travel // when I die

Tags

2019, 7*, accountability, afterlife, afternoon, architecture, bardo, being, black, brick, brown, buildings, capitalism, century, clouds, crane, data, death, decades, dedication, depth, doing, echo, fields, floating, green, ground, Have, height, horizontal, identity, industry, interdependent origination, iteration, length, lintel, London, magenta, mind, notice, orange, passing, perspective, pillars, presence, purple, rain, rainbow, red, reference, ripple, rooftops, russian vine, samsara, sandstone, sapphire, self-cherishing, self-grasping, silence, sill, sky, sound, speech, Thames, thought, tide, time, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, utility, walls, white, world, writing

                                                                                travel

                                                                                noticing
                                                                at all is a product of
                                                                shifted perspective
                                                                related to behold;

                                                                when I’ve nothing to write
                                                                I’ve lost any perspective,
                                                                cornered by both these walls
                                                                I’ve walked along

                when I die
                this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
                in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration

                                                                cranes atop
                                                                pulling them further up and up
                                                                from the ground on which they
                                                                balance on receding point;

                                                                communities of them
                                                                each taller than the last and the next
                                                                all along the wharfs
                                                                of endless account

                it will be expansive
                high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
                it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple

                                                                kilometres long
                                                                courses of brick
                                                                grimed black and utility-studded
                                                                updown onoff foothold and wire

                                                                ripple along nicely
                                                                across right-angled centuries
                                                                and occasional shot bolts
                                                                of deepest russian vine

                with no sound
                save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
                having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and

                                                                believe it or not
                                                                a rainbow exponential
                                                                to the white arch of Wembley
                                                                we’ll chase for miles

                                                                orange shimmering to
                                                                magenta through staccato tides
                                                                out and over flat roofs
                                                                on and into the fields

                all data wiped –
                suds off my hands from my shoulders –
                and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?

                                                                where trees grow from ground
                                                                shaping over decades
                                                                green-flamed cupolas
                                                                clamped to the sky

                                                                and from perspective passing
                                                                of open field
                                                                turn – creak –
                                                                the whole world

                I may well
                have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
                plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …

                                                                and there
                                                                Lancashire red brick
                                                                with high and whitey
                                                                sills stale and lintel

                                                                before washed-out
                                                                sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
                                                                and horizontal fingers of
                                                                scud-rain

                … but they’d just
                floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
                straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve

                                never really
                                made stuff happen
                                and didn’t have to try

                                more than let more and more
                                of stuff happening anyway
                                happen through me

 

train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive

 

 

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

afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields

Tags

2019, 7*, birdsong, camera, clouds, corridor, dancing, drifting, elm, evening, faces, fields, focus, forest, gold, grey, hills, horizon, leaves, nebula, nightingale, photography, planet, purple, red, skeleton, sky, space, spire, stars, sun, thinking, trees, words

                                I took my camera into the fields

                but it was only after the
                purple-grey clouds drifted
                across the horizon and the

                wilted leaves had turned
                their face once more to the
                evening sky, when the sun

                broke low across the fields –
                old gold across the treetops –
                that I’d dansed macabre

                with the tripodial skeleton
                before the red hemisphere,
                reclined upon distant hills,

                extinguished like a farce
                and the populace of the
                heavens radiated above me

                and behind, the grates of
                all space between the two
                sentinel elms, it was there, I think,

                I left this planet
                at a tangent (glow of a
                lantern disappearing down the corridor)

                deep, until whole nebulae
                were within my pluck,
                but even before Antares

                had touched the nearby
                spire, the nightingale had
                been deep in construction

                of the following day’s forest façade,
                free free of all possible words and
                zoomed foci

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

 

 

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

clouds & evening & gold & grey & hills & horizon & leaves & red & sky & space & stars & sun wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
dancing wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
faces wormhole: on facing the Have
purple wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
thinking wormhole: writening
words wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877

 

SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 5*, birth, blue, brown, bushes, clouds, fields, grass, growth, hospital, leaves, purple, red, roads, roots, Spring, trees, water, weeds, William Carlos Williams, wind

                                SPRING AND ALL

                By the road to the contagious hospital
                under the surge of the blue
                mottled clouds driven from the
                northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
                waste of broad, muddy fields
                brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

                patches of standing water
                the scattering of tall trees

                All along the road the reddish
                purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
                stuff of bushes and small trees
                with dead, brown leaves under them
                leafless vines –

                Lifeless in appearence, sluggish
                dazed spring approaches –

                They enter the new world naked,
                cold, uncertain of all
                save that they enter. All about them
                the cold, familiar wind –

                Now the grass, tomorrow
                the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

                One by one objects are defined –
                It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

