Moments

Moments of pure clarity
That scarcely visit,
I hold on to the epiphany
I know will soon desert.
a glimpse of crystal beauty
Sparsely sits with me,
All I understand I attach,
to something,
that when I’m alone,
will do justice to remind.
Like sacred pieces of jewellery,
A talisman of a distant dream,
Hang off my wrists and neck,
In forms of stones and chains that bind me.
This is my religion.
Thoughts are my prayers.
Love is my bleeding heart,
As Air is my day.
Moments of clarity, visit so rarely,
I hold on to like the precious stones, that you gave me to wear.

Five Years

A familiar face, a past long faded away,

Fall from glory, love fallen from grace.

One look, yet, that’s all it takes,

To this place returned, Memory leads me to escape,

Hidden in the yesterdays, whence it was you I held and your lips I forsake,

Years do nothing, erase not a memory of the familiarity of your gaze.

Time may fly, we may grow, change,

And strangers must we be now,

Forget how to speak, to feel your skin for it is not mine to touch now.

Yet here I sat five years into our future, five away from our past, five years older and

The five years I’ve known you less now.

Here I sit, your picture fallen from out of this book,

I’ve been five years from home now.

Life Is Better With Friends Like These

My biggest heart ache was over a friend. Most memorable of my heartaches where always over a friend.

The first time I found my heart broken was when I was seventeen, impressionable and what I looked for in a friend was more solid than what I look for in people now. Ten years older. Ten years wiser. Ten years guarded. Choosing friends at the selfish constellations of adolescence, were ruthless and self-serving, as I think friend selection ought to be. We pursue one in a crowd, a clique perhaps at times, because they represent who we aspire to be. The impression we have of these select few are perhaps impressions alone, but they are a fantasy, a longing of a kind of person we imagine. The admired, cool and collected, each have their own preference, but here I speak of mine.

I was drawn to a powerful mind, frighteningly intelligent, strong and solitary. Her aura was of mystery, pure enigmatic charm. Selective and exclusive, she wandered alone, her seduce like that of the undiscovered diamond. She was a rock and glistened inside.  To my later amusement, not meaning I hadn’t at my infatuation been oblivious, she was the rejected. Both at home in ways and largely by the school we both attended. She was beautiful, this was not an apparent beauty, for she carried herself aggressively, inattentively only cautious to be unseen, she carried herself with an assured elegance that allowed her to slide in and out of the classroom with as minimal a ripple as her intelligence would allow. During classes she was uninterested and effortless but brilliant and cutting. I loved this in her. When ineffectually she’d be hot-spotted, attempted-ly ridiculed by a teacher, spot questioned to catch her off guard with a reference relating to the text in study, she would, without looking away from the distance out of the 4^th floor window, answer spectacularly, stunning both the teacher and her students. Swiftly she would carry on, streaming out assignments at distinctive standards, she would return to ghost through the day, swelled in thoughts of her own that I only hoped to decipher.

We were eventually inseparable, immediately, and more epically fell in love, the kind of love that romance detracts from real, honest love. We became, and continue to be the most intimate of friends I have ever known the experience of and to which I continuously compare my proceeding meetings and friendships, that I can only hate her for. She diminished the rest of the world in the mere presence of herself in mine. To which I am also eternally thankful.

But she created a void, that I couldn’t fulfil until an historical 6 years in the future, I was now twenty-three. I fell in love with a new best-friend. The thing with friendship is that you are not obliged to one or another. When a deep connection is made, it continues, but jealousy, fidelity always seem to play a part in the love-story of friendships. Its magnitude rarely leaves room, the infatuation suffocates the vacuum of the heart, for there is only ever room for one. While one established, lives its life, touching base every so often, a genuine friendship stands long distance and long absences. You can trust to pick up where you left of. You become family. Forgiving, understanding and tolerant, like a sister she can afford, as can you, the discrepancies of a busy life and the invasions and the ambush of new friends.

Here, then came my second heart ache, the feelings familiar, drawn though I was to a vibrantly different kind, elaborate, extravagant, volatile and unpredictable mostly, she was unexpected. This kind of friendship I hadn’t anticipated nor foreseen. We met and worked together for a healthy year before a connection was made. I was only drawn till later, infatuated only once I had known then who she was. Younger and less experienced in life, though she was soulful and wistful, was less self- aware and self-observant. It wouldn’t be fair to leave her there- she was well put together, very conscious of her appearances, not for insecurities sake, but for a dictum of pride in appearance. Irish and strong minded, an opinionated girl that was a bulldozing force in my life. I always imagined friendships as trains in full steam, a ship in full sail, though the train analogy works better. Fast moving and with no time to slow down for me to jump on board, she was a catapulting through life and I fell right on the tracks and was forced to understand and keep up with everything that she sped through. Disagreements, misunderstanding and the full package of a fast paced, whirlwind affair, we found our sync and were no sooner catapulting on our tracks through London life in the same velocity that I had found her. I needed her vigour and alarm. While she injected a vitality in me that I was in little awareness of lacking, I grounded her fleeting and sometimes dangerous mind. Our age difference was of little matter, only ever in my awareness of her lack of self-awareness. But as love is, I accepted and loved her with her embarrassingly loud voice and unforgivingly ridiculous, humorous behaviour in public. We were the ‘Gruesome Twosome’ we were the ultimate definition of Lacan’s ‘Madness in Two’ and we were a life force, stronger together, than apart.

Until, like all forceful energy, it destructs either what’s in its path, which we often did harmlessly in gallivants through our London and intoxicated endeavours, with the toxicity of our chemistry… or you find yourself destructed by the power of your deepest connection that neither of us had the capacity for. In just under two years of the most intense and consuming friendship, working living and spending every waking hour together, our powers tipped, spilling out of our control over the edges and we fell upon each other’s paths.

In no time have I missed a person as I have since I lost, and made myself lost to a friendship I did not know how to be a part of or be apart from. We loved and killed each other. We separated under the most violent emotional expresses and she left the country.

I fell into, what I realise now, a depression owed to her. It may sound unconventional a friendship such as this, or like a love affair, which it certainly was, or a non-platonic attraction of spirits, which I only wish it was, but neither of us where that way inclined. In my thoughts, that is the only kind of friendship that is worth it, that takes every inch of your soul that expects and returns every inch in its take. It is selfish, but fulfilling, as much for them as for the persons seeking. It is invigorating and addictive, it is a mutual obsession. An understanding of minds that are so in tune, that you bear not to be alone, not to be without them, and a better person, the person you always wanted to be, the person that they, only they had the power to give life to.

I can only take away the ferocity of the experience, to reminisce and return to. To borrow life energy from. I can only expect another is brewing in the clouds ahead. The storm is coming, and I eagerly await it.  Until then, these friendships are what keep me alive. Not the love of a man or the fleeting romance. The epic attraction of a friendship in solidarity of our questioned sanity that I have eternally been compelled by. These friendships of a greater power, have had more authority over my happiness, and taught me more of myself than anything I have ever learnt in self inspection and reflection. These unions, rare and few in between keep me alive, they are my life source, and maybe it’s just the style in my being, to seek destructive and all-consuming friendships that take my all, that I am the kind of person that can only give my all, so until then and in between, I continue to wander in my peaceful solitude wake of a deserving other that can claim it, claim me all over again.

Life-Silent Nights

It’s long since words come to me in a feeling so light.
The air floating under a violet sky, heavy and sweet warmth, trickle,
since daylight.
Street lights shine hazy, lazily,
like my footsteps along this old London path.
There, weights of worry, shed heavy, fall behind steps, through this life-silent night.
While the moon in suspense, gazes shyly and cautiously, not to disturb the peace in heaven above,
a power is bestowed on me, arms me for this battle we call a life.

Thomas Hardy – The Going

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon.

        Never to bid goodbye,
Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me.

        You were she who abode
By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time’s renewal? We might have said,
‘In this bright spring weather
We’ll visit together
Those places that once we visited.’

        Well, well! All’s past amend,
Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon… O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing –
Not even I – would undo me so.

