Followers

Friday 25 January 2019

BEING BI-POLAR

For Jeremy...

I'm not mad,
it just seems that way
when mania strikes
and I'm mega enthusiastic
about what others would deem trivia.
The chemicals in my brain get all mixed up.
I am akin to a robot prone to short-circuiting.
Neural pathways malfunction,
creating loops that repeat themselves
over and over and over again,
creating a kind of an acute awareness
of other's emotions. Consequently,
crowds become overwhelming -
indeed, terrifying. Their en masse
thoughts and moods penetrate my skull.
Major panic attack!
It is the loops that let them in.
The so-called "normal" brain is immune
to this kind of intrusion - it's
possessor is incapable of comprehending
how I process this additional flow of data
and so they fear and avoid me.
I am grossly misunderstood.
I am the actor who became his favourite role.

I feel for the psychiatrists. Suddenly
I am an irresistible enigma, a paradox
their analytic minds need to resolve
in order to justify their superiority
over "impaired" individuals like myself. Of course
it's all an elaborate delusion - this superiority.
My loops will ultimately defeat them:
a mind like mine cannot be categorised.
It travels too furiously, too erratically
and never quite integrates with my body.
It is like an anthill: a myriad of separate awarenesses
radiating out in all directions simultaneously.
The analyst, at best, will simply slip
between the lines of communication
and become entangled within
the abstract metaphors
that define who I am.
Only I can unravel the whole truth:
I AM LEGION.


Friday 18 January 2019

RADIOTHERAPY

The text book's dogma:
see, I am categorised - it is
what they decree, not I.

Sentence is passed. I am to be
a lifer, it seems.
And that life is unthinkable.

Such cursed fear,
of living with bone damage,
lung atrophy, tissue loss, pain.

Pre cancer days, I crave your return -
through a window in time, to wholeness.
Oh I cannot, will not submit...


Recovering with my son...in my own way! I have decided to refuse radiotherapy and drug therapy, as I believe the side effects far outweigh the benefits. 
Please wish me luck...xxx


Friday 11 January 2019

HASTINGS CASTLE

Above the town it looms, timeworn, ruinous.
From the south the ocean devours it's foundations
year upon year, inch by inch.

Yet defiant it stands. A sprawling moss-covered hulk,
repelling the violent storms that threaten to destroy it -
It, a survivor for nine centuries and more!

Touch it's weathered vestiges, feel it's history.
Commune with it. Open your mind and experience it all:
the Hundred Years' War, the Dissolution, the bombs of  World War II.

The gloaming is the best time. Such low light
plays tricks upon the mind. The tourists gone,
now only revenants wander among the gloomy ramparts.

Let yourself dissolve into the silence and through half-closed eyes
glimpse what wasn't there a moment ago.
Distant times, the glint of steel, bodies of the slain

and the castle restored to it's former glory:
a shimmering grey-gold mirage, suspended
in the indigo threads of night.

Saturday 5 January 2019

IN BANGLADESH

Lines written on 24th December, 2018... 

It will be lunch time now in Valletta.
They will be dining
and sipping wine in the
roadside restaurants and watching
the passing tourists
who have come to celebrate Christmas.

It will be dark and cold
in Alberta at this time.
The streets will be lit up
with multi coloured Christmas lights
that bewitch both eye and brain.
The city will be mostly asleep,
except for the party goers
singing along the sidewalks,
like the girl in the red
Santa costume, dancing
around a pole in the all night club.

In Reykjavik they'll be clearing snow
from front doors, then going out
last minute Christmas shopping
on skis and sleds over deep snow
that sparkles and glistens
beneath a dark winter sky.

In Bangladesh it is evening,
but not like other evenings.
This one is tragic.
A tsunami has hit.
The villages, the people,
all have been swept away.
By the hand of God?
What true God would inflict such agony
upon his faithful and obedient worshippers?

Volcanoes will erupt, spewing out
molten lava. Tsunamis and earthquakes follow...
while, elsewhere, are peaceful paradises.

In all these places I have never been
my presence dwells: aah, such pleasure...
and the most heart-rending and debilitating compassion.