taking birth

Tags

2022, 7*, being, birth, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, clouds, compassion, identity, ignorance, jewel, knowledge, landscape, lifetimes, light, lightning, lost, mind, mirror, mist, mother sentient beings, opening, perspective, self-cherishing, self-grasping, shadow, Shantideva, sky, sun, young

                taking birth

        there is
        the mind which cracks within the belly
        of darkest clouds

        throws relief to the landscape
        and populace of the
        whole of sky

        if I could but turn
        just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
        trajectory

        and open
        so much more to just this tempered niche
        of knowledge

        that I could both mirror and shadow
        every fluorescence even before and awhile
        it contrasted

        I’d be young
        that I have long lost and mist
        while evolving this sclerotic eye

        and then
        there’d be sun,
        all my endless malapropriations burnished

        and faceted to a tiny étincelant Indra-jewel
        glinting all direction
        within every perspective respective

…responsive over reactive; effulgent over productive;
avenue’d over viewed; abundant over possessed; dispelled over horded;
homeopathic over pathologic; being over mirror; caught over fallen;
the hand that scratches the foot; not-finished-yet over finished…

 

 

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

being & identity & mirror wormhole: mirror
clouds wormhole: Journey
compassion wormhole: ‘the practice…’
lifetimes wormhole: in deed
light & shadow wormhole: silence
lightning wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
mind wormhole: travel // when I die
mist wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Shantideva wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sky & sun wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’

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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

 

psssssh

Tags

2019, 5*, afterlife, air, attachment, breathing, death, denial, fish, hands, hell, hook, identity, land, life, living, regret, self-cherishing, sound, water

                oh yes, lookit
                a morsel, just
                hanging there
                can’t believe my

                luck, maybe too
                good to be true,
                look, wriggling
                and juicy, ah

                what the hell
                openwide and
                chomp; hmmm,
                juicy, ahh: agh

                hook through
                my lip, no, I
                didn’t mean,
                it wasn’t me, I

                wasn’t there, I
                didn’t do nuffin’,
                quick, I’ll rip my
                lip, it’ll heal, just

                get away, no
                it’s up through
                my mouth, shit
                it’s sticking out

                through my nose
                how do I get
                out of this … but
                it was so juicy –

                ugh, where’s the
                air, where’s all that
                water I was
                thrashing around in

                where am I, who
                are all these others
                with no faces, keep
                still y’all, I can’t

                breathe, I can’t
                move through what
                I live in like I
                used to, what

                these hands
                like lands, who
                am I, where
                do I belong

                heating up
                heating up,
                this land is
                too hot, do

                n’t put me
                on it, I’ll
                disintegrate
                psssssh

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 89: These viciously sharp hooks cast by the kleśa-fishermen – these turbulent thoughts, these hateful emotions – and you, o pitiful mind, have been snagged on them again and again – [net-loads of you] – where you will inevitably be turned over to the guards of hell as raw ingredient, to be cooked-alive in the cauldrons there over and over again.

 

 

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

air wormhole: distance
breathing & life & living & sound wormhole: breakfast
death wormhole: in deed
hands wormhole: mandala offering
identity wormhole: eyes like petals
water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

my uncomfortable life

Tags

2019, 6*, abandonment, activity, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breakdown, broken, career, closed, compromise, contentment, context, Dad, disappointment, expectation, experience, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, frustration, greed, hope, injustice, laziness, life, management, no voice, people, politicians, powerlessness, Principal, requirement, resentment, self-cherishing, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-esteem, slogans, society, spin, teaching, thought, Tony Blair, turmoil, waiting, words, work

                I did not know contentment
                at work, what was required,
                what I thought, I never wholly
                got my teaching … sorted

                turmoil, and even when not
                outwardly angry, I was
                closed off and unapproachable,
                carrying anger and resentment

                like a thorny bush tied
                to my back since Dad left
                and people were ‘phony’ and
                society was stupid and words

                were insincere and all activity
                was a compromise and my equals cheated
                and laziness was always greedy
                and hope was rude and the politicians

                were tricksters and Tony Bliar
                and managers slogan-shifted like there was no tomorrow
                and the Principals
                wouldn’t know what to do with good practice if it writhed around suggestively on their desk in front of them and made them delicious promises of future dangerous liaison                      

                and by default I am
                at least disappointed, usually frustrated
                and often impotent-angry with them
                when they invariably reference me

