a one hundred and nineteenth poem...'etiquette: saying 'goodbye' from a moving steam locomotive

Charles, put your hat on properly!

See, they are demonstrating.

Yes, like that -

Lift off crown

Gentleman like

Wave hat around to

Air and so forth,

Cradle a moment in

Fingers of right hand,

Think King, Country,

England, and

Friends lost at sea,

Just long enough not to get

Sentimental, then replace

Carefully, with hint of

Flourish back onto

Head, and remember, always remove

Your cigar first, before

Doing the above,

Else you’ll be sent to Coventry

Or wind up (socially) dead! 

a one hundred and sixth story...'calendars and clocks'

There was once upon a time such a thing as a biological clock other than the sun, and the moon, and the stars.  It lived inside human beings, and was triggered after they had been running around their planet eagerly for between eleven and fourteen years, and went on chiming for another fifty – like a demented alarm, it was hard to shut off, or indeed ignore.

Gregory first noticed his biological clock ticking when he was twelve and at a school pantomime.  One of the girls in his class was wearing black fishnet tights and a short pencil skirt.  Gregory felt a stirring in his still developing loins and thought how he would very much like to touch the girl’s legs, and perhaps squeeze her abdomen.  He spent the next seven or eight years fully developing his loins, and adding to an increasingly long list of things he would like to do with a girl’s body, from head to toe and all the parts in between.

Most of the girls, meanwhile, had long since considered and experienced what they would like to and what they could do with a boy’s body – it was a fairly short list by contrast – and had turned their thoughts to having babies; they after all had a far more significant part to play in the reproductive process than their male counterparts.

Gregory had watched quite a lot of movies before he finally got around to experimenting with his long list.  And not entirely to his astonishment he wasn’t quite as capable as Oliver Reed at manipulating a girl’s body for his own pleasure, never mind hers.  Indeed his first few experiences were like wrestling with the eyes of the blind, and it didn’t help that on each occasion he had a different opponent, more or less willing.

By his mid-late twenties Gregory’s biological clock was beginning to tick insistently.  He felt the need to have babies as much as girls had felt the need for many years, some of whom had now indeed had babies.  But Gregory couldn’t find a regular mate, and life had become anti-climatic as a consequence.  While for many, typical activities such as drinking alcohol helped the search for a regular mate to have babies with and render biological clocks somewhat irrelevant, as well as being in some way a celebration of life, for Gregory drinking alcohol became a way to escape the fact he was alive, and lonesome – it didn’t help him find a mate.

It should also be noted that once upon a time there was such a thing as an artificial life calendar - seasons came and went, it snowed, it rained, the sun shone and so on, but as time advanced some human beings became increasingly aware that they had not done many of the things anticipated by their artificial life calendar.  The artificial life calendar they carried around in their heads, and Gregory’s was, by the time he turned thirty, looking rather blank. 

It was a major cause of anguish to Gregory.  Perhaps even more so than the infernal ticking of his biological clock.

At thirty it was anticipated by the artificial life calendar, which was more or less the same inside the head of every human being (in certain parts of the world), that one should be coupled, preferably with babies, be relatively wealthy with an inscrutable job title, own and be able to use a mode of manufactured transport other than ones legs, go skiing once a year, have been to at least two or more far-flung parts of the planet for R and R, smoked cannabis and be saddled, or about to saddled with a mortgage.  As well as to enjoy, and indulge in, talk of the future.

The future to Gregory, thanks to his inability to fill his artificial life calendar, was once again blank.  And every time its featureless yet somehow ugly spectre was raised his heart sank all the way to his shoes. 

Today, it is amazing to think that a human being could get all the way to thirty years old without having met the anticipations of his or her artificial life calendar.  However, a thousand years ago brains were largely unprogrammed and were often entirely disconnected from bodies – this made filling in the artificial life calendar a far more erratic process.  All I can say is thank heavens for Google CNS!  All I have to do these days is tune into a surface wave if I want, for example, to visit a far flung part of the planet and enjoy R and R, or simply recreate the effects of smoking cannabis.

