Scunnered

Tastebuds rebel

Smoked out of flavour

Bringing me soapy

Juices and perfume

Three pints too much

No longer tasty

Switch to another

Flavoursome brew

Too late for me

Niceness has flown off

Left me with staleness

In body and mind

Movember

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Romance Versus Reality

I conducted an experiment recently using the age-old question: “Is this glass half full or half empty?”  Most people promptly opted for half full going on to describe their sunny outlook and positivity.  Much the expected result given my use of a somewhat hackneyed question to which everyone thinks they know ‘the answer’.  However, I posed the same question to certain friends whom I knew had suffered or were suffering still from melancholia.  This time I asked them to describe the glass as they would have seen it when at their very lowest.

“Glass?  I wouldn’t have the strength to look at it far less describe it.” said one.

“It’s a glass of water.  Get over it.” said another.  It seems that melancholics are too preoccupied to comment on hypothetical situations.  What was surprising is that absolutely no one opted for half empty.  Not a single person wanted to be known as a pessimist.  A bleak outlook has become unfashionable.  Or has it?  Spend enough time socialising in any ordinary crowd and you will eventually meet those who wear irony like a t-shirt; the complainers; those for whom the best days are over and the future is a toilsome burden.  In their day the glass was much bigger and the water was beer.  They are the pseudo-melancholic.  Once known as romantics they became the New Romantics and as they got older they got grumpy TV shows and their grandchildren became Emos.  They are everywhere.

 Shakespeare managed to avoid listening to Radiohead or The Manic Street Preachers but he seemed to have met one of their most ardent fans:

“Away from light steals home my heavy son/ and private in his chamber pens himself/ shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,/ and makes himself an artificial night.” (Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 1)  Romeo in his melancholy adds clouds to his misery.  Any parent will recognise the jilted teenager, barricaded in his room, refusing to eat, surviving on a diet of tears and music that reeks of loss.

Every age has their pop songs that celebrate sadness; The Great Pretender; I’m a Loser by the Beatles; What Do I Do Now? By Sleeper in the 90s and nowadays Pink will provide all the angst any teenager needs.  There is and always has been a market for romanticised sadness.  But how does it compare with actual melancholia?  There are marked similarities.  For example, both conditions are incredibly self-indulgent.  They both require a preoccupation or perhaps an obsession with the self.  How am I feeling?  What is happening to me?  Michel Foucault called melancholia a kind of ‘monomania’.  A one-track mind, which will focus only on the problem totally rejecting any solution.

Nostalgia is another factor in both conditions, longing after a golden past, grieving for what has been lost.  But even these apparent similarities contain stark contrasts.

The pseudo-melancholic is indulgent in that their behaviour is self-focused, they isolate themselves quite deliberately.  On the other hand, a melancholic hates the isolation, fears it, will even seek out friendships, parties, crowds and will happily spend their entire bank account buying drinks and presents just to numb that feeling of loneliness.  This very gregariousness in turn isolates them because most people don’t know what to do with such a needy person.  If you’re pseudo-melancholic you isolate yourself by deliberate withdrawal.  The melancholic is ruining friendships with late night phone calls, a bombardment of text messages and perhaps even turning up on a doorstep in the early hours of the morning.  In their desperation to avoid loneliness they, in fact, create it.  They reach out with tainted hands that repel rather than attract.

The pseudo-melancholic’s loneliness, mood swings, tear stained face, are in fact a well-planned advertising campaign.  They demand that people acknowledge their misery.  At root it’s a way of seeking attention.  Look at me.  Join with me in my sadness.  Share my tears.  They seek sympathy, affirmation someone to share their pains, to console them, to agree they’ve been dealt a bad hand.

Melancholics, conversely, have no ulterior motive to their sadness.  They do not and cannot revel in it.  They do not seek to share it, they seek to eliminate it.  Theirs is no romantic, nostalgic pain.  It is the very weight of worlds of misery pressing them down and their only goal is escape either by distraction, sleep or finally death.  Nietzsche said: “The thought of suicide is a powerful comfort:  It helps one through many a dreadful night.”  Every melancholic knows this, has wrapped themselves in a blanket of non-existence and found relief there.  It is in this ebb that glasses half filled become irrelevant.  All effort is concentrated on one thing, monomaniacally; survival.

