VPT Poetry Retrospective

It is important to be a day ahead of a date that is important to the public image of the state- otherwise and on the very anniversary date of, let’s say, a social revolution or anarchy, one’s opinion may be blocked into silence by the supervising security departments that are too loaded with checking to allow for more material to traffic on the information lines.

There is one starting point that I can take when thinking of November 10, 1989, and it is the one I took when I first learned that the political bureau of the Bulgarian communist party had resigned their leader after over thirty years of his being in post, and were introducing a political change. Such changes are like two huge underwater icebergs, one of which represents the priority of business over any social life, and the other represents the priority of interest over any other individual or group.
The tops of the two icebergs, correspondingly that of politics and that of social relationships, can melt with the global warming or take various shapes in various dimensions, can be judged to be causes right or wrong when seen from the different aspects at which a business or a person is standing. The important thing is that no business structure suffered any major change in the commemorated past twenty years, though business went through a metamorphosis from belonging to private owners before the socialist revolution of 1944, then getting nationalized by the state, then given, in 1989, to people affiliated to political and security structures to manage, and now included in larger global structures. What changed was the system that worked or blocked the economic flows, the system of appropriateness which changed the staff that comprised the social elements of the business structures, and the security system that controlled the public behaviour and informativeness, with as many combinations of matching in the achieved result tools as many are the business or social levels and the business or social locations.

The generations born after there twenty years will need to know little about the period of socialism and capitalism divided to independently work on the same projects with just a few people allowed to cross the professional borders and exchange information vital to the creation of next projects, nor will those generations need to learn about the transition period of the past twenty years when the uniform- because it was created on opposition- social iceberg turned into stable economic pillars of opposite charge of the same elements to carry the stable world flows: of capital whose possession is scattered in bonds, of information to which access is restricted, of labour that is produced in the work-hand industries, of goods produced in restricted amounts to support the easy control of any consummation, of production that can be experimented with at any time and in the name of the people who will live away from the planet earth, of Know-How that recognizes no individual inventor and is valid only when developed in a business laboratory, of doctrines that are so evasive to the people that one would rather work than hope, like turning on the TV set to watch the commercials rather than getting mad when a commercial interrupts something that needs concentration to get to like it.
In line with the celebrations on the more or less 20-year global anniversary of closing an economic and social project that unified Europe after World War 2, here is an old poem of mine:

DUES

Shadows of light ahead of us
predetermining each action
who will measure how fast
you can ease or torque our tension
Who's the sun, a hope in front
to be liked or to be trusted
If I like the sun, you'll trust
Each one's option right and asked for
Who'll be there, the light we see,
by me liked, and by you trusted
We'll achieve that so complete
union of two souls fastened
Who's the child there to be born
whom I'll gladly give my name to,
Nothing else mine will belong
to us but the name material
They say we have lots of lives
following upon each other
I have here now survived
using all my lives, no other
Someone, somewhere, weary, wrong
didn't speculate on this truth
that our shadows future, strong,
predetermine all that we do
Those shadows of time and life,
their life-gist's speculation
on how good or wrong or right
we have been in our actions
Each one ray of effort light
is clad in a latent darkness,
we cannot reach on too far
if our shadows miss their targets
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 09.11.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Maybe it’s the early cold and the coming late autumn and winter months.
Maybe it is the campaign of the administration of the block entrance to clear- with the help of a couple of polyglot laborours and their horse carts- the common entrance premises of the junk accumulated over the years.
Maybe it is a special new resident moving into the block.
Maybe it is the moving out of the old system of organization of a social core around a common problem that is protected as necessary to balance existence by some administrative institutions, and fought versus by peer others.
Maybe it is the necessity to develop new human traits on the permeating indignation.
Maybe it is the business circles of the social and administration organizations that are creating common problems to fully engage the emotions and fear of the general public, and the time and effort of many pensioner functionaries blocked between own survival instincts that ban any discussion on existing problems, and own awareness of the world’s psychological projects, which necessitates subtle management so that the contingent of subordinates survives.
Maybe it is the dog upstairs that jumps and plays about day and night but for a cheered short night walk.
Maybe it is the white dog next-door, replaced by a black one now, that suddenly left to leave me with a new instinct for neighbours and pets.
Maybe it is my recalling the two dogs that dashed from opposite the block to snap at my neck.
Maybe it is the fact is that under one per cent of the house dogs are registered as having owners responsible for the dogs’ actions.
Maybe it is the latest victim of strays that triggered mass media discussion on the stray common problem.
Maybe something else makes me remember this old poem of mine:

The Howl Of The Fine Weather

The howl of the weather fine is terrifying
The cold chimney now mourns a missing life
The season’s gathering its clouds in the high skies
The wind is sweeping its streets of the gathered dust

A door stored on a balcony is banging
The passage cleared by the missing door
made a connection which no one is taking,
but is another chimney huge, another hall

A parent’s crying, stable, grown, honest
He was a pillar of the old spreading days
His daughter’s now missing, claimed for being modest
and ready, with her fate, to home-anchor ways

The world has chimneys cold, and its trains burning
The world has plans for weathers, weathers for the world
In all the seasons, both have moves most winning
But in the crowds motley, nobody’s weep is heard

The howl of the weather fine is terrifying
The cold chimney now mourns a missing life
The season’s gathering its clouds in the high skies
The wind is sweeping its streets of the gathered dust
V.P.T. 1.03.2008
(‘Dorman’, ‘Directions’, ISBN 978 954 91614 7 2)
V.P.Toucheva 22.10.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Now that the administration quartet of a) places responsible for social disruption, b) those responsible for social complaint, c) the ones in charge of social amendment, and d) places responsible for social restructuring, is brushing the dust off the materials gathered for short-term, middle-term, long-term, or eternal, application, while applying the trick to tail-sweep the traces behind, as well as, the way lying ahead, I need not wonder if the centuries to come will be quite sure where to look for information about who I was and what was the role of the world in my endeavour to turn poet.

One thing there is for certain, and it is that the more effort I apply in producing perfection to be liked by my teaching experience, the more amusing is the fact that no matter what masterpieces I write, the world will not accept them as nothing but good products unsupported by the poet’s participation in structure events, nor will the world give me postmortem tribute as I will have left a legacy saying that a dead body can’t get warm, no matter with how many blankets you pile over it.

In line with the above, here is a poem of ‘Whispers’ that will be a musical some day, but not before I write the text and compose the music- two self-assigned tasks, the latter of which rather impossible for the time being (some other poems are at poetrypoem.com/author909, though not the whole of ‘Whispers’ will go there, or anywhere yet settled):

Whispers Poem 10

A blooming spring in early snow
Her life’s a spring postponed for fall
No snowdrop heads, sprightly, wise and low
No apples ripe with harvest calls

She’s the image of time modern
The image of time and life real
Chased is by all who fall in cornered
to verify belongings, deals

She’s chasing, through a wizard feeling,
all who have chased and followed her
All getting paid, or with the instinct
to make their rivals do their work

Time influences her a little
Time rides her back to make a hunch
Time weathers her head tough and brittle
Her hair flies to seek its bunch

Her face strains hard to reach achievement
Strain smiles, grinning at defeat
Achievement’s closer to instinct
Escape’s more precious than a feat

One eye emitting light foreseeing
The other skilful in catching light
She measures distance from-to, bridging
the present now to the future’s past

Her arms are always holding something
A something close to her chest
At times, it is a child lovely
At times, a finding cherished best

At times, ransacked container contents
Sometimes, a precious purchased load
Sometimes, just space that must stay close
for energy resourceful, cold

Thin legs have suffered famine’s plague
Wounds where motion is denied
Feet trained to hook and hold the frame,
or ballet-pose for a flight

A beautiful, a pretty, lady
Seen to be such by many men
Attention reaching her in plenty
Her life so bleak, she can’t complain

An envied by all women lady
Intrigued about by that score
who’ll wrench a hen’s head for no laying
From tables fancy driven off

A blooming spring in early snow
Her life’s a spring postponed for fall
No snowdrop heads, sprightly, wise and low
No apples ripe with harvest calls
V.P.T. (26.01.2009)26.01.2009
V.P.Toucheva 17.10.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

I have gone as far as to imagine a curtain hiding the stage from the audience- there is a large flower inside a jar upon the curtain.

Drawn, the curtain keeps the outlines of the jar only, while a swirl of characters and situations slowly configurate the flower on the stage.

Here is Whispers, Poem 5:

The past is whispering its unforgotten, buried, dreams
The present is replying with remorse and pity
Upon a stall, a seller’s selling, for a trifle, some expensive things
Arrayed, there wait some flowers in bunches withered,
and fruit preserved for cold winter in transparent jars

A man is blocked in supervising from afar, away,
unless the flowers withered get their water vase,
unless the fruit preserved gets out and dries wane,
unless the seller finds an opening for thought and taking part

The past sends, one by one, its flowers and their stories
The present shows, one by one, its practically precious jars
Their whispers come across and dash to reach their unknown homes
Life’s products, made to be consumed, to rot, or wither, stay behind

The past is whispering its unforgotten, buried, dreams
The present is replying with remorse and pity
Upon a stall, a seller’s selling, for a trifle, some expensive things
Arrayed, there wait some flowers in bunches withered,
and fruit preserved for cold winter in transparent jars
V.P.T. 3.10.2009

Now that my son and literary heir needs a humbler me to be able to prepare for his next failure sitting of his graduation exam, I guess that I will have to put away my talent’s regalia and quietly write ‘Whispers’, a play in verse for a musical no one will compose, but I will have set the beginning of a more general trend towards the composition of musicals.

Here is the sentence of today (a transformed sentence of yesterday) in verse:

A war is waging, waging, waging,
somewhere on the patch-work earth
A woman peasant’s climbing, climbing,
job ladders to see all the world

The war is seen, the war is given
Some profit with retribute mirth
The peasant woman is directing
from top positions war and earth

Low, low, in the pits of countries done,
the pyramids of starving and fattening are built
Low, low, under bombs, the starvers’ gross income,
drops bombs as if disguised as fortune’s hellish yield
V.P.T. 29.09.2009
V.P.Toucheva 29.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

The sentence of today is now part of my future musical ‘Whispers’:

Two Women
There’s a fiction author, sits confined
with a composer of social hives
Both authors are polite and kind
Both stern and sticking to own side

The author first evades the clash,
looks at a tree that’s winter-bound:
leaf bunches in green-yellow rashed
upon a blue chased off by clouds

The clouds pass the graveyard sunny
Deer sleepers there are covered with earth
One moment beds gape in the ground,
the next they’re bigger than mole hills

The second author is collecting-
the gathered clues can be processed
She used to heal, but also practised
the skills that go with army ranks

How many in the graveyard-city
were lied to, or were liars worth
How many’ll be forever pitied
How many got what they deserved
V.P.T. 27.09.2009

I wonder what verse will come out of the next sentence:

When a country subsides a war through tools increasing the country’s economic effort needed for covering a monetary debt, and when a family is slowly falling apart and can no longer be collectively controlled by the principle of orders coming along the gridlines of professional belonging, and along the gridlines of structural order, then the man charged with the responsibility to sign the subsidiary long-term economic bond, and the woman involved in strategic projects without her knowledge, are two pawns not only moved but also sacrificed: the man is sacrificed by his country in the name of a new policy, and the woman sacrificed by her closest kin in the name of keeping their former belonging a secret.
V.P.Toucheva 28.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Here is one more sentence of ‘Whispers’:

When an author of fiction is confined with an author of social relationships, both authors politely outstand their aspects of the binary wish to involve in, or stay away from, social pyramids- the first author evades the direct clash and looks at a tree that is winter-bound in bunches of yellow and green upon a sky of blue getting conquered by determined clouds coming from the graveyard; and the second author gathers clues for a future manipulation that will verify his or her nature developed on a combination of civil profession and military rank.
V.P.Toucheva 27.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

Writing is medicine to the nerves, though an occupation different from the aristocratic secrecy of the medical profession- so different that nobody will call writing a business like the name by which medicine goes, but no one calls an author in emergency either.

There are two aspects in which writing plays inventive and produces ideas based on the relationship of medicine with life- one aspect is when a literary work takes parts from life’s living body while keeping life’s brain blocked to eliminate the threat of residing impulses getting transferred, and the second aspect is when malfunctioning parts are taken out and given to a completely healthy body to cure them with time.

Here is the first rhymed part of ‘Whispers’:

Whispers
A long weekend, the city’s out in the country
The autumn’s shrinking into produce and in quiet moods
The buildings watch through eyes whose job is guarding
The trees are carpeting their outskirts with fallen fruits
She walks to meet a man of nature
So many men have come across to meet
But as she passes, memories age-old clatter
Each one connected back along old links
The men she hates, despises, fears
The men she envies and will imitate
The ones she will not go near
The ones that catch, for whom she’s bait
The past was easy, taken, lived through
A past that took, from her, today
The present is unreal, with life dues
A present that gives to the past its day
He calculates the strengths directed
An opposition in exchange
His past does whisper to his present
His present whispers to his past
V.P.T. 20.09.2009
V.P.Toucheva 21.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

What if my idea to write the play for a musical turns into another failure in writing a good enough play for any but self-publication like my plays based on ‘Dorman’ (Plays at http://vpt.hit.bg), or triggers a new round of checking out my personality and occupations. Would it not be much better to continue with my poetry retrospective and see what long piece I have in poetry on the motley background of real life, adding to the resultant picture- where the background gulps the figures in focus- this old poem of mine:
ASKING
What will you do first thing at dawn?
I heard a sick man ask
I'll thank the world that I was born,
for my chance to do tasks
You shouldn't do that, thanks it should
give you for being round
The world' s now desperate to prove
its right to get you bound
What was today that you saw first?
A weak man I heard say
I saw a glittering small bird
when I looked at the day
You shouldn't have done that again,
a one time's just enough
You should have found the right place
and someone you can love
What did you do last thing last night?
An active man asked me
I found a one man to fight,
the person who fells trees
I can't afford to lose again,
lost branches, birds and play
Now I shall join in the chain
but can't participate
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 19.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

If I say once more that my novel ‘Whispers’ is going very well and I am ready to write its next sentence, I may derange a fan into fury and action against repetition, that is why I will now say that my novel is following my old plan to write the play for a musical, and that the next sentence, still in plain form, is:

The global business and political policy that gave the structures the right to choose their men, or gave chosen men the right to create whatever structures they thought fit- the first direction towards creation leading into stability and the second into anarchy- was all around an apartment where, at a table that could be called round because the tablecloth fell almost evenly on all its side, a man was sleeping, clasped over a script, and was dreaming the happy moments of power proper to when a film director selects the staff for his future film.
V.P.Toucheva 17.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU