Well here I am at the end of December and I have not finished writing. It has slowed down a little over the last few days but no booklet for Christmas. But writing is continuing and this has been good. There are now over twenty poems for this new section of the book. They explore different moments over the last nine months and the different emotional responses to those moments. What strikes me about the poems at the moment is how the poems can be divided into two sections. Firstly February to June and then June to the present day. The first section can be characterized by decline, isolation and illness. The second section characterized by incline, a sense of people and community and new health. Writing seemed to have its own mommentum, each poem introduced a new poem, each new poem seems to explore more deeply its subject.

Anyway the experience of writing has been positive. These poems are written quickly - then I move on to the next one.

I'll finish this blog with an example.

Amputation

One Monday, early June,
the surgeons finally cut me adrift,
freed me from
the iron like anchor of my legs
that bound me to the earth.

Amputation was the whisper that,
over the weeks,
gathered its own authority
and settled over everything.
Amputation was the obscene
healing they offered.

Afterwards part of me rose into the air
soaring over the heads
of family and doctors,
untouchable and unable to hear
their bad news
falling like grey ashes below me.

And part of me lay,
on the bed,
snapped off at the legs.
My hands and eyes
searching a strange, new,
disfigured wholeness.



© David Loffman

Hello. I meant to write something in November during my weekends home from the rehabilitation centre I am in to help mke walk again. However weekends were very precious times, and I wanted to spend as much as I could with my family.

So now I am home. I am walking again, rather slowly but I hope it will get easier and faster.

My other obsession over the months has been writing. It has been non stop.

In 1998 I collected together all the poems I had written about the experience of being ill with a serious illness. It was in two parts. The first included all the poems from when the disease started in 1976 until 1998. I wrote part two as a reflection on the illness that I had thought had burned itself out. I printed these out as a Christmas booklet, dedicated to my consultant who was about to retire. The booklet was called Touching The Dark.

However since August I have been writing very intensely about the violent flare up of the disease which began in january 2004. It forms a third part and I hope to be printing a these poems in a small collection for this Christmas.

However I am still in the middle of writing poems and time is running out.

You can read a few of these poems on www.loffman.co.uk

Take care

David

Hi. Well I'm writing. I have been since August almost continually. I'm trying to put the last six months into some kind of perspective. Finding words is a way of doing that although I don't expect sudden healing - writing can only go some way to healing. The poems need a lot of revision and editing.

I have been home for two weeks while my eye recovers from the op it had. As a result I've been able to spend quite a lot of time working on the poems. So I have been steadily revising the poems over the last two weeks. This is what I need to focus on now - quality of writing not quantity - although there are still some poems I need to write.

I've not been able to write about the amputations for example, or the time when I did not eat. I want to write about the incredible sense of liberation and energy I experienced after the amputations. Also I wanted to write about all the amazing visitors that came to see me in hospital. These will be hard to write but I have begun some brief notes. We'll see.

I want to get back to The Troubadour and the Merton writing group again.

If you are reading this and want to know more of what has been going on for the Loffman family over the last seven months visit www.loffman.co.uk

Hi well I have been writing again. This has been quite satisfying, however the poems are a little thin. The poems are about what has happened to us as a family over the past five months. For those that do not know I have had a serious disease that has become very active. As a result I have had both my legs amputated. The left above the knee, the right below the knee. I have also had some difficulties with my eyes. I am at a rehabilitation centre where I hope to be able to walk again. So much has been destroyed for us over this period and we are trying now to pick up the threads of our battered lives and make a new life for ourselves. I put together a brief selection of poems in a booklet as a thank you to all the staff at the hospital who were involved with my care. The hospital is called St Georges and my booklet is called Slaying a Dragon.

Here is a recent poem

Making Connections

I sit at my bed,
all Tooting is laid out
in 3.00 am
humid neon glare below.

With me, in the shadows
of the ward
the restless stirrings
of strangers sleeping,
wrapped up in their own darkness.

Last night,
- the first night for months -
I lay beside my wife,
retraced the shape of her body
and stared into her river blue eyes, again.

And in the morning the children came
running to our embrace.
His arms surrounded me,
her head leant into my shoulder
as I adjusted to their new height.

Lightening fractures the stifling night
and my pages lie exhausted
longing for the morning and home.


© David Loffman

Hi I seem to be online again but things have changed. Now I have no legs, I have a new computer and I've not written a serious poem for months. It has been an incredible year so far. Katy has been in hospital twice with minor but painful operations and I've been in hospital for five months. I hope to be at work again in January however it still may take some time before I can get to the limb fitting centre. Each delay will put Roehampton rehabitation back further.

I have spent some time writing and reading hiaku. I'll put these up on the webswite when I can work out how to do that again. I've forgotten so much. The Troubadour!

New Year. I feel like I'm in a poetry wasteland at the moment. Our health has not been good and family life demanding. I'm not reading much and the television flood gates have opened. I've lost my edge, and am retreating back into a numb, trivial emptiness. I need will and self discipline. I need a physical, mental and spiritual health. I don't mean that my ulcers are an excuse. I mean to be as fit as I can be. This must be my prayer. I am so weak willed.

Christmas was very relaxing and rejuvenating. Maybe I can work from this.

I did manage to get to The Troubadour in December for the poetry party and that was very encouraging. I intend to go back in January and Febuary. I hope I'll be able to read again in March - we'll see.