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1.6.14

Three poems


 STARLIT NIGHT

One starlit night our love-song slipped
Out an open window [that
I had forgotten to make tight]

Slipped out to frolic beneath the moon
And danced all wild till dawn slipped jewels
Like wedding rings on fronds of grass

And back she came-a homing bird
A swallow cross a mighty sea
Back home safe and secret-safe


Clothed in glittering memories


THE SONGS IN MEN’S HEARTS

These are the songs that live in the hearts of men:
First there is the song of WAR that rises,
Boils, and gurgles in the pumping blood.
Sing O warriors cross the dusty plains
Of Troy a shout of joy-To kill!  To kill!
Such glorious joy the blood to spill.
To read the fear in enemies eyes
As entrails spill like treasure in the trench.

Sing the songs of bloody ecstasy.
Those razored words will cut the hardest steel.
Let the axe sing in the morning bright
And swords ring out like bells against  the shields.
The words are hacked into the hearts of youth:
It is a fine day on which to die,
And anyway who wants to live forever?
Ride her hard: Remember to die young!
Go see the world, and blow the fucker up!

Fear is for the others:  Fear is bad!
Hear them screaming for their mother’s arms,
And take joy in the tears of cursed foes.
We are over here, and they are over
There.  C’mon boys let’s do the bastards!
Rape as an act of war is not so bad,
And bashing out those babies brains was good!
Now we rain down arrows from the moon;
We have contracted Death himself to our clan,
Though it must be said he’s mercenary;
He’ll do both sides business for a song.

And deep within the caverns underground
Or in the stars of death, spinning in space;
War is woven in the dreams of hollow men.
Iliads spill out of crooked looms.
Assassins seek the sons of Omeros
Who sing of warriors as idiots and fools.
Their fearful verses drown their battle-crys.
Make burning pyres of all their vacant flags,
And tear their uniforms to tumbling rags.

Then, there is the quiet song of EARTH;
Almost the steady beating of a drum.
A song that drives men home-an odyssey.
A song that sings of warmth and nourishment;
Whispers in the ripples on the rivers,
Echoes in the shimmer of the leaves.
The poetry of forest’s boundless trees;
The murmur of the worker bees;
The stop and chuckle of the bouncing streams
Decanting into endless seas.
The stopped-up silence of ice-age valleys;
The stacked-up mossy grooves of silent peaks
Riven with sheep-tracks and booted trails.
Fuller’s spaceship-earth hanging like a blue
Eye in the immensity of space.
The breathing land-the earth beneath;
The dark and fecund soil that rustles
With the promise of new life.
The patient song that drove Odysseus home
To Ithaki.
To slaughter the suitors of Penelope
And then sit down to home-made cakes and tea.
We climb into her caves to be renewed.
We cross her seven seas to be revealed.
We climb her sacred mountains to be healed.

Then the song that rides men all their lives
When they have reached the right weight of years.
The song of WORK springs into their bright souls
To punch the broken clock of all their days.
To labour for some bastard in a tower
Who leaks their light with every passing hour.
Those corporate donkeys snuffling in their trough
Are fearful of that thing that sets men free.
The endless driving of the gritted wheel
Grinds the gilded amber of their dreams
And hollows out their core.  Their souls
Are frozen like some fearful glacier;
Or river silted with limitless greed,
Grabbing in its gaping maw all
that is wild and mad and on the budding
Spur.  Those that love their work are few,
Perhaps one or two, while millions slave
Like cattle, herded to an early grave.
They work; they save; they work; they save; they work.

Of all the songs held in the hearts of men,
There’s one that goes down deeper than the rest.
The song that fills their mouths and ears.  Oh how
They stumble with its harmonies and chords!
Mischievous boys cavorting in the choir.
Men follow its tunes like stubborn, burdened mules
Led by the halter to the sacred pools
Where flow the words that form the song of LOVE-
The horn-call of the all-encircling feminine.
First taught them by their mother’s long ago-
Clamped like limpets on her milky breasts
Man and boy have sucked from those sacred jugs
All the dark and bright they’ll ever know.

Now a different woman blows his horn.
And tempts him with a bud of sweet red fruit,
Wrapped within her naked turning curve.
She grunts him in his pits and he minds
To mischief in her gently yielding zawns .
White horses crash and the dragon-fires blaze.
Kaleidoscopes of light; cock-thundered.
His fire is  stirred to waking, roaring riot!
The blinding need to scatter-scatter seed!
Then a fork of lightning splits the sky!
A shout spins out! Then turns into a sigh.
Her head lies in the hollow of his hand-
he gently lets her fall into the night.
Out in the rain, his steel has turned to rust.
His eyes weave webs out of the dust for
As we know and trust: all men philo-
Sophise in the embers of their glutted lust!


Now he dreams that it will be just right
And she dreams she’s found her one true mate.
As if they’re stamped with some magnetic charge
That calls each to each across an ocean.
But the world holds all within its halls.
The world is full of hollow men and girls
Who love their toys and bags more than their mate.
From what cold milky flows did they
imbibe such greed? What withered claw planted
Such vain seeds in sterile fields? (As if
Narcissus took up farming for a joke!-
though now he writes the daily news and runs
The BBC!)

