The Journal Of A Disappointed Man

I slip and slide through my life,

trying to get a grip on the rail.

I'm grasping in the dark for a switch

that'll turn on some almighty bright white light and thus, illuminate the way, the path, make everything clear as day. And every breath I take seems to be quickly rolled up behind me and filed away in memory.

Only a particular scent or dose of weather can pinprick the past and even then,

the drawer opens flirtatiously for just a moment.

I have lost touch with everyone I went to school with, everyone in the village where I spent most of my formulative years,

everyone I went to college with,

everyone I ever worked with.

They too, are filed away, often angrily slamming the drawer behind them,

over something I said or something I didn't say.

My lovers cannot be traced.

I know. I've tried.

I've taken trains to their cities and stood on street corners in the miraculous

off-chance that they might wander by.

But each time, I have returned home,

defeated and had to force myself to sleep

so that my heart didn't kill me.

I began my autobiography at 23 years old,

with the intention that I wouldn't live 'til 25.

But I'd done nothing, loved no-one,

said nothing of any great importance by that time.

The journal of a disappointed man.

I took a position at the Natural History Museum

but left after only 3 months due to allergies.

Whilst deluding myself that I could reinforce

the scientist's power of detached analysis

with a poetic intensity,

I would cough up my guts on the glass

that held the giant stuffed man-o-war.

I had a gift of incisive and candid comment,

but I failed to ignite it

when faced with the apple-cheeked Irish girl

who served the tea in the basement canteen.

Drunk most nights, in the Black Swan on Canal St,

I would attempt to put my own complicated nature

under the microscope of a beer glass.

I walked home alone, opening the air with bolshy,

slurred dictums against religion,

ethics, love and life itself.

Lonely, penniless, paralysed by the guilt

of never having told my father I loved him,

I wander hospital corridors, posing as a visitor.

I have wept, enjoyed, struggled and overcome

but I remain disappointed.