They say, “What ever doesn’t kill you,
Makes you stronger.”
This is not the case, I have found.
Jacob’s disjointed hip
Speaks of weakness and limitation
That scars forever.
With each new trial and setback, one shouts,
“Not again.”

But the intervention of a god
Who cries, “Not again,”
Who prayed it too in his own trial,
Prays it with me.
His suffering speaks that “not again,”
Will not be again
And one day we will pray, “Again,”
Again and again.

Written on 29th January 2020.

Girls came and sparked in bosomy doubt;
In those days I was the friend,
The one who had to talk about
A shooting-match, if ever had.
For twenty whole years I took out
Friend like faces, I rose but had not her.

Over ten years ago I met love.
She was in rehearsal, unknown was I.
Two in four hundred, like two gloves,
And letters wrote where numerous charms learnt
I worked off my selfish snaps.
And in her laugh I met my end.
Agreement twice that parting, bored,
I twice got a ring and easily rose
To be well thought of and, after, to believe.

Written using the words of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Wild Oats‘ on 28th January 2020.

That I may be holy, good and full of peace,
I pray my heart and mind might be one.
That the unending onslaught and storm may cease
And compulsions to success might be gone.
I offer the landscape of my inner soul
To Him who comes to me and yet is my goal.

O God, make speed to save me from fear.
Make haste, O Lord, to help my troubled heart
Which with the world’s distortions and sin adheres.
Teach me afresh your ways of peace and art
My pattern’d design and my evening prayer.
May mercy fall and lift me in your care.

Written on 26th January 2020.

“See the Lord is doing something new.”
But not until we’ve returned to him
To the desert where we first fell in love.
There, in the wilderness, we must prepare,
Not in city success or in comfy town,
In exile, abandoned, we must prepare.
Prepare and not receive. Wait.
Painful and distraught. Wait.
The slogans of hope will be just words.
The songs of harvest, wishful ditties.

“Prepare the way of the Lord.
Make straight the crooked paths.”
My heart is crooked by trauma,
Triggered by an unconscious past.
Before the new I must clear the old
Unhelpful ways and wait.
We do so together or we suffer alone,
Exile made execution by excuses we make.
Gather up the harps and silence the drums,
Prepare ye the way. The Lord, he comes.

Written on 25th January 2020.

There comes a time in all creative act,
When surface impulse, having once been loud
And filled with words the page that once had lacked,
Returns to silence and lays like a shroud
Over mind and heart once so free and proud.
Now my faculties sit, weak and fearful,
And I am left confused, lost and tearful
Attempting to extract a buried truth
That may, at last, free me to be cheerful.
And so I must replay my clouded youth.

Written on 24th January 2020.

Dear Future Self,
I’m sorry to impinge
On whatever it is your doing.
I know it’s not helpful
To communicate with me
But I so desperately needed to talk.
I have some questions
Of which Past Self is of no use.
(He is, if I am being candid,
Driving me to distraction!)
Are people right when they kindly state
Things will get easier?
When will the change emerge
And I am born anew
Into a new life with less sadness,
More joy?
What is the point of all of this
Which so painfully placates?
Where are you?
Can I have directions?
Can I visit, just for a day?
I must apologise for the stress,
It must have lost you some friends.
I think it is for the best
But I have been wrong before,
As Past Self continues to remind me,
What a bore.
I keep telling him to quieten down
And to hold onto her.
He is so lucky to have her
And to still be with her vibrancy.
I am not worth his time
In light of her presence.
He does not fully understand.
You may have someone too.
I hope so.
I should not disturb you
For I probably won’t understand
And I too have gifts and, who knows,
Maybe they are enough to hold me
In my frustration and my grief.
There is, of course, Him
In all his magnificence
Who tells me not to write;
To speak with Him and Him alone
And leave you well alone.
Forget I wrote, I was misled,
Yours sincerely, Ned.

Written on 22nd January 2020.

In the cavernous crevices
Of my secluded soul,
Where I have not ventured
In an age and a day
There hides a darkness.

I talk of darkened despair
In moments of mutuality,
Of honest vulnerability
And I speak true in part;
There is a hidden darkness.

But there is something deeper
That even I have not met,
It disturbs me in my dreams.
I cannot grasp or possess it
As it slips back into black.

There is a big black dog
That spits out twisted truths
Of vulnerable honesty.
In moments of menace
I hear its tormented truth.

There is a private presence
That’s been there for an age.
When I to venture a peep
It scurries surreptitiously away
Into its ceaseless cave.

Written on 20th January 2020.

There’s a well trod path, that we all walk
During our ageing and our emerging times.
We walk at different paces, some slow,
Some deliberate; still faster still some other
As they seek the end of this unending path.
There is detritus strewn along the way
Telling stories of past travels or waypoints
Of journeys not seen as destination.
Careless crisp packets, plastic, politically charged,
All discarded solicitously, privately in public.
This is here and yet everywhere in England.

Eliot describes another place, 
another journey and another space:
Little Gidding is a moment captured,
An unobtrusive point not enraptured
By projected poetics but rather by
Metered phrase that catch the eye
And draw us to observe
Something shared to be conserved
A common condition of human life
That gives shape and direction to our strife.

We meet along the way, heading in direction different,
A cross point where divergence touch for a moment,
We meet in an awkward gaze and judgement made,
To speak and share or in silence part,
We generously nod and a pang of what could have been
Transports through my veins and I am undone.
I know she felt the same but sinful condition
Hindered us from turning back to make amends,
A relationship that would feed our journeys still.
Maybe we’ll meet in another time, another point
And reverse the regret at what still could be.

I’m left with Eliot still wrestling
With endings and beginnings.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time.”

Written on 18th January 2020.

I watch you for patterns,
And those repeated turns of phrase
Speak to me of your ways.
You reveal in a gaze your thoughts,
How your reason contorts
And fear and need consorts with doubt.
Then do I know about
All the tales you spout, a mask,
Slipped slightly, I must ask,
Or choose the safer task to look
And read you like a book
That I tenderly took and held
In hopeful hands, propelled
Into your world, compelled to know
Where next your thoughts will go.
I stop. I love and so return.

Written on 15th January 2020.

Robust and wild lays the land,
From rugged peaks to concrete towns.
Industrious the people with hardened masks,
Sweating and toiling to make things last.

Life is a crucible with pressure and heat,
Tough the result, molten their core.
Dwarfish this people, loyal and true,
Once they possess they always have you.

Written on 14th January 2020.