there will be ovations

Tags

2018, 7*, acting, audience, betrayal, blood, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breathing, brother, children, circumstance, concentration, doors, emptiness, enemy, expectation, identity, life, light, machinations, music, naked, others, realisation, role, self-grasping, self-image, silence, sky, society, sound, stage, theatre, thinking, traffic

                ah, there’s the theatre and
                inside, the stage is set,
                the audience settled, the
                lights down, thank the fates,

                I almost didn’t make it –
                the traffic at this time of day! –
                the other is here, good,
                warming up, waving that

                stick all about, making whoosh
                noises, being all athletic and
                disciplined, I’d better get ready,
                torn robe on, oh, the blood

                smear it on, quick, and
                the hanging limb, OK,
                concentrate, breathe – be
                the character – I need

                to give the performance
                they are expecting – the
                circumstance, the machinations,
                the betrayal … no, not enough,

                what if it happened to my
                children, what if it were my
                brother with the stick, oh yes,
                it’s come to this, use the silence

                of the realisation, use the
                music – slamming doors
                in the sky! – no, this is more
                than my story, this is the

                history of my nation, quick,
                I’m ready now, I’m naked,
                I’m gutted and impaled, now
                for the finishing blow – how

                glorious this will be, I have
                so much invested in this,
                there will be ovations and
                encores, so worthwhile,

                I hope he has practised
                well – knows where the
                padding is; wait, is that
                a blade, tied to, the end

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI – verse 43-44: [43] Here is a brandished weapon, and here is my body ready and presented, both of them the causes of my eventual suffering. My attacker has laid hold of his stick (tena śastraṃ), and I both wear and brandish my body. With what should I get angry? [44] It is I who have obtained and hold on to this boil, this pressured blister of a human body – sack of suffering – which cannot even bear to be touched and, moreover, it is I who am blind-sided through my own attachment to it, so that when the pain comes and the ‘boil’ bursts, with whom should I get angry?

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: tram
breathing & society wormhole: the reach turned to love
doors wormhole: pursued
emptiness & life & others wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
identity wormhole: I
light wormhole: travelling / back
music wormhole: and … // … sound
realisation wormhole: passing
silence wormhole: birth in the world
sky wormhole: horizon
sound wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
thinking wormhole: ‘ouch’

 

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and … // … sound

Tags

2019, 8*, allegory, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, conceit, hierarchy, hope, horizon, humanity, identity, ignorance, kleshas, lies, love, music, parents, renunciation, role, royalty, society, sound, teaching, time

                                and …

                … there, where humans
                have found themselves
                in ever-corporate cluster

                evolving mass of breadth
                and hope in horizon; see,
                they conceive their self

                in immaculate conception:
                pyramidically instilled
                and royal to behold;

                it is their that I will
                be, allegorical to there
                conceit, I shall higher their boat

                to get to the other
                shore, I will honour their
                parents, I will love

                their fulsome lies, but
                the time will come
                that I shall cede the role

                and break their fragile Is
                when the boxes with
                broken strings nonetheless …

                                … sound

 

inspired both from, and within, the ‘Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra‘, which is the life-story of the Buddha, the title of which is beautiful: ‘Arya‘ meaning ‘higher, exalted’ as in connected to reality; ‘Lalita‘ meaning ‘play, game, role’, that everything is not just as it seems … an allegory, although coupled with ‘Arya’ it is an allegory that doesn’t merely ‘point to’ a deeper/higher meaning, it comes from and dwells within that meaning … playfully, poetically, suggestively, also suggesting how the scripture is to be read; ‘Vistara‘ meaning any and all of ‘breadth, dimension, elaboration, enlargement, expansion, extension, spread, width’ – the ‘exponetialising’ means of coupling the ‘Arya’ with the ‘Lalita’ parts; ‘Nama‘, meaning ‘named, called’; ‘Mahayana‘ the spiritual way and means of exponentialising; ‘Sutra‘ a ‘discourse’ or ‘means’ given by the Buddha, yes this is an autobiography, but so much more if read with eyes wide open; there are several allusions to musical instruments that ‘sound’ (and sometimes ‘speak’) when not played, or when broken; ‘their’ and ‘there’ in the 4th stanza poem are sic and are meant to be questioning both identity and place in samsara

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: with all love released
horizon wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
identity & society wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
love wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
music wormhole: on facing the Have
sound wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
teaching wormhole: between
time wormhole: ‘there, …’

 

on facing the Have

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 4*, dialogue, distraction, January, music, temptation, William Carlos Williams, wind, windows, writing

                                   JANUARY

                Again I reply to the triple winds
                running chromatic fifths of derision
                outside my window:
                                                     Play louder.
                You will not succeed. I am
                bound more to my sentences
                the more you batter at me
                to follow you.
                                         And the wind,
                as before, fingers perfectly
                its derisive music.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

it’s the immanence of writing within the experience that it is writing about that makes writing a wrestling match between perception and the thought thereof …

 

 

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

distraction wormhole: divergent // direction
music wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
wind & windows wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George

 

TREES by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, black, dark, grey, hill, identity, melody, music, night, north, poplars, scale, sky, stars, trees, vague, voices, weave, William Carlos Williams, wind, yellow

                                TREES

                Crooked, black tree
                on your little grey-black hillock,
                ridiculously raised one step toward
                the infinite summits of the night:
                even you the few grey stars
                draw upward into a vague melody
                of harsh threads.

                Bent as you are from straining
                against the bitter horizontals of
                a north wind,–there below you
                how easily the long yellow notes
                of poplars flow upward in a descending
                scale, each note secure in its own
                posture–singularly woven.

                All voices are blent willingly
                against the heaving contra-bass
                of the dark but you alone
                warp yourself passionately to one side
                in your eagerness.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

a lot of these poems were some of the first poems I read with intent and an open, clean mind that had no precursor of what to see or find; and their reading imprinted deep, even when I didn’t read that well or attentively or learnedly; and, much later, when I attempted to re-ignite my writing, the language emerged like tramlines, there to follow, but fresh, utterly fresh; and utterly mine – which would never have been but for reading WCW

 

 

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

black wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey & sky & voices & wind wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
identity wormhole: moon- // washed
music wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
night wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
stars wormhole: EL HOMBRE by William Carlos Williams
trees wormhole: presence
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

animus rises – powieview #37

Tags

1971, 2016, 7*, adolescence, Allen Ginsberg, anima, animus, bliss, body, Bowie, broken, business, castration, chair, embarrasment, eyes, finger, genitalia, green, guitar, Howl, identity, music, open, rooftops, sex, touch

                ah, the lick the
                ahh-dolescence
                the rise of anima
                touched and sigh’d

                embodied, oo, I’ve
                got one of those,
                one of these, I’m
                one of them, wav-

                ing genitals to
                eternity from the
                rooftops until,
                embarrassed,

                animus rises
                statuesque to the
                cause, blissfully
                broken across

                open green eyes,
                easy shots from
                the swivel chair
                with cut-off finger

 

sigh‘d from the tumultuous adolescence of Ziggy Stardust, 1971 and Soul Love, 1971

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

 

 

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

Bowie wormhole: loss
eyes wormhole: coagulating
green wormhole: olive trees
guitar wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
identity wormhole: it’s all about…;
music wormhole: quiet river
open wormhole: frame
rooftops wormhole: between

 

quiet river

Tags

2016, 5*, Granada, music, quiet, river, windows

                the dormer window
                of the dilapidated escuela
                de música, a sheet holder,

                perhaps, to turn notation
                to wave, perhaps perched
                above the quiet river

 

part of a sunny melange: Granada & Other Poems

 

 

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

music wormhole: is there anything to write?
quiet wormhole: is this it // all the time
river wormhole: river
windows wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

is there anything to write?

Tags

2014, 4*, beach, belonging, eyes, girls, Gran Canaria, Have, innocence, inspiration, looking, men, music, others, passing, pointlessness, toes, trance, walking, writing

                I pick the book up again
                is there anything to write?

                but the mistake of looking around
                for the hook       on the beach

                and all I find is bait: peoples’ toes and
                scars of show the butts and tans of innocence

                the tattoos of belong and the passing music of trance
                the chest-walk of men the eyes-down of girl

                to the bottom of the page
                where I find I have written nothing

 

 

 

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

beach wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
eyes & Have & looking & music & writing wormhole: concordance
others wormhole: so pleased to see you again
passing wormhole: lime crocs
pojntlessness wormhole: this sodden land
walking wormhole: dear Lucy

 

concordance

Tags

2014, 7*, age, armour, discovery, Donald Fagen, expectation, eyes, flow, Gran Canaria, Have, holiday, identity, image, life, looking, music, passing, Salinger, sea, sitting, sun, Sylvia Plath, waves, writing

                                                                                                how to be
                                                                                in a holiday resort
                                                                where the Have is strolled
                                                and swaggered and tattoo’d
                                catching glance like after-image
                when the eyes are closed?

                                                                ~O___,

                                why aren’t I writing?            Well
                                                                I am
                but I was expecting to see something else when I wrote
                                the flow of another holiday
                                                rather than the
                                                                concordance
                                                that I have still yet to discover
                                in my writing eyes wide
                                                closed

                                                                ,___O~

                                                                certainly
                                                the sun and skin keep me
                                                                lapping without gain
                                                                and replaying the chorus from the ‘Nightfly’                
                                                                                unsure if I ever got the verse

                                                                ___“O”—

                                                                but nevertheless
                                                I still worry that I don’t write
                                                                as Plath and Salinger would lifefully so

                                                                I even know the answer
                                but I cannot sit at the moment,
                                                                I thought I had armour by the sea but it has

                                                                so quickly rusted
                                                and I’m overweight and 54 thinking
                                                                of illness and waste

 

 

 

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

eyes & Salinger wormhole: slightly / uphill
flow wormhole: happen//ing
Have wormhole: pass and / fro
holiday wormhole: holiday
identity wormhole: h’rk ‘eh ‘heh ‘hair ‘yeah ‘eh?
life wormhole: I turn to wake up
looking wormhole: Tara mantras
music wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
passing wormhole: ‘someone …’
sea & sun & Sylvia Plath & waves & writing wormhole: jump start
sitting wormhole: woman / has worked in the gym / got a build

 

in the Java ‘n’ Jazz

Tags

2014, 6*, afternoon, Ashdown Forest, balance, bay window, bossanova, clockwork, coffee shop, Forest Row, guitar, jazz, music, openness, pavement, Saturday, shops, Sunday

                                                                                in the Java ‘n’ Jazz the
                                                                                                                bossanova
                                                                                                guitar

                                                                chorded and semi toned (down the
                                                                                                neck) and
                                                                                always regained on the

                                                minor before the bay window-front
                                                                                onto
                                                                a muggy Saturday afternoon

                                like Sunday used to be with all the shops
                                                                closed and
                                                with clockwork

                the pavement shop sign is folded up
                                                and returned closed
                                by the door

with next week’s opening times

 

first published in the Poetry Jar 160914; the Java ‘n’ Jazz is a coffee shop that relaxes in the small village of Forest Row in Ashdown Forest

 

 

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

afternoon wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Ashdown Forest wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
balance wormhole: balance
coffee shop wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
guitar wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25
music wormhole: ‘someone …’
openness wormhole: this time
Saturday wormhole: time
shops wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
Sunday wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance