December 2, 2003

  • One Of Yesterday’s poems.


    _____________________


     


    “A Most Peculiar Man”

    ____________________



    When I’m in my silent world

    There is a song

    That I feel I am at one with

    And which has inspired my poetry

    More than any other song.

    It is “A Most Peculiar Man”

    By Simon and Garfunkel.



    That could have been me

    If no one had cared

    Back in the ‘fifties

    When they had wanted to put me

    Into a mental institute

    Just because I had no empathy

    And was autistic.



    I could have been the one

    With no friends,

    And the one

    Who seldom spoke

    So no one spoke to me

    A most peculiar man

    In Clowne Town.



    “Poor thing” they would have tutted

    As I muttered to the post office

    To get my allowance.



    “He shouldn’t be living up there by himself”

    They would have said

    As I shuffled home singing

    “A most peculiar man”.



    It could have been me

    If no one had cared,

    But some teachers,

    Some social workers,

    And some doctors;

    Spoke up for me

    And kept me sane

    If ever down,

    If ever among the low

    Of a sink-school.



    This is for them,

    To the ones who cared,

    The ones who gave me life

    When others wanted

    Just to destroy me.



    This is to them,

    And to empathy

    Pouring out of my silent world:

    A most peculiar man.

     

    —

    Terry.

December 1, 2003

  • I’ll Make one of my own comments as today’s entry, plus why I have not surfed your sites again. Sorry, no more posting on any site until I have read some of your wonderful sites.


     







    Sorry, I have not surfed tonight, I have wrote five poems instead, each one under a different name. When one is born without empathy, he learns to care deeply instead, and becomes everyone he encounters. It is not a madness, it is a feeling, being each person I have ever known well. Be it the happy, the lonely, the sad or the old.


    Terry.

November 30, 2003

  • “The Belperists, (so called because their “founder” came from Belper in Derbyshire) believes that we all are already dead and that Earth is itself “hell” and that we come from another planet to suffer hell upon this one.”



    This was the first paragraph of a spoof article in my paper on one April the First. (Watch out for a spoof entry in this next April!). I wrote the piece in less than a hour and everyone was fooled.



    Yes, they looked for the spoof in the paper, but thought a true story was it. The true-story clipping was about a boy of ten thrown off the bus because he didn’t have a ticket (or money for one) for his goldfish. As readers knew I loved kooky religions, the Belperists was thus taken as a truism, and even got their way into a guide-book!



    Naughty me!



    ———————-

    In The “Crown & Thistle”

    ______________________________________
    _______





    “It was the first day of Spring” he said bitterly; “When she died.





    “I arrived home and admired the daffodils growing in the garden, and I felt such purpose in life.





    “I opened the front door to see a mass of puzzled women, all with strained eyes and useless words

    “‘Baby’s dead!” came a hoarse shout from a world so far away and yet right next to me.





    “I walked stunned into the living room and saw her there, covered with a tiny sheet.





    “‘When, how?’ I had muttered as if it bloody mattered.





    “As if it mattered, as if anything mattered at that moment, but the still bundle that had that morning put out her frail arms to me and said ‘Bye-bye dadda’”





    He put down his still unsupped pint, nodded to us all and asked us the date as if he didn’t know.





    Outside the pub, in the borders, daffodils had marked the coming of spring.





    “As if it mattered” he mumbled. tears in his shrivelled eyes.”As if it matters this forty-two years on”

    He picked up his darts and threw them with angry force onto the board.





    “One hundred and eighty!” one of us gasped in amazement.









    As if it mattered.

     

    ——


    Comment: As far as I can recall, I didn’t write a truly great poem on my two week South Wales holiday (though I did write five excellent texts!) But this poem I wrote two days back, was from a conversation I heard in a Mountain Ash pub.



    All poets should listen to pub conversations, it’s when tipsy, that heartache comes pouring out. Pretending to read, I listened to this man saying how his baby died one spring day long ago, and he never had another child. He got home from work and someone said “baby’s dead.” the talker and listener then went off to play darts, leaving me suddenly not enjoying either my pint nor the small town that had changed so dramatically from how I remember it in 1959.


    ________________________________

November 26, 2003

  • Newspaper Life.

    _______________

    One of a series of articles by an old reporter. The conversation is rough stab on how I remember it to have been.

    ________________

      A councillor from our area was throwing this party, and the man and his wife, both in the late fifties; invited the editor and his wife, but the editor “kindly” gave Maggi and I the tickets. I did not look closely at the tickets at the time.



      We dressed up smart, had Mrs Davies look after the boys, and Maggi and I went hand in hand to this house off of a set of “Colombo”. It even had it’s own “ballroom.”

      “More than these pants have” I joked. “Take them off then” my wife grinned back, not yet seeing the naked woman who had come to the door.

      “Where is the Editor, and who are you?” the nude woman snapped.

      A naked man (smoking a pipe and looking a little like Eric Morecombe, though of course it wasn’t him,) joined the woman. “Are you a naturist?” he asked.



      “You bastard!”

      The editor said “next time you fuck something up Terry, DON’T put the blame on me, “The Derbyshire Times” had a fucking field-day.”

      “Are you a naturist, then, Sir?”

      “You’d fucking like that would you? No, when I was drunk the other night at the Lord Mayor’s banquet, the old twat, (the councillor) gave me the tickets, look it says on them: “Dress: Why?”



      Maggie never forgave me, not only had she thought that I had planned the whole thing, but also wrongly believed it was some sort of orgy. I had to cheer when the councillor and wife was arrested for being naked on the public highway after getting lost after one party. He had to resign of course, though it never got into the papers.



    (Fucking Tory!)

November 22, 2003

  • I am on my website, using it as “word”, I say this because this isn’t planned, I do not know what I am going to write, but after correcting typos, this will be as you read it.

    I am a nobody, oh, I write passible poetry, I’ve been published all over the world, I’ve been translated into several languages and am mentioned in school text-books in some countries, but so has many another bit-actor in the world of dreaming, oops, of trying to be a writer.



    Oh, I have done it, I have engraved my name into the book of books, but to see how near I have gotten, look for my name on the net with ref to before 1990, you’ll be lucky!



    But does it matter? Does anything matter except the fact we were born and the fact that we are going to die? Even the greatest figures in history are dead, fat good success did them! They might have been a bit cosier than I, but happier?



    Oh, I get depressed, but damn it all, from having been born with autism to having lost half of my brain, (through sexual assault, to the death of my daughter and the resulting divorce, and so on,) means that I should be allowed to get depressed at times…



    But all things considering, I am happy here writing shit onto my eblog, getting only a couple of more admirers than say, The Beatles “Eleanor Rigby”‘s writings. That does not make me a king, but hell, I don’t give a fuck.



    I love reading other blogs of course, to me they are the great new art form, as near the blue touch-paper as say Jazz was in 1910 or plays were when Shakespeare set out.



    Maybe we will not be counted among the greatest bloggers, but we can but hope. Thank you for coming, comment and I will read your blog every day, if I think it worth reading that is, and believe me, I usually only sign the ones that I do. So if I’ve signed your blog, you me best mate.

     

    Terry.

November 19, 2003





  • In rural Wales in the thick winter of 1963, I and three other teenagers used to walk 6 miles (in the solid snow) to the nearest town for the old people. We were their lifeline, and nothing else could get through. It’s a shock to realise that today I would be one of the old people!



    Another thing that I, and a big beefy girl who fancied me (but hated my Sis!), did that winter was help a sheep farmer. A lot of his sheep would have died if it wasn’t for us, because the farm couple were very old, they had no children and most of the shepheds had their families to see to. I can boast that many a sheep would have died if I and Megan Waters (who spoke mostly Welsh) hadn’t led them to safety or collect hay from a helicopter-drop from RAF Aberporth.



    The autumn before I wrote a poem, that forty years later is still in my canon. I was walking through thick carpets of leaves to see Trevor Jones, a school-friend, in the next village. And inspired, I wrote (unchanged to this day):



    “The Leaves of Owain Gwyndedd”

    _______________________________ 





    Leaves drift to the ground

    O men, hear not their sound!





    They fade, become yellow-brown

    We weep when they flutter down.





    It is said the sunset falls

    Summer dies within their walls.





    Owain Gwyndedd, how your leaves

    Rusts & moulders, & makes us grieve;





    But let your foes go & sing

    They know not of your coming spring.





    How soon the swift March gales

    Will blow them all out of Wales!



    ______________________________

    In the near future I am going to write about other important adventures that has inspired poetry from me. The most dramatic, because-and I will NOT be budged on this!- the ghost of a monk spoke to me. This was in Iona, and this has produced one of my favourite poems.



    Also coming up will be Petra, Japan, Menton, France (where I lived for three years) and (after the time spent there) Cyprus.



    Watch this blog, my few die-hard readers.



    Terry, Lord Pineapple, The Thane Of Clowne.



November 17, 2003














  • “Requiem.”





    Do not cry for me

    I have not gone far,

    Only as far as my memory of you

    And all of the love that you gave me.



    Do not cry for me

    As I enter a church for the last time,

    As you whisper a few words of comfort

    Into the ears of others.



    For our hearts will beat together always

    For death cannot part us

    As life could not.



    Goodbye, and thank-you

    For all you have given me

    For all of the smiles and all of the laughter,

    The holding of hands

    And the silences.



    We will be together, forever,

    Wherever we are.



    Do not cry for me my darling,

    For I have not gone far.



    (c) ff % 243  Wrote under the name Lord Pineapple.

    Comment: I would like this poem recited at my funeral, but as none of my family is interested in poetry full stop. Let alone mine, I doubt it wll be. But if any readers want to use it go ahead, say it’s by “Lord Pineapple” and print and publish it at will!

November 15, 2003





  • This is my truthful blog. A lot of readers that might have read it has gone for various reasons, a lot of them middle-aged women, they just didn’t like the truth. Portia, Nanny, Tennesse-Lady, SmoothSailing, Officeconfidential…. But it does not matter, what matters is the truth, if a lot of silly Christians who supports the troops killing children in Iraq but think that the word “fuck” is bad, or think that fiction blogs an insult to their gentle rocking-horse of life, should I fucking care?

      Still, this blog is full of anger and bitterness and my other main one is just poetry I have wrote under different names, so neither are to be read by people who only want to sing like a canary or flower like a rose.

      To those that are left, be them 13-15 year old intelligent girls or old men passing the time away at their work, welcome to another slice of my cake.

      A lot of my fans in my newspaper days were very young children, and it pisses me off that today some people might think me perverted because of it. The truth is I only ever wanted to bring that little sparkle of light into young lives as people did mine when I was a lonely abused and sad bitter child. I felt the best way for me to repay all those little acts of kindness from strangers, some of whom I never even thanked, was to be like them, was to be that beacon in other dark frightened lives.

      Another lot of fans in those days were very old people, and that was because I listened, I didn’t pretend to listen like some people pretend to read blogs, I really DID listen. And a large number of the 500 or so poems wrote since 1996 and my return to this world has been based on the lives I heard then.

      Bill and Jan for example, told me that their only child was in an institution, and told me why. This poem is about this “why”

                    “The Parting”

                    ____________

    (poem on schizophrenia)



    They watched the car draw away

    And they embraced in tears.

    “It’s for the best”he muttered, unconvincingly:

    “He had to go, you could not look after him any longer.”

    She nodded and sobbed out the words

    “I tried, we both tried, but he was getting too much for us.”

    She looked at her husband and led him inside, closing the door

    As if she was shutting it upon Jesus.



    Their house shall be so quiet tonight,

    Whilst far away a grown man will scream out “JUDASIES!”

    At the very top of his voice.



    ———————

      But a lot of their lives were full of joy as well as hardship, and some of their summer-wine could have graced the finest cellars of any Eden.

      So it’s funny that a lot of the names I named (and if anyone objects with a valid reason, I will move them), are the same sort of ageing ladies that used to write to my newspaper saying what a lovely young man I was.

      I still try to be something to everyone you know, an ear, a heart or a whisper, and I still cry today, like at the blogger moving to another school but missing the children of the one left behind, or the young blogger who is worried about her swearing on-line. It’s sad that a teenager feels threatened just because she wants the freedom to speak the truth as if the war-mongering politicians are allowed to lie, but that the truth is evil when it says that there is no god or wants to tell a racist to fuck off.

      End with a poem about a dig, an old Muslim chap told me this, it is almost his story more than my poem, so tender.

      And remember folks, I have no empathy, so all I write is from my heart and not from my mind.

    Terry.



                             “At The Dig”.

                             ____________

    “If these bones could talk,”

    The old man sighed.

    “What will they say?”



    He held the skeleton as if

    It was a lover,

    And he sighed again.



    “See the ribs have been crushed

    As if the poor soul

    Was kicked to death.”



    He performed the sign of the cross

    And gently placed the skeleton

    Back into its grave.



    Up in the sky

    I could hear

    The rumble of thunder.

    _____________________________






    —————————————-
    Lord Pineapple.

November 12, 2003

  • I had been on a plane before, when I was three years old I went to Kenya, but by the time I was nine this was largely forgotten.

      First we traveled to London by train, this itself was always an adventure, on The old Great Central Line, Derby, Leicester, Luton, London. Past vast shunting yards full of steam, past adverts in the fields, and my I-Spy books were filling up, not that they’ll be much use in Cyprus.

      We booked into a guest-house in St. Pancres, I remember it now, it looked just like 221B Baker Street in the “Classics Comic” book, and I imagined that Mrs. Hudson was going to let us in.



      The next morning we piled our suitcases onto a trolly and made for the underground.

      Two years before I fell in love with a bit of the underground that few remembers, the weighing machines printed out cards, on one side was the time and your weight, on the other side was dogs, (see below) of course, being whom I am, I collected them.

      We got a half-double-decker coach to the airport. Perhaps because I have been to many airports since, I can’t remember much about that day until we set off. Planes in those days flew much lower than they do now, and it was clear-skies throughout Europe. Ah, I wish I had kept the photographs I had taken, especially of over the alps, how they’d capture the comment section of my blog! Alas, lie so much of my life, they are like the Norweigan Blue, they are no more.



      At Rome airport my pocket watch (“The Flying Scotsman” on the back, I still have this watch!) stopped, it would not go again until the winter. It was hot, my sister felt faint, and my mother felt sick. It was the flying over Cyprus to Nicosia Airport that held my breath, I had never seen anything so beautiful, indeed even today, that would be my paradise journey.



      It was dark before we left the airport and caught a taxi to our bungalow on the outskirts of the city, and this would be the start of many adventures that will fill many a day’s blog. Not enough to make Hollywood, but enough I hope to keep my few readers happy. Not that I am now writing this blog for anyone but myself, as much as I love my readers.



    ____________________________________

    A card dispensed from a weighing machine in 1953, from the British Automatic Company.








     


    Off Till Saturday.

November 10, 2003

  • “Why are the windows open son?” my mother asked “Its not that warm.”

      In my college room in that autumn of ’68 was more pot than at a hippies convention.

      I saw dad look at an open film-container that lay on the table half way between the settee my parents had sat upon, and the bed I was sat upon.

      I needed to get the container of hash, but dad wanted to look at it too, it became a will of nerves between a stoned student and a police Inspector.

      “Are you alright Terry?” my mother asked, “your eyes make you look ill.”

      “Yes thanks Jenny, i mean Mum, I’m fine” I spoilt my answer by rambling on foolishly “I feel like a rabbit in a hole, I think that’s funny, in a hole, is it a burrow or a, you know what rabbits do dad!” I cried.

      “Smoke?” my father asked.

      “Er, no dad, I’ve got no…” for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what brand of cigerettes my dad smoked, I was that spaced out. “No dad, I’m totally out.”

      “Thou can say tha’ again,” dad snapped. My Mother was no fool, and at last she noticed the film-container that dad and I were eyeing, she picked it up, found its lid and put it into her handbag saying “That thing is bad for you, you are supposed to be studying Terence, not smoking that stuff! I know that’s what they do in college, it was on the news, but you are not, its going into the fire when we get home!” (My parents still had a coal fire then). I had more of the stuff, or I did have until my mother did a search of my college room that would have put my dad’s profession to shame; she found all five quarters!

      “I’m surprised at you!” my mother scowled “Haven’t you a girl-friend?”

      As on cue, Jennifer walsed into my room, stoned to kingdom come.

      Never again did my parents visit me in term, and never again did I keep hash in my college room! 

     

    ———————————

     


     

    Sister and I.