the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes

Tags

2022, 20th century, 8*, afternoon, banshee, blood, blue, brown, capitalism, Carol, childhood, dream, eyes, faces, fields, garden, gold, growing, history, landscape, life, maelstrom, measure, mist, object, objectification, orange, plane, production, sapphire, sky, sound, space, storm, summer, sweet, time, whorl, World War I

                                                the inevitable tock

                        this queasy land
                        life out of time, this dreamscape
                        with waist-high mist

and then a uni-prop dhrined straight across the sky one endless summer gardenoon

                        made a whorl
                        brown and bloody fields
                        and jar-sweet marmalade

                        wherein history appeared
                        as proliferated objects
                        space now only a measure

                        the face appears
                        in the eye of the storm
                        tarnished blue and palsy

                        measuring gossamer gold
                        between always-contestable markers
                        from an impossible sapphire cap

                        only retrospectively glimpsed now
                        as screaming banshees
                        back in the maelstrom

when we close our eyes

time by Carol Redford; used with permission – thank you

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

20th century wormhole: the reach turned to love
afternoon & Carol & garden & sky & time wormhole: time
blue & gold & life wormhole: Journey
brown & capitalism wormhole: travel // when I die
childhood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
dream wormhole: Candaka
eyes wormhole: Four Noble Truths
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
fields wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
history wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
mist wormhole: taking birth
orange wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sound wormhole: long / road
space wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
storm wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
summer wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

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

        

sweet chestnut

Tags

2015, 6*, ageing, air, being, buttress, chestnut tree, compromise, earth, generations, grass, growth, identity, leaf, letting go, life, reaching, time, trees, trunk

                     sweet chestnut

                     I have
                     long
                     since
                shifted the earth apart
                imperceptible for grass to grow,
                now, unknowing, so new;

                     I have
                     forgotten
                what it’s like to emerge
                without design, and have
                grown buttresses for so long
                they have twisted to comprise;

                     the trunk
                     of upward
                     direction
                that I reach from
                aimlessly with diminishing wisdom
                to a top leaf shifting

                     this way
                     and that
                     between air

 

{there is some anger and sulk that I do not write anymore: not sure if I couldn’t keep up the hi-octane perception or that ‘I was only seeking attention’ explains it all; I still don’t know, but maybe I don’t need to hold such stoic upper lips about it all, arms crossed, turned away; maybe just a bit of compassion wafting this way and that …}

 

 

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

air wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
being wormhole: silence
compromise & letting go wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
grass wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity wormhole: a far grander / Sangha
life wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
trees wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’

 

looking hard enough

Tags

2019, 6*, Blake, books, earth, leaves, left, life, looking, path, private, right, roots, smell, stone, streets, Totnes, trees, walls

                down to the right are paths
                wrap ‘tween stone and wall and rind up dale

                that smell of leaf over earth
                and rooting writhed and coupling too to earth

                and down to the left,
                down through constant broadcast high through leaves,

                high streets of venue and outlet to cater for
                every private over life, that

                will yield a book on Blake,
                if not looking hard enough, and books

                that you already had if you
                were

 

and … eventually you have to go into town; in the 21st century you can’t escape from the town …

 

 

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

books wormhole: beneath
leaves & path wormhole: breakfast
life wormhole: despite all / depiction
looking wormhole: then
smell & stone wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
streets wormhole: riders of the night
trees wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
walls wormhole: travel // when I die

 

despite all / depiction

Tags

2019, 5*, appearance, architecture, art, cows, Darmstadt, east, empire, history, illusion, life, line, mass, reality, survival, thinking

                so, lowing
                and looking east
                from all the crumbling musculature
                of past empire,
                chewing cud

                ninety nine percent
                of all and ever species have become extinct and I
                cannot deconstruct
                the categories-
                enough to read

                the lines and mass
                of stijl, reminds me
                that I try to be far too clever trying to read
                despite all
                depiction

 

mused from a visit ot the Museum at Darmstadt attending the celebration of Jon and Sara’s wedding

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: travel // when I die
history wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
life wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
reality wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
thinking wormhole: riders of the night

 

poessay XI – piquant love

Tags

2019, 6*, arch, cause and conditionality, compromise, crane, doing, identity, intuition, knowledge, letting go, life, love, not knowing, obscuration, opportunity, others, poessay, scandal, self, shadow, sitting, thought, writing

poessay XI –

                lookitallathisabouttheplace –
                both the obscuration and the opportunity difficult
                either to see or to take:

                                I don’t know what to do –
                                inject into causality
                                project over condition (whatever

                                I’m sure that’s not the way to do) –
                                I can only know what I intuit
                                usually de-spite “I don’t know

                                but will step in line
                                if you let me join the gang”
                                best served unnoticeable

                                but not really
                                me no matter how deep the cover;
                                so back to the hunch –

                                crane reaching from the crumbling arch –
                                written up on giddy foolscap
                                (given half the chance, or notice)

                                but this is not me either
                                just a more clever ‘I don’t know’
                                than all the others who don’t know at all

                                or know by some rote too lazy
                                or compromised to know (what I
                                might know) or those who

                                say they know holding me deficient
                                that I don’t behave as they know
                                (compromised to behold), or then

                                there are those who seem to know
                                despite the prevalence and norm all about
                                from whom I absorb

                                through my very xylem
                                and then heavy-shadow them all about
                                but they don’t know either

                                just more mystically or glamorously so
                                until the scandal;
                                so don’t try to know at all

                                because any of this knowing
                                is just a whorl somewhere
                                within cascading causality

                                making sure my specious self;
                                just let the self go
                this knower, this knower so much better and deeper than anyone else who does not even know what is to be known,                

                                let it all go
                                and sit with the not-knowing,
                                watching all the fluidity with

                                                                                                piquant love

 

 

 

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

compromise wormhole: looking for the right exit
crane & doing & identity & thought & writing wormhole: travel // when I die
knowledge wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
letting go wormhole: at Kreukenhof
life wormhole: psssssh
love wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
others wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
shadow wormhole: breakfast
sitting wormhole: – creak —

 

psssssh

Tags

2019, 5*, afterlife, air, attachment, breathing, death, denial, fish, hands, hell, hook, identity, land, life, living, regret, self-cherishing, sound, water

                oh yes, lookit
                a morsel, just
                hanging there
                can’t believe my

                luck, maybe too
                good to be true,
                look, wriggling
                and juicy, ah

                what the hell
                openwide and
                chomp; hmmm,
                juicy, ahh: agh

                hook through
                my lip, no, I
                didn’t mean,
                it wasn’t me, I

                wasn’t there, I
                didn’t do nuffin’,
                quick, I’ll rip my
                lip, it’ll heal, just

                get away, no
                it’s up through
                my mouth, shit
                it’s sticking out

                through my nose
                how do I get
                out of this … but
                it was so juicy –

                ugh, where’s the
                air, where’s all that
                water I was
                thrashing around in

                where am I, who
                are all these others
                with no faces, keep
                still y’all, I can’t

                breathe, I can’t
                move through what
                I live in like I
                used to, what

                these hands
                like lands, who
                am I, where
                do I belong

                heating up
                heating up,
                this land is
                too hot, do

                n’t put me
                on it, I’ll
                disintegrate
                psssssh

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 89: These viciously sharp hooks cast by the kleśa-fishermen – these turbulent thoughts, these hateful emotions – and you, o pitiful mind, have been snagged on them again and again – [net-loads of you] – where you will inevitably be turned over to the guards of hell as raw ingredient, to be cooked-alive in the cauldrons there over and over again.

 

 

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

air wormhole: distance
breathing & life & living & sound wormhole: breakfast
death wormhole: in deed
hands wormhole: mandala offering
identity wormhole: eyes like petals
water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

breakfast

Tags

2019, 7*, blindness, blogging, branches, breakfast, breathing, canopy, coffee, dark, echo, energy, eyes, flash, gooseberry, ground, growth, jam, leaves, life, light, living, monkey, path, reaching, reading, samsara, seeing, shadow, sound, sunlight, toast, trees, walking, way, wind, woodland

                breakfast

                these shadows on a long walk
                through the woodland with only occasional sun

                all there, underneath the undergrowth
                cannot see the ground, the stems that grow from it

                branches reach, leaves envelope everywhere
                from nowhere; weave

                and grow round and entwine each other;
                if I lift the leaves to see my way forward –

                searching for light, searching for life
                to grow, to continue – and if I break the smaller branches to

                make way
                I will scratch my arms, sap will sting my skin, my

                eyes, I cannot see, I cannot see;
                and I won’t see; some trees

                are quicker and older (than me)
                they hold the path and reach wide,

                and creepers make them fat
                and vines hang like curtains of water;

                the canopy above, maximised
                to greatest energy, sent back down through rough wires;

                only when the wind leans
                or a monkey leaps, is there a flash of light, gone by the

                time I’ve looked back down to the path
                blinded, to see where I am

                there must be so much light somewhere
                out there, if only I weren’t stumbling around and bleeding

                … really; I come downstairs
                and breathe coffee and spiced home – made gooseberry jam on home – made toast                           

                while reading my posts … yes,
                a thousand hacks and sap in the dark

                where I cannot see
                and cannot know where I am

                a thousand ‘choks’ deferred
                the undergrowth too dense to echo

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 12: How can I attain happiness when the causes for happiness are obtained only through great effort and very rarely, and when the seeds­ of pain and sorrow are so prevalent, relentless and multifarious that they are realised easily and without any effort? And yet it is only from suffering that the thought and longing for escape and liberation from the suffering of conditioned existence will come about … therefore, O my deepest mind, hold yourself strong, patient, steadfast!

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

branches & breathing wormhole: blue sky high
coffee wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
echo & path & walking wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
eyes & life wormhole: eyes like petals
leaves & living wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
light & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
reading wormhole: {reading right to left}
samsara & sound wormhole: at Kreukenhof
seeing wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

eyes like petals

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, Arya Lalitavistara, attachment, Bodhi Tree, Buddha, compassion, earth, eyes, government, hate, identity, life, lotus, lust, Mara, orbit, power, self-grasping, sitting, stillness, suffering

                the variety of grotesquery
                with which beings grasp their self

                the various grips of power
                through summits of council

                and various arrays of stake and brandishment
                appear as the armies of Mara,

                the thirty two ways of seducing
                that would fill life to the full

                over both his shoulders
                while sat under the Tree as endlessly still

                as the orbiting earth;
                the Bodhisattva turned his head,

                clean as no motivation at all
                to exposure and scattered diaspora,

                but looked on them all
                with eyes like petals

 

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: Candaka
compassion wormhole: at Kreukenhof
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity & life wormhole: none and all
power wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
sitting wormhole: quietly in my quiet house

 

none and all

Tags

2019, 6*, anxiety, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattva Vow, cause and conditionality, emptiness, identity, illusion, life, sentient beings, stance, wonder, world

                acknowledging ourselves locked
                in cause and conditionality
                whether gangsta or mortgaged

                frees us from all stance – there is
                nothing on which to take a stand –
                what a wonderful world we could

                really live, phantasmagoric,
                with no anxiety and infinite wonder,
                none and all: may the

                true nature of myself
                and all others take birth
                where it has not yet done so,

                where it has taken birth,
                may it not decrease, but may it
                increase infinitely

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Bodhichitta wormhole: allowed all gain
emptiness wormhole: mandala offering
identity wormhole: the blessings of the Buddhas
life wormhole: beneath
world wormhole: light of all interaction