The irascible old man

A diseased collection of fears.
I could conquer them but I'm holding on to them.
Best to be prepared.
Better sane than sorry.
A rehearsed response to the surprise.

SURPRISE doesn't always trigger the most pleasant physiological reactions: the taste of anxiety; the stomach churn of the most grim possibilities; the stench of the verbal diarrhoea as the most inappropriate annotations spew out.

Restricted by worry and sinister anticipations.

You can't run anymore:
You're too old.
Propped up against the cane of the harsh reality.
You're regressing into a pathetic state where everyone else is to blame.
A condition in which you've fooled yourself.

But the wool isn't over my eyes.
You're the only person left playing this game of blind man's bluff.
Your eyes have been extracted.
As you ground them up and rolled them into every spliff, you convinced yourself you were invincible.
Perhaps your supplies are wearing thin now.
Does that mean you're getting your sight back?

Hi. This is what it's like to face consequences.

At sixes and sevens o'clocks

Confined and adrift in a dream world that doesn't allow innocence.
Having no force to be in control of my dimensions; rebellious fate that stretches and crushes me in different directions. Always the wrong size for the situation.
Stretched entirely out of shape. Worn in so that it's no longer painful.

Disorientated in a meaningless maze.
Encounters with puzzles without obvious solutions.
Constantly presented with unsolvable riddles and while I am occupied by them, a grinning charmer materialises and lures me away to a sense of immunity. Convinced he is guiding the harmless path, my naive and mindless body follows into a haze of deception and turbulence.

Suspicious of the din; skeptical of the buzz.
Seeking the volume and the clarity of the disruptive noise.
A ringing mind or a persistent warning?

Glaring as it all oscillates before me: hypnotised.

Hidden under over sized hats or behind prodigious watches are the people we question.
Invited by their intriguing nature to chase them.
Misled along a dimly lit path.

Curiosity is a healthy quality with hidden dangers.
It probably killed the white rabbit too.

Hunting the invisible

There is a new skyscraper on the horizon. Or at least a tower which was previously inconspicuous.

It's asking to be climbed.
I will seek its apex.

The horizons are broadened from this height. Coming down is infeasible.

Panoramic views that intoxicate the spirit and a clear perspective of what's ahead.
No blurred vision besides the pixelated images of what's behind. They remain a still image captured only by memory.

But on this new journey, I will shoot down the prey, indulge in its sting and taste its narcotic qualities.

Invaluable elixir.

A hard pill to swallow

The realisation that you're asking for too much is painful to digest.

We have been lead to understand that there is a utopia in which lives a man bearing qualities of a charismatic gentleman.
Actually, that is rarely on the menu.

We are brainwashed by a 2D world that leaves our hearts polluted as we face the three-dimensional reality where, when our table is laid, it doesn't look as appetising as we once imagined.

It is crucial that we uphold our values and maintain our high expectations rather than trivialising them and settling for the next best thing - or the biggest tosser on the planet.
Failing this would mean neglecting ourselves.
We need to keep our nails strong. Who knows when we'll next have to fight our way out?

Excessive time spent concerned with others and their motives.

Knowing enough is unachievable. Understanding enough is incomprehensible.

In a storm, we're living in the flicker of a lightning bolt. When the storm passes, that split second is the only light we can shine on the situation and we're left blinded by it.

So we're caught in the next storm, back where we started: behind a grey cloud of fog.

Preparation for hallucination

Perfection is an artificial concept. The notion of flawlessness misinforms the mind and deludes perception.

In music, perfection denotes a harmonious distance between pitches; in language, it is a tense describing something passed. But in reality, the pursuit of precision is a futile tension.

If practice yields perfection then after all this rehearsal, why is everything still exposed as defective?

Camouflage a failing and become convinced it's non-existent or even that it's an asset. A pretence that all is ideal leads to a mask to conceal delusion.

A sham, after all.

Joy ride.

It's going off track.

The driver's seat would be preferable.
I'm awful at navigating when I'm your passenger and I've completely lost my sense of direction.

Travelling alone would be another viable option.
I could take my car, you can take yours and we'll find our own way there. There or anywhere.

As it stands, I can see the wall we're headed towards growing. And for some reason, I'm trying to grab the wheel from your grip and steer us away from it. Fuck that. I will stare straight ahead and watch the wall continue to expand and acknowledge and appreciate its detail as it becomes more clear.


We've hit the wall.
We're not going to keep running until our energy is momentarily restored.
Now you can finally make your immediate escape from the wreckage
and I'll keep my guard up.

I've learned how to take this route before.