Journey

Tags

2018, 8*, birds, blue, breeze, Buddha, city, clouds, day, death, departure, eclipse, evening, fire, flame, form, Ganges, gold, grass, green, hills, horizon, India, Kusinagara, life, looking, morning, night, salvation, sleep, sound, speech, stage, step, stone, stream, teaching, time, town, trees, Vaisali, valley, voices, walking, wandering, wondering

                        the evening before when at length he’d departed,
                Vaiśālī no longer glowed
        like some future city –

                        recent stones of monument
                seemed already unaligned,
        boroughs swallowed by evening hills;

                        we walked wide by the trees across the Gangetic plain,
                robes flupped with each step,
        we lost form as we wandered

                        and we wondered ‘born but to die’,
                still wanting any intoxication
        before the execution;

                        but he looked, always bittersweet,
                to the next horizon – this
        vast and empty stage;

                        in the morning he’d said
                ‘always bite and heat your gold’ and ‘never
        hold the sword by the blade’;

                        ‘I shall lay between those two trees’
                he said in the evening – forks
        around which the whole of time tuned;

                        I prepared grasses about
– I never usually made particular preparations for the night, he would end the day sitting by some copse or stone, away from where we slept glowing like embers,
        as we turned through the night –

                        but he pillowed his head on his hand
                that night, the grasses
        preened green and blue

                        the birds stopped
                as if there were eclipse, the trees ignored
        the breeze,

                        and with shaking headdresses
                dignitaries came to visit from the town
        supplicating –

                        but he spoke with a voice like a cloud, both proximate
and spanning valleys, yearning and teaching to lay down this dried and splintered weight, ‘salvation does not come from the mere sight of me’,
        ‘control the mind’ –

                        and the flames of the fires were low
                as they returned to Kuśinagara
        as if against the stream

                                

Postface Overduction: end of life of the Buddha; narrated by Ananda, close attendant; itinerant life teaching from town to town, area of a few hundred kilometers around central Ganges; left Vaiśālī last, stopped just outside Kuśinagara, town dignitaries came to honour him, had known him before; ‘two trees’ are ‘sal trees‘ tall trunk, no branches until the canopy, northern India, 6th-5th centuries BCE (although there is dispute about this);

        

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

birds wormhole: threshold to behold
blue & city & horizon & morning & time wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
breeze & clouds & valley wormhole: here today and …
Buddha wormhole: eyes like petals
death & speech wormhole: travel // when I die
evening wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
grass & life & trees wormhole: sweet chestnut
green wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
hills & sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
looking wormhole: looking hard enough
night & sound & stone & walking wormhole: meanwhile
teaching wormhole: c’mon – keep up
voices wormhole: travelling / back

        

Advertisement

SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 6*, art, being, categories, chickens, education, existence, form, imagination, interdependent origination, knowledge, life, nature, poetry, quote, rain, reality, red, water, wheelbarrow, white, William Carlos Williams

                so much depends
                upon

                a red wheel
                barrow

                glazed with rain
                water

                beside the white
                chickens

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “wait, is that it, one of his most famous and quoted poems, and that’s it?”; well, no … this poem was actually nested within a whole weave of contemplations and exclamations to the contrary (quoted liberally, tatteredly and patch-workly – sorry, Bill): “the fixed categories into which life is divided … exist – … not as dead dissections … but in a different condition when energised by the imagination … but at present [early 1920s, America, and hence the upcoming androcentrist reference, I do apologise] knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative … the inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge … it is on imagination on which reality rides … it is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and therefore can never be discovered by its anatomisation … it is for this reason that I have always placed art first … art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality – Poetry … poetry has to do with the crystallisation of the imagination – the perfection of new forms as additions to nature …”

 

taken from Ali Shapiro at http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/poetic-analytics/: I hope she doesn’t mind – those venn circles, they were so cold and so sweet

 

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

being & life wormhole: on facing the Have
education wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
knowledge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
poetry wormhole: oh, alright then
rain wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reality wormhole: coagulating
red wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
water wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
white wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

 

words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

Tags

1970s, 1971, 2016, bed, Bowie, brick, buildings, cartoon, clouds, flats, form, guitar, hearing, height, litter, music, park, passing, pipes, shops, silence, sky, step, suburbia, trees, wind, words, world, writing

                           lying still enough in the quiet of bedclothes
                           you can hear the pops in the sky as the
                           clouds settle and the resolve of form as

                           the trees are passed, all big-flared steps
                           through the park like the coming cartoons,
                           into the suburbs, (across the globe), but

                           always back to the room above the shops
                           under height of building pipework and the
                           block of flats, where the brick and grime

                           ignore the swirling litter … but then later,
                           among strumming, the words tumble like
                           boulders, each to their own defining clunk

 

settled throughout: Holy Holy, 1971; Oh! You Pretty Things, 1971; Fill Your Heart, 1971; How Lucky You Are (Miss Peculiar), 1971; Hang On To Yourself, 1971, after the dust

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

 

 

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

1971 wormhole: 1971
Bowie & buildings & wind wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
clouds wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
guitar wormhole: 08:55
music wormhole: well,
park & trees wormhole: 1963
passing & silence wormhole: 1965
shops wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
sky wormhole: 1968
words wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
world wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
writing wormhole: need

 

no one – poewieview #24

Tags

1970, 2016, Bowie, buildings, control, death, echo, emptiness, form, identity, illusion, land, life, night, Salinger, society, stairs, suicide, vista, wind

                           am I really the only one
                           who doesn’t know that
                           buildings are stage props
                           to keep illusion of form
                           and land from blowing
                           away in the night wind

                           the echo of stairwells
                           is inevitable reminder
                           the topple of vistas a
                           tease, but no one saw
                           old James Castle jump
                           we never lost control

 

James Castle jumped from a tower … at which school, and from which book?   Therefore who is the ‘I’ and ‘we’ of poem?   The Man Who Sold the World, 1970

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

 

 

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

Bowie wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
buildings wormhole: bavardage
echo wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
death & wind wormhole: mauve
emptiness wormhole: 1964
identity wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
life wormhole: Dear Sir/Madam,
night wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
society wormhole: miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22
stairs wormhole: the start of adolescence

 

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

 

now, the verticals go down as well as they go up

Tags

1970s, 1980s, 2015, alley, architecture, awning, buildings, chimney, city, colour, Daredevil, dark, dawn, drawing, Edward Hopper, form, Frank Miller, ground, hearing, height, identity, landscape, leisure, listening, litter, notice, orange, rain, rooftops, seeing, shops, silhouette, sitting, snow, sound, streetlight, streets, suburbia, tarmac, vertical

                now, the verticals go down as well as they go up

                                the form of
                                architecture
                                is drawn
                                by rain

                                streetlights
                                merely cast
                                the silhouettes
                                of dawn

                                in the 70s
                                and the 80s
                                the shops
                                opened late

                                like Hopper
                                landscapes
                                foretending
                                leisure

                                sleet down
                                an alley when
                                there are things
                                to be done

                                (cab waiting
                                with the meter
                                running) but
                                when it snows

                                it is time to sit
                                on a ledge and
                                listen to all the
                                muffled sound

                                below; lighted
                                billboards and
                                the uplit facades
                                of monoliths

                                above the
                                chimney stacks,
                                only when
                                sprung from

                                girders can you
                                hang foetus-like
                                above the roof-
                                tops; let all the

                                striving height
                                recede back
                                to the ground
                                it stands from

                                assassins and
                                bounty hunters
                                proceed colourful
                                and silent by the

                                dark rooftops
                                of old town
                                suburbia, only
                                the blind devils

                                leap the burning
                                awnings more
                                bright than day,
                                where only one

                                will notice from
                                the street, and
                                yet the fantastic
                                storeys of

                                orange-corporate
                                building rise
                                ineluctable
                                behind all

                                borough, seen
                                but not heard;
                                except for the
                                litter of paper

                                trailing the collateral
                                dance across tarmac
                                and paviours, hardly
                                noticed, but ever indulged

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
buildings wormhole: dream 260815
chimney wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
city wormhole: Morning in a City, 1944
Daredvil wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
dawn & orange wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
Edward Hopper wormhole: Summertime, 1943
identity & streets wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
rain wormhole: open window
rooftops wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
seeing & sound wormhole: after all?
shops wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
silhouette wormhole: 1959
sitting wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
snow wormhole: To my Mum
streetlight wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting

 

Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23

Tags

1922, 1923, 2015, air, being, clouds, dimension, Edward Hopper, form, function, grass, light, plane, reaching, trees, years

 

 

 

                                Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23

                                so it is always the latent light
                                transmitted through cloud

                                or orbit that depicts manufacture
                                from function to dimension,

                                from light to not light in all degrees
                                of plane and completed form,

                                novel from the slow trees and grass
                                that know no distinction but the

                                quantum happenstance
                                of air and reach, but no way

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
being wormhole: now, have I forgotten anything
clouds wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
Edward Hopper & years wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
light wormhole: prayer to my self
trees wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?

 

of a sudden // all the time

Tags

2015, balance, ceiling, flame, form, light, movement, petals, poem, shadow, sitting, stillness, time, walls

 

 

 

                                   of a sudden

                                   the candle flame
                                   shifts and flicks, then
                                   sits in balance, still,
                                   and comsuming, still
                                   and emitting, folded
                                   and recouping, then
                                   sits in adjustment
                                   spliterring and
                                   forming, finding
                                   a perfect petal …
                                   leaning   leaning
                                   spluttering creating
                                   shadow and light
                                   in flux across wall
                                   and ceiling

                                   all the time

                                   whether I can
                                   form the poem or not

 

 

 

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

balance & walls wormhole: on walking through walls
light wormhole: 1971
shadow wormhole: Buddha / Shakyamuni
sitting wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
stillness wormhole: no cars / no planes
time wormhole: the tangles fall apart

 

tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:

Tags

2014, 4*, faces, faith, fall, family, fate, fence, field, film, flagpole, floodlights, floorboards, flow, flowers, flying, fog, Folkestone, footsteps, forest, form, freedom, friendship, frustration, funding, furniture, future, life, tag cloud poem, trees

 

 

 

faces of all faith
                           fall like a family

                           the fate of a father in fear
                           feeling the fence around the field

                           the film, finding fir, lingers over treetops
                           the fire takes the flagpole; the floodlights take the floorboards;

                           flow often  flowers when flying through fog
                           while Folkestone listens to footsteps of distant forest

                                                      form new freedom:

                                                                                 friendship out from frustration
                                                                                 funding all the furniture of future life

 

 

 

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

faces wormhole: I could step / more open
family wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
father wormhole: Sylvia
film wormhole: the fingers
fir wormhole: the straight line of stones marking the geometry / of death / settle all their own levels over time to make / a new rhythm
flow wormhole: no quota too empty / no fate to fulfil
fog wormhole: 0.42
life wormhole: breathe it all / in
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
trees wormhole: sunny morning

 

first a mishap then clear vision

Tags

'scape, 2014, 6*, age, being, career, centrifugal, centripetal, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, circular poem, detail, distraction, doing, elemental, form, glasses, hope, identity, injustice, journey, letting go, life, looking, lost, moment, name, pointlessness, reading, realisation, role, society, tide, time, vague, vulnerable, waves, world, writing

first a mishap then clear vision

                        face it
  let yourself                 there is
 but never                       no point
known it                           no victory
     always                       no justice
  and you’ve                 there never
                          was

                                                        all the effort
                                   again using                           of reading
                        willing to build                                     writing and
                 for the way back                                              accumulation
                 around hopeful                                                   creating hope
                     and looking                                                      of a salvific
                         I am lost                                                       point but it
                        accept that                                                   plateaus ever
                       and I finally                                               as it is made
                             is stumbled                                       and takes in
                                  before a trip                           miles of amble
                                                          and wander

                                                              but

                                              the natural plain of this life’s journey
                                                              is to gaze un
                                attached past the complication and
                                              across the complexity
                                              to see clearly all the detail
                                                              and form in itself
                content to look unfocused and elemental
                                until my age and career
                                required glasses
                                              so that now
                                I react centripetal to the world
                                              that calls my name in shower and wave
                                and I become
                                centrifugal and solidified
                                (vagued and vulnerable) to
                an identity I can never find
                                while the world keeps leaking
                                              and escaping like gas

                                                                                  so

                                                                          (let them all …
                             and no hope of identity                     disperse
                           with no need of hope                              clean into the scene)
 as the energy fans awry and around                                    like a ‘scape until
                                  and slip-slide                                        the next moment
                                                  only                                    which
        and the shift and chirrups of élan                              moves
                                                          just                       both slight and extra
                                            to the roles and tides

 

 

 

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

being & doing & identity wormhole: ‘I come from the brow …’
career wormhole: what I am about to say is true / what I just said was a lie
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wormhole: 25% scaffolding & rope
circular poem 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
distraction wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
glasses wormhole: all the while / the flagpole rope / occasionally flaps / the breeze
letting go wormhole: sounds // suddenly / stop
life & society wormhole: they find their life growing together –
looking wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
pointlessness wormhole: letter 080514
reading & realisation & time wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
waves wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
world wormhole: the declensions of constant possibility throughout times
writing wormhole: too cold to sit outside / and write flowers of / individual poems