Luke Labern

They have it wrong. Those people who define a person by just one characteristic don’t know anything at all. ‘He’s evil’; ‘she’s nice’; ‘he’s a bore’ – wrong. All wrong. Fluctuation, variation, contradiction – that is what defines a man. I can think of nothing more human than to follow the greatest mistake of your life with an utterly sublime action. It doesn’t make up for it – it’s not a game of making up – it’s just the way things are. The best men are also capable of being the worst. The worst are loved just like the best. Everyone in-between might have a higher frequency of poor or excellent action, but no one exclusively resides in one sphere. If you tell me you’ve found the greatest man to have ever lived, and that he can do no wrong – I’ll tell you to wake up.

In fact, it’s not about the actions themselves. It never has been. There’s something else that runs in the blood – the actions are the end result of a long and complicated chain series of events – it’s what’s in the blood that matters. What’s in the blood? Passion. Energy: resolution: drive: attitude: talent: intuition. The only difference between two men of equal height, of equal weight and equal looks is their psychological disposition. And this is not something that can be worked on, tampered with or reduced – this is the man. Read the rest of this entry »

What do you think, when you hear the words “I’ll never forgive myself”? It seems that each one of us will eventually say this at some point in life – perhaps more than this. It strikes me that those with great power, who are also regarded as evil, often drum it into themselves that they are beyond this measure, this ability to feel remorse.

However, I am not one of these men. I am simply a young man, who was excessively lucky and threw it all away. Now I live with existential demons so fierce, I fear my time alone, for I must duel with them just to fall asleep. This is because I do not feel that I deserve sleep. Rest should be earned; it should be a ticket you gain every day for surviving twenty-four hours of the events which surround every one of us, as we all move towards the day when the bell will toll for good.

I am a petty insomniac who swings between striving for self-confidence, and throwing myself into the jaws nature, to be preyed on all sorts of hungry beasts, all within the same day. Let me take you back to where this all began, and how it is that I ended up in this situation, so that you may avoid my mistakes as best you can.

My name, my name is not important: consider me a fragment of your imagination, as you read this, building up a picture of my complexity and my fallacies, my traits both positive and negative. For a physical model, consider me of average height, of standard looks, Caucasian, short brown hair – some look right through me; others do notice me, as per their taste. My personality is for you to judge, as I consider this my trial, and my punishment will be dealt (as it has been throughout this retelling)… I wish solely to be known as the Unforgiven. Read the rest of this entry »

“From my sides, up flew my hand — clenched into a fist — into the jaw cavity; when the force meets his face, it splits his mandibles parallel and away from one another: his mouth is a new landscape. This is followed by a sharp elbow to the eye area. Whilst his nerves are screaming ‘Your head, your head!’ and sending out a bevy of pain signals, I thrust myself against the gravitational force felt on Earth and raise my kneecap fast and hard into his lower ribs; they crack towards his spine and there is a haemorrhage; internal bleeding his is payment for his arrogance.”

This short salad of words, held together with the sour cream which is my emotional state of mind, is on anger in and after sports. An amateur attempt to describe my experiences, in a sports psychology style. Not that I’ll stay strictly to that whatsoever.

The opening paragraph is what I could have written at this very moment, and it could have been no word of a lie. I did not, however, do these things and unleash my violent rage on my opposing player from the football team I just played (7, Sage [I assume it's his surname] could well be in a lot of pain right now).

Instead, I allowed myself to dissipate the anger that was running through my veins into an external manner: instead of allowing my finger tips to contract into my palm, I did something quite the reverse of what every being of my cried to do. I sat down. I closed my eyes and faced the sky. Upon opening them a few seconds later I saw clouds. What had I just done?

My behaviour was not befitting a human adolescent male from perhaps a few centuries ago. In this C21 we inhabit, however; our little carving of time — and it is staggeringly little, our slice of the pie — it is both inevitable and well-documented that these feelings will arise in life. The arrogance of the population is staggering: it increases at a phenomenal rate, just as proportionately intelligence and philosophical thought seems to fall away from the mind of this country.

Now, this is my real debate: what do I do now? I feel a very heavy weight, an existential guilt that because man creates his own meaning from within his neurones, I had complete control of that situation: both my reaction to the event that portrayed it as something threatening, and my decision not to assault this man very seriously.

I have never been quite so close. My mind was screaming “HIT HIM. RUN AT HIM. THIS IS THE TIME WHERE YOUR CONSCIENCE SUPPORTS YOU. USE YOUR BODY AS A WEAPON AND LET YOUR ANIMAL NATURE TAKE OVER”. Still, nothing. Largely this was because I was a few metres from the confrontation between him and Henry (who, to his credit, did not do anything either). I considered that getting a red card and probably being banned and fined was not sufficiently positive so I instead resorting to my wit to slice through this man’s hot butter of a moronic persona.

Shame he didn’t understand a word I said. I do pity him in a way, as he is now pouring bubbles into his throat in the form of a few pints. May he stagger and slur his speech in peace. I suppose. That is, until our next meeting. Perhaps my tether will be slightly thinner; more worn and frayed, and I will find that introverted self-destruction as I am experiencing now in the form of guilt for not acting on my wishes should be replaced by external force.

F = ma (as our logo displays) would be quite apt to cry as I throw my extremities into the body of another human male. So. What are your opinions? I’m at a loss. Of course, the vast majority will say “well done for doing nothing.” But I did do nothing: and what good, as I have written before, will this do me in my grave? As I lay there decomposing no change will be made to my deceased conscience or the world: it’ll still end. Instead, for the sake of my morals I have sat back on my laurels and now feel a vice-like grip on my thoughts. Would it not have been more to my benefit to have struck this fool, this walking squalor of mind, and save myself this punishment? I would have served justice to a confrontational and egomanical drunkard who is too far into self-love to see that he is a failure, a waste of an organism.

Whatever will I do next time this situation arises?

“Tell me. What’s on your mind? You’ve been different today. You were low yesterday; it’s as if you’re a different person.” As she said this, I looked at her as if to say, ‘I’m myself again.’ I exhaled deeply, and spoke for the first time that day – though I’d had many conversations, I had been simply been going through the motions. It was time now, to speak.

Never turning towards her, looking into the absorbing sky through the window ahead of me, I began, without an introduction: “Fading memories burn bright and linger in the air like a thick smog. I can’t touch them for fear of being burnt, but I can’t control them either – they push me on like a combustion engine. I stare in the mirror and each time I grew more confused, more proud, more pained that I’m closer to death. A boy became a man and a man became a clock. I watch time. I trace it. I hear it and I fear it. I use and I lose it.” I paused. “I see what I’ve become, and finally, now that I love it – life — I don’t wish to die. I fear sleep in case I don’t wake up; I no longer need substances – finally to be alive is enough of a stimulant. My senses feed me, thrill me, boil me from within. At times it is painful, truly painful – I want to cry out because I have so much to say and a need to act. But there are so many contradictory things I want to do at once. It is awful, this pain. Excruciating. But it’s an opiate, it’s a pleasure, it’s addictive.” Read the rest of this entry »

I just found a whole bunch of writing I’d completely forgotten about — we’re talking stuff from four years ago, here. Of course, coyness is not the correct emotion to display here: only honesty. So I’ll post things vaguely interesting from the year 2008 under the appropriate tag.

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The remains of the clear and volatile liquid settled to the bottom of its glass chamber. What had just been removed slid down the throat of a man of interest, causing him to involuntarily shake his head and close his eyes. There was still half a bottle left; so he rose the bottle into the air, pointing the base to the ceiling. A torrent of poison made its way inside. Again and again he repeated this until there was nought but a trickle – mere droplets of rum – that fell onto his cold lips. Read the rest of this entry »

As requested.

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The question was… what exactly was she? Which of the various words in this sphere came closest to describing it? Alluring? Tempting? Enchanting? These words are too simplistic. Her petite form somehow transcended stereotyping. Not too thin, no: somehow she was diminutive and still had curves which appeal to that centre of lust in a man, the same lines which draw a man from intelligence to brutishness, from sensible to the sensual, from moral to immoral.

But at this time he was flirting with the amoral. With no God to secure it for him, he couldn’t see any way of declaring right from wrong. Of course, he remembered what it was like to know instinctively what was wrong: he still did. But something was overriding it. There was a lingering pain, a philosophical dissatisfaction: a sense of anger was coursing through him.

Double thrills slithered from his fingertips to his cortex as he traced that shape: like the onset of a heavy narcotic a cloud thickened, descended and then lifted as his musings on morality – of how he had been wronged – gave way and precipitated carnal pleasure. Was that a slight quiver? Was it her, or him? Both? Slowly tracing those curves, he balanced that fine line that most men cannot: thinking whilst acting. Read the rest of this entry »

I caress your face; I stroke your cheek; I run my fingers gently over the smoothest thing I’ve ever known.  You smile very slightly — yet it says more than any smile I’ve ever seen before. Delicacy personified, I have the most precious thing in front of me and all I want to do is make a gentle back-and-forth motion with the tips of my fingers as gently as I can. I want you to know that I love you simply through these movements and this moment: I want to transmit exactly how I feel: the subtlety of my emotion; every nuance of my appreciation of you; I want the moment to be immortalised and I want to prove how genuine I am – all through touch.

And you know who I am. I make the same mistakes as other men, because I am human. But it is the reverse – the ‘good’, or rather the different, the unique, the trail-blazing – that is where I define myself. And that is why you let me in when others have tried and devoted themselves to you, fallen for you, and been rejected. I can be delusional too: I can be over-bearing and too intense; too enthusiastic. But when it’s just you and I, reduced to our bare, essential natures – naked, as it were – when we have spent hours together and there is nothing left to prove… that is when we remember how and why we are continually drawn to one another. With anyone else, I am certain man: but with you, I am the best. The most profound version of myself. My words tumble effortlessly and fall together as if placed by a divine hand: I don’t know how I do it – if I tried, I would fail. It is simply that I am comfortable, truly comfortable, and at one with myself around you. And you are the same: in a split second a joke is said, a witticism escapes from your breath – and we laugh as if we will live forever.

In fact, that is the point: it is precisely because we are mortal that we laugh. We know that this is all a joke: life is a joke. Sometimes it is a bad joke; but when you and I are together, it is the most precious joke. It is you and I who have the last laugh. We didn’t choose to exist, and we have no option but to suffer and to die – but look at us: we are together, and we are matched with another unfortunate soul so exquisitely fitting to our personality that we can – even when we are apart – reminisce, and swim in memories of varying depths, and know that once (if not forever) we were gifted a time as perfect as is conceivable, as if drifting out to sea, floating, staring at the sky and being absorbed in a universe far grander than we.

Why is this translation the best? I have tried with words – and I will continue to – but they cannot match the feeling of a pulse quickening, or pupils dilating; a nervous anxiety undermining any resistance. When I sweep your hair behind your ear, time washes away: you are timeless beauty. I conjure images of centuries-old femininity, and the contrast between your hair and the delicacy of your skin and the shape of your face… reduces me. All I can be is a concentrated iota of adoration; a lifelong admirer. How such a simple motion can quell my fears; steal my breath; leave a writer lost for words; boil confidence into distilled awe and overthrow power with sublime delicacy, I’ll never know.

That is why only this simple act will do: because it is the purest thing that has the greatest impact. Your skin is the essence of life, femininity, silence; purity; serenity; calm. In this brief moment, all is said and nothing is missing. It could all end a second later and I would be completely fulfilled – posterity loses all appeal, and I am dissolved.

You comprehend it all, and reply with that very slight, but very telling, smile. I refuse to use the word, for that would be to taint and revert to cliché — but this is the only way I know how to express that emotion.

And all of it happens in seconds.

Hello, beautiful. I don’t know if you remember what I look like. In all honesty, I don’t have a great capacity for remembering what changes in appearance I went through during that time, either. Some things have not changed though: people say I have brooding, chestnut-colour eyes, with messy hair of the same tone. I have only light stubble – I didn’t shave much during that stage of my life either, though I cannot seem to grow a beard.

During all those years I was very confused. I expect you are feeling the same, now. Why do I refer to you as beautiful? Not because of face-value features – though of course you are a pretty, youthful and vibrant girl who I adore – but your spirit. To me, you are as good as human life can get. As I write this with a tear rolling down my cheek, I smile so simply and in such an untainted manner that I realise now is the best day of my entire life.

You are, of course, probably crying now, also. Not because of these words, but because you are reminded of stinging memories of your past. Shortness of breath – that feeling that your body is giving up on you, destroying itself from the inside out… That is what has, in the most obscure of ways, given my life meaning. Please: do not stop reading. I will explain everything to you. I can only imagine the pain you had to go through. Of course, I saw you, lying unconscious and being carried into an ambulance for one of hundreds of times, with a glazed look on your face, as still as when you were two gametes in different human beings. Every time I saw this I wished you could see me. I wanted you to know how I felt your pain. I was there for you in your darkest times, when you were so close to perishing that even the paramedics gave up hope. But I knew you would survive. Read the rest of this entry »

That wound we call affection. How at times we are intoxicated by its painkilling qualities: the pure strength and passion of its nectar soothes the heartbreak which has filled our lives up to that point. But, of course, this high cannot last forever. When it has gone we are left reeling, with both body and mind crying out for more – but it’s no easy thing to procure. True affection is the child of compatibility, luck, timing and the right mindset.

What I’ve learnt over the past year is, even if you’ve got most of these necessary components, the alchemy from these into attachment is never a smooth and stable process. Above all, certainty is a description never rightly applied to human co-existence.

Who am I? I have a name, if that helps. I don’t think it does, however, so I’m not going to reveal it. Physically, I am whatever you are attracted to. (Whether this affects how you feel about me during the following events reveals more about you than me, I believe.) My eyes are your favourite colour in the most stunning shade: I have the most incredible piercing gaze. I am a young man, I can tell you that much. Attribute to me the generic features of my sex, if you wish: I try my utmost to place respect, compassion and human rights before my sex drive. That being said, I am human and by definition make mistakes. Lots of them. Of my personality, I can hardly surmise: whatever I am and however I change will become apparent through the following tale.

How does it all begin? Not with my birth; I find this superfluous to the point. You may assume that I have been brought up well, in the English manner (whatever that represents for you), with the same peaks and troughs in childhood as the average child. My family is neither particularly wealthy nor particularly poverty-stricken. I fit, from outside appearances, into the very definition of average. Whether I am any more or less important than any other individual is completely up to you. As far as society is concerned, I am just another token who can become a tax-payer or crime statistic: what does mathematics care of my personality? To its stoic eye, even Euclid was any other man. Only in the thoughts of man does my philosophical being matter. Read the rest of this entry »

Sterile morgue, precise necessity – this is where my story begins. Does this set the tone, or is it merely one of the many aspects of the journey?

The hospital in which the morgue lies is where I spent the majority of the day. How many ways can a hospital inspire emotion? The joy of success – the heart bypass that brings the patient life. The lessons learned – the heavy smoker who has one last chance to stop the cancer spreading.

I saw and heard all of a hospital’s events on that spring day. The humidity felt special – there was a tension in the air; every minute felt important. This made the pleasant times exceptional: a kiss from my husband made my heart pound. A tall tropical drink was an explosion of ecstasy in the form of mango and pineapple. In the Tate Modern, a particular Picasso painting left me dumbfounded. Read the rest of this entry »