“And anger it is that lays in ruins / every kind of mental goodness.”

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, animals, architecture, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, collapse, corner, dream, fireplace, lintel, moss, pediment, pillars, ruin, settlement, sound, stone, thought, trees, walls, weight, windows

                                “And anger it is that lays in ruins
                                  every kind of mental goodness.”

                crunch what have I stepped on
                cracked, hollow, all about, what

                is this square stone pediment
                skewed and in the way, no, not

                square, this moss has rounded
                the corner, and here is a

                pillar (where’s the arch, where’s
                the other pillar) all concussed

                and made of cone it seems,
                it must have just collapsed

                one day, couldn’t hold the weight,
                maybe someone took the

                other pillar, maybe the lintel
                just shattered and got walked over;

                but no walls here, just that
                mound over there, I could

                climb the side, there are steps, oh,
                it was the fireplace, all that rubble

                has filled the hearth and …
                this was the back wall, here

                is a corner of a window space,
                but there are just trees to see

                now, was it cleared here once,
                did they keep animals milling

                about, were they comfortable,
                did they have dreams …?

 

a wistful from Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, verse 7: “Encountering that which I fear or do not want, and obstructed or frustrated in obtaining what I want, these provide the fuels of discontent, of unhappiness, of irritation. They smoulder and then flare-up, spreading within me. I become built-up and headstrong with anger which eats away inside and will eventually consume me and the toxic world I have created for myself.” The title-quote is from “The Nectar of Mañjuśrī’s Speech”, a commentary to the Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Kunzang Palden.

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
dream wormhole: on facing the Have
sound wormhole: in turgid reflection
stone & trees wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890
thought wormhole: in deed
walls wormhole: Female Peasant Carding, 1875
windows wormhole: threshold to behold

 

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threshold to behold

Tags

1967, 2019, 8*, abandonment, alcove, being, birds, blue, books, breeze, Dad, Eglinton Hill, evening, garden, head, identity, life, meaning, openness, place, purpose, room, shoulders, skirting board, sky, son, sound, standing, text, time, trees, Victorian houses, weight, windows

                                  threshold to behold

                having persistently interrogated every alcove
                and skirting and sash-window of every room
                he could possibly have been in

                for any lead to any whereabouts, to even a
                chalk-outline, of how to be (beyond the breath
                of standing next to him in the breezy garden) –

                they were so well-moulded, fitted at perfect
                right angle, pulleys holding the weight just right
                to open, surely they would know – nothing,

                (or were they just too arcane to decode),
                the son stood before the bookshelves – how
                was it, now – legs not really astride but anyhow,

                (dangling, even), but head and shoulders alert,
                scanning the spines, weighing what each had
                to offer to respective places and times in the

                whole of a life, ah, this is the one – plucked –
                from the top of the spine, reached down; felt
                their weight, now, opened boarded covers

                (sound of crease), open at random (must of
                decades), what does the text say when
                eavesdropped unaware, has it sense, could I inhabit

                that sense enough to see what to do, to breathe
                what to be – birds take flight into the turning deep blue
                above evening trees

 

my father left his family on my eighth birthday; I’m sure he didn’t plan in that way, but that’s the day he happened to come home late again and confess that he’d been seeing someone else – I played with my new cars behind the sofa and listened to him leave, I didn’t look up so much as stare at the shape of the room as if noticing for the first time in the Victorian house on the hill where we lived; ‘I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed’ (a no-prize to anyone who can name where these lyrics come from) looking for the direction I needed to be ‘the man of the house, now’ as someone said to me at the time; it’s only now I have retired that I realise there is no direction to go and that there is no man about the house other than saying makes it so; I still don’t look up, but am more and more sure that I don’t have to, now; still, all that browsing, plucking and hoarding over the years …

 

 

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

abandonment & Dad & life wormhole: my uncomfortable life
being wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
blue & trees wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
books wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
breeze wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
Eglinton Hill wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
evening & time & windows wormhole: Boulevarde Montmartre, Evening Sun, 1879 // Boulevarde Montmartre at Night, 1879
garden wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
identity wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
meaning wormhole: the old man;
openness wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
sky wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
sound wormhole: 10/28 ‘On hot days …’ by William Carlos Williams
Victorian houses wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1921, 6*, air, ambition, awareness, being, body, breathing, clothes, dream, eight worldly dharmas, feeling, feet, ground, hats, life, living, looking, nose, shoes, sky, talking to myself, Thursday, weight, William Carlos Williams

                                THURSDAY

                I have had my dream–like others–
                and it has come to nothing, so that
                I remain now carelessly
                with feet planted on the ground
                and look up at the sky–
                feeling my clothes around me,
                the weight of my body in my shoes,
                the rim of my hat, air passing in and out
                at my nose–and decide to dream no more.

 

from Sour Grapes, 1921

a song, perhaps, to sing when once one is retired, althout WCW was only in his thirties when he wrote this, which possibly means you don’t have to wait to be broken by the long haul in order to realise the beauty oftheworldwhichcrushesyou is precisely where you stand in it with being rather than reach …; we try to make ourselves so solid and de-fined by what we want rather than what we are, that we are afraid of the openness of the sky that arcs so far away from us, but that when we jump right into it – the ultimate skinny-dip – we feel ourselves so solid on the ground from which we leapt … he wasn’t a showman, old Bull Williams, but he knew his shit, even from the age when you wouldn’t believe it

 

 

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

air & being wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
awareness wormhole: letting them go
breathing wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
dream wormhole: “I need help”
feet wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
life wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
living wormhole: `whappn’d!
looking wormhole: cowl
sky wormhole: we held cold hands
talking to myself wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
William Carlos Williams wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams

Tags

2017, 7*, blue, brown, church, convergence, flower, jasmine, line, moon, morning, orange, petals, pink, pinnacle, seeing, sky, slate, smooth, steeple, stone, turquoise, weight, William Carlos Williams

                     TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE

                Rather notice, mon cher,
                that the moon is
                tilted above
                the point of the steeple
                than that its color
                is shell-pink.

                Rather observe
                that it is early morning
                than that the sky
                is smooth
                as a turquoise.

                Rather grasp
                how the dark
                converging lines
                of the steeple
                meet at the pinnacle–
                perceive how
                its little ornament
                tries to stop them–

                See how it fails!
                See how the converging lines
                of the hexagonal spire
                escape upward–
                receding, dividing!
                –sepals
                that guard and contain
                the flower!

                Observe
                how motionless
                the eaten moon
                lies in the protecting lines.

                It is true:
                in the light colors
                of morning
                brown-stone and slate
                shine orange and dark blue.

                But observe
                the oppressive weight
                of the squat edifice!
                Observe
                the jasmine lightness
                of the moon.

 

from Al Que Quiere! 1917

it was me he was talking to, it was me; and although I was young and didn’t really follow him with consciousness, nevertheless, as I grow older I notice, mon cher, that I walk about with my head, tilted;

 

 

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

blue wormhole: new blue porsche
brown wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
church wormhole: oh, alright then
moon wormhole: moon- // washed
morning & seeing wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
orange wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: Bridgnorth
sky & William Carlos Williams wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
stone wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye

 

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

 

woman / has worked in the gym / got a build

Tags

2014, 3*, allowing, chair, exercise, fingers, flying, forearm, hands, knuckle, letting go, playing, portrait, sitting, weight, woman

                                                    woman
                                has worked in the gym
                                   got a build

                                sits in the chair
                for a thousand miles slacked that ten thousand sit-ups allow
                                hands hold the tablet
                with strategic fingers relaxed
                                that the deadweight has been let go
                playing bejewelled deft as rounded knuckle and
                                veinéd forearm allow

 

 

 

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

allowing wormhole: listen willya
hands wormhole: sleep now
letting go wormhole: forgotten anything
sitting wormhole: dear Lucy
woman wormhole: ‘someone …’

 

exactly equal

Tags

2013, doing, equilibrium, experience, gentleness, posture, practice, settling, sitting, superhero, superpower, talking to myself, weight

 

 

 

                important to settle gently into sitting
                                              (into doing)
                                not heroically like a superpower but with
                                cold
                                brass
                                weight
                exactly equal to the experience and posture in the cup
                                                                                 on the opposite end
                                                              of the arm

 

 

 

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

doing & practice wormhole: practice
posture wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
settling & talking to myself wormhole: recovered
sitting wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
superhero wormhole: escape from Flat Planet
superpower wormhole: just words wiped across a line

 

H e a v e

Tags

2013, being, bird, childhood, Eglinton Hill, emergence, feeling, garden, height, identity, London, reaching, stone, Thames, trees, weight

 

 

 

                a stone

                I picked it up
                felt the slight weight just enough
                to feel the lift

                ran my thumb over the smooth top
                with salt-traction enough to grip

                to find the lip of the bevelled chip
                to test the arm-loose weight again to

                       H      e     a    v  e

                it straight up
                straight up higher

                higher than an apple tree
                higher than a passing bird
                higher than the downhill lands of London and the Thames

                this is what I can do
                this is what I can be
                and no one would know if only
                I can stay with that

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–
being wormhole: separate
bird wormhole: tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again
childhood & Eglinton Hill & identity wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
emergence wormhole: just words wiped across a line
garden wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
London wormhole: in desperation and worthless art
stone wormhole: ha ha ha
Thames 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
trees wormhole: start where you are I