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

 

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like butterflies on / buddleia

Tags

2015, Allen Ginsberg, buddleia, butterfly, Emily Dickinson, letting go, poetry, reading, Roger McGough, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, yellow

 

 

 

                I have a habit of
                discovering poets
                and buying their
                complete works

                outright, but then
                reading them like
                a book is far too
                rich, like a bowl of

                yellow butter icing;
                I worked my way
                through Sylvia and
                it damn near killed

                me; I tried it with
                Emily and it left me
                all terse; Allen left
                me lost on street

                corners with my
                genitals hanging out;
                Roger left me on
                the doorstep for

                the milkman; it
                wasn’t until I
                returned to Old
                Bull, all cantank-

                erous with acc-
                epted discipline,
                that I found my
                self flicking through

                like butterflies on
                buddleia, enjoying
                myselves for the first
                in a long long time

 

 

 

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

Allen Ginsberg wormhole: my life / of others
buddhleia wormhole: I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia
letting go wormhole: prayer to my self
poetry wormhole: wriving
reading wormhole: the peculiar continuum of trains
Sylvia Plath wormhole: Black Rook / in Rainy Weather
William Carlos Williams wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
yellow wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?

 

I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia

Tags

'scape, 2014, air, ants, brick, buddleia, car park, grass, lilac, realisation, sand, shops, tarmac, time, tree roots, Uckfield, walls, weeds, white

 

 

 

                I’ve only just realised
                after so many decades
        that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia

                the weathered brick wall
        so new and even when built
                skirting the back-road High Street car park
                behind the shops
                long abandoned
                broken
        where the tree roots burst the tarmac (cut off now)
                three courses leaning
                dry grass and leaf weed along the reclaimed border
                a whitish bloom growing –
                out of or into? –
                the top course
                in the open air
        sand-dust at the foot cracking avenues along which
                ants travel under
                quivering weed stalks
                leaning from
                out the wall

        same as they ever have same as they ever will

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: after the storm
buddleia & shops wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name
lilac wormhole: the edge has come …
realisation & time wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
walls wormhole: thar she perched
white wormhole: ‘the red and white …’

 

events happen / through all measure of name

Tags

2015, 6*, Alan Moore, art, black, buddleia, chimney, city, doing, echo, Eddie Campbell, From Hell, history, life, meaning, night, purpose, rain, shops, sleep, society, streets, walls, windows

                                events happen
                through all measure of name
(history happens in echo-wet streets while shop fronts stand and stare)
                                lives subsist behind walls
                and know only of purpose to step through the door
                                (meanings glimpse
                                 between windows both ways – make art and go to bed to sleep)

                                meanwhile chimneys
                                disperse coal at right-
                                angels angles, over
                                city and line and
                                only when the
                                streets occasionally
                                empty do you know
                                of immense happenings
                                in the silence
                                and the yard-silt
                                where the buddleia
                and knotweed grow black into the night

 

askance from chapter one of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

a little snippet from askance From Hell, askance from chapter ten of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, gwn’n’avvalook

 

 

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

Alan Moore & meaning & society wormhole: September – silhouette of leaf // the / inside and the / outside
black & shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
buddleia 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
chimney wormhole: never there
city wormhole: start where you are I
doing & history & life wormhole: relapse
echo wormhole: just words wiped across a line
night & rain wormhole: 1977
sleep wormhole: sunny morning
streets wormhole: step
walls & windows wormhole: ‘the old chair rocked …’

 

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

Tags

2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, being, bench, birch, blue, Bob Hoskins, bridge, buddleia, buildings, Carol, change, crane, dark, doing, education, emptiness, experience, faces, field, fireworks, frost, glass, glasses, green, grey, Have, horizontal, houses, hyperbole, identity, impermanence, journey, life, lifetimes, light, listening, London, love, mouth, not knowing, openness, orange, others, passing, pastel, phone, pink, poetry, pointlessness, politics, red, scaffolding, silver, sky, speech, St. Paul's, station, staying, study, sun, table, talking to myself, Thames, thinking, thought, time, tired, train, travelling, trees, twilight, Uckfield-London line, voices, walking, white, windows, work

                                   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

                                   look out for the throwing up of hands and
                                   the want-only doing it anyway without thought
                                   or fibre thinking you deserve the better after
                                   all the point and anxiety of thinking; rather
                                   stay with the pastel openness of not knowing

                                   what to do; “it’s like they’re doing this to wind
                                   me up” all the mouth-open listening and loud
                                   hyperbole of their being, all app’d and down-
                                   loaded they, obbviously haven’t finished studying
                                   or whatever it is they’ve been bought into

                                   college to do these days; their time’ll come;
                                   frost covers the passing fields and trees, equally;
                                   “t’b’fair-r-rr, I’m not gen–you–in–lee concerned;
                                   I think, if you always stay in the same en–vie–
                                   rhon–meant …” gaze-mouth open … “I think,

                                   you need to have new ex–peer–re:–NCs
                                   nyoopeople nyooplaces” stopping waiting
                                   starting ten-ta-tively slow gliding, while another
                                   train shifts approaching the same station priority
                                   passes for a long time; then on another train,

                                   “it’s like we’re on another train”; frost thawing
                                   equally on the waste grounds between lines,
                                   green and horizontals return, except for the
                                   bare silver birch; so they no longer store parcels
                                   at London stations look how much they’ve

                                   brightly opened them up no more dingy offices
                                   and partitions where people lived their long
                                   and working life; on the stepped bench by the
                                   river across from the Poetry Library somewhere
                                   in the Southbank Centre I struggle with the

                                   vacuous way things have to change but forget
                                   the dark silt accumulated in unused yards
                                   where not even the buddleia grow, as St. Paul’s
                                   becomes dwarfed by glass and leaning building;
                                   all the sun across the riverside architecture –

                                   depth from finial cupola and scaffolding except
                                   the red cranes up into the grey-blue-blue-grey
                                   sky concrete counter-weight and lifting-hods
                                   catching light despite orange lights clean atop each
                                   arm and elbow; crowds walking the bridge under

                                   suspension ties leaning towards the last pillar; tired
                                   now we travel home under neon light on exasperated
                                   faces with no expression past turning houses and
                                   raised embankments, a passenger stands suddenly
                                   to leave, “oh, he’s dropped a tooth” quips Carol out

                                   loud, “I’m joking; it was a mint imperial” rolled
                                   under the table, look, the man with pink-frame
                                   glasses chuckles into his phone like Bob Hoskins,
                                   love him; “this is coach number five of twelve”
                                   we need to make sure we are travelling in the

                                   correct part of the train otherwise we cannot alight;
                                   “please mind the gap”; I cannot retain things that
                                   have passed (I can’t help it: “that are past”) no matter
                                   how much they may chime with the time in
                                   retrospect, during the last leg of “whatever” journey

                                   home looking for more to add to the poem greedy
                                   through the darkening windows, ah, but it’s too late
                                   now, the arc has already formed the spine, all the
                                   particulars falling in fitted pattern like feathers giving
                                   the illusion of lift and flight amid pervasive dissolution

 

 

 

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

anxiety & identity & time wormhole: re lax // me
architecture & bench & buddleia & glasses wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
being & doing & houses & openness & sky & sun & windows wormhole: lobby
birch wormhole: Eridge Station
blue & glass & green wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
bridge & trees wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
buildings & Have & speech wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
Carol & pink & politics wormhole: Luisenplatz
change wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
crane & grey & light & London & mouth & red & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
education wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
emptiness & pontlessness wormhole: never there
faces wormhole: – sigh! –
field wormhole: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
life & others wormhole: career came to naught …
lifetimes wormhole: transition
listening wormhole: there are patient listeners
love & poetry wormhole: sometimes
orange wormhole: Christmas
passing & travelling wormhole: dawn
silver wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
study wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
talking to myself wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
Thames wormhole: 1967
thinking wormhole: thinking wide enough
thought wormhole: breathe it all / in
train wormhole: is she / looking at me?
twilight wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hever
voices wormhole: ‘green post …’
white wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
work wormhole: corroboration

 

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

Tags

1970s, 2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, art deco, ash tree, bay window, bench, Beresford Square, blue, breathing, brown, buddleia, buildings, Canary Wharf, cars, change, clothes, clouds, communication, compassion, Dallin Road, demolition, dream, Eglinton Hill, empire, Europe, eyes, feet, fence, Genesta Road, ghosts, glass, glasses, grass, growth, handshake, head, house, identity, iron, keys, language, leaves, library, light, living, London, looking, love, music, passing, pavement, people, petrol, piano, pigeons, plane, plastic, Plumstead, purple, rain, rainbow, roads, rooftops, school, schoolgirl, shadow, Shard, singing, sky, smile, sound, speech, step, streetlight, streets, sun, swifts, talking, tarmac, Thames, time, travelling, trees, tv, vow, walking, walls, windows, Woolwich, yellow

 

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

 

 

                      Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

                      all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
                      holding together, the grubby art deco window that
                      coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
                      maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

                      glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
                      down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
                      plaques on the wall above top floor windows
                      scud clouds above the coping

                      then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
                      the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
                      upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
                      pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

