Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879

Tags

1879, 7*, axle, boulevard, burn, carriage, chimney, evening, future, horses, individualism, lives, Montmartre, night, passengers, pavement, pediment, petrol, Pissarro, shops, skyline, sun, time, windows

Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879

                each atelier window
                piled up above the
                pediment line,
                shutter-shut but
                lives to be told, each
                with individual chimney

                each carriage with each
                passenger pulled by their
                own horse evenly around
                an axle; fixed,
                only the boulevard proceeds …

Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879

                … through time; but at night
                the shop-fronts burn and
                ignite the petrol pavement,
                there, under the rippled
                surface, the ache of things to come

 

 

 

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

chimney wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
evening wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
night & skyline wormhole: intent
shops wormhole: pediment to behold
sun wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
time wormhole: the old man;
windows wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875

 

Hastings: neither all or nothing

Tags

2018, 7*, being, birch, blue, buildings, church, doing, flats, furniture, grey, Hastings, height, houses, net curtains, passing, pavement, reaching, reason, roads, sea, silver, sky, steeple, steets, time, Victorian houses, walking, windows, wondering, writing

                                                                Hastings: neither all or nothing

                I walked steep down
                                through Victorian house fronts
                                                down the whole height of the
                                                                church steeple

                and stood at the grey sea
                                wondering if there was good reason
                                                to write of it, after all;
                                                                the houses

                were now flats with nets knotted in the
                                windows and abandoned furniture
                                                on the street, but look,
                                                                that corner building

                built to the shape of bifurcating roads, oh
                                and the silver birch at the edge
                                                of the pavement reaching
                                                                up into the blue

                cleared sky and although I needn’t write it,
                                I do; and the roots of this small
                                                tree have bulged the paviours
                                                                unnoticeably over the years

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
birch wormhole: over-pink cagoule
blue wormhole: {reading right to left}
buildings & silver wormhole: London, 1809
church wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
grey & sky wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
net curtains wormhole: keep the light off
passing wormhole: passing
roads wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
sea wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
streets & writing wormhole: on facing the Have
time wormhole: somehow
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian pipework
walking wormhole: blister on me thumb
windows wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871

 

YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1927, 6*, air, branches, division, growth, gutter, pavement, sound, sycamore, trunk, twigs, water, William Carlos Williams, youth

                                YOUNG SYCAMORE

                I must tell you
                this younf tree
                whose round and firm trunk
                between the wet

                pavement and the gutter
                (where water
                is trickling) rises
                bodily

                into the air with
                one undulant
                thrust half its height–
                and then

                dividing and waning
                sending out
                young branches on
                all sides–

                hung with cocoons–
                it thins
                till nothing is left of it
                but two

                eccentric knotted
                twigs
                bending forward
                hornlike at the top

 

from Poems, 1927: its the indigeogravity that I like of justwhatistherehere … only

 

 

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

air wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
branches wormhole: pursued
sound wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
water & William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

 

sometimes

Tags

1966, 2017, 7*, action, armchair, Batman, between, building, city, cowl, fence, gap, immanence, mind, moon, outline, pavement, perspective, shadow, sky, skyline, space, streetlight, thought, true nature, turning

                sometimes even the
                broadest flow of thought –

                fan-pivoted about cowled
                head, turning tightly – cannot

                breech the tightening gap
                where casts the shadow,

                sometimes the mind
                must suspend in space

                and enfold
                its natural shape

                      he vaults
                the fence straight down the center
                      of the city
                and the outline of the moon
                      becomes
                the outline of the downtown skyline

                      between

                the streetlamp on the pavement
                and the moon above the sky

                      stood

                the building like a giant armhair –
                immanent perpsective

 

Detective Comics #354, August 1966; cover: Carmine Infantino; “No Exit For Batman!”, writer: John Broome, artist: Sheldon Moldoff: tight-corner thinking and evasion – the redaction to zero, then out, again, the other side

 

 

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

Batman & thought wormhole: thought
city wormhole: sufficiently away
mind wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
moon & sky wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
shadow wormhole: cool / tiled flooring
skyline wormhole: 1964
space wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
streetlight wormhole: where did the silence go

 

PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, 6*, astonishment, evil, good, gutter, identity, man, minister, pavement, pulpit, sound, sparrows, step, Sunday, thinking, voices, walking, William Carlos Williams, wisdom

                      PASTORAL

                The little sparrows
                hop ingenuously
                about the pavement
                quarreling
                with sharp voices
                over those things
                that interest them.
                But we who are wiser
                shut ourselves in
                on either hand
                and no one knows
                whether we think good
                or evil.
                      Meanwhile,
                the old man who goes about
                gathering dog-lime
                walks in the gutter
                without looking up
                as his tread
                is more majestic than
                that of the Episcopal minister
                approaching the pulpit
                of a Sunday.
                      These things
                astonish me beyond words.

