to arms, then;

Tags

1907, 2017, 8*, attention, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, body, carelessness, eyes, fate, fields, fire, focus, hell, ideals, identity, inner-self, karma, kleshas, laziness, Louis de la Vallee Poussin, mind, mindlessness, monster, mother sentient beings, narcissism, opportunity, over-reaching, phantom, practice, rebirth, resolve, smoke, staying, suffering, superhero, surprise, talking to myself, torture, translation, war, Warrior

                but there are plenty of opportunities
                to shave off indolence

                there are too many surprises
                to meet-off heedlessness, and stay;

                no use wailing and whimpering
                enfeebled by narcissism,

                when being unremittingly tortured
                of body and mind

                it’ll be way too late,
                I shall have nothing left but bad fate;

                the thing is, they don’t plot, they don’t
                manoeuvre and they

                hardly ever show
                themselves, so how is it I walk eyes-

                wide-open into each of their snare and
                realm; there, monsters

                slavering astride horizon cower me to
                craven identity, fires

                hot to match all my defences, afflicting
                me without notice

                or even much effort
                fires of the sun, fires of the atom, I’ll be

                engulfed but not
                consumed to blessed oblivion … oh, give me

                a break! – I’m
                ongoingly consumed even now, as long as I

                continue endlessly playing
                this solitaire, hitting the ‘new game’ button

                again and again
                until I … stop; but the cleverer I get

                with them the cleverer they already are,
                like shadow-boxing –

                these ancient enemies
                of mine; … to arms, then; not super-

                heroically, trying all the more better
                than I only am and

                then finding myself (on acrid fields –
                the smoke of fallen

                ideals and bombed aims) wanting, but
                inwardly, with

                attention and focus, the Way of the
                Steely Warrior; I shall

                be `ard with suffering, I can take it,
                I shall wear my

                oozed bowels and fallen head like medals
                in this, the War

                to End All Wars, not Mr Redfordman
                who is or isn’t

                good enough, but the wish and drive to fight,
                as long-suffering as mothers …

                … nothing to do with Mark Redford;
                ‘Je ne garde qu’une

                passion: celle de détruire les passions!’,
                these phantoms

                that stir the entire world; ‘dépouille-toi donc’
                the best translation prescribed

 

Bodhisattvacaryavatara IV, 43, French translation by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Introduction à la Pratique des Futurs Bouddhas, 1907

 

 

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

attention wormhole: travelling // arrival
eyes wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
identity wormhole: stuck in lower realm
mind wormhole: circuitry
practice & talking to myself wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
superhero wormhole: the quiet whale
war wormhole: looking ahead

 

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping

Tags

2018, 7*, change, constellations, elm, fields, fire, gale, harvest, hills, letter, night, production, rain, reaping, sheep, sound, stars, sun, thought, time, trees, valley, vista, windows, writing

                Dear Pat and John,
                and then the rain came

                for weeks, now, making
                havoc over fields of

                trampled trees and
                drowned sheep; rain

                against the windows
                as I write, rain carried

                on the gale that
                bounds up the valley

                gust over gust up and
                over the leaden hills;

                the window rattles
                a log slips, sparks

                disperse and resettle
                like time; the view

                has changed outside:
                metal beasts across fields

                nodding idiotically, no
                further need of pitchforks

                under the sun, now just
                production, churning

                moral thought to mud,
                no distribution

                where fields of ignorance
                lay; last night

                the engines switched off
                one by one across

                the fields and
                Pegasus shimmered

                gazing long on the
                southern elms

                standing about
                with hands in their pockets

                reaping their own
                and individual harvest

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working; “Pat and John” were friends of Mick from his London days, I think; he wrote occasional letters to them talking about the ‘countryside’

 

 

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

change wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
hills & sun & thought & time & trees & valley & windows & writing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
night & rain wormhole: river
sound wormhole: Batgirl –
stars wormhole: the silent night of the Batman

 

Clea

Tags

2016, 5*, brick, circle, claim, Clea, direction, Dormammu, Dr Strange, eyebrow, fingers, fire, gaze, head, identity, looking, morality, obligation, others, path, play, rhyme, self, space, spell, stars, thought

                                                              Clea

                     she is made of circles and stars
                     but gazes only from brick-lined

                     tunnels that hang in space – portals
                     of thought – then eyebrows frown

                     to look, and fingers splay in fanned
                     direction; she will dispel the tiresome

                     play of self and other – claim to
                     claim, rhyme to spell – and obliged

                     a morality to stand firm on its
                     own two feet, despite paths that

                     lead in ribbons and head of open fire

 

through the portals hung in space from Strange Tales #s 126 & 127, by Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

Dr Strange wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
identity wormhole: just one, open, nerve,
looking wormhole: let it all go
obligation wormhole: true nature
others wormhole: even / a second
path wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
play wormhole: Jericho
space wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
thought wormhole: time

 

Michael Redford: triptych

Tags

1935, 1970, 2007, 2009, 2012, afterlife, armchair, being, black, brown, carpet, chair, cigar, doing, doors, evening, fire, floorboards, garden, green, horizon, life, living, living room, night, piano, plants, plastic, Ramsden Heath, realisation, sitting, sitting room, smell, sound, table, talking, trees, uncle, windows, wine, wood

 

 

 

                                           Michael Redford
                                           1935-2007

                                           later on
                           he strolled in the garden
                           breathing the night and the plants
                           smoking a fine cigar

                           then he paused
                           and looked back at the armchair
                           where he had been sitting –
                                           Pphffffff

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                              sitting room

                                              plastic-marbled
                                              chest-height handle

                                              smell of sofa-linen
                                              and wood-fire evenings

                                              with company
                                              and dark green wines

                                              cool black boards and
                                              the white patterned carpet

                                              with almost-meeting
                                              crenellated walls

                                              brow-height mantelpiece
                                              on jungle green

                                              and the piano in the
                                              corner with duff bass keys –

                                              plant-shaking

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                                                      1970

                                                                      to my uncle
                                                                      shifting on
                                                                      hardplastic
                                                                      seat of dining
                                                                      chair – crack –

                                                                      elbow uncomfortable
                                                                      on table-edge
                                                                      carving – creak –
                                                                      to execute a
                                                                      perfect tree

                                                                      on the horizon
                                                                      with just two strokes
                                                                      one brown
                                                                      one green
                                                                      I knew then

                                                                      to put down
                                                                      my compass plans
                                                                      for every detail
                                                                      but only just now
                                                                      doing it

 

looking for what to publish today, I found my uncle unassumingly proffering the lesson in life that he always gave, even nine years after he died: that you don’t look for life, you notice it; some teachers teach by being rather than saying, so that you don’t realise you are being taught until you know; wherever he is now, I hope he knows what he gave me/us … in fact I dedicate the clean-ity of all I notice to return the gift to my uncle wherever his lives have led him now

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: need
black wormhole: the start of adolescence
brown wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
carpet wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
doors & garden wormhole: impressionism
evening wormhole: well,
green & talking wormhole: bavardage
horizon & life wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
living & night & smell & sound & table & windows & wood wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
living room wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
piano wormhole: tabla
Ramsden Heath & uncle wormhole: … still waving!
realisation wormhole: dream career // groggy
sitting wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
sitting room wormhole: purple and mauve
trees wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

Bodiam Castle

Tags

2015, blue, castle, chimney, fire, France, green, invasion, leaf, power, privilege, refugees, river, sky, society, soldier, terrorism, time, vertical, war, windows, world

 

 

Edward Dalyngrigge made money as a mercenary soldier, fighting endlessly against France, then married Elizabeth, the heiress of the Wardedieu, to build a castle to defend against invasion looking fabulous (oh, and build a wharf on the river Rother to benefit from the trade).   It looks fabulous to this day but has defended only right and privilege.

 

                                Bodiam Castle

                                perpendicular-only
                                view of the world

                                through metre-age
                                of sandstone, so I

                                looked straight up
                                the chimney where

                                perpetual fires no
                                longer burned and

                                saw transluscent leaf
                                lean against blue sky

 

We live in a much more settled world now, comfortable by our ruined castles and retired landscapes.   The nearest incursions are on the beaches of Tunisia, although there is worry at the port of Calais.

 

 

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

blue wormhole: the art of sit and follow
chimney wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name
green & windows wormhole: good session
power wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
river wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
sky wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
society wormhole: any answers
time wormhole: earthed
war wormhole: castrated
world wormhole: nothing // matters

 

the Buddha head in an antique shop

Tags

2014, being, Buddha, compassion, doing, doors, eyes, fire, identity, Lewes, life, love, meaning, openness, others, purpose, realisation, roads, samadhi, searching, shop, silence, smile, stillness, thinking, time, walking, wood

                     the Buddha head in an antique shop stood
                     large and quiet on a cherry wood corner unit

                     by the open door
                                                 what, a Buddha’s head in an

                     antique shop thought I and crossed the road
                     to study the lids cast down detached reserved

                     but not closed to a smile and more mysteriously
                     connected beneath my spiky-backed search for

                     authenticity than my hollow preferences could
                     ever be

                                  making little whorls of realisation all
                     about his head – the release of the milliard

                     anxieties in the myriad of people I have ever
                     known – topped by a flame on the crown so that

                     I knew still that there was more work to be done:

                                walking around
                                in life – there is
                                nothing but walk
                                ing about in life
                                no matter how in
                                between or steep
                                or lost no matter
                                the sweaty knees
                                the lucky finds
                                the giving way
                                the loss of time
                                even if I found
                                my way and even
                                if I’d taken diff-
                                erent turns and
                                alleyways there
                                is still only the
                                lift the swing
                                the plant and
                                the roll to the
                                next          step

                     I went back to see what the price was but the

                     shop was closed and everything in it to be
                     considered pre-ordered or pre-sold anyway

 

 

 

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

being & life wormhole: ‘when it came / time to go …’
Buddha wormhole: how ironic
compassion & others wormhole: HPB
doing wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
doors wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
eyes & walking wormhole: titanic
identity & realisation wormhole: connections
Lewes wormhole: Earwig Corner / out of Lewes
love & silence & time wormhole: in the middle of silence and heat:
meaning wormhole: somewhat // digesting
openness wormhole: the View: from Here to the Learning Objective to the Learning Horizon
roads wormhole: moon
searching wormhole: my fidgety self
shops wormhole: we // walk
smile wormhole: my life is not your market
stillness wormhole: St. Ludwigskirche
thinking wormhole: too cold to sit outside / and write flowers of / individual poems
wood wormhole: a splash of fresh water

 

hands in pockets

Tags

'scape, 1978, 20th century, 3*, doors, faces, fire, hell, streets, Thomas Merton

 

 

 

                           hands in pockets

                on the street
                at the door
                to the cellar

                he pulled open a flap
                and the fire of hell
                blew up in his face

 

 

 

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

20^th century wormhole: Have
doors wormhole: ‘after the war …’
faces wormhole: brown suit
streets wormhole: a mid-afternoon

 

green wine

Tags

2009, 20th century, 3*, childhood, fire, green, history, life, linen, rug, voices, white, wood

 

 

 

                the smell of –
                      white linen and
                      small, printed flowers –
                people sitting around the fire –
                      dark-wood legs on
                      and off the rug –
                clever, green wine, smoking –
                      sagged underneath as the feet
                      sometimes shifted with the punch-line –
                but the fear and the guilt –
                      were never mentioned
                      in the nineteen twenties –

 

 

 

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

20^th century wormhole: time
childhood wormhole: 1969
green wormhole: the osteopath
history wormhole: echoes
life wormhole: you
voices wormhole: ‘green post stamps …’
white wormhole: the silent night / of the Batman