“The Jester’s Warning” (A Poem)

By Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@martinantonsmith

The Jester then spoke softly….
& the crowd did quieten.

“Planned aloofness” is a maturity test:
If you do it – you don’t have it

AND Furthermore

That which is not…
Cannot ever be…..

Until:
IT BECOMES
Something else

It is not a decision….
It is a kind of alchemy.

And the crowd did murmur…
And then the crow cried out….

For both the crow and the crowd knew
Alchemy’s sometimes bedfellow:

Transmogrification

“Disembodied hearts (have all the fun?)” / (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Sometimes a dove is in your heart, but a cat is lurking – so it can’t come out right now.

Sometimes your heart is a flower unfolding, but the sun didn’t rise today.

Sometimes your heart is a drum, but no one can find the drumsticks anywhere.

Sometimes your heart has been stood on, squashed, flattened – but it’s really just waiting for resurrection.

Most of the time writing about…

Your own heart…

Or Someone else’s heart…

Namely it being broken etc –

Means you have probably written a fucking awful thing.

Because you’ve risked being just another bland asshole talking of ‘love”.

And it is because I know this, & so I let it be known, and I almost never write of things of the heart,

That you will know I mean it.

I promise you these are not ‘bland assholes love lyrics type 17a clause iii’.

I used to say you were cold hearted & perhaps I was right –

But to say ‘you’re cold hearted’ is a C- analysis not the A+ one.

For is it ‘cold-heartedness’ or is it ‘correct survival mechanisms of a battle hardened nervous system?’

But on that level, I know that I was more than ‘cold hearted’ too.

I hope both our hearts can still sing after all these years.

Perhaps a heart can still sing to itself while no one – including ourselves – is looking.

But perhaps our hearts sing to each other without us knowing.

This might happen while we are both asleep,

Perhaps out hearts are laughing, joking, dancing & drinking away.

They don’t care that we – the earth strapped ego people – no longer talk or see each other.

Our hearts know we are both like children and don’t know any better,

Than to always get in the way of ourselves & always ruin ‘what might be’.

Our hearts laugh at us, knowing we are such fools –

They know we’re missing out on a hell of a party down here.

And once in a million tries, the two dancing drunk hearts will make a breakthrough.

The human beings attached hear them party,

In that half awake half asleep dreamscape,

For a brief few moments we both feel that the other one is still there.

Yes this is a glorious thing,

But as I’m a greedy bastard, I’d still to see you in the flesh again.

But I don’t know if you will ever allow it.

But why should our disembodied hearts have all the fun?

It’s a simple good argument don’t you think?

And I know I can’t do anything right now other than cajole a few words from the dictionary,

Ask for some of the best ones to fall out,

Then re-order themselves perfectly,

Just to impress you a little.

I wonder if you will one day ever read this?

And I just overheard both of our hearts talking to each other while I was drowsy,

During the party they went outside for a quiet pow-wow,

I heard one of them say this to the other, & the other one nodded in agreement:

All they need to do is clink a glass, raise a smile, make some eye contact, and say hello.

The hearts are right – It is we fools that makes ‘matters of the heart’ become unsolved mysteries.

As a surprise – let’s be wise and follow their advice.

It could happen.

“Don’t Be An Alco If You Can Help It – A Tribute To Buk” (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

Perhaps no writer has told of the average joe’s plight in the nine-to-five drudge.

Than the great Bukowski.

Yes he was a sleaze – he admitted this himself.

This is why he agreed to write the newspaper column ‘Notes of a dirty old man’.

But let’s be honest at least half of urban-nine-to-five slave-women like sleazes – at least sometimes.

You see it’s about utilitarianism – They can use the sleaze & then throw them away.

They are conveinient, disposable.

They are fun during bar-night-ovulations or during rolling personal crises that is ‘modern city life’.

So while half of urban western women say they hate Buk – They are are at least intrigued by a wild animal type like Bukowski.

Because Buk was more a phenomenon of our dystopian reality just as much as he was a ‘dirty old man’.

