Craig asked. I answered.

Dear Craig,

Thank you for your request to me to write about “what disability pride means to me”. Ask me an easy question, Comrade!!!

You are correct to observe that what I’m asked for “may not be your jam” (as you put it).

It is beyond my skill with words to answer such a question. And if I'm honest, I am 100% certain that anything I might try to say on the topic would be self-serving bullshit. I'm known for that.

Nevertheless, I wrote you a not-very-good poem on the subject. It doesn't even rhyme. But then again … life seldom does.

Publish all of this. Or none.

That’s your choice.

Love ‘n peace.

Dougie

Don't Ask Me Mate (I'm Making Life Up As I Go Along)

Life is full of mysteries.

Like ...

Exactly what time on that Tuesday morning

(a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away)

did The Big Bang thing actually happen?

Who knows the secret recipes for Mars Bars and Irn Bru?

(both of which I've consumed way too much of

to be good for me).

Who really shot JR?

And how does one bend it like Beckham?

I was Dougie Herd before my accident.

I was Dougie Herd as I lay on that Scottish beach,

neck broken in three places,

coughing up the salt water, spluttering

as I fought for air,

while the universe -- bored out of its infinite mind --

rolled the dice

to determine if Dougie Herd might have a future.

(That too was a long time ago

in a galaxy far, far away.)

I am who I am.

If I'm not good enough for anyone I meet

that's their problem.

“Get out of my way,” is what I think

(but I do not say it

because my parents brought me up to be

polite

even to nincompoops).

So, to answer your impossible question

friend …

If I was Walt Whitman I would say, “I sing

the body electric.”

If I was LVB, I'd say, let's sing

our ode to joy.

If I was Em, I'd tell you,

“hope is the thing with feathers.”

And if I’d been Virginia Woolf, I'd know

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."

But I know nothing.

Except this.

I would make Marxists of us all.

In this sense:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in many ways.

The point, however, is to change it.”