LOST MEANING

Lost Meaning

Looking for meaning in the ordinary seems like the most urgent thing that we can do – Ian Bogost

I met the man on the street on the way to work.
I was on the way to work; he was on the street.

He was looking for meaning, he said.
I said, “What kind of meaning exactly?”
and he tried to describe it but, really,
it was like trying to differentiate between
one lump of sugar and another.
“I’ll know him when I see him,” he said.

People can get very attached to their meanings
but I had to get to work so I bid him adieu and

said I hoped he found his meaning
and I meant it, which seemed to help.
He stopped his search and looked at me,
as if he’d just realised I was there and then
shook his head, “Not him, no, not him.
I thought for a second, but, no.”

The Circle of Pain

Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath – Eckhart Tolle

Anger—proper anger, not annoyance—
is the result of pain
and anger can also, interestingly, result
in pain which in turn…
You see where I’m going with this, right?
But the question is:
Which came first, the anger or the pain?
Does it really matter?
I mean, it was a very, very long time ago.

The thing I want to know is why a snake
would even think
chewing off its own tail was a good idea.

Osculatoria

A man’s kiss is his signature – Mae West

“It’d be like kissing your sister,” they said,
the men who’d never kissed their sisters,
men who, many of whom, don’t have sisters,
the same men who say stuff tastes like shit
but have never tried it, not even deep-fried.

My sister was actually a great kisser.
She was pissed at the time which may have helped
(it certainly didn’t hurt)
but, by anyone’s standards, it was a great kiss.
Top five—maybe top three—though what do I know?

A kiss is a kiss.
Can’t say I’ve ever had a bad one
but I guess there must be a bottom five.
Kissed a bloke once too.
It was… surprisingly… okay.

Hardly Nothing

…is an idiomatic expression implying that something is, in fact, significant or meaningful, despite its seemingly trivial appearance

She acted as if nothing had happened.
He acted as if something had.
Still, they pretended.
(Postended surely as it’s after the fact.)
Maybe nothing did happen.
(I always struggle with that one.)
Something or nothing.

So, was it something or nothing?
Or are you making something out of nothing?

It was what it was, whatever that was.
Nothing… much.

Eudaimonia

…is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit

Happiness is not a state.
It’s a consequence,
a gut response
a kneejerk reaction.
One can’t keep on reacting.

A mountain has one peak.
All the rest is… anticlimax.

Contentment, on the other
hand, is well… it’s so
sedimentary;
from the French sédiment.
It involves a load of sitting.

Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct magazines and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland, that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and (increasingly) next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels.