lack of center: “when will I know when they’re working?” I asked my doctor when I was going onto anti-depressants for the first time in 2012, “you won’t; others will notice”; and so it goes – I’m more together, I’m less together, and I’m usually the last to realise I’m any different than I was; which is quite humbling when you’re used to running about being the small ‘I am’, secretly hoping someone will notice …
“The Lady from Nowhere”: from Strange Tales #124, September 1964, ‘The Lady from Nowhere’ by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko
landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey: oh, Sylvia …
Landscape, Pontoise, 1875: about three storeys at right-angles into the Landscape, Pontoise, 1875, by Camille Pissarro
languidly close the portal: held within from Strange Tales #118 outwards, ‘The Possessed’, March 1964; Lee & Ditko
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Agricultural Show
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn: an appliquiary to : The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion: an appliquiary to The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – mmpph’: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs: an appliquiary to: Tne Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – With Pigs
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working; “Pat and John” were friends of Mick from his London days, I think; he wrote occasional letters to them talking about the ‘countryside’
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds: an appliquiary to : The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley: an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
the Last Day of Morecambe lluminations: you could drink the sky down in one draft and your head would swim with the wind all along the promenade
the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations: seaside town – where elements meet
the last piece of pop: Bachman Turner Overdrive, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
late morning / Saturday: browsing possible books to read at the end of the week is like finding new pockets in the world to put your hands in and go for a walk
leaf: a gardenal
leaves: fall together and apart
left alone: left alone
left and right of the chin held / slightly back / corners of the mauff held / slightly down: I ternd rouwnd an I sed to ‘im, I sed …; you knew things were getting serious 60/70 years ago in sauff eest London, when someone ‘turned `round’ and said something to you – there ain’t never no turning back then
‘left now …’: yes, an old old friend
Leicester: … the long and winding road …; the prequel that complementarity is … possible
lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light: properly arriving
let: it be, let it be-ee, let it be, let it be; there will be an answer, let it be
let: always the answer to the anxiety of Having too much is the possibility of the raw experience that you actually have nothing at all
let it all go: glimpse, far beyond my ability to practise; there it is
‘let everything go …’: go on, don’t mind me, I’ll be alright; go on, off you go …
Let’s Go: action in poetry
LET’S GO!: breath inaction
let’s have some ice creams: first part of the triptych scenes ’round a marriage: // you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
‘let them slide off …’: actually, I slipped out, almost unnoticed
letter 080514: the writing of which pulled me out of a taxiing which I only vaguely knew I was in although I was spiralling nauseously
letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk: Mum was diagnosed with cancer in the early summer of 1998, she died the following March 1999; I couldn’t get up to London to see her regularly so I started a correspondence; sixteen years later I realise that our correspondence didn’t just stop with her death, the same as our life together didn’t: our life together was always the response between the words and events …
letters to mum II – family // like a grate: you can never step into the same river twice
letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually: Daigu Ryokan (1758-1831): ah, the thief / left it behind – the moon / at the window
letters to Mum IV – healing comes in smiling: The Zen Master Hakuin (1686-1769) travelled extensively to learn from other masters. When he was 32 years old, he returned to the Shoin-ji, the temple in his home town of Hara, in present-day Shizuoka Prefecture. Here he devoted himself to teaching a growing number of disciples. Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as a teacher living an exemplary life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. One day without warning, her parents discovered that she was pregnant. This made her parents angry. The girl would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment, she named Hakuin as the father. In great anger the parents went to the Zen Master and scolded him in front of all his students. All Hakuin would say was “Is that so?” After the baby boy was born, it was entrusted to Hakuin’s care. By this time he had lost his reputation. His disciples have left him. However Hakuin was not disturbed, and enjoyed taking care of the little boy. He obtained milk and other essentials the boy needed from his neighbors. A year later, the girl-mother couldn’t stand it any longer. She confessed the truth to her parents— that the real father of the boy was not Hakuin but a young man working in the local fishmarket. The father and mother of the girl went to Hakuin at once. They asked his forgiveness and apologized profusely to get the boy back. Although Hakuin loved the child as his own, he was willing. In giving up the boy, all he said was: “Is that so?” — Edited from Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957), p. 22
letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love: Mum died 20th March 1999; I wrote this letter but hesitated sending it – a regret of my life; I ‘send’ it now hoping she’ll read it somewhere. Having marked her would-be 81st birthday the day before yesterday, I thought it high time …
letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.: The 20th of March 2015 was the sixteenth remembrance of my Mum’s death; she was 65. She left nothing as memorial or legacy but the let and allow for worlds of words to fructify …
let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were: the more you try to be real, the less you ever were …
letting them go: prelude to a trip to Italy
lets us mauve a whirl elongated: first attempt at a ‘poein’; let’s see what this does, or is
library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!: this piece is a sequel to [start where you are III] – delve which was quite cute; happened in the same library in the same town, but in entirely different lives
library windows: tin pan alley
the library, / you know …: 4*; practising moving through sneer to bud of smile without really shifting at all; an afternoon spent in the new[er] library in Woolwich, looking at the people in ‘my town’ do living in a library which-I-never-did-in-my-day, but then, also, there didn’t used to be many people in the old library in my day giving me the false impression that I was of supreme equanimity towards others, whereas I was of supreme indifference; thank goodness, as I get older and more cynical, there is always – and always was – the possibility that we all have a sweet and innocent true nature that we could find between us all …
life [‘n’ death] / legerdemain – poewieview #15: oh, Janine, 1969 [clap]; Conversation Piece, 1969 [clap], you like to know me well, but …
Life on Mars?: Woolwich, Hare Street on a Sunday afternoon when the shops all used to close
Life on Mars? – poewieview #31: Sunday afternoons – Life on Mars?
