VPT Poetry Retrospective

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

My novel “Whispers” is going very well, and I am ready to write its third sentence following the second sentence:

The city was a growing ball of relationships wound over one another in layers that traced back along the applied policies, and revealed in cross sections the features of compatibility that pointed to how small the world was when seen in its whole, and how huge if examined in the variety of its elements: some intent on motion, though with no idea about where to stop, some uncertain about which way to go, though charged with the strong wish to participate.
V.P.Toucheva 15.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

The writing of my novel ‘Whispers’ is going on very well no matter how distracted I am into making attempts to understand the arguments of the President and those of the Prime Minister concerning the circulation of energy supplies, arguments that set the state’s parametre of the global economy and the economics’ parametre of state funding.

Really, the writing of my novel ‘Whispers’ is going on very well and I am almost ready to write its second sentence after this first that reads:

The residential block was about to be cleared of cockroaches with a special concoction sprayed- an initiative coming from the younger generation of the previous social gurus as an alternative option to repairing the roof; an initiative giving business, allowing access into inhabited areas, and preventing hordes of cockroaches from crawling around, scared by the microwave vibrations which the residential area was to be exposed to in the name of creating stability, a steady weather, or security.
V.P.Toucheva 12.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

My future novel, called ‘Whispers’, is promising to be a good one, but I do not know if the simple strategy I am applying in writing it will not turn out to be a rather complicated one if it bases on images drawn from the past twenty years like:

the policeman under double stress who is supporting the law levels, but also pretending to be liberal to the creation of the levels of organized crime

the doctor who is burdened with the dilemma to cure a patient or to provide the hospital with another donor for the advance of science in the direction of proving that an old body can live longer if some of its parts are substituted with elements from a younger body

the military officer who must meander, participating in all the campaigns of the big state and business policies while keeping himself outside the effects of those policies

the administration clerk who has a stable chair at a stable desk, and a stable bonus to a stable salary for staying not bribed by clients desperately rattling in the administration chambers formed by the walls of rights and opportunities, and roofed by restrictions of appropriate historical time, relevant to business location, allowed partnership, and politically supported investment

the.....

Well, if one wants to read, or write, something, one must spare the time and apply the necessary skills. I must sit at my desk, meander to avoid my ideas for better occupation, call from my past a bit of youth to reinforce my inspiration, and step on the world’s organized levels to find characters as orderly and clear as the diamond structure.
V.P.Toucheva 5.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

There are two basic spheres: economic and social.

Now that the military structures are shredding off their economically independent administration sub-division, the Ministry of Administration no longer exists, and the State Information Bureau has been announced to have spent lavishly on irrelevant purchases, what can one think but that the first institution has exhausted the funds that temporarily supported redundant officers, the second is handing over the power and tools for granting or blocking entrepreneurship, and the third can no longer place orders for services with firms whose heads cannot be officially hired as consultants on serious matters.

The global stability for Bulgaria bases on the economic levels and the social pyramids, like anywhere in the world, and a person can seek a working position as a specialist in a social-economic pyramid, or a business niche in an economic-social level. In other words, the global stability bases on the principles of the socialist and the capitalist systems combined.

It may prove to be innerving both to the survivors who have been hoping for a still period to be able to take a relaxing breath, and to the drop-outs from the fake structures that lined the basic ones all through the past couple of decades.

In one word, a social war is about to start in Bulgaria between the already settled social layers and the elements settling down from the levels now renewed with foreign import of specialists and specialists returning from abroad- where they were lured to go, driven out of the country by the numerous reforms- to introduce the parameters of uniformity in performance and organization.

I am not sure that the novel I am writing will be as good as “Dorman”(http://vpt.hit.bg), nor that I will not be distracted into proving my identity and independence, that I can write a poem nobody can imitate, or that I am not planning to sell my half of my apartment, or that I know enough of English to have taught at the Bulgarian comprehensive schools, or that I can take care of myself if I am not set up in a situation where my good manners and my endurance are tested.

Here is a poem written on September 4th, 1997, when I attended a training course, with two lovely ladies, Janet and Priscilla, come a bit too late to teach me what I had already found through practice:

Late
It was the hour
It was half past
He looked inside to wake her up
She wasn’t there
She had got up
He’d lain awake
to be in time
she’d lain awake
because of him
V.P.T. 4.09.1997
V.P.Toucheva 4.09.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU