Testing times…

I have had some integrity challenges lately.  One of them was when I was in my local supermarket the other day, I was buying some sliced ham

I used to believe in forever…

but forever was too good to be true (AA Milne), I was reflecting on this quote as I read 16 Thoughts On Life from Winnie The Pooh  http://www.morefm.co.nz/16-Thoughts-on-Life-From-Winnie-The-Pooh/tabid/520/articleID/11484/Default.aspx .

Manopausal perhaps?

Actually I think that dress makes your bum look big said no man ever…. well possibly not ever.

Hello Sciatica My Old Foe.

It  was almost a red letter day.  This chapter has been a relatively short few weeks however the book has been running for 24 years and it yet may not yet be over. I am not easily un-nerved however I felt some anxiety as I was seated, lots of shuffling of paper and what seemed an inordinate amount of errs, hmms, and umms did not help to settle me. 

Broken, somethings just are….

I remember it as if it were yesterday, 41 years is a long time to have a memory like that.  I had admired it for a week, standing tall and proud  Dressed in shining splendour, green and gold with a shiny silver overcoat, it had to be mine.  I am not sure how I wangled it, either bottles to the bottle-man or I may have mowed some lawns but in my hand I held the necessary to make it mine, possess and admire it till the time came to set it free.  I took it out of the over coat, smelt it savored  it, stroked it even, smooth then just a little rough.  I held it by its single white leg and imagined how it would end, and then disaster, in a moment it was an amputee, this thing of wonder lay in two pieces and I was desolate.  My rocket was broken.  this was no plastic fantastic but made in China nevertheless. This was the grand deluxe, sky traveller rocket, ready to be ignited to fly high into the sky and with a huge bang ignite a flare that would hang in the air by a thing of absolute marvel, its own parachute.  But now it was broken.  I remeber taping it up, but like a modern space rocket tape didn’t do it. I lit it, it fizzed rose a few feet, exploded and was done,  it was broken and could not be fixed, refired, rebuilt, re engineered, it was finished.

I thought about this as I read the news about the Pike River Mine http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11354441, it’s so unfair I heard one person lament.  Twenty nine men dead, and no one held accountable and no bodies to be recovered, no comfort here, just 29 men lying on the hard rock at the bottom of the earth, no words said over their bodies,no final farewells, time to move on they said, nothing more to be done, nothing to see here, move along. Tomorrow I have another MRI scan, back problems, bad, no relief from the relentless pain and disability, sucks me dry, destroys me one little bit at at time.

This is a last gasp attempt t try and get some resolution, lose some weight they said, so I dd 45 kgs, no improvement. get fit they said, so I did, be active so I did,get a job, so I did, take these pills, that vitamin, this mineral, pray, be thankful, all of these things I have done.  It is like I have used my prayer quota up on other things…. a long time ago.  I am prepared to be told that there is nothing “they” can do for me, I have heard it all before.  I have a plan for that but I know.  I know broken when I see it now and i am largely a broken man, living a life dictated by circumstance and brokenness.

I have encountered broken many times, I have pressed on chests and poured air into my neighbors lungs, in a futile attempt to start here heart beating again, all I did was push her blood into her chest, you see her heart was broken, an aneurysm they said, you did a good job, there was no chance, but I tried, I prayed and pumped and pumped and prayed and breathed, nothing, just a still whiteness and the smell of death,

I recognise other things in my life that are broken, I am tempted to try and fix them however b myself all I could do would be like my rocket, fix it with tape and hope, if I had had Gorilla glue I may have had a chance, however the weigh to be power ratio in the rocket was made for it to be perect and could never function with tape around the stick.  I have carried that broken rocket in my head for 40 plus years.  I hope the other brokenness is not with me for that long.

Live laugh and love well and freely, who knows what the morrow brings, it may be too late on the morrow.

Auckland Poem

Auckland

Bursting at the seams

You polyglot

Desires and needs

Thrash against each other

Like wind against tide.

Your burgeoning waters

Explode with many hues

From sparkling blue to muddy brown

They are coloured

Like the people that you encompass

Manicured streets

With emerald green lawns and swaying palms

Battle against the meanness of your grey neighbour hoods

Your dirty stories not so secret

Struggle to have their voices heard

Everywhere monuments

To unfettered desires pulsate in the street

Like flashing neons

Fast food, fast cars, fast women

Scream out their desires

Your promise of new hope and opportunity

Tantalises and lures

Like insects to a flame they all come

Some to die in fleeting flashes

Others lifted to the sky

Auckland you vagabond, jewel, and whore

Selling yourself for the price of another fix

Bigger roads, brighter shops, more cars

How much is enough

When will you be satisfied

(c) Paul Cronin 2010

The poems have gone,

I sat in my bed the other night and tried to put together some words, ones that don’t go to the edge of a page, a poem to be precise.   It should be a relatively easy task as my mind and heart is full of my mother, plenty of adjectives to describe her and her life but the words were gone,

This too shall pass…

Thus was the sage advice from my sister last week and she is so right.  Unfortunately this too  is still current and whilst  the knowledge that it shall pass is comforting it just seems too far away.  I haven’t posted for a while,but the muse is upon me and if I want to call myself a writer (and I do) then I should write.  I have been deeply angry on a number of levels, for a variety of reasons and whilst have felt the urge to write I was somewhat concerned with the vitriol that was rolling in my head, I didn’t want to write because I had nothing good to say, however there it is, I may still be angry in a week or a month, shall I remain silent for that length of time, those that know me will instantly recognise that as a rhetorical question!

So something positive in amongst this well a couple of things, I celebrate my children, and my nephew who lives with me, that is I am proud of them. Not because of any particular achievement at all but because they are living their lives with passion, and that is absolutely awesome and is comfort to me, so that is one extraordinarily good thing.

The second thing that has occurred is a bit more surprising, those who know me well will tell you that I have a quick mind, a quick  tongue and could even be accused of having a sardonic wit.  Being truly sardonic is an artform to me, it rates well above mere sarcasm, which any amatuer can achieve.  Over the past few weeks I have been presented with golden opportunities to practice the dark art of sardonicism, however I have resisted these opportunities and largely persisted with the firm, (and rather terse) response.  Not as fruitful perhaps as other approaches but more respectful, especially when dealing with minions who have no ability to reply, firstly there is no real challenge in it, a bit like shooting ducks on the water really, secondly it can be extremely hurtful and I don’t want to hurt nobody as Bob Dylan sings.

One of the struggles I am having is around work at the moment.  I have only had one paid day in the last month.  Whist not quite desperate I do need to get some soon, I don’t want to rely on state assistance.  However I will do what I need to do to house, feed and clothe my kin and kith.  But my need to work is deeper than a need to provide, it strikes at my psyche which is a huge difference for me.  Whilst I am an adequate house person, I really find being a stay at home single parent a kind of suffocating, suppurating, scab, that eats at me like some form of gangrene, I feel myself slowly dying a little bit at a time.  However that needs some examination.

People ask me what I do and I describe myself as a writer who teaches for a living.  Blog writing is one form that I express myself in however I am also a poet,, except that I am not writing poetry at the moment, does that make me an ex poet?  One who has a hundred or so poems to his name,I have more blog posts than poems!  Alas I know what is wrong with me, it is not writers block per se as I am able to produce poetry if asked however it is a matter of the heart,  however that will be my next blog post.  I fear that I have lost my ability to love people outside of my immediate family.  More on that later.  For now I am ready to try to sleep.

Take care and live well,

Paul

Look into my eyes.

In my last post I wrote about trust issues.  I have reflected on this since I wrote the post and wandered what was bugging me.  So here it is, some of you may be able to relate to this. I have been let down in a number of ways by people I counted as friends over the years.  Some of these have been minor incidents and some have been breaches of trust that are immense.

My Name is Paul and I am a

My name is Paul and I am a recovering confrontationist. I recently had an education day in which the theme of the day was around confrontation. Type confrontation into Google and you get somewhere around 47 million references. Yes that’s right 47 million. That is a whole lot of pages about confrontation and here I am adding another one. Now I have blogged before about my need to be right and how a long time ago I would beat down anyone else who disagreed with my accepted position on life. I think I have arrived at a more reasoned approach these days. https://kiwipaulspoetry.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/the-bully-within/

Don’t get me wrong,