Bad Day Blues

This was written during the covid lockdowns - what disastrously misguided decisions they were! - and reflects my frustrated amazement as men's minds went mad. Joseph de Maistre wrote against the atheist and murderous French Revolution and is often bracketed with our own Edmund Burke (and how we can do with a revival of his thought!)

   Another poem written in the same vein - which some might denounce as sour but others would recognize as clear-eyed if despairing - is "On Having an Evelyn Waugh Moment," written in December 2014 and posted here on 17 January 2019.

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I woke in the morning feeling weird,
My God, was it covid? I scratched my beard:
    And suddenly I hated unconscious bias,
    And loathed all thought of the appallingly white;
    Death to racists! Castration for sexists!
    Patriarchy and capitalism were things of the night.
        Oh no, it was beyond a joke,
        I’d become woke!

I woke in the morning feeling strange,
My God, was it covid? Or a midlife change?
    For my wrist was limp, and my voice it minced,
    I ached for a toyboy with pecs like rumps,
    And my jeans were tight, and my crotch it bulged,
    My toupee was bouncy and I swished in pumps!
        Oh Lord, what could I say?
        I was gay!

I woke in the morning feeling faint,
My God, was it covid or some other complaint?
    Softly warbling about gendered autonomy,
    I stretched for my bra, suspenders and knickers,
    Then I shaved, did my makeup and anguished about dresses –
    I was meeting my group, “BoyzNowGirlz” (most of them vicars).
        Oh curses, despite lacking a fanny,
        I’d become a trannie!

I woke in the morning feeling off,
My God, was it covid? I had no cough,
    Instead, snarl-faced and bulging-eyed vain,
    I dreamt I was marching, chanting “Humans not Whores,”
    And “Wages due Housework” before texting home
    To check the au pair had swept all the floors.
        Oh rats, I could have been a terrorist,
        Instead I was a feminist!

I woke in the morning feeling ill,
My God, was it covid? I was hot then chill.
    I checked my phone: the cities were fired,
    Arson, looting and frenzy swirled in the streets,
    Obese, fleck-mouthed zombies, blaming oppression,
    Smashed their own neighbourhoods, exulting in tweets.
        What the hell, with a clatter
        I took the knee, screeching “Black Lives Matter!”

                Dear reader, de Maistre was right:
                Renouncing the Truth to dig a sump
                Darkens day to night –
                Where all will jump.

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© September 2020

"Strong Currents, Deep Water"

During my years in London I used to walk along the river bank from Kingston Upon Thames to Richmond - you  could convince yourself it was semi-rural. There was a sign on a slightly skewiff post planted just off the river bank, "Strong Currents, Deep Water." I made a note and put it in my jacket pocket where it lay forgotten for years until, disposing of the jacket, I finally found it. Hence this poem.

   An early poem along the same half-light, half-serious lines of a disabused man ruefully reflecting was "February 1981," written in the same month and year of the title and posted here on 16 February 2012. A more recent poem is "Well Met in Dorking," written in August 2013 and posted here on 18 July 2015.

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There’s barely a day without its fight,
   The bills backed up, the children foul,
Reproaches hurtling left and right,
   The woman scornful like a big-eyed owl;
Oh marriage, commitments, are all very well
But they light up a path to a freezing hell,
Where two are pinioned flank to flank
      And shackled with bricks and mortar:
   I know a sign on the river bank –
      “Strong currents. Deep water.”

And workplace assessments are soul-damning trash,
   “Yes-ing” and “no-ing” in a conference call,
Make a poor showing and your job’s gone smash,
   Future and pension thrown to the wall;
The Director of Colleagues was coolly phlegmatic,
More Mephistopheles than wisely Socratic,
He was permed, silk-suited and suavely swank,
      But his nod sent lambs to slaughter:
   I know a sign on the river bank –
      “Strong currents. Deep water.”

Oh, at night when the sky is black as a cloak
   And the bedclothes dank with fear’s own sweat,
I tug and tear at this cosmic joke,
   Finding mere molecules clumped and ill-met;
What justifies, confides a meaning,
To the human animal coiled and keening?
Will the solar wind, unconscious, blank,
      Scatter us, quarter to quarter?
   I know a sign on the river bank –
      “Strong currents. Deep water.”

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© June 2020