taking birth

Tags

2022, 7*, being, birth, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, clouds, compassion, identity, ignorance, jewel, knowledge, landscape, lifetimes, light, lightning, lost, mind, mirror, mist, mother sentient beings, opening, perspective, self-cherishing, self-grasping, shadow, Shantideva, sky, sun, young

                taking birth

        there is
        the mind which cracks within the belly
        of darkest clouds

        throws relief to the landscape
        and populace of the
        whole of sky

        if I could but turn
        just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
        trajectory

        and open
        so much more to just this tempered niche
        of knowledge

        that I could both mirror and shadow
        every fluorescence even before and awhile
        it contrasted

        I’d be young
        that I have long lost and mist
        while evolving this sclerotic eye

        and then
        there’d be sun,
        all my endless malapropriations burnished

        and faceted to a tiny étincelant Indra-jewel
        glinting all direction
        within every perspective respective

…responsive over reactive; effulgent over productive;
avenue’d over viewed; abundant over possessed; dispelled over horded;
homeopathic over pathologic; being over mirror; caught over fallen;
the hand that scratches the foot; not-finished-yet over finished…

 

 

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

being & identity & mirror wormhole: mirror
clouds wormhole: Journey
compassion wormhole: ‘the practice…’
lifetimes wormhole: in deed
light & shadow wormhole: silence
lightning wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
mind wormhole: travel // when I die
mist wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Shantideva wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sky & sun wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’

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‘she shook the sweets …’

Tags

'scape, 1981, 6*, bed, blog, buildings, Carol, clouds, green, grey, lightning, London, love, marriage, Plumstead, red, seagull, Shooters Hill, silence, sky, smoke, Thames, time, wind

she shook the sweets
onto the bed

the grey sky
washed clean

metal smoke rose
then right-angled

a seagull
flew between the buildings

then

 

lightning

{the sweets were Lindt chocolates, individually wrapped in deep-red; the made bed was covered by a deep-green candlewick bed-spread; she was Carol, shortly before or after we were married, staying in what had been my bedroom, halfway up Shooters Hill, overlooking the Thames basin; this was the first poem I published on this blog, almost exactly ten years ago, and, in those early days, she got very little … no views; I think she deserves more than that; want a sweet?}

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

buildings & red & Thames wormhole: travel // when I die
Carol wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
clouds wormhole: here today and …
green & sky & time wormhole: meanwhile
grey wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
lightning wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
London wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
love wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
Plumstead wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
seagull wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: silence
wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

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

 

‘… plane is upright …’

Tags

1965, 2018, 7*, being, brick, buildings, carlights, circular poem, city, curtains, Dr Strange, existence, eyes, field, floor, guidance, hats, life, lightning, looking, moebius, moon, neighbourhood, passing, perspective, plane, rain, resolution, shadow, sign, speech, Stan Lee, steel, step, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, streets, sun, throat, time, turning, vertical, walking, walls, way, windows

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                            when field of all temporal …
                                                              than just a façade but                           …
                                                                                                                                   …
                                      of steel and brick more                                                        … plane is upright
                                    the hatch and cross                                                                          and turned to perspective

                      windows, for a second                                                                                              and route is looped
               through endless endless                                                                                                      through the eye of

       neighbourhood boroughs                                                                                                               its own step, there will be
                 will be revealed as                                                                                                                     curtains of reign

   lightning where canyons                                                                                                                        through which to stride
             will always turn to                                                                                                                          oblivious, but the loss under-                                                                        

        but the reach of eye                                                                                                                             brim will seize the rear
 only to the next puddle;                                                                                                                            palate and numb the speech

       passing carlights look                                                                                                                          as eyes turn to look behind
 the walls and floors when                                                                                                                        themselves, save the

             enough to disregard                                                                                                                  moon will always guide
     leaving flit and twistreach                                                                                                               through dusty streets

          falls like inevitable treacle                                                                                                      far better than the beady sun
                 underbrim gathers then                                                                                               with all its signage and

                              as the ride across the                                                                                paraphanelia, no it is by
                              that resolve will be seized                                                                slanting blind shadows

 

Strange Tales #132-133, May-June 1965, Stan Lee; Steve Ditko: it is my contention that Dr Strange is strange because he doesn’t appear in his own event, he slips in and out at right angles to plane existence thence to vanquish solipsistic threat – story of my life

 

 

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

being & life & rain & walking wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
buildings & moon wormhole: the moon, the moon
circular poem wormhole: amid
city & sun & walls wormhole: space for probing thought
curtains wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
Dr Strange wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’
eyes & looking wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
field & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
lightning wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing
wormhole
passing wormhole: Victorian pipework
shadow & streets & windows wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing

Tags

'scape, 2016, 5*, bench, blackbird, blue, breeze, childhood, cuckoo, daffodil, dinner, echo, field, garden, green, kitchen, lightning, looking, nature, no thought, non-doing, past, present, shadow, sound, speech, thought, time, trees, uncle, walls, wood, writing

 

 

 

                ‘when’s uncle coming back?’ tin-
                colander-clnkscrape-against-
                enamel ‘he’ll be back soon; run

                along now’ plate-shuffling ‘where
                IS Mick, he was going to check
                on something …’ cutlery-placed-

                on-wood ‘oh, he’ll be standing
                in a field somewhere, looking …’
                from arm to nature, doing nothing

                I wish I had more time to float
                about on the surface; I made a
                garden seat from the wood

                of an ancient cottage, six hundred
                years old, a daffodil in the breeze,
                the echo mocking the cuckoo

                in the blue shadows, green pasture
                walls of tree acknowledged by
                no conscious thought; lightning,

                magnetism of blackbird commentary,
                the paper I write on through time left
                not empty-handed as the present slips

                                              through
                                                              sensory
                                                                                 fingers
                                                                                              to the
                                                                                                            dead past

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing

 

 

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

bench & blackbird & blue & breeze & echo & garden & green & shadow & time & trees & wood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
childhood wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
field wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment&
kitchen wormhole: early evening
lightning wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
looking wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
sound & speech wormhole: my seat // now
thought wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
uncle wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
walls wormhole: constant hummm
writing wormhole: tiling

 

“Darling” – poewieview #28

Tags

1971, 2016, agenda, Batman, Bowie, breathing, Frank Miller, head, identity, Joker, lightning, society, sound, storm, talking, the Dark Knight Returns, tv

                                after the storm
                                KRAKKK

                                talking heads
                                bickered about

                                dodging each
                                others’ agendas

                                on institution
                                tvs, when the

                                Joker breathed
                                “Darling”

 

oh, God, I could do better than thaat, Queen Bitch, 1971

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

1971 & Bowie wormhole: ‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27
Batman wormhole: my / superpower
breathing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
identity wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
lightning wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
society wormhole: 1964
sound wormhole: tired
storm wormhole: first Spring storm
talking wormhole: fine
tv wormhole: To my Mum

 

a crack of lightning / in the dark of night

Tags

2016, 7*, arc, architecture, axle, beach, belly, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, buoyancy, centre, choice, connection, dark, emptiness, eyes, gesture, high, lightning, mind, mouth, night, opening, pattern, phantom, pillars, porticos, posture, samsara, shadow, shallow, shame, Shantideva, show, silence, sky, speech, true nature, twilight, uncaused, universe, waves, world

                                a crack of lightning
                                in the dark of night

                                the world casts eyes
                                downwards bullied

                                by the dirty phantoms
                                of obligèd choice with

                                pillars and porticos
                                deep and high across

                                the silent sky like an
                                end of age crepuscule

                                gathering ténèbres,
                                all while the mind revolves,

                                empty to the universe about,
                                empty at the centre of

