y’know; sometimes you’ve just got to have a rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me, pathetic, awkward (don’t forget the ‘awkward’), poor-me whiiine to realise just how rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me-ie, pathetic, and awkward you can be; sigh – but there’s still some poetry in it, so I’ll share the self-pity about (caution: this is quite a high-pitched whiiine; it is strongly urged that you wear ear-protection – or at least stick your fingers in your ear reciting la-la-la – if you undertake to read this; you have been warned)
my life
of others
how long has this been going on
how long this has been going on
demands in their eyes pull me to them like a planet
pull on me to contain them
pull deep in me through the latest casual orbit
I give because I can
learnt silently over decades
I have lived to allow ever wider
in order to include
to neutralise my gravity in order to listen
and let them breathe enough
to find their own solution –
decades of leaning a hundred awkward ways
to be with others
decades of privately finding ways
to re-collect my own gravity –
shiny marbles with petrified ink –
and decades having to let them go
one by one
tearfully
eventually
all under the great broad horizon
lost before the hills on the great broad horizon
the beautiful-twilight mauve desert
and the radiation presence of another close planet they
cannot do the same for me
they will not do the same for me:
the squalls and foreclosures,
they are of my own making
an audience extends only so far as to conclude that it is all my own awkwardness – all I have to do is fit –
before I have even finished explaining
usually I don’t bother to finish
or even start
the solution is ready-made
(with a few ‘hmm’s to make it look kindly)
or just kept to themself
echoing loudly behind their eyes
like sharing secrets with the fog
I find myself alone
each one of them was the last person I could turn to in the world
but they all uncannily agree with each other
they are the Company Man
I have done my bit for the family
I have done my bit for the team
I have done my bit for the community
all by not being there
all by not getting in the way
I cried when I was acknowledged once
it never happened again
I suppose
it’s just
they need to keep from shattering in a thousand pieces
they need to hold the whole damn thing together
so I give because I can
because it is right
but cannot expect return
they cannot give
what they expect
in return
for sure things are done things may be organised
(sometimes even when I want them)
but for some greater good
for some greater career
for some greater legacy
not mine
certainly not mine (‘America I have given you all
and now I am nothing’)
when I work it is all about them
when I stop it is all about how they performed
all that I do and don’t do
is how it sits as support or burden
to them
conclusion: it is only them who do the work
the thinking the organising
I seem to do nothing
really
and do it annoyingly and awkwardly and thinkingly – roll of eyes – I
have to be managed to be of any competence
(that’s meant affectionately) I
am just the recipient of their
good work
(what do they call them these days – ‘clients’)
my value
my contribution
what I am
are the price I pay to receive
so I don’t say anything much – what’s the point?
I’ll put a few things out
tentatively
(where I might be patronised at best – if I’m lucky,
if the planets are lined up right)
told it’s cute
or individual
or much too clever to understand
or it’s not what was needed
or sorry, Mark, did you say something
and the audience will move deftly on
to what it wanted to talk about anyway
or what it wanted to be doing
all along
I mostly keep it to myself
here
in the place I claim
each day – time to myself bittersweet
(at siege from service and compliance)
to ‘indulge’ myself ‘stay up too late’ ‘contemplate my navel’
otherwise I get ‘grumpy’
I talk to
myself
I am not the Company Man
no one
to share
me with
no one beyond the managed obliged corporate return
oh yes I return to myself
find my own meaningpurposeaudiencelove
safe in the fifty year relationship
which is good for only one
decades whittled away
here and there
chips and shavings on the floor
leaving a petrified face
eyes wide mouth open
bas-relief out from being
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
Allen Ginsberg & giving wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
allowing & loneliness wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
being & breathing & sitting wormhole: the art of sit and follow
doing & identity wormhole: my beauty
echo wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
eyes & time wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
family wormhole: sometimes
fog homework: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
horizon wormhole: To my Mum
life & love wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
lifetimes & others & pointlessness & society wormhole: Totnes
listening wormhole: before // writing?
management wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
mauve wormhole: ‘green post …’
meaning & talking to myself wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
twilight wormhole: the four whores of the apocalypse
mlewisredford 