a few reflections on / keeping your cow / in a large meadow / while walking round / the streets of Horsham

 

 

 

                                                   a few reflections on
                                                   keeping your cow
                                                   in a large meadow
                                                   while walking round
                                                   the streets of Horsham

                           don’t stare off to think
                           like Plato in a wonder
                           stare at the things about you
                           sufficient through which to see

                           don’t look through my (varifocal) glasses
                           for the finest point (which everyone else missed)
                           look instead through my eyes
                           to see what I am thinking

                           don’t close your eyes when sitting
                           to concentrate with less distraction
                           open them to include each thought
                           within every breath I take

                           don’t walk along the street
                           flexing your abdomen to be upright
                           and deft lift them all instead
                           poised so that movement flows
                           through them
                                     playfully
                           like a visceral grate

 

“To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him.” Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

 

 

breathing wormhole: … thank you
Shunryu Suzuki wormhole: “don’t move / just die / over and over … / be true to / yourself / and don’t move” / – Suzuki Roshi
thinking wormhole: ‘I wanted to write a poem’
walking wormhole: A206 / Plumstead Road: / perched on a wall

 

A206 / Plumstead Road: / perched on a wall

 

 

 

                                                   A206
                                          Plumstead Road:
                                          perched on a wall

            it’s when I wander off

            looking for the angle
                      that will see me straight
            looking for the time
                      that will connect me to my
                                birth
            looking for the change
                      that shows how things
                      are still the same
            looking for the step-aside and crossing
                      that will vindicate my notice

            that I’ll have missed
                      the miles and miles
                      I have walked

            not to mention the street tree here
                      square in its own plot of land
                      before shoals of roaming car
                                its trimmed branches reaching
                                from its sturdy trunk
                                          variously into the sky

 

 

 

a street corner of … Woolwich
walking wormhole: strangers
Plumstead wormhole: bench / corner of Cantwell Road / and Eglinton Hill

 

fresh start

 

 

 

                                   fresh start

                steering my life into
                night time envelopment

                helpful gusts from
                the wet street

                offer occasional wafts
                of powdery net curtain

                over long-dried gloss

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being
part of >>> breeze

 

1972

 

 

 

                                                      1972

                                        rain-sprinkled tarmac
                           evening shop lights petrol rainbow
                                 in the gutter

 

 

 

part of >>> years
evening wormhole: let us mauve a whirl       elongated

 

gotcha

 

 

 

                           gotcha

                right in the middle of the wide open space
                between late-Victorian apartment buildings
                where the avenues and streets acutely dissect
                           on the one side
                and the right-angled 1960s canyon of higher business
                           on the other
                two hundred and seventy feet up will you
                never learn Riddler there is nowhere you can
                show yourself that is safe from my happenstance

 

 

 

part of >>> Batman
blue bat wormhole: The Batline Life-line

 

Dr Strange #6 (Feb 1975)

Dr Strange #6 (Feb 1975); Marvel; writer: Steve Englehart; artist: Gene Colan; inker: Klaus Janson

 

 

 

                     the always aslant encounter
                                of human street and park
                                making their lives
                                          in the grounds they see
                     in the grounds provided to them
                                                   constant encounter
                                as variable as the daily

                                                   for those who see
                     elliptical to the happenstance
                                          the skyline to the treeline
                                                   the glide to the cobbles
                                the palm to the point
                                          the bothstep to the same side
                     to avoid their paths
                                          and collide
                                          Hopper saw it
          and Colan saw it and Strange had already
                                          stepped into it
                                                   stepped out it

                                moment

                                                   but now
                     his pupils were that much more round
                                the trashcan tilted
                                          the better to see now
                                                   the street
                                                   the face in the orb implied
                     that everything had changed and
                                          things
          would never be the same
                                          again

                                          continued …

 

 

 

Dr Strange wormhole: biography

 

archaeology / of the sky

 

 

 

                                   archaeology
                                   of the sky

                           quick now
                           parked in a bay
                           Permit Holders Only
                           facing down the street

                           the line of TV antennas
                           receding above the
                           chimney pots rooftops
                           and facades while

                           from behind soft-shoe
                           footsteps pass holding
                           a cigarette out from
                           the thigh but not
                           swinging

 

 

 

after a medium / Americano

 

 

 

                                after a medium
                                              Americano

                      I could handle the buses on North Street
                      I could even dodge the leafleteers

                      but the child’s scream from deep in the pushchair
                      under an angry parent-face

                      ‘wasn’t expecting that

 

 

 

Brighton wormhole: chew that gum

 

coffee shop / no -

 

 

 

                                coffee shop
                                     no –

                     not the leggings which wrap
                                her –

                     … the hundred people making their way
                                in the street
                     when a hundred pigeons flap
                                across the sky
                                disappear
                     and then return to the roof
                                they came from

 

 

 

… part of: coffee shop poems
pigeons wormhole: from behind

 

coldstreet

 

 

 

                                                     on the coldstreet

                                           stepping out of the newsagent
                                                     downhill
                                           the bright blue
                                           padded lumberjacket
                                           unbuttoned and somewhere

                                           uphill
                                           the single bounce
                                           of a basketball nicely
                                           inflated because
                                           you could hear the
                                           simultaneous echo
                                           inside

 

 

 

Plumstead wormhole: Plumstead Common / Road