All Souls’ Eve - a poem

This poem was written for the Tunbridge Wells Writers 'Fright Night' held around Halloween each year, though of course, it's not intended to be frightening.

It is, however, about death and it takes inspiration from the All Hallows Eve traditions of saying prayers for the dead, as well as going door-to-door, singing and being offered 'soul cakes' (apparently called 'harcakes' in parts of Lancashire - an idea that completely passed me by in my Methodist childhood) the forerunners of today's Halloween trick or treat customs.

So, in saying prayers or lamenting the dead, we might remember all the times they were as distant and removed from us in life. Other people are always, to some extent, separate - 'other minds' - and are no more or less alive in our imaginations when they shuffle off this mortal coil: where coyle meant bustle or disturbance, the real performance of life

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All Souls' Eve

When you closed the door, you were no longer there.

When the light was extinguished and you refused to speak.

You were not there.

A soul, a soul, a soul cake!      

Mixed and proved and baked and cooled.

You were once, and now you are not there.

When you left the house to work, you were not there.

When you hid behind a book or ghosted into TV-land,

you were no longer there.

A soul, a soul, a draught of wine.

Grown and picked and pressed and kept.

You were once, and now you are not there.

When you sang and soared,

became another, you were no longer there.

When you stayed away; when you travelled far.

You were not here or there

A soul, a soul, a catch of song.

Plucked from the air and pinned to the stave,

flung from string into echo.

You were - once: you are no longer.

When you stopped, you breathed no more.

When you closed your eyes and refused to speak, you were not there

A soul, a soul, a soul-shell.

Born and mixed and raised and pressed and pinned

and flung and kept and cooled.

You were not there, you were not there

For none of us are here or seen or heard,

Unless we are here and seen and heard.

©2015 Philip Holden

https://www.illustrationx.com/artists/grayjolliffe

Willy

I've a willy in my trousers

It's been there since my birth

Though it hadn't got much length

And it hadn't got much girth.

I've a willy in my trousers

I had it as a boy

My Mummy said "Don't do that,

Your willy's not a toy."

I've a willy in my trousers

It led me on to knowledge

It allowed me in Boys Grammar School

Which got me into college.

I've a willy in my trousers

I've had it all my life

It helped that it grew up with me

And helped me get a wife.

I've a willy in my trousers

It gets me higher pay

I never have to use it

I only have to say -

"I've a willy in my trousers"

And I can be the boss.

You haven't got a willy?

Oh well, my gain, your loss.

Now, the willy in my trousers

Has many roles, though chiefly

It helped me help make babies

If only very briefly.

And the willy in my trousers

Doesn't ask for me to thank it

But occasionally gets restless

And then I have to ...readjust myself and try and think of something like Jeremy Paxman or the weather.

The willy in my trousers 

Will be with me when I go

Though it's silly to be worried

Because nobody will know

If my willy in my trousers

Made me kinder; made me meaner

Or that if I'd been a woman

I'd have called it Wilhelmina 

I've a willy in my trousers

And it's made me what I am

Not a genius or hero

Just a silly willy man.

Early Winter (2015)

 

The distant hills are pale grey, pale green. Overexposed. Desaturated.

The chill air holds them back from their humming, buzzing colours of Spring and Summer.

Nearer, wraiths of heating and washing and factory hover, reluctant, coiling slowly above the town.

Cold brick entombs the people. They are afraid to wake the giant Winter.

No snow, as yet. The frost is just the early rash of a deepening cold; it will melt and then return.

The air is sharp, yet thick and turgid, slowing the breath and the step.

Leaves are curled and crisp, buds hidden like children in the attic.

The breath is held. Why give up warmth? Why give way to the season?

The step is tense. Why slip? Why lose one’s footing?

We are on the edge.

In time we may say. “What happened to Winter? It was mild, wasn’t it?”

In time we may say. “Do you remember?”

That was when...

That was when...

The paradox at the heart of the Paris murders.

I think have an eye for puzzles. I 'see' them before I understand them. 

So it was with the murder of the journalists, cartoonists and police officers in Paris on the 7th January.  It was not the obvious shock and the futility of death but it was something to do with the narrative, the supposed causes and effects.  There was something self-defeating and contradictory. It seemed so convoluted that, at first, I couldn't even explain it to myself. But it was there. A puzzle.

Let us, first of all separate out the idea

that these were 'Islamic terrorists' from the act they committed.

There are, it seems, some Muslims who would argue that they are at war with, presumably, anti-Muslims. I don't know this for myself, since the only source of this idea is the media I consume.

It's this same media that sometimes makes me think that some Muslims are getting a poor deal - along with many other people; Christians, Buddhists, atheists, women, men.  Indeed, it is the media that tells me that some Muslims are being persecuted and I conclude that this is wrong.  Whatever their beliefs, they should be able to live in peace.  

And it would seem (from what I've read) that many people of all religions (and none) agree with me.  It is probably one of the few things that an overwhelming majority of the world's population agree.  Not, as it happens, freedom of speech, but freedom of thought as well as freedom to live.

So what effect could anyone (of any religion and none) think killing people who expressed a thought could or should have?

If Charlie Hebdo had NOT published satirical takes on the prophet Mohammed, then the gunmen would not have known that people held (apparently) anti-Islamic beliefs. In fact it gets more twisted because, of course, simply because such articles and images were published does not demonstrate that anyone holds a particular belief...  These are expressions of thoughts, parts of a conversation that takes place between the creators of the images and stories and their readers and thence between other readers and, indeed, prior to their creation between other people and the creators.

If I say to you I think God is stupid for creating different religions what can it possibly say about my beliefs?  That God exists? That he is a he? That he can't possibly exist because he makes stupid things happen? That he actually does exist and is stupid? That I can't fathom his divine plan?  However you interpret it, I can't believe all those things at the same time and (depending on your point of view) so which one would you elect to judge me on?

In truth the printing - ink on paper and, what, 60,000 copies? - of any article in Charlie Hebdo is a matter of little consequence. Like the tip of an iceberg it represents only the visible manifestation of a thought, a passing thought at that, that contributed to a flow of conversation.  It echoes (and is contested) in hundreds if not thousands of other conversations taking place in streets, bars, homes, on Twitter...sometimes in print...and yes, in churches and mosques all over the world.

And what these gunmen did was choose, quite arbitrarily to impose a judgement on a group of people who they presumably held responsible for part of this conversation.

But what they did was not only random it was also illogical.  

For the self-same freedom of thought is so basic, so universal, that the gunmen themselves depend upon it.

Even as the gunmen drove away from the site of their atrocity in Paris they relied on the common decency of ordinary French people to allow them to do so. To drive on the right side of the road to give way to them where instructed.  They themselves depended on the common humanity of people to allow them to take on the sole responsibility for their actions, trusting the masses who assembled subsequently in city squares NOT to turn into a mob and begin judging anyone who expressed a contrary thought.

Should they be caught (and not die in a shoot-out, which at the time of writing seems likely) what will they expect to happen?  They may anticipate being brought to trial when they may be defiant and uncooperative, but they will be afforded respect by the very people who condemn their acts.  They may confess and shout threats from the dock, but they will know that they will not be summarily executed for doing so.  

They will rest easy in the fact that the vast majority of people in the world respect their right to think things that are abhorrent to most of us.  And they will rest easy in the knowledge that that same majority will not hold their families responsible for their crimes nor condemn the doctors, police or prison officers who will care for them in the way that police officers attempted to care for the staff of Charlie Hebdo.

Their actions - the random and ill-conceived murder of genuinely innocent people who job was to print thoughts for other people to consider, and indeed reject - achieve nothing.  It is, by definition, self defeating.

Rather like the proverbial tree falling in the forest, if you kill everyone who disagrees with you, you are not 'right' (since there is no-one to observe you being right)...you are just alone.

And then... vraiment, vous etes un charlie.