Someone once said that having ideals is no great feat;
the real feat is, in the name of truly great ideals, not to falsify minute details.
I can see the ghosts lurking behind the words as I write them—their eyes
fixed on the page, following the rasp of the worn nib of a fountain pen
that meticulously records all the petty grievances of a little man at odds
with a broken heart I’m not yet ready to give up on. Absolution, after all,
begins with oneself.
What does it mean to love, let alone to love well?
And whom—or what, for that matter?
After all, we say love countless times every day:
I love a good laugh now and then;
I love my steak rare;
I love Friday nights out with my buddies;
I love travelling;
I love your haircut;
I love those floral twist-back tops she wears;
I love that song;
I love the latest book by [author of your choice here];
I love my [pet or person of your choice here];
I love myself;
I love you.
Honestly, it’s as confusing as dying
over everything in life.
There is no purpose to life—we are born to die, and that’s it.
Everything in between is a flaccid time-filler. And yet we flex
our muscles and strike dignified poses, as if we were better
than seagulls fighting over a box of chips with chippy sauce
dumped on the pavement by bar-goers on their way home
after a Friday night out, when in fact, even our cries are as loud
and desperate—except theirs say that there is no purpose to life
but life itself.
So it turns out I’m from Generation X, but I didn’t quite make it
to Xennials, which, in the eyes of iGens, let alone unfledged Alphas,
would probably put me somewhere in the stratum of social fossils.
And I’m fine with it because all this bizarre palaeontology catches
no more than a cobweb weaved between the edges of the volumes
of Encyclopædia Britannica resting on my shelves.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
hidden pilcrow 