In the freezing
bone cracking coldness
of forgettable February Fridays
I feel in my mind
the warm glow of an hearth:
When imminent weekends
mean hopeful anticipation
of less doom laden exits.
For two whole days
not having to brave
the bitter,
merciless,
biting icy lash
of Winter’s shameless,
victory pinnacle;
arrogant,
furious thrash.
I feel in
the warmth of embrace;
even at it’s nerve throbbing
pulsating height of passion,
a vibrating resonance
that calls out with each rapturous sigh...
‘Hold me while you can
for I am passing by.
Ecstasy is temporary,
born like all to die.’
I feel the terror
that stiffens the spine
and the sinew
from the cranium base to the heel,
when in the depth of night
strong hands wrench
at the handle of my locked door
and harsh voices hack
at the still blackness ...
Out there!
Reverie raped.
Slumber shattered.
Dreams demolished.
Hope scoffed at as a cheap con trick
by a drowning desperate reality.
I feel righteous zeal
as flight turns to fight
and a fumbling for weapons
leaves me standing in the stairwell
naked like a Viking berserker.
Eyes agleam,
teeth gritted.
Courage boiling my blood,
armed with a coat hanger and a biro.
I feel the foolhardiness
of my dream paranoia
and the shame
of my futile fury
when the voices are found
to be rose branches
scratching the wall in the breeze
and the rattling door
is an unlocked shed.
As the ‘protected’
unendangered female
sniggers,
snuggling,
in my bed.
I feel mighty in the crowd.
My individuality absorbed
when the ball whistles
across the field
and bulges the back of the net
and marionette strings
are jerked in my shoulders
pulling up my arms
involuntarily
unstoppably.
Piercing fingers
splayed to the skies
as my feet leave the ground
levitated by bogus brotherhood,
my throat bellowing
a one noted song
as I join in sense
in spirit
in selfish insanity,
the bawling baying
monominded throng.
I feel frustration.
A strange mixture
of sinister pleasure
stirred with a dirty old man’s
self loathing
and I reel backwards
from the chasm fall of despair
into galloping middle age
when that young hairdresser
steps from her shop
to pull down the blind.
And the hem of her flimsy
pleated dress
sways across her youthful
sculpted ivory thighs
just above
her fulsome behind.
I feel pain
at the back of my eye sockets
when the news
of more carnage
is media managed in my direction
from all over a globe
of weeping.
Evincing that the species
I am one of
is imperfection epitomised
and damned
by it’s bestial flaws
that cause a constant
sinking of the heart,
in a horror story
called history
in which I play
a bit part.
I feel the ache
of futile falsehood
and the crushing grip
of a mechanical
metalled gauntlet
on my sternum,
when someone mentions
the name
of a forlorn lost love
or a dead loved one
as I hold
the synthetic smile
or look of bland indifference
on my face.
And the infinite doom
of echoing loss
makes my blood
run icy cold.
And I feel rage
as I rasp out a curse
at an idiot in a van
who nearly pushes me into the hedgerows.
I see my bloodied hands
tearing at his eyeballs,
my butcher knife
ripping at his genitals
and I feel
a quarterman’s cleaver
in my hands
chop
chop
chopping slowly,
as I carefully
split the bastard’s spine.
Then I feel lightness
in my head,
a spring in my spirit
when a swallow swirls
and swings
and twirls in a dance
along the highway,
then sweeps off
to somewhere in the fields.
And I know
that I am at one
and the same time
Shiva the destroyer
and Ram the creator.
A reacting
responding
pushed and pulled
environmentally exercised
Mara manipulated
android sack
of emotional sludge.
How?
I feel
is through electrical impulses
surging in a brain.
Synaptic frigging
jiggling and jinking
interacting blinking
concluding and clinking
paradigming
perceptions of convenience
and labelling it
thinking,
as senses
claw at the air,
the water,
the gas
and the flames.
And the Vampire mind
sucks like a starving infant
at stuff that it swallows and spits,
and opines on,
and relies on,
and spews in betrayal
and rejects
because
it amounts to nothing.
For there is only
feeling.
There is
no,
I.
David Hazell
