make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let

Tags

2013, 7*, afternoon, attention, boundary, class, construction, defeat, defensive, dream, labour, letting go, lifetimes, living, morning, satisfaction, shift, silence, skill, speech, teaching, waking, water

                I woke saying “sit down”
                to a class who had
                been testing me like water

                moving silent against
                my every prescription
                demanded or presumed

                despite all the charm or
                cleverness I might use
                to a morning

                and then an afternoon
                of defeat and defence
                unable to use the skill

                and manoeuvre I have
                taught myself for
                lifetimes now

                all the shift and forming
                around the boundaries
                finding every fissure

                and fault just ahead
                of my every attempt
                to dam it all; what labour

                what want of satisfaction;
                let the water go
                where it will – it will

                all go there anyway – and
                make your rickety
                constructs strong with

                unbending grids
                of attention and wide-
                open grates of let

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: divergent // direction
dream wormhole: wakeoutofadream
letting go wormhole: redundant
lifetimes wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything
living wormhole: free
morning wormhole: windows // and balconies
silence & speech & water wormhole: the quiet whale
teaching wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket

 

the quiet whale

Tags

2013, 8*, air, breath, community, currents, echo, groundlessness, life, light, passing, quiet, silence, society, sound, speech, superhero, water, whale, windows

                there was a thirty year cacophony
                     storied and canyon
                     full of echo and window
                     and impossible superheroes
                but the giant fin e – ven – tu – all – y
                     passed gliding out of freeze-frame
                     the quiet whale drifting off
                                like a community

                                there is nothing left
                     the after-currents, the dwindling tendency
                     the receding cheers the gears the home-lights
                                                receding bobs
                                                no ground to
                                                stand from
                                                su – spend – ead

                                     but too
                     no need to hold my breath anymore
                                no need to stay submerged down here
                                                let this leaden air out
                                                to rise where
                                                it will
                                I will take in all water
                                                behind my ears
                                                               and reach anywhere
                                                                               through power
                                                                                                   of silent speech

 

 

 

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

air & passing wormhole: too greedy
breath wormhole: municipal garden
echo wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
groundlessness wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
life wormhole: step
light & society wormhole: Infantino / district of Gotham
silence wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
sound wormhole: where else
speech wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
superhero wormhole: bud
water wormhole: embodying
whale wormhole: gulp // spout // and recede
windows wormhole: to rescue something

 

St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”

Tags

'scape, 2013, 8*, age, being, blindness, blue, books, breeze, Carol, contrapuntal, Derbyshire, flies, flying, grass, hill, mating, plants, seeds, shelf, speech, stone

                St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards
                with the forelegs hanging down obscene
                reaching some height blindly to connect
                out from the long-stalk tri-separating up-
                to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what
                is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know-
                what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and-
                it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”

                stones like grouped books on a shelf
                some fat enough to stand upright by themselves
                some leaning
                some fat ones leaning anyway
                with twisted spine

                various stalks of dried grasses
                reach slightly arthritic and
                inflexible in the breeze
                their seeds spent but ragged contrapuntal

                to the distant hill risen
                too old to read
                too stone-blue to talk with
                there and always there
                and only there by its lone and ever self

 

 

 

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

being & breeze 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
blue wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
books wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
Carol wormhole: ‘quick – she’s gone to pay …’
grass wormhole: prospect
speech wormhole: municipal garden
stone wormhole: prelude: // travel

 

municipal garden

Tags

'scape, 2013, 7*, Bakewell, branches, breath, building, bus, cars, child, clouds, coach, finials, garden, green, grey, hearing, morning, parent, passing, pigeons, pink, roses, speech, traffic, trees, voices

                                municipal garden

                pigeons along the ledge
                below the finials of the municipal building
                heads collapsed down into their shoulders

                the grey clouds convene
                from all across the morning
                the hangdown branches variously shuffle

                the municipal dustcarts and buses –
                      sorry not in service –
                the livestock carriers the plant carriers
                      and the coaches
                make their careful turn across the
                      mini-roundabout
                and all the cars cannot be seen but
                      are heard behind
                the long screen of pink rose bushes
                      constantly

                ‘can we go on the grass?’, ‘no’,
                inevitable as the next breath ‘why?’
                upturn voice ‘because you’re not allowed’ …

                … ‘why is it so green?’ the pigeons
                flock variously down to under the trees
                forming perfect rounds of pecking heads

 

 

 

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

branches wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
breath wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
bus wormhole: 1968
cars wormhole: Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it
child wormhole: ‘quick – she’s gone to pay …’
clouds & garden & green & morning & trees wormhole: garden
grey wormhole: handsome
passing wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
pigeons wormhole: embodying
pink wormhole: the skyline
speech wormhole: mother and daughter
voices wormhole: singsong chant

 

mother and daughter

Tags

2013, 3*, Croydon, daughter, London Bridge, morning, mother, phone, portrait, rhetorical interrogative, sing song, speech, talking, train, Uckfield-London line

                sing song announcement contributing conversation
                in timbre of mother and daughter on the train from

                London Bridge to East Croydon, ‘my battery’s almost
                ran out and … I only charged it up this morninn,’ ‘what

                does that mean,’ asked rhetorical-implicitly, ‘it means,
                I can’t send any more e-mails,’ sure of the right answer

 

 

 

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

daughter wormhole: to allow / passage
morning wormhole: 1968
mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
speech wormhole: prospect
talking wormhole: singsong chant
train wormhole: gone black
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hurst Green

 

prospect

Tags

2013, 4*, bicycle, children, grass, house, portrait, sister, speech, walking

                prospect

                out from the house
                straight down the steps

                boing   boinng   boinng
                says the five year old

                with his bicycle while tcht
                says the nine year old

                sister behind him why
                don’t you do it the old-

                fashioned way walking
                her bike elegantly down

                the grassy slope

 

 

 

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

house wormhole: vastly
speech wormhole: lost and city ground
walking wormhole: handsome

 

lost and city ground

Tags

2013, 4*, childhood, city, Eglinton Hill, flowers, garden, ground, Plumstead, smell, speech, weeds

                lost and city ground

                ah, the weeds and wildflowers
                overgrown and gummy
                in the ground smells just a little

                acrid before ‘come in from
                the garden, dear, you’ll get
                all dirty; it’s dinner soon’

 

written in response to one of my favourite bloggers who … hasn’t for more than three years now: https://dimsumhearts.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/be-an-architect/

 

 

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

childhood & Eglinton Hill wormhole: to rescue something
city wormhole: 1968
garden wormhole: within
Plumstead wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
smell wormhole: the // orange rose
speech wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

 

Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

Tags

2017, 7*, angel, circle, clock, doing, everything, glass, lifetimes, light, nothing, Salisbury Cathedral, speech, statue, stone, time

                Salisbury Cathedral

                angels fizz and jagger touch
                a single flame of tongue

                the oldest working clock
                shows no time anymore;

                so much empty stone
                so many lives lost

                only coloured light of lineage
                and majesty keeping inward –

                so much hopeful effort frozen
                in faraway stare outwards –

                curlicue ends of stone form
                perfect circles of nothing

                suspended in everything

 

 

there is nothing ventured that gain doesn’t think it so, there is everything gained by staying in the centre of the circle; read the whole sequence as it hangs unearthly in space: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

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

doing wormhole: nothing significant
glass wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
lifetimes wormhole: Open – All – Ours
light wormhole: darkness
speech & stone & time wormhole: stone

 

stone

Tags

2017, 7*, acceptance, afterlife, barrow, breath, death, girl, hair, life, lost, parent, place, settlement, sky, speech, stone, time, world

courtesy of https://historicengland.org.uk – hope she doesn’t mind

                                there was
                                just out
                                and hunt
                                and gather

                                and then
                                we stopped
                                to keep
                                and found

                the whole world wider than the sky

                                that we
                                got lost
                                to where
                                we were

                                and time
                                which came
                                to late
                                and so we

                                hauled
                                the stones
                                to fix
                                place

                                and dis
                                covered
                                in …
                                and life

                                and death
                                the smell of
                                deepness
                                the breath

                                of stone
                “you know what they were talking about
                                in class …
                                Kirsty …”

                                scampering
                                sideways
                                down the
                                slope untied

                                hair waving
                                all over
                                the place
                “… they were talking about barrows, burial

                                chambers;
                                we’re standing
                                on them
                                now – ”

                                all over
                                the place;
                                I’ve come
                                from the

                                ground I’ll
                                go back to
                                the ground
                                when time

 

perspective; read the whole sequence as it treads sideways down through time: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
breath & hair & life wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
death wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
girl wormhole: neither nude nor / descending a staircase
sky wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
speech wormhole: retirement
stone & time & world wormhole: weight

 

retirement

Tags

2017, 7*, air, blood, career, face, feeling, identity, managerialism, mist, movement, murder, professionalism, retirement, smile, speech, table, teaching

                           retirement

---

                                     .                                      ,                                           .

                           ,                .                                                                                     ;                                                 ,                                                                                     .                       –                 .

                ,             ,                                                       ,  “                                                                     ,                                 ”,         … there

---

                           had been a murder
                           I could feel it all around me and
                           it wasn’t just because there was

                           mist all about – suggested movement,
                           sudden stop – and there is
                           no body

                           that I can see
                           no speech balloon of blood
                           from a face’s final cry

                           but a gentle air
                           where the table is that I
                           use to pound my fists

                           and a swirly smile
                           that told me so, dispersing and
                           unattributive

 

retirement #6: here it is, the full story in all of its salacious detail; restricted strictly to those over 18 years of age – warning: graphic violence, with scenes of intent unattribularity

 

 

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

air & mist wormhole: 1968
career & teaching wormhole: holiday
identity & smile wormhole: six paramitas
managerialism wormhole: dry rot
professionalism & table wormhole: while
speech wormhole: so pleased to see you again