I am a soldier of many campaigns. I have fought wars on foreign shores
and at home, against many foes, and against myself. I bear many scars
invisible to the eye. Never having been decorated by my country you
won't find me in the history books. I have fallen by the wayside time
and time again while others soaked up the glory. Politicians have me
in their blindspot and I refuse to bribe them with dinners, girls, boys,
drugs or money. In short, I've been honourably Olsen'd.
It's winter in my car now. Like me it refuses to start. She, the woman in
the passenger seat, could've at least stayed and given me some warmth. But
why change? You know, the clock is wrong and has communist tendencies. The
gear stick on the other hand has been behaving like a dictator. And my
hand is refusing to have sex with me. It says it's bored. Well how does it
think I feel? Why does every living thing have to get bored?
It's dark tonight and so cold I'm afraid to fall asleep lest I not wake
again. My leg has gone to sleep but that's typical, as it's never done
anything I wanted it to. This may explain something to those of you who've
sometimes seen me walking along normally and then suddenly, spasmodically,
gone into the splits. It's a little embarrassing but usually garners quite
a bit of applause. Being an old pro I graciously accept it (I was taught
to never waste applause), and take a bow so that people think it was
intentional, and worthy of their response. This does place some added
daily pressure upon me.
But I must say, all in all, that it would be a shame to not awaken to
another day of dread and boredom. I'd wonder who won the football? Or
did every team lose? Just as an aside, has there ever been a war that
was declared a draw? And who decides? Is there a judging panel of experts
on the hill?
When I was a boy my first love was Hayley Mills.I must've seen that
fucking Pollyanna movie 46 times. Not because I was into the story of
Pollyanna, but I was very much into Hayley. Well, as much as you could
be from the stalls. As the years went by and I grew some hard earned sense
I realised our love was doomed before it could even begin. She was a film
star princess and I was just a boy from St.Kilda who'd never been anywhere
except to the local movie house. It was a painful realisation but there you
have it.
Still, if she spoke to me today I'd turn into that awkward shy boy. Funny
how that is, huh?
I have to stop putting my heart into everything I write as I feel there's
not much of it left. But should you ever miss me, I'll be right here.
(c) Frank Howson 2019
Don't stop me from having some fun
Fun is in such short supply these days
When I was a child nothing made sense
And the school system shut me out
I was too busy dealing with things at home
To be expected to think during classes
All the lessons I needed to learn were there
Within my family
And I soon excelled at observation
And the devastating power of words
Achieving an A every year
My senses heightened to love
And other dangers
So I befriended broken people
Some were too broken and betrayed me
So they could claim credit for breaking me some more
But others bloomed when they received the loyalty
Of a friend
And I was nothing if not loyal
For loyalty has been my greatest gift
And my deepest flaw
It has undone me many times
In the light of day
The most important thing we can learn
Is that we know very little
We can send men to explore the outer realms of space
And yet so much of us is unchartered
If the moon landing was faked
It is probably the most revealing comment one
can make about human beings
God would smile at our arrogance
Attempting to create on such a grand scale for ants
It seems, to me, that it's not what we do that counts
Anymore
It's what we appear to do
So, perhaps we have finally accepted
The truth
That we are just B grade actors
On a huge soundstage created by the Almighty
And each day we rise to go through the motions
And play our roles as convincingly as possible
For the amusement of God
You see, the poor bastard is so bored
Living in the great darkness he shares with Satan
Where there is no time
And not even the relief of commercial breaks
In my opinion that would make sense
Of the nothingness
And we'd at last know who we are
And where we are
Like the Joker
One has to go insane to see
the insanity of the truth
(c) Frank Howson 2019
I remember you
Even more painful, where and when
You told me when it was over
That you'd find me again
So you searched all the hostels
Inhabiting lonely men
I was killed by your mouth
You were killed by my pen
I told you I liked chocolates
So you bought me a cigar
You have a cruel talent
For pushing me too far
I remember walking miles
While you passed me in your car
The same one I'd bought you
When you became my star
Now the years are conspiring
To drive me insane
Along with some of my friends
Who only deal in pain
So let me spell it out
To you nice and plain
My dance is slowly fading
And it failed to bring you rain
I'll soon be gone like Jesus
To never come again
You nailed me to your cross
And made me watch you with other men
They all hurt and manhandled you
And I shed tears for my precious friend
But you stood with them and mocked me
I should've known how it would end
(c) Frank Howson 2019
Let us kneel and say our prayers
That something hears our call
We think too deep
And we see nothing at all
Rome wasn't built in a day
But I bet it took an hour to fall
Let us not weary in our cause
Until we right the wrong
A place is not a home
Until you feel you belong
A country isn't great
Until it looks after its own
To value true friendship
You must walk many miles alone
Let us not rush to condemn
Until we know what's real
Let us try a little kindness
Until the broken hearts heal
Let us not worship false gods
Like money or power
For we will see their futility
In our final hour
And when we face the truth
May we hold our heads up high
And know we did our best
And that the seeds of those deeds won't die
And that the judgement we're given
Can't be argued or repealed
For the best of us did not rest
Until the broken hearts healed
(c) Frank Howson 2019
Photograph by Frank Howson 2019 Mui Wo.
The Jewish are very smart. They tend to be suspicious of new people until they prove themselves.
Me, probably due to Irish blood on my mother’s side, I treat everyone as family until they prove different. The upside of this is you have a lot of wonderful people in your circle. The downside is, when one, or two, or three of them betray your trust, or work against you out of meanness, it is a devastating jolt to your heart. I end this year with a very weary heart, so weary it murmurs.
This is a result of befriending a man who had very few friends. In fact, most people went out of their way to tell me how much they disliked him. This was mainly due to his own self-destructiveness, opportunism, or snobbery, depending on his mood or his snap judgement of someone. He rarely made an effort, choosing to act aloof, or just plainly not acknowledge others at all. I remember once him coming to Hong Kong with me, and clearly annoyed by the fact that I had/and have a strong group of dear friends here. Most of them he ignored. And when asked a question by a sociable/polite person, he’d assassinate the budding conversation with a blunt “Yes” or “No” answer. Sometimes just a grunt if he thought you were beneath him. This didn’t win him any friends. So, his loneliness is some weird self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, I remember going out to one of the islands and meeting a long-time friend for lunch and my fellow travelling companion didn’t utter one word throughout the whole lunch. Even when he was asked something. It was so embarrassing it made one’s teeth ache. So much for common courtesy.
When he was propelling people away from himself at a terrifying rate, I asked him what his problem was. At first, he blamed the humidity! Then when that didn’t wash, he went for the sympathy vote, claiming he was very shy. My in-built shit-detector went off because I’ve seen this man when he meets someone with huge wealth or a person who could be helpful to him. Or a celebrity. Bingo! Suddenly he has a personality and would attempt to talk their ears off, mainly about himself and what a genius he is and how he can do anything brilliantly, etc., etc., etc. Well, everything that is, except make an effort to converse with normal people. At one New Year’s Eve Party held at a huge mansion, the person in question was so impressed he cornered the wealthy host and talked and talked and talked about himself and how marvellous he was at everything until the normally polite host had to tell him that he had a party to run and quickly exited.
This walking contradiction gets even weirder considering this person-in-question had come from very humble roots and was staunchly left-wing, supported the Democrat, etc., etc., etc., and yet, was too much of a snob to start up, or keep going, or add to a conversation with anyone he thought was beneath him. I don’t object to anyone’s politics, but I do object to hypocrisy. People who passionately believe in a cause, and who don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk, I have much time for. Even if I disagree with certain political agendas they support. But hypocrites, nope, count me out.
One day I realised that this person-in-question had some huge internal, psychological, social contradictions. I came to the conclusion he hated himself and was ashamed of his family background. Hence in recent years he’s become a wine and food snob. I would always undo this façade when he’d hold court criticising someone’s wine, by saying, “Y’know, I knew this guy when he used to drink warm beer.”
And it was true.
Somebody I know, a very spiritual person, explained to me that certain people, like the person-in-question, are cling-ons. They don’t actually have a life. They live through you. There’s a great scene in the brilliant movie, “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” in which Jesse looks at Ford one day and says, “You don’t want to be like me, do you? You actually want to be me.” A chilling moment. I had another weird moment when the person-in-question berated me for going to a Bob Dylan concert and not taking him! I calmly tried to reply with some logic like, “But you don’t like Bob Dylan. In fact, you’ve ridiculed him for years. And I took a female companion. One who likes Bob Dylan. You…arrr…have a wife? If you wanted to see the concert so much why didn’t you buy two tickets and take her?” I’m still waiting for an answer. Because there is none. It is mental. Dark. Bizarre, and seriously creepy. But I do tend to attract these people. Perhaps because I’m one of the few who has ever given them my time and concern.
Since distancing myself from this person-in-question, he obviously can’t own up to why I have done that. So, the oldest trick in the book, albeit very cliched to anyone with a thinking brain, is he now tells people invented stories about me and accuses me of everything he does. Yawn. Someone with as many things to be ashamed of as he possesses, should be very careful. As that Jewish prophet once said, “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.”
I came from a working-class background and my formative years were spent in, at that time, one of the toughest streets in St. Kilda. But unlike my ex-friend, I’m not ashamed of it, nor do I pretend to be something I’m not. I’m actually proud of where I came from and the experiences, both good and bad, that helped shape me into the person I am, as they were invaluable. I also have the greatest respect for battlers, people like my mum and dad who struggled on very little and yet made their kids feel that we were rich. We were rich, in so many ways. Both my parents were unique. Originals. Characters. The type of which we don’t see much of today. But they were genuine. Big-hearted. Told it like it was. And didn’t try to be anything but themselves. Perhaps that’s why they were both so well loved by everyone they met.
I miss them. I think the world misses what they possessed. At the end of the day, that’s what you’re remembered for.
He's in that room
Second door to the right
Asleep on the couch
Exhausted from trying to make sense of it all
And from staying out of anyone's way
He can't play the person he was anymore
The clothes don't fit
The lines don't ring true
And the lighting isn't right
All of his happy endings
Added up to one massive disaster
He stood up once
To be shot down
But that bravest hour
His finest
Misreported by many
Cost him more than money
And years
And the loves of a life
Although the fire was extinguished
Some embers still burn
When it's that three o'clock hour
And the world is silent and God whispers "Don't worry"
To thwart the attack of the shadow people
For it takes a lifetime
To realise
That the more you're taught
The less you think you know
It's all part of the process
Of shedding skins
In order to set the spirit free
From the chains of this world
For you have to be beaten
And mocked
And fall
Time and time again
On your road to humility
That will eventually carry you
Above these prison walls
The world has been taken over by idiots
And statisticians
Gossips shows and celebrity chefs
And is a place where a couch
In a tiny room
Has become someone's refuge
As he puts on his coat
And goes walking with his ghosts
Into a familiar surrounding
That is at last bearable
As he wanders
With the knowledge that
With wisdom comes predictability
And explains God's boredom
With us
Can you imagine?
Few can
Take this man
Oh, take him, Lord
He who lived with trauma
And the insanity of hope
And walked streets that turned back into themselves
Like people do
And was insulted, defamed and betrayed
By those he'd shown the most kindness to
How much am I bid for his heart?
It's weary from caring
But it is still in working order
What do I hear for his love
That has the capacity to extend to so many
For so little in return?
What am I offered for his feet
That have walked the world many times
And yet were still able to stand while others fell?
What will you give for his voice
That was silenced for a time by experts
Who feared his truth?
Going once
Going twice
Sold
Words (c) Frank Howson 2019
photograph by Bruce Woodley.
I begin this story in the deep state of insanity, God knows where it will end. It is your fault as much as mine, that it has happened. For, you see, I was the one who came knocking all those nights you chose not to answer the door. But I have waited, without thanks or encouragement. Good things come to those who wait, my mother once told me. So here I sat, in this darkness, waiting for you to acknowledge me.
You didn’t kill me with your slings and arrows. Or your bullets and blades. No. You were crueler. You ignored me to death. I couldn’t find it in myself to forgive you. For you knew what you did. I bled in pain and, finally exhausted from hanging on too long, I suffocated.
I was taken down from my cross by the few who loved me, wrapped in cloth, and buried behind a rock to make sure I didn’t keep coming back like Judy Garland.
But I did. Many didn’t recognise me as I stepped into the spotlight on the stage of Carnegie Hall. But there I was. Transformed. In living colour. “At the top of his game,” wrote one critic, a friend of the producer. “He’s a laughter machine,” wrote another. “What the Fuck?” was the headline of the New York Times. That last review killed me. Again.
I wasn’t used to the warmth of the spotlight so my face hurt from smiling. My hand hurt from shaking others. My back from being slapped by strangers. And stabbed by a few friends. The crazier I became, the louder they laughed. My jokes were all at my expense, hence my well-publicised bankruptcy. I had no idea where I was going, so that became my plan. It has been emulated by many since, and they’ve all ended up in the toilet. Some of us have been in the toilet so long, people are talking.
Your love only gave me cancer. You kept begging me for closure, but you were really nagging me to death. I see it all now. For in death, we all become safe, don’t we? And then others are free to rewrite their memories so they can live with them. And you become enjoyable dinner party chat (gossip that, now you’re dead, becomes safe enough to become fact), to sophisticated listeners on their own way to the big fade-out.
I have kept on living just to spite you. You stole the joy from my life so that I could be as miserable as you. You paid me back for having friends. For having a future. For having a past. For having a positive attitude. For having bothered to put up with you.
I knew that by falling in love with you I’d be destroyed, so I only have myself to blame on that count.
You have more in common with those you detest than you realise.
The years I spent with you weren’t wasted as I learnt more money needs to be spent on mental health.
I’ve been on the streets and caught its madness. Even the traffic lights are wrong. Yesterday the TV lied to me. The toaster has the shits about something. The bathroom has turned right wing. And the refrigerator no longer engages in late-night conversations about literature.
I loitered on the corners of Dream and Nightmare, where I died waiting for a handout. A leg up. A racing tip. A sporting result. A kind word. A smile. A passing ex-wife. Anything.
“Live The Life You’ve Dreamed” was a framed quote on the wall of the local drug dealer.
I have found Life to be quite addictive. Like an Agatha Christie mystery, you keep wondering what’s next.
I can’t afford to travel as much as I used to, so I spend my days going up and down in the elevators of tall buildings. Besides, it does you no good to get away I’ve discovered. Jesus knew that.
I can’t go home any more because too many strangers are living there. And I’ve been away so long nobody remembers me.
I spend most of my days gathering food for the homeless. I call it lunch.
We know what got into Chet Baker’s arm, but what got into his head? Have you noticed that nobody seems to care about the important stuff once they have their headline?
Where is that black girl who showed me that Life was meaningless? She said the less you cared, the more luck you got. I have some questions for her. But I think I may have lost her by confessing that I loved her.
My father always told me that if Hitler had been able to get out of bed each day before noon, he’d have won the war. I’ve not been quite sure what I was supposed to have deducted from that advice. So, subsequently I’ve forced myself to be an early riser for fear of becoming a lazy fascist.
My dear ol’ dad took things to extremes, and no matter what time of the day or night I got out of bed, my father was always awake. I suspect he feared that if he slept in it could lead to him invading Poland. A terrible burden for a man to carry to his early grave. But so you have it. That’s all I was left with.
But what do I know?
It came as quite a shock to me when I was asked to write a book and share my wisdom with the world. I was also somewhat confused when I delivered the finished manuscript to my publisher and he laughed out loud at all the places I’d cried whilst writing it. When I inquired as to why this was, he laughed so hard he fell off his chair and shrieked, “Don’t worry, it’ll be alright!” And collapsed in hysterics again on his expensive carpet. I had to step over him to get to the door.
Later that day I returned to his offices to pick up my hat (I’d left it behind), and was told that a board meeting was in progress discussing my book and it’d been going for hours and I couldn’t interrupt it. I listened at the door and heard many people squealing with laughter, and gasping for breath.
I cried all the way home.
But no one noticed me. Anyway, I see nothing in the eyes of strangers I pass on the street. Nothing. Just an abyss that goes so deep you can’t scramble back from it. I have found myself on occasion, falling. But then, I always lost me again. So I’ve kept falling over and over and over in search of something familiar. In the end, the falling became my life.
I was shunned by everybody and then told to make my own way. I wasn’t in the club. I hadn’t gone to the right schools. My parents were poor. I’d read about universities but didn’t know where they were. This was in the dim dark days before Google Maps. When the Labour Party believed in who they were. And so did we. Everything I learnt I achieved by doing, and not from some academic book. So, I became the eternal outsider. Always looking in on others easy-come good times. Watching them through the window as they munched on expensive Government funded finger-food and sipping vintage French Champagne. Some of the organisers saw me standing outside in the rain, looking in, and felt sorry for me. They said I could come in if I promised to dry off and only have a cup of tea with the kitchen staff. But such treatment only made me stronger. And hungrier. So I developed the necessary resistance to haunt them. Eventually they thought they should give me an award as my alienation was becoming obvious. So, they gave me an award nobody had ever heard of but it had my name on it. It lasted a few years before it fell apart. Beating me by a few months. But while I was somewhat together, it got me a few easy lays and a social disease. And, for a time, it felt good to be noticed. It reminded me that I was alive.
It’s best summed up in the words of Ballsack who once said, “There is something out there that stems from something that makes no sense whatsoever to anything other than the something you may attach meaning to.” I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
I do sometimes remember to look around at the exquisite beauty of nature and am filled with humbling wonderment as well as contrasting anger at man’s obsession with destroying anything he hasn’t had a hand in. Such is our envy. Such is our insecurity. Such is our shortsightedness. Such is our spiteful will to bring about our own destruction. Although, in those last despairing moments of our self-inflicted demise we will cry and whimper like the true cowards we are. And shake our fists at our mothers for bringing creation to us and thus sentencing us to death.
Exist-tense, if we stick with it, rewards us with a present. A gift, if you will. But that can only be fully appreciated if we turn our backs on the past because what happened then was just a series of presents that we initially devalued but either gained from or lost our minds over, and here we are. At the crossroads, going forward or being pulled back into the abyss of “What if?” or “Why?”
People with rooms to spare won’t take in a friend who is homeless. Why not? Because they’re afraid you won’t leave. They don’t mind killing you as long as you don’t die on their premises. And once you do depart this life, there are so many stories they can twist to elevate themselves.
I recently saw workers erecting a monument to someone. It wasn’t finished yet so I couldn’t define who the subject was. But the shoes looked a lot like mine. I wondered whether this monument was a tribute to me and my life. A life in which everything I had ever loved I’d reduced to ruins.
