Tag Archives: poetry

New Year’s Resolutions 2023: Mid April Update #NewYearsResolutions

Background

On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is my fourth short update, three months later (check out update one here, update two here and update three here).

I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).

Me (04/01/2023)

Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk comida portion control, mean my current weight is now 15st 9lb (219lb). That is solid progress. Let’s keep it up!

Holiday break

I’ve always had a problem with routines. I’m all or nothing. If I take a break from a project for a few days, for whatever reason, I find it very hard to get back into the rhythm. I don’t know why. It’s a real weakness.

I went on holiday on the 1st of April and got back this week. So I was really scared that I was go off the rails. As it happens, though, I only put on 1-2 lbs and have got right back into the swing of exercise.

Half way there

I am about half way on my weight-loss journey. At least, until I meet my target goal weight. But I am only at the beginning of my life-long health journey.

© 2023 Bryan A. J. Parry

New Year’s Resolutions 2023: Mid March Update #NewYearsResolutions

Background

On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is my third short update, two months later (check out update one here and update two here).

I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).

Me (04/01/2023)

Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 1lb (225lb). That is solid progress. Let’s keep it up!

Wake up calls

I have now reached and gone beyond a highly significant milestone for me, namely, 16st 2lb. Here’s the story of why that weight is so psychologically important for me.

When I was about 27 years old, I had let myself slip into a weight-based funk; too many beers, too many pies, and I’d stopped running. I remember it clearly: I was in Malta on holiday, and I went past a chemist’s; it was closed, but it had a coin-operated height-weight machine outside it. Being a former colony, Malta uses/used our British system of weights and measures. So I stepped on the machine. It rang up 16st 2lb. I had never weighed so much in my life. I turned to see my face in the reflection in the window; I looked truly bloated and grotesque. And memories of being a small boy and asking my then rather overweight Dad how much he weighed rang around my head. “Just over sixteen stone”, he said. I had never seen my Dad so fat, now nor me. It was a wake up call, and when I got back from holiday I got real. I got back into exercise and got back into shape.

Years of good habits followed, but eventually I would sink into a funk again, partly due to mental health problems caused or exacerbated by rather trying life circumstances. And here we are today. But I’m back on track, and I mean it.

© 2023 Bryan A. J. Parry

New Year’s Resolutions 2023: Late February Update #NewYearsResolutions

On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is my second short update, two months later (check out update one here).

I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).

Me (04/01/2023)

Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 6lb (230lb). That is solid progress. Let’s keep it up!

It also counts as another milestone achieved. To those who don’t know the British system of weights, we measure things in stone and pounds. There are fourteen pounds to a stone. Therefore, each seven-pound interval represents a milestone, namely, half a stone. Having now dipped below 16st 7lb, I have arrived at and gone beyond that milestone. Next stop? 16st 2lb. Why is this odd weight highly significant for me? Well, let’s find out in the next post — where I will have reached that target.

© 2023 Bryan A. J. Parry

New Year’s Resolutions 2023: February Update #NewYearsResolutions

On the 4th of January, I posted my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. Here is a short update, a month-and-a-half later.

I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).

Me (04/01/2023)

Well, a consistent regimes of (1) jogging every day, and (2) junk food portion control, mean my current weight is now 16st 10lb (234lb). That is a great start. Let’s keep it up!

My other four goals on the list are in progress, but the achievements so far aren’t as solid as my weight loss. Therefore, I’ll update on those later.

© 2023 Bryan A. J. Parry

New Year’s Resolutions 2023 #NewYearsResolutions

Let’s get right to the point.

  1. I need to lose 50lbs. Simple as that. During Covid, I became the fattest I’ve ever been. Not acceptable. Current weight: 17st 12lb (250lb). Goal weight by the Summer: 14st 5lb (201lb).
  2. Finish editing my first poetry collection and get it ready for self-publication.
  3. Enter some poetry competitions.
  4. Carry on with my language learning programme (Basque) and meet my goals in it (not specified here to avoid a long post).
  5. Get back on the horse with regards my Spanish. Specifically, get back to practising my speaking using Glossika every day and watching Spanish TV every day. Sit a B2 practice test around the Summer to see how I’m getting on.