                But now the stark dignity of
                entrance – Still, the profound change
                had come upon them: rooted, they
                grip down and begin to awaken

from Spring and All, 1923, from which Paul Mariani’s excellent biography of William Carlos Williams got its name “A New World Naked”; being is to break and contrast, it is primordial but also cyclical, WCW doesn’t bother with the cosmic, he deals in twigs

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
leaves & Spring & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
purple wormhole: … the underleaves show
red & William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
roads wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
wind wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

… the underleaves show

Tags

2017, 7*, black, brick, Carol, crank, faces, glasses, grey, hair, Ironbridge, leaves, mirror, progress, purple, railtrack, reading, steam, sunglasses, table, thrust, time, trees, Victorian, walls, wind, windows, wood

                greased and black teeth interlock
                in turn from steam built to release

                to crank the thrust trained to track
                sooner ahead and curving to distant

                future while bricks stack high to
                shape an echoey wall up to 1000 a

                day, coal-faced and sullen and bolts
                sunk into wood that will never be

                undone again all the while
                the wind blows the upper trees …

                                — O —

                bottom of the tall mirror above
                the wooden table tops the back

                of handsome hair let grey with
                sunglasses and purple glasses on

                the end of her nose reading
                something carefully before the

                five-high-four-wide-flank-of
                paned windows all along the front of the Refreshment Pavilion and

                when the wind blows high
                … the underleaves show

 

Blists Hill is a delightfully recreated Victorian industrial town near Ironbridge, Shropshire which tags itself ‘The Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution’ we revisited in May 2017

 

 

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

black & purple wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Carol & hair wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
faces wormhole: sharpened apex
glasses wormhole: Batgirl –
grey wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
leaves wormhole: travelling // arrival
mirror wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
reading & wind wormhole: perspective
table wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
time wormhole: Bridgnorth
trees & windows & wood wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
walls wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye

 

polystyrene / boulderscape

Tags

'scape, 2017, 5*, being, black, change, doing, emotion, green, hills, life, mauve, orange, purple, realisation, sky, Star Trek, transmission, violet

                                                polystyrene
                                boulderscape

                                                under orange skies
                                realisation
                is transmitted

                                                mauve to purple
                                he turns to face
                his life

                                                green and violet
                                over the black hills
                where officers try

                                                to control emotion,
                                nothing happens, and
                every thing changes

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
black & purple & sky wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’
change wormhole: with all love released
doing wormhole: ‘still …’
green wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
hills wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
life wormhole: tremule
mauve wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
orange wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
realisation wormhole: next unexpected step

 

‘when travelling astrally …’

Tags

1964, 2016, 5*, black, clouds, Dr Strange, facade, faces, fingers, purple, sky, Strange Tales, texture, time, travelling, walls, white, windows, world

                when travelling astrally the
                eloquent fingers navigate the
                world which is flat white or
                receding black where the only
                elapse are the hands of time
                and the turn of windows in
                the facades of 3rd dimension
                and gargoyle faces bystand
                on walls; light leans between
                struts and the clouds texture
                the sky like purple worms

 

from Strange Tales #121, ‘Witchcraft in the Wax Museum’, June 1964; Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

black & Dr Strange & time & walls wormhole: coagulating
black & white wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
clouds wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
faces wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory
purple wormhole: with all love released
sky wormhole: between
travelling wormhole: travelling // arrival
windows & world wormhole: frame

 

with all love released

Tags

2016, 8*, air, anatta, birdcall, blue, breathing, Buddha, change, civilisation, dark, earth, echo, finding, glow, groundlessness, impermanence, inspiration, karma, letting go, looking, lost, love, purple, red, shadow, shelf, time

                I still look for you on the
                shelves and by the way

                head tilted to one side
                feeling in the shadows

                under foliage between
                stems for something lost

                shining darkly red
                pushing up through

                purple earth – fold of
                blue shadow – I knew

                you’d be here somewhere
                without remembering

                where I’d let you go,
                mutated through cycle

                as wax will wane; and
                I know when I find you

                I’ll notice the glow
                where it shouldn’t be

                obvious when discovered –
                I knew it! – but now

                my daylight groping is
                done; I have found no

                ground to stand on
                I must let you go again,

                my friends, and face
                the only task … alone

                I could track back
                through centuries of

                millennia and tectonic
                inch and breathe the

                same air, amid forming
                civilisations, the only

                air replenishable, as
                the man who strolled

                through parklands and
                birdcall, all possible

                echoes collapsed, and
                I could breathe that

                same heir both in and
                out with diminishing

                return dispersing the
                hanging proliferation of

                ténèbres hautes and
                redoubtable as they may

                seem, as known as I
                am not, with all love released

 

 

 

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

air & Buddha wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
blue & time wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
breathing & letting go wormhole: travelling // arrival
change wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
echo wormhole: looking / ridiculous
groundlessness wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: between
love wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
purple wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
red wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
shadow wormhole: low afternoon

 

the silent night of the Batman

Tags

2011, 7*, alley, attention, Batman, belief, black, blue, buildings, Christmas, city, east, fear, glass, green, guilt, ink, light, marble, marzipan, night, people, planes, purple, river, rooftops, rose, shops, silence, sky, skyline, smile, south, stars, streetlamp, thought, vista, windows, writing

                the silent night of the Batman

                even while they carried their
                gift-wrapped parcels and looked
                to each other with smiles of belief

                the shop signs hummed dark
                against the marbled frontage
                while above, quiet floors of

                clear-dark windows looked east
                looked south in the ink-black sky
                enough to write a novel in a

                single sitting, enough to hold
                a fleet of stars above the skyline
                stacking slowly; when the sky

                is ink-green the rooftop
                gathers ink-blue attention
                and leaps without step or

                swing through the glass and
                ledges of city vista, the lingering
                thought to shadow the guilt,

                the alley to streetlamp the
                fear, and over the river the rose
                cast high and wide to the stars until

                marzipan fingers reach across the
                ink-purple sky and marshmallow lights
                go out

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
Batman: cape and cowl
black wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
blue wormhole: out
buildings & people wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
Christmas & stars wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
city wormhole: city streets
glass wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
green & sky & smile wormhole: looking ahead
light wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
night & writing wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
purple wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
river wormhole: glide
rooftops wormhole: low afternoon
shops wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
silence wormhole: is this it // all the time
skyline wormhole: clear as vista
thought & windows wormhole: for / the first time

 

pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria

Tags

'scape, 2016, 5*, burgundy, butter, communication, gladiolus, green, horizontal, lilac, morning, National Trust, olive, pine tree, purple, Standen, story, time, velvet, white, wisteria

                           pine

            crafted
bourough of uprise through decades
of averted event

                           gladioli

            what are the stories:
chilled petals of lilac from velveted purple
            morning buttercurls from
medicine burgundy?

                           wisteria

            networks
of unconnecting junction
necessary for combed and horizontal trail of olive and green flurry from which to hang the            
            requisite white and tinted
lilac

 

while strolling through the garden one day … at the National Trust house of Standen; I know this is a bit more summery than present-posting, but I just found the piece in a notebook and forgotten I’d written it, so, there …

 

 

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

burgundy wormhole: clouds
communication wormhole: comfy
green & white wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
lilac wormhole: 1968
morning wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
olive wormhole: 1967
purple wormhole: south horizon
time wormhole: darkness

 

south horizon

Tags

1959, 1967, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2011, 2012, 7*, abandonment, anger, Bowie, childhood, Dad, discovery, divorce, drum, evening, experience, horizon, light, London, Margaret Thatcher, memory, Mum, Nan, pain, parents, perspective, purple, rhythm, river, saxophone, shift, Shooters Hill, south, texture, Thames, travelling, words, world

                south horizon

                out on the river
                the purple is shifting

                but in the evening-bulb light
                the world-shaping words

                of grown ups
                is shifting uncontrollably

                but,          no; it’s OK          look
                there is rhythm, there is

                a saxophone, a hi-hat – shflpt –
                in the crack there

                where words sift
                where worlds shift

 

I submitted this to an online magazine; they didn’t want it; I’ll publish it here again with the copy that supported it:

about the poem: on my eighth birthday (in 1967) my Dad arrived home late from work; my parents had one of their last arguments; my Dad left home that night; I couldn’t remember much of what happened that night – what was said, how much I heard, how much I understood – but I realised that worlds could change quite quickly that night; years later, in 1993, David Bowie recorded ‘south horizon’ on his ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ album, but I didn’t really get to know the piece until 2011; hearing it etched that experience back into my memory – bevelled it up, almost – but it also supplied textures and chord changes to the memory that allowed me a perspective that held me from being just angry or hurt; (‘the river’ is the river Thames; we lived on Shooters Hill in SE London from where we could hear and breathe the river)

author bio: Mark Redford was born in 1959 and grew up in South East London until he bolted to university (like a bat out of hell) in 1979, hot from Margaret Thatcher’s election victory; London was never the same every time he returned back; his mother, who had brought him up with her mother (his Grandmother), died in 1999; since then he has travelled back to London frequently to find the previous 40 years, but only seems to find them when he writes down what he saw; you can see what he sees (possibly better than he can) at: https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/; if you bump into him there, give him some directions would you?

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: monument to vainglory
Bowie wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
childhood & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
Dad & divorce & texture wormhole: beepbeep
evening wormhole: alighted
horozon wormhole: 1966
light wormhole: so pleased to see you again
London wormhole: 1967
Mum wormhole: 1967
Nan wormhole: work
purple & river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
travelling wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
words wormhole: breathing out
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show