eighth birthday // now

 

 

 

on my eighth birthday
it should have been about me
but I’ve had to wait
an awful long while
now

 

 

 

eighth birthday wormhole: mlewis diptych

 

Science lesson

 

 

 

                                          Science lesson

                                          the brass tap of the gas
                                          outlet the earthenware
                                          brown of the rubber tube
                                          connection the blue flame
                                          within the Bunsen burner
                                          but through the wide
                                          window so many new
                                          reaches of the silhouette
                                          branches into the
                                          sapphire blue sky

 

 

 

Roan school wormhole: ‘the importance of …’
blue sky wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea

 

school uniform

 

 

 

                           school uniform

                      grass too deep and green
                           to consider colour
                      stick to the tarmac grey
                           and blue to the step
                      and redbrick and flint stone
                           high to the window
                      small and greensky to reflect
                           and then

                      some boys by the ancient oak
                           have found a
                      natural high crouch and count
                           to twenty jump up
                      and someone pulls you tight around
                           the solar plexus
                      prolonged drift before blackout

 

 

 

Greenwich Park wormhole: ‘the importance of …’
Roan school wormhole: grammar
oak wormhole: grammar
blue sky wormhole: grammar

 

grammar

 

 

 

                           deep into the thinnest pages
                           soft as clean-cut sheets opened
                           either side stepped gently to
                           easy at-ten-tion typeface slightly
                           Edwardian-fine disciplined and
                           careers-old always supported by
                           slightly rubbled covers maybe
                           green maybe blue maybe
                           brown and embossed title
                           and publisher’s crest

                           tireless examples of grammar
                           with locating particularities which
                           only knit into a texture of
                           communication when gazing out
                           through the window at the
                           oaks and elms of Greenwich Park
                           and the deep grey skies over London

 

 

 

blue sky wormhole: morning
books wormhole: OK
gold wormhole: grey air
oak wormhole: Eglinton Hill
Roan school wormhole: dream / career / 040712

 

1976

 

 

 

                                                   1976

                                   I sat in the dark
                                   and wrote a poem
                                   about the moon
                                   across the floor

                                   in secret I had
                                   found the point

                                   I went to bed
                                   late and en-nerved
                                   and slept secure

 

 

 

part of >>> years
existing in … writing and being
meaning wormhole: easily

 

chrysalissing

 

 

 

                           chrysalissing

out of a foggy life of past with just
      faint lemon lights of echo
I slightly formed vague and beguiled
      by object and window

out from the shift of role I saw
      that the whole of world
was a turning whale its form clear
      and hideous as it receded

out through the greying blue
      of bequeathed roles
decaying within the dark-wood panelling
      I searched for rooftops and breezes

out through the work to need I conceived
      mechanism sufficient to breathe
but found myself ragged and mumbling on the mauve and olive plane of squander
      ghostly to the machine

in through the tragedy of awkward shoulder oblique with neck and cranium
      and shoals of voice uniformly shifting
I settle back and breathe in through the enveloping odyssey
      homing at last

 

 

 

lemon wormhole: backseat

 

mlewis diptych

 

 

 

                the oaks
in the triangle of land between
                Eglinton Hill and
                Cantwell Road
grow leaning haphazard out of the raised earth

                it was
fenced off gated and unknown when I was young
                in the sixties
it is fenced off still and littered
                in my fifties

                every Autumn
they shed leaves make the land grow contained
                by the fences

                but they are
                not huge
they are clothed in new arran pullovers of
                thick ivy

 

~~ “mlr” ~~

 

                                          on 2nd November 1967 my Dad left

                                          a little later in 1968 I dug a hole in the garden
                                          a little frightened about how deep I would go

                                          I lobbed stones high up into the air (careful that they land
                                          back in my own garden) and wondered if they could strike
                                          the birds            the planes?

                                          I ran around the edge of the garden over a hundred times
                                          counting the laps (and was made to drink salted squash
                                          to replace the sweat I’d lost)

                                          I wondered: if an alien race conquered the world
                                          and said they would go away if Someone could
                                          answer one single question correctly,
                                          and it was only I who would know the answer
                                          stood there in the garden                           now

 

 

 

1967 wormhole: 1967
1968 wormhole: the fingers
autumn wormhole: “bring in as many / different types of leaf / as you can find”
birds wormhole: The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get (1973) – tribute
oak wormhole: Bob // 1995/2012

 

let us mauve a whirl elongated

please float awhile on the surface, then seep under the waters … it’s alright, I’ll support you all the while

 

 

 

                                               let us mauve a whirl          elongated

                                   let us stay awhile in a ripple
                                   let us slip past
                                               the present current
                                   let the shoal go          elsewhere
                                   deep evening-blue
                                               in the pillows of counterpane

                                               and then
                                   let us keep it urban unto ourselves
                                   in every window every evening
                                   even when we run askance of ever
                                               and all of the time

 

 

 

evening wormhole: dream / 240897

 

so lonely

 

 

 

why don’t you do something
                      why don’t you say something
            they said when I was young
                      and because no one notices anything other
            than their own statement
I didn’t so because there was little point
                      and they had wandered
            off somewhere else anyway while
                      I hesitated and looked at the ground

            but I was so lonely

                      so I did something
            and I said something
                                   look
                      I have something to do
I have something to say –
            bare tree branch against
                      a sandstone brick wall
                                   in the sun –

                      and now
            compromised to do empty things
and resigned to bite my tongue
                      with a broken heart
            … oh come on
                      this is the life-long chance
                                   to act
            within doing with an empty heart
                                   (like a secret agent)
            and to speak
                      while I word with a loving heart
            (like a secret writer)
                      and let my heart empty
                                   of all the pain of bidding and persuading
as Frost somewhat said
                      out of step is useful
            because you get to notice the things that everyone else missed
                                   out of order
                      is no use to anyone

                                   do
                      with all your body and all your sight
                                              speak
            with all your heart and all your mind

 

 

 

currency of generations

 

 

 

                                          currency of generations

                                          ‘fetch the tin of buttons’
                                          a quest to the cupboard
                                          by the stairwell just outside
                                          the room we dressed in
                                          and spent all morning
                                          because it was warm
                                          ‘the one with the fruits’
                                          different sorts of fruit
                                          pastel-coloured and
                                          marshmallowy on a tin
                                          ‘they’re petit-fours’
                                          something to understand
                                          later (the taste had been sugary
                                          and pasty and although
                                          it looked like fruit it stuck
                                          in my throat) now has
                                          buttons which are cool
                                          and swirly when I run
                                          my finger through them
                                          and marbled-enough
                                          to see history and boiled-
                                          sweet transparent-enough
                                          to see worlds themed by colour
                                          and echo from the clothes of
                                          real people from family aunts
                                          and uncles in the past who
                                          I never knew or can’t remember
                                          the lineage from which I came
                                          all contained in the fading shine

 

 

 

a room in the House on Eglinton Hill
Mum wormhole: wakey wakey / time to get up