travel // when I die

Tags

2019, 7*, accountability, afterlife, afternoon, architecture, bardo, being, black, brick, brown, buildings, capitalism, century, clouds, crane, data, death, decades, dedication, depth, doing, echo, fields, floating, green, ground, Have, height, horizontal, identity, industry, interdependent origination, iteration, length, lintel, London, magenta, mind, notice, orange, passing, perspective, pillars, presence, purple, rain, rainbow, red, reference, ripple, rooftops, russian vine, samsara, sandstone, sapphire, self-cherishing, self-grasping, silence, sill, sky, sound, speech, Thames, thought, tide, time, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, utility, walls, white, world, writing

                                                                                travel

                                                                                noticing
                                                                at all is a product of
                                                                shifted perspective
                                                                related to behold;

                                                                when I’ve nothing to write
                                                                I’ve lost any perspective,
                                                                cornered by both these walls
                                                                I’ve walked along

                when I die
                this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
                in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration

                                                                cranes atop
                                                                pulling them further up and up
                                                                from the ground on which they
                                                                balance on receding point;

                                                                communities of them
                                                                each taller than the last and the next
                                                                all along the wharfs
                                                                of endless account

                it will be expansive
                high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
                it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple

                                                                kilometres long
                                                                courses of brick
                                                                grimed black and utility-studded
                                                                updown onoff foothold and wire

                                                                ripple along nicely
                                                                across right-angled centuries
                                                                and occasional shot bolts
                                                                of deepest russian vine

                with no sound
                save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
                having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and

                                                                believe it or not
                                                                a rainbow exponential
                                                                to the white arch of Wembley
                                                                we’ll chase for miles

                                                                orange shimmering to
                                                                magenta through staccato tides
                                                                out and over flat roofs
                                                                on and into the fields

                all data wiped –
                suds off my hands from my shoulders –
                and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?

                                                                where trees grow from ground
                                                                shaping over decades
                                                                green-flamed cupolas
                                                                clamped to the sky

                                                                and from perspective passing
                                                                of open field
                                                                turn – creak –
                                                                the whole world

                I may well
                have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
                plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …

                                                                and there
                                                                Lancashire red brick
                                                                with high and whitey
                                                                sills stale and lintel

                                                                before washed-out
                                                                sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
                                                                and horizontal fingers of
                                                                scud-rain

                … but they’d just
                floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
                straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve

                                never really
                                made stuff happen
                                and didn’t have to try

                                more than let more and more
                                of stuff happening anyway
                                happen through me

 

train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive

 

 

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

afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

riders of the night

Tags

2019, 7*, buildings, cars, coat, continent, crane, dark, docks, dualistic conception, hats, headlights, ideas, inexplicable, light, living room, making sense, morning, night, paper, pink, propaganda, rain, red, ships, silhouette, sound, speech, streets, sweat, thinking, time, Tintin, truck, waiting, war, water, waves

                riders of the night

booms of inexplicability
                had spattered velvet stars and shredded cloth all morning

despite the raised-brow
                consternation of the smartest of overcoats and the darkest of hats

that startled drops of sweat
                could devise in the presence of impending war, it was only   th-  

  at night   by the docks where
                the cargo waited unknown and the ships floated above the water,

that one could think a thing between them
                before any further dénouement under filigree refinery of silhouette;

                the   next  morning   the ship sat in the water, content to the
lapping red line,

                waiting fast and moored under the single ribbon of exhaust
from the funnel f’ard;

                but it is only   later   that water ranges continental across stepped and geologic                
wave, under relentless rain,

                that solitary lights lolling will make any sense at all;
and there were some

                had ideas like a living-room on a pivot that housed raised cranes
but the cars drove through streets

                like they owned them and the trucks travelled in straight trail
of their antecedents’ front headlights

                and although buildings always pointed up, the propaganda usually
ended up on pink paper:

                ‘Me, drive ‘round something that is nothing, but something you think is something,                
 but is nothing …?’

 

{image not mine, found on the internet, can’t remember where, happy to take down if a problem}

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
cars wormhole: travelling / back
crane wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
light wormhole: breakfast
living room wormhole: what life went on
morning & sound & streets & time & water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
night wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: beneath
rain wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
red wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
silhouette wormhole: window
speech wormhole: the blessings of the Buddhas
thinking wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
waiting wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: in deed
waves wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms

Tags

2019, 7*, Amsterdam, boats, buildings, canal, cause and effect, dome, facade, leaves, living, passing, phantom, possession, Spring, time

                everything is caused by something, which
                something is caused by something else, nothing
                stands alone where all pass as phantoms

                                from the canal boat
                                spring leaves turn before
                                centuries of storey

                                facades pass fixed
                                in blanked pageant,
                                with protruding girder

                                with which to reach-in
                                with what to stay and
                                intermittent egress

                                whose iron pins will hold
                                the sides, and only domes
                                will not turn

 

a trip through the canals of Amsterdam where the audio commentary didn’t work forcing the mute passing buildings to do the work instead; the title is from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 31

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
leaves wormhole: blue sky high
living wormhole: looking for the right exit
passing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Spring wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
time wormhole: beneath

 

Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

Tags

'scape, 1896, 2018, 5*, bridge, buildings, desire, industry, lives, Pissarro, river, rooftops, Rouen, sky, smoke, storey, streets

                                   Great Bridge,          Rouen, 1896

                                                   to span       the river

                                   is to ride the banks            with quarter and delve inland

with vascular street and hood-eyed blocks         of storey looking down

            under receding ateliers of desire          under oblivious

                                                      plumes      of sky

 

spanning the reach of the Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896 by Camille Pissarro, the eternal dialectic between nature and industry

 

 

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

bridge wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
buildings wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
river wormhole: Sujātā
rooftops wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
smoke wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
streets wormhole: {reading right to left}

 

Puerto del Carmen

Tags

2019, 6*, balcony, birth, boats, branches, buildings, canopy, death, distance, east, evening, glass, green, harbour, hills, horizon, hovering, impressionism, Lanzarote, life, midday, mist, morning, people, promenade, sea, streetlamp, sunset, time, trees, trunk, walking, water, west

                Puerto del Carmen

                to the east
                in the morning

                the promenade
                ended out at the

                harbour wall beacon,
                occasional impressions

                of couples made
                their way under

                irregular lamps on
                their rusting stems with

                fragile glass bulbs;
                one boat anchored

                out at sea, seemed
                closer than it was

                because the
                horizon is always indistinct;

                then, here at midday, the
                single spindle tree holds

                a canopy intricate
                of branches and peppered-green

                writhe-angled
                to the trunk through which

                storeys and balconies
                can clearly be read;

                in the evening to the
                west, the further

                hills all will hover
                for all the distance

                that bolts of mists will allow
                and for all the show of

                lowing sun will preview
                blind across the water

                                straight
                                at
                                me

 

Puerto del Carmen, a stretch, in distance, along the southern coast of Lanzarote, an elongation of time when one is there …

 

 

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

branches wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
buildings wormhole: intent
death wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
evening & morning & people wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
glass & green & sea wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
hills wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
horizon & life & trees wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
mist wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
promenade wormhole: waiting to be heard
time wormhole: I
water wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796

 

intent

Tags

1967, 2018, 5*, avenue, Batman, buildings, cape, contemplation, cowl, dark, night, passing, skyline, tree, white

                past avenues of uprise
                one can only prowl intent

                but oblivious, there may be
                clean white skylines under

                the darkest nights but
                contemplation under cowl

                or tree foreshortens
                the sweep of the deepest cape

 

Detective Comics #370, Dec 1967, writing John Broome, art Sheldon Moldoff

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: pediment to behold
buildings & passing wormhole: travelling / back
night wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
skyline wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
white wormhole: pursued

 

travelling / back

Tags

2018, 6*, Birmingham, buildings, cars, crane, crimson, custard, evening, floor, gazing, glass, glide, leaves, light, mauve, passing, phone, railings, red, reflection, seagull, smile, south, talking, traffic lights, train, travelling, voices, windows, world

                              travelling
                              back

                                under …          … the evening aisle lights
         as she gazes across                  on the tinted glass
            bites her quick                         and the passing
         flicks her phone                          crimson and custard leaves
   smile in her mouth                          turning
                she has a fixed                   while the blokes do their
shake-heads, look-down –          talking – ‘so funny’,

          —\O___

          out of Birmingham New Street
          the seagull holds the glide

          southwards over the wetted
          bitumen floors of long demolished buildings

          cars rise slowly
          to traffic lights held at bright red

          —\O___

                    mauve pilot lights into the early evening
                    the crane folded away into a four

          —\O___

                              on the regional train
                              the darkening has set in,

                              there is no outside
                              just a double world on the window

                              with occasional disembodied station lights
                              illuminating railings to go

 

went to visit my daughter in the midlands, then travelled home

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
cars & voices wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
crane wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
evening wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
glass & light & windows wormhole: birth in the world
leaves & red wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
mauve wormhole: mauve
passing & travelling wormhole: horizon
reflection wormhole: ash leaves
seagull wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
smile wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
talking wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
traffic lights wormhole: transferring
train wormhole: passing
world wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

Hastings: neither all or nothing

Tags

2018, 7*, being, birch, blue, buildings, church, doing, flats, furniture, grey, Hastings, height, houses, net curtains, passing, pavement, reaching, reason, roads, sea, silver, sky, steeple, steets, time, Victorian houses, walking, windows, wondering, writing

                                                                Hastings: neither all or nothing

                I walked steep down
                                through Victorian house fronts
                                                down the whole height of the
                                                                church steeple

                and stood at the grey sea
                                wondering if there was good reason
                                                to write of it, after all;
                                                                the houses

                were now flats with nets knotted in the
                                windows and abandoned furniture
                                                on the street, but look,
                                                                that corner building

                built to the shape of bifurcating roads, oh
                                and the silver birch at the edge
                                                of the pavement reaching
                                                                up into the blue

                cleared sky and although I needn’t write it,
                                I do; and the roots of this small
                                                tree have bulged the paviours
                                                                unnoticeably over the years

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
birch wormhole: over-pink cagoule
blue wormhole: {reading right to left}
buildings & silver wormhole: London, 1809
church wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
grey & sky wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
net curtains wormhole: keep the light off
passing wormhole: passing
roads wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
sea wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
streets & writing wormhole: on facing the Have
time wormhole: somehow
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian pipework
walking wormhole: blister on me thumb
windows wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871

 

London, 1809

Tags

1809, 2019, 7*, breathing, buildings, century, clouds, columns, fields, gas, geomancy, gold, horizon, London, monolith, possibility, silver, sky, sphinx, steel, Thames, time, unicorn, west, William Turner

                there are monoliths built
                of unknowable antiquity

                scattered arcanely about
                the basin horizon,

                pillars of ribs help them
                breathe once a century,

                fields between have yet
                to be built; the Thames

                seethes gaseous silver
                while to the west a

                tarnished silver sphinx
                unicorn, hideous possibility,

                sits solitary as if a pack
                before the proscenium sky

                of gilded cloud steel and
                titan to all of time

 

London from Greenwich Park exhibited 1809 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00483

London, William Turner, 1809

 

 

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

breathing wormhole: blister on me thumb
buildings wormhole: ‘streetsigns …’
clouds & time wormhole: on facing the Have
gold wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
horizon & London wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
silver wormhole: that
sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
Thames wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211

 

‘streetsigns …’

Tags

1970, 2018, 6*, alley, Batman, buildings, cape, direction, east, height, moon, north, silhouette, solitude, south, space, story, streetsigns, wings

                streetsigns
                point north south east
                in silhouette

                buildings
                rise in solitary storey,
                the wings

                of the Batman
                unfurl under the
                moon and flutter

                suggesting
                all manner of alleyway
                between

 

unfurled from Batman #225, September, 1970; Denny O’Neill, Irv Novick

 

 

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

Batman & buildings wormhole: raised brow
moon wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
silhouette wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
space wormhole: to let be