I mean the cliché is that all women like a ‘bad boy’.

Clichés have to at least be half true – don’t they?

Of course they are.

And that’s why at least as many Western dystopian city livin’ women love Bukowski as hated him, & probably more.

Although he did say himself that he ‘let women push him around’, & that’s why they liked him so much.

But that was a schoolboy analysis, even he would know that – after all, he had a big brain.

But I think – on top of the ‘Western city dystopia effect’ – he was at least a hybrid of both a ‘pushover & a bad boy’.

Perhaps it was the hybrid nature that intrigued his many boozy women that he talked of in his novel ‘Women’.

But then again most of Buk’s women were fellow ‘bottom of the barrel types’.

They were alcoholics, party animals, literal prostitues etc.

Though later in life Buk said he ‘couldn’t be bothered with bars no more’ –

He ‘just wanted to sit in a quiet room with a beer and his thoughts’.

You see even an dive-bar-livin’-alco like Buk can’t party much past fifty.

There’s the famous video where he gets pissed at Linda (his wife) because she keeps partying big.

In the infamous video she is unrepentant & says “I’ll keep going out at night & I’ll see whoever I want”.

This makes Buk ‘see red’ – he threatens to ‘Get his Jewish lawyers to kick her out’.

She is again unrepentant to his discomfort & his view of ‘how it should be’.

He loses it, his anger boils over & as the are both at opposite ends of the couch,

He starts kicking her like a child would – it looks bad on camera but there’s no force behind the kicks.

He ruined his poise & argument there.

It was a good argument to not be an alcoholic if you can help it at all.

Because if you’re deeply damaged – and most of us are – alcohol takes all your problems and makes a stage show of them.

But if you are (an alco) and you can’t (stop), it also helps (like Buk was) to be an entertainer, artist or writer – and living in America

They kinda issue you a ‘free pass to misbehave’ over there.

This is why America has both the best art and literature and the worst behavour.

So Rest In Peace Buk – may you be soaking in a giant vat of Budweiser in the clouds.

You behaved bad AND made great art.

The embodiment of the USA.

For the record I was a binge drinker for fifteen years, but not an alcoholic.

These days I just sit in a quiet room, drink two beers a night & write.

Like Bukowski my wild party days are long gone.

All I have left are a few wild memories.

And sometimes I really miss my (watered down) version of the various Bukowski Boozy Babes.

As Bukowski’s life was a testament to:

Time really does turn deadly sharp edges into fuzzy warm curves.

The truth is they were both good and bad and you could not have one without the other.

This is why you should never ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’.

Perhaps both the best saying and civic instruction to have ever lived.

So let us never throw Bukowski’s out of the pages of our literature.

“The Rosy Life Of The High IQ + Neuro-divergent” (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

If you have high IQ and Neuro-diversity you tend to live in your own world.

A world of ever-swirling-ideas, stacks of sky-high books & mindsets of never wanting to be ‘pinned down’.

And of course, at least a few decades of voluntary poverty – that goes without saying.

But let me explain the ‘pinned down’ thing.

You see people like us – who are smart & also neuro-divergent (I reckon I have ADHD) –

We love ‘Ideas’ much more than the current version of ‘bland Earthian reality’ dished up.

So this explains our tendency to not want to commit to a single-probability-wave-collapsed, long term course of action –

It is too much connected to the ‘real world’.

We would rather talk about the myriad of pitfalls that the ‘real world’ has waiting to ensnare.

When we do this with a beer or tea or coffee we are in our version of ‘heaven’.

For example I don’t like the idea of being a Lawyer with two kids in private school with a high price wife on a hill.

And then we would have dinner parties where we all sit & rattle off narrow upper-middleclass epithets to each other.

“Oh I’ve decided to rebalance my portfolio”

“Oh really – that’s wise”

“Yes I decided that while drinking bitch juice at Portsea Polo last week”

“Oh what a great Idea Ms X, and I have got my reno going – we are adding an extra room & two new bathrooms”

“Oh isn’t that wonderful Ms Y – but will Burt still pee on the toilet seats?”

Cue the laughing like Hyena’s & all in front of poor Blushing Burt.

That kind of life I would see as a ‘living hell’.

The performative narrow-band blandness of it all is stomach churning.

Why would anyone want to live like that?

When I see people like this I think it’s all because they have killed off their inner child.

They have ‘human sacrificed’ themselves.

You can’t think of them as the playful child they once were – it is impossible to divine from their adult faces.

Someone that has a high IQ & is Neuro-diverse sees these things very easily.

We see the unhappiness & the unhappiness out there in the world.

We see through the smoke & mirrors of this ‘reality tv’ world they’ve sneaked on us.

Of course we suffer – for we are usually poor – but perhaps a few might get wealthy off Art/Media/Music etc.

Those ones often can’t handle being back in the world of empty epithets, status, & bank balances – so they do themselves in.

So we are better off being alone on our rooms with books piled high & living off the food scraps the world throws up.

If we die under a ditch early in life – we can accept that.

For at least we saw the swindle and had a original few ideas.

We let the dull have their dinner parties, & we were happily uninvited.

It’s far more fun to make fun of them.

They can swig their overpriced bitch diesel & practice their sneers in their expensive cracked mirrors.

We will be writing of it all with full epistemological & philosophical accuracy for future generations to enjoy.

While they will be outed as the ‘intellectual sludge people’ of the ever-declining post-post-Roman era.

All in all I’d say us high IQ-Neuro-diverse have it pretty good.

The only draw back is we need to raid the back of the couch to buy milk,

And our rooms are book laden dusty debacle obstacle courses.

Other than that life’s Rosy for us.

The only weak point we have is when there is a sudden ‘crisis of confidence’:

Where we wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with the thought:

“Are we just a rehahsed version of them but don’t know it?”.

It is a terrible conjecture indeed.

If it were true, I would act to bury it deep in my psyche forthwith – to protect a fragile ego.

If it were not true, I’d be willing to write a poem about it.

Dragon slayed my friends – Dragon slayed!

We are not at all like them – we are not like our natural enemies.

We have not yet became that which we fight against.

But this is not the end of our problems:

For what of the next conjecture:

Are we High IQ Neuro-divergent family still just ‘bunch of assholes’ none-the-less?

I call this the ‘Griswold’s theory’ and I hope the answer is not of the ‘one hand clapping in the woods’ type.

But let’s be honest with ourselves: we can easily slip into the territory without knowing it,

So perhaps all of us can be assholes some of the time,

Some of us can be assholes all of the time,

But all of us can’t be assholes all of the time.

This is called the Dylan-asshole-theory.

Of course I could continue, however this is a poem and not an essay.

And I think we can all agree, be us High Iq Neuro-divegent’s or Upper middle class pustules or somthing else:

Only an asshole would write am essay and call it a poem.

I reader pals, would never do that.

Though I am also sometimes a unscrupulous liar.

I regard this as an inalienable right my artistic license,

Which strangely is now made to expire every five years, & limits the number of passengers I can stage dive onto.

And now this essay, er…I mean poem must end.

For more than enough intellectual chaos has been metered out,

And ‘world befuddlement stocks’ have been greatly enriched.

My work is done here.

“The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice – Part 4 – Take the Fork in The Road & You can’t not be a Soldier”:

by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

….Back to the analogy of the Apprentice-to-Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful mountaintops: Remember you’ve now come a long way, relaxed to much & have seemingly tumbled back to your starting point.

It was a dramatic event. Before you knew what was really happening you have stopped falling & are no longer tumbling downhill. Now you are still at the bottom – where you began the journey long ago. You notice it ‘looks and feels like’ the psychological state many have called ‘rock bottom’. It feels that way.

