prelude: // travel

Tags

2013, 6*, acceptance, castle, coffee, compassion, doing, driving, dust, field, green, Have, mist, motorway, passing, people, progress, self-compassion, sky, steel, stone, sunlight, tarmac, travelling, waking, wood

                                prelude:

                had a day to myself
                no work to do no family no obligation
                I could have built myself a castle stony to the sky
                but I did nothing to make my mark in the world
                nothing to house
                the sky

                and I felt strangely accepting of that
                a sort-of love really

                                travel

                woke-up stupid lack-slept
                but I have a certain love for myself
                and I get on with last-minute packing

                people, slaves in so many ways to Have
                but I have a certain love for myself
                and can accept us all to suffer our own coffees

                there is steel in all the greens and mist in all the sunlight
                the harvester shaves the field to dust and someone
                burns the wood to waft across the motorway

                but I have a certain love for myself and
                I let them all pass and while the rubber turns
                the tarmac I progress to a destination

 

 

 

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

acceptance & sky wormhole: stone
coffee wormhole: magnificent salad
compassion wormhole: so pleased to see you again
doing wormhole: wasted –
field & green wormhole: greedy
Have wormhole: beepbeep
mist wormhole: retirement
motorway wormhole: dawn
passing & travelling wormhole: handsome
people wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show
stone wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything
wood wormhole: the 19th century

 

faintly apricot air?

Tags

'scape, 2015, 6*, air, apricot, grey, kerb, morning, Plumstead, progress, shadow, Shooters Hill, sky, streetlight, streets, tarmac, trees, walking

                why tarmac the whole street wide
                for one bicycle uphill and one

                careful walker down (hand in pocket
                no necktie), the trimmed-back trees

                planted along the kerb edge marking
                curved progress, marking the ends

                of terrace or maybe containing the
                wide grey sky over Shooters Hill that

                delivers a half past ten morning to the
                Borough; thinks the man by the sole

                streetlight leaning back on his cane
                in the shadow of the faintly apricot air?

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance
apricot wormhole: the skyline
grey wormhole: industrial estate
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
Plumstead wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
shadow wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sky & streets & trees wormhole: open window
streetlight wormhole: passing below
walking wormhole: to allow / passage

 

a theremin note – poewieview #21

Tags

2016, 20th century, afterlife, Bowie, childhood, cocoon, death, driving, faces, footsteps, futility, headache, history, hope, horizon, identity, life, lifetimes, perception, porridge, sight, society, sound, tarmac, theremin, time, trend, weariness

                     and then there is a ready-delivered weariness
                     in life after things start to echo: a theremin note

                     receding back towards past wistful horizon;
                     and then the footsteps march muddy over

                     recalcitrant tarmac, the tyres keep turning
                     through skiddy porridge despite all steer;

                     it starts as top-spin kwinkle, first off, then
                     the taran-tadaa of new-stood sight, to the headaches

                     that leave the face all palsied, until the pallid
                     cocoon folds in to snuff the tired trend of hope

 

you have to go deep into the corridors and past the tall windows, to get to eventual recognition – let alone re-cognition when it cannot be found – with only brief respite between thoughts and the too-closeness of every footstep; you cannot escape the footsteps, no matter how many doors you peep into; After All, 1970

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

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: the 20th century
Bowie wormhole: and that’s where I are
childhood wormhole: through
death wormhole: life [‘n’ death] / legerdemain – poewieview #15
faces wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
history & society wormhole: hinged – From Hell ch. V
horizon wormhole: Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20
identity wormhole: true nature
life & time wormhole: b / r / e / a / t / h / i / n / g
lifetimes wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
sound wormhole: always

 

stacked

Tags

'scape, 2013, blue, carlights, cars, combe end, horizon, morning, orange, pink, sky, snow, tarmac, white, windows, yellow

 

 

 

                                              stacked

                                cold sky
                                morning
                                hint of blue
                                hint of pink
                                on horizon
                                yellow car pulls in
                                dicating frozen snow
                on verge front lights dipped onto the drying tarmac

 

 

 

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

blue & white wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
cars wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
combe end wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
horizon wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
morning & sky & windows wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky
orange wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
pink wormhole: dog bark
snow wormhole: clouds
yellow wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post

 

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

 

now, the verticals go down as well as they go up

Tags

1970s, 1980s, 2015, alley, architecture, awning, buildings, chimney, city, colour, Daredevil, dark, dawn, drawing, Edward Hopper, form, Frank Miller, ground, hearing, height, identity, landscape, leisure, listening, litter, notice, orange, rain, rooftops, seeing, shops, silhouette, sitting, snow, sound, streetlight, streets, suburbia, tarmac, vertical

 

 

 

                now, the verticals go down as well as they go up

                                the form of
                                architecture
                                is drawn
                                by rain

                                streetlights
                                merely cast
                                the silhouettes
                                of dawn

                                in the 70s
                                and the 80s
                                the shops
                                opened late

                                like Hopper
                                landscapes
                                foretending
                                leisure

                                sleet down
                                an alley when
                                there are things
                                to be done

                                (cab waiting
                                with the meter
                                running) but
                                when it snows

                                it is time to sit
                                on a ledge and
                                listen to all the
                                muffled sound

                                below; lighted
                                billboards and
                                the uplit facades
                                of monoliths

                                above the
                                chimney stacks,
                                only when
                                sprung from

                                girders can you
                                hang foetus-like
                                above the roof-
                                tops; let all the

                                striving height
                                recede back
                                to the ground
                                it stands from

                                assassins and
                                bounty hunters
                                proceed colourful
                                and silent by the

                                dark rooftops
                                of old town
                                suburbia, only
                                the blind devils

                                leap the burning
                                awnings more
                                bright than day,
                                where only one

                                will notice from
                                the street, and
                                yet the fantastic
                                storeys of

                                orange-corporate
                                building rise
                                ineluctable
                                behind all

                                borough, seen
                                but not heard;
                                except for the
                                litter of paper

                                trailing the collateral
                                dance across tarmac
                                and paviours, hardly
                                noticed, but ever indulged

 

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: dream 260815
chimney wormhole: silhouette: // second / thoughts
city wormhole: Morning in a City, 1944
Daredvil wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
dawn & orange wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
Edward Hopper wormhole: Summertime, 1943
identity & streets wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
rain wormhole: open window
rooftops wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
seeing & sound wormhole: after all?
shops wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,
silhouette wormhole: 1959
sitting wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
snow wormhole: To my Mum
streetlight wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting

 

after all?

Tags

2014, autumn, being, breath, cars, duty, finding, found, glimpse, identity, journey, leaf, lost, mantra, others, passing, poetry, quiet, seeing, self, service, sound, streetlight, talking to myself, tarmac, writing

 

 

 

                is it really worth me writing isn’t it
                just finding wisps and glimpses
                between which to find the outline
                of my wan and piquant poetic self

                no great find and no great journey
                wouldn’t I be better found lost in
                duty and service to the others
                I seek to identity myself sic from

                defined by all common denominator
                factored through by breath and mantra
                to find the being before the breath and
                after the sound or is there a self

                nevertheless to be recognised in the
                scrape of dried leaf under streetlight
                across the tarmac the first to herald
                autumn business and quietly passing cars

                after all?

 

 

 

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

autumn wormhole: under silent direction of architecture
being wormhole: Morning in a City, 1944
breath wormhole: Summertime, 1943
cars wormhole: along
identity & sound wormhole: … anymore
others & talking to myself wormhole: it is complete
passing wormhole: 1963
poetry wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia
seeing wormhole: wriving
streetlight wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting
writing wormhole: that comicbookshop in dreams,

 

1972

Tags

1972, 2012, evening, haiku, light, petrol, rain, rainbow, shops, streets, tarmac, years

 

 

 

                                   1972

                                 rain-sprinkled tarmac
                      evening shop lights petrol rainbow
                           in the gutter

 

 

 

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

1972 wormhole: 1972
evening & rain & streets wormhole: To my Mum
haiku(esque) wormhole: after the storm
light wormhole: thar she perched
shops wormhole: I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia
years wormhole: 1962

 