                                the mighty axle of
                                uncaused leave to turn,

                                when through the merest
                                gesture of pouvoir, an

                                imperturbable shift of
                                posture, a disclosure, is

                                opened and cracks
                                across the sky – the

                                phantoms cannot dully
                                sustain their buoyant

                                suspension – they arc
                                and connect in frantic

                                pattern showing
                                everything like bellies

                                of incestual shame and
                                mouths too small to think

                                to talk; “no more” they
                                wail, leaning into their

                                true nature like shallow
                                waves on a long beach

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Shantideva, chapter one, verse five

 

 

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

architecture & mind & sky wormhole: reaching branchbeach wormhole: development
Bodhichitta wormhole: – sigh! –
emptiness wormhole: the policies came to nothing
eyes wormhole: 1964
mouth wormhole: too late:
night wormhole: work
posture wormhole: impressionism
samsara wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
shadow wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
silence & speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
twilight wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
waves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
world wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

1964

Tags

1960s, 1964, 2014, angel, archetypes, beauty, Burt Bacharach, Diane di Prima, Dionne Warwick, dream, emptiness, feeling, hair, humanity, identity, imagination, life, light, lightning, lime, Manhattan, morning, myth, reality, San Francisco, shadow, streets, table, tectonic plates, the Summer of Love, time, walking, years

 

 

 

                           1964

                           she stood up from the
                           lime-green tablecloth we bought and walked
                           down through the streets
                           between morning shadows …

 

you’ll never get to heaven (if you break my heart): Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach, Hal David; soon after I posted this I sat down and had lunch (sultanas and banana in porridge) and read the following passage which was so apropos that I just had to add it to this work; it is by Diane di Prima, “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, the beginning of chapter 19 – I haven’t asked permission (don’t know how to), but I just wanted to share it, it’s brilliant:

Certain times, certain epochs, live on in the imagination as more than what they ‘actually’ were, and there is always a price to pay for them.   They are, if you look close, times when the boundary between mythology and everyday life is blurred.   The archetypes break out of prison, as it were, and by some collective consent we or many of us, simply choose a myth and live it, heedless of the restrictions of the so-called ‘real world’.   Or we are somehow chosen by the myth we were born to live.   Sometimes with deadly rapidity.

This meeting of world and myth is where we all thought we were going.   Where we thought we wanted to be; it was so beautiful.   Vivid, bright, and deadly, like some tropical flowers.   Not human.   Not cut to our measure.

But we – we couldn’t see that.   Thought we were gods …

‘The 60s’ are often referred to as such a time, though what is usually meant by the term is merely ‘The Summer of Love’ and its aftermath: 1967 and 68.   Tip of the iceburg, if you ask me.

For me most of the 1960s, and on to about 1976, was a time bathed in the mythic.   It was a time when the archetypes stalked the streets of Manhattan, numinous and often deadly.   When angels, incubi, and other dreams of what could be settled in your hair and refused to be brushed aside.   When we see the creatures that lived in the fog worlds of San Francisco as casually as you see your corner grocery.

                                                      .

We had struggled so long and so furiously to find, reach into, the world of our feelings, our secret knowledges, and intuitions, and it was as if Something had caught us up, caught the hand we had slipped through the gap, and that Something was now pulling us in.   Pulling us under.   For as certainly as we knew that behind the facades our parents had lived there was the world of human feeling, behind that world was yet another that sought to claim us.   What I have called the World of Archetypes.   Inexorable bundles of soul purpose, often wearing human or humanoid form, sometimes walking among us.   Without conscience and without regret.   And so beautiful!

As I can tell you now, behind the Archetypes are vast impersonal patterns or textures of energies we might call Orisha.   Or Yidam.

And behind that, perhaps the Void dances, not black, cold, or empty as we have believed, but dancing with light, sheet lightnings spread as a series of surfaces over nothing.   And moving faster than the eye can register.   Even the eye of the mind.

Our downfall was – it was so beautiful.   For us, who had replaced religion, family, society, ethics with Beauty, who saw ourselves as in the service of Beauty, no warnings were understood, no traps anticipated.   To go down in the servive of That – that was the ultimate grace.

But archetypes have their own drama: a vast uncharted cycle of Comedia dell’Arte, which they play out through us, without our informed concent.   And with, ultimate, no concern for human purpose.

And it is not without reason that we have been handed by the science of our time the image, the fact or metaphor, of tectonic plates.   Earth continents floating on a core of molten magma.   As we ourselves float, melting a little, changing shape.   Bumping against each other, lifted by, dependent on, in total chemical exchange with, the molten soul stuff I have here called Archetypes.   That seeks to brek through to the surface wherever the plates are thin.

The plates were very thin in 1964.

 

 

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

1964 wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
beauty wormhole: [s]
[Burt] Bacharach wormhole: 1963
Dionne Warwick wormhole: nothing to write
dream wormhole: dream career // groggy
emptiness & walking wormhole: and that’s where I are
hair wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
identity wormhole: rhymed
Manhattan wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
life wormhole: mauve
light wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
lightning wormhole: first Spring storm
lime wormhole: thick thick fog
morning wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
reality wormhole: top table
shadow wormhole: up on the hill
streets wormhole: tabla
table wormhole: Soir Bleu, 1914
time wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
years wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13

 

first Spring storm

Tags

1985, air, blue, childhood, electric, house, identity, ink, lightning, rain, red, sense of self, Spring, storm, wind, writing

 

 

 

                first Spring storm

                                red-ink air

                                              and
                                              as the rain
                                              blows against the house

                                                              electric blue

 

 

 

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

air & blue & red & writing wormhole: red ink
childhood wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
house & rain wormhole: always
identity wormhole: miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22
lightning wormhole: dream 230315
Spring wormhole: opening
storm wormhole: The Louvre in a Thunderstorm, 1909
wind wormhole: and that’s where I are

 

dream 230315

Tags

2015, airport, beach, business, Carol, Charlotte, dream, horizon, identity, leisure, life, lightning, looking, morning, Mum, plane, sea, station, sunshine, talking, time, town, train, walking, windows, Woolwich, work

 

 

 

                                                      dream 230315

                           walking through town in a Woolwich
                           cleaned timeless on a sunny morning

                           into the clinic along Powis Street on time
                           for my eventual appointment in life;

                           the first client amid the beginning-of-day
                           chat, dispersal into action behind screens;

                           she sits on the settee, I sit on the swivel
                           chair; she looks at me       assessing, I feel

                           good in my natty casual clothes; she cannot
                           speak, tries several times, she consults a

                           colleague; they are surprised, the consultation
                           becomes a sit-down party, I, fade from the

                           scene … walking about the seaside town, the
                           preparations for the coming day of all the

                           business and the leisure to be made from it –
                           hand-painted lettering in bleary windows a

                           metal stand is handed down to the beach
                           showing the way to the after-dinner boat

                           trip (where will it moor?); the water is full
                           of junked buoys, slimey and sun-faded; a sea

                           plane passes overhead up the beach – no help –
                           a huge helijet comes in low – gigantic – heading

                           for the airport – airport? – falling, she’s
                           too big for the town, nose-diving, disappears

                           into collapse like a building with plumes
                           of columns and lightning on the horizon;

                           Carol and the kids; I run to where I left them,
                           not at the station, no entry; but here is

                           Charlotte, only 6; train is leaving town,
                           Charlotte has gone, I cannot see Carol;

                           I run down the platform to say goodbye,
                           she turns to face me; she is Mum

 

 

 

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

beach & morning & time wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
Carol & looking wormhole: recline
Charlotte wormhole: ‘my Dot …’
dream & windows & work wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
horizon wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting
identity wormhole: it is complete
life wormhole: Detective Comics #345
lightning wormhole: footfall
Mum wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
sea wormhole: Buddha / Shakyamuni
talking wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
train wormhole: travelling
walking wormhole: earthed
Woolwich wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile