When the first winds of the new year blew, I headed for the clouds,
Where I hid myself away, choosing escapism to avoid humanity,
My reclusiveness rewarded me with welcomed childhood reconnection,
With back-to-basics art, without stress, leading me to this fragile moment,
With my mental hibernation over, I have re-entered a changed world,
And this summer and her fires finds me slower, sluggish and punch drunk,
I feel the work army at my gates, their battering ram access underway,
Where my walls feel more papier-mâché than the required stone and mortar,
But I must fight those who wish to steal and run away with my time,
Time that I am well aware feels more fleeting now than ever before,
My time of seclusion is over, the deceased have now been laid to rest,
And I must pull myself from the haze that I’m caught in to commence battle,
A bare-knuckled fight against outsiders and takers that I feel ill-prepared for,
Like an old lion with blunt teeth and dulled claws, I just feel in the way,
But I still must defend myself, for even though I am tired and weary,
A war between my mind and a senseless world has been declared.
Our Lady of the Broken Heart
Remember, not everyone makes it to a new year, life can be short.
(Requiescat in pace)
Finding Portals
As the calendar closes on this final day of the year,
I don’t feel anything other than a numb indifference,
In a personal review of everything I have created,
A sustained enthusiasm for creativity was evident,
My output declined, I felt, and still do feel quite lost,
Like being encased in an airtight concrete bunker,
Lightless and inescapable, suffocating and restraining,
Surprisingly, writing gave me the most creative sustenance,
My private notebooks became illegible, their imagery manic,
Many pages were illustrated with such violent force,
Pages punctured, torn and replaced, screaming scrawled texts,
All aggressively wrapped in an explosion of coloured madness,
As though multiple Me’s were all erupting at once,
Uncontrolled, unrefined and absolutely lost in confusion,
A new year is the one opportunity to find myself,
Where my mental walls are not confines, but portals,
Allowing me to access a journey that makes me feel complete,
I need to rediscover the path to my wellness.
Seasonal Abnormality
For me, the end of the work year brings internal changes,
All creative endeavours feel virtually impossible,
The urge to do something imaginative is strained,
It takes time for the scars left by the year to fade,
Time is required for the anxieties of life to ease,
This is a dangerous time for the imaginer,
When the fires of the creative engine feel all but out,
It is important that some creativity must still happen,
But a passage of time being unproductive must also occur,
A period of zombified browsing, grazing, or dozing off,
Reconnecting with the imaginative core, laziness,
This behaviour must be indulged to allow regeneration,
A time to heal, rest, reinvent and renew interests,
Before another year begins, these are dangerous days,
Caution must be observed to avoid a terrible complication,
Where a psychological blackhole, the void, opens,
It’s vast and can completely engulf a creator, obscuring hope,
Negatively affecting the entire upcoming year.
Silent memories
It’s a couple of weeks before Christmas,
And I sit thinking about years gone by,
Closing my eyes, I can see smiling family faces,
Those of parents, grandparents, siblings, children,
My memories feel like short silent movie clips,
The faces, now colourless and blurred with time,
They feel like they belong to someone else,
As a grandfather myself now, I contemplate the future,
Will I be smiling when my seat at the table is empty,
Silently existing in someone’s distant memory,
Imprisoned in a blurred grey thought released once a year,
Or have I really been that way all along?
Testing testing
Ok, this will be the last AI jibberish I’ll share, but it was a fun experiment.
I decided to double down and really test AI video conversion, so I applied it to a few of my idea scribbles to see if it could work me out. The result was disturbing and amusing; I have been laughing at it ever since.
December
I don’t seem to be able to connect lately,
I feel like I’m unable to communicate effectively,
I’m irritating myself every time I open my mouth,
This makes me feel tired, a term I’m sick of repeating,
People exhaust me, even when seen in moderation,
I don’t have the energy for it all right now,
My words come out awkwardly, and I feel like an alien,
An outcast on an island of beige repetitive tedium,
It feels like there’s a heavy weight on me,
I have the kind of exhaustion that avoids sleep,
I wake up tired, I struggle through the day, then at night,
When I lie down, I’m wide awake for hours,
It’s also the time of year for that annual socialising dread,
Everyone looks so happy and full of excitement,
Either that or they’re about to win an Oscar for best actor,
If you’re like me, hold your head up; it doesn’t get much easier.
Don’t pretend, just let it happen, let it all flow past you,
Conserve your energy, because you’re going to need it,
Merry Christmas, the war with the mind is never over.
Fireflies in the morning light
I recently used AI to animate old family photos,
I was unprepared for how it would affect me,
Old still photographs that I had looked at countless times,
Came to life, they breathed, they lived again,
And then, like fireflies in the morning light,
Their lives faded out once more,
It evoked such a powerful sensory response,
For six seconds, ghosts came to life on my screen,
For six seconds, I felt their embrace again,
And for six seconds, my heart wanted to believe the lie.
Liminal Space
There have been liminal spaces in my life,
Where I found myself transforming internally,
Becoming someone or something else,
Shedding a virtual armoured exoskeleton,
Immediately afterwards, I’m left vulnerable,
This is a time for caution and self-protection,
Because whatever sneaks beneath my guard,
Becomes a part of me, trapped beneath my new shell,
Embedded until my next transformation.
Bright Stars
The stars in the sky are like the people around you,
The dim kind are many, and the bright kind are few,
Some stars only shine brighter in their galactic abode,
Surrounded by dim ones who watched them explode,
So, create your own place in the night sky above,
And fill it with bright stars, the kind that you love.
Dan Verkys 