Minha mãe sempre me contou a mesma história
De como Narcissus quebrou Drinick
Porque nem sempre o amor é suficiente
Ás vezes ele só causa dor

Narcissus foi o primeiro amor de Drinick
A primeira verdadeira paixão
Drinick foi o único amigo de Narcissus
Durante longos verões e todo o resto do tempo

Narcissus nunca chorou
Nem quando sentiu dor
Drinick nunca desacreditou
Nem quando chegou ao fundo do poço

Então Narcissus quebrou Drinick
Em pedaços tão pequenos
Que ninguém seria capaz de consertá-lo
E ninguém nunca consertou

Minha mãe sempre me contou a mesma história
De como Narcissus quebrou Drinick
Porque nem sempre o amor é suficiente
Ás vezes ele só causa dor

Narcissus se foi e nunca mais voltou
Drinick ficou e nunca mais correu
A história dos dois morreu
No dia em que Narcissus quebrou

Minha mãe sempre me disse
Nunca seja como Narcissus
Que perdeu tudo o que tinha
E nunca seja como Drinick
Que foi deixado sem nada

Minha mãe sempre me contou a mesma história
De como Narcissus quebrou Drinick
Porque nem sempre o amor é suficiente
Ás vezes ele só causa dor

Eu já fui Narcissus
E já tive meu Drinick
Mas a história se repetiu
Minha mãe sempre me disse

Quando Narcissus quebrou Drinick
Uma jovem lua pairava no céu
Naquela noite as estrelas não apareceram
E todas elas se apagaram do olhar de ambos

My mother always told me the same story
How Narcissus broke Drinick
Because love is not always enough
Sometimes it only causes pain

Narcissus was the first love of Drinick
The first true passion
Drinick was the only friend of Narcissus
During long summers and all the rest of the time

Narcissus never cried
Nor when he felt pain
Drinick never disbelieved
Nor when he reached the bottom

Then Narcissus broke Drinick
In such small pieces
That no one would be able to fix he
And no one ever fixed

My mother always told me the same story
How Narcissus broke Drinick
Because love is not always enough
Sometimes it only causes pain

Narcissus was gone and never returned
Drinick stayed and never ran again
The story of the two died
On the day that Narcissus broke

My mother always told me
Never be like Narcissus
He lost everything he had
And never be like Drinick
That was left with nothing

My mother always told me the same story
How Narcissus broke Drinick
Because love is not always enough
Sometimes it only causes pain

I've been Narcissus
And I've had my Drinick
But the history repeated
My mother always told me

When Narcissus broke Drinick
A young moon hung in the sky
That night the stars did not appear
And they all went out of the eyes of both

A young man was walking along when he came across monk who was sitting on the side of the path meditating.

The young man, curiously stopped. “You are not from here? For I know everyone in this kingdom, and everyone know who I am. My name is Narcissus, son of Cephissus, and I am King of this land. Where do you come from, and what are you doing in my kingdom?

The Buddhist monk sat silently, and continued to meditate. His eyes were closed and at his side was a banana and a pale of water.

“Did you hear me? I am Narcissus and I am King of this land. If you know me like my people do, you would know that; I am honest, I am kind, and I am loving and full of compassion. I am fair and just. I am an advocate of peace, I judge no-one, and my subjects love me. And you sir, what are you?”

The monk opened his eyes, took the banana and peeled it. He halved it and offered Narcissus the King the other half, then continued meditating without saying a word.

Narcissus ate his banana, musing at the monk who didn’t speak. Why do you not speak?” asked Narcissus. I am the King and I demand to be answered when I ask a question.”

It was deathly hot, so the monk offered Narcissus a drink from his pale of water.

“I am thirsty. I will accept your offer,” said Narcissus. He drank all that was in the ladle and helped himself to another. He stood and waited for the water in the pale to become still again. Then he pitched over and looked into it, admiring his reflection, and smiled. I am still beautiful he thought. Again he addressed the monk, asking him who he was.

The monk leant over and kissed Narcissus on the feet, and bowed to him without saying a word.

Narcissus peered down at monk, smiled, and said to himself, “strange man,” and moved on.

The monk resumed his position, smiled, and whispered to himself,
“I am nothing.”

By: Cedric McClester

Narcissus had a cartharsis
When playing on stage with his band
With all due respect he was a beautiful wreck
‘Cos you never knew where he would land
Sadly his affliction was ****** addiction
That eventually got out of hand
Which despite his gift caused a riff
With the members of his band

Call him Narcissus
Or even Cobain
The flip side of euphoria
Often is pain
Which sometimes can lead
To one’s self-distain
Or an act of suicide
If it must be explained

Narcissus could be capricious
You never knew what to expect
And he could engage people from a stage
By challenging their intellect
Making them take the plunge into grunge
‘Cos he was the architect
He’d play for hours on end
When he became circumspect

Call him Narcissus
Or even Cobain
The flip side of euphoria
Often is pain
Which sometimes can lead
To one’s self-distain
Or an act of suicide
If it must be explained

Despite having a child
And also a wife
He had a certain distain
For his own life
Success cut his insides
Just like a knife
To the point where he decided
To take his own life

Narcissus was self-pernicious
As a consequence of his deep depression
So he took a ride on the wild side
Which also should serve as a lesson
Don’t take what you have for granted
Your gifts might well be your blessin’
And that is the lesson my friend
In the end this poem is addressin’

Call him Narcissus
Or even Cobain
The flip side of euphoria
Often is pain
Which sometimes can lead
To one’s self-distain
Or an act of suicide
If it must be explained
























(c) Copyright 2015, Cedric McClester.  All rights reserved.

Rain falls from the clouds
Water from the sky
I'll be ******
if you think you can
**** with me one more time

Narcissus has a script
Narcissus has a plan
Narcissus wants to see you do
a little song and dance

He's under the illusion
Everyone around him is dumb
Offer any logical opinion
And once more he's on the run

Narcissus offers you a fantastical amazing deal
Narcissus offers a real awesome solution
Narcissus will conveniently be
too busy or forgetful
to follow through on his promises
Naricissus leaves you in a web of confusion

Don't trust him
Let that ship set sail
Any ounce of self-respect you lend to him
Will check-bounce to no avail

Real men don't abandon responsibility
Abandon other humans, ex-lovers, children
For familiar blank void shores
What only matters is sending Narcissus on a flight
onto Icarus's wings, watch him burn, in the light of a perfect
sun
Forget the blank void shores
Your mirror is cracked like your soul
Because when it rains it pours

He's under the illusion
Everyone around him is dumb
His only love is himself
His mirror is a pair of mental handcuffs
And he's on the wing of Icarus
Soaring straight into the sun

Everyone around him is dumb
So he thinks
As he soars
Into the sun
Everyone is dumb

The reflecting light hits his mirror
The mirror that is never enough
And Narcissus finally sees from the light of the sun- himself
And it's far too late
To remove the handcuffs

So much for the familiar blank void shores
Because when it rains it pours

Narcissus in chains
Head hung in shame
Where once was beauty
Now nothing remains
No other to blame
Self-bound and tamed
The pitiful, once proud
Narcissus in chains

A flower in bloom
Eventually wilts
Bright leaves growing dim
As essence is spilt
Lifeblood grows weak
Decrepit and stained
All pretty things fade
As the earth lays claim
Broken and twisted
Like narcissus in chains

Reflected in a pool
An image shows true
Until shattered and torn
By a rock falling through
Rippling, tattering
Illusion no more
Cracked and fragmented
As one's inner core
And what's left on shore
Now forever is changed
Who made you so
Oh, narcissus in chains

Time steals beauty
And flowers, they rot
Clear pools dry up
Their waters forgot
As things fall to change
One still remains:
The pitiful, once proud
Narcissus in chains

