Author: fatherkim

Picture the scene

Spring petals ride the warm breeze onto my window sill.

Last nights rain drips down from the gutter.

Bed hair, without a care, woken up by the sun peaking through my curtains.

Whilst the coffee grinds,

You wake up.

We make love.

Engage in small talk.

It’s summer now

Our naked bodies are entangled

Before the Fall

Licentious heaven, unadulterated fun without any shame.

My body’s a furnace, the heat too hot for you to bare thus,

You wake up.

We make love.

Engage in small talk.

Autumn seems to be all doom and gloom.

Maroon leaves contrast the pale blue sky

The breeze has a frosty bite now.

You better wrap up tight now.

Perhaps it’s the lack of sun making us so irate

The shorter days seem to keep us wide awake – with nothing else to do

We make love.

Engage in small talk.

Now it’s winter.

The cold seeps through the walls sending shivers and dampening our spirits.

Though you’ve grown tired of my symmetry

You cling on, leeching off my warmth.

With your raspy breath I can’t tell whether you’re awake or asleep.

Even though the nights are long, we were never aroused.

You wake up.

We break up.

The hums you hear in bed
The static of the night,
The sound-track to your thoughts.

When the hustle and bustle of your day subsides
Like a fading siren flying east to west,
Dusk settles and everything mutes.

You lie in your thoughts,
Un-comfortable.
You turn on the music, drowning the deafening silence, fighting fire with fire
Until your eyelids start to droop.

The clock hands tick,
Loud and obnoxious.
Your eyes open.
The sun peaks over the horizon.
The trumpets mute falls off.

6 is my favorite number.
The sun rises 10 minutes to
the birds chirps 10 minutes past.
Between day and night, lost
free without restraint
uncircumscribed, by the rules and laws
written under concrete pavements,
graffitied a hundred meters high
on skyscrapers and tower blocks.

Rheumy eyed, but spirits high I walk the streets alone.
I walk past bin-men, homeless men, men walking their dogs,
jogging men, men in suits and intoxicated men –
I wonder if they recognize me.
With their four eyes, goggley eyes
fixated on the gum splattered floor of London Liverpool Street.

Tin cans and glass bottles litter the pavements.
Bin bags torn open by foxes and rodents,
festering next to sleeping bags with cardboard signs and
baskets half empty with loose change.
I look at my reflection on the humongous twenty by twenty
meter square window of TM Lewin,
like the mannequin with no face, I cannot recognize
what I see in front of my very own eyes.

I stand, disgusted.
Unable to see through my tattered clothes and
shambolic shoes stained and worn down, torn over the miles.
This body that I’m in, chameleon;
(I came to this spot several times after, wearing different moods or attires
and every time I stood in front of my reflection I was a new man.)

As I stood rooted to the spot, unable to look away
the sun slowly peaked its head over the Heron Tower.
The glare on the window, over exposed my reflection
allowing me to pry my eyes off and once again,
continue walking rheumy eyed, but spirits high
to the hums and whistles of the bin-man
through London Liverpool Streets rat infested, newspaper littered
gum splattered concrete pavements.

I want a heart of gold
I want it in bold, on the cleft of my left chest.
All I want is for you to understand,
But I cannot speak to you.

All I can manage is a gulp-
My Adam’s apple quivers and
You sigh. The whole world sighs.
Like Solomon, you know what is right and what is wrong
You sit across me in ur throne,
With your crisp white shirt and your black collar on.

It’s about aesthetics.
It’s about ascetics.
It’s what’s mine
It’s what’s divine.

To you, my heart of gold may as well be fodder.
For this ink in my skin will brand me a bull
And you will be ashamed that I had once drank from your udder.

But there can only be one bull.
The 19 years under your shadow have sharpened my horns
And as the blood which leaks from my pores christens me
I will strike you in your side to bathe in your rich holy oil.

I can’t seem to fall asleep tonight.
Counting sheep, meditating, recordings of rainy nights- something’s just not right.

I was too busy visiting foreign countries, walking through narrow streets.
Bumping into old-acquaintances, new ones too.
I blew the dust off my trumpet, ended up in Ronnie Scott’s – sober.
I tried my luck with Poker, grandmaster Kim without a wsop gold ring.

I wrote love letters packed in glass bottles, soon to be washed up on shores.
I met the love of my life, started a family, even watched them grow, grow and grow.

I was back in school. Mum’s packed lunches, tuna sandwiches, penguin bars.
Awkward school dances, braces, shoes two sizes too big.

I saw my future alas, hazy. Like a broken camera struggling to focus.
I think I saw streaks of grey hair, an antique armchair, a gold ring too.

But it comes to a stop, the train grinds to a halt. Some people get out, others step in but it seems like I’m a part of the  background, just taking it all in.

Innocence,

Then anger.

Next comes the embarrassment,

Followed by the defence mechanism.

Finally stopping at the realisation that

You just need faith.

The irony about trying to find yourself is that the more you reflect the further away you stray from your true image.

We’re blessed with rationality and self-consciousness but we cannot answer the simple question of ‘who am I’?

When I consider this seemingly trivial inquiry two key things occur in my mind. Firstly, the syntax of the question seems to presuppose that the focus of the inquiry is on a singular ‘thing’ however, the use  of the pronoun ‘who’ doesn’t immediately rule out the possibility of a plurality. Indeed, ‘Who’ could be in reference to a person or persons.

It is 18 past 5 in the morning and I am leaning against my wall. It is crazy to think that the wall is also exerting the same force in my direction, I think that’s the case anyway?

I’m disappointed that Thersa May decided to go ahead with her attempt to form a minority government with the DUP. Yes she won the most votes, but with all things considered the result of this election was a huge loss for herself and the Conservative party. She better get herself a new whip, after all a single rebel backbencher could result in motions failing to pass.

My neck is killing me.

Before I begin my ill-prepared rambling on a subject matter which I, to be frank, have no authority over , I would like to give some insight on what inspired me to blow the dust off my laptop and write a new blog on such a heavy and depressing topic.

I’m sure you all have heard on the news, or read on the papers the extremely shocking statistics which surround marriage in the late 20th and 21st century. From my experience, the most common statistic which the average lay-man would be able to produce, off the top of his head, would be the 50% divorce rate in the USA. However, after less than 2 minutes of research, I came across a statistic which made my jaw drop; Around 32,000 Belgians sign for divorces every year which amounts to an eye watering 71% divorce rate… Thus, these sobering statistics, alongside my conversation with my English Teacher on the major impact of marriage on society/societal values and child development spurred me to do some more research and build up a case as to why I believe Marriage is a ghost of what it once meant and stood for.

Like any other word, the definition of marriage has changed over the course of human history. The Oxford dictionary defines marriage as “The legally or formally recognised union of two people as partners in a personal relationship”. It is extremely important to note that this ‘modern’ definition of marriage differs greatly from the original and it is the shift in societal values, which has altered the purpose and indeed the definition of marriage. In my opinion this has, alongside other factors, made the concept of marriage redundant.

The original definition, and purpose, of marriage was a formal contract between members of opposite sexes to ensure a life-long union for the express purpose of raising children within a family and an ordered society. This was the case for much of Western European history where marriage was a civil institution namely, an aggregate of civil society outside the sphere of the state. Before the 1969 Divorce Reform Act, marriage had been a civil (Civil in the sense that it was a part of private life not controlled by the state) contract between two people, an important element of the contract being that it was life long and there was no breach thus, the wedding vows uttered before the formal recognition such as “till death do us apart” or “in sickness and in health” had authenticity.

Unfortunately, The consequences of this divorce law were that, in a situation where only one partner who had made a solemn oath of life long partnership decided that they were no longer prepared to hold to that oath, the state would quite literally burst into their home if necessary and drag away the other party who were prepared to keep true to their promise; even if abuse or adultery did not occur.

Quite frankly I find this extraordinary because, although I admit I am no expert in this field, I believe that in any other area of law if two people were to decide on something and consequently sign a contract, and if one member were to break that contract, one would go to the court to enforce it. But since 1969 what the Act has allowed is the ability for the state to actively intervene and force that civil contract apart. This is an enormous interference of private life from the state; fundamentally this means the states interference on private life has grown immensely and the one institution which was separate from the state and provided a huge area of private life has been under attack.

After listening to a speech by Peter Hitchens I found out that Justice Hale, in her 1982 essay ‘the utility of marriage as a legal institution’ wrote, “whether it would have been possible to improve the inequality of sexes and improve the protection of the weak and at the same time promote lasting marriage, we will never know. Instead the efforts of English law to remove the defects of the marital package deal have succeeded in virtually destroying whatever value it had as a stabilising and restraining force.”

Thus, the distinction between married and non-married couples have been blurred to the point of, in my opinion a matter of formality; and without sounding pretentious I lament at this shift in society. For centuries marriage was the foundation of a society, it provided a place to raise a child in a safe loving environment and it allowed parents to pass on their ethics and values to the next generation. However, with the decline in marriage and the licentious obsession of my generation I honestly fear that morality, at least the traditional values, will be all-too-soon lost. It really would have been nice if that could have continued. It would have been nice if in the future, If i were to ever marry, that the weddings vows I utter would have meant something. It would be nice if the state had not intervened in our private life. It would have been nice if marriages meant more than a better mortgage rate.

It really is not surprising why so many people don’t get married at all, why so many marriages end in divorce, and why so many remarry; because why shouldn’t they? What advantage is there if the contract, the oath, the promise cannot actually be supported and will not be supported?

There is one last thing that I would like to touch on that, for me personally, hammers the last nail on the coffin that once was marriage, and this is the issue of gay marriage.

I understand why people in the LGBT community would want to be involved in a civil institution which has been a integral part of being human and quite honestly, if gay people want to make a life-long contract with each other, and adopt children, I see no problem with that whatsoever. In fact, they could call it a marriage if they like, I really have no issue with that, though I would question why they would want to be part of a tradition which has explicitly alienated them. I do not however see why it should be demanded of social institutions (like the church) to recognise it as a legitimate marriage even though it goes directly against their long history and tradition, as well as the principals involved. Marriage and Matrimony are used synonymously but what people don’t often know is that the etymology of ‘matrimony’ is mother and this links back to the tradition of marriage being between a man and a woman. Indeed, though marriage is a civil tradition, the state recognises it because matrimony (motherhood) occurs in nature irrespective of the state. Thus, though homosexual relationships occur in nature, with the original definition of ‘matrimony’ homosexual matrimony just cannot exist; it’s like calling an apple an orange.

Anyhow I’ve lost my train of thought and I am in such a state of despair that I will just lie in bed now.

Josh Kim