two profiles

Tags

2016, 5*, balcony, being, chair, eyes, face, feet, hair, legs, Lewes, library, mouth, neck, passing, pen, portrait, reading, skyline, step, study

                two profiles

                reading – backdrop of cascade swept back across neck
                line from thinned mouth to pen to poise to foot on
                chair leg to foot step to ground …

                    step past un-laced shoe bounce girder-sprung
                                                            balcony,
                                                    no,
                                          forgot
                                    some
                    thing, got it now, settling down to reception

                studying – cascade over both shoulders crescent face
                with hood eyes and smirky mouth, counter-recline
                of neck to body to outstretch legs crossed at boot

                tinkling the laptop awhile with open-mouthed
                tentation hidden by the handbag, skylined by flask

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: ‘still …’
eyes & mouth wormhole: looking ahead
face wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
feet wormhole: when the rain has settled / the dust
hair wormhole: Batgirl –
Lewes wormhole: reating & wriding
library wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
passing wormhole: “I need help”
reading wormhole: for / the first time
skyline wormhole: river

 

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‘God, who am I …?’

Tags

2014, 20th century, 7*, distance, faces, girls, history, horizon, identity, library, lost, madness, motion, Nightmare, presence, progress, reading, sitting, sun, sunlight, Sylvia Plath, talking to myself, TH Huxley, thought

picked over, cajoled, placed this way and that, gazed at the upper corner of the room, and eventually written from entry 33. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962; Plath wrote this, I merely … Plath wrote this, but the failure is mine, all mine, I tellsya!

                God, who am I?
                I sit in the library tonight
                the lights whirring
                girls everywhere
                reading books
                faces

                And I sit here without identity
                There is history to comprehend
                before I sleep

                Yet back at the house
                there is my room
                full of my presence
                There is my date this weekend:
                believes I am human –
                only indication that I am whole
                not merely a knot
                without identity –

                I’m lost!
                Huxley would have laughed
                What a conditioning this is!
                Hundreds of faces
                beating time along the edge of thought

                a nightmare
                no sun
                only continual motion
                If I rest inward
                I go mad

                There is so much
                in different directions
                pulled thin
                against horizons too distant to reach

                To stop with the German tribes
                and rest awhile: but no!
                On, on, on, through ages of empires
                ceaseless pace
                Will I never rest in sunlight again?

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: 20th century
faces wormhole: jump start
history wormhole: tragic and archival
horizon wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: between
reading wormhole: reating & wriding
sitting wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
sun & Sylvia Plath wormhole: concordance
talking to myself wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
thought wormhole: divergent // direction

 

inbreath

Tags

2016, 4*, architecture, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breath, library, oxygen, Shantideva, thought, time, true nature, water, waves, writing

                           ineluctable thought
                           older than written word

                           trickles down through
                           library and architecture

                           fresh as dispersing froth
                           over rib and tumble of

                           flow in time dispensing
                           new oxygen for the next

                           inbreath

 

freshly exhaled from Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 7

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
Bodhichitta wormhole: more than effigy
library wormhole: library windows
thought & time wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
waves wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
writing wormhole: with endless love

 

library windows

Tags

'scape, 2015, awning, being, gables, grey, Lewes, library, morning, rain, sky, transmission, windows

                     library windows to the sky
                     morning grey to be and to

                     come and between the valley
                     outlets of the regular gables

                     the washed alluvial-coloured
                     stains down the tin awning

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey wormhole: Saturday
Lewes wormhole: walking through Lewes
morning wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
rain & windows wormhole: sixty four sixty five
sky wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

 

Black Rook / in Rainy Weather

Tags

2013, anxiety, black, block, library, notebook, open, rain, reading, rook, Sylvia Plath, weather, writing

 

 

 

                                I sat with the date
                                and the open page
                trying to channel an effect through the objects around me
                                pen poised

                                nothing happened
                                but a little anxiety
                I put the book aside and picked up the Collected* instead
                                next one: Black Rook
                                in Rainy Weather

 

* Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, Faber, ed. Hughes; to get the double serendipity: Black Rook in Rainy Weather

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: un … able
black wormhole: dream 260713
open wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
rain wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
reading wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
[Sylvia] Plath wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
writing wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively

 

library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!

Tags

2014, ageing, being, birdsong, books, carpet, compassion, echo, feet, identity, Lewes, library, life, light, listening, notebook, opening, passing, people, reading, red, roof, settling, shadow, sound, striving, study, table, talking, talking to myself, travelling, walking, windows, writing

                library: start where you are IV

                                time to write –
                                but I’ve come
                                to the table

                                wanting to find
                                the same people
                                the same vistas –

                                foreclosed*
                                before I even open
                                the notebook

                                wanting the talk of feet reading
                                and the scent of sigh tired and the
                                stretching in common embrace

                                but instead I have the constant
                                humm of light high up in the varnished
                                rafters the intermittent beep

                                of the drinks machine and
                                the sway of heavy man with step-
                                energy walking up then down the

                                quiet research balcony
                                which I hadn’t been noticing
                                aha; I see, I hear, I, here.

                                the light doesn’t hum
                                it spreads the ubiquitous
                                plum-red carpet with

                                venn shadows from feet
                                from case; that alarm was it
                                regular between key-tap-return and bird-twit

                                has stopped
                                the heavy man went downstairs
                                and I noticed the girders and ties

                                (that such mass can move so decisive
                                 and change without wheel or haul
                                 through all the planes we have riveted

                                 and braced about our life)
                                at last I am settled and
                                my table still empty

                                              I’ve

                                been trying to get
                                from here to there,
                                where there would really

                                make here much better and
                                connect them together,
                                reduce their distance,

                                dissolve any distinction,
                                              I
                                have studied this extensively

                                in all those books, composed it, even;
                all the distance I have travelled!
                                from here to there

                                marking myself wrinkled tired
                                and echoed in my own space
                                              … actually quite nice here, if I let open some windows

 

* this piece is a sequel to [start where you are III] – delve which was quite cute; happened in the same library in the same town, but in entirely different lives

 

 

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

being & writing wormhole: hot chocolate
books & compassion & Lewes & reading & settling & table & talking to myself wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
carpet wormhole: Trinity Arts
echo wormhole: ‘in the midst of winter …’
feet & identity & sound & travelling wormhole: Totnes
life wormhole: lifetime
light & people & windows wormhole: up here
listening wormhole: purpose
passing & talking wormhole: ‘discution poli / d’orage …’
red wormhole: on the raised patio reading Plath
roof wormhole: prologue-ing
shadow wormhole: the dash is magnificent / the shadow grotesque
striving wormhole: re lax // me
study wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
walking wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre

 

[start where you are III] – delve

Tags

2014, being, books, breathing, compassion, detail, emptiness, eyebrow, eyes, faces, feet, fingers, green, hair, hills, identity, laptop, legs, letting go, Lewes, library, lime, looking, mouth, muse, phone, portrait, profile, reading, settling, sitting, sound, speech, stretch, sun, Sylvia Plath, table, talking to myself, thinking, time, travelling, windows, woman, world

                                prologue:

                                start where you are
                                envelopped in the world

                                so do I pry open the locale
                                to see how I am found

                                but careful not to crack the world
                                to see where I am located

                                … no, that’s not it

                                not prying open
                                but you don’t become stuck

                                in matter or location (and neither
                                become lost in daydream or script)

                                rather

                                you look where you are and
                                receive it with compassion and all the detail

                                flowing in without resistance and
                                whenever I evince judgement – ‘thinking’ –

                                let it sink back into view like
                                brushed paint onto a second coat

                                never located
                                always travelling

                                scene 1:

                                three women in the quieter
                                study area of the library

                                              delve

                                a cough when I sat to join the table
                                an ‘excuse me’ a look up a wink –
                                was that a wink? – she reads lime highlights
                                and Evian, arms crossed prop the book like
                                a lap top over the edge of the table
                                a book on museum ethics awaiting
                                her right eyebrow crooked naturally to read

                                unplugged, but she has a good hour
                                on the central table, she plinks and
                                brinks open and sits still as a hill range
                                receding only the corner of her mouth
                                and lip-emote and deft at the text
                                the clear green eyes flick and decide
                                at the corrections to be made

                                legs crossed ankle boots
                                foot pointing circling retrieving
                                boot cuffs clapping slightly behind
                                while reading, then stopped when editing
                                round chin profile, raggedy hair
                                spun in constant bun brow raise –
                                mess of poised fingers work the keyboard

                                interlude:

                                I delved awhile into ‘Stars Over
                                The Dordogne’ – falling
                                presentiment – and looked up

                                scene II:

                                my boot-circler was gone, just gone –
                                I didn’t see her leave – was she even there?

                                but the sun had moved window-
                                tinted across their faces

                                one had shiny hair and breathed
                                regularly head-collapsed

                                the other placed her book flat on the table
                                keep the sun off her face on her ponytail

                                scene III:

                                during ‘The Rival’ unplugged was called
                                she had to go to Nero’s to check her link

                                (library censorship – smirk in her lilt)
                                she stretched long and distant …

                                … then gathered and left

                                dénouement:

                                I wrote the scenes I checked the dictionaries
                                time to go, ‘oh’ she said tapping her phone

                                ‘time flies …’ I said, ‘yes, but I feel I haven’t
                                got anywhere’; ‘but you’ve been here all along;

                                all four of us’
                                I didn’t say …

 

already, there is a sequel in post-production, coming to a post near you soon: all the distance I have travelled!

 

 

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

being & emptiness & identity & letting go wormhole: fall
books & travelling wormhole: Desolation Angels
breathing & settling wormhole: … back to the outbreath
compassion & faces & lime & speech wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
eyes wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
feet & table wormhole: gold wedding band
green wormhole: “King …”
hair wormhole: sight / seeing
hills wormhole: the poppies / of van Gogh
Lewes wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
looking & sitting & sound wormhole: prologue-ing
mouth wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
muse wormhole: oh,
reading & Sylvia Plath wormhole: on the raised patio reading Plath
sun & windows wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
talking to myself wormhole: really old
thinking wormhole: relapse
time wormhole: time proceeds
woman wormhole: End Israeli / Apartheid
world wormhole: mass

 

start where you are I

Tags

'scape, 2014, Amsterdam, being, canal, Carol, choice, city, library, poetry, river, trees, writing

 

 

 

                                   start where you are I

                                   “where do you want to sit …”
                                   on six floors of choice in the
                                   city on river and fan of canal
                                   and new trees along the quays
                                   above spreading ripple in all
                                   direction on the river’s bend
                                   and junction “… to write your poem?”

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: gently straighten
Carol wormhole: step
city wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
poetry wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
trees wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
writing wormhole: un … able

 

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

Tags

1970s, 2014, 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_________________________________|—–

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

 

poised patiently for / hours

Tags

2014, Amsterdam, carpet, coffee, drawing, library, portrait, sitting, sound, staying, time, walking, writing

 

 

 

                                she was here before
                                we went for a walk
                                she was here when
                                we came back after
                                a coffee she stayed
                                upright bracelet
                                scraping across her
                                laptop as she was
                                writing or drawing
                                and then plwapp she
                                was done plug-ping
                                out the wall several
                                shuffles of organisation
                                I suppose before the
                                bauk-bakk-bok of
                                high-heel boots that
                                had been cross-legged
                                poised patiently for
                                hours – carpet

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–
carpet wormhole: sunny morning
coffee wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
library wormhole: ‘like a piece of ice on a hot stove / the poem must ride on its own melting’
sitting wormhole: thinking wide enough
sound wormhole: the long road
time & walking wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
writing wormhole: scattered