green and / luminant / to behold

Tags

2012, 5*, balance, being, breakdown, coffee, communication, diagram, distance, ears, eyes, father, fingers, fracture, gardening, gathering, glass, green, holiday, home, listening, looking, luminous, people, school, service station, society, suit, summer, table, talking, terrace, thinking, thumb, woman, work

                                first day summer
                                holiday service station
                                100 miles away from
                                home thinking I
                                don’t fit in with the
                                way things
                                are played

                always looking
                                fractured
                                cracked
                                                from in at the side

                                green and
                                luminant
                                to behold

                                on the terrace
                                two businessmen sit
                                with ledgers coffees
                                the woman listening

                to one
                                                to the other

                                agreeing
                                the diagram
                                on the table

                                the elder sits back
                                dark suit large ear
                                plump throat tanned
                                skin upturned hand
                                emphasising gently
                                beside the diagram
                                thumb to fingers

                slightly gathering
                                like a father
                                                like a gardener

                                occasionally
                                talking with
                                still young
                                green eyes

 

 

 

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

balance wormhole: ‘still …’
breakdown & society wormhole: after all
coffee & woman & work wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
communication wormhole: Infantino KO
eyes wormhole: two profiles
father wormhole: looking ahead
glass & people wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
green & looking & thinking wormhole: Batgirl –
holiday wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
listening wormhole: buttercups
school wormhole: step
table wormhole: immeasurable love
talking wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?

 

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looking ahead

Tags

2015, 20th century, 8*, age, attention, cypress, dark, daughter, dress, duty, eyes, facade, father, field, fields, green, hair, horizon, house, jaw, land, left, lifetimes, medals, mouth, portrait, Remembrance, sienna, sky, smile, standing, war, white, youth

                                                looking ahead

                at 18 he peered frightened and gentle –
                the high forehead and round jaw of all
                his youth, but that his mouth held duty

                faintly pursed on the left, in reserve and
                to attention, although the epaulettes were
                (the wings of a choirboy) – at the strips

                and strips of field and fields of umber
                and sienna and the deepest darkest green,
                as high as the land was wide, and it was

                wide, to the white-washed house perched
                on the higher horizon flanked by European
                cypresses, at home in the fields; at three

                she looked above the horizon, hair in all
                direction to the sky, the purse to the left,
                in attention and wan smile from above

                the ruffled dress (soon to be outgrown with
                every crumple-ene); the medals were worn
                on the left side, the eyes up to the right;

                they stood together to attention, in profile
                before the wet facades of eleventh hour,
                eyes forward, eyes down, pursed and still

 

three photographs in the house of an old friend: her father when newly enrolled in the army shortly before World War II – he served in Africa; herself in her then-best dress in the very early 1960s; father and daughter standing on a wet street collecting for Remembrance Day …

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
attention & smile wormhole: dear Lucy
daughter wormhole: mother and daughter
eyes wormhole: addictive
father & lifetimes wormhole: granny
field wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
green & white wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hair wormhole: immeasurable love
horizon wormhole: Bexhill 140215
house wormhole: slightly / uphill
mouth wormhole: over-pink cagoule
sky wormhole: low afternoon
war wormhole: memorial

 

granny

Tags

2015, 4*, disability, father, garden centre, generations, grandmother, grin, lifetimes, mother, portrait, tangerine

                granny
                tried tangerine jelly with her

                but she weren’t having none of that with a
                cheeky grin

                mum and dad
                finshed theirs quite quick with a few exchanges

                packed up the chair and whirred off
                granny looked back

                and returned to stack the plates and cups on the tray
                with a lifetime’s

                push up of bottom lip with each place-
                ment

 

 

 

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

father wormhole: out
lifetimes & mother wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211

 

out

Tags

2015, 3*, Ashdown Forest, blue, Carol, children, family, father, gorse, home, kitchen, pine, shoes, walking

                                in
                from a different walk
                down an alley of gorse by the blue pine on the forest

                                through
                the front door step
                out of shoes hang coat need wee need to eat feel spacey

                                while
                Carol tells the adult kids
                I’ve come over all queer sniggers in the kitchen

                                there
                where I left them
                opened awkward toes bent up and bits of dried mud

                                the
                father’s shoes of
                thirty year’s family as if they had always never been out

 

 

 

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

Ashdown Forest wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
blue & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
Carol wormhole: at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree
family wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
father wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
kitchen wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
pine wormhole: Cocktails in 1951

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles

Tags

2014, 3*, coffee shop, father, glass, Jon, Lewes, looking, posture, shirt, shop, son, streets

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles

                ‘fat            nervous            stupid            rich’

                in the side-glass entrance to the shop
                I watch down the street two men
                amble up the street – same shirt
                same posture they both turn to
                look in a shop window fat nervous
                stupid and rich

 

 

 

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

coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III
glass wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
looking wormhole: the sitting room
posture wormhole: !
streets wormhole: I turn to wake up

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III

Tags

2014, 4*, bus, coffee shop, desire, father, joke, Jon, Lewes, raspberry, son, speech

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III

‘double-decker bus        gravestone
                dingle berry        fumbling        clutching’

                                hot day in the coffee shop
                                I’ll have something different
                                ah yes, a Double-Decker Dingle-
                                berry Gravestone Cooler
                                would be good, I think,
                                amid the ambient fumbling
                                and clutching of desire,

                                ‘would you like raspberry
                                 sauce with that, sir?’

                                uh, no thank you, I have
                                a bus to catch

 

 

 

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

bus wormhole: municipal garden
coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes & speech wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

Tags

2014, 3*, coffee shop, father, joke, Jon, Lewes, poem, son, speech, words

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

                ‘I’ve got to give you five words and you’ve
                 got to work them into a poem:

                fluffy       popsicle      Nostradamus
                carcinogenic      parasite’,      so I said

                                it can’t be done

 

 

 

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

coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes & speech & words wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

Tags

2014, 4*, coffee, coffee shop, father, joking, Jon, Lewes, notebook, rhyme, son, speech, words, writing

            Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

               ‘write, what rhymes
                  with coffee’ said Jon
                     taking the piss of my
                        notebook out in the coffee shop
                           but I had my own back
                              by messing with his words

 

 

 

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

coffee wormhole: too greedy
coffee shop wormhole: with endless love
father wormhole: singsong chant
Jon wormhole: magnetic field
Lewes wormhole: relief
speech wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
words wormhole: reading // unstirred
writing wormhole: over-pink cagoule

 

singsong chant

Tags

2015, 6*, being, bracken, child, communication, elder, father, footsteps, Herst Henge, Herstmonceux Castle, knowledge, love, questions, reading, singing, sitting, talking, voices, walking

                the young father walked the
                daughter up the avenue between

                the bracken and elder, her
                singsong chant powering her

                useless steps to Herst Henge;
                he speaks in cast-off phrases,

                kindly and patient, he knows
                of the circle without reading

                the board, he sits with no need
                of revitalisation, while the

                daughter wanders about hap-
                hazardly asking questions

 

third of four of the triptych; still at Herstmonceux Castle, in the grounds; here is a little something about Herst Henge if you happen to be a little daughter tromping up a grassy hill by a castle; and, yes, these three are hinged together … but they keep falling apart again, they might need something else to fasten them …

 

 

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

being & communication & talking wormhole: the // orange rose
child wormhole: child
father wormhole: to allow / passage
knowledge wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge
love wormhole: so pleased to see you again
reading wormhole: reading // unstirred
sitting & voices wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
walking wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y

 

to allow / passage

Tags

1940s, 2015, 4*, daughter, father, legacy, looking, mouth, passing, pavement, portrait, profile, Salinger, smile, walking

                           the father
                           walks ahead
                with a Salinger smile from
                           the 1940s

                           to allow
                           passage
                on the narrow pavement
                           and in

                           profile his
                           daughter
                following behind wasn’t smiling
                           looked

                           up to his
                           shoulder
                had exactly the same lower tick to
                           her mouth

 

 

 

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

daughter wormhole: love and precision
father wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
looking wormhole: … swap round
mouth wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
passing & walking wormhole: embodying
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman