Fwd: Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler – review | Books | The Guardian

Sleeping It Off in Rapid City by August Kleinzahler – review Guardian Books

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/19/sleeping-it-off-august-kleinzahler-review

Beautiful design can help make great poetry | Books | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/oct/21/poetry-cover-august-kleinzahler

More on August Kleinzahler's 'Sleeping it off...about the beautifully subtle cover photo.  This is the cover on my edition so why would anyone make it er...red?

Some superb reviews from Silver Star-Journal of the Horus-Maat Lodge (I've got an old poem in here too!)

WHY MEDIATION IS SO COOL!

I think I have applied mediation type skills over the past twenty five years of my career both as a social worker and for the past fifteen years as a manager and leader.  I seem to have found myself in the capacity of an emergency roadside rescue service attending to failing services or organisations much as a mechanic might attend to a broken down car.

This has required a lot of negotiation and conflict resolution often when the conflict has been directed at me personally as the change agent and the originator of the distressing new systems.

At this point I guess I could proceed to a directorship of a large corporate social care organisation in the public sector and look to retire with a nice fat salary but truthfully I can think of nothing worse than ending my working days among the grey suits in endless meetings and performance reviews and other current managerial guff.

Enter mediation.  I was researching the activity as a result of developing a publicly funded mediation service for Guernsey.  My light bulb moment quickly came when I realised two significant facts.  Firstly Mediation as an activity is very much at a growth point and the growth potential is significant and may well remain so for the next decade at least.

Secondly the activity is an interesting brew of several different and attractive ingredients.  It makes a positive contribution to well-being and is therefore ethically valuable-this is important and the first question I ask about an activity in my prior commitment reflection-Is it worth doing?

It is boundaried.  There are parameters.  There are end points.  There are measurable outcomes with actual effects.  There is a skill base against which one can measure one’s development.  It is about engagement with rather than power over.  It has room for passion and artistry.  It has space for excellence.  It seeds into other fascinating areas like conflict resolution and labour conciliation.  This is all very appealing and most of all it means that as a leader I can actually go and do some real work rather than spending my time interfering with my staff.

That last comment was in jest really.  I do believe that effective balanced leadership is crucial but it needs to be like the butterfly’s wing in the air rather than the all too common thump of the jackboot.

Mediation offers me an area of practice that will complement the other areas of my work life very well and I believe it to be one of the most fruitful skill sets to manage the emotional traumas of family break-up to emerge in recent times.

IDEAS FROM GEORGE MONBIOT'S BLOG ON RESISTANCE TO THE COALITION

So here goes. We need to redress the balance between cuts and tax rises (currently 3:1)(3), as fairly as possible. That means starting with the UK’s most regressive form of taxation: national insurance. This levy is so unfair that it’s hard to understand why it hasn’t received more attention. On earnings of up to £844 a week, you currently pay 11% national insurance. On earnings beyond that point, you pay 1%(4). We should raise the national insurance rate for higher earnings from 1% to 15%(5). This would help to address a wider injustice: the poorest 10% of UK households pay proportionately more tax (direct and indirect) than the richest 10%(6).

We must close the tax gap. Tax avoidance and evasion are the preserve of the very rich: only millionaires and corporations can afford the specialist advice required to disguise their earnings. The tax gap amounts to between £40bn and £120bn a year(7,8). Not all this money can be reclaimed. We need a national target to claw back £25bn a year. Staffing levels at HM Revenue and Customs should be raised accordingly.

Of the various means of reclaiming money from the banks, a financial transactions tax (the Robin Hood tax) is the fairest and most sustainable. It’s easy to collect, hard to avoid and highly progressive, as it falls largely upon the richest people in the country(9). A tax of 0.005% on financial transactions could raise a net £13bn a year; a tax of 0.01%, £25bn(10).

The government should adopt the plan proposed by the Green Fiscal Commission: by 2020 levies on damage to the environment should amount to 20% of the total tax-take(11), with a commensurate reduction in the income tax and national insurance paid by people with low earnings. The tax exemption for private schools must end. This costs us £100m a year – to grant unfair advantages to the children of the rich(12).

Greg Philo of Glasgow University has proposed an interesting means of mobilising the money the very rich have stashed away: transferring the entire national debt to them. He’s shown that this could be done through a one-off tax averaging 20% on total assets worth more than £1m(13). It would be graduated, so that the richest people are charged at a higher rate than mere seven-figure millionaires. It wouldn’t have to be paid immediately: the asset-holders could choose to pay only the interest on the debt until they died, whereupon the capital would go to the state. This ensures, as the government has promised, that “the broadest shoulders should carry the greatest burden.”(14)

The government should set a target of 0.5% per year for reducing the Gini coefficient – the measure of income inequality – in the United Kingdom(15). To this end it should raise the minimum wage by inflation plus 5% each year until it reaches the level identified by the Living Wage campaign(16). We also need an official High Pay Commission, whose purpose is to identify, as a multiple of the living wage, the maximum remuneration anyone in the UK should receive(17).

The following new military hardware programmes should be scrapped: the Trident weapons system; aircraft carriers; Eurofighter jets. The Barrow shipyard, where new nuclear submarines were to be built, should be redeployed to produce offshore renewables: wind, wave and tide turbines(18). The money saved should be spent on a new public housing programme.

To fill looming gaps in provision and reduce unemployment, the government should raise the public workforce by the following levels: 10,000 more social workers; 10,000 more planners; 50,000 more hospital cleaners; 100,000 more educational staff; 350,000 extra care workers for the elderly(19). As Unison points out, 92% of the cost of employing a public service worker is recouped by the state, because it raises tax revenues while reducing benefit payments(20).

These measures will help to address the immediate problems of the deficit, the debt, unemployment, inequality and a threatened double-dip recession. But we also need to move to a system which doesn’t depend on endless economic growth to sustain high employment and a decent standard of living. We need a Steady State Commission, to develop a government programme for turning a growth-based, boom and bust economy into a stable system, without damaging the prospects of the poor(21).

Quickies on a Sunday!

Audio book 'Silence' by Shusaku Endo-  Available on Audible.  Like Brian Moore's 'Black robe' and due (according to The Guardian's Sue Arnold) to be made into a film starring the great Daniel Day-Lewis.  A sort of hideous torture leading to spiritual conversion theme!

'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' by Muriel Barbery Trans Alison Anderson Narr by the utterly brilliant Barbara Rosenblatt and Cassandra Morris on Audible.

'Perpetual Euphoria'  by Pascal Bruckner-might be worth a look.

'Alternative and Activist New Media' by Leah A Liedrouw

'Overconnected'  William H Davidow

'I shall not hate:  A Gaza Doctor's journey'  Izzeldin Abuelaish

'Solar' by Ian McEwan-Comedy from the melancholic genius-we really should check that out.

'The Ask' Sam Lypsyte  "One of the funniest and most straight-out brilliant novels of the last few years." (Nicola Barr)  Such reviewers comments always come with a warning but it does get my attention.

Who ever knew that Tim Leary wrote a novel and that it has this title?

Gareth Knight artwork from his Journal-'Quadrigal'-I like it!

A beautiful pen holder for a Moleskine notebook-The Quiver.  One of those little things that makes you think erm...that could improve my life.

Check some of this out and get back to me if they're good!
Have a great Sunday and spare a thought for the freedom fighters in the Middle East!

Success to your work!

THEMES OF A LOST LIGHTBRINGER

THEMES OF A LOST LIGHTBRINGER

First, there is the forgetting.

This allows the unfolding, the fracturing

to begin.

This forgetting that you love,

forgetting of the joy and bliss,

forgetting of life’s very precious pulse.

What is this forgetting that is everywhere?

That covers the buildings

and the waters

to the farthest stretch?

Has the Snow Queen returned

to curse us with Heart’s ice?

Then there is betrayal.

That moment of impeccable choice.

Go this way or go that way.

Follow the green man

or the beckoning finger.

Tunnel or rockface.

Path or stream.

That faint sound of voices 

murmuring on the wind

or the clamour of the marketplace.

Choices in the vital moment,

choices that return with vengeance

 of wounds and loss

on the morrow’s breaking.

Spawns deceit it does,

births a hideous monster

suckling on your soul’s dugs.

Drawing you into circles.

Making you into other shapes too.

Unknown.

Un-remembered.

Un-expected.

And then...

Discovery!

Cup breaks,

breathless in foundation

you are plucked/cursed/hidebound.

In a fucking instant

you become newly defined.

A new gestalt

out of which you totter

gracelessly.

Lurching out of Plato’s piss-washed cave

blinking like a reptile on a stage

re-membering

that something a shadow makes.

You have only one cloak to wear today,

let it be a cloak of ashes

to hide your naked despair.

Hide such nakedness from the villagers.

Begone then!

Return when you are healed.

We good folk cannot stand your endless tears.

You follow the soiled track

to re-membrance

Yes!

Re-member.  Re-gain.  Re-turn.

But too late, poor lost child.

All is lost,

it is too late.

All the other fools have left

and there is none so piteous as 

the single fool,

a brightless and despairing fool.

There is little so affronting to our eyes.

We do not like this cracked mirror.

We hate it!

Acceptance spins your cloak of 

ashes into wool.

It shall protect you from the cold wind.

Gather it about you and set your face 

to the West.

Be your destiny and

accept it all into your heart.

What was hollow is now solid.

What was empty is now full,

of pain but also of purpose.

Acceptance is the gift

you give yourself in life,

the rope on which you climb

sweet dreamer.

Accept it all into your heart.

Let go into it!

Let go!

Just let go!

And so...spinning in that web

that holds us all.

A sudden realised thought

sparks out of the void.

Forgive!

Forgive everything!

Find forgiveness and dive into it.

It is understanding.

It is wisdom.

It is the hero’s way.

The transmutations of alchemy are it.

The soul’s truth is it.

It is the only path

out of this dark wood Lightbringer!

So let your light shine

and yield to this well-wyrded fortune.

Follow the strings of runes

To her fabulous eyes

That ever changing glyph,

hazel and blue of

hazel and blue.

Fall upon your sword each day.

Be carried home at evensong

upon your shield.

Children’s tears shall wet your wounds

and even the harsh Gods

will wonder at such pain.

The blood itself will cry out of these caves.

Even the good folk will wonder:

Some will say, forget.

Some will say, re-member.

Lost Lightbringer, they will say,

re-member!

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CAMERON CLEGG AND OSBORNE: THREE NAUGHTY LITTLE MONKEYS

The impact of the comprehensive spending review and the proposed cuts in state spending of, in some cases 8% reductions year on year for five years will lead in some cases, to a 40% reduction in state provision.  It is an unheard of amount and the effects cannot be easily determined.  We have heard that ‘we are in this together’ and that the cuts will not be borne disproportionately by the most vulnerable in society.  But while the banksters gather to grab a share in an estimated 7 billion bonus pot over the next few weeks it has certainly come to my personal attention that in fact the cuts will directly affect the most vulnerable groups in society as well as the slightly unsavoury new term to describe ‘the squeezed middle’ now being touted by Ed Miliband in an attempt to create clear blue water between a seemingly directionless opposition and a coalition hell-bent on the dismantling of vast elements of a welfare state built up over the last fifty years.  There is a good reason why the cuts will be targeted (I use the word advisedly) on the poor, the vulnerable, the sick and the ‘squeezed middle.’

The major reason is an astonishing ‘hands-off’ mentality from the government in relation to where the cuts will fall.  But while the government may present this as giving freedom to local authorities to reduce where they determine, it is obvious that panicked and poorly lead local authorities will target the areas of least resistance and these are generally populated by those most dispossessed, most powerless, voiceless and least able to resist.  The real strategy is an abdication of responsibility that will allow the coalition to avoid the difficult decisions and, more crucially the responsibilities of identifying which groups lose and which maintain their funding.  There will be no winners-apart that is, from the usual suspects.

The looked after children population falls into this category.  With 60.000 children and young people in care set to rise to 120,000 by the end of 2012 there will be a proposed doubling of the population of children coming in to the care system.

The domino effect will be set in train by the cumulative effects of withdrawal and reduction of benefits on the poorest families who have to date managed to keep their families together by the skin of their teeth.  The difference this time is that this vulnerable group will be joined by members of Miliband’s ‘squeezed middle’ who can usually struggle along through boom and bust.  With an average national salary of just £26,000 per annum these families will be taking the hit on the 5% VAT increase as well as their better off neighbours facing an imminent reduction in child benefits and tax credits which will mean the loss of hundreds, in some cases thousands of pounds a year in income.  Add the hikes in transport and utilities costs and you have a perfect storm for the middle classes who earn around £37,000 per annum.  Certainly never seen as a penurious income but soon to be far from comfortable

But what is astonishing about this round of cuts to me is the almost complete absence of what we might call a culture of resistance.  The passivity with which the comprehensive spending review was received by the nation was remarkable.  I think this is compounded by the predominant emotion in a recession which is fear but the flipside of that particular coin is anger and I sense a deep fury among the people at the injustice of this elite-manufactured recession.  I would not be surprised to see a series of serious riots in the cities over the summer of 2011.  I also see a political system which is rooted in ideas of society relevant to the 1950’s and completely unfit for purpose to deal with the three major challenges of the next twenty years and beyond.  Namely climate change, the loss of biodiversity and increasing global instability.

Leadership in the UK is supplied by a cadre of elite educated sociopaths with a pathological sense of their own entitlement and crucially no understanding of normal economic life.  Cameron, Osborne and Clegg visited Oldham in the recent by-election like Victorian gentleman anthropologists observing a tribe of African bushmen.  They are so divorced from the reality of most people’s lives that they are unable to see the implications of their policies on actual lives.  To them it is all theory.

This has to change.  We need a new political party which is truly of ‘all the talents’.  We need the leadership of the most brilliant people in their respective fields so we can have the best healthcare, the best welfare, the most effective military capability, the most effective  strategies for industry and commerce, the very best and relevant educational system for all our children and it needs to be based on what works, not informed by some outmoded political cod-philosophy derived from the turn of the last century.  We need an end to the ludicrous and simplistic binary polarities of Labour and Conservative.  We need an integral politics and a new political party to take us forward.

I don’t see anything like this evolving presently but you know sometimes it takes a disaster to birth a new beginning.  Sometimes all you can do is take a deep breath, do your bit, and cross your fingers.

The Passion Soundtrack by Peter Gabriel. Beautiful...

Suzi Feay's Book Bag: books on planes

Suzi Feay's Book Bag: books on planes: "Long haul flights always used to involve, for me, a bag full of books just to get me through the babies screaming, engine droning, claustrop..."

THE VERY GREAT AND ALMOST UNKNOWN ARTIST & MAGICIAN-AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE

THE BLOG AT THE YEAR END. GOODBYE 2010: HELLO 2011!

So this hiatus between Christmas and New Year?  A toe might be dipped back into the work world but it’s not really serious.  This is an intermission, a time to gather breath.  But it’s not a serious time.  It’s not a time to actually do anything-God Forbid!  Heaven Forfend!

These public holidays-so called bank holidays.  Thank God for them is all I can say.  Opportunities to take leave without digging into your actual leave.  That’s gotta be good.  I’m sure they’re considering repealing them as too expensive but could they get away with it?  Probably!

It’s been a funny old year 2010.  I don’t think anyone with a brain will look back on the year and say 2010 was notable for much.

It was the year that the UK had its first coalition government since the second world war.  But it’s just Tory government by other means.  It doesn’t actually mean anything.  It was the year that students took to the streets to protest tuition fees and were duly charged with horses and kettled into freezing corrals by the thuggish officers of the Met.  But did it indicate some kind of political maturation?  I think not.  I predict more riots as the weather improves.  I predict water-hosing and tear gas.

2010 was the year when nothing much happened.  It was more of the same.  Same old, same old.

We did of course have the Gulf oil spill and the Haiti earthquake and the Pakistan floods and the Korean conflict.  More positively we had the amazing rescue of the Chilean miners.  We had and have Wikileaks-a story still unfolding.  We had Hurricane Earl and the engagement of the Royal Princeling.

Southern Trains continue to perpetrate abuse upon an innocent and vulnerable customer base.  How is it possible that these bastards are allowed to actually assault travellers on an almost daily basis?  Is there even a slim possibility that these scumbags will have their license to operate a railway renewed in 2011?  And how is it possible that London with it’s chronically underfunded and under invested transport infrastructure has been given the Olympics for 2012?  It will be a nightmare of immense proportions!  Did anybody on the Olympic Committee actually take time off from the wining and dining to actually use a tube or a bus?

VAT rises to an eye-watering 20% on 4^th January but apart from meaning more money out of our pockets and into the governments-what does it actually mean?  And with someone like George Osborne in charge of the country’s finances how can we listen to words like fiscal rectitude and ‘we’re all in this together’ without chortling.

That’s the problem with this kind of year.  It slowly corrodes the soul but quietly.  It makes cynics out of the intelligent.  It stunts the critical faculties and makes zombies out of us all.  We look at David Cameron and Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband and George Osborne and something in our hearts curls up and dies.  Something to do with hope and aspiration.  Something to do with the rise of the marketing men.  Something to do with the absence of leadership.  These men, have any of them got any balls?  Or are they emasculated carbon copies of men?  Whatever happened to men anyway?  Very quietly they just feminised themselves away, along with male oysters and sticklebacks.

And as a blood red sun sets over an oestregen sea, all that can be heard is the clip clip of the hair stylists scissors and crackle of celebrity magazines glossy pages being turned.  Welcome to the Hell of the Normal.

The Songs in Men's Hearts

First there is the song of WAR that rises,
boils, and gurgles in the pumping blood.
Sing O Argives 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.
These 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 sings of warriors as idiots and fools.
Their fearful verses drown the battle-crys,
make burning pyres of all their vacant flags,
and tear their uniforms to tumbling rags.

Travelling light on two wheels!

An extremely lightweight and stylish steed noticed recently in a London street.

The Sunday Heart of Balance Poem for All Hallows Eve or Walpurgisnacht

BLUE HALLOWEEN


The village store has, just this minute, closed.
It’s drawbridge has gone up-portcullis down.
An aproned granny smirks behind the door
                                         and labours the cruel bolt into its case.
My eyes weak pleading falls on stony ground.
I curse her and her brood under my breadless breath,
And curse ‘life in the country’ milk-less on halloween.

A youth observes this frieze of unmet needs
In the dark hunching of Milnthorpe Square.
Just then, Death walks past, blood on his shining scythe.
‘You’re the one that I’ve been looking for
                                        these past two years and more!’
I shout and push him in the back of my old van,
                                        pleased he’s at my shoulder once again.

Then a little witch walks past with a broom,
a-hubble and a-bubble, lovely little witch.
Suddenly, I feel so sad for me.
No kids or pumpkins or those vampire masks.
Just me, and all my dry and dusty books.
Writing down the bones

What is Poetry? Poetry is the weather!

A very long time ago way way back before iphones and Nintendo's and electric cars, and Tony Blur, I used to live in...Blackpool.  Yes, that's right, Black-pool.  In gaelic it's Dubh-lin. I don't know what the gaelic is for shithole but that would have been a more appropriate name for it.  Though, thinking about it I did love the architectural vanities of that long sweeping promenade against whose walls the Irish Sea used to fling itself with relentless vigour.
The point of this ramble is that when I was in my late teens/early twenties I was hitting the pubs and clubs and almost everyone I knew was, or claimed to be, a writer.  I found an actual poet and we used to huddle in pubs reading our latest works to each other and casting lustful glances at any girls in the vicinity.  I never saw any of the other 'writer's' work, it was always in preparation.  I came to realise that though these people could pontificate on any and every aspect of the art of writing as a theoretical exercise, what they wanted was the perceived cachet of being a tormented writer without the somewhat stolid and unromantic activity of sitting at a desk for hours at a time while nuclear explosions go off in the imagination and then trying to confine that to the blankly  unrelenting page.

I came to realise then, that any productive writer even if they are producing rhyming couplets to their poodle, is worth so much more than the phoney writers who've read everything by the oulipo group and can post-modernly do a wicked gender/transcending relativistic critique of whatever you have produced and whose wicked insights can leave you gasping as you are crucified on the poisoned barbs of their wit.  These guardians of the literary heart, will leave you feeling like a drooling idiot for daring to offer your poetic baubles for their distinguished attention.  You realise as you stare into the narcissistic depths of their peepers that you are in fact, no writer at all.  What you are is a scumbag, a running sore, a leprous pretender ringing your little bell in the darkness of your own pustulent ignorance.

Whoah!  Where did all that come from?  This is straight from my Id-quill, spilling over the page in poolings of naked truth.  Please continue!

2.50pm:  The poet lumbers away from his desk of dreams and stumbles downstairs to find some coffee.  (To be continued...)

5.35pm:  Children fed he shuffles back to the desk of dreams trailing his sisyphean mortal coil behind him and commences:  What is Poetry?  Ah that is the question.  Once he responded 'let me go away and think about it'.  Returning aeons later he said with all seriousness-'If the World is a tree then Poetry is the wind in it's branches.'  Minutes passed....then:
'Why wind?  Why not the seed-ripening sun?  Or the all-encompassing rain?  Why not just the weather?'
'The weather!' he bleated weakly, 'you can't say that Poetry is the Weather!'
'Why not?'  Minutes drip from the branches of the World Tree...phut...phut...phut.  A poetic wind softly rustles it's greens.
'Because, because, because it's just not right, damn your eyes!  And another thing, if you barbarically plough my metaphorical allusions you will expose my poetic roots to the harsh winter frosts.  You will destroy my crop, my potatoes will blight and my carrots will bolt.'
'Well then,' replies the torturer 'so what is Poetry?'

The Writer's Alamanac with Garrison Keillor and 'Gas' by Charles Bukowski

A few months ago I remember reading in the London Review of Books an article by August Kleinzahler fulminating in a mouth-foamingly hostile manner about poor Garrison Keillor and his poetry and new writing site-The Writer's Almanac.  What particularly irked Kleinzahler, who is anyway I think something of a manipulative bad-boy as regards the media, was Keillor's midwest accent and his homesy soft spoken wisdom-bull.  Kleinzahler may be a hustler but Poetry needs bad boys and girls to hurl shit-bricks into the whirring fan-blades of it's complacency and self-regard.  At the end of the day it's only the poets who get covered in shit that have anything to say that's worth listening to.  Beware the clean, sensitive, milky-skinned lily-livered twats who masquerade with their metrical poses and anal scansions and their wine and poetry evenings.  Give me the mad drunken buggars like Bukowski any day.
Below is the link for Keillor's slightly dead-pan reading of Bukowsk's 'Gas'.  I'm reading Bukowski's Collected Poems at the moment and loving their ferocity and dark power-The Pleasures of the Damned  Poems 1951-1993 (Canongate 2007).  I don't know why 'Gas' isn't in it because it's great and always makes me smile.
Thanks for reading.  Success to your work.  Love and Will in Balance.


Gas


by Charles Bukowski

my grandmother had a serious gas

problem.

we only saw her on Sunday.

she'd sit down to dinner

and she'd have gas.

she was very heavy,

80 years old.

wore this large glass brooch,

that's what you noticed most

in addition to the gas.

she'd let it go just as food was being served.

she'd let it go loud in bursts

spaced about a minute apart.

she'd let it go

4 or 5 times

as we reached for the potatoes

poured the gravy

cut into the meat.



nobody ever said anything;

especially me.

I was 6 years old.

only my grandmother spoke.

after 4 or 5 blasts

she would say in an offhand way,

"I will bury you all!"



I didn't much like that:

first farting

then saying that.



it happened every Sunday.

she was my father's mother.

every Sunday it was death and gas

and mashed potatoes and gravy

and that big glass brooch.



those Sunday dinners would

always end with apple pie and

ice cream

and a big argument

about something or other,

my grandmother finally running out the door

and taking the red train back to

Pasadena

the place stinking for an hour

and my father walking about

fanning a newspaper in the air and

saying, "it's all that damned sauerkraut

she eats!"

"Gas" by Charles Bukowski, from The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain. © Harper Collins, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

MILIBAND BREAK-UP!

Yes it's true, after a string of heartbreaking No 1 hits and a five year domination of the album charts with such essential rockers as 'Pimp my Pinstripe Pants Baby' and 'Pricks in the Parliament' and the classic jazz fusion concept album  'Expensive Sandals and Expense Scandals.' it seems the Ed and Davy show is about to go solo with Ed signing what is rumoured to be a highly lucrative contract with the heavily unionised  Don't let us down or we'll 'ave you recording company.
Davy on the other hand has been coy about his future but has indicated he may not even form a new band and may instead spend time with his family discovering his musical roots though he is rumoured to be  imminently releasing a highly dubbed version of 'What's it all about Alfie?'

Some prominent music critics have described the brothers highly selective childhood experience as meaning they have no idea of what it actually means to be a normal human being while others, of a crueller disposition, have suggested the brothers are not actually human at all and arrived here in pods along with other well known performers of the nineties and noughties.  It is not known where the originating planet was but it is attested by several sources that the Mothership was simply called 'N-E-W-L-A-B-O-U-R'.

Professor Bumpn'dink of the University of Hollywood has suggested that the brothers strangely fixed facial expressions are clear evidence of aliens simply trying to copy genuine human emotions.
'Only a feckin' eedjit would believe a feckin' word to come out of their alien orifices!'  The professor said.

Others have pointed out that the boy's father was the famous Ralph Miliband who was a sociologist.  The conclusion is that if your dad is a sociologist you must know...lots of things.

Heart of Balance wishes both Ed and Davy all success in their latest scramble for power...er...we mean...career move.

We all get a little down sometimes! A poem to read down the phone to the samaritans in the wee smalll hours and dedicated to those amazing people who work for them.

TONIGHT MY HEAVING HEART

Tonight my heaving heart has laid me low

and shudders in the holes of its dark cave.

The fractured rhythm of some loathsome row

beats out the brutal measure of my days,

rasps against the roof and dripping walls

and builds into a tune that mocks and crows:

A dirge, lament or elegy that drifts and calls

over the dead white fields where nothing grows.

A Glasgow child stands on a slivered rock

and in his eyes there is no trace of fear

as Chaos lumbers down the steely Clyde;

a hairy beast wrapped in a kilted frock;

to lie in wait for forty frozen years.

INCIDENT AT CRACKINGTON HAVEN

In August 2005 we went to Cornwall on holiday and visited Crackington Haven on the day of the Boscastle floods. It never appeared on the news or in the newspapers but it will be a day we will always remember because we thought we were all going to drown. The pub mentioned in the poem is the building on the left side of the picture. Imagine everything else under water and cars and fridges heading out into the bay! It took five years to write this poem and it's been through many drafts but I felt I really needed to memorialise this day and celebrate our survival. When I hear foolish people describe themselves or others as 'Masters of The Universe', I recall that day and remember that the true Master of the Planet is the climate and the natural forces that it commands-all else is transitory.

INCIDENT AT CRACKINGTON HAVEN

Some few miles north of Boscastle,
a hamlet nestles in a crack
of cliff that rolls down to the sea.

We travelled there to try the surf,
and look around the rocky shore,
and eat some scones with clotted cream.

Some specks of rain began to fall
and angry clouds came rolling in:
The surfers dashed as lightning flashed.

We huddled in the small cafe
as raindrops became golf-ball sized,
and torrents dropped from angry skies.

The beck that chuckled like a child
now grew a matted mane, and claws,
and without pause, began to roar.

We scuttled to the white-washed pub
that perches just above the beach
while raindrops turned to tennis balls.

We ordered pub lunches and pints
and settled down to stuff ourselves
when Jack said, 'Dad! Come look at this!'

Water sluiced the car park floor
and flowed around the parked up cars.
Jack and I rushed out the door

to move our car to higher ground
with one eye on the frowning clouds
then ran back, soaking, to the pub.

Now all watched the waters grow.
Raging water from above:
Foaming water from below.

The beck spat out and the sea sucked in,
working like nefarious twins.
Then, all sound seemed to subside.

An eerie silence fell about.
A sepulchral skewer clamped
a gag in the tongue-tied clout.

Then, like a bomb the silence cracked.
A horde of banshees screaming out
our doom to split the sky in half.

The heavy rain had just been tears
from the roused and raging dragon's eyes
but now with boom, and bang, and blast,

the dark dragon herself appears-
bolts out of the beck and bends
the sky with whirling water-wings!

The hissing rain still pocks the sand
and lightning stirs the churning swirl.
The water stomps in giant's boots!

The beck's banks break apart like glass;
smashed and pounded and then ground
beneath the raging of it's flow.

The hustling trickle's now a torrent
and we feel we might be doomed.
Just then, all the children start to scream.

Men holler like loons to order.
The women's eyes are filled with tears.
Two lifeguards fret and scream for calm.

Platoons of men are window-pressed
and watch a fridge go floating by.
A tree, turning in the tide

waves feathery leaves as if
to say 'goodbye, farewell-I'm gone'
followed by strings of spinning cars.

Beside them sits an ancient pair
quietly eating pie and chips,
frowning at the fearful din.

I ask the barman-'Shall we move
upstairs and wait until the flood subsides?'
He says: 'The rooms are occupied!'

Flowing round the old white pub
go the brown sinewy arms,
like fingers rouns a pure white throat.

Any moment now I think
this pub will float right out to sea.
This monument to drink will sink

with all her screaming fearful crew.
The choice seems clear; stay here and drown
or take the road to higher ground.

Let's go! We wade out to the car
and soaking wet, we all pile in.
Thank God the engine starts first time.

The pedal-pressed leg shakes
but we judder up the hill
and leave the others to their fate.

Then...Damn it! Damn! Damn! Damn!
My moleskine notebook's in the pub
full of poems not yet grown.

Ben jumps out and rushes back
and while he's gone the seconds drag:
A son is poor exchange for some

mere book but in a flash he's back
and up the hill we steeply strain,
water washing to the rims.

The honda coughs and groans against
the push of that great flowing tongue
that so nearly licked us out.

We crest the ridge like freedom's song
Yes! We're saved! We'll live! We'll live!
Then sorrow for our shipmates down below.

We park besides malevolent floods
and rush into another handy pub.
The feverish light of the nearly-dead

dangles guttering lanterns in
our wild and widening eyes
as we wail our salty tale

to startled diners and a clutch
of locals brooding by the bar.
A sullen landlord scowls for free.

'There's talk of bodies at Boscastle!'
A news-hack from the local rag
picks about the place for scraps:

Like some strutting raven on
a field of silent slain-
Against a white backdrop-a stain!

'Crackington-where? No! No!
It's Boscastle that's in the news.
Not What-haven! Where?'

Just a place we thought we'd met
our end, that's all. That's it, no more.
A hamlet nestling in a crack of cliff.

We visited to try the surf
and look around the rocky shore,
and eat some scones with clotted cream.

Some lies are worse than others

Indeed a lie is a lie is a lie.  But some lies change the very substance of how we see the world and all that is in it.  Some lies corrode our sense of hope, lessen our courage and destroy optimism.  Some lies darken the world for us.  What is the vilest lie?  Is it political?  In 'The Republic', Plato even encourages the guardians to lie to the people as a means of control, likewise Machiavelli for whom a lie is simply another instrument of power and control for the effective prince.  Or is it to say 'I love you' and not to mean it?  Or to say I am your friend while sliding the stilletto into the ribs smilingly?



THE VILEST LIE

 The vilest lie has wormed its wicked way
 into the very heart of me and mine,
and nests there breeding poison in my veins.
My high, thick walls and ramparts fell apart as
in the demon stormed and ate me tea.
I do wish we could trap the bloody thing,
confine it in some stinking foetid hole
to meditate upon it’s ruthless crimes.
Will we wait here for redeeming signs?
Some indication of a deeply-felt regret?
I say we let it rot here by the shore!
The waves can wash away it’s many sins!
For it has plagued me with the foulest dream:
That life is just a dream, and nothing more.

Fwd: GEORGE MONBIOT TELLS IT LIKE IT IS AND IT'S NOT GOOD. Why the climate talks in December are doomed to failure.

From George Monbiot's blog:

The Process Is Dead Posted: 20 Sep 2010 12:07 PM PDT It's already clear that the climate talks in December will go nowhere - so what do we do?

THE DOUGANS' TRIUMPHANTLY RETURN TO THE UK! LAURELS SCATTERED BENEATH THEIR TYRES BY A GRATEFUL POPULATION!

Indeed palms beneath our feet and hosanna's ringing in the air?  I think not.  As we disembarked the ferry at Weymouth in the early hours of a grim Sunday the only sound was of the muffled clamp of thick fog and wind-spun drizzle as we blithely drove out of the town in completely the wrong direction for which action, in the tradition of my gender, I roundly blamed my poor suffering wife, while the children optimistically asked whether we were there yet.  Ten hours later we arrived at Kendal red-eyed but relieved and stunned by the wild beauty of the Lakes-our eyes still unused to a horizon of land that exceeded nine miles in any direction.
So here we are, back in the UK after three years in Guernsey setting up court advisory services for children and families. It was a fascinating project and I’m now taking a break before embarking on a new challenge probably in the private care sector. And to top it all we're back just in time for the recession to start biting and the city streets to erupt into protest and revolution.  Marvellous, but then again was it not always thus?
Getting an entire household back from one country to another including children, the gerbil Mr Nibbles, and all possessions is quite an endeavour and an organisational task of immense proportions so my wife Millie and I are still in recovery mode as are the children. But they were all brilliant. I can blog a bit now and start to catch up on lots of stuff that’s been happening. Life in the Channel Islands has inspired me to begin writing a fairly lengthy poem called ‘A Theory of Islands’ and I’ll be posting bits on that as it develops. Essentially the concepts of flotsam and jetsam and the random way in which lives are cast up on distant shores serves as prime theme and then there is something of the inwardness of islands and the inevitable predatory reaction to ‘passing trade’. I began to think of smuggling and ship-wrecking and piracy not only as illegal survival activity but as a philosophical mindset determined by location, in this case the proximity of the sea-a kind of smuggle-osophy. And then there is the sea herself with all her mystery and pitiless wildness. To live within the ambit of such a wild force must inevitably impact on one’s growth and nature, on one’s perceptions and values. Anyway that’s my theory of islands stuff. It’s great being back in the UK and I’m aware how I relish just the great diversity of cultures and peoples. Even the complexities of weather are appealing-though I’m not sure how long that will last. I’m going to start posting some video on the blog over the coming weeks including some of my songs, some interpretations and some of my poems performed for the blog. When I get settled in the Brighton area I’ll be doing some gigs and readings and will post those dates here. It’s looking like I’ll be working in London which was part of my plan so I’m looking forward to that and just enjoying being unemployed for a wee while. Thanks for reading-Success to your work!