                      I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
                      followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
                      from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
                      double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

                      cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
                      on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
                      hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
                      a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

                      the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
                      arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
                      the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
                      dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

                      the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
                      building and upright support, plays along the side
                      of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
                      signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

                      hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
                      so many of my people generations poor in the sun
                      from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
                      Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

                      in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
                      down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
                      walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
                      badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

                      sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
                      your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
                      all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
                      public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

                      and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
                      I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
                      between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
                      my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
                      I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
                      and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

                      out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
                      the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
                      and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
                      pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

                      you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
                      I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
                      unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
                      of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

                      highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
                      when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
                      up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
                      she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

                      the way things are these days, with music in hand
                      she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
                      the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
                      do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

                      how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
                      under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
                      yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
                      steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

                      bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
                      since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
                      from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
                      now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

                      and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
                      still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
                      I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
                      at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

                      at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
                      at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
                      high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
                      sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: Batman#175
bench wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea
blue & leaves & sun wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
breathing wormhole: born again
brown wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
buddleia wormhole: (Little by Little)
buildings & travelling wormhole: I could step / more open
cars & roads wormhole: the long road
change & time wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
clouds wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
communication wormhole: Maidstone
compassion & feet & love & speech & talking wormhole: there are patient listeners
dream wormhole: we’re born // to die
Eglinton Hill & Woolwich & yellow wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
eyes & looking & shadow wormhole: a maturity
Genesta Road & rooftops wormhole: corroboration
ghosts wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
glass & light & streetlight wormhole: oh-pen
glasses wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
house wormhole: day off
identity wormhole: that
living wormhole: scattered
London wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
music wormhole: no exit
passing & sound & walking & windows wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
people & rain & sky wormhole: Luisenplatz
piano wormhole: … walking down the street
pigeons wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
purple wormhole: consturnation …? // consternation
school wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
smile wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
streets & trees wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Thames wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
tv wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
walls wormhole: stuck free to move within

 

(Little by Little)

Tags

2013, 5*, birch, blue, buddleia, Carol, earth, evening, hands, Leicester, love, naïveté, silence, smell, UB40, walking, wind

                                                                      (Little by Little)

birches planted perfect in little squares
hand by step
scent by skin

high-wall factories standing silent with buddleia
Augustine by Anne
blue-petal by blush

the earth smell of vegetables before the riot of fabric
undercover from the evening
starch by wind-chime
logic by naïveté

 

 

 

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

birch wormhole: from the / bedroom / window
blue wormhole: bell
buddleia wormhole: Boy
C & Leicester & love wormhole: the strange mauve relief of / this burgundy-gritty encounter
evening & walking wormhole: we // walk
hands wormhole: ‘hand / in hand …’
naïveté wormhole: the / pyrrhic / play
silence & wind wormhole: Saturday
smell wormhole: skyline / of the evenings

 

Boy

Tags

'scape, 2011, 3*, bicycle, boy, Brighton, buddleia, faces, fence, hair, Have, pavement, portrait, red, rust, walls

 

 

 

                                          Boy

                           down the long featureless
                                          pavement
                           red brick wall rusty fence
                                          buddleia
                           the pinched face wide head
                                          spikey hair boy
                           cycles shell-suit top billowing
                                          building to a jump

                                          over nothing

 

                                          once

 

 

 

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

Brighton wormhole: relief
buddleia wormhole: William Carlos Williams
faces wormhole: Eglinton Hill
hair wormhole: portrait … // … reading
Have wormhole: Have
pavement wormhole: demolition
red wormhole: school uniform
walls wormhole: as

 

William Carlos Williams

Tags

'scape, 2011, 5*, buddleia, buildings, horizon, lilac, mauve, mist, portrait, sun, William Carlos Williams, windows, writing

 

 

 

                                   William Carlos Williams
                                   sat on the hospital roof
                                   to write and enjoy the sun

                                   through the mist were lilac buildings
                                   large as the horizon
                                   with small menacing windows but

                                   the occasional buddleia plants
                                   grew out mauve between
                                   the cornice stones

 

 

 

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

buddleia wormhole: ‘the old / Lotus Elan …’
buildings & sun wormhole: from my childhood
horizon wormhole: fir trees
lilac wormhole: avenues of uprise
mauve wormhole: ‘on the smooth road …’
mist wormhole: classic
William Carlos Williams wormhole: hinted
windows wormhole: crows on the / chimneys / of 40/38
writing wormhole: time proceeds

 

‘the old / Lotus Elan …’

Tags

'scape, 2010, 4*, blue, buddleia, cars, clouds, combe end, grey, time, white

 

 

 

                                   the old
                                   Lotus Elan
                                   blue with the
                                   grey of
                                   coming rain

                                   parked for months
                                   before the now
                                   flowering white
                                   buddleia

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–
blue wormhole: retirement
buddleia wormhole: mauve
cars & combe end & time wormholes: tuning fork
clouds wormhole: meditation
grey wormhole: ‘the burgundy velvet evening …’
white wormhole: beep