For R. Mutt
This is a poem,
if I so decide. I have the power to do this.
After all, I am a poet and a seasoned connoisseur
of porcelain fixtures.
Category: English poetry
The circle of life
I can’t recall the last time I needed a nap after dinner.
It must have been when I was a kid in the nursery.
I remember teachers herding our skittish bunch onto mattresses
on the floor of the playroom for that very purpose.
Those who didn’t want to sleep had their faces pretend to be brushed
with a janitor’s broom, which was always greeted with squeals and laughter.
But eventually each of us would fall asleep, as I had just done.
Life truly does come full circle.
One of the myriad
Writing poetry has always been a peculiar occupation,
even more so now, in the Age of Imagination,
when it has turned from the spiritual torment of a few under patrician patronage
to a thankless endeavour pursued by the faceless myriad, hardly ever paid for,
even in that cheap currency called likes, driven by some obscure algorithm
that decides whether and to whom to show your stanzas.
What I’m actually trying to say is that I’m a pathetic third-rater,
feeling sorry for myself because no one reads me
—except you, of course.
An emigrant must be a fool
I left my country to spare my kids the national hysteria of the Messiah of Nations,
but in the end, they are even more confused than if they were raised there.
Perhaps that’s exactly what was to be expected. After all, even I’m no longer sure
who I am since two decades have severed all ties except one: my passport.
However, my new home doesn’t exactly make it easy to find a new identity.
If anything, I would call myself a Scot rather than a Brit, but that hardly matters,
given that I refuse to swear an oath to the king. So, I settled for an emigrant,
with all the obligations but without the most fundamental right—the right to vote.
This is the price I pay for staying true to my principles, although some might say
I’m just a stubborn fool.
You will always regret something
If I were to punch anyone in the face,
it would be the one who said I should live my life
without regrets. What kind of advice is that?
The only way to follow it is to never be born;
otherwise, you will always regret something,
even if it’s the life you haven’t lived.
In that magical moment just before bed
So many have said so much so far that, in all likelihood, I can only add a thing
or two at most to the canon—though this bromide is unlikely to cut it—yet I still
meticulously compose a stanza every day, as if it were supposed to fix something.
Who knows, maybe I should try my hand at songwriting, or perhaps epitaphs
could become my thing. After all, most of us are more likely to listen to the radio
or visit loved ones at a graveyard than, even in that magical moment just before bed,
reach for a book of poetry.
Spiritual maladies
In the scorch of August, sitting naked in a garden chair
dragged into my airy living room, I read Carlyle’s notes
on the froth-eddies and sand-banks of the Mechanical Age
he was born into and wonder whether a simple urban hermit
from the Age of Imagination like myself should still repeat
after him that our spiritual maladies are but of Opinion.
Although we may be fettered by chains of our own forging,
which we ourselves could also rend asunder, the sheer number
of those who have fallen victim to their corrupting weight
hardly makes the latter plausible. But what would I know
beyond my sweaty, naked body?
Collateral damage
It starts with skipping the shower on the odd occasion.
After a while, showering every other day becomes a habit.
Then you realise that washing the whole body once a week
was actually good enough for your forefathers, but since you
are not religious, you end up settling for doing it fortnightly.
You even come up with quite an elaborate explanation
—something about environmental awareness and the like.
But, I guess, personal hygiene is not the worst casualty
of the lockdown-induced remote work, online shopping,
and heartbreak.
There’s no way this is the fever
So, here I am—one moment I’m soaking wet
under the sun hidden behind the dark clouds
that just so happened to have decided to sweat cats and dogs all day long,
listening to old men, older than me, who sing
about past loves and how regrets are part of life,
trying to reach the long-forgotten tranquillity
of a bookworm—and the next thing I know, your eyes are wide open
and your girlish face is lit up with impish glee
because of something I said.
There’s no way this is the fever from that old sonnet,
because like chickenpox or measles, once we had it,
we were supposed to gain lifelong immunity—or so I thought—and yet,
all the symptoms suggest otherwise, which makes me wonder
if there is any point in agonising over the physician
leaving me to my own devices if nothing ever changes
regardless of whether I follow his prescriptions or not.
After all, I’m about to be called an old man myself,
old enough to sing my own songs.
hidden pilcrow 