Three poems

Here are three of my old poems that I've decided to dust off so that my regular readers have something to read that they may not have seen before.

The first poem kind of summerises what I'm going through at the moment with my current bout of sleep disturbance.

Sleepless

Head pounding

The regular beating of an internal bass drum

Stomach churning

The digestive system performing back flips

Sweat pouring from the forehead

Mind racing at light speed, unable to stop.

“Try your relaxation exercises,” you think to yourself

An attempt that ends in failure

As your mind forces you to think about your breathing

Or else you’ll be tempted to stop.

Characters from stories you’re trying to write

Assert their thoughts into your head

Taking control of your consciousness

To prevent you from sleep.

So tired…

So tired…

Still unable to enter the exquisite Land of Nod

Fatigue set in hours ago

But still unable to sleep.

Read a book

The large dryly-written tome you bought for the purpose

Of closing down your mental faculties for sleep

But even that doesn’t work.

Surf the Net

Watch the TV

You look at the clock

It’s a quarter past three!

Pacing the room and giving a nasty glare

To the fast-asleep feline curled up in the chair

Five o’clock in the morning and starting to write

Woken up with a start

“Wake up, you lazy sod!  Did you have a good night?”

© Myles Cook, 2007

The second poem I have decided to post here sums up the spiritual and cosmic angst that I feel typifies the current state of the human condition although I suppose it could just apply to me.

Soul, Searching

Looking for answers to questions

That reveals one’s true inner heart

And helps to find one’s place

In the infinite universe of which we are a part.

The questions posed seem to have easy answers

Unless you work out the rules

That govern the giving of answers

To avoid one looking a fool.

“Who are you?”

A question that provides one with identity

If the answer one happens to find

Whilst failure leads one only to obscurity.

“What do you want?”

The question that is the key that unlocks the true calling of one’s heart

Opening exquisite vistas of possibility

For one’s real journey to start.

Two questions that can be used

To reveal the richness within one’s soul

Providing one with the directions

To allow one to reach one’s goal.

Two questions

Only one answer for each -

A quest for each living soul

To find one’s own path

And not merely be

Just another soul

Searching.

© Myles Cook, 2007

My final choice of poem is one that I wrote during the period of my marriage when I loved my wife and believed she still loved me.  Unfortunately, I was an emotional cripple by the time I met my wife and whilst I loved her dearly, I was unable to show that love properly - a subject that I will come back to when I post the final part of my account of my descent into depression.

The Hollow Man

I am the hollow man

A man without a soul

Animated only by necessity

A purely mechanical being.

I am the hollow man

I can no longer show my love

For the one person who means the world to me

When once it would have overflowed.

I am the hollow man

A man who is dead inside

But once I was an emotional man

One who would have cried

To see the man I have become

And to know my light has died.

© Myles Cook, 2005, 2006

I hope you enjoy reading these poems and that they go some way to giving you some insight into me as a person as well.

Feel free to comment!

What’s it all about?

I don’t know about anyone else but I suffer from cosmic angst, the feeling that unless I know the reason for living there isn’t much reason in living.  I didn’t know how to put it into words until I met J Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, when he was at the first dedicated Babylon 5 convention here in Birmingham.  He was explaining the thinking behind what he was putting his characters through and said that he posed two questions to them in the wrong order, namely “what do you want?” and “who are you?”.  To have the answer to what you want, Straczynski said, one must first know who you are.  It was at that moment I found what I had been missing in life – I didn’t, and still don’t, know who I am.  I have spent many a long night trying to work out the answer to that annoying question to no avail.

I have very little memory of my childhood and I have no idea why I became a victim of depression at the age of seven.  The only way to find out who I am is to know what made me the person I am today for a person is the product of their memories and experiences.  I don’t know what to do about my lack of memories about my childhood.  I’ve asked my parents but they are as much help as a chocolate pickaxe.  I have no friends from that point in my life; let’s face facts – I haven’t got any friends full stop, not friends who know me well enough to be able to help me anyway.  I certainly don’t want to have hypnotherapy because you never know the kind of things the therapist is doing to your fragile mind or body while you’re under the influence (although that might increase my sexual experience, I suppose).

I need to know who I am.  I need to know what the Hell my existence is all about.  That need is all-consuming in my life, even more necessary to me than all the other things on the Maslow hierarchy of needs.  I need to be complete, to become all that I’m capable of becoming, to be the real me rather than the series of masks I have to wear to fit in to a society that I am increasingly horrified and marginalised by.

Such big questions have no easy solutions and I have sought answers in philosophy, psychology, politics, theology as well as my own attempts at poetry and self-analysis through the writing of a TV series based on my interests and research.  I am still suffering from cosmic angst though as, no matter how much I try, I still have no answers. 

Who am I?  I don’t know.

What do I want?  I don’t know.

Not much progress for 17 years work, is it?

Until next time…

Where I'm coming from

Before I launch into my new era of campaigning I thought it would be a good idea to give you an idea of where I’m coming from so below is a short biography of my journey so far.

All my life I had been essentially directionless and feeling as if there was something missing in my life, a missing piece of the puzzle that is me.  I’m sure that would have been the pattern of my whole existence if it had not been for two very important events.  The first event was meeting, in 1995, J Michael Straczynski, the creator of sci-fi series “Babylon 5”, who was able to put substance to the ghost that was haunting my life.  He was explaining the mystery behind two of the characters in his show, one of whom asks “what do you want?” and the other who asks “who are you?”, questions that were asked in that order across the first two seasons.  Straczynski explained that the characters who answered the first question did so without knowing the answer to the second and that, without that knowledge, were doomed to make bad choices because, unless you know who you are, how can you really know what you want?  This simple truth was a revelation to me as it was the answer to what was missing in my life in a few simple words, two questions that would unlock my spiritual cage and set me off on my journey of self-discovery.  I have not yet found out the answer to the question of who I am but it has given me some kind of direction where once I had none and I believe that the journey is more important than the destination.

Taking a quick step back for a moment before I describe the second event that changed my life, I must explain a peculiarity of my personality.  I have always been aware of having two competing personalities within my own, one is the scientific and the other the philosopher, and between the two there are diametrically opposed points of view.  I have to say at this juncture that I am not talking about having a case of Multiple Personality Disorder, merely a heightened form of the human capacity to have two different personalities to suit the social situation.  This dual personality is shared by everyone to some degree, it allows us to put up with people we can barely stand or otherwise have to get on with even if we have an aversion to them.  Not everyone, however, has two competing personalities that are so opposed to each other.  The turmoil that rages within me from holding two such violently opposing personalities is, as you can imagine, very hard although it has provided me with the ability to see all points of view on issues and has given me a high degree of creativity too.

I was under the impression that I was alone in my affliction until, in 2005, I read a book on CG Jung and his theories.  It gave me the first hint that there was someone out there who knew what it was like to have such division in their mind.  I immediately took to Jung and his theories and decided to seek out a copy of his autobiography, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”.  It was a long search but, in 2009, I found a copy and it was a revelation on par with my meeting with Straczynski.  I felt a kinship with Jung that I have never felt with anyone in my life; his world view, his personality, everything he was struck a chord in my soul.  I will never be half the man Jung was, but what part I could achieve would be a testament to his influence on my development.

I have had other influences on my personality but Straczynski and Jung have been the greatest.  Between meeting Straczynski and finding Jung, I became interested in politics, specifically political ideologies, and, from my interest in them, I became interested in philosophy, theology and anthropology.  Together with my life-long interest in psychology, my studies in these areas have informed my creative efforts and my spiritual journey to find the answers to not only who I am and what I want but also what it is to be human and what needs to be done to change the world for the better.

I once started a magazine to explore every subject under the sun, a beginner’s guide to everything if you will.  It was to act as a place for people to discuss and debate, for amateurs to be helped by those with expertise in the subjects we covered and for the experts to gain an outsiders view of their subjects from amateurs.  The magazine was called Enlightenment.  I have always thought that to be an apt title and so my new project will be called the Enlightenment Project.  I hope you will be interested enough to join me on my journey.

Until next time…