Some Sad Dark Secret

An Autobiographical Narrative: 1980s

1.

Thanks to the large quantity
Of notes I committed to paper
While at Leftfield College, London,
My beloved college can live again
Through sundry writings
Painstakingly forged out of them,
Such as the poetic pieces that follow,
Which is to say, Some Sad Dark Secret,
Sabrina's Solar Plexus,
She Dear One that Followed Me,
And I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces.
And as in the case of all
My memoir-based writings,
The names of people and institutions
Have been changed
In the solemn name of privacy.

2.

Some Sad Dark Secret was inspired
By words once spoken to me
By a former tutor and mentor
Of mine at Leftfield in around 1982 or '83.
And which then ended up
As informal diary notes
On a piece of scrap paper,
Consisting of both
The words themselves,
And my own perhaps
Partly fantastical
Reflections on them.
Some quarter of a century later,
They were edited and versified,
And then the process was repeated
A half decade or so after that.

3.

I Hate Those Long, Long Spaces
Was recently conceived
From thoughts confided to a notebook
Sometime between 1981 and '83
While I was a student
At the University of London.
                                                                   
As I see it, they betoken
An undiagnosed depressive condition
Which ultimately led to my contracting
A serious drinking problem,
And ultimately some kind of crack-up,
From which I emerged while not unscathed
                                                                   
Another man entirely,
And while I'm still the victim
Of a depressive condition, it's not as it was,
Which is to say, one alleviated
By spells of great elation,
And yet fundamentally rooted in desperation.
                                                                   
Today, it's seen by its sufferer as long term
Yet temporal, to be dispelled,
Once he comes into a new glorious body,
Which is his hope and his prayer,
So all the sicknesses of the old,
Will be a thing of the past, never to return again.

Some Sad Dark Secret

"Temper your enthusiasm,"
She said,
"The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality."
"Don't push people,"
She said,
"You make yourself vulnerable."

She told me not to rhapsodise,
That it would be difficult,
Impossible, perhaps,
For me to harness my dynamism.
The tone of my work,
She said,
Is often a little dubious.
She said
She thought
That there was something wrong.

That I'm hiding
Some sad
Dark secret from the world.
"Temper your enthusiasm,"
She said,
"The extremes of your reactions;
You should have
A more conventional frame
On which to hang
Your unconventionality."