the inertia of animation of Narcissus...
  the water that becomes ice
of a fixation...
in visage...
           if only Narcissus found
himself...
     fixating on his shadow...
then again...
whatever Jung proposed,
in schematic,
and without mythological
imagery...
              to propose a counter...
has been lost
to the vague attempts of
countering mythology with
mystification of the shadow...
borrowing from Kant...
a shadow is something deemed
cold...
  i say... a shadow is something
deemed animate...
Narcissus fell in love with
an inanimate reflection of himself...
and this is why Jung
failed to explain the shadow...
   in that...
  his explanation does little
justice to mythology...
  and serves nothing more than
mysticism...
how can mythology not be treated
seriously...
when the current contest
of lived to recorded time
is exponentially comical...
    myth is time with the logic
of said myth, being kept as...
what coincides with
whatever happens
                    now to happen later,
having borrowed from
what happened in the past,
a past, that... mediates the impeccable
intricacy of scientific prodding...
to disavow a humanism of
the, "grand explanatory project"...
as if... that will not be countered
by an irrational tomorrow...
to the rationalism of...
oh... say... 3 billions year, give or take.
the shadow is too mystical in
Jungian terms...
my explanation of the shadow is...
counter to Narcissus...
the demigod who...
looking at his shadow...
                      made a more subliminal
fascination...
  the mere form,
   and how thought somehow
contradicted consciousness (dasein)...
Jung took the mystical,
   archetypical route...
i took the mythological,
archaic route;
i guess we both returned to the same
conclusion...
        only that...
there wouldn't be a Narcissus
without a lake,
since there would be no Narcissistic
observation on either sea
or river...
   but i sure as hell can cast
a shadow onto the sea,
as i can, onto a river.

rarely do i have a title before a poem,
but sometimes it feels like i've abstained
from ******* for a month and i write one down;
i'm surprised i didn't take the bait,
i was a blind man that was give sight years later,
every gold-digger's wet-dream some might add,
but what post-Marxism has revealed is that
that bourgeoisie like to belittle those of menial-task
labour rather than the upper-tier socialites,
it's just that they don't possess insignia of power,
they exercise their power on the lowest kind,
men who'd gladly spend a hot summer's day toiling
the fields in full happiness of physical splendour
than spend it pampered in a Versailles parlour kin -
they think books are their macaroons...
i should have not minded my self-worth so much
and settled for the prize of easy-living,
it was more like a self-obsession but made kinder
with the word solipsism... whatever it was,
i spent a month in St. Petersburg like Al Paccino in
Alaska insomniac witnessing the white nights...
i could write a honorary poem with rhyme and
perfect punctuation... but life isn't like that...
it was a night to remember, a great **** on a bed
with a tortoise green headboard and a line of mirrors
where the concept of ******* was made clear:
Narcissus watching himself ******* with nymph
after nymph until Echo's turn came; it was no longer about
the face or beauty, but the insect-like banality,
Narcissus inventing fiction, ******* in-front of a mirror,
discharged and opened a Pandora's box for himself,
pronoun usage... strange how all monotheists contest
the existence of one among no other, like polytheists
contests the existence of one among many... like now...
if they be gods, their names do not necessarily denote
a chance encounter and formal airs or grievances mastered
for a brief conversation; very much resides in their poetic
investment being banked, that Narcissus, less noun
and more imagery is best understood -
for i claim that poetic techniques are equally needed in
the lessons of grammar: such that metaphor,
onomatopoeia, imagery, pun are equal with noun, verb,
adjective... etc.

rude words? crude words? well, i guess
you're fine with the carnage of images,
you abstract someone in alternative versions
of dimension and say a £-D person doesn't matter...
when did Luis XIV ever bow before a *******?
so she calls you up, this rich, pampered,
self-righteous Cinderella hopeful from
St. Petersburg with a flat about 10 minutes
shy from the the Hermitage...
she's walking on glass, i can hear her from
a mile away like a shark sniffing a droplet
of blood from a mile, the salt, the salt
agitates it's senses, god be merciful,
but god wasn't with missing eyelids on
aquatic creatures and serpents, i'm guessing
the Darwin in me swoons to say:
eyelids breed dreams, mammalian blood,
no eyelids, no dreams,
amazing how a rainbow can penetrate a
cave of darkness, don't give me the meaning
of dreams, Freud, give me how it happens,
your why is perfect for the rich,
a second coming of communism -
those neo-**** punks don't know what
they're defending, they think is glam-rock
style obituaries, it's degenerate culture
right on the pitch of saying... it's a fork.
no, i don't have any respect...
why did you leave Edinburgh, she asked.
i don't know, he replied.
now comes the abstracting of rigid
fiction systems due to the psychology of
being attracted to ancient pronouns,
after all psychology was always attracted to
ancient pronoun uses,
we have the scholarly etymology from ego
as the up-keeping of Greek -
fair enough, keep the alphabet, but forget about
the ideas behind it... but wait, you kept both!
and the urban etymology from self
as the insertion of slang & slur and what
other nonsense you'd come up with for applause...
so she calls you up after you asked her:
those anti-contraceptive pills working?
yes.
you asked me to not use a ******.
yes.
can we keep it casual?
yes.
am i looking at torture instruments in a museum?
yes.
**** me, i better get drunk every night and hope
for an early death... 'cos that's what i'm doing right now!
i don't want to live more than i had wished to live...
every ******* time i open *harold norse'
autobiography: memoirs of a ******* angel i'm nagging,
i read the **** thing, too much premature **** in it -
or.. swearing... a healthy approach to a vault of vocabulary -
it's not a version of bankruptcy, it's just economics babe,
say it blunt, use a sharp knife... better that than
saying it sharp, and having to use a blunt knife,
believe me, you'll be taking oaths on a guillotine by then...
but you'll find it easier buying a harold norse memoir
than one book of his poetry...
it's antiques we're dealing with, this ain't
alan ginsberg's howl, it's the fringe, a scotland of
the roman empire, antiques!
i do wish i never said: get an abortion...
but the dialectical dichotomy in me that some would
say less eloquently as being schizophrenia now wishes
i didn't... but... what's that argument for feminism?
i forget taking contraceptive pills he ***** me on my period
or he ***** me on my period and i get impregnated,
so this is some miraculous ****-up situation by chance?
she said the exact words: i think i'm pregnant.
the Cartesian in me says: i think... so i'm guessing
she doubts she is.
better still... i don't know!
so she is, she isn't... my truthful reply would be...
i, don't, have, any, money... she's the one with
a spare apartment roughly 10 minutes from the *******
Hermitage and i'm stuck in limbo to her game plan of
having parents and never growing up...
well of course poetry doesn't sell, we don't have
patronages from popes, and if only english teachers
and aristocrats write in this medium...
then you're all about to pack your bags for
Disneyland...
still the first page from that autobiography ****** me off,
i don't know why, there's so much pompous pie
in it... given social stratification the outcasts feel
empowerment by rebelling against social norms and
expectations, while the social in-casts have to feel
shame... and this is an existential shame, a sense of
purpose without a sense of continuum -
that's what's bothering me, it's that shady grey area
of ratios 2 : 1 in China, 2 : 3.4 in England or...
1 : 2 (single mother, two children)... if i really did a runner
would i write for zilch? if i did a runner i'd run blind
completely, i wouldn't expose myself to some minor
event in my life... i'll repeat...
approximately 10 minutes... from the Hermitage...
i can see the Shard of London as a toothpick from where
i'm sitting on the odd day in the park...
my position isn't exactly one of power, but more of gob.

apparently that's also me:
outside the internet
segment of my life...

http://tinyurl.com/ybu5nujl

although i'm glad
that it's not everyday...
birthday parties
of 18 year old
girls are............
       exhausting...

no, really...
   when i left the party i left
a girl standing in the door
attempting to woo me in
for the night...
left lamenting asking
people:
do you know the direction
to hell?!

****...
people boast on the internet
all the time...
      suntans,
or some exotica from
a holiday in Thailand...
never a little piece of
Piracy in terms of
skin color from Hackney,
east London...

      i'm starting to contemplate
one thing,
and one thing alone...
what would the demigod
Narcissus make
of a photograph,
if a mirror was smashed?
perhaps like any mortal...
i abhorred and subsequently
abhor watching video
footage of myself...

i simply gather...
Narcissus has no memory faculty...
a photograph is a memory atom,
a mirror is an object...
and the visage reflected in it
is also a memory, albeit
passing...
     ergo fluid...
  
Narcissus can be Narcissus before
a mirror, looking down
on the still water of a lake...
but sure as ****
he doesn't have the ***** looking
at a photograph...
  apparently Narcissus becomes
Dorian...
        the imagination...
stemming from **** *******
and blocking
reproduction...
          
