Here’s something a bit different.

For reasons quite unrelated to this post I stumbled upon a strange and slightly haunting artefact today. I refer to the picture above. It was given to me long, long ago, in a gesture, I believe, of sincere love. I should point out that we are talking about teen love here – the purest of love, but not always the best thought out. I failed to appreciate it properly, as such, at the time, and am suddenly harbouring feelings of guilt.

Not that there’s any shortage of things to feel guilty about in my past.

I’ve had to snip the bottom off it a bit for publication, as it gets a bit personal, lower down (no pun intended). The poem is by a fellow named Rabindranath Tagore,who sounds like a character from a Kurt Vonnegut novel but was, in fact, a Bengali poet and painter who won the Nobel prise for literature in 1913. So what I uncovered today turns out to be part of a very long story, I suppose.

The poem itself is here.

*

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving
stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward
by thee into ever widening
thought and action-
into that heaven of freedom,
my father,
let my country awake.

*

It’s difficult to know what possible association the poem has to the drawing and the (very brief) relationship that gave rise to it. It was a fairly cosmic period of my life. A lot of strange things happened.

I don’t know if the drawing actually means anything to anyone anywhere. I’d certainly be interested to hear if it did.

But I bring it into the light again as a way of saying, to somebody, both thank you and sorry. I’m sure that, in some language, there’s a word that means both.

Having spent the last week or so ranting about US gun laws and Utter Stupidity (the two terms being interchangeable) it occurs to me that other species of our planet must observe us and wonder what all the hype about ‘intelligence’ is.

Combining that with our continuing failure to face the realities of climate change (my own nation being amongst the worst offenders) …. and all that flora and fauna might be beginning to realise that the accident of our birth is turning out to have been a very serious accident indeed.

There is no way, of course, that I can express the sentiment nearly as well as did Eric Idle, who said ….

“So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!”

There is little more I can do, therefore, to limit my own stupidity, other than focus on just being merely silly. As follows ….

*

Behold the astral goat my friend
The snout that sniffs, the ears that bend
Receiving signals from the stars
Messages to Earth from Mars
Beware as well the winged baboon
That flies up there above the moon
And looks down on your wretched face
From vantage points in outer space
And fear you should the cosmic bee
Her nectar through the galaxy
The psychic moose that’s on the loose
Dark matter ducks, the Gibbous Goose
Look down my friend, but don’t look up
The universe is just a pup
But it will soon become the beast
It’s wrath and fury soon released
Await the final sacred cow
Go hide beneath the blankets now
Lest you be like the dinosaur
A victim of a meteor

*

Please look after your kids.

Following my humiliating (but not unexpected) recent defeat at the hands of the NYC Midnight judges I have meekly returned to my roots, cap in hand, to bore you with silly poems. Some a lot sillier than others but none requiring any serious thought – on my part or that of the reader.

I remember discovering, to my youthful dismay, that the plural of platypus is platypuses and not platipi. This is an outrage. How can such a delicate and graceful little animal be given such a cumbersome plural when a relatively clumsy oaf like the hippopotamus gets something so much more poetic? I won’t stand for it!

Anyway, I was considering the platypus last night whilst drinking heavily and cursing, yet again, the NYC Midnight judges, and thought it high time to express my feelings on this poorly appointed plural.

*

We are but mammals, you and I
Together with the platypi
Our species not in short supply
Such is our wish to multiply
We live on land yet yearn to fly
To hope just once, before we die
This gravity to yet defy
To rise one day, and touch the sky

*

By way of factual information, by the way, for those not familiar with this wide brown land, the platypus does not, it would seem, multiply veraciously, as I might have suggested for poetic convenience. Kangaroo, on the other hand (no plural required, they are almost never seen alone) breed like rabbits, and there are eight or nine of them on my front lawn right now.

Some of you may recall my expressions of surprise when a story of mine scored a 2nd place in the NYC Midnight Short Story Competition first round.

I spoke about it here, if you are interested or very bored.

This is an unusual event. I am normally weeded out as a joke in the first round and quickly discarded, but, occasionally, something slips through.

I can report, however, that in a return to normality, the judges awarded me with an equal last place in round 2. So I suppose I can return to writing silly meaningless ‘poetry’ and dine out on sour grapes for a while.

The feedback is always interesting in that it frequently seems self-contradictory. The following extract actually represents about 75% of the total feedback I received for this one.

*

“ The narrative’s journal structure is phenomenal, with the first section introducing this structure in its incredible and intriguing lines, “I am a survivor. My husband is a survivalist. There is a difference” and ending with the stunning revelation that “The notes will be brief and there will be errors of fact and clarity. For I am writing in the dark.” This section also successfully adds riveting elements such as the description of the bunker itself with its ammunitions stores and combustion stove around which they “bathe, cook, eat, sleep, talk and think.” The journal’s initial entry is distressing and compelling in equal parts, with the evocative metaphor of the “paratroopers, who descended like locusts to squabble over the scraps that the heavy artillery had left behind” and how these were “Evil little boys waving guns and chanting slogans they didn’t understand.” Katarzyna’s torturous experience, while deeply distressing and sickening, is realistic because rape throughout human history as been used as a weapon of war and sets the foundation for her lasting trauma. It makes perfect sense that she is “dying inside” and Aleksander’s expectation of sex underscores his inability to protect her, to understand and show empathy, and how he puts his needs before her own. All the journal entries have something engaging, wrenching, or thrilling about them, and the brief paragraphs that become single sentences generate a quick clip of a pace for the plot as it unfolds. Additionally, the way in which the accuracy of the dates devolve into question marks and finally, blanks, is fantastically reflective not only of the passage of time but also Katarzyna’s emotional trajectory. There’s so much in the story that’s tense, threatening, and/or bleak, from the strain between spouses in the bunker to the nightmares inside Katarzyna’s head to the nuclear holocaust outside the bunker. The final pages create further distress and conflict with the unknown figure approaching. It is a satisfying development when Katarzyna takes up her husband’s rifle and shoots him through the heart. I think you set the scene here wonderfully and create a complex character that the reader can follow throughout the story. Considering her experience, the isolation and cramped quarters, it’s not surprising that we watch this woman slowly going mad. The revelation that she kills her husband is so heartbreaking but makes perfect sense all things considered”

*

Go figure.