Why is it do you suppose that as a species we have been given the senses to perceive, be curious of and bear witness to fourteen billion years of the wonders of the Universe.... yet we have not the common-sense to know or be assured of our own tomorrow?

Somewhere out there it is quite possible that intelligent life exists... but it certainly isn't us.

How many souls have been lost because they used their heart as a compass?

If you want to see what becomes of optimists just look upon the faces of those people coming out of betting shops and casinos.

A pessimist will tell you that optimism is an addiction that will cost you as much as you are willing to wager and eventually the house will win.

You can only be as optimistic as you are lucky.

Old Macdonald's farm used to contain many happy animals...
New Macdonald's farm used to be called the Amazon and only contains beef cattle now.

Every year ends in darkness and starts in darkness.
Why does that seem like a revelation?

You may not like it but...
You know more about the universe than it does about you.
Even if you know nothing.

Why does time push us ever forward when we are the sum of all our yesterdays? Every tomorrow that once was and will be is destined to become yesterday? And what of yesterday when tomorrows are no more?

How many ventilators can you buy for the price of an Aircraft Carrier?

Is it still real if my best memories are not kept by others in them?
What if those dreams and memories are the regrets and nightmares of those with whom I shared the moment?
Am I who I thought I was and am I able to believe in who I am if my memories are not shared?

A flash of light upon the sky
and dinosaurs were gone.
In a universe that knew them not,
and held no memory to live on.

Of ourselves our human kind,
we think the universe holds us dear.
Through time and vastness of it all
so doubtful it knows we're here.

So many things come and gone
forever changing it still evolves.
Too short is our human existence
to see how all of this resolves.

We think our kind important
a central purpose for it all.
But the universal scale of things
serves to remind our place is small.

We will never know its purpose,
and may never know if there was plan.
But rest assured my fellow humans,
our path will be as the dinosaurs
when the universe recycles man.

So many years since the mirror showed the fairest of them all.
Long since the face, a friend once was, I do by memory now recall.
Who was this face, this man... this once was just a mere boy?
I knew him well so long ago in a world once knowing tastes of joy.

We walked in light and sun and no shadow harboured fears.
But that face no longer greeted me as the shadows grew by years.
I shared his hopes, his dreams and passions on so many sunlit day.
So long since did things yet fade and so too his image went its way.

So long since and yet I still recall him as if from some other life.
Slaughtered dream and hope and passion long dead upon fates knife.
How long since he and I were one, I cannot quite recall.
But perhaps that face I saw reflected was never there at all?

So many years ago... a lifetime so it seems...
When once my own reflection and I...
Shared a world inspired by hope and the same dreams.

A face, a man, a boy I thought I would always know,
So long since and too many years ago

I have long since come to accept that you chose a different way.
I can even say it out loud to myself and my tears will stay away.

Sometimes I am convinced that I am well and everything is fine.
Yet still come days of soft shadow, remembering how you were mine.

I remember being son.
I remember being brother.
I remember being boyfriend.
I remember being husband.
I remember being father.
I remember being employee.
If you have had your fill can I make a memory of being me?

Cast my ash upon the rocks and let them settle upon the sea,
for there upon that rocky shore is the place I choose to be.

Peace and tranquil summer days that I spent without a care,
where sound of wave and salted scents be carried by the air.

Weary are my bones with a soul of torments without release,
but on that shore my soul can rest and finally know some peace.

The lap of wave upon the rocks under the clearest blue of sky,
In the warmth of childhood memory my soul could finally lie.

The choke and mew of seagulls as they pass along their way,
solitary songs of disturbance to accompany the passing of a day.

For I am come to such an age to hear the appeal in this call,
to know both rest and peace and with no fear in it at all.

Dark of night surrounds me, pillow below my head.
How long the many hours since I tumbled onto my bed?

Mind so filled with thought that clearly has me stressed.
Racing, scattered thought that just wont let me rest.

Blanket that feels loose and shifts to feel oh so tight,
and so it sets the pattern for this never ending night.

