SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

'scape, 1917, 7*, anchor, angle, birds, blue, branches, buds, concentration, convergence, desire, disappearance, energy, erect, flying, grey, ground, holding, orange, passing, red, right, rock, sky, Spring, sun, tap root, trees, twigs, William Carlos Williams

                                SPRING STRAINS

                In a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                crowded erect with desire against
                the sky–
                            tense blue-grey twigs
                slenderly anchoring them down, drawing
                them in–

                            two blue-grey birds chasing
                a third struggle in circles, angles,
                swift convergings to a point that bursts
                instantly!

                            Vibrant bowing limbs
                pull downward, sucking in the sky
                that bulges from behind, plastering itself
                against them in packed rifts, rock blue
                and dirty orange!

                                                                                But–
                (Hold hard, rigid jointed trees!)
                the blinding and red-edged sun-blur–
                creeping energy, concentrated
                counterforce – welds sky, buds, trees,
                rivets them in one puckering hold!
                Sticks through! Pulls the whole
                counter-pulling mass upward, to the right,
                locks even the opaque, not yet defined
                ground in a terrific drag that is
                loosening the very tap-roots!

                On a tissue-thin monotone of blue-grey buds
                two blue-grey birds, chasing a third,
                at full cry! Now they are
                flung outward and up – disappearing suddenly!

 

from Al Que Quiere, 1917

the cacophany of a single moment – all instruments loosening-up, scaling, tensing, waiting for the grand inaugural middle ‘C’ – all held together in a fidgety bag; the shabby audacity of this piece – ‘let’s not just have vignettes, let’s also have local, tectonic landscapes’ – made my young eyes work, I had to read it several times successively to hold together all the strands, and then he lets me off, I finally ‘got’ the three birds disappearing … you don’t hold it all together, you don’t; there’s no need to; William Carlos Williams was a crafty master

 

 

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

birds wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
blue wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
branches & sky wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
orange wormhole: I
passing wormhole: tram
red wormhole: Bridgnorth
Spring wormhole: city streets
sun & trees & William Carlos Williams wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

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vastly

Tags

'scape, 2013, 4*, blue, disappearance, grey, high, house, mist, sky

                high high
                mist-grey

                slowly
                turns the

                cold blue
                grey

                exhaust
                from the

                central
                heating

twists and furls up the side of the house and then
completely

                and                                vastly
                disappears

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: open window
grey wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
house wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
mist wormhole: 1968 – orange sand and mauve mist
sky wormhole: Open – All – Ours

 

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

 

top table

Tags

2015, change, defining, disappearance, glance, information, power, reality, stairs

 

 

 

                                              always
                information rises up the stairs,
                      twirling

                                              as it
                remains the same success
                      ively

                                              re-
                defined through perpetual storey
                      until it

                                              dis-
                appears amid highly-trained shift of glance
                      at the

                      top table

 

seen amid the rising wallpaper of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011); Directed: Tomas Alfredson; starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Mark Strong

 

 

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

change wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
power wormhole: teached / in the ass
reality wormhole: four-colour pulp into cinematic di[gital]pix[el][live ac]tion so easily makes for semantic palava (if you read what I mean) … the foredreading of Dr Strange
stairs wormhole: twisted / pulled / and chipped

 

dog bark

Tags

'scape, 2014, autumn, clouds, disappearance, dog, leaves, notice, oak, pink, sky, sound, writing

 

 

 

                                                              pink
                                              vapour trail
                                in the turning sky
                which descends to mingle amid the dark oak leaves
                                has disappeared
                                              by the time I check
                                                              to write it

                                                              dog bark

 

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: purple and mauve
clouds wormhole: clouds
dog wormhole: ‘discution poli / d’orage …’
leaves & oak wormhole: London Park in Greenwich town – poewieview #5
pink wormhole: three musicians
sky wormhole: bamboo-green boiled sweet / with soft purple filling
sound wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
writing wormhole: seventy two, perhaps – poewieview #9

 

on sitting / in front of / a hedge

Tags

'scape, 2013, 6*, air, bramble, brown, conifer, death, disappearance, grass, green, hedge, looking, mauve, pink, plants, rain, shadow, shamatha, sitting, vipashyana, wind, windscreen, yellow

 

 

 

                                          on sitting
                                          in front of
                                          a hedge

                there’s nothing to see
                at first, but you keep sitting
                and looking, well there are
                colourful plants rising behind
                dusky pink and mauve and yellow
                conifer-tops beyond

                no, stay looking at the hedge

                OK well the rain switter’s across
                the windscreen veining vaguely within the arched wiper zones
                slowly obscuring and reflecting
                                the hedge away

                still, keep looking at the hedge

                movements of the wind shift the
                grasses grown tall and the hanging
                bramble stem obscene and reaching for advantage
                                probing air

                no, the hedge, the hedge

                has been cut
                during the last month
                some sort of bindweed growing up through it
                in patches hairy new-growth rilled along the top

                OK, not finished, keep looking

                and new-green creeping out the edges
                of the oldgreen and shadow navels other shapes
                stark and clearer because they
                have turned caramac brown and have
                                strangely
                                died

                alright now, time’s up

 

 

 

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

air & brown wormhole: emerged
death wormhole: ‘when it came / time to go …’
green & yellow wormhole: no hat
hedge wormhole: prologue
looking wormhole: titanic
mauve wormhole: moon
pink wormhole: there
rain wormhole: ‘I can hear it raining / but cannot see it …’
shadow wormhole: in the middle of silence and heat:
sitting wormhole: I will eventually drift tectonic
wind wormhole: I find / you find your bones / on the outbreath
windscreen wormhole: Seaford / 280310

 

‘at the end of the day …’

Tags

'scape, 1995, 5*, disappearance, grey, rooftops, sky, smoke, sparrows, sun, wind, windows

 

 

 

                at the end of the day
                sunlight over
                           the rooftops

                           flick
                past my window

                           a sparrow

                weaves and dives
                into the scuddy grey

                           getting

                nowhere

                           then

                           smoke

                from a chimney
                           blown
                           down the

                roof at one side

                then
                the
                other

                                    rolling
                           over
                the edge

                           then

                disappearing

 

 

 

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

grey wormhole: grey and yellow
rooftops wormhole: the Bat-parent
sky & windows wormhole: comicbook morning
smoke wormhole: ‘”… during all of my lives …”‘
sun wormhole: ‘sunlight …’
wind wormhole: pylon on the hill