The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, arms, Atlantic City, beauty, being, black, blue, candle, cheek, city, colour, communication, daisies, dress, ears, eyes, fingers, glass, green, grey, hair, hands, hips, knuckles, lips, looking, matches, mirror, mouth, movement, open, orange, others, portrait, poverty, red, reflection, ring, ruby, sea, seagull, silence, skin, sound, speech, temptation, thinking, walking, waves, white, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman, wrists, writing

                            1. THE WAITRESS

                No wit (and none needed) but
    the silence of her ways, grey eyes in
    a depth of black lashes–
    The eyes look and the look falls.

    There is no way, no way. So close
    one may feel the warmth of the cheek and yet there is
    no way.

    The benefits of poverty are a roughened skin
    of the hands, the broken
    knuckles, the stained wrists.

                Serious. Not as the others.
    All the rest are liars, all but you.
                                        Wait on us.
    Wait on us, the hair held back practically
    by a net, close behind the ears, at the sides of
    the head. But the eyes–
                            but the mouth, lightly (quickly)
    touched with rouge.

    The black dress makes the hair dark, strangely
    enough, and the white dress makes it light.
    There is a mole under the jaw, low under
    thr right ear–

                And what arms!

                                        The glassruby ring
    on the fourth finger of the left hand.

                                        –and the movements
under the scant dress as the weight of the tray
    makes the hips shift forward slightly in lifting
    and beginning to walk–

    The Nominating Committee presents the following
    resolutions, etc. etc. etc. All those
    in favor signify by saying, Aye. Contrariminded,
    No.
      Carried.
                And aye, and aye, and aye!

    And the way the bell-hop runs downstairs:
          ta tuck a
                ta tuck a
                      ta tuck a
                            ta tuck a
                                  ta tuck a
    and the gulls in the open window screaming over the slow
    break of the cold waves–

                O unlit candle with the soft white
    plume, Sunbeam Finest Safety Matches all together in
    a little box–

                And the reflections of both in
    the mirror and the reflection of the hand, writing
    writing–
                Speak to me of her!-

                –and nobody else and nothing else
    in the whole city, not an electric sign of shifting
    colors, fourfoot daisies and acanthus fronds going from
    red to orange, green to blue–forty feet across–

                                        Wait on us, wait
    on us with your momentary beauty to be enjoyed by
    none of us. Neither by you, certainly,
                                                nor by me.

 

with love from Poems, 1928

 

 

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

beauty & speech wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
being wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
black wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
blue & grey & writing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
city & William Carlos Williams wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
communication wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
eyes wormhole: between
glass & red wormhole: travelling / back
green & woman wormhole: on facing the Have
hair wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
hands wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
looking wormhole: waiting to be heard
mirror wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
mouth wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
open wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
orange & others & walking wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
reflection wormhole: I
sea & seagull & waves wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
silence & sound wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
thinking wormhole: there will be ovations
white wormhole: alabaster balustrade
windows wormhole: birth in the world

 

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waiting to be heard

Tags

2019, 6*, air, compassion, contempt, east, feet, hope, indifference, Lanzarote, lifetimes, logo, looking, others, passing, promenade, story, toes, walking, west

                we look at each other –
                along the promenade east or west –

                within packaging-design, with
                burnt-core contempt, or we don’t notice

                with open air-indifference; but
                we have exposed feet, we lift and swing

                and place and stay, transferring,
                in a thousand different ways, with

                unsettling hope where
                the thousand different toes tell a

                thousand different stories in a
                thousand different ways, all just

                waiting to be heard

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: birth in the world
compassion wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
feet wormhole: pediment to behold
lifetimes & looking wormhole: I
others wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
passing wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
promenade wormhole: amniotic avenue
walking wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

I

Tags

2018, 6*, anatta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, identity, karma, left, lifetimes, looking, reflection, right, self-cherishing, time

                                    I get what I deserve,
                                    I can see it there in the mirror
                                    looking back at me,

                        it seems its left is my right but it is
                        all just the same
                        reflection

            it would be better
            if I hadn’t brandished this ‘I’ about in the past
            making it all right and powerful over others whenever I could,

            simply ending up
            with this pain in my
            own neck …

            it would be better if I
            didn’t have this
I

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 42: In previous lives and former times, I myself have subjected just such pain, suffering and torment on other sentient beings, therefore, it is only just and fitting that I, the former perpetrator, who distressed, wronged and harmed all these beings, deserve the return, that I become the attacked, that this becomes my lot.

 

 

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

identity wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: oh, alright then
looking wormhole: somehow
reflection wormhole: travelling / back
time wormhole: alabaster balustrade

 

somehow

Tags

2018, 5*, corridors, dream, embracing, forgiveness, head, looking, manager, now, retirement, school, speech, teaching, time, visit

                                somehow

                                I was visiting back
                where everything seemed to have changed
                                … ‘I’ll let Simon, here
                take you there’, I let
                                Simon know
                that I knew these corridors,
                                had worked here a time ago
                for quite a time …
                                and in the lunch hall
                the manager who’d watched it fall apart
                                in unmoveable brief
                was making her way
                                my way we,
                would have to meet, I looked down
                                to greet, she looked down
                to avoid hoping there
                                was anything else to notice,
                I took her head in my arms
                                because I think it’s
                OK to say “it’s OK”
                                now

 

 

 

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

dream wormhole: on facing the Have
looking & retirement & school wormhole: to let be
school wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
teaching wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
time wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

 

to let be

Tags

2018, 6*, allowing, being, change, echo, identity, letting go, looking, meaning, mist, Mum, prospect, purpose, putting out, retirement, rhetoric, school, shopping, space, streets, voice, wisdom

                                so I stopped working
                in an institution that couldn’t converse within its own rhetoric

                                couldn’t find a voice
                to navigate through all that drifting mist, and got lost, so I

                                no longer comb
                through shops and streets looking for echoes of a lost chord

                                that would weave
                my lives back together (couldn’t find it in all that looking),

                                all that
                                anxious putting-out
                and prospect, finding everything changed and nothing done,

                                and no monument
                that I was ever really there other than the space through

                                which the change
                happened glorious to allow, nothing to behold, everything

                                to be, a lot of
                history to let go – it was obstructive of me to try to solidify

                                there anyway,
                I should have stayed with the wisdom I inherited before

                                I was born,
                allowed the acceptance of my mother’s wisdom: to let be

 

 

 

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

being & identity & meaning wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
change wormholeL The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
echo wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
letting go wormhole: beguiled / desire
looking wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
mist wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
Mum wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
retirement wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
school & streets wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
space wormhole: space for probing thought

 

SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 7*, balcony, blue, boy, car, driving, face, girl, house, laughing, law, leg, looking, man, mind, no-mind, passing, roads, smile, travelling, watch, William Carlos Williams, woman

                XI

                In passing with my mind
                on nothing in the world

                but the right of way
                I enjoy on the road by

                virtue of the law–
                I saw

                an elderly man who
                smiled and looked away

                to the north past a house–
                a woman in blue

                who was laughing and
                leaning forward to look up

                into the man’s half
                averted face

                and a boy of eight who was
                looking at the middle of

                the man’s belly
                at a watchchain–

                The supreme importance
                of this nameless spectacle

                sped me by them
                without a word–

                Why bother where I went?
                for I went spinning on the

                four wheels of my car
                along the wet road until

                I saw a girl with one leg
                over the rail of a balcony

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “In passing with my mind …”, the perfect beginning, middle and end of a poem; I read this when I was younger, possibly a bit impatient that I wanted something more to happen to call it a happening and also a little annoyed at the snagged details in passing thinking them too particular to so little that was happening … but I liked it; and this liking slipped in between my pomposity and fussiness and worked its way out over following decades through poems exploring this same sense of passing not being the start of something and its almost immediate dissolution, but its almost-not-being-there being its universal reality: vivid, important and sufficient unto itself – “the supreme importance / of this nameless spectacle”; it wasn’t until later I read more of the text in which WCW embedded these poems, raised beds, nonetheless, with earth so finely nourished and turned over that you could sink your fist into it up to your elbow: “When in the condition of imaginative suspense only will the writing have reality … Not to attempt, at that time, to set values on the word being used, according to presupposed measures, but to write down that which happens at that time / To perfect the ability to record at the moment when the consciousness is enlarged by the sympathies and the unity of understanding which the imagination gives, to practise skill in recording the force moving, then to know it, in the largeness of its proportions …”

 

 

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

blue wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
girl wormhole: ash leaves
house wormhole: presence
looking & travelling wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
mind wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
passing & roads wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
smile wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
woman wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold

 

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

Tags

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

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

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

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

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

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

blister on me thumb

Tags

2018, 6*, being, breathing, cold, day, distraction, finding, growth, hope, inspiration, looking, money, need, not knowing, notebook, purpose, shelf, step, talking to myself, teeth, thrill, walking, windows, zip

                blister on me thumb
                so I did the zip right up

                to walk around the cold day
                to look for finds that I

                knew I no longer need
                nor even the thrill of find

                what I hadn’t known
                was there let alone the

                inspiration that I think
                to hold the day worthwhile

                while yet the outbreaths
                follow the in- without

                step or hope under my
                very nose, and I make

                from window to shelf
                distracted the while by

                tugging the zip back down
                over the separated teeth

                before I can reach for
                wallet or note-pad

 

 

 

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

being & windows wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
breathing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
distraction wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
looking & walking wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: only

 

THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 5*, black, carnation, growth, hands, loneliness, looking, mouth, pink, school, schoolgirls, streets, time, walking, white, William Carlos Williams, yellow

                                THE LONELY STREET

                School is over. It is too hot
                to walk at ease. At ease
                in light frocks they walk the streets
                to while the time away.
                They have grown tall. They hold
                pink flames in their right hands.
                In white from head to foot,
                with sidelong, idle look–
                in yellow, floating stuff,
                black sash and stockings–
                touching their avid mouths
                with pink sugar on a stick–
                like a carnation each holds in her hand–
                they mount the lonely street.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

 

 

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

black wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
hands wormhole: we held cold hands
loneliness wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
looking & streets & time & walking wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
mouth wormhole: letting them go
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pigs
school wormhole: how to teach
white wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

‘… 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