B le tch l ey P ark

Tags

1960s, 1980s, 2016, 20th century, Bletchley Park, blink, cable, change, children, chimney, colour, communication, culture, data, Edwardian, elbow, ethic, Europe, eyes, grain, Have, history, hotel, ink, knowledge, legacy, living, Luton, marble, meaning, metal, militarism, mind, night, pattern, poem, point, politics, possibility, power, railtrack, rhythm, smell, smile, society, sound, story, subversion, table, the British Empire, thought, time, timetable, typewriter, veins, windows, wood, World War, writing

 

 

 

                                B  le  tch l  ey      P   ark

                                Edwardian fingers pointed
                                from military sleeve the way
                                in and the way through

                                while some knew that a W
                                will never return a W and
                                we will henceforth return

                                to a following possibility of
                                change, the veins in marble
                                cladding and the grain in

                                parquetry floor were no
                                longer décor of legacy but
                                cover for subversion – smiling

                                minds up in front of chimney
                                stacks – no, now, platted
                                and inflexible cable linked

                                lozenges of releasing code
                                (no-longer-just-location)
                                in patterns of levered ratchet

                                across European divide; no more
                                the flurry scratch of ink across
                                blotted paper with fortitude

                                and Empire wile, now the
                                erstwhile sturdy tables were
                                anchored by elbow and fallen

                                eye gazed at shifting pattern,
                                now the heat of metal and
                                ribbon made the ink fume

                                like acid; now was the time
                                of proletariat genius as tape
                                connected the diagonals and

                                metal frame softened and
                                bent in constant hold;
                                now the colour was splashed

                                and the ethic was learned
                                and the story is told to the
                                schoolchildren who – blink

 

visit, 260416, pages of scribbled notes; the poem sifted and shifted until a pattern formed and simultaneously dispersed, across time; in the hotel room in Luton right next to the rail-line which slingshot-ricochet’d passing trainsnotstopping in the window one side, out the window the other, all night and all of the day, in timetable but not necessarily rhythm

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: impressionism
change wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
chimney wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
communication wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
eyes & Have & history & hotel & time wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
knowledge wormhole: 1963
living wormhole: need
meaning wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12
mind wormhole: becoming
night & society wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
power wormhole: top table
politics wormhole: dear clown’s face
smell wormhole: when writing // stay
smile & thought wormhole: while walking
sound wormhole: 1965
table wormhole: 1964
windows wormhole: mauve
wood wormhole: quick inventory after coffee
writing wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

bavardage

Tags

2016, buildings, career, city, columns, dream, Europe, eyes, façade, green, lime, passing, talking

 

 

 

                                   as we talked
                                   standing about
                                   like columns

                                   a building moved
                                   in the corner
                                   of my eye; I broke

                                   the circle to see it
                                   move independent
                                   of the learnèd city,

                                   but they wouldn’t
                                   believe me if I told them,
                                   so I said nothing

                                   while they
                                   continued their bavardage
                                   as it drew down

                                   central avenue, a lime-
                                   green building on a
                                   trailer pulled by

                                   I know not what but
                                   the crowds of common élan
                                   the facades turned

                                   their mutual angles
                                   slowly as it passed,
                                   I knew I needn’t have

                                   told them, they
                                   hadn’t noticed it
                                   anyway

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: tabla
career wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
city & passing wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
dream & lime wormhole: 1964
eyes wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
green wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
talking wormhole: early evening

 

just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment

Tags

2013, agenda, Daleks, Europe, experience, Lost in Space, managerialism, politics, practice, Steely Dan, teachers, teaching, thinking, value-bled education, values, war

 

 

 

just saying, is all V:

                                so, all those with experience
                are experienced in the Old Ways
as if they were Europe before any of the Wars; there is a New Thinking
                which older teachers a priori and de facto cannot respond to
                                              therefore,
                                screen out the older ones
                (“… and pan-fry the Big Ones
                   use Tact, Poise and Reason
                   and gently squeeze them …”)*, neutralise their experience, and if they
won’t go – even if they have good values,
                                even if they have good practice – allow them
                to participate ONLY if they subsume their practice in a
                                              management role (‘keep your enemies closer’)
                                and if they won’t do that (‘… pain …’; sharp intake of breath):
                                              ‘they – will – not – contibute
                                              does – not – compute
                                              danger, Will – danger
                                              exterminate – exterminate’

                                                                                 … systematic and consistent disempowerment

* Steely Dan, ‘Throw Back the Little Ones’, from Katy Lied (1975); used without permission but definite alignment

 

 

 

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

managerialism wormhole: sometimes
politics wormhole: any answers
practice wormhole: really old
teaching wormhole: wriving
thinking wormhole: dream 260815
values wormhole: nothing // matters
war wormhole: Bodiam Castle

 

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

Tags

1970s, 2014, anxiety, architecture, art deco, ash tree, bay window, bench, Beresford Square, blue, breathing, brown, buddleia, buildings, Canary Wharf, cars, change, clothes, clouds, communication, compassion, Dallin Road, demolition, dream, Eglinton Hill, empire, Europe, eyes, feet, fence, Genesta Road, ghosts, glass, glasses, grass, growth, handshake, head, house, identity, iron, keys, language, leaves, library, light, living, London, looking, love, music, passing, pavement, people, petrol, piano, pigeons, plane, plastic, Plumstead, purple, rain, rainbow, roads, rooftops, school, schoolgirl, shadow, Shard, singing, sky, smile, sound, speech, step, streetlight, streets, sun, swifts, talking, tarmac, Thames, time, travelling, trees, tv, vow, walking, walls, windows, Woolwich, yellow

 

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

 

 

                      Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

                      all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
                      holding together, the grubby art deco window that
                      coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
                      maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

                      glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
                      down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
                      plaques on the wall above top floor windows
                      scud clouds above the coping

                      then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
                      the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
                      upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
                      pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

                      I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
                      followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
                      from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
                      double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

                      cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
                      on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
                      hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
                      a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

                      the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
                      arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
                      the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
                      dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

                      the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
                      building and upright support, plays along the side
                      of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
                      signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

                      hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
                      so many of my people generations poor in the sun
                      from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
                      Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

                      in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
                      down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
                      walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
                      badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

                      sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
                      your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
                      all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
                      public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

                      and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
                      I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
                      between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
                      my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
                      I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
                      and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

                      out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
                      the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
                      and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
                      pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

                      you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
                      I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
                      unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
                      of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

                      highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
                      when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
                      up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
                      she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

                      the way things are these days, with music in hand
                      she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
                      the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
                      do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

                      how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
                      under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
                      yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
                      steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

                      bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
                      since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
                      from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
                      now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

                      and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
                      still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
                      I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
                      at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

                      at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
                      at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
                      high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
                      sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

 

 

 

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

bench wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea
blue & leaves & sun wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
breathing wormhole: born again
brown wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
buddleia wormhole: (Little by Little)
buildings & travelling wormhole: I could step / more open
cars & roads wormhole: the long road
change & time wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
clouds wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
communication wormhole: Maidstone
compassion & feet & love & speech & talking wormhole: there are patient listeners
dream wormhole: we’re born // to die
Eglinton Hill & Woolwich & yellow wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
eyes & looking & shadow wormhole: a maturity
Genesta Road & rooftops wormhole: corroboration
ghosts wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
glass & light & streetlight wormhole: oh-pen
glasses wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
house wormhole: day off
identity wormhole: that
living wormhole: scattered
London wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
music wormhole: no exit
passing & sound & walking & windows wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
people & rain & sky wormhole: Luisenplatz
piano wormhole: … walking down the street
pigeons wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
purple wormhole: consturnation …? // consternation
school wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
smile wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
streets & trees wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Thames wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
tv wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
walls wormhole: stuck free to move within

 

tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes

Tags

1960s, 2014, air, Allen Ginsberg, anxiety, beach, cafe, cars, earrings, earth, east, Eastbourne, eating, echo, economics, Eda, education, educational behaviourism, Edward Hopper, eggs, Eglinton Hill, Eiffel Tower, elastic bands, electric, elipse, elm, Eltham, emergence, Emma Peel, employment, emptiness, empty, endeavour, engine, Enlightenment, ennui, Eternity, Europe, evaluation, evening, evidence, exchange, existence, expectation, experience, exploitation, expression, eyebrow, eyes, faces, growth, Have, identity, journey, landscape, life, looking, pointlessness, school, society, sound, tag cloud poem, teaching, time, war

 

 

 

while earrings twinkle
the earth turns inexorably
east

in all the cafés along Eastbourne front
eating happens with clak but no
echo

economics doesn’t explain it
all said Eda* but I didn’t understand her then or now
despite my education

despite the educational behaviourism
I teach in schools of tomorrow’s children creating
life as treacled as an Edward Hopper

look what happened to Ginsberg’s eggs!
the journey from Eglinton Hill
to the Eiffel Tower took ten years

by elastic band and is still incomplete
because the electric was not current,
but elipse, and no one factored that in

well, just look at the elm which
grows into the ground and
only in Eltham is the emergence apparent

and Emma Peel with a face like a plate
in permanent employment modelling different styles of emptiness
but stuck and empty herself within that very decade

I don’t know: the endeavour should never be
the engine because where would you get off
for the Enlightenment?

ennui the constant air of Eternity
drifting across landscape of Europe despite
scar and plenty

the evaluation has still not been made
no matter how late into evening you wait
the evidence will always peel and flake

the exchange will already look to the next
the existence will writhe on the Utah beaches
to tailor expectation like Emperor’s New Clothes

experience is common but not the denominator
exploitation works best when dressed as expression
with only a wisp of anxiety betrayed by an eyebrow

just look deep into anyone’s eyes

 

*Eda was someone I fell soppily in fatuation with during the first year of university, but I was so naïve I didn’t know what it was and didn’t know what to do with it; I still don’t now

 

 

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

air & looking wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
anxiety & teaching wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
beach wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
cars wormhole: cold wind
Eastbourne & Dionne Warwick wormhole: promenade
echo wormhole: 1963
economics wormhole: 20th century
education wormhole: just saying, is all – III
Edward Hopper wormhole: Dr Strange #6-13
Eglinton Hill & evening wormhole: ‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’
Eiffel Tower wormhole: parc du Champ-de-Mars
emergence wormhole: vagued
emptiness & time wormhole: posture
evaluation wormhole: the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon
eyes wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
faces wormhole: titanic
Ginsberg wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
Have & war wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
identity & life wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
pointlessness wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
society wormhole: introducing / the stranger
sound wormhole: open window
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness

‘the imperial buildings of Europe …’

Tags

'scape, 2011, 20th century, 4*, breeze, Europe, history, life, samsara, windows

 

 

 

         the imperial buildings of Europe
              wider than entrance
              misty and solid behind flag
              with tall windows seeing neither out nor in
         dismantled each other

         the sound was tectonic in everyone’s face
              only the flags stood flapping needlessly
         there was nothing left
         men now wore their only suit slightly small and uncomfortable
              and women wondered

 

 

 

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

20^th century & history & life & windows wormhole: ‘I asked my Nan to write down her memoirs …’
breeze wormhole: I’m sorry but
samsara wormhole: mass