by Carl Halling

Created on: December 19, 2010

The Debris of My Existence

   

Until recently, I had the impression

Of decaying

Along with the moral standards

Of contemporary Europe

With London as the lieu

To which all autoroutes lead.

In my room, I was surrounded

By debris

Of my existence,

Lacking the will even to clear

The carpet, whose colour,

Incidentally I came to forget.

I ceaselessly tampered with my hair,

Growing it long,

Having it cropped , hennaing it red,

Dyeing it blue-black, bleaching it near-white;

It fell out in bunches,

Dessicated and exhausted.

My face grew sallow and haggard,

With bloodshot, inflamed,

Glazed, blue-ringed orbs

And bitten, bloated, ravaged lips.

My body lost its athletic aspect

And became shapeless and emaciated.

What lies above has as its basis an extract from a novel I wrote or attempted to write in about 1983, and yet despite the fact that its protagonist was partly based on myself, the poem itself is almost entirely fictional. Having said that, it does to some degree reflect my psychological condition in those darkly hedonistic days long before I became a Christian.

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