I know that I must sleep before the rise again of the sun,
in a world that cant relent from insistence things must be done.

My body urgent in its craving to be silent and be still,
but my mind just wont give in possessing the stronger will.

A discomfort on my left side, so I roll again to my right.
Countless repetition through the hours of a god forsaken night.

Nothing that I do brings a sense my mind is nearing calm,
I must try to get some sleep before clock sounds its alarm.

So the hours go, too many hours surely for just one night,
but too late now to rest as window reveals dawns early light.

What choices would I change if I started from anew?
What lessons from my life to change to see another view?

Would I make the same mistakes or choose another way?
Would I speak out just as loud at the times I had my say?

How would I react to the things I've seen men do?
Could I hope to be braver and help those it was done to?

Would I choose to stand when I saw the need to fight?
Would I still see the same things I do now as being right?

Would I still choose to hurt those I caused pain to?
Knowing that the choice once made is impossible to undo.

I know I cannot go back and do it all over from the start,
but if I did it all again, I would live it with a bigger heart.

The light at the end of the tunnel is actually a sense of worth, of value, of relevance... a sense of purpose and place.
The loss of these took me here.
It is not a light that those in the tunnel control... seemingly forever beyond my reach and unable to believe in value, place or worth.
It was never the aim to switch the light off. It was the hand and judgement of others that threw the switch to off. It is why the light and the switch are on the outside of the tunnel and not in the darkness where I am.
If you give no worth...
If you give no value...
If you give no relevance...
If you give no purpose...
Then there can be no place where the light can shine.

Oh the things that my eyes have seen,
the many places walked I have been.

Upon peak and trough did I roam,
rarely knowing a place called home.

So many turnings along my way,
passing on through to seldom stay.

Staying as long as life allowed,
more times alone than in a crowd.

Beautiful faces that came and went,
both good and evil sometimes sent.

With words sometime of the softest kind,
echoing shrill calls yet within my mind.

Words once soft now turned to stone,
where faces vanish until left alone.

Upon road so full of twist and turn,
until a heart can no longer yearn.

Corners met that were never turned,
unseen paths that were never learned.

Future's short path left to travel on,
in time memory fades and it too is gone.

Things I was and all that I saw,
gone forever through the closing door.

How long then be there just a trace,
that my soul and I ever saw this place.

To dust and particles we all will decay,
those once met too will just fade away.

Until even memories of all are no more,
of a life full lived that no one even saw.

All I have are the footprints that show where I have been.
Passing natures beauty and all the faces that I have seen.

The empty road ahead seems darker than it ever has before.
My mind whispers to me that it cant do this life much more.

I have seen the things aplenty and I am tired of the view.
My days are filled with replay and there is never any new.

I'm not afraid to end it and it certainly holds little fright.
Yet I see others fighting to survive so to end it cant be right.

A sense of being trapped like a mouse treading upon a wheel.
Just knowing that until the last I breathe that this how I will feel.

Do you know these feelings and the empty lonely days?
To wake upon to the morning to curse the suns new shinning rays?

Like you I know not when or if this today will be my last.
But I wont mourn a life of no future and of only never ending past.

Tired of the expectations of what life compels each and all to do...
And loneliest of all my empty days no one dear to say "I love you".

My life is but a long memory of someone no longer there.
I who have no purpose, destined to vanish as if smoke upon the air.

Not by rope from a branch nor by knife upon flesh have my pains been given to yield.

But by words on a page do I yet seek to make my wounds to become healed.

Thoughts like demons cast out to be left behind to help me better see the road still ahead.

Perhaps to see smiles and love once more, but if not, a world where I crave less to be dead.

Ten thousand lights or more all strung upon the sky.
Have stood there every night as life has passed me by.
Never did they notice me as they stood their constant place.
Never with cause to note the lines that time drew upon my face.
Throughout my every year they have never changed at all.
Their radiant glow never faded upon night-times magic shawl.
They stand exactly where they were on the day I came to be.
And there too they will stand when time draws it's end to me.
My mind has often pondered why stars outlast us so.
And as the sand yet dwindles I wish it more to know.

