quest in brown: a conglomerance of psychic textures mixed with terraced architecture; late evenings in Plumstead as it started getting dark in the early 1970s, was the time to go on Quest for something that might have been missed – and there might ALWAYS have been something that might have been missed; you never knew … and I still don’t
quick inventory after coffee: a perverse relationship with coffee is that the buzz can have you simply notice what exactly is going on, especially when you have temporarily re-located into a different room to start the day … or notly; you don’t necessarily have to start because of the beginning of the day, unless you have some fine, good discipline to do so – the cavernous voice of Gain and Achieve is not necessarily the impulse it is all cracked up, to be …
‘quick – she’s gone to pay …’: … easy to miss
quiet: ping-ping pang-png-png-pong pung-pong ponng panng; NEVER underestimate the sound of primal-pastel colours in the Barnsgate Housing Estate during the 1970s when everything seemed potential except here
quiet: this should be the focus and legacy of teacher evaluation, not the diseased tuberculoid anxiety that we have become ontologically accountable to since someone – stupidly – said “Education, Education, Education”
‘the quiet boy …’: when I wrote this in 1978 it was just anxious; now it has acquired a creepiness all by itself …
quietly: a quiet urbanal
quietly in my quiet house: drenched from under Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 76-77: [76] If someone is attuned enough to spiritual things to find delight and joy in recognising the appearance of excellent qualities and worth in another and praising them as a good person, and if this makes them happy and draws people close together, why then, oh (sulky) mind, don’t you join in with the recognition as well; why are you not rejoicing too and taking the same delight too? [77] (But isn’t feeling joy and delight an attachment, and therefore bad?) But this pleasure, this delight cultivated through praise of another’s virtue, is an entirely virtuous activity, a spring, a fountain, of joy, which is not prohibited, but, even, a precept, taught by those of Ultimate Quality and Worth, an excellent way to bring people together of which one should take full advantage.
quiet machines: beep-beep brp brcscscscscscscscscscscssswsssssssh …
quiet river: walked up the side of the Río Darro between the Alhambra on one side and the Albaicín (old Arab) quarter on the other, past many guitar shops; … aha: music; someone played guitar with a gentle amplifier, but he wasn’t sat with a cap before him, he was sat in his living room across the river – wide open windows with no balcony railings; he would have pulled crowds, but there were too many scooters eager to show their young speed, and too many white taxis with fares to deposit and pick up, passing up the narrow street; aha, music:
the quiet whale: I have this huge self which I have spent a whole life drifting away from
quite simply: eventually everyone must be a beetle
quite … / … yet – poewieview #12: I don’t know how to what saying … London Bye Ta-Ta, 1968; When I’m Five, 1968; Ching A Ling, 1968; The Mask, 1968 … yet?
Quiver of / Tiffany – poewieview #20: through the lonely portals of The Supermen, 1970; Saviour Machine, 1970; Running Gun Blues, 1970
quoshed: just a bit of me me me; sometimes I just need a slap
‘radar-blinking …’: … loving the alien
radar-blinking: the eternal relationship of life
radiator: breathe in, diaphragm rise, sit upright, head slightipped forward, breathe out
radio: meeting a grandad who died before I could remember him
Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23: by Edward Hopper
rainbow: playing tag with being
Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844: emerging out from Rain, Steam and Speed – the Great Western Railway by William Turner, 1844
raised brow: Detective Comics #392, October 1969, Frank Robbins, Bob Brown: almost two years after my father left I was beginning to find my nerve
Ramsden Heath: watch it slowly accumulate up in the corner of the room strange around the exposed roofbeam then sweep across the ceiling safe safe
Ramsden Heath: and silence
Ramsden Heath: plong kaplong kaplong … sweep across the room
rather: ‘T ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it / ‘T ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it / ‘T ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it / That’s what gets results / You can try hard / Don’t mean a thing / Take it easy, greasy / Then your jive will swing …
reaching branch: thinkquentiality
the reach turned to love: Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 10 … (when adversity strikes), if anything can be done about it what is the point in getting upset about it; if nothing can be done about it what is the point in getting upset about it.
the Reader (2008): directed: Stephen Daldry; actors: Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes
{reading right to left}: The Crystal Palace, London, 1871 by Camille Pissarro
reading // unstirred: the stir of reading
reading // unstirred: but definitely shaken, if at all possible, if it’s not too much trouble, thank you very much, Mr. & Mrs. Patterson, thank you, lovely to see you
realisation: after the washing has been done it is time to tip it all away and rinse with clear water
really: and truly
really?: … I was, like, wha-? for, like, over a decade, I’m not even jokING; didn’t’I … tell him, wasn’t’I not even joking; omg – I can’t believe you don’t even believe me-whatever
really: … and here it comes, the old, reliable colleague,right on cue and, even though slightly harassed these days,slightly inevitable now, even wearily so
really: really; there are some things I don’t like about myself – and for good reason … by some time I’ll realise what they are
really old: come on; COME ON!!!!!
