sitting may be everything

 

 

 

                      sitting may be everything

            that I spend my life avoiding –
                                un-building un-comfortable
                      un-balanced un-accumulative
            not-fitting-in – but

            never the less important to inhabit this
                                the fundamental experience of my life
                      which all my creation all my endeavour
                                              seek to vindicate and justify

            I aim for sublimity despite it
                                and I suffer ennui
                      trying to maintain it rather
            I should embrace it –

            awkward uninspiring dead numb
                                just sitting is a mine of new finds
                      ever still uncomfortable
            but not un-valuable because of that

                                if only I could …
                      – stoppitnow

 

 

 

from my childhood

 

 

 

                                  from my childhood

                        untied            un-navigated            foggy
                        in the house on the hill now too big for us

                        out of the dreams of colours and glass
                        ‘… need to be the Man of the House now’

                        something high and far-out to be
                        constructed                reaching

on the edge of a collapsed crumbling viaduct – a society that no longer thrives

                        but persists – I will never succeed in building
                        on such a structure                scared of falling

                        buildings too high to raise my eyes
                        ledges too narrow to ste-        pp

                        hills becoming vertical as I climb
                        branches lurching with my weight

but this is all I know to do                                  
this is all I have done                                  

            but then I didn’t have to be
            anything other than what I was I was

sufficient as I was to be everything                                  
that was needed to be                                  

            the Man of the House ‘the Man
            of the House’ made me other

because I reached after the sublime                                  
to be the Man of the House                                  

            I don’t know myself
            I am someone who has striven

beyond himself all his life and yet                                  
there isn’t a hidden me covered over                                  

            waiting to be found I am what I have striven
            not what I have striven away from

I should accept me as I am and sit and                                  
when the fear and failure come up accept them                                  

                        when the anger and violence
                        come up accept them

                        when the reading and sublimity
                        come up accept them

                        these are the child who stood
                        in the garden smiling at the sun

                        through the branches but frozen
                        because they were moving

                        delighted but bewildered
                        reaching but blinded

 

 

 

a room in the House on Eglinton Hill

 

sitting

 

 

 

                                                                      sitting

                                    the constant regular gritty
                     sandy grating abrasive bonds of the wall
                          of my life

 

 

 

I could smile

 

 

 

                                the horizontal and vertical
                      uneven paint strokes
                                eye-gritty and never right
                      of aesthetic over life
                                is what it all and ever is:

                      disappointing slight
                                disappointing unexpected
                      which is what is sufficient
                                to be all that it is

                      no need for Grand Dreams or
                                Played-in-a-Certain-Way
                      I could smile while it is being
                                disappointing

 

 

 

‘thinking things through …’

 

 

 

                thinking things through
                           is a branch reaching
                           through the blue air
                making it happen
                           is a trunk growing backwards
                           into the earth
                living is watching the leaf
                           uncurl let go and
                           blow around the ground

 

 

 

‘in the bookshop …’

 

 

 

                                    in the bookshop
                                    bare legs step
                                    around the…
            stop
                                    to check the title
                                                                      poise
                           correct
                                    veins on top of foot …

                                              … release
                           three whole strides back to check
            with Mum
                                    four ‘I love Wilbur Smith,’
                                    stand ‘rather’      - quickly -
                                    ‘I love his books’

 

 

 

oh / my / god

 

 

 

                                oh
                                my
                                god

                     standing on the concourse
                     at Charing Cross her

                     right foot pointing left
                     crossed behind her left foot pointing right
                     leant forward holding

                     the eye contact building the up
                     as the sentence
                     reaches the
                     climax

 

 

 

it was like

 

 

 

                                              it was like

                                is not is it
                                reports it it
                                extemporises it it
                                itemises it it
                                accessorises it it
                                Haves it

                                trying to concentrate
                                when sitting is like
                                … meditating

 

 

 

tan / … gl / … ed

 

 

 

                      it doesn’t all hold together –
                                if-only-I-could-find-the-key-or-thread
                                                                                                    it
                                                        is                                                                            tan
all                                                                                 gl
                                  just
                                                                                                    ed

 

 

 

not always so

 

 

 

                                   there is no justice in the world
                                              to seize to define
                                              oneself with
                                   things and people happen
                                              for their own reasons
                                              neither right nor wrong
                                   I am not justified or defeated
                                              by the warp or the weft
                                              there are just two words
                                   to grasp the meaning of life
                                              not always so

 

 

 

huzza-huzza-huzza.   Man walks into a zendo.   Says, ‘I’d like your best advice on selflessness, please’.   ’I'm sorry, sir, we’ve just run out’.   O’oh, let me hear you – b’dmm psssh