this time

Tags

trees, passing, time, identity, Charlotte, houses, openness, driving, 2*, fields

                this                time

                in the back seat
                driven by Dot
                houses through trees
                open fields turning

 

 

 

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

Charlotte wormhole: love and precision
identity & time wormhole: dream I // dream II
openness wormhole: such such potential
passing wormhole: pass and / fro
trees wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket

 

open window

Tags

'scape, 2013, 5*, birds, birdsong, blue, echo, houses, open, passing, quiet, sky, snow, sound, streets, sun, time, trees, windows

                open window

                in the quiet street
                sun shone against
                the sides of houses

                and began to melt
                the dust of snow,
                at length,

                soft steps pass –
                foot-scrape and
                trouser-scuff – then

                cough once twice
                in upper voice
                down the houses

                and it was only then
                that the birds called
                in different ways

                in different trees and
                all of which echoed
                down the blue blue sky

 

 

 

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

birds wormhole: Is There / Life on Mars? – poewieview #32
birdsong wormhole: relief
blue & quiet & sky & sound & windows wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
echo wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
open wormhole: fine
passing wormhole: to allow / passage
snow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
streets wormhole: familiasyncopation
sun wormhole: 1964
time wormhole: alighted
trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose

 

love and precision

Tags

2015, 5*, Birmingham, blue, Charlotte, daughter, doing, driving, houses, love, precision, red, silhouette, sky, talking to myself, walking

                played with Dot
                hung with Dot; there’s
                a lot to be gained
                from hanging with love

                drove to Birmingham
                walked around dark
                ening redbrick houses
                until we were all silhouettes

                before a Prussian blue sky;
                do the formal stuff
                when you can, absorb
                the rest with love and precision

 

‘Dot’ is my daughter Charlotte; just over a year ago she moved up to Shropshire with her partner; we visit, and sometimes meet in Birmingham for a day

 

 

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

blue & sky wormhole: industrial estate
Charlotte wormhole: dream 230315
daughter wormhole: returning home handsome
doing wormhole: sleep now
love wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
red wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
silhouette wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
talking to myself wormhole: woven-through
walking wormhole: magnificent salad

 

the skyline

Tags

1964, 2016, 7*, apricot, black, buildings, collosal, Dr Strange, fight, houses, light, Mordo, morning, pink, power, silence, sky, skyline, spell, Stan Lee, statement, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, world

                the deepening spells must wait
                there is sky to conduct
                and arm to girth the world

                upon a pink apricot morning
                the silent tower was pierced
                oblivious to black boltage of strike;

                protagonist beget defence
                and they grew statemental
                and collosal to dolls’ houses

                they stood on silent levels
                inferred from clamoured storey
                until the light broke

                the skyline

 

from Strange Tales #125, October 1964, “Mordo Must Not Catch Me”, by Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

apricot wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
black & morning & pink & silence wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
buildings wormhole: passersby
Dr Strange wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
light wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
power wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge
sky wormhole: woven-through
skyline wormhole: did I get old?
world wormhole: beepbeep

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

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

brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

walking through Lewes

Tags

'scape, 2013, dark, emergence, grey, hills, houses, identity, Lewes, possibility, time, trees, walking, walls

 

 

 

                           walking through Lewes

                           I emerge from darkness
                           between thick stone walls

                           holding hills and houses
                           and overhanging trees

                           grown and replaced
                           for a hundred years

                           ever on a grey day full
                           of possibility and time

 

 

 

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

emergence wormhole: the practice
grey & walking wormhole: “walking …”
hills wormhole: Soir Bleu, 1914
identity & walls wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
time wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
trees wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948

 

com- / mute

Tags

'scape, 2013, blue, books, bridge, buildings, clouds, coffee, communication, crane, East Croydon, Euston, eyes, horizon, houses, light, London, London Bridge, marble, movement, music, others, passing, people, piano, rainbow, reading, shadow, sky, sleep, sound, sun, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, windows, winter, woman

 

 

 

                                com-
                                mute

                      low cloud
                      covering the sun in blue sky
                      keeping pace with the train over
                      commuterland people waiting

                      to start their day in houses
                      casting variously rhomboid
                      from the sun as the clouds drift I
                      close my eyes from the sun

                      intense flick through membrane
                      colouring the whole spectrum some
                      tie-dyed and contrasted
                      through bare trees

                      at East Croydon tower-blocks
                      distance-high stand
                      still on various unknown horizons flanked
                      with light and shadow

                      the train fills some stand
                      still and yawn by the door all look
                      down unless asleep
                      one sits next to me reading a book for women

                      leading people at London Bridge
                      I lose the thread amid marble frontage
                      and high filigree window and cranes
                      at Euston a court of coffee

                      and circular chords
                      suggesting upward spirals
                      at the bridge and occasional
                      piano plinks            possibly

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: hungry for a thread or two
books & music wormhole: sit
bridge wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
buildings & passing & sky & sun wormhole: 2 pm
clouds & trees wormhole: all along the blue sky
coffee wormhole: ‘filtered coffee …’
communication & shadow wormhole: Western Motel, 1957
crane wormhole: … back to the outbreath
eyes wormhole: mauve / night
horizon wormhole: sooner or later
houses wormhole: Sunday afternoon
light & London & sound & windowswormhole: south horizon
others wormhole: [s]
people wormhole: New York Movie, 1939
piano wormhole: bass and piano
reading wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia
sleep wormhole: Morning in a City, 1944
train wormhole: the continental stride of trains
travelling wormhole: training the mind
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
winter wormhole: ‘in the midst of winter …’

 

Sunday afternoon

Tags

2015, afternoon, Carol, change, clouds, future, hill, houses, life, quiet, Sunday, Totnes, vista, walking, wondering

 

 

 

                                              Sunday afternoon

                                walking quietly uphill
                from wondering about what house to buy
                                next in life

                                the clouds climbed
                tumultuous up ahead with ledges of vista
                                wonderful to portend

                                shifting

 

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
Carol wormhole: dream 260815
change wormhole: lifetime
clouds wormhole: Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23
houses wormhole: To my Mum
life wormhole: CV
Sunday wormhole: Luisenplatz
walking wormhole: dream 230315

 

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

 

bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream

Tags

2013, abandonment, childhood, dream, Eglinton Hill, eyes, fear, girl, Herbert Road, houses, identity, looking, love, muse, power, spell, thought, windows

 

 

 

                                bottom of Herbert Road to the
                                foot of Eglinton Hill dream

                                              girl of my child
                hood reached to take my wallet as I
                                contemplated houses
                                              in the window
                                              I grabbed her wrist
                                righteous to justice you’re coming with me
                                              I won’t get fooled again
                                but with no design she
                                                              looked up
                                              to me the fear that even I
                                                              would hate her and leave her
                                                              without power – the only thing she had and I
                                                                                                            I fell in love
                                                                                 with those eyes
                                                              and those shoulders –
                                              the spell cast
                                yet again

 

 

 

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

abandonment & Eglinton Hill wormhole: just words wiped across a line
childhood wormhole: relapse
dream wormhole: Dr Strange VII – the madness of Mordo
eyes & love wormhole: the dash is magnificent / the shadow grotesque
girl wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
Herbert Road wormhole: Christmas
houses wormhole: the lines are not that straight / after all
identity & looking & power wormhole: between
muse wormhole: knees
thought wormhole: under silent direction of architecture
windows wormhole: after the storm