the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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coagulating

Tags

1964, 2016, 6*, Dr Strange, eyes, frame, Have, identity, illusion, reality, spell, Strange Tales, streets, talking, time, truth, walls

                both street and screen frame
                all the truth we can but claim

                we spell with claim, and elbow
                and weave a cage of mallow

                babble all sticky sweet to the
                merest touch, coagulating

                during years of circulation
                into walls with frightened eyes

 

based on ‘The House of Shadows’ in Strange Tales #120, May 1964, by Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

1964 & Dr Strange wormhole: frame
eyes wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory
Have & walls wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
identity wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
reality wormhole: river
streets wormhole: loss
talking wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
time wormhole: with all love released

 

coagulating

Tags

1964, 2016, 5*, circulation, claim, Dr Strange, eyes, framing, pink, society, speech, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, streets, truth, walls

                           both street and screen frame
                           all the truth we can but claim

                           we spell with claim, and elbow
                           and weave a cage of mallow

                           babble all sticky sweet to the
                           merest touch, coagulating

                           during years of circulation
                           into walls with frightened eyes

 

immerging (sic) from ‘The House of Shadows’ in Strange Tales #120, May 1964, by Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

Dr Strange wormhole: the purple mist between
eyes & pink & streets wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
society wormhole: gone black
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – mmpph’
walls wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

Tags

1967, 3*, air, answers, beauty, being, bells, black, breath, breeze, brown, bull, cause and effect, childhood, clarity, clouds, cows, curtains, dancing, dawn, dew, doing, dusk, earth, east, Einstein, elm, energy, evening, field, freedom, grass, green, grey, heat, hedge, hills, horizon, identity, Jupiter, leaves, life, light, logic, meadow, mind, moment, months, moon, morning, mother, mouse, nature, night, nightjar, noise, openness, order, owl, questions, quiet, rabbit, rebirth, scarlet, September, silence, silhouette, silver, sky, slow, space, stars, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, truth, ultimate reality, uncle, universe, valley, velvet, white, wind, wings, woodland, words

A Precious Moment

As after the heat of a summer’s day the face glows in the mildness of evening, so the face of the countryside glows in the mildness of early autumn.   The summer months have infused the merest suggestion of brown in the deepening green of the foliage and the face of the earth gives up its warmth to the stars above to see them dance.   It was into this calm that I walked one late September’s eve.   The evening star cast her unblinking eye across the heavenly dome to Jupiter in the darkening east and the nightjar echoed its song above the empty fields.   I stood at the end of the stack-yard and returned the disinterested gaze of a cow in the field beyond.

It is during these slow hours when the pace of the day has declined, that the smaller noises of the land become apparent.   The bull, who was tethered a full two hundred yards away in the next field could be heard to rattle his chain and blow down his nose at a particularly juicy clump of grass he has found.   Behind me in the ‘maternity’ box, a freshly calved heifer mooed huskily yet very softly as its offspring raised its head suddenly at a strange sound.   Perhaps it was the sound of ancient timbers creaking under the weight of centuries, or that of the leaves above whispering to the bowed stems in the hay meadow below.   Or maybe it was the very silence that enshrouded these small sounds that attracted its attention, for silence is so startling in its rarity and its beauty.   Dusk gave way to night and I became aware of the immense depths of space, the dizzy height of the mackerel sky, and although it was the clouds that moved, it seemed they were stationary against the clear black silhouettes of the elms and that it was the motion of the gibbous moon behind the clouds that alternately blackened and silver-plated the night.   Even at the tender and romantic age of sixteen I was aware of this quietude, and in one enlightened moment jotted down these few words on an old envelope:

         Soft, soft, the bell that tolls the evensong
         Across full summer’s empty fields serene.
         And slowly draws the scarlet cloak, the hem’s
         Black velvet, diamond specked, communes me with
         The white barn owl, who with his noiseless wings
         Doth glide and swoop upon the luckless mouse.
         Selene set within the lap of dusk
         Transmutes the living green to silver plate,
         Enshrouds my world with immobility.
         And with a quietude that frees the mind
         Of bondage from the peering eyes of day,
         I fain become the earth, the sky, the all.

But it wasn’t until my late teens that I realised there are two times during the twenty four hour cycle when such a quietude exists. One is just before the dusk and the other just before dawn.   Although both seem to be divisions between day and night, the prelude to dawn seems to me to be the more startling and more satisfying to experience.   In the evening the mind is released into a reverie bound by personal conscious thought, but during the morning pause one experiences a freedom and profundity of thought that is rarely to be found in any other part of time.

It is barely half past five in the morning when I start milking, but often I arrive at the cowshed half an hour before in order to experience this precious moment.   Although at this hour the ‘Stone that puts the stars to flight’ has yet to be flung, I can sense the great spaciousness of the valley before me.   Again the trees move softly and the long grass in the hay meadow sifts the breath of night, and I wait.   I wait for that incorporeal beauty that is the union of soul and nature.   It begins where the breezes end and the rustling leaves are stilled.   A serene stillness envelopes the woods and meadows and even I am not conscious of breathing.   I am drawn into the quietude and become part of it; become part of the very earth on which I stand; part of the universe through which I move.   I have become part of each blade of grass in the valley before me, part of every hill.   I feel myself part of the earth, feel its very movement through space.   Unfortunately mere words can no longer be the conveyance of the emotions involved (and I use the word ‘emotions’ for want of a better noun) for they become so expansive and so personal.   No longer can mere words impress the reader’s soul with such profundity of emotion that this experience releases within me.   Each must go his own way, search alone and experience it first hand and with an open mind.

A thought is born and from that thought comes two more.   The two are made four and the four made eight, a self-multiplying chain reaction of thoughts has been set in motion that flows with great haste through the mind; in fact a torrent of thoughts in one brief second, and yet each one is startlingly clear and leads the mind one step nearer the truth.   The heavenly dome is vast above the valley and the stars, thrown into their mythological patterns by the great cosmic hand, impress their presence on the mind with unusual brilliance and time is no more.   Now the mental hosts are converging, and step by step I am racing towards that vertex which is the ultimate truth.   The questions are being answered at an ever increasing rate, the startling, brutal logic disclosing the result of a preceding reaction which itself, reveals a cause.   So through to the highest plane the mind soars upon an ever accelerating reversal of the law of causation. But the pace is too much.   The mind flags and begins to flounder.   At this juncture the mind can be likened to a water skier who, while the pace is kept up skims along the surface in the sun, but immediately he slows down he begins to sink, until at length he finds himself floundering with no forward movement.   Now the mind has become weak and cannot comprehend the unfathomable thought.   But I have brushed the grey curtain; I have seen a light faint though it may be and both my physical and spiritual selves have been revitalised and my cup runneth over.

For most of our lives we are lost beings out of tune with life around us.   Only during such precious moments as these do we fit into the great harmonious chord; all things round and above have their special place in it, from the fat brown rabbit throbbing in the cornfields to the fleecy pieces of golden cloud that sail upon the pale green skies of dusk.   Worries, anxieties, tensions, all are reduced to their proper size in relation to life, and as the imperceptible ‘Left hand of dawn’ lifts the veil on the eastern horizon, we are cleansed and reborn with the stripling day.

It is only during such periods that nature can be reduced to anything approaching order, and that there is an order I am in no doubt.   Einstein’s inquiring mind was working on the universal equation when the workings of that very same equation stilled his physical being; perhaps now he has solved it, we in this life never shall.   The perpetual motion of nature is the perfect machine and we are part of that machine.   It is complete within itself, recreating its own new parts from the debris of the old.   No energy is wasted or lost, just charged in form.   Nature permits us a marginal tolerance within which we may make one or two adjustments to suit our needs and requirements, but beyond this we dare not go for we merely create more problems than we solve.

         So does she pass, the gentle night,
         Slow seeps the dawn upon the scene.
         Dew sparkling in the first light of
         The new day shows where she has been.
         The eyes of day now open on
         The dewy sward and gossamer
         Bows low beneath its pearly load,
         And hedgerows faintly scent the air
         With green along the unused road.
         And I am born once more and see
         The day as I once first beheld –
         A child within his mother’s arms,
         Another, within its mother’s arms.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & field & morning wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
beauty wormhole: the policies came to nothing
being wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
black & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
breath wormhole: inbreath
breeze wormhole: and that’s where I are
brown wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
childhood wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: reaching branch
evening & silhouette wormhole: tired
green & space & uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
grey & horizon wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
hedge & hills & life & light wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: with endless love
leaves & mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
moon wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
night & silence & sky wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
openness wormhole: ‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27
quiet wormhole: Jericho
silver wormhole: Jon
thought & time wormhole: inbreath
white wormhole: mauve
words wormhole: bloogying

 

1968

Tags

1968, 2009, abandonment, being, child, childhood, curtains, divorce, doubt, facade, father, feeling, holiday, identity, illusion, lilac, living, passing, sky, sleep, stretch, sunlight, time, timelessness, town, truth, vermillion, yawn, years

 

 

 

                                                                 1968

                      child living at rate: three months per hour
                      sat under lilac viscous sky and watched
                      the vermilion slicks form and pass; the

                      Way Things Are through which I had come
                      was no longer living with us; what I had
                      felt – under my fingernails – might not be

                      true (like the facades of towns erected
                      for a holiday) now had reference, I felt
                      no feeling, all Absolutes were off, all

                      interaction doubtful.   The child slept for
                      a week, is now stretching and yawning, a
                      new day ahead shining through curtains

 

 

 