ASIDE TO READER: SHIT!  SHIT!  SHIT! I’LL JUST GIVE IN!
THE POET HURLS HIS QUILL DOWN TO THE FLOOR.
LOVE SIMPLY CANNOT BE DEFINED IN WORDS!
THE MELODY IS TOO COMPLEX AND STRANGE.
I’M TRYING TO PULL DOWN ULTIMATE MYSTERIES!
TRYING TO RING SOME ‘MANY-SPLENDOURED’ BELL!
TRYING TO READ THE CODED CLUES, LOCKED
WITHIN THE KERNEL OF A RIDDLES SEED!
BUT COME! LETS ALL TAKE A BREATH AND CARRY ON.


The warriors of love are the singers of this song
And so we gift them this:  A wedding vow:

I stand here in your fire and in your ice.
Treat equally as gifts; your pain and joy.
Witness here the weaving of my word and will
That, in our very essence we’re conjoined.
In the centre of our Selves, we’re One.

As you see:
The song of love sucks in all the rest.
The fact is:  It’s the one men love the best.
Even if the one, that wounds them most.
Fact is:  It’s the song that makes men blessed.


WHO KNOWS HOW LOVES NETS ARE CAST UPON THE SHAPE-SHIFTING SEA? 

Love has garrotted me-
Crept into my room
and, sleeping, slipped the wire
round my neck and pulled,
until my eyes ballooned.
Love is a mafia assassin!

Love slaps my arse;
gives me pointy ears and
a shrill, shrieking bray.
Has he bid Ariel
anoint my sleeping eyes?
Love is that devious Oberon!

Love is a game with balls;
A game of win and lose-
But this is a threadbare ball:
A pig’s wind-charged bladder
Is bejewelled against the sun.
Love is that penalty shoot-out!

Love seems to be my mission
behind the enemy lines.
Special forces or special needs?
These dark mountainous regions
magnetise the needle.
Love is a broken compass!

Who knows what love is all about?
Who knows how deep her nets go down?
Or who casts them out
On the shape-shifting sea?





26.5.14

Response to Professor Ray Jones article on Michael Gove's proposed privatisation agenda for Children's Social Work Services

Ok firstly Professor Jones is to be thanked for putting his thoughts on this issue with such clarity. He clearly does not labour under any illusions that private capital is anything but bad…well not even bad but…EVIL!
Capitalism, he considers is characterised by ‘venture capital’ and practically best illustrated by the usual suspects-Serco, Atos and G4S.
However I will propose that such an analysis, though passionately expressed, is far from accurate, not only in its characterisation of ‘Capital’ as corrupting and incompetent, using only such examples as will prove his own point, but that he has ignored completely any of the recent developments in social entrepeneurialism including radical and local not for profit initiatives that are changing the landscape of big, soulless, corporations running essential services in social care and health.
‘Capital’ is not inherently evil, in fact it is not inherently anything other than energy. It is how capital’s energy is directed that takes it into the landscapes of morality.
The fact is that Local Authority Children’s Services tend to mirror the very worst examples of organisations that the professor cites. They are hierarchical, top-down, command and control structures that operate on the basis of targets and performance. Staff are disempowered and overwhelmed with myriad requirements to fulfill the needs of higher management. Complaints are endemic among users. The human resource environment is oppressive and uncaring with process driven solutions to emotion based issues.
In addition the work itself is hugely demanding both emotionally and intellectually and physically.
I have always thought of social workers as heroes, finding solutions and transforming children’s life chances despite their organisations rather than because of them. Subversive heroes rather than rule-followers. Spanners in the works rather than cogs in the machine!
I strongly feel after many years as practitioner and leader in frontline services that Children’s Social Work is well overdue for a change and that may well be found in a diverse private sector subject to the disciplines of the market but inspired by up to date organisational and entrepeneurial thinking.
Think about the Integral models inspired by Ken Wilber and an Integral Social Work Practice that embraces real world models of social and human functioning celebrating that diversity and complexity. Think about visionary leaders and entrepeneurs creating new businesses and organisations that not only deliver outstanding services but are joyful places to work. Think about a business where integrity precedes profit but where profit is accounted for. Read ‘Reinventing Organizations’ by Frederic Laloux (20140) and see the examples of companies like the Patagonia Clothing Company and our own Ecotricity that are applying new models of business that privilidge and support human growth and potential.
I am not suggesting that privatisation is some great good and I share the concerns about incompetence arising from greed or plain stupidity in the examples noted. But for the future’s sake can we not get out of this constant spiral of negativity and blame that has infected Social Work for the past half century and start to embrace new models of delivering services that, in their core nature are at the root of what it is to struggle with the very nature of being human.
It was Einstein, I think who said, we cannot solve the problems of the future with the same mindset that created them.
Apologies for going on so but I guess that shows how useful your article has been Ray! I like the cat being put among the pigeons!
Best wishes,
Tony.

16.2.14

MAN IS BORN FREE BUT IS EVERYWHERE IN TRAINS

Man is born free but is everywhere in trains.

I commute from a gentile little Sussex village into London daily, courtesy of Southern Trains.  I thus am a regular customer of this strange, benighted organisation.  Well the descriptive noun 'customer' indicates a degree of voluntary transaction, a choice.  In fact I am probably more of a serf in thrall to a psychopathic and ruthless Overlord, forced to pay an extortionate tax in order to go about my business. An organisation that would better befit the pages of a James Bond novel filling the role of a 'Smersh' of the rails, instead of spies it would be-'death to commuters'.


I am now firmly of the view, after some years, that the incompetence displayed by Southern is no mere display of a fumbling, incoherent direction that places short term gains to shareholders over any long term investment in customer experience.  Not the necessary outcome of the vile John Major's last big giveaway of the country's wealth to the Daily Mail and Financial Times readership in the shape of the country's track and rolling stock.  Not a shambling example to the works of the creative mismanagement with which the private sector handles often handles public services.
 No, gentle reader, the truth is far far worse than that.

 Southern Trains is merely the mask behind a fiendishly contrived plot to drive the commuting traveller mad.  Raddled with job insecurity due to missed appointments.  Financially insecure due to rapacious increases in fares.  Give them hope, particularly at times of holidays that they will rest that cold evening safe in the bosom of their family before the crackling fire then steal the hope away at the last minute.
The sophisticated psychological knowledge displayed by Southern is evidenced by the merciless attack on all the emotional centers of the benighted traveller.

The commuters of southern trains share the experiences of many innocent peanuts in that they are continually assaulted. 

How shall we defend against this monstrosity.?  How strike a blow for freedom?  The answer?  We shall not!  We shall huddle like sheep in a storm dripping in the narrow central isle ( standing room only of course).  And shall we storm the first class carriages half full with plump faced marketing executives and vacant bankers and cadaverous psychotherapists?  No we shall not.  We shall suffer either in silence or with a good humoured quip at the Eastern European person pushing the trolley of overpriced light refreshments up and down the train.


Southerns explanations for delay are as fiendishly plotted as a Ben Marcus novel.  Suicides in Putney.  Strange inexplicable fires in rail cuttings.  Signal malfunction everywhere.  And in one case I experienced-swans on the line!
But reality will out and after thousands of torturous commuting miles I am firmly of the view that Southern Trains is part of a vast and secret experiment to study how much abuse an ordinary human being can take without cracking.
Who is Southern Trains?  Let us, in the immortal lines of Seamus Heaney's first successful poem do some 'digging'.

Southern Trains is owned by a Company called Govia (sounding like a city named by Michael Gove!) Formed from two lesser companies Go-Ahead (I'm not kidding!) and Kelsio which is a French transport company.  The nefarious entity was spawned in order to take part in the pillage and rapine of the rail network privatisation in 1996 birthed out of the grey murk of the John Major administration which you may recall was in the process of being decisively ejected by the electorate and the privatisation was seen in many quarters as a cynical nod to the rapacious hedge-funds and commercial interests waiting in line to rip off the country's rolling stock and rail network.  The cynics were proven right by history and rail privatisation is generally seen as a disaster for the railways and for the traveling public.  Excuses for chronic delays such as 'leaves on the line' or 'the wrong kind of snow' have now become part of folklore and the rail companies themselves some of the most hated providers of services in the country.


The other thing about trains is how there exists the opposite size effect from clothing shops.  I walk into a clothes shop now and it appears that the sizes are made for a race of giants.  I look like a child wearing its fathers clothes, my hands and feet buried in mounds of material.  On a train however the design template seems to be for a midget.  The seats fit neither your nether regions nor your torso.  One is held in a Foetal type curl unable to stretch out.  The seat in front is inches away from your head.  The train wobbles just enough to make writing impossible.  Any uncapped drinks will spill.
And the design?  I understand that one is confined by the tube structure but do they really have to be so very ugly?  Plasticky?  With such vile coloured schemes?  The South Eastern fast link appears to have achieved a degree of comfort that makes first class redundant.  Why can't the other train companies do the same?

Coffee?-don't touch it!  Overpriced and poor quality.  Drink anyone? You can't afford them! £5.00 for a small gin and tonic!
And when did it become part of the contract between train companies and traveller that a seat, far from being guaranteed as a minimum became a lottery with the consequence that a standing journey of an hour or more became commonplace, even on the Virgin line between London and Manchester?  It rather grates therefore to see Branson's smirking face plastered all over the tele advertising more of his scams when you see entire families crouched in the aisle of his trains for more than an hour.
Why is it so impossible to think of a train interior as being beautiful and ergonomic and facilitative?  Why is a train arriving on time such a relief?
Why did we allow our commute to be hijacked by these bandits? 
Let's break the bonds of our chains!

Let us take back our trains!