White you out

The names we award to the colour of one's collar,

mean less here in Oxford, where the collars will be white,

because daddy's collar is already quite white

(though to say "Daz-white" will seem awfully blue),

where even black skin indicates whiter collars,

or white mothers, who'll white you out,

scraping black from the canvas, leaving it white

and bare, and boring, a space to be filled in,

ignoring the proscriptions of a white collar,

demands of taste behind your pound or dollar,

seeing distinctions like 'high', forgoing the 'low',

consigning baser forms to the blue abyss below,

where I've missed the simple pleasures of

Yates on a Thursday, or sambucca before eleven,

where EastEnders is not just watched, but waited on,

but I'm dipping my collar in bleach, whiting myself out...

(with such a dingy-looking shirt, I'd best not go out).

Lace

The lace of my brain unlaced, the trace

of the stain unstained from the place

where we left it, feigned in the instant,

ingrained in the act, the spasm, the retract

-ed, redacted instant on the page, the cracked

screen where I write cracked words, from

the cracked brain you cracked with the crack

of our spasms, smoked with our pipes,

the chasms between rhymes that come

with coming, rhyming bodies, alive, long

revived by the manic instant of the

painter's brush, or the poet's pen, spent

again in the moment, the instant,

the stain that follows in shocks, in waves,

the crack that cracks outwards for days,

and in retreating leaves the thread

unfurled and undead, tying my head

to the words that we said, the spasms in bed,

fixed, and clicked into place, leaving only the

trace of your stains in my brain, coming

in poems, leaving prose for better things,

unread.

"Metanoia"

Madman in the Attic had become too too tongue-in-cheek for me; a bit on the nose, a bit unhelpful, a bit of a joke that didn't work anymore. I just discovered a new word, Metanoia. It's Jung, so its actual psychological significance or reality can be taken with a side of salt: a moment of re-thinking the world, of re-structuring the universe around a realisation, an epiphany: it is the category to which both 'psychotic breakdown' and 'healing' belong. That ambiguity is beautiful. It is "a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself of unbearable conflict by melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form", cf. Wikipedia. Been there, done that. And what a lovely spin, too: a more adaptive form.

Yes. There is something I agree with there. I do feel stronger, better. Recovered, but not like bones that recover more frail. More like steel, reinforced with steel, molten steel poured over, hardened into some enormous obelisk; the original thoughts, the original feelings, the original loves and losses are someone else's. They belonged to the old particles of steel, which dripped off as I was growing, becoming, strengthening. My self-image reduced to coal, the chipping forces made me crack; more pressure, and heat, and agony, and on the other side I changed, into diamond. As if coal I had had been my chrysalis; I had span it around me with negative thinking, poor decisions, and antidepressants had been the steroid, and my carbon-and-sulfur silk-web spilling too fast to catch; time was all it took for the Adult to emerge.

Metanoia, n.

It contains 'annoy'; that's cheeky, I feel, the right amount of on the nose. It contains 'meta', and look, look at the absurdity of a blog discussing why I chose the name for a blog only I read (properly), half-aware to Watch What I Say while Saying What I Feel. (The same time knowing it's slightly ironic, because I'm fudging this exposition to fit a very loose definition of 'meta', because I feel I have to. ) And it has these other fitting meanings, too: it is the retorical device of retracting what you just said and saying it again in a better way. What I mean by this is, it is the style of self-correction, that lends itself freely to streams-of-conscious, blog-blank-type, etc. What I mean by this is, it is my style. What I mean by this is... [joke not funny anymore]. In theology, 'metanoia' is repentance.

My blog has, stylistically, always been dependent on epiphanic elevated journals, taking real things and lifting them into the pure abstract, heightening things into pure fiction. Now it is named for being so. And it has always been a (more carefully constructed than it might appear) intentionally long-winded, winding, self-correcting and confusing style at once meant to seem instantaneously written but encoding more interesting truths all the same. Like the "Birds" poem (blog down), which is all about renewal and a desperate attempt to find happiness (pre- or mid-SSRI detox), which was a false start perhaps, this blog signals a positive-outlook way forwards. For one thing, depressing blogs don't get you second dates, and they seem to over-worry College.

I am torn whether to quote from Kanye's "Stronger" or Wordsworth's "Prelude", so I'll quote neither. Onwards!

Birds

Small, yellow birds come together

in swooping, long chains – they look

like sheet music , faint sketched out rows

dotted with black beaks and tails, perfectly

plotting out their song (a tweeting, chirping,

unapologetically freeform melody); swirling

staffs of song wrap around in ribbons,

and the closer in it ties, the louder it sings,

and the further out it loops, the more faint

and elegant it begins to sound. I am some-

where in that music, somewhere behind

those layers of invisible and disappearing staffs

(five line staffs, I can just make out),

being carried away piece by piece (each pair

of tiny bird-feet carrying a pound or so of flesh),

and the music rinsing me clean (on top the mountain,

so green, its scent so alarming), leaving me left

all but a man, scorched by their music,

wet and cold like an infant.

And he says to himself, "Story of My Life."

Once upon a time I was a happy young man.

Then, one day, a wicked witch cast a spell on me, and I started (very slowly, at first) to become someone else altogether.

The handsome prince promised he'd slay my demons, and be patient, and when the real me fell totally asleep he promised he'd wait for the 100 years-spell to pass.

At the worst of it, locked away, demons all about me, unable to think for tears falling or feel for numbness aching me, I was abandoned by the prince.

At this point, I succumbed and the real me fell further from the surface; the demons overtook me, and I became the Monster that knights and princes travel the land to slay.

(No wise prophets were there to recognise the innocent person underneath.)

Things got really bad.

And worse and worse.

I was abandoned at the worst possible time.

I was blamed for everything that happened to me. Was it my own fault this thing happened to me, then?

Now the prince wishes to roam the world, slaying demons for others, and wants more than anything for some other knight to come and slay me.

And I still need saving, but no one seems to care.

I don't think this is even the happy young man talking now. I'm someone else, still.

Written on the Occasion of a Confrontation

Hesiod the Hellenist, and Homer’s Homos

Do you listen to old Aesop’s fables,

Concluding the dead fabulist knew best?

Does Shame still reign your anus, unable

To enter Eros? This attorney rests

His case on science, on logic, on facts:

(The fact being you did not choose what pleases

Your being.) Retract assumptions: enact

Redemption for We that love erastês.

Fabulist and fabulous: ne’er collude,

‘Lest to suffer the rude, the boisterous –

Like an idiot you get fucked (no lube!),

Mentally at least: it’s preposterous

That your frail dignity should yet depend

On the judgements of lesser men (mere boys

At a loss, you concede, to comprehend

The situation.) You and I both toyed

With feelings we chose to reject, respect

Arbitrary mores and social controls,

Dare we not upon death, rewards collect,

For setting hell for ourselves as our goals.

You’re nearly free but so far from awake

That I could shake you by your bones, ring you

By your ears, drive you with a wooden stake

(Forsake that mistake, for is it not true

Vampires rest in horizontal closets?)

Wake up to see that a swirling access

To the uncommonly possessed (trust it’s

Me who wants what’s best; abide where digress

-sions spring from passion!) by the uninspired,

And get fired up! Reclaim the fires of hellls

They invented to throttle our desires,

ART IS YOURS – (mostly mine) – listen as bells

Ring out to proclaim my words as music:

Do not relent ‘til your face is in stars,

Praise poetry (its art metaphysic)

That teaches it’s fine to be who you are.

Had it been