travel // when I die

Tags

2019, 7*, accountability, afterlife, afternoon, architecture, bardo, being, black, brick, brown, buildings, capitalism, century, clouds, crane, data, death, decades, dedication, depth, doing, echo, fields, floating, green, ground, Have, height, horizontal, identity, industry, interdependent origination, iteration, length, lintel, London, magenta, mind, notice, orange, passing, perspective, pillars, presence, purple, rain, rainbow, red, reference, ripple, rooftops, russian vine, samsara, sandstone, sapphire, self-cherishing, self-grasping, silence, sill, sky, sound, speech, Thames, thought, tide, time, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, utility, walls, white, world, writing

                                                                                travel

                                                                                noticing
                                                                at all is a product of
                                                                shifted perspective
                                                                related to behold;

                                                                when I’ve nothing to write
                                                                I’ve lost any perspective,
                                                                cornered by both these walls
                                                                I’ve walked along

                when I die
                this mind will no longer whorl about this pinchèd self
                in a world of diminished return and profusion of iteration

                                                                cranes atop
                                                                pulling them further up and up
                                                                from the ground on which they
                                                                balance on receding point;

                                                                communities of them
                                                                each taller than the last and the next
                                                                all along the wharfs
                                                                of endless account

                it will be expansive
                high and up in industrial and sandstone sky
                it will fathom all the deep of brown kelp in shifting purple

                                                                kilometres long
                                                                courses of brick
                                                                grimed black and utility-studded
                                                                updown onoff foothold and wire

                                                                ripple along nicely
                                                                across right-angled centuries
                                                                and occasional shot bolts
                                                                of deepest russian vine

                with no sound
                save diminishing echoes of a pleading late self
                having nothing left to refer to and nothing left to here, and

                                                                believe it or not
                                                                a rainbow exponential
                                                                to the white arch of Wembley
                                                                we’ll chase for miles

                                                                orange shimmering to
                                                                magenta through staccato tides
                                                                out and over flat roofs
                                                                on and into the fields

                all data wiped –
                suds off my hands from my shoulders –
                and did I back enough up for some grander vector to reach?

                                                                where trees grow from ground
                                                                shaping over decades
                                                                green-flamed cupolas
                                                                clamped to the sky

                                                                and from perspective passing
                                                                of open field
                                                                turn – creak –
                                                                the whole world

                I may well
                have built pillars of cleverness and thought:
                plinthed, fluted, capitaled and giddyingly architraved …

                                                                and there
                                                                Lancashire red brick
                                                                with high and whitey
                                                                sills stale and lintel

                                                                before washed-out
                                                                sapphire-afternoon of steely sky
                                                                and horizontal fingers of
                                                                scud-rain

                … but they’d just
                floated there upright in space ‘neither use nor ornament’
                straining on the string in my baby-fat hands, I’ve

                                never really
                                made stuff happen
                                and didn’t have to try

                                more than let more and more
                                of stuff happening anyway
                                happen through me

 

train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive

 

 

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

afternoon & sky wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
architecture & thought wormhole: “And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”
being wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
black & sky wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
brown & green & walls wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
buildings & crane & rain & red & speech wormhole: riders of the night
capitalism wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds wormhole: at Kreukenhof
death & identity wormhole: psssssh
doing wormhole: writening
echo & mind & passing & sound & time wormhole: – creak —
Have wormhole: on facing the Have
London wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
orange wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
purple wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields
rooftops wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
samsara & trees wormhole: breakfast
silence wormhole: window
Thames wormhole: London, 1809
train & travelling wormhole: beneath
Uckfield-London line wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
white wormhole: 10/22 by William Carlos Williams
world wormhole: none and all
writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

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early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

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

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

mother and daughter

Tags

2013, 3*, Croydon, daughter, London Bridge, morning, mother, phone, portrait, rhetorical interrogative, sing song, speech, talking, train, Uckfield-London line

                sing song announcement contributing conversation
                in timbre of mother and daughter on the train from

                London Bridge to East Croydon, ‘my battery’s almost
                ran out and … I only charged it up this morninn,’ ‘what

                does that mean,’ asked rhetorical-implicitly, ‘it means,
                I can’t send any more e-mails,’ sure of the right answer

 

 

 

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

daughter wormhole: to allow / passage
morning wormhole: 1968
mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
speech wormhole: prospect
talking wormhole: singsong chant
train wormhole: gone black
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hurst Green

 

Hurst Green

Tags

2013, birdsong, echo, feet, fence, girl, muse, phone, portrait, staring, station, time, Uckfield-London line

 

 

 

                                              Hurst Green

                                the girl
                who walked from her Mini with lithe
                step stood by the concrete fence grown its own lichen
                from decades standing with
                                hot veins
                                on the top
                                of her feet

                while birds pheeped and echoed in the long-
                grown copse behind turned
                                her feet
                                sideways –
                                anxious –

                as she leant on the fence to make the phone
                call and chewed the inside of her mouth staring
                at the platform
                                for minutes
                                afterwards