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

1968 wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12
abandonment wormhole: 1963
being & passing & living wormhole: impressionism
child wormhole: and that’s where I are
childhood & sky wormhole: 1963
curtains wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
divorce wormhole: sit
father wormhole: Jon
holiday wormhole: nothing to write
identity wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
lilac wormhole: I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia
sleep wormhole: com- / mute
time wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
vermillion wormhole: 1967
years wormhole: 1964

 

what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie

Tags

2012, anxiety, career, education, identity, managerialism, offer, practice, time, truth

 

 

 

                           what I am about to say is true
                           what I just said was a lie

                           when you spent
                           eleven years being
                           too busy deciding and
                           leading my career
                           to consider what
                           I had offered
                           even while you
                           were asking of me
                           what I had to offer
                           you created an
                           anxiety in my
                           practice which
                           couldn’t be resolved
                           unless I ignored myself

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
career wormhole: dream career // groggy
education & time wormhole: the ancient tree
identity wormhole: 1964
managerialism wormhole: dear clown’s face
practice wormhole: because

 

Apologia

Tags

agenda, anxiety, AST, Big Picture, bureaucracy, career, compromise, creativity, dialectic, education, management, managerialism, organic education, performance management, politics, professionalism, resource, responsibility, results-led education, truth, value-led education, values

After years of struggle, isolation, stonewalling (Hadrian-walling!), silence, evasion a teacher might, quite out of the blue, be offered a role or responsibility so that their work might be developed and disseminated for the benefit of educational- (for the Benefit of All!) provision.   At last, recognition!   But then, minutes later you are being led to your desk in a temporarily-divided corridor room (in which you will have to battle for desk space by pulling back the desk through the temporary wall), there where you will practise your advanced skill (by bottling it up into a tube and sending it through the tube system), your very own prison cell …

Recognition (in the system which has systematically repulsed work which is not constructed, developed or packaged in the pre-scribed manner) is the opportunity to be exploited.   Responsibility is the means through which you will be exploited (given with laurel and epaulets into your own hands).   Opportunity is the (‘very interesting’) work of making your skill ‘fit’ into the Big Picture.   Experience is the history of compromise through which values and ideals will be lost into the Big Picture.

Success in the Big Picture Bureaucracy entails that truth is an agenda over which you have no control, principle is declarative, creativity is a formula, debate is a compromise, influence is an exercise of power, delivery is an over-riding Tough Decision, professionalism is the exercise of abstraction.   A skill (in teaching, say) is developed (despite Continuing Professional Development) through a dialectic between the Provision (the Teacher) and the Receptor (the pupil).   This dialectic yields truth which is explorative within the service (not pre-defined or even pre-determined), a principle which is exercised freshly, uniquely and adjusted-ly each time, creativity which comes from the minute detail of the dialectic, debate which is the (means of the) dialectic, influence which is an agreement, delivery which is the nurture to see the dialectic through, and professionalism which is effective (dialectical) giving.

The compromise is not evil, but it is misguided, borne out of an impatience with the progress of organic education, wanting to direct and control the progress of an education which has become ‘intensive’ as a result.   Why was there an impatience?   Because education came to the attention of politicians (themselves caught in their own compromise borne of neo-conservative power-control-agenda in the face of emergent globalisation) and the regulation of education became a propaganda (both ‘outside’ and ‘in’ the service) through which to justify Global Truth as Control…

Therefore I offer my work – itself borne despite recognition, support, investment, enthusiasm from the School – not to the school but wide open to the world of anyone who might culture it.   I will publish it (with a view to balance the paucity of alternative-values educational publication compared to the whole wash of government-published material), I will not make money or career out of it (in order to avoid the Compromise), I will offer it anonymously (as long as I can, in order to avoid becoming a Voice which must be accountable to an agenda item and not the dialectic).   I will cast it as a seed.   Let it stick in the dirt.   Let it grow.   Organically.   If it will.

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

compromise wormhole: just what
managerialism wormhole: nightmare
professionalism wormhole: there was a call and far from no response
resource wormhole: the ghost with open wound
results-led education wormhole: ‘once upon a quarter century …’
value-led education wormhole: through a cracked glass greenly
values wormhole: the path / no echo

 

poessay VI: // truth

Tags

2010, 2013, 3*, compromise, economics, Have, poessay, society, truth

 

 

 

                                poessay VI:

                                Have
                does not discuss it states
                                Have
                does not seek discourse
                it is declarative and absolutive
                                and usually
                                catastrophive

                                Have
                is often bashful because
                it is not quite sure how far and
                                wide the
                                compro
                                mise is
                                but con
                stantly seeks it out none
                                the
                                less

                                truth

                is whatever enables a transaction –
                                it is right
                because the transaction took place
                                relative
                                solely to
                                the deal
                                with only
                nominal reference to definition –

 

 

 

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

compromise wormhole: ‘consumption is compromise: …’
economics & society wormholes: Have
Have wormhole: poetry
poessay wormhole: poessay V: // writing / as practice while / writing