Another day of cloud and shadow,
has come to take up the stage.
Another sense of empty loneliness,
that so often fills my published page.

That feeling that there is no point,
no rhyme or reason to what I do.
Another day devoid of sunshine,
where dark shadow taints the view.

An ever present feeling of endings,
that assuredly a soul attests are near.
Desolation's discomfort behind my eyes,
seemingly compelled to fill with tear.

Mind now drawn from dreamless sleep,
to wakeful hours as empty as those dreams.
An empty world of loneliness and silence,
where thoughts become nightmare's screams.

Slow moving hands that count away the time,
days filled with shadow immune to every light.
Empty total vacuum unaffected by the hour,
despair, minds refuge in black deep as the night.

Somewhere in this world where darkness reigns,
all dream and hope took turn and lost its way.
So I close again my eyes to drift in dreamless sleep.
to hope that hope returns again some day.

A fellow poet made comment on my writing.
A Doctor by trade.
His comment "you are a thinker".
I know he intended no accusation.
In truth he is the first Doctor I have encountered to highlight the worst symptom of depression.
Whilst I continue to seek a cure to the thinking... I appreciate the comment and inadvertent diagnosis.

Born of mind and heart and folded by the soul,
thus a poets words are forged.
Cast upon the fickle breeze or dispersed by howling gale,
perhaps to find new minds and hearts in which to grow.

I look upon shards of dreams
all shattered once taken in a blur.
Leaving me now only the reality
of something they never were.

I have held onto the tatters
of the promises the dream had made.
The memories and the fondness
and the wishing they had stayed.

At the time they held the warmth
and a true purpose to my days.
To give me fulfilment,
until dream and I went our separate ways.

To know the touch, to know the kiss
and the face of a true dream.
Only for it to fade and for loves embrace,
to not be as it would seem.

I cannot hide the hurt
and I wont trust love again.
I live each day in memory
where the scars of dreams remain.

How then can I hear the advice
such as you may give.
For without trust in hope and dream
is how I am now come to live.

"Tis the eve before Christmas and nights silence abounds.
Darkness has fallen and only slight breeze to make sounds.
All down the quiet street each house light is now turned out.
Many hours since merry occupants were moving about.
Tucked tight in their beds are each young girl and small boy,
awaiting the morn of Santa inspired mirth and pure joy.
I sit crouched in the hedge my senses alert and aloof,
This year I'll get him before his reindeer ***** on my roof.

Again before an emptiness of soul, where all is fears.
Awake but mind devoid of light or any new ideas.
Crushing feeling of loneliness permeates the very air.
Every action taken or ignored devoid of simple care.

How did I become this decayed and empty thing?
Thinking daily upon miseries, so often days before did bring.
Distant, faded memory of the moments that made a smile.
So fleetingly they went to allow despair room all this while.

Worth? A sense of purpose long deserted, gone and fled.
Only a loathing and a pointlessness is left to fill my head.
Long days before today and for others still yet to come,
Without reason to be, certain only eventually I will succumb.

Like coats of paint upon a wall each day another layer smears.
No smiles, no joy, no hope just a face soddened by my tears.
Ever present darkness, shrouds of dark veils upon me, drape.
Calling increasing loudly that there is only one true escape.

I've been walking all alone in a sideshow
There has been passion and pain on this ride
There is a voice I hear calling
The voice rises from my souls very inside

For a time I didn't know what was calling
With my head as if lost at sea
But today I knew what was calling
It was all of my choices taunting me

I think of the people here in the sideshow
Like me they wonder around so confused
Every day they make their choices
But which ones do they choose?

