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

 

Advertisement

my uncomfortable life

Tags

2019, 6*, abandonment, activity, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breakdown, broken, career, closed, compromise, contentment, context, Dad, disappointment, expectation, experience, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, frustration, greed, hope, injustice, laziness, life, management, no voice, people, politicians, powerlessness, Principal, requirement, resentment, self-cherishing, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-esteem, slogans, society, spin, teaching, thought, Tony Blair, turmoil, waiting, words, work

                I did not know contentment
                at work, what was required,
                what I thought, I never wholly
                got my teaching … sorted

                turmoil, and even when not
                outwardly angry, I was
                closed off and unapproachable,
                carrying anger and resentment

                like a thorny bush tied
                to my back since Dad left
                and people were ‘phony’ and
                society was stupid and words

                were insincere and all activity
                was a compromise and my equals cheated
                and laziness was always greedy
                and hope was rude and the politicians

                were tricksters and Tony Bliar
                and managers slogan-shifted like there was no tomorrow
                and the Principals
                wouldn’t know what to do with good practice if it writhed around suggestively on their desk in front of them and made them delicious promises of future dangerous liaison                      

                and by default I am
                at least disappointed, usually frustrated
                and often impotent-angry with them
                when they invariably reference me

                (and they always reference me)
                or when I am actually wronged,
                and then I’ll blow, beyond all immediate context
                because I have already been smouldering,

                waiting for the wrong to happen,
                expecting the wrong to happen,
                experiencing the wrong happening
                even before it has manifested;

                and I am right, it is wrong
                and compromised and greedy and unprincipled
                what they have done, even
                when they haven’t

                given expression to it, in fact
                especially when they haven’t
                given full expression to it
                and are sloganising and spinning

                that what is happening
                is entirely something else;
                and the powerlessness of
                not being able to have a voice

                no appeal to a universal
                right and wrong … built me up
                with no recourse and, I get broken;
                look at my tired eyes – my uncomfortable life

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: south horizon
breakdown wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
career wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
compromise wormhole: raised brow
Dad wormhole: the reach turned to love
eyes wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
life & society wormhole: the old man;
management wormhole: how to teach
people wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
teaching wormhole: and … // … sound
thought wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
waiting wormhole: all // are // none
words wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
work wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873

 

all // are // none

Tags

2017, 8*, arrival, being, billow, Buddhas, creation, desert, doing, end, everything, gargantuan, journey, light, love, mountains, night, quote, reaching, samsara, start, suffering, true nature, tuning, waft, waiting, waves

                                all

                that Enlightened beings do
                is be, but without
                flinch, reach or

                conjuration; a wave-
                length with neither
                start nor end which

                tunes the few to their
                own true nature
                with neither start

                nor end, the basis
                both from and to
                which they might

                both journey and
                arrive; external light
                that caps the peaks

                of mountainous
                night lost in waft
                and billow;

                                are

                they on the edge of
                everything gargantuan
                and frightening in all

                their detailed beneficence,
                are they everything that
                gives me the nod and

                wink waiting for me
                to get it, are they in
                amongst us suffering

                the arrows that we
                sling all about in outrageous
                discontent, are they

                la porte etroite or the
                desert of love, are they
                always there for us,

                are they never there;
                they are none of these,
                they are all of these

                that we make them
                to be – light neither
                emanating nor pervading

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
doing wormhole: I
light wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
love wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
night wormhole: transferring
samsara wormhole: inner / hegemony
waiting wormhole: Bexhill 140215
waves wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

 

Bexhill 140215

Tags

1920s, 1935, 2015, 5*, ageing, balcony, Bexhill, de la Warr Pavilion, eating, grey, horizon, line, looking, model, photographer, poem, portrait, promenade, red, sea, sun, waiting, wife

                                Bexhill 140215

                                sugar blues necksweat
                                I need to manage what I eat
                                as I age
                sitting in the de la Warr Pavilion café est. 1935

                                looking for a poem
                                between the clean lines on the balcony,
                                … waiting
                for his wife, trying the zoom lens onto the promenade

                                of a photographer
                                trying positions of his model
                                in fashion-red
                hooded coat and flower heads on her hat from the 1920s

                                on the sun-grey sea
                                with wide horizon

 

 

 

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

grey & sun wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
horizon wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
looking wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
promenade wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
red wormhole: leaves
sea wormhole: concordance
waiting wormhole: just

 

just

Tags

2014, 3*, boundary, dusk, eyes, film, freedom, horse, looking, meadow, morning, mountains, waiting

                just

                                crouching
                from mid-morning until gathering dusk
                                not moving
                                                drying
looking deep across the meadow with no boundaries but the mountains
                into the horse’s eyes who
                                just doesn’t
                                                run
                                                free

 

film: ‘The Horse Whisperer’, 1998

 

 

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

eyes wormhole: free
film wormhole: divergent // direction
looking wormhole: dream I // dream II
morning wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
waiting wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

 

I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

Tags

2013, 5*, anticipation, belonging, books, cleaning, courage, identity, letting go, living, lost, recognition, sitting, space, voices, waiting, world

                I wanted to clean out the meditation room
                to help clear my sitting of voices

                I wanted to bring my books into the house
                to integrate myself into living

                the snag was, and always is, to think
                that there is space in the world for my voices to belong

                rather than the courage to let them all go: I keep
                waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

 

 

 

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

books wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
identity & sitting wormhole: time
letting go & living wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
recognition wormhole: slow enough / to have love
space wormhole: so pleased to see you again
voices wormhole: municipal garden
waiting wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
world wormhole: stone

 

St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton

Tags

2013, 7*, black, blue, brass, Castleton, ceiling, church, metal, patience, silence, smell, sound, waiting, wood, writing

                                smell

                of centuried wood and polish
                misaligned and creaky and
                still held by metal twist brace
                with brass lamp-holders polished
                and blackening and spore
                of pew-bolster-cushions patient
                and attentive waiting

                                silently

                but for the crease and crankle
                of the notepad as I write these
                lines high among the rafters
                of the powder-blue ceiling

                                St. Edmund’s
                                Parish Church
                                Castleton

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
blue & Castleton wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
church wormhole: and that’s where I are
silence wormhole: 1968 – orange sand and mauve mist
smell wormhole: too much in arrival
waiting wormhole: greedy
wood wormhole: prelude: // travel
writing wormhole: the goldilocks stance

 

greedy

Tags

2013, 4*, butter, cabbage, canal, eating, field, Ghent, green, hijiki, leaf, lemon, lemon verbena, Nepal, paprika, poem, prayer flags, red, rice, squash, taste, tofu, waiting, white, yellow

                too greedy
                after a vegetarian meal

                slices of squash in light butter
                tofu-stuffed paprika
                sprigs of hijiki
                leaf of lemon verbena
                shredded red cabbage
                little mounds of rice
                to infuse the field of tastes

                beautiful by the canal
                and the Nepali prayer flags but I
                wanted a poem as well while
                waiting for the bill

                would have finished it off nicely

 

 

 

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

field wormhole: occa / s / i // o / n / a // l // l // y
green wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
lemon & white wormhole: 1968
red wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
waiting wormhole: sleep now
yellow wormhole: monument to vainglory

 

sleep now

Tags

1997, 2012, 7*, breathing, cotton, doing, dream, dress, embarrassment, evening, feet, girl, hands, identity, lap, legs, movement, muse, neck, portal, purpose, quiet, searching, shop, shoulders, sitting, sleep, streetlight, talking, toes, waiting, writing, yellow

I am safe in a corner shop (looking for portals on shelves in racks)
evening gathers inside ending-day-busy streetlights just          on

a girl and myself waiting to be served quiet     I am seated     waiting
the girl is fidgeting her shoe drawing her foot out slightly

to see her veined feet the root of her toes; she notices me noticing
and moves to another part of the shop adjusting         something

I am sorry; she has on a yellow dress; she comes back to the counter
stands beside me talking to the shopkeeper adjusting her tights now

plucking them up raising her dress a little, she steps and sits on my lap
without talking without referring to me still talking to the shopkeeper

clean crumpled yellow cotton neck; oh; a little bashful I put my arms
around her waist, she continues to talk engaged in her business

her hands come to rest on my hands on her legs I am embarrassed
but she is comfortable in my lap moving and leaning as she talks

thank you yellow cotton shoulder, now I know what to write
now I know what to do, now I can breathe      deeply, I think I could

sleep now

 

 

 

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

breathing & doing wormhole: I
dream & girl & muse wormhole: adjustment
evening wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
feet & writing wormhole: returning home handsome
hands wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: passersby
quiet wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
searching wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
sitting wormhole: time
sleep wormhole: gone black
streetlight wormhole: well,
talking wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
waiting & yellow wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

Tags

2016, 9*, alley, axe, birth, black, blue, classroom, echo, eyes, faces, fields, garden, grey, hate, hazel, ivy, kitchen, leaf, life, love, mist, morning, passing, pigs, pink, Ramsden Heath, Robin, silence, sky, snow, sound, speech, step, sun, teacher, thought, ugliness, vertical, waiting, walls, white, windows, winter, witness, woodland, yellow

            snow

            waiting;

            ruffles beneath the trembling ivy,
            divergent verticals in the hazel coppices;

            silence;

            reverent steps, and in the cavernous
            grey of high hangs the faintest, pink;

            baton;

            on a woodland bank a single lesser
            periwinkle holds up a blue flower,

            by the wall a solo leaf descants to the ground
            and a snowflake touches the cheek;

            turn;

            the black background of the woods
            a million flakes seen,

            in the classroom thirty pairs of eyes
            drift across to the window

            and the music teacher holds
            his sentence;

            thought;

            leeward black, and fields of white, if
            we were to hate everything that

            included rip and tear of any ugliness,
            there would be nothing left to love;

            morning;

            through window panes the sun
            is a flat yellow disc viewable

            without hurt to the eye,
            mist divides land into borough

            and alleyway stepping crunch from the
            steam kitchen into the sparkling garden;

            piggery;

            at the bottom of the garden,
            piglets stop snuffling around and stand

            looking, like little pink statues, then …
            hurtle across the yard barking at the sun

            (the sow had rather build her nest in the
             corner of the field, one morning

             she was there, an army of piglets
             lined up at the milk bar

             the most ridiculous expressions
             of content upon their faces, and

             a robin on the solid water
             of the cattle trough);

            witness;

            the ch-nnk and bite of axe in log
            bounced across the fields to the woods and back with

            such clarity I expected it to continue
            as he laid his axe aside, “Morning”,

            “Morning”;

            it is not winter that dispels life,
            but life that dispels winter

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow

 

 

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

black & blue & echo & eyes & faces & fields & garden & grey & kitchen & life & love & morning & pink & silence & sky & snow & sound & sun & walls & white & windows & winter & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
faces wormhole: “The Lady from Nowhere”
passing wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
thought wormhole: Clea
waiting wormhole: returning home handsome