It's happening! But it's not happening on television, except a by-the-way item on the News. It's like the late, great Gil Scott-Heron once sang - 'The Revolution will not be televised.'   It's happening! Yet you'd hardly know it from the newspapers. I search in vain 'The Observer' and the 'Sunday Times' (not mine) for one column even.
   You begin to question, begin to wonder. Yet Youtube and Facebook tell a different story and there you can read and witness the postings.
   At first, the pictures seem strangely dark and oppressive and it makes me think of times of the Depression.
   But no, this is New York City on Saturday and there's an occupation of Wall Street. It's a massive protest replicated in many other places across the USA, against the bankers, the share-gamblers who trade in people's lives; who shift money round the globe without caring about the consequences.
   Against the ones who caused this whole economic crisis in the first place,  given total freedom by Bush , Blair and then Brown, to play the markets with their 'Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed' to quote the folk band Show of Hands.
   700 protesters were arrested as they tried to stall traffic on Brooklyn Bridge, but you'd hardly know about it. And elsewhere, inspired by it, plans are afoot in Canada for similar occupations. They may well have
chanted ' The people united.....will never be defeated!' in the States  instead of 'Workers', but they have had enough like many others across Europe.
   And, like the students when they marched in London, the many public service Trade Unionists who rallied and even ( whatever their motives) the rioters in England over the summer........they have nothing to lose.
   Why has this been given so little coverage? If it were part of the Arab Uprisings things would be different. Is it a fear, under Government pressure, of all this spreading? Or is it just that it doesn't fit their formula, like the recent protests in Egypt against the military government there, who are acting just like Mubarak before them, with a ruthless totalitarianism? This too , has been given scant coverage.
   Yet the British media over-estimates its influence. They should know from the huge impact of Facebook and Twitter in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya that people will get to know things far quicker now than any of their cameras and presses can deliver. Already , a similar occupation is planned for London on Oct. 15th, with a call to occupy the Stock Exchange.
   Where will all this lead us? Cynics might say, I've seen it all before and it comes and goes away. In the 1960s we witnessed widespread rebellion, often based on student protests, anti-Vietnam War marches and Civil Rights movements. In N.Ireland and the USA, these have had lasting repercussions.
   Today , things are significantly different. Although the so-called 'underclasses' ,who are most seriously affected by the cuts and price rises,
have yet to take to the streets, there is a much wider force for change which comprises green activists, Trade Unionists and students. Once these rise together, they could prove the most potent force since the opposition to the war in Iraq.
   The ConDems responses are minimal, of course. They are committed to class warfare and their scathing attacks on the Welfare State, public services and pensions are just a part of this. Just as Thatcher used unemployment as a weapon to beat down the workers, so Cameron and Clegg are using the deficit to cover an onslaught on
those who struggle most.
   Labour cannot be trusted to take a lead. Ed Middlengland and his cronies fail to back the very Unions who placed him in power and , like Blair and Brown before him, he woos the 'squeezed middle' while completely ignoring those at the bottom whose poverty and daily grind is worsened every minute.
   Here in Wales, Plaid Cymru offer no solutions. They merely advocate private investment rather than the immediate nationalisation of Welsh water, railways and all energy suppliers at the very least. How else can we be expected to control the exorbitant prices now being charged? There isn't even any competition and share-holders and executives are the only ones to gain.
   I'd like to think that the uprising of the people will overtake the politicians and take them by surprise, as many reject the traditional notion of party politics and take history into their own hands. As someone posted on their Facebook wall -   'If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.' ( Desmond Tutu )


IT'S HAPPENING!

It's happening now
people
           in cities     in squares
sitting down to stand
occupying
               trespassing
chanting
            singing
                       in unison

facing the Feds       the cops
their helmets and truncheons
their water cannons
their CS canisters

mouths bandaged
with dollars    pounds -
showing their features
                                 unafraid
of secret cameras

it's happening
                    in the places
where it all began
the money markets
where the gamblers
with lives far and near
risk someone else's skin

shop-floor     sweat shop workers
thrown out
                 binned
not to be re-cycled,
flung onto landfills
of bodies
                  toxic troubles

almost incinerated,
they have risen
                        from piles of debris
waving the flags of new-found flesh

ripping the bills      the notes
from their lips
                     and uttering

'Yes! It's happening!
We are ourselves and one!'

    

