How?

how can the one
be one and the same
as the one that i love
and the one driving me insane?

how can smiles
be smiles swept away
with cascading tears
i fear will stay?

how can the first
be the first and last
someone to trust
absolve me of my lying past?

how can i be so strong
and yet so weak
my head so rationale
my soul so meek?

In pursuit of happiness

Ten to the power of eighty is the math types say,
Give or take a factor, likely to portray,
The approximate number of particles that comprise the universe.
I know a little of the theories espoused in an attempt to explain,
Elliptic and random motions, in the cosmic and quantum planes;
But I shake and I struggle to comprehend,
The meaning of this moment, of life and how it will all end.
Raging against uncertainty drives me close to insanity,
And almost keeps me bound to the spot I know so well,
As miserable as a sinner, in a true living hell.

What is man?

What is man without endeavour,
But an ape destined to live forever,
Not knowing of the deliverance,
From the sum of all fears and ignorance,
That enslaves the simian mind;
And that the gods have long since left behind.

The dying of the light

What are we to make of twilight, those final searing moments when the sun sinks and dies and brings our own mortality sharply into focus? We can party like shamen, or view the setting sun as an ecological metaphor; the smouldering embers of a tired and angry giver of life. We should count our blessings, our lives pass in the blink of an eye in the scale of all creation. We take for granted the rise, phoenix like, of a rejuvenated sun come the morning. But inevitably there will come a day when all our sunsets are done. I can't help but think we should rage and rave on towards that day, never loosing sight of our responsibility to carve out a little happiness in a daunting world.

I wrote this poem about being true to oneself three years ago. I have lived with the pain of lies ever since. Truly for something wonderful to happen we should absolve ourselves of the shackles of self-deceit, and welcome the new sun and new loves with an honesty that allows one to anticipate the dying of the sun with a clean conscience and content soul. Occasionally in life someone comes along that reminds you of this fact.


Liar

Shall I compare thee, liar, to a corpse?
Compared to that brittle and lifeless husk, thou art sick.
And ye knows it.
Black is the colour of thine alignment:
The dark brooding clouds that hath enslaved thy mind's summer seasons,
Holds thy soul captive more securely than any prison bar.
Lies are to blame;
Denying the truth has driven thee insane.
Does thy know, even, what the truth is?
Thy lives thy life at a perennial sunset.
I have oft thought this to be the most difficult time in any man's life:
To accept that thy's day is finally concluded.
But fool, for you, another can still yet begin;
Whilst thou let it?
Whilst thou accept the wonder of creation,
In all its blaze, and all its glory?
As the new sun labours to free itself of its saline warder,
A countless myriad of stars shimmer on the crescents of the ocean's fabric;
Far more plentiful and far brighter than any night sky.
Echoes of the heavens on Gaia's seas.
Reflections indeed.
This is life, and it can be yours,
But never again for that rancid corpse.
So liar, does thy see the truth?
Will thee look eastwards and dance naked on the sands?
The future is the only one true purity, so take it by the hand;
But have a care not to violate it,
For time will come when thy's tomorrow's are exhausted.
Or ye can go now, and head westwards again,
And covert the corpse's vile and dark den.


And from another Welshmen far more eloquent than I:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

~ Dylan Thomas

Snowfall

Snowfall,
Covers all;
Except the guilt,
That my broken heart has built.
No winter fun can be had there;
Nor summer sun for us to play without a care.
Nothing grows or comes to those hinterlands,
Those barren patches polluted by clumsy hands.

Postcard from Cyprus.

Coooooie! I saw this and thought of you...

In my monster book of Su Doku, puzzle number 99 only has a I in the centre square. As you will doubtlessly imagine, my simian mind trembled with fear at this impossible outrage, although Harry says that's life.

I saw a dead fish today. Already nature had begun to recycle its quickly rotting flesh, as a swarm of anonymous bugs swamped over its body in a feeding frenzy. I'm more convinced than ever before that immortality on a sub-atomic level awaits us.

The Geordies, Scousers and Essex bints that are as common here as dead fish are all lovely and share my quantum aspirations, unlike the tedious Welsh.

The food here is mainly dead fish.

The sky is blue, its beautiful and so are you. How many fish might still be alive just for the want of a little prudence do you think?

Hopefully I'll see you soon when maybe we can play with the dead fish together.

Thomas xxx

Untitled lamentations concerning oceans

I recently returned from an antipodean adventure to New Zealand, and talking with Mike last night shamed me into action. I have myriad pictures to process with PohotoShop as well as writing-up my blog for the main website.


As a start here's a picture of Ninety Mile Beach at sunset. Blinky and the brothers Deak are silhouetted in the background. This shot coupled with our regular visits to the beach along New Zealand's coastline got me thinking about the oceans again, what follows are snippets of my meandering reveries.


One:
A billion billion photons scorch a wound in a drab and salty sky,
Casting burnt umber reflections in the flat plane of other universes,
That, for me, will never endure or evolve beyond this moment.


Two:
Gravity makes you mesmerising so that jilted lovers must come,
A million each generation here each to cry a thousand tears,
To keep you deep and salty.


Three:
Blue meets blue with seemingly linear perfection,
That betrays the spherical nature of things
In ancient minds.