and // do your ears burn red?

Tags

2015, 5*, blond, clothes, dark, ears, eating, face, girl, hands, hotel, identity, kitchen, life, night, passing, red, sweat, Sylvia Plath, talking, time, twilight, water, writing

                and do your ears burn red, or do you,
                washing dishes, with those same clothes
                rotting under your armpits, still talk
                about visigoths to your pathetic self

                and divine nothing?   I put you in a book,
                because a girl with blond hair told me
                about you one night eating grapes in the
                twilight kitchen, the planes of her face

                growing darker; two years ago, with those
                same clothes, stood in the doorway of the
                old hotel watching a girl named Ann, with
                wet hair walk beside Lake George; acrid,

                now, with the stench of dried sweat and
                your long black hair, your hands puffed
                and creased from the hot water; tell me,
                do your ears burn red?

 

bevelled up into bas-relief out of entry 120. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962

 

 

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

girl wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
hands wormhole: place
hotel wormhole: constant hummm
identity & life wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
kitchen wormhole: out
night wormhole: humm
passing wormhole: passing
red wormhole: Bexhill 140215
Sylvia Plath wormhole: at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree
talking wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
time wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
twilight wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
water wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
writing wormhole: found

 

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at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree

Tags

2014, breeze, Carol, colour, garden centre, humour, identity, language, poem, speech, Sylvia Plath, table, Ted Hughes, words, writing

                at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to
                replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about
                the Yew Tree

                                if I was to say to you
                                “write a poem NOW”
                                what would you lock
                                on to?

                                ‘are you talking to ME
                                …; I only use words
                                for lists complaints
                                reports; what’s the
                                use of poems; I can
                                see colours and hear
                                breezes but I don’t
                                connect them with
                                words’

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: ‘someone …’
Carol wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: cape and cowl
speech & Sylvia Plath & writing wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
table 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
words wormhole: reating & wriding

 

Cocktails in 1951

Tags

1951, 2014, 6*, air, black, cars, clouds, grass, green, grey, leaves, listening, loneliness, moon, ocean, passing, pine, pink, sky, sound, speech, Sylvia Plath, talking, trees, white, writing

                Cocktails in 1951

                down below, that half-curious
                half-comical world on the terrace
                up here the air blurs the syllables
                of conversation like sky-writing

                from a clear pencilled line to a
                puffy cloud; green of grass
                grey of ocean and a deepening
                sky faintly pink; always a roaring

                of sound, cars whirring along
                the turnpike; the moon, now,
                over the green-black tops of pines
                chalkily white, third quarter lunar phase sphere

                amputated optically and neatly;
                below a thick voice, “The moon’s out.”
                The reply ravels and threads
                on the leaves and is lost to you

 

dug into, dug up, found, carefully dusted off and pieced together from entry 87. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962, but written by Sylvia Plath before the moon really came out

 

 

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

air wormhole: and I lose sight of her into memory
black wormhole: slightly / uphill
cars wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
clouds & pine wormhole: volcanic rock
green & trees wormhole: Tara mantras
grey wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
leaves & moon wormhole: between
listening & talking wormhole: reating & wriding
loneliness wormhole: wakeoutofadream
passing wormhole: duty free // chastened
pink wormhole: pink and orange
sky wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
sound wormhole: place
speech wormhole: h’rk ‘eh ‘heh ‘hair ‘yeah ‘eh?
Sylvia Plath wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
white wormhole: greedy
writing wormhole: is there anything to write?

 

‘God, who am I …?’

Tags

2014, 20th century, 7*, distance, faces, girls, history, horizon, identity, library, lost, madness, motion, Nightmare, presence, progress, reading, sitting, sun, sunlight, Sylvia Plath, talking to myself, TH Huxley, thought

picked over, cajoled, placed this way and that, gazed at the upper corner of the room, and eventually written from entry 33. of The Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962; Plath wrote this, I merely … Plath wrote this, but the failure is mine, all mine, I tellsya!

                God, who am I?
                I sit in the library tonight
                the lights whirring
                girls everywhere
                reading books
                faces

                And I sit here without identity
                There is history to comprehend
                before I sleep

                Yet back at the house
                there is my room
                full of my presence
                There is my date this weekend:
                believes I am human –
                only indication that I am whole
                not merely a knot
                without identity –

                I’m lost!
                Huxley would have laughed
                What a conditioning this is!
                Hundreds of faces
                beating time along the edge of thought

                a nightmare
                no sun
                only continual motion
                If I rest inward
                I go mad

                There is so much
                in different directions
                pulled thin
                against horizons too distant to reach

                To stop with the German tribes
                and rest awhile: but no!
                On, on, on, through ages of empires
                ceaseless pace
                Will I never rest in sunlight again?

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: 20th century
faces wormhole: jump start
history wormhole: tragic and archival
horizon wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: between
reading wormhole: reating & wriding
sitting wormhole: all the sandstone / reflections in the / marble-blue troughs
sun & Sylvia Plath wormhole: concordance
talking to myself wormhole: a nice grey woollen picnic blanket
thought wormhole: divergent // direction

 

concordance

Tags

2014, 7*, age, armour, discovery, Donald Fagen, expectation, eyes, flow, Gran Canaria, Have, holiday, identity, image, life, looking, music, passing, Salinger, sea, sitting, sun, Sylvia Plath, waves, writing

                                                                                                how to be
                                                                                in a holiday resort
                                                                where the Have is strolled
                                                and swaggered and tattoo’d
                                catching glance like after-image
                when the eyes are closed?

