in deed

Tags

2019, 8*, Arya Lalitavistara, austerity, being, birth, black, Buddha, children, consumerism, death, doing, ears, fear, grin, hate, identity, infrastructure, investment, karma, letting go, lifetimes, love, mother, nirmanakaya, nose, samadhi, shame, skeleton, society, son, thought, war, womb, world

                                I

                gave birth to you, I
                held you deep within my very womb,
                the very kernel of all the labour of all my life’s beings and I

                gave you up to being
                with all the love of whole investment
                placed in care of self in state, you cannot,

                                just
                                die

                                __O—

                … she addressed her son

                who sat unmoved
                to the whole world’s reach
                that only his bones leaned together
                dry and upright

                who sat unconsumed
                to the whole world’s glut
                that to feel his stomach
                was to grasp his spine

                who sat unloved
                to the whole world’s reflection that
                children poked grass in his ear ‘till it
                came out his nose

                who sat unknown
                to the whole world’s shame
                that he was dust-black as a
                tree stump hideously grinning

                                __O—

                and know, mother, I do not die;
                I embroiled with the world to show
                the terrible wake of uncoupling
                her greasy mechinations,

                                in deed

 

honnnnnnnned like the string from a lute, not too tight not too loose, from chapter 17 of the Arya Lalitavistara Sutra in which the Prince’s mother (who had died and gone to heaven) came to see her son after he had been practising austerities for six years and was on the point of dying; she feared he was taking his quest to extremes, but he calmly told her that (the point of the whole Sutra being called ‘Lalita’, a ‘play’) that he had to show, in human form, what the two extremes of living in life were, in order to then show the way between to two extremes to liberation

 

 

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

being & war wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
black wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: the old man;
death wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
doing wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
identity wormhole: threshold to behold
letting go wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
love wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
society & thought wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: on facing the Have

 

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The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, arms, Atlantic City, beauty, being, black, blue, candle, cheek, city, colour, communication, daisies, dress, ears, eyes, fingers, glass, green, grey, hair, hands, hips, knuckles, lips, looking, matches, mirror, mouth, movement, open, orange, others, portrait, poverty, red, reflection, ring, ruby, sea, seagull, silence, skin, sound, speech, temptation, thinking, walking, waves, white, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman, wrists, writing

                            1. THE WAITRESS

                No wit (and none needed) but
    the silence of her ways, grey eyes in
    a depth of black lashes–
    The eyes look and the look falls.

    There is no way, no way. So close
    one may feel the warmth of the cheek and yet there is
    no way.

    The benefits of poverty are a roughened skin
    of the hands, the broken
    knuckles, the stained wrists.

                Serious. Not as the others.
    All the rest are liars, all but you.
                                        Wait on us.
    Wait on us, the hair held back practically
    by a net, close behind the ears, at the sides of
    the head. But the eyes–
                            but the mouth, lightly (quickly)
    touched with rouge.

    The black dress makes the hair dark, strangely
    enough, and the white dress makes it light.
    There is a mole under the jaw, low under
    thr right ear–

                And what arms!

                                        The glassruby ring
    on the fourth finger of the left hand.

                                        –and the movements
under the scant dress as the weight of the tray
    makes the hips shift forward slightly in lifting
    and beginning to walk–

    The Nominating Committee presents the following
    resolutions, etc. etc. etc. All those
    in favor signify by saying, Aye. Contrariminded,
    No.
      Carried.
                And aye, and aye, and aye!

    And the way the bell-hop runs downstairs:
          ta tuck a
                ta tuck a
                      ta tuck a
                            ta tuck a
                                  ta tuck a
    and the gulls in the open window screaming over the slow
    break of the cold waves–

                O unlit candle with the soft white
    plume, Sunbeam Finest Safety Matches all together in
    a little box–

                And the reflections of both in
    the mirror and the reflection of the hand, writing
    writing–
                Speak to me of her!-

                –and nobody else and nothing else
    in the whole city, not an electric sign of shifting
    colors, fourfoot daisies and acanthus fronds going from
    red to orange, green to blue–forty feet across–

                                        Wait on us, wait
    on us with your momentary beauty to be enjoyed by
    none of us. Neither by you, certainly,
                                                nor by me.

 

with love from Poems, 1928

 

 

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

beauty & speech wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
being wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
black wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
blue & grey & writing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
city & William Carlos Williams wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
communication wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
eyes wormhole: between
glass & red wormhole: travelling / back
green & woman wormhole: on facing the Have
hair wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
hands wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
looking wormhole: waiting to be heard
mirror wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
mouth wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
open wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
orange & others & walking wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
reflection wormhole: I
sea & seagull & waves wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
silence & sound wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
thinking wormhole: there will be ovations
white wormhole: alabaster balustrade
windows wormhole: birth in the world

 

Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872

Tags

1872, 2018, 6*, black, chimney, contemplation, earth, Eternity, grey, hill, horizon, leaves, moon, path, Pissarro, red, sky, winter, woodland

                at the brow of even mild hills
                on the curve of the red-leaf path

                the copse at either side will be
                black and hack-hack skeletal and

                the tatterdemalion-grey sky
                will seem like the moon has

                come too close to Earth, only
                the ridge and chimney of the next

                dwelling sits down beyond the
                brow quietly contemplating eternity

 

Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872 by Camille Pissarro – the only image I could find online, but it is not the colours I have seen

 

 

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

black wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
chimney wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
grey & red wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
horizon & moon wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
leaves wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
path wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
sky wormhole: {reading right to left}
winter wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

 

early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

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

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, black, carnation, growth, hands, loneliness, looking, mouth, pink, school, schoolgirls, streets, time, walking, white, William Carlos Williams, yellow

                                THE LONELY STREET

                School is over. It is too hot
                to walk at ease. At ease
                in light frocks they walk the streets
                to while the time away.
                They have grown tall. They hold
                pink flames in their right hands.
                In white from head to foot,
                with sidelong, idle look–
                in yellow, floating stuff,
                black sash and stockings–
                touching their avid mouths
                with pink sugar on a stick–
                like a carnation each holds in her hand–
                they mount the lonely street.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

 

 

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

black wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
hands wormhole: we held cold hands
loneliness wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
looking & streets & time & walking wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
mouth wormhole: letting them go
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
school wormhole: how to teach
white wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’

Tags

1967, 2018, 7*, arrival, Batgirl, Batman, beauty, black, books, eyes, glasses, identity, ink, knowledge, looking, mask, night, silhouette, skyline, talking

                a blacknight fitted perfectly
                over the local skyline like spilt ink

                as masks and blindfolds
                drove through the light to where

                silhouettes can talk
                in strictest identity and all the books

                can lean to the right where eyes beautiful look
                over rectangular glasses

 

Detective Comics #363, May 1967, Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino: oh the rhymes we wend and the bends we play

 

 

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

Batman & skyline wormhole: space for probing thought
beauty wormhole: only
black wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
books womrhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
glasses wormhole: we held cold hands
identity wormhole: Victorian pipework
knowledge wormhole: singsong chant
looking wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
night wormhole: the moon, the moon
silhouette wormhole: despite that
talking wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on

 

TREES by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, black, dark, grey, hill, identity, melody, music, night, north, poplars, scale, sky, stars, trees, vague, voices, weave, William Carlos Williams, wind, yellow

                                TREES

                Crooked, black tree
                on your little grey-black hillock,
                ridiculously raised one step toward
                the infinite summits of the night:
                even you the few grey stars
                draw upward into a vague melody
                of harsh threads.

                Bent as you are from straining
                against the bitter horizontals of
                a north wind,–there below you
                how easily the long yellow notes
                of poplars flow upward in a descending
                scale, each note secure in its own
                posture–singularly woven.

                All voices are blent willingly
                against the heaving contra-bass
                of the dark but you alone
                warp yourself passionately to one side
                in your eagerness.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

a lot of these poems were some of the first poems I read with intent and an open, clean mind that had no precursor of what to see or find; and their reading imprinted deep, even when I didn’t read that well or attentively or learnedly; and, much later, when I attempted to re-ignite my writing, the language emerged like tramlines, there to follow, but fresh, utterly fresh; and utterly mine – which would never have been but for reading WCW

 

 

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

black wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey & sky & voices & wind wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
identity wormhole: moon- // washed
music wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
night wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
stars wormhole: EL HOMBRE by William Carlos Williams
trees wormhole: presence
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, being, black, branches, curtains, dress, elm, house, love, sky, smell, song, time, voices, white, William Carlos Williams, windows

                      LOVE SONG

                Sweep the house clean,
                hang fresh curtains
                in the windows
                put on a new dress
                and come with me!
                The elm is scattering
                its little loaves
                of sweet smells
                from a white sky!

                Who shall hear of us
                in the time to come?
                Let him say there was
                a burst of fragrance
                from black branches.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

some poems ride the air: they are about nothing much at all (of import to the nation), they don’t do anything, but they are so much more alive and enduring than the cleanest and enshrined momument; I suppose they renew each time they are read with evanescence and sniff …

 

 

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

being wormhole: all // are // none
black wormhole: I
branches wormhole: transferring
curtains wormhole: languidly close the portal
house wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
love & time wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sky wormhole: sometimes
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
voices wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
white wormhole: cowl
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
windows wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …

 

I

Tags

2017, 6*, black, blue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, city, doing, duality, eyes, following, identity, ignorance, opaque, orange, outside, power, sky, walls, white

                their eyes flashed orange
                and opaque – power of all things to try;

                along the high white walls
                outside of the city

                under the deep blue sky turning black, I
                followed them

 

flashed both from and within – Bodhisattvacaryavatara VIII, 9

 

 

 

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

black & walls wormhole: … the underleaves show
blue & white wormhole: mauve
city wormhole: between
doing wormhole: the balance necessary between
eyes wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
identity wormhole: letting them go
orange wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
power wormhole: Batgirl –
sky wormhole: abandoned sound mirrors

 

… the underleaves show

Tags

2017, 7*, black, brick, Carol, crank, faces, glasses, grey, hair, Ironbridge, leaves, mirror, progress, purple, railtrack, reading, steam, sunglasses, table, thrust, time, trees, Victorian, walls, wind, windows, wood

                greased and black teeth interlock
                in turn from steam built to release

                to crank the thrust trained to track
                sooner ahead and curving to distant

                future while bricks stack high to
                shape an echoey wall up to 1000 a

                day, coal-faced and sullen and bolts
                sunk into wood that will never be

                undone again all the while
                the wind blows the upper trees …

                                — O —

                bottom of the tall mirror above
                the wooden table tops the back

                of handsome hair let grey with
                sunglasses and purple glasses on

                the end of her nose reading
                something carefully before the

                five-high-four-wide-flank-of
                paned windows all along the front of the Refreshment Pavilion and

                when the wind blows high
                … the underleaves show

 

Blists Hill is a delightfully recreated Victorian industrial town near Ironbridge, Shropshire which tags itself ‘The Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ we revisited in May 2017

 

 

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

black & purple wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Carol & hair wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
faces wormhole: sharpened apex
glasses wormhole: Batgirl –
grey wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
leaves wormhole: travelling // arrival
mirror wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
reading & wind wormhole: perspective
table wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
time wormhole: Bridgnorth
trees & windows & wood wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
walls wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye