meanwhile

Tags

2020, 6*, afternoon, angle, binoculars, blue, cranes, curtains, Eiffel Tower, flags, gorge, green, hope, horizon, mankind, moon, night, rite, rooftops, sea, seagulls, shape, ships, sitting room, sky, sound, stone, time, Tintin, travelling, walking, warehouses, water

                the seagulls, they glide about the
                cranes and warehouse rooftops

                they wheel above the pacing and fro,
                cut between pulleys and raised pennants

                oblivious to distant headland through
                studied binocular pointing out to sea, back in the day

                when the skies were afternoon-blue
                and the sea still sitting-room-green

                then, when there was dare to hope
                and ships anchored on the horizon

                under curtain-drapes of nightest sky
                while the moon snagged in line from

                fore-mast to prow; nevertheless, they
                trekked over crag and gorge, they walked

                through water and pushed through
                trapezoids – slab! – into rooms of stone

                locked and immovable despite
                horizon, fit or ninety degree angle

                oblivious to mankind’s rite and dress;
                meanwhile the twins climbed the tower

 

c’mon, now: a gold-plated no-prize to the first reader who can tell me which book this piece came from to celebrate my return to writing; perception – knowing what’s going on – is never as linear as it might seem to be in a story; already given that there is breadth and depth, even in the scant of depiction, there is usually a time (and a space, and we know how relative those two can be) during which something happens, but let’s not think that these are the only dimensions – there is always a right-angle to be taken that paisley-swirls to a far-wider cauldron than could have initially never been conceived but of which there were pre-echoes if listening askance intently-enough

 

 

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

afternoon & horizon & sky wormhole: travelling,
blue wormhole: silence
cranes wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Eiffel Tower wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
green wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
moon wormhole: ‘not sure …’
night & water wormhole: riders of the night
rooftops wormhole: travel // when I die
sea wormhole: then
seagulls wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
sitting room wormhole: the sitting room
sound wormhole: Four Noble Truths
stone wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: travel // when I die
travelling wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: breakfast

 

the sitting room

Tags

2014, 5*, anxiety, being, carpet, evening, green, home, looking, pattern, remembering, sitting room, sweet, taste, texture, tired, velvet, windows

                the sitting room

                                in the early evening –
                                                tired and sprangled – I
                notice the pattern of the carpet
                                soothing as a deep mint-green boiled
                                                sweet

                                                that I
                                might have looked through
                                                for quite a while
                before holding it in my cheek as I shuffled about
                                swallowing occasionally
                                                in remembrance and velvet texture

                                                and after so much anxiety
                                of effect and agent
                far outside the windows of the room, it was
                                                                good to be
                                                                back home

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: too much in arrival
being wormhole: work
carpet wormhole: languidly close the portal
evening 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
green wormhole: where else
looking wormhole: just
sitting room wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
texture wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
windows wormhole: dream I // dream II

 

Michael Redford: triptych

Tags

1935, 1970, 2007, 2009, 2012, afterlife, armchair, being, black, brown, carpet, chair, cigar, doing, doors, evening, fire, floorboards, garden, green, horizon, life, living, living room, night, piano, plants, plastic, Ramsden Heath, realisation, sitting, sitting room, smell, sound, table, talking, trees, uncle, windows, wine, wood

 

 

 

                                           Michael Redford
                                           1935-2007

                                           later on
                           he strolled in the garden
                           breathing the night and the plants
                           smoking a fine cigar

                           then he paused
                           and looked back at the armchair
                           where he had been sitting –
                                           Pphffffff

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                              sitting room

                                              plastic-marbled
                                              chest-height handle

                                              smell of sofa-linen
                                              and wood-fire evenings

                                              with company
                                              and dark green wines

                                              cool black boards and
                                              the white patterned carpet

                                              with almost-meeting
                                              crenellated walls

                                              brow-height mantelpiece
                                              on jungle green

                                              and the piano in the
                                              corner with duff bass keys –

                                              plant-shaking

 

—~~M~~—

 

                                                                      1970

                                                                      to my uncle
                                                                      shifting on
                                                                      hardplastic
                                                                      seat of dining
                                                                      chair – crack –

                                                                      elbow uncomfortable
                                                                      on table-edge
                                                                      carving – creak –
                                                                      to execute a
                                                                      perfect tree

                                                                      on the horizon
                                                                      with just two strokes
                                                                      one brown
                                                                      one green
                                                                      I knew then

                                                                      to put down
                                                                      my compass plans
                                                                      for every detail
                                                                      but only just now
                                                                      doing it

 

looking for what to publish today, I found my uncle unassumingly proffering the lesson in life that he always gave, even nine years after he died: that you don’t look for life, you notice it; some teachers teach by being rather than saying, so that you don’t realise you are being taught until you know; wherever he is now, I hope he knows what he gave me/us … in fact I dedicate the clean-ity of all I notice to return the gift to my uncle wherever his lives have led him now

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: need
black wormhole: the start of adolescence
brown wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
carpet wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
doors & garden wormhole: impressionism
evening wormhole: well,
green & talking wormhole: bavardage
horizon & life wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
living & night & smell & sound & table & windows & wood wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
living room wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
piano wormhole: tabla
Ramsden Heath & uncle wormhole: … still waving!
realisation wormhole: dream career // groggy
sitting wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
sitting room wormhole: purple and mauve
trees wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

purple and mauve

Tags

'scape, 1970s, 2015, autumn, city, evening, mauve, purple, rain, rooftops, shops, sitting room, smell, streetlight, streets, tarmac, time, windows

 

 

 

                      there is a street view somewhere
                      from the shopfront rooftops at

                      the turn of the season as the
                      evenings gather earlier around

                      streetlights and window displays
                      all wet across the camber of the

                      patchwork tarmac like a cosy
                      sitting room with the damp smell

                      of dinner almost ready somewhere
                      during the mid 1970s when

                      everything began turning
                      purple with mauve with slivers
                      of white and yellow highlight

 

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: after all?
city & time & windows wormhole: Office in a Small City, 1953
evening wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
mauve wormhole: mauve / night
purple wormhole: dream 260815
rain & rooftops & shops & streetlight & streets wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
sitting room wormhole: mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional
smell wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting

 

mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional

Tags

2014, blogging, breeze, clock, doors, flower, green, identity, lamp, lemon, life, London, mauve, meaning, net curtains, offering, openness, orange, purpose, sitting room, speech, Victorian houses, white

OK my dears, because you are my blogee friends and do me the honour of wriggling through my petites ramblings where you have probably surmised that I am a weed flowering out of a piece of neglected land by a once-brightly painted wall (of a Victorian house) in sauff-eest London, I’m going to let you all into a little secret: I am a compulsive geek, a compulsive geek-weed flower.   In my solipcistic search for a bit of point amidst all the ground … I count everything.   I’m not particularly proud of it, it doesn’t really add up to much and I am starting to sit in order to make all the counting so transparent that I’ll see right through it to the purpose I was looking for all along anyway.   But on the way I have collected (almost arthritically) a bunch of data about all sorts of things which have shaped me into the paricular flowered weed that I have become (mauve-thin thorns with white tips, deepdark green leaves at the top of the stem, and small but long petals with deep lemon edges, white middle and the thinnest blood-orange corrola and spine).   I have whole lifetimes of top 10s/20s – and more? – of word and picture and tone and image, my whole culture wrapped, bagged, ticketed and stacked into a comfy armchair in a spacious and double-faceted sitting room by a standard lamp and a ticking clock somewhere, doors open, net curtains billowing.   Slighty.   Occasionally.

So.   At the end of the day (litralee – I’m not even jokinngg-ugh) I audit my day and assign MY MEASURE of how much I got out of everything I did or how well I did it.   Or not.   The measure will only make sense to me, but they are A measure of how much I have got out of them, so I will include the numbers for your comparification (if you get that far).   Not geeky enough for you?   OK, try this on for size: I started doing this counting in 1998 and still do it?   Not even bothered yet?   I audit household work, career work, what I do for my kids, what I do for my wider family, what I do for my wife, what I do in my spiritual practice and what I do for myself at the end of every day.   Yawn?   I put all my numbers onto a spreadsheet (once I figured out what spreadsheets were) and have now got ongoing averages and charts for everything I do, hear, think and eat!   Whp-p! I saw your eyes twitch then, I’m getting to you, aren’t I (I’m sorry, but I’m on a roll now).   How about, once I settled my spreadsheet: I inserted enough rows above March 1998 all the way back to 2nd November 1959.   Yes, YES: the day I was born!   Do you see; do you see what happens when you start to listen to a geek; do you see my awful power …?   And then I retroactively filled in all the data!.   Oh, whoh; phew, sheesh – what a load off my mind; if I smoked I’d be taking a long draw at the moment – hot air through the teeth, down the throat – and holding it wondering what adjective would do justice to what just happened.

Actually, I think this confession is doing far more for me than it will ever do for anyone else.   Nevertheless I will be sharing with you some of the countings I have like a toddler sharing the stickiest boiled sweet that I’d saved in my hand just for you even though I’d scoffed the rest myself.   It’s sharing, I suppose, and it’s as sincere as a 54 year old child can be.   I’ll call them “mlewisredford’s top ten _______ !” and provide my own commentary.   I’ll store them under ‘poeviews’.   So you’d better have a wet handkerchief handy, you never know when I might proffer a little fat arm upwards with large ‘lashed eyes sincerely unwavering.

Look out, now!

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

breeze & orange wormhole: wha’
doors wormhole: tired
green & London wormhole: still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city
identity wormhole: I don’t think I could do it any more
leon wormhole: the library, / you know …
life & mauve wormhole: in verse / question / m a r k ?
meaning wormhole: adversely / mistaking the finger for the moon / again
net curtains wormhole: 3:30 am
openness wormhole: practising
sitting room wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
speech wormhole: inverse superhero
Victorian houses wormhole: Victorian bays / right angles and eaves
white wormhole: let

 

across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually

Tags

'scape, 2012, 7*, being, childhood, combe end, conservatory, creativity, doing, doors, fir, freedom, garden, ghosts, gold, ideas, identity, knowing, learning, life, lost, melodrama, oak, power, reading, recognition, silence, silver, sitting room, sun, thinking, time, tragedy, values, wind, windows, winter, world

 

 

 

                                              across the room
                                through the patio doors
                                through the conservatory windows
                at the bottom of the garden
                the still bifurcated trunk of
                                the oak
                before the let-grown hair and fringes
                                of the fir tree
blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun

                                from childhood – I just don’t know
                so I learn to read a what and when
                I learn to make a how and why
                                and get so lost
every time I am blind-sided and over-ridden

                                I had
                based my identity (out
                                of ‘don’t know’)
                                on my seen and proffered
                                I had
                invested my value
                                in my take and provision

                so I become transparent
                                and even shake my chains a little
                                              every time
                                                              for such a long time now
that I sigh a tragedy and become a melodrama
                                all by myself

                actually

                I have good ideas and do some good things
                                              but they never were and never could be
                                                              me
                                I had … them
                                I created … them
                and I am ever far far quieter and wider than any local opinion or play
                                              if only I could remember that
                                              if only I could live that

                                trouble is
                the seeking validation
                the seeking confirmation that what I say and do
                                              is valid in the world

                                because
                what I think and do is valid but
                                not because
                                              and never only because
it wins a notice or purchase in the world all like the wind

                                              I have
                so much freedom and so much power in the world
                                I can think anywhere
                                              I can do anything
                                if only I did but squander it all chasing pieces of silver

                                maybe
                I’m way too polite
                                I don’t obstruct I don’t get in the way
                I keep objection to myself
the only way as a child to be of value or benefit throughout life
                                hoping someone will notice the golden silence I have to offer
                in a pathologically uninterested world

 

 

 

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

being & identity & reading wormhole: only
childhood wormhole: cupboards
combe end wormhole: 3:30 am
conservatory & recognition wormhole: again
creativity wormhole: inverse superhero
doing & life wormhole: Child of Illusion
doors wormhole: the early morning of the sixties
fir & garden wormhole: dream 040198 / Eglinton Hill
ghosts wormhole: nightmare
gold wormhole: heavy shower …
learning wormhole: good / enough
oak & sitting room wormhole: ‘the next station / is Hever’
power wormhole: the way
silence wormhole: zazen in everyday life
silver wormhole: Eridge Station
sun wormhole: red net curtains / with appliqué blooms
thinking & wind wormhole: through the window
time wormhole: too
values wormhole: Put service back into people rather than productivity
world wormhole: Woodbrooke labyrinth / affirmations
windows wormhole: through the window
winter wormhole: the sun / in a clean / industrial / sky

 

‘the next station / is Hever’

Tags

'scape, 2012, 4*, field, oak, passing, sitting room, train, Uckfield-London line

 

 

 

                                          ‘the next station
                                          is Hever’

                           past a flat field set with sheep
                           a horse and established shapely oaks
                           placed about comfortably like a sitting room

 

 

 

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

field wormhole: blue and green / a l l s  o  r  t  s
oak wormhole: school uniform
passing wormhole: a riveral
sitting room wormhole: tuning fork
train wormhole: side / window
Uckfield-London line wormhole: con / firm

 

tuning fork

Tags

'scape, 2010, 5*, carpet, cars, combe end, Genesta Road, growth, moonlight, net curtains, night, sitting room, streetlight, streets, time, windows, writing

 

 

 

                                              tuning fork

                                sitting in the dark room
                                enjoying the street
                                under the street light
                                the car opposite
                                reverse-parked on the
                                steep drive
                                the family on holiday
                                for a week now
                                un-regularly
                                a security light
                                pixels through the
                                voile curtains
                                              off again because
                nobody is there

                                exactly thirty five
                                years ago I sat
                                on the living room
                                floor and watched
                                the moonlight work
                                its way across the
                                shag carpet for the

                                first time

                                writing

                                in the dark

 

 

 

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

carpet wormhole: flat blue / carpet
cars wormhole: Seaford / 280310
combe end & net curtains & time & writing wormhole: ‘after an hour …’
Genesta Road wormhole: 1976
moon wormhole: ‘turning right …’
night wormhole: midnight
sitting room wormhole: sit
streets wormhole: 1975
streetlight wormhole: classic
windows wormhole: the open window

 

sit

Tags

2010, 5*, childhood, comics, divorce, Eglinton Hill, fog, green, moon, music, numbers, planets, reading, sitting, sitting room, skyline, speech, talking to myself, voices, writing, yin yang

 

 

 

            I stared at the pattern of the carpet
            playing with my cars behind the settee
            while my parents said
            final things to each other
            the twirl of the branch
            a better life the
            curl of a flower you’d
            better go the border and
            never step back in this house
            again the shadow of the
            leaf is also a darker green

            I had never studied the pattern
            before – never had to
            never could – I can
            work it out see
            how it repeats

            I think something is happening
                with Mum and Dad
            on the other side of the settee but
            this pattern continues around
            the whole carpet

            only later – in bed –
            was it announced what
            I had already known and
            only then could I ask

            why does it have to
            happen to us and cry
                only when it was announced
                only when it was expressed

            I already knew but
            couldn’t express
            couldn’t announce only
            count the patterns
            drive the cars

            I cried but I was numb –
            pattern but beyond the settee –
            I could fracture from things
                just find a pattern

            you’re the man of the house
            now someone said to me so
            I studied the pages of
            black and white comicbooks

            patterns of power
            solving under a cowl
            jumping under a cape
            between the skyline and the world

            I shall throw stones high
            until they don’t come down
            I shall dig so low that
            no one could follow, no

            I shall count all numbers
            I shall collect all numbers
            I shall discover all planets
            I shall posture the heroes, no

            I shall number the histories
            I shall texture the music
            I shall shock the lyric
            I shall smell the books, no

            I shall sunlight the chorus
            I shall cry the biography
            I shall see the image
            and write them all, yes

            I shall follow the curl and
            twist the twirl under
            moonlight all night long
                then

            I shall play catch in the rye
            I shall alors les boulevards
            I shall yin the yang
            I shall surreal the fog

            I shall honour my guru
            I shall marry my wife
            I shall father my children
            I shall teach my classes

            but forty two years on he had still
            just left
            and I still didn’t know
            how to be the man

                      –=+

            get out from behind the settee
            take a seat and get comfy
            say hello to everyone and just

            sit

 

 

 

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

childhood & green wormhole: 1963
comics & divorce & reading & sitting & writing wormhole: warp and weft
Eglinton Hill & music wormhole: south horizon
fog wormhole: 1968
moon wormhole: ‘Batman …’
sitting room wormhole: sitting room
skyline wormhole: biography
speech wormhole: dry rot
talking to myself wormhole: scatter
voices wormhole: satin poem

 

sitting room

Tags

'scape, 2009, 4*, black, childhood, green, piano, Ramsden Heath, sitting room, uncle, white

 

 

 

                                                       sitting room

                                               plastic-marbled
                                               chest-height handle

                                               smell of sofa-linen
                                               and wood-fire evenings

                                               with company
                                               and dark green wines

                                               cool black boards and
                                               the white patterned carpet

                                               with almost-meeting
                                               castle walls

                                               brow-height mantelpiece
                                               on jungle green

                                               and the piano in the
                                               corner with duff bass keys –

                                               plant-shaking

 

 

 

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

childhood wormhole: ‘up floated the printed words …’
green wormhole: loud music
piano wormhole: ‘sneezing …’
white wormhole: ‘at midday the Batman walked across the square …’