my / superpower

Tags

2011, ambiguity, Batman, Beast, Buddhanature, Daredevil, dilemma, disempowerment, distrust, Dr Strange, emptiness, Hulk, identity, ignominy, ingenuity, insight, Kryptonite, naïveté, poem, presence, prohibition, release, Spiderman, stealth, Superman, superpower, Thor, tragedy, wisdom

 

 

 

                                               my
                                superpower

                I am not implacable like Superman
                                              which is both my own Kryptonite
                                and my own presence

                I am not grim like the Batman
                                              which is both my own Tragedy
                                and my own wisdom

                I am not angry like the Hulk
                                              which is both my own Ignominy
                                and my own stealth

                I am not strange like Stephen
                                              which is both my own Ambiguity
                                and my own naïveté

                I am not a human god like Thor
                                              which is both my own Dilemma
                                and my own ease

                I am not webbed in moral struggle like Spiderman
                                              which is both my own Disempowerment
                                and my own ingenuity

                I am not fore-sighted like Daredevil
                                              which is both my own Prohibition
                                and my own insight

                I am not mellifluent like the Beast
                                              which is both my own Distrust
                                and my own poem

                                no,

                                no

                                my super power
                                is far far greater
                                than all of these

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: early evening
Daredevil wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
disempowerment wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
Dr Strange wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
emptiness wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: need
naïveté wormhole: true nature
Superman wormhole: sit
superpower wormhole: exactly equal
Thor wormhole: song of irrelevance

 

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sit

Tags

2010, abandonment, ageing, Batman, bedroom, being, biography, birthday, books, border, branches, cape, carpet, cars, Catcher in the Rye, childhood, children, comics, compassion, counting, cowl, crying, Dad, divorce, father, flower, fog, fracture, French, green, guru, history, house, identity, image, leaf, life, living room, lyric, marriage, moonlight, Mum, music, night, numbers, parents, pattern, planets, posture, power, Salinger, self-compassion, sentient beings, settee, shadow, sitting, skyline, speech, stone, sunlight, superhero, Superman, surrealism, talking to myself, teaching, wife, world, writing, yin yang

 

 

 

                           I stared at the pattern of the carpet
                           driving my cars behind the settee
                           while my parents said final things
                           to each other; the twirl of the branches

                           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 now,
                           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, around the whole room;

                           only later – in bed – is 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 had already known
                           but I could only count the patterns,
                           I could only drive the cars; and

                           as I cried, I was numb – pattern
                           before settee – I could fracture
                           from the world, just find a pattern;
                           you’re the man of the house now,

                           someone said to me, so I studied
                           the pages of comicbooks – patterns
                           of power, solving under cowl,
                           jumping under 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 adopt
                           the posture of heroes, no; I shall

                           number the histories; I shall weave
                           the texture of music; I shall taste
                           the shock of 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
                           into existence, yes; I shall follow
                           the curl and the twist and the twirl

                           under moonlight all the night long;
                           then, I shall play catch in the rye;
                           I shall alors les boulevards; I shall
                           yin the old yang; I shall surreal in

                           the fog; I shall honour my guru
                           I shall marry my wife; I shall father
                           my children; I shall teach in those classes –
                           but forty two years on, he had still

                           just left; and I still didn’t know how
                           to be the man; time to get out from
                           behind the settee, take a seat with
                           all the others, and
                                                  just
                                                  sit there with them all awhile

 

 

 

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

abandonment & divorce wormhole: … back to the outbreath
Batman wormhole: zok! and pow!
bedroom & Dad wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
being & identity & talking to myself & world & writing wormhole: out!
books wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
branches wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
carpet wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
cars wormhole: after all?
childhood & music wormhole: fantasia
comics wormhole: Detective Comics #345
compassion wormhole: de Boeddha // of light
father wormhole: sight / seeing
fog wormhole: my life / of others
green wormhole: three musicians
history wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
house wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
life & speech wormhole: “write, let’s break outta here!”
living room wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
Mum wormhole: dream 230315
night wormhole: mauve / night
posture & sitting & superhero wormhole: exactly equal
power wormhole: the continental stride of trains
shadow & teaching wormhole: … anymore
skyline wormhole: The Louvre in a Thunderstorm, 1909
stone wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
Superman wormhole: escape from Flat Planet

 

escape from Flat Planet

Tags

2015, angle, being, buildings, comics, doing, identity, life, meaning, pointlessness, purpose, renunciation, speech, superhero, Superman, talking to myself, time

 

 

 

                                                              escape from Flat Planet

                                                              ugh, must … get good … at
                                              anything … make everything
                                around me – worthwhile

                                – except
                I don’t know what to do
                                              in a life that hides its worth
                                presumed rhetorically
                                experienced missing … hngh, if

                                I …
                                can do … what
                             I can
                exponential [to what I am] maybe,
                just maybe, I will find the right angle
                out of all this seeming plane,
                                                              maybe I could soar the tallest building
                                with a single bound

                                and yet …
                and still decades on
                                I am bound in old borders
                arranged cleverly on a page
                                four-colourful and heroic but still unable
                                              to account for the
                                              always-higher
                                              rooftop
                                from which I can swing
                                                              despite all the words of bubble balloon and effect

                                … I have to accept
                being unmasked again and again –
                                              but it is so humiliating …
                                              so much depends upon
                                              my strong arm; don’t you see!!! –
                                … have to become
                                my own secret identity
                                beneath all dimension

 

 

 

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

being & doing wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
buildings wormhole: up here
comics wormhole: Dr Strange VII – the madness of Mordo
identity wormhole: truly invisible
life & pointlessness & time wormhole: on walking through walls
meaning wormhole: nothing // matters
renunciation wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
speech wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
superhero wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
Superman wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
talking to myself wormhole: my life / of others

 

multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)

Tags

1930s, 2014, 9*, age, Allen Ginsberg, architecture, avenue, Batman, being, birds, buildings, choice, city, collective unconscious, consumerism, death, doing, doors, earrings, emptiness, faces, Frank Miller, giving, grey, Have, identity, Joker, letting go, life, lightning, lime, magazine, mother of pearl, night, olive, option, red, Shantideva, silhouette, sky, society, sound, space, speech, statue, steam, Superman, talking, talking to myself, thunder, topaz, tv, vindication, walls, wisdom

 

The Dark Knight Returns (1986); writer: Frank Miller; artist: Frank Miller & Lynn Varley

 

 

 

                earrings: left then right
                static square and upright obelisk

                steam across every avenue
                before the silhouette architecture with grizzly coat of ornamentation

                earrings: lime-olive horizontal
                and block full-stop

                the rabbit-chase fall below
                is sudden guttural and city-wide

RMMBL
                ‘a flash of lightning in the dark of night’*
                                                                                 KRAKK

                all the effortless intelligence beyond the door
                beyond the wall        with bat-darts

                earrings: mother of pearl
                pause and equals

and there he is jumping taller than a building across the only spaces left now:
                the sky and the ante-room before preconception (a cowardly and superstitious lot)

                the spires stand clean
                in the grey-wash sky

                where gothic statues acknowledge
                the impossible pinion and swing

                “… I have to know”**
                and stone manes splay when he sees “a reflection”***

                earrings: topaz pennies
                one and three-dangling

                and while the gently-cornered squares
                talk the Worm the Bluff and the Dribble

                others take the space down in the dump
                where a position cannot be found

                where the position cannot be resisted
                no matter how young you are

                no matter how strong you are in the realistic world
                in all the floorboard rooms the TVs and magazines

                stack positions on shelves and in refrigerators
                and in wrappers multifarious in choice and option

                any space here
                would make everything all the more ugly

                no
                no

                the move needs to come from
space of no choice and it can never be obvious it can never be choice

                Bat-signal
                bright on the side of Moloch****

                stone birds from the 1930s
                earrings: gone

                ah, but the world grows [not] up
                rather it folds over itself and regenerates

                with billowed ruffles
                atop old buildings

                “so many smiles / so many faces / all the same”*****
                “every year they grow smaller”******

                earrings: vampyre’s teeth soaked
                serious faces        all the same

                when you break too many of the important rules
                you’ve acted to define yourself vindicated

                you haven’t given    anything
                it doesn’t count

                death happens by itself without design
                all you have to do is let it all go –

                the purpose and the self –
                and you could live clean for a hundred years

 

* Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 5, Shantideva (translated Stephen Batchelor): ‘Just as a flash of lightning on a dark, cloudy night / For an instant brightly illuminates all, / Likewise in this world, through the might of Buddha, / A wholesome thought rarely and briefly appears’
** Book I, P.43 & 45
*** Book I, P.47
**** Howl
***** Book III, P.25
****** Book III, P.25

 

 

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

Allen Ginsberg wormhole: poetry
architecture wormhole: stranger / if we met
Batman wormhole: tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again
being & vindication wormhole: heavy load
birds & talking wormhole: sunny day
buildings wormhole: the edges of my reach
city wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
death & life & night & sky wormhole: … sshhh
doing wormhole: the meaning is the moment all day long
doors wormhole: walking / right into the side of the very door left / open for me
emptiness & space wormhole: wha’
faces wormhole: quest in brown
giving wormhole: practise what you doing / give what you having / breathe what you remember
grey & lime & olive wormhole: Hever
Have wormhole: shared anxiety
identity wormhole: prologue
letting go & talking to myself wormhole: … and
lightning wormhole: jagged panel
red wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
Shantideva wormhole: walking
silhouette wormhole: clouds
society wormhole: the sounds the difficulty and the long long strands of liquorice
sound wormhole: someone called Frank
speech wormhole: mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional
Superman wormhole: inverse superhero
tv wormhole: Love Me Do
walls wormhole: Knapps

 

inverse superhero

Tags

2012, 5*, career, creativity, identity, listening, managerialism, night, purpose, responsibility, speech, superhero, Superman, teaching, tragedy

 

 

 

                                   ignore my creation and offer
                                   then tell me to take responsibility
                                   if I want to be heard even though

                                   I can only test the weight
                                   and sway of a re spon si bi li ty
                                   in a place where the walls listen

                                   so I’ll continue to work
                                   with purpose and tragedy
                                   deep into the silent nights to which

                                   ignore that I am wasted and
                                   presume me unnecessary
                                   then suffer me withdrawn then

                                   want me mi nu te ly attentive
                                   to every ache pain and crisis and
                                   all the while imply that I don’t

                                   I am an inverse superhero

                                   everything that is faster taller
                                   and somewhat super in me
                                   doesn’t shift waft or is even noticed

                                   and my secret identity
                                   is suffered to be around ‘if only
                                   he had a bit more élan’

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: successive scenes in the autobiopera / conflict and resolution in each episode // credits: me me me me me
creativity wormhole: ashramas
identity & teaching wormhole: again
listening wormhole: through the window
managerialism wormhole: :just wondering
night wormhole: I don’t know what to do …
speech wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
superhero wormhole: the / Woolworth / Building
Superman wormhole: anatta

 

anatta

Tags

2013, 6*, being, breeze, doing, doors, ideas, identity, image, settling, sitting, sound, superhero, Superman, thinking, walls, windows, world

 

 

 

                                                              anatta

                                     in a world that
                just don’t work right
                           that just don’t work right
                to make sense to me
                           to make sense of me
                there is great comfort
                           in spin-off where
       ideas can be cohesive
                and reach out like tendrils
                           for to grow my own roots and fibre
       where pictures can be composed
                and deepen like open envelopes
                           to structure my walls and windows
       where sounds can be accorded
                and wonder like turns of a breeze
                           there to open doors and
                                     navigate my way
       and all my lifetime leaping (taller than a single building)
                           and running (faster than a speeding bullet) from the
                           very ground I start from
                                     every time

 

 

 

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

being & identity & settling & sitting wormhole: far too muscular
breeze wormhole: chrysalissing
doing wormhole: “rest your frontal lobe”
doors wormhole: radio
sound wormhole: Leicester
superhero wormhole: preee -senting // en- / senting
Superman wormhole: and no one would know
thinking wormhole: how ironic
walls wormhole: so lonely
windows wormhole: Science lesson
world wormhole: brave new world?

 

and no one would know

Tags

2008, 5*, Batman, Bodhisattva, comics, Daredevil, growth, Iron Man, Superman, superpower, talking to myself

 

 

 

I am not blind – but if I could tune my senses as if I were I could be
      superhuman
            and no one would know
my parents were not shot down before me but if I could hold tight and
      always to what is right I could be immovable
            and no one would know
I may not have shrapnel near my heart but if I could create with
      what is to hand I could transform the world
            and no one would know
I may not come from another world but if I live here I could leap
      buildings with a single bound
            and no one would know

 

 

 

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

Batman & comics wormholes: the Bat-parent
Superman & Daredevil wormhole: my / superpower
superpower wormhole: divorce
talking to myself wormhole: pattern

 

my / superpower

Tags

2011, 4*, Batman, Beast, being, comics, Daredevil, Dr Strange, growth, Hulk, life, Spiderman, Superman, Thor, zazen

 

 

 

                                      my
                     superpower

            I am not implacable like Superman
                     which is my own Kryptonite
            I am not grim like the Batman
                     which is my own Tragedy
            I am not angry like the Hulk
                     which is my own Not Being Accepted
            I am not strange like Stephen
                     which is my own Ambiguity
            I am not a human god like Thor
                     which is my own Dilemma
            I am not webbed in moral struggle like Spiderman
                     which is my own Shifted Agenda
            I am not fore-sighted like Daredevil
                     which is my own Not Being Listened To
            I am not mellifluent like the Beast
                     which is my own Distrust

                     no

            my powers are far far greater
            than any of these

 

 

 

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

Batman & comics wormhole: Batworld
being wormhole: just
life & Superman wormhole: by default
zazen wormhole: right effort

 

by default

Tags

2011, 5*, Bodhisattva, growth, life, management, performance, speech, Superman, talking to myself, teaching

 

 

 

I heard the rationalisations made by others when my parents separated
            the state- agree- and pro-claims that come-on-now put life
               together again
I have always distrusted the way others have seen things-are
            over folded arms leaning on brooms
                      leaning on rhetorical interrogatives
                      for agreement – the essential glue of life
so I developed my own view and picture

                                by default

in contradistinction to the broom
            the bartered agreed proclaimed understandings
                      think alternatively from the usual
                      build myself alternatively from the usual
                      pride myself alternatively from the usual

when I was young I didn’t present my take
            because I was young
when I was a teen I questioned usuality but ended up hurting people
            and then shut up because they wouldn’t like me
when I was older I kept quiet in order to be-the-bodhisattva So That
   Others Might Live
            (actually I colluded with others that I was head-in-the-clouds
               and mostly useless)

but the school kept sloganizing for better performance
            kept provoking me to think about teaching
                      I couldn’t help it they kept goading me ‘this
                                is the way things are’
I placed my thoughts carefully in the rocket ship
            and shot them into the sky tucked-up cohesive dotted and teed
            they would grow to have a fine blue chest

but still they came from an alternative world
            still they would always be alien to the norm
for them to be listened to would be to redefine how things are seen
                      and why would they do that?
                                and why would I hope that they would?

 

 

 

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

life & management & teaching wormhole: after all
performance wormhole: purity
speech wormhole: yes
talking to myself wormhole: right effort