A collection of narrative and philosophical texts
© King Rollo 2009. All rights reserved
Hear some of this
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The All
The thing that ‘is’ is neither this nor that
but is both this and that at the same time.
That is the mystery so difficult to unravel.

Things and people share this in common,
that they are neither objects nor animals, but events.
With something keeping us apart
and also drawing us together.

These things that can’t be explained
by science or even by experience,
let us just call them “mysteries”
and leave them at that.

Then there be no duality.
Only unity. And with unity comes peace.
With peace all is revealed in its own time.
To be at one with the all, that is the great adventure.
---o0o---

The Word
The word said, "Do you know me?"
"Only by repute," I mumbled; but quite smug at the speed of my riposte.
"I believe I'm quite a good word, though," said the word swotting
at a passing apostrophe with one of his ascenders.
"It all depends who you're prepared to believe," I uttered,
with a little more venom than intended, "but the OED does have you down
at some length," I conceded in slightly more conciliatory tone.
That brought a smile to his little 'e's, and in a dialect that reminds me
of a man I met who lived somewhere between Scarborough
and Bridlington, he murmured, "Eiagh, now then."
But it doesn't sound as good when written down like that.
"Well I must be a good word because they say me in't church
every Sunday," continued my new friend,
who I fear now seemed a vowel short of a full syllable.
”Rubbish, you're not a nice word at all," I declared.
"No, honest, they always preach t'good word in't churches."
"That's The Word you twat, not a word.
You're just 'a word', not 'The Word'."
His appearance became quite disheveled;
slumped over the side of the table lamp.
"Well I be buggered," he confessed as he expired
dissolving into a weak and meaningless anagram right there
before my eyes. And do you know, to this day I haven't
got a bad word to say about anybody.
---o0o---

I Will Fight

And so... I will Fight.
I Will fight.

Not in the streets where my fore-fathers
delivered their souls in rivers of blood before me
to be glorified on some cold November morn.

Nor in the fields. Lost. Looking up at the hills of destruction;
crossed swords marking the chaos of a thousand years.

But I Will fight. And not against those hearts of men and mankind
that cower beneath the burden of another’s foot upon Their nape.

But I will fight For freedom.
Yours and mine; for they are intertwined.
That which has been taken. As from a beggar’s bowl.
Mis-appropriated. For it was not Theirs, but Ours.

I will fight. I will fight with the brute strength of truth
which has lain in my loins this sixty years;
passed in relay before me. And now to you.

My will fights.
The struggle and writhing within me is born of a free man;
free to choose a twisted path of destiny.
And a right to say ‘No.’
No, this is wrong; we are wronged;
they are wrong. I will not go there.
I will fight to say ‘No.’ The choice to say, ‘No!’
For without such choice there is no freedom;
only the bonds of slavery.

So shall I fight; upon the battleground of knowledge;
pouring illumination into the darkness of ignorance;
to scotch the serpent of disjunct argument;
crawling my way through the barbed wire of deceit;
to rebut the blitzkrieg of bluff and muster
amid the foul stench and inequality of corruptions;
reaching even those sewers
beneath the fast lane of demented greed.
Yes. I fight. I fight with the weapons of mind,
and the deepest instincts of guile bequeathed me.

And never again with the useless sacrifice of body.
---o0o---

The Love Light
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you occasionally find
a very special look come into a woman’s eyes
that is so full of warmth and compassion and intensity
that it dazzles you completely; as the sun dazzles
when driving into the West late on a summer’s afternoon.
And so you realize what the love of God must be like.
You may find this person only once or twice in a lifetime.
When it happens be careful; let this gift
never be taken for granted or the day may come
when it won’t be there anymore.
And the light will go out of your life forever.
---o0o---

It
You’re looking for It; not knowing what it is.
Should you find it you know what it was you’d looked for,
only to realize the It you thought it was is not it at all.
It’s quite different. There never was an It.
Only a shadow; as deep down you had felt its warmth all along;
unable to show your love for it; fearing no one would understand.
How could you hope to share that with anyone, now:
when you know what It has become:
on finding the opening toward an inner self:
of wondering how it could have been otherwise?
At least you’re knowing one thing now.
It is.
---o0o---

Tra La

I shall die of this.
This trivialty.

I have terminal trivi-bloody-ality.

Boredom I can deal with. A doddle.
Just find something to do. Tra La. Cockle doodle do.
Not even do. Just occupy the mind.

Tra la.

Any minor distraction will do.
Such a small thing. Oh yes, I can manage any amount of Boredom
Or Tedium. Now there's a good word. Medium tedium. Happy medium.
And the world hurtles through space at twenty-two thousand miles an hour.
And of all the atoms in the Universe
our few are the only ones that can experience it.

And now this constant nagging unending... Triviality. Beyond insanity.
The final death throes of a mind in spasm.

Mediocrity? well, that's different, isn't it? because it's just part of a
larger statistical picture.
Medium, mode, mean.
Someone's got to be mediocre within the bigger picture.
But Trivi-bloody-ality!? No one HAS to suffer that, surely!?

Lord! send me an earthquake.

That I may live again.
-o0o-

Mind
It's as though you're out for a peaceful walk somewhere
and you come across a country mansion; in the woods.
There's no one around so you go inside and into one of the rooms.

There, when you open the door and look in,
you behold the most wondrous sight your eyes have ever beheld.
It is so beautiful that you didn't realise before what beauty really meant.
And looking in the next room there's a bit of a shock because it is full of a luminance
the like of which you've never seen in your life. You stuff some of it in your pocket
and on the way out you sneak in to the first room again and take out what's in there, also.

When at home you're able to admire these few prized possessions,
and even build up a collection as you revisit the mansion in the woods,
and find each room has a more dazzling offer than the previous.
One day you notice that your prize collection doesn't look so beautiful any more.
There's tarnish showing through here and there and anyway they just don't
seem to fit in the room. They just don't look as beautiful as when you first saw
them in their rooms at the mansion. Which is quite upsetting.

So you go back to the mansion again, and this time look around on an upper floor.
On opening a door there, you discover an ornate desk with a small, plain cardboard box.
When you look inside a flood of inspiration fills your head
and you realise, almost at once, exactly where all the things in your room should go
so that they feel beautiful once more.

So you go home and collect all the beautiful things and bring them back to the mansion
and replace them in their original positions.
That way, whenever you get the opportunity to slip away,
you visit the mansion and spend time with these discoveries that changed your life so bountifully;
and every now and again you find your way along the corridors to visit a new room.

This time you go there and, instead of finding some new treasure
as you were expecting,
there are two men in white coats
and they look at you as if to say, 'Come, we've been expecting you.'
Aghast, you turn round and close the door behind you
and run back the way you came
and sit down a while to wonder what all this means.
You don't go back into that room again, although you get occasional
glimpses of the men through the window, or some times you hear them
chuckling between themselves when they think you can't hear.
You get to be quite familiar with the mansion and it's layout and you find a satisfaction
in spending time with the many treasures which are beginning to harmonise with each other.
And then you look around and find that you're wearing a white coat.
--o0o--

Demon Spirit
I’ll be but true
And nothing shall descend the tree
‘twixt heaven and hell.
If thine aren’t blesséd all fury shall fall
but fail to take hold of thy heart.
Never blank thine eyes that part the truth
from the delicious ecstasy of thine own will,
or the devil that leaves you as you wake
becomes more real than the waking itself.
It is merely a sign that  all is well with the world,
everything melting to the wind
beside the madness that returns to haunt thee by day.
That incoherent babble of minds
distorting the truth within, only to fool the Merry,
with their sordid grin and fixéd principle.
What demon spirit is this?
Come show thyself, let us not shilly-shally
in the wake of a maiden’s dress!
But tread thee careful.
For the day is not yet done.
-o0o-

Thought For Day 19
You only have to look at the sea
to realize how the universe works.
The night sky reveals the secrets of poetry.

Is it purpose that defines us?  Or addiction.
A comfort zone of our own invention.
Should denial be one of humankind’s basic instincts
then hope be its finest delusion,
making the cosmos a rather complicated place.
The trick is to make it simpler and
spend more time in a land of nowhere
making up for all hard-working ancestors.

As cost benefit analysis becomes
the fundamental measure of right and wrong,
is it wrong to have an intense longing for tranquillity?
It shared with only friend and loyal companion, Solitude.
And watch quietly as reality unravels.
Everyday in every way a little more marginalized.
Crushed by negative forces depleting all.
Reserving a right to be anti-social as anyone
because that is equality. Everyday in every way.
Forward forward everywhere nor any drop to back.
And tired of those who use their mouth as a cattle prod.
Does a bruised ego count as an industrial injury?

What is left when illusion of significance is taken away?
This knowledge. This true belief, with cold reason to believe.
It is a wise man that proportions his belief to match the evidence.

Every force has an equal and opposite reaction.
And yet, fools, cast in their own certainty,
they cannot see the consequent responsibility
of their own actions. Or ignorance.
It is wanting that keeps us alive.
There are those who spend money
they do not have on things they do not want
to impress people they do not like.
Others take up new sports like Power Slouching.

Yet we are as blind fish swimming in some subterranean pool.
Fast changing world a sign of gathering seeds of entropy.
You have your sad little pathetic life and I have mine.
But my sad little pathetic life,
wrapped as it is in its own debris of fate,
is entirely different to yours.
Everything changes. That is how it works.
So much of life has Loss for its central theme.
It is so hard to say goodbye.
For, in parting,
we die a little.

Now fully engaged by internal dialogue,
self allowing another person there also.
A place where rationality does not play a big part.
The first thing they taught me at Boy Scouts was
how to protect myself from vermin.
And now relinquishing the realms of the mundane.

That will be the word of the week. Mundane.
Next week is “Escape Awareness Days Week”
There is no escaping what is just about to happen.
There are no old, bold air pilots.

Abnormal mental clarity and those early signs of
delusions of adequacy creeping about.
Looking for a haystack in which a needle used to be
having slipped between the floorboards of existence
while engaged in this creation of memory.
Nothing in a world of something.
Something in a world of nothing.
To strive. To seek. To find and not to yield.

When you lose something, all you have to do is
look in the right place and it will be there.
Treading soft, treading careful.
Lest stumbling upon another’s dreams.
Perception far outstripping reality,
whatever that might be.
A world created entirely by light.
Or thought.
The self as an ocean. Without a shore.
The future does not lie with the herd
but with the influencers of the herd.
Predictions are very difficult to make.
Particularly about the future. Or herds.

Things are not difficult now because they are difficult.
Things are difficult now because they are impossible.
Technology leaps and abounds and nothing works.
Without being heard excepting by those
who know nothing about anything.
And as space becomes denser, time goes faster.
But this is how it works. This paradox.
This perverse speck of awareness in a whirlpool of infinity
where all life is a dream. And dreams are just dreams.
Humans engines of symbolism.

Being more organised, the world increases in chaos.
Those that like to think events can be controlled
in dream-like reality that cannot be washed away
are but just ‘things’ that think they know things.
For events can be ridden only as an unruly horse
and surprised when your own courage emerges to
confront one man’s paranoia or another’s reality;
or those irritating voices on the radio
speaking so much about so little.
It is not what it is, that is important.
It is what it may become.
Pulling bind-weed to find
it rather longer than expected.

Brain changes to porridge with subsequent inability
to come to any conclusion
let alone come to the phone.

And the sea and sky patiently await my attention.
===o0o===

New Paragraph
It was time for a new paragraph.
He had dreamt of this moment all his life.
He had kept his pencils sharpened in readiness year by year.
That anticipatory inner glow as you hear the sound of the wood shavings
sheared away from the pencil hub rotated against the steel blade.
The satisfaction as you pull out. And this time, yes.
This time a perfect conical culmination in the precision tip
of graphite suited so perfectly to the fine words
that were just about to flow from its tip.
No less cared-for either is the rubber eraser on the other end
just in case an adjustment is needed here and there
to hone the text into absolute harmony with itself
and the rest of the universe of which it is, after all, a part.
And now that day had come.
The day of The New Paragraph.
That was supposing that the old one had, in fact, come to an end.
After all it had done him such wonderful service over the years.
Perhaps he could make do and mend for a while;
a new paragraph could seem something of an extravagance at the moment,
what with the environmental cost of white space on paper.
Maybe he could make do with re-cycling little-used punctuation:
for instance the colon and semicolon are so little used these days;
I can't think why as they take up all that space on the keyboard.
But no! This is a new century. A new age.
The stultifying age of Pisces that kept us on a narrow-minded,
carping agenda for two thousand years is well and truly consigned to the trash can.
In this emerging age of Aquarius we are enlarging our collective psyche
into our expansive and creative consciousness of fresh and innovative textures
that centre on the happiness of humankind and the spirit
of universal charity and divine love that will banish for evermore fear and greed.
Come then, let us grasp this new paragraph and write fearlessly
into destiny without further procrastination.
Giant sale! 50% off. When it's gone it's gone...
Do you know, already I'm quite nostalgic for my old paragraph.
---o0o---

Not Me

I’m not angry.
I’m bitter.

I’m eaten up. With bitterness.

I can’t think how I got that way.
I’m alright in myself.
It’s the others.
It must be the others.

Not all of the others.
Just some of them.

Very few, actually.
Just a few spiteful individuals that can’t resist
bringing the rest of us down.

We’re alright. Aren’t we?
Mostly?
There’s bound to be a few
every now and again.

Perhaps it’s you.

You bastard, it is. It’s you that’s
making life miserable for the rest of us.

Not me.
Not the real me, anyway.
===o0o===

Postscript
I pick up a scalpel… and carefully eviscerate the thing before me.
The day had started badly, but that is the way with technology.
Now I was back to the hands-on stuff.

It was hard to remember those days, long ago 
when entire neighbourhoods were built using these crude techniques,
without the aid of any mechanical device…
excepting the primitive tools of our trade and our traditional methods.

Now, I am told, I have to think differently;
that I believe is the current maxim “Think Different” the final “L.Y.”
having been expunged as if it were going to save them money or something.

I know sometimes I’m accused of writing words as if I’d paid 50p each for them,
but having chosen them I at least derive full value for the expense involved.

Now it’s ‘think different.’ And words are cheap.
It seems only yesterday I was exhorted not to ‘re-invent the wheel’
or ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’. But now… ‘Think Different… ly’

And whilst life takes on this strange mixture of organisation and chaos
I note that there is no plural for the word ‘Chaos’; it is all one great big goof ball.

And so I pull the article apart once more and with the aid of a thesaurus
complete a remarkable reconstruction job, proving once again…
that the truth, cleverly told, is the biggest lie of all.
===o0o===