Self portrait

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite impassive, recording, not thinking."
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin

Self timer set:
Snapshots are my journals
Proof of life

I am a viewpoint,
A moving image stream,
A series of tableaux

My memory is full
Battery low
Too dark
Poor image
Delete


 1/11/10

Memento Mori

Dense blackness yields
To a chill grey dawn
Clammy air sticks
To my skin

Dread stalks me
Death marks out its targets
Nearing with each step

Soon enough, it will strike
To my very heart.
Much better to face
The threat myself
Than watch helpless
As it takes those I love

The terrible calculus
Of such balancing
Sours the soul
But denial is vain evasion

The memory of yesterday's
Crisp sunshine seems
An age away
A paradise
Before the Fall


26/10/10

Marathon men

The slap of trainers on tarmac
Echoes down the still-dark street

Youths are happily a-bed,
Snugly dreaming - it's the
Middle-aged who feel the need
To run, their faces red,
Mouth open, gasping, as they try
To beat their personal best,
To improve, transcend

They never can outpace
The thing from which they run:
It's perched on their shoulder
A shade, whispering doom.

The end of days

Loss changes the calendar
Transforms it into a minefield
Of broken anniversaries
Missed events
Empty chairs,
A rosary of grief
Rotating with the months.

Forgetting seems like treachery
To the gone,
Yet without it, who can bear
To face the rolling years?

Philosophy's task

There is knowledge
And then there is certainty
We can lightly know a fact
It sits in mind, untroubled and untroubling,
Engendering no warmth
No strong emotion, no fear

But reality intrudes
A visceral certitude
Of consequences sure and soon
And wholly negative

Sometimes this shift
Is occasioned by events
Newsflashes from the outside world
Broadcasts from fate

And sometimes by thought
The erosion of plausible denial
The collapse of cant

Ecologists say "Extinct is forever"
Glib, tautological, as a slogan
For their very specific, very urgent cause-
They also speak a general truth

As Socrates said, philosophy's task
Is learning to die

The benefits of age

Withering leaves are flags,
Signing the march of the seasons:
They are lost in the wind

Youth has gone; stuff fills the void:
A life of shopping, cleaning, and waiting

Unimaginable to the urgent young
Who, breathless, move on:
Next party, next girl, next kiss

Filling their days
With a chaos of pleasure
But unable to luxuriate in it:
No time! No time!

I'm slower now, calmer,
More thoughtful;
A line is drawn: that's done, over.
Now, what's next?

Old age: views on life and death

Life
My memory's not
What it was- but then,
Neither is the world

Hands shake and tremble
I open the newspaper
Head shakes and trembles

Tea and cakes were treats
To fill time between kisses
Now they're all there is

A winter mountain
My summit is topped in white
The cold reaches deep

I bask in the warmth
Of company: it's good to
Be seeing old friends


Death
Old age is not bad
When you consider what the
Alternative is

The postman brings cards
For funerals every day:
I will go to mine

I check the paper
To see whether I am dead
If not, I get dressed

Grey skies: Brown leaves drop
As nature prepares to sleep
I'll not see her wake