in deed

Tags

2019, 8*, Arya Lalitavistara, austerity, being, birth, black, Buddha, children, consumerism, death, doing, ears, fear, grin, hate, identity, infrastructure, investment, karma, letting go, lifetimes, love, mother, nirmanakaya, nose, samadhi, shame, skeleton, society, son, thought, war, womb, world

                                I

                gave birth to you, I
                held you deep within my very womb,
                the very kernel of all the labour of all my life’s beings and I

                gave you up to being
                with all the love of whole investment
                placed in care of self in state, you cannot,

                                just
                                die

                                __O—

                … she addressed her son

                who sat unmoved
                to the whole world’s reach
                that only his bones leaned together
                dry and upright

                who sat unconsumed
                to the whole world’s glut
                that to feel his stomach
                was to grasp his spine

                who sat unloved
                to the whole world’s reflection that
                children poked grass in his ear ‘till it
                came out his nose

                who sat unknown
                to the whole world’s shame
                that he was dust-black as a
                tree stump hideously grinning

                                __O—

                and know, mother, I do not die;
                I embroiled with the world to show
                the terrible wake of uncoupling
                her greasy mechinations,

                                in deed

 

honnnnnnnned like the string from a lute, not too tight not too loose, from chapter 17 of the Arya Lalitavistara Sutra in which the Prince’s mother (who had died and gone to heaven) came to see her son after he had been practising austerities for six years and was on the point of dying; she feared he was taking his quest to extremes, but he calmly told her that (the point of the whole Sutra being called ‘Lalita’, a ‘play’) that he had to show, in human form, what the two extremes of living in life were, in order to then show the way between to two extremes to liberation

 

 

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

being & war wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
black wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: the old man;
death wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
doing wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
identity wormhole: threshold to behold
letting go wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
love wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
society & thought wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: on facing the Have

 

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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

 

AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

Tags

1960s, 2013, 6*, abdomen, attention, birth, emergence, evening, eyes, feeling, flower, heathland, history, identity, infrastructure, life, light, lime, looking, meaning, mist, possibility, posture, reading, rebirth, shade, shoulders, sitting, streets, time, womb, writing

                AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

                decade of ever-immanent emergence
                but yet womb-like misty with heathland-lime streak

                forefeeling borne and colourful possibility
                then birthed starving and naked into too local streets

                with all their historynfrastructure; born within
                two months of the 1960s, towards the end

                I was flowering, but with a knuckle in the
                stem below the petal receptacle, made me

                always look downwards to the ground: I sit
                for hours hunched over a table writing, I sit

                for evenings correcting a tendency to
                close my eyes, I sit slouched in all manner of

                chair reading and reading; it will take decades
                of shade and whither before I raise

                my face to the startling of light and correct
                my shoulders and abdomen

 

in the immortal words of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: “the path is the goal”

 

 

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

abdomen wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
attention & writing wormhole: magnetic field
emergence wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
evening wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
eyes & light wormhole: languidly close the portal
history wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
identity wormhole: travel
life wormhole: 35 years ago …
lime wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
looking & streets & time wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
meaning wormhole: tiling
mist wormhole: the purple mist between
posture wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
reading wormhole: lonely and free
sitting wormhole: even / a second

 

the figure “46” / in frosted glass

Tags

'scape, 1999, 5*, air, black, cabinet, childhood, doors, Eglinton Hill, evening, glass, hall, inside, life, lime, lino, morning, outside, time, white, womb

                                              ^{the figure
                                              in frosted glass}

                                                                                              morning

                                              black & white
                                              chequered lino

                                              a single cabinet
                                              in the hall

                                              lime air through
                                              the front door

                evening

 

 

 

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

air & black & evening & morning & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
childhood wormhole: ashramas
doors wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
Eglinton Hill wormhole: currency of generations
glass wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
life & time wormhole: listen willya
lime wormhole: bavardage

 

(another / gulp of air)

Tags

2013, being, breathing, doing, identity, life, living, realisation, rebirth, release, sitting, womb

 

 

 

                                (another
                                gulp of air)

                                a leap
                                a release
                                a splash
                                into a
                                quiet womb

                                floating … oh
                                I am to swim
                but every time I surface I find I am nowhere
                                to be found … oh
                                                              I am
                                              the water

                                no more struggle

 

 

 

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

being & doing & life & sitting wormhole: nu’ink, / that’s what
breathing wormhole: To my Mum
identity wormhole: Desolation Angels
living wormhole: the dash is magnificent / the shadow grotesque
realisation wormhole: between