The ideas intellectualising
And I see the evasive gestures
Intertwined in the silence
That space between thoughts and written words
And war weary
cast ashore in that talk of the weather
Nobody dares mention the critical
Instead in the mediocrity, sparse honesty
Carefully chosen each destination so as to not bring anyone too close to the fire,
Or worse, beyond it – into the darkness
That has always surrounded us.
© TheHairyTeacher 2017
My mother’ grip weaker but tighter too
A desperate plea to me and to mortality
The love abounding but unstable
The conditions placed upon herself weigh badly.
“Was I a good mother?” the plaintive quest to understand
The fear of an Unforgiven.
Yet what her memories paint and what of them remain
I cannot judge
But what I can induce is blame
That reassurances will never penetrate.
A child robbed of youth;
Or the joy therein,
Robbed of a father through the maraudings of a mean mother
And when his death arrived
Though grown
She was left alone against the politics of the justifiably estranged
Strained through years of conflict and contradiction.
So what then of my future in this mess?
A hand that will grip tight long after death
Is made of love and not the need for love
To reciprocate is joy
But to give without expectation is strength
And to never look for reassurances is brave –
Especially at the end.
© TheHairyTeacher 2017
In the faded blue now turned dark
There sparkle the settlements of an age
An eyesore to the unspoilt landscape
A sign of hope to the weary traveler
A beacon amidst the puffs of clouds
Which dispel the views our tired minds are longing for.
Holding on just this little bit longer
The time now measured in our descent
as the clouds embalm us
The darkness almost entombing –
But we pray, collectively,
That engineering, yes science,
Will save us again,
Will transport us safely into the bosom of our destination.
We are the pilgrims set out against life
In search of it
In the nuances of every step
We are fools hoping for change
And yet we see it,
We feel it,
Perceive it at every turn.
But collectively we become lost in the mantras
The panic,
The sheer superstition ,
Rock Face sheer, cliffintine,
We have it, it us
And shattered in our communion
We scream injustice
Searching for our scapegoat
The voodoo functions
The blame is cast
The snake eyes removed as was our Judas.
And again as we set down we forget our hysteria
And once more we move beyond the limits of our fear
Into the freedom that forgetfulness and ignorance afford us.
© TheHairyTeacher 2017
Back again my pretty creepy crawley
With school start and hair washed-
It doesn’t matter.
You discriminate not though many on your behalf do
They shout “You filth” and they do not mean you.
The psychosomatic impulse
The hand that reaches, scratches, passes back to point
And waits
The tendency engorged by fitful, fanciful, frantic
Imaginations!
And back again to torment, Cos that is what you do.
The morning’s bus-stop-wait inspection
The routine, the chore imposed.
Each itch, each scratch, questioned
Queried, curious, cautious
And paranoid, yes paranoid,
The present you endow.
© TheHairyTeacher 2017
I didn’t try today to remember
Nor forget for I thought that unwise.
I didn’t reach for tears to quench the fire
Nor would I allow my heart to burn with rage.
I never promised anything nor were oaths given
And yet I felt betrayed by what you’d done.
While I the innocent stone thrower
Lay down my implements of hypocrisy.
Refrain: I regret not knowing you
And you not loving me
I despise the taint I threw on thee
I blame my self as is my fallacy
Noone was wrong to let a thing just be.
I didn’t die that day
When you released me
Nor did I relish in
The new found misery.
I guess I begged
I may even have seemed pathetic
I was new to you and never asked for this.
Yet I wasn’t the victim of a hit and run
I believe we fought two pugilists as one.
You may have cracked my heart
With belittlements’ array
While I internalized the rage and came undone.
I didn’t lie that day upon failed laurels
Instead I fuelled my dreams from painful memory
Not like a trooper nor a troubadour
But like a man who’s lost and carries on.
Sometimes empowered by self-righteousness
Sometimes alone and left distraught
I have at times given weight to thee
And wonder if you’ve ever even thought of me.
Refrain: 1 or 2?
To hold the shadow dear, the faded memories
The loves lost
The fights had
The friends, the feelings:
To position them in a place of some importance
Each one a tool
To teach
To tempt us forward.
And yet upon a pedestal too oft residing
The pain descending
Like hot wax dripping
Time measured in its and your destruction.
Time measured backwards towards the hurt
As if nothing mattered anymore.
The blind fool lives for what is lost
The wise one dares to tread once more into the minefield
that is the heart.
© TheHairyTeacher 2017
The mind’s allowed freedom,
To roam, to express
But without some temperance
It could lead to distress.
A coming of age a rite of passage
To write in remembrance to commemorate
I’m not mourning and yet I may still
For what I have done to that old tired beast.
I’ve slaughtered it, humanely,
in the name of expression.
Stood there in the limelight only the darkness to see
But like oft has been mentioned, I felt them, faceless, expectant,
and when I sat down swaddled in the spotlight
I sat down with the weight of their individual silence,
Each of them protruding through the inky veil,
To sit beside me on the sack cloth coughing:
This is poetry, culture – steak after all,
And I played my part tonight.
And I come away less vilified than deified,
Though the truth, I know, lies somewhere in between.
I shake the remnants of a beer from its hiding place,
hunting it down with my greed,
And allow that though momentarily I was sophisticated,
I am, in the end, Still me.
© TheHairyTeacher2017
Morning’s minions drawn from their downy warmth
To be flailed by street amid the swarms
Dark night shifts to grey sky warning
That the gloom arrives though day is dawning.
And onwards into the belly of the beast
Never satiated by the thronging streets
Each day then cursed to repeat again
Man’s fate sealed subservient till the end
© TheHairyTeacher2017
To flounder in the muggy mind of breathlessness and beer
The spring arrives to summer and yet lethargic I am charged
The older woman found wanting upon the step inclined
A hand up a chance received renewed am I inside.
What kindness then that with intention for its own reward
The Quickening delighted note though as of yet not marred.
© TheHairyTeacher2017
