Ad Victorem Spoilias

I wanted to try and take a poem apart, but I'm aware it's very personal, and more than a bit raw.  However I think I should try and explain about it, as I want to share it.

I do remember people reading it at the time recoiling at the savagery in the imagery, but I'm hope I can temper this with some explanation.

Respect. Find out what it means to me

So today's word is respect.  A word I tend not to use much, but maybe I should.  The trouble is I find people who bang on about the importance of  'respect' tend to be stuffy, stand on ceremony types I have little time for, and,  oddly, they have little real respect for anyone.  How much are the problems of our society due to a lack of respect, and how has that respect been lost?

Sunday Afternoon Blues

More old poetry this afternoon.  I'm in something of a reflective mood, but nothing terrible original is springing to mind to try and explain my mindset.  So I turn backwards to see if I've been here before, does anything fit the bill.

The Grief Machine

If you have been bereaved, you will know that numb feeling when it seems there is some form of thick glass between you and the world.  You can see the world, but live on your own, the walls invisible but nevertheless totally solid. The Grief Machine was written a week or so after my father died when I felt I was a shell with a vast hole bored through me.  I was never sure that 'vortex' was the best word, to me it felt as if I had my insides gashed out leaving totally emptiness and that's all I could find to try and explain it.  'Vacuum' seemed wrong, as that implies nothing, and your emotions swirl, just removed from everyone else.  A lot of the time you do seem empty, operating like an automaton, going through the motions because to let your feelings out would be to tumble out of control, and as you seem to have no boundaries or edges, such a thing is quite terrifying.

The Death of My Father

I wrote the original piece in the weeks after Daddy died.  I have always be proud of the piece, and grateful that I wrote down how it felt in those early days.  I have edited it somewhat so hopefully the rawness isn't too toe-curling, but coming up to the third anniversary of my father's death, on 18th January, dear and lovely readers of my blog, I suggest you find the hankies before you read this.

I have, to use those loathed and much disputed words, moved on, but I can remember feeling how it was.  I will add the poem I wrote about his death nearer the anniversary, but for now dear friends I give you a piece from January 2009

The Death of My Father

The train slowed and all those people, for whom their lives depend on getting off first, rustled and stirred. Tidy people who tidied away the small things that mattered in their lives so that they could be five seconds ahead of the pack. Does this give them the advantage on the rest of us, or make them first over the top? It’s one of those thoughts that rushes through your head several glasses of red down sitting on the train out of Liverpool St, mind filled with warm thoughts of close restaurants and final goodbyes. How many of us sit there in emotional transition back to the life expected of us?

My father was very fond of painting before his heart attack, and, much to my mother’s astonishment made rather a lot of money selling his paintings of penguins, my favourite being penguins standing at a railway station, not one looking at another. I think an art expert would generously call the style ‘naive’ but they betrayed an emotional intensity that some woman coming to the the local village Art Show one year was so affected by she uttered those long hoped for words ‘do you have any more of these’ and such was her enthusiasm, her cheque paid for a nice holiday I believe. I remember joking with my mother that she should lash Daddy to the easel to fund any more holidays they would want, but of course his inspiration was not as strong once a commercial imperative was established, and after his heart attack he never returned to the easel, six and half years before his death.

And a Happy New Year to you too

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.

5th January
I've had a cheerful start to 2012. Despite massive over indulgence over the Christmas period.  But here I am facing the first of my 'Sad Days', the anniversary of the Absent Father leaving, 4 years ago today. 

The period of sadness tried to descend last night, when memories of that last time when he returned home from the train as usual with that otherness about him. I didn't even need to ask, I just knew he was off.  I remember getting horribly, horribly drunk with mindless grief, and then trying to be normal.  I so regret that last response, my memories of the AF looking fed up, glad he was at last getting rid of the trouble.

But all this was a long, long time ago.  Am I a different person now?  I really hope so.  So much time and pain has passed my way, it would be sad to think this last four years have meant nothing.  However the one thing that really, really irritates me is being told it is time I should move on.