VPT Poetry Retrospective

Evolution is a tricky business, especially where people are involved. Evolution has its natural and artificial aspects. Natural evolution takes time and has group varieties, which means that different groups have to be formed to have them keep their own specific pace of development; such groups must not be very large so they have a recognizable variety of elements naturally brewing inside them while the very groups are carefully monitored and controlled in their whole. Artificial evolution is a puzzle picture of substituted pieces along the double arrow of keeping relevance to the older pieces while slowly changing the whole picture.

My own process of mature evolution started in 1980 when I was given the chance to attend a summer course for teachers. Before and after that, the attention of the special departments agents to me was more than conceivable and capable of turning any ‘wheel’ that will not hurry up to get rolling on its own in the direction of unknown lands. My project to be able to find where a person’s capacity for comprehension, particularly one connected with learning foreign languages, is linked to other factors like the activity of other people, had to be forgotten, and my love for being loved to be developed as an artificial image, feasible but useless to the projects of any declared or concealed wheel axis. The old socialist wheel that would roll until the final victory of communism- always represented by a cart wheel- was intent on taking me in the direction of carrying freight while I was ready to lead the way out of the socialist doctrine that was implanted in Bulgaria by my own competition abroad.

Any wheel has a hub that is turned, a circle that is turning, and spikes to connect and keep separated for the sake of an increased distance travelled at the minimum of effort on the part of the axis to which the wheel is attached.

Bulgaria is now undergoing an artificial evolution: the same things are successively labelled as rotten, as freedom, anarchy, order to be reinstated, as the latest achievement. Something important is observed: where there is one aspect, there is a balancing opposite one, or otherwise natural evolution would draw in and spoil many of the modern plans.

The process of substitution also concerns the hub and the circle of the global ‘wheel’ connected to the idea of socialism through the spikes, and to the idea of capitalism through the axis.

A ‘hub agent’ implanted in the social sphere may use different tools through which to get hitched to a circle of individuals who have played their parts and will have to be replaced as soon as the ‘hub agent’ gets in the limelight. A ‘hub agent’ implanted in the administrative sphere may create the chart of a circle of businesses that will shine in the sunlight out of the classified files as soon as the ‘hub agent’ gets anonymous and leaves the circle of businesses to be substituted seen and the axis that turns the wheel incognito.

In line with the above, here is an old poem of mine which invites nobody but ‘tomorrow’:

COME, TOMORROW, COME
Over the hills
and over the mountains,
over the clouds,
and over the seas,
there are lands -
so dreamy and boundless,
there are people,
and there is me
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 21.11.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

The European Union now has own President, Foreign Minister, Parliament, Government, laws, codes, commissions, institutions, Justice, in one word, the European Union is now a huge state with own government system, and any relationships will treat outsiders as to-be-accepted new elements or as partner states, and any useless mirror structures in the member countries will either merge or will disappear.

The past period of twenty years during which Bulgaria was taken out of one economic block to be placed in another, retained most of the stable structures through instruments, manipulation, and people- some of them now criticized, persecuted, and substituted by the common law stating that the instruments and the performers may get criticized, never the aims and the already constructed.

It is part of the human nature to glee at mega projects- the smaller a person is, the greater the joy at a large conglomeration where the openings for that person’s personal welfare seem as many as mouse holes.

I almost now feel to be a European poet, and not someone ambitious coming from the economically retarded socialist block permeated with mentality inherited from numerous generations that lived under different ethnic and political yokes.

In line with the down-statement of fine Mediaeval Music and Drama coming to substitute Bulgaria’s confinement into Mediaeval Life Style, here is an old poem of mine of the time when the EU patchwork was being made out of what there was of achievement and ambition, resentment and historical dues, prospects and global standards, people to live on the earth and people to live on other planets, economies that had split to catch both the technical and the social aspects of development and innovation, countries separated for opposite projects to be implemented, and much more:

THE COMMON CITY
Now gaining the flavours common
to cities of its style and rank,
and posing the unsolved problem
of sameness as bleak as a blank
Adventurers who've passed its hard tests
have settled with adapted wings
The wise have saved their old treasures
unused and hidden from their needs
The young, escaping their background,
have made a leap to take the lead
And only 'fore the weather's riots
a jaw is clenched, or braced the wings
The city, colourful, in plenty,
its head adorned, its feet concealed
A common city, one in many,
in its rock-chair wakeful sleeps
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 20.11.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

The following poem, rather fresh for my Poetry Retrospective, may seem unexpected to my laziness in finding literary glory, and to my confinement in reluctance to look for money, but reflects some of what the city gives to give, takes to take, takes to give, and gives to take, in a common dualism of logic:

The Common Dualism of Logic
(Whispers, Poem Introductory)

Refrain:
Percentage seventy – strong and compatible
Percentage twenty – it’s specific, weak
Percentage ten – odd, unreliable
Percentage hundred- ordered, rather bleak
The dualism of world’s logic:
The city gives to simply give
It takes to take- thing rather common
It takes to give, and gives to take

While authors old and forgotten
were left to leukemia’s means,
at concerts fine, new tastes begotten
became the richman’s latest bliss

Refrain:
Percentage seventy – strong and compatible
Percentage twenty – it’s specific, weak
Percentage ten – odd, unreliable
Percentage hundred- ordered, rather bleak
The dualism of world’s logic:
The city gives to simply give
It takes to take- thing rather common
It takes to give, and gives to take

The city’s huge with structures crossing
It is an open home hostile
A host nowhere, a guest unwelcome,
you may be outcast upon this isle

Refrain:
Percentage seventy – strong and compatible
Percentage twenty – it’s specific, weak
Percentage ten – odd, unreliable
Percentage hundred- ordered, rather bleak
The dualism of world’s logic:
The city gives to simply give
It takes to take- thing rather common
It takes to give, and gives to take

The city’s like all big world cities
A picture puzzle- changed, complete
Some of its items are new pieces
A substitution for domino shift

Refrain:
Percentage seventy – strong and compatible
Percentage twenty – it’s specific, weak
Percentage ten – odd, unreliable
Percentage hundred- ordered, rather bleak
The dualism of world’s logic:
The city gives to simply give
It takes to take- thing rather common
It takes to give, and gives to take
V.P.T. 17.11.2009

The two main candidates for Mayor of Sofia, that of the home businesses and the police, and that of the old socialists and the international economy, are putting two full stops to the twenty years of specific infrastructure development and social class diversification.

The lack of accumulated enthusiasm that poured out today alongside the twenty per cent taken poll (me counted in though for a dim reason), may have at least two basic explanations:
• the people who went into business on assets looted from the socialist economy, will not vote for any idea of order reconstructed out of elements of the repressive socialist model, or imported from EU capital cities that are ahead in the planning and organizing of the lives of millions of people pooled in places removed from chance of manufacturing or cultivating anything for a living,
• the people whose single achievement in the past twenty years is represented by their relatives working abroad, will never vote for a change that will once more challenge their ability to adapt.

In line with the future levels along which an import of projects, specialists, population, will bring in the idea that the higher a location is, the less ethnically specific its population is, here is an old poem of mine:

Questions Unanswered
What did I do to make the night so angry?
What ill presumptions did I claim for me?
What did support me in amounts plenty?
What next steps planned, no options to succeed?
What favours did I offer to integrity?
What chanced-on powers took all rash bids?
Why is the dark space round me so angry?
Why broken are to trips my body links?
Why do I feel deficiency in stores exhausted?
Why's not there to supplies fresh a cross-bridge?
What if I break free of my lockdowns boasted?
What if, like stray dogs do, I roam streets?
What if I walk and walk all lost in motion?
In search of strength which round me exists?
What if I reach someone's unmatched emotion?
What if I am his cross-time across-bridge?
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 15.11.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

A new score of years made up of four five-year plans is beginning with squabbles between the major state institutions.

A new round of changes introducing pattern relationships and economic order is enclosing the individual interests awoken to fights against the life quotas allotted by the structures, and the group interests that are breaking ahead through life to make the routes for new structure branches.

I hope that I will live long enough to see the focus of globalization taken off Bulgaria that is so deeply entangled in historical, political, and ethnic, legacies that the country will be able to settle into a quiet life only after greater locations get hitched into the global picture.

I also hope that my pension will not necessitate my looking for additional income, because no matter how many vacancies get recurrently posted, there is little real need for teaching or other staff; and no matter how polite secretaries can be, the contracts between their customers and their agencies are shifted onto the translators as direct responsibility with all the incurrent clauses for delay, quality, or invoiced payments.

In line with the coming new round of global economic construction, here is a very short old poem of mine:
YEARS
Of all the musty and delicious,
the pleasant and unpleasant smells,
my years - coming, gone, fictitious-
have made for me a stiff old shell
My body lives by stacking odours
My brain combines and tests them all
My life whirls round rooms of horrors
That dying something is my soul
V.P.T.
V.P.Toucheva 13.11.2009 Sofia, Bulgaria, EU

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