familiasyncopation

Tags

2016, 7*, apartment, baby, breeze, brother, cactus, children, cotton, family, father, Granada, laughing, meal, passing, portrait, running, sound, streets, sun, Sunday, talking, tragedy, uncle, walls

                                familiasyncopation

                                down
down in the narrow streetways of the Gran Realjo of always sunny Granada

                                                                clak
                                                vacuum clak whines
                                quickly clak scrapescrape around
                the ap – clak – ment

                light cotton cloth hangs
                                back into the room
                                                hangs
                                                relents
                                                hangs                hangs

                family
                                sits
                                                variably
                                                                for the
                                                                                meal
                father’s sentence – chairscrape –
                                ri – co – ch – e – t – s
                                                around four walls
                                                                in warm and all-inclusive statemental embrace                
                                                                                and continues – despite interruptions – all the while                

                children lament a chasing game
                                of plakplak sandals
                                with surprising tragedy
                                                in the street below an uncle

                pushing the baby
                                half on the pebbles                from time to time
                                                “a^hahahaha … herrr”
                                                                talks staccato with his brother

                light cotton cloth
                                billowing out, not quite
                                                          not quite
                                                snagging
                                on the cactus

                leans back into the room

 

the title runs together the Spanish word for family (which ends in the useful prefix ‘a’ which links) with syncopation to provide a gloriously arrhythmic portrait of a family meeting for midday dinner on a Sunday through the wide open windows of the apartiemento; I’m not even sure if all the noises I heard were from the same family, but that doesn’t matter, they were, they were;

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
family wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
father wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
passing wormhole: industrial estate
sound wormhole: … swap round
streets & walls wormhole: passersby
sun wormhole: woven-through
Sunday wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly
talking wormhole: sleep now
uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing

 

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the policies came to nothing

Tags

2012, 5*, apartment, beauty, bittersweet, blue, buildings, business, cars, childhood, death, dizzy, emptiness, facade, gigantitude, height, looking, Manhattan, Mum, pink, reaching, roof, society, view, windows

 

 

 

                                          oh

                                   bittersweet beauty
                                   apartment window

                                   at any stage up the
                                   building façade                dizzy

                                   looking further up
                                   the top receding from

                                   view or yet dwarfed
                                   by another block kept

                                   in place by gigantitude
                                   everything kept in place

                                   by gigantitude; when
                                   young I had an image

                                   of a building so many
                                   floors high pinnacling

                                   to a turret roof and
                                   tiny cars going about

                                   their business, on the
                                   pink cover the blue

                                   cover of insurance
                                   policies my Mum kept,

                                   my mother dead now,
                                the policies came to nothing

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: 1967
blue & buildings & windows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
cars wormhole: fine
childhood & Manhattan wormhole: tired
death wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
emptiness wormhole: the coffee shop opportunity
looking wormhole: tripping up to / London town
Mum wormhole: currency of generations
pink wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
roof wormhole: always
society wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

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

brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

1967

Tags

1967, 2010, apartment, Christmas, city, light, mauve, morning, Nick Fury, S.H.I.E.L.D, walls, white, windows, years

 

 

 

                                1967

                                from the 17th floor
                                apartment the
                                mauve wall the
                                white up-turned
                                bowl and the
                                not-yet-dressed
                                Christmas tree
                                standing over
                                the city
                                morning
                                lights

 

 

 

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

Christmas & light wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
city & mauve & morning wormhole: purple and mauve
walls wormhole: “write, let’s break outta here!”
windows & years wormhole: 1963