Some Perverse Will

The following piece began its life as, and consists in its present form as amalgam of, two almost identical unfinished and somewhat jejune pieces of poetry composed possibly around 1980, and while I have altered the original structure somewhat as a means of ameliorating it on an aesthetic level, in its finished state it remains lamentably attenuated. In its defence however, it has not been reproduced below to serve any great aesthetical purpose so much as to bear witness to my appalling spiritual condition following some quarter of a century of existence as I hurtled towards wholesale ruin in consequence of what is described in the piece as a “demon of motion”; although at the time, the poisons that fuelled me were not primarily or even significantly narcotic. Rather they constituted a furious desire for strong sensation within a diversity of fields, the intellectual, the social and the amatory among them, reinforced by industrial strength doses of self-obsession.
Furthermore, from around the turn of the eighties or earlier, I began to be motivated by an adoration of early death, as well as those artists who, both gifted beyond measure and exquisite of face and form had gone in quest of it, devoutly wishing to be ultimately numbered among such bedevilled individuals myself, to know such blissful delinquency as it must have seemed to me.
I have it on authority from a vicar on the evangelical wing of the Church of England and for whom I have the utmost respect that my eventual dependency upon alcohol was analogous to one particular non-narcotic addiction he highlighted. At the time, he was active within the ministry of healing and deliverance, and although I haven't seen him since the mid 1990s, presumably still is.

Since accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as my Saviour in early 1993, I have lost the fundamental restlessness and discontent depicted in this brief but harrowing piece, because the meaning of my existence is now gloriously clear to me. Thence I have found true inner peace, even if I no longer have access to the transient spells of ecstasy alcohol and nicotine once faithfully afforded me, while dismantling me by degrees.
That does not mean, however, that my existence is a supremely peaceful one, far from it, for the Word of God warns that each person who rejects the sovereignty of the fleshly realm in favour of that of the Lord Jesus Christ will undergo much tribulation and persecution, in some cases of an excruciatingly painful type, whether physically or spiritually, perhaps even amounting at times to a veritable hell on earth.
This may be especially true of repentant Christians who come to faith following an extenuated sojourn within the decadent heart of the world as avid flunkies of the Flesh; as well as desperately vulnerable front line believers who are powerfully active within ministry, as pastors, missionaries, servants of the Lord within the arts and music and so on, may God protect them. However, as comfort they possess a true and infinitely worthwhile purpose in life, something that ever eluded me in my youth, for all the fierce, flaming fanaticism I lent my ideals, whether artistic, intellectual, political or whatever and yet which amounted in the end to precisely nothing.

I’m a restless man
I am never
Still
I’m always spurred on
By some perverse
Will
The grass is never
Green
No peace here
To find
Some demon
Of motion’s
At work within my
Mind
No bed is too soft
That I won’t
Abandon
It’s sweet calm
And comfort
For a softer
One
I’m a restless man
I am never
Still
I’m always spurred on
By some perverse
Will.