My Feelings

Anthony — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:05:23 +0000

I have been asked how I feel about quitting a lot over the last few weeks. It’s the most common thing for people to say to me right after “Congratulations!”. It is difficult to answer – it’s complicated, as they say on Facebook. On the one hand I am glad to be free of an environment that I had become eager to leave and excited to be out in the world again, on the other I have given up an opportunity to continue to work on some fascinating and significant projects with some great people as well as any financial security I had.

But what better way to express such a complicated mélange of emotion than through a poem? And so I present:

My Feelings

The wyrm chews my eye. I
Inhabit blackness, surrounded around
By smothering nothing
Red lines pulse pain
Screaming silence, white edge -
There is sharpness
Moving cuts. Tears wet nothing.
Falling is pounding, eternal impact. Mush. Crush. I
Struggle to touch but cannot.
Reach out to the dark, feel numbness
All is distant. Only the end is near – too
Near. Or is it? The wyrm eats too
Slowly.

Hmm. Not quite what I was going for…

No, really, I’m fine. I am more relaxed than I can remember being – ever! I am laughing easily and enjoying pretty much everything I do in a way that I had forgotten was possible. I feel – playful!

I assume this feeling of wellbeing will be slowly eroded by anxiety as I start to run out of money, but for now everything is epically good.

Don’t worry about me! Yet…

Tubercle Bacillus

Anthony — Mon, 31 May 2010 17:19:16 +0000

Recently my friend Melanie successfully defended her PhD thesis in London. It was to do with medical geography, specifically regarding Tuberculosis. In celebration, I wrote her this sonnet…

Bringer of death, Tubercle Bacillus -

Oft latent, but when not severely rough;

A one half chance to reach life’s terminus

your lot, unless you are extremely tough.

Known as “Consumption” once, disease malign

Appearing to “consume” one from inside

Named by Schönlein, eighteen thirty nine,

“Tuberculosis” – those years, many died.

Blood tinged sputum, fever, sweats and chills,

weight loss, deathly pallor, coughing mess -

These your symptoms, proof of all your ills.

Confirmed by x-ray, or a Mantoux test.

A subject dark, quite full of gloom not glee,

Unless you are new Doctor, Melanie!

I don’t consider myself to be much of a poetry person, but I quite enjoyed putting this together so I may try and do it again. Who knows?

Back in the Saddle » Poetry

My Feelings

Tubercle Bacillus