Back in the bad old days of my youth
When I found myself isolated and alone, unemployed... friendless
Had nothing to look forward to
And a body full of pains
I was sitting out in a back shed one day... despairing
How had things come to this I asked myself
And what could I do?
My life had really gone off the rails...
Now I had these two young pet cats 😺
They were my best friends and confidantes
While I'm sitting there... busy despairing
One of the cats comes in and jumps up onto my thigh and quietly just crouches down there
And closes his eyes
It's like he's saying "I'm with you in whatever you're going through, you're very important to me"
It interrupts all my despairing, I smile and think it's rather cute
And then... then the other cat appears, he comes in and he does the exact same thing
He jumps up onto my other thigh and crouches down there and closes his eyes
It's like they were saying "You belong to us, you're our best friend, we don't like to see you unhappy, we're here for you, we're with you in this"
I had to smile, even laugh to myself
I thought it was like God was sending me these animals to cheer me up
To tell me not to give up
That there was still hope in this world/ this life.

The two cats were tomcats
When one of them grew older he went wandering looking for a female probably (wasn't neutered)
He got killed on the road, knocked down
The other developed some kind of mange and would go around crying
In those days people were poor, they didn't spend money on animals
My Dad eventually got sick looking at him and hearing him cry
He threw him in a bag one day and doused him with water
Put some sticks and stones in it and threw him in the ditch (it was cold Winter time)
For the next couple of days and nights you could hear the poor animal crying
Until at last, there was silence
(It was like that scene from the Silence of the Lambs movie
When the young FBI agent recalls her childhood memory of hearing the screams of the lambs).

They were there for me but me, I wasn't there for them.

It's unbearable to hear the blind speak of light
Or the dead teaching the dead how to live
And liars affirming liars with yet more lies
But alas inescapable is this babelic cacophony
I run, far into the wilderness, but woe upon me clings
Thus I close my eyes, shut my ears, seal my tongue
Wrap myself in the dark depths of desolation
And like the dead, slip into the silence of the void

The Moon hung low in the sky
like the tarnished reflection
of my soul on that night .
☆
A night spent rambling
down lonely streets of
derelict dream houses ,
with forbidding peaked
rooves ,
stretching high into the
gloomy dark like knives .
☆
Now and then ,
a sound made by something unknown ,
would drift on the dank air
or round some
threatening corner .
☆
Was there faint stirring
of grey curtain in a window ,
☆
A muffled cry behind
peeling paint of bolted door ,
☆
A soft voice sighing ,
straining against the wind to be heard ,
☆
But then , no-one was there .

When dreams make the
shadow of their evil real ,
then walk the sodden path
of forgetfulness .
☆
Forgetting of all life , love
and tenderness of human
touch .
☆
Vanquished , youth's idyll
lay bound in silken chains of regret .
Blinded eyes plucked out ,
lay on a silver tray at his
side .
☆
Discarded and unloved .
☆
Like a meagre meal
in poverty's room ,
the soul is dissected and
eaten piecemeal by devils .
☆
While in dead of night
or blazing sun of noon ,
the stench of rotting dreams
shrouds Eternity over those deadened eyes .

Alone

It Feels More Than It Really Is,

Desolate abandonment
The void left by, taught through
The faces I would turn towards
And truest love I knew

Yet away from me, unhappily
Or indifferent, themselves have turned
Fixed, never to meet within my gaze
My life's  cautionary tale, discerned
Falling in love with many a friend
From very early on
Where nothing matters like they do,
No matter that they've gone.
No matter that the majority
the best parts of our life's real years,
Are spent relapsing in mere memories
As sincerely, serenely, their aura disappears.

It Really Is More Than It Feels

Alone

Voices in the dark
like Spring-heeled Jacks ,
run down a grimy slate roof
into a filthy gutter
filled with the tears of Saint Sophia .
☆
Dust , dirt , insects
and the remains of dead
forget-me-nots ,
the only images left to
a diseased mind .
☆
They run over and over
in geometric perfection ,
☆
a cataclysm of holes .
☆
☆
☆
                       2
No light for his lantern ,
hope forsaken gloom ,
then run down
tormented avenues
to an empty field ,
under the moon of
Mars in September  .
☆
Under blood red stars ,
without truth or meaning ,
the tower of his wasted
dreams ,
and the chimeras of his
past ,
gather now around
and begin casting lots .