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.

The Itch

 

I’ve got an itch. Nothing metaphorical

It’s on my foot. The middle bit. 

The palm? The small?

No, that’s backs. 

The instep? Maybe. I don’t know. 

I only know it itches like a thousand bitches

And I know it shouldn’t scratch it but

It makes me think I might go mad and
It would be so good to rip off its stupid face and

It doesn’t have a face

I know

It’s just a bit of me

A place that, for some reason, has decided

My attention should be divided by its

Ticking, pricking, son of a bitching

Endless itching

I said it wasn’t metaphorical

But a part of me thinks, what is its genesis?

I mean, I see things in a way

You might call holistic

Mind and body interconnected

Emotions just as strong a part of how

My physical responses pop and crack

So if there’s pain, what’s the real cause?

Am I sublimating guilt or grief?

Am I anxious in a way I can’t perceive?

Is the foul distraction, there, beneath my sock

My body’s way of telling me to stop and take stock?

Or is it just because we changed washing powder?

I’d forgotten we’d done that

It’s probably that.

Now everything itches.

Stuck On You

 

A girl once accidentally glued herself to my heart

And we found it impossible to become

Unstuck

There was no easy way to tear ourselves apart

A girl… no, not a girl. A woman

Though I saw her as a girl, it’s true

Perhaps that was part the problem

And not really the glue

And obviously not really “glue”

We’re being figurative, of course

I’m trying to find a metaphor for something difficult to escape

What I mean is, less like glue, 

More like sellotape

Yeah, sellotape

For the art the endeavour

Was like trying, seemingly forever

To brush the tape from the right hand and

Finding it adhered firmly to the left hand’s fingers.

And then the same back, and then the reverse

The act of attempted removal became

The method by which adherence grew more firm

And we tried to peel the thing apart

But the whole thing was a mess

And things stretched out and tangled up

And we couldn’t find the end

And so the girl tore her self away

The only escape from our sticky situation

Not a girl, a woman, who

Through no fault of her own

Became the object of my Fixation

Back Home From the Holiday

 

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t a real lightsaber

That I held in my small hands

That sad, grey Saturday

After we got back home from holiday

I mean, I know it wasn’t real-real

I was young, but I sort of understood

That the Jedi and their like

Were a long, long way from 1970s Bradford

If it had been real-real I would, for sure,

Have cut the cat in half

Or sliced off my own foot

Or at the very least badly damaged the wallpaper

No, I mean that

The illuminated plastic tube

With it’s chunky red torch for a handle

Probably wasn’t official 20th Century Fox merchandise

I was 8 and I did not care

I waved the gently glowing stick

In a gentle infinity loop

In the darkness we’d created on the stairs

It was beautiful thing

Handed down to me, like Luke’s

His from his father, me from my mum

His to battle galactic evil

Mine so I might feel a little less glum

On this sad afternoon

When the wild tumbling golden heat of sand dunes

And the ice cold joy of waves over my bare feet

Were gone for another year

And here we were, back on our street

The lightsaber didn’t hum

Didn’t retract when the fighting was done

But it cast enough light to illuminate a young boy’s face

Helped him forget that the holiday was far, far away

And it cut through time, to today

Years after the batteries rusted and the

Plastic bent out of shape

A memory of a kindness and

A warmth that endures

Every time a holiday comes to an end

Are We Becoming Friends?

 

The wine tastes great so I pour myself some more

Never taking my eyes off your lips as you talk

The air between us bubbles with the joy

Of stories that are new

Of personalities at full force

You are a spark, an overwhelming thing

A series of patterns that coalesce in

Firework blues and neon blossom pink

Exploding in slow motion trails after your hands

It’s impossibly beautiful, and so of course

Lazy synapses trigger

"Here comes true romance," they sing,

Something bigger than the regular emotional response

Loads of different pleasure chemicals firing at once

But I’ve been here before

And so I pause 

The glass at my mouth

The aroma of wine dark and hesitant 

As I breathe slowly in

These are well worn paths

Grooves into which I easily slip

Songs I don’t even notice I’m singing

Love, maybe, yeah

But love is a word 

Translated from a dozen different languages

A place where roads meet from a scattering of cities

Destinations as unlike each other 

As time is from space

As flirtation is from confidence

And as friendship is from romance

Where we are, sitting here,

Illuminated by low lights and the coming on of night

Is not a place unto itself

More a possibility space

We can choose to set off in any direction

I pour you more wine

Try to slow myself down

Stroke the curved edge arc of my glass

And let this moment 

Unfold in real time