When Compared to the Fathomless Joy Awaiting 31.

by: Carl Halling

Book Five

Epic and Autobiographical (A Versified Finale)

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

Born on the Goldhawk Road
Provides a fitting preface
To a long autobiographical piece,
Consisting almost entirely
Of versified prose, and linear in nature,
Which is to say,
Beginning with my birth,
And leading all the way
To the early 2000s.
Whilst dealing with my earliest years,
It was fashioned only recently.
Although An Autobiographical Narrative
Has been composed not solely of
Stray pieces of prose
That failed to make the first team.
For it includes
Further versified phenomena,
Such as refugees from the memoir,
Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child.
The piece itself is a versified version
Of one much reproduced
In various forms throughout my writings,
Although it bears little resemblance
To its original, which first glimpsed
The light of day in around 2002,
As a meagre and mediocre slice of prose,
And while it can still be read
On the World Wide Web,
It's undergone much modification since then,
Including the alteration
Of all names of people and places
For the solemn purpose of privacy.
Although it was first published
In a form resembling that found below
At the Blogster website,
On the 1st of February 2006.

Born on the Goldhawk Road

I was born at the tail end of the Goldhawk Road
Which runs through Shepherds Bush
Like an artery,
And in the mid 1960s,
Served as one of the great centres
Of the London Mod movement,
But I was raised in relative gentility
In a ward of nearby South Acton
Whose vast council estate
Is surely the most formidable
Of the whole of West London.
Although my little suburb
Has since become
One of its most exclusive neighbourhoods.

My first school was a kind of nursery
Held locally on a daily basis
At the private residence
Of one Miss Henrietta Pearson,
And then aged 4 years old,
I joined the exclusive
Lycée du Kensington du Sud,
Where I was soon to become bilingual
And almost every race and nationality
Under the sun was to be found
At the Lycée in those days...
And among those who went on to be good pals mine
Were kids of English, French, Jewish, American,
Yugoslavian and Middle Eastern origin.

While my first closest pals were Esther,
The vivacious daughter
Of a Norwegian character actor
And a beautiful Israeli dancer,
And Craig, an English kid like myself,
With whom I remain in contact to this day.
For a time, we formed an unlikely trio:
"Hi kiddy," was Esther's sacred greeting
To her blood brother, who'd respond in kind.
But at some stage, I became a problem child,
A disruptive influence in the class,
And a trouble maker in the streets,
An eccentric loon full of madcap fun
And half-deranged imaginativeness.

And my unusual physical appearance
Was enhanced by a striking thinness,
And enormous long-lashed blue eyes.
Less charmingly, I was also the kind of
Deliberately malicious little hooligan
Who'd remove some periodical
From a neighbour's letter-box
And then mutilate it before reposting it.
The sixties' famed social and sexual revolution
Was well under way, and yet for all that,
Seminal Pop groups such as the Searchers
And the Dave Clark Five;
Even the Fab Four themselves,
Were quaintly wholesome figures.

And in comparison to what was to come,
They surely fitted in well
In a long vanished England
Of Norman Wisdom pictures;
And the well-spoken presenters
Of the BBC Home Service,
Light Service and World Service,
Of coppers and tanners
And ten bob notes;
And jolly shopkeepers
And window cleaners.
At least that's how I see it,
Looking back at it all
From almost half a century later.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

In its most primordial form,
Snapshots knew life as spidery writings
Filling four and a half pages
Of a school notebook
In what is likely to have been 1977.

And these were edited in 2006,
Before being tendered a new title,
Subjected to alterations in punctuation,
And then finally published at Blogster
On the 10th of March of that year.

Some grammatical corrections took place,
Which were suitably mild
So as not to excessively alter the original work,
From which certain sentences were composed
By fusing two or more sections together.

Ultimately, parts of it were incorporated
Into the memoir, Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child,
And thence into the first chapter
Of the definitive autobiographical piece,
Seven Chapters from a Sad Sack Loser's Life.

But recently, it was newly versified,
With a fresh set of minor corrections,
Although as ever with these memoir-based writings
The majority of names have been changed,
And they are faithful to the truth to the best of my ability.

Snapshots from a Child's West London

I remember the 20th Chiswick Wolf Cub pack,
How I loved those Wednesday evenings,
The games, the pomp and seriousness of the camps,
The different coloured scarves, sweaters and hair
During the mass meetings,
The solemnity of my enrolment,
Being helped up a tree by an older boy,
Baloo, or Kim, or someone,
To win my Athletics badge,
Winning my first star, my two year badge,
And my swimming badge
With its frog symbol, the kindness of the older boys.

I remember a child's West London

One Saturday afternoon, after a football match
During which I dirtied my boots
By standing around as a sub in the mud,
And my elbow by tripping over a loose shoelace,
An older boy offered to take me home.
We walked along streets,
Through subways crammed with rowdies,
White or West Indian, in black gym shoes.
"Shuddup!" my friend would cheerfully yell,
And they did.
"We go' a ge' yer 'oame, ain' we mite, ay?"
"Yes. Where exactly are you taking me?" I asked.

"The bus stop at Chiswick 'Oigh Stree'
Is the best plice, oi reck'n."
"Yes, but not on Chiswick High Street,"
I said, starting to sniff.
"You be oroight theah, me lil' mite."
I was not convinced.
The uncertainty of my ever getting home
Caused me to start to bawl,
And I was still hollering
As we mounted the bus.
I remember the sudden turning of heads.
It must have been quite astonishing

For a peaceful busload of passengers
To have their everyday lives
Suddenly intruded upon
By a group of distressed looking Wolf Cubs,
One of whom, the smallest,
Was howling red-faced with anguish
For some undetermined reason.
After some moments, my friend,
His brow furrowed with regret,
As if he had done me some wrong, said:
"I'm gonna drop you off
Where your dad put you on."

Within seconds, the clouds dispersed,
And my damp cheeks beamed.
Then, I spied a street I recognised
From the bus window, and got up,
Grinning with all my might:
"This'll do," I said.
"Wai', Carl," cried my friend,
Are you shoa vis is 'oroigh'?"
"Yup!" I said. I was still grinning
As I spied my friend's anxious face
In the glinting window of the bus
As it moved down the street.

I remember a child's West London

One Wednesday evening,
When the Pops was being broadcast
Instead of on Thursday,
I was rather reluctant to go to Cubs,
And was more than usually uncooperative
With my father as he tried
To help me find my cap,
Which had disappeared.
Frustrated, he put on his coat
And quietly opened the door.
I stepped outside into the icy atmosphere
Wearing only a pair of underpants,

And to my horror, he got into his black Citroen
And drove off. I darted down Esmond Road
Crying and shouting.
My tearful howling was heard by Margaret,
19 year old daughter of Mrs Helena Jacobs,
Whom my mother used to help
With the care and entertainment
Of Thalidomide children.
Helena Jacobs expended so much energy
On feeling for others
That when my mother tried to get in touch
In the mid '70s, she seemed exhausted,

And quite understandably,
For Mrs O'Keefe, her cleaning lady
And friend for the main part
Of her married life
Had recently been killed in a road accident.
I remember that kind
And beautiful Irish lady,
Her charm, happiness and sweetness,
She was the salt of the earth.
She threatened to ca-rrown me
When I went away to school...
If I wrote her not.

