Here’s an extract that shows how I combine prose and poetry to explore ideas, feelings and topics.
The Last Poem
Before I took my first thought
The universe did not exist.
Then it all clicked on
And has never ceased to desist.
They tell me one day
I will dream my last dreams,
Then the universe will stop
To seem how it seems.
Adrift in a void
That is not even there.
With no thoughts to avoid
Or feelings to share.
Alone.
Without even me.
With nothing to do
And nothing to see.
When time does not exist
And nothing is real
You cannot be
And I cannot
feel.
OPHER 31.12.97
I wrote this on the last day of 1997.
Life is all we have. We have a consciousness that has come out of a miraculous fusion of chemicals. My mind is a mass of dendrites connecting more neurones than a galaxy.
When I die I will cease to be.
But I hope the ripples of my life will reach out to touch everyone and help make the experience of this wondrous universe better for everyone.
We do not die while our memory lingers on in the actions of others. We reach down through the generations with fingers of delight.
My friends and family live in me as I will live in others.
Lines
Read between the lines
On my face
That’s where the truth
Lies
Down through the years
On my genes
Written in disguise.
Drifting through the tides
Of time,
Rushing through the dreams
Of space,
Wondering at the sense
Of wonder,
Gouged deep within
My face.
Opher 25.7.95
I wrote this while looking into a mirror and studying my face. I was wondering just how many of my feelings, views and philosophy were mine and how much was put there by my culture, upbringing, education, social mores and adopted position.
We are all subject to expectations and restrictions. We are all put through the cultural mincer. What comes out the other end is a shredded version.
How much of my philosophy was merely reaction against the pressures on me and how much were my genuine views.
How can you tell?
Is there a real essence of me that makes objective decisions on matters of morality or actions? Or are we pulled back and forth by the forces acting upon us?
I was fortunate that my family did not indoctrinate me with their politics or religion. They left me to discover my own mind. But the school, my friends and society at large had bearing on my thoughts.
Where am I in the midst of those lines on my face? They are familiar and yet the more I stare the more unknown I become. The lines lie.
Am I a product or an essence?
Leave me be
Leave me be,
Sandpaper me,
Put pins in my body.
Burn me with fire
To the dirge of some midnight choir.
Don’t ease my thirst
Make it worse.
I don’t want to recover;
I want to suffer.
As you can see,
I’m happy here
In agony.
I’m quite alone,
Cut to the bone,
Happy in silence,
With nothing
To make any sense.
Don’t give me another session
I’m deliriously happy
In my depression.
Opher 7.1.1997
I wrote this poem in response to a strange court case. A group of sado-masochists were being prosecuted. They were performing weird and extremely painful acts on each other that included sandpapering their genitals, putting pins through their testicles, and nailing themselves to the table. They were filming this and sending it to each other.
Now I have no inclination towards S&M, I find it peculiar and a sad reflection on our repressive sexual culture that ends up confusing sexual feelings with pain, violence, punishment, subjugation and degrading acts, but I could not see why a group of consenting adults who were doing no harm to anyone else but themselves should be prosecuted. They were publicly humiliated (they might have enjoyed that bit), lost careers, split up families and were imprisoned.
Surely what consenting adults chose to do in private is up to them?
LOVE SPENT
My love’s grown old
The fires run cold
My passion spent
In giving vent
As we drift along
To winter’s end.
For we walk together
And apart
And cannot change the picture.
Where once we would have wrestled with the world
We must now accept it.
It now takes all the time
To fashion a single brushstroke
That may not alter sense
Or produce a single joke.
The meaning has been drained
Into the mundane.
OPHER 5.2.98
I have been told that I am obsessive. That is true. When I am consumed with a passion it is all-encompassing.
Some of my passions burn themselves out.
My art I approached with a fury. I flung paint at canvas as my head burnt with ideas and need.
Then I woke up one day and the cinders merely glowed.
Minefields
Can’t look
Can’t see
Can’t touch
Can’t feel
Can’t smell
Can’t taste
Edging round the minefields of your inhibitions
Sneaking up on you
Trudging through the sand-dunes of your desserts
An oasis overdue
Don’t touch
Too hard
Don’t feel
Too deep
Don’t see
Too much
Don’t move
I hurt
Apart and at bay
Hunted like prey
Locked up passion
On ration
Not let out to play
Today
Safe within the barbed fence of pyjamas
Unisex walls
Restrained within the mind game patterns
Without balls
Do not intrude
Into the rude
Sense my mood
Keep at bay
My way
No play today
OPHER 19.12.97
Sex is a minefield. You only have to look at the courtship palaver of animals to see that. There are rituals and whole pageants necessary to be performed.
It’s all so easy in a new relationship where passions are high and the air is scented with pheromones as the hormones race the heart. But once that phase succumbs to a lesser heat the frenzy subsides. Then it is more a question of synchronicity and mood, inclination and desire…… and a balance.
Sex is intimate and requires both parties to bring the biology into alignment. Sometimes that doesn’t happen. Old relationships are patterned on compromise.
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