BROKEN BOW Jan 2001


Finished a bottle of five year old wine, nothing special, back on whisky in defiance of the truism.
If it were colder outside, the air would freeze to glass. I'm the Ocean is on the headphones and it
is 23.13. I am worried about my future, where to go and what to do, what to be when I get tired
of being what I have been. I think I need an operation, it will be my first and I already hate
hospitals. This is not a surprise to the reader. By candle and computer light, incense from the
kitchen to ward off the neighbour's cigarette smoke.

I am holding on to my youth but the great outside is catching up. Pale hair sprouts from
earlobes, skin has lost some suppleness, stomach is begining to get larger and soft. In the last
seven months I have set all previous writings onto computer, recalled a thousand memories and
loved it. Made the mistake after finishing of saying to myself, ‘So now I can die’. Idiot.
My physical complaint has compounded the encroaching sense of mortal fragility and I have the
human fear. ( Where did that line come from? I don’t speak like that in real life...)
I thought I knew enough to protect me - death is imposible, only a change. Life has no end
although there is now evidence of decay - I believed this as truth, but Body has reacted to actions
and hidden beliefs. How much is reversible and how soon in the finite life of flesh?

O (secret name) where are you and why are not here with me, being loved?
It is 23.48 and I am still hungry, a little calmer from the exorcism of truth, but this is only
temporary. Resolve to take all possible courses of action to remove the problems, there must be
no obstacle, no struggle. Take a swig of whisky. There is a certain look I give myself at these
moments when faced with a mirror, when I make a ‘heroic’ stand and know I will not follow
through. It is a deathly certain look that I have known for years, of the way of the end. Despite
all previous learning, the machine's heart is dead, cold and has not loved enough. It is midnight
now and I am not a pumpkin, although I might as well be.

My ranting on all levels amused me, now I am wondering if it was only a symptom of the
underlying problems, a vague protection. The tombstone to read, ‘He showed polite interest,
made his excuses, then left’. A rainbow in shades of black and my flag is invisible. Too lazy
to do what I love consistently. I expanded, contracted, I pulsed, punched the wall and floor and
went dead for another life. I had no idea I was this old now. Everything in the binary Haka -
I die - I die - I live - I live.

I am a broken bow for the arrow of love.



///A hernia operation caused by impatience, caused me to spend the rest of this year with pain and fear - the real stuff, not the alien feelings of panic attacks. Although these re - appeared in May of that year after too many weeks of barely supressed stress. Never force an exorcism was a good lesson learned. I was re - taught off my cloud and ivory tower and back into a terrible human state of the fear of death and the decay before it. People do anything to ignore and put off these feelings, while their mind knows it will lose, and stores up the terror as a weapon.
Of course, I am all right now. Ha bloody ha.///