Best Society

“When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired -- though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on -- in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am."

Philip Larkin, 1922-1985

Nigel

Middle-Age Crisis (2003)

I have tried your life, with its mortgage, car, weeds and pastel-screened walls. I have paid my way in money and toil, not entitled to the perks of your tender romances.

Within your world of manipulation and lies, and minds unaware of their sad mediocrity. Your simplistic hiding places of repression and self-deceit make me jealous of your ignorance, yet happy that I do not walk as the living dead – as you do.

Nice may have a price, and that I have paid in full, but I sleep tightly and warmly at night knowing that I am able to experience the dismal corridors and blinding flashes of understanding.

This I have learned and, perhaps now, my time has come.

MBS?

Nigel

Prison (2003)

Never have I witnessed such a clan of impersonal, rude, intimidating and blinkered individuals.

A collection of ill-informed, mechanistic liars, apparently content to indulge in their own needs and desires, so as to get their way, by any measures available.

A conglomeration of fear-driven hypocrites, such that those good and noble, within the game, could barely gasp their last breaths of integrity within the hatesmoke-filled space.

I wonder what prison will bring? 

MBS?

Nigel

I Looked (2003)

I looked at the vicious crowd, pushing and jostling, and I did nothing, 
now I am a hooligan.
I looked at the calm soldier, slicing his enemy with his bayonet, and I did nothing,
now I am a war criminal.
I looked at the disembowelled refugee children, and I did nothing,
now I am a participator.
I looked at the stick-like bodies, as they were pushed into the trench, and I did nothing,
now I am Nazi.
I looked at the shattered remains of the crash victim, and I did nothing, 
now I am a manslaughterer.
I looked at the voluptuous body of the seductive model, and I did nothing,
now I am a rapist.
I looked at the distant scientists, collecting the remains of the murdered schoolgirl, and I did nothing, 
now I am a murderer.
I looked at the taboo sexual practices of others, and I did nothing, 
now I live the rest of my life as a child sexual offender,

... and then, I shutdown the computer. 

MBS?

Nigel