Regret is not
The fleeting deferral of
some brief romance
Regret is
the inability to react
to the irreversible moment
of something created
slipping away

(My boy Jamie being led
  into that bitter cold by
  a hand that should have
  been none
  but my own)
  
Photographs
faded pulpit dark and
winter noon grey
are but the same as
extinguishing candles
to mark , instead , what
could have been done
for the world

(I thought they were better off
being together
with their own kind
so I used to hurry past
them waiting for the trains
their children tidy and
smiling, nevertheless)

And the Angelus bell
will continue to ring
long after we all rot.
And the ghosts we share
will take all but their
names with them, to
be dug up for some
purpose of record
to fissure a cause for disquiet
along the nuns' walk wall.

(Before that, she had been
such a carful girl
and these days I
wince at the sound
of giggles which
remind me of hers.)

Horror is so so important. Stories are how we explain our world, how we make sense of it, how we prepare ourselves for it. If ever there is a place for horror, it's in stories. It is the most important part of many stories, because you WILL be afraid in life. And your fears will not be so cut and dry as a zombie hoard you can hack at. Nobody wears a white or black hat- you don't know. Life is messy as hell. So I think it's really important that we learn to feel fear and confusion and to face horror in a controlled environment like a movie or a book, where everything is make believe and reversible, where things are a bit easier to make sense of. It's training, really, for a world that is so much more horrifying than any monster under your bed. The monsters in horror films do exist, they just exist in different ways. They hide behind faces. They hide in the mirror. And you need the practice of recognizing and facing them in their purest form before you graduate to living surrounded and inhabited by them. Children need horror. People need horror. I really believe in that. That's why I LOVE horror films. Because I always wish my life was so simple. I wish I knew what was chasing me, and that it would only break my body and not my soul, and who was "good" and who was "evil". I watch horror and I think it'd be a relief to have something to hit, something to hold and swing against my demons, something to struggle against that had a face and a clear malice, and no complicated soul beneath. Something that could never convince me that maybe I was the one in the black hat, and just didn't know it yet. Life is brutal. Show your children how to face it, instead of protecting them from it until the opportunity is past and letting them face alone the disconcerting, bewildering, frightening betrayal that no, nothing makes sense, and no, the good guys don't always win, and no, you aren't always on the good side, and no, the cruelest people almost never get what's coming to them. Prepare your kids to be horrified, because monsters under the bed and zombies and ghosts and vampires- they're nothing compared to lovers, to bosses and best friends and sudden deaths and trying to live through the pale, ugly moments of mediocrity that pile up around you as you age. Get them ready to be hurt, because you have to know that you can't keep that from them. You can't stop the world from doing what it does. The world creates and then destroys. It wounds. You can't stop that. You can only be honest about it. Just like we teach our children rhymes and myths to explain confusing things like seasons and divorces, we need to show our kids the symbols that represent the horrors they will ALL have to face in their lives. I will always see horror as an escape from the fear I have in my life, because it's simple. It's one side versus the other and nobody switches and if you lose, you die- you don't have to keep going. That's the secret. For all of you who wonder- why would anyone like a horror film? We like them because we can feel our fear and our revulsion and leave it behind once it's done, tidy and finished, a release of the screams that build up in our throats from things we refuse to let inside enough to react to. It's a deferral. A stand-in. A safety net. It's a way to handle everything we can't handle in a symbolic form and move past it. Horror is incredibly important in this world.

Before you go to the place burial
Before the world goes unreal
Before God ceases to be ideal
Before man becomes asocial
Before Money becomes viral
Stop Money from become visual.
When you give any approval
To let cruel Money be initial
Pave path pathetically deferral.
We know Money is very vital
Many for it with brothers quarrel.
Stop Money from become visual.
Human never before money trivial,
Money – a means to be happy total
Is a wrong belief as it is only defrayal.
Let be a man, lion, fox or camel
Be it gold, silver, iron or metal
Stop Money from become visual.
Why to treat Money so special
When human nature is acquittal?
Many times it needs one’s approval
To change man who is immoral:
God is watching You! Ye Mammal.
Stop Money from become visual.

Deferral an insidious skulking mortal
born out of apathy where tenacity is held.

Creeps through nerves leaving trails
of poisonous narcotics, pulls on the strings
of a fragile brain.

Feeds on a grit in lethargy
mind desperately seeks to awake,

contaminates ambitions by turning
desires into dreams.

Finds it death by chocking
On gulps of great passions and resolve.

I smile more than most I know,
I look down at many pilots below.
I laugh at those of equal height,
I look up to others with envious might.

Clouds with beckoning feel,
draw my want without reveal.
To look down on birds in flight,
paragliding is my delight.

Those who offer venomous spite,
will suffer fools contrite.
Flying restricted on various days,
with onlooker bewildered daze.

Begger them and with angry call,
those who fly will avoid the squall.
We laugh, we hollow, we fly,
best to avoid the obvious lie.

Live to paraglide, live to glide,
avoid stupid behaviour cause of collide.
Sink, soar, climb or thermal,
delay the inevitable deferral.

Land with full public gaze,
out of seat, hands up with awesome grace.
Just a want to fly and sky play,
with sky gods I pray.

Avoid stupid maniac behaviour,
the club is heading towards failure.
For we, the coastal pilots may vote,
to tell the hill types to revoke.

I because I Iove to fly,
not to to fight with overlie.
Reasons to fly, avoid obvious scorn,
I because paragliding ****.