PRISON.

Rather an old one this but I am posting it anyway. I do love this one and it is certainly one of my best I feel.

Self made prisons are the hardest

My mind made this one

Locks, bars, turnkeys

I crafted them myself to imprison myself

This broken wing of my own mind

I created the means. A rod for my own back

And my wing broke. My mind broke. My life became lost

 

But this prison is home

I find comfort somehow in cold bitter loneliness

Why should I reach out. Seize comfort when this pain fits so so well

Like a glove.

And I have withdrawn to become one with myself

In my self made cell

These bars are my own fears

Would I leave if I could?

Could I just walk?

 

Find some god to rescue me and my broken wing mind?

Yeah gods are two a penny

Gods of self pity maybe

Mine would be one of self loathing

No self pity here. I already explored that one

I shook his hand

So I deserve this sentence

For being imperfect in an imperfect world

For enjoying my broken wing

 

And then I sit, crosslegged admiring my bars

No golden sun without.

Only a cold spiteful moon of memory

And I imagine a blade and immolation

Should I cut deeper

Watch the blood run. See my life force leave me

Mingling with my tears and my fears

Black puddles on a dusty stone floor

Embrace departure and finality?

A final salty tear to say goodbye?

 

Would that would be too easy

Too simple. The fools way out although foolishness…

It has it’s attractions.

But I want this pain. I shouldn’t end it

With this pain comes understanding

Cold biting realisation is a powerful tool

In experienced hands

 

So I sit, naked on a cold prison floor of my own design

And I wonder. Is my prison keeping me in?

Or keeping others out?

Should I let you in

To share this glowing incandescant pain

To share this broken wing

Should I allow you here?

Just let some light into my darkness

Can I do that?

 

I think not

I tried sharing and boy it hurts.

I won’t make that mistake again

It broke my wing

It killed my spirit

It placed me in this cell

Of my own design

I can’t come back from it

 

So I will stay here. I will taste sweet oblivion

I am alone. I will be always.

 

 

©2009 Stan Rogers

 

 

 

 

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What Do I Deserve. 2009.

Time for another oldie tonight. I wrote this in 2009 and it is one of my all time favourites. Another Matt Spears inspired piece, exploring bitterness at life I suppose. Enjoy.

What do I deserve?

Little, some might say

I leave when I said Id stay

But thats me

Matt has nothing on me ha.

You might find me in a wine soaked corner

Broken cigarette between bitten smiling lips

And Sarcasm

I will give you sarcasm

And then smile cos you dont deliver.

Ha…Take my broken cigarette

Crush it on your carpet and light another

Tell you a story you have never heard before

About you and your problems

And so do I care?

Matt might have but he aint there

And look into my eyes. Pain? Ha

That aint pain, it is loss

I can handle that. I did before. I will again

Fifty five years and I get used to pain

Dont send you insane.

Just walk out the door, slam it even

Pull up the collar and say ….Fuckem

You wont pull me down. You cant hurt me

Cos I am used to it now. Have to be

And walk down the street

Glaring at street lights reflecting in rain spattered puddles

Daring them. Hating them

Just for being there.

Hearing noises of the late weekend night

Kicking garbage, coke can, and smiling.

And entering some sad local bar

Her in the corner? Too much lipstick, Cheap clothes

And I smile, pulling down my collar

Lean against the bar. Catch eyes.

Whisky…Large one OK?

And scan the lives in this neon lit hell

Talk to you. Sitting on the stool next to me

Putting your leg over the other as you grin at me

Tell me your story, might make me smile?

Ha. That you dont want. Would ruin your night

And I find a seat and enjoy the feeling of trainers

Yea sticking to beer drenched carpet

And think…let my mind wander

Shouldnt be let out on its own.

But suck back whisky and smile at the woman in the cheap clothes

Dare her to talk and feel her pain and want

Because deep down she is me. Lost and alone

Stan Rogers 2009

IF I WERE TO FEEL ANGER. Re-edited.

Between the years of 2007 and probably 2010, I reached the peak of writing creativity. I was always more of a poet, a troubadour of this modern age rather than a novelist I felt, but I did turn out Love Sex and Time Travel in 2007 which is still my biggest seller by far. It is also my favourite novel. I actually cried as I wrote parts of it such was the emotion I put into it, which came from my poetry.

In those heady four years, my brain positively crackled with new ideas. I didn’t write because I wanted to make money from it. I wrote because I had to. I didn’t have a future … I had a NOW.  If I hadn’t have written my words down, I felt that my mind would explode, and so most days I would just write. I would write more and then more. Beautiful poetry, wonderful words seemed to cascade from my mind continuously it seemed.

Also, during those four years, my life changed totally. It was all down to my words. I gave up the rat race in 2008, taking redundancy, and vowing to never return to 9 to 5 slavery, I left the UK to be with my Sandra in the Seychelles. Ideas as usual poured from me spurred on by Sandra and her love of my words. But it was not to be, the Seychelles was not for me and I unhappily returned to the UK a few months later. But my words never stopped and in 2009 I wrote some of my finest work. I also started the Seer Of Albion, which believe it or not started its life as a simple Facebook status, then a very short piece of philosophy about reading people’s faces for emotions. Then it became my project for NaNoWriMo that year. That is a competition held every year to write a 50,000-word novel during the 30 days of November. I succeeded and won my certificate.

I was inspired in my writing of it and even parts of the story by my Raven who I had first talked to in late August 2009. We became online lovers and then real lovers in December 2009 and then she became my wife in 2012. I thought that my life was complete. My writing did continue into 2010 but something was different. My mind stopped crackling. Writing became something of a chore. I missed daily targets that I set myself. My inspiration faltered and instead of a natural flow it became a chore to try to find it. I had lost the plot. My writing became contrived and forced and so the flow slowed to a trickle. I put that down to being so very much in love with Raven. I was happy and very content and I suppose the need to write diminished because of that contentment.  From then until now, apart from a few shining exceptions, I feel my work has been second class and pedestrian.

Yes through these years I did produce some wonderful poetry but it was the exception amongst a sea of dross. My follow ups to Love Sex and Time Travel and The Seer of Albion ground to a virtual halt over those years and that is where they pretty much stand now, along with The Anonymous Poet another novel started in 2014 which I felt had the potential to be my strangest but greatest novel yet. All lay, stuck between about 10 and 20 thousand words. I wouldn’t admit to it but my inspiration had just totally dried up. I became dead inside, mundanity bit, and my inspiration followed it. I had found love but had lost my words.

And now? Well a wonderful thing has happened to me but at a terrible cost to myself personally.  The unthinkable, for me, happened and I lost my dearest love. But slowly my mind has started to function again. I wrote Three Castles, I rewrote Until the End of Time, I rewrote Beautiful Brown Eyes. Not by far my greatest work, they still lacked some of my previous fire, but they were a turning point. For 8 years my follow up to Love Sex and Time Travel has lacked direction. I could not see where it was going, I could not imagine the ending, until a couple of days ago. The ending had been there all the time. I had written it already a few years ago and not known that it could be the ending, a wonderful inspired ending that explains both books and will lead to another follow up. Now it will be. I have a direction at last.  My end has a start…. I am a writer and a poet once more, if a very lonely and heartbroken one although as she knows, she is always welcome to call me at any time.

© 2018 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.

I thought I would finish by posting a piece of poetry from about March 2009.  I do admit it was inspired by my very dear friend, Donna Marcozzi. It wasn’t the piece I originally looked for but it does show the emotional depth of feeling I felt back in 2009. Here is, ‘If I Were To Feel Anger.’ It is the past, the present, and the future…….

If I were to feel anger. Tears of rage
Loss of innocence even at my age
Would it be at losing you…before I knew you?
Feel your soul dissipating through my outstretched fingers
Like mist on a summer morning. Dew dissolving under hot morning sun
And a breaking heart in my chest. Feeling your sighs
Touching your face across a void, and mutual highs
But I am me. The guru of love lost.
I find it so hard to be…happy?
So hard…just so hard. Life gives me that as interest.
And I am never ready. Always behind
And where’s the sense in that?
Can I help this feeling of self imposed loss?
Going down with all hands baling
Angry with failing, and fighting my own devils
Punishing myself for imagined future crimes
And past indulgences….back to haunt me
And people feeling anger at me
And I wonder why. Because I dare to be happy?
Because I stepped into their lives?
I hate these feelings of trying to balance
Not to hurt and think of others feelings.
Guilty I suppose… I always am. Perhaps trying
Isn’t really enough.

Should I just lie down? Fulfil my own collapse.
Give up at all that lies before
Renounce myself.
And any anger I feel is at myself
Audacity at my own hope of being
Temerity at daring to think I could ever possibly be happy.
At daring to think that love isn’t possession
Not control…I want to give. But that isn’t right
Is it?
Anger at inner turmoil. At trying so hard
At being the person I aspire to be
Anger at the insults I receive?
No not really…just sadness at negativity and pain
And spite, the worst of human sins.

©2009 Stan Rogers

Beautiful Brown Eyes. Repost.

The night is late, the streetlight glows softly orange

Through the slats of the apartment blinds

An old movie, black and white, plays softly

One she loves. Adding a gentle silver glow to the room

And in my lap, she lays sleeping, sharing our blanket

Sharing our life, sharing a heartbeat

… and sharing a dream

I love to watch her sleep

Gentle breathing, occasional snores

The odd sleep twitch and mumbled word

And I gaze at the one I know I love above all else

The only woman I know I can ever love

Over the years we have been apart many times

But we always find our way home to our love

… to each other

The only love we can know or desire

I feel my leg begin to tingle, pins and needles tingle

But I cannot move it, I cannot

To do so would spoil this perfect moment in time

And I won’t do that

All my love I see before me in this beautiful lady

Complete contentment and happiness

Wrapped in a huddle of blankets and in my arms

… as they gently encircle her warm shoulders

And although I know it can’t,

… I want this moment in time,

To never end, to last forever

Because I love her

I feel her gently stir, and I bend forward to kiss her cheek

A yawn, a smile on that sleepy face I know so well

A look of love in her eyes, such beautiful brown eyes

And that love is mirrored in mine

I love her

And in my love for her

… I am home.

© 2017 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.

ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT (Unanswered)

I pay to live

Every single damned day I pay

A small part of me falls into the debtor column

As a small part of me dies

Every day I reap fear

Of my future

Do I have one?

Do I even deserve one?

Will I survive intact without fear again?

Happiness. Such a normal thing.

We say happiness without even thinking of its meaning.

Is it just a smile? Is it being in a place.

…. Where the heart is content?

Is it being with someone I can love, or trust?

Or having the safety of money in the bank?

…….

….. no. It is peace with myself

Can I ever feel that again?

Can I be at one with me… with the universe?

Can I look at my face in the cold early morning mirror?

As I wash.

…

Even then I ask myself questions.

None can I answer with any satisfaction

None can I answer

None at all.

My life now is unanswered questions.

I even feel an answer may be death.

How I yearn for its sweet sweet arms

To kiss a gun… pull the cold steel trigger

How I wish it would visit me now and take me

In a final kiss

In a last touch of my cold hand

….

Or …

To wash down the brown bottle contents with whiskey

And need to question no more

Sweet bliss of darkness

Sweet finality of life’s unanswerable questions

I swear to myself that I won’t

I swear that I can’t.

But maybe it is the answer I seek.

Perhaps it is the only answer I can possibly hope for

Should I be a coward and refuse my penance?

Should I lay down and allow death to take my soul

… and my fear

… and my eternal unhappiness.

 

© 2018 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.

This Darkness.

A dark thing walks beside me

I cannot see it… I cannot touch it

But I know it is there

It stalks me constantly, gradually siphoning away my soul

Oh, it won’t take my life, no not my life

But my mind it will have

My body it doesn’t want.

Each day … each hour … each single killing minute

I lose a little to this murderous thing

My mind loses a little

My future becomes more forlorn

My past? That disappears slowly behind me

Like the daylight on a foggy evening

And I have given it my unshared tears

As stasis settles in

All joy and love diminishes, all happiness has no future

In this empty shell I am becoming

An empty blank book … no feelings … no hope

 

Occasionally I imagine I can feel it touch me, this awful thing

Sometimes I awaken in the dark of night and it stands beside my bed

Dark even against the night

And I know it peers at me … into me

And its touch is not physical, just an iciness I feel within myself

It feels like bitterly cold fingers working their way into my chest

My mind screams noiselessly, fighting the deathly fear

But I have not the strength to fight hard

I just accept my shadow

For it is the shadow of myself.

 

© 2018 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.

 

 

 

A NEW MUNDANITY.

 

 

Rescue me from mundanity my lover

You have always been on my mind, since I first never knew you

A hot Arizona night, walking an endless black top desert road looking at the stars above us

Each one a soft salty kiss on your dry warm lips.

The desert moon so full like a cold dead face hanging oppressively above our small lives, our blessed intense love.

Jumping a flatbed to Denver or Austin,

And us, sharing a pint of rot gut to keep the cold desert night from our hearts and welcoming Jack into our souls…

Wish Sal was here … Sharing the scent of our travel sweat. Dean too.

And through Missouri…Wish I had a crystal ball …

I could see your face so much better through the fog …

The clarity of knowing your troubled thoughts.

Travelling together …Carolina odyssey …White beaches, blue sea.

Reading my own lovelorn, lonely poetry to you under the shade tree …

In a town square, full of civil war memories…Oppression. Domination. Slavery

But we laugh it off…Both of us, we are no Martin Luther King’s to exorcise injustice.

Only mine. My own sad injustice. My own truth.

Lover … Meet me soon … You are too often in my crazy dreams. Never in my love enveloping arms.

Your face is always behind a veil of not knowingness

And I plead … Rescue me from mundanity my lover

A cold clear Scandinavian night … Jagged shimmering lights in a northern sky …

And you are with me … As always. Only a heartbeat away but so so far.

Holding my small work worn fingers in your own. I feel you now. I can imagine your warmth.

Tracing ‘Jeg elsker dig’ on the back of my hand with a slender loving fingertip.

Riding the train … A city … Somewhere … Entering a city … A no hope city … No trees, no green gardens.

Watching the evening lit windows from the train … Life going on out there in those small windows

In those rushing past snapshots … Secrets. Lust. Hate. Mundanity … Because it’s always there. Perhaps in me too although with you ….

I banish it … And, and, and yes, I am waiting for you…Please come to me soon my unknown lover.

 

Riding the bus in England’s sad heart.

Second city blues … Am I in my own lost England? Is this really my home?

Minarets fill the vista of a crumbling slowly disintegrating society … Full of dark faces. Foreign speech and unfamiliar ways.

I love them you say. They bring us our own destruction. New Anglo-Saxons… New invaders. You smile.

Slowly taking over … And you smile again and tell me a story about your younger years.

Lover I know you so well …We talk most nights … You hold me close …so close I can feel your heart, so close I can hardly breathe.

I can feel your sweet breath on my cheek as you whisper to me in my loneliness.

Is this to be my penance for not meeting you yet. My pain for this being away from you.

I can’t even imagine your name. I do try but it is always a quiet whisper away from me.

But I hear your voice and like everything in my life …

Are you too late. Will we ever meet or will we just pass each other by?

Will you leave me again?

Lover please … Save me from mundanity. And I will rescue you from a life of not having my kisses.

Not having my love, not feeling my heart beat beside yours.

Can you see me now? Can you feel me?  Do you dream of me on your lonely nights?

Or do my word echo in meaningless voids?

Crying out but never ever answered?

I am writing this for you now. I compose this for you.

Do you know me? … and still I look for you.

 

A red grape … A crushed Tuscan dream. A red stain on you ruffled white blouse.

One button too many undone. Temptation?

Blood of your heart or spilled wine?

But a smile that says I don’t care. I will never care when I am with you.

Wherever we are. Whoever we are… whatever we are.

 

Yes. Oh Yes, our morning … Driving to some dead-end job.

I left you this morning … Skinny legs sticking out from under the duvet. Hair in your face.

A mess…But my mess. Love tossed bed … Chipped cup of coffee left.

And save me from mundanity. Lover Please save me now.

I can barely exist with this pain,

And moving on. Are you with me lover? Not yet?

Are you the same as me? Seeing sense in darkness. Love in a gesture.

Are you thinking of me now?

Are you missing me … still unmet?

Do you yearn for your unknown lover as I do?

And we travel and love.

A small island off the African coast. And different stars above.

And always we said. Where we are means nothing.

A snowflake on a spring morning

Yesterday’s newspaper, last year’s worries

But we will have each other. No matter where we are. No matter the things we do.

And save me from mundanity my lover.

 

But my lover I fret. Words taken wrongly on a drunken night.

Misunderstanding. Fear of our own feelings

Fear for our lives. And still I wait for you my lover.

And still I search and I knew I had found you. Did I?

A city of holy spires and river walks.

Of hope and love.

Of dreams and talks, but you fell.

You lied and misled for no other reason than hurt

And I lost you on a crisis ridden night

Your dreams weren’t mine

Your needs not as sublime

And so?

Mundanity went on, you weren’t the one.

And still on this cold English day

Save me from myself, and Mundanity lover.

But …

Love is not dying away. Love is eternal.

Not fading or giving in

And I won’t lover. How could I give up hope so I seek you still?

And so now I move on … in your heart and your arms

In your love and your kindness

Is mundanity gone with Mid-Western dreams?

In middle America. Did my dream lie there?

My dream did my lover. You really did

But love warm sheets may warm again.

As warm as your hand in mine

Latte frosted lips may kiss again

My heart broke asunder one more time.

But you were the one.

Oh, my lover. You tease me so.

But you were truly the one.

You hide in my dreams, although you walk in my heart.

And I go on. Yearning for you lover.

And maybe destiny will still bring us together again

Or maybe cruel fate will forever keep us apart.

 

© 2017 Stan M Rogers. All rights reserved.