lifetime: a week after my 49th birthday …
lifetime: … now I take myself by the hand to cross the road and reassure that I don’t have to shout at the traffic
lifetime: the vogue for clear clean green glass means that you are seeing through cracked glass sideways, no matter how smooth it may be
‘light blue …’: a colourfal
light blue and grey: thrmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm drp
‘the lighter green underside …’: walking into work with an uncontrived fresh perspective
LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams: … and WCW had a son called … William, who was it about, hmmm … twirl
light of all interaction: slight opacity from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra, the life story of the Buddha who left behind all that life could give in order to find what life is all about, who could be you or could be me
a light rosé: everything is seen through when light is realised properly
‘like a piece of ice on a hot stove / the poem must ride on its own melting’: open serendipity was what I was looking for all along anyway
like Basho: such sweet sweet happenstance
like butterflies on / buddleia: … now I know my ABC, next time won’t you sing with me …
like ink – poewieview #23: oh, God, I should be dead: She Shook Me Cold, 1970; pack a pack-horse up and step-up here, on Black Country Rock, 1970
lime crocs: d’aww, look at the innocence of age
the lines are not that straight / after all: askance from chapter thirteen of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
listening: widely
listen willya: is this a bit ‘cor blimey’ naive. Yes, and bloody proud of it too. Certainly being clever has become disreputable now.
listen willya: I first wrote this in 2012 when there was industrial action over teachers’ pay and conditions – just about the time I started completely losing my emotional marbles at work; I have slightly reconfigured the piece and re-posted it on the day that the NUT is taking industrial action over teachers’ workload, pay and budget cuts: what does the government respond: ‘we are spending more than ever on education’!? … ‘show your working-out, girl’ thwackk!!!
a little bit of love / and muffle: `amazing what you have forgotten you have written …
(Little by Little): a patchwork of relationship
little thrills: so kind of the fog of nescience to part a little at times to show just how deep it really is
living: the awkward life of branches and twigs
living mystery / murder theatre: not quite a night out at the opera, but it comes pretty close sometimes …
lo: Frankie Howerd voice, “…and lo, it came to pass …” (dry-mouth-open-tongue-out-breath-intake-through-teeth)
lobby: a postural cooking pot
lobby: turn again Dick Wittington!
London: a misty memorial
London, 1809: London, William Turner, 1809
London Hearts – poewieview #4: through the teeth of Bowie’s London Boys, 1966
London Park in Greenwich town – poewieview #5: Rubber Band, 1966; ‘I hope you break yer baton’
London refugee march – 120915: … when do we want it …?
lonely and free: Jack Kerouac didn’t find himself until he was completely alone in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state and found that there was nothing there at all; in all the World since the Wars there is no truth at all, only message and manipulation in the form of ’empowering democracy’ – once you are someone, you are already used up and retiring, far better to be nobody, and breathe
THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams: from Sour Grapes, 1921
‘the long road …’: who knew that such beauty was possible before I was anywhere near being able to understand it?
the long road: onomatopoeic light travel from the Shooters hill woods to the banks of the Thames through time
long / road: the warp and weft of ebb from the days when some cars were painted ochre and road-traffic was already acquiring its own saturation of speed all amidst the hatching of verticals and horizontals, a heady mixture for a gazing teenager wondering not only what it was he has to do but also within which direction
looking: for a second
looking ahead: three photographs in the house of an old friend: her father when newly enrolled in the army shortly before World War II – he served in Africa; herself in her then-best dress in the very early 1960s; father and daughter standing on a wet street collecting for Remembrance Day …
looking around / up and down / the street and / holding the / handshake / shaking be- / tween exchanges: Woolwich New Road
looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been: … didn’t even realise the direction this poem was taking until I entitled it
looking for Lester: a re-view of David Bowie’s ‘Looking for Lester’ from ‘Black Tie White Noise’; which will probably grow because every time I go back to it I find another little alley to wander or voice that textures …
looking for the right exit: back from a visit to the midlands; visited Chester for the first time – it’s an old town, back to when it all begannn annnd connnntinnnues…
looking hard enough: and … eventually you have to go into town; in the 21st century you can’t escape from the town …
looking / ridiculous: there were a number of attacks on people in Paris during January 2015; there was debate in the UK about launching an attack on Syria as a response; the recently elected leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbin, said no; there was a reticence to ‘do an Iraq’ (no one wanted to say ‘shock and awe’ anymore) on Syria although a coalition ‘precision airstrike’ in December 2016 did manage to kill two of the terrorists involved; three years on and the story is still confused … can’t we all just take these blinds off, I’m fed up with bumping into this same wall and tripping over this same rubble
loose to life: these words that I am righting write now …
losing the anxiety: bloody kids, they grow up and then get all cleverer than you
losing the mind: mirrors, signal, manoeuvre
loss: the uplift of a public fall in Birmingham where no one notices … ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town’
actually I just wake up now and don’t want to go to work but I am still as lost: as ever
lost and city ground: written in response to one of my favourite bloggers who … hasn’t for more than three years now: https://dimsumhearts.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/be-an-architect/
lost cape: ever-reaching you are inclined to snag yourself
lost self: looking is being; looking for is losing
lost the search: just quietly, and a little bit embarassed that it took so much to get … here
loud music: whole lives in the passing of a guitar strum
loud music: I think it was some UB40
The Louvre in a Thunderstorm, 1909: by Edward Hopper
love: Bob, RIP, 1994-2012
love and precision: ‘Dot’ is my daughter Charlotte; just over a year ago she moved up to Shropshire with her partner; we visit, and sometimes meet in Birmingham for a day
Love Me Do: burrstout of harmonica …
low afternoon: The Quay de Paris in Rouen; Johannes Bosboom, 1839
Luisenplatz: a cultural
Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it: … have you just flown in from heaven …?
magnetic field: the immanence of parenting already gone before the growth is noticed
magnificent salad: never forget the olive oil
the Magoo Effect: “I can’t see the glasses I’m looking through, herm, hm”
the Magoo Effect: Magoo was a progress in cartoon comedy: instead of just missing the point and falling like a prat, he now started talking with the missed point while the rest of the world passed him by. ONLY NOW HE’S BACK! AND HE’S GOT POWER! AND YOU HAVE GOT TO LISTEN TO HIM WHEN HE TALKS PAST YOU. Of course he’s older now and is hard of hearing – everything you say to him you have to shout.
the MagOO Effect Effect: … he’s fading out now, but I’m still, like, whajussappened during the last decade!!!
Maidstone: poor old Maidstone; it’s not just Maidstone but it’s where I happened to be when looking for all these things and finding that they were not there
mandala offering: a mandala offering is a ritual way of offering the whole universe to the Buddhas, a way of giving up everything for the sake of one’s essential goal in life; ‘is the universe mine to offer?‘ – my universe is, `bought and paid for; ‘but the universe is so big, how can you ‘offer’ it?‘ – easy, the whole of the universe is inside my head; ‘is your universe worth offering to the Buddhas?‘ – it could do with a clean up, which is why I imagine it buffed up with all the Mark Redford stuff cleared away; ‘why bother?‘ – it gives me a clean sheet with which to work on; ‘isn’t that just a bit self-indulgent?‘ – nope, self-indulgence is one of the things I hope to clean out of the universe in order to offer it, I’m hoping to invite a few friends and family around once it’s cleaned up; ‘`sounds rather limited‘ – you don’t know how many mothers I’ve got; ‘do the Buddhas want your mandala?‘ – the Buddhas are my universe, it’s just that I don’t see it yet, my damn ownership keeps getting in the way, and besides, I’m under universe-arrest at the moment … some stuff I did in the past …
Manhattan 2012: the story of my life in the turn of a magazine page
make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let: to save the career I had to let go of the career
manifesto: … so there I was teaching about the Norman Invasion …
man of tomorrow: an early obscenity which showed that abhorrence shows the edges of where you are prepared to feel
the mantra of Maitreya: Maitreya will be the next being to manifest as a Buddha in this world after the teachings of the current Buddha have been lost; the mantra is actually OM MAITRI MAITRI MAHA MAITRI ARYA MAITRI SOHA; insofar as it can be translated it reads ‘OM love, love, great love, sublime love SOHA’, where ‘OM’ is ‘regarding everything from the most-bottom line’ and ‘SOHA’ is ‘let it be so, as it already is’; the poem flowered quite petally from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter VI, verses 37-38: [37] And like this, when they are so bewildered under the spell and influence of the kleśas, they will even destroy and, finally, take their own treasured life, then, how might it be hoped they would hold themselves back from harming or killing the bodies of others? [38] Even if I have lost, or cannot develop, compassion for these beings intoxicated and driven mad by their kleśas, who are engaged within their own self-destruction – lost in their own perdition, chained within their own fall – and who are, even now, committed to my destruction, then, how could I develop anger towards them? The least I could do would be to restrain from anger.
march / 26th 2011: … when do we want it …?
Marion Park: yes it is; and, yes, that’s where it all happened; or didn’t; I used to get taken to that park when I was young because it had really high swings but I didn’t see anything and still don’t
Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I: snotty little bugger
Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II: `see what I did there?
Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III: gosh, is that the time!
Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles: OK, finish up, we’re off
marketsquarefight: almost Jesus cleansing the Temple
the Mark Redford Problem: sorry, Mark, now what was it you wanted to say? The Inevitablentuality of the fourth breakdown …
mass: … look out it, – it’s going to … compromise, agghhh!
mass: forty three days before the next election which will solidify the compromise and let it harden beyond smell
Matildenplatz / & Luisen: Darmstadt music festival every year, so many trinkets to buy
matter: a broken pencil …
a maturation: like tectonic plates shifts in ones nature are only noticeable in effect rather than cause
a maturity: somehow, somewhere, I will find that erfect moment
mauve: buddleia plants make any colour metallic
mauve: the backdrop of Victorian houses especially take the rain
mauve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeU4JxYtpe0; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcW8AxTBOVQ
mauve night: an early word-colour painting
mauve / night: … this one echoed, all of a sudden
mauve sky: an early word-painting in oils
‘the mauve wind …’: the transformation of elements
may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely: ‘Eight Verses on Training the Mind‘ (by Geshe Langri Tangpa, translated by Jeffrey Hopkins); With a determination to accomplish / The highest welfare for all sentient beings / Who surpass even a wish-granting jewel / I will learn to hold them supremely dear. // Whenever I associate with others I will learn / To think of myself as the lowest among all / And respectfully hold others to be supreme / From the very depths of my heart. // In all actions I will learn to search into my mind / And as soon as an afflictive emotion arises / Endangering myself and others / Will firmly face and avert it. // I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature / And those pressed by strong sins and sufferings / As if I had found a precious / Treasure very difficult to find. // When others out of jealousy treat me badly / With abuse, slander, and so on, / I will learn to take all loss / And offer the victory to them. // When one whom I have benefited with great hope / Unreasonably hurts me very badly, / I will learn to view that person / As an excellent spiritual guide. // In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception / All help and happiness directly and indirectly / And respectfully take upon myself / All harm and suffering of my mothers. // I will learn to keep all these practices / Undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions / And by understanding all phenomena as like illusions / Be released from the bondage of attachment.
may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely: I liked it so much, I bought [into] the Company
the meaning is the moment all day long: … despite the ticking clock
meanwhile: perception – knowing what’s going on – is never as linear as it might seem to be in a story; already given that there is breadth and depth, even in the scant of depiction, there is usually a time (and a space, and we know how relative those two can be) during which something happens, but let’s not think that these are the only dimensions – there is always a right-angle to be taken that paisley-swirls to a far-wider cauldron than could have initially never been conceived but of which there were pre-echoes if listening askance intently-enough
meanwhile / this lost soul just / keeps on living / day to day: a brittal
meditation: attentive liquidity
meditation session: … there I was, minding my own business …
memorial: the Airmans’ Memorial is a tiny walled garden on Ashdown Forest marking the place where an aircraft crashed on the way back from a sortie during the 2nd World War; a service a Remebrance is held there every year
Michael Redford / 1935-2007: the value of those who have lived who have left the simplest of lessons in your living to be learnt
Michael Redford: triptych: looking for what to publish today, I found my uncle unassumingly proffering the lesson in life that he always gave, even nine years after he died: that you don’t look for life, you notice it
Michael Redford: // someone missing: surprising all the spaces where I might bump into my uncle
a mid-afternoon: -al
midnight: does everything sad have to be bad?
Midnight Conference: the oil-coloured palette of the Black Bat series of Topps cards added somnambulent emotion to the evolving myth of the Batman
mild darshan: book spines on shelves and maybe, just maybe, if you’re lucky, the faint musty smell of paper
militant naïveté: a call to naïve
‘mint toothpaste …’: the beginning of the rest of a life
mirror: I look out and around with my gawky face and find that and find that there are no attractive faces to fall instantly in love with …
miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22: All the Madmen of the Saviour Machine collapsed into a rogue card with which you could do anything if you let the rules allow … if you let the rules allow
the missing chord // the now-silent seagull: I may not write as much as I used to, but when I let myself I usually strike a chord that takes me quite by surprise
Mistake: I wrote this and published it before I got to see Robert de Niro’s excellent ‘The Good Shepherd’ – what a resonance
‘the mist high in the sky …’: this is what looking high gets you
mlewis diptych: when the world disappears you go back to ground
Moebius strip: life goes on and out and in and on and under and on and round and in and up and on and down and out and eventually … continues and stops and starts and up …
just at the moment when you stop listening to yourself talking to yourself
months: so much time, so little moments
months: time stretches on interminably when you don’t add up the tiny moments
moon: writinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng
the moon: little did I realise that I wouldn’t write much more for a quarter of a century
the moon, the moon: Detective Comics #391, September 1969; Frank Robbins, Bob Brown – anyone lived in a pretty how town
‘the moonlight …’: a happy find after 18 years of not-looking
moon- // washed: lifetime
monument to vainglory: retirement #1: a significant passage in life which doesn’t have a particular rite, religious or otherwise; I have retired since the beginning of this academic year – I had a flurry of written response when I holidayed in Granada, but since then, nothing; I have not been writing much, I have been cast adrift (the end of my career was what was left after my ability to keep going in to teach at school, eventually dissolved … fizzled) …
the moral of the story: never go for the vainglorious HA!
more importantly: things are glorious within the whole world of which they are a part, not in which they are apart
more than effigy: Bodhisattvacharyavatara, I, 10; the benefits of Bodhichitta
morning: the streets of South London
morning: a pastel sketch with word-highlighting
morning: I’m not sure which was more refreshing – the bath, the morning, the open window or the hedge
the morning: after
morning / cloud pass: the perfect way to start the day, noticing what I am not noticing
Morning in a City, 1944: by Edward Hopper; limpid existence
morning in / Shrewsbury Park / reading POW comics: the first time I noticed that comic images were made up of dots of four colours in a park high over London – endless endless possibility
morning sun: contempfluence
morning / through the / open door: my grandmother lived through open doors and allowed the puffs of air in
‘a most intense blue …’: in and out the dusties …
‘the mother …’: a study in looking…
mother and child: all in a lazy exit from a big city
mother and daughter: in the blue-fangled kitchen
mother and daughter: uplilt of inflexion at the end of each phrase?
the Mother of Wisdom: from the days when I thought that wisdom had to be noticed!
mourning: how loved ones absorb into you by disappearing
mouth open: … where does the magic go when a child falls asleep?
movement: absolutely every single thought, word and action of every single being – above, below and human – whether intentional, reflexive, forced or unconscious, whether noticed or ignored by others, whether virtuous and wise or hurting and blind, is done only and naturally because they all want some mode of happiness, satisfaction, recognition and want to evade any mode of frustration, pain, discomfort within every and whichever milieu they are in for every moment of their existence, before and after their present one; and in this way there is such a pervasive unity between us all that it fills the whole of universe and time that the particularities of our twitchings and itchings are not so local, and are definitely not ‘ours’
multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986): writer: Frank Miller; artist: Frank Miller & Lynn Varley
municipal garden: and, yes, I had a tart later that day
muse: looking long and clear enough at anyone is the way to love
my awareness / and growth / are like my abdomen: abdomenyoga
my beauty: “ah, my beauty, past compare; these jewels, bright I wear; was I everr, Margueritaaaaaaaa …!”
‘my best writing happens …’: wha’ th’ -!
my current vague and pain: I don’t usually know what is going on inside me until I have let myself unknowingly write about it and left myself the perspective to understand what hasn’t yet occurred in time-enough to notice the experience as it happens, or as it happened decades previously
‘my Dot …’: ‘comes a certain time when you look at your child and you suddenly realise they have become an adult without telling you
my fidgety self: when the moon is full and the sleep is always somewhere else, that is the time when the emptiness of the self I am looking for is most apparent – – – if I could but face up to what I suspect I know …
‘my grandmother’s …’: the zen of grandmothers
my job: the unbearable treacle between doing and being
my life is not your market: someone done well: they got to own the vocation of service, measured the very life out of it, then took all the money away from it to make it more efficient; I hate politicians (hey!; look at the tagline for this site, it says – ‘calculated perpetual and relentless naïveté …’ – I will not back down from it!)
my life / of others: I hesitate before publishing stuff like this – it looks like I’m whining for sympathy – I am not; but if writing cannot be candid – warts and all – it is already damned, so I will publish AND be damned
my life / of others: y’know; sometimes you’ve just got to have a rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me, pathetic, awkward (don’t forget the ‘awkward’), poor-me whiiine to realise just how rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me-ie, pathetic, and awkward you can be; sigh – but there’s still some poetry in it, so I’ll share the self-pity about (caution: this is quite a high-pitched whiiine; it is strongly urged that you wear ear-protection – or at least stick your fingers in your ear reciting la-la-la – if you undertake to read this; you have been warned)
‘my main Job in life …’: the lowest aspiration
my seat // now: fidgeting
my // shell – poewieview #19: “the prince heard the cry of a monkey in the forest: it had been trapped by hunters who used a nut case which was so-shaped that a monkey’s hand could fit into the shell when opened flat, but not if the hand was held as a fist. The hunters placed food in the shell which greatly attracted the monkeys; when they put in their hands to grab the food they could not withdraw their hands, and yet they wanted the food so much that they would not let it go. And so they were trapped. This seemed to the prince that it might be the answer: beings find no happiness in life because the very act of trying to get happiness binds them to frustration. In selfishly trying to grab their own lives, they were trapped in them. The enemies to fight were the delusions within oneself: selfishness, pride, greed, belief in the self, anger, jealousy, hate, desire etc, those things which try to grasp happiness in life.”
my struggle: serving suggestion: read with Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ playing softly and with a haunting echo in the background
my / superpower: I am not sure I have hit this one right yet, which is my own eagerness to be published
my / superpower: I was right: no one looked at it the first time ’round
my uncomfortable life: Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through
my way: the fine line between centrifugal and centripetal
‘n’: clipped and epiglottal in all ways and means
N. …: it was in the stare, the stare
Nag’s Head: did I have to grow up or grow out?
Nan: the constancy, the simpleness, the wholeness of a grandmother who was not my parent but who was so so much more
nearing: – where’s roshi?
need: a poet’s gotta do what a poet’s gotta do
need: ‘here I am, foot in hand, talking to my wall … I’m not quite right at all; am I?’
neither nude nor / descending a staircase: detached propinquity
‘never a dull moment …’: let’s just stop an pause for a minute, shall we …
‘never look up’?: weaving from out of chapter 2, Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Shantideva
‘”Never,” / said the Sandman …’: the roll of finality in certain events of life
‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’: the ways of adults in a way-too children’s world
never there: the conurbations that abound in ever-specialised communication
nevertheless: néanmoins
Newark / Airport: airports are never here
new blue porsche: oh, maybe I shouldn’t, but, someone’s got to do it; I blame the bankers
new-found love – poewieview #36: I cried sadly, for a love I could not obey; summoned up through the dread rituals of Shadow Man, 1971; Star, 1971; Velvet Goldmine, 1971; Sweet Head, 1971
new garden: published but never indexed
new garden: launch
new life: the happenstance of notice in the windy town-city there for all to see and none to care
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: on new year’s eve, 2014, we took the train up to London to walk over some of the bridges across the Thames, and listen to the voices of passing people; as long as we got back home before the crowds built up for the firework celebrations
New York Movie, 1939: by Edward Hopper, and the girl with the mousey hair
New York, New Haven and Hartford, 1931: from draft-board to construction: traversal and the sun
the next step: observed during the always-potential-but-still-sparse eighties
‘the next stop / is Hever’: … almost home
next unexpected step: steps can be years long …
a nice grey woollen picnic blanket: there is always something more important than is
nightmare: I have been off work for the past four months, working my way defeated and flick-eyed through what is turning out to be my fourth breakdown from the school I work in; through all sorts of pulling myself up by my own collars and all sorts of looking deep into my own stare in the mirror, I am moving towards returning, still empty of confidence but with a much deeper understanding of what I am not; let’s see if the leviathan has changed or moved, shall we …?
a night of rum: a poem within a poem
night time: colours are at their best at night when you cannot see them
night time: before you know it, you can know something is happening; in retrospect
the / nineteen / sixties: road signs pointing in all directions
‘no …’: you can’t look at stuff in a slack-handed sort of way and expect to see something beautiful; you can’t look at things in a usual way and expect to see something new – but I look constantly and rarely see and need to give myself a good seeing to from time to time
No: ever
no biggie:: quiet as they come
no cars / no planes: a swirlal
no exit: ‘… and the next day / and the next / and another day’
no hat: there is always a turn out of whatever situation found
no more: slow, slow, quickquick, slow
no one – poewieview #24: James Castle jumped from a tower … at which school, and from which book? Therefore who is the ‘I’ and ‘we’ of poem? The Man Who Sold the World, 1970
none and all: may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has noy yet done so, where it has taken birth may it not decrease but may it increase infinitely …
no point: an inexhaustible abundance of absolutely nothing at all
no quota too empty / no fate to fulfil: I write when I [am right to] write; when I have found the ‘elegence’ within and the ‘basic goodness’ without (to mix with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s words a little); either before, during or after I write; whether it flows, blocks or makes sense, or not, at all, at all … forever and ever, amen
Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16: seen what shouldn’t have been seen because it couldn’t be noticed: Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud, 1969
not always so: vaudeville Zen
not a word: slave to beauty and image
not fact: whatever
no / thing: the previous text or message was sent in error, please go to http://www.theblackholeistoo.com for further information; thank you for your understanding in this matter
nothing doing is important / or worthy in itself: …
nothing // matters: … nothing is important or significant, nothing is heard or achieved … and yet this is not a nihilistic poem
nothing // matters: and yet as the old texts still say …
nothing significant: There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile, He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile; He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, And they all lived together in a crooked little house.
nothing to say: nothing to be but what is: the epitome of relaxation
nothing to write: nothing to be … so much potential
noticeably: meeting a dear old friend again after so many years
‘noticed how her hair parted back …’: part of a triptych of naïvelove – tripped, falling and as mauve and mist-rising as a heathland morning; see also: ‘“I don’t know,” he said …’ & ‘snatched from his …’
Notre Dame: cathedrals have immanence in the very stone that is their own tomb
‘not sure …’: still in my friend’s apartment in Totnes towards being evening
not that close: woah, stand a little back there, my good man, woman and child
not / the Catcher: retirement #2; having caught my breath a little, there is time, perhaps, to take the despondancy and meld (sic) into it, on an atomic level, what really was lost during all that time?
not yet quite sure / what: ‘Monday, Monday -dadaa da dadadaa …’
now: in order for beings to transform energies in the universe they need a central core through which to funnel it which is clean and purely empty
what do we want? spontaneity creativity happiness relaxed alert sharp skipping smiley persistent retiring accommodating attention!!! when do we want it …? NOW!!!
now, have I forgotten anything: fear and wanting in Uckfield
nowhere / that can be seen: in September we looked after the apartment of our friend in Totnes; we do this from time to time; this time we travelled by train – takes the best part of a day to travel just over 200 miles; we arrived and settled and it was already getting dark; the apartment has a wonderful window, a cathedral window, from the floor apexed into the roof looking out over Totnes settled either side of the river Dart: there’s nothing for it, many evenings, but to turn out the lights and look across the valley at the lights …
now, the verticals go down as well as they go up: from the second volume of Marvel Visionaries showing Frank Miller’s initial script and art run on Daredevil in the 1980s
nu’ink, / that’s what: somewhere / between everything / is nothing / which is everything
obituary: my career – teaching minds to follow through their own thought – died on the morning of 121212. It was twenty five years old.
objective intimacy: the scent of forearm through the field of conditioned air
occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y: a walk with my son and prospective daughter-in-law
the ocean: plus ça change …
‘of all the people …’: each footplace swing and step, each skirt or pointy shoe, each wheelie case …
of a sudden // all the time: I tried to make this poem in the shape of a flame – but it wouldn’t, easily
offer the victory and accept the defeat: how many times have I got to learn this before before I’ve learnt it beyond remembering to do it?
Office at Night, 1940: the quiet intimacy of reach and strive; Edward Hopper
Office in a Small City, 1953: from the surmise of Edward Hopper
oh: even the most settled life is precarious
oh,: even the most precarious life is settled
oh, alright then: I jus’ couldn’t elp mesself: there it was, it was write there … {hurk}
‘oh my girls and muse …’: stuff and nonsence really
oh / my / god: the postural expostulation just in case you didn’t receive it hyperbolically-enough
oh-pen: the pen is mightier than a closed window
oh-pen too: … and when you emerge to recreation as well, every time; every time
oh, this is how I am / at the moment: rising from the ashes of defeat in a single breath – all the time
oh yes: the same as ever Disraeli’s ‘Two Nations’ since 1867, but the only difference now is that it doesn’t really seem that way if you don’t look that hard … actually there is no difference at all, despite the hope that may have been in the hair during the centenary of that reference and despite Thatcher’s gorge at the top table …
OK: always what is more important is the slight step back from the event and drama of whatever it is I am trying to do so that I don’t go crashing and breaking onto the shore with it but rather work my way along the beach and never really leave the ocean …
OK, quiet now / for the register: how to over-reach for the effect while thinking it is a practice of the cause
the old man;: An old man was the first of the Four Signs that tipped the Prince to thinking that there was more to life than privileged indulgence – there was a seriousness in life to consider which his father had designed to keep from him; when the Prince had been born, there was a prophecy that he would either become a great king enjoying power and influence far beyond, even, what his father had achieved, or that he would leave home and become a seeker of deeper purpose and meaning in life, but the father could not keep all of life’s questions at bay for the rest of the Prince’s life … the other Signs were: illness, death and worldly renunciation; this encounter fore-shadowed the Prince leaving his home to search for that deeper meaning and purpose
old age: there can be a grace and a lumber in growing old
‘the old chair rocked …’: the end of days
‘the old chair rocked …’: and if you look very carefully she sees there now …
‘the old / Lotus Elan …’: one of the ’60s’ Elans
olive trees: on the journey from Malaga to Granada; I hadn’t been able to get the writing started at the airports or during the flight – looking too earnestly, perhaps, a passing passenger shook her tits at me; after about 1000 miles of travel I finally noticed passing olive tree fields with wild-grass growing around the edges
om muni muni maha muniye soha: a return visit to Gran Canaria to see if I could still sea
on: layers of being
once: to be right in the centre between two worlds
‘once upon a quarter century …’: resurrected by the http://theassailedteacher.com/, bless his cottons
one: a droplet
one day / in 1956: is it too obvious to suggest angry young men in developing cities?
one day / in 1956: possible recursor to bass slap where and when the trees were not yet that strongly rooted …
‘one last lorry thunders past …’: hitch-hiking; on being alone and not alone
one mirror: looking closely at emotion
on facing the Have: 291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War
on holiday: do you go on holiday to change your mind or does your mind change because you go on holiday? No, you go on holiday for a change of scene
only: nothing to do with serendipity and certainly nothing to do with individual strands of cause and effect but everything – everything – to do with synchronicity
only: ‘value for money’, ‘choice’, ‘what people want’ are all ways of convincing ourselves that the emperor has clothes …
only: when all else fails and unravels before your very breath, just stop a second and stand on the ground you are standing on before it is too late
only: how many times have I got to tell myself to realise that everything I am looking for is right inside the eyes I look with; right inside the air that I breathe?
only: an excursion to alien planet of Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote, Jan 2018
on the crowded street: drama as music, symbol as action, speech as colour
only the Batman realises that he is dead: in the only very slightly alternate world in which we live we none of us survived the quietly malignant WWII, but the horror was too much to accept so we believed ourselves developed into a fair and equal society, learning to laugh and smile despite all …
‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27: I’ve never ‘got’ Andy Warhol, and I still don’t, 1971
on sitting / in front of / a hedge: ‘hold first to the principle of the two witnesses …’
on / that / day: Jon and Sara married a couple of weeks earlier, but we celebrated later all together
‘on the grey streets …’: contained
on the raised patio reading Plath: I’d forgotten I’d written this one, and I don’t know what drew me back to it
on the hill: a lost lost Saturday, stung by the pointlessness and tiredness of playing football because I am young and a boy
‘on the side of the hill …’: shivering slightly
‘on the smooth road …’: swings and roundabouts
on walking through walls: aw, jeez; LIGHTEN UP … with care and precision
‘the open-air …’: the life of death
Open – All – Ours: constructed out of Bodhicharyavatara, chapter three, verse ten, by Shantideva
opening: a deep breath
open window: all it takes is for a window to be open – even slightly – to find new pockets in the whole fabric
the open window: an open window-al
open / window: the whole world needs to settle down in meditation when you do, otherwise nothing happens at all
open window: tendency to lean
open window: the importance of airing the house every day
open window: “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket / Never let it fade away / Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket / Save it for a rainy day” (Vance, Pockriss & Pockriss)
open window: there I was, minding my own business, lazily connected to the rest of the world …
the open window: as I listened
the open window: VA VA VAROOOM
orange / tracksuit: where are we going?
the // orange rose: the second of four in the Herstmonceux Triptych (uh oh); on this day Hilary Manuhwa was exhibiting his works in the grounds of the castle; we had a lovely scattery conversation under the windy trees; have a look at cultureinstone if you are interested
organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11: standing on the street corner looking at the traffic go by: I’m Waiting for the Man, 1967; Let Me Sleep Beside You, 1967; Karma Man, 1967; In The Heat of the Morning, 1968
the osteopath: especially with cranial osteopathy, virtually no treatment happens, and yet things in the long run release by themselves
ontophilology: condo ergo sum
‘ouch’: from Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 41: Although the immediate cause of the blows and injury I receive is delivered by the stick yet I do not take this into account but, rather, become angry at the wielder of the stick, my aggressor, my attacker. But then, as the attacker, likewise, is wielded under the influence of anger, if I really must get angry, it would be more fitting for me to rise and become angry at the anger instead.
‘our blue soft eyeballs kissed …’: this poem has taken thirty two years to grow up and I’m not sure if it’s still there yet
our life: after a long while together actions belie the bedazzlement of words
our whore-y little compromises: askance from chapter nine of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
out!: accomplished
out!: “It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’ The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.” (from the “Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya” (Majjhima Nikaya 63), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html .)
out: side
“out of step is useful because / that means you get to notice / what others have missed; out / of line is no use to anyone”: said Inspector Jack Frost and, with a quiff of the head upwards and to the right, he walked off with a slight waddle
outside: the sting of loneliness
out side of the writing / lodge: as my Uncle used to say of the greens when the Sunday roast dinners came to land on the table, ‘these were in the ground an hour ago’; this piece was written this morning, outside Virginia Woolf’s writing lodge at Monk’s House, Rodmell, East Sussex, listening to someone read a section from ‘Mrs Dalloway’ to the collection of visitors, 160515; I publish it with verve because I am not sure it is ‘fine’ yet, but I enjoyed the visit
over-pink cagoule: or maybe: with the wrong mind altogether?
‘over the 42 years of my life …’: when I think of the constant diet of tv I ingested over decades of life I get cholesterol around my heart
El Palacio, 1946: a pure and brazen landscape from Edward Hopper
parc du Champ-de-Mars: photographing oneself as being in front of the Eiffel Tower
park: a parkal
The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804: by William Turner
pass and / fro: are we nearly there yet …?
passersby: the quote is from Stephen Batchelor’s translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (V, 57) which I was reciting as my holiday reading; the ideal and the model, the should and the example; how to be amongst other (and amongst others), it is not the finials, so much, as the sky before which they reach …
passing: my earliest ‘passing’ poem – the whole of experience is in passing, it is when it is held that it becomes usual
passing: the art of gaining ground
passing: round
passing below: just when you think you cannot go on anymore, you find that you never stopped
‘passing overhead …’: relax … nothing’s under your control
passing skies: strange, that
the path / no echo: another piece to celebrate the fourth time I have had to breakdown to realise the wisdom of the very words I have said myself to myself time and time again
patient: everything is already there for those who wait
patronage: sick and tired of people spinning me round like a whorl presuming there to be a lack at the centre rather than gentleness, insight and need
pattern: a middle-aged and maturer paen to just doing
the peculiar continuum of trains: intimacy
pediment to behold: right-angled from Detective Comics #371, “Batgirl’s Costume Cut-Ups” by Gardner Fox and Gil Kane, January 1968
Peeks at Castleton: keeping my feet firmly on the ground; Chogyam Trungpa named his handbook on meditation “The Path is the Goal” – excellent
pen and ruler: possibly a poeview of ‘thru these architect’s eyes by David Bowie without my even realising it at the time
‘peoples’ heads …’: a mise-en-scene-al
pep talk: actually written when I went back after my third breakdown; published as I prepare to go back after my fourth … here’s hoping
perched: me, up on the Forest, letting my socks down for awhile
perspective: I was walking down the street one day …
phantom / stranger: a lifetime of bemusement, a hope of acceptance
Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes: … of intial episodes of the first season of Twin Peaks: this reading will require experience of being seen
pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria: while strolling through the garden one day … at the National Trust house of Standen; I know this is a bit more summery than present-posting, but I just found the piece in a notebook and forgotten I’d written it, so, there …
pink and blue: this girl was so cool because no one was looking
be here next week, same time, same place
plaintive // plaintiff? // but not precious: how long can you keep the Yes-No Game going? Here it has been going for eleven years, with ever-proliferating variations
‘… plane is upright …’: Strange Tales #132-133, May-June 1965, Stan Lee; Steve Ditko: it is my contention that Dr Strange is strange because he doesn’t appear in his own event, he slips in and out at right angles to plane existence thence to vanquish solipsistic threat – story of my life
the pleasant land / of counterpane: if you let the landscape of which you are a part be your guide you go nowhere and arrive where you are
”please be very kind / with your practice’ …’: let it happen all by itself with your effort but not caused by your effort
plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002): in the intervening changes that happened during the successive 16 years, how otherwise could the sequel not be so cubist and dashed?
‘”plink” …’: resting in the finality
plop!: suddenly everything slows down
plop!: all the width of glance
Plumstead Common / Road: actually disused now
Plumstead – Woolwich 121114: Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich;
Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211: Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, in time; those who know Woolwich and Plumstead (all none of you across the world wide, as far as I can tell, although you have got Google maps, if you’re really interested) will [be able to] recognise as they appear: South Circular coming up to Well Hall roundabout, Eglinton Hill [childhood home], Plumstead Common Road, St Mary Magdelene’s Church, Woolwich New Road, [along A206], Waverley Crescent (top of Griffin Road), Plumstead Common (proper), back up Eglinton Hill …
Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London: of course there is a whole tapestry in the lives of Plumstead to Woolwich and back again, which is loosely knit together over lifetimes, but never bordered and finished …
pocket: I’m fine just here, ducks, don’t mind me
the pocket: slipping deeper into the very material that is all and only the garment itself
the pocket: all the anxiety of walking down the street with hands in the pocket … or not
poessay I: clumsy, so clumsy
poessay II: the ubiquity of choice, squalid in proliferation, viral as a spore
poessay III: jijimuge: a kaleidoscopical
poessay III: jijimuge: true prequel to the upcoming Doctor Strange movie coming out in November 2016
poessay IV: moving from the center of the circle that I didn’t know was there to find myself unsure where to go or how to get back
poessay V: // writing / as practice while / writing: ‘so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow // glazed with rain / water // beside the white / chickens.’ WCW
poessay VI: // truth: where, oh where, are we all now …
poessay VII: // true revolution: the net-curtaining of being within an already-gauzy mind
poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism: in a land long ago and all alone there lived the practice of nurture which grew communities beyond compare; but the communities turned into cities – all the better to control your living, my dear – where nurture was made commodity, and then was made redundant with little pension
poessay IX – … just saying, is all II: “… them’s the rules and regulations … it is vital that … looking smart …”
poessay X: soul love: this piece of work grew out of a conversation with Johnbalaya which we had over coffee and jam on toast one mornings in the pages of Powieviews; orange juice anyone?
poessay XI – piquant love: what was I, who am I now that I do not need to be
‘a poet …’: the way in which poetry is like a building – the space is always there (space is always there) but what has changed is the way the building encases the space; the architecture of the word. Some buildings you inhabit, all of the others you live among … Are buildings just ownership of space? Should they be?
poetry: is poetry so immanent in this world or is it all just manufactured trim?
poetry: … or is poetry a raised, gloved palm?
poets do neither report nor / walk around enrapt in transport but / ’tis when in writing their worlds are wrought: Sylvia Plath wrote like a stringy muscular arm, her reach wondrous to behold
p o i n t l e s s n e s s all around: I spent a long time thinking about whether I should publish this, I couldn’t see the … I didn’t spend long thinking about publishing this at all, what’s the … anyway, I did, in the end
point of realisation: even from the clunk-a-day artwork of Sheldon Moldoff there was a certain opera under the cowl
poised patiently for / hours: all the lifetime of passing relationship
the policies came to nothing: so much building, so little point
‘the politics of Have becomes a morality …’: the anxiety of choice
polystyrene / boulderscape: establish orbit, Mr Sulu; lieutenant, have Bones and Mr Spock and some red-shirts meet me in the transporter room
Le Pont des Arts, 1907: by Edward Hopper, an American in Paris over 100 years ago, and still bracing
Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902: de l’avantaged de Pont Neuf, Paris, 1892 by Camille Pissarro
Le Pont Royal, 1909: by Edward Hopper before he really started working
the poppies / of van Gogh: discovery in the Ramada Hotel, Darmstadt; prequel to consturnation …? // consternation
portrait: a socially not-sure-of-itself sequel to demolition
portrait: ‘been dazed and confused for so long it’s not true …’
portrait … // … reading: hold still, just a minute
portrait: / two pigeons: all the movement in one world happens at streetlight #33
pink and orange: … said the taxi driver
possible: the inevitable and immanent complement to Leicester
posture: it’s never too late to achieve in arrear
the posture: to be or not to be is not the question; rather it is to not be in order to be
practice:: is it ‘I am therefore I write’ or ‘I write therefore I am’?
practice: … or should I simply let go of each and every one no matter how beguiling they may be to my outlaying biography?
the practice: what shall we do today kiddies; oh, OK, ok
‘the practice …’: lookit: `found this one in my notes; possibly four years old; forgotten I’d had it; found stuck like a leaf between BCA I,3; not sure if it reminds me of the quote, top left of the web page, that I put there to remind myself … sure, on reflection, it does; how can I not: offer it up, and out
practise what you doing / give what you having / breathe what you remember: nothing to do, nothing to say
practising: the cultivation of being where you are
Prajnaparamita // Maitreya: the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as ‘it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!’, where ‘gate’ means ‘gone’ – it originates from the Heart Sutra wherein Avalokitshvara has just systematically taught that nothing exists intrinsically (including the means to realise this), but not that nothing exists which is why it is possible to attain Enlightenment (‘bodhi’); Maitreya’s mantra is om maitri maitri maha maitri arya maitri soha, wherein ‘maitri’ means ‘loving kindness’; the poems are mine, trying to make sense of a thousand lives
prayer to my self: … may I become a fully enlightened Buddha in order to benefit all mother migrating beings
the precision // the gentleness // and / the letting go: from the fourth chapter of ‘The Wisdom of No Escape’ by Pema Chödrön – teachings so sweet that they are poems from a burgundy robe
preee- / senting // en- / senting: when you have a cycle of: pointlessness >>> isolation >>> superheroism >>> recognition >>> defeat >>> pointlessness … the best thing to do is just do … something … anything … as long as you are not there too
prelude: // travel: the further you travel, the deeper you stay where you are, true, but if just you stay where you are, you are nowhere stuck in solidification …
preoccupied: writing my way out of a sticky situation
presence: from somewhere within Detective Comics #356, October 1966; “The Inside Story of the Outsider!”; written: Gardner Fox; art: Sheldon Moldoff
prologue: with due homage and intrigue to Philip Whalen‘s “This poetry is a picture or graph of a mind moving” because the mind never stays still in the universe it creates to inhabit while searching for itself
prologue-ing: perpetual peregrinations of pre-emptive and presupposed prerequisites deemed endlessly busy in perambulation that you end up NOT BLOODY DOING ANYTHING!
promenade: the changing flights of seagulls
promenade: I am terribly fond of these two; I found them in passing as I sat and watched the sea halfway through my third school illness
promenade: / dual layering: multiculturalidentityologyal
promenade: the function of grey is portal
prospect: boing boinng boinng
psssssh: Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 89: These viciously sharp hooks cast by the kleśa-fishermen – these turbulent thoughts, these hateful emotions – and you, o pitiful mind, have been snagged on them again and again – [net-loads of you] – where you will inevitably be turned over to the guards of hell as raw ingredient, to be cooked-alive in the cauldrons there over and over again.
Puerto del Carmen: Puerto del Carmen, a stretch, in distance, along the southern coast of Lanzarote, an elongation of time when one is there …
purity: am I doing well …?
purple and mauve: where was it, where was it now …
the purple mist between: contrasted out from within ‘Beyond the Purple Veil’ in Strange Tales #119, April 1964; written: Stan Lee; drawn: Steve Ditko
purpose: askance from chapter two of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
pursued: Detective Comics #403, September 1970, “You Die By Mourning” by Frank Robbins and Bob Brown
Putting Out: hold it, hold it, hold … and relax
pylon on the hill: a colourful
the pyrrhic play: to be or to try to be, that is the question …
mlewisredford 