The Prayer of Saint Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.


O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

The Madman

I am black and surrounded. It seeps into me like toxic gases. Stuffed full of cotton wool, barbed wire tears at my flesh. Slowly picking it away like chicken on a bone.


I must be and move and sit in this room. Drowning in self-conscious misery my confidence has snapped. It has been borrowed, taken away by a malevolent demiurge who is howling in some cage made of black space and motion.

Faces tear at me with eyes and beaks speaking of swords. They eat me up. Breathless and gasping, my face melts and my skull protrudes

I try desperately to focus on light, magic, beautiful, mystical moments of freedom but I come into this place and it flees from me. I am at a loss. Dying, scared faces realize that I am mad. I am insane. I do not belong in this story, in this place. 

How did I get here? 

There was an interview and a purple sky and a summer. I was here in this room but I couldn’t get out because the taxi was late. Now it has arrived and I have missed my stop.

The purple room with the skylight, and the gulls, and the cat sleeping in the sunlight has gone. There is just this room with its bare walls.

Faces which used to melt of warmth in my presence are now frozen in fear, like my jaw when my eyes go mad. I hold my breath until I can’t bare it any longer


Every morning I want to die. I want to drown myself, I want blood, I want hooks, I want anything other than this boredom. Ripping myself out of the warmth and coming here over and over again in a dream which keeps repeating.

I will enter into a hole under the floor where it is black but I am not afraid because I am not there. I am here, on a beach with pebbles and fish and horses.


Round and round he wanted to stay before but now he laughs. They were holding their breath. They were holding their breath, just like I do when the panic sets in and I just want to leave, but I am rooted.

I must continue. I keep saying it is a new moment. Every moment it is renewed, and they haven’t noticed and it’s ok. But they have, they have noticed. 

One day I will just snap and break the book case into splinters. I will dig them into my skin and push over tables and grow my hair long and wild, and run down to the river, and I will have escaped.


I will be somewhere new. A dance floor with drugs and music. The pounding beat is me and I am it and I do not have to care or be anything because all there is is the music, and the sky, and the pigeons circling round and round above the hills, while the airplanes land and the sky is blue.

The sky is blue, it is not black, it is blue and beautiful. The sun fills up the world. I wake up and it is there. I go to bed and it is there. I am alive, and life is fun, and it works. My intentions come to fruition.

That is the agony, of course. The fact that I feel it every night. And then the panic button comes on. I feel trapped and I don’t hear. I don’t want them to see, and they do see, and it goes on.

I sleep and decide that I am a shaman. The world is a magical dream, and there are kind beings on my sofa. It is 2012 and the world is becoming something new. Everything is God and everything is pure.

I am here where I need it to be, but it does not follow me. I am a psycho and they are afraid of me and I am afraid of them and the other people, and being so tired.

The good intentions wait and then they crowd round me again when I sit on that seat and I say it again. I will be magic, I will help, I will inspire. Then it comes on me. It comes on me, over and over again. 

I end up with eyes that are holes sitting in the darkness.

But then a world without people is worse. I am going to go there because I have not been grateful and I will not be given a second chance this time.

I will just be frozen in that room asking “but what do we do - where do we go?” What do we do, where do we go over and over again. Running into the bathroom with the mirror and the flickering faces, in the virtual reality experience.

I will go back there because I have not appreciated here. I have thrown here away because it feels not part of me. 

I want to be in a darkened room where I don’t have these people in my face. But they keep appearing and then they will investigate me for being a nutcase, and I will run away again.

A room with no ceiling

Eagles scream, sore above the sky, picking at the clouds like candy floss.

 But where is that man I saw before with the hat and the stick?

 He was walking down some lost country lane through babbles of squawking rooks and creaky rusted gates, green wellington boots floating in the wind.

But the view at the top was so spacious and free like a room with no ceiling. I sat on the bench and watched the smoke float up into the blue summer sky. I was home. I was free. Only me and the view.

 Then I heard the children laughing in the field below.

 They were all dressed in pink tuxedoes, whirring round and round like spinning wheels pushed by Egyptians under a pink sun.

Two girls were holding a skipping rope and the one in the middle, a little purple girl with pig tails and an anaemic teddy bear was jumping and jumping.

A strange man with rimless glasses was watching from the sidelines. He was sweating and rubbing the condensation off the glass.

 She just went right over to him. She jumped at him and starting biting. Her teeth were like electric saws cutting through cheese.
---

Spatters of gold paint covered the grass and sparkled in the twilight.

The children had long since disappeared but I still heard their laughter.

By now the sky was pink and orange, the city spread out before me like a Roman arena. I realized that I did not have to walk, I could just fly across and look down on it all like a bee in a summer garden. So I climbed up into the sky and started moving my arms about and slower and slower I went higher and higher.

Then I was flying

----

eagles screams and sores above the sky picking at the clouds like candy floss where is that man i saw before with the hat and the stick he was walking down some lost country lane through babbles of squawking rooks and creaky rusted gates green wellington boots floating in the wind

But the view at the top was so spacious and free like a room with no ceiling and I just sat on the bench and watched the smoke float up into the blue summer sky I was home I was free only me and this view and then I heard the children laughing in the field bellow they were all dressed in pink tuxedos and they were whirring round and round like spinning wheels pushed by Egyptians under a pink sun two grils were holding a skipping rope and the one in the middle a little purple girl with pig tails and an anaemic teddy bear was jumping and jumping there was a strange man with rimless glasses watching from the sidelines and sweating rubbing the condensation of the glass but she just went right over to him and she jumped at him and starting biting her teeth were like electric saws cutting through cheese

Spatters of gold paint covered the grass and sparkled in the twilight the children had long since disappeared but I still hear their laughter by now the sky was pink and orange the city spread out before me like a roman arena and I realized that I did not have to walk that I could just fly across and look down on it all like a bee in a summer garden so i climbed up into the sky and started moving my arms about and slower and slower I went higher and higher and then I was flying 

Circles

Mediocrity is mercenary, like fog. The exhaust sputters and lurches. A snail leaves a trail of silver on a gravestone.

One hymn. One reason. To float, to shine, to fly. Buzzing in endlessly. This whisper. This silence.

I push open the window and the air rushes in. My skin is cold and fragile.

Something solid is needed.

The ordinariness is comforting. Churches and spirits are empty.

These kids, these books, this icy forest.

Just to be here on this train, discussing Hitchcock.

Analysing the opening scene of Midsomer Murders. Brewing coffee.

Hands, voices, conversations.

I don’t want to spend my life sitting in a circle.