Indeed, today, it is amazing to think that a human being could get all the way to thirty years old and still be worried about his or her biological clock.  In fact, the idea of a biological clock is frankly absurd to people a thousand years on.  While I still have to wait for my loins to develop, as soon as they have and I use Google Mind-Reader to see which girl thinks my body an interesting play-thing, hey presto, I plug into a socket, and pleasure and babies are easily downloadable.

There was a lot of discussion a thousand years ago about integrating artificial intelligence, micro chips and so forth, with the human brain and body, but today, as I know you’ll expect me to say, it seems it was all unnecessary.  The decision to create a more controlled and automatic brain interfaced with the body – arms, legs, reproductive organs etcetera – should have been, ironically, a no-brainer!

Life, today, a thousand years on as an organism more than half under the command of digital algorithms is a whole lot less complicated and a whole lot more fulfilling.

a one hundred and fifth story...'ham'

Ham spent most of his life pretending.  He pretended he was happy.  He pretended his job was important and that business was going steady.  He pretended his wife was still enamoured with him, and he with her.  He pretended his kids were swell.  He pretended about a whole bunch of other things. 

Ham’s face was a wall.  Ham’s face was a very attractive and elaborate lie.  Ham’s face was a very attractive and elaborate lie that hid the fact that in truth everything was just about as abominable as imaginable. 

Ham secretly wanted to blow his brains out.  But Ham knew someone would have to clean up the mess.  And some people might miss him.  And some more people would pretend to be sad at his passing.  So Ham kept on pretending.  Quoth Shakespeare: ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’.

Ham was downright miserable.  The other side of the very attractive and elaborate wall, it was about as much fun as a needle in the eye.  His job, meanwhile, was about as rewarding as a hunt for a needle in the Largest Haystack in the Universe, and profits had disappeared into a quagmire.  Ham’s wife scorned his every attempt at making things better, and so Ham began to make fewer serious attempts at making things better.  And of Ham’s two kids: one had become a drug-addled transvestite, living half on the streets, to Ham’s secret and severe embarrassment; the other, a Doctor, was strongly rumoured to be practising illegal medicine – and neither was in regular contact with either of their parents.  Although this was perhaps for the best.

When Ham left his wife every morning and drove to work he had dreams of crashing his car into a tree, or driving headlong into an oncoming juggernaut, but he had become so good at pretending that he pretended to himself that he could still smell the flowers on the roadside verges and hear the birds in the roadside scrub.

When Ham walked into the office to begin a day’s work he had dreams of walking straight out again, never to return, but he had become so good at pretending that he pretended to himself that the secretary at the front desk smiled at him every morning, and that Dolores, his buxom, and not unattractive co-worker, had a serious crush on him.  Ham also pretended his boss was something other than a malicious goon.

When Ham went out with his co-workers, he had dreams of telling them all to go to hell, and longed to tell his boss how he wanted to throttle him on a daily basis, but he had become so good at pretending that he gladly bought all his co-workers drinks, regaled them with tales of his two swell kids, and often, after a few, told his boss how greatly he respected him, which was, of course, water of an Eider’s back, and a load of baloney.

Then Ham would travel wearily home again, and have dreams of making sweet, mad, passionate, and pure love to his wife, when in reality she would go to bed early with a lifestyle magazine, turn over on her side and switch her reading light out as soon as he appeared on the landing.  And Ham would get ready for bed, button up his PJs, and hope to fall asleep and dream of one of his two sons as a Nobel prize winning theoretical-physicist, when in reality the only theoretical-physicist to have won the Nobel prize invented the Atom bomb.

But eventually sleep would come, and Ham, for a few hours at least, was spared pretending, and his attractive and elaborate face would become sloppy and slack-jawed, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, his eyes shut and cancelled on the world.

a one hundred and eighteenth poem...'swedish room'

There was a place

Beyond words

Where we met

Outside of the

World, the mess

And the clutter,

You my butter

Cup, my guts all

Churned up, I

Remember sucking on

Your breasts like a

Baby after milk, then

Lying content in the

Cradle of your

Swedish room, safe,

Warm as a child basking in

A new womb.   

a one hundred and seventeenth poem...'sculpture'

Lola had the post-weekend blues -

Everything seemed gone

Forever, and her mind as if it

Had become sludge all in the space of

Three days.  The future stretched on

And on into nothingness.  Only his grey

Clay features stuck out from a

Wall of mud when she at last summoned

Strength to open her tired eyes,

Again sinking her thumbs into

The cold, wet daub.  .  

a fourteenth reflection...'listening to depression'

Depression Awareness Week was last week: an important initiative aimed at raising the profile of the illness and all its potential manifestations. 

When depression takes hold it can be incredibly difficult to get out of whatever the depressive state on one’s own accord.  There may be a very strong element of guilt involved on the part of someone experiencing low mood which can prevent him or her engaging sufficiently with their depression, as well as frustration, bordering on desperation that there doesn’t appear to be anyone around to listen and respond on an emotionally intelligent level that involves more than just sympathy, as well as an understanding that human beings, depressed or otherwise, function on the idea of hope existing somewhere, or in somebody else.

It is hard to listen to someone with depression – some of things they have to say may appear so at odds with your conception of reality that it is nearly impossible to know how to respond, or indeed understand why and how they may feel the way they do; moreover, it can be uncomfortable in that participating in an intimate conversation involves a degree of vulnerability and openness on your part, which in itself can turn up unwanted feelings and/or memories.

However, it is essential that depression is accepted and listened to.  While not necessarily a cure, if you are prepared to lend an ear and hear out what someone struggling with depression has to say in a sensitive manner, you will have acted as a sticking plaster on a bleeding heart. 

There aren’t many hard and fast rules about how to listen to someone struggling with depression since the reasons why they feel low, in addition to how low they feel, will vary from person to person.  However, if there are any best or better practices then it may be more preferable to listen and respond with simple questions to lead your friend onwards in what they have to say without appearing to dismiss or judge the reasons for their low mood; and it helps too, if able, to try and detect simultaneously where their hope for a better future may lie - and however unrealistic the basis for their hope may seem to you, make sure you exercise extreme caution and tact before telling them so, if indeed you have to at all.

It is also worth remembering in these sorts of conversations that the person struggling to come to terms with their depression may very likely be feeling isolated and detached from goings on around them, and as a listener it can help to share any similar experiences you may have had – they will feel less abnormal and more relaxed as a consequence – so long as you are not desperately uncomfortably about it, and continue to let them hold the majority of the conversation.

Furthermore, the person struggling to come to terms with their depression may have been experiencing a particularly complicated version of reality, again perhaps in comparison to yours, and it does not always help to introduce your more straightforward view of reality into the conversation anytime soon, if at all.  The more they talk, and you prompt and listen, the further they are coming out of their depressed Self, clearing and opening new mind channels that may have previously seemed obstructed and/or impossible to navigate.

And another important part of listening to someone confessing their depression can be touch.  There is a place that exists for many people beyond words, a place where two people can have a profound meeting, and in the case of someone who may have been feeling disassociated from the physical world, and/or experiencing potentially extreme cognitive dissonance, or repetitive and damaging thought cycles, touch is a good way to help them both engage with the physical world, and bring about an awakening of the senses, as well as break the sometimes merciless vortex of inner conflict and worry.

At the very worst, if you are able to do any or all of the above, you will have played a part in helping the cause against loneliness, itself one of the causes of depression.

a one hundred and sixteenth poem...'the odd couple'

Tony Blair’s ears

Were just too big

For his own double-

Bed.

Nevertheless, wife

Cherie, used them

Alternately as

Pillows for her

Unusually square-jawed

Head.