PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, 6*, age, blue, breathing, colour, compromise, fence, furniture, green, growing, houses, identity, looking, love, measure, poverty, progress, rooftops, society, streets, time, walking, weather, William Carlos Williams, yard

                                PASTORAL

                When I was younger
                it was plain to me
                I must make something of myself.
                Older now
                I walk back streets
                admiring the houses
                of the very poor:
                roof out of line with sides
                the yeards cluttered
                with old chicken wire, ashes,
                furniture gone wrong;
                the fences and outhouses
                built of barrel-staves
                and parts of boxes, all,
                if I am fortunate,
                smeared a bluish green
                that properly weathered
                pleases me best
                of all colors.

                            No one
                will believe this
                of vast import to the nation.

 

from Al Que Quiere!, 1917

and he’s right, of course: the ‘import’ of the nation can only progress when it doesn’t have to concern itself with the right and wrong of wealth distribution – but you can’t have progress without competition, otherwise we all just stay where we are; but honouring competition as inviolable is honouring that which is our basest common denominator, surely inequality is less than we could achieve – to try to rise above the process of evolution, the survival of the fittest, is, rather, to surrender to hubris and daydream which doesn’t put bread on the table; but – however; eventually – man up … but to look, and take in, with love and, without scheme, all behind the, dappling cacophany, with which we, mark our height, where we can breathe, without implication, or compromise, free as a glance, single as an ethic, and twice as, selfless

 

 

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

blue wormhole: transferring
breathing wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
compromise wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
green & identity & time & walking wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
looking wormhole: perspective
love wormhole: all // are // none
rooftops wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
society & streets wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
William Carlos Williams wormhole: and that’s where I are

 

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and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

Tags

19th century, 2016, 20th century, 8*, access, air conditioning, alley, architecture, back, balcony, bay window, being, black, blindness, blue, burgundy, carlights, chimney stacks, clouds, compromise, contemplation, cross-section, distance, down, Eastbourne, eyes, facade, Ford Cortina, foreground, front, Have, height, hierarchy, history, hope, hotel, houses, inside, life, living, outside, passing, pier, pipes, privacy, prologue, promenade, sea, seagull, seeing, sky, society, sound, streetlight, sun, time, tree, up, Victorian houses, walking, walls, waves, white, windows

                and naerrgh a mention of a seagull’s call

                prologue

                the fetch of uneventful league to
                mingle with pier piles nonchalant;

                the borderline lightbulbs strung for
                decades between promenade lamp

                and stack of height and white façade
                of black-wrought balcony for where to stay

                setting

                frontage shows the way-to-look-
                ing blind to what is seen amid

                all the detail of hierarchy, eye
                turned to what it hopes, while

                rear windows, set central in
                the shapèd drop, look inward

                to find the fit to be; in time
                the rear extension of amenity

                cut fresh cross-sections of life
                turned 90° deep with windows

                unadorned; but then
                were added storey, creating alley

                to hidden access whenever
                contemplating the corners

                that encourage right angle
                where you can serve your

                down and truncating down-
                pipe blind to abutted wall

                perambulation

                                but, I’m in luck

                eye caught by extractor flaps
                in the foreground venting downwards

                venting upwards, sun neatly off
                the downpipes to the right

                on the left long-painted white pipes
                rusting, and between, a leafing tree

                undecided which way to lean
                the background, the monolith back

                of the seafront hotel, conditioning
                air; later, passing the backs of

                houses-become-their-own-entrance,
                seagulls perched at rest

                on the chimneys, I caught
                the tail of a reg-D Cortina with

                burgundy-deep fins and round
                tripartite lights, smaller

                than I remember

                epilogue

                oh, yes and a Persian-blue
                chimney stack with off-white pots

                under sky-blue sky
                and wisps of cloud

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: looking ahead
architecture wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
being wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
black & blue & Have & living & passing & society & walking wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
burgundy wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
clouds wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
compromise wormhole: after all
Eastbourne wormhole: city streets
eyes & life & seeing & time wormhole: 1964
history wormhole: looking / ridiculous
hotel wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
promenade & sea wormhole: Bexhill 140215
seagull wormhole: do I
sky & white wormhole: travelling // arrival
sound & sun & windows wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
streetlight wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
Victorian houses wormhole: red / lacquer / door
walls wormhole: certainly a Captain, / but not America
waves wormhole: place

 

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

 

sweet chestnut

Tags

2015, 4*, ageing, aimless, breeze, buttress, chestnut tree, compromise, earth, emergence, grass, growth, leaf, life, reaching, thinking, time, tree, trunk, vertical, wisdom

                      sweet chestnut

                      I have
                      long
                      since
                shifted the earth apart
                imperceptible for grass, now,
                to grow unknowing, so new;

                      I have
                      forgotten
                what it’s like to emerge
                without design, and have
                grown buttresses for so long
                they have twisted to comprise;

                      the trunk
                      of upward
                      direction
                that I reach from aimlessly
                with diminishing wisdom
                to a top leaf shifting between

                      the air

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: humm
compromise wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
emergence wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
life wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
thinking wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
time wormhole: for / the first time

 

just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

Tags

2013, 4*, accountability, career, compromise, expertise, just saying, listening, managerialism, message, politics, principle, production, public service, responsibility, work

                just saying, is all VII:

                the drive to de-power the worker
                in public service; you cannot
                call-the-shots-because-you-are-an-expert
                … because you are the worker

                if you are calling the shots you must be
                a manager of some thing so that
                you can then be held accountable
                for the shots you call – kept on message.

                If You Are not a Manager you Cannot
                Call the Shots. Even if you are a genius;
                ‘take a responsibility, then we’ll listen
                to you’, I wouldn’t on the principle they

                wouldn’t listen to, they didn’t listen on the
                principle that I had no voice without responsibility
                compromise; de-experting workers
                is inexorable to production, in fact

`spolitical

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: wakeoutofadream
compromise wormhole: gone black
listening wormhole: within
managerialism wormhole: seen but not heard
politics wormhole: this sodden land
work wormhole: weight

 

gone black

Tags

2013, black, business, Channel Tunnel, compromise, decision, phone, sleep, society, train, travelling

                           snipped smart and cologne
                           all about with compromise

                           the business man in shoes
                           and open shirt drops asleep

                           after the decision on the
                           phone and a light meal –

                           tablet gone black as we
                           all plunge into the Tunnel

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
compromise wormhole: dream career // groggy
sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
society & train & travelling wormhole: lonely and free

 

dream career // groggy

Tags

2012, career, compromise, dream, identity, journey, naked, obsession, pride, professional development, realisation, talking to myself, teaching, voices, waking

 

 

 

                                                      dream career

                                                      so there I was
                                                      naked except
                                                      for my pants
                                                      in the room
                                                      had to make it
                                                      round the room

                                                      I figured to go
                                                      right round
                                                      the room – do
                                                      it properly –
                                                      started off fine
                                                      became more

                                                      and more difficult
                                                      pants caught
                                                      on something
                                                      maybe the door
                                                      but I pushed on
                                                      turned the

                                                      support post at
                                                      far end of the room
                                                      pants were getting
                                                      tighter and tighter
                                                      ‘but I can push on’
                                                      stretched thinner

                                                      and thinner ‘but
                                                      I am strong’ going
                                                      to cut and then
                                                      I suddenly realised
                                                      how ridiculous:
                                                      the room, the

                                                      journey, my nakedness
                                                      my pants – would
                                                      my pants slice
                                                      off my legs –
                                                      so I stopped
                                                      and woke up, groggy

 

as the great majority of my readers are from America, I’d better point out that ‘pants’ means ‘underwear’ – the last vestige before total nudity (believe me, it ain’t pretty!); I am in the last throws of my career (I know, it’s been lingering on since obituary, and maybe shouldn’t’ve) and soon to enter the Last Rites; I was having a natter with Waywardspirit and we both agreed that it was about time; but I was nevertheless indulging in a little guilt ‘n’ defeat when I came across a dream I had before, even, my ‘obituary’ and it makes me feel better; and wiser …

 

 

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

career & teaching wormhole: and that’s where I are
compromise wormhole: working / for a living
dream wormhole: let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were
identity wormhole: the start of adolescence
realisation wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
talking to myself wormhole: true nature
voices wormhole: becoming

 

working / for a living

Tags

2013, buildings, compromise, doing, Horsham, letting go, living, passing, work

 

 

 

                                working
                                for a living

                      don’t be stuck in buildings
                                regular and angled as compromise

                                rumble past them all with
                      however long a trailer

                      reading the road ahead
                                observing give way

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Office in a Small City, 1953
compromise wormhole: “write, let’s break outta here!”
doing wormhole: zazen
Horsham wormhole: preoccupied
letting go wormhole: training the mind
living wormhole: let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were
passing wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
work wormhole: tobacco pouch

 

“write, let’s break outta here!”

Tags

2012, beauty, compromise, creativity, depression, letting go, life, living, samsara, speech, steel, walls, writing

 

 

 

                                “write, let’s break outta here!”

                      stuck in compromise
                      a-foreclosed, I need to
                      break out, I need to create

                      something strange and
                      beautiful – too hideous to
                      contemplate – and abandon it

                      in order that it digest into
                      my everyday construction,
                      rags around the base of a high, steel wall

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: it is complete
compromise wormhole: block ‘n’ role
creativity wormhole: start where / you are II
depression wormhole: relapse
letting go wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia
life wormhole: recovered
living wormhole: dream 260815
samsara wormhole: un … able
speech wormhole: … anymore
walls wormhole: mauve / night
writing wormhole: after all?

 

block ‘n’ role

Tags

2013, block, compromise, future, identity, keys, recognition, role, sound, speech, work

 

 

 

                                block ‘n’ role, so

                here we go
I’ll just put myself under this pile of somewhere
                                without anyone knowing and only slightly suspecting
                I’ll even compromise myself inside and
                                              throw away the key
                                now, I can’t say fairer than that, (and
                                              I’m already doin’ m’self outta bob or two)

                                patterns of the past
                                              plans for the future
                and the only hint that I am
                                ever here: disconcerting clink of chains

 

 

 

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

compromise wormhole: mass
identity wormhole: thy will be done
recognition wormhole: Trinity Arts
sound wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
speech wormhole: I do
work wormhole: dream 230315