Is Anybody Asking The Narcissists: Are You OK?

It’s a thankless task,

Trawling the narcissists

To see if they’re Ok.

Sometimes we see

Someone’s Facebook page

Drop to less than three posts a day.

That’s when we know we need to act,

To add a smiley face, love heart,

Or like so they can go their way

Through their day,

Solid in the knowledge

That the world has got their back

And cares about the lack

Of attention the waiter paid

To the water level 

In their dog’s bowl

Or the level of froth 

On their child’s

Bambichino, because, you know,

These things matter!

Like zucchini flowers in batter!

If your go to café doesn’t

Serve them right,

Then a war crimes trial 

Is pending.

So what else is trending?

Beauty tips for ugly people,

Super diets for fat people,

Plastic surgery tips,

Chick pea and lemon dips,

Hot bods doing workouts,

Feeling the burn in those quads,

Lats and abs as they crush

Those crunches and run 50 laps.

Thumbs up, clapping hands, 

Love hearts💖💖💖💖

We have to keep them loving themselves,

Because without them,

The internet would just be a desert,

Populated by interesting people

Who just want to talk to each other.

And that is not a business plan

Anyone can sell.

 

©Shaun Green 2024

Weak Spot.

We all have a weak spot,

That’s what he said.

Didn’t know what he meant.

Was he talking about mortality

Or a more fundamental reality,

Where toxins in food, air and water

Find binding points in bodies

To cause corpuscles to coalesce

Into cancers,

Like the nitrates in my ham sandwich

Seeking a soft point in my bowel

To mutate cells and truly become

A pain in my arse?

We all have a weak spot,

That’s what he said.

But was he referring to a chink

In the armour that makes you think

You can be calmer when your life

Is out of control,

Drinking too much,

Running your mouth off,

Acting like a dick when you swore

To yourself that was the last thing

You would ever be...

Again.

We all have a weak spot,

That’s what he said.

And I checked my shit:

Love, life, relationships,

Looking for a loophole

Where a DNA sized mole might,

Out of pure spite,

Sink its teeth into the meat of me,

Ripping out emotions

That pour in oceans incarnadine,

While I run around frantic,

Finger at the ready,

Looking for holes to plug

To stop the Atlantic.

We all have a weak spot,

That’s what he said.

And if we’re not dead then life

Hasn’t found it...

Yet.

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Free Range Children.

My brother and I rode our bikes

To the tech school, did monos,

Pissed in doorways, played cricket

As if no one was watching.

Our parents certainly weren’t.

It was the 80s, well before

Paedophiles, rapists, killers,

Although Chopper was in jail

Just down the road.

But he was a good guy, misunderstood: 

He only targeted crims,

The earless long arm of the law,

Taking it easy in Jika Jika

While the guards fed him

Cigarettes and porn.

Now that I think about it,

My parents were taking a gamble.

Either they thought the world was safe

Or they didn’t give a shit.

They were thrust into responsibility

Too early and decided

It was not for them:

Dad wanting to be a rockstar,

Mum wanting to be a groupie,

So children were an afterthought…

Like handbags or shoes or that first

Dire Straights album (you know the one, 

before they were famous?).

In the 80’s, children were accessories:

Easily lost, rarely found,

But delivered back with a no-return policy.

I have fond memories of my childhood,

But beneath that is a creeping horror

That I might be remembering it wrong:

That it was actually no different

To any other time in human history,

When the bad fought the good and,

Despite the hype,

The bad always won.

But I can’t believe that.

I look back on a golden time

Through rose-coloured glasses

And think: it’s alright. 

It’s all good.

Yeah, I’m fine.

 

©Shaun Green 2023

The Poise Between Pieces.

She will cling to that thing

Called happiness, grasp it,

Take it, no matter what.

Seasons chilling and killing,

Bombs falling and exploding,

She will run through mud,

The sky on fire,

Her children sheltered

Under her embroidered cloak,

Through smoke and bullets

And choked roads,

Where brave men die.

She will run,

Her heart in her chest

Because surviving means

Being better than the rest.

While buses queue at borders,

She lays down in a hut

Patrolled by the enemy,

Fearing the prod of a rifle,

The strangled screams of others

Whose luck has run out.

 

She will cling to that thing

Called freedom, grasp it,

Take it, no matter what.

Her husband sends txt messages

From the front: “We kill Russians!”

And she is glad in her exile,

While the children play at war:

Plastic guns, plastic bullets.

Her nausea a symptom

Of something deeper:

Maybe pregnancy, maybe the sense

the world could end at any minute.

No such luck, is her surmise,

As we keep rolling around the sun,

Fucking, fighting

And killing each other.

Still her refugee grasp

Reaches to clasp

That fleeting moment,

That feeling so rare these days,

A singular and unabashed

Sense of self.

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Clarity.

The phone, the phone,

The bloody phone didn’t wake me,

So now I am late for a job I hate,

Working, always bloody working,

Making money for someone else,

Putting cash away

For their retirement,

Whereas I will end up

Living in a demountable

In a caravan park

In bum-fuck nowhere.

Got to get my head straight,

Got to concentrate,

See things clearly.

There has to be a way

Out of this maze.

There has to be a way.

If I could just float up a little,

Get a bird’s eye view,

See the path clearly,

Then I wouldn’t be down here,

In the shit,

Running around blind,

Butting up against walls,

Swamped by bills, bills, bills

And credit card debt,

Credit card debt, credit card debt:

Never have so many owed so much

To so few…

Theta state, theta state,

Bring up all the food you ate.

Fuck it, if I could just

Get clear of these voices

Crowding my mind,

Telling me I am a shit dad,

That I was a shit husband,

That I am a shit earner,

That I am shit, shit,

Worse than shit,

The lowest of the low,

If I could just get clear

Of these voices and

Find a clear space,

Where I can reach through

To a higher ground of calm,

Make peace with the past

And stop letting it kill me,

Slowly, ever so slowly,

Then I think I might be alright,

Yeah, I might be alright.

I might be alright.

Deep breath in,

Deep release out.

I am…

Alright.

 

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Chaos Theory.

I want the world to be ordered,

Separated into neat categories,

But it’s all butterflies and bears

And once in a hundred-year storms,

Polar ice melting, sea level rising,

Forests burning, people killing people

Over land, religion, whatever.

And when I look inside, I see my own mind

Running a hundred miles a minute,

Calculating a risk I will never face,

Voting down autocrats whose names

I will never know,

As I blindly swerve through streets

Designed by engineers well versed

In making the impossible seem possible,

Only to arrive at a destination

Preordained to not be the one

I was aiming for.

Who knew

That in the maelstrom of information

Swirling about the ether,

There are codes to make sense of things,

But not to us – we who suffer and strive;

No, this intelligence belongs to

The shadow world or marketers

And large corporations who mine our data

Like it was iron ore,

Our values, our interests,

Our preferences, our clicks on Pinterest,

Every desire, perversion, quirk or love,

Converted to zeros and ones,

Chucked into a digital tumbler

And spat out as spam,

While the world outside spirals

Into an insane whirlwind of war

And aggression, as if we have gone

Back in time 50 years!

What have we become?

We are children of chaos,

Our merely being here

A coincidence of egg meeting sperm,

Which required the dinosaurs to die

And mammals evolve,

Thanks to a random meteor strike,

Hitting that sweet spot between

Total annihilation

And partial species extinction.

We still look to the skies,

In fear another rock might

Peek out from behind the Sun

And due to Gravity’s eternal return

Smash us into oblivion.

We seek order in a disordered universe

That doesn’t hear us and doesn’t care.

So, we are going to have to learn

To live with chaos.

It seems to rule,

And it is everywhere.

 

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Tick, tock.

Seconds into minutes,

Minutes into hours,

Words into sentences,

Sentences into paragraphs,

All narrative reversed

While meaning is sucked

Down the plug hole

At the end of the universe.

 

Tick, tock…

 

Time is and always will be 

A perverse engine of creation

And dissipation,

Destroying the past,

Promising a future

Which does not exist,

Guaranteeing the present

Only for a moment

With words which cannot last.

 

Tick, tock…

 

Language is time’s slave,

Full of tenses without meaning,

Each and every syllable 

Forged as a pin

To trap the flapping wings

Of temporality,

To slow the flow,

To stave off mortality.

Who were you yesterday?

Who are you today?

Who will you be tomorrow?

 

Tick, tock…

 

You will be you 

In time effervescing,

Rising toward demise,

Just as language is doomed to die.

Time is outside our prison

Of distinctions, pronouns, 

And prepositions.

Just as the wind and water

Carve the rock, grind it to sand,

So shall our alphabet

Be reduced to dust,

And every word ever spoken

Or read or heard

Will be as atoms to the wind.

 

Tick, tock….

 

 

©Shaun Green 2023