   Love at first sound ; where, for days or weeks you totally inhabit an album or song and it lives in you. The music and words combining to fill full your days and dreams.
   It doesn't often happen to me. It did when I first listened to Captain Beefheart's 'Strictly Personal', the intense feeling of something unique, at  once a primitive voice of desert and swamp and then strangely, but  almost always, married to lyrics which come from dreams, nightmares or outer space. 
   It did another time when I heard Kevin Coyne's song 'Turpentine', so out of time with the many oh-so-sensitive whining hippies who appeared on the 'Old Grey Whistle Test'. Here was a punk before it even happened, a bluesman with Derby accent who sang his pained and angry cry from the view of a boy who was a total nihilist.
    Coyne was an outsider and revelation much like another singer-songwriter whose sounds I fell for at first hearing, Tom Waits. Living in W. Germany we'd go over the border to the Netherlands for music and tobacco (small cigars I smoked then). I also crossed the border imaginatively into the world of Waits, of bars and characters and the loneliness of being in a strange land : 'Tom Traubert's Blues' had all of these and more, with its remaking of 'Waltzing Matilda'.
   Others I've grown to love, especially Dylan and Cohen, whose voices grated initially. How could they claim to be singers? I was so wrong and made up for my poor judgement by soaking up all their work later, though I mostly sang Cohen to myself around the house and there was a particular pub in Aber where Saturday nights were singalong and 'Bird On The Wire' was my favourite. For Dylan, I had to stand as my wife played piano and follow his intricate words.
   Music has been so exciting of late. I have become intrigued by  the lyrics of Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, at a time when few bands are not at all adventurous with words and likewise the peculiar phrasing and rhythmic impulses of Welsh band The Joy Formidable, whose lyrics sometimes remind me of the work of Peter Finch. I'm not sure if they'd count him as an influence though!
   However, real love at first sound came from one of the finest albums this century without any doubt. It's an album which has swum and flown in my brain from first listening: full of birds and foam, of nymphs and dolphins.
   I was uncertain about downloading The Waterboys'  'An Appointment With Mr Yeats' at first. The title seemed a bit awkward and Richard Curtis almost put me off. Yes, the Richard Curtis of all those famous romcoms which lacked the 'com' and had a lot of predictable 'rom'! It wasn't the fact that Curtis mildly criticised this album ( saying that he much preferred Mike Scott's own words) that made me wary; it was more the fact that if Curtis eulogized The Waterboys then maybe I should take stock of my great admiration.
    One listen on youtube to their version of 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' was enough to persuade though. Here was a bold, bluesy rendition of the poem, which should conventionally have been treated as a simple acoustic lament. This prepared me for the rest.
   So much of what Scott and his bassist do with the poems isn't what you'd expect, yet there are still echoes of the very best of their music through the years, even the resounding piano chords from that classic, 'The Whole of the Moon'.
   The music is taken to another level by their desire to do justice to Yeats' words and Scott's voice is even more passionate than on recent cds. He sings with such an emotional power throughout, that each word is given weight and I can only compare to early Cohen for anything like this. Thus the word 'mad' has such a quivering quality in 'Mad As The Mist and Snow',
while 'grave' in 'September 1913' is deep and doomy and 'copulate' at the end of 'News For The Delphic Oracle'  is intoned with such lasciviousness.
   In an age of endless singer-songwriters who moan in the inevitable First Person about the end of love affairs and little else, what price songs about the 'Four Ages of Man' or the myth of Niamh and Oisin? Interestingly, Scott chooses to alter the ending of the 'Four Ages of Man' and stop with 'at stroke of midnight'. There is no 'God wins' at all and it actually makes the poem more mysterious. I'm not sure if this is a later version of the manuscript or not.
   I have never cried so much over an album and different songs affected me the more I listened. The first  was 'Sweet Dancer', an example of the band's more folk-rock side, though Katie Kim's dueting vocals have more than a hint of alt. country style. Most of the album is definitely closer to the 'rock 'n' roll' Scott claimed on one tv interview.
    'Sweet Dancer' doesn't work so well on the page and reads as rather slight. However, Scott and the Boys bring it to another dimension altogether with Wickham's winged and wheeling violin, the subtle harmonies and , above all, the way the refrain of 'sweet dancer' is sung over and over. It's such a visual poem and the flute at the end leaves with a sense of the girl ( seen as 'mad' by men in the house) drawing pictures with her movements on the lawn.
   This album has so much variety of interpretation, from the chanting , leaping opening of 'The Hosting of the Shee' to the incantatory 'Let The Earth Bear Witness' with its musing on mortality.
   It make me want to revisit my Waterboys' cds and also to re-read the work of W.B. Yeats. I have never been a fan of all his poetry and the later tendency to 'gyres' left me cold, but individual poems moved me considerably. Some, like 'Leda and The Swan' aren't featured on the album; others, like 'An Irish Airman Forsees His Death' are.
   If you've never listened to The Waterboys before ( apart from that single) , then lend this an ear.......or two! Rock on, Billy Yeats! It might just be that Scott & Yeats are the best songwriting combo since Becker and Fagen ( who are they?.........another story!).
   I make no excuses for digging up an old one for this occasion. The title refers to ' the autograph tree' in Coole Park and Yeats' house at Thor Ballylee. Yeats' friend, author and translator Douglas Hyde, signed his name ACA on the tree i.e. Gaelic for 'the most beautiful branch'.  


                              The tree & the tower

There's a wide spread of petticoat
August auburn on the outside,
green facing in, where we hide
in that 'sensuality of the shade'
Yeats marked so delicately.

The first to initial that smooth
parchment of the copper beech.
Augusta Gregory in autumn
widowed in buffed red-brown :
WBY losing its clarity to time.

Weathering and the admiring palms
have rubbed so many autographs,
obscuring Hyde, An Craoibhinn Aoibhinn
his Gaelic name of the knife
and others queried or forgotten.

The tower remains, its gyring stairs
up to the stars, the ghosts of Normans
who built to oversee, while Coole
has long been left to fester down,
for uneasy spirits we're waiting on.

Over the tower's roof a sword in the east,
under the laefy dome we trace
a constellation of friends made myth ;
under the bridge blown in rebellion
the stream translates script-reflections. 

   The tragic events at Gleision drift mine near Pontardawe have been  harrowing. The relatives of those dead miners must have suffered so much, waiting anxiously in Rhos Community Centre to find out about their loved-ones. And now they have to bear the grief.   There have been so many of these tragedies in the past that few in the Valleys do not know someone touched by them. There was the terrible accident at Six Bells Colliery near Abertileri in 1960 ( now marked by an large, outstanding sculpture) and only a few years later the Aberfan Disaster of October 1966, when 144 died because a huge waste-tip collapsed onto Pantglas School.
   Opencast coal-mining (much more like quarrying) looms over this town of Merthyr, with its constant threats of dust and diesel fumes and endless noise from diggers and trucks. A black hole in the lungs of the mountainside.
   The Red Poets (who launch issue 17 on Sept. 23rd) have always been associated with the Valleys and our hardcore performers for many years have been Jazz ( from Penywaun) who once worked as a miner, Tim Richards from Abertridwr (who was very active in  support groups during the last Miners' Strike) and John Davies from Maesycwmmer, an ex-Labour Councillor whose work is often influenced by the importance of mining to the Valleys.
   As to myself, it has pervaded my work from the first day I set foot in the Valleys, staying with a miner and his wife in Tredegar , while doing teaching practice there. It was impossible to ignore his hands, each line engrained with coal and his lungs, rasping and gravelling with all the dust he'd breathed in.
   When I moved to Merthyr, I couldn't fail to ignore the effect of the coal industry (especially from the 19th century) on the landscape of the Waun at the back of my house.
   There had been many drift mines (much like Gleision) and also small shaft-holes which had become overgrown or plugged in. No openings remained on the slopes yet the topography has been shaped by them and the numerous slag-heaps now reclaimed by heather and gorse, by grass , wild flowers and bracken.
   I have known men who worked at Tower Colliery , which was owned by the workers after the Strike and, for all their suspicion of the overbearing Tyrone O'Sullivan, they much preferred this pit to any run by the NCB. They knew that safety came first and would ensure that conditions were always as healthy as possible.
   If we have to have coal mines at all, then at least let them be controlled by the workers themselves, in co-operatives similar to Tower.
   Of course, it's difficult at present to be sure about health and safety matters at Gleision. Seeing pictures of the mine is like time-travel back to the 19th century, with wooden props and a mere two and a half foot high gallery to work in.
   From listening to mining engineers on tv, it seems likely the miners dug into an old working which was flooded. Water from the old gallery would have rushed rapidly into Gleision. But was there proper equipment to detect such workings?

   The solidarity and support of communities in the Swansea and Neath valleys for the miners' families shows clearly that caring and compassion haven't disappeared. 
   Mining is often only a few generations back for many of us here and my grandad's family  from Cilfynydd (near Pontypridd) were hauliers at the mine whose site is now occupied by Pontypridd High School.
   This sense of family history combined with the over-riding impact of coal on the geography itself means we cannot easily forget the past, nor should we.
   The Empire that coal, iron and copper helped create through its engines of trade left most of us stranded as it collapsed, and seemingly without a purpose.
   Yet, other people can give us  a direction and I can only admire the many who came to Gleision to fight and try to save those miners lives.  It is deeply ironic that Cameron ( featured uncritically on BBC Wales's 'Week In, Week Out' last night) is cutting the health and safety budget by 30% and attacking the pensions of the same fire-fighters he hails as heroes!
   It's impossible to bring much light to relatives of those who died; however, messages from across the world bring comfort and the cwtsh of communities helps with glimmers in a long, dark passageway.

                              
                                 Voice Remained

I could tell he was speaking about
the best and worst of times,
though his face had no glint of light
from lamp or end of the line.

There, in his warm taxi, the rain
tipping down outside, he looked back
into the dark gallery, couldn’t wipe
the wet away like his windscreen.

It was like ‘Coalhouse’ on telly, he explained,
that private mine on the slope above Tower;
production came first and safety after,
him and his dad looking out for each other.

With a mandrel at the face,
when it was dry the heat
would be like a furnace,
sweat like a plague of flies.

But in the damp was the worst,
days like today up to their thighs
hacking away……twice a collapse
and his dad dug him out of death.

Dust clogged like leaves in the drain
and notches in the rail like pot-holes ;
yet laughter was their second skin.
As he drove away, his voice remained.

   The death of ardent Wales and Bluebirds fan Mikey Dye outside Wembley was a tragedy for the family and many friends he left behind. As yet, it's difficult to ascertain the circumstances, but a man from Redditch in Worcestershire has been charged with manslaughter and others have been arrested.
   Violence at football matches is inexcusable. Sadly, some of those who have perpetrated it sell their books and gain notoriety and money by glorifying it. Having witnessed gratuitous and senseless attacks both by and on Cardiff City fans in the past, I can say that it is always shocking and painful.
   One time, away at Wrexham, I saw a so-called Cardiff supporter lay into a much slighter Wrexham fan , who was walking on his own. It made me ashamed to be associated with the club.
   My first memory of this kind of assault was when I used to follow Cambridge City and we were playing at Hendon in the Cup. My best mate Lart wore a black and white top hat which made him stand out. We were about thirteen and as slight as that Wrexham fan. Passing some Hendon fans, one very burly man just launched himself at Lart, who managed to struggle free, though he was bleeding profusely from his face. We were shaken and scared, but it didn't stop us going to see the sport we loved.
   Thankfully, football has generally changed for the better, despite the malevolent influences of the English and Welsh Defence Leagues, who try to use it to recruit ignorant people to their obnoxious brand of Islamophobia.
   Recently I attended the Huddersfield Carling Cup match and was delighted to see their fans drinking with ours outside the Ninian Park pub before the game. This was especially gratifying as two of my long-term friends are Terriers supporters.
   Some 20 years back there was a totally different scenario before our League game with them.  Walking on the pavement opposite to the same pub, I was there when a Huddersfield coach was pelted with bottles and glasses, shards flying and landing at our feet. The Town coach braked to a rapid halt and out piled loads of supporters who invaded the Ninian, where all hell broke loose.
   Nowadays, we have become much more of a family club and this kind of violence is something I haven't seen for many years. Yet, I've read many postings on Facebook and messageboards by rugby fans praising their own sport for its lack of violence. If there are psychos amongst footie fans (and the police, it must be stressed), then in rugby they tend to be on the pitch. Eyes gouged out, bits of ears chewed off..........you'd need to bite off an opponent's goolies and spit them out in the ref's face to actually get sent off!
   Moreover, three things brought home to me the violence which accompanies rugby. I have only ever been physically assaulted twice in my life for no reason and both times by rugby players (off the field).
   In my last teaching post we were regularly visited a policeman, who used to work as an undercover cop in sport. He always told the pupils that ,in fact, the number of arrests of rugby supporters ( mostly at internationals) far exceeded football ones. Alcohol, freely available during the games, played a major role in this.
   A friend and fellow poet Dave Hughes from Swansea, who worked for many years as a Social Worker, has written a vivid and disturbing poem called 'Grand Slam' about the domestic violence carried out by rugby fans, with their much more macho culture. He follows both sports , yet concedes that the influence of rugby - a sport which lauds physicality rather than skill in most instances - is appalling and the 'slam' itself becomes a metaphor for abuse of women in particular.
   While I can't deny that football still has problems, important aspects like racism have been tackled head on and dealt with in this country in most cases.
   It doesn't help anybody that the charging of an England supporter in relation to Mike Dye's death has been followed by threats of revenge in certain quarters. I'm sure his family and true friends would not want to tarnish memories in such a way.
   For me, football has always been about passionately following your team whatever ; about the sheer thrill of scoring and winning and, as a Bluebird of many, many years, about appreciating the good times because I've known some really awful ones.   It's about the hopes and possibilites that this season we will go one better, even though I'm cautiously optimistic.
   My great friend Mike J. Jenkins, from the same village of Heolgerrig, was like-minded. He loved to stand on the terraces and join in the chanting. He was a generous , gentle and very funny man. His last words to me from his hospital bed were when I was walking to the Reading game  ( second leg of the play-offs)  - 'If we get to Wembley, I'll be there!'
   Of course, we never made it. Neither did Mike.