But now you have dusted yourself off, checked you’re bruises and broken bones over you can now see you seem to indeed be back to the ‘randomized cultural abyss’ where you started your journey between ten and twenty five years ago. You at this stage of your development (Not yet a Master) trust your immediate surroundings far to much – or should I say the ‘meaning imbued’ into your surroundings.

This natural for most for remember – you are not a Master (of Life) yet, you are an probably an experienced Apprentice – perhaps you are even a mature Journeyman. A Journeyman to a Master is of course a seen as a more primitive state than the Apprentice who can become a Master (of Life).

For the Journeyman lacks the constitution (tools) to ever become a Master (But of course we need them still & a Master knows this intuitively. But let’s say for simplicity you are not so ‘bad lucked’ to be a forever Journeyman – let’s say you can become a Master (of Life).

Again let’s go back to where you found yourself at rest after falling back from your journey to the fabled path where you spotted the peaceful, Masterful mountaintops in the reachable distance. The truth is when you woke up from the tumbling down, you were now no longer the exact same Apprentice you were immediately before the fall. Your history precludes that possibility. It must do as the inputs are much different, so must the output. You are not the same person, you are not the same Apprentice. The Master looking from the future knows this. But a forever Apprentice or a forever Journeyman will not know this at all – for his mind is not at t ha level of being able to see through surface appearances.

But this situation is where Life throws up a ‘fork in the road moment’. It is by nature a psychological fork as much as a physical one. It’s of belief. It is akin to the ‘what you Think becomes you’re Actions and what becomes your Actions becomes your Reality thesis (that saying is True – but of course Life Coaches/Internet guru’s have twisted/murdered all these good old type fables). The (psychological) fork in the road goes like this: From that point after the fall, you can either ‘roll over & die’ (do nothing at all) or ‘load yourself back into the stock barrel to be fired back into battles-scape (of Life)’ and possibly towards being a future Master (of Life).

If again later in the journey you chose the wrong path in the road (i.e. you agree to stay an Apprentice or at best a Journeyman) you also choose a path of not being to ever become the Master. If you choose the ‘path of the Master’ you are on the ‘right fork of the road’, I.e. the path to possibly become a Master (of Life).

Of course it’s worth mentioning that Yogi Berra (the famed American baseball coach) also said wisely “if you see a fork in the road ahead – take it”. So in truth you can take the right fork (towards being a Master) the left fork (An Apprentice or Journeyman) or (as Yogi Berra warned of, & p.s. to the non-American’s – Yogi Berra is his real name & he is not the ‘Jellystone Park’ Cartoon Bear that steals pic-a-nic baskets) you can sit the grass next to the fork in the road or back at where you fell back too (falsely) avoiding the stress of making a decision.

But let’s assume your smart enough to “take the fork in the road” as Berra said. What is the difference between the two situations he talks of – ‘the barreling towards the forks in the road of life or the ‘roll over & die’ situation where you avoid life entirely?

The one that ‘loads themselves into a the barrel again’ and then also chooses the Masters path at the key ‘fork in the road’ has proven they are future Master material’ – for they intuitively know not to trust their kneejerk feelings after waking up from the fall backwards to what looks very much like that old randomized abyss of the beginning of life’s adult journey (perhaps) ten to twenty five years ago.

The future Master chooses not to take the ‘beaten down, in-the-moment, go-to advice’ – that is of choosing the options that stop

You from becoming a ‘Master’. The future Master has (psychologically) a healthy ‘dissociation’ between themselves and their minds ‘chatter’ (bad superficial advice).

I hate to admit it, but life seems to be indeed akin to a War (and I would contend is at least as much ‘attritional’ as vs a series of ‘shock & awe’ battles). Sun Tzu (The Art of War) had many fine points on the matter in fact. In wandering the wrong forked path after a blow to the mind and spirits, anyone can easily forget life’s ‘War-like-ness’ – & I think even a future Master (of Life) can even still fall prey to ‘aimless wandering’ – but perhaps I am being to optimistic, but that’s also not a bad strategy in itself, so long as it’s based on (Enlightenment like) philosophical reasoning vs blind reasoning. I’d like to think that twenty years in a psychological rest area is not also a metaphorical black hole of mediocrity (as eighty years as an Apprentice would certainly be).