 

0.46

 

 

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

echo & muse wormhole: currency of generations
feet wormhole: Western Motel, 1957
girl wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
time wormhole: the missing chord // the now-silent seagull
Uckfield-London line wormhole: train journey // like a branch

 

train journey // like a branch

Tags

2015, branches, girl, hair, muse, passing, portrait, shoulders, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line

 

 

 

                                train journey

                                passing treelight over the
                                cusp of the girl’s shoulder

                                whisps of hair held outwards
                                by the air-conditioning

                                like a branch

 

 

 

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

branches wormhole: 50 mph
girl wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
hair wormhole: recovered
muse wormhole: Poewieviews
passing & travelling & trees wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
train wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938
Uckfield-London line wormhole: com- / mute

 

com- / mute

Tags

'scape, 2013, blue, books, bridge, buildings, clouds, coffee, communication, crane, East Croydon, Euston, eyes, horizon, houses, light, London, London Bridge, marble, movement, music, others, passing, people, piano, rainbow, reading, shadow, sky, sleep, sound, sun, train, travelling, trees, Uckfield-London line, windows, winter, woman

 

 

 

                                com-
                                mute

                      low cloud
                      covering the sun in blue sky
                      keeping pace with the train over
                      commuterland people waiting

                      to start their day in houses
                      casting variously rhomboid
                      from the sun as the clouds drift I
                      close my eyes from the sun

                      intense flick through membrane
                      colouring the whole spectrum some
                      tie-dyed and contrasted
                      through bare trees

                      at East Croydon tower-blocks
                      distance-high stand
                      still on various unknown horizons flanked
                      with light and shadow

                      the train fills some stand
                      still and yawn by the door all look
                      down unless asleep
                      one sits next to me reading a book for women

                      leading people at London Bridge
                      I lose the thread amid marble frontage
                      and high filigree window and cranes
                      at Euston a court of coffee

                      and circular chords
                      suggesting upward spirals
                      at the bridge and occasional
                      piano plinks            possibly

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: hungry for a thread or two
books & music wormhole: sit
bridge wormhole: Le Pont des Arts, 1907
buildings & passing & sky & sun wormhole: 2 pm
clouds & trees wormhole: all along the blue sky
coffee wormhole: ‘filtered coffee …’
communication & shadow wormhole: Western Motel, 1957
crane wormhole: … back to the outbreath
eyes wormhole: mauve / night
horizon wormhole: sooner or later
houses wormhole: Sunday afternoon
light & London & sound & windowswormhole: south horizon
others wormhole: [s]
people wormhole: New York Movie, 1939
piano wormhole: bass and piano
reading wormhole: like butterflies on / buddleia
sleep wormhole: Morning in a City, 1944
train wormhole: the continental stride of trains
travelling wormhole: training the mind
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
winter wormhole: ‘in the midst of winter …’

 

Eridge – Cowden

Tags

2013, anxiety, awareness, being, field, glance, hedge, identity, now, passing, reflection, travelling, Uckfield-London line, windows, worry

 

 

 

                                                              Eridge – Cowden

                                worried
                     that I am not being aware of now enough
                     to cure the ineffable anxiety of being

                                I glance
                     at the reflection of myself in the window
                     passing by hedges and fields noticing

                                my beard
                     grown long and needing a trim

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: thy will be done
awareness wormhole: practice
being & identity wormhole: enough
field wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
hedge wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
passing wormhole: ‘from under the awning …’
travelling wormhole: travelling
Uckfield-London line wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
windows wormhole: purple and mauve

 

new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

Tags

2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, being, bench, birch, blue, Bob Hoskins, bridge, buddleia, buildings, Carol, change, crane, dark, doing, education, emptiness, experience, faces, field, fireworks, frost, glass, glasses, green, grey, Have, horizontal, houses, hyperbole, identity, impermanence, journey, life, lifetimes, light, listening, London, love, mouth, not knowing, openness, orange, others, passing, pastel, phone, pink, poetry, pointlessness, politics, red, scaffolding, silver, sky, speech, St. Paul's, station, staying, study, sun, table, talking to myself, Thames, thinking, thought, time, tired, train, travelling, trees, twilight, Uckfield-London line, voices, walking, white, windows, work

                                   new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to
                                   walk the bridges across the Thames, and
                                   listen to the voices say it is, and was, like,
                                   but get back home before the fireworks
                                   obliterate it all in the emptying twilight

                                   look out for the throwing up of hands and
                                   the want-only doing it anyway without thought
                                   or fibre thinking you deserve the better after
                                   all the point and anxiety of thinking; rather
                                   stay with the pastel openness of not knowing

                                   what to do; “it’s like they’re doing this to wind
                                   me up” all the mouth-open listening and loud
                                   hyperbole of their being, all app’d and down-
                                   loaded they, obbviously haven’t finished studying
                                   or whatever it is they’ve been bought into

