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

 

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faintly apricot air?

Tags

'scape, 2015, 6*, air, apricot, grey, kerb, morning, Plumstead, progress, shadow, Shooters Hill, sky, streetlight, streets, tarmac, trees, walking

                why tarmac the whole street wide
                for one bicycle uphill and one

                careful walker down (hand in pocket
                no necktie), the trimmed-back trees

                planted along the kerb edge marking
                curved progress, marking the ends

                of terrace or maybe containing the
                wide grey sky over Shooters Hill that

                delivers a half past ten morning to the
                Borough; thinks the man by the sole

                streetlight leaning back on his cane
                in the shadow of the faintly apricot air?

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
apricot wormhole: the skyline
grey wormhole: industrial estate
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
Plumstead wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
shadow wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sky & streets & trees wormhole: open window
streetlight wormhole: passing below
walking wormhole: to allow / passage

 

tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair

Tags

2015, bay window, Crowborough, economics, emptiness, eyes, haiku, hair, hands, Have, hedge, Herbert Road, hills, Hillside, history, horizon, hotel, house, humanity, life, London, rooftops, Shooters Hill, sight, society, tag cloud poem, terrace, Thames, time

                                                     haiku   is awkward

   the more that is left in

     like uncombed  hair

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                            the hands that Have   are

 
                                                    small and gnarly that hedge a                
                                                        fund and close their eyes;

 
                                                my sight formed along
                                          rooflines of Herbert Road edged
                                                           above the distant hills

 
                                beyond the river
from terraced steppes along the
     declining line of

 
                                                      Shooters Hill; but then

                  my sights folded inwards at

                                                                   Hillside, pages of

 
                                                              turned history that had

                                lost its own horizon, from

                                                                                                            hotel to house in

 
                              the bay windows of
                              London where humanity
                                                                              is stuck in all time

 

‘aitches’ touch on quite a few boat-ties to my past: ‘Herbert Road’ was the local shopping high street where I lived in London until I was 19; it is in Plumstead which spreads south over the crest of ‘Shooters Hill’ and merges into Woolwich down to the river Thames; ‘Hillside’ is one of a little cluster of houses where I settled to raise a family and grow a career in Crowborough in the late 1980s – that same 80s that, mean-and-all-the-while, Thatcher was creaking open that casket (‘can’t read the label – “–ora’s Box”?’) which left me alien to my own background and lost in my own riverbank mist, save for the miraculous peek of haiku and the deadened gaze of bay window …

`haven’t published a tag cloud poem in a while: they’re made up of the larger tags of my work built up over the years – this one emerged into a series of haiku[esque] pieces of work – almost inevitably; this one was particularly difficult to form, the tag-words didn’t run off each other smoothly – I must admit I left a few words out; the green links are to those respective tags, the different sized fonts determined by the number of ‘topics’ that pertain to that tab … nerk!

 

 

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

Crowborough wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
economics wormhole: 1959
emptiness wormhole: need
eyes wormhole: bavardage
haiku[esque] wormhole: ‘green plum jam on rye …’
hair wormhole: impressionism
hands & humanity wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Have wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
hedge wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
Herbert Road wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
hills wormhole: life [‘n’ death] / legerdemain – poewieview #15
Hillside wormhole: Charlotte
history & horizon wormhole: a theremin note – poewieview #21
hotel wormhole: Hotel Room, 1931
house wormhole: first Spring storm
life & society wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
London & rooftops & Thames wormhole: up on the hill
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
time wormhole: 1968

 

up on the hill

Tags

'scape, 2013, bench, childhood, electric, emergence, grass, grey, leaf, London, Nithdale Road, orange, Plum Lane, Plumstead, purple, rooftops, shadow, Shooters Hill, shrub, streetlight, sunlight, Thames, Woolwich, writing

 

 

 

                                up on the hill

                                there is a bench
                                and a streetlamp which casts
                                introspective orange
                                over shrubs and grass
                                making them purple and indistinct

                                but over descending rooftops
                                and terraced rows
                                the city leafs out into evening
                                from the grey Thames
                                wet with electric sunlight

 

‘up on the hill’ is not the same ‘up on the hill’ which is the start of Steely Dan’s ‘Aja’, but it starts from a similar call; the ‘hill’ is Shooters Hill which rucks up in the south east London basin just short of the Thames; the ‘bench’ is one of a few on a piece of land at the corner of Nithdale Road and Plum lane overlooking Plumcroft school, the lower slopes of Plumstead and the sprawl of the developing Woolwich Arsenal estate to the Thames as you raise your gaze from the ground, eveningly; this is a small, open patch of land which doesn’t obviously seem to belong to anyone, but is important to any awkward teenager who may wonder if their way is in writing …

 

 

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

bench wormhole: bougainvillea
childhood & emergence & shadow wormhole: the start of adolescence
grey wormhole: and that’s where I are
London wormhole: tabla
orange wormhole: stacked
Plumstead wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
purple wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
rooftops wormhole: keep the light off
streetlight wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1
Thames wormhole: dream 260815
Woolwich wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
writing wormhole: first Spring storm

 

walking over / Shooters Hill

Tags

'scape, 2004, 4*, bushes, green, London, mist, night, Plumstead, Shooters Hill, trees

 

 

 

                                          walking over
                                          Shooters Hill

                           in my new green
                           roll-neck jumper

                           as night gathered
                           round the trees

                           mist rose from the
                           trees and bushes

                           like the pipes
                           of an organ

 

 

 

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

green & London & night wormhole: green
mist wormhole: Heathrow / Airport
Plumstead wormhole: To my Mum
trees wormhole: open window