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25.9.09

REVIEW OF 'THE SECRET'

This is the kind of drivel that makes my blood boil. Why? Why can't I just shake my head and pass on by? Because this Law of Attraction crap is endemic. It's everywhere! It takes the gullible for a ride and gives a platform to dangerous fools. Dangerous because they encourage regression back to some ignorant childish state where the sun rises just for you and where anything will happen just because you want it to.
And here we have some dimple cheeked workshop leaders telling us we can have all that money-squillions! We can have that fancy sports car. We can feed all those insecurities with wish-fulfillment. We too can have sexual partners hurl themselves at our feet and ride into New York on a donkey to the sound of ringing hosannas.
This string of dodgy looking gurus bedeck themselves with titles like Prof this or Dr that. I'd guess there's hardly an o'level between the lot of them. And what also galls is the sheer poverty of their message. That material wealth will somehow make you feel better about yourself.  That 'feelings' are what it's all about.
I'll tell you a secret-for nothing-it's true!  You can do just about anything if you put your mind to it but get this-shit happens!  Of course you can change and grow but get this too-it takes work, damned hard work and discipline and study and maybe even a seasoning of good old luck.  Just sitting there's not going to do it.  Nope!  Sorry!
The Integral Living Program devised by Integral Institute is based on ideas and facts from the very latest research in Developmental Psychology and some of the best brains around.  Go have a look at Integral Institute's website.  But don't expect any secrets.  Nobody is going to give you any secrets!  You've got to get off your lardy backside and work!
The Secret is a manual for narcissists who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
This is brain gloop.  This is chicken-shit for the Soul.  Avoid like the plague!  Unclean!  Unclean!

18.9.09

A love sonnet for a friday

I love sonnets; little balls of poetic gold they are. And they are quite ancient forms too, first created by Petrarch around 1235 or so, and then developed and evolved by poets ever since. Sonetto is the italian for 'room' or 'small song' or 'little sound' and that's a good description of this form with its endless possibilities for interior design!  In English the rhyme scheme was adapted and evolved, most notably by Shakespeare with his three quatrains and rhyming end couplet.  Lately the form has taken off yet again and Seamus Heaney's sonnets are glorious as are those by Edna St Vincent Millay, Kavanagh and Frost-check out his, 'Acquainted with the Night'. As Edward Hirsch and the divine Eavan Bolan write in their definitive book 'The Making of a Sonnet'-'Each poet individually comes up against the massive determinants of the form.'  These determinants of form are the ground where the muse is provoked out of her normal register/provoked into sometimes bringing down the fire from the heavens and manifesting some awful or wondrous truth.  Isn't that one of the things that poetry is for?  Elsewhere Hirsch alludes to the sonnet as 'a small vessel capable of plunging tremendous depths' and most beautifully as 'one of the enabling forms of human inwardness.'
This little song doesn't have any of those pretensions.  It was written as a bit of fun for my beloved; and that's also what poetry's for.

Here I've kept to a fourteen lined iambic pentameter, folded the piece into a quatrain, a middle couplet (where I've tried to stash the notorious sonnetic turn) and a concluding octet with an emphatic closing final two lines. Naturally this sonnet was written for my beloved Millie, to be recited by me, clad in tights and strumming a melancholy chord upon my lute in the lower garden (God!  What a thought!) while she attends to her toilette at her balcony. I hope you enjoy it.
Success to your work!



MILLIE

You’re more to me than earth and moon and all
the fancy treasures; pearls and solid gold
stashed in sparkling piles in vaulted halls.
Beside your beauty they’re just old and cold!

As rivers run their channels to the sea,
so time marches with a jaunty swing.

How hot the day was you turned thirty-three!
And, as a gift, I wrote this little thing.
It may not last like diamonds or gold;
It will not bring the critics to their knees!
Nor alter much the flowing of your day.
And what I truly feel cannot be told.
Like the wind that breathes on forest trees,
my love breathes in the spaces of your soul.

8.9.09

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE

Stephen Covey published his book in 1989 and it's been a bestseller ever since. I wrote these habits down several years ago and kept them on my wall to remind me what constitutes effectiveness as a human being. I don't think we can hear about these too often and I am saddened that so few leaders in the world today appear to possess these habits. It aint rocket science and they work.

BE PROACTIVE
BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND
PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST
THINK WIN/WIN
SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND,THEN TO BE UNDERSTOOD
SYNERGISE
SHARPEN THE SAW



This mindmap is by Serge de Gheldere and is taken from Gideon King's Novamind Connect site.  Novamind offers an excellent piece of mindmapping software for macs.  See more at http://www.novamind.com/connect/nm_documents/269

1.9.09

THE ORGANISED WRITER

I promised some time ago to write a short piece about how I personally organise my writing and my projects. I'm by no means suggesting this as an example of ultimate organisational skill but only as possibly giving a wee bit of advice and ideas that may be useful.

I don't separate my writing and professional and personal life into silos-that doesn't work for me. So this is, I guess, how I organise my whole life, in terms of trying to achieve my goals with the minimum amount of fuss and stress.
The major reason I make a big study out of this is because I am, at heart and by nature, a complete airhead!

The uber-template for my work is provided by David Allen's Getting Things Done or GTD as its known. His best-selling book by the same name is available everywhere. Allen begins his strategy for organising information into CAPTURE. If useful info flows past you and into the big sea, there's loads of good stuff you're going to miss-ideas, research, creative solutions, inspirational thoughts and deadline dates as well as opportunities. So capture it all and consign it like a great steaming pool of potential into the IN-TRAY.
Then on a daily basis you dive into this pool and bottom out the whole thing. Letters/emails/ideas on post-it notes/bills/unfinished poems/doctors appointments/execution warrants etc,
Each item is subjected to a formula-Can it be dumped? So bin it! Can it be done in less than three minutes? Then do it? Does it need to be deferred? So put it in a place where you'll pick it up again such as a @PROJECTS FILE. Is this item dependent on someone else? So slap it in a @WAITING ON file that you'll follow up appropriately
when the time is right. Create the files that work for you-we're all very different. But don't have too many action files.
The classic GTD process looks like this:



David Allen's website offers a range of GTD tools which are well made though a little pricey. Crafty folk can make their own. I would strongly advise getting a TICKLER FILE which is simply 43 folders labelled 1 through to 31 and 12 folders with the names of each month. You can place stuff in here that will ensure you come across it at the right date. A good labeller is also an essential tool for labelling your various folders or even your children-so you don't forget their names! A stapler that you can whack is also highly recommended. I also use a metal stacking desk-top system to store my current folders and my tickler file upright where they're all at hand.
I think the great thing about David's system is that, once you 'get it' and trust it then you can let go of remembering all that stuff which is a great stress releaser and I think a real aid for creatives.

For WRITING I carry a MOLESKINE notebook everywhere-they're just about the best I've used. At some point I transfer my writing to a hard backed and divided A4 notebook, again by hand- I use an Oxford FLINGBOOK. I use MINDMAPS to write my poems in this book and though somewhat arduous to do all this by hand I regard this step as an essential re-write. The completed poem or piece of writing is then ripped out and filed in a loose leaf file with a small sticky label with the name of piece written on. This eventually becomes a hand-written manuscript and it is this file that is typed into my computer as I hurl my quill pen to the floor and enter the digitised age. I use a 24 inch Mac Intel and write nearly everything in SCRIVENER-far and away my favourite writing program. Later they'll be exported to WORD but I rarely use that to actually write. If I'm on a PC I use PAGEFOUR which is similar to SCRIVENER but not, I feel, quite as good. I also use a Mac Laptop but mine recently blew its logic board so I'm unhappily using a Dell. I also use a dictaphone to record my work and read it back to myself. Currently I use tape but I'm considering some method of getting them onto cd's-I can't recommend enough listening to your own poems while you're cooking or taking a dump-Poetry is oral. Sometimes a poem won't reveal/expose itself until it's heard.
I write anachronistically with a Silver Parker filled with real ink. I keep a load of little supplies like sticky labels, index cards, scissors, pencils and highlighters and a very important RED PEN in a robust little zippered pouch. I always keep a couple of index cards in the back of whatever book I'm reading to keep a note of particular references or quotes.  I keep a range of 'Tombo' coloured pens for my hand drawn mindmaps near at hand. Like many writers I am almost sexually aroused by stationery supplies and am often to be found in such places gently fingering materials from the top shelf! (Enough of that! This is not a confessional piece!)

I have a Shorter Oxford DICTIONARY and a Roget's THESAURUS for reference. I'm not keen on any style instructors or grammar manuals like Fowler's or Strunk and White. (They've become a publishing opportunity for those people who enjoy wagging fingers and shouting such as Lynn Truss and John Humphreys. Language is alive and moves like a big dirty river-something these guys don't seem to realise. If you want to read something from someone who knows and loves language-try Bill Bryson's 'Mother Tongue' or Guy Deutscher's book or anything by Stephen Fry.)

On the computer I use EVERNOTE and YOJIMBO for capturing info like snippets of quotes or websites or visual info that I can sort through at leisure. I also use NOTEBOOK from CIRCUS PONIES SOFTWARE which is a digitised MOLESKINE and a lovely little program. The best mindmapping programs are MINDMANAGER and NOVAMIND and are easily available on the web.

I always use Mindmaps if I'm at a meeting or lecture and want to record information or actions.

If I'm writing all day, I do it in bed by the way, surrounded by my papers and tools and wearing my pyjamas. I only discovered them recently when I had to go to hospital-but honestly, pyjamas seem to be a uniform of the subconscious allowing a stream of creativity to flow through. Once you're dressed you're back in the Real World. For females I'm presuming long flowing nightdresses with fluffy collars would have the same effect. Or you could write naked I suppose? Whatever floats your boat! Me I'm sold on pyjamas-with buttoned shorts. (Not trousers with white cords-that would be 'Carry on Poet!' Don't do it!)

So there it is. I hope there was something there that was useful. Do let me have your comments and success to your work!

Tony.

30.8.09

A poem from the dark-side

Some poems dip toes into little pools of darkness. Others just dive in, to rivers of shit. As Jung memorably said- we do not grow by turning always into the light but by making the darkness visible. Though this is one of the darkest poems I've ever written, I hope you enjoy it. The image of relationships ending in acrimony and hatred or betrayal, that always comes to my mind, is of bloody and cruel trench warfare. Of slaughter. As family mediation is one of the strings on my bow of being, I am witness to a lot of this. I suppose, to continue the analogy, I'm one of the stretcher bearers running round gathering up the bits. I once had a powerful dream of separated parents as medieval knights jousting, using their children as lances-'splintering against their shields of hate.' Of course it's not always like that. Many people, probably most, end their relationships with quiet dignity even heroism. But that doesn't make for the best dark poetry!
And yes...For a while I was a soldier there myself-bewildered and trench-footed.
This is an inverted sonnet-that is, with octet and sestet changed round and without punctuation of any kind, apart from the bracketed (to us), and the paltry comma after 'you, and me' to create a sense of separation, topsy-turviness and confining loss.
This is from my nearly completed collection 'The Book of Three Rings.' For which I am currently seeking a publisher!


LIVING WOUNDS

Kindness is a language that is dead (to us)
A gag that swells within our strictured throats
We’ve laid the concrete over our green fields
And cut down all the trees and crucified
It all upon a cross of hate and pain
Hammered in with poisonous nails

Our insides spilled out in a bloody trench
Beneath the clouds of deadly gas-the stench
rises from the corpses of the family friends
Lying half-buried in the sodden mud
Beyond them by a blackly blasted tree
Lies something that once was you, and me
It lies now in a desecrated tomb
For we've been born again-as living wounds

14.8.09

From a 1994 Notebook

I felt a frozen thought fall from the book shelves. Morning light danced on the carpet as it crawled across the floor and wound its way upstairs and under the bedroom door.

Onions/Carrots/Potatoes/Celery/Cauliflower/Green-Red Pepper/1 small cooking apple/Tomatoes

...I am amazed that such an attractive woman should do such a job. We are in the lakes, somewhere, in some kind of park. She becomes cold and although I dearly want to fuck her, I go running round her. Run miles to find the car and bring it to her. Running like a little boy trying to please the headmistress when all I really want to do is come all over her. She is best described as willowy...reed-like...as if glimpsed through gauze.

Yet again of Sharon. She ends up sharing my bed with some other guy but I fuck her anyway. It's good.....................(water damage has removed words)...I am sure that she knows. In fact the radical fact is that she doesn't, but something profound had changed. Some atmosphere of trust has dissolved. But by God, it was good fucking her.

There was this awful time at the bedside. Holding that hand that the fucking demon arthritis had swollen then withered into a claw. I felt a surge of something deep in my body, something cold entered my heart and i knew with unshakeable certainty I was feeling death on me. I knew she was going to die. My head began to swim. A chair scraping on the floor sounded like a car crash. A toilet flushing sounded like a great river breaking its banks.
'Tell me' I demanded suddenly fiercely, urgently...'Do you love me?'

Flowers from her grave.

'Even the darkest night has an end. Even the brightest stars must ultimately be extinguished. Even the all-conquering mountains must collapse into their own bony entrails. There is no forever-that's just blind faith. There is only the knowledge of now and some unreasoning certainty about tomorrow.
More than that is too dreadful to contemplate. What the early Church did not realise is that one moment in hell is for all eternity. The experience of hell never leaves...never leaves.'
'You've put a foot in hell then?' smiled the newspaperman.
'I-have-been-there-yes...I should say that.' He spoke the words with such intensity that the smile drained from the newspaperman's face like air from a child's balloon.

Pancakes/Spinach/Ricotta1/4/ Gorgonzola 1/4/Parmesan1/4/Spring Onions/Mozzarella1/4/Double Cream/Butter/Milk

A contagious silence billowed and eddied around the house, peopling it with ghosts-stairs creaked, slithering hands rubbed wet windows in the rain. Floorboards groaned like restless sleepers and with the last ebb of the sun it became a dormitory of tiny noises.

TVP/Chunks and Mince/Turmeric/Mung beans

12.8.09

INTO THE BONES OF A POEM

I wrote recently that I would unpack a poem from my impending collection to indicate a bit about how it emerges from the chrysalis of thought into the form, meter and rhyme of a whole, complete poem.

Here's the original poem in all its uncut glory. When I wrote it I thought it was a finished thing; when I returned to it, it seemed so unfinished as to be hardly started.

FORCEPS DELIVERY-POET'S BLOCK

Contractions have ceased
for two weeks.
There has been silence.
No little kicks or movements.

But now I birth this
being back to life.
Push out this new sound.
It is a pub-delivery.

A message from the omnipotent stars?
Postcards from the Pleiades?
No-just these small words
Like tiny fists, opening and closing
in the gloaming.

Well,it's an experience just writing that out without interfering! The poem was about a fallow period in the middle of a creative frenzy of some nine months when most of 'The Book of Three Rings' was written. A period when I had given up work to concentrate on writing and other stuff-real work!

I experienced this period as some kind of pregnancy and that's what got me thinking about this metaphor. Poems were dropping like daily babies on the floor and the first word 'contractions' came in to my head.
But the rhythm in those first two lines is unhappy-making. A first line of four syllables and two stresses and a second line of three syllables with two stresses. Why not join the line up to make four clear stresses-tract/ceased/two/weeks?

Contractions have ceased for two whole weeks

It's certainly a lot clearer with a regular four beat line(tetrameter)though there's no getting away from the ugliness of 'contractions'-not a nice word! Maybe I should have put 'Contractions they have ceased for two whole weeks' but the 'they' seemed to contrive the line into pentameter in a very artificial way. It seemed to take away some truth, and all and everything,even the laws of prosody must bow their heads to truth. Non?

'There has been silence' seems a bit obvious and lacking the fear that went with the lack of creative juice-would it ever return? So it became:

An all pervading silence surrounds me.


This is much better with it's sense of that almost palpably oppressive type of silence and my comfort zone-the iambic pentameter. Ti-Tum Ti-Tum Ti-Tum Ti-Tum Ti-Tum.

No little kicks or movements with its terribly clumsy beat becomes:


No swimming in the limpid sac-no kicks


Of course I'm in danger of doing my metaphors to death here but really there's no going back so the author just dives in with a clear and colloquial declaration:

So now I'll birth this bugger back to life:
PUB DELIVERY! THE FORCEPS OF PURE WILL!


This starting to be a bit of a piss-take with the capitals signifying a shouted line. We must not take ourselves too seriously hence:

(medicated with the sacred hop)

I decide to keep the next couplet pretty much as it is but change 'stars' to 'gods'.

A message from the omnipotent gods?
A one-off postcard from the pleiades?


The poet is confronted with his own hyperbole and confesses his sins pentametrically:

No way! Just fucking words and words and words.

But like a good poetic sneak just can't resist returning to his clever metaphor and giving the ending a gloss as if the closing door has had a makeover. In poetry this showiness is generally a fault. The poet is seduced by his ever more outlandish metaphors and similes. Like a drug-addicted lover who we just can't leave. Ah, that old seducing mind!

So we have:

Like tiny fists on waving stalks.
Like dumb mouths opening/closing, in their sleep.

So the re-written poem is:

POET'S BLOCK

Contractions have ceased for two whole weeks.
An all-pervading silence surrounds me.
No swimming in the limpid sac-no kicks.
So now I'll birth this bugger back to life:
PUB DELIVERY! THE FORCEPS OF PURE WILL!
(medicated with the sacred hop.)
A message from the omnipotent gods?
A one-off postcard from the pleiades?
No way! Just fucking words and words and words.
Like tiny little fists on waving stalks;
like dumb mouths opening/closing,in their sleep.


I think it's lots better but I hate to see my hubris so nakedly displayed!

Success to your work!

3.8.09

Jen Hadfield wins 2009 T S Eliot Prize!




Jen Hadfield is the youngest poet ever to win the T S Eliot Prize. She is prodigiously gifted as a poet, and has a voice that melts the legs and caused a mild palpation in this elderly gentleman's chest! Hear her read on the magnificent Poetry Archive-(Very well done indeed Andrew Motion). 'Nigh-No-Place,' her second collection reeks of the harbour-smells of Scottish islands-those God-droppings set in sapphire. There is a lilting thread that gently weaves a skein through all the poems. Language used like brushes of gentle light to articulate the moods of weather, the blashy-wadder, the inner moods. Here sheep and cats and dogs are characters. There is a refreshing sincerity in Jen's poems (when I went back to my own work I was appalled by my poetry's gravitas, its metropolitan disdain or pehaps the frown it wears as it looks around for victims...Ahem.) Jen's poems have none of that-they are indeed fresh, open and young. I wish her well in what promises to be a very fruitful career.
Buy the book and read it slowly rolling the words inside your skull as you would a good wine in your mouth. There's iodine from the seaweed gathering in your nostrils as you read this verse. Sit with it and carry the poems around for a few days. There's a waft of Lagavulin here. These poems take you back to what really matters-they mind you what your poetry's for.

31.7.09

Various Musings

Mmmm...Well two weeks ago I had Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction. This was my first experience of surgery and though a fairly routine operation, I was not looking forward to it-a full anaesthetic being required and me not being keen on such things for a variety of reasons, such as being much less tolerant of pain than normal folk!
One consequence is that I have six weeks to recover and have spent my first week stumbling round on crutches.

Something bad did happen in hospital and I want to write about it in the blog but I'm going to just sit a bit longer with it before I go fully into print. It is around nurse-vampyres chattering like gaggles of fruit bats and spearing we poor patients on the dripping, poisonous trivia of their meaningless gabble. God was I ever glad to get out of there!

My Book of Poetry-The Book of Three Rings which I have now been working on for seven years is nearly finished and I'm on the final draft. PARDON ME! WHAT'S THAT YOU SAID? IS IT ANY GOOD? GODDAMN YOU TO THE SEVENTH CIRCLE OF HELL YOU HAIR SCUTTLING BUG!! AHEM! OF COURSE IT'S GOOD!

Many of the poems featured in this blog are drawn from this collection. I'm really looking forward now to getting into a new project and already have some ideas. The Book of Three Rings is the story of a relationship cycle triaded into three rings-Despair/Spirit and Healing and finally Transformation. It sounds heavy as unrelenting debt and it is in parts but... I'm pleased to have honoured it with so much sweat and tears. The final story is that out of tragedy we can be moulded for greatness or smallness and it is the capacity to rise above the anger of broken-heartedness and to find forgiveness that allows us to grow, heal and move on...Obvious really!
I expect to be finished by end August and it just so happens I'm signed off work until then because of my knee!


In the next few days I'll publish some more poems from the collection, say a bit about how I write and organise my projects and show how poems transform and change under the re-write, with particular note to meter and form. (It may not sound interesting dude but in fact the meter and the form are the priming mechanisms for the poetic hit!)

Success to your work!

26.7.09

Freya Hoffmeister-Conqueror of New Zealand South Island!



Now this, my friends, is what heroes are made of. Freya is the first woman to solo kayak around New Zealand South Island-an incredible feat of skill and endurance. Congratulations and honour to you Freya.

22.7.09

Song of the Siren-A Poem!

Song of the Siren

Let me sing you a siren song,
a song that flows from the heart of me.
From the lush valleys
crazed with wild poppies
to the edge of the silvered sea.

Let me be the voice of the wind,
the soul-song of the mystery.
Let me be well carved
as from ebony
to the grain of infinity.

I saw a thousand serpents snaking.
I saw herds of great beasts grazing.
I saw hordes of armies feasting.
In the land of the lotus-eaters.

The dark ship-shapes made landfall there
in the harbour of the harpies.
The land where brave souls
are sold for gold,
the land of all that scares me.

Let me sing you a sea shanty,
a song of a ship on a wine dark sea.
A ship in full sail,
on course for true North.
Seeks Ygsdrassill the wisdom tree.

Are these the harbingers of doom?
The cold of the night; the dark of the dream?

Phosphorescence of burning stars
then the dark of the hunter’s moon.
Trust flows from the dark.
Trust is dammed too soon.
Trust in the rose that’s lost its bloom.

I felt the white sail billowing
like a white stallion whinnying.
A cold fear lingering;
in the land of the lotus-eaters.

I saw ten thousand women weeping
while away the men were creeping.
I heard the fiddle; saw the burning.
In the land of the lotus-eaters.

7.7.09

I COULD'VE BEEN BILL GATES!

It was many moons ago in the wrong half of the seventies and I was working as a programmer in the Department of Health and Social Security in Blackpool. We programmed in Cobol and I still get shivers when I think of those little binary digits. The department was made up of about twenty programmers and three systems analysts under the leadership of Geoff, a tall, thoughtful, lean man in his early fifties. Apart from having a strategically placed desk where I could glimpse the knickers of the sixth-form girls at the secondary school next door playing netball, the job had little to recommend it. The printers spewed out vast rolls of graphed paper which were checked endlessly. The computers were vast boxes with spinning tapes occupying football pitch-sized halls.
I decided, after several months, this was beyond a joke and determined to hitchhike around Europe with my guitar for a couple of years in the time-honoured manner of troubadours and poets over the centuries. This was, needless to say, viewed as a poor career option by my already-old geeky colleagues .
But you could have knocked me down with a wet fish when, upon hearing of my plans, our somewhat distant leader Geoff invited me out to a restaurant as he wished to put a serious proposal to me. I can’t remember what we ate, Chinese I think it was but I was intrigued and just a little suspicious that his designs might be of a sexual nature.
We bantered a bit and then Geoff leaned forward with a serious expression and said ‘ you know Tony, my wife and I have never had children, though we dearly wanted them.’
I nodded while hovering up some Chop Suey. That’s a shame’ I empathised.
‘Yes but what I really wanted Tony was a son. I wonder if you could be that son?’
I stopped eating and stared awkwardly at Geoff and then the table. There was a pathetic kind of pleading in his voice that made me resist my first impulse which was to laugh. It was if he had just told me he had fallen in love with me. In fact he had. He wanted to be my daddy…and frankly that position had been openly available for some time and was now one that I considered a tad redundant.
‘Er…Er…’ I took a deep swig of beer.
‘Well I don’t know what to say Geoff…I mean..’I trailed off.
‘You see’ he continued as if I’d said nothing and he appeared to be growing in excitement, his eyes began to twinkle.
‘Computers are the future Tony. Oh I know it’s hard to believe now but they will get smaller and smaller till one day they’ll be the size of a wristwatch with holographic projections, perhaps even beyond that. But you see, when they get the size of a television say, then people will buy them for their houses, and very soon there will be a computer in every home in the country. People will talk to each other with them, they’ll play games on them, put photos on them, write letters on them. There will even be small computers for carrying in a briefcase. In 20 years time it would be as strange not to have a computer as…well…a car!’
His voice had taken on a quivering quality as if he were truly aroused by the vision he had just painted.
‘And I intend to be there’ he continued…’All these computers will need programmes, will need software, they’ll need operating systems…Just happens to be my speciality, and I want you to be part of it. I want you to come into the business with me. I want you to take it over when I’ve…when I er…mmmm’ He trailed off, lost in a sea of primogeniturial complications and just looked at me expectantly.
In hindsight it is strange to admit that Geoff’s predictions seemed less mind-blowing and truly prescient than they did twenty years later when everything came to pass just as he said it would.
‘But I’m going hitch-hiking in Europe.’ I said somewhat lamely. Geoff’s eyes clouded with disappointment and possibly a hint of disbelief. He had offered me the riches of Croesus and I was going hitch-hiking? It made little sense.
I did go hitch-hiking round Europe and must have sung ‘Strawberry Fields’ a thousand times. I got back several months later and got a job in the Cleansing Department as a road-sweeper. One of my ‘roads’ was the one outside the Computer Department and my ex-colleagues would view my fallen status with a strange mix of compassion and outright glee.
Me? I thought-alright you bastards, you may be laughing now but I could’ve been Bill Gates! The richest man in the world!




4.7.09

John Gray is not God!

True but he has written a great book. I strongly advise you to read, study, ponder, and digest.

Oh the lives of the Idle Rich!



I want this boat. So what if I don't know how to sail? So what if sailing upon the deep I shall be superficial and shallow? I want it...NOW!!! NOW I SAY!!!

Black-eyed Blair

Tony Blair, the infamous war criminal, who is anything but in hiding, received a medal yesterday presented by his mate-the now quite dotty Lord Mandeltoon of LaLa Land. Blair sported a black eye. Perhaps received from an angry Iraqi mother? The medal was rumoured to be for services to India while PM but others say it is for the 200 thousandth Iraqi child death milestone recently passes in a drone attack. Very well done Tony. Congratulations on your...er...medal.

The Obama Fly-swatting Incident

The Iraqi and Afghan Metaphors are too obvious to be even interesting!

1.7.09

Unrolling Maps of 'The Real' at the feet of the Sleepwalkers

I was talking to a man about ‘truth’. He was a senior manager in a local government department. Incredibly straight, sensible, ambitious, a real eye for detail. A born bureaucrat. Always in a suit. Yet without a sense of humour or personal warmth, a real cold fish. A man with a great gaping hole in his belly. A man of our times. A management man. A meetings man.
It was early on in our working relationship and I was referring to the contents of a letter that had been sent out by another manager to a member of the public which contained information about me that was inaccurate. That I considered to be inaccurately critical of me. I had instituted a grievance against the author of this letter seeking the letter to be withdrawn and was discussing this in my supervision session.
‘So what do you want to get out of this?’ He asked me. I was puzzled by the question.
‘I don’t want to get anything out of it. I just want to be clear about what is true and what isn’t.’
He looked at me closely. I remember vividly his somewhat dull eyes scanning me for some clue as to what I meant. Finding none his expression changed to one of pity. I realised with a shock that this man whom I considered morally undeveloped actually pitied me.
‘Truth’ he explained ‘is relative, it depends on your perspective.’ I was confused.
‘But the letter was inaccurate and false. The things it said happened did not, in fact, happen, and the interpretations put upon those things that did not happen are necessarily false. Surely that makes it untrue?’
He shook his head sadly and stared at me as if I were a particularly dense child .
‘You have a lot to learn.’
I thought ‘this man lives in the World as if he is immortal. Yet one day the cold hand of his death will be upon him and nothing will be relative and even if it were it will not matter. All that will matter in that moment is what he has done with his life. One day he will understand this. One day you will understand it too and me and all of us. That question-WHAT HAVE YOU MADE WITH THE RAW MATERIAL OF YOUR LIFE? will be demanded. For now this poor fool has created a moral code that demands nothing of him and can legitimise any failure to live the moral life. These moral relativists have created a bland landscape for the soul. Anything is equal to anything else. As we concluded our discussion he called me a crusader, meaning, I presume, that I am carried away by my own outrage, that my emotions get out of proportion. Yet a part of me responds to this and senses the truth of it.
There is the story of the Comanche, the tribe of horse warriors pushed down from the great plains to the harsh deserts of South West America by the inexorable spread of the white people. The tribe would elect a chief whose role was to lead the men in time of war. In the heat of battle the war chief must go to the centre of the battlefield and thrust a spear into the ground. A cord is attached from the spear to the war chiefs ankle. There he must stay until the battle is won or he is dead. What a profound action that is when we meditate upon it.
It is a metaphor upon which I based my life. Be clear. Be honest. Stand up for something!
So I say YES to life! There is a position. If you tell a lie then you are wrong. It is simple. All that is required is courage. Courage mon Coeur! That shall be my motto and were I ever foolish enough to possess a coat of arms, that is what shall be written upon it, probably against a background of a hand making the two fingered gesture.
Boldness is required for such an active philosophy and wisdom comes in knowing when to bend with the wind. Humility too is needed in order to accept our mistakes as gifts. These are the tools of life. We are not here to be managed. We are not in this World to respond to market fluctuations. We are not given this life to accumulate more and more THINGS!
We are here to obey the rushing torrent of our Heart. We are here to listen to the song of our blood merging with the cosmic pulse of the Universe! Ah! There I go again getting carried away!
But then why not?
Of course there is risk. Where there is belief, commitment and faith to inform the lived life, there is always the risk of dogma, rigidity and prejudice towards the different. But Christ! Life is surely meant to be a great adventure and the dead hand of the corporate is upon us. I say-TO HELL WITH THEM!
I was relaying the story of the War Chief and the spear one night to a friend in a pub. He smiled at the story and said:
“Bloody hell, sometimes I’d want to pick up that spear and get the hell out of there!’ We both laughed and then the truth of what he had just said came crashing into my consciousness. Sometimes you have to pick the spear up and get the hell out of there. It offers flexibility and the ability to flow. It offers the possibility of forgiveness. Where there is the choice to stand firm there is always the option to run like hell. There must be. It is life.
I would have found it easy to die for something, it’s living for something that takes such effort. The alienation of men in Western society I feel is in no small part due to the absence of a war in our lifetimes. It is all so beautifully simple in a time of war-we are over here, they are over there..C’mon boys let’s kill the bastards! Deriving meaning in a time of peace and living a life of honour is not easy. Enemies are no longer identifiable. It is easier to demonise the opposition than to see ourselves in their monstrosities. Do you think the Serbs in Kosovo were aliens? What we watched on our TV sets with horrified fascination was the obverse side of compassionate masculinity. It is only when we own and take responsibility for the seeds of our own being in the actions of the ‘enemy’ that we become real. Only when we understand that the torturer breathes the same stardust as ourselves do we understand. The simple tenets of faith become too self evidently phony otherwise.
And yet...and yet there are examples of noble men to be found everywhere. Indeed I find myself at times surrounded by them. We all struggle with our masculinity in a world which would castrate us. Castrated men are easy to control. They work themselves to death willingly and fight when directed. They do as they are told. They are relieved of the madness of passion and ecstasy. But the warrior poets, the intellectual explorers surfing the edges of the current paradigms, the questing mystics-they are really dangerous assassins of the 'taken-for-granted'. They unroll maps of the real at the feet of the sleepwalkers.

From 'Letter to a Father Unknown'

26.6.09

The Mysterious Beauty of NOW!

AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL

Hewn from granite, I was inlaid with copper and silver and gold. Lapis Lazuli my eyes, and burnished well, till shining in the morning sun, I glowed and hummed. A mystery wind blowing through a conch shell. A sound like gathering or redemption. A sound more like ‘blown’ than ‘moan.’ Something running through. Something bidding life. Like the bloods headlong rush or the river folding itself to a conclusion after much slow, flowing thought. I’ve seen the Eden do this with my own eyes! The blowing heightened once or twice, as when I held my sons, naked and smeared with their mother’s blood shivering in the immensity of their new life. For a moment it seemed eternity pulled up her skirts and said:

‘Man, in this second you are alive for once! Feel the power of NOW! See through, over, into. See the truth of the child. Feel the miracle in your fingernails. Feel it brush against your skin!’ And then you...You took me to the deepest well and I cast a bucket for a crock of gold, and you said:

‘Look! Look how deep the heart goes! It is limitless really!’

And in the moment of falling; of letting go, I was gathered up. And in the moment of trusting; I was loved so much. And in the moment of saying:

‘Yes! I’ll take this life. This one! Its birth, its struggle, its countless breaths. Its footsteps. Its becoming and befriending. Its shrinking from the light. Its tears and weight, of so much fear. Its heartbreak and its love.’

In that moment of NOW, a life is stretched from these small boundaried cairns. Stretched against the canopy of infinity. It is made to see it is not one thing but the many brought to one. A radiant point of NOW that whispers:

‘THIS IS ALL! THIS IS IT! THIS IS EVERYTHING!

AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL!

23.6.09

The Bloggers Ball

The Bloggers Ball
My blog seems to be very slow in taking off. I know that numbers aren’t everything but 49 visitors in 4 weeks means if this was a dance I’d be a wallflower. I’d be sitting there in that morbid collective of boring bloggers. In fact not only boring but physically clumsy and ugly with ill-fitting cheap clothes, no money and to cap it all, a crushingly sensitive self-consciousness. We’d be staring out at the dance floor watching all the beautiful bloggers moving with a completely natural and easy sensuality and laughing into each others smiley open hideously successful faces. And we would want to knock their blindingly white teeth right out of their mouths. Spider -thoughts of herding these scumbags into Abhu Graib and causing them hideous sexual humiliation with dog leads and electrodes would crawl across our synapses while we outwardly smiled and took nervous sips from our rum punch.
This is how it always is. The internet has acquired the competitive tendency like a teenager acquires pimples. You must have followers. You must make money. You must have hits. You must acquire ‘marketing skills’. You must imbibe the writers discipline even if it be boiling oil hot from the nipples of Lucifer himself. And don’t forget you must make money. You must surf the limitless wave that is the next big thing in publishing. Oh and did I mention you must make money?
I have been a writer since I upped like the sassy little twat I was and wrote a poem about a deer being killed in the forest by a hunter. I must have been thirteen. I was at boarding school in Hampshire in the UK and it was just about the point I realised that everything, absolutely everything I had been told about the world, politics, history and especially religion was utter bum-twaddling, brain-mouldering, arsewipe. I was like the guy in those sci-fi movies who goes walking on the spacecraft and ends up having an anti-magnetic moment and spins off into the limitless vacancy of the Cosmos screaming soundlessly and tumbling like a gnat into the gaping maw of the Mandelbrot Dragon. Just writing these words I am also suddenly aware that it was also about this time I gave up on becoming an astronaut as an unrealistic career choice.
Anyway…My poem went down pretty well with the guys (all guys at my school) and I realised I was already what I wanted to be-A WRITER! A STORYTELLER! A WORD-ENCHANTER! A TEACHER!
My poem by the way was utterly crap. But I learned something about the power of the written word, for both good and ill.
In English class I started writing stories about satanists and rapists and death and people who did unpleasant things to horses, and writing I saw, could become an assault on the status quo. Words were weapons and the powers that be were fair game. One day I’ll post on how auto-erotic writing got me through puberty!
I wrote through my twenties, thirties, forties and now into my fifties. I have been spectacularly unsuccessful in publishing terms but I am in every fibre of my being , a writer. A word-onaut spacewalking out on the flight deck of story, awaiting my own anti-gravity moment!
I don’t need your internet publishing be –a- writer- in –thirty- days scams. I’d rather be a wallflower with a literary grenade held surreptitiously between my arse cheeks, waiting for the propitious moment.

22.6.09

Orgasm in 61 lines

UTTERING THE WORDS OF LIFE

Last night when I

licked the wet walls

of your mouth’s cave,

nibbled the sweet

shells of your ears,

palpated the soft creamy

down of you,

and slipped inside you

between your peaches…



I became a secret cannon.

A huge tube of steel!

Cunning symbols wrought thereon.



My swelling balls

the spherical wheels.



And I discharged from

the mountaintop to

the great all-encompassing

lake beneath.



Became the cannonball

then a pinball

rushing through tubes,

mazes and passageways.



Then with a great spurt

of red fire gushed

fire-workingly through your head

with a shout! Aieeee!

And you breathed:



‘I’m coming! I’m coming!’



Me, I hurtled through air

still rising!

Till, reaching the zenith

of my whirling arc;

I plunged,

fell with grace,

disappeared o’er

the crested ridge

and landed with a thud

in a field of disinterested cows.



The ball I was flattened

on the sweet earth,

its grey skin merged

into hands, eyes, legs.



On the faint breeze

wafting from the next valley

I heard your voice,

laden with urgency,

uttering the words of life:



‘I’M COMING! I’M COMING!’

3.6.09

Write Work!

Unless you earn your living from writing it’s a sure bet you’ve got to have a job. That’s because you have to eat and pay the rent in order to write. Writers are therefore like spies. They go to work but only in order to do their real job-Writing! They are not who or what they appear to be. And this may well go unnoticed by colleagues and clients. The fact is we are only pretending to be teachers, bus drivers, social workers and judges. It’s all to fund our dark secretive habit as riders of the imagination, observers and recorders of the peculiar, surfers of paradigms and creators of characters inhabiting wider created worlds. As a writer is it wise to, as it were, ‘come-out’? Personally I think we need to be careful about this disclosure. Why? because if you are like me you work your nuts off to get a project finished before deadlines then you write in the time left. If my employers knew, they might consider me defrauding them despite my delivery of their project in a timely fashion, they might want more of me. This, I find is in the nature of employers- VE MUZT IMPROVE EFFICIENCIES! VEE MUZT INTOLERATE VASTE!

Karl Marx apparently always had food remains in his beard but he was right about those owners of the means of production. So the ancient rule atop the entrance to the chamber of the Illuminati might be embraced by we motley clan of scriveners-whether garreted and starved or struggling to feed our muse amid the panoply of corporations-TO KNOW TO WILL TO DARE AND TO KEEP SILENT.

And be careful what job you choose. It is nigh impossible to steal away to whittle a quick sonnet off while labouring for a piece-work brickie. And call me controversial but these builders will not honour and respect your muse though they may feed your imagination.

No, a desk in a privatish office, a laptop and access to the internet are a good start. A bookcase helps. Long stints as a kerouakian fire warden in a remote national park are ideal. Night security jobs can be useful as long as there is no risk of being shot or taken hostage. We do not want real dramas at work because that would interfere with our creative ones. And then of course there are the jobs that are really not suitable for sharing with one’s muse. I do not want my brain surgeon obsessing over his latest gore-fest script or my pilot catching up on his reading on the night flight. I want them pinned and wedded to perfection in their work, ever alert and super-responsible. And of course actors, dancers, musicians, artists are their work!

So the next time you notice that solitary shelf-stacker with a dreamy look in her eyes or the street sweeper, silently reciting some rhythmic line or the taxi driver with the worn legal pad on the seat beside him; that could just possibly be the greatest living writer on the planet. Be careful what you say! Or you could just kill them!

29.5.09

God Almighty Folks! What's going on in The UN Council?

MAY 29, 2009
UN PRAISES THE SRI LANKAN MASSACRE OF CIVILIANS

In the Times:

Sri Lanka claimed a propaganda victory last night after the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution praising its defeat of the Tamil Tigers and condemning the rebels for using civilians as human shields.

China, India, Egypt and Cuba were among the 29 developing countries that backed a Sri Lankan-proposed resolution describing the conflict as a “domestic matter that doesn’t warrant outside interference”. The resolution also supported Colombo’s insistence on allowing aid group access to 270,000 civilians detained in camps only “as may be appropriate”.

The Sri Lanka Ambassador in Geneva said that European nations had failed with their “punitive and mean-spirited agenda” against his country. “This was a lesson that a handful of countries which depict themselves as the international community do not really constitute the majority,” Dayan Jayatilleka said. “The vast mass of humanity are in support of Sri Lanka.”

Western diplomats and human rights officials were shocked by the outcome at the end of an acrimonious two-day special session to examine the humanitarian and human rights situation in Sri Lanka after the blitzkrieg of the final military offensive that wiped out the Tiger force.

The vote is extremely disappointing and is a low point for the Human Rights Council. It abandons hundreds of thousands of people in Sri Lanka to cynical political considerations,” Amnesty International said.

Sri Lanka, unable to stop the Human Rights Council taking up its case, rushed its own motion to the floor in time to beat a more censorious resolution tabled by Switzerland.

27.5.09

Don't go to Milnthorpe!

HALLOWEEN

The Spar shop is closed.
Drawbridge up-portcullis down.
An aproned granny smirks through the glass
as she labours the bolt into its round case.
A rifle bullet of finitude
condemning me to a
milkless, breadless existence.

I curse country life
under my breadless, milkless breath.

A youth observes me warily.
The grannie and I in rictus.
A frieze of unmet needs
in the dark hunching
of Milnthorpe Square.

Then, suddenly, Death walks past-
blood on his scythe.
As if on his way to a party-
he is clearly jaunty.

‘I’ve been looking for you’ I shout,
while wondering how to bundle him in
to the boot of the car.
Then four little witches
hubble bubble giggle and trouble past.
Lovely little witches.

And I feel sad for me.
No kids.
No pumpkins.
No vampire outfits.
Just me
and my dry and dusty books.
Writing down the bones

Photo by Matthew Emmott

Aung San Suu Kyi in Jail...Again




The 63 year old leader of the Burmese opposition is now being held in Insein (or should that be insane?) jail in Rangoon. It is said to be a rat-infested hell-hole and her health is fragile given that she has spent 11 out of the last 19 years in jail. Who are the scumbags who have turned this beautiful country into an Orwellian nightmare? General Than Shwe is the hardline leader of the Junta but maybe on his way out with stomach cancer but waiting in the wings is the truly monstrous Maung Aye, linked to drug lords and said to be an alcoholic. They hate Suu Kyi because she has a legitimacy as the leader of the National League for Democracy they can never have, and like the murdering bandits they are, they fear her.
The American who swam across the lake to her house, John Yettaw, may just have given the bandits the excuse they need to get Suu Kyi out of the way before they hold what are laughingly going to be called 'elections' later in the year.
Fact is that it is only an International Criminal Court that promises action and redress against these monsters that they will fear. Curses upon the strutting creeps. Blessings and honour to Ms Suu Kyi.

24.5.09

The X-Factor for Politicians? How about 'Britain's got Leaders'?

"The tyrants of the Golden City tremble
At the voices which are heard about the streets,
The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble
The lies of their own heart;..."

The Revolt of Islam 1817 Percy Bysshe Shelley

It's true what they say about literature and history-what goes around comes around. Politics in the gutter is no new thing then. But what results from this current national disenchantment with the pillars of the establishment? First the bankers and now the politicians. A golden opportunity is what. And also a great risk. They are the two sides of the same coin. Shall we have a workable and representative democracy? Essentially a pluralist fudge admittedly but, famously, the least worst of all the others. Or how about a bit of British fascism with all its attendant dressing up in sexually charged uniforms and marching and lots of bonfires and high jinks? Unfortunately this will also include beatings, torture, institutionalised racism and a sharp and enduring drop in serotonin levels across the nation but hey, it could be worse.
I suggest the X Factor for potential politicos. Or we could call it "Britain's got Leaders!" They can present their ideas before a panel of judges to include Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry and David Attenborough. (Simon Cowell? You can fuck right off now! And don't get me on that despicable and repellent toad Piers!)
They will be given opportunities to present ideas and respond to a series of challenges and possibly spend some time in 'The House' for a continually televised residential experience along Big Brother lines. Many challenges will be of a DIY nature to encourage them to repair and decorate their own houses without cost to the tax payer. The country will cast a series of votes to diminish the field of candidates one by one. We could enlist Sir Alan to the cause too. "Gordon Brann you're useless and incompetent, you're fucking fired mate!" Ah, sweet music.

21.5.09

PERSEPOLIS (2007) And the Irish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse



Watched Persepolis last night. What a great movie as well as a brilliant graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi who co-directed the film with Vincent Paronnaud. This just shows how animated films can educate as well as present great dramatic opportunities. And the story? The triumph of the bearded joy-killing imams and the devolution of Islam back to its medieval tribal roots. It is a triumph of illiteracy over education, of the tribe over the global commons, of women's oppression over women's liberation, of islands of dogma over the ocean of faith. When will we see that the etymology of the word religion is from the Latin religere-to bind? Religion is the curse that binds us to the horror of the past. The bearded imams are simply the other face of the child-abusing Irish priests identified in the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which reported this week that the Catholic Church in Ireland has left a legacy of neglect, fear and endemic sexual abuse in its institutions. Also that these same institutions have energetically sought to protect the abusers and cover up their crimes. And reader, there can be few worse crimes than the sexual abuse of children. It is the murder of childhood itself. These hypocrites are peddlers of hate and filth all. It has been our fate to watch them grow in strength since the seventies but you know, I really believe their time is coming to a close. There's something new in the wind, and it just might blow that tribe of God-worshipping, torturing, censoring, woman-hating, child-abusing lickspittles away with their beards and their black robes and their relentless bullshit. The breath of the new Aeon. It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It might just be on its way! Love and Will in Balance!

18.5.09

The Unloved



Last night I watched 'The Unloved' on Channel 4; a first film directed by the rather wonderful actress Samantha Morton about an eleven year old girl, played beautifully by Molly Windsor, living in a care home. It was heartbreaking to watch because it so accurately portrayed the emotional frost that seems an inevitable fact of life in a residential institution. That absence of love that leaves everything in black and white, a mere photocopy of reality. Love is the sunlight that grows children and unfortunately it seems, it cannot be manufactured outside the structure of the family.
In my late twenties I decided finally that it looked like my long term ambitions to be a freelancing astronaut would not bear fruit in this life and so I needed to decide on some sort of career. I wanted to do something that would not be routine and would be valuable so I decided to become a social worker in Children's Services.
I can honestly say I've never particularly regretted that decision but I can also say that most of my professional life has been spent fighting to protect children in the looked after system from the worst excesses of what is now called Corporate Parenting-an oxymoron if ever there was one!
I don't know what attracts the stony hearted, burnt out cases, and stupidly ambitious pole climbers into social work, I guess these people are in every profession. But I have a really simple-minded view of services for looked after children and it's this-Is this good enough for my kids? If so then it's good enough for looked after children. If not, then it bloody well isn't Mr Balls!

17.5.09

The Sunday Poem: Poetry of Domestic Violence

THE MADNESS


Last night the madness stole my soul.
Wove blood red mists before my eyes.
Drove me to the door axe-handed.
Thoughts garbled to the carrion crow.
Blood curdled in the pits.
Garotte for finger, stone for fist.
A knife and spear for hand and eye.

Till it seemed a child came, bathed in light
and held the space between with grace
till anger froze into shame.

To the parent of this rage: Blind grief .
We say: ‘Come in! Come in to the Heartspace!
Let us speak awhile to hear what
breeds your dark pain. Tell us tales
of sorrow long into the night. Let's
drive this demon from your door.’