neither nude nor / descending a staircase

Tags

2015, 4*, cafe, doing, girl, Marcel Duchamp, movement, muse, portrait, step, work

                neither nude nor
                descending a staircase

                tallgirl footplant
                squareround roundtable
                legtake weightswing
                clothlinger ‘n’ widescoop

                stoopgather wideshoulder
                footplant shiftsquare
                headturn shoulderbare
                headlift straightstep

 

 

 

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

doing wormhole: not / the Catcher
girl & muse wormhole: sleep now
work wormhole: matter

 

ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

Tags

2016, 8*, being, breathing, child, clothes, colour, comics, despair, Dorian Gray, emperor, exclamation, exposed, flowers, Granada, hope, identity, inspiration, light, love, mantra, model, phrase, portrait, Prajnaparamita, rain, rainbow, realisation, retirement, secret, seeing, self, self-containment, self-image, speech, step, thread, tragedy, vanity, wandering, words, world

 

 
le mot just
the piquant phrase
                                         the simple model rising magnificent
                                         from cavalcades
                                         of stoic tumbling

                                         threads through like
                                         weave which clothes me
                                         presentable to the world …

                                         but no one sees the
                                         emperor’s clothes of
                                         such fine thread it cannot
                                         be seen, no wise child
                                         to point and exclaim
                                         the hang and drape
                                         to put an end to all step –
                                         “look, mummy, that man
                                           is not an emperor!”

 

 
less than naked
I am seen right through
                                         adrift of discourse
                                         I step with stubborn countenance,
                                         all the better to
                                         stare myself into existence,

 

 
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
                                         lest I lose [what I haven’t
                                         got] self-contained in trembling
                                         vanity, secretive in hope
                                         of things to come, desparate
                                         in tragedy that my grimy
                                         portrait might be seen …

 

 
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
                                         their colour, breathe their
                                         light and let the light rain
                                         fall in shards of rainbow,
                                         cleansing with love –

 

 

 
                      om     ga – te     ga – te
                                      pa – ra – ga – te
                                                      pa – ra – sam – ga – te
                                                                      bo – dhi     so – ha

 

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

 

 

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

being wormhole: pocket
breathing wormhole: within
child & light wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
comics wormhole: chartless …
identity wormhole: not / the Catcher
love wormhole: love and precision
rain wormhole: monument to vainglory
realisation wormhole: passing below
seeing wormhole: con / sum / mate
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
words wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
world wormhole: the skyline

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

Tags

1967, 2016, 9*, alley, axe, birth, black, blue, classroom, echo, eyes, faces, fields, garden, grey, hate, hazel, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, mist, morning, passing, pigs, pink, Ramsden Heath, Robin, silence, sky, snow, sound, speech, step, sun, teacher, thought, ugliness, vertical, waiting, walls, white, windows, winter, witness, woodland, yellow

            snow

            waiting;

            ruffles beneath the trembling ivy,
            divergent verticals in the hazel coppices;

            silence;

            reverent steps, and in the cavernous
            grey of high hangs the faintest, pink;

            baton;

            on a woodland bank a single lesser
            periwinkle holds up a blue flower,

            by the wall a solo leaf descants to the ground
            and a snowflake touches the cheek;

            turn;

            the black background of the woods
            a million flakes seen,

            in the classroom thirty pairs of eyes
            drift across to the window

            and the music teacher holds
            his sentence;

            thought;

            leeward black, and fields of white, if
            we were to hate everything that

            included rip and tear of any ugliness,
            there would be nothing left to love;

            morning;

            through window panes the sun
            is a flat yellow disc viewable

            without hurt to the eye,
            mist divides land into borough

            and alleyway stepping crunch from the
            steam kitchen into the sparkling garden;

            piggery;

            at the bottom of the garden,
            piglets stop snuffling around and stand

            looking, like little pink statues, then …
            hurtle across the yard barking at the sun

            (the sow had rather build her nest in the
             corner of the field, one morning

             she was there, an army of piglets
             lined up at the milk bar

             the most ridiculous expressions
             of content upon their faces, and

             a robin on the solid water
             of the cattle trough);

            witness;

            the ch-nnk and bite of axe in log
            bounced across the fields to the woods and back with

            such clarity I expected it to continue
            as he laid his axe aside, “Morning”,

            “Morning”;

            it is not winter that dispels life,
            but life that dispels winter

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

 

 

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

black & blue & echo & eyes & faces & fields & garden & grey & kitchen & life & love & morning & pink & silence & sky & snow & sound & sun & walls & white & windows & winter & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
faces wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
passing wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
thought wormhole: Clea
waiting wormhole: returning home handsome

