Tags
2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white
… and yet I think I am so modest:
I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,
all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
all the Big Issues I generously buy
all the time given to Carol and the kids,
to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,
all the insights from comics and books, I think I
know what’s what; I stand colossal
on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
than the ants that circle across it,
so much more, even, than the cat
that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand
human to the height of all achievement; all of this
I have already destroyed
a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
with even the most slight
annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed
teeth and howls; when this dent,
this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from
this axe from some other side) that
holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,
everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
and isolated; I won’t
become human again for so long I’ll need
another, far-future,
flash of lightning
in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll
ever get another chance
to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s
ease out all these creases, let’s
polish all that chrome, before evening comes again
Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach