and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

Tags

19th century, 2016, 20th century, 8*, access, air conditioning, alley, architecture, back, balcony, bay window, being, black, blindness, blue, burgundy, carlights, chimney stacks, clouds, compromise, contemplation, cross-section, distance, down, Eastbourne, eyes, facade, Ford Cortina, foreground, front, Have, height, hierarchy, history, hope, hotel, houses, inside, life, living, outside, passing, pier, pipes, privacy, prologue, promenade, sea, seagull, seeing, sky, society, sound, streetlight, sun, time, tree, up, Victorian houses, walking, walls, waves, white, windows

                and naerrgh a mention of a seagull’s call

                prologue

                the fetch of uneventful league to
                mingle with pier piles nonchalant;

                the borderline lightbulbs strung for
                decades between promenade lamp

                and stack of height and white façade
                of black-wrought balcony for where to stay

                setting

                frontage shows the way-to-look-
                ing blind to what is seen amid

                all the detail of hierarchy, eye
                turned to what it hopes, while

                rear windows, set central in
                the shapèd drop, look inward

                to find the fit to be; in time
                the rear extension of amenity

                cut fresh cross-sections of life
                turned 90° deep with windows

                unadorned; but then
                were added storey, creating alley

                to hidden access whenever
                contemplating the corners

                that encourage right angle
                where you can serve your

                down and truncating down-
                pipe blind to abutted wall

                perambulation

                                but, I’m in luck

                eye caught by extractor flaps
                in the foreground venting downwards

                venting upwards, sun neatly off
                the downpipes to the right

                on the left long-painted white pipes
                rusting, and between, a leafing tree

                undecided which way to lean
                the background, the monolith back

                of the seafront hotel, conditioning
                air; later, passing the backs of

                houses-become-their-own-entrance,
                seagulls perched at rest

                on the chimneys, I caught
                the tail of a reg-D Cortina with

                burgundy-deep fins and round
                tripartite lights, smaller

                than I remember

                epilogue

                oh, yes and a Persian-blue
                chimney stack with off-white pots

                under sky-blue sky
                and wisps of cloud

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: looking ahead
being wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
black & blue & Have & living & passing & society & walking wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
burgundy wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
clouds wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
compromise wormhole: after all
Eastbourne wormhole: city streets
eyes & life & seeing & time wormhole: 1964
history wormhole: looking / ridiculous
hotel wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
promenade & sea wormhole: Bexhill 140215
seagull wormhole: do I
sky & white wormhole: travelling // arrival
sound & sun & windows wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
streetlight wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
Victorian houses wormhole: red / lacquer / door
walls wormhole: certainly a Captain, / but not America
waves wormhole: place

 

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two profiles

Tags

2016, 5*, balcony, being, chair, eyes, face, feet, hair, legs, Lewes, library, mouth, neck, passing, pen, portrait, reading, skyline, step, study

                two profiles

                reading – backdrop of cascade swept back across neck
                line from thinned mouth to pen to poise to foot on
                chair leg to foot step to ground …

                    step past un-laced shoe bounce girder-sprung
                                                            balcony,
                                                    no,
                                          forgot
                                    some
                    thing, got it now, settling down to reception

                studying – cascade over both shoulders crescent face
                with hood eyes and smirky mouth, counter-recline
                of neck to body to outstretch legs crossed at boot

                tinkling the laptop awhile with open-mouthed
                tentation hidden by the handbag, skylined by flask

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: ‘still …’
eyes & mouth wormhole: looking ahead
face wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
feet wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
hair wormhole: Batgirl –
Lewes wormhole: reating & wriding
library wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
passing wormhole: “I need help”
reading wormhole: for / the first time
skyline wormhole: river

 

London refugee march – 120915

Tags

2015, 5*, architecture, balcony, buildings, capitalism, denial, dog, economics, freedom, global, justice, London, migration, people, Picadilly, politics, power, protesting, railings, refugees, roads, sound, stucco, sun

London refugee march – 120915

                                                there are
                                no economic migrants
                within global capitalism
only refugees

                                                you can’t have
                                a free market without fair-dom
                freedom for the mass
is individual

                the dog
                calmly
                sniffed
                this bit
                of road
                that bit
                below the
                plackards
                and the
                whistles
                on a lead
                past the

just too beautiful
                railings and balconies and
                                stucco of Picadilly, sun on the sides showing
                                                all the finial of denial

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: glide
capitalism & London wormhole: place
dog wormhole: slightly / uphill
economics wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
justice wormhole: listen willya
people wormhole: passing
politics wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
power wormhole: I turn to wake up
roads wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
sound wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
sun wormhole: city streets

 

Bexhill 140215

Tags

1920s, 1935, 2015, 5*, ageing, balcony, Bexhill, de la Warr Pavilion, eating, grey, horizon, line, looking, model, photographer, poem, portrait, promenade, red, sea, sun, waiting, wife

                                Bexhill 140215

                                sugar blues necksweat
                                I need to manage what I eat
                                as I age
                sitting in the de la Warr Pavilion café est. 1935

                                looking for a poem
                                between the clean lines on the balcony,
                                … waiting
                for his wife, trying the zoom lens onto the promenade

                                of a photographer
                                trying positions of his model
                                in fashion-red
                hooded coat and flower heads on her hat from the 1920s

                                on the sun-grey sea
                                with wide horizon

 

 

 

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

grey & sun wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
horizon wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
looking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
promenade wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
red wormhole: leaves
sea wormhole: concordance
waiting wormhole: just

 

windows // and balconies

Tags

2013, 4*, balcony, buildings, city, columns, cornice, Europe, imperialism, morning, sun, windows

                the imperial buildings of Europe stand derelict
                except for their columns as the morning sun

                edges the cornices and the modern city rises
                already awake through the high broken windows

                and balconies

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: 1968
city wormhole: Infantino / district of Gotham
morning wormhole: where else
sun wormhole: morning sun
windows wormhole: the quiet whale

 

the 19th century

Tags

19th century, 2016, 5*, balcony, black, blue, death, evening, halo, head, portrait, profile, purple, sitting, smile, walls, white, windows, wood

                even into her later years
                the 19th century sat in the
                darkening room with dark wood
                furniture long into the evening

                on warm nights you could
                see her profile and slight-etched
                smile between the balcony railings
                and all the height of window and

                coving above her sometimes-
                nodding head; when she died
                she left a chalk-purple and dark-
                blue halo on the bare white walls

                glistening sometimes
                where her black cap used to be

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: gone black
blue wormhole: magnificent salad
death wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
evening wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
purple wormhole: the purple mist between
sitting wormhole: moment
smile wormhole: and smile / like a bud
walls wormhole: coagulating
white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
windows wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
wood wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing

 

El Palacio, 1946

Tags

'scape, 1946, 2015, balcony, black, blue, daylight, detail, distance, doors, Edward Hopper, grey, looking, Mexico, mountains, red, sky, streets, windows

 

 

 

                El Palacio, 1946

                the perpendicular signage
                plainly black and red
                in the dirty daylight

                and the tall windows
                and doorways down
                the street with their

                proud back-painted
                balcony rails looking
                out over empty flat-

                roof streets one floor
                up, submerged before
                the mountains under

                unrelenting pressure
                of the blue and grey
                sky so that distance

                is sharper than the
                foreground in all of
                its vague detail

 

 

 

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

black & grey wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
blue wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
doors wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
Edward Hopper & red wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
looking wormhole: substance
sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
streets wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
windows wormhole: reaching branch

 

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

 

‘filtered coffee …’

Tags

2015, balcony, coffee, Gran Canaria, haiku, holiday, settling

 

 

 

                                  filtered coffee in
                           a tin jug and only a
                               small cup to drink from

 

 

 

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

coffee wormhole: the peculiar continuum of trains
haiku[esque] wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
holiday wormhole: our life
settling wormhole: sooner or later

 

dream 260815

Tags

2015, balcony, buildings, Carol, cellar, child, dream, Genesta Road, glass, grey, hills, home, identity, kiss, life, living, looking, love, Nan, parent, path, Plumstead, promenade, purple, schoolgirls, shoes, teenagers, Thames, thinking, wandering, windows, wood, Woolwich

 

 

 

                      dream 260815

wandering about the promenade, the schoolgirls¹ urge, again, with
girly concern, for their friend, (‘am I old, should I listen to them?’),
I should speak to her, in Spanish – learn the sounds, (‘what does it
mean?’): ‘let me enclose you’; this time I will; I have demurred too long

I have said it; I find myself, returned to Genesta Road²; the frontage
rebuilt, even a storey higher, central stairwell – vertical purple glass –
where houses join, art deco³, Edinburgh rock cladding, balconies for
viewing, windows for seeing, stylish; (‘what’s happened to my home?’)

Nan⁴ opens the door, she is younger, smart, she has energy, things to
do; government grant, upgrade houses; (‘how have the rooms changed,
what is their view now?’); story: a skeleton found, (‘where?’), in her 40s
when she died, drunk, unfound, (‘in a cellar?’), (‘we haven’t got a cellar’),

(‘have we got a cellar?’); so we drive around Plumstead, Woolwich⁵, we
boat on the river; new buildings, coffee and cream block pattern, new
woodland on the hills, straight paths; I am looking after the child,
(‘Joseph?’)⁶, I love this child, I will look after him, at the swimming pool,

he jumps into a pool, it is deep, he goes under, arms asplay, I jump in,
save him, no panic, hold his soft body; we make to the paddling pool,
teenage boys sit around, various grey jackets with label design, sullen,
defiant, looking; they sit on the edge, put on their shoes, water has

drained: platforms, winkle-pickers, creepers, suede, chains; mud on the
tiles; I make the stand¹, I hold my child, they should not do this: they leave,
slowly, I am now marked; I hand the child back to his parents, I kiss his
head, I’ll see him again; we are coming home now, Carol⁷ smiles at my love

 

1. I am a teacher
2. my teenage home
3. there are somewhat famous examples of art deco terraces further up the road at 85-91, designed by Berthold Lubetkin
4. my grandmother (1906-1989), helped bring me up as a teen
5. SE London, where I grew up
6. my eldest son
7. my lovely wife

 

 

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

buildings & glass & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
Carol & dream & life & looking & Woolwich wormhole: dream 230315
child wormhole: … back to the outbreath
Genesta Road wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
grey wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
hills wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
identity wormhole: The Godfather III: // AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …
living wormhole: I can say / that I do all sorts of dance
love wormhole: I do
Nan wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
Plumstead wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
promenade wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
purple wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
thinking wormhole: dedication
windows wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925