Distant Horizons Improvisation 4.13.2009 Poem by Margaret Alice

Medlley:

1. Distant Horizons Improvisation

It’s time to get ready for bed - don’t
want this feeling of freedom to end,
sitting with the Fairy Tales as back
rest on a high kitchen chair

Dreaming while reading ‘Soul Music’,
kids listening to Slade’s CD, perfect
foil for Buddy’s Music With Rocks In,
Mustrum Ridcully would have been

Just as mystified if he heard ‘Get Down
And Get With It’ & ‘My Oh My’ & ‘Run
Run Away’ - it is easy to see why the
wizards of Unseen University

Were mesmerized by this new kind of music,
the bemused Archchancellor would have
understood why the Bursar got high
without dried frog pills

And I must go to bed to rise bright and
early to sit at a desk, type questionnaires
and play corporate politics in a red-tape
state institution, changed every month

Personnel played by human resources as if
we were an accordion, ridden bareback by
every new-fangled invention of bureaucratic
persuasion – I could pray for resignation

To reconcile me to my role and station in life,
but I’m scared my prayer would be heard; I
don’t want to be resigned, still want to rant
and rave against my fate

Still want to dream that all this might change
as soon as I find a golden key or magic flute
that would open the chute – Open Sesame –
that will let me take off and fly away

To distant horizons of improvisation...
13 April 2009

2. Not Satisfied At All

This has been a most distressing,
most depressing, tiring day, totally
discouraging, tired from attempts
at helping a colleague struggling,
trying to defuse the mounting
conflict between two strong
personalities, tired from
lack of sleep,
emotionally
deplete

Completely squashed by evaluation
procedures showing me to be an
average human being - marked
like sheep, rated and graded –
found wanting, see the
comparisons between
the hard-working sort
who never gets bored
forging on happily
through the day

I am counting blessings, the main one
being I still have a job in spite of the
fact that I’m the most pathetic being
alive; the worst administrator that
has ever been, usually I’m quite
keen to point out to people I’m
so deliciously low, a squashed
cabbage – but when they
concur, saying ‘Yes,
we know, you’re up
to no good’

My glass self-image shatters into a
million pieces - the boss, placated
within my limitations, indicated
she was not satisfied
at all…


3. Refuge From Reality

A quick summary of the history
of pop and hip-hop, heavy metal
and blues, especially the commercial
types who zoom in and take charge,
the exploitation of the talented, the
stupidity and gullibility, it is a marvel
of delight to read Terry Pratchett’s
rendition of the beginning of modern
music in the 20th century, I’m sitting
here with a smile right round my face,
Chrysoprase the troll, a Mafia boss,
Buddy Holly or really called Imp y
Celyn, and Susan, Death’s grand-
daughter forced to take account of
Buddy’s imminent death – what a
wonderful magic place in which to
take refuge from reality, created by
an imaginative writer with the best
imagination that was ever seen!

Terry Pratchett “Soul Music” 1994