Mask of Malcontent
Hard working
With no drive
No drive but one
A passion that stirs within
Something to show
What’s within
Something to heal
To mark what cannot be seen
Symbolism and craving
Burning desire
Over whelming grace
Fluid moment
But little relief
And once the dead is done?
Feelings worse than before
Again to charm the storm
Again to feel its rage
A cycle begins
A spiral
Addiction solid
As any drug
Black eyed stare
Pupil dilated to the full
Liquid darkness with endless depth
My eyes staring at me
This half light
This fake night
Illusion holds
The tawny flecks in hazel sheaths
Hidden in the gloom
Staring calmly
Rage canceled
Emotion muted
This numbness I love
This mask of self content
Moving through treacle
Course set and bound
Buffered cradle of mind
Something is crazed
Chained
A sea of words
Bounded by a shore of concept
Towers built of language
Flash out meaning
Standing on islands of convention
Saving the would be drowned
In vessels of knowledge
Seeing the catch of inspiration
Looking to the horizon of ideas
Written for National Poetry Day 2014
Remember the tide lapping at the shore How we walked on shingled beach War bomber fractured in the mudded flats Metal bones peeking at low tide Recall the estuary filled with birds calling You showed me the eddible weeds That grew there Warm salt, bitter Remember the old lady who swam Hat of neon pink, skin of blue There by the wall They build it as wave defence Black tar oozes and regular concrete blocks Bring to mind the pill box set inside Full of junkies’ needles And discarded love
Remember the storm that ripped the sky Spiking down and blazing the land How the sky turned dark Blistering heat and oppression Broken in the thunder The tent sagged upon itself I got wet But was denied the shelter of you I caught you a green crab By curved chimneys reaching into the sky Their roundness cloud factories You said it was edible You said it didn’t belong We put it back But I got a rash From algal blooms You drove me to town for my prescription
Thinking now Of how thisteled sand spiked my feet You carried me to my tent Where an adda lay in wait I scared it and felt sad We saved an orange ladybird The first we’d ever seen That night I was cold A whole in the canvas let in the night I thought of your arms And dreamt of tangled feet Throbbing footpaths greeted us In a misty summer dawn The mass of creatures writhed Lady bugs of all colours And not just dots but all kinds of shapes They made fitful crunches as we walked I gave up trying to save them Most starved, some bit And the sun set like a child’s painting With a moon that arose on it’s heels The whisper of the waves Lapped froth at day glo sandled feet You gave me a padded shirt To keep me warm It smelt of you
Remember the belt of rope you wore To keep up the cut offs frayed to faded fluff A sometimes shirt tight across your chest The skin turned bronze upon you Whilst I hid in sunblock and gingamed cotton There was no hair upon your chest Though you were older than me We went swimming in the sea I cut my foot on carelessness Oh my polluted sea I wept for the crimes of people You smiled I have always wondered Was it for me? My heart hurt at it’s beauty As to keep you I enthralled you in Greens and greys, browns and blues Blending together in landscapes only we saw I rescued a fledgling So sickly small It hopped on to me I was filled with hope Later laying in long sun dried grass You said it would be fine I believed you though I knew it could not be true And little rabbits stopped near us I caught them to pet You laughed that I released them Each with a new name That meant nothing but my love
Do you remember the bike rides, in the ink of night Drunkness a murmur on everyone but ours breath The smell of wood smoke as we cooked And chatted without care Subjects and philosophies dripped from our tongues The stars were pin pricks of ice In my spin
Remember how it could not last How they said we could not be The disapproval The anarchy We did not have the guts to try And the summer evaporated Autumn put dreams under glass We said goodbye So chaste the taste of you The scent in my mind A look of longing You held my hand And gave me a memory
The orange mire
That marks the blaze
Glowing trees
Dark at the centre
Luminous around the edge
Devastation with a heart of gold
Embers twist and turn
And float away
Couriers for the blaze
Devour, consume
Cleanse the forest
Dead wood gone
Insect marauders restrained
Soil charred, blackened
Purified
Nutrients induced
New shoots appear
Green islands
Trees resilience
Outer crust baked
Whilst heart wood
Cold as Alaska
The fire – Life’s catalyst
Wax trapped seeds
Heat melts
Ensuring their escape
Breaths new life
Destructive Creation
Fire the destroyer
Fire the bringer of life
Fire the cyclic phenomenon
In a puddle patterns are repeating
In the stars the patterns are completing
Gravity in waves are meeting
Patterns over awed and far too fleeting
Ripples flowing into chaos
Returning wonders
Reflecting back ghosts of self
Cross cutting generations
Shiver, shiver
On my own
Lips blue
Till you come home
Shiver, shiver
Cold bright hands
Stark white
Plane lands
Shiver, shiver
Trembling cold
Stars bright
We enfold
Dreams are running through my fingers
Fearing capture, being spun into actuality
Being changed into the real
Changed into the comprehension of fools
Into something they cannot escape
A form they inhabit
Something they are
A thing that encapsulates
Impressions of inspiration
They dart away
In a colour blur of taste
A vibration of faint echo
These images are hollow
Intricascies shared with the world
This one written
That one drawn
Those ones made
All creations are such
And so is the theory that drives
Investigation
Ideas, dreams, inspiration
They are running through my fingers
I catch them
I let them go
I loose them
But they come back
A brighter shade than before
More substantial
An imprint of potential
Dreams of dreamers brim over
I shall dream some more
Most people think of procrastination as a bad thing. They see it as not bothering to do the work at hand or going of into a day dream etc… however recently I have found that procrastination is a good thing.
I think that some jobs actually require you to procrastinate, forcing yourself to try and think when you have gotten into a rut can be counter productive, like looking for errors in code for hours on end without a brake – you kind of become blind to what you are trying to do. You need a break – you need a mind reboot, you need to do something else.
The same is often true of the beginning of things, sometime the idea, the germ of a project is not yet ready and needs that little longer. Starting prematurely can stunt it’s growth – deadlines are a problems and some of them need to be met but most of industry is actually soft deadlines which makes things easier – I myself manage much better with staggered soft deadlines than hard harsh big ones.
I see my performances and workshops and what have you as rolling deadlines – though there is stress there which I will come onto in a bit.
Back to procrastination, sometimes you need to procrastinate to re-fire the brain and sometimes it is your brain remembering something you need for your project but it can’t quiet explain it too you.
For example: when I was doing my Science Communication coursework, I was desperate to include a certain concept but couldn’t remember what it was called or who the lead educator was that was involved with it. In frustration I kind of gave up and in procrastinating found myself on YouTube watching Jason Silva who I find energising and stimulating (and yes he’s my sort of eye candy but not that kind of stimulating honest!).
About two vids in and bam! The name I was looking for, mentioned as a throw away comment, in excitement I stumbled back and finished the work off in one sitting as it jogged my memory and the associated stuff all came flooding back in an accessible format for me – of course I am dyslexic and ADHD so this maybe a me thing but in that case it may well hold true for other like me of which there are many.
I have countless examples of stuff like this – being stuck with poetry and picking up a maths book and the words for the concepts of the numbers tumbled onto the page to make the poem that was stuck – and so on.
Then there is the stress – I am a stress bunny, I always have been and I think always will be, if I get stressed enough then meditation wont work as I’ll feel stressed about wasting the time and so on. This is the point at which procrastination is kind of a saving grace. I can pass the work with reading books, watching films, knitting, painting, writing essays, going for a walk to photograph swans, having a bath, writing a song, playing the guitar, hugging the girls, tickling Alaric and so on.
Obviously most of this is only an option as I work from home/at events but it is something that has been working really well for me. It stops the nose bleeds and the burning skin that warns another out break of shingles is in the coming.
I am far more likely to make a deadline – even a hard deadline – if I procrastinate. It also works really well with the non-focus then hyper-focus thing I have and sort of bridges the gap between the two.
Now to my current stress head – I think I am being successful or the beginnings or something but this means people are now expecting stuff from me, a certain standard et… and that makes me stressed – I can’t stand letting people down.
And so I was feeling too nervous and stressed to start on stuff I needed to do to sort my little play out, most of the work is done it just some admin pieces but it makes it all seem rather real and what if my stutter comes back or I am having a bad fatigue day or I’m just rubbish and it’s naff and I’m being paid…. and I’m not GROWN UP enough for this.
My procrastination led me to pick up the comic book / graphic novel I got out of the library yesterday – another Neil Gaiman Sandman book. This one is called Fables and Reflections.
The first story is called Fear of Falling and as if made for the situation, it is about a play write panicking and trying to pull out of producing his play. Needless to say it was exactly what I needed.
So I am going for procrastination is good.
