Wall-e

I build walls

To keep out those who 

May hurt me

Or judge me

Or laugh at my 

Choices in life

I build walls

To keep out them

Who do not understand

Or let me live

The way I live

Loud or loved

Quiet or quite

Adequate

I build walls

To keep out those

Who come unannounced

Barging in to my

Life as I go about

Humming my tunes

Tunelessly

But wait

Perhaps these walls

Are not to keep

Them out 

But to keep me in

With just my selfish self

For company

Yours insincerely

Rejoice rejoice dear acquaintances,

Passing fancies and friends of friends 

And all those one would really not

Want anywhere near one's death bed nor

Pose for pics on your wedding day or

Blow balloons on your sprog's birthday

What once would mean a limp handshake

A non-committal nod or a half-rictus

Is now writ bold in this great big tome, 

This scrapbook of social one-upmanship

For where else would you turn 

When you can't turn the page

Or stand face to face 

With that nameless face

Worry not friends (in the loosest sense)

Just post a 'like' on his Facebook page

No holds barred

'You are the only one I am rude to' 

she said to me as we drove back from Sainsbury's

'I know' I said rather grumpily and not to be outdone in this plain speaking contest added:

 'You are very naive and I exploit you all the time, but I try to do it in small measures so that you don't notice'

'I've noticed' she said with a curt little laugh as I reversed into the drive.

That was that - as arms laden with groceries, we descended into domestic chaos and the little pingpong rally of words ended unceremoniously.

Later that night as I tossed and turned in the grips of a fever, she sat up and put my head in her lap till I went back to sleep again.

It sure is a good thing that she thinks I only exploit her in small measures.

My rude little girl.

Lost in translation

It is difficult to know what a writer thinks anyway, but more so when he thinks in a different language. The subtle subtexts and implied meanings of words, often seeped in colloquialism or historical, political or even folklore references are easily lost in translation, trampled underfoot in an effort to be either academically accurate, inappropriately verbose or unnecessarily ornate.
 
I came across this while surfing for a poem as seen below in its original French:
 Quel dieu, quel moissonneur de l'éternel été,
Avait, en s'en allant, négligemment jeté
Cette faucille d'or dans le champ des étoiles. 

 (Victor Hugo; Boöz Endormi - Boaz sleeps)
 
Having (not) studied French for two years before medical school (sadly I did not quite see the benefit at that time, so simply fooled around rather than pay attention), I looked up various web versions which seemed woefully inadequate: 

What God, what reaper of eternal summer,
So carelessly in leaving her had thrown
That golden sickle in the field of stars.

What summer harvester through times unsown,
So carelessly in leaving her had thrown
That golden sickle into the field of stars.

What God, what comer
Unto the harvest of the eternal summer,
Had flung his golden hook down on the field of stars

What God
of the eternal summer passing dropped
his golden scythe there in that field of stars

What God, what harvester so carelessly had thrown
His golden sickle on that field of stars, and gone?

What God, what harvester of eternal summer
Had, in going away, negligently thrown
This golden sickle in the field of stars

I tried copy/pasting the original text straight into Google translator:
what God
what reaper of eternal summer
had, as he went, carelessly thrown
this golden sickle in the field of stars

... before settling on my version (stolen from various above):

which God
who reaped this endless summer
had, in leaving, so carelessly dropped

his golden sickle
in the field of stars

mais pourquoi? I hear you ask

 Admittedly another pointless exercise.

Maladjusted

I slip out for a walk
when no one is looking
with my magic lasso
for company

It hums overhead
as I take aim
and let go with
rather unnecessary
brutality

I do not watch
as it snakes up
beyond the clouds
and the inconsequential
pretend-layers of the ionosphere

but kneel down to drive
a stake through
my leaden heart - a convenient
anchor for that rope in flight

As it finds its prey
I pull - with all my heart
and drag down the stars
one by one

to trample,
strangle them
quietly till their
dim lights shine
no more

I love the darkness
that drips on to the stake
and climbs up the rope

to swallow the world -
now free of those
annoying little stars

(Inspired by Sherman Alexie, but of course nowhere near as good)

plaque gothique

It was practically nothing - really, in the grand scheme of things these should be overlooked. But then that would be fair and we know that life is not very fair - so there, no more wishful thinking.

As I said, it was hardly anything - a little loss of sheen, perhaps a spot which did not gleam as much as the rest, a little breach in the wall - but they noticed - ever vigilant though deceptively quiet, they sensed that something was afoot - almost imperceptible, a little butterfly flapping its wings not knowing the tempest awakened halfway across the world.

So they stir and all of a sudden there were many where there were but a few, and like the cuddly Mogwai spawning Gremlins they turn feral, as they are caressed by tendrils of tenuous gossamer that wake them from slumber. In the blink of an eye the breach is swamped - for they are insatiable and they hunt in packs.

Their hungry calls summon the silent lumbering giants rumbling down slopes in slow motion - juggernauts of relentless destruction fuelled by gluttony, they heed the cries of their kin and in their haste smother many of them underfoot. In no time at all they are an amorphous mass of flesh and blood - mindless, brutal and yet - very, very effective.

It does not take long - all of this, hardly a matter of minutes  - not enough time for the stressed, overweight, middle aged man to reach for his phone and tell the voice at the other end that he was dying from a heart attack as those little platelets and those not so little monocytes plugged the breach in his ruptured plaque.

Happy Mother's Day!

She taught me to watch my step when going down stairs

And to eat with a spoon and drink from a cup

She taught me not to splash around when using the boys’ room

And to fold my socks and iron my trousers

She taught me to pay attention to detail

And enjoy the tiredness at the end of the day as you sit back

And look at the work you have done - critically

She taught me to be proud without being arrogant

And to be calm in the face of adversity

(Although I do not manage either very well)

More than anything else

She taught me to believe in myself

And to dare to dream  ...

Once up on a time, in a more innocent world, when 9/11 was still the 9th of November, I went for an English Language Test. The examiner asked me what would be my dream job and a much leaner, younger, wide-eyed, naive, hot-headed and ever so slightly reckless version of me (who had not stepped out of a 5 mile radius of his house for all 23 years of his life) said:

‘I would like to teach Medicine at Cambridge or Oxford’ - not even knowing what it really meant let alone the journey it would set me on.

More than a decade later as I sit typing this, having finished my first week in my dream job, I know who to thank for all the little things which led to all the not so little things in my life.

To my mother - a genuine superhero in disguise

Childhood is a pile of rocks

Near my house they were scattered
in the grass
black and brown and porous
they looked like the
backs of large and clumsy animals
playing hide and seek - badly

there were steps cut into them where
I sat with my grandfather
who was a hero when I was little
and then annoying as I grew older
which was unfair to him - for
 he was the same man
but it was I who lost the eyes of a child

we sat on those steps cut
into half hidden
porous rock animals hiding - badly
to watch sunsets - again and again
never growing tired
of the finger painting on that
great big iPad in the sky

Those steps and those rocks shrunk
over the years as I lost
my childhood eyes till they were not
magical anymore - just
porous rocks
scattered in grass
a pile of rocks
seeped in my childhood
for they let my innocence in
(they were porous)
as I sloshed it around
carelessly