boyfriends in tow?”
“Thankfully, no.”

“What was he doing?”
“Said one of them asked who Mr Percy is: he offered to show her.”
“Lucky you never had more trouble.”
“Cider drinkers, eh?”

 

“So how big is it?”
“What?”
“His donger. Vlad the Impaler.”
“Don’t know.”
“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Why would I be interested?”

“Because you are gay!”

 

“F**k off!”

 

 

 

 

---

 

(2010)

 

---

 

Hi everyone!

Though I have avoided alcohol for 40 years and rarely spend time in bars,
this piece attempted to imitate a type of non-PC banter, once overheard among young men, after several drinks.
For the crudity, I apologise.

Please do not take it seriously.

Most profanity has been edited out; but some retained, for the sake of authenticity.

 

It was also a writing experiment: at using only dialogue, with no added description.
I hope you found it intelligible?

 

Comments are always VERY welcome!  😊

 

 

Visitors may now be relieved to hear I did not produce much prose after 2010, and thus,
shall soon resume blogging my more usual musings, and depressive poetry.

 

(Art on the blog is mine.)

 

Thank you all for reading.

 

 

---

( art / blog / culture / depression / fiction / fun / humor / life / mental health / music / reading / story / writing )

Spun from light

 

 

 

 Lostness    ( 105 )

 

 

Who decided we need music in bookshops?

Why save no peaceful corners for
a quiet soul to seek?

 

Introverts get reduced choice
as others move to bar more space
from unfilled silent time.

Creating asymmetric stress
on those made tense by noise.

 

Aping malls, cafes, and
lavatories: will
libraries soon
proclaim some added sounds?

 

At hospitals
I’ve fretted
pain’s lost hours
trapped facing
fixed TV’s.

(Many adverts later
euthanasia gained appeal.)

 

Illness drove me there again
a body breaking down.

Sat wishing I’d been spun from light
not draped by weary flesh.

 

 

Awareness of deficiencies
may leave unsolved
their cure.

Though deep within
are yearnings for
a place
beyond this state.

 

Yet being gloomy
through these moments
what will brighten up the rest?

(Or if I can’t change now
then when?)

 

 

But misfortunes
starve
an appetite
that hungers after hope.

 

And a heart craves
thought
which
comforts.

 

While
sour truths

just feed
despair.

 

 

 

(2012)

 

---

 

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

Comments are always very welcome!

It’s so nice when people break the silence and isolation of blogging with chronic illness.

Thank you all for reading.)

 

---

 

( anxiety / art / blogging / depression / lostness / mental health / music / painting / poem / poetry / reading / thoughts / writing )

Breaking a spell

 

 

Lostness   (62)

 

 

 

Chess often resembled my life:
an unsuccessful search
for a mate.

 

I grew slowly possessed by the game.

On empty days it was simply too interesting;
mesmeric with alien beauty.

What began as something to exercise the mind
could gradually take it over.

I had made a bad choice
since laborious progress in this skill
meant little to others;
whereas similar efforts at art, writing, or music,
might attract some attention;
reducing isolation.

Better, then, to reverse course,
giving up an unproductive pursuit…

But I seemed unable to break the spell
or rekindle dormant passions
(though still frustrated by their loss).

Creativity had been eroded
through illness and depression
plus, a more disturbing possibility:
self-sabotage.

 

 

---

 

 

Later, I considered why these opinions felt compelling.

 

In a sense, we are also victims of our beliefs.

They may make us defensive, predictable, rigid.

(As extreme doctrines mould extreme followers.)

Should one expect people to criticise what they find essential?
Surely, too much is at stake?

A humble incentive for faith could be
being weary of thinking
and wanting another to do it.

Yet would pride admit such a reason?

 

 

---

 

 

Suddenly
sunlight
touched my arm

I thought of a particular girl
for the first time in years
which felt slightly odd
though
as I never ended a relationship
they all seem somehow unfinished
to me.

 

Perhaps only love
redeems
an existence like mine.

 

Will it ever

arrive?

 

 

 

(1994-1996)

(beauty/blogging/chess/lostness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like the blues

 

 

 

 

 

Lostness   (61)

 

 

Flamenco speaks into my wounds
like the blues…

Sounding through
this lost life
that may soon go unmourned

Vibrating
across these empty hands
no child will ever reach for
as I stay unmarried
and unloved.

 

Coping
with so much darkness
absorbs spiritual resources

mine feel almost
used up.

An existence of mainly
lying around
exhausted by illness
trying passive activities
which fail at masking grief
while missing creativity

Unable to enjoy
what little I can do
or fully escape inside
some heartless cocoon
of the cerebral.

 

Struggling again
with self acceptance
and embracing imperfection
I ponder
how easily hate arrives
once we interpret action
in negative ways
how hostility takes offence
where not intended
(justifying
preformed antipathy)
eroding consideration
or even the social lubricant
of manners.

 

I muse over advice for happiness
listing:
purpose, relationship, variety, attitude, health,
inner peace.
My score is zero, out of six:
aimless, alone, in monotony,
misery, sickness and turmoil.

But does seeing my plight
in tragic terms
shield me
from its paltriness?

 

I might need a decent fuel
of lies
to push aside depression

Since recent dreams fill
with the dead
a situation
unexpected
before middle age.

I have merely learned
helplessness
facing slow destruction
by inexorable forces
in crushing
isolation.

 

And it occurs to me that

among other things

love
is also
not always wanting
to be somewhere else.

 

 

 

(1993-1994)

 

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

 

 

Slowly deleted

 

 

Lostness   (58)

 

 

Writing, because I cannot live…

 

Impatient from excess rest.
Thirsting for experience…

Physical problems reveal thought’s futility;
its empty hands.

Mind, fails to help: adding suffering.
Reflections undermining will.

 

Illness constrains activity…

 

Intensifying an unhappiness which going out might reduce,
at least, via diversion.

I remember once giving things up prematurely.
Now, persistence increases pain.

 

A phrase haunts me:

“You always love your second talent best.”

In my case, dropping art for music, and these struggles
to fit words together.

Occasional reveries still arise, about unexpected skill,
being found by experiment.

Though women and chess soon exposed my limitations
at new kinds of challenge.

 

Reality can become a stage for humiliation.

 

There are nights when even my dreams resemble third-rate TV:
inconsequential, or showing repeats.

Perhaps sickness also diminishes the unconscious?
Some inner shrivelling
as I endure this lasting absence of human warmth
across continued solitude
carrying an unwelcome burden
that is my sexuality.

Isolation tightens a cold embrace
while my genes get slowly deleted
from the database of existence.

I contrast the glamorous dead,
whose images stir passion beyond their graves,
with my own disappearance
seen as aesthetic cleansing.

 

The longer I remain alone, the uglier I feel.

 

Hence those fantasies of transformation
envisaging exile’s distressed profundity, yielding,
amid a comforting, attractive,
shallowness.

 

Beauty may only be “skin deep”
but that is as deep
as many want to go.

 

 

 

(1993)

 

(beauty/blogging/depression/ideas/loneliness/mental health/poetry/thoughts/writing)

 

First blogiversary!

Purple phase

 

As a teenager I attempted to visually evoke sensations of energy and beauty,
stirred in me by music.

(I include some pen images, done at age 16.)

Later, taking up guitar, Hendrix was a major influence.

Even now, after 30 years of being too unwell to play,
I remember wonderful feelings during improvisation,
ascending on a solo,
ideas flowing from my fingers.

Not realising how short this phase would be, I made no recordings.
Nothing remains of those musician days.

Art, poetry, music, philosophy, chess…
multiple interests eroded by illness.

Reading or writing are left to me.
And the struggle to put words here;
while I still can.

 

 

 

 

One year ago, today, I posted my first poem.

No-one noticed.

118 posts later I almost reached 100 followers,
but have got stuck for several weeks,
like a runner unable to step across the line…
at 99.

Growing an audience is difficult for me.
Due to poor health I lack stamina for social media, networking,
or spending much longer on other blogs.

Hence I gain new visitors by chance: via the WordPress reader.
A rather slow process.

 

On the positive side:
I managed to maintain a regular weekend blogging schedule despite many problems;
and “likes” are up in recent months.

 

So, to all my readers…

 

Thank you!

 

(I hope you will return next week for…

Lostness  (55))

 

 

 

 

(Mental health/drawing/art/music/beauty/blog/blogging/poetry/writing)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Forlorn lucidity

 

 

Lostness   (41)

 

 

At times I feel so unformed.

My “becoming” experienced as drifting.

Perhaps such shapelessness constitutes a price of freedom?
Hence, while freedom is curtailed by the liberty of others, or biology: I wrestle, in addition, with lack of direction.
How to advocate a lifestyle even I may not enjoy?

For me, any hopes to produce something worthwhile carry a suspicion of fantasy.
Whatever I concentrate upon leads to an imaginary complaint from neglected possibilities. Thus my shifting between art, poetry, prose, music and philosophy.
Yet these urges to “keep options open” might work against the commitment required for achievement in each area.

 

What I do, today, is more important than what I intend to do, tomorrow.

 

Writing can be lured toward an ideal:
a certain beauty, via vivid sentences, lit by clarity, evocative as distant incense, hinting at transcendence, through the web of art.

Or, in the present case, while living isolated and unknown:
a dream that people I cannot meet might still be touched by my words.

 

---

 

 

Forlorn lucidity

After the telephone call
turning
into that gloomy front room
lit by a single electric button, glowing
red and insistent,
under its display panel,
though daylight’s blade
slicing between almost-closed curtains
smears one white fleck
across darkened glass

I stand
perceiving some discomfort
in the head
from neurons alert
with forlorn lucidity
while self, sensed
spirit-like, lingers
where conflict had been,
on the site
of my defeat.

 

 

(1986)

 

(philosophy/psychology/mental health/thoughts/ideas/poem)

 

 

Poem 1983 (2)

Listening

 

Seated alone
eyes open
I wait

Needle arcs across air
then a wash by harmony
compressing crafted fingers

Music seems to thicken
in viscous pink
towards my door

It dips and drives
passing light
through the body

Imagined ornamental trees
stir among
cool shadows

Melody bursts on weightless shores
like some faint echo
of a face.