Do Not Gaze Into The Abyss (The Abyss Doesn't Like It)

 

“Be careful,” said Paul’s mum

As we were going out to play

“If you end up fighting monsters

You may yourself become monstrous, 

Along the way.”

It was a weird thing to say.

And she said it in that casual way

You’d get from mums in the 1980s

Though their warnings weren’t usually so far reaching

They tended to be about talking to strangers

Or playing by electrical wires

Not matters so intellectual, existential and Nietzschean

“Be careful if you fight with monsters.”

Not, “Don’t fight monsters.” This was, apparently fine. 

Paul’s mum, like mine, was of the belief

That kids learn better through experience

Let them find out for themselves what 

Horrors promethean

Lurked in the shadows and trees

Of the long Summer afternoons and evenings

Nothing wrong, thought Paul’s mum

With letting kids learn

What it feels like to wrestle a creature that burns

Like the fires of hell

It’s character building, I guess

And it wasn’t just us

All our friends

Said their mums were OK

If they came back at teatime with

Bruises and bleeding

And the knowledge of death in their eyes

But all were quite clear that no matter the struggle

Our conduct, when fighting

Must be decent and cordial

“Remember your manners, 

And watch your behaviour, 

With the creatures that arise from the depths

When you step on the cracks in the pavement.”

And our mums, it turns out, 

Were insightful and wise.

Not that we were so smart as to always

Remember their words or heed their advice

But there’s monsters out there

Who tried to engage us

And make us like them

Their faces like mirrors, 

Their screams and nightmare accents contagious

They’d open their jaws and show us the abyss

And we’d just make up weird songs 

And we’d blow them a kiss

And they’d curse us with words that should rip out our souls

But we’d just say, “No thank you,

We need to get home.”

And those monsters went back at the end of those days

To their mums, I suppose

For their tea, 

In their dens and their caves

And their mums would say to them

“Did you have a nice time?

Did you meet any humans? 

Did you show them the dark endless pleasures of night?”

But the monsters would shake their weird heads and stay quiet

Hot tears would well up

In their foul insect eyes

They’d failed to make monsters of me or of Paul

If anything, they’d started, themselves, to transform

They caught themselves humming

Our daft little songs

They’d start to forget what was right, what was wrong

Where their festering hearts and minds really belonged

If only their mums had told them

Of the dangers out there in the long Summer days

Where there’s humour, and joy and forgiveness and love

No sinister creature can truly prevail

But don’t be too hard on the mums of those monsters

They knew of the risks, but they probably reckoned

That holding things lightly,

And keeping good humour,

Is not advice generally given or taken

Or heeded by humans

And decent behaviour,

Less about winning and more about truth

While poison to monsters,

Is not something most human creatures

Can really be bothered to do.