 

through the pane – poewieview #34

Tags

1971, 2016, 5*, afternoon, being, books, Bowie, death, doing, friends, green, life, listening, looking, love, pipes, questions, quiet, sky, square, stain, step, streets, time, Victorian houses, windows

          spikes in constant
          exchange through the pane
          try in vain to
          puncture the sky; sky

          rising
          but – what – shall – I –
          be; steps upwards, steps
          aside, but – what – is – going – on

          look-away-
          turn-head-to-friend –
          check, with love –
          look-back

          shall I leaf the books,
          shall I lengthen the wick,
          interrogate streets, but –
          will – the – streets – listen …

          exiting languidly in the late green afternoon
          amongst the pipes, back windows and
          soot-stained Victorian houses all about
          the lonely square

 

peered through Eight Line Poem & Changes, 1971, after January 10th 2016

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

afternoon & Bowie & looking wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
being wormhole: travel
books wormhole: Life on Mars? – poewieview #31
death wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – the soft canticle of the gourds:
doing & windows wormhole: languidly close the portal
green wormhole: fresh destiny
life wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
listening wormhole: my seat // now
love wormhole: listen willya
sky wormhole: passing skies
streets wormhole: coagulating
time wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
Victorian houses wormhole: opening

 

words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

Tags

1970s, 1971, 2016, bed, Bowie, brick, buildings, cartoon, clouds, flats, form, guitar, hearing, height, litter, music, park, passing, pipes, shops, silence, sky, step, suburbia, trees, wind, words, world, writing

                           lying still enough in the quiet of bedclothes
                           you can hear the pops in the sky as the
                           clouds settle and the resolve of form as

                           the trees are passed, all big-flared steps
                           through the park like the coming cartoons,
                           into the suburbs, (across the globe), but

                           always back to the room above the shops
                           under height of building pipework and the
                           block of flats, where the brick and grime

                           ignore the swirling litter … but then later,
                           among strumming, the words tumble like
                           boulders, each to their own defining clunk

 

settled throughout: Holy Holy, 1971; Oh! You Pretty Things, 1971; Fill Your Heart, 1971; How Lucky You Are (Miss Peculiar), 1971; Hang On To Yourself, 1971, after the dust

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

1971 wormhole: 1971
Bowie & buildings & wind wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
clouds wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
guitar wormhole: 08:55
music wormhole: well,
park & trees wormhole: 1963
passing & silence wormhole: 1965
shops wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
sky wormhole: 1968
words wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
world wormhole: tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving
writing wormhole: need

 

Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street

Tags

2012, avoidance, change, comics, conventional reality, Dr Strange, Edward Hopper, ellipsis, encounter, eyes, Gene Colan, hands, humanity, life, living, moment, quotidian, reality, seeing, skyline, step, Steve Englehart, streets, time, trees, walking

 

 

 

                                                              I

                                the always-aslant encounter
                                                              of humans and street
                                              making their lives
                                                              in the grounds they see
                                making their lives in the grounds they are given
                                                                                 constant encounter
                                              as variable as the daily

                                                                                 for those who see
                                elliptical to the happenstance –
                                                              the skyline to the treeline
                                                                                 the glide to the cobble
                                              the palm to the point
                                                              the both-step-aside to avoid each other’s path
                                                              and collide –
                                                                                 Hopper saw it
                and Colan saw it and Strange had already
                                                              stepped into it
                                                                                 stepped through it stepped out again

                                              moment

                                                                                 but now
                                his pupils are that much more round
                                              the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
                                                                                 the face in the orb implied
                                that everything had changed and that
                                                              things
                would never be the same again

 

I am psyched that the first trailer for the Doctor Strange film has just been released; I think this is going to see me lose my 56 year old jaded-cool; I am more excited about this than I was for the Batman movies, even though Batman is my character (oh, sorry, didn’t you know?), (in fact, I envisage Batman, ideally, as more akin to Doctor Strange, the character should be more mystical than he is generally presented); I am glad to see the trailer dealing with kaleidoscope-reality, this has a lot to go for it from the start; Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One is a genuinely creative piece of casting but I hope she is not as ‘explainey’ and active as this trailer suggests (or even as dynamic as she was Gabriel in ‘Constantine’, a female sage should have more devastating effect but with less of the door-slamming); (and talking of door-slamming: I was disappointed that the trailer starts of with the ubiquitous iron door slam portending dire catastrophe for gawp-eyed Humanity, I was hoping Doctor Strange, at least, would approach tale-telling differently, but I suppose superhero movies have hit their formula now, no one’s going to play with it with that much money going in … mind you, Stark’s humour, and the first Avenger’s humour were interesting innovations, I might hope for something innovative in Strange, not humour, so much, as power through deft and understatement, rather than grunt); the round loft-window gave me The Smile at the end; Cumberbatch has a Good Walk as he broaches realities, he has the right eyes to see-through fingers for the part as well; I once hoped that David Lynch might write and direct Doctor Strange … that would have been interestingly different and so right … it was not well-received (have a look in the comments section of https://longboxgraveyard.com/2012/11/28/76-superhero-greenlight-doctor-strange/) … actually, dab’n’abbit, here is my tender, but I’ll settle with what this film seems to promise:

