Letter to the line manager.

So, you try to learn the language.

It’s hard in dull surrounds.

Still, you gather the essentials.

And, as you’re that way inclined, you add it all up, you fit the jigsaw pieces together. Bit by bit. … Messy picture. Weird statistics. Tired, tiring, tiresome compulsion. God help you. … Eventually, you realize 60% of the words boil down to genitalia and objectionable people, the other 40% encapsulate variations of GET LOST and GO AWAY.

Hard to believe but it’s true.

No wonder you find it hard to communicate.

This world has lost its way, if ever it knew it.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, ahh SCREW IT.

…

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Sympathy Pain.

Communication breakdown.

I offer my sympathy but you brush it aside, time after time, so wrapped up in pain, I know, I know, I try to console but you continue to writhe and complain, and it hurts, me.

Me?

How did this become about me?

Your pain becomes my offence and grief.

But isn’t it always, about me?

No matter compassionate we seem,

we can only truly relate when it’s personally felt.

So, go on, baby, spread the misery.

And I’ll induce some self-inflicted sympathy pain.

…

Lifeless.

You hear the voices, banal conversation.

You hear the car engines, coming and going,

hollow laughter.

Stomach-churning revulsion festers.

… You hate your fucking neighbor!

…

You’re certainly not envious,

you don’t want his/her life,

you want *your* life (is that too much too much to ask and hope for, Jesus, Lord and Savior?)…

But you are stuck lifeless in this society,

Purgatory.

And you despise the reminder of others living their lives, no matter how shallow or inconsequential, it’s killing you a little more each and every day.

 

…

Salafists & Sapphists.

Salafists and Sapphists, sit down and drink cups of tea, they talk and sigh as they exhale after each mouthful. Neither understands each other, different languages, mutually exclusive tongues. Their words might as well be gibberish. They just nod and raise their eyebrows. And drink tea. … If only they realized how much they should hate each other!

… 

Misunderstood.

The more that is said,

the more that is misunderstood,

one way or another.

…

That said,

I prefer silence.

…

Revival, She Wrote.

It was a Friday night. There were thousands of us in the old Dynamo Stadium. We had a myriad of reasons for being there, from the ardent to the curious. Some wore old Orthodox Crosses prominently, some counterfeit heavy metal t-shirts. Old and young, entrepreneurs and prostitutes, all swept up in the search for something to believe in, something bigger than themselves, something to help them through the night, and next week.

There was music and singing on the stage – we only recognized a few words. We swayed and waited. Patiently.

Eventually, the superstar preacher came out with a translator and, as he said, some Holy Ghost fire…

How we wanted to touch the Americanness! … We soaked in every second-hand word. … Charismatic. … Something happened. … We worshipped.

(TBC)

…

Hope.

Hope…

The Man-Child

Men, I am told, in their 30s or 40s, on the verge of responsibility, often revert to childish, stupid games and behaviors.

Witness the man-child.

…

Life tomorrow.

I have forgotten yesterday.

I don’t recognize myself.

I have no friends.

I fear tomorrow’s tomorrow.

I am trapped.

Outside, I hear only noise, annoying noise and imposition.

It’s a nightmare, wherever I turn.

Others don’t understand. Others don’t want to understand. It seems they only want to burn their fires and fill the air with fumes of smoke and pollution.

…

Broadcast confusion.

…

Life today.

Hundreds of people all in one place, an association but no connection. They do their thing then they leave through the exits, they will not recognize one another tomorrow.

…