                                   college to do these days; their time’ll come;
                                   frost covers the passing fields and trees, equally;
                                   “t’b’fair-r-rr, I’m not gen–you–in–lee concerned;
                                   I think, if you always stay in the same en–vie–
                                   rhon–meant …” gaze-mouth open … “I think,

                                   you need to have new ex–peer–re:–NCs
                                   nyoopeople nyooplaces” stopping waiting
                                   starting ten-ta-tively slow gliding, while another
                                   train shifts approaching the same station priority
                                   passes for a long time; then on another train,

                                   “it’s like we’re on another train”; frost thawing
                                   equally on the waste grounds between lines,
                                   green and horizontals return, except for the
                                   bare silver birch; so they no longer store parcels
                                   at London stations look how much they’ve

                                   brightly opened them up no more dingy offices
                                   and partitions where people lived their long
                                   and working life; on the stepped bench by the
                                   river across from the Poetry Library somewhere
                                   in the Southbank Centre I struggle with the

                                   vacuous way things have to change but forget
                                   the dark silt accumulated in unused yards
                                   where not even the buddleia grow, as St. Paul’s
                                   becomes dwarfed by glass and leaning building;
                                   all the sun across the riverside architecture –

                                   depth from finial cupola and scaffolding except
                                   the red cranes up into the grey-blue-blue-grey
                                   sky concrete counter-weight and lifting-hods
                                   catching light despite orange lights clean atop each
                                   arm and elbow; crowds walking the bridge under

                                   suspension ties leaning towards the last pillar; tired
                                   now we travel home under neon light on exasperated
                                   faces with no expression past turning houses and
                                   raised embankments, a passenger stands suddenly
                                   to leave, “oh, he’s dropped a tooth” quips Carol out

                                   loud, “I’m joking; it was a mint imperial” rolled
                                   under the table, look, the man with pink-frame
                                   glasses chuckles into his phone like Bob Hoskins,
                                   love him; “this is coach number five of twelve”
                                   we need to make sure we are travelling in the

                                   correct part of the train otherwise we cannot alight;
                                   “please mind the gap”; I cannot retain things that
                                   have passed (I can’t help it: “that are past”) no matter
                                   how much they may chime with the time in
                                   retrospect, during the last leg of “whatever” journey

                                   home looking for more to add to the poem greedy
                                   through the darkening windows, ah, but it’s too late
                                   now, the arc has already formed the spine, all the
                                   particulars falling in fitted pattern like feathers giving
                                   the illusion of lift and flight amid pervasive dissolution

 

 

 

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

anxiety & identity & time wormhole: re lax // me
architecture & bench & buddleia & glasses wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
being & doing & houses & openness & sky & sun & windows wormhole: lobby
birch wormhole: Eridge Station
blue & glass & green wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
bridge & trees wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
buildings & Have & speech wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
Carol & pink & politics wormhole: Luisenplatz
change wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
crane & grey & light & London & mouth & red & walking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
education wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
emptiness & pontlessness wormhole: never there
faces wormhole: – sigh! –
field wormhole: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
life & others wormhole: career came to naught …
lifetimes wormhole: transition
listening wormhole: there are patient listeners
love & poetry wormhole: sometimes
orange wormhole: Christmas
passing & travelling wormhole: dawn
silver wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
study wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
talking to myself wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
Thames wormhole: 1967
thinking wormhole: thinking wide enough
thought wormhole: breathe it all / in
train wormhole: is she / looking at me?
twilight wormhole: dream / 301197 // home
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Hever
voices wormhole: ‘green post …’
white wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
work wormhole: corroboration

 

Hever

Tags

'scape, 1930s, 2012, 5*, evening, green, grey, lime, olive, sky, time, train, trees, Uckfield-London line

 

 

 

                Hever

                grey-low (with hint
                of lime and olive

                     milkshake)

                sky over avenue of
                turning trees straight
                straight to the early
                evening of the 1930s

 

 

 

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

evening & olive wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
green wormhole: window
grey wormhole: Love Me Do
lime wormhole: 25% scaffolding & rope
sky & trees wormhole: the edges of my reach
time wormhole: sunny day
train wormhole: I glimpse above the rooftops
Uckfield-London line wormhole: Eridge Station

 

Eridge Station

Tags

'scape, 2012, 4*, birch, cream, green, leaves, passing, silver, speech, train, Uckfield-London line

 

 

 

                                a whole orchestra of
                                silver birches waiting
                                ‘the train made a noise
                                but you opened your
                                mouth at the same time’
                                stone-cream boards of
                                Eridge Station with
                                stone-green highlights
                                before leafing shrubs

 

 

 

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

birch & silver wormhole: only
green wormhole: how hard / to meditate
leaves wormhole: clouds
passing & train & Uckfield-London line wormhole: ‘the next station / is Hever’
speech wormhole: End Israeli / Apartheid