we held cold hands

Tags

2018, 6*, acquamarine, airport, bardo, beach, buoy, Carol, clouds, cold, electric, engine, glasses, grey, hands, holiday, horizon, Lanzarote, love, Morecambe, morning, pink, planes, sea, sky, sound, streets, sunset, time, volcano, walking, waves, white

                we walked by the airport with tinted glasses
                flights coming in going out while the

                sun set behind; without tripping
                the waves lapped and swashed as they do

                but broke electric white and fetched
                electric aquamarine all along under

                the gauzy pink and far horizon
                while jet engines cracked their power and

                streets of new villas hung like morning belts
                of cloud before the still-dormant volcanoes;

                finding noway round an air port
                we about-turned to vainly chase the sun

                down; the sea, now, met the sky
                in bardos of grey and buoy, the belts

                of cloud had turned electic, the planes
                taxi’d twice their size before take off and

                we held cold hands through it all
                like first we did in Morecambe decades ago

 

see also: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations for the prenouement

 

 

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

beach & sea wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
Carol wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds & glasses & hands & love & morning & time & waves wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey & sky wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
holiday & white wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
horizon wormhole: mauve
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
sound & streets wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
sunset wormhole: that
walking wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

 

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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

 

Khandro Tsering Chodron

Tags

2018, 7*, anatta, beach, being, blessing, breathing, cheek, distance, feeling, fetch, identity, immanence, Khandro Tsering Chodron, Lanzarote, love, sea, shoulders, thinking, touch, virtue, waves

                                that fetch that waved
                                a thousand miles

                                caressed my shoulders
                                smoothed my cheek

                                makes me feel loved
                                and particular; thinking

                                                of Khandro Tsering Chodron
                I wonder of something far

                                far finer that needs no
                                distance to accumulate while

                                there is nobody to mark
                                its touch, spreads spume

                                of love everywhere, all for to
                                breathe and to bathe

 

Khandro Tsering Chödrön (1929-2011) was recognised as a living dakini within Tibetan Buddhism, although she was always uncomfortable with the recognition and resisted being treated as such; she was very influential during her life, not because she taught or was learned or headed an institution, but because she dwelt in (not even exhuded that you might choose to react against it) a blessing and a peace that was completely un-designed, always spontaneous (sic) and as natural as a child’s experience; if anything, she was recognised for her devotion to her Spiritual Guide, even during the 52 years after his death – constant prayer, constant envelopment within the guidance and inspiration given; her presence made it real to believe, and dwell awhile in, the immense power and transformation of subtlety;

 

 

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

beach wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
being & sea wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
breathing wormhole: cowl
identity wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
love wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content
thinking wormhole: moon- // washed
waves wormhole: all // are // none

 

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

 

and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

Tags

19th century, 2016, 20th century, 8*, access, air conditioning, alley, architecture, back, balcony, bay window, being, black, blindness, blue, burgundy, carlights, chimney stacks, clouds, compromise, contemplation, cross-section, distance, down, Eastbourne, eyes, facade, Ford Cortina, foreground, front, Have, height, hierarchy, history, hope, hotel, houses, inside, life, living, outside, passing, pier, pipes, privacy, prologue, promenade, sea, seagull, seeing, sky, society, sound, streetlight, sun, time, tree, up, Victorian houses, walking, walls, waves, white, windows

                and naerrgh a mention of a seagull’s call

                prologue

                the fetch of uneventful league to
                mingle with pier piles nonchalant;

                the borderline lightbulbs strung for
                decades between promenade lamp

                and stack of height and white façade
                of black-wrought balcony for where to stay

                setting

                frontage shows the way-to-look-
                ing blind to what is seen amid

                all the detail of hierarchy, eye
                turned to what it hopes, while

                rear windows, set central in
                the shapèd drop, look inward

                to find the fit to be; in time
                the rear extension of amenity

                cut fresh cross-sections of life
                turned 90° deep with windows

                unadorned; but then
                were added storey, creating alley

                to hidden access whenever
                contemplating the corners

                that encourage right angle
                where you can serve your

                down and truncating down-
                pipe blind to abutted wall

                perambulation

                                but, I’m in luck

                eye caught by extractor flaps
                in the foreground venting downwards

                venting upwards, sun neatly off
                the downpipes to the right

                on the left long-painted white pipes
                rusting, and between, a leafing tree

                undecided which way to lean
                the background, the monolith back

                of the seafront hotel, conditioning
                air; later, passing the backs of

                houses-become-their-own-entrance,
                seagulls perched at rest

                on the chimneys, I caught
                the tail of a reg-D Cortina with

                burgundy-deep fins and round
                tripartite lights, smaller

                than I remember

                epilogue

                oh, yes and a Persian-blue
                chimney stack with off-white pots

                under sky-blue sky
                and wisps of cloud

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: looking ahead
architecture wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
being wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
black & blue & Have & living & passing & society & walking wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
burgundy wormhole: pine // gladioli // [&] wisteria
clouds wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
compromise wormhole: after all
Eastbourne wormhole: city streets
eyes & life & seeing & time wormhole: 1964
history wormhole: looking / ridiculous
hotel wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
promenade & sea wormhole: Bexhill 140215
seagull wormhole: do I
sky & white wormhole: travelling // arrival
sound & sun & windows wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
streetlight wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
Victorian houses wormhole: red / lacquer / door
walls wormhole: certainly a Captain, / but not America
waves wormhole: place

 

place

Tags

2014, 7*, capitalism, child, doing, doubt, earth, energy, finding, gentleness, groundlessness, hair, hands, hope, leading, letting go, London, lurch, market, placement, precision, seeing, shift, sound, streets, thinking, vindication, waves, weight

                      not seeing
                      the energy
                      shift and wave
                      underneath

                      I flex in all the
                      wrong places to
                      ground my own
                      earth to stand

                      on, there, there
                      is the precision
                      but then I easily
                      despise my hope

                      and put on weight
                      far too quick to
                      judge and lurch
                      toward vindication

                      it’s just ‘thinking’
                      that makes it so
                      a toddler’s head
                      chatters by your side

                      just let them all be
                      let their bouncing hair
                      be gentleness to the
                      palm of the hand but

                      don’t take them by
                      the hand to lead them
                      through the streets
                      of London, there’s

                      nothing to find in found
                      and always there are
                      smiling deals to make,
                      letting go, in the market

                      place

 

 

 

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

capitalism wormhole: miss / ad / venture – poewieview #22
child wormhole: municipal garden
doing wormhole: holiday
groundlessness wormhole: the quiet whale
hair wormhole: and I lose sight of her into memory
hands wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
letting go wormhole: woman / has worked in the gym / got a build
London wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
seeing & thinking wormhole: time
sound wormhole: Tara mantras
streets wormhole: ‘charcoal grey-slate sky …’
vindication wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
waves wormhole: concordance

 

concordance

Tags

2014, 7*, age, armour, discovery, Donald Fagen, expectation, eyes, flow, Gran Canaria, Have, holiday, identity, image, life, looking, music, passing, Salinger, sea, sitting, sun, Sylvia Plath, waves, writing

                                                                                                how to be
                                                                                in a holiday resort
                                                                where the Have is strolled
                                                and swaggered and tattoo’d
                                catching glance like after-image
                when the eyes are closed?

                                                                ~O___,

                                why aren’t I writing?            Well
                                                                I am
                but I was expecting to see something else when I wrote
                                the flow of another holiday
                                                rather than the
                                                                concordance
                                                that I have still yet to discover
                                in my writing eyes wide
                                                closed

                                                                ,___O~

                                                                certainly
                                                the sun and skin keep me
                                                                lapping without gain
                                                                and replaying the chorus from the ‘Nightfly’                
                                                                                unsure if I ever got the verse

                                                                ___“O”—

                                                                but nevertheless
                                                I still worry that I don’t write
                                                                as Plath and Salinger would lifefully so

                                                                I even know the answer
                                but I cannot sit at the moment,
                                                                I thought I had armour by the sea but it has

                                                                so quickly rusted
                                                and I’m overweight and 54 thinking
                                                                of illness and waste

 

 

 

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

eyes & Salinger wormhole: slightly / uphill
flow wormhole: happen//ing
Have wormhole: pass and / fro
holiday wormhole: holiday
identity wormhole: h’rk ‘eh ‘heh ‘hair ‘yeah ‘eh?
life wormhole: I turn to wake up
looking wormhole: Tara mantras
music wormhole: in the Java ‘n’ Jazz
passing wormhole: ‘someone …’
sea & sun & Sylvia Plath & waves & writing wormhole: jump start
sitting wormhole: woman / has worked in the gym / got a build

 

jump start

Tags

2014, 6*, alleys, bodies, exploration, faces, flesh, following, Gran Canaria, holiday, mind, nerve, sea, settling, sun, swimming, Sylvia Plath, thread, vista, waves, writing

                                                jump start

                sun-holiday can’t write
                                wanting to have written
                                                explore new alleyways find new vistas

                                                but the flesh
                is too blurbly and the faces too sneery
                                to settle my mind –

                                                                hanging stalks in the waves
                                                coming ashore
                                not coming ashore clinging to finger butt –

                that I cannot find a thread
and I cannot follow a nerve down to wherever it flinches
                                and tightens

                like Sylvia did in the
                                Letters for a Birthday
                                                at Yaddo

 

 

 

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

faces wormhole: so pleased to see you again
holiday wormhole: forgotten anything
mind wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sea wormhole: wasted –
settling wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
sun wormhole: the evening
Sylvia Plath wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
waves wormhole: divergent // direction
writing wormhole: reating & wriding

 

divergent // direction

Tags

2013, 6*, attention, being, CGI, control, distraction, echo, film, growth, identity, life, movement, naked, nerve, observing, reputation, self-compassion, self-love, sequel, sitting, society, sound, static, thought, waves

                it’s not just the oh-ho naughty thoughts
                that really shouldn’t but burst through
                ta-dha because you can’t stop them yet
                (secretly don’t want to, yet)

                it’s not even the oops echoes and sequels
                of each sprain and twinch that ached
                and deadened a sense of naked self, no
                it’s the thousand little nerves and waves

                the stylish static of the over-working CGI
                that test and flash the Dolby sound before
                the titles roll and the big names appear it’s
                all of that wide wide widescreen that needs

                      the love of incorporation
                      not the surroundsound of
                      stereo or the left and right
                      eyes watching in divergent

                      direction

 

 

 

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

attention & distraction & sitting & society & sound wormhole: nevertheless
being wormhole: facing the crime section
echo & life wormhole: the quiet whale
film wormhole: spit / spot
identity wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
thought wormhole: Virginia
waves wormhole: do I

 

do I

Tags

2013, 5*, attention, being, branches, breathing, breeze, fish, horizon, leaning, living, pigeon, questioning, seagull, shock, waves

 

                                                                    do I

                                              cast
                                              eye
                                              and heart  –   wide o’er
                                   the bob and trough
                                   the waft and wave
                                   the horizontal lean
                                   the shock and the approach
                              and then do I breathe a weave through it all like a fish,
                                              like a seagull,

                              do I?

                     do I
                                ride a breeze
                turn my feathers
                and alight a-bob on a branch to survey:
is that how I do it?

 

 

 

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

attention & breathing wormhole: too greedy
being & living & waves wormhole: step
branches wormhole: municipal garden
breeze wormhole: where else
horizon wormhole: ‘avenue of wraggled gorse tops …’
seagull wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in