One of my favourite curry recipes from Jamie Oliver! Thank you Jamie!

Peter's Lamb Curry (from Jamie's book The Return of the Naked Chef) - serves 8.

2 tablespoons butter
2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
285ml/1/2 pint stock or water
1.5kg/3 1/2lb leg of lamb, diced
1 handful of chopped mint and coriander
285ml/1/2 pint natural yoghurt
salt and freshly ground black pepper
lime juice to taste

Hot and Fragrant Rub Mix -

2 tablespoons fennel seeds
2 tablespoons cumin seeds
2 tablespoons coriander seeds
1/2 tablespoon fenugreek seeds
1/2 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 clove
1/2 a cinnamon stick
2 cardamom pods
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Curry Paste Ingredients -

5cm/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled
2 tennis-ball-sized red onions, peeled
10 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 fresh chillies, with seeds
1 bunch of fresh coriander

Preheat your oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.

Lightly toast the fragrant rub mix in the oven or under the grill. Chop the curry paste ingredients roughly, add the rub mix and puree in a food processor.

In a large casserole pan, fry the curry paste mixture in the butter until it goes golden, stirring regularly. Add the tomatoes and the stock or water. Bring to the boil, cover with kitchen foil and place in the oven for one and a half hours to intensify the flavour. Remove the foil and continue to simmer on the stove until it thickens. This is your basic curry sauce.

Fry the lamb in a little olive oil until golden, then add to the curry sauce and simmer for around 1 hour or until tender.
Sprinkle with chopped coriander and mint and stir in the yoghurt. Season to taste and add a good squeeze of lime juice. Serve with spiced breads, steamed basmati rice and lots and lots of cold beer.

FROM BILL MCKIBBEN OF 350.ORG-OBAMA'S HALO SLIPS...AGAIN

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bill McKibben - 350.org <organizers@350.org>
Date: 10 September 2010 21:02
Subject: Just left a meeting with the White House...
To: heartofbalance@gmail.com

The White House refused to accept our offer of a free solar panel installation on 10/10/10. That's why we need to lead by example, and show our leaders how work gets done.  Can you start or join an event in your community on 10/10/10?

Dear friends,

I just walked out of a disappointing meeting with the White House: they refused to accept the Carter solar panel we came to Washington to deliver and said that they would continue their "deliberative process" to discuss putting solar panels back on the White House roof.

Well, we're done deliberating. When Pakistan is under water, Russia is on fire, and millions of people are ready for clean energy jobs, it's not time to deliberate: it's time to get to work.

Today marks the one month countdown to the 10/10/10 Global Work Party. Will you help us celebrate by signing up to register or attend an event today?

We entered this morning's meeting buoyed by the over 40,000 of you who signed our letter requesting President Obama to make the retrofit. We were equally heartened by the hundreds of work parties that have been registered since our road trip began on Tuesday. And we were humbled by reports of the amazing work being planned in places like Zimbabwe, where a group of students will be installing solar panels on the roof of a rural hospital for 10/10/10.

I'm also incredibly proud of the three students from Unity College who stood right up to the officials we met with and explained to them that if they wanted to communicate about the greening of the government they should do something in a place where people pay attention.

This week's road trip got incredible media coverage in places like Newsweek, the Washington Post, USA Today, and more. Thousands of you helped spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Hundreds of you signed up new work parties to show how you're leading this movement for climate solutions. Because in the end, that's what it is going to take: a movement.

Your efforts are building incredible momentum. In the last month, big partners like Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, and the World Council of Churches have joined the 10:10 Campaign and 350.org in planning for 10/10/10. The day will be a moment to bring our entire movement together and show our so-called leaders what real leadership looks like.

As for the Carter solar panel, it's going to stay in Washington for now, ready for President Obama to come take it home. And as for me, I'm going to head home myself for a few days of rest before hitting the road again to drum up support for 10/10/10.

Your hard work means the world to us, let's keep up the fight.

Onwards,

Bill McKibben

PS: This week was a big week for our online growth too -- we're super close to 100,00 supporters on Facebook. Push us over the edge: Click here to invite your facebook friends to join you.

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350.org is an international grassroots campaign that aims to mobilize a global climate movement united by a common call to action. By spreading an understanding of the science and a shared vision for a fair policy, we will ensure that the world creates bold and equitable solutions to the climate crisis. 350.org is an independent and not-for-profit project.

What is 350? 350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Scientists measure carbon dioxide in "parts per million" (ppm), so 350ppm is the number humanity needs to get below as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. To get there, we need a different kind of PPM-a "people powered movement" that is made of people like you in every corner of the planet.