early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

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

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

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only

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2018, 7*, beauty, commentary, contrast, day, heat, land, landscape, language, lava, living, love, night, orange, passing, people, perspective, phone, profile, raspberry, sand, silence, sky, sound, speech, stone, sun, talking to myself, twilight, violet, voluptuous

                                only

                from the point of stand
                the dunes are sharp
                against speechless sky

                in passing they rise
                flatly up and up in
                broad brush of land

                blistering from a distant
                sun, in approach they
                are voluptuous cleft

                and hip – raspberry
                stone in orange – the
                Venusian ring-tone

                doesn’t interrupt the
                commentary skip
                across three languages

                                –O___

                OK, the contrast
                between the profiles
                of lifeless heads of lava
                and the twilight-violet sky
                of no day and no night
                is beautiful

                but I could
                have spent the day
                amid peoples’ peeks
                and primal landscapes
                open for to behold
                instead …

 

excursion to Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote, Jan 2018

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
living & talking to myself wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
love wormhole: we held cold hands
night wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
orange wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
passing & people & speech wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
silence & sun wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
sky wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
stone wormhole: `whappn’d!
twilight wormhole: letting them go

 

at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree

Tags

2014, breeze, Carol, colour, garden centre, humour, identity, language, poem, speech, Sylvia Plath, table, Ted Hughes, words, writing

                at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to
                replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about
                the Yew Tree

                                if I was to say to you
                                “write a poem NOW”
                                what would you lock
                                on to?

                                ‘are you talking to ME
                                …; I only use words
                                for lists complaints
                                reports; what’s the
                                use of poems; I can
                                see colours and hear
                                breezes but I don’t
                                connect them with
                                words’

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: ‘someone …’
Carol wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: cape and cowl
speech & Sylvia Plath & writing wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
table 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
words wormhole: reating & wriding

 

the peculiar continuum of trains

Tags

2013, Belgium, coffee, embarrasment, head, language, magazine, passing, reading, smile, train, voices

 

 

 

                the peculiar continuum of trains

                                working
                                haltingly
                through the language of a
                short histoire de cunnilingus
                in a French magazine –

                                well it was there! –

                from over my shoulder
                I am asked if I would like
                some more coffee, oh –
                shortest of pauses magdown –
                                yes, please …

                I place my cup on her tray she pours
                two thirds full I add a drop of milk
                … thank you, she continues down
                the aisle a smile warmly bathed
                through the back of her head

 

 

 

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

coffee wormhole: start where / you are II
passing wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
reading wormhole: Black Rook / in Rainy Weather
smile wormhole: recline
train wormhole: dream 230315
voices wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven

 

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

Tags

1970s, 2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, art deco, ash tree, bay window, bench, Beresford Square, blue, breathing, brown, buddleia, buildings, Canary Wharf, cars, change, clothes, clouds, communication, compassion, Dallin Road, demolition, dream, Eglinton Hill, empire, Europe, eyes, feet, fence, Genesta Road, ghosts, glass, glasses, grass, growth, handshake, head, house, identity, iron, keys, language, leaves, library, light, living, London, looking, love, music, passing, pavement, people, petrol, piano, pigeons, plane, plastic, Plumstead, purple, rain, rainbow, roads, rooftops, school, schoolgirl, shadow, Shard, singing, sky, smile, sound, speech, step, streetlight, streets, sun, swifts, talking, tarmac, Thames, time, travelling, trees, tv, vow, walking, walls, windows, Woolwich, yellow

 

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

 

 

                      Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

                      all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
                      holding together, the grubby art deco window that
                      coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
                      maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

                      glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
                      down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
                      plaques on the wall above top floor windows
                      scud clouds above the coping

                      then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
                      the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
                      upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
                      pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

                      I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
                      followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
                      from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
                      double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

                      cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
                      on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
                      hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
                      a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

                      the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
                      arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
                      the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
                      dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

                      the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
                      building and upright support, plays along the side
                      of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
                      signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

                      hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
                      so many of my people generations poor in the sun
                      from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
                      Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

                      in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
                      down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
                      walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
                      badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

                      sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
                      your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
                      all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
                      public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

                      and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
                      I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
                      between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
                      my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
                      I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
                      and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

                      out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
                      the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
                      and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
                      pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

                      you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
                      I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
                      unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
                      of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

                      highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
                      when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
                      up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
                      she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

                      the way things are these days, with music in hand
                      she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
                      the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
                      do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

                      how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
                      under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
                      yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
                      steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

                      bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
                      since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
                      from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
                      now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

                      and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
                      still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
                      I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
                      at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

                      at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
                      at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
                      high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
                      sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: Batman#175
bench wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea
blue & leaves & sun wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
breathing wormhole: born again
brown wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
buddleia wormhole: (Little by Little)
buildings & travelling wormhole: I could step / more open
cars & roads wormhole: the long road
change & time wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
clouds wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
communication wormhole: Maidstone
compassion & feet & love & speech & talking wormhole: there are patient listeners
dream wormhole: we’re born // to die
Eglinton Hill & Woolwich & yellow wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
eyes & looking & shadow wormhole: a maturity
Genesta Road & rooftops wormhole: corroboration
ghosts wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
glass & light & streetlight wormhole: oh-pen
glasses wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
house wormhole: day off
identity wormhole: that
living wormhole: scattered
London wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
music wormhole: no exit
passing & sound & walking & windows wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
people & rain & sky wormhole: Luisenplatz
piano wormhole: … walking down the street
pigeons wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
purple wormhole: consturnation …? // consternation
school wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
smile wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
streets & trees wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Thames wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
tv wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
walls wormhole: stuck free to move within

 

I could step / more open

Tags

2014, 6*, balcony, being, blossom, blue, branches, budding, buildings, buying, child, choice, Eastbourne, education, faces, green, happenstance, Have, identity, journey, language, letting go, life, looking, nonsense, notebook, openness, pavement, promenade, red, roads, sandwich, seagull, seeing, sky, space, statue, sun, syllable, thinking, time, traffic, travelling, trees, voices, waiting, writing

 

 

 

                                it’s all just nonsense
                the things to buy the things to wear
                                the schools to teach
                                the roads to drive
                the born to life the choices to make
                                the faces to set
                                against the sun

                                but two things:
                there is a tree with deep-wine blossom
                next to the red-brick apartments with balconies
                and the sky hangs indifferent and only
                changes when you think about it afterwards

                                I could step
                                more open
                                through all of this
                noticing the space and treasuring the happenstance
                and not caring about the gain or the journey
                                until I think
                                about it afterwards

                                              -o~~~-

                                                              OK …
                                              … sandwich
                                pausing to get out my notebook
                a seagull alighted on the promenade lamp
                                and waited
                                flew off

                                              -~~~o-

                the statue of an Elder
                cast in rolls and folds of overcoat
                stares disconsolately roadward
                and blooms green over the years
                ignoring the traffic passing and indicating
                and all the while beside and behind
                the pollarded tree out of the pavement
                branches all the same length now
                                              budding

                                              -|o____

                by the cobalt-blue railing
                on the lower promenade
                passes a child-voice reciting
                high – slightly complaining –
                cascading downwards with
                each syllable in a language
                which I cannot understand

                                              —o|||

                                                                                 but
                                                              you don’t look to see
                                              otherwise too many thoughts crowd your eyes
                                rather you let enter to observe
                so that the disparate can be made

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: this is not my poem / although I found it nevertheless
blossom wormhole: Manhattan 2012
blue & Have & sky wormhole: Maidstone
branches wormhole: ‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’
buildings wormhole: introducing / the stranger
child & faces & green & identity & life & red & seagull & thinking & time wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
letting go wormhole: letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually
looking & seeing & sun wormhole: !
looking wormhole: open window
promenade wormhole: 1963
roads wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
space wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
travelling wormhole: sniff
trees wormhole: no hat
voices wormhole: connections
waiting wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
writing wormhole: the precision // the gentleness // and / the letting go

 

gravity

Tags

2013, 6*, being, breathing, getting ground, groundlessness, language, life, lifetimes, sitting, voices

film: Gravity (2013); directed: Alfonso Cuarón; actors: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

 

 

 

                                              gravity

                I close my momentum
                and do nothing more

                than sit – and maybe
                breathe – and still

                and still I hear
                the debris of talk

                trail me about in its
                after-draft all land-

                gauge cannot help me
                turns me upside down

                and sunk I can only ever
                fall and stand back up

                on the very ground
                I fell from

 

 

 

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

being & breathing & sitting wormhole: tapestry
groundlessness wormhole: lost
voices wormhole: con / firm

 

sit stay heal

Tags

2013, 6*, anxiety, being, growth, identity, language, sitting

*the title comes from a humorous reference made by Pema Chödrön in her book ‘Taking the Leap’ to training (… dogs)

 

 

 

                                   the anxiety
                                   which moves
                                   to strive to
                                   fill the gap
                                   that suggests
                                   that I am
                                   insignificant
                                   in the whole
                                   of this multiple
                                   world and prove
                                   that I am not
                                   insignificant
                                   even unto myself
                                   through constant
                                   ripples and waves
                                   of sentences
                                   crossing over
                                   each other in
                                   all directions
                                   getting everywhere
                                   on the same level
                                   but for the sky
                                   they reach for
                                   but can never
                                   ever be …

                                   sit    stay    heal*

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–
anxiety wormhole: ontophilology
being & identity & sitting wormhole: practice:

 

kids these days

Tags

2010, 4*, Have, hyperbole, identity, language, portrait, society, speech

 

 

 

                                                              kids these days

kids say “…seriously, I…” “…it really is…” “it was literally…” “it was like…” “I was like…” “…I’m not even joking”.   The references are often hyperbolic – or meant to convey hyperbole – because there is a great need to be heard (which normal formal language isn’t) hence the attention-grabbing distinction of the language.   But it is also a means of stating – exclaiming! – their identity (“I was like…wha’!!”).   And therein is the disempowerment of their own speech – self-declamatory statements become the currency, they become overused, hyperbole mounts up – “it really, literally, actually was…” – hyperbolic inflation sets in, runs out of control and leaves its citizens with no means to express themselves sincerely – bankruptcy, ‘whatever’!

Why such an over-consumed drive to declaratively state oneself?   Because in con-sciety (society based on the value and moral of consumerism) you are nothing (you are outside) if you are not defined by Have.   As soon as children become self-aware they are required to have – a priori – their self defined.   How to define one-self?   Panic, look around, how does it happen?   Self is defined by Have – you have things.   But adults do that with money, ‘can’t do that yet, but you can also Have statement.   Truth is declarative – not scientific not rational – I state therefore I am.   ‘It’s my opinion and I’ve got a right to it.   You can’t say I’m wrong’.   Young people have little linguistic reference or capital to declare so they universalise their local personal experience just as TV soaps are universal in their locality – their reference is exponential to the broadcast story, it is locally declarative but watched by, like, everyone.   What they see and learn in their own back living room they practise at school and measure how tall they are growing by the attention they get with their declarations (or wilful bankruptcy).   There are winners and losers: the winners ultimately (literally) appear on TV (the pub the party the gossip the paper) the losers listen and copy…

 

 

 

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

Have & society wormhole: Have
identity wormhole: and
speech wormhole: sit

 

the cure / for block

Tags

2011, 4*, Allen Ginsberg, block, growth, language, managerialism, writing

 

 

 

                                              the cure
                                              for block

                      when you are inhibited in flow
                                ears flat crouching
                      read some Allen Ginsberg
                                the great loosener

                      contains open care
                      able open naïveté
                      inexorable naïveté

                      that catches a groove
                      that catches a naïve
                      that catches an open

                      through the wiles connives and flattery
                      of the powerpolitico accomitvoid
                      evasiagendal scruplelogicless

                      humanomanagerialasphyxia
                      virus which causes so much
                      snot

 

 

 

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

managerialism wormhole: teached / in the ass
writing wormhole: writing