Narcissus could never peer
and bind himself to a Gemini visage
within the confines of the sea,
or a river...
   hence?
     out of curiosity...
what would Narcissus do...
  with a photograph?

our sole material possessions, have become our deepest & solidified regrets: i count myself boastful, at having such a horde of possessions... works really well within a feng shui dynamic... which probably is a higher tier conceptualißation of the yin & yang... look! so much less time spent cleaning your materialistic worth, to peacock in a narcissus-mirror, that others will never seem to see: given they're also striving. failures? my most precious possessions... given that i'm the only person laughing-out-loud in the vicinity of a mile's worth of radius... yes, "solipsistic" laughter will always be deemed menacing... i swear to god... narcissus is the archetype of a vampire... for me, the story of him and echo has a different narrative chamber... he's a automaton, it's not that he fell in love with his reflection, it's that he never saw it! he was imbued with a automaton self-prefixation to do what was invested in him: to self-love... to me the whole conjuring of narcissus is very much akin to saying: narcissus is the father of the vampiric myth... to me he didn't see himself in the lake, there was no reflection, as a deity, his inner mode of "thinking" elevated him beyond the fickleness of a mortal creature, who does pander to his visage, once with mirror, now with photograph... by the way... you look thinner in a mirror than in a photograph... why? you're alone!

oh, don't think about it -
   these days "they're"
weeding out intelligent people,
not the dummies -
    and i don't mean "idiots":
i mean the *status quo
             enforces - stabilißer:
the membrane layer
                         of society;
the only chance of success
these days:
   is the ability to teach yourself
how to become bored;
and that's going to be hard...
   you don't have to teach yourself
procrastination:
    that's a pleasure...
  but boredom? that's a chore...
and you need to teach yourself that
"quality".

with every photograph
i've come to realize
that:
      i barely recognize
    myself...
  in that:
i don't! i can't recognize
myself!
            antithesis of
the Victorian prejudice...
  a photograph doesn't
steal a soul...
          to be frank:
i've been robbed
                   of a memory!
how else will you explain
paranormal
phenomena...
         within the confines
of the anti-matter
Noumenon?
            isn't anti-matter
crucial
in providing an explanation?!
why is, or how are,
the 2st century peoples,
the justified excuse makers?!
it's the 21st century!
a common argument...
so what?!
              the faact that it's the 21st century
us no excuse to market the
past centuries,..
  what is this... ******* Utopia?!
     i'm the sort of people
who says a moon landing never happened...
because it's anti-Pythagorean...
to draw a hypotenuse...
you need to points...
   the vortex of coordinates,
a (0, 0), and a (1, 1)...
                       you would have
landed on the moon,
have you landed on it, twice...
once?
   once, upon once, it can be faked...
you need to land on the ******* thing
twice... before it can can be
solidified...
and agreed upon...
shame...
         the Soviets sent Laika into space...
but the h'Americans sent
the long lost cousin of Darwin...
   Albert Jr...
                  i'm not arguing that
man never managed to land on
the moon,
i'm arguing... he never managed
to land on it the second time...
        which is slightly worrying...
i can give you: landing on it the first...
but the fact that it didn't
for a revisionist second?
slightly worrying...
  in the least...
a photograph steals a memory...
come to "think" of it...
why would a photograph steal
a soul, and not a memory?
and why would the first
moon landing be a success...
while Apollo 13 be a failure?
            this is no conspiracy theory...
but it's somehow odd...
  first come first served
success story...
               i'm not denying
the first moon landing...
             i'm denying...
what am i denying?!
can't remember...
             flat earth? sure...
esp. when and only when
you are reading a map and navigating...
car... across the European continent...
esp. across the Rhine...
      what  could Narcissus
say, comparing a mirror to
a photograph?!
oh sure... we landed on the moon...
but why didn't we land on it
the second time round?
   you know why there is a conspiracy
theory surrounding
the moon landing?
    the Pythagorean principle
of a vector...
      (0, 0) - (1, 1) -
               the only source of proof,
is to prove it a second time...
the fact that there was no second
moon landing...
oh i believe the first moon landing
was a Las Vegas fluke...
       but the fact that no second
moon landing ever happened?
denies the prospect of
the first moon landing ever happening...
with an X...
    there's no Y... to market a Z
away from conspiracy...
   i can't deny the moon landing...
but with the advanced technology...
prior to the moon... Mars...

             such crude instruments
back in the 1960s...
      oh... the moon landing happened,
even if it didn't happen...
but why didn't it happen
a second time around?

  considering the fact...
the science requires at least two
examples of the same proof,
before it can be considered
unshakeable dogma...
  
   it's not a conspiracy theory...
if we are to be puritanically scientific
about, "things"...
there needs to be a second
moon landing for the first
moon landing to be agreed upon...
after all...
isn't science the rite of passage of
trial & error?

  no?
     first and sole attempt and all
is true?
   last time i heard...
that's not how science works...
then again:
i must be wrong...
             guess science is becoming
very much akin to religion...
how can you keep an article of faith,
akin to the moon landing...
with only... one... moon landing?!
- and subsequently
call it... a science?!
  
          i thought science required
a comparison litany?!
no?!
      might as well aim at:
the moon landing never happened...
the basic workings of science
is coordinates,
within the confines of a vector...
1 = it happened
0 - it didn't happen...

   prove it!
two words... prove it!
replicate a second moon landing!
i'll believe there ever was a moon
landing... if there is a second one!

“It really sickens me that you can’t take this life straight,” she said.

Her eyes were afire with a pink halo of hatred that smote her compassion. She reached for her coat and wrenched the cheap motel room door open. It made a small dull thud as it hit the brittle plaster wall. (I hoped my deposit would cover the damage.)

She was one surreal moment’s breath away from leaving me there for good.

“You’re a lonely old man because you’re a selfish old *******,” she said.

She disappeared down the walkway like some direful wraith caught in the night wind. The curt sound of her red highheeled shoes clicking the worn concrete. The inexplicable proof of her existence ferried away in a sea of incandescent tail lights that shown from the highway.  

Maybe she was right. Maybe I can’t take this life straight and never hope to. And, maybe I am selfish. But, I’m only selfish because I’m so **** lonely all the time. That’s the ***** of it. Life is a never-ending toilet bowl flush of selfishness, drunkenness, *****, and utter loneliness.

It took me too many years to figure out that the problem wasn’t her, or even with other people for that matter, it was with me.

It’s only when we figure ourselves out that we realize that we’ve been doing a lot of things wrong with our lives. Listening to the wrong voices in our heads. Taking the wrong advice from strangers. Avoiding the admonitions of those who really love you. These things happen all the time. None of us has the answers. I don’t know anything.

In fact, after all the years I spent searching for meaning in academia perusing dusty libraries and old bookstores for that gem of knowledge, I can tell you definitively that only ignorance is bliss. That it’s even true when it comes to dating. The less you think you know the better you are.

I guess this is where the train stops for me. Time to get off. Try something else. Take to the woods and grow a manly neck-beard like Thoreau did in Walden. Adhere to the early American philosophy of rugged individualism and all that. Too soon would I realize that life isn’t about solitude, or a separation from others; rather it’s about the connections we make. Solid connections.

The hedonistic Epicurus tells us to live a life of pleasure through the temperance of desire, and warns us not to seek what is inappropriate for us mortals, but to enjoy our mortal needs.

I do not know if Epicurus ever found a mate, a friendship, or even a partner to share his most intimate thoughts with besides his raucous audience, but I do know he died in isolation away from society. I’ve never been a hedonist. I’m far too traditional for all that.

My sordid love life is more akin to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the tragic story of Echo and Narcissus.

I’ve been Narcissus for too many years to count and what’s worse I was in oblivion. For too long have I been unto myself. Admiring only myself. The time has come to choose. Either die like Narcissus or live and love with Écho.

I’d like to walk in the sunlight, drink from the cool springs, and with a Shakespearian passion bask in it’s eternal glow and live inside the warm,  but ever ethereal, love of another’s heart.

To love another with such Shakespearian passion would lead me to realize that the only thing my love can save is myself. And, all the time this duality would haunt me—to unequivocally know that without the tenderness of Echo in one’s life there is only the vain Narcissus.

For now you know the duality, that is also the tragedy, of this man. Let that echo in your ears and see if it does not ring with the truth of all men.