A burned-out incandescent (globe)
When something’s electric essence fails
and you click the switch up and down in a faint hope
that it will come alive again
so one day I attended at a brothel
to test my circuits and see if they lit up as once they used
reliably to do. Of course it was too late by far.
The luminance flickered and died, a briefest spark
that failed to illuminate the gloom of eight decades
of faithful service, and I knew my time was up.
Malcolm Miller 30.4.2014
A burned-out incandescent (globe)
When something’s electric essence fails
and you click the switch up and down in a faint hope
that it will come alive again
so one day I attended at a brothel
to test my circuits and see if they lit up as once they used
reliably to do. Of course it was too late by far.
The luminance flickered and died, a briefest spark
that failed to illuminate the gloom of eight decades
of faithful service, and I knew my time was up.
Malcolm Miller 30.4.2014
Green eyes of my best friend….
This slightly erotic account of an airliner’s landing popped into my head and I wrote it straight down…
Airport assignation
Wheels, flaps extend, and then, with gentle whining
the gleaming cylinder sinks with machine precision
towards the runway’s pavement street of destination,
to plant hot smoky kisses with passionate squeals
before a shout of power marks the consummation
of its journey with the hot breath of reversed thrust.
Like lovers that come one by one – and each one pays –
they take their turn, moving over to the terminal
before their time to leave, fulfilled and refreshed.
© Malcolm Miller 10.3.2014
This near-erotic image of an airliner’s arrival popped into my head unaccounced, and I wrote it straight down.
Airport assignation
Wheels, flaps extend, and then, with gentle whining
the gleaming cylinder sinks with machine precision
towards the runway’s pavement street of destination,
to plant hot smoky kisses with passionate squeals
before a shout of power marks the consummation
of its journey with the hot breath of reversed thrust.
Like lovers that come one by one – and each one pays –
they take their turn, moving over to the terminal
before their time to leave, fulfilled and refreshed.
© Malcolm Miller 10.3.2014
Isaac Asimov had a story in which people carried personal computers on their belts. It was far-fetched at the time (1950s?) but today we have powerful machines in our pockets with more computing power than the vessels took men to the Moon. Their power and capabilities are far in advance of their use as telephones or tele-writers. They are true televisors which can send and receive pictures between callers who have similar devices. But for me there’s a problem. Even held at arm’s length the perspective distortion in faces is ugly and distracting, and that can be too far away for comfortable conversation. So what’s the point? I have tried mine, and prefer not to use the video. Good for sending a picture of one’s surroundings, but not for a picture of oneself!
Televisor in my Pocket
Of course it’s something out of science fiction
simply something that we take for granted now
as part of our familiar world. What a wonder
it would have seemed only one generation ago!
A phone with a screen; see the caller and she sees you,
if that’s what you want. But here’s the twist –
I never use that function, don’t like it at all!
It isn’t just the unavoidable distortion of perspective
that can turn a face into an obscene caricature
viewd from far too close through its tiny lens –
I don’t like it – that tiny talking picture
is something that I can’t connect with anyhow.
Until we have a holo screen at least a handspan wide,
or else a way to show each party as from at least a metre
then I’m never going to use it despite technology’s best.
Who’s prepared to talk from so short a distance
except perhaps a lover, and even then, arm’s length
is much more comfortable for normal conversation!
© Malcolm Miller
I was going to title this blog ‘Lasting Love’ but then decided that ‘Limerance ‘ would be more eye-catching. The word was invented by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979, but I only became aware of it a few years ago. A definition of Limerance is: ‘a cognitive and emotional state of being emotionally attached or even obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings.’ Now that’s a bit of a mouthful, but can be pretty well simplified to: ‘being in love’.
‘Love’ is a word with many meanings, and its use can cause confusion. We all love others to some degree, whether family, special friends, mentors, carers, or even teachers. To love and be loved is a satisfying and healthy feeling for those who have it. Some theorists equate it with such brain secretions as serotonin. For most of us, it’s a highly subjective feeling which is very difficult to explain, as poets and writers have found over millennia, myself among them, though I have written at least a hundred poems on the subject.
Being ‘in love’ has been equated with obsessive-compulsive disorders, but I think this is going a bit too far in most cases. We have all heard of people whose feelings became extreme to the degree that they indicated mental disorder, but, luckily, for most of us ‘falling in love’ is a quite survivable state. If this was not so, neither commitment nor successful marriage would be so prevalent.
Unrequited love is when the desire to be loved by a partticular person becomes too strong and can lead to irrational behaviour and thinking. Most of us have had the experience of a ‘crush’ on someone who never noticed us or had any awareness of the strength of our feelings. Limerance is an extreme of feelings of affection, but in some cases can be mutual, which might be what has sometimes been described as ‘they are head over heels in love.’ This is clearly a much more desirable state than when felt by only one of a pair, but can cause all kinds of trouble when one of them is already in a state of commitment to somebody else.
The feelings assiciated with limerance are powerful, and have over many ages led to the search for either ‘the elixir of love’, love potions, or perhaps ‘the cure for love’. Modern neuroscience has used its most powerful instruments to search for the biological triggers inside us which predispose us to ‘falling in love’, though of course we know that this tendency is hard-wired in our genes. Whether it is moderated by detectable and modifiable internal chemical chemical messengers which might be subject to medical intervention is not yet certain, and that’s just as well. As a genetic feature over which we have no control, I suspect that it is neither chemical nor psychological, but a powerful mind-body function of the whole person.
There are some people who are never aware of love in the way that most of us experience. We susceptibble ones might pity them, though it may be that they can sail through life happily avoiding the turbuklent storms that can accompany Limerance!
Watching the birds at the nearby lake is something I enjoy every day.
At the lake
Coarse discords like shouts of anger or agony
rip across the calm blue sky.
White shapes of jagged feathered lightning
zig-zag from tree to tree.
The cockatoos are flocking, playing, yelling,
big birds that know no rival, that own the space
around the lake, secure among the noisy crowd.
Sometimes one turns his aggression
against the placid ducks, a strafing fighter
without a gun, sulphur-crested larrikin
having his fun. The ducks don’t care,
since if they want to, they can dive.
© Malcolm Miller 11.2.2014
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