Margaret picked me up
And carried me back to my house.
I immediately put on my uniform
As soon as she had gone home,
Left a note for my Pa,
And went myself to Cubs.
When Pa arrived to pick me up,
The whole ridiculous story
Was told to Akela,
Baloo and Kim,
Much, much, much to my shame.

I remember a child's West London

The year was 1963, the year of the Beatles,
Of singing yeah, yeah in the car,
Of twisting in the playground,
Of "I'm a Beatlemaniac, are you?"
That year, I was very prejudiced
Against an American boy, Robert,
Who later became my friend.
I used to attack him for no reason,
Like a dog, just to assert my superiority.
One day, he gave me a rabbit punch in the stomach
And I made such a fuss that my little girlfriend, Niña,
Wanted to escort me to the safety of our teacher,

Hugging me, and kissing me intermittently
On my forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks.
She forced me to see her:
"Carl didn't do a thing," said Niña,
"And Robert came up and gave him
Four rabbit punches in the stomach."
Robert was not penalized,
For Mademoiselle knew
What a little demon I was,
No matter how hurt
And innocent I looked,
Tearful, with my tail between my legs.

I remember a child's West London

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

In September 1968,
While still only 12 years old,
I became a Naval Cadet
at the Nautical College,
Welbourne,
Situated then as now
In the Royal County
Of Berkshire.
Which may have made me
The youngest and unlikeliest
Serving officer
In the entire Royal Navy,
If only for a very, very short time.

The Four Precious Years (I Spent at Welbourne)

My third and final school
Was the former Nautical College, Welbourne,
Where at still only twelve years old
I became the youngest kid in the college,
And an official serving officer
In Britain's Royal Naval Reserve.
Founded at the height of the British Empire,
Welbourne still possessed her original title in '68,
while her headmaster,
A serving officer in the Royal Navy
For some quarter of a century,
Wore his uniform at all times.
However, in '69,
She was given the name Welbourne College.

While the boys retained their officer status,
And naval discipline continued to be enforced,
With Welbourne serving both
As a military college
And traditional English boarding school.
The Welbourne I knew
Had strong links to the Church of England,
And so was marked by regular
If not daily classes
In what was known as Divinity,
Morning parade ground prayers,
Evening prayers,
And compulsory chapel
On Sunday morning.

Later in life, I felt grateful to her
For the values she'd instilled in me
If only unconsciously, even though,
By the time I joined Welbourne,
These were under siege as never before
By the so-called Counterculture.
And in the early 2010s,
I'd insist if I possessed
A single quality that might be termed noble,
Such as patience, or self-mastery
Or consideration of the needs of other people,
Then I'm at least partially indebted
For such a wonderful blessing
To the four precious years I spent at Welbourne.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

For all the Beatniks of SF consists of
Edited and versified extracts
From one of my earliest
Existent pieces of fictional writing.
Dating at an estimate from about 1970,
It reflects the spirit of the times,
Even though its been sanitised
For online publication.
In the years immediately following
The revolutionary events of '68
I was deeply in sympathy
With the West's prevailing
Adversary Culture
Or Alternative Society
Which is very much not the case today.
And my attitude is dictated
Not by increasing maturity,
But by my Christian beliefs,
Without which I might
Be an ageing hipster by now,
Blithely festooned
With ostentatious symbols of revolt.

For all the Beatniks of San Francisco

Shirley Brown was a very beautiful girl,
And her brunette hair
Hung down her back
And as the wind blew thru the window,
It waved around. It waved around.
She was making sandwiches,
And was packing them with fruit,
And two massive bars of fruit
And nut chocolate.
She lit a cigarette, picked up the basket,
And with a nod of her head,
Waved her hair backwards
And walked out the back door
Into the alley where,
Propped up against a fence
Was a blue mini-moped.
She mounted the bike
And with a little trouble, started it.
And the rider made a sudden jump
As a horn blew behind her,
And a leather jacketed youth
Sped by on a butterfly motor-cycle.

People turned away
And the music blared on
And the youths talked on.
Then, a park keeper came
But the youths took no notice.
"What are you kids doing,
The keeper shouted,
I've had complaints from all over,
Clear off, wilya,
This is a park
Not a meeting place
For all the Beatniks in San Francisco."

John Hemmings started dancing:
"Cool it, grandpa, get on,
Get going, don't bug me!"
The kids had gone too far
And they knew it.
Some of them turned away,
As the radio blared even louder,
Litter was scattered everywhere.
"I ain't chicken of dying,
John Hemmings then said,
We've got to go on,
ALL RIGHT! Who are the crumbs
Who want to chicken out at this point,
Just take your bikes and go.
We're free people now.
Nothing can stop us,
We'll rule the streets,
The young people will triumph."
He was perspiring wildly
And his black hair
Hung down his back.
It waved around. It waved around.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1960s

This jackadandy's original title was
An Essay Written by a Guy
Who Was Too Lazy to Finish It,
And it dates from
My college days, ca. 1971,
At a time I was yet enamoured
With the hedonistic
Hippie way of life.
It's been reproduced more or less
Verbatim, notwithstanding
Some minor editing,
And versification.
And I don't think it's necessary
To add there is no such cologne
As Monsieur de Gauviché.
As the first title implies,
It was never finished,
But I've taken the liberty
Of belatedly turning the protagonist
Into a dandified danger man
Somewhat in the mould
Of Peter Wyngarde's
Stylishly overdressed secret agent
From the classic television series,
Department S and Jason King.

Englishman, Jackadandy, Spy

He made no move at all
As the alarm clock went off.
But ten minutes later,
It was obvious he was awake.
He lifted himself out of bed
And went towards the bathroom.
He shaved himself
With a Gillette Techmatic
After having sploshed himself
With a double handful
Of icy cold water.
He washed again, dried his face,
Put on some Monsieur de Gauviché
And got dressed.
He wore a Brutus shirt,
A Tonik suit and a pair of
Shiny brown boots.
He was six foot two,
And he smoked sixty Players
Medium Navy Cut cigarettes
A day, and he lit each one
With a Ronson lighter.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest
Wardrobe in London.

He was a fair-haired man
And very good-looking.
He was thirty two years old
And a bachelor,
And lived near Richmond, Surrey.
He was immaculate,
Wore long sideboards
And a long moustache,
And his hair was shortish
And well-combed.
His shirt was light blue,
And he wore a dark blue tie.
He wore two rings on each hand.
He washed himself
After his usual breakfast
Of toast, black coffee and health pills.
He cleaned his teeth thoroughly,
Put some more cologne on,
And then went to do
His isometrics.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest
Wardrobe in London.

He was born in London in 1940.
He went to Eton and Oxford,
Had taught at Oxford for eight years
But was sacked.
He had been an Oxford Rowing Blue,
And got a degree in English, Art and History.
His father was Lord Alfred Hardin, M.P.
Titus loved teaching,
And not many people know the reason
For his dismissal at the age of thirty one.
He was nearly expelled from Eton
For smoking, drinking,
And being head of a secret society
With secret oaths, but he was
Too promising a sportsman,
And all the boys respected him
As a prefect.
He was a fair-haired man
And very good-looking.
He was thirty two years old
And a bachelor,
And lived near Richmond, Surrey.
His flat was beautifully furnished.
His name was Titus Hardin,
And he had the biggest wardrobe in London.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1970s

To See You at Every Time of Day
Is a song lyric, penned in 2003,
But heavily based on one composed
Almost certainly in 1974,
And which I originally sang
In a voice I stole from Bryan Ferry,
Who'd begun his career
As a conventional Glam Rock icon,
But who by '74,
Had reinvented himself as an old-style
Crooner cum matinee idol,
And it was his eccentric version of
These Foolish Things
That was the direct inspiration
For the lyric in question,
Indeed the song as a whole.

To See You Every Time of Day

To see you in the morning
Be with you in the evening
To see you here
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day

To hold you when you're laughing
Console you when you're crying
Take care of you
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day

So tell me why you push me away
When I've sworn to be forever true
When I've pledged
My pure and simple heart to you?
How can you be so cruel?

To see you in the morning
Be with you in the evening
To see you here
At every time of day
Such a simple prayer
To see you at every time of day.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1970s

The Athlete, the Poet and the Reprobate
Was based largely on writings
Created possibly as early as 1976.
And as such, it's been reproduced
More or less word for word,
Despite having been recently edited
And subject to basic versification.
And in its original form,
It constituted some kind of
Unfinished fantastical novel
Centred on the titular
Athlete, Poet and Reprobate,
An absurdly self-exalting
Version of the original.
For within less than two decades
Of penning these self-same words,
I'd come to saving faith in Christ Jesus.

As to novels reflecting the luxurious lifestyle
Of a bygone age,
None had been even remotely completed
By the time of writing,
And unless I'm grossly mistaken,
I was several years shy of becoming an actor.
That said, the timidity described
Is at least partially accurate,
And I did feel the need to provide
An outward show of my significance
Through a peacock display of dandyism,
Which included
Some wildly idiosyncratic behaviour,
As well as the subtle deployment of cosmetics.

The Athlete, the Poet and the Reprobate

"I can't decide," she said,
"Whether you're an aesthete
Or an athlete
A poet or a reprobate."

"Even when I'm a lout,
I'm an aesthete," he answered,
"I lure, rather than seek."

"So why do you
Need to dress up?"

"Like Ronald Firbank,
I suffer from a need
To give an outward show
Of my significance.

His lifestyle is an uncanny
Parallel
To my own young manhood

I alienated people
Through a crippling shyness
Which I disguised
With my violently idiosyncratic

Behaviour, wore cosmetics
And wrote novels
That reflected the luxurious
Lifestyle of a bygone age.

The sensation
Of never quite belonging
Lingered about me always
That's why
I became an actor.

Through heavy experiences
I have built up
A stoned wall
Resistance
Against arrogance and aloofness

I am a sophisticated cynic
With a kind heart
And a tendency towards regret."

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

The origins of An Actor Arrives
Lie in the barest elements
Of a story started but never finished
In early 1980,
While I was working at the Bristol Old Vic
Playing the minute part
Of Mustardseed the Fairy
In a much praised production
Of Shakespeare's celebrated
A Midsummer Night's Dream.

It was originally rescued in 2006,
From a battered notebook in which I habitually scribbled
During spare moments offstage
While clad in my costume
And covered in blue body make-up
And silvery glitter. And while doing so,
Some of the glitter was transferred from the pages
With which the were stained
More than a quarter of a century previously
Onto my hands...an eerie experience indeed.

An Actor Arrives (at the Bristol Old Vic)

I remember the grey slithers of rain,
The jocular driver
As I boarded the bus
At Temple Meads,
And the friendly lady who told me
When we had arrived at the city centre.
I remember the little pub on King Street,
With its quiet maritime atmosphere.

I remember tramping
Along Park Street,
Whiteladies Road and Blackboy Hill,
My arms and hands aching from my bags,
To the little cottage where I had decided to stay
And relax between rehearsals,
Reading, writing, listening to music.
I remember my landlady, tall, timid and beautiful.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Nineteen Eighty Tell Me
Has been reproduced more or less
As it was originally scrawled
In a red Silvine memo book
In the very summer of 1980,

Almost certainly as I was waiting
To go on as Mustardseed the Fairy
During the London run of a much-praised
Bristol Old Vic production
Of A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Nineteen Eighty Tell Me

Nineteen Eighty, tell me,
Where are you?
What are you trying to be?
This week, you're 1963
And there's even
Talk of a rebirth of '67
But that's next week.
Nineteen Eighty, tell me,

When will you be mine?
A little bit '59,
I'll not share you with a Beatnik
Take a rest after the exertions,
Punk revolutions,
Before our old friend,
Sweet nostalgia,
Goes round the bend.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

1.

Thanks to the large quantity
Of notes I committed to paper
While at Leftfield College, London,
My beloved college can live again
Through sundry writings
Painstakingly forged out of them,
Such as the poetic pieces that follow,
Which is to say, Some Sad Dark Secret,
Sabrina's Solar Plexus,
She Dear One that Followed Me,
And I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces.
And as in the case of all
My memoir-based writings,
The names of people and institutions
Have been changed
In the solemn name of privacy.

2.

Some Sad Dark Secret was inspired
By words once spoken to me
By a former tutor and mentor
Of mine at Leftfield in around 1982 or '83.
And which then ended up
As informal diary notes
On a piece of scrap paper,
Consisting of both
The words themselves,
And my own perhaps
Partly fantastical
Reflections on them.
Some quarter of a century later,
They were edited and versified,
And then the process was repeated
A half decade or so after that.

3.

I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces
Was recently conceived
From thoughts confided to a notebook
Sometime between 1981 and '83
While I was a student
At the University of London.

As I see it, they betoken
An undiagnosed depressive condition
Which ultimately led to my contracting
A serious drinking problem,
And ultimately some kind of crack-up,
From which I emerged while not unscathed

Another man entirely,
And while I'm still the victim
Of a depressive condition, it's not as it was,
Which is to say, one alleviated
By spells of great elation,
And yet fundamentally rooted in desperation.

Today, it's seen by its sufferer as long term
Yet temporal, to be dispelled,
Once he comes into a new glorious body,
Which is his hope and his prayer,
So all the sicknesses of the old,
Will be a thing of the past, never to return again.

Some Sad Dark Secret

"Temper your enthusiasm,"
She said,
"The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality."
"Don't push people,"
She said,
"You make yourself vulnerable."

She told me not to rhapsodise,
That it would be difficult,
Impossible, perhaps,
For me to harness my dynamism.
The tone of my work,
She said,
Is often a little dubious.
She said
She thought
That there was something wrong.

That I'm hiding
Some sad
Dark secret from the world.
"Temper your enthusiasm,"
She said,
"The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality."

Sabrina's Solar Plexus

"You were frightening, sinister,
You put everything into it
I took a step back
You get better every time
How good can you get?"

People are scared of fish eyes
They confuse, stun, fascinate
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes
Sucked dry of life fish eyes...

Sabrina was unselfish,
Unselfconscious,
Devoted, unabashed,
Spontaneous,
A purring lioness:
"Yes," she said,
"I can imagine people
Wanting to possess you."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes...

Sabrina said: "I'm sorry;
I'm just possessive
I'm frightened of my feelings
You'll miss me a little,
Won't you?
You should read Lenz.
I'm sure you'd
Identify
With the main character."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

Have I written about the
Crack-up?
When I came home
Empty-handed
And I just couldn't
Articulate
For latent tears.
But am I so repelled
By intimacy?
When will someone
Get me there (the solar
Plexus) as Sabrina said.

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

"You look beautiful;
I wish you didn't,
Malignant
Flim Flam Man."
"I like it when you really feel
Something;
But then it's so rare."

People are scared of fish eyes;
They confuse, stun, fascinate;
Coldly indifferent
Fish eyes;
Sucked dry of life fish eyes.

She Dear One Who Followed Me

It was she, bless her,
who followed me...
she'd been crying...
she's too good for me,
that's for sure...
"Your friends
are too good to you...
it makes me sick
to see them...
you don't really give...
you indulge in conversation,
but your mind
is always elsewhere,
ticking over.
You could hurt me,
you know...
You are a Don Juan,
so much.
Like him, you have
no desires...
I think you have
deep fears...
There's something so...so...
in your look.
It's not that
you're empty...
but that there is
an omnipresent sadness
about you, a fatality..."

I Hate Those Long Long Spaces

I hate those long, long spaces
Between meals and drinks
Specifically the afternoon
And after midnight.

I hate mornings too
Until I can smell the bacon
And coffee. I cheer up
Towards the end of the afternoon,

But my euphoria stops short
Of my final cup of tea.
I sink into another state of gloom
Until my second favourite time of the day.

My favourite is that of my
First drink and cigarette.
I hate those long, long spaces,
Specifically the afternoon and after midnight

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Verses for Tragic Lovers
Adolphe and Ellénore
Is based on an essay I wrote
Around 1983
For a former mentor at university,
Who sadly died in 2008,
And who features
As Dr Elizabeth Lang
In various autobiographical
Writings of mine.

It concerns the protagonist
Of French writer Benjamin Constant's
1816 novel Adolphe,
(Which its author emphatically insisted
Was not autobiographical;
Nor a roman à clef),
Who is a prototypal victim
Of what has been termed
Le Mal du Siècle,
Or the sickness of the century...

Which, born in the wake of the Revolution,
And arising from a variety of causes,
Political, social, and spiritual,
Depending on the sufferer in question,
Produced such qualities as
Melancholy and acedia,
And a perpetual sense of exile,
Of alienation,
That found special favour within
The great Romantic movement in the arts.

Although as a phenomenon,
World Pain was hardly a novel one,
For after all, does the Word of God not say
That there is nothing new
Under the sun?
But it was possibly unprecedented
In terms of pervasiveness and intensity
At the height of Romanticism
And I'd have no hesitation
In labelling it tragic as a result.

In terms of my own pre-Christian self,
It was almost overwhelmingly powerful,
And so believer that I am, I feel compelled
To expose it as potentially ruinous,
For after all, is it not still with us
In one way or another,
Having been passed on by the Romantics
To kindred movements coming in their wake,
From the Spirit of Decadence
To the Rock Revolution?

And could it not also be said
That the peculiar notion
Fostered by Romanticism
Of the artist as a spirit
Set apart for some special purpose,
Of which pain is so often an essential part
Is also still among us?
Of course it could,
And I'd have no hesitation
In labelling it tragic as a result.

This Mal du Siècle
Is surely especially melancholy
In the case of tragic lovers,
Adolphe and Ellénore,
For it results in Adolphe effectively
Drifting into a romance
With another man's mistress,
A young mother, Ellénore,
Who sacrifices everything for him
Only to discover he no longer loves her.

For Adolphe is in some respects
A work within the tradition
Of the libertine novel
Of the Age of Enlightenment,
And yet at the same time,
By no means an endorsement of libertinage.
Is rather perhaps, in many respects,
A powerful indictment of this tendency,
And thence as much a reproach
To the tradition; as a late addition to it.

And the forlorn figure of Adolphe
Was ultimately to prove influential,
Notably in Mother Russia,
Where he allegedly served in part
As model to Pushkin's fatal dandy,
The Byronic Eugene Onegin,
And if Tolstoy's Count Vronsky
Was also partially based on Adolphe,
Then there is of course a marked kinship
Between Ellénore and Anna Karenina.

In the end, though, one can only weep,
At the tragedy these eminently romantic
And sympathetic figures
Made of their lives. And I speak as one
Who was once in thrall to the tragic worldview,
But who came to view life
As something infinitely valuable,
To be lived fully under the guidance of God,
And not sacrificed like some beautiful bauble
For the bitter-sweet pleasures of the world.

Verses for Tragic Lovers Adolphe and Ellénore

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

We know little of the physical appearance
Of Adolphe, but in all probability
He possesses the youthfully seductive charm
Of Romantic heroes,
Werther, René and Julien Sorel.

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

Adolphe is preoccupied with himself
In the classic manner
Of the contemplative, melancholy,
Faintly yearning, hypersensitive,
Isolated, perceptive Romantic hero.

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

Perhaps he is somebody who believes
That self-interest is the foundation
Of all morality, but then, he announces:
"While I was only interested in myself,
I was but feebly interested for all that."

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

There is much genuine goodness
In Adolphe,
But much of it is subconscious,
Surfacing only
At the sight of obvious grief.

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

The cause of this inability to feel
Spontaneously, is very probably the result
Of the complex interaction
Between a hypersensitive nature
And a brilliant if indecisive mind.

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

By reflecting on his surroundings
To an exaggerated degree,
Adolphe feels a sort of numbness,
A premature world-weariness
Lucid thoughts and intense emotions confused.

Ellénore initially resists Adolphe's advances
But after a great deal of persuasion,
Agrees to see him on a regular basis,
And soon falls in love.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Thanks to the large quantity
Of notes I committed
To paper while at Leftfield,
My beloved college can live again
Through writings
Painstakingly forged out of them,
Such as the poetic piece below,
Based on several conversations
I had with my good friend Jez,
A tough but tender Scouser
With slicked back rockabilly hair,
Who'd played guitar in a band
At Liverpool's legendary Eric's
Back in the early eighties,
When Liverpool post-Punk
Was enjoying a golden age.
These took place at Scorpio's,
A Greek restaurant situated in
North West London
Following a performance at college
Of Lorca's Blood Wedding
In which I'd played the bridegroom.

One of the Greats Who Never Was

"I think you should be
One of the greats,
But you've given up
And that's sad.

You drink too much,
You think, ____ it
And you go out and get _____,
When I'm 27 I'd be happy
To be like you.

In your writing,
Make sure you've got
Something really
Unbeatable...
Then say...'Here, you _______!'

You've got the spark of genius
At sixteen, you knew
You were a genius,
At nineteen, you thought
What's a genius anyway?"

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

In the autumn of 1983,
I took residence
In a room on the grounds
Of a Technical Lycée
In Brétigny-sur-Orge,
A commune in the southern
Suburbs of Paris
Some sixteen miles
South of the city centre.
And for those first few months,
I was happy, blissfully happy
to be a flâneur in the city
which had inspired
so many great poets
to write classics
of the art of urban idling,
And the following versified
Refugee from
At the Tail End
Of the Goldhawk Road
Briefly touches on this phase.

Paris What a
City (as Juliette Once Wrote Me)

...my paris begins with those early days as as a conscious flâneur i recall the couple seated opposite me on the métro when i was still innocent of its labyrinthine complexity slim pretty white girl clad head to toe in denim smiling wistfully while her muscular black beau stared through me with fathomless orbs and one of them spoke almost in a whisper, qu'est-ce-que t'en pense and it dawned on me yes the slender young parisienne with the distant desirous eyes was no less male than me dismal movies in the forum des halles and beyond being screamed at in pigalle and then howled at again by some kind of madman or derelict who told me to go to the bois de boulogne to meet what he saw as my destiny menaced by a sinister skinhead for trying on tessa's wide-brimmed hat getting soused in les halles with sara who'd just seen dillon as rusty james and was walking in a daze sara again with jade at the caveau de la huchette jazz cellar the café de flore with milan who asked for a menu for me and then disappeared back to brétigny cash squandered on a gold tootbrush two tone shoes from close by to the place d'italie portrait sketched at the place de tertre paperback books by symbolist poets such as villiers de l'isle adam but second hand volumes by trakl and delève
and a leather jacket from the marché aux puces porte de clignancourt losing rory's address scrawled on a page of musset's confession walking the length and breadth of the rue st denis, what a city (as juliette once wrote me)...

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

A Cambridge Lamentation
Centres on my brief stay at Coverton,
A teaching training college
Contained within the University of Cambridge,
With its campus at Hills Road
Just outside the city centre.
A fusion of previously published pieces,
It was primarily adapted
From an unfinished and unsent letter
Penned just before Christmas 1986,
And conveys some of the fatal restlessness
Which ultimately resulted
In my quitting Coverton early in 1987.
In its initial form, it had been forged
By extracting selected sentences
From the original script,
And then melding them together
In a newly edited and versified state,
Before publishing them at the Blogster weblog
On the 10th of June 2006.

A Cambridge Lamentation

This place is always a little lonely
At the weekends...no noise and life,
I like solitude,
But not in places
Where's there's recently been
A lot of people.

Reclusiveness protects you
From nostalgia,
And you can be as nostalgic
In relation to what happened
Half an hour ago
As half a century ago, in fact more so.

I went to the Xmas party.
I danced,
And generally lived it up.
I went to bed sad though.
Discos exacerbate
my sense of solitude.

My capacity for social warmth,
Excessive social dependence
And romantic zeal
Can be practically deranging;
It's no wonder I feel the need
To escape...

Escape from my own
Drastic social emotivity
And devastating capacity
For loneliness.
I feel trapped here,
There's no
Outlet for my talents.

In such a state as this
I could fall in love with anyone.
The night before last
I went to the ball
Couples filing out
I wanted to be half of every one

But I didn't want to lose her.
I'll get over how I feel now,
And very soon.
Gradually I'll freeze again,
Even assuming an extra layer of snow.
I have to get out of here.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Both The Destructive Disease of the Soul
And The Compensatory Man Par Excellence
Possess as their starting points
A novel written at an estimate around 1987,
With one Francis Phoenix as chief protagonist.

Its fate remains a mystery,
But it may well be it was completed,
Only to be purged soon after
I became a born again Christian in 1993,
With only a handful of scraps remaining.

The versified pieces below
Were forged out of these scraps
In September 2011, although initially,
They'd taken shape as prose pieces,
Only to be edited and versified at a later date.

The Destructive Disease of the Soul

No amount of thought
Could negate
Suffering in the mind
Of Francis Phoenix.

That much he had always believed,
That humanity is a sad, lost
And suffering race.
Sometimes he felt it so strongly
That the worship of a Saviour seemed
To be the only sane act on earth,
And then it passed.

It was not increasing callousness,
But an increase in the number of moments
He felt quite intoxicated with compassion
That had soured Frank's outlook.

During those moments, he wept
For all those he'd ever been cruel to.
He could be so hard on people,
So terribly hard.
To whom could he ask forgiveness?

It was his sensitivity
That bred those moments of Christlike love,
When he cared so little for himself,
For his body, even for his soul
When it was the soul of his father,
The soul of his mother,
The souls of his friends and relatives
And everyone he'd ever known
That he cared about.

That was truth, that was reality,
That was the purpose of all human life,
That love, that benevolence,
That absolute forgiveness.
Otherworldly love is painful,
But it is the only true freedom known to Man.
Too much thought eventually produces the conviction
That nothing is worth doing.
Thought is a destructive disease of the soul.

The Compensatory Man Par Excellence

I seldom indulge in letter writing
Because I consider it
To be a cold and illusory
Means of communication.
I will only send someone a letter
If I'm certain it's going to serve
A definite functional purpose,
Such as that which I'm
Scrupulously concocting at present
Indisputably does.
It's not that I incline
Towards excessive premeditation;
Its rather that I have to subject
My thoughts and emotions
To quasi-military discipline,
As pandemonium is the sole alternative.
I'm the compensatory man par excellence.

Deliberation, in my case,
Is a means to an end,
But scarcely by any means,
An end in itself.
This letter possesses not one,
But two, designs.
On one hand, its aim is edification.
Besides that, I plan to include it
In the literary project upon which
I'm presently engaged,
With your permission of course.
Contrary to what you have suspected
In the past,
I never intend to trivialise intimacy
By distilling it into art.
On the contrary, I seek
To apotheosise the same.

You see...I lack the necessary
Emotional vitality to do justice
To people and events
That are precious to me;
I am forced, therefore,
To at a later date call
On emotive reserves
Contained within my unconscious
In order to transform
The aforesaid into literary monuments.
You once said that my feelings
Had been interred under six feet
Of lifeless abstractions;
As true as this might be,
The abstractions in question
Come from without
Rather than within me:

My youthful spontaneity
Many mistrustfully identified
With self-satisfied inconsiderateness
(A standard case of fallacious reasoning),
And I was consequently
The frequent victim
Of somewhat draconic cerebrations.
I tremble now
In the face of hyperconsciousness.
I've manufactured a mentality,
Riddled with deliberation,
Cankerous with irony;
Still, in its fragility,
Not to say, artificiality,
It can, with supreme facility,
Be wrenched aside to expose
The touch-paper tenderness within.

With characteristic extremism,
I've taken ratiocination
To its very limits,
But I've acquainted myself with,
Nay, embraced my antagonist
Only in order to more effectively throttle him.
Being a survivor of the protracted passage
Through the morass of nihilism,
Found deep within
"the hell of my inner being,"
I am more than qualified to say this:
There is no way out
Of the prison of ceaseless sophistry.
There many things I have left to say,
But I shall only have begun to exist in earnest
When these are far behind me,
In fact, so far as to be all but imperceptible.

I long for the time
When I shall have compensated to my satisfaction.
I never desired intellectuality; it was thrust upon me.
Everything I ever dreaded being, I've become
Everything I ever desired to be, I've become.
I'm the sum total of a lifetime's
Fears and fantasies,
Both wish-fulfillment
And dread-consummation incarnate.
I long for the time
When I shall have compensated to my satisfaction.
I never desired intellectuality; it was thrust upon me.
I'm the sum total of a lifetime's
Fears and fantasies,
Both wish-fulfillment
And dread-consummation incarnate.
I'm the compensatory man par excellence.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

An Aphoristic Self-Portrait
Was expeditiously versified
In September 2011,
Using a series of teeming
Informal diary entries
Made in various
Receptacles in the late 1980s.
And as such may provide
Some kind of indication
As to my psychological
And spiritual condition
Some half a dozen
Or so years prior to my
Damascene conversion.

An Aphoristic Self-Portrait

As a writer, people are my vocation.
As for humanity, men, women
And other abstractions,
Their interests constitute little more
Than my hobby; I can only deal in people.
As soon as I start dealing in sects
And sections, I am either an insider
Or an outsider, and I feel lost as either
And as soon as I feel lost,
I make no attempt to find myself,
But simply retrace my steps
And return to the people.
You can call me detached if you like,
But you see, the only way
I can remain sane as a person
With such an all-consuming instinct
For attachment, is to be detached
The world of subjectivity
Holds no sway over me,
Because it is paradoxically impersonal,
Being affiliated to partisanship,
Sentimental causes and other such abstractions.
I couldn't possibly belong
To a school of orthodox thought
That accepted me as a member.
I don't believe in myself
Other than as a crystal clear container
For the freshest cream of human individualism.
When I was younger,
I ached to be famous for the sake of it,
But now it occurs to me
That anyone can be famous
Provided they are sufficiently audacious
And thick-skinned, and I desire fame
Not so much for the vain satisfaction
Of being seen and known and heard,
But in order to guide others
Towards a happier way of being,
The only precept for celebrity,
Indeed for being in general, as far as I can see.
Adversity seems to be my fate,
As well as fortune.
The meek ones gravitate to me.
I'm the prince of the hurt ones,
The damaged ones.
I resent all success and authority.
I'm so affectionate one moment,
So icy and evasive the next.
I'm in love with many people at present.
I over accentuate my individuality,
Because sometimes I look at myself
In the mirror and I say:
"Who's that pathetic wreck?"
The more complex you are,
The less you like yourself,
Because you frighten yourself.
The more I find myself liking someone,
The more I doubt us both.
Liking someone negates them for me.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

Strange Coldness Perplexing was forged
Using notes scrawled
Onto seven sides of an ancient
Now coverless notebook,
Possibly late at night
Following an evenings carousal
And in a state of serene intoxication.

The original notes were based
On experiences I underwent
While serving as a teacher
In a highly successful
Central London school of English,
Which I did between the spring,
Or summer, of '88 and the summer of 1990.

It gives some indication
Of my emotional condition at the time,
Including a tendency, as I see it,
To wildly veer between
The conscious effusive affectionateness
I aspired to, and sudden irrational
Involuntary lapses of affect.

It also bespeaks the intense devotion
I manifested towards my favourite students
And which was reciprocated by them with interest.
All punctuation was removed around 2007,
And extracts tacked together,
Not randomly as in the so-called cut up technique
But selectively and all but sequentially.

Strange Coldness Perplexing

the catholic nurse
all sensitive
caring noticing
everything
what can she think
of my hot/cold torment

always near blowing it
living in the fast lane
so friendly kind
the girls
dewy eyed
wanda abandoned me
bolton is in my hands

and yet my coldness
hurts
the more emotional
they stay
trying to find a reason
for my ice-like suspicion
fish eyes
coldly indifferent eyes
suspect everything that moves

socialising just to be loud
compensate for cold
lack of essential trust
warmth
i love them
despite myself
my desire to love
is unconscious and gigantesque

i never know
when i'm going to miss someone
strange coldness perplexing
i've got to work to get devotion
but once i get it
i really get people on my side
there are carl people
who can survive
my shark-like coldness
and there are those
who want something
more personal
i can be very devoted to those
who can stay the course

my soul is aching
for an impartial love of people
i'm at war with myself

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

In the early part of autumn 1990,
I began a course known as the PGCE
Or Post Graduate Certificate in Education
At a school of higher education
In the pleasant outer suburb of Twickenham,
Becoming resident in nearby Isleworth.
I began quite promisingly as I saw it
Even though my heart
Was not really in the course
But I genuinely saw the benefits
Of successfully completing it,
And as might be expected,
Excelled in drama and physical education.
I rarely drank during the day,
But at night I was sometimes so drunk
I was incoherent.
The following versified piece
Serves a testimony to this sad truth.
Its original was a letter
Typed to a close friend in about 1990,
Some three years or so
Prior to my coming to saving faith
In the Lord Jesus Christ.
And concerning a series of accidents
I'd recently suffered.
However, it was never finished, nor sent.
When it was recovered,
It was as a piece of scrap paper,
A remnant from a long lost past.
It was subsequently edited and reassembled,
Before being subject
To some kind of versification in 2006.
And then some half decade later,
Further work was performed on it,
But it was still pretty threadbare for all that.

Incident in St. Christopher's Place

Dear, I haven't been in touch
for a long time.
Sorry.
The last time I saw you
Was in St. Christopher's Place.
It was a lovely evening...
when I knocked that chair over.
I am sorry.
Since then,
I've had not a few accidents
Of that kind.

Just three days ago,
I slipped out in a garden
At a friend's house...
And keeled over, not once,
Not twice, but three times,
Like a log...clonking my nut
So violently that people heard me
In the sitting room.
What's more,
I can't remember a single sentence
Spoken all evening. The problem is...

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

The following oddity, recently versified,
And even more recently
Afforded a fresh new title,
Is one of only a handful of works of mine
exhibiting the absurd
and affected writing style
I briefly adopted in the very early 1990s,
And which was typified
By an obsessive use of
such archaisms as "tristful" and "pheere",
although how much of it's
been based on something
I concocted more than two decades ago,
and how much of
more recent origin
I'm afraid I'm unable to say for certain.

Who Had He Not Sought Such Fatal Lethe

The playwright was most effective
As the dramatic illuminator
Of his own tristful destiny
As well as those of his kinfolk.
And of the two plays that treat
Of the tragic Tyrones
One features James,
His wistful pheere Mary,
And his two troubled offspring

A quartette of characters
Based respectively
Upon O'Neill's father James,
His mother Ella,
O'Neill himself,
And his elder brother, Jamie
Who had he not sought
Such fatal Lethe
Might have evolved into
A great actor like his father,
Or a writer like his brother,
Such was the luminous
Brilliance of his early promise.

How richly blessed he'd been
At birth with charm and intellect.
While part of the
Minim Department
Of Notre Dame University,
He was a favoured prince
Destined for a future
As a Catholic gentleman
Of exquisite breeding
And learning; and then
A prize-winning scholar
At Fordham, from which
He came to be expelled
For a foolish indiscretion.

While the other is an account
Of poor Jim Tyrone's
Last attempt at securing
Some kind of earthly felicity,
Through his love for a
Hoyden with a heart as vast
As his implausible life,
A Moon for the Misbegotten.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

The Loonie's Last Reckoning,
Based largely on events that took place
On the 16th of January 1993,
Was initially an adaptation
Of an autobiographical fragment
Possibly penned around 1996,
Which was then edited, reassembled
And versified for publication
As Remnants from Writings Destroyed 1
At the Blogster website
On the 10th of March 2006.
While in time, it was incorporated
Into an early version of the memoir,
Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child
Known as Spawn of the Swinging Sixties.
Only to be unearthed in late 2011,
And wedded to a versified translation
Of notes made probably around 1992,
Shortly before the events
In question took place,
And then awarded a striking new title.

The Loonie's Last Reckoning

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded

Drink me one day = 10 vodkas
7 1/2 pints 14 wines
1 bottle of wine + 6 gins + 4 pints
Or 2 bottles of wine + halfs then 4 pints
Or bottle of wine + 5 pints +
Cans and shorts.
Saw myself as a loonie
Of the Lunatic Underground

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded

Five + Two = Seven Units By 11.30
12.30 = Six Units 1.30 = 5+2 = Five
Units
6.30 = Four Units 7.30 = 3+2 = Five
Units
8.30 = 4+1 = Five
Units
12.30 = Free
Saw myself as a loonie
Of the Lunatic Underground

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded

Broken at last
With etiolated face
Tremulous hands
After so many years
Of semi-Icaran hubris

It was late in the afternoon
Of The 16th of January 1993
That my whole
Intoxicated universe
Finally exploded.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

Oblivion in Recession
First existed
As a series of rough notes
Scrawled on a piece
Of scrap paper
In the dying days of January 1993.

Oblivion in Recession

The legs started going,
Howlings
In my head.
Thought I'd go
Kept awake with water,
Breathing,
Arrogantly telling myself
I'd stay straight.
Drank gin and wine,
Went out,
Tried to buy more,
Unshaven,
Filthy white shorts,
Lost, rolling on lawn,
Somehow got home.
Monday, waiting for offie,
Looked like death,
Fear in eyes
Of passers-by,
Waiting for drink,
Drink relieved me.
Drank all day,
Collapsed wept
"Don't Die on Me".
Next day,
Double brandy
Just about settled me,
Drank some more,
Thought constantly
I'd collapse
Then what?
Fit? Coronary?
Insanity? Worse?
Took a Heminevrin,
Paced the house
All night,
Pain in chest,
Weak legs,
Lack of feeling
In extremities,
Visions of darkness.
Drank water
To keep the
Life functions going,
Played devotional music,
Dedicated my life
To God,
Prayed constantly,
Renounced evil.
Next day,
Two Valiums
Helped me sleep.
By eve,
I started to feel better.
Suddenly,
All is clearer,
Taste, sounds,
I feel human again.
I made my choice,
And oblivion has receded,
And shall disappear.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

Some months after appearing
In the Scottish Play at the Lost Theatre
In the one-time working class
West London suburb of Fulham,
I wrote the piece featured below,
Such a Short Space of Time.

But in the first instance
It was part of an unfinished short story,
Not a poem at all.
My parents were on vacation
During the period which inspired it,
Which is to say early in the summer of 1999.

Hence, I spent a lot of time at their house
Performing various tasks,
Such as watering my mother's flowers.
As well as this, I took sneaky advantage
Of their absence to transfer
Some of my old LPs onto cassette.

It was something my own music system
Was incapable of doing, unlike theirs.
And it was a profoundly unsettling experience,
To listen to songs that, perhaps in the cases
Of some of them, I'd not heard
For twenty years, or even twenty five, or more.

With a heartrending intensity,
Doing so had the effect
Of evoking a time
When I was filled to the brim
With sheer youthful joy of life
And undiluted hope for the future.

Yet as I did so, it seemed to me
That it was only very recently
That I'd heard them for the first time,
Despite the colossal changes
Brought about not just in my own life,
But the lives of all those of my generation.

Hence, I was confronted at once
With the devastating transience
Of human life,
And the cataclysmic effect
The passage of time exerts on all human life,
And it was a profoundly unsettling experience.

Such a Short Space of Time

I love not just those
I knew back then,
But those who were young
Back then,
But who've since
Come to grief, who,
Having soared so high,
Found the consequent descent
Too dreadful to bear.

With my past itself,
Which was only yesterday,
No, even less time,
A moment ago,
And when I play
Records from 1975, Soul records,
Glam records, Progressive records,
Twenty years melt away
Into nothingness.

What is a twenty-year period?
Little more than
A blink of an eye.
How could
Such a short space of time
Cause such devastation?
I love not just those
I knew back then,
But those who were young back then.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 2000s

In the summer of 2003,
I wrote about an hour's worth
Of Rock songs in response
To a request from my dad
For songs for a possible collaboration
With the son of a close friend.
They were as far from Hard Rock
As it's possible to be,
Being influenced by such relatively
Benign and melodic genres
As Folk, Pop and Soul.

The songs, some new,
Some upgrades of old tunes,
Were recorded on a Sony
CFS-B21L cassette-corder,
Which I think has been discontinued,
And were generally well-received.
Most have already been featured
In this collection of writings;
While all exist as MP3s,
Except Think the World of She,
And Love, You've Left Me Once Again.

So Lovelorn in London Town

From morn to friendless night
He tramps the streets
Just in case he might
Come across her he's a tragic sight
But he don't care
Love gives him might
He haunts the cafés and the discos
And the bars so lovelorn

He knows that he won't find her
But he's got to keep on trying
It gives some meaning to his life
It gives some substance to his time
It is his motive and his project
And his plan so lovelorn

He only met her once
But it changed his life
And it changed his type
And it changed his mind

They say he once was
A successful man
But he threw it all up
As if he'd gone insane
And he took to the streets
And another man was born

They say love comes but once
For some but when it does
It's like a mighty
Atom bomb inside
A disease that seizes
A gentle soul
And when it comes for him
He'd better try to hide

From morn to friendless night
He tramps the streets
Just in case he might
Come across her he's a tragic sight
But he don't care
Love gives him might
He haunts the cafés and the discos
And the bars so lovelorn.

O Lover Mine, Where are you Going?

O lover mine, where are you going?
O lover mine, where are you going?
Look, see the signs of summer coming,
You can't leave me at this time.

O lover mine, did I not please you?
O lover mine, did I not please you?
I tried so hard, tried hard to reach you,
Hoped that we were doing fine.

O Lover mine, I'll always love you,
O lover mine, I'll always love you,
No matter where, how far you're roaming,
I'll be here when you return,
I'll be here when you return,
I'll be here...I'll be here...I'll be here.

I Think the World (of She)

She's precious as can be,
She means so much to me.
She spells generosity,
and she's always
been a friend in need.

Been so many years
Since we met in our heyday,
So young and so free,
Sun-soaked days,
No tears, no cares,
Back in our heady heyday,
what I'm trying to say is,
I think the world of she.

She's tender as can be,
Her kindness is for real,
So real for me,
She sends warmth to me,
Like gentle poetry I can feel.

The thought of her makes me happy,
Because of all she's done for me,
I guess you'd say that I've been lucky,
She's one in a million, can't you see.

Been so many years
Since we met in our heyday,
so young and so free,
Sun-soaked days,
No tears, no cares,
Back in our heady heyday,
What I'm trying to say is,
I think the world of she.

I'm That Kind of Guy

If you're looking for a guy who will honour you,
I'm that kind of guy,
If you're looking for a guy who'll be moral too,
I'm that kind of guy,
I believe in what's right,
and should I take you out day or night,
You can be sure,
Should I come to your door,
You are safe with me.

I believe in pre-marital chastity,
I'm that kind of guy,
I believe in old-fashioned chivalry,
I'm that kind of guy,
and in the midst of romance,
Should I take you out to a dance,
You can depend, I will defend,
Our honour to the end.

So, come on, angel, take a chance on me,
A man who'll uphold your purity,
Ain't no kind of bad boy,
Some might see me as a sad boy,
But there's more to love than just you and me.

I believe in courtship purity,
I'm that kind of guy,
I believe in the sanctity of matrimony,
I'm that kind of guy,
And in the midst of romance,
Should I take you out to a dance,
You can depend, I will defend,
Your honour to the end,
I'm that kind of guy, I'm that kind of guy.

Love, You've Left Me Once Again

Love, you've left me once again,
Gone to catch an early plane,
Where you gonna fly this time,
In search of the perfect clime?

I am the one you leave behind,
Worried out of my tiny mind,
I was the one who saw you through,
I need your care and loving too.

Love, you've left the happy home,
You've pledged your solemn word you'll phone,
But I would rather you were here,
You've no conception of my fear.

Halfway across a crazy world,
Is no place for such an unknowing child,
If only you could see me cry,
Then maybe you'd stop to wonder why.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 2000s

Ancestry Culture Nationhood (All of Them)
Is the only full piece to be lifted
(And subsequently doctored)
From At the Tail End of the Goldhawk Road,
which has as yet only been published
as an eBook. And which will
Almost certainly cease to exist
In its present form in the very near future.
Its origins lying in the concluding passages
Of Spawn of the Swinging Sixties,
An early version of the memoir,
Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child,
Both it and Spawn also being part of Tail End.

Ancestry Culture Nationhood (All of Them)

1.

As a perfectly foolish young man I wanted...to prove to the world...something...I tried too hard...to do and be everything...to prove to the world...something...

I was a peacock, swathed in decorative gallant dandyism,

of which I was an acolyte.

I've learned to love and honour inner masculinity at its purest...leadership, strength of will and purpose, protectiveness, compassion for the weak, courage and chivalry...Thanks to God.

I feel nothing but gratitude towards all the components which have gone into to making me unique in terms of my gender

...ancestry...culture... nationhood...all of them...

2.

There are those who might look at me and see an individual who treated some of the most precious gifts a person can be blessed with during the prime of their young life with a nonchalance so utterly cavalier as amount to blatant contempt.

In terms of natural endowment, these would include the kind of intelligence that produced an articulate speaker at just two years old, as well as health so robust that all serious childhood sicknesses were kept at bay until I was 13,

when I caught meningitis following a spell as a foreign exchange student in St Malo off the Brittany coast.

By my early twenties anyone who knew me then would be forgiven for believing that if anyone was destined for ultimate celebrity it was me, "le futur célèbre", as I was described in a letter in late '77 by a former friend from France,

or something similar.

These theoretical critics of mine might make mention of the fact that for all my lavish good fortune, I've finished up a lost soul haunted by the past, and tormented in the present by unfathomable regret.

That is far, far from the way I view my situation.

Some people in this city don't even have a roof over their head.

As for my being a lost soul, nothing could be further from the truth.

While I won't deny that I'm inclined to the occasional remorseful mood, the fact remains my soul has been salvaged not lost, which means that one day all my tears will be wiped away...for all eternity.

At least, that is my hope.

I'm not the most social of beings I'll admit, and yet paradoxically perhaps, I love to wander among crowds of people, gaining great comfort from doing so.

The truth is for one reason or another, I'm relatively incapable of pretending to be anyone other than myself in a social setting.

This in marked contrast to the myself of thirty years ago...a gifted social enchanter...

...as a perfectly foolish young man I wanted...to prove to the world...something...I tried too hard...to do and be everything...to prove to the world...something...

That said, I consider myself to be a person of far greater integrity today by the Grace of God.

At the same time, I've never been more aware of the necessity of my reliance on God, nor that He'll never leave me nor forsake me.

When all's said and done, I'm a deeply blessed man for all my superficial so-called woes, because my heart's desire has been fulfilled.

As for my supposed melancholia, this particular thorn in the flesh has been afflicting Christians for centuries.

To cite some examples for the sceptical...Martin Luther suffered for much of his life from a tendency towards dejection of spirits which he attributed to a variety of causes including spiritual oppression in the realm of the mind,

founder of the Quaker movement George Fox was by his own admission "a man of sorrows" in the early days of his walk with God,

poet and hymnodist William Cowper was a lifelong depressive who endlessly doubted his own eternal salvation,

Prince of Preachers Charles Spurgeon was prone to inexplicable anguish accompanied by lengthy bouts of solitary weeping, and so on and so on.

What though are the tears and trials of this brief life when compared to the fathomless joy that awaits the true Believer in Heaven?

3. (A Definitive Finale)

If I've given the impression over the course of this piece that I no longer see myself as an artist, then I've done so purely by accident.

What I resolutely don't do however, is subscribe to the theory of the automatically tormented nature of the creative artist.

Could God, the Creator of the universe, possibly condone such a role, which has legendarily entailed a variety of tragic conditions deemed to be characteristic of the "tortured artist" including addiction, depression, mental instability?

Perish the thought.

God wants artists to work for Him, the supreme Artist, to seek refuge in His love and care, where the sensitivity that is so often their undoing can be a blessing rather than a blight to them.

I can't deny I'm still deeply drawn to the creative genius of artists, but not in the way I used to be, which is to say from the position of one who worshipped them at their most turbulent and self-destructive, and thence sought passionately to emulate them...

...as a perfectly foolish young man I wanted...to prove to the world...something...I tried too hard...to do and be everything...to prove to the world...something...

...but from a distance, still appreciating them, but having a heart for them at the same time.

I especially feel for those artists whose sufferings have resulted in their lives being wrecked by alcohol, my own one-time near-nemesis.

I'd like to think that there were those, whether artists or not, who in consequence of reading my writings, come to the realisation that escape from alcohol addiction is possible through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

I'm not saying I haven't paid for my past in a worldly sense...

As a perfectly foolish young man I wanted...to prove to the world...something...I tried too hard...to do and be everything...to prove to the world...something...

What though are the woes of this brief life when compared to the fathomless joy that awaits the true Believer in Heaven?

What though are the wonders of this brief life when compared to the fathomless joy that awaits the true Believer in Heaven?

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