so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

Tags

2017, 6*, consummation, discovery, fingers, gap, gold, grasshoppers, Have, life, light, mind, retirement, Rumplestiltkin, talking to myself, weaving, words, writing

                                                                so
                do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or …
                                Rumplestiltskin

                                                oh,
                                I have a mind and
                                                oh,
                I can weave gold from any old fibre

                whether you give me your life or not – never
                                a consummation to be made,
                                                never a consummation to be had

                                but
                they have some charm
                                and they have some light
                                                to decipher

                                                makes them sparkle if I twinkle the words finely enough
                                between the gaps
                fingers working like grasshoppers

 

 

 

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

gold wormhole: mauve
Have & life wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
light wormhole: chuckling
mind wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
retirement & talking to myself & writing wormhole: letting them go
words wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory

 

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turned backs of saddened victory

Tags

1964, 2016, 6*, bone, Dr Strange, eyes, faces, flame, light, lime, message, purpose, role, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, thought, windows, words

                while little more than bone bends
                calcified from the hip to graft with

                hideous and perverse satisfaction
                to phemur on which it sits, the

                messenger is sent lumbering clothed
                in outsize roles and ragged over

                cross-hatch purpose to breach the
                barrier of any window and the light

                that it may let fall across all facial
                thought – oh, the faltine flames

                that flicker lime between furnished
                brow, the words, not seen, but rise

                in smokey scapulas, the being in
                cross-hatch has frantic eyes, the amulet

                has light which cannot be framed –
                turned backs of saddened victory

 

from the Dr Strange story, Strange Tales #116, ‘Return to the Nightmare World’, January 1964; Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

1964 & faces wormhole: 1964
Dr Strange wormhole: the skyline
eyes & thought wormhole: between
light wormhole: tremule
lime wormhole: lime crocs
windows wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
words wormhole: at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree

 

at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to / replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about / the Yew Tree

Tags

2014, breeze, Carol, colour, garden centre, humour, identity, language, poem, speech, Sylvia Plath, table, Ted Hughes, words, writing

                at table 21 in the garden centre thinking to
                replicate Hughes’ exercise for Plath about
                the Yew Tree

                                if I was to say to you
                                “write a poem NOW”
                                what would you lock
                                on to?

                                ‘are you talking to ME
                                …; I only use words
                                for lists complaints
                                reports; what’s the
                                use of poems; I can
                                see colours and hear
                                breezes but I don’t
                                connect them with
                                words’

 

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: ‘someone …’
Carol wormhole: twilight / and parasols down / within minutes
identity wormhole: cape and cowl
speech & Sylvia Plath & writing wormhole: Cocktails in 1951
table 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
words wormhole: reating & wriding

 

reating & wriding

Tags

2014, 5*, beauty, being, boy, breathing, girl, grass, irony, Lewes, listening, phone, reading, talking, words, writing

                                reating & wriding

                                in
                through the words to the being
                out from the being between
                                words

                                why
                isn’t there beauty that can talk
                in locus and suffusion
                un-trapped in seem and word

                                even

                                even this
                has never existed

                                because
                the girl sat on the lawn and
                made her soliloquy
                                whatever

                                to the boy
                (who had the boxers who had the phone
                 and the tattoos and was not afraid
                 to sit on the grass and use them) who listened
                to every meaningful judder of her low cut top

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: weight
being wormhole: the sitting room
breathing wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
girl wormhole: and I lose sight of her into memory
Lewes wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
listening wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical
reading wormhole: singsong chant
talking wormhole: … vague / thunder
words wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II
writing wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

Tags

2014, 3*, coffee shop, father, joke, Jon, Lewes, poem, son, speech, words

                Mark & Jon at the coffee shop II

                ‘I’ve got to give you five words and you’ve
                 got to work them into a poem:

                fluffy       popsicle      Nostradamus
                carcinogenic      parasite’,      so I said

                                it can’t be done

 

 

 

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

coffee shop & father & Jon & Lewes & speech & words wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

 

Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

Tags

2014, 4*, coffee, coffee shop, father, joking, Jon, Lewes, notebook, rhyme, son, speech, words, writing

            Mark & Jon at the coffee shop I

               ‘write, what rhymes
                  with coffee’ said Jon
                     taking the piss of my
                        notebook out in the coffee shop
                           but I had my own back
                              by messing with his words

 

 

 

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

coffee wormhole: too greedy
coffee shop wormhole: with endless love
father wormhole: singsong chant
Jon wormhole: magnetic field
Lewes wormhole: relief
speech wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
words wormhole: reading // unstirred
writing wormhole: over-pink cagoule

 

reading // unstirred

Tags

2011, 6*, dissolving, growth, homoeopathy, letting go, reading, study, teaching, university, words, world

reading

haven’t got the energy to study anymore
university and teaching knocked that out of me
feels unwholesome now
over-eating
over-chewing

                far better now
                to read without trace without
                wholesale shopping and let the worlds*
                flavour my mind homoeopathically the way
                I would always have preferred but that now
                I can just let dissolve like cordial in water

                                                                                 unstirred

 

* sic

 

 

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

letting go wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
reading wormhole: Granada and other poems … continued
study wormhole: ashramas
teaching wormhole: while
university wormhole: Grizedale College
words & world wormhole: south horizon

 

south horizon

Tags

1959, 1967, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2011, 2012, 7*, abandonment, anger, Bowie, childhood, Dad, discovery, divorce, drum, evening, experience, horizon, light, London, Margaret Thatcher, memory, Mum, Nan, pain, parents, perspective, purple, rhythm, river, saxophone, shift, Shooters Hill, south, texture, Thames, travelling, words, world

                south horizon

                out on the river
                the purple is shifting

                but in the evening-bulb light
                the world-shaping words

                of grown ups
                is shifting uncontrollably

                but,          no; it’s OK          look
                there is rhythm, there is

                a saxophone, a hi-hat – shflpt –
                in the crack there

                where words sift
                where worlds shift

 

I submitted this to an online magazine; they didn’t want it; I’ll publish it here again with the copy that supported it:

about the poem: on my eighth birthday (in 1967) my Dad arrived home late from work; my parents had one of their last arguments; my Dad left home that night; I couldn’t remember much of what happened that night – what was said, how much I heard, how much I understood – but I realised that worlds could change quite quickly that night; years later, in 1993, David Bowie recorded ‘south horizon’ on his ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ album, but I didn’t really get to know the piece until 2011; hearing it etched that experience back into my memory – bevelled it up, almost – but it also supplied textures and chord changes to the memory that allowed me a perspective that held me from being just angry or hurt; (‘the river’ is the river Thames; we lived on Shooters Hill in SE London from where we could hear and breathe the river)

author bio: Mark Redford was born in 1959 and grew up in South East London until he bolted to university (like a bat out of hell) in 1979, hot from Margaret Thatcher’s election victory; London was never the same every time he returned back; his mother, who had brought him up with her mother (his Grandmother), died in 1999; since then he has travelled back to London frequently to find the previous 40 years, but only seems to find them when he writes down what he saw; you can see what he sees (possibly better than he can) at: https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/; if you bump into him there, give him some directions would you?

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: monument to vainglory
Bowie wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
childhood & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
Dad & divorce & texture wormhole: beepbeep
evening wormhole: alighted
horozon wormhole: 1966
light wormhole: so pleased to see you again
London wormhole: 1967
Mum wormhole: 1967
Nan wormhole: work
purple & river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
travelling wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
words wormhole: breathing out
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show

 

breathing out

Tags

2014, 4*, ambition, breathing, daily, emptiness, non-doing, openness, self-compassion, sitting, talking to myself, time, words, writing

                I must take
                the time

                to sit with
                an empty page

                each day

                without guile
                or ambition

                completely
                and openly

                and let

                the words write
                themselves

                with compassion
                as if I were

                breathing out

 

 

 

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

breathing wormhole: writing: // in turn
emptiness wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
openness wormhole: con / sum / mate
sitting wormhole: pocket
talking to myself & writing wormhole: No
time wormhole: open window
words wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

 

ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

Tags

2016, 8*, being, breathing, child, clothes, colour, comics, despair, Dorian Gray, emperor, exclamation, exposed, flowers, Granada, hope, identity, inspiration, light, love, mantra, model, phrase, portrait, Prajnaparamita, rain, rainbow, realisation, retirement, secret, seeing, self, self-containment, self-image, speech, step, thread, tragedy, vanity, wandering, words, world

 

 
le mot just
the piquant phrase
                                         the simple model rising magnificent
                                         from cavalcades
                                         of stoic tumbling

                                         threads through like
                                         weave which clothes me
                                         presentable to the world …

                                         but no one sees the
                                         emperor’s clothes of
                                         such fine thread it cannot
                                         be seen, no wise child
                                         to point and exclaim
                                         the hang and drape
                                         to put an end to all step –
                                         “look, mummy, that man
                                           is not an emperor!”

 

 
less than naked
I am seen right through
                                         adrift of discourse
                                         I step with stubborn countenance,
                                         all the better to
                                         stare myself into existence,

 

 
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
                                         lest I lose [what I haven’t
                                         got] self-contained in trembling
                                         vanity, secretive in hope
                                         of things to come, desparate
                                         in tragedy that my grimy
                                         portrait might be seen …

 

 
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
                                         their colour, breathe their
                                         light and let the light rain
                                         fall in shards of rainbow,
                                         cleansing with love –

 

 

 
                      om     ga – te     ga – te
                                      pa – ra – ga – te
                                                      pa – ra – sam – ga – te
                                                                      bo – dhi     so – ha

 

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

 

 

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

being wormhole: pocket
breathing wormhole: within
child & light wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
comics wormhole: chartless …
identity wormhole: not / the Catcher
love wormhole: love and precision
rain wormhole: monument to vainglory
realisation wormhole: passing below
seeing wormhole: con / sum / mate
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
words wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
world wormhole: the skyline