 

from ‘Al Que Quiere’, 1917

it was these ‘pastorals’ that made me notice: there is a way out of societal precursoring, there is a way to see other than through those bi-focal lenses; and there is a way to see that doesn’t involve a revolution, that doesn’t involve the dismantling of what is there at all, but the love and heart to accept what is really there – clean, audial and postural – once the glasses have been taken off; it takes courage, of course, because in doing so you have to dismantle all the constructs which you had thought to be your identity, and even soul – this is why you need love, in order to handle the searing wisdom you will receive, there’s no place for ‘what about me’ (in fact, WCW, in just the previous poem in the Collected (‘Apology’) talked about how it is the faces that make him write, that oblige him to see); the everything about the anything that is ever more true than any myopic and partisan specificity

 

 

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

identity wormhole: anxiety
sound & voices wormhole: transferring
sparrows wormhole: somewhere
Sunday wormhole: buttercups
thinking wormhole: it’s all about…;
walking & William Carolos Williams wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

 

both modern and en-slaved / to life

Tags

2017, 6*, begging, exploitation, giving, Have, identity, life, market, modern slavery, pavement, poverty, Rome, society, streets, walls

                beggars placed disfigured
                either side of a pavement

                wept to the wall or knelt
                at the paviour; snatched up

                from somewhere the plastic
                cuts shut, (there

                to shame a thousand
                passing pardons each to weave

                themselves reassured
                with bonhomie on the next

                street corner, or sometimes maybe
                to ladder a little

                to give) exploited
                to within a width of their life

                making bruised a market
                of the will to Have

                both modern and en-slaved
                to life

 

there is a distinct type of beggar on the streets of Rome which I have not witnessed anywhere else in Europe (and only heard about in India); the legend among Romans is that injured and displaced people are rounded up from poorer areas in eastern Europe, promised medical care (which often leaves them disfigured – all the better to inspire sympathy) and shelter, and kept in very basic conditions on the outskirts of large cities in Italy and taxied in every day to earn their living; there are gangs of people who exploit these beggars in this way – modern slavery

 

 

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

giving wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
Have & society wormhole: amniotic avenue
identity & walls wormhole: I
life wormhole: letting them go
streets wormhole: breakfast

 

perspective

Tags

'scape, 2017, 5*, architecture, bay window, Eastbourne, elm, gables, head, line, looking, passing, pavement, perspective, reading, rooftops, time, walking, wind

                perspective

                the line of gabled rooflines
                over neat bay windows

                and the line of coppiced elms
                edging the pavement

                looking upwards reading
                upwards underneath

                occasional blessings
                of wind about my head

 

 

 

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

architecture & walking wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
Eastbourne & passing & time wormhole: where did the silence go
looking wormhole: it’s all about…;
reading wormhole: two profiles
rooftops wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working

 

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

 

pass and / fro

Tags

2013, 4*, blue, car park, Have, passing, pavement, rain, shopping, sky, storm

                still-wet paviours from the storms
                      packed
                      car-park
                      and the
                      constant
                      pass and
                      fro of
                      want
                all under the blue blue skies

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
Have wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
passing wormhole: and I lose sight of her into memory
sky wormhole: Infantino / district of Gotham
storm wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28

 

to allow / passage

Tags

1940s, 2015, 4*, daughter, father, legacy, looking, mouth, passing, pavement, portrait, profile, Salinger, smile, walking

                           the father
                           walks ahead
                with a Salinger smile from
                           the 1940s

                           to allow
                           passage
                on the narrow pavement
                           and in

                           profile his
                           daughter
                following behind wasn’t smiling
                           looked

                           up to his
                           shoulder
                had exactly the same lower tick to
                           her mouth

 

 

 

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

daughter wormhole: love and precision
father wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
looking wormhole: … swap round
mouth wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
passing & walking wormhole: embodying
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman