We all have things to obsess about, of course. Old age is a bit of a thing for me, as I have just confessed, recently. But we all obsess about our hair just a little bit, don’t you think?Women might obsess a bit about their boobs and backsides (does my bum look big in this?) and men about some other personal measurements, but we all seem to hope that our hair might somehow disguise our other frailties. But ‘bad hair days’ leave us exposed to the world.

I was around in the sixties and seventies. Hair was important back then. I had lots of it. Long flowing blond curls. Did it help me through those difficult adolescent years? Probably not.

The handsomely weathered face that I hide behind here might suggest that I have an abundance of age defying follicles. But I don’t. Most of them deserted the sinking ship long ago.

Anyway …. Esther provided a five word challenge this morning on the subject (my morning, anyway, it might have been her evening. I’m on the bottom of the planet. Standing upside down from a northern hemisphere perspective. That may be what causes my hair to fall out) and I gave it a try. I may, as usual, have gone a little off script …. a few five word comments, all unhappily joined up together (that’s two more).

Here it is

***

Hair. Everywhere. It shouldn’t be
Don’t dare. Stare. At me
My naked head to see
So bare. Cold. Up there
Where it used to be

***

As if you haven’t already heard enough from me.

I do have a bit of an obsession about being old. I admit it. But has anybody noticed? Meg? Cyranny? Kate?

And my pal Stoner probably hasn’t noticed it at all and probably wasn’t even thinking about it when she posted her thing about packing (I’m fairly sure that she’s under 100 years old, and that’s when these things start to really bite – and geeeez, I started to feel past it even before that) but I read her post and this is what emerged in response.

I haven’t even edited it. My latest story was rejected by the NYC Midnight people today, so I’m never writing again. I’m a bitter and twisted old man.

***

Don’t look back

It’s time to pack

The past must stay behind

This all must end

My only friend

Stay lonely in my mind

Come what may

I’m on my way

The path is dark but clear

Come what will

I’ve had my fill

It’s all downhill, from here

***

The picture is of a painting that my mother hung over my cot when I was a baby. It’s a poor reproduction and it has suffered through time. But it remains very special to me.

*********

Cyranny suggested here that she had a wonderful childhood (that’s what she said at the start of the post, anyway, so I just ran with it. She may have denied it later) and that is certainly my remembered experience, likewise. Others have informed me that I am mistaken, that in fact my childhood was influenced by all sorts of negativity and unpleasantness. But that’s not how I remember it. And if I can’t rely on my own memory then what can I rely on???

But if I’m wrong then it would suggest that it’s all been a dream and so I thought … maybe that’s it. Maybe this is just a dream and I’m writing to you from within that dream … though you are all, I suppose, in that dream with me …

But I really did wonder if, from birth, one begins to dream of what lies ahead and of what one’s life might become. But as time goes on one’s life takes its own twists and turns and doesn’t really take the same direction as the dream, but the dream is happy to adapt to circumstances and alter its past so that it always stays aligned with the only reality that it knows. So eventually the dreamer (you and I) comes to an inevitable point where the dream becomes a fulfilled prophesy.

But the dreamer doesn’t like the prophesy and thinks, “What went wrong? What can I do about this?” The answer is obvious. It’s time to start dreaming again.

So the dreamer dreams of being the little boy who thinks he can dream of whatever he wants …. but he is doomed, eventually, to dream of being the dreamer. And around and around it goes.

Does that make any sense to anyone? Or am I just dreaming?

Anyway …. I wrote another silly poem about it ….

***

Oh, to be that little boy

Each little thing, a little toy

Each little story, little book

Enchantment with each little look

Oh, to be again so small

When now I stand so very tall

Please gently tuck me into bed

Put little dreams within my head

Oh, to be so sweet. Naïve.

Oh, to sleep with make-believe.

To wake with every day anew

With every dawn a different view

I’ll dream forever. Or until

I wake to find I’m dreaming still

With treasured dreams I cannot keep

Until, again, I fall asleep

Each dream a dream, and once begun

A dream of what I’ve now become

Each dream will reach this moment when

I dream to be that boy, again.

***

I have posted a couple of NYC competition entries in the last couple of days and I’m staggered to find that some people actually read them. Or claimed to have, anyway. Thank you. You really didn’t have to. The NYC people pay judges to do that (though I suspect that they don’t pay them much). But again I say thank you.

But enough of that. Last night I wrote a poem for my friend Meg who lives with her dad and has pet fish. It was a cheap gift to her based mainly on my discovery that daughter rhymes with water.

I’m wondering if publishing it here diminishes the value of the gift. I’m sure that she’ll let me know ….

Anyway, this is a very long winded way of providing something much much shorter to read …

The love of my life
From my wife
Came my daughter
I nestled her
Wrestled her
Carefully taught her
She’s my every wish
Such a dish
Who’d have thought her
So real
Makes me feel
Like a fish out of water.