What depression looked like today...

The black creature, looming and ready, came at me just this morning. Now it is nagging and gnawing my insides. It has grown its own arms and legs and is wrestling me endlessly, trying to pin me to the canvas. I try to preoccupy myself. A trip to the bathroom, just to wander around the building... I lock the door to be alone, but I am not alone. I am tottering under the plunging sensation, battling to stand upright as the black one drips silently into my psyche. Trying to remember the rules of engagement, I trot through my mantras-breathe deep; thought challenge; pray. Mindfully walking, I head for the stairs.

Moving on up now, still not out of the darkness, I am aching for exercise to pull the black creature off my back, but I have the rest of the day to negotiate. Class after class. Yet another tedious meeting. Players on a stage and all that...

On the commute home, the black creature accompanies me, adding to the frustration of learner drivers, road-blocks and slow moving queues. I get out of the car, ready to pick a fight with myself.

The cross-trainer and the punch-bag wait for me in the dark, cold garage. Twenty minutes is all it takes, and I have managed to emerge again. Seemingly simple. Good for a couple of hours, but late in the day the black creature tries to re-emerge. All I can mouth are the same words I used this morning: "Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me, but nevertheless let your will be done..."

When the black creature comes on me, like today, it wishes to steal something precious. A part of me that I cannot live without. But I am stronger now. I will defend myself against this invisible onslaught. My grip on hope is vice-like.   

 

such a winter

white witchcraft winter
chosen frozen limbs
deliver
daily december
to grey gloomed Denethor
in such a time as this.

taut and icy mind-map,
web of willful wilting,
seeming endless morning
carrion crow creeping
under door-frame,
seeping
curtaining the darkness,
lilting,
willing
to sickle this sickly psyche
hammering hindsight
to the forefront
of a thawing, thriving mind's eye,
glimpsing its twenty-twenty mission.





shared with poetry jam-carry on

sign on the door said...

gone out for a while
so don't wait up
scratching the surface of
bamboo and dirt;
soil under fingernails
won't come clean
and
dead, like a battery,
in a cell-phone fatality,
drain the mind off his back
where it cannot be seen.

plugged in and charging
loading, rebooting,
an avatar sabateur
just got him motoring
slow to assemble,
but
quickly resembling;
he faces familiars
redressed in this groundhog
shell,
under the poison tree
discotheque monastery
with
closed-circuit liberty
yelling its knell.




Posted on Poets United Poetry Pantry 141


Postscript:
This poem partly inspired the latest
poem by The Unknowngnome
"Untitled, March 08, 2013."
Read it here.

Interconnect.

Ice dystopia
Next in line for leaving home
Thawed heart if you speak.
                           ---
Exhale winter through
Raindrop drumming on your mind
Carry on, dig deep.
                           ---
One life left to leave
No one misses seeds you sow
Never for nothing.
                           ---
Estimate your worth
Chasms cannot close themselves
Take your time my friend.


  

    







Posted at Haiku Heights prompt: support
and on Poets United.

Left Discarded.

Maybe the fact that I've been finding myself working out ways to eat five portions of fruit and veg by lunchtime over the past few weeks should have alerted me.

If not that, then heading to Morrisons in search of avocadoes and oats, having read a chapter of Bear Grylls' book, certainly should have done the trick.

Oh and did I mention that I've taken up golf? Being able to purchase a second hand set of clubs this week has whetted my appetite in a different way- for getting out onto the course.

All of this adds up to one simple fact: I must be getting older. It happens, you know. And as I turned 39 this week, I had a sense that I was deliberately heading out on a pilgrimage: the Mecca of a slightly healthier lifestyle and who knows what else...

Going into Oxfam on Saturday and picking up a driver, a putter and eight irons for the princely sum of £19.90 also set me thinking about health. I can't help but wonder whose clubs I have inherited and why?

But, on a brighter note, approaching forty has also forced me to look back. And in doing so, I've decided to embark upon a spring clean of something that I have held dear for many years.

Writing music has been in my blood since I was a youngster. I vividly recall writing a tribute to our pet cat Tinker at the age of about twelve. Verse one went something like this:
"One day Tinker the cat was walking along the road. Then came a big bad witch and turned him into a toad..." Hardly Paul Simon I know.
  
From then until now, I've penned a wheelbarrow full of lyrics (many of which should have been wheeled to the rubbish dump, I'm willing to admit) in the hope that some memorable melodies might turn up. Not many have, but I'm still trying. The perfect song is, for me, like that elusive, tantalising hole-in-one that I'm just waiting to ace... 

I've attempted, several times, to quit writing songs, but I honestly can't. I sing in the shower, I sing to my pupils at school (ask them about "The Critical Essay" song), I sing at church and I make up songs in my attic. I enjoy singing to my son and we often concoct one-time fun songs that will be instantly forgotten. The ones that stick become ritualistic, like the song for cleaning teeth each night: "Clean your teeth, Make them clean, make them fit to be seen by the Queen..."

Now don't get me wrong. I know these songs are not going to be remembered by many in years to come. However, they've become part of a collected set of memories and I often use them to recall specific occasions in that 39 years gone by. There's "Smile," the song I wrote for the girlfriend who was to become my wife. There's "West End Walk," the song that I wrote to express the feelings I had during a bout of depression, several years back. They've become little windows that I can look through to remind me of my past. They form part of who I am.

Which brings me to "Left Discarded". It's a collection I've started putting together of some of the music that I've managed to record, somewhere, somehow over the years. The recording equipment I have is hardly state-of-the-art, so as you can imagine, these are fairly rough and ready, but I simply wanted to have them permanently on record. Maybe, the act of doing so will let me move onto something different.

I'll be adding to the collection over the coming weeks but for now, the link below will take you to what has been "Left Discarded." If you get a chance, have a listen and if you like any of what you hear, please download a track or two for free: 
http://sciencekings.bandcamp.com/

Daylight Saving Time or A Walk in the Forest...

It's always a dangerous season. The walk into the forest happens at roughly the same time each year, when tall spindly giants shed their golden, auburn, and scarlet locks to form a crisp, cushioned and comforting welcome mat under your feet. And so, you may enter with a spring in your step.

Gradually, you acclimatise to the slumber that is setting in around you as you become part of the spell that is being cast. Squirrels hoard their stock. Deciduous trees shut down their growth. Darkness falls earlier and days go minimal. Black meanders through, just a few minutes earlier with each turn of the planet. And daylight, in an inversion of long, endless, summer, scuttles away, half-ashamed, after briefly punctuating the dusk.

"How far can you walk into the forest?" The child grins as you stumble manfully over his brainteaser, before eventually giving in.
"Halfway-because after that you’re walking out of the forest."

Not strictly true. There’s always another option...

Fear comes from uncertainty, and in the weeks before you enter the forest, you begin to wonder whether you will walk straight through this year. Or, whether, as in years gone by, you will lose your way in the endless turnings of oak, pine and briar. Will you be retracing lost steps over and over with vanished memory of where you once began and where you are headed? Helplessly etching imprints on tree trunks in the hope that if you happen to return this way, you will recognise your hand amongst the many, scratched in bark by the others who have lost their way too?

In the forest, you may wander like a lost child, but the panic is felt in palpable, tangible heart-hammering technocolour and it is very possible that there will be no happy reunions. Until, that is, a silence begins to set in, like the icicles that form and hang from the branches of every tree, beautifully isolated and untouchable.

Wandering the increasingly cold, bleak landscape, wind can begin to chill the bones. Turning to look for help, it is possible that darkness can fall unawares and there is only the sound of breaking twigs beneath your feet as you tread and retread familiar yet uncharted territory.

How long will the darkness of the innermost labyrinth last? In the forest, time can seem interminable. Days can seem to lead to months and on into years. Memories of past excursions can surface without warning, sending you spiralling towards colourless mornings and greying, dusky afternoons. You are walking in mist, and you are wishing that you would arrive at a clearing: a cool breeze, a blue sky, a motionless, mirrored pool of water…

You face the fact that journeying in the forest is a part of who you are. And, as leaves begin to fall again this year, you dream that these trips will not merely define you, but will refine you for your next arrival in the clearing. Certainly, time will travel; Spring will sprout; re-creation will rise. And bubbling to the front of your mind, another memory forms: of colours that begin to merge from the hard, barren ground: yellows, reds and violets on a canvas of brown and green. Let them be the colours of your hope, as you approach the forest once again...