The pickled truth
The wishful lie
The gross uncertainty
The shortened sigh
The caressing punch
The sharpened kiss
The honest politician
The vacant list
Category Archives: Writing
What It Is Not
A place of refuge for a while
An altogether feeling place:
This is something else.
This is not the Monday blues
And not only cos it’s Thursday
This cannot be feeling down
At least not what I recognise.
This is something else: unique.
This is love’s dimension.
This is when the rift has grown
Becoming irreparable – beyond the irreparable
This is not the end of all
Just a ridding of one moment
That man should count himself as whole
By that – incomprehensible!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
And on and on
Allowed only a notion
The fatigue, but fulfilled.
Whatever happened to those dreams,
To that boy that would become man?
In the lightened darkness of a tired mind
there is no self-rebuke.
When the challenges are taken
And yet the memory curdles hope,
Leaving shadows to plague our sanity.
Outside the wind is blowing,
The sun is shining,
the time is passing.
Inside all things have grown eternal
With the boy and man united.
And so another drop in the ocean,
A fading picture,
A fond fickle notion beyond the lives, beyond our time;
life goes on without us!
The pub
It might not be somewhere over the rainbow
But it is somewhere out there…
Hidden from view but not ear,
A band of friends, perhaps conspirators?
They laugh beyond the cheery tune on the radio.
In here…
In here in this other room, the desolate one, where the desperate sit perched at the bar or in the darker corners,
typing on phones, reading newspapers, or staring into the half distance, finding the floor sometimes a good repose…
In here heads turn expectantly but nothing ever happens, only the songs on the radio are any indication of a better world out there –
Wherein resides “Daddy Cool”.
Even as the door opens a mumble is all that’s heard…
The aging barmaid streaming out,
Perhaps this rat has jumped the ship
And yet the open door promises change
And then…
“Itt a Babus” and the chatter begins.
The barfly awakens, the barmaid questions, another familiar enters…
And then the door closes.
Who is the desperate one now?
Alone in the phone-screen glow.
Do old wolves cry out…
“…for their mothers?”
“Huh?” Catching only the end of the question, Billy had been paying little attention to his friend, preoccupied as he was with his own thoughts, his mind adrift in a fantasy – this fantasy had a name and her name was Maria.
“I said : Do old wolves cry out for their mothers?”
What kind of question was that, Sammy was beginning to wonder, rapidly losing confidence by his friend’s obvious disinterest.
“You mean by howling and stuff?”
“By howling and stuff! Not by howling and stuff!!! Ah fuck it!” Sammy’s irritation beginning to grow. It was glaringly apparent that his moment of profundity was being ususrped by something other than the moment, judging by the glazed look in his friend’s eyes.
“Yeah.”
“That’s it! Where are YOU, boy?”
“Huh?” Billy was becoming aware of his friend’s change of tone but he was still half way off from touching down in this conversation. He’d have to make the effort, he supposed.
“Sorry man, I was elsewhere.”
“No kidding…Maria perhaps?”
“Fuck off” his words implying annoyance, a cheesy grin erupting ón his face conveying otherwise.
“Hah! Well, what were you two doing this time?”
This was the point where Sammy would, usually, crudely depict a coitus perverticus, whereas Billy had been moulding paradise.
He braced himself for the onslaught, but somehow something seemed different.
Maybe there had been something in Sammy’s question that alluded to this now serious demeanour…
“So did you ask her to marry ya?” …or maybe not.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake…”
“Gotcha” the leery grin pasted, sparkling on his face.
“Now give us the gory details.”
Who needs enemies… Billy pondered.
“Why? I’m sick of this dreaming. I wish I knew what she really thought of me.”
“What! And risk disappointment? Those fantasies you have are better than the real thing, I’d imagine.”
Though spoken almost facetiously there seemed to be a tone of honesty in Sammy’s words.
“If not better, at least less complicated.”
“Maybe…” Billy continued, “but how the fuck would I know. I’ve never even had a girlfriend before. Fuck, I really need this!”
“Christ” gasped Sammy and with that they both fell into convulsions.
“I really need this” Sammy parroted, while Billy perched himself on the armchair’s arm, posing in stance, face all askew, pain and pleasure intertwining.
And then in came Ivan.
For whatever uncanny reason it always ended up this way when Billy acted up. It was as if Sammy’s older brother and the Gods were in cahoots.
“ You queers watching this?” Ivan snorted, grabbing the controls as he asked and switching to the news anyway. Sammy was about to protest but instead left it at that, shoulders drooping before hunching.
“Do you want a coffee?” he asked Billy, already moving towards the kitchen.
“Yeah” Billy replied, following sheepishly, trying to avoid eye contact with the bigger brother but somehow being drawn in by the supercilious smile.
“Make me one too, won’t you Billy,” Ivan sai with a wink.
The blush on Billy’s face rose furiously.
“Careful you don’t boil before the kettle does!” Ivan’s derisory laughter bitch slapping him out into the kitchen.
“Wanker!” Sammy snapped, obviously now enraged.
“ Well, that’s what it looked like to me! ,” came the muffled voice from the living room.
“ Shit!”. Sammy wasn’t necessarily afraid of his older brother, he was terrified, and although Billy tried to play the diplomat – all at ease with differences- in his heart of hearts, he, too, would rather not be anywhere near that man.
“Don’t forget…two sugars!”
“ No worries” Billy, like the Pavlovian dog, responded.
“Good boy!” The snigger that followed slowly drowned out by the rising volume of the television.
“ Why the fuck does he have to listen so loudly?” Billy asked, resisting his powerlessness in style.
In a future hindsight, Billy would wonder, if it wasn’t to give them, Sammy and himself, carte blanche to bitch about him so fully secure was he in his dominance, but at that moment Billy could only share his friend’s anger.
“ But, eh, …” he began.
“ Are you really going to serve him his coffee?” Sammy queried.
Predictably Sammy had started to take his frustrations out on Billy.
“ What can I do?” Billy implored.
“Tell him to fuck off”
Suddenly the door flew open and in came the beast in question.
“Coffee ready yet?” the question all-demanding.
Billy began to stutter, but couldn;t find any purchase.
“ I’m not askin you!” Ivan snapped, eyes turning towards Sammy.
“ All right. There you are!” but with the look bearing down on him, Sammy appeared to flinch, as Billy would put it, in slow motion.
“Enjoy” Ivan sneered, and just like that the storm was gone.
“ De…but…eh …de…” Sammy’s deliberate mockery of Billy falling short as Billy put a piece of the puzzle together.
“ Are you really going to serve him?” came Billy, mimicking Sammy’s voice, badly.
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, too!” This would sometimes be followed by: “ especially Bono” but this wasn’t one of those times. And for the seconds in which the gloom fell, the fantasy Billy had been having seemed to dissipate, or relegate in importance.
“Fuck it. I’m out for a fag” Sammy announced, and this call to arms would bring back the focus, and Maria would return.
“Well, he’s in there!” Billy sniggered but Sammy either didn’t hear or wasn’t interested, so feeling slightly juvenile just then, he turned to follow his friend outside.
“ I’m with ya,” he said, this subtle sign of solidarity hopefully the peace flag necessary.
A man, Billy decided, didn’t need to make enemies, especially of friends, when love was on the line.
Blind Fate
I would rather be it –
On earth tonight.
I would rather reign supreme
Than ever have fandangled promise
A sort of Damoclesian promise.
For sure it may be true,
But the tormenting doubt forever lurking?
Would that I would turn away from the flesh that binds
In favour of a faith so blind.
I may never live again and so must taste,
If anything, this life in all its ways.
And taste it pure and full
Not dull and in decay.
I must relish in my fears
Knowing life has always risk.
The life that has none is already death –
So defined by inconsequential evidence.
And so in light of sacrifice
I’ll topple my soul into the stream
And find the rhythm in the heat of things.
The passion, the forgiveness, all enraptured
Flowing as the current leads…
Towards the mouth, the opening.
I shall remember everything
My mistakes no less than my suffering .
My Soul
Sometimes in the sound of things I remember,
Though by nature I’m inclined to forget.
In the beauty of all things forgotten,
the surprise defines all moments.
I hear in the voices of the children,
in my own voice too, though I may play reluctant,
The freedom of a passing moment captured,
Rendered real and different by our time.
In notions of my own self- deprecation
When I’ve renounced past Peter and sought Paul,
I merely beg forgiveness because I dared not assume it,
The fatal Christian flaw – the memory!
The casual eye
Reflections, musings, all indirect.
The shadows of timidity set.
Eyes bound to embrace if by chance
And then in blush turn once more back.
To shaded Eyes, the hidden glance,
The brushing back – displaying risk.
Another eye to eye embrace
Till two souls set save embarrassment.
A nail pick and a fumble still
The night resides in circumstance –
Ill-comfort or the lack of breath –
One’s terrified by the sombre poet.
Hope, yet eternal, springs then falls
It is the chill of winter afterall.
And so the fleeting glance- perchance-
Is nothing but the final failed romance.
And yet in words as these, such coined,
There is a lurch towards new Hope!
Competition Feb
Poem of the week
Submit a piece of poetry, maximum 50 words, and win yourself a free class/a mark 5,
if it is judged to be the poem of the week.
Native English speakers, as well as other followers, can also contribute by giving likes to the posts submitted.
Entries should be posted on Facebook (or sent to: martin@thehairyteacher.com if you are just looking for feedback but not interested in the competition)
I’m not a preacher
I’m the Hairy Teacher
You are your own audience
The night lies broken, breathless, shattered
From the remnants of a state
The heart in horror trembles,
The sheer impossibility cleverly delined by reason
Has itself inclined in dubious hope.
A rendered artefact or some more aged dogma…
A light, in truth, the death knell of depravity.
Shored up beyond the scurrilous entreprise,
The matching and the making,
The pairing of all hideous will,
the depth as once quite necessary:
Fed fine the aquatic entity
In toil and broil and unity swims out towards the breach of things,
The borders given form,
Both perceptible as thought and touch.
What flowers, builds new barriers,
Pushed out beyond the pale.
Nighttime fondles creeping,
And the shadows emanate.
Soft sounds as city hum infuses,
The mind at odds with immortality,
Finds roads reached out of time by fog and swirl and everything.
The essence of a tired being,
The night in duplication fathoms nourishment from blood soaked stones,
The drops of soul, the seed denied.
Roots sans purchase revel in a weary word
Shake skyward a silly song.
A song of freedom, a song of hope,
Just as nightingales and larks united.
A kiss, a gentle tug, a pleading,
The face of dawn beyond the sight emerging
Shades the black to blue to navy grey.
And yet from where the traveller finally rests there’s nothing but night’s silhouette