Nice Guys Finish Last

I managed to fall into a discussion today with a stranger whilst having a midday coffee break.
He had seen me helping a lady get all her bags onto a bus and said I was one of those "nice guys". I said "Aren't we all, in the end?"
"No." He bluntly said and continued along the lines of, "Some people don't try to be nice guys, they don't even want to be. The politicians, the marketers, the salesman. They succeed because they aren't nice people. They succeed because of nice people."

I was pretty taken aback. I can't remember the majority of our conversation but one thing he said really got to me.

"If you always give then it's easy for other people to take from you. If you stop giving you don't lose anything and you stand to gain a lot more."

I'll admit it. I was almost convinced by this argument. I'm the kind of person that will rarely say no unless I absolutely have no other choice. I try to do whatever I can to help other people, even if it means I would be less well off at the outcome, which I usually am. Either with less time, money or energy. If I stopped giving of these then, yes, I would retain what I have and still acquire more from those that were the "nice guys". It's a win-win, right?
I wondered, perhaps that if I were to be less focused on the wellbeing of others, I would instead be able to focus purely on the self. If someone considered me to be selfish for it then who cares except they themselves? I would still benefit at the end of it all..

So why maintain this persona of nice for niceness?

No, as I said, I was almost convinced; not entirely. I finally came to my conclusion only a few moments ago.

I don't help people because I have to. I don't do it for the sense of satisfaction in being the good guy. I do it because I want to be treated the same.

Okay, so there will be a lot of people who may take advantage. Many who would bleed my veins dry for themselves. Some who may not realise even that they are doing so. These people are an unfortunate reality and I can accept that.

But if I acted the same, I would be teaching others I meet that that is how society is. That's not how I want society to be, that's not the impression I want to give, that's not the world I want to live in.
 I hope that if I treat someone with respect that they would treat me the same, and expand the attitude onto others. I hope to show empathy and I want others to be empathic too.

And yet, empathy is a much bigger word than it first appears. You can put yourself in another man's shoes and say you see and feel and understand without ever having done anything of the like. Even in your mind, you can picture a person's situation but the detachment to it is still a factor. Although the solution to you may be obvious, the situation has had no affect on you because you remain behind a glass wall of imagination. Until you really are in the same room, surrounded by the same four walls, breathing the same air you cannot fathom it. It's very easy to say cheer up when you're not the one in despair. It's all too easy to let someone go when you aren't in love with them and it's a simple thing to fall asleep when your mind isn't running in circles.

Sometimes, empathy is impossible.
We cannot understand because the concept is too alien.

I want to help if I can, and where I can't I want to show that I want to.

Because sometimes all you really need is someone to just be the "nice guy".

Platform of Power

It was only after writing this piece of poetry that I really looked into the past of the Israel/Gaza border war. All in all, I can't really say which side I support in the conflict. Both of them have made poor aggressive mistakes and to be honest I think they are as bad as each other. That being said, I wrote this poem after reading several recent articles revolving around the shelling of schools and the humanitarian crisis that's occurring, or rather had been occurring in Gaza at the time. 

Man, these days nobody has time to worry about being any kind of racist,

Who even gives a damn if you're a black, a white or even Asian?

Look around, it's seems we've figured out ourselves we're all the same skin,

Besides, now we've got democrats, republicans and liberals to spill our hate in.

It's amazing, the villain seems to always get control,

Waging wars in which they never fight, at least not they themselves alone,

Instead as a head of a nation, they risk the population as a whole,

And I'm not here to point fingers, but you can see it in the death tolls,

Look up the polls, nazi Germany, 6 million Jews dead,

And in the war that ensued for their freedom 7,375,800 Germans took rounds of lead,

How many in comparison were the ones who stood behind the desks?

Who commanded this campaign of hatred, who sent the population to their deaths?

Even the top dog of the lot spent his last days safe, concealed on the back line,

And despite that it was all just his own impassioned method of divine,

He built a wall of lesser men to distance himself from his own crime,

And despite the loss of a generation of families through his lies,

Despite the sheer number of Jews and Germans tortured by his political guise,

Despite that he would allow those men in his place to sacrifice,

Still, within his creature comforts he survived the blight of war by taking his own life.

Power is a platform that lays on the backs of others strife.

And now look to Gaza, where mothers, children, fathers are left to rot,

Where another form of genocide is warming up the plot,

Where daily, those that die are not a military lot,

But the innocent and stranded in a cage waiting to be shot.

Where the water is a luxury that no man has even got,

Where the houses now are rubble, where the payloads had been dropped,

And who stands in the background ordering this horrific defiance of god?

Those same sufferers of evil, that this world pledged to and had not forgot,

I am not a racist, I am not anti Semitic, I've no time to be, I am not,

But this stinks of an similar genocide, stirred in a similar form of pot,

And I hope that those that sit beneath those higher men feel the blood in their backs begin to clot,

That they see.

Power is a platform that needs to be promptly lifted off.

Also please, check out this astounding video recording made of the rescue of a small child buried by rubble. If nothing else, this stands as a poignant reminder of the true victims in political warfare.
Post by Thông Tin Hàn Quốc.

i have a friend and he’s my backbone,

my gritted teeth and and fortitude,

and when i die i want on my headstone

a little piece of his attitude,

I have a buddy boarding stations,

playing music to the booths,

And if i had his determination,

I’d be singing similar truths,

I’m not myself, I am a culmination of all those that i meet,

i’m not a star, and i refuse to be,

i’m am myself, formed by inspirations, victories and defeat,

I’m not a star, i am a goddamn galaxy

and i owe my talent, 

to a dedicated poet i’ll never be,

i blame him for my habits,

and my willingness to openly disagree,

and i owe my freedoms,

to a star i catch in every northern sky,

and i owe my reasons,

to every artist that sings to just get by,

I’m not myself, I am a culmination of all those that i meet,

i’m not a star, and i refuse to be,

i’m am myself, formed by inspirations, victories and defeat,

I’m not a star, i am a goddamn galaxy

we are not planets, we shine brighter each and every day we believe,

we are not islands split by sea,

we hold each other up, with a silent contract of willing community,

we all become a goddamn galaxy.

sssd

I could have been the richest guy in the world,

except instead i got a job and now that's my lot,

its like im paying to stay in prison,

is it a given, that I give them, every goddamn ounce of my soul,

to reach a goal i never dreamt for,

if being free means being poor,

then give me poverty, 

if there's a line i won't need to to see it anymore

Diabetic Dreams

A fog hangs around the room with a definitive musky scent, it develops from the embers of my tobacco roll up and spreads itself in grandiose swirls around the place. I move slowly so as not to disturb their dancing and shift the curtain slightly across so as to let in a strand of sunlight. The effect was as to be expected, although the way the light shine off of those little smokey particles is always astounding. I feel like I'm in a 1950's cinema, smoke obscuring an Alfred Hitchcock picture, I see John Williams mouthing but the sound is a bubbled muffle.
 The door opens and a police officer steps in explaining his urgency to get me out of the house, something about carbon monoxide. Across from me I can see Ed J. Carlson slowly falling unconscious to a sleep we all know he never wakes from. I grab my mac and head out the door with the police officer.
 In his car he explains that he is no longer an officer of the law, but instead a contributing member of it, he tells me how his past employment left him with vertigo and a debilitating acrophobia. As he speaks I can see the road getting longer and longer as if I were not moving but instead the world moving around me.
 I blink and Maggie is standing there in the middle of the road speaking to a man, I see the words "Jealous" and "Skipper" pass her lips but again no sound utters free, another blink and I gasp for air.
 My room. The same cigarette burning through to the filter tip that all now hangs ever threateningly over the whiskey glass I often use as an ashtray. My eyes sting and my throat is a pin hole in tin foil, each breath tearing through with a sickly tasteless sensation. I drink a water bottle dry and pull up my shirt revealing my stomach. I jab a needle into it counting, "1, 2, 3, 4..".
 As I lay I listen to the silence that engulfs me, I can just hear so distant in my own head a music only I can understand, the guitars, the drums, the piano, the violas and the cellos. Somewhere a glockenspiel is driving it.

- Max
Yellow Journal, 17/12/1983

Sex, Drugs and Positivity

Lately I've started to get those strange feelings again. I'm sure I've mentioned them before. They're like little nags of nostalgia, except I would accept that the nostalgia is less nostalgic and more expectant. It's very hard to describe it frankly. Sometimes I would say it feels like I'm in a book, stuck on a particular page that I'd hate to turn in case I lost that feeling of euphoria that a particular set of sentences inspired. Other times it reminds me of sitting in a newly refurbished room, suddenly aware of all the amazing things I could do with the new space. But really, I can only describe it one way, which is unfortunate because that way is so very undescriptive to anyone who has not had the pleasure of seeing through my eyes and thinking through my mind, and that way is thus: Streetlamps and Dusk.

I feel awfully static as of late. As if however much I seem to spur myself forward, the more I am pulled back. I feel ever more impotent in the face of an exceptionally average society which only leads me to the conclusion that I should have indeed chosen to find some place to build my hermitage in the forest.

I soon remember this is England.

I really should have been born in the goddamn rainforest.

Strangely, I'm feeling startled by those of late. Before they were mentioned, I'm sure. Those little nags of the nostalgic, expectantly accepting of it's nostalgia more or less. Frankly it's hard to describe. 

The Magpie

Hidden in the heath-lands and mires of southern England, in an old forgotten wood long since trodden by human wandering, there stood an old proud oak, so ancient that, like all other things having reached an age of wisdom and patience, they flourished a mane of silver, camouflaged by the auburns and greys of autumn's flavour that permeated the woodlands, lingering on the leaves, hanging from them and weighing them to the ground.
 It was here, above the overgrowth, that there stirred a wind that lifted those lost leaves into a flourish of colour, then twice and then a third time before a sudden gust lifted the forest floor. Mice and voles scurried from the unexpected nakedness and squirrels watched careful and curious from the tree branches.
 When it all settled, it could be seen, directly beneath our great silver crowned oak, a small opening had appeared, where it's roots had become torn from the ground and pulled with it the earth, where below that earth was a lack of earth that stretched far beyond lights uncanny ability to cast itself, where below, thought one curious eye, must have been something.. Where below must still be something.. Where below, one magpie found his path lay.