I arouse myself from Morpheus’ embrace,
In panic,
and prowl the stark, bleak blackness
of my flat.
Is it that I cannot contemplate
with equanimity
the possibility
that, once returned to sleep,
I’ll not awake?

I have now reached the age
where concern with
the colour of my *****
and the colour and consistency
of my faeces
have become matters
of matutinal preoccupation.

The symbols of arriving springtime have come late this year
in north-west London.
The blossom on the apple tree outside my bedroom,
heralding the anticipation of renewal
and the promise of life to come
has been delayed by several weeks.
And the flowering is less profuse than ever.

I try to seek the metaphor;
the concatenation of my personal survival
conveyed by the tree’s own growth.
But what does the linkage signify?
Another year?  Another life?  Another death?
Or none of these?

And if I yearn for signs of immortality
then I am doomed to morbidity,
as the tree is programmed to portray
a slow, inexorable but unmistakable decline.

And still I know that morning light
will daily draw me to my bedroom window
and the forlorn desire to see some sign
some hope, some promise, some assurance
that there is no inevitability
of change,
save that it be change itself.
Instead of which I am presented with
a demoralising symbol of uncertain hopes.

Spring should be an optimistic season;
the blossom on the tree should herald
a renewal, not a death.
But this poor springtime growth has
merely served to reinforce
the fears and sadnesses of
Winter’s  tribulationary concerns.

ENVOI
Five days the blossom stayed
and then was gone.
Nor were concerns allayed,
but hopes were thus betrayed
and possibilities undone.

I do not celebrate this pagan feast,
But others do, I know,
And some may call it Chanukah,
Or worship Christmas snow.

But call it whatsoe’er you will;
Light candles, deck your tree,
Or merely give your heartfelt thanks,
Please read this homily.

You do not need a good excuse
To celebrate a feast
You only need to have your fun
Before you are deceased.

They tell me that
inserting a stent in an artery
these days is no different
than lancing a boil in my ***
when I was a kid.

It should reassure me,
but the use of a phrase
such as invasive surgery
fills me with such dread,
as does the hated “C” word
that rattles round involuntarily
in my head.

And even worse
is when they call it
Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
or PCI for short
but not for long
before the dreaded doubts
once more invade my mind
in sinuous counterpoint
to that more disquieting
portent of invasion.

Knowing that I had but a short span
of time before
I would depart,
and cognisant of all that I had built
upon the trellis of my dreams.
I wondered how best to preserve
those unique sentiments
as my endowment to the world.
There seemed to be
no formula for one such as myself
to entertain the posthumous
yet valid sustentation of my life.

But then the gods,
or such as pass  for them
in my philosophy,
took pity on this sinner
and vowed to store his yet
unsatisfied  expressions
of Life’s truths
for all posterity.

They salted a rain cloud
with my spawning seed
that I might yet persist
in word and deed.
Then storms produced
a prophecy,
a bequest to my progeny
that when I am no more,
and worms have done their worst,
the nascent grains of my philosophy
shall still remain intact and undispersed.

And so these morbid lines
continue to enhance the pages
of this conduit;
to bore, excite, annoy, exasperate
and otherwise to plague their readership.
But have no fear:
take heart dear reader,
persist in honest faith
and reassurance that
the peregrinations of this verbal inning
is closer to its end
than its beginning.

There is a taste to violence,
a tang, a smell,
a strange delight
that thrills and yet disgusts
the fickle sense of worth,
the sweet austere caress
that fills and then combusts
to leave the hated spirit
stained in hell.