Dr Strange operates in worlds which are ‘mystical’ in the sense that they function within natural laws and forces which are alternate to our own – they are worlds which we just don’t get and it would be better for us that we didn’t know about them so we can continue functioning ourselves.   And yet Stephen Strange is of and from this world – he is all too human but has mastered the Mystic Arts.   He therefore lives between the two worlds – the physical/political and the occult worlds – or rather he lives amid, at the same time.   He is ‘strange’ because he bridges these two worlds, and this is the central pull of the character for me.   In comics the ‘occult’ world was depicted fantastically (the floating-island footsteps of Ditko, the swirls of Colan) because it was a visual medium meant for younger audiences (growing up); but the occult world doesn’t so much ‘look’ strange (like a childishly re-arranged physical world), in fact it isn’t even a different world it is the same world ‘seen’ (and ‘heard’ and ‘felt’ and acted in) differently.   What was equally attractive about Dr Strange (and under-used in the comics) was the depiction of the character in ordinary, recognisable surroundings but knowing he was actually operating in a world out of the space-time continuum.   I would conceive that Strange’s ‘battles’ took place while he was strolling through a park, while walking on the street, in the blink of an Eye (herm).   I once heard David Lynch talk about how he achieves perspectives in his work by ‘filming through the eye of a duck’ meaning that he doesn’t just film ‘lineally’ he films simultaneously/alternately – he shoots a scene/whole films which physically depict one narrative but which affectively show an alternate landscape in which they play out.   What better ‘mise-en-scene’ist than David Lynch to depict the life of a character who has ‘mastered’ the arts of living bridged across two worlds-in-one?   No need of CGI, no need of costumes, not even much need of action!   I know, I know, not the ingredients for your standard superhero blockbuster money-maker.   But they have been done and will continue to be done under their own momentum.   Dr Strange has always been a peripheral character because he is so … strange.   Perhaps this would be time to make a different take on the comics-to-film translation formula …

Anyhoo, I wrote a series of poems tracking Doctor Strange through a key set of issues written by Steve Englehart and drawn by Gene Colan; (Dr Strange #6-13 (Feb 1975-April 1976)); these issues are some of the best comics I have ever read; they were also seminal in shaping me to become the significantly un-noticeable writer I have become to this day; I posted them in 2012 and then re-posted them again in 2014 because I thought the film was immanent – it wasn’t; but, dammitall, I like these babies so I’m going to post them again, spread out until November 4th …

 

 

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

change wormhole: top table
comics wormhole: Poewieviews
Dr Strange & Gene Colan wormhole: Dr Strange VII – the madness of Mordo
Edward Hopper wormhole: New York, New Haven and Hartford, 1931
eyes wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
hands wormhole: really
life & reality & streets & time & walking wormhole: 1964
living wormhole: dash
seeing wormhole: rhymed
skyline wormhole: miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22
trees wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23

 

Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20

Tags

2016, abundance, atrophy, bitterness, Bowie, city, cross, curtains, decay, defeat, dockside, earth, gods, hatch, horizon, humanity, love, mortality, mountain, opening, pen, piles, plane, portal, privacy, rage, reverse, river, ruler, sphere, step, tears, wanting, waves

                                reverse
                of usual effulgent horizons opening like shallow waves
                                              logarithmically
                                wanting
                fall-to-knees mortality and tears over abundance, equally
                                              untenable
                                              atrophic

                                stepped to the earth
                                from the mountains
                                a god stood like a man

                                down by the docks, by
                                the piles, while a city grew
                                and festered all about

                                the river: hatch and cross,
                                pen and ruler, private
                                and bitter, sphere and

                                plane, all with woven
                                curtain pulled, defeated,
                                across every portal, and

                                no room for Quiver of
                                Tiffany, only a rage that
                                I cannot control, after all

 

through the lonely portals of The Supermen, 1970; Saviour Machine, 1970; Running Gun Blues, 1970

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

Bowie wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
city wormhole: gotcha
curtains wormhole: the art of sit and follow
horizon wormhole: stacked
love wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
tears wormhole: dear clown’s face
waves wormhole: thick thick fog

 

through

Tags

2013, being, childhood, class, creativity, doors, identity, school, step, work

 

 

 

                     I go to school
                     I am nervous but

                     I have a friend if I
                     hold his hand and

                     I care for his nerve
                     like the son he has to be

                     and step through the door
                     to do the good job and grow

                     creative and seasonal through
                     the raw-open classrooms

 

(actually, I don’t and I didn’t since I wrote this, and I am not all too sure that I will be able to continue much longer since I let go the hand and sniffed around for the Recognition, because … that certainly weren’t coming anytime soon

 

 

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

being wormhole: opening
childhood wormhole: quite … / … yet – poewieview #12
creativity wormhole: organ / sunlight in all our eyes – poewieview #11
doors wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
identity wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
school & work wormhole: just saying, is all IV: // lost

 

1963

Tags

1963, 2014, abandonment, bedroom, betrayal, childhood, Eglinton Hill, loss, sound, step, toes, years

 

 

 

                1963

                                  steppin’
                            ‘n’ lope-n’
                            ‘n’ swingin’
                            ‘n’ toe-n’
                            ‘n’ makin’
                            m’ way fr’m
                                one room to n’other
                                   with only a creak to pretend

 

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: sit
bedroom wormhole: the open window
childhood & Eglinton Hill wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
sound wormhole: dog bark
years wormhole: 1966 … actually sic // of it allllll-bsssssssh – poewieview #8

 

that comicbookshop in dreams,

Tags

1960s, 2015, anxiety, arrival, bay window, beach, black, blue, buildings, comics, doing, doors, dream, Edward Hopper, eyes, finding, floorboards, frustration, glass, going, grey, growth, hill, home, hope, identity, lemon, lifetimes, lino, looking, moon, morning, numbers, regret, searching, shadow, shops, sky, step, streets, sycamore, Thames, time, town, trees, universe, Victorian houses, walls, windows, wormhole, writing

 

 

 

that comicbookshop in dreams,

where the sidestreets meet together
off the highstreets under the shadows
slanting down the rear façades of pipework and blackened window
from so much higher up than can never concern us it’s frightening
the morning afer Hopper’s Nighthawks
is closing down

the ones I try to get to
when I find myself done in town (after
the frustration of trying to get somewhere
or the anxiety of trying to get away from a somewhere
that always follows me) but never arrive at; I make
my various ways there, I know the routes
like the back of my hand

the ones with
warped door stuck at the top
or the bottom (will the glass pane hold) with
step onto lino once lemon and grey with new hope
now one with the floorboards as they sag under warren
of backrooms like forgotten lifetimes (wormholes to everywhere) into
the fust and pulp of paper and number all for the finding,
are closing down

I should have
patronised them more, I suppose;
I still haven’t found that second issue, that elusive fourth,
and the stacks just keep sliding wondering other titles and other
universes pressing their sky and moons into my eyeball as I stand
and scan; but I couldn’t keep up, blinked too soon
have to get on, things to do
places to be

it’s having a sale
clearing all the stock; the sentinels stand
impassive with all find, impassive before all loss: hooded
eyes on somefaraway beach; for old times’ sake I pick up some
mid-60s anthologies with their simple figures reaching out of panel
with all the stance of opera, and maybe a sixth issue, and maybe an early
fanzine for some intertextuality, but I’ll avoid the figurines: too
defined in detail, too static
in marque

I’ll come away
with stash held close to my heart
back out into bustle of street busily in all direction
with all the noise of weak indication and strong giant message;
I’ll work my way uphill by quiet sidestreet past high walls that
impossibly hold the looming sycamore and bay-windowed villas
over the river under skies of grey and blue gantry
home to catalogue my finds on the shelf like
a maze and plot their weave in life
like a stanza

 

 

 

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

anxiety & looking & searching & shops wormhole: lo
beach wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
black wormhole: Black Rook / in Rainy Weather
blue wormhole: Buddha / Shakyamuni
buildings & comics wormhole: escape from Flat Planet
doing wormhole: the endless acts of life
doors & sky & time & windows & writing wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting
dream & moon wormhole: prayer to my self
Edward Hopper wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
eyes wormhole: the Conqueror
glass wormhole: heirloom – break / after heavy shower
grey & Victorian houses wormhole: corner of Plum Lane / Eglinton Hill and / Shrewsbury Lane
hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
identity wormhole: good looking
lemon wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
lifetimes wormhole: now, have I forgotten anything
morning wormhole: hot summer / morning
shadow & walls wormhole: of a sudden // all the time
streets wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
Thames wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
trees wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven