VPT Poetry Retrospective

The days, months, years, and decades of educational arguments over world politics and matter-of-fact science, which I and my son have had, though both of us simple philologists and both comparatively poor, seem to be asking an alternative question worth developing into a literary work: How can a future help its own past, even if in the same place; and how can a present help its own self if it is separated in two complete parts, each in a different sphere.

The question has much of Bulgaria’s past and present, of the people who left it to live abroad, of the people who came to live in the country, the people who need just the area, the people who need just the power, the people who are tools in the hands of other people, the people of difference and similarity, the people who act instinctively, the people who scheme and wait, the people of all the different spheres and scales, the people of all the different destinies and lives, everybody really.

In line with my future work, here is a retrospective poem:

Rhyming
There’s no hurry to describe the seasons
Enough to look and see the people going past
They seem to liken their all lives’ meanings
to natural divisions by a cast
The autumn person will be nice and cold
like autumn trees which, wet, wait for the night
with pine-tree needles scattered on the ground
and air that’s so strong though light
The spring-time person will be happy, flying
towards a flourish or a conquest
like spring which gives its blessings: arming
the seeds with the potential of days next
The summer person is the scarest to notice
the mist of heat and dust blur off the sight
The summers are forever, ever, thirsty
Don’t get the fruit they’ve grown, working hard
The winter person is the most lucky
Naught there’s to steal, naught there’s to take
The winter, itself, takes beneath its carpet
all, even dreams of spring which will be back
There’s no hurry to describe the seasons
Just say ‘hello’ to each coming phase
If you don’t match, you won’t be greeted: reasons
for this a lot, but you won’t be off-chased
V.P.T. 18.10.2003

Now that a shift has successfully been achieved from where the left wing subtlely implemented the right-wing projects, through the rush to establish a relevant business and party spectrum, and to the right wing that will have to reinforce with borrowed and established structures the marked social levels and clear the economy of excess, the old orthodox political parity is ready to teach order to the least protected by either business or party life.

I am now embarking on new lands, as if to complete a long and exhausting cruise that started in the early nineteen-nineties with the grand blue-bannered meetings of the opposition and went through the different business, party, and individual utilization of the information and picture material gathered by the special agencies. Here is a new poem in Bulgarian:
Живот-музей
Отпуснах аз юздите на живота,
не забелязвам дъжд, мъгла и зной
Навярно съм умряла без да мога
да разбера помагат ли, или пък търсят помощ тя и той
Успях от гробището своя паметник аз да изтръгна,
поставих го в живота си като в музей на път
Едни сега се кланят на останките, а други бързат-
настигнат ли музея, те своите следи ще заличат
V.P.T. 6.07.2009
V.P.Toucheva 6.07.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Today is poll day that started while the country was still sleeping, and began well east and outside the boundaries of Bulgaria on a promised new parliament.

Almost every person in the streets and on the way to openly vote and anonymously express affiliation or negation seems happier today than at an own birthday party, as if the future of the world depends on each individual choice irrespective of the all the other choices.

Everyone is charged with a certainty, as if with an army rank that provides income and a stage to climb and tribune all the popular opera arias in the ears of someone differently talented who will want to turn up the volume to hear the strength of the masterpieces.

There is a restricted choice of parties and candidates, all seemingly with ranks and learned arias, and all seemingly with one definite role distributed on the different levels of the same pyramid.

One will be making a mistake to look for a squit party of ragamuffins to vote for and morally punish the political system for cheating one’s hopes of democracy and freedom, because there are none, and also the system has taken measures to co-ordinate the time of vote and the time of placing a second stamp on the bulletins.

Today’s poll is returning the country to about twenty years ago when the blue wing of the self-created democrats won over the red wing of the communists that had taken all the well-paid and powerful positions in the country, but today’s poll is also taking the country ahead to where the red wing cannot take the assets they accumulated while introducing the capitalist idea, and where there are very few unpaid or powerless supporters of the blue wing.

So far, so well. I guess I have an old poem of rank and for the stage:

SEA BLUE

The distant shore
The misty sky
The held-up waves
The blue-
so blue,
so blue,
so blue
above the water
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 5.07.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

It is really stimulating when a round-headed young man of the low crop and of the low military ranks stops one at the front door of the block where one has been living since 1978, and asks: ‘Do you live here?’ and ‘What is your name?’.

No wonder many people, with me among them, look suspicious to any new wave of political recruitment come fresh from the countryside, all burdened under the certainty that they were born and bred to introduce specified order in the environment which they find to be unspecified appropriate.

The political fraction of the socialism past is now retreating into entrenchment and leaving the business fraction of the transition period to finish the project, both sides fearing qualified and genetic competition, both sides fighting for the few comfortable places in the city, and both sides clearing the ground for the advent of the big predators.

The double thought that predators have by birth the right to look for prey, and that the patches of grass start on plots where moss and mould have taken root, is consolidating and stimulating to my decision to either enter the opposition between people taking the poll and people refraining from voting, or enter one of the many political oppositions where the candidates have at least once changed party belonging, or have at least once changed a military or a business career for a political one.

In line with the above, and to verify my living here, here is an old poem of mine:

At Sunset
Believe me, clouds small,
the smallest clouds,
can separate the sun from thee,
can give a lot, a lot of trouble,
you must believe, believe in me
Can ride the sun,
slip down slowly,
the sun can ride them free,
can turn their white
to crispy popcorn,
like demons gaping breathe
The sun has yes, a thousand faces,
three thousandfold or more,
and well-bred is,
the sky embraces,
but blocks to dreams the door
Believe me, dreams,
the shortest dreams,
if brave enough
to stay around,
can help you fly
the slightest breeze
to get rid
of the hideous clouds
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 4.07.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

The question ‘Where have you been?’, meaning the past twenty years, and the question ‘Where were you?’, meaning the same past twenty years, seem to have different literal and historical meaning to the different people in Bulgaria.

The more people express- during one or another interview for one or another position or job- that there must be more people ready to actively act for the four different aspects of social benefit: further development, fighting against inherited negative tendencies, social stability, and country growth, the larger is the army of functionaries ready to reintroduce methods where lots of peopled structures control the peopled masses, neither the controller nor the controlled in control of the economy, the science, the capital, or the projects for involvement in social control.

If one has a look at the Bulgarian political spectrum and the people ready to govern in the name of the country- the term ‘country’ now used to decreasingly imply ‘local population’- one may reach the conclusion that the candidates for power and posts are most appropriately forming a low dense social cohesion network woven by the collective endeavour of all the segments of the political pie chart, which network is reinforced with inter-party and inner-party similarity and opposition of the basic for the region, and historically developed for social positions, human types, economic dependencies, and coalitions.

In line with this, one may say that it is easy to choose whom to vote for at the general election on Sunday- one can vote for the person or party that will produce their next army of individuals ready to govern the assets they have access to, that can be used in the explaining of control failures with assets they have no access to, can control people they neither care about nor surpass in qualification and skills, can be used in the explaining of why a reform has reached a dead end, in one word, people who will climb to, or be hauled into, an upper network of denser rules and a compactability of job positions diversified with foreign specialists in all the relevant areas.

In line, here is an old poem of mine, almost rhymed with its own rhythm:
A Treacherous Partner
Life's such a treacherous, now, partner
It will slap its palm onto you
If unsuccessful to crush down,
it'll scoop you in a loving mood
It will, no trick of its now working,
hold your face as if for a kiss
Or it will fend off anybody
who can provide secured peace
It will raise you from the firm ground
to show its utmost respect
Or it will make your pride bend down
to learn its patience and its tact
Life's such a treacherous, now, partner
It needs you say that its your boss
All you can learn from life is how
to be more treacherous and cross
V.P.T. 7.07.2003
V.P.Toucheva 3.07.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Taming the Shrew (to borrow the title and idea from Shakespeare) is a responsible job, and the larger area is shrew and to be tamed, the larger the staff involved in the job. The Balkans have always been untamed due to the incompatibility of the East and West in their major competition for leadership in the directions westwards and eastwards in search of new Americas to discover.

If there is a saying that quality cures, no matter that the quality matter might be inadequate for immediate use in an ailment, then the Bulgarian politician spectrum is the quality we need to be whole time engaged in neighbour relationships, on household, communal, regional, world, space, etc. levels, fixing problems that are progressively orderly and well classified along the vertical line, though we have to cope with them on the horizontal line.

It is obvious that the pie chart of the programs of the political parties is promising to accommodate the Bulgarian Parliament with professional politicians working for professional businessmen, working, in turn, for professional politicians of higher ranks, working for professional businessmen on higher levels, and so on. If one program has already been used for economic alterations, it is now in the social sphere and is introducing the stability of allowed oppositions, where a program based on social relationships, it is now giving ideas about economic development.

In line, here is my latest poem about how charmed I was to see in person a former minister of education, very charmed indeed as I spent half of his mandate looking for a job, and half in criticizing the absurdity of tramping down on the education system to be able to unhitch it from the socialist basic criteria and links and prepare its progressive uprising reform for the establishment of education as one of the many businesses supporting, and supported by, all the other businesses. No wonder a parent during that minister’s mandate warned me that he would do everything so I nowhere got a teaching job- the parent was a businessman doctor, more or less the god of survival.

To/From The Marketplace

To/from the marketplace I walked
Past politicians live campaigning
I asked myself the question long:
'Do the survivors double playing-
once at the table con opponents,
once at the table con themselves-
chase in a chain creating problems,
or cheat on all their close friends
To/from the marketplace I walked
Met politicians self-campaigning
Like kings saluted by their courts
Like cats round open trap doors playing
The city, in its work day plunged,
was stepped in skills con new conditions
All played their games at tables large
All carried grudges strong, ambitious
To/from the marketplace I walked
And took along my own life
All through my past with smile mocked
Ahead to traps of pride and strife
V.P.T. 30.06.2009
V.P.Toucheva 2.07.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

I am calculating the coins, not gold ones, that must last me over the next couple of weeks.
In the meantime, the present Parliament is gathered for its last session to sum up the work they have continued and affiliated further in the statement that the Bulgarian nation is the poorest and the least developed on the Balkans.

I am calculating how many coins to spend a day not because I have not used my human rights, on the contrary, I am still retaining property over my home after getting the carcinogenic pipes into my flat, I am not yet at the mercy of the lowest parameters of underground businesses that peer the highest parameters of the legal ones, I know that human rights are an imaginary value that depends on social class dissemination and on business classification, but its is not easy for someone brought up by a socialism doctrine to understand that governments camouflaged in social projects take from the country as much as the businesses need to create their structure stability and camouflaged in business projects governments take from the people as much as science needs from today to provide tomorrow with a collective evolution.

It seems that I have started to adapt to the new world order and am growing smooth presentable fur, developing the classic features of the predator, walking with satisfaction through the cover-up orderliness where nobody dares complain of one’s health or poverty unless a medical experiment hitches onto the physical existence and a psychological team tests one’s capacity of social integration, but I am still dreaming of monitoring the new world order from where I can enjoy its results over a fruit-and-beach cocktail rather than from inside the pot where artificial social patterns get derived from the evolutional patterns self-developed in the human nature.

It is a pity psychology has chosen to base politics on the succinct human types represented by the different parties for the people to find likeness in one or another, and it is a pity that politics has chosen to base psychology on the different genetic features of each person that can be developed into one or another human type.

In line with my own evolution, here is an old poem of mine written for the new world order that brought in my counting of coins but also brought in the freedom to speak about how poor I am:

Just One Time
The time
I didn't take
a sea-shell home
was
when I fell in love
with you
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 25.06.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

It is interesting to learn how many countries have a law that obliges the whole nation to be a community of organ donorship, and how many of those that have the law also have a system constructed on general practitioners who know little about laws, on executive agencies that keep the registry of refusals but cannot be reached, and a ministry of public health that cannot be engaged in minor cases.

It is also interesting how much of the control over a population of no importance is derived from laws connected with the complexity of life: health, rights, home, jobs, and accessibility. Also, how many of the programs forbidden in one place of the world are allowed in another, and how many secret projects are full of people unaware of being involved in long-term explorations. As to me, my father fought against the nazi in World War Two, and I am sure that I have a few subtle non-friends in the scientific circles; and my father-in-law fought against the Bulgarian fascist regime and the capitalist system, and I have a few open non-friends in the spheres that have been privatized. It is not a paranoia, it is a lasting confrontation that started with shooting, continued with reformation, and is going on with monitoring and assistance.

In one word, here is m poem of yesterday, written and given to the world to read in its whole, unlike the methods that include a life in a turmoil of accidents and confusion to grab a piece from a half-dead body and grab a fee from a desperate patient:

A Sunflower
A sunflower yellow has just bloomed
It is a secret when it blossomed
A soul sighed out by life doomed
From somewhere secret hurried home

A hungry eye that feeds on beauty,
on joy and stylishness we have
Can someone rich be rich in duty
and buy it off itself or for itself

A roamer in eternity and lucid Eden
With no place to stop, no threat or fright
A listener to tunes of light and freedom
In closeness and dusk of its small site

A sitter by a lake of blue and glory
Alone as if nobody was, nobody will
It tells life’s long tales through its story
None needs to hear how flowers feel

A sunflower yellow has just bloomed
It is a secret when it blossomed
A soul sighed out by life doomed
From somewhere secret hurried home
V.P.T. 22.06.2009
V.P.Toucheva 23.06.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

It is past midnight and I am still reading the innovated law of transplantation. One does not declare consent of donation of own organs after one’s death, one must declare refusal of donation, which refusal must be registered, and one must check if the registration has really been entered.

The evening news said that recently there have been three instead of thirty heart transplantations because there are not enough heart donors.

Who would die, but emotionally, to offer one’s heart, but in art, to someone, but in a commune where everything is common, and who would provide medicine with parts of the human body if not a well-organized supply system, also what else does science need but a chance to enrich the combinations of compatibility of tissues and vessels.

The Law of Transplantation says that one can declare refused donorship of just one body part or tissue, or just for one medical or scientific purpose. One needs knowledge to formulate a refusal of larger coverage of the human body, or one may borrow ideas from Shakespeare.

They say that all world’s religions, apart from a few sects, support the practice of transplantation. I wonder which sect to enter. Also, it is a mystery where they give or sell the refused experimentation and donorship declaration forms.

It is interesting how close mankind is to the creation of an assembled human body of flesh attached to the basic strains and outlines of the sinews of compatibility, like adding houses and buildings beside and over the arteries of electricity lines, water mains, and road communications.

In line with my concern about being used for free when I will no longer be the amateur poet and the retired teacher but a dead body, I recall an old poem of mine written for my book character Jane Brown:

Forgive Me
Forgive me, please, forgive, my heart,
I didn't know you existed,
I thought that I was after love
and you were of me just a part
I should have taken you out, my heart,
and laid you bare on my soul,
and topped it with my, love for her,
and let her find for you the globe
Forgive me, please, forgive, my heart,
I didn't know you existed
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 23.06.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

My parameters, set by my products of intellectual work and my living standard, range between
• the structures well above, where my products would naturally belong, but might inappropriately compete with the products of the people who have gained places in those structures,
• and the structures well below, where I would be serving the structure itself, and not a person or a group of people.
In one word,
• I am not wanted ‘upstairs’ because I am not offering myself, but am offering my products,
• and I am not wanted downstairs because I will not enter a pyramid of income redistribution but will ask for a place in the structure itself.
A problem of both a genetic and a social aspect in it states:
• both ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ need people of specific qualities and aptitudes, and I am inappropriate for either.
It is like in the film where
• the bank uses the front door to steal from an investor through the bank owner,
• the investor approaches through the back door to steal back his belonging,
• the owner empties the bank of its content and stores that content elsewhere, creating a new back door,
• the investor integrates an own agent in a chief position and thus controls the bank through the personnel, creating a new front door.
• a shell is produced where depositors believe that their material assets are stored, but in fact the owner is using them for larger investments,
• a flow is produced where the investors believe that the owner makes the decisions, but in fact decisions are made by the personnel,
• an organization of stability and flow is produced to turn into a real nut crusher when a crisis comes or is needed to clear the grounds of the past.
Now that
• I have given away my books to individuals who have helped me out of desperate situations created by the structures to retain the money flows through innovation and redistribution of power and means
• and have given money for compulsory repairs of what is working so that the money flows create the necessary structures through the people in jobs,
I am sure that I have set my parameters.

One more thing, one must be on good terms with one’s neighbours and obey their decisions or get ousted because one’s neighbours’ income often comes from flows created through innovation and redistribution.
One must ignore
• the fact that the half-way innovated central heating pipes are leaking,
• or the fact that the innovation of the main pipes breaks the water meter seals and the water company will not seal water meter more than five years old,
• or the fact that new water meters are sold at shops where the assistants care nothing about measurements
• or the fact that it is difficult to find a technician to install the wrong size water meter and more spare parts and diplomacy are needed,
• or the fact that the plastic pipes are more carcinogenic than rusty,
• or the fact that the plastic pipes are smaller in cross-section and the increased pressure leads to water tap leaks
• or the fact that the new equipment may burst into over-activity at will because a new idea of distance control and remote reading is about to be introduced,
• or…
In one word,
• stay calm when the ‘upstairs’ level does not want your product, but pay for the level to be produced, and know that your products may fit there, but you do not,
• stay calm when the ‘downstairs’ level wants to help you on a charge, but do not ask for a place there, and know that you may fit there but your products don’t ,
• believe that you are paying with money and time, effort and emotion, and whatever decision you make is either the right or the wrong one, for which assessment there are other levels and other paid jobs creating structure stability and flow continuity.
• V.P.Toucheva 18.06.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU