Everything to Prove to the World Something: Selected Verse and Lyrics 1

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 ***. 

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.

 

All the Rivers of Tears

 

I feel at one with sweethearts

Through the years,

With the wartime lovers

Who went overseas,

All the shattered hearts,

All the rivers of tears,

I feel them all.

 

Verses of love,

Lovers who must part,

Portraits of love

Worn so very close to the heart,

All the lovers lost,

Loves that never even start,

I feel them all.

 

A Multitude of Woes

 

As a young man,

I was always obsessed

By melancholy.

I saw deep sadness,

The quality

That so tormented my heroes,

Such as Arthur Rimbaud,

 

And Montgomery Clift,

As glamorous and romantic,

But it’s not…

It’s not remotely romantic,

When you yourself are adrift,

And weighed down,

By a multitude of woes.

 

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.

 

Babycham Deers and Romantic Lands

 

South Pacific, Jiminy Cricket,

This world

I tried to gain access,

I tried to write

A book

That would capture

All my happiness,

 

Full of romance,

Life that was enhanced

By beauty and love,

Carousel and Disneyland,

Babycham deers

And romantic lands,

These patterns I wove.

 

The Girl Who Said Hello the First

 

If I wasn’t sure

Of all the nostalgia

I’d endure,

I would wish to explore

Some of those moments again.

 

How your mummy, she knew mine,

They’d been friends

For a little time,

Like the time that you explained,

Your first name, it was Jane.

 

I really loved you, Jane,

Though you only gave me pain,

You were the girl

Who said hello the first,

But it only ended for the worse.

 

In our local swimming pool,

I swam so close to you,

Did you smirk

To your bob-haired friend,

Between the deep and shallow end?

 

So I just shyly slinked away,

Feeling such a fool that day,

Pet Clark reinforced

My bitter woe,

Singing My Love on the radio.

 

I really loved you, Jane,

Though you only gave me pain,

You were the girl

Who said hello the first,

But it only ended for the worse.

 

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 are 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.

 

Ethanol Thief of Youth

 

Auto-annihilation is stupid,

It breaks hearts.

And ruins lives,

I hate that I was ever self-destructive,

I rue the day I became entranced

By its shadowy charisma,

 

While alcohol spoiled my life:

Poor Jo-Jo was right

To warn her cherished daughter

Of its insidious malignancy.

I was one of the felicitous ones

In that it didn’t entirely destroy me,

 

But despite its lack of glamour,

In comparison to

other more romanticised intoxicants,

It’s among the most lethiferous of drugs

That stole from me

What remained of my gorgeous youth.

 

Or Happier At Least

 

I was happy,

TV nightly,

As a family,

 

Simple pleasures,

Any Umbrellas,

Family holidays,

 

I was happy,

Perhaps the world was happy,

Or happier at least.

 

For a Long Lost Espanya

 

O how

Ruefully I pine

For a long lost Espanya,

What I wouldn't give,

To be young again...

And happy as I was back then...

 

Maria, full of peace, 

Do you remember

Francis Albert

Sing songs of Tom Jobim

That mournful afternoon...

Happy as you were back then...

 

O for

That wide-eyed

Impression of yours,

Paquita La de Murcia

Of your beloved Marilyn...

Happy as you were back then...

 

O how

Ruefully I pine

For a long lost

Espanya,

What I wouldn't give,

To be young again...

And happy as I was back then...