Falling Short
it feels like i have never really met expectations.
of course, i get close.
once, we wrote to each other,
and once, i am sure we made plans.
but when it comes to expectation,
we have never met up.
that is why i have never quite met expectations.
and that leaves me wondering,
am i enough?
or, as i often feel, perhaps i am too much?
i never seem to quite meet expectations.
of course, i have come close,
and sunlight has shone upon me.
but on closer inspection,
it never became a summer reality.
i am the eternal… if only… maybe…
oh, people see some kind of potential,
but in the end,
it’s all quite elemental.
with my life so staggered,
progress has always been incremental.
and that is why i have never quite met expectation.
i have waved at it from afar, shouted across a street,
but we have never embraced,
and it seems that we are destined to never meet.
James Garratt – Friday 15th November 2024
More poems at
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/
More about this blog, The Boy Behind the Glasses, here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/2020/01/08/the-boy-behind-the-glasses-an-introduction/
More poems from 2024 here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/poems-and-writing-2024/
Falling Short – Written Friday 15th November 2024 (Aged 49)
The Boy Behind The Glasses. Poetry and Writing 
I like the handwritten aspect. Nice poem.
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Thanks Heather. I still write everything in writing pads. So everything here has the original scribble :). Thanks for the comment
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That’s awesome. I usually write everything by hand as well although I never thought of presenting it in such a way. I think the words flow easier when I have a pen in my hand. You are welcome, I look forward to reading more of your work.
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I’ve still got my writing pads going back 30+ years. The Writing Pad is a safe space – it’s where you can be all versions of yourself :). Presenting it like this shows the unedited natural creative process. Then the typed version is the one with the polish. It’s about peeling back the creative process.
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Your comment has stuck with me and I have pondered on it a lot. Your writing collection is admirable. To have all those notebooks is priceless. You have your whole life story in arms reach. At any moment you can pick up a paper and review your past with a deeper connection than most. Memories and experiences only carry so much weight but the emotions and essence that is left on those papers can transport you back to that time with great accuracy and depiction. Like reading a novel over, tiny pieces of you are still there in relation to your mind set when you first read the book. Your notebooks are a gateway to your past like most do not possess. That is intriguing and fascinating to me.
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Thanks Heather – that’s a very kind of thoughtful response. I’ve always had my writing pads and they’ve followed me around as I have moved to different places in life, and there has always been an idea, I should type them up, digitise them and preserve them. So in 2019 that’s what I started doing with this website. I couldn’t have imagine the journey when I started, it was like facing younger versions of me and the whole process became something of a personal reckoning and probably a healthy one, if, at times, it was painful. It did take me back, I guess the hard parts were, my own fragility and lack of confidence, my toxicity towards others and realising that the past I had constructed or the narrative I held wasn’t always true. There were also moments of intensity were I couldn’t remember who I was writing about or what I was writing about and that was sad, I wish I had made little notes about some of the poems. But I am really fortunate to have this record, it’s not really about the quality of the writing, a lot of that isn’t very good, it’s about the whole, I can reach back to me in 1995 and some of it is unrecognisable but a lot is surprisingly relatable. The whole typing up experience was hard, as I said, but it allowed me to feel more at ease with who I am. And you’re right, they are a gateway to my past. What is interesting in them is not just the poems themselves but letters I hadn’t sent people – records of conversations I would have otherwise lost. I have in effect performed a whole therapy sessions on myself 🙂
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