To further answer your question: I’m standing at the river bank in the sunshine. It’s hard not to love this city, and my mobile job, at a time like this. I have, however, stood on this spot many’s the time in another mood, with nothing but hatred in my heart!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
It’s quite possible that I see things differently to everybody else,
that I see danger at the corner cos it there resides.
That I see cheaters, schemers,, dreamers, in the words of rhetoric,
that I cannot believe in anything – but myself.
It’s quite possible that I see everything just like everybody else
but we’ve been lied to long enough so as to not even believe ourselves.
And in comparison where common ground is found
we are often made suspicious, even made to doubt-
for we must all be different and-
then be judged as though we’re not?
©TheHairyTeacher2014
It could be Ireland but for the snow that comes in drifts, light flakes deceptive.
The green grass muddied once more encased,
and Spring entombed, perhaps,
so what comes next.
The rising cheer has so soon abated, as mother nature holds her breath.
Allowing still the chilling fingers caress the shrinking countryside once again.
Those tired of darkness they beg for Springtime,
the blossom’s mercy, the rose’s promise.
Blood on the carpet green, yellow, pink – exciting,
now all abounding with whitish sheen.
Little diamonds, slivers, pearing down in string-like curtains;
sending silence across the thoughts –
the land once more is sleeping.
Beneath, the street, ensnared only by our own vain wishes,
with city light and city surface,
sets cars heaving past hellbent on murder:
Their spring fizz slushed again in sludging cleanliness.
What’s left of autumn now is surely gone.
The blackened leaves tattoo the quiet streets
worn inky thin they’d stain like tarmac melt-
That once upon a knee in jeans attired.
Why? With such heat? Why, with youth, of course!
Contending here again with the damp, the chill, the beast
As another false alarm is trodden down.
Traffic moves again in lumbered, measured, plod.
What of the coming Spring?
Perhaps it never comes!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
We are all characters in somebody else’s book as well, as I in theirs, they are in mine, and so the cycle completes itself, the gentle interweave of thoughts and images; we are all still characters in someone else’s book, and she, for what it’s worth, was in mine.
It all began, as any story does, but when exactly is such a vagary that all I’ll say is it all began sometime before this, sometime, as you’d expect, in the past, seeing as any story must have its linearity to some degree.
When he heard her speak for the first time, she spoke English, but it could have been French, it was so heavily inflected. As it happened, after that she did, as they both did try French together with varying degrees of success. She spoke as she had to, he, as he wanted to, and this would come to define everything that they were.
She dressed simply, almost the prude, he drew his inspiration from rebellion: he dared to be different. She wore her hair short, cropped, a very conservative style. He left grow grow long, and somewhat unkempt. He had an image conveyed by his exterior. His interior it was that would finally betray him.
As they passed each other, met each other, chatted to each other, they found a path between them that dared to intertwine. She had smiled freely from the start but now he noticed the light in her eyes, he presumed a recent phenomenon, brought on by his own presence. He, too, felt a smile gain purchase on his face, and had even dared to think differently.
„If only she would be mine.”
One day followed the next into a framework of unfettered change. She became more sensual, more illustrious; he assumed, too, that she had begun to notice the change in him, for hadn’t he just then passed a witty remark. How intelligent he must seem. Beneath the veneer of apathy a man troubled with such existential matters truly existed.
One day became another and he built her up into the graven image of his thwarted soul, she would be the one to save him, redeem him- for whatever he had done, he had done wrong. She would be his right, his innocence; she would be the one to teach him love. “Oh sweet rebellious heart, that you may be salved by the unguent of my deepest love!” He thought, indeed, that she would matter.
One day not unlike another, busying himself with his indifference, trying to remain inconspicuous, he had spotted her in a crowd. She hadn’t even noticed him. He dared to think she didn’t care. She just hadn ‘t noticed him, but why? Perhaps it wasn’t even her, but it was. His tiny heart knew it. The flowers late in bloom made to shed their petals. He approached in his casual way. „Were those laughs for me?”, as he passed a table full of stangers.
“Hi, how are you?” the faintest whisper, his all alluring mystery.
“Hi. Who are you?” the abundant reply.
Indeed!
One day, like another, just passed by, just kept on going without a care. No need to stop, no need to pause, to reflect. Just on and on. Day after day, week after week. Life crumbled into an infinite void, no longer relevant. For she hadn’t even recognised him, not even after he had explained himself. She had been so cool; he the frigid fool, rendered inert. He had tried to be witty. She had smiled politely, then left. The next time she had come to the bar she had had an escort, 3 men, as if protection was necessary.
He didn’t know why. He hadn’t even noticed her. She meant nothing anymore. He would swear he had never thought of her again. And yet she would remain a part of his story as he a part of hers. His pain: that she had played her part well while he remained in hers just an extra, unnoticed, forgotten. He had even forgotten himself.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
Samuel Beckett: “If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.”
In this conveys the sacrifice not of man to woman nor vice versa but of us, humanity, to the passions which oft times our rationality would refuse. For what is Love…and in this I do beseech you… patience, for truly there is no answer; but that here, right now, and in the understanding of words and the depth of emotion, some have tried to answer, tried to commend with thought that which rejects all reason…and yet it is our very reason which we would offer up as sacrifice to the greater wealth of Love…for yes, man, woman, humanity, could no longer relish its existence but that it would converge upon the greater plateau, as somehow we perceive it, and thereon it would allow us relinquishment, it would tease us to falter, doubt, then continue…this place defined not as the altar, nor as the tomb, but the essence of all things. What is Love if in truth it cannot be and not be, if it cannot live and unlive, if it cannot draw from you the listener a certain rush to stale sobriety, cynicism perhaps veiled. What is Love if it cannot defend itself against the very things which it purports to describe. For Love must be more than these and all words. Love must be a bore when it is bandied about in rhetoric. Love, by its own volition, negates itself but that it is felt to within an inch of its loss, for Love is all that we don’t have in a moment. Love is not regret! Love is not memory…these things already define themselves. Love is everything and cannot be rendered, divided, shared. Love is whole, complete, infinite. Love is!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
The tshirt tells a story
And I listen most intently
The truth or fiction of it
Left for another time.
The night has left me awkward
The personal juices lost
And the bare fleshed memory
Comes at such a cost.
The morning light with morning sights
Has caught me unawares
I tremble beneath a trimbley
I shudder behind my shades.
I let the street cross under
And let the bridge ship by
I harness hope from nothingness
And count the lives in time.
Inside the church of everybody
I sell my soul to God
But come feeling hard done by
Needing that hairy dog.
I inflict interest from onlookers
As I shave my way to work.
Outside dishevelled emptiness
Inside resides much worse.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
The stripping away of her aesthetics and faith
Waiting in line for the afternoon x-ray
The true search within to reveal everything
Of a doubt that she’s had about Self.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
She curiously inclines herself to look
to search
to seek.
She’s prettied herself right up tonight
to find
to clutch
to keep.
But her face it tells of tears just fresh
that she hides beneath a blush.
And her eyes they tell of painful things
she’ll never to you entrust!
©TheHairyTeacher2014
‘Evil’…just a word
in a verse that could be a recipe.
It could be anything.
I decide –
if I decide,
to choose…
anything at all.
©TheHairyTeacher2014
I’m eating her away with the filth of my mind:
at once consuming and consumed.
I relish in the torrent of her flow, from a height,
her head, cascading.
I wonder at the slight valley,
which runs between neck and shoulder socket,
almost broad, almost muscular, always sensual.
I wonder as I drink the unblessed blood of Christ,
the draught that would still water be without Him –
it is not the best till last, but nearly,
it is not the end because the sulking lady’s skinny.
I am devouring the room with my ego,
and the room smiles, stretches, and…
once more enslaves me
©TheHairyTeacher2014
