my uncomfortable life

Tags

2019, 6*, abandonment, activity, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breakdown, broken, career, closed, compromise, contentment, context, Dad, disappointment, expectation, experience, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, frustration, greed, hope, injustice, laziness, life, management, no voice, people, politicians, powerlessness, Principal, requirement, resentment, self-cherishing, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-esteem, slogans, society, spin, teaching, thought, Tony Blair, turmoil, waiting, words, work

                I did not know contentment
                at work, what was required,
                what I thought, I never wholly
                got my teaching … sorted

                turmoil, and even when not
                outwardly angry, I was
                closed off and unapproachable,
                carrying anger and resentment

                like a thorny bush tied
                to my back since Dad left
                and people were ‘phony’ and
                society was stupid and words

                were insincere and all activity
                was a compromise and my equals cheated
                and laziness was always greedy
                and hope was rude and the politicians

                were tricksters and Tony Bliar
                and managers slogan-shifted like there was no tomorrow
                and the Principals
                wouldn’t know what to do with good practice if it writhed around suggestively on their desk in front of them and made them delicious promises of future dangerous liaison                      

                and by default I am
                at least disappointed, usually frustrated
                and often impotent-angry with them
                when they invariably reference me

                (and they always reference me)
                or when I am actually wronged,
                and then I’ll blow, beyond all immediate context
                because I have already been smouldering,

                waiting for the wrong to happen,
                expecting the wrong to happen,
                experiencing the wrong happening
                even before it has manifested;

                and I am right, it is wrong
                and compromised and greedy and unprincipled
                what they have done, even
                when they haven’t

                given expression to it, in fact
                especially when they haven’t
                given full expression to it
                and are sloganising and spinning

                that what is happening
                is entirely something else;
                and the powerlessness of
                not being able to have a voice

                no appeal to a universal
                right and wrong … built me up
                with no recourse and, I get broken;
                look at my tired eyes – my uncomfortable life

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment wormhole: south horizon
breakdown wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
career wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
compromise wormhole: raised brow
Dad wormhole: the reach turned to love
eyes wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
life & society wormhole: the old man;
management wormhole: how to teach
people wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
teaching wormhole: and … // … sound
thought wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
waiting wormhole: all // are // none
words wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
work wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873

 

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green and / luminant / to behold

Tags

2012, 5*, balance, being, breakdown, coffee, communication, diagram, distance, ears, eyes, father, fingers, fracture, gardening, gathering, glass, green, holiday, home, listening, looking, luminous, people, school, service station, society, suit, summer, table, talking, terrace, thinking, thumb, woman, work

                                first day summer
                                holiday service station
                                100 miles away from
                                home thinking I
                                don’t fit in with the
                                way things
                                are played

                always looking
                                fractured
                                cracked
                                                from in at the side

                                green and
                                luminant
                                to behold

                                on the terrace
                                two businessmen sit
                                with ledgers coffees
                                the woman listening

                to one
                                                to the other

                                agreeing
                                the diagram
                                on the table

                                the elder sits back
                                dark suit large ear
                                plump throat tanned
                                skin upturned hand
                                emphasising gently
                                beside the diagram
                                thumb to fingers

                slightly gathering
                                like a father
                                                like a gardener

                                occasionally
                                talking with
                                still young
                                green eyes

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

balance wormhole: ‘still …’
breakdown & society wormhole: after all
coffee & woman & work wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
communication wormhole: Infantino KO
eyes wormhole: two profiles
father wormhole: looking ahead
glass & people wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
green & looking & thinking wormhole: Batgirl –
holiday wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
listening wormhole: buttercups
school wormhole: step
table wormhole: immeasurable love
talking wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?

 

after all

Tags

2016, 4*, Alan Moore, anarchy, breakdown, career, compromise, extreme, gender, innocence, Katie, regret, retirement, sadness, sleep, society, teaching, V for Vendetta, victim, wind

                Katie tugged at the eaves, alright,
                so I roused just deeply sad

                at the end of my wasted career,
                too naïve to win, so I read

                the beginning of Evey and V’s
                encounter and knew it could

                never have been done
                after all

 

storm Katie hit the southern UK in March of 2016; naming storms makes it personal; I was also starting what turned out to be my last protracted burn-out from work; Evey and V are the main protagonists in Alan Moore’s ‘V for Vendetta’ – V is the play-through of Anarchy created by the state against which it wages vendetta, his very presence provokes the state, let alone what he says or does; Evey is the play-with of innocence nurtured by the state to fulfil her gender to which she serves as victim, her very presence is exploitative; Evey and V could never co-exist if they stay as they are: if they stay as they are, they are extreme, if they change, they are compromised; by the end of August I was retired and filled with thoughts of what could have been of those 29 years

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Alan Moore wormhole: darkness
breakdown wormhole: I turn to wake up
career & teaching wormhole: “I need help”
compromise wormhole: sweet chestnut
retirement wormhole: dream I // dream II
sleep wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
society wormhole: found
wind wormhole: clear as vista

 

I turn to wake up

Tags

2014, 7*, authority, breakdown, Carol, determination, doors, dream, Emily, future, heart, Hillside, home, humiliation, identity, innocence, life, managerialism, neglect, power, presumption, pupils, responsibility, sound, streets, teachers, teaching, time, toilet, uniform, waking

the e-mail that clanked dank in my heart
                the report I hadn’t written
                                for so long, for Emily
[her future all depends on it, poor Emily, she is so innocent and so pretty she deserves all the future she can get and You are neglecting her of it with your own languid longevity] but I will

                                NOT be responsible for future lives
                when I am ill from the presumption which doesn’t let me
even crap in private outside my own backdoor pan-in-the-yard
                they have called for me at my front door
                                with the brusqueness of a uniform
                                                with the presumption of amoral (sic)
                                                                even here
                                                the uniform and the outside toilet in my own house:                
                the humiliation could not be more complete so
I pull the hood of my dressing gown over my head
                and sink out of the dream

                                This Will Not Be

                                                I rouse Carol from
                                                                her own dream
                                                and drift somewhat back to …
                                … pupils all around the street
                                                they
                                                should
                                                not be
                                                there but only I
                of all the teachers in my front room
go out to front and tell them –
                command of my righteousness –
                                that they should not be there they should be BEHIND the house
                                                behind the house
                                but they turn languid
                and run round the corner down the street, they know
they don’t have to listen to me and
                I am powerless because
                                I am ill

                                I am so fed up with this
                                                I turn myself to wake up
                                                                I turn to wake up

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: slow enough / to have love
Carol wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
doors & life wormhole: every step I take
dream wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Hillside wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: dear Lucy
managerialism wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
power wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sound & streets wormhole: while
teaching wormhole: dream I // dream II
time wormhole: this time

 

slow enough / to have love

Tags

2013, adjustment, ageing, breakdown, choice, confusion, consistency, doing, freedom, land, living, love, Martin Luther King, mountain, option, presumption, quiet, recognition, saviour, secret, shame, streets, stumbling, true nature, wasteland, work

                I used to skip and side-step all the
                too-presumptive adjustments
                for consistency and do it all

                in my own sweet way
                secretly hoping for recognition
                shamefully thinking to be the saviour

                now I’m confused and made old
                stumbling and doddering by the
                too-many prescriptive options to

                exercise the choice I am offered
                so I continue to do it all in my
                own sweet way, quiet enough

                to be effective, ignored enough
                to have scope and slow enough
                to have love; I have come to

                the top of the mountain and I have
                escaped a promised land
                four times injured to within

                an inch of my own true nature
                and I roam the streets and wastelands
                now, free at last, free at last

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: strain
doing wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
living wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
love wormhole: handsome
quiet wormhole: open window
recognition wormhole: not / the Catcher
streets wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
work wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

 

strain

Tags

2017, 7*, breakdown, career, identity, music, nude, openness, retirement, sound, vinyl

                I’ve lost the needle that settles
                between grooves and plays the circling music

                on fluff the arm skates across the ridges
                making awful rip of a career

                it skints along a ridge edge – wedges in,
                bounces out – a scratch to repeat

                against all reasonable hope that it might not;
                I cannot hear the pops and crackles,

                the greeting space before the
                opening strain, awaiting nudity

 

retirement #7: Virginia Woolf’s first novel was ‘the Voyage Out’; she wrote much of it as she experienced two breakdowns and a number of stark bereavements; this is not a trip to venture and return, this is a discovery to venture and change; so much changes between generation, within and across lives, the further you travel the deeper you stay where you are; read the whole sequence: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown & retirement wormhole: what wounds have you got?
career wormhole: seen but not heard
identity wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
music wormhole: within
openness wormhole: 1968
sound wormhole: ssreet chak-chak

 

what wounds have you got?

Tags

'scape, 2010, 5*, breakdown, career, depression, ghosts, identity, results-led education, self, snow, sound, teaching, voices, wind

                           part V

I have been in, but not part of, the stadium for such a long time
it is here, all about and above, creaking, flapping, I
had thought it didn’t exist at all; it is cardboard and canvas
standing up against the inevitable winds, and snow

so much construction, so little structure, so little warmth
it is cold here in this quiet wasteland, but I sit
to one side now – out of the way – and shut my ears
to the noises and voices.   I still have a lamp.   I try

to keep warm by it.   I can’t see them – out in the night
and cold – are there any other souls lost, out there?
Come and join me over here.   If we sit together
I can get quite a lot of heat from this lamp.   Let’s see –

what wounds have you got?

 

since this was written and published years ago I have subsequently and finally retired … from being the ‘ghost with open wound‘; I am now, just cold

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: monument to vainglory
career & teaching wormhole: everwhile
depression wormhole: beepbeep
ghosts wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
identity wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
results-led education & voices wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
snow & sound wormhole: open window
wind wormhole: time

 

monument to vainglory

Tags

2016, 8*, abandonment, autumn, branches, breakdown, brown, career, direction, element, freedom, getting ground, ground, horizontal, identity, institution, leaves, planet, rain, reaching, retirement, teaching, wind, work, yellow

                     where am I
                     cast free here

                     where the wind resolves
                     horizontal and

                     implacable between
                     the necessary institution

                     passageways;
                     I held on

                     long as I could
                     way after I’d turned

                     glorious yellow
                     wet, brown and pasted

                     to the bifurcating
                     branch, tensile to every gust;

                     because
                     I was tired of any

                     direction at all;
                     to the ground with me,

                     then,
                     stability and whimsical reach were

                     never my natural element,
                     open out to minute

                     breakdown
                     deep

                     into a revolving planet and
                     leave (ha!) myself

                     mulched to branch
                     monument to vainglory

 

retirement #1: a significant passage in life which doesn’t have a particular rite, religious or otherwise; I have retired since the beginning of this academic year – I had a flurry of written response when I holidayed in Granada, but since then, nothing; I have not been writing much, I have been cast adrift (the end of my career was what was left after my ability to keep going in to teach at school, eventually dissolved … fizzled) …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment wormhole: beepbeep
autumn wormhole: 1964
branches wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
breakdown wormhole: dry rot
brown wormhole: magnificent salad
career & teaching wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
identity & work wormhole: matter
leaves wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
rain wormhole: balance
retirement wormhole: Granada holiday …
wind wormhole: 1964
yellow wormhole: … swap round

 

dry rot

Tags

2012, anger, breakdown, broken, care, career, creation, culture, decision, disregard, giving, growth, illness, management, managerialism, resentment, speech, survival, teaching, thought, work

 

 

 

                                dry rot

                                still

                resentment sets in
                                I go to work anyway
                but the resentment is always there
                                I create resources I mark books
                                I teach lessons
                but the resentment is always there
                                I do my fucking duty
                                I do an extra parent’s evening
                but the resentment is always there
                                some manager asks how I am
                                I tell them I survive
                                              (but I don’t tell them
                                               I don’t thrive –
                                               `not quick enough)
                but the resentment is always there

                I offered my thought
                               my creation
                               my care
                because I nurtured growth
                              I cultured way
                              I wanted to give

                                AND YOU PAUSED
                IN YOUR BUSY-NESS AND PRESSURE
                JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GET ON
                                WITH YOUR BUSINESS AND PRESSURE TO COMPENSATE THE OH, SO, ANXIETY OF
                                MAKING THOSE TOUGH DECISIONS FOR THE SAKE OF PROGRESS (PROFIT?)
                                TO OVERLOOK

                                what I continue to think
                                what is still on the table
                                              unopened
                                but which has lost the will
                                              to project anymore

                                              you

                                              make

                                              me

                                              sick

                you made me sick
                                you created a sick teacher
                even while I attend each day
                                for the sake of absence management
                even while I create and mark
                                for the sake of growth
                even while I sit through a meeting
                                which dribbles on about ‘good to outstanding’ until it is running down your neck
                still the resentment is always there
                                sticky invisible and malignant

 

I know: we’ve heard it all before; just indulge this little toddler for a little while longer, will you; it has only slightly altered since I wrote it a good four years ago, like being in a boat on the sea, buffeted and brûlée’d, looking for where the sky becomes screen and the prow rips through it (c’mon, film buffs, what am I talking about?)

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breakdown & management wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
career wormhole: need
giving wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
managerialism wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
speech wormhole: fine
teaching wormhole: aghh – we’ve been infected / it’s spreading through the system / we’re losing our files … / it’s taken out the processor … / I, I can’t open with this program anymore … / it’s scanning me – / I’ve got to buy a Virus Protection Program / from it …
thought wormhole: the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being
work wormhole: work

 

and that’s where I are

Tags

2016, Aleister Crowley, alley, appearance, birch, black, Bowie, breakdown, breeze, brick, building, car park, career, Carol, cars, cats, child, church, clothes, coffee shop, creativity, decision, Diane di Prima, disappearance, down, Eastbourne, emptiness, fear, form, grey, Heart Sutra, horizontal, humanity, identity, left, leg, looking, mother, muse, others, passing, pavement, plane, posture, quantum, rebellion, right, right angle, roads, school, searching, seeing, silence, silver, sitting, sound, spire, stain, stopped, streets, talking to myself, teaching, trees, up, vertical, waiting, walking, walls, William Carlos Williams, wind, writers, writing

            inner coffee shop

            so, is writing pointless,
            just rebellion from root
            just the muscling of me
            to spite the hard fear that

            I’ll turn to stone if I look
            into her face … `spite the
            knowledge that others are
            far more brave than me?

            St. Saviour & St. Peter

            so what draws me to sit,
            after all, on the roadside
            wall across from the spire
            clear for all to see the

            even bricks buttress, cap
            and flute up so high to
            eleven storeys to, maybe,
            the single point, with run-

            down stain and grimèd
line defining plane and vertical rightened quantum to the neat, surrounding parking and the passing upright
            humans both of public
            dress and private gait

                           360º

            and then the grey cat
            strolled from some-
            where left between
            silent cars to cross the

            road right – stopped –
            t’looka’leaf ‘n’ disappear
            up on wall by tree-sniff
            stop – fence? – no,

            down be-hind th’wall
            out through th’front
            windscreen ‘n’
            downastepps t’street

            to not appear where
            expected; ‘shut’, a mother
            leads a tot from front
            door to car …
                                   … still no appearance

            … … scamper with the
            wind behind as the car
            pulls away; maybe I should
            record this wh’appened all

            around breeze, strolled –
            stopped – by the wall
            back from b’hind m’left
            enters the gateway out

            by th’alleyway (with the
            bold and naked silver birch
            I hadn’t noticed);
                                          upover
            the fence [not attempted

            before] tadaaanother cat
            black treesniff checkleft
            then … left, jumptowall,
            jump to pavementstop;

            over the road frontleg
            onelick s t r o l l s car-
            shielded; black belly-slink
            low across the road; they

            walk away both from
            sight either side of the van;
            one tail up and wiggy
            one tail fluffy with spine

            these things all of great
            importance to spite the hard fact
            of my writing them,
            old Bull Williams would have

            and that’s where I are

 

there are expanses awkward to the landscape in writing sometimes: the technique is there, the shift can be made, but the will and excitement just isn’t; I have been reading Diane di Prima’s “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, I greatly fed off her childhood but have languoured once she got into the Work; I have been reading about Aleister Crowley’s ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ awkward plane; I have a huge project ongoing writing poewieviews to David Bowie’s oeuvre – I am going to new lands but the luggage is heavy and awkward and requiring decisions which I don’t easily make; oh, and I am off work again, feeling un-plugged in to my own practice of vocation like a forlorn state-of-the-art food mixer; I spent a morning down in Eastbourne chauffeuring my wife around like the successful carer that she is; walking; sitting in a coffee shop; snagged at St. Saviour & St. Peter Church on the corner of Spencer Road and South Street, still pondering the relationship between multifarious form and the emptiness makes it dynamic; but it wasn’t until I sat back in the waiting car and watched the chess moves of two cats in the street that I stumbled across the full quote from the Heart Sutra: “form is emptiness; emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form also is no other than emptiness”; but it wasn’t until I got home and shaped it all up from scribbles to column – with my ageing black AND white cat leaning against my foot – that I wondered if I still hadn’t quite got it yet (as William Carlos Williams, the great great practicer of ‘no poetry but in things’ said); and yet it has been satisfying finding not so …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

birch wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
black & grey wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
Bowie wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
breakdown & writing wormhole: nothing to write
breeze wormhole: strange / tarnish
buildings & silver & streets wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
carer wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
Carol wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
cars wormhole: stacked
cats wormhole: new garden
child wormhole: dream 260815
church wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
coffee shop wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
creativity & school wormhole: through
Eastbourne wormhole: along
emptiness wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
identity wormhole: dear clown’s face
looking & muse & sound wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
mother & silence wormhole: early evening
others wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
passing & posture wormhole: really
roads wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
searching wormhole: opening
seeing wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
sitting & talking to myself wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
teaching wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
trees wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
waiting wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
walking wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
walls wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
[William Carlos] Williams wormhole: and then just stop
wind wormhole: keep the light off