Thankfully, melancholics also have their bright spots.  There are times when they rise from incapable to very very able.  Able to relate to others, able to see the world as a shining beautiful place to be.  They are the lucky ones, who will weep at the trite emotions of a pop song yet laugh at real adversity with the knowledge that it is beatable and with the wisdom to know how to keep going when the battle seems lost.  I’m beginning to sound romantic.  Forgive me.  I’m still a recovering melancholic.

Am I Too Drunk

Is it too late

when you eye up the glass fridge

and the beer bottles

look like they’re queuing

to get out,

to get bought and drank?

I see them.

They plead like dogs in the home.

Pick me!  Pick me!

And I feel guilty

about leaving them.

Stitched Up

They frighten us

The scarred men

They look like the fights

We managed to avoid

Arouse suspicion

Did he deserve it

Start it, do time for it?

Looks like it

A war we did not

Take part in

Or condone

Fought without our approval

Or understanding

Yet the scarred men

Walk among us

Drink with us

Laugh with us

Begging us

‘Ignore our wounds’

But, we can’t

No, we won’t

Untitled

The time had come.

The preparations had taken weeks.  Apart from preparing himself, Roy had to source the equipment he needed, fund the project, take delivery of the items and yet somehow leave no trace, no telltale sign that could lead back to him. 

He’d faked himself a student card and gone into the university library to use their computers or he’d find a back street internet café, the kind that transients used as they back-packed around the world, making sure he wasn’t stuck in a window, ensuring he could see everything going on but not be seen. 

He had to find a place for the deed, trawling the classifieds, appearing in pubs for one pint only, eliciting the information he needed before leaving, never to return.

He had found a quiet enough place, paid for it in cash using a false name.

The place was clean, out of the way and there would be no strangers blurting through the door.  Roy had made sure of that.  Now the place was ready.  Nothing had been left undone.

He’d gathered the people here that he wanted to witness this event.  He kept them silent.  They held their breath knowing not to cross him as he shut one eye and peered down the scope.  The place was in darkness.  Roy was calm, poised, ready to strike.

The door opened a little.  Someone was coming in, nervously, trying to adjust to the gloom.  The lights went on and Roy sprang into action.  He pulled his explosive, pressed a button and shouted: “SURPRISE!” in unison with everyone else.  His daughter’s shocked look turned to a grin, a moment Roy had captured on camera: “Happy Birthday darling” he said as he handed his daughter a glass of Champagne

Extract from A Stranger's Tears - Get your copy now

I’m visiting a place, a place where my friends and family have already been.

It’s my suicide attempt.

But this time I can see it from the outside.

I understand that it must hurt.

At the time (still at times) I honestly believed with every inch of my being that this was the right thing to do, that this would make everything ok.

I know now that it would have hurt people, I know that it did.  I feel guilty about that but I can’t yet see why they’d hurt so much.

I can’t believe that the feelings I would have if one of my friends committed suicide, the anger, frustration and that aching loss. are how people would feel, how people did feel, when it was me.

I don’t think I’m worth that much emotion.

When I glimpse the truth now and again, it makes me cry.

I still feel I have to earn it.  I feel like my actions can turn people’s love off and hopefully on.

I know that’s not true but I can’t feel that truth and I can’t yet live it.

This Latitude Sucks

He glanced at his watch

Soon he’d be in bed

But his thoughts wandered

Wended south

Like a migratory instinct

Driven to the warmth

To where he’d soon be

Going out instead

Of going home

Only his feet were glad

They’d stood for enough

The Strategist

The week had been long, busy with bureaucracy and emotionally draining.  Phone calls had been made and the due diligence had been done, ticked off, filed and left to gather its own dust.

 Fraser had finally escaped from the humdrum monotonous buzz of the daily grind.  He’d done lunches, been for coffees, smiled at clients and braved the snarling jams at rush hour.  He skipped tea, threw on his hat at its jauntiest angle and made his way pubwards. 

 The weekend beckoned with sleek, glossy hair, fake tan and miles of mascara.  He was ready to charm and was already imagining that tinkling giggle and adoring smile. 

 He opened the door, doffing his hat and spun it on the bar as he ordered up a bottle of the finest red wine.  He looked around and his smirk began to fade.  Bald heads, beer bellies.  The fruit machine clamoured and Pink Floyd were fifteen minutes into a solo on the jukebox.  He drained his glass in disappointment but declined to leave.  He knew this.  He’d been here before.  It was a man monsoon in the middle of a female famine.  But he would get by.  Either things would pick up soon or he’d steal someone’s girlfriend.

 He withdrew from the pack, let them howl together and lick each other’s wounds.  He became aloof; stood apart knowing this would engender curiosity.  Let the rest take the scraps; the barked camaraderie.

 And soon?  The plan worked so I put my pen back in my pocket.

Old Skool

Couple of B Boys

Startin’ with da top rock

in their two grand trainers

mooths aghast

as auld boy in a pullover

helicopters

let me hear you say

Freeze!

Handstand in brogues

spinning on a tweed trilby

puffed out, points

“Pernod wee man!”

And now all the youth

are swilling aniseed

Red Red Wine

It’s only grapes.

Grapes and European feet

and the inside of a barrel

with the dust of a cellar.

I’ll take two bottles.

NIght Hawk

A day of moping

of milling

of endless cups of tea

with cigarettes

the thumb blistered with flicking buttons

bleary eyed channel hopping

that climaxes its boredom

with an episode

of Scooby Doo

Columbo for the kids

with a tell-tale ending

of unmasking

and meddling

so the staleness gets wiped

or rather exchanged

for the humid

human bodies and alcohol

with cigarettes

in a mixture of ennui

and shouting pretenders

fake hearty laughter

nods and salutes

and sweaty coins

forfeited for warming

liquid comfort

tossed back with smiles

A Becks, a Tennents,

a Motorola

it’s just a new place

to feel alone.

My Hero

He was listing like a sinking battleship, trying to look normal as he walked diagonally home.  He stopped, but not all at once.  Only one leg stopped.  The other one kept going then struggled to get back making him lean even further.  He was fumbling in his pockets, bent double, trying to find a cigarette.  Then in and out of every pocket.  Hips; inside; shirt; back; jacket all the while shrugging like a Parisian mime artist.  Then he saw me.  Glimpsed, then squinting, pulls up his trousers and walks semi-towards me.  He’s right next to me before he can get his mouth to work.

“You alright buddy?”

“Aye mate.”

“You alright?”

“Aye.”

“I’m…” he sniggers, “I’m a wee bit,” and he does that action, lifting an imaginary glass to his lips, then laughs, “Aye. A wee bit drunk.”

“Really?”

He winks, points at me as he waltzes backwards.

“Heh!  You’re alright buddy.” and he shakes my hand.  Then he remembers the cigarette, stares at it as if it’s surprised him.

“Want a light?” I say with lighter in hand.  He puts the cigarette behind his ear, hands on his hips, puzzled, then slaps my shoulder. “I was just gonna ask you that.  Are you a vaircloy, a calaiv, a clairvoyant?”

I hold the light out to him as he sucks at his cigarette like a straw.  It’s half lit before he says: “You’re alright big man.”  He waves, walks a dozen steps then turns round.  Hands in the air, cigarette in mouth he attempts to bow, staggers then walks away, sideways.

And instead of jumping off that bridge I went home.

It’s true that helping someone else helps you.

Fish Out of Water

They all rushed in before me

as I ambled

Thinking I was early

then SHABOOM!

noise and humidity

beer and stupidity

instead of a quiet night

The seats every one of them taken

as I lingered

leaning on a door jamb

eyes agog

blatant femininity

creates an affinity

instead of lonely times

They’re at the bar in droves

as I hovered

looking for a lager

wallet out

stark spontaneity

mix with the gaiety

instead of hanging back

They all left before me

as I mumbled

thinking I was charming

then ding ding

drink up your alcohol

home time for one and all

instead of a shared bed

Mind Over Scatter

Brow like corrugated iron

Fists of adamant

Every muscle tight

Teeth rasping

Thoughts flying like starlings

A scattered unison

Pissing me off

You flapping

Bastard leave me be

I will not be enraged

An ocean of calm

That shrieking

Will not disturb

Love Poem

I like it.

I really like it

when it’s me and you.

The simplicity

instead of duplicity.

You love me as I am.

And I love you.

End of the Month

For some it was payday

and that meant celebrations

with an early louse

a drinky poo or two

and a takeaway after

For some it was Friday

and that brought the weekend

with the kids at mine

a DVD or two

with no moaning at the ex

For some it was night time

and that meant loneliness

or a cheeky pint

with the lost at the bar

envying others problems