Stage 4: Anger
Rainstorm
I watched the rain
From my window today -
The birds fell quiet
And thunder rumbled outside.
I wrote words of hope
For a better day,
But my anger burns silently inside.
Requiem (Part 2)
This is a bitter requiem
for those who have loved and lost,
the memory of a first kiss buried in the thud of a fist.
(You are falling so far away from me.)
This is a bitter requiem,
for those whose dreams have slowly died,
who have lived quiet lives, unnoticed in all the fuss.
(Where did we go, what happened to us?)
This is a bitter acknowledgment,
of those who haunt only themselves,
a last fleeting requiem,
for lives long forgotten by everyone else.
Fair-weather friend (Part 2)
When the going gets tough, you get going;
I stood by you, but you deserted me.
And this is not love, it’s only you
Walking all over me.
So then fine; desert me, get going, get gone.
I’d rather be alone on my own than alone with you.
For this is not love, it’s only you
Walking all over me.
Medicate
You have hypnotised yourself into happiness, why not?
We live in a world where grief is a disease,
Sadness a perversion and only weak minds do not
Live a life of blissful ease.
You starve yourself into the correct shape,
Medicate yourself into the correct mental state.
You fake it until you make it
And then, when you have made it, it is all still fake.
You puzzle me.
Is this all there is to you?
Or do you rage underneath, do you weep
For the unhappiness that shames you?
#bliss
There has to be a better way than this,
Posting false photos of our perfect lives,
Humble-bragging about our hashtag bliss -
But I can see the lies in our shadowed eyes.
Posting false photos of our perfect lives,
We bemoan the banality of endless selfies -
But I can see the lies in our shadowed eyes
As we seek ‘likes’ and heart-shaped emojis.
We bemoan the banality of endless selfies,
But we’re addicts, seeking hits day and night,
Seeking ‘likes’ and heart-shaped emojis -
Bubble-wrap to keep the cold world outside.
Yes, we’re addicts all right, seeking hits day and night,
But there’s hate on the TV, there’s hate on the streets.
We’re bubble-wrapped to keep the cold world outside,
Until hate starts to scream from our tiny phone screens.
Well, there’s hate on the TV, there’s hate on the streets,
And there has to be a better way than this.
Hate starts to scream from my tiny phone screen,
And I can’t stand to see your hashtag bliss.
Sanity?
How is happiness a sane response
to a world in which I
and all my loved ones will die?
But to stay alive -
to love others and to love life -
is an act of bloody defiance
and a creation of meaning,
where meaning would be denied.
Swansong
The rainswept streets are empty but for an ambulance speeding along, with a banshee riding up on top to sing her melancholy swan song.
We do not hear her, we do not heed; warm and dry, we are glued to our little blue screens as we seek virtual love through ‘Grams and Chats, dodging vicious trolls in popularity polls and liking endless photos of cats. Ours is the world of Amazon and the meme, where the famous are famous for being famous and reality is not all that it seems.
So it is that we are blind to the evils of our time despite being at times glued to the TV news and YouTube, shuddering at beheadings in a far-off place, bewailing the disgrace of violence and poverty in places we’ve never visited and never will see. We watch trauma survivors speak in the emotion-free dubbed voices of the BBC, while bambi-eyed celebrities, earning 20 million a movie, plead for their chosen charities.
We scurry like bugs across the water, trying to out-run the pain, asking ourselves: is immortality to be found in popularity and fame, or is the pursuit of endless youth the only game to be played? Should love and adoration be our primary aim? Or is happiness all there is, fickle as the rain? Whatever you choose though, be sure to not slow down - never dip below the water’s surface, or you will surely drown.
A positive life is a moral one, no room for whiners here. Don’t worry about raising the minimum wage, write a cookbook for foraged food and turn poverty into a TV career. Survive cancer by fighting it, the dead ones clearly didn’t try. The sick and the poor have earned it; the weak deserve to die. And so we live such lonely lives.
And what of love? Not self-love, preached in every book and blog and tweet, but love of others, extending beyond ourselves, more important than life; bitter-sweet. Love that may bring happiness, but also will bring grief. Love that makes us laugh and love that makes us weep. Love that alleviates the loneliness and makes it all the worse. Love that is a blessing; love that is a curse.
The rainswept streets are empty but for an ambulance speeding along, with a banshee riding up on top to sing her melancholy swan song.
What Bliss
For god’s sake, what bliss is this?
We’re photoshopping our lives
Into soft-focused lies -
A fiction where no one dies,
And pain and fear do not exist.
For god’s sake, what bliss is this?
Do we think our photos
Of toast and avocados
In a tastefully furnished home
Will fend off loneliness?
We live in a world of love
And of unbearable loss,
Where dust is what becomes of all of us.
We face our fears, but we’re still afraid,
We stay upbeat, but our pain does not fade
And our anger turns to bitterness,
So for god’s sake - what bliss is this?
Lives lived in unrelenting busyness
No time for daydreams or idleness,
Just an exhausting pursuit of the perfect positive.
For god’s sake, what bliss is this,
When we live in a world so bleak?
So leave me alone and let me grieve,
You cannot possibly comfort me
For the loss of a life once lived.
Three Poems
01
I’ve been so badly hurt that I need to convalesce,
to recover and reassert my independent self.
Please let me be alone, let me just catch my breath.
You wanted all of me, but there’s so little of me left.
02
You said I don’t deserve friends,
because I wouldn’t have sex with you.
I say we never were friends,
if sex was more important to you.
03
This love’s no good, I’m letting go -
This ship has sunk, this rat’s deserted.
I’m sick and tired of your martyr’s lies
Of busyness and sacrifice.
This love’s no good, I’m letting go.
This ship has sunk and you deserved it.