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

 

dream I // dream II

Tags

2014, 3*, arrival, blue, experience, explanation, giving, hill, identity, looking, people, poem, reflection, retirement, school, tarmac, teaching, time, town, waking, windows

          dream I

    I had to get to school
    from the college halls
    in a town I didn’t know
    or what I was doing there

    I was already late
    but making my way
    past blue window reflections
    on honeycomb tarmac

    I realised I was going the
    wrong way up a hill people looking
    at me in my teacher’s clothes they
    knew the school is not here

    I am in an area I do not know
    so I go back down the hill
    trying to show that I know
    what I am doing I can see

    the whole town spread out
    like a city the different areas
    the school is there somewhere
    and I need to get myself there

and yet woken up now I’m not so sure I do

          dream II

    my chance to teach
    I explain everything

with little clever phrases like poems
    but each time

    I have to explain yet further
    taking hours, not

    holding them I gave of my
    of my own experience but it wasn’t

    theirs, they started leaving
    before I could conclude

retired now I’m not sure I ever arrived

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: pass and / fro
giving wormhole: six paramitas
identity wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
looking wormhole: over-pink cagoule
people wormhole: memorial
retirement wormhole: Virginia
school wormhole: step
teaching wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
time wormhole: tragic and archival
windows wormhole: windows // and balconies

 

make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let

Tags

2013, 7*, afternoon, attention, boundary, class, construction, defeat, defensive, dream, labour, letting go, lifetimes, living, morning, satisfaction, shift, silence, skill, speech, teaching, waking, water

                I woke saying “sit down”
                to a class who had
                been testing me like water

                moving silent against
                my every prescription
                demanded or presumed

                despite all the charm or
                cleverness I might use
                to a morning

                and then an afternoon
                of defeat and defence
                unable to use the skill

                and manoeuvre I have
                taught myself for
                lifetimes now

                all the shift and forming
                around the boundaries
                finding every fissure

                and fault just ahead
                of my every attempt
                to dam it all; what labour

                what want of satisfaction;
                let the water go
                where it will – it will

                all go there anyway – and
                make your rickety
                constructs strong with

                unbending grids
                of attention and wide-
                open grates of let

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: divergent // direction
dream wormhole: wakeoutofadream
letting go wormhole: redundant
lifetimes wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything
living wormhole: free
morning wormhole: windows // and balconies
silence & speech & water wormhole: the quiet whale
teaching wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket

 

a nice grey woollen picnic blanket

Tags

2013, 6*, Ashdown Forest, blanket, bodhisattva, cars, children, driving, feeling, finding, grey, responsibility, roads, safety, sentient beings, sun, talking to myself, teaching, trees, warp, weft, wool

                                              OK
                                I think I get it:
                a nice grey woollen picnic blanket

                                I found the grey
                when crossing the road for the umpteenth time
                                safely

                                I felt the wool
                when I finally allowed that cars will keep driving
                along the road, well where else could they
                                go?

                                I suspect
                that there might be a fascinating check design
                in the warp and the weft but I am too busy
                to explore this now backward and forward across
                                the road

                                there
                are some trees and a sunny glen over there
                I can spread the blanket wide and enjoy
                the meal I carry heavy on my back there
                right after I have crossed my hundred thousand children
                                safely

                                one
                by one as they pop up to the side of the road, w-hupp, here’s
                                another one

 

 

 

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

Ashdown Forest wormhole: memorial
cars wormhole: municipal garden
grey wormhole: every step I take
roads wormhole: 1968
sun & trees wormhole: while
talking to myself wormhole: free
teaching wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’

 

‘let them slide off …’

Tags

2013, 3*, fog, groundlessness, humour, managerialism, measure, survival, teaching

                let them slide off
                let them shed
                the weights and the measures

                let there be levity
                redundant and quiet
                in groundless fog and cloud

 

 

 

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

fog wormhole: thick thick fog
groundlessness wormhole: beepbeep
managerialism wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
teaching wormhole: step

 

step

Tags

2013, 4*, being, class, life, living, movement, pattern, school, shift, step, teaching, walking, watching, waves, wind, woodland

                walk into the school and see
                the patterns and movements

                walk into the class and see the
                waves and shifts as if watching

                woodland in the winds and
                walk through minding your next

                step

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
life wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
living wormhole: slow enough / to have love
school wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
teaching wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
walking wormhole: too greedy
waves wormhole: 20th century
wind wormhole: within

 

just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences

Tags

2013, 5*, appearence, breath, career, communication, decades, dialectic, lungs, managerialism, neglect, no voice, offering, plastic, professionalism, rights, teaching, toxic

                                                                                 just saying, is all VIII:

                                              and after all
                                              I had something to offer
                                              to the very fibre and vessel of teaching

                                              that was ‘hoff’-
                                              ishly and consistently denied the right to enter
                                              that holy dialectic, it was

                                              sincere and
                                              credible and beneath
                                              neglect, while keeping up toxic appearences

                                              of communication,
                                              thriving in a sealed plastic bag …
                                              … in which I have taken breath for decades

                                              my lungs
                                              now shot through, unable to
                                              speak but still reliant on a borderline-

                psychotic professionalism wasting me to the bone

 

 

 

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

breath wormhole: stone
career & managerialism wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
communication wormhole: reprieve
professionalism & teaching wormhole: wakeoutofadream

 

wakeoutofadream

Tags

2013, 6*, career, circular poem, contentment, CPD, defensive, defining, dream, freedom, gap, history, identity, KUE, lesson observation, loneliness, measure, process, professionalism, propaganda, sitting, stillness, struggle, teaching, time, true nature, waking

                                                                                wakeoutofadream
                       both content and free                            where I struggle
                   that is your true self                                         to take the measure
      and inhabit the loneliness                                              of the class I track and train
               and go with neither                                                  brilliant to my design
between define and defend                                                      and told upon inspection
           (nothing to stand on)                                                      I should be engineering them
                        to find the gap                                                   by process
to history or the propaganda                                                and should have been
   moving neither left nor right                                         for years now
                                   keep your seat                            what have I been doing?
                                                              just

 

 

 

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

career & identity wormhole: weight
circular poem: no / thing
dream wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
history wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
loneliness wormhole: lonely and free
professionalism wormhole: retirement
sitting wormhole: bud
stillness wormhole: still
teaching wormhole: Virginia
time wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

 

Virginia

Tags

2017, 20th century, 5*, chess, inside, retirement, society, teaching, thought, Virginia Woolf, writing

                                              Virginia wanted
                                to dispense with tale-tell-all
                rough-carved and ugly in ungainly moves
                                across the cornered chessboard

                                              but what
                                of the train of thought she thought
                as more essential than denouement
                                and in and in she went

 

retirement #9: I understand this much: that Virginia Woolf was nurtured in, but wanted to bridge out from, the more of [patriarchal] social imperialism; it has waited this long for me to appreciate her need and courage whilst emerging from the more of unattributable results/problem-solving-backwards managerialism in what should be public (not political, not (someone’s) personal (career)) service (not done-deal) into retirement, in an era when it all seems to be lurching horribly right again; read the whole sequence as it extricates itself from customs: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: to rescue something
retirement wormhole: strain
society wormhole: darkness
writing wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie

 

weight

Tags

2017, 8*, anatta, April, beauty, breeze, career, circle, clouds, countryside, identity, lesson planning, right angle, seeing, stone, stone circles, teaching, thought, time, view, work, world

                                                              April clouds are stone
                                              foreboding over the countryside
                                                                                   placed in circles across the land
                                                                                              over millennia

 

 

                I had wanted
                to follow thought and view

                at right-angle
                to all the world

                to find it beautiful
                in all its stark

                to lose my weight
                in perfect shifting breeze

                but had to work
                and plan the bend

                and case the sight
                and lost my sight

                (and gained some weight)
                I … had to work

 

retirement #8: when you slip out of a career and look back on what was achieved, there is only a quiet and drifting cloud to contemplate although the experience of working through it was of unworkable stone which you knew all the time shouldn’t be the case, but it was, it was; read the whole sequence as it drifts across the skies: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: Sylvia
breeze wormhole: 1968
career & identity wormhole: strain
clouds wormhole: the // orange rose
seeing wormhole: Day Out
stone wormhole: reprieve
teaching wormhole: seen but not heard
thought wormhole: handsome
time wormhole: time travel
work wormhole: holiday
world wormhole: reading // unstirred