meanwhile

Tags

2020, 6*, afternoon, angle, binoculars, blue, cranes, curtains, Eiffel Tower, flags, gorge, green, hope, horizon, mankind, moon, night, rite, rooftops, sea, seagulls, shape, ships, sitting room, sky, sound, stone, time, Tintin, travelling, walking, warehouses, water

                the seagulls, they glide about the
                cranes and warehouse rooftops

                they wheel above the pacing and fro,
                cut between pulleys and raised pennants

                oblivious to distant headland through
                studied binocular pointing out to sea, back in the day

                when the skies were afternoon-blue
                and the sea still sitting-room-green

                then, when there was dare to hope
                and ships anchored on the horizon

                under curtain-drapes of nightest sky
                while the moon snagged in line from

                fore-mast to prow; nevertheless, they
                trekked over crag and gorge, they walked

                through water and pushed through
                trapezoids – slab! – into rooms of stone

                locked and immovable despite
                horizon, fit or ninety degree angle

                oblivious to mankind’s rite and dress;
                meanwhile the twins climbed the tower

 

c’mon, now: a gold-plated no-prize to the first reader who can tell me which book this piece came from to celebrate my return to writing; 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

 

 

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

afternoon & horizon & sky wormhole: travelling,
blue wormhole: silence
cranes wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Eiffel Tower wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
green wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
moon wormhole: ‘not sure …’
night & water wormhole: riders of the night
rooftops wormhole: travel // when I die
sea wormhole: then
seagulls wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
sitting room wormhole: the sitting room
sound wormhole: Four Noble Truths
stone wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: travel // when I die
travelling wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: breakfast

 

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SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

'scape, 1917, 7*, anchor, angle, birds, blue, branches, buds, concentration, convergence, desire, disappearance, energy, erect, flying, grey, ground, holding, orange, passing, red, right, rock, sky, Spring, sun, tap root, trees, twigs, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING STRAINS

                In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                crowded erect with desire against
                the sky–
                            tense blue-grey twigs
                slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
                them in–

                            two blue-grey birds chasing
                a third struggle in circles, angles,
                swift convergings to a point that bursts
                instantly!

                            Vibrant bowing limbs
                pull downward, sucking in the sky
                that bulges from behind, plastering itself
                against them in packed rifts, rock blue
                and dirty orange!

                                                                                But–
                (Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
                the blinding and red-edged sun-blur–
                creeping energy, concentrated
                counterforce – welds sky, buds, trees,
                rivets them in one puckering hold!
                Sticks through! Pulls the whole
                counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
                locks even the opaque, not yet defined
                ground in a terrific drag that is
                loosening the very tap-roots!

                On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
                at full cry! Now they are
                flung outward and up – disappearing suddenly!

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the cacophany of a single moment – all instruments loosening-up, scaling, tensing, waiting for the grand inaugural middle ‘C’ – all held together in a fidgety bag; the shabby audacity of this piece – ‘let’s not just have vignettes, let’s also have local, tectonic landscapes’ – made my young eyes work, I had to read it several times successively to hold together all the strands, and then he lets me off, I finally ‘got’ the three birds disappearing … you don’t hold it all together, you don’t; there’s no need to; William Carlos Williams was a crafty master

 

 

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

birds wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
blue wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
branches & sky wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
orange wormhole: I
passing wormhole: tram
red wormhole: Bridgnorth
Spring wormhole: city streets
sun & trees & William Carlos Williams wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

the missing chord // the now-silent seagull

Tags

'scape, 2016, angle, architecture, birdcall, buddleia, chimney, chords, decades, Eastbourne, fire-escape, flying, gliding, hotel, keyboard, seagull, silence, sky, time, yard

                                                   the missing chord

                           spotted high and gliding from somewhere out the picture
                           down in the delivery lane between the seafront hotels –

                                          the heights of decades passed
                                          with stacks and chimney pots
                                          held motionless over long-
                                          vanished keyboard above the
                                          crescendo of utility rooms and
                                          fire-escape at all angles –

                           sinking down to the yard wall, the switch of buddleia that’ll do nicely
                           reached back up to glide home somewhere in the heavens

                                                   the now-silent seagull

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: Le Pont Royal, 1909
buddhleia wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia
chimney & hotel wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
Eastbourne wormhole: and that’s where I are
seagull wormhole: now, have I forgotten anything
silence wormhole: fine
sky wormhole: 1967
time wormhole: bloogying

 

escape from Flat Planet

Tags

2015, angle, being, buildings, comics, doing, identity, life, meaning, pointlessness, purpose, renunciation, speech, superhero, Superman, talking to myself, time

 

 

 

                                                              escape from Flat Planet

                                                              ugh, must … get good … at
                                              anything … make everything
                                around me – worthwhile

                                – except
                I don’t know what to do
                                              in a life that hides its worth
                                presumed rhetorically
                                experienced missing … hngh, if

                                I …
                                can do … what
                             I can
                exponential [to what I am] maybe,
                just maybe, I will find the right angle
                out of all this seeming plane,
                                                              maybe I could soar the tallest building
                                with a single bound

                                and yet …
                and still decades on
                                I am bound in old borders
                arranged cleverly on a page
                                four-colourful and heroic but still unable
                                              to account for the
                                              always-higher
                                              rooftop
                                from which I can swing
                                                              despite all the words of bubble balloon and effect

                                … I have to accept
                being unmasked again and again –
                                              but it is so humiliating …
                                              so much depends upon
                                              my strong arm; don’t you see!!! –
                                … have to become
                                my own secret identity
                                beneath all dimension

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
buildings wormhole: up here
comics wormhole: Dr Strange VII – the madness of Mordo
identity wormhole: truly invisible
life & pointlessness & time wormhole: on walking through walls
meaning wormhole: nothing // matters
renunciation wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
speech wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
superhero wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
Superman wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
talking to myself wormhole: my life / of others

 

before // writing?

Tags

2013, angle, attention, being, breathing, discipline, listening, looking, questioning, seeing, shift, waiting, wind, writing

 

 

 

                                what is
                the discipline of writing
                is it waiting for the wind to shift gaze
                                to unknown angles there to soar
                                or alight elsewhere

                                or is it
                to breathe everything I hear
                and see everything I feel before I put pen to paper
                                and during and
                                after I writing?

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: gently straighten
being & writing wormhole: my beauty
breathing wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
listening wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
looking wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
seeing wormhole: up here
waiting wormhole: purpose
wind wormhole: hot summer / morning

 

lifetime

Tags

2008, angle, change, dawn, feeling sorry for myself, gaze, identity, life, looking, notice, others, pavement, rooftops, speech, wonder

 

 

 

                                              lifetime

                           I look and I gaze and wonder
                           but I don’t notice

                           lives shift and change but
                           I am quiet and not noticed

                           I see dawns over rooftops
                           I see angles from the pavement

                           but no one else notices;
                           and then I speak

                           and everyone continues
                           to listen to themselves

 

 

 

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

change 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
dawn wormhole: dawn
identity & speech wormhole: 1963
life & rooftops wormhole: up here
looking wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
others wormhole: time proceeds

 

just words wiped across a line

Tags

2015, 5*, abandonment, angle, childhood, divorce, echo, Eglinton Hill, emergence, eyes, floorboards, identity, juxtaposition, Mum, pointlessness, seeing, speechless, superpower, tragedy, writing

 

 

 

                out of the numbness from nothingness
                                the tragedy that was drugged stable
                                but couldn’t speak
                                              the empty floorboards that held no echo

                a head reared and cast around
                                mouth sealed with a conjunctivitis
                                and eyes seeing all the angle and juxtaposition
                                              there was to see

                but found the power to leap buildings
                                and act with super human subtlety
                                but in lessening gradations of effect until
                                              just words wiped across a line

 

 

 

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

abandonment & childhood & divorce & Eglinton Hill & eyes & identity & Mum wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
echo wormhole: the echo of / a small box
emergence wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
pointlessness 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
seeing wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
superpower wormhole: wakey wakey / time to get up
writing wormhole: “out of step is useful because / that means you get to notice / what others have missed; out / of line is no use to anyone”