48/2023

I feign confidence to charm
Whomever my voice and eyes
Might reach, play the man
Comfortable in his skin and work,
While my brain mocks the lack
Of progress, the role of the
Minor writer playing at being
Major inside these shrunken
Boundaries of life and geography,
The diminution by age and lack
Of imagination and energy. The
Pictures we paint are inevitably
Lies.

R, 17/02/2023 11:21

Today’s #MastoPrompt was #mock.

I wanted to write more than one poem, but time has raced away from me. I was even in the supermarket when Colonel L called me and asked me if I would be joining our weekly videocall. I cursed, raced round the shop rather than indulging the slow retail therapy I had thought I was going to let myself succumb to, and got home for 18:30, and we managed to have a slightly less than frantic 30-minute chat.

Reading Alan Rickman’s diaries right now. I think I need some light fiction to read inbetween the years. The diaries are strange. Staccato. Fragmented. Relentless. So much ordinariness (in a good way) amid all the name dropping. Sadness. We who read others’ diaries after the fact have the benefit of hindsight. Those writing then don’t yet have the knowledge of how and when they are going to die. We already know that about them.