The War of life is about embracing the rough & tumble, showing your battle-scars with pride. Then you are reminding yourself that you are at (some various kind of) War – with at least large attritional aspects. While a soldier in the ‘War of Life’ (hopefully to be a Master) you then must agree (as a soldier does by definition) to ward off the often ‘beaten down part of your mind. After all – a soldier worth their salt doesn’t like a ‘chatterer in the ranks’, especially while under enemy fire (to act like this would be seen as Treasonous or at least Court-Martial-able).

Isn’t it sad we don’t always hear of ‘Life’s battle cries’ hidden amongst the rest areas of the mountain’s foothills, and in the ‘randomized abysses’ we all came from, and in particular after a ‘heavy fall’. But then again if everyone was a ‘Master’, then it would also be true that no one would be – for ‘without shade their is no light’. Whatever the Truth is, Shakespeare was onto something, for life as it is and has been lived here prima facie on Earth, is surely some kind of weird alchemy of both tragedy, comedy and history – and we all need to create genuine meaning out of it all, much to the chagrin of the future-present-past slings & arrows that abound.

THE END

This writing is owned by Martin Smith Creations Ltd (NZ). For Commercial use contact Martin A.Smith at martinantonsmith@gmail.com. For non-profit Educational use, please share freely.

“Heartbreak I Miss You” (A Prose Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

I have never wrote of heartbreak in any of my poems.

There will be a day when that comes – in fact now is as good as any.

I am probably a coward for not doing so earlier.

Their are many heartbreaks in life – but these are the three big ones:

Heartbreak of the Romantic kind – for the one you were ‘supposed to be with’ but it ‘seemingly cannot ever be’.

This type will not fade as the years and decades pass.

Next is Heartbreak of the Non-Romantic kind – perhaps the most common is the ‘disappearing/invisible parent’ of the seven to seventeen-year-old.

It might be a divorce thing, or they may be there but not present, or deeply betrayed the child.

This kind of Heartbreak I also believe does not really fade.

Next – the third type, another Non-Romantic Heartbreak is (as Jung famously mentioned) is that of the ‘unlived life’

Or more specifically it is:

‘The dispair of the Adult who realizes that their life is now proven (without a doubt via the ‘condemnation of the years’ effect) to be an an unlived, unfulfilled, un-potentiated one.

Jung mentioned that when a parent suffers from this, they take it out on the child –

‘It is the child that suffers most for the unlived life of the parent’.

But of course, this adult sufferer will also take it out on themselves in their inner minds – a personalized hellish torment.

The interesting thing is someone can suffer for not just three of these Prime Heartbreaks – but four if they had the additional wrath of an ‘unlived parent’ experience as a child.

And now I wonder if that ‘sufferer of four concurrent Prime heartbreaks’ is me.

And I wonder if that is also true for the other side of the Romantic Heartbreak – her.

Perhaps we had six Prime Heartbreaks between us both, and when we split together we created seventh & eighth.

And I wonder if that is why we resonated in a cosmic energetic unity for that short ‘lit-fuse year’ we were together.

All Theory aside, how does one keep ones aging chin up under these circumstances?

And of course I know their is no answer to this question –

There is only a half-answer:

Only the traditional only-half-working-one,

To remain stoic in the face of you forever falling down the ‘black chasm abyss’ for eternity.

i.e. The same one they used in WW1 – when you saw your best hometown mates head blown off by howitzer fire from one foot away.

And I think if one were to suffer all four Prime Heartbreaks, that would certainly qualify you for the analogy.

Yes Stoicism can’t actually truly save you if you suffer from three or four Prime ‘life-concurrent’ Heartbreaks.

Unfortunately – as the saying goes – ‘you’re on your own’.

And in closing I will separate out just one of my Prime Heartbreak’s,

The one who signifies seemingly forever romantic lost love.

She is surely the most important one of the different types – it feels that way.

She is after all why I wrote this poem right now, after so many years in mourning.

This is the one where my brain settles on only three bare words:

I. Miss. Her.

Or another song title way to put it would be:

“Heartbreak I Miss You”

‘The Brain’ must know that that’s all that really matters.

The-Professor-in-my-minds-eye says:

‘Heartbreak 101: Torment can make for good art and writing’ – by the way this is a compulsory paper’

“A Catch Up with Pete The Wanderer” (A Poem/Prose)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

And so I walk down the town.

It is Friday @ I’ve taking half the day off.

I have allowed it, as I have finished a block of work on the studio ‘reno’.

As I walk past the cafe – who do I see?

It’s Pete the 50 plus dreadlocked wanderer/rough sleeper who hides it quite well.

Pete has nice hardy shoes & outdoorsy clothes that almost gives a middle class trampers appearance.

That’s no accident – Pete ain’t stupid – I can attest.

We have met a few times before by the ‘bridge rest area’, where he stops over a lot.

He stays for one night – as else the ‘freedom police’ stormtroopers mobilize.

In the past I’ve shared a few beers with him, & talked of the rigged world the satanic shadow elite have created,

And how the term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was coined to malign the pesky people who dare hold democracy to account.

And we talk of how NZ has ‘completely lost its way’.

I sit & have a coffee with him – it’s great to see him – for he is confirmed as being alive.

He’s embattled, downtrodden but the glimmer of hope and knowledge still resides in his eyes.

I haven’t seen him in perhaps six months.

He tells me he’s been walking the Te-Araroa trail, & he recently went to his rich mothers 80th in Queenstown.

Having a haircut to get to I have to cut the catch up short.

Haircut done I’m walking the streets again – I then see Pete walking with a six pack he has acquired.

I agree to quit the day for work at 2pm, buy a six pack for myself & we toddle down to the bridge rest area.

We again talk of the of the rigged world the cabal shadow elite have created,

And how NZ has completely lost its way.

The convo is peppered with latest news items confirmations of this – The Epstein files, Mass emigration to Australia etc.

Pete is a good conversationalist, but mostly broadcasts – you can’t tell him much on something you don’t already 100% agree on.

The time flies & I finish 3 of my six cans to his 6 plus two ‘big bots’ of Aussie made Coopers Red.

I’ve already given him one of mine an hour ago, on saying goodbye I give him another one, which leaves one for my pocket.

I walk back home via the main street of the town way having some Chinese food before home.

I tell my Chinese friend who is a server there what I’ve been up to with Pete – she warns me about doing that kind of thing –

That is – ‘hangin’ with vagrants’

I tell her that if no one is friendly to the most downtrodden, at least once in a while – we’re sowing more seeds of destruction.

I think she half-understood.

I am glad he’s still alive & kicking.

After he wakes from his “illegal” night by the bridge in his tent, he’s hitching to Dunedin then Marlborough.

I guess I’ll see him again soon & good luck to him in the interim.

There are more & more Pete’s in NZ these days which is sad on one level (rough sleeping) and good on another –

‘How Pete gets treat’, tells us where we are at, & what we have become as a nation.

The week before the news said they’ve given more powers to police to move rough sleepers on.

As usual they didn’t mention where they would move them on to – because clearly they don’t give a shit.

For we are ruled by vapid new money ghouls: If they person isn’t their snobby dinner parties they can die.

I guess this is why we celebrate ‘Guy Fawkes’ – for with coldness like this coming from the top ranks –

Who wouldn’t want to ‘blow up Parliament’?

See ya next time Pete.