That’s it.

These things are important to me. I want to achieve them. These are SMART goals (some details left out to keep the post short) but with in-built flexibility.

Let’s see how I get on.

Poem: Crippled Pigeon #poetry

I wrote this several years ago in around 2003; it’s one of my college-era poems. 

Crippled pigeon, half brown, half grey:
How have you hobbled through the day?
How have you safely through the throng
Hopped your way the long day long?
How have you gathered up the food
To keep you strong when you’re eschewed,
And scorned, or kicked and chased from sight
By vicious children, fearless wight?
Yet lent against the kerb you “stand”,
And then I but outreach my hand
And Lo! Ascending to the sky
No crippled pigeon, strong you fly.

© 2003, 2020 Bryan A. J. Parry

Poem: The Swan

I wrote this in 2006, I believe.

The Swan

It was early in the morning,
Not long after sunrise,
That I was trudging to my workplace,
Crusty sleep in eyes;

My sagging head was lowly hung,
My face was bleak and wan,
And then at once bold in my path
Was stood a snow-white swan.

A mother warding her dear child
Destroyed my pensive mood
(The swanling doddled ‘tween her legs
Canal bank grass for food).

Her breast was out, her neck was stiff,
Her eyes that shone were keen,
Her form was strong, unmoving
Save her eyes that had me seen;

And nearer by a couple glid
So calm, and peaceful, free,
With pink mouths ope and trumpeting
Their happy song to me,

And there!
My gloomy wallow was forgot
As joy and bliss and truth begot.

© 2006 – 2016 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Swan.spreads.wings.arp.jpg

Poem: The Bluebells

Bluebell Wood

I wrote this in around 2004-2005. Walking around parkland, I rounded a corner near the Thames, and all-of-a-sudden I saw this field of bluebells. A transcendent feeling overtook me wholly. I was a firmly committed atheist by that point, had been for years.  None-the-less, the pantheistic language of this poem I felt appropriately captured the way I felt in that sublime moment when I felt like I was gifted this field of bluebells.

The Bluebells

I thank the lord my God I’m blessed
To see nature resplendent dressed,
All clad in richest purple hue,
The grass become a sea of blue;
And look what gently flutters by,
A wing that flashes golden eye,
As I amidst the long grass be,
Whilst golden sun shines down on me.
The heavens harken up above
To birds whose breasts resound with love,
A cool breeze makes the bluebells nod
To witness majesty of God.

© 2016 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from http://www.cotonmanor.co.uk/images/bluebells/bluebell_wood-coton_manor.jpg

Random Images 20: Reverse Poem

hint: read top to bottom, then bottom to top.

42a07830-347c-11e5-955c-4748b82c32c2_CKhVgqNWoAANnQM

The Inevitability of Being (Poem)

stephen-king

Poems are never completed, only abandoned, and I think I’ve just about given up on this one (it’s been fifteen months since I was able to edit it). So here we go! Constructive criticism is quite welcome (you might help kickstart my mind!).

The Inevitability of Being
Stephen King was asked: why the horror voice?
He replied: why d’you think I have a choice? 

Writers write ‘cos they don’t know how to not.
Pigs root in shite, and smile, for it’s their lot.
And time ticks down till end of all—just ‘cos.
But it’s not bad to revel in the what
You have unchange-inevit-ably got.

So hear me, world, this proclamation!
—declared outside of Barking station!

I make up languages no one can speak!
I love Sci-fi, lattes, and ancient Greek!
I crave cliff top vistas yet I hate heights!
The snoozing city stirs my soul at nights.

Hear me, world!
I need a pillow ‘tween my legs in bed!
Hear me, world!
I inevitably was — and now dead.

© 2013-2015 Bryan A. J. Parry

featured image from http://cdn3.whatculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/stephen-king.jpg