Part Two Book Five Epic and Autobiographical (A Versified Finale)

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

 

In the early part of autumn 1990,

I began a course known as the PGCE

Or Post Graduate Certificate in Education

At a school of higher education

In the pleasant outer suburb of Twickenham,

Becoming resident in nearby Isleworth.

I began quite promisingly as I saw it

Even though my heart

Was not really in the course

But I genuinely saw the benefits

Of successfully completing it,

And as might be expected,

Excelled in drama and physical education.

I rarely drank during the day,

But at night I was sometimes so drunk

I was incoherent.

The following versified piece

Serves a testimony to this sad truth.

Its original was a letter

Typed to a close friend in about 1990,

Some three years or so

Prior to my coming to saving faith

In the Lord Jesus Christ.

And concerning a series of accidents

I'd recently suffered.

However, it was never finished, nor sent.

When it was recovered,

It was as a piece of scrap paper,

A remnant from a long lost past.

It was subsequently edited and reassembled,

Before being subject

To some kind of versification in 2006.

And then some half decade later,

Further work was performed on it,

But it was still pretty threadbare for all that.

 

Incident in St. Christopher's Place

 

Dear, I haven't been in touch

for a long time.

Sorry.

The last time I saw you

Was in St. Christopher's Place.

It was a lovely evening...

when I knocked that chair over.

I am sorry.

Since then,

I've had not a few accidents

Of that kind.

 

Just three days ago,

I slipped out in a garden

At a friend's house...

And keeled over, not once,

Not twice, but three times,

Like a log...clonking my nut

So violently that people heard me

In the sitting room.

What's more,

I can't remember a single sentence

Spoken all evening. The problem is...

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

The following oddity, recently versified,

And even more recently

Afforded a fresh new title,

Is one of only a handful of works of mine

exhibiting the absurd

and affected writing style

I briefly adopted in the very early 1990s,

And which was typified

By an obsessive use of

such archaisms as "tristful" and "pheere",

although how much of it's

been based on something

I concocted more than two decades ago,

and how much of

more recent origin

I'm afraid I'm unable to say for certain.

Who Had He Not Sought Such Fatal Lethe

The playwright was most effective

As the dramatic illuminator

Of his own tristful destiny

As well as those of his kinfolk.

And of the two plays that treat

Of the tragic Tyrones

One features James,

His wistful pheere Mary,

And his two troubled offspring

 

A quartette of characters

Based respectively

Upon O'Neill's father James,

His mother Ella,

O'Neill himself,

And his elder brother, Jamie

Who had he not sought

Such fatal Lethe

Might have evolved into

A great actor like his father,

Or a writer like his brother,

Such was the luminous

Brilliance of his early promise.

How richly blessed he'd been

At birth with charm and intellect.

While part of the

Minim Department

Of Notre Dame University,

He was a favoured prince

Destined for a future

As a Catholic gentleman

Of exquisite breeding

And learning; and then

A prize-winning scholar

At Fordham, from which

He came to be expelled

For a foolish indiscretion.

 

While the other is an account

Of poor Jim Tyrone's

Last attempt at securing

Some kind of earthly felicity,

Through his love for Josie, a

Woman with a heart as vast

As the sorrows of his life,

A Moon for the Misbegotten.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

The Loonie's Last Reckoning,

Based largely on events that took place

On the 16th of January 1993,

Was initially an adaptation

Of an autobiographical fragment

Possibly penned around 1996,

Which was then edited, reassembled

And versified for publication

As Remnants from Writings Destroyed 1

At the Blogster website

On the 10th of March 2006.

While in time, it was incorporated

Into an early version of the memoir,

Rescue of a Rock and Roll Child,

Known as Spawn of the Swinging Sixties.

Only to be unearthed in late 2011,

And wedded to a versified translation

Of notes made probably around 1992,

Shortly before the events

In question took place,

And then awarded a striking new title.

 

The Loonie's Last Reckoning

 

It was late in the afternoon

Of the 17th of January 1993

That my whole

Intoxicated universe

Finally exploded

 

Drink me one day = 10 vodkas

7 1/2 pints 14 wines

1 bottle of wine + 6 gins + 4 pints

Or 2 bottles of wine + halfs then 4 pints

Or bottle of wine + 5 pints +

Cans and shorts.

Saw myself as a loonie

Of the Lunatic Underground

 

It was late in the afternoon

Of the 17th of January 1993

That my whole

Intoxicated universe

Finally exploded

Five + Two = Seven Units By 11.30

12.30 = Six Units 1.30 = 5+2 = Five

Units

6.30 = Four Units 7.30 = 3+2 = Five

Units

8.30 = 4+1 = Five

Units

12.30 = Free

Saw myself as a loonie

Of the Lunatic Underground

It was late in the afternoon

Of the 17th of January 1993

That my whole

Intoxicated universe

Finally exploded

 

Broken at last

With etiolated face

Tremulous hands

After so many years

Of semi-Icaran hubris

 

It was late in the afternoon

Of the 17th of January 1993

That my whole

Intoxicated universe

Finally exploded.

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

Oblivion in Recession

First existed

As a series of rough notes

Scrawled on a piece

Of scrap paper

In the dying days of January 1993.

Oblivion in Recession

The legs started going,

Howlings

In my head.

Thought I'd go

Kept awake with water,

Breathing,

Arrogantly telling myself

I'd stay straight.

Drank gin and wine,

Went out,

Tried to buy more,

Unshaven,

Filthy white shorts,

Lost, rolling on lawn,

Somehow got home.

Monday, waiting for offie,

Looked like death,

Fear in eyes

Of passers-by,

Waiting for drink,

Drink relieved me.

Drank all day,

Collapsed wept

"Don't Die on Me."

Next day,

Double brandy

Just about settled me,

Drank some more,

Thought constantly

I'd collapse

Then what?

Fit? Coronary?

Insanity? Worse?

Took a Heminevrin,

Paced the house

All night,

Pain in chest,

Weak legs,

Lack of feeling

In extremities,

Visions of darkness.

Drank water

To keep the

Life functions going,

Played devotional music,

Dedicated my life

To God,

Prayed constantly,

Renounced evil.

Next day,

Two Valiums

Helped me sleep.

By eve,

I started to feel better.

Suddenly,

All is clearer,

Taste, sounds,

I feel human again.

I made my choice,

And oblivion has receded,

And shall disappear.

 

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1990s

 

Some months after appearing

In the Scottish Play at the Lost Theatre

In the one-time working class

West London suburb of Fulham,

I wrote the piece featured below,

Such a Short Space of Time.

 

But in the first instance

It was part of an unfinished short story,

Not a poem at all.

My parents were on vacation

During the period which inspired it,

Which is to say early in the summer of 1999.

 

Hence, I spent a lot of time at their house

Performing various tasks,

Such as watering my mother's flowers.

As well as this, I took sneaky advantage

Of their absence to transfer

Some of my old LPs onto cassette.

 

It was something my own music system

Was incapable of doing, unlike theirs.

And it was a profoundly unsettling experience,

To listen to songs that, perhaps in the cases

Of some of them, I'd not heard

For twenty years, or even twenty five, or more.

 

With a heartrending intensity,

Doing so had the effect

Of evoking a time

When I was filled to the brim

With sheer youthful joy of life

And undiluted hope for the future.

 

Yet as I did so, it seemed to me

That it was only very recently

That I'd heard them for the first time,

Despite the colossal changes

Brought about not just in my own life,

But the lives of all those of my generation.

 

Hence, I was confronted at once

With the devastating transience

Of human life,

And the cataclysmic effect

The passage of time exerts on all human life,

And it was a profoundly unsettling experience.

 

Such a Short Space of Time

 

I love not just those

I knew back then,

But those who were young

Back then,

But who've since

Come to grief, who,

Having soared so high,

Found the consequent descent

Too dreadful to bear.

With my past itself,

Which was only yesterday,

No, even less time,

A moment ago,

And when I play

Records from 1975, Soul records,

Glam records, Progressive records,

Twenty years melt away

Into nothingness.

What is a twenty-year period?

Little more than

A blink of an eye.

How could

Such a short space of time

Cause such devastation?

I love not just those

I knew back then,

But those who were young back then.