We all go through life with choices
All as a blind man feeling his way
Always hoping for good choices
Ones that encourage the passion to stay

Passion can thrive on our choices
It can make our most memorable day
But a badly considered choice
Can chase forever our passion away

My trip has been filled with choices
Some rough and some divine
I have dealt with my choices
I have dealt with many that weren't mine

I am here near the end of the sideshow
I look back to where I have been
My eyes are filled with loneliness
I have lost most of the passion I've seen

When you get near the end of your sideshow
I hope you have learned from my way
I hope you make choices
That allows all your passions to stay

Lately I have had a feeling of a sense of deep foreboding in the air,
every time I stop to pause, to think, I can feel it just lurking there.

An all pervasive feeling that all things are not as they should be,
and I get an anxious sensation that it's effects are not just on me.

Colours of nature seem all faded and the air seems different too,
the sky is somehow much more ominous and appears a paler blue.

Even the birds I see upon their wing seem more skittish everyday,
and I wonder if they feel it too, does a dark fear halt their play?

I sense a tension in the natural order of these once normal things,
and my heart and mind are fearful of what message this all brings.

Like some silent siren wailing or invisible flashing hazard light,
my mind is filled with deepest dread and senses things aren't right.

Far too much time caught up thinking upon the portents that I see,
with each terrifying thought I pray for all, to hope that its just me.

I am frustrated by those who refuse to understand.
The panic you see from the Governments of the world has true foundation and the measures of isolating, distancing and quarantine are our only effective weapons at this time.
The formula is simple....
Known Deaths/Known Cases x100 = %Death Rate

Published figures as on 7th April... World totals
Known Deaths = 78,268
Known Cases = 1,381,014

The maths gives a resulting figure of 5.6%
Unchecked in a world population of 7 billion (assuming that to be the current figure) would mean more than 390 million deaths.

It is an alarming and fearful figure.
But give it some context... bring the maths to your personal world.
Before the end of the year these things could be so.
At least five in every one hundred people you know would not have made it. Family, friends, colleagues, neighbours.
The numbers explain why herd immunity is not an option of preference. No one knows who will succumb and who will survive. There is no way of knowing.
Keep in mind... the figure of 5.6% is how it stands with all that is being done. Outbreak areas in parts of Italy, Spain, UK and USA show that the virus can be even more lethal than only 5.6%.

I do not write this to cause fear and panic but rather as a persuasion to give understanding to those who refuse to understand the magnitude of what is happening.
Please...
Do what is being asked. Help to save some of those 300 million or more people... some of whom you know dearly. By doing so then something less than 5.6% can be the outcome.

for the 78,268 dreams, hopes and loves the world will miss...

Whatever happened to the happiness,
from all those early childhood days.
Where laughter. joy and sunshine,
filled all of imaginations endless plays?

What became of the joyous music,
giving beat and harmony to the world.
When dream and hope could exist,
and all possibilities could be unfurled?

When did all this darkness fall,
to lay shadow so dark upon the lands,
as a dense foreboding that has been
summoned by greeds unsated demands?

When did dream and hope become,
just mere folly and wasted thought.
What happened to the morals and the ethics,
that as kids we valued and were taught?

When and where did all this go,
for everywhere I look such is just not there.
All has been replaced by a selfish world
of greed, hatred and down-trodden despair.

I know that in the course of time,
I am meant to see an old man's view.
But what worth and value of a world,
where hate and lies are sold as true?

Death and hatred fill this world,
in every rank corner that I see,
and in silent, desperate fear I wonder,
why we stood-by and let it come to be?

Throughout my life I have made a study of the human soul.
I have found there to be broadly 26 categories and accordingly have labelled them alphabetically.... "A" souls, "B" souls, "C" souls... and so on. Each type having their own characteristics.
Unsurprisingly the 18th group is the largest.

The reality is that there is a difference between love and need.
The understanding of both is only evident when true love is found and the contrasts revealed.
Only then are hearts, minds and souls contented as one.