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

The Journey Of The Master’s Apprentice : Personalized Abysses & The Start of the Journey – Part 3 The Pain of Resting Too Long” (A Serialized Essay)

……continued from https://antonmartinsmith.com/2026/02/26/the-journey-of-the-masters-apprentice-part-2-personalized-abysses-the-start-of-the-journey/

A ‘eventually Bad’ thing can take the same look. When ‘beating your own path’ to find meaning – It’s annoying that it is not always obvious that your doing either the right or wrong thing. I was listening a a 50 year old writer who wrote for 29 years with no success, & then finally at age 50 it ‘suddenly all fell together’. He said that during that 29 years every ‘normal person’ thought he was an idiot for wasting his time. He won because he knew he was good & had a thing called ‘faith’. I think the Apprentice – to Master process is like this. A budding ‘Master’ of (something original) will probably usually be known as a failure to most around them.

For people on this journey (hopefully if of meaning, originality, Mastership) – perhaps after a decade or two of adulthood (if you are lucky or not forever willfully blind) you see that the trail has changed & looks less ‘abyss-ie’.

A quick surveillance as you look around shows that you have now arrived at a new location – the foothills of a hazed but surely very real, and at the least ‘partly beautiful’ towering distant mountain peak.

As you realized the improved conditions, you recognize you have ‘come a long way now’. But then you being an Apprentice (of Life) instead of a Master, you chose to celebrate and you tell yourself to take rest.

That’s what feels right. But there were risks in that decision. On this ‘celebrated rest’ you relaxed too much thinking you were enjoying yourself – that which is happening is of course the ‘Masters test’. For you don’t know it, but you’ve done something wrong by resting (too long) & psychologically celebrating too much.

The future Master-self (if you become one) who is looking on from the future, knows this is where you let your guard down (against Life’s tripwires).

The (future self) Master is watching you (as him/herself in the past) as a greenhorn Apprentice (of Life) making schoolboy/schoolgirl errors.

The future-self-Master see what the present ‘more foolish you’ has done – in choosing to ‘rest too long’ Apprentice-you has allowed a random unvetted element to sit beside you while you were resting.

While you patted yourself on the back about ‘how Far you’ve come’, some strange force came to distract you, perhaps it was a person pf a ‘collective of people’ that appeared in human form (common), but perhaps not (perhaps the destructive force was simply an obsession with electric guitars or a psychological addiction to cynicism etc.).

Because you as the Apprentice (of Life) only within the ‘adult game’ for perhaps ten to twenty five years, you have so much to learn yet to become literally ‘Masterful’.

In taking to rest & the distraction that was ‘served up’ while you were relaxing in the ‘rest area’, you lost sight of the main goal. You lost sight of the hazed covered mountaintops & the less beaten path that leads towards its peak.

So, of course in these conditions you are as the famed Roman border-guard-soldier who has over successive generations became en weakened to be casual about taking off his uncomfortable helmet while on guard/lookout duty. He is like most the other Roman guards of The Decline – he thinks to himself ‘it’s been quiet on the ‘hun invasion front’ I can relax a little”. He trusts the bad chatter in his mind, instead of being like Marcus Aurelius the stoic Roman Emperor who would dismiss the minds weak defeatist chatter with ease. That kind of creeping malaise they say is what really made the Roman Empire fall.

Thinking like that can make disaster easily strike just like an asp might strike someone ambling dreamily through the long grass on the savannah. The disaster bites, you are snapped out of you’re seemingly-always-getting-a-little-better-journey. Suddenly you’re rolling back downhill fast, tumbling, sweating, having no rest, losing parts of yourself piece by piece. That’s what they call in the vernacular a ‘rude awakening’.

Back to the Apprentice to Master journey from the abysmal beginning to the Masterful……

“A Short Poem About NZ” (A Poem)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

New Zealand:

Both A ‘Beautiful Place’,

And a ‘Failed State’.

I would find that all very amusing,

If only I didn’t live here.

Oh well – I guess I shouldn’t complain.

I mean it is largely a ‘Gentile Form Of Poverty’.

As we all wake all up each morning from underneath our various bridges, gutters & alleyways –

Cold, wet and saddled with delirium as is characteristic of the early stages of pneumonia –

We all take a deep breath & then shout out loud:

“Oooh the crisp clean Mountainous air! ain’t I lucky to be alive in New Zealand!”