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

        

travelling / back

Tags

2018, 6*, Birmingham, buildings, cars, crane, crimson, custard, evening, floor, gazing, glass, glide, leaves, light, mauve, passing, phone, railings, red, reflection, seagull, smile, south, talking, traffic lights, train, travelling, voices, windows, world

                              travelling
                              back

                                under …          … the evening aisle lights
         as she gazes across                  on the tinted glass
            bites her quick                         and the passing
         flicks her phone                          crimson and custard leaves
   smile in her mouth                          turning
                she has a fixed                   while the blokes do their
shake-heads, look-down –          talking – ‘so funny’,

          —\O___

          out of Birmingham New Street
          the seagull holds the glide

          southwards over the wetted
          bitumen floors of long demolished buildings

          cars rise slowly
          to traffic lights held at bright red

          —\O___

                    mauve pilot lights into the early evening
                    the crane folded away into a four

          —\O___

                              on the regional train
                              the darkening has set in,

                              there is no outside
                              just a double world on the window

                              with occasional disembodied station lights
                              illuminating railings to go

 

went to visit my daughter in the midlands, then travelled home

 

 

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

buildings wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
cars & voices wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
crane wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
evening wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
glass & light & windows wormhole: birth in the world
leaves & red wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
mauve wormhole: mauve
passing & travelling wormhole: horizon
reflection wormhole: ash leaves
seagull wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
smile wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
talking wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
traffic lights wormhole: transferring
train wormhole: passing
world wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 6*, air, blossom, blue, cars, children, distance, flowers, grapes, green, gutter, light, marsh, mist, petals, reeds, smell, strawberries, streets, sun, voices, water, William Carlos Williams, willow

                                BLUEFLAGS

                I stopped the car
                to let the children down
                where the streets end
                in the sun
                at the marsh edge
                and the reeds begin
                and there are small houses
                facing the reeds
                and the blue mist
                in the distance
                with grapevine trellises
                with grape clusters
                small as strawberries
                on the vines
                and ditches
                running springwater
                that continue the gutters
                with willows over them.
                The reeds begin
                like water at a shore
                their pointed petals waving
                dark green and light.
                But blueflags are blossoming
                in the reeds
                which the children pluck
                chattering in the reeds
                high over their heads
                which they part
                with bare arms to appear
                with fists of flowers
                till in the air
                there comes the smell
                of calamus
                from wet, gummy stalks.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921
WCW was good enough to let us into his local so much that we found his family there too; he espoused the search for poetry within your own fingernails, within your local yards and backstreets, within your private moments in front of your own mirror, within the loaned experience which can only be borrowed when you’ve brought up children and shown them the world in which you brought them to their own existence … rather than charging off for it rummaging about Europe’s kulture: he was an icognito prince, old WCW

 

 

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

air wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
blossom wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
blue wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
cars wormhole: ash leaves
green & William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
light wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
mist wormhole: that
smell wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
streets wormhole: we held cold hands
sun wormhole: only
voices & water wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

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

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

TREES by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, black, dark, grey, hill, identity, melody, music, night, north, poplars, scale, sky, stars, trees, vague, voices, weave, William Carlos Williams, wind, yellow

                                TREES

                Crooked, black tree
                on your little grey-black hillock,
                ridiculously raised one step toward
                the infinite summits of the night:
                even you the few grey stars
                draw upward into a vague melody
                of harsh threads.

                Bent as you are from straining
                against the bitter horizontals of
                a north wind,–there below you
                how easily the long yellow notes
                of poplars flow upward in a descending
                scale, each note secure in its own
                posture–singularly woven.

                All voices are blent willingly
                against the heaving contra-bass
                of the dark but you alone
                warp yourself passionately to one side
                in your eagerness.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

a lot of these poems were some of the first poems I read with intent and an open, clean mind that had no precursor of what to see or find; and their reading imprinted deep, even when I didn’t read that well or attentively or learnedly; and, much later, when I attempted to re-ignite my writing, the language emerged like tramlines, there to follow, but fresh, utterly fresh; and utterly mine – which would never have been but for reading WCW

 

 

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

black wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
grey & sky & voices & wind wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
identity wormhole: moon- // washed
music wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
night wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
stars wormhole: EL HOMBRE by William Carlos Williams
trees wormhole: presence
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
yellow wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams

 

I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on

Tags

2018, 7*, apartment, apricot, being, birds, blackberry, blue, cream, damson, facade, fruit jellies, future, grey, holiday, island, January, knowing, Lanzarote, lemon, life, light, morning, palms, planes, right angle, sea, seeing, sky, sunset, table, talking, toddlers, voices, volcanic rock, white, wind

                                     I don’t need to go out
                          onto the balcony to see behind me
                               to know what’s going on

                the sea is a damson-blackberry
                fruit-jelly grey in January
                around a volcanic island; the

                cream of apricot née lemon
                awash the staggered faces of
                apartments fades to berry-

                blue along the white facades
                (until the right-angled sides
                 become wholly indifferent in

                 the morning) while palm trees
                blow into the setting sun and
                planes land in the headwind;

                eventually they are broadleaf-
                white under the damson-blackberry
                fruit-jelly grey sky when the

                balcony light flicks on, voices
                talk of the future around the table
                and toddlers shriek like birds landing

 

 

 

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

apricot & wind wormhole: transferring
being wormhole: cowled
birds & blue & grey & sky wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
holiday wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
lemon wormhole: … vague / thunder
life & seeing wormhole: anxiety
light & voices wormhole: moon- // washed
morning wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
sea wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
sunset wormhole: Is There / Life on Mars? – poewieview #32
table wormhole: … the underleaves show
talking wormhole: coagulating
white wormhole: presence

 

moon- // washed

Tags

2017, 5*, Batman, body, city, death, fall, identity, light, moon, society, sound, thinking, voices, windows

                all the
                window
                lights of

                the city,
                audience
                to the

                quick quips
                and the
                eventual

                whappp
                of fall are
                moon-

                washed
                over the
                prostrate

                body

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: presence
city & moon wormhole: sometimes
death wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
identity wormhole: cowled
light wormhole: all // are // none
society & thinking wormhole: cowled
sound wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
voices & windows wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams

 

LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, being, black, branches, curtains, dress, elm, house, love, sky, smell, song, time, voices, white, William Carlos Williams, windows

                      LOVE SONG

                Sweep the house clean,
                hang fresh curtains
                in the windows
                put on a new dress
                and come with me!
                The elm is scattering
                its little loaves
                of sweet smells
                from a white sky!

                Who shall hear of us
                in the time to come?
                Let him say there was
                a burst of fragrance
                from black branches.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

some poems ride the air: they are about nothing much at all (of import to the nation), they don’t do anything, but they are so much more alive and enduring than the cleanest and enshrined momument; I suppose they renew each time they are read with evanescence and sniff …

 

 

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

being wormhole: all // are // none
black wormhole: I
branches wormhole: transferring
curtains wormhole: languidly close the portal
house wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
love & time wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sky wormhole: sometimes
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
voices wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
white wormhole: cowl
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
windows wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …

 

PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1917, 6*, astonishment, evil, good, gutter, identity, man, minister, pavement, pulpit, sound, sparrows, step, Sunday, thinking, voices, walking, William Carlos Williams, wisdom

                      PASTORAL

                The little sparrows
                hop ingenuously
                about the pavement
                quarreling
                with sharp voices
                over those things
                that interest them.
                But we who are wiser
                shut ourselves in
                on either hand
                and no one knows
                whether we think good
                or evil.
                      Meanwhile,
                the old man who goes about
                gathering dog-lime
                walks in the gutter
                without looking up
                as his tread
                is more majestic than
                that of the Episcopal minister
                approaching the pulpit
                of a Sunday.
                      These things
                astonish me beyond words.

 

from ‘Al Que Quiere’, 1917

it was these ‘pastorals’ that made me notice: there is a way out of societal precursoring, there is a way to see other than through those bi-focal lenses; and there is a way to see that doesn’t involve a revolution, that doesn’t involve the dismantling of what is there at all, but the love and heart to accept what is really there – clean, audial and postural – once the glasses have been taken off; it takes courage, of course, because in doing so you have to dismantle all the constructs which you had thought to be your identity, and even soul – this is why you need love, in order to handle the searing wisdom you will receive, there’s no place for ‘what about me’ (in fact, WCW, in just the previous poem in the Collected (‘Apology’) talked about how it is the faces that make him write, that oblige him to see); the everything about the anything that is ever more true than any myopic and partisan specificity

 

 

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

identity wormhole: anxiety
sound & voices wormhole: transferring
sparrows wormhole: somewhere
Sunday wormhole: buttercups
thinking wormhole: it’s all about…;
walking & William Carolos Williams wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

 

transferring

Tags

1990, 2017, 7*, air, apricot, blue, branches, commentary, connection, corridors, distance, fall, falling, fence, flow, here, humour, iconography, land, microphone, muddy, neon, night, openness, phone, shirt, sky, sound, spark, teeth, telephone lines, thawing, traffic lights, transference, trees, Twin Peaks, voices, water, waterfall, wind, wood

                here

                are the transferring phones
                dialling over waterfalls
                voices in the curly wire

                giving soundtrack and
                commentary through
                all manner of splayed connection

                in the trees, through
                empty corridors – the transformer
                must be off, or something:

                muddy waters to apricot air
                sparks grade, twist and edge teeth
                into lumber … oh, checkshirts;

                the post fence sinks to land
                and distance, there is air
                in a wide-open microphone

                there is neon under a
                dirt blue sky, through all the branches
                a cascading iconography

                of posthumour – fall flow thaw;
                at night the wind
                moves the swinging lights

 

mostly a palimpsest of season 1 from 1990 of Twin Peaks

 

 

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

air wormhole: with all love released
apricot wormhole: 1964
blue wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
branches wormhole: ash leaves
flow wormhole: Batgirl –
night wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
openness wormhole: clear as vista
sky wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
sound wormhole: sreet
traffic lights wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
trees & wood wormhole: … the underleaves show
voices wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
water wormhole: sharpened apex
wind wormhole: lost the search