I’ve only just realised / after so many decades / that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia

Tags

'scape, 2014, air, ants, brick, buddleia, car park, grass, lilac, realisation, sand, shops, tarmac, time, tree roots, Uckfield, walls, weeds, white

 

 

 

                I’ve only just realised
                after so many decades
        that the smell of neglected land is lilac buddleia

                the weathered brick wall
        so new and even when built
                skirting the back-road High Street car park
                behind the shops
                long abandoned
                broken
        where the tree roots burst the tarmac (cut off now)
                three courses leaning
                dry grass and leaf weed along the reclaimed border
                a whitish bloom growing –
                out of or into? –
                the top course
                in the open air
        sand-dust at the foot cracking avenues along which
                ants travel under
                quivering weed stalks
                leaning from
                out the wall

        same as they ever have same as they ever will

 

 

 

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

air wormhole: after the storm
buddleia & shops wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name
lilac wormhole: the edge has come …
realisation & time wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
walls wormhole: thar she perched
white wormhole: ‘the red and white …’

 

Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

Tags

1970s, 2014, anxiety, architecture, art deco, ash tree, bay window, bench, Beresford Square, blue, breathing, brown, buddleia, buildings, Canary Wharf, cars, change, clothes, clouds, communication, compassion, Dallin Road, demolition, dream, Eglinton Hill, empire, Europe, eyes, feet, fence, Genesta Road, ghosts, glass, glasses, grass, growth, handshake, head, house, identity, iron, keys, language, leaves, library, light, living, London, looking, love, music, passing, pavement, people, petrol, piano, pigeons, plane, plastic, Plumstead, purple, rain, rainbow, roads, rooftops, school, schoolgirl, shadow, Shard, singing, sky, smile, sound, speech, step, streetlight, streets, sun, swifts, talking, tarmac, Thames, time, travelling, trees, tv, vow, walking, walls, windows, Woolwich, yellow

 

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

 

 

                      Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

                      all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
                      holding together, the grubby art deco window that
                      coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
                      maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

                      glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
                      down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
                      plaques on the wall above top floor windows
                      scud clouds above the coping

                      then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
                      the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
                      upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
                      pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

                      I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
                      followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
                      from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
                      double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

                      cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
                      on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
                      hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
                      a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

                      the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
                      arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
                      the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
                      dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

                      the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
                      building and upright support, plays along the side
                      of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
                      signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

                      hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
                      so many of my people generations poor in the sun
                      from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
                      Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

                      in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
                      down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
                      walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
                      badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

                      sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
                      your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
                      all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
                      public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

                      and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
                      I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
                      between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
                      my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
                      I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
                      and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

                      out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
                      the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
                      and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
                      pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

                      you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
                      I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
                      unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
                      of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

                      highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
                      when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
                      up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
                      she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

                      the way things are these days, with music in hand
                      she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
                      the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
                      do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

                      how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
                      under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
                      yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
                      steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

                      bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
                      since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
                      from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
                      now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

                      and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
                      still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
                      I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
                      at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

                      at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
                      at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
                      high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
                      sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

 

 

 

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

bench wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea
blue & leaves & sun wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
breathing wormhole: born again
brown wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
buddleia wormhole: (Little by Little)
buildings & travelling wormhole: I could step / more open
cars & roads wormhole: the long road
change & time wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
clouds wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
communication wormhole: Maidstone
compassion & feet & love & speech & talking wormhole: there are patient listeners
dream wormhole: we’re born // to die
Eglinton Hill & Woolwich & yellow wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
eyes & looking & shadow wormhole: a maturity
Genesta Road & rooftops wormhole: corroboration
ghosts wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
glass & light & streetlight wormhole: oh-pen
glasses wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
house wormhole: day off
identity wormhole: that
living wormhole: scattered
London wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
music wormhole: no exit
passing & sound & walking & windows wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
people & rain & sky wormhole: Luisenplatz
piano wormhole: … walking down the street
pigeons wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
purple wormhole: consturnation …? // consternation
school wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
smile wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
streets & trees wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Thames wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
tv wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
walls wormhole: stuck free to move within