1968

Tags

1960s, 1968, 2014, 5*, air, avenue, blue, breeze, buildings, Burt Bacharach, bus, city, Dionne Warwick, direction, lemon, life, lime, mauve, mist, morning, openness, possibility, roads, sky, white, years

                      1968

                      the rear of the bus
           moved out of the scene – whitened blue

                      the wide open spring air
           reached between buildings – to grimy lime

                      and avenues rolled down
           in every direction – through flash lemon

                      bolts of mist and haze
           across each intersection – and ankle mauve

                      and slightly too little
           worn – for the morning shift of breezes

 

promises promises – more Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach sustaining another burst of breath-takingly open and naïve possibility from the later 60s

 

 

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

1968 & Burt Bacharach & Dionne Warwick & mauve wormhole: 1968 – orange sand and mauve mist
air wormhole: faintly apricot air?
blue & life wormhole: to rescue something
breeze wormhole: the bench
buildings wormhole: Open – All – Ours
bus wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
city wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
lemon wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
lime wormhole: magnificent salad
mist & sky wormhole: vastly
morning & white wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
openness wormhole: breathing out
roads wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment
years wormhole: 1967

 

magnificent salad

Tags

2016, 5*, acceptance, Alhambra, almonds, apple, being, blue, brown, coffee, colour, custard, embracing, Granada, green, holiday, lime, morning, oil, openness, orange, peach, prunes, red, salad, table, time, walking, yellow

                magnificent salad

                you take diced red and yellow apple
                and sliced melocotone flesh
                a few dark-shredded prunes and a
                sprinkle of roasted abrezia nuts

                a lightwood table top to eat from
                in the lo-fat custard (with hint of lime
                from the pulled curtain) apartamiento
                and the blood-orange shirt discarded

                from the morning’s walk, in the burnt
                orange street of a constant 30º Granada
                of a currently perpetual 2 pm, then
                just a twist of no-tickets to the Red

                Castle all week; a cup of milky coffee
                waiting, but not before I drink the
                run-off olive oil and soy sauce from
                the green and bluely leafed plate

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: and smile / like a bud
being wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
blue wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
brown & red & yellow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
coffee wormhole: quick inventory after coffee
green & walking wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
holiday wormhole: Granada holiday …
lime wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!
morning & table wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
oppenness wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
orange wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
time wormhole: moment

 

AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

Tags

1960s, 2013, 6*, abdomen, attention, birth, emergence, evening, eyes, feeling, flower, heathland, history, identity, infrastructure, life, light, lime, looking, meaning, mist, possibility, posture, reading, rebirth, shade, shoulders, sitting, streets, time, womb, writing

                AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

                decade of ever-immanent emergence
                but yet womb-like misty with heathland-lime streak

                forefeeling borne and colourful possibility
                then birthed starving and naked into too local streets

                with all their historynfrastructure; born within
                two months of the 1960s, towards the end

                I was flowering, but with a knuckle in the
                stem below the petal receptacle, made me

                always look downwards to the ground: I sit
                for hours hunched over a table writing, I sit

                for evenings correcting a tendency to
                close my eyes, I sit slouched in all manner of

                chair reading and reading; it will take decades
                of shade and whither before I raise

                my face to the startling of light and correct
                my shoulders and abdomen

 

in the immortal words of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: “the path is the goal”

 

 

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

abdomen wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
attention & writing wormhole: magnetic field
emergence wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
evening wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
eyes & light wormhole: languidly close the portal
history wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
identity wormhole: travel
life wormhole: 35 years ago …
lime wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
looking & streets & time wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
meaning wormhole: tiling
mist wormhole: the purple mist between
posture wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
reading wormhole: lonely and free
sitting wormhole: even / a second

 

weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33

Tags

1971, 2016, afternoon, air, blue, Bowie, eyes, green, grey, kitchen, lime, looking, piano, shadow, sky, windows

                           weight of high sash windows

                           the under-cupboard shadow
                           hung lime tendrils in daylight

                           air out the corner of my eye
                           without looking it took the

                           whole afternoon to slowly
                           drift across the blue and green

                           kitchen achieving a seamless
                           high grey sky – plant shake on the piano

 

mlred in the dry quick of sand Quicksand, 1971

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

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
air wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
blue & shadow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – from arm to nature, doing nothing
Bowie wormhole: carpet worn / to the backing – poewieview #30
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – mmpph’
green & piano wormhole: trellis / and wisteria – poewieview #29
grey & looking wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
kitchen wormhole: what life went on
lime wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
sky wormhole: Is There / Life on Mars? – poewieview #32
windows wormhole: El Palacio, 1946

 

the figure “46” / in frosted glass

Tags

'scape, 1999, 5*, air, black, cabinet, childhood, doors, Eglinton Hill, evening, glass, hall, inside, life, lime, lino, morning, outside, time, white, womb

                                              ^{the figure
                                              in frosted glass}

                                                                                              morning

                                              black & white
                                              chequered lino

                                              a single cabinet
                                              in the hall

                                              lime air through
                                              the front door

                evening

 

 

 

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

air & black & evening & morning & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
childhood wormhole: ashramas
doors wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
Eglinton Hill wormhole: currency of generations
glass wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
life & time wormhole: listen willya
lime wormhole: bavardage

 

bavardage

Tags

2016, buildings, career, city, columns, dream, Europe, eyes, façade, green, lime, passing, talking

 

 

 

                                   as we talked
                                   standing about
                                   like columns

                                   a building moved
                                   in the corner
                                   of my eye; I broke

                                   the circle to see it
                                   move independent
                                   of the learnèd city,

                                   but they wouldn’t
                                   believe me if I told them,
                                   so I said nothing

                                   while they
                                   continued their bavardage
                                   as it drew down

                                   central avenue, a lime-
                                   green building on a
                                   trailer pulled by

                                   I know not what but
                                   the crowds of common élan
                                   the facades turned

                                   their mutual angles
                                   slowly as it passed,
                                   I knew I needn’t have

                                   told them, they
                                   hadn’t noticed it
                                   anyway

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: tabla
career wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
city & passing wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
dream & lime wormhole: 1964
eyes wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
green wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
talking wormhole: early evening

 

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

 

thick thick fog

Tags

2013, awareness, charcoal, dragon, fog, glimpse, grey, letting go, lifetimes, lime, olive, pattern, pollution, searching, sitting, waves

                                                                                 thick thick fog

                                              charcoal grey and, oh, so enveloping …
                                                              … quite interesting, really, but
                                                                                 lifetimes’ thick

                                so
                do I look for where it parts by itself –
                                where an olive or a lime seem to suggest and to beckon and
                                chase them like a barking dragon wherever they may go

                                or
                do I sit here
and watch the billows overlap and pollute in all their pattern and wait
                                for when the gap comes
                                to me

                when I’ll be ready for it?

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938
fog wormhole: sit
grey & waves wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
letting go wormhole: a little bit of love / and muffle
lifetimes wormhole: Hotel Room, 1931
lime wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
olive wormhole: the edge has come …
searching wormhole: Grizedale College
sitting wormhole: because

 

finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

 

 

 

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915¹

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill² a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill³,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple⁴ in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;⁵ buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square⁶ with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,⁷ under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

¹ this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
² Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
³ All Saints Shooters Hill
⁴ Woolwich Gurdwara
⁵ woolwich new road and buildings
⁶ true nature II
⁷

 

 

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

brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

David Bowie – Iris

Tags

2014, anxiety, arch, blue, Bowie, carpet, eyes, India, iris, lemon, lime, mauve, mist, portrait, sky, south, stone, time

 

 

 

                                Iris

                on the wide steppes
                swathed languid and anxious
                in belts of lime mist before
                an open stone archway

                eyes raise dreadful
                through lemon carpets
                to blueing sky and – mauve –
                washes southwards

 

I wrote this of an iris I found in Darmstadt, Germany; what drew me to it was the notion of the Aryan peoples of central Asia who penetrated into the Indian sub-continent and flowered the Upanishads; but the poem still didn’t feel quite complete until I heard of the death of David Bowie this morning

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
blue wormhole: “walking …”
Bowie wormhole: New York Movie, 1939
carpet wormhole: sit
eyes & mauve & sky wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
lemon wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
lime wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
mist wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
stone wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
time wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948