Untitled Poem

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The road is long
and the load heavy
that winds
its way to Rome.

There on my bicycle
around my twentieth year
Cycling home,
Winds on my chest,
after an early shift.
Heart in pain,
My mind conjured from its depths
A mental image
of that statue,
of Dying Seneca
That stands in the Louvre.

Can you see it?
Others though think this statue
may be of an Old Fisherman.
Let’s feel its Seneca though,
Seneca Stoic Sage
Who counselled
wild ferocious Emperor Nero.
Seneca
was also a playwright
or were there two different men?

If they are the same man
some say he found a kind of catharis
Through writing his blood filled
almost blood thirsty
tragic plays- or
perhaps they were
also a needed compensation
For his calm stoic natural ethical wisdom.

For some it seems
such a different hand the author of the plays
than the calm noble wise proponent
of natural stoic wisdom.

Yet Look deeply
at Aristotle’s doctrine of Catharsis.
And the benefits of diving into and showing
Greek Tragic plays.
It would then make full sense for Seneca
to ramp up the floods of blood
for his savage Roman Crowd.

I saw something in the statue
of a man caught
in the sufferings of life though.
He seems to want to speak
but does not feel he can.
How many times must wise Seneca have
felt like this counselling
the wild murderous Emperor Nero?

I felt a little like this in that moment
flowing through the air on my bicycle.
Caught in the cycles of life, between anger, pain,
stern counsel and accpetance.
For I had felt a betrayal of sorts
Had been committed.
For my Father
Had handed over
one of my short stories
to an Aunty,
who happened to be a psychiatric Nurse
who then happened
to hand it to one of her Superiors
a Psychiatrist,
a modern so called Doctor of the mind.
All without my knowing or consent.

The purpose? Perhaps you can guess
worried people
Wanting expert insight, to check
Signs of mental unbalance in me.

The verdict?
An all clear,
a lucid and insightful work
that could be followed
from beginning to end,
not the rumblings
of an unsound mind.
Anger or acceptance?
Perhaps in those days
I suppressed overly.
The waves of life
Roll through us.
We manage as we can.
Like old dying Seneca,
or an Old Fisherman,
or Young Tom.

​The script is not written by us
We come into life as life dictates
but yet we choose
how we play out our part.
Ramana Maharishi “All is predestined”
See the blinding insight in that,
Freewill left untouched
as St Julian of Norwich spoke
"All shall we well"

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