SHAVING TIME

I was depressed to read yesterday that here in the UK universities employ up to three quarters of their teaching staff on zero hour contracts. Organisations using such shoddy strategies should be ashamed of themselves but in this present state of affairs they appear to regard it as a good business model. It is not. Humans deserve better.
Since the crisis of 2008 employers are expecting their staff to do more work for less money. Trans National Corporations pay pitifully little tax and contribute even less to the common good. Such a situation is not sustainable.
This poem was forming in my head before I read the latest shameful statics.

SHAVING TIME

Today, as every other,

it's the 6:30 am hurtle,

50 in the 30 zone.

Zero contracted,

a quart of tasks pours

into his pintpot of hours

He juggles rent and food,

fuel and debit,

hand to mouth.

There is no trickle down,

there is no end,

it will get worse.

Bleak, is it not?
But bleaker still is an article in Science that reports a study into the 94 ecological processes that are the basis of healthy marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. Unfortunately 80% are already showing signs of distress and response to climate change. You can read about it for yourself here.
We appear incapable of treating members of our own species fairly let alone of curtailing our destructive behaviours. There will be a price to pay for our actions.

he swapped his wife for the radio

by acrimony not by choice

and here he is in the night

twisting in memory soaked sheets

balancing recrimination

against sleep

the pressure of the night

compress the voice on the World Service

dream switch

to a grandstand view

of his hopes falling at the first hurdle

then dead horse heavy

he is trapped beneath

it will take years to get free

I have revised this poem. You can read the first draft here. Discussing it with the Secret Poets led me led me to expand the middle stanza. Hopefully this makes it clearer.

Bob Marley came to mind as I wrote this post. The lines: think your in heaven, when your living in hell seem to me to sum up the perspective of those with the power. 

Peace, love and unity. Until the next time.

KICKING UP LUNAR DUST

Each poem should be unique. I have said this before. 
Uniqueness implies that each metaphor, each image you choose is fresh.
Discussing this post's poem with Juncture 25 recently, it was pointed out that the line: the earth a disc in their sky, was clichéd.
I have to confess I rather liked it but experience leads me to trust my fellow poets judgements. 
Here is the revised poem [you can read the last draft here].

THE SLOW REVEAL

The composition of moon rock did not interest me.

I was twelve.

Neil and Buzz were kicking up dust,

hopping about the lunar surface,

transported there in flimsy machinery.

I was so taken with the idea,

humans free in the universe.

Yes, I was thinking big, beyond the moon,

beyond Mars and out into the Big Black.

I am no longer twelve,

now the science intrigues,

to an extent.

I am no longer twenty four and see their compromises,

the propaganda trade offs, the political expediency

of using war criminals with their benevolent butcher's smiles.

I am no longer forty eight

and know that out there in the stars,

we would have acted out our history.

Colonisation, exploitation, atrocity.

Listening to the news, this Sunday morning,

all three seem hard wired into our brains.

The eagle eyes amongst you will notice that a word has been removed from the penultimate line.
It was felt that sopping Sunday introduced something new to the poem right at the end and was unnecessary.
My thanks to Juncture 25.
Here is Bob Marley with Redemption Song. Wondrous.

HUMANITY RENDERED INTO DATA

Where do poems come from? I have no idea. For me it’s an unanswerable question, akin to pondering what was there before the big bang. Something that. Instead I think that when the poem calls you simply have to say thank you and then try to fashion it into something workable. I suppose that’s the poetic process turning the personal, the specific into something universal.

I’ve been vaguely pondering this because earlier in the week I was just falling to sleep when I had an idea for a poem. Experience has taught me that you have to get it on paper or it will evaporate with the night. I turned the light on and spent half an hour or so trying to capture the thought. Then I slept.

I am at my best first thing in the morning. When the house is quiet before anyone else is awake.  I have been working on the poem and have got it in reasonable shape. 

Before going any further though I feel that a little background is necessary. Museums in the UK have collections of human bones, all museums do. There has been a move amongst the people from whom the human remains were taken to request them back. Over the last two centuries or so many disrespectful acts were perpetrated on indigenous people around the globe. One of these was to take human remains to exhibit in museums. 

There has been some repatriation in the last ten years. The majority of the remains of Aboriginal People have been returned to the first people of Australia. Which is a start. Little enough and late enough but a start.

Plea

Plundered spirits caged in display cases,

their humanity rendered into data,

serial numbered scientific evidence,

they are excluded from the Dreamtime or heaven.

Wherever they should be, it is not here.

You would see your father buried,

or a neighbour, with due ceremony.

Why not return these people?

End their misery

and heal ourselves into the bargain.

As I say I have no idea where this poem came from. It simply appeared in a rough form and I took it from there.

I want to end on an up this week. I’ve just found on youtube the full video of Bob Marley and The Wailers in 1973 at Capital Rehearsal Studios. This is a real gem. It is worth an hour and twenty six minutes of your life. Enjoy.