the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes

Tags

2022, 20th century, 8*, afternoon, banshee, blood, blue, brown, capitalism, Carol, childhood, dream, eyes, faces, fields, garden, gold, growing, history, landscape, life, maelstrom, measure, mist, object, objectification, orange, plane, production, sapphire, sky, sound, space, storm, summer, sweet, time, whorl, World War I

                                                the inevitable tock

                        this queasy land
                        life out of time, this dreamscape
                        with waist-high mist

and then a uni-prop dhrined straight across the sky one endless summer gardenoon

                        made a whorl
                        brown and bloody fields
                        and jar-sweet marmalade

                        wherein history appeared
                        as proliferated objects
                        space now only a measure

                        the face appears
                        in the eye of the storm
                        tarnished blue and palsy

                        measuring gossamer gold
                        between always-contestable markers
                        from an impossible sapphire cap

                        only retrospectively glimpsed now
                        as screaming banshees
                        back in the maelstrom

when we close our eyes

time by Carol Redford; used with permission – thank you

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

20th century wormhole: the reach turned to love
afternoon & Carol & garden & sky & time wormhole: time
blue & gold & life wormhole: Journey
brown & capitalism wormhole: travel // when I die
childhood wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
dream wormhole: Candaka
eyes wormhole: Four Noble Truths
faces wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
fields wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
history wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
mist wormhole: taking birth
orange wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sound wormhole: long / road
space wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
storm wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
summer wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain

time

Tags

'scape, 2022, 7*, afternoon, birdsong, breeze, Carol, chaos, chorus, doppler, echo, Emmett's Gardens, garden, jet plane, morning, pigeons, pine, shadow, silence, sky, speech, sun, time, tulip, walls, watching

                                                an array of peaceful jet-scores
                                                across the sky never colliding
                                                welcome to Emmett’s Gardens

                                    time

                        various pine shadow of afternoon
                        away from height of morning sun
                        beyond the rose garden wall

                        held from chaos by the chorus
                        of chivourrts, ch-hwhtts and echoed pigeons
                        from the facing proscenium …

                        … ah, we’ve missed the tulips
                        just stalks top-heavy no we haven’t
                        said Carol watching them twaddle

they doppler even as we watch
between breezes some coming low
to land behind the pines

 

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

afternoon wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’
breeze & morning & speech wormhole: Journey
Carol & silence wormhole: ‘‘she shook the sweets …’
echo wormhole: travel // when I die
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
pigeons wormhole: municipal garden
pine wormhole: out
shadow & sky & sun wormhole: taking birth
time wormhole: the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
tulip wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
walls wormhole: silence

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/emmetts-garden

the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

mirror

Tags

2022, 6*, being, British Museum, enslavement, Greece, Have, history, identity, inner-self, mirror, outside, samsara, society, time, tragedy, war, woman

                                mirror

                        we lift
                whole armies of chariot, arm and thigh –
        scalloped handle either side –
                        to nichèd or columned view
                                asymmetrical
                                        grotesquery

                and for
        thousands of years now
                we see through eyes
                        polished and weighty above our heads
the extent of all our
                inwardly estate

 

I was struck by a caption by a mirror from the ancient Greek section of the British Museum which explained that rich women were not able to own any land, but that they could display their wealth in their own domestic environment and self-presentation

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

being & identity wormhole: ‘the practice …’
Have & samsara wormhole: travel // when I die
history wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
mirror wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
society wormhole: Candaka
time wormhole: ‘‘in my car I pass…’
war wormhole: riders of the night
woman wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

‘in my car I pass…’

Tags

2021, 6*, afternoon, billboard, Birmingham, cars, digital, gaze, grey, industry, motorway, passing, sky, smoke, steel, streetlight, sun, sunset, thinking, time, travelling, velcro, William Turner

          in my car I pass
          vehicles and lamps
          under adjoining grey skies

          after neon billboards
          hook my gaze like
          passing velcro

          I lower the blind
          to the afternoon sun
          (although it stays just left),

          no matter, there was
          a single rising twist
          of industry which

          would never conjoin
          with the steely sunset
          as Turner might have it

driving up through Birmingham on the M6 to see my daughter…

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

afternoon & travelling wormhole: meanwhile
cars wormhole: riders of the night
grey & smoke wormhole: ‘‘she shook the sweets…’
motorway wormhole: prelude: // travel
passing & sky & sun wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
streetlight wormhole: ‘not sure …’
sunset wormhole: http://boiled spangle with soft centre
thinking wormhole: a far grander / Sangha
time wormhole: Journey

 

Journey

Tags

2018, 8*, birds, blue, breeze, Buddha, city, clouds, day, death, departure, eclipse, evening, fire, flame, form, Ganges, gold, grass, green, hills, horizon, India, Kusinagara, life, looking, morning, night, salvation, sleep, sound, speech, stage, step, stone, stream, teaching, time, town, trees, Vaisali, valley, voices, walking, wandering, wondering

                        the evening before when at length he’d departed,
                Vaiśālī no longer glowed
        like some future city –

                        recent stones of monument
                seemed already unaligned,
        boroughs swallowed by evening hills;

                        we walked wide by the trees across the Gangetic plain,
                robes flupped with each step,
        we lost form as we wandered

                        and we wondered ‘born but to die’,
                still wanting any intoxication
        before the execution;

                        but he looked, always bittersweet,
                to the next horizon – this
        vast and empty stage;

                        in the morning he’d said
                ‘always bite and heat your gold’ and ‘never
        hold the sword by the blade’;

                        ‘I shall lay between those two trees’
                he said in the evening – forks
        around which the whole of time tuned;

                        I prepared grasses about
– I never usually made particular preparations for the night, he would end the day sitting by some copse or stone, away from where we slept glowing like embers,
        as we turned through the night –

                        but he pillowed his head on his hand
                that night, the grasses
        preened green and blue

                        the birds stopped
                as if there were eclipse, the trees ignored
        the breeze,

                        and with shaking headdresses
                dignitaries came to visit from the town
        supplicating –

                        but he spoke with a voice like a cloud, both proximate
and spanning valleys, yearning and teaching to lay down this dried and splintered weight, ‘salvation does not come from the mere sight of me’,
        ‘control the mind’ –

                        and the flames of the fires were low
                as they returned to Kuśinagara
        as if against the stream

                                

Postface Overduction: end of life of the Buddha; narrated by Ananda, close attendant; itinerant life teaching from town to town, area of a few hundred kilometers around central Ganges; left Vaiśālī last, stopped just outside Kuśinagara, town dignitaries came to honour him, had known him before; ‘two trees’ are ‘sal trees‘ tall trunk, no branches until the canopy, northern India, 6th-5th centuries BCE (although there is dispute about this);

        

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

birds wormhole: threshold to behold
blue & city & horizon & morning & time wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
breeze & clouds & valley wormhole: here today and …
Buddha wormhole: eyes like petals
death & speech wormhole: travel // when I die
evening wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
grass & life & trees wormhole: sweet chestnut
green wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
hills & sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
looking wormhole: looking hard enough
night & sound & stone & walking wormhole: meanwhile
teaching wormhole: c’mon – keep up
voices wormhole: travelling / back

        

under the blue and blue sky

Tags

1930s, 2020, 6*, blue, city, dome, horizon, identity, interdependet origination, London, lost, Ludgate Circus, morning, passing, pavement, seeing, sky, space, St. Paul's, stopped, sun, thought, time, traffic, work

                I stopped short
                caught on the kerb-

                side, traffic past,
                crawling from the morning

                sun; there was space
                before me here, but a

                city all about as far
                as I could see uphill until

                the consoling dome
                of St. Paul’s, deep behind any

                horizon, confirmed,
                yes, yes, it has come to this

                that you are found
                dressed dark and sober for work

                and lost
                under the blue and blue sky

 

 

who is it, who is it: that noticed or wrote or snapped or talked or stopped or dressed or read …?

 

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

blue & horizon wormhole: meanwhile
city wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
identity & time wormhole: sweet chestnut
London & sky wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
morning wormhole: riders of the night
passing wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
seeing wormhole: ‘not sure …’
space wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
sun wormhole: silence
thought wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
work wormhole: slight sneer

 

sweet chestnut

Tags

2015, 6*, ageing, air, being, buttress, chestnut tree, compromise, earth, generations, grass, growth, identity, leaf, letting go, life, reaching, time, trees, trunk

                     sweet chestnut

                     I have
                     long
                     since
                shifted the earth apart
                imperceptible for grass to grow,
                now, unknowing, so new;

                     I have
                     forgotten
                what it’s like to emerge
                without design, and have
                grown buttresses for so long
                they have twisted to comprise;

                     the trunk
                     of upward
                     direction
                that I reach from
                aimlessly with diminishing wisdom
                to a top leaf shifting

                     this way
                     and that
                     between air

 

{there is some anger and sulk that I do not write anymore: not sure if I couldn’t keep up the hi-octane perception or that ‘I was only seeking attention’ explains it all; I still don’t know, but maybe I don’t need to hold such stoic upper lips about it all, arms crossed, turned away; maybe just a bit of compassion wafting this way and that …}

 

 

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

air wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
being wormhole: silence
compromise & letting go wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
grass wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity wormhole: a far grander / Sangha
life wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
trees wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’

 

‘she shook the sweets …’

Tags

'scape, 1981, 6*, bed, blog, buildings, Carol, clouds, green, grey, lightning, London, love, marriage, Plumstead, red, seagull, Shooters Hill, silence, sky, smoke, Thames, time, wind

she shook the sweets
onto the bed

the grey sky
washed clean

metal smoke rose
then right-angled

a seagull
flew between the buildings

then

 

lightning

{the sweets were Lindt chocolates, individually wrapped in deep-red; the made bed was covered by a deep-green candlewick bed-spread; she was Carol, shortly before or after we were married, staying in what had been my bedroom, halfway up Shooters Hill, overlooking the Thames basin; this was the first poem I published on this blog, almost exactly ten years ago, and, in those early days, she got very little … no views; I think she deserves more than that; want a sweet?}

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

buildings & red & Thames wormhole: travel // when I die
Carol wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
clouds wormhole: here today and …
green & sky & time wormhole: meanwhile
grey wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
lightning wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
London wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
love wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
Plumstead wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
seagull wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: silence
wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley

meanwhile

Tags

2020, 6*, afternoon, angle, binoculars, blue, cranes, curtains, Eiffel Tower, flags, gorge, green, hope, horizon, mankind, moon, night, rite, rooftops, sea, seagulls, shape, ships, sitting room, sky, sound, stone, time, Tintin, travelling, walking, warehouses, water

                the seagulls, they glide about the
                cranes and warehouse rooftops

                they wheel above the pacing and fro,
                cut between pulleys and raised pennants

                oblivious to distant headland through
                studied binocular pointing out to sea, back in the day

                when the skies were afternoon-blue
                and the sea still sitting-room-green

                then, when there was dare to hope
                and ships anchored on the horizon

                under curtain-drapes of nightest sky
                while the moon snagged in line from

                fore-mast to prow; nevertheless, they
                trekked over crag and gorge, they walked

                through water and pushed through
                trapezoids – slab! – into rooms of stone

                locked and immovable despite
                horizon, fit or ninety degree angle

                oblivious to mankind’s rite and dress;
                meanwhile the twins climbed the tower

 

c’mon, now: a gold-plated no-prize to the first reader who can tell me which book this piece came from to celebrate my return to writing; perception – knowing what’s going on – is never as linear as it might seem to be in a story; already given that there is breadth and depth, even in the scant of depiction, there is usually a time (and a space, and we know how relative those two can be) during which something happens, but let’s not think that these are the only dimensions – there is always a right-angle to be taken that paisley-swirls to a far-wider cauldron than could have initially never been conceived but of which there were pre-echoes if listening askance intently-enough

 

 

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

afternoon & horizon & sky wormhole: travelling,
blue wormhole: silence
cranes wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Eiffel Tower wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
green wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – tenderness
moon wormhole: ‘not sure …’
night & water wormhole: riders of the night
rooftops wormhole: travel // when I die
sea wormhole: then
seagulls wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
sitting room wormhole: the sitting room
sound wormhole: Four Noble Truths
stone wormhole: looking hard enough
time wormhole: travel // when I die
travelling wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: breakfast