I came upon the page and thought to write of who I am and who I was.
I thought it best to explain the things that people saw when they looked my way.
How I came to be what I see in my own reflection.
I gave benefit of doubt that they would or could then have some understanding. Perhaps naivety was my flaw?
The more I wrote the fewer looked.
Is it simply me or the openness that makes it so?
Is it what they see or the not wanting to really know?
Could it be that honesty is a frightening thing?
Am I better off to keep secrets and carry a facade?
Would then perhaps more be interested in who I am?
Would they then have the time to stop a while?
Or is it simply having seen they see no value?
And yet it is that I still need to fill the page...
and to hope someone will see me and stop a while.

There's a music in my soul,
soft lyrics sound in my head.
Words I know so well,
about thoughts I've never said.

Like spirits on the wind,
grains of sand before the storm.
The harmonies in tune,
where the symphony does form.

Sometimes the theme it is so clear,
constant lilt and steady beat.
Stories of places I would go,
and people I've yet to meet.

Often I hear the cry,
of a soul that's lost its way.
Where thoughts hide in the night,
and my demons have their say.

Some would say its a sad song,
but it has a comfort when it comes.
With the violin song so clear,
and steady beat of muffled drums.

My soul is singing to my mind,
and through the harmonies they play.
To chase darkness from my thoughts,
until they dissolve all life's pains away.

Yes I love it when it sounds,
when that music fills my soul.
I can feel alive again,
spirit for a time completely whole.

Let your soul write your song,
listen and heed  its steady refrain.
Move along with it, where it leads,
as it comes to ease your pain.

So many days spent wishing to be somewhere, with someone.
Endlessly needing to feel that someone somewhere needs me.
So tired of feeling and being empty. So empty from feeling tired.
So tired of just being.

Moving from nothing to nowhere and back again. Some days just too tired and empty to even deal with nothing and nowhere. Never changing, never varied and oh so never ending.
So tired of just being.

Repetition that drains, that saps, that devours and consumes.
Eating away just a little more of who I was, who I can be.
Eroding piece by piece who I was and how I see myself.
So tired of just being.

Pointless, aimless, redundant so totally without purpose.
Devoid of reasons to wake and no rest though I sleep.
So much time wasted, abused, misused, cursed and loathed.
So tired of just being.

I spent most of my life learning how to cry.
I will spend the rest of it learning how to stop.

March of last year I posted my first mutterings on HP.
For all the feedback, for all the energy and inspiration, the sharing of thoughts and circumstance but mostly to those who gave me an ear or shared a view... thank you.
You are an inspirational lot.... I am honoured by your company.

Often when I thought myself wrong it was then that I was.

If you would just stop making choices....
I could live by something more than consequence....
If I promised the same to you would you not be at rest too?
No choice. No consequence.... nothing.
Isolated, contented.... safe..... nothing.

Harmonies and melodies that accompanied my drift,
nursing wounded soul and often giving it a lift.
Moments when cords and rhythm took me the next mile,
so many old chorus' that could make my heart smile.

Songs and tunes that touched the moments I've seen,
to connect forever to people and places I've been.
Soundtrack to my life to record memories in rhyme,
taking me back as if I were some traveler in time.

At some lonely hour when an old track comes to mind,
stresses and troubles for a time gone and left behind.
Teleported by some in the moment pertinent track,
where a mind can find escape and be taken right back.

The music of who I am, of my soul that shaped my life,
at every joyous moment and every tumultuous next strife.
I play those old tunes and I sing so badly right along,
I can't help but  to do so, as its my life and hearts song.

They tell of a land to the North
with misted valley's and of glen
Where red deer wild roam
as they make splash upon the fen.

Strong and hardy is the stock,
many with deep red hair,
Raised from their day of birth,
on naught but deep fried fare.

Custom demands of each a thrift,
and preservation of everything,
this all born out on coinage in pocket,
bearing the head of the last king.

They are true a hardy race,
of this many can contend,
and rumours abound all over,
of them tossing trees end on end.

So too there are tales of a legend,
that gives some despair to the soul.
that they smack a ball all over hillsides
until it falls into a wee hole.

Cultural music is a strong tradition.
and dance often accompanies that,
with much joy and merry festivity
to sound of someone neutering a cat.

An ancient tongue they sometimes speak
that gives cause to a certain lilt.
But ire them not for revenge is sweet
as they turn backs and raise their kilt.

My words seek ears, seek minds to know that I am real.
To touch the world, to leave some mark on where I passed.
I came, I saw, I was and to hope for nothing more than to know...
Someone noticed even just a moment of it all.

The most beautiful places and beautiful times are always shared by four eyes.

Invisible is the wall that holds me back.
Things of beauty I can see beyond it.
Gazing upon wonders that are cast in light.
Light that calls and draws me to it with a longing.
Many faceted are my eyes as I observe beyond the barrier.
Headlong and in frenzy I pound upon the invisibility.
Despite the constant beat of my wings, I cannot break through.
The wall holds firm and I am trapped.
My power to fly freely is utterly diminished.

Far across the water sits a little Chinese man,
who has his own ideas of life's most desired plan.

On the other side of the ocean is yet another guy,
whose plan doesn't agree with a Chinese minds eye.

Petty is their game but they just don't see it so,
and so they push each other in a destructive to and fro'.

Two school boys being bullies is the policy that they choose,
Both belligerent and stubborn, both determined not to lose.

Surely they must see that the other guy wont ever give in.
Preferring total destruction over allowing the other guy to "win".

They cant see that neither side will ever accept to give,
Both intent to destroy it all than allow us all to live.

All can see it coming but no one dares make a sound,
until the mark of mankind's passing is just craters in the ground.

Through kisses we came to be here.
Soft curves of flesh revealed and traced by fingertips inspired.
To feel the rise and fall of silent, restful breaths and to touch true restfulness.
To savor the miracle of it and so gentle so as not to disrupt it.
Lips seeking to follow in finger's path so as to know the sensation of the sights.
Along neck and shoulder by delicate procession giving the sense of touch new meaning
With fingertip and lips, with sight and by scent to know the gift that has been given.
To feel through touch of skin and the tangle of limbs a feeling so peaceful and at rest.
Lips pressed to lips in the softest and most tender way so that they seem to be as one.
Gentle movements as hands and eyes and mouths explore the sense of being of one soul.
Conversations between eyes, devoid of ears, speaking both of fire and contentment.
Intimate caresses shared and without thought to keeping secret the soul's desires.
Passions and lusts, loves and dreams converging to bring true peace of mind and body.
Locked in embrace, in heart, in mind and in memory your kiss is my highest point.
All else is without sensation or fire or purpose without it

Sometimes I remember just how my heart did feel,
and it reminds me how, love used to be something real.
Back in the days my heart and mind were still young.
When I could hope and dream of sharing love with someone.

It seems so long ago and oh so far away.
Years ago before I came to despise each day.
Back in the days my heart and mind were still young.
When I could hope and dream of sharing love with someone.

So many lonely hours trying to find out what went wrong.
When did I become deaf and to afraid of life's sweetest song?
Wish I could go back when my heart and mind were still young.
When I could hope and dream of sharing love with someone.

Life is an empty thing without a love to share.
And a future is nothing without someone to care.
Wish I could go back when my heart and mind were still young.
When I could hope and dream of sharing love with someone.

Once I had a dream that I would know loves embrace.
And love would take us to our own special place.
But my mind and heart are no longer young.
And mind and time tell me there will be no one.

Which is the sadder life to lead?
To remember that I loved and was loved and it has passed.
Or to forget I loved and was loved as though it never was?

How do you recall the one you loved and forget that they have gone?

One Turbot says to the other "do you believe in Cod?"
The other replies " I think we each know a Sole". "I believe one day when the chips are down and we are at our most battered we will each know a Plaice and we are destined to fillet".
They exchanged a glance and swam away.... just for the Halibut.

I hope my Whiting doesn't offend. Remember believers.... believe in Cod and one day you will be Prawn again.