Filler Moments

It sometimes takes one truth, an honest truth spoken by an objective party, where one word alone jolts you to realise the reality you are in. Unintentionally and mindlessly spoken, the conversation came to a cross road between the ordering of coffees, waiting to settle back into the original topic we had begun with.The filler topic, to my mind the most honest, doesn’t afford time to calculate and rationalise. Just say what is, a crystal observation. A harsh truth at the midst of a seemingly awkward joint in a rendevous, the clarity of what’s been happening is unquestionable. Abruptly said, you’re stagnant. You’ve let this stagnation get the better of you, and it has superseeded your ego. You’ve lost care, no better, interest in your ego. This is the only drive we have as floating one man islands, to sustain our self motivation, and I see you’ve lost that force. When was the last time you went to the gym? Awkward silence as I looked at my friend, completely aware he meant nothing malicious by it, just an innocent observation. You’ve let yourself go.

It takes just one unfiltered truth to let reality sink in. The necessary reality. He was just short of holding a mirror to me, forcing me, unprepared to coat the relection in my usual rationalisation excusing what I was faced with, to see the once trim, smiling and radiant face look back in forms I didn’t recognise. She sat, slumped diagnally, head held in left hand, elbow stretched to the far edge of the table, full plump face and uninterested, unwilling to indulge in the charisma that ran beneath the surface. At this point, beneath maybe two layers of surface.

My face must have given it away. He apologised immediately, but I wouldn’t allow it. I was thankful for the uncomfortable converation we had inadvertedly come to. Unanticipated and under-prepared. But that was the reality. I”d been working at a respectable job, too easy for me, I was losing interest, and I had so far lost interest in being interested to further this career. Bukowski like, I indulged in harmful indulgences. I couldn’t be bothered with the gym because I couldn’t think who I’d be bothering for. I coulnd’t care to think of a greater opportunity since I coulnd’t see the point of where it would lead me. So what if you approach great success only to lose it. What for. Love. What for. It began to feel like a higher moral dignity, integrity, to be unshifting in these crippling beliefs.

For the following 45minutes, I could only see this girl that bored me. Even me, the inflated anti-ego that felt righteous in her stagnation. It was easier. At least seems to be. You spend every minute of the day seeing people pass you by, that you could be, to let life go at 25 is heartbreaking. But unshakable. It takes dicipline and persistance to keep the kite in flight. I’d spent all my life working towards this moment, and with a fleeting second of honesty, I realised I can’t let the reigns go now.
I just hope I’ll feel the same tomorrow.

I Carry Your Heart With Me – E.E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Silent Weights of a Depression

We are drowned in the cynicism of a society, criticised as one too ready to classify disorders and illnesses.The inevitable need to continuously address the rising dysfunctions of our social and psychological well-being, should notably be justified by an ever changing society. And we need to begin to appropriate classifications that respond to the new tangent diseases.

Prominently, distressing new and damaging conditions are weightlessly being dismissed in the white noise of a media inflicted society. Eating disorders and conditions relating to eating habits- unnamed since unnoticed- are gradually breaking the psyche of our growing generations.

We can all relate to the familiar concerns of weight, size, slender appearances, bulky bones and un-lady like figures that torment our every day, in every choice we make, from the food we decide to eat for breakfast, to the outfits we tailor to our mood, to the torturing voice that ridicules you with every step. With the change in society that reflexes the changing media, it is no wonder that new psychological conditions are constructed in our generation. Despite attention and medical acknowledgement of anorexia, bulimia and obesity, there is little consolation for its sufferers. Yes, we named a few, addressed the matter on the NHS and health policies, statistics feign the matter as one dealt with.

But conditions are on the rise, depression linked to food and weight are colossal. Worse, there is no where to turn. No where that we know to turn.

It is psychological, it always has been; ‘food addiction’ is real, it’s felt and experienced and yet when approaching a GP or nurse in tears and suicidal pain, there’s little that’s offered to accompany the leaflets of healthy eating, nutritional guides and exercise pamphlets, handed over. With polite interest and qued concern, eyes don’t meet and the difficult, perhaps awkward conversation is not entertained.

You walk out, motivation peaks at 5%, with thanks to the literature you have snagged to search for the answers you are looking for soon, after a few steps, it dismissal dawns on you with the added feeling of foolishness. Settled once again back to the pits of your thoughts and unheard distress. Pointless efforts never felt so apparent with the failed attempt to seek help…so torture resumes.

Why then, when it’s called food addiction, is it not taken with serious concern. No one is ready to listen; counselling and therapy has never been so unwilling to reach out to the need of the damaging cycle of feeling fat.

Who exactly is there to reach out to, WeightWatchers? As much as one can commend the support group its organisation has provided, you can’t rely nor expect that besides weight loss networks, that your weight issues and the depth of your distress are addressed to be resolved. Once and for all.

It’s time to address the weight-inflicted depression, the psychological damage of weight problems, its rise in the individual and its relentless hold over happiness. It seems absurd to write lengthily about the troubles of weight, but body issues are the ruling force of life, indiscriminate to gender and detrimental to contentment. At what stage then is it to be taken seriously; is it when at a ripe age women attempt bulimia? Or research and learn how to accomplish anorexia? Is it when, despite endless efforts to avoid seeing the reflection in a mirror, the sight avoided, caught, the image you see propels a plummeting spiral to the storming depths of a depression that you pray would ride out. Still waiting, there’s no help to seek and the few organisations around are out of reach, even costly.

If you’re lucky enough to be taken seriously, you may save yourself from the unimaginable struggles of the depression inflicted by weight worries. We cannot console ourselves scapegoating the media and the impressions drummed into the growing generation. Boys and girls. The waters run much deeper. There is a whole sector of psychological well-being that is persistently disregarded. The explanations come in spades- the too lazy to exercise- the greedy- the binger- the media inflicted self-conscious- the distorted body image- the self loathing. It is not enough that we label and name. In the new society, by no means old, the body has been paraded- pin-up girls, the glamorous 50s, the fashion infused decades proceeding and the now, the svelte generation of the Victoria’s Secrets era- the models; a package that comes with exercise routines abundantly and generously provided on networks such as YouTube. It’s safe to say these influences have been around for long enough almost to the point of insignificance. Size-0 was attacked, rightly so, but not much of the issues beneath this have been addressed.

What our generation needs is a listening ear, available advice and counselling to a generation that has cried out for attention far too long. Just as exercise channels have been shared unsparingly and generously, so should counselling to address the underlying issues of weight control in its many forms. Not just nutrition advice, not just exercise routines but the depths of psychological insight.

The missing link between weight issues and media has long been discovered, we have even established the psychological links that tie to the temperament of emotional eating, yet the links that can hope to help eliminate, at least respond to the unnamed illnesses that  silently destroy behind the concealment of the brave face, fail to surface.

The temple as our body, stands on its final legs as the foundations disintegrate under the mite of weight-related depression.

In Her Room

She used to shriek breathlessly, in my ear every night. As every near dawn light would appear, with a one-force velocity, her cries pierced my dream endlessly. I would awaken listening, knowing I was being spoken to, just as she knew she was being listed to. And so her shrilled pain lit up my every night. Years of muted anguish that had never been heard translated into the dreams of this girl that slept in her room. She had found me, her source  to tell the story and I, grateful at having been chosen, let her pour into my dreams at half past four everynight until she could find the words that relieved her of what she tried to absolve.

There was a kind arrangment between the two of us. Concerned and uncomfortable. I stayed with her a year, in her space, I moved carefully around her and waited everynight for her whispering distress. And everytime she did come, neeling on the right side of my ottoman bed, that sunk deep into the darkeness of the elongated room. She would sit tentatitvely by me, I could feel her nervous pose leaned in against the crook of my neck, I could feel the whisps of air from the words she spoke in my ear. She was anxious to lose my attention, if I should wake up, she is lost again. But her voice lightly began to come through as she began to whisper of the night she was killed.

I woke up every morning wondering what I’d seen that night. There’s a superstition in Italy that warns the dreamer never to look out of a window after waking from a dream, else it could escape through it. It may have been the reason I could rarely recall her story, or place the sequence of her life until her final night. Or it could have been what she allowed me to remember. She only let me take away what mattered little.

Months later I began to realise she needed nothing of me, only to tell of the evil she had suffered. I slowly began to see her, as she would delicately appear to me, her long white gown, a gentle night dress, she had been caught off guard, her hair loose, untied when she went to bed, long and black hanging heavily off her ethereal shoulders to base of her spine. She was barefoot, held to be silenced. She was quietly wiped away from life, to the darkeness of a new world, unfound and unnoticed. Lost in half worlds. The dark in love’s abandon, she began to search for the little boy she left behind.