inner coffee shop
so, is writing pointless,
just rebellion from root
just the muscling of me
to spite the hard fear that
I’ll turn to stone if I look
into her face … `spite the
knowledge that others are
far more brave than me?
St. Saviour & St. Peter
so what draws me to sit,
after all, on the roadside
wall across from the spire
clear for all to see the
even bricks buttress, cap
and flute up so high to
eleven storeys to, maybe,
the single point, with run-
down stain and grimèd
line defining plane and vertical rightened quantum to the neat, surrounding parking and the passing upright
humans both of public
dress and private gait
360º
and then the grey cat
strolled from some-
where left between
silent cars to cross the
road right – stopped –
t’looka’leaf ‘n’ disappear
up on wall by tree-sniff
stop – fence? – no,
down be-hind th’wall
out through th’front
windscreen ‘n’
downastepps t’street
to not appear where
expected; ‘shut’, a mother
leads a tot from front
door to car …
… still no appearance
… … scamper with the
wind behind as the car
pulls away; maybe I should
record this wh’appened all
around breeze, strolled –
stopped – by the wall
back from b’hind m’left
enters the gateway out
by th’alleyway (with the
bold and naked silver birch
I hadn’t noticed);
upover
the fence [not attempted
before] tadaaanother cat
black treesniff checkleft
then … left, jumptowall,
jump to pavementstop;
over the road frontleg
onelick s t r o l l s car-
shielded; black belly-slink
low across the road; they
walk away both from
sight either side of the van;
one tail up and wiggy
one tail fluffy with spine
these things all of great
importance to spite the hard fact
of my writing them,
old Bull Williams would have
and that’s where I are
there are expanses awkward to the landscape in writing sometimes: the technique is there, the shift can be made, but the will and excitement just isn’t; I have been reading Diane di Prima’s “Recollections of My Life as a Woman”, I greatly fed off her childhood but have languoured once she got into the Work; I have been reading about Aleister Crowley’s ‘Do What Thou Wilt’ awkward plane; I have a huge project ongoing writing poewieviews to David Bowie’s oeuvre – I am going to new lands but the luggage is heavy and awkward and requiring decisions which I don’t easily make; oh, and I am off work again, feeling un-plugged in to my own practice of vocation like a forlorn state-of-the-art food mixer; I spent a morning down in Eastbourne chauffeuring my wife around like the successful carer that she is; walking; sitting in a coffee shop; snagged at St. Saviour & St. Peter Church on the corner of Spencer Road and South Street, still pondering the relationship between multifarious form and the emptiness makes it dynamic; but it wasn’t until I sat back in the waiting car and watched the chess moves of two cats in the street that I stumbled across the full quote from the Heart Sutra: “form is emptiness; emptiness is form; emptiness is no other than form, form also is no other than emptiness”; but it wasn’t until I got home and shaped it all up from scribbles to column – with my ageing black AND white cat leaning against my foot – that I wondered if I still hadn’t quite got it yet (as William Carlos Williams, the great great practicer of ‘no poetry but in things’ said); and yet it has been satisfying finding not so …
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
birch wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
black & grey wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
Bowie wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
breakdown & writing wormhole: nothing to write
breeze wormhole: strange / tarnish
buildings & silver & streets wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
carer wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost
Carol wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
cars wormhole: stacked
cats wormhole: new garden
child wormhole: dream 260815
church wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
coffee shop wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
creativity & school wormhole: through
Eastbourne wormhole: along
emptiness wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8
identity wormhole: dear clown’s face
looking & muse & sound wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
mother & silence wormhole: early evening
others wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
passing & posture wormhole: really
roads wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
searching wormhole: opening
seeing wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
sitting & talking to myself wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
teaching wormhole: the MagOO Effect Effect
trees wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
waiting wormhole: Saturday – poewieview #3
walking wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
walls wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
[William Carlos] Williams wormhole: and then just stop
wind wormhole: keep the light off
mlewisredford 