by Carl Halling

Created on: December 19, 2010   Last Updated: September 20, 2011

The Athlete, the Poet and the Reprobate

‘I can’t decide, she said,

Whether you’re an aesthete

Or an athlete

A poet or a reprobate.”

‘Even when I’m a lout,

I’m an aesthete, he answered,

I lure, rather than seek.’

‘So why do you

Need to dress up?’

‘Like Ronald Firbank,

I suffer from a need

To give an outward show

Of my significance.

His lifestyle is an uncanny

Parallel

To my own young manhood

I alienated people

Through a crippling shyness

Which I disguised

With my violently idiosyncratic

Behaviour, wore cosmetics

And wrote novels

That reflected the luxurious

Lifestyle of a bygone age.

The sensation

Of never quite belonging

Lingered about me always

That’s why

I became an actor.

Through heavy experiences

I have built up

A stoned wall

Resistance

Against arrogance and aloofness

I am a sophisticated cynic

With a kind heart

And a tendency towards regret.’  

Afterword:

‘The Athlete, the Poet and the Reprobate’

Was based largely on writings

Created possibly as early as 1976.

And as such, it’s been reproduced

More or less word for word

Despite having been recently edited

And subject to basic versification.

And in its original form,

It constituted some kind of

Unfinished fantastical novel

Centered on the titular

Athlete, Poet and Reprobate,

An absurdly self-exalting

Version of the original.

For within less than two decades

Of penning these self-same words,

I’d come to saving faith in Christ Jesus.

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