A Poem and an update.

I have missed a month in posting or updating this blog. I think my muse is either dead or drunk in some gutter howling at the moon with a gang of winos, which is where I am headed myself if I do not sort out my life. I guess I need to start doing something, but again this is always easier to talk about or discuss rather than actually taking steps to rectify the situation I am in. Actions speak louder than words they say, and this is true. I could probably write a few hundred words moaning about my current life situation like I have done previously on my blog, but I shall spare you the moan this time. Two years since my marriage disintegrated, and I have more or less turned myself into a wreck because I am still quite frankly reeling from what happened to me when I became homeless. They say forgiveness is divine – after all they claim Jesus forgave his abusers and his betrayers, and that would have been a very strong thing to have done, especially if Mel Gibsons film ‘The Passion of the Christ’ holds any semblance of historical truth, which is a very barbaric and disturbing movie of the final days of Jesus. But I digress. Some things I find hard to forgive and probably always will. I also presently feel as if I am under some kind of Sword of Damocles. I find this hard to explain, but I have this ‘feeling’ of impending doom, as if something bad is about to happen. My sensitivity picks things up and always has done. I try not to dwell on it however.

Next month is National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo) and I have one or two ideas floating around to maybe take part, to try and write fifty thousand words in thirty days. That is just under two thousand words a day, and if my muse sobers up then I would like to give this a go. Someone once told me that we all have a book inside us, and this I believe is so true because I think we are all just slightly unique, each one of us has different experiences we can draw on. I see it as a way of producing a first draft, or at least a method of actually getting one of my ideas down on paper (or rather Microsoft Word), and I am not in it to ‘win’ anything, or even probably to find a publisher, but rather I think I will attempt it for my own sake, my own challenge. Wish me luck.

I was going through some old poetry, and I suppose this is what sparked me to update wordpress. After all it is national poetry day today. I try to update this blog at least on a monthly basis, sometimes that doesn’t always work out. But re-reading some old things made me want to share one of them on here. There are a few poems currently on this site,  and one of the old ones is at the end of this post. This particular poem I wrote several years ago when I was reminiscing about my youth; it deals with a time of my life that was very important to me. A time when I was starting college and learning about society whilst I studied a Social Studies course which was an Access Course that allowed me to go onto University. That was nearly two decades ago. That, when you think about it, is a long long time  but to me it seems like it was almost yesterday  – such are the vagaries of time.

I am reading a lot of historical fiction presently. Bettany Hughes book on Helen of Troy is a must read, and puts new light onto who Helen of Troy could have been and her status in Bronze Age society, a status that Bettany Hughes argues was just as equal as men back three thousand years ago. An interesting read. Also reading a lot about King Arthur and the formation of Britain during the years after the Romans left these Isles, when the then Roman Emperor Honorius told us to ‘look to our own defences’, to defend from Anglo Saxon incursions. Really interesting period of UK history. Anyway, time to go. Poem below, titled ‘The Age of Enlightenment’. Comments are always pleasing!

The Age of Enlightenment
dawned
during youth;
questions about the rights
of man and beast
(but mainly about beast)
swam around the receptor
and archive of memories.

Diet was altered;
dead animals now
never entered the lithe, sprightly
holy temple,
causing an enhanced awareness
with a permanent fix.
Oh, dear narcotics
don’t you wish you were as clever?

Questioning words
flittering across wide open eyes,
creating a Brave New World
of alternate thought.
Mr Huxley, sir,
you lit the match
to start the fire
which spread fiercely,
consuming old habits
and thoughts,
turning to cinder
the ‘muck of ages’.

Like tendrils of smoke rising
and vanishing in the wind,
The ancien régime of
hindered thought
unhindered itself.
Enlightenment was here!

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