so where have I got:

Tags

2017, 4*, Avebury, being, dynamic, inverse relationship, measure, public service, talking to myself, teaching, travelling, value

                so where have I got: I took
                three threads on this short trip:

                once anything is measured it loses
                all value; value is dynamic and

                integral to the happenstance;
                measure is limited and quantitative;

                there is an inverse relationship
                between measure and value, there

                ought to be balance for there to
                be a public service … in and

                out the Avebury Stones, can’t
                seem to find a sig … nal?

 

see: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

being wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
talking to myself wormhole: to arms, then;
teaching wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
travelling wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

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agreed termination without prejudice

Tags

2016, 4*, bulb, communication, depression, despair, flower, growth, petals, retirement, stalk, teaching

                                how is the growth
                                from thorny stalk

                                to cuppèd bulb to
                                flowered petal made?

                agreed termination without prejudice

 

‘agreed termination without prejudice‘ is the phrase given when a teacher is too broken to try to return to work again for the seventh time in ten years, and both sides are so wearied of ‘the way things are‘ despite all the changes and accommodations made, other than what was actually needed; but I will snatch victory from the razor-sharp fog of defeat, I … shall not-ice

 

 

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

communication wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
depression wormhole: without any buffet at all
retirement & teaching wormhole: after all

 

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 need help”

Tags

2015, 4*, career, dream, fear, letting go, passing, shame, speech, stairs, teacher, teaching

                vulnerable and stuck
                on the way to first lesson

                taking the short-cut over
                the main stairwell, narrow

                foot-ledge, I cannot
                continue, don’t look down,

                I cannot go back, “I need
                help, get a teacher” and

                I am not ashamed to
                call out loud, no one

                does, I cannot go back,
                a teacher passes, I

                cannot remember her
                name “I need help”;

                I realise there is a balcony-
                corridor behind the ledge,

                safety partition is loose,
                I can lean back into it,

                break the screen, fall
                back, no more fear

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: circuitry
dream wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
letting go wormhole: place
passing wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
speech wormhole: Sandwich
stairs wormhole: is this it // all the time
teaching wormhole: I turn to wake up

 

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_________________________________|—–

afternoon wormhole: be
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