                          COMRADE, BLUEBIRD,FRIEND
                            (i.m Mike J. Jenkins)

I was sitting close to the curtain,
I couldn't even mouth 'Amen!'

I'm waiting for you as ever
comrade, Bluebird, friend

in the chapel you once gave a sermon
the priest praised a faithful Christian

I'll raise a pint of ale you loved,
namesake, Bluebird, friend

white cross of flowers on your coffin,
the standard blackness of mourning

we shared so much, even differences :
teacher, chanter of the terracing

the priest's tenor loudly resonating,
he spoke of a man of learning

you could tell stories defying any formula,
laugh-maker, math's man, friend

you were 'going home' he kept saying;
I heard you reply 'I belong here!'

I'm waiting for you, I'll be waiting forever,
my comrade, Bluebird, friend.

   This week my young daughter started at Comp. We have spent more on her uniform than on a self-catering holiday in Kernow.   There are trousers which are not boys, yet look the same as them; there is a jumper with badge on, and long-sleeved shirts far too hot for classrooms; there is a grey hoodie which can't be worn in class and is for sport alone, to be worn by girls and not boys in a breach of the European Declaration on Human Rights for certain.
   There is a  hockey skirt and I half expected a lacrosse outfit, except she's off to Ysgol Gyfun not Howell's! We bought the wrong one, a wrap-around affair like a mini-sari. I was sent to buy the right one called a 'scort' and nearly came back with a 'scart lead'!
   At least she inherited ties from my two oldest, though one is unwearable as it's graffitied with 'MANICS'. We checked the other to see if it had 'MOZART' on it, but luckily didn't.
   I loathe school uniform and always have done. From my days in Grammar School waering cap , ridiculous shorts and an enormous blazer handed down from my brother, right through to being a teacher and witnessing the inordinate waste of time spent spying on pupils, admonishing and punishing them for breaking petty rules.
   Having taught in Germany which, in common with most of Europe, has no uniforms, I know that they're totally unnecessary, uncomfortable and very expensive. Moreover, German pupils had acquired a very sensible and practical approach, mostly wearing jeans and t-shirts. In summer they could wear shorts without fear of suspension. It was all very civilised, like the 6th form at Radyr Comp. (where I used to teach) and like Primary schools used to be in this country.
   I'm tempted to take the whole matter to the European Court of Human Rights, as no school can legally force any pupil to wear uniform, many of which are fit for funerals ( black), or for mockery from other schools (red).
   The only thing stopping me is the fact that my daughter would be a 'guinea pig' in this process and her schooling would be sacrificed for my principles.As with the tawse in Scotland and cane elsewhere, I dream of a day when uniform's banned forever.
   It's all a legacy of the public school system : a reflection of the over-riding militarism in schools, which sought to impose discipline from above rather than foster self-discipline. The ConDems would return to this in a more obsessive way with their desire to appoint ex-members of the Armed Forces in all England's schools; conveniently forgetting the strong culture of bullying in the Forces, exemplified by Deep Cut barracks.
   It's about time that we learnt from the likes of Finland ( whose system was excellently reported by a certain Ciaran Jenkins on BBC Wales last week) and trusted pupils and teachers to make their own decisions and that includes what to wear in both cases. I was once admonished by the Governors of a school for not wearing a tie, though thankfully my last school weren't so dictatorial. Pride comes from loving the whole school environment, not from brandishing the regimental badge.
   The April Rising at Pen-y-dre High School in the 80's brought this home to me more dramatically than anything else.
   It was the time of the Miners' Strike, Greenham Common and the teachers' industrial action. Every lunchtime we left school, as part of a work-to-rule, to demonstrate that the lunch hour was ours.
   I believe all this influenced the pupil protest at Pen-y-dre ,which was highly organised, even if some criminal elements did exploit it to fling sausages at staff cars and smoke in the open. It was a reaction to a newly-appointed Head of Year who threw her weight around and banned white socks and donkey jackets ( maybe that's why white socks became so iconic in Merthyr).
   About 60 pupils managed to chain and padlock the gates and sit down on the drive, having changed into 'civilian clothing'. Many more joined them later. Unbelievably, the only person allowed to leave was the Head, who had a meeting in Cardiff!
   The police eventually arrived at the end of the school day to break it up and 200 pupils were suspended as a result. The local paper published a story describing it as a minor disturbance: the Head was a master of spin long before Tony Blair.
   Contrary to myth, most pupils I taught were against school uniform, many vehemently so. There are also an increasing number of teachers with these views, often too afraid to voice them.
   The financial argument is increasingly important, as many newspaper stories have illustrated this week. In 'The Observer' an article entitled 'Families 'break the bank' to pay for school uniform' shows clearly how the rising costs and cuts in grants have hit the poorest families hardest.
   The argument that you cannot distinguish social class so easily is an absurd one. Pupils who are poorest inevitably stand out, with the tattiest uniforms. Pupils spend ages trying to defeat the system with its trivial rules about the colour of shoes or length of skirts. Energy better expended elsewhere.
   How can they possibly have faith in an education system based on such futility? How can they show respect to staff who have to pounce on them for wearing trainers to school? It merely breeds resentment and that April Rising was symbolic of it.


Off  To  Grammar


At eleven, I was packed off to Grammar
wearing above-knee grey shorts,
a peaked cap and handed-down blazer.
I must've resembled a stunted jockey
desperately searching for his horse.

I might as well have had the motto
'I am a victim. Aim here!'
on the badge at my head and heart.
Yellow the colour of the crest,
yellow the colour of my fears.

The older boys would grab our caps
and hurl them onto bus-shelter roofs,
they'd giggle at our spindly legs
which weren't even sprouting hairs.
At least my blazer was in shreds.

Within a month I wore long trousers,
my tie was hanging off like fur moulting,
my jumper beginning to lose its skin
and my cap had become a rugby ball
tossed down the three-quarters of the bus.

The bright badge was darkening
like a love-bite shown off for boasts
and whoever invented school uniform
to rile and humiliate us First Formers
must've tut-tut-tutted at the constant abuse.


  
  
  
   

   Both my older children have said to me they could never live in London and I would certainly concur. I always feel a sense of panic on the crowded tube and lost, even if I do have some notion of the geography. The bus is preferable, at least it gives you an idea of where things are in relation to each other.
   Some people relish the anonymity of cities, but I'd rather have a feeling of belonging in a village or small town. When I returned to Aberystwyth to live as a student I felt it was a town to fit my head. Even Barri (where I lived then) sprawled too much to the east , while I knew every inch of Aber (though curiously still have problems with street names).
   I grew up in Penparcau, a village near Aber and like Heolgerrig, where I live now, loved it's proximity to both countryside and town. Penparcau had the hill of Pen Dinas with its strange unfinished monument, the rivers Rheidol and Ystwyth and sea at Tanybwlch. The town was a walk away for an adventurous six year-old, with a half-pier where we could plunder machines for chocolate.
   Cities always seem to define themselves through areas anyway, rather than an entirety and Cardiff contains so many contrasts, between say rough Ely and posh Pontcanna (to use two stereotypes). Although my older children have both lived in Cardiff, I don't think they have put down roots there.
   As a teenager, I lived in two very different village communities which starkly defined the influences of the city. The first was Horseheath on the border between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, a farming community though some worked at a nearby factory.
   Much more than the city, the classes did mix, though my friend the Rector's son would never play with the village lads  as I did endlessly, both footie and cricket. The palatial landowner's house up the road was another matter and his two gorgeous daughters were beyond our chances, even if they did travel on the same bus to school.
   Most of my friends were sons and daughters of farm and factory workers
and I soon picked up their distinctive accent. My Grammar school divided between 'city' and 'country' and I soon sided with the latter, loving the burr and rounded vowels which were the opposite of swallowed Cockney of Cambridge.
   When we moved to my stepfather's house between Whittlesford and Duxford it was a different world completely. This was a middle-class area of no name, which housed commuters and every morning I made the same trek to the train as they did. There was no sense of community whatsoever and it could have been a suburb of Cambridge.
   My wife is from Belfast and shares my antipathy for cities. She spent too long surrounded by streets and estates not to value the closeness of moor and mountain, even though she doesn't appreciate the hostility of some neighbours in Merthyr.
   When I lived in the city for five years I disliked it intensely, even somewhere as attractive and easy-going as Cambridge. The best of times was during my first year on our newly-built estate, where old allotments existed and we could roam them picking fruit. In retrospect, I think I only liked it because it reminded me so much of my filching days in Penparcau, where a badge of pride was a tale of being chased by a farmer brandishing a gun!
   Cambridge offered no freedom to someone brought up to swim in Cardigan Bay, skim stones on rivers and make labyrinthine dens in bracken and gorse. Though I cycled everywhere, there seemed no way out of its endless streets and its murky river was no companion.
   It belonged to someone else : the students or tourists.......definitely not to us.
   Though we played footie and cricket for hours on Jesus Green, it was never ours like the cow-field we claimed in Horseheath, with two old branches for posts, cow-pats to dodge and a  boggy ditch for the touch-line. Jesus Green was smooth and lawn-like and could've been anywhere.
   Even now, Heolgerrig has little left of community, which revolves around the Primary school if anything. Now the Thomases have left, our Post Office is no longer a bastion of Cymraeg and one of our two pubs has recently been shut. New housing estates are being built despite the recession and it is falling further into commuterdom.
   Yet there's such promise in the Waun and Aberdar Mountain. Cattle have at last returned to the Waun, though the grass is so long they seem to be drowning in wild rye. The landowners have given up - for the present at least - their stories about cows collapsing down old mine-shafts; a ruse to prepare the way for opencast mining.
   The mountain gives up its crops of wimberries and blackberries in abundance and there are always exciting visitors such as the Tawny Owl which shrieked so loudly from our oak tree the other night that my young daughter was sent scurrying downstairs like a petrified rodent !
   This is a poem about being in Cardiff and its negativity, though I don't always feel this way.


                             EVERYBODY'S SOMEWHERE ELSE

Today like many others
on the streets
in the city
waiting for the green man,
it's normal to be mad

everybody's somewhere else
talking to themselves :
tiny ear-pieces you can't see
and tiny microphones
you can't detect

I don't reply
I don't wide berth
everyone lost in private sound :
concealed wires
and invisible nets

their palms are screens
their fingers pad,
their faces books
of pages failed to print,
arms raised in praise of masts

everyone is where they're not
and by the time they match
the voices to the flesh,
they'll be bedded down
where there is no searched or found. 

   Unlike professionally-opinionated Prof. David Starkey, historian and master of the ludicrous generalisation, I don't pretend to have a PhD on 'The Street' and the effects of gangster rap. Though I have to say to him, why now? Why not any other time in the last decade or more, when this rap has been just as influential?
   I cannot pretend to know what it's really like to be young in the cities of England ( because most of those rioters were young ); to feel that intense pressure to join a gang, to be part of its close network, its comradeship and to feel the pull of violence and criminality, so the mean streets of Hackney resembled those of L.A.
   The part played by gangs in the riots may have been important, but it was also an abandonment of their traditional roles, which suggests the leaders weren't in control. As one commentator said - ' If you're operating a large drugs syndicate, the last thing you want is the place crawling with police.' Gangs left their territories and forgot allegiances for once, with a common purpose of crime always manifest. Though many of those prosecuted were individuals caught up in the mayhem.
   When I first began teaching in Merthyr in one of the most deprived areas in Europe over 30 years ago, there was an outbreak of gang warfare on the yards.  It was very vicious as they were vying for control; 'boyz' out to prove who was hardest.
   It was no accident that this was also the most oppressive and violent era in education I've experienced, with the cane used regularly and almost every teacher using some form of physical punishment. One serial offender once told me he'd prefer the cane to detention any day : it was over much more quickly. This lad went though school being punished and emerged to spend a lot of time in Her Majesty's institutions ( and I don't mean the armed forces!).
   Violence bred violence and, as the system improved markedly to favour the pupils, the influences of gangs waned. They were replaced by individual criminalised families and others who warranted a undue influence by being 'rock 'ard'. However, generally school created an alternative atmosphere to the destructive forces of the estate and sometimes, the home.
   For many, it was very difficult though. With parents who didn't care or single mothers constantly struggling to survive, many couldn't be changed by the school's 'other world'. These weren't always pupils without academic ability. I recall one girl ( who I wrote about in 'Sara's Story' in the book 'Child of Dust') who was extremely bright. She would invariably volunteer to read in class and was a vocal and articulate presence at all times. She was highly creative and her poems and stories were a revelation.
   One day I found her writing a letter in class. I asked her who it was to and she told me her boyfriend in jail. I found out later he was a drug addict and well-known pusher.
   After that I noticed an alarming deterioration in her personality : from an outgoing, lively character, she became sullen and withdrawn. Soon, she dropped out of Year 10 completely and I learnt that not only had she been taking hard drugs, but she'd become pregnant as well. The sense of waste and missed opportunities was tragic, yet she tried in vain to finish her English coursework from home.
   How to break this feeling of rejection by family and society isn't easy to solve, of course. Job opportunities and an education system which values everybody and fails none are fundamental. 
   Moreover, education can do a lot more to find and encourage pupils' talents. Many disaffected pupils are also the ones who can express themselves very well through poetry and music and they aren't given enough chances to do so, with music not inclusive enough and poetry-writing marginalised.
   To encourage a sense of belonging, local history must be the foundation-stone of the History syllabus. It should involve both individual and group research into family and place. This is certainly an area which has declined in recent years and the Welsh Bacc. could play a significant role in reviving it.
   More vital is that youth clubs should be run which actually empower young people. It's interesting to note that in the weeks preceding the riot at Tottenham, 8 out of 13 youth clubs in Haringey had their funding cut. These clubs should have direct links to the Councils, so youngsters can make their voices heard and, above all, see that their proposals are taken on board and executed. Even more importantly, young people should have opportunities to carry out changes to their environment, helping to design murals and skate-parks and , indeed, construct them.
   All these require investment and trust. Some are already happening with regeneration programmes, yet need to be co-ordinated so they are seen as levels of true democracy and participation and not just another 'scheme from above'.
   The following poem is set in a rough, tough estate in the Valleys, but it could be a lot of places where trainers mark out a gang's territory. Poetry and artwork, rap and song : the children of such areas have so much to offer and we must not let them down.




Two Trainers Tied




Two trainers tied to telephone wire,
flick-tongued tightrope walkers
left them behind ; the gangland sign
declaring – ‘ Do not enter!
This terrortree is owers!’

Two trainers are like trophies
of animal ears always listening
to the conversations complaining
that somebody has fallen far
down to the white lines.

Two trainers marking a no-go area :
if you’re the wrong person
at the wrong time you’ll be dangled
like a puppet, then strings broken,
your limbs found in the gutter.

Two trainers like flags of the poor
hoisted from shoulder upon shoulder,
a ladder of bodies aspiring upwards ;
emptiness steps and stops mid-air,
along the wire waves of fear. 




 

   They went in without a care for the law or the disdain of the outside world. They attacked violently, burning and invading, only concerned with what they could acquire. Innocent people died and the fires flamed for days.   Yes, the invasion of Iraq was a prime example of neo-imperialist looting.
   This scenario uses what I call 'Left Switch', which I deployed in my poem 'Them Blue Ooligans' depicted the police as football hooligans on the rampage. My friend, comrade and fellow Red Poet Tim Richards has used this successfully on many occasions.
   I am not trying to be over-simplistic in equating last week's riots in England with Blair's Iraq debacle, but I am picking up on an excellent point made by an Iranian-born rapper on Newsnight last week, where he argued that the rioters were merely following the example set by the upper echelons of society. He said that looters were behaving just like countries, who invade in order in take what they want (oil, in the case of Iraq).
   Of course, such parallels are fundamental to any understanding and both Cameron and Miliband  have stressed that the whole of society must take responsibility, even as they demonise the rioters while excusing the war, even as they allow the likes of Michael Gove to pay back money for goods acquired on expenses, whilst jailing one woman who simply received a pair of stolen shorts and actually slept through the riots!
   There is, in short, a marked disparity between grand statements about collective guilt and their actions. The incident which sparked the initial riots in Tottenham - the police shooting of Mark Duggan - will be dealt with in due course ( whenever that is!). Yet if the police involved had been instantly suspended on discovering that he hadn't fired a bullet and was almost certainly executed on the streets, then Cameron would've been setting an example to the rest of society.
   Instead, the police are universally praised for their bravery at the same time as being criticised for a lack of robust tactics. What can be more 'robust' than killing a man in such a way? If the Norwegian police could detain Breivik in much more fraught circumstances, then why not Duggan?
   Bankers and tax evaders have long looted our society, playing on fear and greed in the international markets. Have they been punished in the retributive manner now being seen against so many rioters? No, they have been rescued by our taxes and  rewarded by a resumption of the very bonus culture which caused the problems in the first place.
   The rank hypocrisy does not stop there. Why are no journalists confronting Boris Johnson and fellow ex-Bullingdon Club members Cameron and Osbourne with their own pasts, when they went on the rampage, wrecking pubs and restaurants in Oxford?
   There has been much speculation about the causes of the riots, but the malaise of capitalism hasn't often been raised. An exception was a fascinating article in the 'Independent' by Chumbawamba's Boff Whalley, who showed clearly that the word 'anarchy' had been much misused and abused by the tabloids.
   What happened in England's towns and cities was the antithesis of true anarchy, a state without leaders but with an order greated by a belief in the basic goodness of humanity. It was leaders who created the conditions which led to them : poverty, heavy-handed policing and stringent cuts.
   As the week's events unfolded it was very interesting to observe the changing use of language. They began as 'UK Riots' and then gradually the 'England Riots' became synonymous with British ones, as if England and Britain were interchangeable.
   Despite short and erroneous columns in the 'Guardian ' and 'Independent', they never happened in Wales. Why is this important matter not discussed in the Anglocentric media?
   I believe the reasons are as complex and manifold as those about the causes of England's Riots. After all, Gloucester and Bristol kicked off, yet not the more deprived cities of Cardiff and Swansea.
   Our levels of poverty and unemployment are undoubtedly greater than England, though both are more entrenched and we benefited a good deal less from the  New Labour regime, so the shock of relative poverty isn't so recent.
   However, I genuinely think that , like Scotland, there are factors in our favour. With a comparatively new and gradually developing Senedd, we are witnessing  a period of increasing self-confidence  and the 'Yes' vote was indicative of that.
   The expenses scandal which rocked Westminster and created mass disillusionment with politicians affected Wales, but AM's have shown much more openess and affinity with the struggles of the people. Despite dire economic circumstances, this self-confidence has seeped downwards.
   Moreover, while the ConDem Gov. has illustrated its sheer callousness by abolishing EMA's, maintaining fanatical testing in schools and raising tuition fees, the governments in Cardiff Bay and Edinburgh have carried out Social Democratic policies which showed they did care about young people : refusing to get rid of EMA's, insisting on an education system without 'exam factories' and divisive Academies and not raising tuition fees.
   Of course, many are totally alienated in Cymru : they don't vote because no parties represent their interests or alter their lives. Youth unemployement is rife and growing rapidly. Yet, especially in the Valleys, a semblance of community does remain. Despite it all, there's a fierce sense of belonging, reinforced by the static nature of those towns and villages over the last few decades.
   I've merely touched upon the reasons why we avoided the riots of last week, but I believe that our education system, more caring government and sense of hope against the odds are just some.



                              NOT THE WELSH RIOTS

The riots never happened in Wales.........

because we're too civilised,
because we actually believe
in real communities

because we're all in prison anyway,
because the English started it
and we've got to be opposite

because we have a sense of belonging
and a sense of the future,
even if we've no idea what it is

they never happened in Cymru
because the only blackberries
are growing on bushes everywhere

because bards are enthroned not queens,
because of the Merthyr and Chartist Risings,
because our history's waiting to be reborn

because we couldn't be bothered,
we're all too high or low,
too exhausted after so many elections

the riots never happened in Wales
because we abolished SATs and league tables
which branded so many as failures

because someone, somewhere really cares
and we're busy lining up
for our free prescriptions

because of our pacifist traditions
and when we talk about 'the City' we mean footie,
because we have a lot less people to envy.



                            

   One person who had a profound effect on my political beliefs was a fellow garage-worker, who I met on my 'gap year'. It wasn't called a gap year then ; it should've been dubbed a 'I- haven't- a- clue-what-to-do' year really.
   I wrote the poem 'John' about his premature and sudden death from a heart attack. He was one of many people I adopted as father figures, as I never got on with my own.
   In his 20's, John had walked out from the Valleys' Depression to seek work in the nascent car factories of the Midlands. Now he was retired, but working part-time 'on the pumps'. In the middle of our many political discussions, he once told me - 'as I get older, I get more revolutionary.'
   At that time he veered towards Plaid Cymru and that same year another Plaid activist in Barri persuaded me to go along to a local meeting addressed by their one Councillor, John Dixon , then of Dinas Powis. As an anarchist, it didn't take long for me to realise that I had little in common with them.
   I feel now as John did then, just months before his untimely death, that every day reinforces my belief in revolutionary politics. I recently spoke to one prominent member of Plaid who dismissed Marxism sweepingly with - 'Is anyone a Marxist nowadays?' To which I instantly replied - 'Yes, I am actually!'
   But it's much more complicated than that. Culturally and historically I identify with Cymru, Britain being a product of Empire, war and monarchy and Europe a  conveniently constructed economic market. I want to see a socialist republic in Wales as I do in every country, each different according to their relative histories. Trotsky's 'world revolution' has never been more pertinent and we must organise globally as well as nationally and locally to overturn capitalism which thrives on the Markets' greed and gambling with the lives of the poor.
   So economically I remain an avowed Marxist. While I can see that tinkering with the present system can have short-term benefits and would praise the efforts of the One Wales Government and the SNP to introduce universal policies such as free bus passes and prescriptions, this is ultimately 'pissing in the wind'.
   In the end, SNP leader Salmond (seen as a role model by Plaid) knows that getting elected is all about not offending too many Scots and supporting the monarchy and, worse still, ingratiating himself to Rupert Murdoch to ensure that the 'Sun' in Scotland fully supported the SNP.
  In short, Marx was right in his analysis of bourgeois democracy. It has an appearance of power, but the real power actually lies with the multi-national corporations. Gas and electricity prices rocket and many people will die this winter as a result, but the solution of re-nationalisation isn't even whispered by social democrats.
   Yet it is the only solution to ensure price control and fairness for all. Of course, it must be very different next time around. The workers themselves must own the companies, so they have a  continual interest in their improvement. They must be run on a democaratic basis, with management elected and accountable at all times.
   As stock markets plummet, cuts abound and prices soar, as benefits are slashed and pensions and jobs threatened, the whole nature of capitalism should be questioned. In the long term, any system based on division, greed and 'boom and bust' will fail. Marxism is a relatively new philosophy in historical terms and, with the exception of Chile ( destroyed by their own military in league with the CIA), there have been no revolutions which fitted Marx's ideas of the majority of workers taking their place in history.
   In the midst of all this, the best hope for social democracy in Wales (i.e. Plaid Cymru) are looking to their US-based guru Adam Price to return like Lenin to the Finland Station (there the analogy ends) and save us all!
   The 'Western Mail' has spent the 'silly season' touting him as Wales's future 'Salmond factor', with a possible interim leader such as Leanne Wood.
   Yet his absurdly argued 'Flotilla Effect' doesn't even do justice to reformist politics. More like 'the floater effect' , whereby it's impossible to flush the shit down the pan. The shit being capitalism and its unending series of crises.
   Price's arguements about the benefits of being a small country in Europe are patently ludicrous. You have only to look at neo-liberal Ireland to see that. A succession of right-wing governments doling out the very low corporation tax Price advocates, have led that country to the brink.
   His analysis is devoid of any Marxism, as befits a Harvard scholar. The problems created in Ireland with an unregulated banking sector and exploitative companies would merely be replicated in a capitalist Wales.
   Furthermore, I am an anarchist as well, because I believe power must be distributed as widely as possible. Co-operatives need to be run democratically, as do educational establishments, with no hierarchies to cause endless friction as a result of bullying by management, headteachers etc.
   With revolutionary politics coming to the fore in the Middle East and north Africa, it is positive aand refreshing to witness what can be achieved without resorting to the militarism of those oppressive regimes.
   I am not naive enough to suppose that peaceful revolutions will inevitably happen in Europe in the near future, but simply do not see reformist social democratic parties like the Greens, Plaid or even some elements in Labour being able to deliver.
   They may dismiss revolutionary politics as deluded, but I believe their adherence to a corrupt and ultimately destructive system is far more dangerous. Passing the Plaid stall this week at the National Eisteddfod I saw Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas sitting in splendour : monarchist, pro- nuclear power and peer. The system changes them, they do not chnage the system.

                                      THE ROAD DOWN

The desert lands, flat and treeless
and dust in our throats
no water could wash away.

The motel where we stayed
on the road down, the noise
of other refugees from the Great Collapse.

This Leisure Centre where there is
no enjoyment, close to shopping malls
and diners I couldn't show my face.

The school where I disguise myself,
where I learn  silence about a mother
stranger I haven't heard for years.

The hall we call home,the floor
we room, the mattresses we bed down,
and dreams I balance on top of canyons.

My father says - 'We're at the bottom, darlin'.....
there's only lookin' up from now on.'
I tell no-one where I'm living.

If it had been a flood or hurricane
we'd flown from........but job, house, debts ,
gone without breakages, except out heads.

I want to crack the mirror where
my mom's eyes stare back, to break
every neon mocking what we've become.



  

   On Monday August 1st 'Dim Gobaith Caneri' will be launched at 7 pm at Cyfarthfa Castle Museum, Merthyr Tudful. It's the first in a series of joint exhibitions of stunningly arresting paintings by Merthyr artist Gus Payne and text by myself ; it runs will the end of the month and free pamphlets of the prose-poems/ micro-fiction will be available for all.
   Our collaboration began a few years ago when we decided to interpret idioms in Welsh, certain familiar phrases and  local place-names.
   Our interpretations were arrived at individually and it was never a question of a joint approach, or illustrating each other's work. We did, however, agree to explore a number of common idioms such as 'dim gobaith caneri' itself ( ' no hope like a canary'), with its specifically Valleys mining connotations.
   Others, like the name of the huge opencast coal site above the town, Ffo-y-fra('ditch of the crow' ) reflected our mutual concern for the future environment of Merthyr.
   What is crucial, I feel, is that Gus ( who calls himself michael Gustavius Payne as an artist and on his website) and I share a great deal.
   First and foremost, we are both learning Welsh, though he is well ahead in terms of fluency ! Furthermore, our political ideas are very similar : strongly leftwing, but with no party political allegiances.
   Beyond this, we are both very much influenced by music. Gus once sang in a punk band and music has always played a major role in his life. For me, it's probably more inspirational than the written word, attested by my latest book of poems 'Moor Music'.
   Another factor is that we're both vegetarians and passionate about animal rights. This is illustrated, I believe, by the animal imagery running through my prose-poems and micro-fiction and Gus's paintings.
   Initially, we were both drawn to bird imagery : this is understandable, as many of the idioms centre round birds , like ' gwyn y gwel y fran ei chyw' ( 'the hen always sees her chicks as white').
   Gus is a master of animal depiction and since then he has introduced monkeys and dogs into his work, as well as the ubiquitous lurking cat.
   Dogs and cats figure more in my micro-fiction than the prose-poetry. in 'Allan o'r cwd' ( 'out of the bag' ) for instance, I use the historical setting of a travelling fair to show how easily people are enticed and duped.
   It will be interesting to see how people who attend our exhibitions respond to our distinctive yet instinctively shared imagery and narratives.
   For two of my poems ( only one of which appears in the free pamphlet) I have taken a different approach. 'The Canary-Child' and 'The Boy Balancing' (based on an earlier painting) are direct responses, products of close-watch. Both appear on his website.
   I fopund that prose-poems lent themselves to this project. They are, after all, framed by their own shape, as are the pieces of micro-fiction. Sometimes, it's hard to distinguish between what is prose-poetry and micro-fiction, and that is as it should be.
   I truly believe that Gus is one of Wales's greatest artists and I'm absolutely 'wrth fy modd' to be associated with his stunning paintings.
   The following is one of the most recent prose-poems and also atypical with its Mabinogion connections...............


                                        A FO BEN BID BONT

   Once I waded the ocean, palming the wind and treading down tides.

   A message under a starling's wing brought me.

   I knew that man who had cut off their lips and tortured with such savagery.........but she had given nothing but gifts, my white crow: even the feathers of herself.
   Once I had laid down my head in a river for my countrymen to traverse.
We hunted for her captors; terrified of me for all their fearsome ways.
   Now my head's an empty viaduct, where ghosts of steam pass over a gravel path.
   Yet she has been released at last, returned to this, her belonging.

   And those over the sea, miraculously, can speak again, lips grown back!

   One day, perhaps, my head will serve as  a bridge for women and men to cross valleys, rivers, estuaries in search of the bird-woman rising up, knowing and beyond knowing.

     a fo ben bid bont - to be a leader is to be a bridge