the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1930, 7*, attic, day, desire, light, night, poem, roof, streets, William Carlos Williams, windows

                THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE:

                                the unused tent
                                of

                                bare beams
                                beyond which

                                directly wait
                                the night

                                and day–
                                Here

                                from the street
                                by

                                   *   *   *
                                   *   S   *
                                   *   O  *
                                   *   D  *
                                   *   A  *
                                   *   *   *

                                ringed with
                                running lights

                                the darkened
                                pane

                                exactly
                                down the center

                                is
                                transfixed

 

from Poems, 1930: the word becomes the poem, nothing beyond the word itself – cf. * SODA * – but everything in it just the same; WCW was an atomist, a catalyst and maybe, even, an alchemist, but he was not a dogmatist or a fantasist and definitely not a rhapsodist, although he was a poet, and very often-enough, didn’t know it

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

light & windows wormhole: window
night & william Carlos Williams wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
roof wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
streets wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896

 

What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

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

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George

Tags

2018, 7*, branches, breeze, brother, child, clouds, cuckoo, dust, earth, echo, Essex, green, hands, home, journey, land, lark, life, meadow, mind, pink, poem, retirement, scythe, shirt, Shropshire, silence, smell, speech, stone, time, wind, woodland, writing

                                old George

                long retired from land, unable to
                keep soil from his boots, continues
                working, earth and life, picking up

                branches and stones; the blades
                cut clean, men in the meadows
                sway to the rhythm of scythes,

                stems fall graceful to swathe and
                green aroma, the diminishing island
                cut to the last, magnified by

                silence, a lark high above the
                dust; the breezes will dry the
                stalks to rustle and the distant

                woods will echo – cuckoo; it is
                then the child places the building
                block on the nursery floor when

                there will be no time, day after
                day, save for forks of pitch and
                hands that burn pink and stalk

                of shirt and sweat, constant under
                minds of approaching storm cloud
                before the last journey home; old

                George had removed his jacket
                picking out fluff from the corners
                of a pocket, “…used to be my brother’s;

                lived in Shropshire … didn’t
                find no pound notes in it, just fluff,
                a few hay seeds,” flung them

                to the Essex wind – scattered
                poems and stacked essays,
                typed up and waiting to behold

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay

 

 

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

branches wormhole: presence
breeze wormhole: chuckling
child wormhole: next unexpected step
clouds wormhole: that
echo wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
green wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
hands & life & retirement wormhole: beguiled / desire
mind & writing wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
pink & stone wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
silence & speech wormhole: new blue porsche
smell & time wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
wind wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams

 

Bexhill 140215

Tags

1920s, 1935, 2015, 5*, ageing, balcony, Bexhill, de la Warr Pavilion, eating, grey, horizon, line, looking, model, photographer, poem, portrait, promenade, red, sea, sun, waiting, wife

                                Bexhill 140215

                                sugar blues necksweat
                                I need to manage what I eat
                                as I age
                sitting in the de la Warr Pavilion café est. 1935

                                looking for a poem
                                between the clean lines on the balcony,
                                … waiting
                for his wife, trying the zoom lens onto the promenade

                                of a photographer
                                trying positions of his model
                                in fashion-red
                hooded coat and flower heads on her hat from the 1920s

                                on the sun-grey sea
                                with wide horizon

 

 

 

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

grey & sun wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
horizon wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
looking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
promenade wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
red wormhole: leaves
sea wormhole: concordance
waiting wormhole: just

 

at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree

Tags

2014, breeze, Carol, colour, garden centre, humour, identity, language, poem, speech, Sylvia Plath, table, Ted Hughes, words, writing

                at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to
                replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about
                the Yew Tree

                                if I was to say to you
                                “write a poem NOW”
                                what would you lock
                                on to?

                                ‘are you talking to ME
                                …; I only use words
                                for lists complaints
                                reports; what’s the
                                use of poems; I can
                                see colours and hear
                                breezes but I don’t
                                connect them with
                                words’

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: ‘someone …’
Carol wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: cape and cowl
speech & Sylvia Plath & writing wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
table wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
words wormhole: reating & wriding

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

Tags

2014, 3*, coffee shop, father, joke, Jon, Lewes, poem, son, speech, words

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

                ‘I’ve got to give you five words and you’ve
                 got to work them into a poem:

                fluffy       popsicle      Nostradamus
                carcinogenic      parasite’,      so I said

                                it can’t be done

 

 

 

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

coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes & speech & words wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

 

dream I // dream II

Tags

2014, 3*, arrival, blue, experience, explanation, giving, hill, identity, looking, people, poem, reflection, retirement, school, tarmac, teaching, time, town, waking, windows

          dream I

    I had to get to school
    from the college halls
    in a town I didn’t know
    or what I was doing there

    I was already late
    but making my way
    past blue window reflections
    on honeycomb tarmac

    I realised I was going the
    wrong way up a hill people looking
    at me in my teacher’s clothes they
    knew the school is not here

    I am in an area I do not know
    so I go back down the hill
    trying to show that I know
    what I am doing I can see

    the whole town spread out
    like a city the different areas
    the school is there somewhere
    and I need to get myself there

and yet woken up now I’m not so sure I do

          dream II

    my chance to teach
    I explain everything

with little clever phrases like poems
    but each time

    I have to explain yet further
    taking hours, not

    holding them I gave of my
    of my own experience but it wasn’t

    theirs, they started leaving
    before I could conclude

retired now I’m not sure I ever arrived

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: pass and / fro
giving wormhole: six paramitas
identity wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
looking wormhole: over-pink cagoule
people wormhole: memorial
retirement wormhole: Virginia
school wormhole: step
teaching wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
time wormhole: tragic and archival
windows wormhole: windows // and balconies

 

facing the crime section

Tags

2013, 6*, being, bookshop, finding, notebook, perspective, poem, remembering, wanting, writing

                I’m out
                I’ve remembered my notebook
                I’m sat in the book shop
                (facing the crime section)
                wanting too much to have…
                    …found the lean out|      |from which the
                                or the crevice|      |perspective will…
                                              reveal the poem
                                      to remember where I am enough
                                                                           to find it

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: nevertheless
bookshop wormhole: dream / 221297
writing wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page

 

too greedy

Tags

2013, 6*, air, ambition, attention, breathing, coffee, distraction, experience, fruit jellies, love, passing, people, poem, sandwich, sitting, smoothie, staying, sugar, talking to myself, town, walking, walls

                you know, mark, you can be
                too greedy, not from the coffee
                or the four DVDs, not from the

                ploughman’s sandwich nor the
                pear and peach smoothie, not even
                from the bag of fruit jellies that

                now you’ve opened you’re
                probably going to have to finish,
                but from wanting to carve a poem

                out of every damn experience you have
                sitting on every damn wall in
                every damn town you visit while

                every damn person walks past thinking
                you’re a bit damn weird … but then,
                nah, I don’t quite think so, as long as

                you seep into the observation and
                don’t ride it through somewhere else,
                and you can check the ambition

                with enough wide-open love to breathe,
                you could sculpt poems out of
                the very air where you stay put …

                … and, besides, I’m getting one
                hell of a sugar-buzz from these
                sugar jellies … will I never learn!

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: retirement
attention wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
breathing wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
coffee wormhole: too much in arrival
distraction wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
love wormhole: slow enough / to have love
passing wormhole: morning sun
people wormhole: where else
sitting wormhole: the goldilocks stance
talking to myself wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
walking wormhole: ‘avenue of wraggled gorse tops …’
walls wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams