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1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
straight out from school to Heathrow on the M25
a network of lonely roads going nowhere, then;
waiting, studying coffee highlights in the green
lobby with blue spotlights and pillared space for
phones to pace up and down and talk it still is,
loudly; at the next hotel we wait with more spot-
lights in our eyes no matter where we sit; furniture
deco-curved and just off right-angle, held together,
material to wood, for decades with check-
pattern and slight stain; there is a locked-in-
ness in our world on all sides which only our
future eyes – that never look directly – betray
in their gaze; early flight tomorrow; in the
morning-effect light shifting, the mist hanging
around the base of the sky, land spread with
low buildings always on the horizon, flat and
matt, before the sun flanks their edges into 3D,
radar-spinning, floodlights turn off, arms of
cranes hold their reach, and … the control
tower; 3567 miles and I didn’t bring enough
books (you can never bring enough books);
I travelled for lifetimes to arrive in New York,
still the same person: roads scraped and pock-
marked, trees still reach and lean in front of the
sky, people still live city life breathing in and
out the power of my money, lights still go on
in the evening and in between traffic shoals
the sparrows bicker in the trees; in room 506
over Central Park, already I am familiar with
the lore of the branch, the places-to-go apricot
street lights, the white path lights, the traffic
lights and the ‘cheeps’ bounced off building wall
between the lmmmdmda-lmmmdmda – laersssh
through the rain-dusty windows, under grey-sky
steel-clouds and the slowly shifting charcoal; but
then there is always the next day, the ever-waiting
gulp-open and blue-chip sorry of impressionistic
sidewalk, the walnut marble frontages walking
south up into downtown in cold air between
buildings and didn’t bring enough clothes (I never
know what clothes to bring) – by Radio City ‘with a
transistor and a large sum of money to spend’;
everything created for living beyond subsistence
everything produced at cost through labour
everything earned through labour if you can get it
everything obtained at price and compromise
everything experienced at cost through trademark
everything Had, but no one left to have it …
everything that is uneasy in the modern day
was manufactured behind the half-closed blinds
of America – home of the Potential and Slave –
and yet … it is so sad-beautiful: the space sculpted
by façades of apartment blocks giant arm-widths
apart, communities of single window – italicised
nib–scratches – stepped upwards and backwards
the Avenues of Uprise reaching higher and
lower again and again and again; America has
so much condensed history since it braved the
conceit and responsibility, of choice: cleansed
by ethnically assimilating, pledged by conforming
allegiance; Someone had to make a stand against
all this equivocation and by God Almighty We
Made that Stand; `made continental infrastructure
out of it, far bigger far more reaching even than
law and democracy … … but there is such
width in your sadness – lilac blossom before
marble façade; such height in your sadness –
giddy out on the balconies looking eight floors more
above; such blank in your sadness – when you
skip my English joke and call ‘you’re welcome’
from the till; such sadness when you ask for
change outside Starbucks; even the trees through
the hotel window, even the wide sidewalk cleaned
for strolling and not curbing, even the smiling
doorman in brown suit … all Had; all kept
in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place
by gigantitude, (when I was young an image
of a building so many floors high pinnacling to a
turret roof on the pink cover on the blue cover
of the insurance policies that my Mum kept;
my mother is now dead the policies came to
nothing); 99: “for all the freedom and choice to
be Had, life is hard when you pay with your work
and no time left and no money to choose
leaves you tired with no sense of humour”;
1: “for all the freedom and choice to be Had
life is anxiety where you pay for with your
history and obligation, never stopped still-
enough to choose, leaves you always with
dyed hair; look, only on the fifth floor of the
Eldorado, a man at the window canary short-
sleeve shirt turns back into the room, traffic light
booms out on a long arm swinging slightly taxis
u-turn as the sun comes up from behind; women’s
magazines, waiting for Mum at the hairdresser’s
in the mid-sixties, illustrations, young tree avenues,
blossoming handbags, little dogs on leash, promise
of love, promise of life, promise of man’s jaw in
boardroom where cologne cinches the deal, slight
smile signs the papers: maybe later some chinos
and open collar on the terrace; there was a calendar
brought home from work (“not needed … we work
in London”) – buildings of Manhattan, can decorate
my room, make my world, all the stepped down
walls of windows up which b-e-y-o-n-d myself
giddy and beautiful, I cannot look up or down but
keep them high on the wall; going out in the
evening Daddy ‘have to’ ‘to do with work’ ‘can’t be
helped’ white shirt bow-tie, clean-cut neck cologne
‘good for contacts’ ‘if I can, just’ ‘business’; there
was a new white Mini, a new white Anglia parked
outside on the hill over London, Matchbox models
to match for the boys, going into ‘business’ ‘make
a go’ Dennis & Dennis, home, evening drinks, meet
the family, the boys play Dennis G and Dennis P
for years after; ‘… Daddy is leaving, he will not be
coming back’; I had thought it was all pastel-blue-
and-grey beautiful but the glamour got to him first
and now I dream of falling off balconies and ledges,
(do I fall up or down); evening: ghouls from the
subway gaining and pushing but the top trees-only
gently leaning, hybrids swashing yellow down the
tarmac in schools while the thunder of a plane
descends; morning: eyebrows raise like coving, the
reggae lingers then kicks in; a neat rhombus of
sunlight unconcerned across her cheek, a blind rolls
down, ‘I’ll just read a chapter’-fixed lashes, the
rhombus travelling now across collar bones between
her white collars; Carol reads far better than me,
she reads history as it happens, she is the ‘captain-
speaking’, she knows what time it is in other
countries, she knows there is no airport in Glasgow
(she also bullshits when cornered); now I miss all of
this, I see only peoples’ posture contrary to their
eyes, and little else; I came to Manhattan and saw
your avenues of strange displacement your streets
of darkness and morning-side; I found I was there
a lifetime ago, but you left me and I have moved on
now and I shall not be back, there is no need;
I shall celebrate your strange beauty from afar;
Newark Airport: everybody here / is talking all
the time to / someone somewhere else; the control
room sits overhanging on the concrete stem,
fingers of cloud float nonchalantly by, with no delays
today, two girls study magazines, swap articles,
a third texts constantly with fixed smirk; but you,
you are so beautiful with hennaed hair braided
neatly back because you are in uniform, you are
taking a break, ID and equipment around your
neck, clear dark skin, grey shirt and St. John’s
badge eating a bag of crisps with eyebrows sharp
and eyes so white looking, not talking looking
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
abandonment & streetlight wormhole: dawn
air wormhole: just
anxiety & Carol & crane & Have & lifetimes & London & love & pink & sky & train & travelling & white & work wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
apricot wormhole: only
beauty wormhole: smiling
bedroom wormhole: sunny morning
blossom & branches & waiting wormhole: I could step / more open
blue & grey & mist & trees & walking wormhole: right to be
books wormhole: a light rosé
breathing & life & speech wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
buildings & identity & society & space & windows wormhole: where the real action // always is
childhood & dream & Eglinton Hill & ghosts & green & looking & morning & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
clouds & light & posture wormhole: Buddha Amitabha
coffee wormhole: poised patiently for / hours
coffee shop wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
compromise wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
Dad & traffic lights & yellow wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
dog wormhole: silence
evening wormhole: lobby
eyes wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
haiku(esque) & hair & Manhattan & people & roads wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
history wormhole: 20th century / schzoid man
horizon wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
hotel wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
lilac wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
living & sitting & sound & sun wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
money wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
Mum wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
music & reading wormhole: sometimes
obligation wormhole: scattered
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sparrows wormhole: zazen in everyday life
spotlights wormhole: ‘the dining room …’
talking wormhole: – sigh! –
walls wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
wind wormhole: Christmas
mlewisredford 
great writing!
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thank you for commenting – I was despairing that it was too much
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Insightful revelation written with spare complexity, Mark. Blooms with each read.
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this is a great relief to hear: I thought the scent might be contained within its own unopened petals
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Doesn’t happen in fine poetry. Smile.
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Your poem is a tour de force worthy of Whitman and Ginsberg. Bonnie introduced me to you and I look forward to catching up. Smiles…>KB
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really nice to meet you, although I have a feeling we have passed in the ether already; best regards to Bonnie
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Well if we have, I don’t remember. But then there many things I don’t remember and somethings I do remember to forget or having forgotten remember there is a space waiting to be filled–Nature abhors a vacuum. Smiles…>KB
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… the Nature of Obscuration?
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“… all Had; all kept
in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place
by gigantitude,…”
Brought to mind this I just read, from a book of ghazals:
“Flattened by world’s sheer size, we run fast.
We’d rather be dwarfed by space than time.”
–Rachel Dacus
Sound like ‘Americans’? Does to me, does to me…
Sound like ‘American’ts’? Doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
But then this piece, this Magnum piece,
this over-whelmed-by-its-gigantitude piece,
has brought so much to mind it is hard
to pin down and I would not want to
would not want to pin it down
I would let it fly, even if it fly away
(I sometimes worry that I over-use, weigh down some of my posts with too many tags and then I come over to your place and see that flagrancy, that opulence, that rococo flair, the arabesques, the devil-may-care flamboyance, the ‘take that!’ attitude, the curly-cues and flourishes and think…..I want to do that….)
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Now that I’d like to see – a Gigantitude (of course, always relative to the environment it crowds), flying (lifting from the environment it has shadowed), away (stripping the environment of gravity by its recede) – like the spaceships in ‘Independence Day’; when the Big Guy has buggered off, and you no longer have to keep on his good side, you can tag to your heart’s order which is … paisley-patterned!!!
But thank you, thank you for your effulsiveflourescentivitude, it is muchly appreciated
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i am reminded of the opening sequence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—the giant booted foot coming down to squash the head with the sound of raspberries. I can hear a giant, sky-covering, earth-shuddering “pfpfffft!” as the world-flattening, time-dwarfing, SPACE comes down….
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…but now I recall. The foot was bare…
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and so the poor doggie had none!
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