all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving

Tags

2018, 8*, arrival, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Bodhisattvas, body, Buddhas, clarity, clothes, clouds, confession, emperor, falling, ignorance, immanence, mind, naked, non-duality, omnipresent, omniscience, Perfection of Wisdom, presence, realisation, self-image, self-indulgent, standing, stillness, time, train, ultimate reality, visualisation, walking, windows, wisdom

               all the low clouds keeping pace
                through the train window,
                always arriving, whether fast or
                slow, but never actually moving

                ‘I am always in the presence of all
                 the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who
                 are always endowed with unobstructed
                 wisdom’; there is no ultimate

                difference between the body and
                the mind therefore those who
                walk about in that realisation are present
                wherever an omniscient mind is,

                throughout each plane of ten directions
                within each of the ten directions
                none of them safely away in far places
                of my mind (where I might just get

                get away with anything) and when I
                invoke them to come ‘here’, they are
                already always here, far more immanent
                than I could stand on my own two feet,

                far more immediate before I could even
                think to in-front generate, far more
                intimate than my dignity could allow …
                and then at and long and even last, I’ll

                recognise it all, all my rotting lacks and
                fetid habits (never successfully hidden),
                finally signalling that I get it – confessing
                it all, each writhing and breaking-up sod

                of wilful and peevish stupidity, undressing
                it all with lay-aside relief; and it’s not
                like I’m informing them, they won’t be
                shocked or recoil with disgust or resigned

                with disappointment, it is just me falling
                far short of being right, let alone clever
                or wise, unpeeling from myself all the
                lies I accepted that said I am right,

                clever and vindicated like an emperor
                with new clothes; this immanence of
                clarity, this confession that inculcates a non-
                duality rising to a Perfection with wisdom

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara II 27; V 31

 

 

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

clouds wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’
mind wormhole: to arms, then;
realisation wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
stillness wormhole: cape and cowl
time & windows wormhole: … the underleaves show
train wormhole: mother and daughter
walking wormhole: amniotic avenue

 

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and // do your ears burn red?

Tags

2015, 5*, blond, clothes, dark, ears, eating, face, girl, hands, hotel, identity, kitchen, life, night, passing, red, sweat, Sylvia Plath, talking, time, twilight, water, writing

                and do your ears burn red, or do you,
                washing dishes, with those same clothes
                rotting under your armpits, still talk
                about visigoths to your pathetic self

                and divine nothing?   I put you in a book,
                because a girl with blond hair told me
                about you one night eating grapes in the
                twilight kitchen, the planes of her face

                growing darker; two years ago, with those
                same clothes, stood in the doorway of the
                old hotel watching a girl named Ann, with
                wet hair walk beside Lake George; acrid,

                now, with the stench of dried sweat and
                your long black hair, your hands puffed
                and creased from the hot water; tell me,
                do your ears burn red?

 

bevelled up into bas-relief out of entry 120. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

 

 

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

girl wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
hands wormhole: place
hotel wormhole: constant hummm
identity & life wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
kitchen wormhole: out
night wormhole: humm
passing wormhole: passing
red wormhole: Bexhill 140215
Sylvia Plath wormhole: at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree
talking wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
time wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
twilight wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
water wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
writing wormhole: found

 

ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

Tags

2016, 8*, being, breathing, child, clothes, colour, comics, despair, Dorian Gray, emperor, exclamation, exposed, flowers, Granada, hope, identity, inspiration, light, love, mantra, model, phrase, portrait, Prajnaparamita, rain, rainbow, realisation, retirement, secret, seeing, self, self-containment, self-image, speech, step, thread, tragedy, vanity, wandering, words, world

 

 
le mot just
the piquant phrase
                                         the simple model rising magnificent
                                         from cavalcades
                                         of stoic tumbling

                                         threads through like
                                         weave which clothes me
                                         presentable to the world …

                                         but no one sees the
                                         emperor’s clothes of
                                         such fine thread it cannot
                                         be seen, no wise child
                                         to point and exclaim
                                         the hang and drape
                                         to put an end to all step –
                                         “look, mummy, that man
                                           is not an emperor!”

 

 
less than naked
I am seen right through
                                         adrift of discourse
                                         I step with stubborn countenance,
                                         all the better to
                                         stare myself into existence,

 

 
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
                                         lest I lose [what I haven’t
                                         got] self-contained in trembling
                                         vanity, secretive in hope
                                         of things to come, desparate
                                         in tragedy that my grimy
                                         portrait might be seen …

 

 
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
                                         their colour, breathe their
                                         light and let the light rain
                                         fall in shards of rainbow,
                                         cleansing with love –

 

 

 
                      om     ga – te     ga – te
                                      pa – ra – ga – te
                                                      pa – ra – sam – ga – te
                                                                      bo – dhi     so – ha

 

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

 

 

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

being wormhole: pocket
breathing wormhole: within
child & light wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
comics wormhole: chartless …
identity wormhole: not / the Catcher
love wormhole: love and precision
rain wormhole: monument to vainglory
realisation wormhole: passing below
seeing wormhole: con / sum / mate
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
words wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
world wormhole: the skyline

 

new-found love – poewieview #36

Tags

1971, 2016, 5*, amplification, Bowie, clothes, concert, green, identity, love, naked, pose, ritual, self, smile, sound

                there is really very little to cast
                `cept the quiet and clothèd pose

                with primal-screech response
                dampened in amplified arc, which

                I shall wear with naked torso
                paraded along the auditorium-intimate,

                heightening register drawing up
                the flexèd leer, green and sickly, in its

                new-found love

 

I cried sadly, for a love I could not obey; summoned up through the dread rituals of Shadow Man, 1971; Star, 1971; Velvet Goldmine, 1971; Sweet Head, 1971

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

Bowie & identity wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
green wormhole: magnificent salad
love wormhole: moment
smile wormhole: the 19th century
sound wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?

 

hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?

Tags

1992, black, blue, brown, cave, cliff, clothes, coat, doors, echo, eyes, falling, green, grey, groundlessness, growth, home, house, identity, Joe, kitchen, light, mauve, mist, mother, path, pink, planet, pointlessness, quotidian, red, school, searching, silence, sky, sound, story, streets, tea, time, voices, waves, world, wormhole, yellow

every day David would come home from school, and his mum would ask him how it went and he would say it was fine although he always wondered to himself what it would be like if he had a day at school which was worthwhile, and whether he would notice it if it happened; then he would have a cup of tea which his mum made him and he would do a hundred other similar things until he went to bed that night; and he wondered why it was that he had been doing this for years without any change when he noticed that the path leading to his front door didn’t in fact lead to his front door anymore but ownwards like a cliff-path, under the house and curling away into what seemed like a great underground cavern which was so big that it was like a world and the celing was so high that it seemed like a sky, although you could see it; his house was just there on a ledge on the side of a huge cliff, the street where he lived just wasn’t there, anymore; “do you want a cup of tea, luvvey?” sang his Mum from the kitchen window; “in a minute, Mum, I’m a little, busy, at the moment, I’m looking for the town where I used to live”; “OK, dear, but don’t stay out too long”; “Aaaaaaaargh!!!” said David, for quite a few minutes when he missed his footing on a pebble and fell over the edge of the path and down, a surprisingly long way without bumping into the side of the cliff at all, when he started realising that it was pointless – and a little silly really – him saying “Aaaaargh” when there was no one in possible sight anywhere around in this huge cave, what was the point, in saying anything?, so he stopped, but, as he looked below him, he could see, gradually, more clearly, a great blueness coming into sight as he fell, as if clearing through mist, with green patches, here and there, and yellow and grey streaks, and some more waves if you really looked; and David began thinking how pointless it was to describe the sea as “blue” when if you really looked you could see all sorts of colours in it, and he set himself the challenge of trying to find, really different colours that you wouldn’t expect to find in the sea, and after a while – as he fell and fell for ages as if he had jumped from an aeroplane – he saw a pink which quickly turned into a bit of red then mauve then blue and then the sleeve of the old man shifted as he took the pot off the fire to serve up the tea and the colours of his coat changed again in the half-light so that David couldn’t tell if it was black or brown or blue, anyway he was looking forward to his tea because it smelt richer and thicker than he had noticed it before but the man wasn’t offering him any and poured himself a cup only, besides David noticed that the man was growing larger but that the room wasn’t getting cramped by him; the man was now, probably, fifty feet tall and the sounds of his moving coat and his supping of the tea were starting to sound echoey; oh, no, it was David! he seemed to be shrinking, faster and faster, his clothes had long since ceased to be on him but around him and then he was lost in a huge valley between his shirt collar and the shoulder of his shirt and then there was a small hole at his feet which grew quickly so that he clung to one side of it to stop himself falling in but the edge of the hole became thicker and flatter so that it was smooth and there was nothing more to hold onto, so he wasn’t holding anymore, and he expected himself to be falling, but everything around him just seemed to be going away from him in all directions into blackness, when from out from nothing something seemed to come towards him, huge, with great speed, that he expected it to make a great rushing sound but it didn’t, it was totally silent, it was a planet, a planet so big that it make his legs wobble, coming straight for him, getting larger and larger so that it filled everywhere around him but it never seemed to hit, so he closed his eyes; after a while he told himself that he may as well see the End so he opened his eyes and the planet was gone, there were just dancing lights zipping round and round him so quickly that if he looked back along where they came from they would whip round so quick that he would see them a hundred times every inch he moved his eyes and eventually they went so fast he could just see bands of light surrounding him; as he travelled toward the centre, and the front door opened, the sun, which was low and had caught in the glass in the door and sent a dazzling piece of light straight into his eye, whizzed halfway around the horizon and disappeared behind some trees and the houses opposite and his Mum’s face, “hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?”

 

written for my eldest child when he was young

 

 

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

black & mother wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
blue & eyes & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
brown & echo & red & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
doors wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
green & mist & sound & voices wormhole: 1967
grey & kitchen wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
groundlessness & pointlessness wormhole: Jericho
house wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity & world wormhole: lonely and free
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
mauve & pink wormhole: my seat // now
path wormhole: 50 mph
school wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
searching wormhole: substance
silence & streets wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
time wormhole: even / a second
waves wormhole: inbreath

 

currency of generations

Tags

2012, buttons, childhood, clothes, colour, cupboard, echo, Eglinton Hill, family, generation, history, identity, lifetimes, living room, marble, marshmallow, morning, Mum, muse, pastel, sound, speech, stairs, taste, tin, transparent

 

 

 

                                currency of generations

                                ‘fetch the tin of buttons’
                                a quest to the cupboard
                                by the stairwell just outside
                                the room we dressed in
                                and spent all morning
                                because it was warm
                                ‘the one with the fruits’
                                different sorts of fruit
                                pastel-coloured and
                                marshmallowy on a tin
                                ‘they’re petit-fours’
                                something to understand
                                later (the taste had been sugary
                                and pasty and although
                                it looked like fruit it stuck
                                in my throat) now has
                                buttons which are cool
                                and swirly when I run
                                my finger through them
                                and marbled-enough
                                to see history and boiled-
                                sweet transparent-enough
                                to see worlds themed in
                                colour and echo from the clothes
                                of real people from family aunts
                                and uncles in the past who
                                I never knew or can’t remember
                                the lineage from which I came
                                contained under tin-bent lid

 

 

0.62

 

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

childhood & Eglinton Hill & morning wormhole: between thoughts
echo & stairs wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
family & lifetimes & sound & speech wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
history wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
identity wormhole: too late:
living room wormhole: fine
Mum wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
muse wormhole: and that’s where I are

 

and that’s where I are

Tags

2016, Aleister Crowley, alley, appearance, birch, black, Bowie, breakdown, breeze, brick, building, car park, career, Carol, cars, cats, child, church, clothes, coffee shop, creativity, decision, Diane di Prima, disappearance, down, Eastbourne, emptiness, fear, form, grey, Heart Sutra, horizontal, humanity, identity, left, leg, looking, mother, muse, others, passing, pavement, plane, posture, quantum, rebellion, right, right angle, roads, school, searching, seeing, silence, silver, sitting, sound, spire, stain, stopped, streets, talking to myself, teaching, trees, up, vertical, waiting, walking, walls, William Carlos Williams, wind, writers, writing

            inner coffee shop

            so, is writing pointless,
            just rebellion from root
            just the muscling of me
            to spite the hard fear that

            I’ll turn to stone if I look
            into her face … `spite the
            knowledge that others are
            far more brave than me?

            St. Saviour & St. Peter

            so what draws me to sit,
            after all, on the roadside
            wall across from the spire
            clear for all to see the

            even bricks buttress, cap
            and flute up so high to
            eleven storeys to, maybe,
            the single point, with run-

            down stain and grimèd
line defining plane and vertical rightened quantum to the neat, surrounding parking and the passing upright
            humans both of public
            dress and private gait

                           360º

            and then the grey cat
            strolled from some-
            where left between
            silent cars to cross the

            road right – stopped –
            t’looka’leaf ‘n’ disappear
            up on wall by tree-sniff
            stop – fence? – no,

            down be-hind th’wall
            out through th’front
            windscreen ‘n’
            downastepps t’street

            to not appear where
            expected; ‘shut’, a mother
            leads a tot from front
            door to car …
                                   … still no appearance

            … … scamper with the
            wind behind as the car
            pulls away; maybe I should
            record this wh’appened all

            around breeze, strolled –
            stopped – by the wall
            back from b’hind m’left
            enters the gateway out

            by th’alleyway (with the
            bold and naked silver birch
            I hadn’t noticed);
                                          upover
            the fence [not attempted

            before] tadaaanother cat
            black treesniff checkleft
            then … left, jumptowall,
            jump to pavementstop;

            over the road frontleg
            onelick s t r o l l s car-
            shielded; black belly-slink
            low across the road; they

            walk away both from
            sight either side of the van;
            one tail up and wiggy
            one tail fluffy with spine

            these things all of great
            importance to spite the hard fact
            of my writing them,
            old Bull Williams would have

            and that’s where I are

 

there are expanses awkward to the landscape in writing sometimes: the technique is there, the shift can be made, but the will and excitement just isn’t; I have been reading Diane di Prima’s “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, I greatly fed off her childhood but have languoured once she got into the Work; I have been reading about Aleister Crowley’s ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ awkward plane; I have a huge project ongoing writing poewieviews to David Bowie’s oeuvre – I am going to new lands but the luggage is heavy and awkward and requiring decisions which I don’t easily make; oh, and I am off work again, feeling un-plugged in to my own practice of vocation like a forlorn state-of-the-art food mixer; I spent a morning down in Eastbourne chauffeuring my wife around like the successful carer that she is; walking; sitting in a coffee shop; snagged at St. Saviour & St. Peter Church on the corner of Spencer Road and South Street, still pondering the relationship between multifarious form and the emptiness makes it dynamic; but it wasn’t until I sat back in the waiting car and watched the chess moves of two cats in the street that I stumbled across the full quote from the Heart Sutra: “form is emptiness; emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form also is no other than emptiness”; but it wasn’t until I got home and shaped it all up from scribbles to column – with my ageing black AND white cat leaning against my foot – that I wondered if I still hadn’t quite got it yet (as William Carlos Williams, the great great practicer of ‘no poetry but in things’ said); and yet it has been satisfying finding not so …

 

 

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

birch wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
black & grey wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
Bowie wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
breakdown & writing wormhole: nothing to write
breeze wormhole: strange / tarnish
buildings & silver & streets wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
carer wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
Carol wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
cars wormhole: stacked
cats wormhole: new garden
child wormhole: dream 260815
church wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
coffee shop wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
creativity & school wormhole: through
Eastbourne wormhole: along
emptiness wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
identity wormhole: dear clown’s face
looking & muse & sound wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
mother & silence wormhole: early evening
others wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
passing & posture wormhole: really
roads wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
searching wormhole: opening
seeing wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
sitting & talking to myself wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
teaching wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
trees wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
waiting wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
walking wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
walls wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
[William Carlos] Williams wormhole: and then just stop
wind wormhole: keep the light off

 

To my Mum

Tags

1970s, 1974, 2008, breathing, brown, Burt Bacharach, clothes, clouds, Dionne Warwick, evening, field, floorboards, friends, green, grey, horizon, houses, journey, kitchen, laughing, Mum, Plumstead common, rain, relationship, sky, smile, snow, streetlight, streets, Thames, time, tv, walking, white, windows, Woolwich, work, yellow

 

 

 

To my Mum who breathed deep the day she got a good set of saucepans in her pantry in 1974.   To my Mum who walked the long tunnel at Woolwich to and from work every day for twenty five years.   To my Mum who smiled on Plumstead Common when the white clouds were on the horizon and the grey cloud seamless in all the windows.   To my Mum who ate chops and beans every evening to hold off weight but who always wore smart coats.   To my Mum who was never quite sure if it was OK to laugh and relax in the seventies as the possibility suggested,

                – yes, it was okay,

and every time she did,
there were plastic raincoats in the evening high street,
there was Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach,
there were floorboards and wooden stepladders and wallpaper,
there were empty milk bottles on the doorstep,
there was a thin of snow on the housing estate under the green grey sky,
there were bowls of crisps and crackers and twiglets for the Cup Final,
there were high sash windows overlooking the Thames,
there were phone wires in front of the skies where she would never go
there were car journeys on wet roads by deep green fields,
there were yellow streetlights of new relationships and new-found friends,
there were bulbous patterns of brown and green to match the seasons.

My Mum cried when it all went wrong but went to work anyway.

 

To my Mum, who died 20th March 1999, far too early to realise the extent of her own patience and the width of her generosity; who typed up invoices for cargo ships in and out of London and taught me to leave three spaces after a full stop, which I honour to this day.

 

 

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

1974 wormhole: 1974
breathing & green & horizon & streetlight & white & work & yellow wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
brown wormhole: the dash is magnificent / the shadow grotesque
[Burt] Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1962
clouds wormhole: purpose
evening wormhole: after the storm
field wormhole: the edge has come …
grey wormhole: hinged
houses & white wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
kitchen & sky & snow & streets & walking wormhole: dream 260713
Mum wormhole: just words wiped across a line
rain wormhole: the four whores of the apocalypse
Thames wormhole: H e a v e
time wormhole: between
tv wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
Woolwich wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II

 

1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

Tags

1959, 1960s, 2012, 2015, 99/1, abandonment, air, airport, America, anxiety, apricot, art deco, avenue, beauty, bedroom, birdsong, blossom, blue, books, branches, breathing, buildings, business, Carol, Central Park, charcoal, childhood, choice, clothes, clouds, coffee, coffee shop, compromise, crane, Dad, divorce, dog, dream, Eglinton Hill, evening, eyebrow, eyes, falling, fashion, floodlights, Ford Anglia, freedom, furniture, ghosts, glamour, Glasgow, green, grey, haiku, hair, Have, history, horizon, hotel, identity, life, lifetimes, light, lilac, living, London, looking, love, magazine, Manhattan, marble, Mini, mist, money, morning, Mum, music, New York, obligation, pastel, people, phone, pink, plane, posture, radar, reaching, reading, roads, sadness, sidewalk, sitting, sky, smile, society, sound, space, sparrows, speech, spotlights, Steely Dan, streetlight, sun, sunlight, talking, taxi, terrace, texting, time, traffic, traffic lights, train, travelling, trees, uniform, waiting, walking, walls, walnut, white, wind, windows, work, years, yellow

 

 

 

                                          1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

                                straight out from school to Heathrow on the M25
                                a network of lonely roads going nowhere, then;
                                waiting, studying coffee highlights in the green
                                lobby with blue spotlights and pillared space for

                                phones to pace up and down and talk it still is,
                                loudly; at the next hotel we wait with more spot-
                                lights in our eyes no matter where we sit; furniture
                                deco-curved and just off right-angle, held together,

                                material to wood, for decades with check-
                                pattern and slight stain; there is a locked-in-
                                ness in our world on all sides which only our
                                future eyes – that never look directly – betray

                                in their gaze; early flight tomorrow; in the
                                morning-effect light shifting, the mist hanging
                                around the base of the sky, land spread with
                                low buildings always on the horizon, flat and

                                matt, before the sun flanks their edges into 3D,
                                radar-spinning, floodlights turn off, arms of
                                cranes hold their reach, and … the control
                                tower; 3567 miles and I didn’t bring enough

                                books (you can never bring enough books);
                                I travelled for lifetimes to arrive in New York,
                                still the same person: roads scraped and pock-
                                marked, trees still reach and lean in front of the

                                sky, people still live city life breathing in and
                                out the power of my money, lights still go on
                                in the evening and in between traffic shoals
                                the sparrows bicker in the trees; in room 506

                                over Central Park, already I am familiar with
                                the lore of the branch, the places-to-go apricot
                                street lights, the white path lights, the traffic
                                lights and the ‘cheeps’ bounced off building wall

                                between the lmmmdmda-lmmmdmda – laersssh
                                through the rain-dusty windows, under grey-sky
                                steel-clouds and the slowly shifting charcoal; but
                                then there is always the next day, the ever-waiting

                                gulp-open and blue-chip sorry of impressionistic
                                sidewalk, the walnut marble frontages walking
                                south up into downtown in cold air between
                                buildings and didn’t bring enough clothes (I never

                                know what clothes to bring) – by Radio City ‘with a
                                transistor and a large sum of money to spend’;
                                everything created for living beyond subsistence
                                everything produced at cost through labour

                                everything earned through labour if you can get it
                                everything obtained at price and compromise
                                everything experienced at cost through trademark
                                everything Had, but no one left to have it …

                                everything that is uneasy in the modern day
                                was manufactured behind the half-closed blinds
                                of America – home of the Potential and Slave –
                                and yet … it is so sad-beautiful: the space sculpted

                                by façades of apartment blocks giant arm-widths
                                apart, communities of single window – italicised
                                nib–scratches – stepped upwards and backwards
                                the Avenues of Uprise reaching higher and

                                lower again and again and again; America has
                                so much condensed history since it braved the
                                conceit and responsibility, of choice: cleansed
                                by ethnically assimilating, pledged by conforming

                                allegiance; Someone had to make a stand against
                                all this equivocation and by God Almighty We
                                Made   that   Stand; `made continental infrastructure
                                out of it, far bigger far more reaching even than

                                law and democracy … … but there is such
                                width in your sadness – lilac blossom before
                                marble façade; such height in your sadness –
                                giddy out on the balconies looking eight floors more

                                above; such blank in your sadness – when you
                                skip my English joke and call ‘you’re welcome’
                                from the till; such sadness when you ask for
                                change outside Starbucks; even the trees through

                                the hotel window, even the wide sidewalk cleaned
                                for strolling and not curbing, even the smiling
                                doorman in brown suit … all Had; all kept
                                in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place

                                by gigantitude, (when I was young an image
                                of a building so many floors high pinnacling to a
                                turret roof on the pink cover on the blue cover
                                of the insurance policies that my Mum kept;

                                my mother is now dead the policies came to
                                nothing); 99: “for all the freedom and choice to
                                be Had, life is hard when you pay with your work
                                and no time left and no money to choose

                                leaves you tired with no sense of humour”;
                                1: “for all the freedom and choice to be Had
                                life is anxiety where you pay for with your
                                history and obligation, never stopped still-

                                enough to choose, leaves you always with
                                dyed hair; look, only on the fifth floor of the
                                Eldorado, a man at the window canary short-
                                sleeve shirt turns back into the room, traffic light

                                booms out on a long arm swinging slightly taxis
                                u-turn as the sun comes up from behind; women’s
                                magazines, waiting for Mum at the hairdresser’s
                                in the mid-sixties, illustrations, young tree avenues,

                                blossoming handbags, little dogs on leash, promise
                                of love, promise of life, promise of man’s jaw in
                                boardroom where cologne cinches the deal, slight
                                smile signs the papers: maybe later some chinos

                                and open collar on the terrace; there was a calendar
                                brought home from work (“not needed … we work
                                in London”) – buildings of Manhattan, can decorate
                                my room, make my world, all the stepped down

                                walls of windows up which b-e-y-o-n-d myself
                                giddy and beautiful, I cannot look up or down but
                                keep them high on the wall; going out in the
                                evening Daddy ‘have to’ ‘to do with work’ ‘can’t be

                                helped’ white shirt bow-tie, clean-cut neck cologne
                                ‘good for contacts’ ‘if I can, just’ ‘business’; there
                                was a new white Mini, a new white Anglia parked
                                outside on the hill over London, Matchbox models

                                to match for the boys, going into ‘business’ ‘make
                                a go’ Dennis & Dennis, home, evening drinks, meet
                                the family, the boys play Dennis G and Dennis P
                                for years after; ‘… Daddy is leaving, he will not be

                                coming back’; I had thought it was all pastel-blue-
                                and-grey beautiful but the glamour got to him first
                                and now I dream of falling off balconies and ledges,
                                (do I fall up or down); evening: ghouls from the

                                subway gaining and pushing but the top trees-only
                                gently leaning, hybrids swashing yellow down the
                                tarmac in schools while the thunder of a plane
                                descends; morning: eyebrows raise like coving, the

                                reggae lingers      then kicks in; a neat rhombus of
                                sunlight unconcerned across her cheek, a blind rolls
                                down, ‘I’ll just read a chapter’-fixed lashes, the
                                rhombus travelling now across collar bones between

                                her white collars; Carol reads far better than me,
                                she reads history as it happens, she is the ‘captain-
                                speaking’, she knows what time it is      in other
                                countries, she knows there is no airport in Glasgow

                                (she also bullshits when cornered); now I miss all of
                                this, I see only peoples’ posture contrary to their
                                eyes, and little else; I came to Manhattan and saw
                                your avenues of strange displacement your streets

                                of darkness and morning-side; I found I was there
                                a lifetime ago, but you left me and I have moved on
                                now and I shall not be back, there is no need;
                                I shall celebrate your strange beauty from afar;

                                Newark Airport: everybody here / is talking all
                                the time to / someone somewhere else; the control
                                room sits            overhanging on the concrete stem,
                                fingers of cloud float nonchalantly by, with no delays

                                today, two girls study magazines, swap articles,
                                a third texts constantly with fixed smirk; but you,
                                you are so beautiful with hennaed hair braided
                                neatly back because you are in uniform, you are

                                taking a break, ID and equipment around your
                                neck, clear dark skin, grey shirt and St. John’s
                                badge eating a bag     of crisps with eyebrows sharp
                                and eyes so white looking, not talking     looking

 

 

 

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

abandonment & streetlight wormhole: dawn
air wormhole: just
anxiety & Carol & crane & Have & lifetimes & London & love & pink & sky & train & travelling & white & work 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
apricot wormhole: only
beauty wormhole: smiling
bedroom wormhole: sunny morning
blossom & branches & waiting wormhole: I could step / more open
blue & grey & mist & trees & walking wormhole: right to be
books wormhole: a light rosé
breathing & life & speech wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
buildings & identity & society & space & windows wormhole: where the real action // always is
childhood & dream & Eglinton Hill & ghosts & green & looking & morning & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
clouds & light & posture wormhole: Buddha Amitabha
coffee wormhole: poised patiently for / hours
coffee shop 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
compromise wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
Dad & traffic lights & yellow wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
dog wormhole: silence
evening wormhole: lobby
eyes wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
haiku(esque) & hair & Manhattan & people & roads wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
history wormhole: 20th century / schzoid man
horizon wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
hotel wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
lilac wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
living & sitting & sound & sun wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
money wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
Mum wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
music & reading wormhole: sometimes
obligation wormhole: scattered
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sparrows wormhole: zazen in everyday life
spotlights wormhole: ‘the dining room …’
talking wormhole: – sigh! –
walls wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
wind wormhole: Christmas

 

smiling

Tags

2013, alcohol, beauty, Brussels, cafe, clothes, love, passing, people, posture, smile, step, tea, walking

 

 

 

                           at the café by the Grand Place
                           on the terrace by passing people

                                     smiling
                           I take a sip of lemon tea

                           for I do not drink alcohol
                           to notice beauty of tired-step

                           out of tick with neck-tock
                           the elbow-pull of shirt-wide fin across the back

                           and the variety of toe-plant matched
                           reassuring to the heel lift-flip

                           to have a good time

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
love & passing & people & smile & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
posture wormhole: should is good when / too used to cruise
tea wormhole: a cup of tea, gov