a far grander / Sangha

Tags

2019, 6*, identity, mother sentient beings, Priory, Sangha, self, self-image, Swarthmore Hall, thinking

                went to Swarthmore Hall
                brandishing my fragile self
                to open up to all beings

                went back to the Priory
                with rising grandeurs
                of delusion; shall I

                relinquish this flaw
                of expecting I am so much
                more than I appear if only

                I were understood …;
                then perhaps I could be
                more than I could ever

                understand and recognise
                these beings as already
                my own and take

                my one and lonely
                place with a far grander
                Sangha than I could ever have allowed

 

‘Swarthmore Hall’ is where the Quakers began, Carol did a course there; it is in Ulverston in South Cumbria where we lived soon after we married and started our family, we were aware of the place at the time, but not as students; ‘the Priory’ just outside Ulverston is the Manjushri Institute, a Buddhist college that we lived in; this was the first time I’d been back to visit in 32 years; and … this is the last poem I wrote – 4th September 2019 – I haven’t written one since, not seized to, not tipped towards; I have been letting a lot of things go during these beginning years of my retirement, even my Batman comics … maybe more a spiral than a circle …

 

 

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

identity wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: silence

 

silence

Tags

2019, 5*, being, blue, child, clothes, doing, emptiness, light, mother, others, perseverance, Quakers, shadow, shape, silence, sitting, sun, thinking, walls, windows, woman

                                silence

                there –
                in the round

                some threw fluting gapes
                three to engulf the fourth

                some were cleaved peacefully
                head from leading shoulder

                some wore a chemise, others a shalwar,
                others a collar, one a hand-towel draped quickly over the shoulder be back in a minute

                one projected flanks like enveloping wings
                unaware as she nodded

                her neighbour bathed in the same return, the other sat
                comfortably on nothing at all

                the man held the frame
                with perseverance to allow the shape

                the woman privately understood
                most of what everyone thought, only the

                child contained in the mothers’ arm
                watched the walls dance phantasmagoric

                and only the windows let in
                the blue blue sun

 

Quakers sit in light to worship

 

 

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

being & sitting wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
blue & windows wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
child wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
doing & light & thinking wormhole: Four Noble Truths
emptiness wormhole: none and all
mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
others & shadow wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
silence wormhole: travel // when I die
sun wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
walls wormhole: looking hard enough
woman wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902

 

Four Noble Truths

Tags

2019, 7*, Bodhichitta, doing, doors, eyes, fly, flying, food, Four Noble Truths, glass, ignorance, liberation, light, sound, suffering, thinking

Four Noble Truths

                and here comes the fly
                brandishing eye-bulbs in seventeen directions

                unaware of in or out
                looking for light or food to go

                finds one truth against the glass and
                findsssszzz the second against the glass

                in seventeen different directions
                at once – in to the room straight

                by my head: do I duck and swat
                (hideous temptation that shudder reminds me

                 no), do I guide it’s flight with foolscap sheet
                (and look at those bodies hung en-wrapped in cornered webs

                 no), the door remains open,
                it has but to fly through, the remaining

                two truths unfound and all unrealised; may the
                supreme and precious jewel

                Bodhichitta take birth
                where it has not yet done so

                where it has taken birth
                may it not decrease but may it increase

                infinitely

 

what more fitting way to conclude this meditating-occupation than the Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths (there is suffering in life, suffering is caused by grasping, grasping can be loosed, by letting it all go) for liberation and Bodhichitta to extend that liberation universally …

 

 

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

Bodhichitta wormhole: none and all
doing & sound wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
doors wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
glass & light wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: despite all / depiction

 

despite all / depiction

Tags

2019, 5*, appearance, architecture, art, cows, Darmstadt, east, empire, history, illusion, life, line, mass, reality, survival, thinking

                so, lowing
                and looking east
                from all the crumbling musculature
                of past empire,
                chewing cud

                ninety nine percent
                of all and ever species have become extinct and I
                cannot deconstruct
                the categories-
                enough to read

                the lines and mass
                of stijl, reminds me
                that I try to be far too clever trying to read
                despite all
                depiction

 

mused from a visit ot the Museum at Darmstadt attending the celebration of Jon and Sara’s wedding

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: travel // when I die
history wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
life wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
reality wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
thinking wormhole: riders of the night

 

riders of the night

Tags

2019, 7*, buildings, cars, coat, continent, crane, dark, docks, dualistic conception, hats, headlights, ideas, inexplicable, light, living room, making sense, morning, night, paper, pink, propaganda, rain, red, ships, silhouette, sound, speech, streets, sweat, thinking, time, Tintin, truck, waiting, war, water, waves

                riders of the night

booms of inexplicability
                had spattered velvet stars and shredded cloth all morning

despite the raised-brow
                consternation of the smartest of overcoats and the darkest of hats

that startled drops of sweat
                could devise in the presence of impending war, it was only   th-  

  at night   by the docks where
                the cargo waited unknown and the ships floated above the water,

that one could think a thing between them
                before any further dénouement under filigree refinery of silhouette;

                the   next  morning   the ship sat in the water, content to the
lapping red line,

                waiting fast and moored under the single ribbon of exhaust
from the funnel f’ard;

                but it is only   later   that water ranges continental across stepped and geologic                
wave, under relentless rain,

                that solitary lights lolling will make any sense at all;
and there were some

                had ideas like a living-room on a pivot that housed raised cranes
but the cars drove through streets

                like they owned them and the trucks travelled in straight trail
of their antecedents’ front headlights

                and although buildings always pointed up, the propaganda usually
ended up on pink paper:

                ‘Me, drive ‘round something that is nothing, but something you think is something,                
 but is nothing …?’

 

{image not mine, found on the internet, can’t remember where, happy to take down if a problem}

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
cars wormhole: travelling / back
crane wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
light wormhole: breakfast
living room wormhole: what life went on
morning & sound & streets & time & water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
night wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: beneath
rain wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
red wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
silhouette wormhole: window
speech wormhole: the blessings of the Buddhas
thinking wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
waiting wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: in deed
waves wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields

Tags

2019, 7*, birdsong, camera, clouds, corridor, dancing, drifting, elm, evening, faces, fields, focus, forest, gold, grey, hills, horizon, leaves, nebula, nightingale, photography, planet, purple, red, skeleton, sky, space, spire, stars, sun, thinking, trees, words

                                I took my camera into the fields

                but it was only after the
                purple-grey clouds drifted
                across the horizon and the

                wilted leaves had turned
                their face once more to the
                evening sky, when the sun

                broke low across the fields –
                old gold across the treetops –
                that I’d dansed macabre

                with the tripodial skeleton
                before the red hemisphere,
                reclined upon distant hills,

                extinguished like a farce
                and the populace of the
                heavens radiated above me

                and behind, the grates of
                all space between the two
                sentinel elms, it was there, I think,

                I left this planet
                at a tangent (glow of a
                lantern disappearing down the corridor)

                deep, until whole nebulae
                were within my pluck,
                but even before Antares

                had touched the nearby
                spire, the nightingale had
                been deep in construction

                of the following day’s forest façade,
                free free of all possible words and
                zoomed foci

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky

 

 

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

clouds & evening & gold & grey & hills & horizon & leaves & red & sky & space & stars & sun wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
dancing wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
faces wormhole: on facing the Have
purple wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
thinking wormhole: writening
words wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877

 

writening

Tags

2018, 4*, blogging, discovery, doing, happening, identity, legacy, metaphor, page, poetry, publishing, thinking, writing

                writening

                I like to find what I think
                in kinaesthetic metaphor
                and surprise myself;

                nothing more, not trying
                to be the best, or visionary
                or even to write poetry –

                it just happens; I have
                taken to sharing it – nice
                of you – but, also,

                attached to how it is received –
                not nice, a little ugly;
                I should just do it naturally –

                wash ‘n’ go, shake ‘n’ vac –
                just discover, let it fall
                and spill all over the page,

                not to write the Body
                of Work to blithely leave
                to posterity …

 

the penultimate of my 2018 pieces of work … and they’ve not been coming thick and fast during 2019 either … well’s drying up!

 

 

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

doing wormhole: Renunciation
identity wormhole : The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
poetry wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
publishing wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
thinking & writing wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

 

The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, arms, Atlantic City, beauty, being, black, blue, candle, cheek, city, colour, communication, daisies, dress, ears, eyes, fingers, glass, green, grey, hair, hands, hips, knuckles, lips, looking, matches, mirror, mouth, movement, open, orange, others, portrait, poverty, red, reflection, ring, ruby, sea, seagull, silence, skin, sound, speech, temptation, thinking, walking, waves, white, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman, wrists, writing

                            1. THE WAITRESS

                No wit (and none needed) but
    the silence of her ways, grey eyes in
    a depth of black lashes–
    The eyes look and the look falls.

    There is no way, no way. So close
    one may feel the warmth of the cheek and yet there is
    no way.

    The benefits of poverty are a roughened skin
    of the hands, the broken
    knuckles, the stained wrists.

                Serious. Not as the others.
    All the rest are liars, all but you.
                                        Wait on us.
    Wait on us, the hair held back practically
    by a net, close behind the ears, at the sides of
    the head. But the eyes–
                            but the mouth, lightly (quickly)
    touched with rouge.

    The black dress makes the hair dark, strangely
    enough, and the white dress makes it light.
    There is a mole under the jaw, low under
    thr right ear–

                And what arms!

                                        The glassruby ring
    on the fourth finger of the left hand.

                                        –and the movements
under the scant dress as the weight of the tray
    makes the hips shift forward slightly in lifting
    and beginning to walk–

    The Nominating Committee presents the following
    resolutions, etc. etc. etc. All those
    in favor signify by saying, Aye. Contrariminded,
    No.
      Carried.
                And aye, and aye, and aye!

    And the way the bell-hop runs downstairs:
          ta tuck a
                ta tuck a
                      ta tuck a
                            ta tuck a
                                  ta tuck a
    and the gulls in the open window screaming over the slow
    break of the cold waves–

                O unlit candle with the soft white
    plume, Sunbeam Finest Safety Matches all together in
    a little box–

                And the reflections of both in
    the mirror and the reflection of the hand, writing
    writing–
                Speak to me of her!-

                –and nobody else and nothing else
    in the whole city, not an electric sign of shifting
    colors, fourfoot daisies and acanthus fronds going from
    red to orange, green to blue–forty feet across–

                                        Wait on us, wait
    on us with your momentary beauty to be enjoyed by
    none of us. Neither by you, certainly,
                                                nor by me.

 

with love from Poems, 1928

 

 

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

beauty & speech wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
being wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
black wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
blue & grey & writing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
city & William Carlos Williams wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
communication wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
eyes wormhole: between
glass & red wormhole: travelling / back
green & woman wormhole: on facing the Have
hair wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
hands wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
looking wormhole: waiting to be heard
mirror wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
mouth wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
open wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
orange & others & walking wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
reflection wormhole: I
sea & seagull & waves wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
silence & sound wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
thinking wormhole: there will be ovations
white wormhole: alabaster balustrade
windows wormhole: birth in the world

 

there will be ovations

Tags

2018, 7*, acting, audience, betrayal, blood, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breathing, brother, children, circumstance, concentration, doors, emptiness, enemy, expectation, identity, life, light, machinations, music, naked, others, realisation, role, self-grasping, self-image, silence, sky, society, sound, stage, theatre, thinking, traffic

                ah, there’s the theatre and
                inside, the stage is set,
                the audience settled, the
                lights down, thank the fates,

                I almost didn’t make it –
                the traffic at this time of day! –
                the other is here, good,
                warming up, waving that

                stick all about, making whoosh
                noises, being all athletic and
                disciplined, I’d better get ready,
                torn robe on, oh, the blood

                smear it on, quick, and
                the hanging limb, OK,
                concentrate, breathe – be
                the character – I need

                to give the performance
                they are expecting – the
                circumstance, the machinations,
                the betrayal … no, not enough,

                what if it happened to my
                children, what if it were my
                brother with the stick, oh yes,
                it’s come to this, use the silence

                of the realisation, use the
                music – slamming doors
                in the sky! – no, this is more
                than my story, this is the

                history of my nation, quick,
                I’m ready now, I’m naked,
                I’m gutted and impaled, now
                for the finishing blow – how

                glorious this will be, I have
                so much invested in this,
                there will be ovations and
                encores, so worthwhile,

                I hope he has practised
                well – knows where the
                padding is; wait, is that
                a blade, tied to, the end

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI – verse 43-44: [43] Here is a brandished weapon, and here is my body ready and presented, both of them the causes of my eventual suffering. My attacker has laid hold of his stick (tena śastraṃ), and I both wear and brandish my body. With what should I get angry? [44] It is I who have obtained and hold on to this boil, this pressured blister of a human body – sack of suffering – which cannot even bear to be touched and, moreover, it is I who am blind-sided through my own attachment to it, so that when the pain comes and the ‘boil’ bursts, with whom should I get angry?

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: tram
breathing & society wormhole: the reach turned to love
doors wormhole: pursued
emptiness & life & others wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
identity wormhole: I
light wormhole: travelling / back
music wormhole: and … // … sound
realisation wormhole: passing
silence wormhole: birth in the world
sky wormhole: horizon
sound wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
thinking wormhole: ‘ouch’

 

‘ouch’

Tags

2018, 6*, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, cause and effect, circular poem, doing, speech, thinking

                                         what I say and do from now on because …             … ‘ouch’,
                                                           and take a little care over                                    I am hit by a stick –
                                                                       I shall wise up                                                  I shall be angry with the stick,
                                                          ‘damn my stupidity’,                                                      ‘damn stick’ …;
                                       with cause and conditionality,                                                          but the stick by itself
                                                         my blind messing                                                                cannot hurt me,
                                                I shall become angry at                                                                it is the wielder of the stick
                                              now, for it to be enacted –                                                             that made it happen –
and it was conditioned by the right circumstances,                                                                I shall be angry with the wielder,                                
                                                              to say or do so,                                                                ‘damn wielder’ …;
                                    it was caused by my tendency                                                                but, beforehand,
                                               wasn’t just spontaneous,                                                               the wielder of the stick was
                                                    but what I said or did                                                              not my attacker,
                                               ‘damn what I said or did’ …;                                                        he was prompted by his anger,
                             I shall be angry at what I said or did,                                                        the anger made him wield the stick –
                                                                         I said or did –                                                 I shall be angry at the anger,
                                               it was prompted by something                                      ‘damn his anger’ …;
                                                                         erupt from nowhere,                      but his anger didn’t

 

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 41: Although the immediate cause of the blows and injury I receive is delivered by the stick yet I do not take this into account but, rather, become angry at the wielder of the stick, my aggressor, my attacker. But then, as the attacker, likewise, is wielded under the influence of anger, if I really must get angry, it would be more fitting for me to rise and become angry at the anger instead.

 

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

circular poem wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
doing & speech wormhole: the reach turned to love
thinking wormhole: ‘there, …’