                (and they always reference me)
                or when I am actually wronged,
                and then I’ll blow, beyond all immediate context
                because I have already been smouldering,

                waiting for the wrong to happen,
                expecting the wrong to happen,
                experiencing the wrong happening
                even before it has manifested;

                and I am right, it is wrong
                and compromised and greedy and unprincipled
                what they have done, even
                when they haven’t

                given expression to it, in fact
                especially when they haven’t
                given full expression to it
                and are sloganising and spinning

                that what is happening
                is entirely something else;
                and the powerlessness of
                not being able to have a voice

                no appeal to a universal
                right and wrong … built me up
                with no recourse and, I get broken;
                look at my tired eyes – my uncomfortable life

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: south horizon
breakdown wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
career wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
compromise wormhole: raised brow
Dad wormhole: the reach turned to love
eyes wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
life & society wormhole: the old man;
management wormhole: how to teach
people wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
teaching wormhole: and … // … sound
thought wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
waiting wormhole: all // are // none
words wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
work wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873

 

I

Tags

2018, 6*, anatta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, identity, karma, left, lifetimes, looking, reflection, right, self-cherishing, time

                                    I get what I deserve,
                                    I can see it there in the mirror
                                    looking back at me,

                        it seems its left is my right but it is
                        all just the same
                        reflection

            it would be better
            if I hadn’t brandished this ‘I’ about in the past
            making it all right and powerful over others whenever I could,

            simply ending up
            with this pain in my
            own neck …

            it would be better if I
            didn’t have this
I

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 42: In previous lives and former times, I myself have subjected just such pain, suffering and torment on other sentient beings, therefore, it is only just and fitting that I, the former perpetrator, who distressed, wronged and harmed all these beings, deserve the return, that I become the attacked, that this becomes my lot.

 

 

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

identity wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: oh, alright then
looking wormhole: somehow
reflection wormhole: travelling / back
time wormhole: alabaster balustrade

 

is this it // all the time

Tags

2015, 6*, Bodhichitta, breathing, corridors, depression, emptiness, fear, groundlessness, identity, living, mist, perception, pointlessness, questioning, quiet, rope, searching, self-cherishing, silence, snake, stairs, standing, stone, sun, time, trust, walls

                is this it
                coming again out of the mist

                that in my trust I find I still
                get nowhere that I want to be –

                by the walls along the corridor
                or at the top of silent stairs

                standing on the landing – it
                is not up here after all, nowhere

                else to go …
                is

                it
                this damn mist

                so easy to overlook
                so quiet to breathe

                that I mistake the stones for a figure,
                I fear the rope for the snake, and yet

                this mist will disperse
                the sun will always eventually appear

                I need not wear my collar up
                all the time

 

 

 

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

Bodhichitta 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
breathing & quiet wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
depression wormhole: to rescue something
emptiness wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
groundlessness wormhole: place
identity & stone wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
living 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
mist wormhole: while
pointlessness wormhole: is there anything to write?
searching wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
silence wormhole: circuitry
stairs wormhole: currency of generations
sun wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
time wormhole: sweet chestnut
walls wormhole: snapshots about Totnes

 

where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …

Tags

2017, 7*, austerity, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, conscience, conscientiousness, death, doing, effort, fall, gravity, illusion, inspiration, karma, Lucifer, mind, now, practice, self-cherishing, Shantideva, superhero, talking to myself, time, virtue

                where it has taken birth
                may it not decrease … there are

                tiny filaments here and there
                from time to time
                connecting the flexing muscle
                further corridors within the firing mind

                it’s not a whole package
                nicely taped up in cardboard
                and delivered with a smile, a signature
                and a how-might-I-do-better survey

                it … won’t happen like that;
                here’s where if anywhere
                the austerity takes place
                here’s where if anywhere I develop

                gaunt lines of virtue
                in my cheek, after the inspiration
                has gone:
                just keep on keeping on; if I try super-heroically –

                ag-grandiosely – there is nothing
                to let ‘not decrease’,
                if it does not burn it is not fire;
                I am either serious or not

                and if not, I should;
                go back
                calm down and create new filaments
                quietly and accordingly

                anything ethical
                should be conducted … only,
                not become an eater of conscience
                like Lucifer’s hapless fool

                simply bargaining
                with illusion is the loss of its finding … out,
                the gravity of the flailing fall
                exponential

                to each and every action
                where it will take a long time to gain ground; death
                affords time to practise
                now, all the time now, not

                later, not I-did-have-it-but-
                now-I’ve-lost-it … NOW

 

right-angled out of chapter IV of Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara … or in

 

 

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

being & doing & talking to myself wormhole: six paramitas
death wormhole: ‘never look up’?
mind wormhole: moment
practice wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
superhero wormhole: passersby
time wormhole: the bench