                                                                ~O___,

                                why aren’t I writing?            Well
                                                                I am
                but I was expecting to see something else when I wrote
                                the flow of another holiday
                                                rather than the
                                                                concordance
                                                that I have still yet to discover
                                in my writing eyes wide
                                                closed

                                                                ,___O~

                                                                certainly
                                                the sun and skin keep me
                                                                lapping without gain
                                                                and replaying the chorus from the ‘Nightfly’                
                                                                                unsure if I ever got the verse

                                                                ___“O”—

                                                                but nevertheless
                                                I still worry that I don’t write
                                                                as Plath and Salinger would lifefully so

                                                                I even know the answer
                                but I cannot sit at the moment,
                                                                I thought I had armour by the sea but it has

                                                                so quickly rusted
                                                and I’m overweight and 54 thinking
                                                                of illness and waste

 

 

 

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

eyes & Salinger wormhole: slightly / uphill
flow wormhole: happen//ing
Have wormhole: pass and / fro
holiday wormhole: holiday
identity wormhole: h’rk ‘eh ‘heh ‘hair ‘yeah ‘eh?
life wormhole: I turn to wake up
looking wormhole: Tara mantras
music wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
passing wormhole: ‘someone …’
sea & sun & Sylvia Plath & waves & writing wormhole: jump start
sitting wormhole: woman / has worked in the gym / got a build

 

jump start

Tags

2014, 6*, alleys, bodies, exploration, faces, flesh, following, Gran Canaria, holiday, mind, nerve, sea, settling, sun, swimming, Sylvia Plath, thread, vista, waves, writing

                                                jump start

                sun-holiday can’t write
                                wanting to have written
                                                explore new alleyways find new vistas

                                                but the flesh
                is too blurbly and the faces too sneery
                                to settle my mind –

                                                                hanging stalks in the waves
                                                coming ashore
                                not coming ashore clinging to finger butt –

                that I cannot find a thread
and I cannot follow a nerve down to wherever it flinches
                                and tightens

                like Sylvia did in the
                                Letters for a Birthday
                                                at Yaddo

 

 

 

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

faces wormhole: so pleased to see you again
holiday wormhole: forgotten anything
mind wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sea wormhole: wasted –
settling wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
sun wormhole: the evening
Sylvia Plath wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
waves wormhole: divergent // direction
writing wormhole: reating & wriding

 

landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey

Tags

2013, birth, black, breathing, clouds, England, green, grey, hope, iron, landscape, life, London, mauve, mist, park, pipes, pregnancy, publishing, shadow, streets, Sylvia Plath, Victorian houses, walking, writing

                soon after I was born
                to the rendered sides of
                talling Victorian terrace-ends
                with networks of iron black pipe
                and random small frosted window
                                Sylvia Plath

                arrived back in England
                pregnant with newhope and
                immanent with firstbook
                to breathe the alternating
                talling shadows of street
                and the misty greenmauve landscape
                                of park

                landscape of cloud over London
                with differing depths of grey

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
breathing & writing wormhole: the goldilocks stance
clouds & green & grey wormhole: municipal garden
life wormhole: garden
London wormhole: handsome
mauve & shadow & walking wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
mist wormhole: prelude: // travel
park wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
publishing wormhole: Granada holiday …
streets wormhole: Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it
Sylvia Plath wormhole: Sylvia
Victorian houses wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34

 

Sylvia

Tags

2015, 3*, beauty, faces, Picasso, portrait, Sylvia Plath, writing

                                  Sylvia

                ugly as a Picasso
                in all her beauty

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – gull circling out at sea
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
Sylvia Plath wormhole: too late:
writing wormhole: woven-through

 

too late:

Tags

2015, blue, breathing, death, emptiness, eyes, holiday, identity, lifetimes, living, mouth, nose, seeing, sky, speech, sun, Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

                      you were not morbid
                      you were not paranoid

                      you were just awkward
                      with built-in mis-match

                      of all of our lives and
                      no hope for emergence;

                      you breathed always
                      through your eyes – so much

                      more to see – but they
                      said the nose, the mouth,

                      was more usual and
                      essential to living –

                      too late: you saw the
                      sun-bleached blue of a

                      holiday before the deep-
                      high sky of emptiness

                      and panicked

 

 

 

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

blue & sky wormhole: furl-reach
breathing wormhole: while walking
death wormhole: no one – poewieview #24
emptiness & identity & living & seeing wormhole: Jericho
eyes wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
holiday wormhole: 1968
lifetimes & sun wormhole: work
mouth wormhole: early evening
speech wormhole: dry rot
Sylvia Plath wormhole: and then just stop

 

and then just stop

Tags

2014, being, fall, habit, letting go, poem, rejection, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams

 

 

 

                      rejection from the Blue Hour
                      the first I’ve ever had over the
                      one I thought they’d love but
                      which didn’t suit their style

                      and I’m surprisingly alright
                      although I could easily not be
                      alright, I am well-practised
                      at that, but I simply let it go

                      it is no big deal and anyway
                      Sylvia and Old Bull Williams
                      suffered much ado out of style
                      and look what happened to them

                      how fresh to see a whole cascade
                      of ipso facto about to teeter
                      and then just stop – not another
                      fall – and then just stop

 

 

 

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

being & letting go wormhole: gentle
Sylvia Plath wormhole: bookmark
William Carlos Williams wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia