{reading right to left}

Tags

1871, 2018, 9*, autumn, blue, brown, chimney stacks, chimneys, confusion, Crystal Palace, damp, dark, decline, draft, drifting, fire, flag, flagpole, garden, gas, high, London, passing, people, Pissarro, progress, reading, sand, shrub, sky, smoke, society, streetlamp, streets, Sydenham, the British Empire, wind

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871

                deep eaves in Sydenham the
                chimney stacks raised high

                to draw the draft – splendid
                in counter – front-garden shrubbery

                left tangled to riot and dampened
                from autumn, seems stuck in

                foreboding brown conflagration;
                the clean stroke of streetlamp

                under sandened sky will not
                be sullied by slimey gas until

                after dark – controlled, controlled blue –
                but, we read in the right direction:

                look, the flag from some
                turgic land of the Empire swaves

                away from its pole – the dirty
                heavens cry – the dwarfed

                chimneys, here, their smoke of
                coke and belch drift

                in the same direction conjuring
                transparent edifice where mens’

                seriousness loom in smudged
                silhouette, foreboding to behold,

                and others scuttle about the
                bright, wide street coming

                and crossing in all direction –
                pushchairs and carriages to hold

 

The Crystal Palace, London, 1871 by Camille Pissaro

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

autumn wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
blue & society & streets wormhole: on facing the Have
brown & wind wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
garden wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
London & sky wormhole: London, 1809
passing wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: only
reading wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

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Sheffield Park Gardens

Tags

2016, 9*, air, black, blue, bluebells, branches, Buddha, Carol, children, contemplation, copper beech, creation, daffodil, dandelions, discovery, duck, eyebrow, face, family, fields, flag, future, garden, gem, girls, glance, green, hair, Have, humanity, India, kalpa, lake, land, life, limbs, living, mauve, May, name, passing, petals, plants, pollen, primrose, promise, rhododendron, seeing, serendipity, settlement, shade, Sheffield Park Gardens, sitting, society, stone-chat, talking to myself, transluscency, tribe, voices, walking, water, yellow

                Sheffield Park Gardens

                we walked
                upright
                across wide fields

                in scattered groups,
                family and tribe,
                private longing

                under shaded
                brim for a land
                of silk and money

                8th May 2016, with

                only childrens’ voices
                we walked into
                the garden

                dispersing to
                our hides to make our own
                discoveries

                by happenstance
                and peripheral glance
                held cold and fresh

                before name:
                that stone-chat
                that makes the

                copper beech
                transluscent;
                the cool stretch of branch

                yet to bud
                before the haze
                of dusty pollen;

                what to make
                of the solitary dandelion –
                butter yellow life –

                amid
                fain clusters of primrose; and
                there in the shade,

                mauve-bells and
                daffodil stalks make in-
                visible a steely blue;

                bluebells
                like raised eyebrows, relaxèd
                to see a future;

adult voices pass, now, talking ways of life; young girls practise handstands and routines in the fields;                

                let’s sit by the lake awhile:
                where a duck’s
                head

                sits
                just out the shade of exotic plants
                (let’s say, from India)

                the water lapping
                anywhere (let’s say, oh,
                 two thousand

                 five hundred
                 years ago), tucked
                immaculate

                black
                letting nothing out
                but the feint

                of blue
                or green that will form a gem
                in kalpas

                of contemplation;
                across the water a willow rests
                like a flag

                (girl’s hair
                 recovers from each upswing from each
                 hand-stand);

                turning home
                Carol stooped
                to smell the rhododendron flower

                “oh, …”

                pushed her face
                into the petals with lust
                was it

                because I’d
                said the branches
                were an orgy of slippy limbs

                or was it just me
                making things up
                as we walked along?

 

I know, I know, it’s mid February, and the poem was written and set in a May; it’s not seasonally right, but this was the next in line to be printed: them’s the chops …

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: Batgirl –
black & blue & Carol & passing wormhole: travelling // arrival
branches & voices wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
Buddha wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
family wormhole: out
garden wormhole: slightly / uphill
green wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
hair wormhole: two profiles
Have wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
life wormhole: sweet chestnut
living wormhole: ‘still …’
mauve wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
seeing wormhole: glide
sitting wormhole: amid
society wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
talking to myself wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
walking wormhole: loss
water wormhole: without any buffet at all
yellow wormhole: greedy

 

travelling // arrival

Tags

2016, 9*, arrival, attention, awkward, black, blue, breathing, calves, Carol, clouds, co-ordinate, ears, eye, fields, groundlessness, hedge, horizon, identity, karma, leaves, letting go, notice, passing, sky, smell, teeth, thread, time, travelling, white, wind, wind turbines

                travelling – no theme

                when the wind blows
                leaves turn and follow like
                dislocated jazz-hands

                everything is parting
                and passing all around
                … me (is that the theme?)

                I can’t find what to
                think or notice; in the
                corner of my eye a

                small black creature
                keeps pace, stretched in
                leap over field, through

                hedge, unspite, imhindered,
                depossibly, gathering
                everything in disregard;

                bit between molars (for
                weeks, for days?) wedging
                teeth slightly awkward

                has just worked loose;
                there are skies, there,
                certainly, high, silky

                and whipped, and then
                blue-coagulated drifting
                like a fleet, like calves

                crossing fields ears
                waving, as wind blades
                heave beyond hill horizon

                I conjeal            myself
                in notice, relieved with a
                thread and co-ordinate

                where for to breathe
                again but having lost
                so much more that I

                never had; Carol shuts
                the Kindle and leans; I
                smell her warm head

                for miles – arrival

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

attention wormhole: before any writing
black & blue wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
breathing & groundlessness wormhole: is this it // all the time
Carol & clouds & sky wormhole: Christmas 2015
hedge wormhole: free
horizon & white wormhole: looking ahead
identity wormhole: without any buffet at all
leaves wormhole: Batgirl –
letting go wormhole: “I need help”
passing wormhole: I am not yet ready
smell wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
time wormhole: looking / ridiculous
travelling wormhole: Tara mantras
wind wormhole: after all

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

Tags

1967, 2016, 9*, alley, axe, birth, black, blue, classroom, echo, eyes, faces, fields, garden, grey, hate, hazel, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, mist, morning, passing, pigs, pink, Ramsden Heath, Robin, silence, sky, snow, sound, speech, step, sun, teacher, thought, ugliness, vertical, waiting, walls, white, windows, winter, witness, woodland, yellow

            snow

            waiting;

            ruffles beneath the trembling ivy,
            divergent verticals in the hazel coppices;

            silence;

            reverent steps, and in the cavernous
            grey of high hangs the faintest, pink;

            baton;

            on a woodland bank a single lesser
            periwinkle holds up a blue flower,

            by the wall a solo leaf descants to the ground
            and a snowflake touches the cheek;

            turn;

            the black background of the woods
            a million flakes seen,

            in the classroom thirty pairs of eyes
            drift across to the window

            and the music teacher holds
            his sentence;

            thought;

            leeward black, and fields of white, if
            we were to hate everything that

            included rip and tear of any ugliness,
            there would be nothing left to love;

            morning;

            through window panes the sun
            is a flat yellow disc viewable

            without hurt to the eye,
            mist divides land into borough

            and alleyway stepping crunch from the
            steam kitchen into the sparkling garden;

            piggery;

            at the bottom of the garden,
            piglets stop snuffling around and stand

            looking, like little pink statues, then …
            hurtle across the yard barking at the sun

            (the sow had rather build her nest in the
             corner of the field, one morning

             she was there, an army of piglets
             lined up at the milk bar

             the most ridiculous expressions
             of content upon their faces, and

             a robin on the solid water
             of the cattle trough);

            witness;

            the ch-nnk and bite of axe in log
            bounced across the fields to the woods and back with

            such clarity I expected it to continue
            as he laid his axe aside, “Morning”,

            “Morning”;

            it is not winter that dispels life,
            but life that dispels winter

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

black & blue & echo & eyes & faces & fields & garden & grey & kitchen & life & love & morning & pink & silence & sky & snow & sound & sun & walls & white & windows & winter & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
faces wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
passing wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
thought wormhole: Clea
waiting wormhole: returning home handsome

 

Woolwich Central – making life better II

Tags

2012, 9*, city, compassion, fear, identity, life, lifetimes, living room, love, pain, prayer, question, reading, silence, sky, space, superhero, Victorian houses, voices, walls, windows, Woolwich, words

 

 

 

                           Woolwich Central – making life better II

                           passing the gothic Victorian house pointing
                           skywards in all directions partitioned to
                           so many living rooms I know how much

                           I cannot be the superhero to the voice
                           sustained in high-register and edge of fear
                           let alone for the silent voice that sits by the

                           hollow wall under the table; can I rend
                           those walls asunder and pike the onslaught
                           with a single glance deep into the whorl

                           of flinch and recoil of a lifetime of no register?
                           can I scoop up the silence and hold it foetal
                           forever safe from division before the window?

                                          can I?

                                          spell:–

                           may the pain of scream and the silence
                           of numb build the very thirteen floors of
                           open-plan living in the centre of the city that

                           they never quite found when they committed
                           their lives together for life and may all the fear
                           and cower magnify transparent exponential

                           to the tangle that pulls it all tight into its own
                           relief – the space forever at its heart as the
                           space between these words that allows them to be read

                           thank you

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

city wormhole: city twilight
compassion wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
identity wormhole: just words wiped across a line
life & lifetimes & love & reading & sky & space & walls wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
living room wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
silence wormhole: ‘the walking stick …’
superhero wormhole: amid
Victorian houses & Woolwich wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
voices 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
windows wormhole: 1977
words wormhole: career came to naught …

 

multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)

Tags

1930s, 2014, 9*, age, Allen Ginsberg, architecture, avenue, Batman, being, birds, buildings, choice, city, collective unconscious, consumerism, death, doing, doors, earrings, emptiness, faces, Frank Miller, giving, grey, Have, identity, Joker, letting go, life, lightning, lime, magazine, mother of pearl, night, olive, option, red, Shantideva, silhouette, sky, society, sound, space, speech, statue, steam, Superman, talking, talking to myself, thunder, topaz, tv, vindication, walls, wisdom

 

The Dark Knight Returns (1986); writer: Frank Miller; artist: Frank Miller & Lynn Varley

 

 

 

                earrings: left then right
                static square and upright obelisk

                steam across every avenue
                before the silhouette architecture with grizzly coat of ornamentation

                earrings: lime-olive horizontal
                and block full-stop

                the rabbit-chase fall below
                is sudden guttural and city-wide

RMMBL
                ‘a flash of lightning in the dark of night’*
                                                                                 KRAKK

                all the effortless intelligence beyond the door
                beyond the wall        with bat-darts

                earrings: mother of pearl
                pause and equals

and there he is jumping taller than a building across the only spaces left now:
                the sky and the ante-room before preconception (a cowardly and superstitious lot)

                the spires stand clean
                in the grey-wash sky

                where gothic statues acknowledge
                the impossible pinion and swing

                “… I have to know”**
                and stone manes splay when he sees “a reflection”***

                earrings: topaz pennies
                one and three-dangling

                and while the gently-cornered squares
                talk the Worm the Bluff and the Dribble

                others take the space down in the dump
                where a position cannot be found

                where the position cannot be resisted
                no matter how young you are

                no matter how strong you are in the realistic world
                in all the floorboard rooms the TVs and magazines

                stack positions on shelves and in refrigerators
                and in wrappers multifarious in choice and option

                any space here
                would make everything all the more ugly

                no
                no

                the move needs to come from
space of no choice and it can never be obvious it can never be choice

                Bat-signal
                bright on the side of Moloch****

                stone birds from the 1930s
                earrings: gone

                ah, but the world grows [not] up
                rather it folds over itself and regenerates

                with billowed ruffles
                atop old buildings

                “so many smiles / so many faces / all the same”*****
                “every year they grow smaller”******

                earrings: vampyre’s teeth soaked
                serious faces        all the same

                when you break too many of the important rules
                you’ve acted to define yourself vindicated

                you haven’t given    anything
                it doesn’t count

                death happens by itself without design
                all you have to do is let it all go –

                the purpose and the self –
                and you could live clean for a hundred years

 

* Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 5, Shantideva (translated Stephen Batchelor): ‘Just as a flash of lightning on a dark, cloudy night / For an instant brightly illuminates all, / Likewise in this world, through the might of Buddha, / A wholesome thought rarely and briefly appears’
** Book I, P.43 & 45
*** Book I, P.47
**** Howl
***** Book III, P.25
****** Book III, P.25

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Allen Ginsberg wormhole: poetry
architecture wormhole: stranger / if we met
Batman wormhole: tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again
being & vindication wormhole: heavy load
birds & talking wormhole: sunny day
buildings wormhole: the edges of my reach
city wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
death & life & night & sky wormhole: … sshhh
doing wormhole: the meaning is the moment all day long
doors wormhole: walking / right into the side of the very door left / open for me
emptiness & space wormhole: wha’
faces wormhole: quest in brown
giving wormhole: practise what you doing / give what you having / breathe what you remember
grey & lime & olive wormhole: Hever
Have wormhole: shared anxiety
identity wormhole: prologue
letting go & talking to myself wormhole: … and
lightning wormhole: jagged panel
red wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
Shantideva wormhole: walking
silhouette wormhole: clouds
society wormhole: the sounds the difficulty and the long long strands of liquorice
sound wormhole: someone called Frank
speech wormhole: mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional
Superman wormhole: inverse superhero
tv wormhole: Love Me Do
walls wormhole: Knapps

 

Woolwich Central – / making life better II

Tags

'scape, 2012, 9*, life, lifetimes, passing, Plumstead, prayer, space, superhero, table, Victorian houses, voices, walls, windows, Woolwich, words, writing

 

 

 

                Woolwich Central –
                making life better II

                outside the sectioned late-Victorian gothic house
                I know how much I cannot be the superhero
                to the voice sustained in high-register vengeance and edge of fear
                let alone the silent voice that sits by the hollow dividing wall
                under the table

                can I rend those walls asunder
                and pike the onslaught with a single glance
                deep into the whorl of flinch and recoil
                of a lifetime?

                can I scoop up the silence and hold it foetal
                forever safe from the division and board
                before the window?

                                can I

                may the pain of scream and the silence of numb
                build the very thirteen floors of open-plan living
                in the centre of the city that they never quite found
                when they first committed their lives together
                for life

                and may all the fear and cower magnify transparent
                exponential to the tangle that pulls it all tight
                into its own relief – the space forever at its heart
                as the space between these words
                that allows them to be read

                thank you

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

life wormhole: Notre Dame
lifetimes wormhole: calm down
passing wormhole: there
Plumstead & walls wormholes: Bonus Books
space & Woolwich wormhole: Woolwich Central – / making life better
superhero wormhole: HA!
table wormhole: table
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian / houses / uphill / Brighton
voices wormhole: varnish
windows wormhole: ruddy pink
words wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge
writing wormhole: write / in / g

 

Dr Strange #6-13

Tags

1975, 2012, 9*, being, change, continuity, doing, Dormammu, Dr Strange, dream, Edward Hopper, elipse, emptiness, Eternity, Gene Colan, Have, humanity, Nightmare, Paul Simon, reality, society, Steely Dan, Steve Englehart

Dr Strange #6-13 (Feb 1975-April 1976); Marvel; writer: Steve Englehart; artist: Gene Colan

 

 

 

                                I

            the always-aslant encounter
                                of humans and street
                      making their lives
                                in the grounds they see
            in the grounds they have been given
                                           constant encounter
                      as variable as the daily

                                           for those who see
            elliptical to the happenstance
                                the skyline to the treeline
                                           the glide to the cobble
                      the palm to the point
                                the both-step-aside to avoid each other’s path
                                and collide
                                           Hopper saw it
and Colan saw it and Strange had already
                                stepped into it
                                           stepped through it and out again

                      moment

                                           but now
            his pupils are 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 that
                                things
would never be the same again

                                continued …

                                II

            … things are the same again
                      always have
                      always had
                                the second half of the twentieth century
            incorporated it
                                you either had it or you wanted it
                      either way it fed the corporation
                      everyone fed the corporation
                                           by wealth by health
                                                       by belief
                                this is the way things are
                                           dwelt at the very heart of the world
                                                               turning growing and fiery
            there comes a time
                      when the power
                                and the beauty become elliptical
                                           to each other
                                           to themselves
                                                       then chaos will come
                      you mark my words
            thinks the aged Genghis high on the edge of the world
                                aged enough in life
                      to see beyond self:             there is nothing there
there is nothing there

                                III

                                a colossus
            strides effortlessly across canyons and generations
                      fed by the needs of billions
                                engorged enough to consume
                                itself
                      it speaks with a flaming head
unstable
                      too much
                                           too much that
                                it will disperse itself even as it reaches
                      the needs of billions
                                flooded through a world of veins
                                           like tumbling yellow fat
                                                       the mother is bound
                      the father is blind
                                and only all the words of worlds
                                                       will speak
                                           while Strange and devotion
                                           expand through dimensions
            growing alarmingly through the stages of their lives
                                quick to get there while
                      wanting it all
                                a son sits ‘by the blackened wall
                                           he does it all he thinks he’s died
                      and gone to heaven’*

                                IV

                                there are ellipses yes
            but Strange has long known that they are doorways too
                                           he can step through them all
                                in the twinkle
                      of anyone’s eye
                                           he can see the aches
                                of option and perspective
            he can see the nightmares
                                of polarity and stasis
                      bounding towards him
                      but never approaching
                                           me             ME

                                his own speech
                                becomes the twinkle in his eye
                                           he steps
            and with a flourish
                      the sky takes a form of the whole universe
                                to talk:

                                V**

                      ‘communication
                                           has undone you
                                you know of all others’ success
            and see only your own failure
                                you will not have ignorance
                                           you would have all knowledge
                      all the words of worlds speak
                                           and from each word
            you draw more closely in upon yourself
                                unable to settle on shared or
                                           compromise ‘… stand
            on their differences
                      and shoot at the moon’ ***
                                each man must win
                                so all men must lose
                                           all expansion
                                                       must take the turn of contraction
                      you cannot have
                                           sustained growth
                                ‘first comes spring and summer
                      but then we have fall and winter … Ben’ ****

                                VI

                                the twinkle
                      becomes my eye
                                           I see my life
            from inside the many faces I have worn
                                as I contrive power and plan escape
                      over/from/death/life
                                vainglorious
                                                               compulsive
            petulant

                      and failed every time I act
                                [and compose]
                                the more I do
                                           the less I get anywhere
                                and the more
                                                               my selves multiply and reside
                                I could lose
                      the whole world
                                           through my asides and schemes
                                                       my power and play
                                all of the ellipses spinning
                                           to conjure my face
            spinning fit to vortex to hold my face to the world
                                           and the more I am
                      a sorcerer supreme the more
                                I am grotesque
                                           the more I gestate the mad messiah-killers
                      in the backrush and tail-
                                           spin

                                                       I hadn’t thought
            I hadn’t given
                      I hadn’t laughed
                                I hadn’t loved
                                           another

                                VII

too late
            planet Earth is no more
                      for all my fighting and struggle
            I have achieved only the madness of Mordo
                      the whole span and play of existence
                                           ssspunnn
                                into its opposite:
                                                               being
            death
                                ovum
                                           rebirth
                                everything
                                           is the same as it ever was but
classic classic comicbook
                      it was all just a dream
                                it is everything that is dream

 

 

 

* Steely Dan, The Royal Scam, The Royal Scam, 1976
** Steve Englehart, Dr Strange#10, Oct 1975, from p.15-16
*** Paul Simon, Cars Are Cars, Hearts and Bones, 1983
**** Being There (1979), dir: Hal Ashby, Chance the Gardener

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: what comes first … // the poem or the content … // the shamatha or the vipashyana … // the posture … // or the sitting?
change & Dr Strange & & Edward Hopper Gene Colan wormhole: Dr Strange #6 (Feb 1975)
doing wormhole: writing is not a container of reality / it is being the reality / itself
dream wormhole: dream / 150910
emptiness & Have wormholes: poessay IV
reality wormhole: the bottom line
society wormhole: poessay II