really really: the fold-up of reach
reating & wriding: uh, yeah, yeagh, I feel that too
rear attic / bedroom: a memory so early that I am not sure that I can remember it; an early emergence to cognisance
the receding / roads of Hejira: the pavement grntch of 1977
recline: a moment linked indelibly with another at least two decades later
recovered: perceiving the eye of the raging storm … and letting it go
‘the red and white bollard …’: who will blink first
‘the red and white …’: sometimes there is no turning back
‘red edged with / mauve …’: time for prayer
red ink: a post impression
‘red ink air …’: writing
‘red ink in the air …’: a crayon pastelal
red / lacquer / door: is this when it all begins?
red net curtains / with appliqué blooms: PL Travers used to say that you should connect, but you should never explain
red / red / air: intimate forbidding of the erotic kind
handsome: wormy circumlocutions
relapse: afterlogue to 121212
relationship: requires mutuality
re lax // me: seasons’greetings (sic)
relief: all good things come to those who wait
relief: streetlights
RENAISSANCE: renaissance man now has a mobile phone
renounce: … but quietly, quietly
Renunciation: the insufficiences of life which prod active questioning
reprieve: the fourth part of the triptych without which there would be no ‘tych’ at all; this is the clip that links
responsible: a centipede was happy – quite! / until a toad in fun / said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?” / this raised her doubts to such a pitch, she fell exhausted in the ditch / not knowing how to run – Katherine Craster
“rest your frontal lobe”: no wonder I’m getting old
Retirement: In 2008 four long-serving teachers – with getting on for a century of service between them – took their retirement. I wrote poems to commemorate them all but never shared them. The titles are their initials.
retirement: retirement #6: here it is, the full story in all of its salacious detail; restricted strictly to those over 18 years of age – warning: graphic violence, with scenes of intent unattribularity
the retriever the daughter and the mother: fanned recycling of life and energy
returning home: life is one long journey through different vistas and cultures which travels nowhere at all
returning home handsome: handsome is self-possessed with no sense of self; a daughter with a career in town, sharing a late lunch break, perhaps, with the mother, to see her home, mum laughing at something on these phones they have, daughter laughing at the anecdotes and observation, eyes held; later, after the daughter had left, mum unpacked some ready make sandwiches and cake, she gave a donut to a passing homeless man with a limp, she’s packed too much, neither she nor he had to say a word.
reversing the polarity: applying a new adaptor
rhetorical inevitability inexorable in both immanent dissipation & implicit effulgence: searching for the resolution of this poem I found that there was no need for one; and in that finding it was already resolved
rhymed: chirrup
riddled: Batman is the King of the hypnopompic world brought into this sad world through comics and cards; in the nineties he became King of the hypnagogic world instead – and stayed there
riders of the night: all this: in ‘The Land of Black Gold’ by Herge
right effort: as dear old Alan Watts said – you can’t bite your own teeth
right to be: when you have arrived to doubt all ground that you have stood on , it is vital that your senses remind you who you are …
rising up: amid all the blunder and endless endless talking to myself something makes for a surface …
river: from early pages of my life in Tales to Astonish
‘the road is long …’: oarwhite may’gh ai-uhzit gow’ng?
the rong way wround: on writing with a stale fart or writing with the window open, and if you’re especially lucky, with a slight, occasional breeze; always, always your own choice
roof-top vigil: mused the child, ‘I know, I could develop myself through super-concentration, then people would notice me’
rose: the velvet symmetry of pink or red
La Route de Louveciennes: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870; by Camille Pissarro
La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872: 
right there, from La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872 by Camille Pissarro (… actually, better if you could see the original)
row boat: “There’s always the Diamond friendly Sitting in the [Beat] Motel …” almostBowie
‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’: which was the Spectre: my Dad, the whale, the Phantom Stranger or time …?
ruddy pink: this was written 20th January 2012 just in case you were there
Rue de la Bourse de Bruxelles: financial institution
Rue de Provence: if you breathe really carefully in Paris everything stops
[s]: constantly realising (because I keep on forgetting) that I am wide as others, and never the twain can meet
safe: aa-schommp!
St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796 by William Turner
St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton: crankle
St. Ludwigskirche: ricochet
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”: stereoscopic time
St. Mary Magdalene’s / ground: a churchgroundoral
Sandwich: “I have the white bread sandwich and the wholemeal bread sandwich”
Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything: there is nothing ventured that gain doesn’t think it so, there is everything gained by staying in the centre of the circle
sat?: a gift of shift
sat: still
satin poem: a daily re-introduction with myself which is a surprise everytime. No it’s not. Lurch.
… satisfaction: no, no, no … that’s what I say
satis faction: ‘when I’m driving in my car … when I’m watching my TV … when I’m riding ’round the world”
satisfaction / looking down / – ‘good parent: wad eye tail yuh?
Saturday: love is giving the space to let someone do their own growing
Saturday: filtered through: That’s Where My Heart Is, 1965; I Want My Baby Back, 1965; Bars of the County Jail, 1965; You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving, 1965; Baby Loves That Way, 1965; I’ll Follow You, 1965; Glad I’ve Got Nobody, 1965; That’s A Promise, 1965; Can’t Help Thinking About Me, 1965
Saturday / afternoon: a canopyal
… Saturday arrived: Theseus’ thread out of childhood
Saturday / morning / TV: ruhnn -inng 1st-thing in th’m0r’ ninng
scandal: night and day you are the one
scatter: the power of the tiny tiny seed
scattered: the tinyness of power
school uniform: the search for meaning during breaktime
Science lesson: the study of life
scintillating to mind’s content: I thought I’d published them all but there was one still left
Seaford / 280310: the same old warp and weft
the sea plant: a sea plant
see: as in glimpse, sufficient for a lifetime
seeing: wysiwyg wysiwya[re]
seeing / clear: seeing is be-ing
seen but not heard: a whine in time
self: he’s an odd one, never fitted in
the self: a plaintiff and a plaintive
separate: the south downs, east sussex
September – silhouette of leaf // the / inside and the / outside: askance from the prologue to From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
service station: now, Have I got everything I need?
session: the warm embrace, wider than my arms, wider than my thought
‘set the controls / for the heart of the sun’: the further you really travel the more you stay where you are … invisibly
settling: when all is said and done, at the end of the day, to be honest, truthfully, I’m not even joking, litralee … there is nothing else to do in life
Seven A.M, 1948: before time gets going, nothing happens, and yet everything is done as if there were elves; painted by Edward Hopper, 1948
seventy two, perhaps – poewieview #9: serendipitously bounced from Come And Buy My Toys, 1966, and the wordage on the page
shamatha-vipashyana: I could spend the whole of the oppressive summer weeks listening to the ever-innovative codes of the blackbird
shared anxiety: why do people laugh so much …?
sharpened apex: I wanted to like the Alhambra, as contrast to the too-crafted deliberation of the Cathedral’s ‘this aching // and spacious dichotomy’; but there was too much ‘oh’ (when we couldn’t – easily – get tickets) and too much ‘ooo, let’s get a photo’ when we got there; oh, lighten up, Redford, just like the place; but I couldn’t – my wife called me a miserable Marxist, and I was quite happy with that
she blinks: ‘something in the way she …’
‘she busted in …’: my kids thought this was about me and my wife when we were young; when I told them it wasn’t they looked disappointed, they thought they had figured something out
sheesh!: does my bum look big in this?
‘she smiled …’: the ‘him’ is a (sic), they are child and so was I
Sheffield Park Gardens: 9*; Sheffield Park Gardens is a National Trust place in East Sussex (https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sheffield-park-and-garden): it has “Acres of landscape garden bordered by historic parkland and woodland” originally designed by Capability Brown; anyway, this poem holds a potted history of the mythic, social and spiritual development of humankind to an exceedingly vague and unspecific present, unless it recedes back 2500 years to the mythic and spiritual place in India where the Buddha taught mere [and whole] [and ultimate] immanence (i.e. not immanence of … anything), and brings it back to the present so that a future will indeed be possible
‘she shook the sweets …’: individually wrapped, creamy chocolate, in the bedroom of my teenhood and an open window …
‘she shook the sweets …’: the sweets were Lindt chocolates, individually wrapped in deep-red; the made bed was covered by a deep-green candlewick bed-spread; she was Carol, shortly before or after we were married, staying in what had been my bedroom, halfway up Shooters Hill, overlooking the Thames basin; this was the first poem I published on this blog, almost exactly ten years ago, and, in those early days, she got very little … no views; I think she deserves more than that; want a sweet?
shifting: so much activity, so little to show …
Shonagh – poewieview #17: … all because of what you are: The Prettiest Star, 1970
should // be // aware: the unecessary earnestness of obligation
should is good when / too used to cruise: should should be soft as a feather rather than tight as a vice … HA!
Shunryu / Suzuki / Roshi: all of an ever
preee-senting … Shunryu Suzuki Roshi: in word
– sigh! –: either way, or not, I am happy to have propagated the name of Shantideva
sight / seeing: stayed at Brugges in Belgium for a few days – a change is as good as a rest to a blind horse
significance: but it’s just so tempting
silence: there is nothing more echoey than a housing estate called ‘Barnfield’
silence: intimate relations of the olfactory kind
silence: still echoing even though it is not certain that there was a noise to start the echo in the first place and, besides, does an echo still occur when no one is listening, even if they are around to hear it … rff?
silence: Quakers sit in light to worship
silent: `good to get away from it all; ahh
silent crash // … / after all: … ghosts can’t bump into anything, can they … can they?
the silent night / of the Batman: for decades I have observed the ritual of reading ‘The Silent Night of the Batman’ just before Christmas (Batman #219, Feb. 1970, Mike Friedrich Neal Adams). At the time it was a quietly (almost silently, I suppose) radical idea for a Batman story because it involved no direct fighting action at all except the singing of carols – and yet everything still happened by itself! Wonderful four-colour magic! I wrote a poem to explore everything happening by itself without even the direct appearence of the Batman. It was written night of 23rd December 2011 and here it is published 24th December 2011. Wha’; where’d that come from!
the silent night of the Batman: there are may different kinds of night – each one of them a different colour
the silent night of the Batman: just keeps on giving; you HAVE REALISED that this is a Christmas ritual: “The Silent Night of the Batman” by Mike Friedrich, Neal Adams and Dick Giordano, published in Batman #219, February 1970
the silent night of the Batman: I am so pleased to say that this is the sixth time I have posted this poem, mostly always on Christmas Eve: the poem in which my hero-ego – Batman – doesn’t appear and yet everthing is done by his having been there all along; Batman doesn’t swing across the rooftops, it’s just that we sometimes find the space to change our minds; who is the Santa Claus for the 21st century – Batman (termsandconditionsapply:discussionaboutexistenceis … irrelevant); sculpted out of “The Silent Night of the Batman” in Batman #219 by Gary Friedrich and Neal Adams
the silent night of the Batman: who’d’a’thought; 7th year in a row; happy Christmas
silhouette: // second / thoughts: you need good suspension and no regrets to change your mind while doing
simply: living zazen
single fat cherry: first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is a mountain
singsong chant: third of four of the triptych; still at Herstmonceux Castle, in the grounds; here is a little something about Herst Henge if you happen to be a little daughter tromping up a grassy hill by a castle; and, yes, these three are hinged together … but they keep falling apart again, they might need something else to fasten them …
sit: not a command, so much, as a finish
sit: let’s just flick through these cards … Radcliffe … Reid, too far … Redford; here it is: now, what’s the profile on this one
sit: a descant of a biography like the silent sliding of a not-quite-carefully-enough stacked pile of comics
sit / and move: sorry, gotta go
sit. / In. / g …: the persistent challenge that is the true measure of a biography
siting and writting: sic-ing
sit stay heal: ineluctability as a living breathing practice
sitting: still
sitting: the whole drama of silence
sitting: an self-referenced ontological hyperbole
sitting: I wish I could keep the taste of my own wisdom, unaware that the desire is the very thing obscuring it; as Alan Watts said, ‘you cannot bite your own teeth’
sitting may be everything: but I still spend my whole time fidgeting
a sitting room, in generations past, was a parlour, a place to entertain guests, to talk, not to live in; as a guest to my Uncle’s house this was a magical magical place
the sitting room: deep and liminal-green
sitting up in bed s i m u l t a n e o u s l y: I find, if I’m not that aware, that I get up in the morning all by myself and miss the whole world rising with me …
six paramitas: these emerged from the section of Gems of Dharma, Jewels of Freedom by Je Gampopa introducing the Six Perfections: delving into etymology reveals facets and perspectives like walking around a display case at a museum and really having a good look at something fascinating; and then I thought, c’mon, Mark, `about time you started standing on your own two feet; so, I sat down to do so
sixty four sixty five: this is – believe it or not – from Bowie’s first cluster of works: Liza Jane, 1964; Louie Louie Go Home, 1964; I Pity the Fool, 1965; Take My Tip, 1965, only one of which was actually written by him; they’re all in there somewhere fore-striding the next day …
skeins of candy pink and lilac: Entering the Conduct of the Bodhisattvas (tr. Kretschmar): [9] If the Perfection of Generosity (is meant) to alleviate the poverty of beings, then, since poor people still exist at present, how did the previous Protectors perfect (generosity)? [10] The Perfection of Generosity is said to be (giving) to all beings with a generous mind-set all (one’s) possessions, including the results (of such giving); hence, as far as (generosity) is concerned, it is (a generous state of) mind.
‘the sky …’: … what you mean …? Oh, yes!
skyline / of the evenings: OK, the bridge of the piece of music, bridges over canals, bridges over motorways … ‘where’s that confounded bridge!’
the skyline: from Strange Tales #125, October 1964, “Mordo Must Not Catch Me”, by Lee & Ditko
sleep now: from a dream had on the 24th August 1997, the day before our 16th wedding anniversary
slightly / uphill: you can find the photo in Salerno’s book on Salinger
slight sneer: a quip
slipstream: coming to accept
slowly: achieving or not achieving, that is the question
slow enough / to have love: and I turned around and I said, I said …
slow slow / quick quick / slo / w: life from the end-on view of an old-fashioned vinyl stylus
the slug: _______~~~~~——==¬¬¬^“`¬~~=___
‘a small group of people stepped out of the registry office …’: the final witness
‘small Tina at the table …’: seeking regress
‘small town busy …’: the beauty and the busy
smalltown / Derbyshire: a tidy tensional
‘the smell of gloss paint …’: the fumes of foment
smell of seats: a cinemal
smell of the / window frames: the lure of beauty through a dark green bottle
smiling: a contastal
The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get (1973): The Smoker You Drink The Player You Get (1973); Joe Walsh & Barnstorm; the natural colour of my brother
snapshots about Totnes: hold still, steady, steady …
‘snatched from his …’: being so besotted pulled me beyond myself, alive and naïve; companion: ‘“I don’t know,” he said …’ & ‘noticed how her hair parted back …’
‘sneezing …’: bless you
sniff: sensory wafts into a life that I have never met
snoring / schlupp: a delicious hypnagogic moment
snow: a deliciously envelope moment
snow and incense: always to place yourself outside of yourself
so: the close close relationship between sitting and writing
so: damn, I wish I’d listen more
“so …”: it takes a lot to be open-faced
so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin: … still undecided even while I write
‘so easy to forget to sit …’: … when travelling
so, how long is, a piece of string?: Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 47: Impelled by my actions – [drawn out by circumstance, incited by the heat of the moment, prompted by hearsay, provoked by trigger, instigated by design, mobilised by obligation, shoved by control, summoned by role] – those who cross or hurt me, those who do me wrong just appear, right in my way and do what they have to do. And because of their actions, they will end up fallen and consigned to the infernal realms … surely, isn’t it actually me who have destroyed and damned them, haven’t I just been the mirror to magnify back to them their harm?
Soir Bleu, 1914: read from right to left through the eyes of the painter’s landscape; Edward Hopper
so lonely: the dynamics of a biography, the urge to living
somehow: life is never what you think it is when seen through the eyes of dream …
‘someone …’: all things bright and beautiful …
someone called Frank: my Mum tried to start up another relationship after the divorce – needed a father-figure for the boys – we moved somewhere, for a week; we needed to get rid of our teddy bears (time to grow up) but I kept my comics; but it was already too late: I had experienced ‘other‘ and spent the rest of my life not being able to return back
someone’s got to do it: a good two years into retirement and I can still wake up with frustration matting my hair and running down my face
some steps: so little noticed, so far to travel
something / 70s about: I have comicvision to thank for this
sometimes: I suppose it’s the ‘mostly’ that is more important because it is more usual
sometimes: is only ever apparent in the cold hard glare – difficult to appreciate – of a pervasive Always and Eversometimes: you’ve just got to put it out there again and again and again …
sometimes: Detective Comics #354, August 1966; cover: Carmine Infantino; “No Exit For Batman!”, writer: John Broome, artist: Sheldon Moldoff: tight-corner thinking and evasion – the redaction to zero, then out, again, the other side
somewhat // digesting: dhy’know, every morning I wake up and have … breakfast
somewhere: cheip- cheip
so much: left when everything is gone
the son: a family leap
song: sitting on the magic carpet
song of irrelevance: someone give that man a slap
sooner or later: all the time
so pleased to see you again: Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 17-19
sounds // suddenly / stop: no better way to celebrate the warmest day of the year so far by closing your eyes and listening to the sounds
the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13: filtered through grill of angst: Space Oddity, 1969, Cygnet Committee, 1969, Memory of a Free Festival, 1969
the sounds the difficulty and the long long strands of liquorice: when will I truly arrive at the age that I am?
south horizon: fresh out the oven, wrapped in a blog it’ll stay warm for centuries; midwifed by David Bowie’s track from ‘The Buddha of Suburbia’, lived by me and anyone else who cares to notice the beauty of cracks
south horizon: David Bowie, from the Buddha of Suburbia album (1994); the terrace ends of tall Victorian houses
south horizon: 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?
so where have I got:: nowhere, that’s what; but at least I’ve got that
space for probing thought: Detective Comics #360, February 1967, Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff; Batman #190 Gardner Fox, Sheldon Moldoff, March 1967: how; how does the Caped Crusader stay so ahead of the game?
spaces between // elastic bands: different coloured bands crossed over each other different thicknesses different spaces left in between …
‘a spark …’: timeless elemental sex
‘a spark from the empty light socket …’: ubiquitous uniqueness
the spectre: haunts the trees of alley like mist, pans the eye of notice like tears; and is the gift of present unwrapped
‘spilled out of the nurses’ / quarters …’: the moment when we were no longer children
spit / spot: chim chimenee chim chimenee chim chee cheroo …
a splash of fresh water: there is such escape from the prison of the flights of fancy through which we live our lives by dwelling quietly in the place we were in all along
splish splash squelch: what is left when the needless choreography falls away
sreet: wha’, wassat, where …, – when; am I?
… sshhh: something which smouldered reading a piece that Suzy Blue had written a while ago …
ssreet chak-chak: call-to up-look
stacked: looking up and up out the window, then down and down
Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832: berthed out of the cave by Coleridge‘s ‘Kubla Khan‘, 1816: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832 by William Turner
the stamina: to stay
the stance of Buscema // qualitatively: WHEN all the world is young, lad, / And all the trees are green; / And every goose a swan, lad, / And every lass a queen; / Then hey for boot and horse, lad, / And round the world away; / Young blood must have its course, lad, / And every dog his day. // When all the world is old, lad, / And all the trees are brown; / And all the sport is stale, lad, / And all the wheels run down; / Creep home, and take your place there, / The spent and maimed among: / God grant you find one face there, / You loved when all was young. (Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) from The Water Babies)
‘standing astride …’: the same chest of drawers that I later stripped down and found my Nan in the grain – grain
star / through the kitchen / window: follow the star with the eye to see what you will see
start where you are I: I’m trying to think of something clever to write about this poem but my cat has decided he wants to sit on
the two inch strip of available lap between me and the table and push his face against my hand as eye tie-pppppp
start where / you are II: so, I was just wondering …
[start where you are III] – delve: so many encounters degenerate into needless love-affairs when they need not and should not to be
‘staring through the glass …’: flutt…
the start of / adolescence: the anxiety created immediately beauty is isolated, then found
the start of adolescence: one might almost say that ‘under the stairs’ is like a wardrobe (first person to get back to me about where this solipsistic reference comes from gets a Stan Lee No-prize)
Statue of Liberty: a slight concern of living
staying alive: and everlasting instance of ontological tautology … .
Stay with that.: more than lack of obstructive contact, much, much more.
step: where the wild things run freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
step: look what I just walked straight into; and out again the other side
stepping out of the car / waiting on the yellow lines: rye-uh
still: ‘still’ as in ‘nothing happening on a Saturday afternoon’ and ‘still’ as in ‘despite nothing happening on a Saturday afternoon’
still: walking through wide-open reclaimed land for industrial development windsweeps time like long grasses
‘still …’: o’er’oopps’agh’nghh’wh’hayy’uh,gottit,gottit,nope,givvup[trying][not,balancing],nhapp
still there?: the architecture and street furniture of a living childhood
still there // above the / Dallin Road / allotments / looking high over the river and the city: what it is like living a fractured but happy childhood up the hill in London where you are constantly reminded of the wide open sky however much you scrub around in the underbrush to find the hidden gems
… still waving!: a salute to my Uncle Mick (1935 – 2007) who lived with great gust through the trees and great dark-wood texture for most of his life in Ramsden Heath, Essex, quietly, with a smile
‘stomping home from school …’: so what exactly is important here …?
stone: perspective
‘the stone-wall horizon …’: a horizonal
stop: the wisdom of no escape
stormy sky: a fieldal
stormy sky: awhooo pirrish
the straight line of stones marking the geometry / of death / settle all their own levels over time to make / a new rhythm: the be-all and end-all
strain: Virginia Woolf’s first novel was ‘the Voyage Out’; she wrote much of it as she experienced two breakdowns and a number of stark bereavements; this is not a trip to venture and return, this is a discovery to venture and change; so much changes between generation, within and across lives, the further you travel the deeper you stay where you are
‘strands as thick as rope …’: always bigger than oneself, never anywhere to turn
the strange mauve relief of / this burgundy-gritty encounter: the fulcrum of hay-fever between the worlds of ideas and love
stranger: lesson for life as Pema Chodron always urges – always stick with the soft spot
stranger / if we met: all under the downward gaze of the skirts, coats and hats
strangers: … may I become a fully enlightened Buddha in order to benefit all migrating beings, my mothers from former lives; a piquant companion to the more verbose, but none the less widening, ‘how ‘do published so long ago on the path that it has turned the corner and fallen out of sight …
strange / tarnish: only noticed once I think I start to develop some rhumatism, and certainly when my life-lustre languishes
‘streetsigns …’: unfurled from Batman #225, September, 1970; Denny O’Neill, Irv Novick
the street: of all desire
the streets just fill with business: askance from chapter six of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell
Struck: 24th April 2008
stuck free to move within: all the petal, all the fugal, but never no centri; when will I ever stop to learn …?
stuck in lower realm: Bodhisattvacharyavatara VII, 19
stuck: so compact, it could fit into a utility belt
‘stunted trees …’: the cud of history
substance: I wish somebody had told me before I had to find that I’d written this poem already; and then forgotten that I’d written it and couldn’t remembered where I put it anyway; OK, OK, but I wish I’d listened; OK, but I wish I’d taken it in … OK, I wish I’d breathed a bit at the time … OK, where are my slippers?
successive scenes in the autobiopera / conflict and resolution in each episode // credits: me me me me me: be sure to tune in, same time, same thought, next breath
such such potential: slow, slow, quickquick, yawwwn
suddenly fly off again: patience, patience
sufficiently away: from Batman #183, August 1966: “A Touch of Poison Ivy!”, written: Robert Kanigher, drawn: Sheldon Moldoff
Sujātā: from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra: “The village girl Sujātā, who has done much good in the past, / Continuously makes offerings, thinking: “May this guide complete his discipline!” / When she hears the request of the gods, she brings milk porridge with honey; / She goes to the river and happily sits on the banks of the Nairañjanā.”
summertime: phfffffffff…
Summertime, 1943: by Edward Hopper, whenever a curtain billows
Sunday: a pastoral
Sunday: since I’ve gone part time I have three Sunday evenings a week; but I also have three Friday afternoons a week as well
Sunday afternoon: just wondering, that’s all, uphill, like there was only progress to make
the sun / in a clean / industrial / sky: the architecture of weather in a small town
‘sunlight …’: … the edges of leaves
sun low / from behind: waiting in the car beside Toad Rock
sunny day: lazing on a sunny afternoon …
sunny morning: what you see after the first cup of coffee
sunny morning: there’s many a slip ‘twixt pen and page … and eye … and world
sun setting over a lake, 1840: Sun Setting over a Lake, William Turner, 1840
sunshine: the collapse of distance
sun through / the hedge: hedges are inpenetratble but they have a fatal weakness – sound
supermarkets: now there’s no escape
… swap round: posted while listening to ‘Lazarus‘ by David Bowie, on a darkening mid-afternoon November-day with the overhead lights all on; written over two years previously in the Wych Cross cafe on Ashdown Forest not knowing which way to turn
sweet chestnut: all the solidity between the shift and the flutter
sweet chestnut: there is some anger and sulk that I do not write anymore: not sure if I couldn’t keep up the hi-octane perception or that ‘I was only seeking attention’ explains it all; I still don’t know, but maybe I don’t need to hold such stoic upper lips about it all, arms crossed, turned away; maybe just a bit of compassion wafting this way and that …
swifts test the chasm of sky: the shut and open Case of the Strange Holiday Affair
Sylvia: I have only just discovered Sylvia Plath 36 years on; I read her when I was 17 but just couldn’t digest her
Sylvia: this is a fanpoem; honest
tabla: a tinkle and even
tabla: “… Four in the morning / Crapped out / Yawning / Longing my life away / I’ll never worry / Why should I? / Its all gonna fade …” [Paul Simon] … still floating after all these years
table: a very quiet but busy act
tag cloud poem I – numbers: all the years of my life
tag cloud poem II – acceptance: all the grace of living the offer you cannot refuse
tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again: the incredible darkness of being
tag cloud poem IV – C: … ‘what a difference a day makes / twenty four little hours …’
tag cloud poem V – draft-ness: the rules this time were to choose which ds to use but not change the alphabetical order; like slicing through a chunk of moss-covered 54 year old granite and finding polished marble in the cross-section – ice-cream with raspberry ripple
tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes: the rules for this were to include every single ‘e’ in the cloud which widened my field of vision but also deepened what I’d find
tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom: what happens when you give an ‘f’ …-
tag cloud poem VIII – growth: what happened when you get a decades-long gee-up
tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair: ‘aitches’ touch on quite a few boat-ties to my past: ‘Herbert Road’ was the local shopping high street where I lived in London until I was 19; it is in Plumstead which spreads south over the crest of ‘Shooters Hill’ and merges into Woolwich down to the river Thames; ‘Hillside’ is one of a little cluster of houses where I settled to raise a family and grow a career in Crowborough in the late 1980s – that same 80s that, mean-and-all-the-while, Thatcher was creaking open that casket (‘can’t read the label – “–ora’s Box”?’) which left me alien to my own background and lost in my own riverbank mist, save for the miraculous peek of haiku and the deadened gaze of bay window …
talking: is like waiting for the right moment to start your solo in blues or jazz; just look at Joe Walsh’s face when starting one, just look at Stephane Grappelli’s – they know how to talk
tan / … gl / … ed: of can’t this head or make tail
the tangles fall apart: an ode to heir
tapestry: who would believe that such lush drape and crushed velvet could adorn the very walls inside of yourself for all of the time already passed?
Tara mantras: the Mother of Loving Compassion, always half-off the lotus in all directions to respond smiling to every slightest wimper that troubles the grass about the land
teached / in the ass: ‘whatever happened to that public service …?’. I rather naively hold to the notion that those words ‘public’ and ‘service’ refer to a body of professionally trained and ‘vocation’ed people who, society-wide, provide the service (giving, committing, creating) of teaching (far beyond just providing, or enabling …nurturing). Whatever happened to that …?
teached / in the ass: over four years on it is not top of the agenda anymore; but it is still happening, only now my ass is really sore and no one is really interested; still
teaching: you could heave a thousand beautifully-hewn boulders into the Grand Canyon – it would make no difference at all
teen gaze: newly aware of self but not aware of history
‘teeth pulled …’: so near and yet so far
text: a still life
texture: the yawn of history
… thank you: I know when I’m licked
thar she perched: the muse out there on the Yorkshire moors
thar she perched: the posture has it all
that: the lack of definity which allows the nothing to take place that enables the everything in potentiality to actually be … ing … ly
that: the link between land and sky is … the crane
that comicbookshop in dreams,: is closing down
that comicbookshop … // … in dreams: “You who are accustomed to dwelling abroad in the marketplaces of destiny …” translated by Marion L Matics from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter 1, verse 11
that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*: *yes, yes, of course; lines from ‘Losing My Religion‘ by R.E.M – I do not claim that I wrote these words (and I certainly don’t make any money through publishing them on my blog – *ironic emoticon*), just that I nicked them because they fitted so well as the title to the experience I had died through and the piece I had written ‘to see if I still feel’, but that the words pervade the fabric of my dysfunctional relationship with teaching like the smell of cooked cabbage is mine, wholly mine, I tellya
thawing: about as interesting as watching paint dry
then: surprise!
then: like milk and ice cream
then: prologued from S. Giorgio Maggiore, Early Morning, 1819 & Looking east from the Giudecca: Sunrise, 1819 both by William Turner; did you see the sunsets that morning, was anybody else there …?
theological discussion: ‘those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak’ says the Tao Te Ching
there: lifetimes of moment
there: passing succincticity
there: the countdown was finished, this was the first stage, the beginning of eventuality, the first of my first days of the rest of my life …
there: you can’t look for what you’re looking at if its something other than what you wanted to see
there are patient listeners: to all the beautiful friends out there who give the space of listening to others who cannot return the favour, without hope or scheme
‘there, …’: There is nothing so destructive and negative as hatred or aggression; there is no discipline or austerity stronger than tolerance, forbearance or patience. Consequently it is only right to practise and cultivate patience and to do so constantly and persistently in all ways and in all situations.
there is: well come on, now, how long can YOU wait for the rejoinder to ‘shave and a haircut …’ …
there is no / meritocracy: in commemoration and with great excitement about becoming an Academy at the beginning of this term. What freedom this opportunity will allow for us all to think along the same lines. Five months on, now, and guess what we all think … actually I don’t know what we all think, you’ll have to ask a manager, which will only be useful if you are fluent in unattributable rhetoric!
a theremin note – poewieview #21: you have to go deep into the corridors and past the tall windows, to get to eventual recognition – let alone re-cognition when it cannot be found – with only brief respite between thoughts and the too-closeness of every footstep; you cannot escape the footsteps, no matter how many doors you peep into; After All, 1970
‘there’s a hole in our garden …’: my first clean observational poem – I was so excited when I found this
there was a call and far from no response: ‘things … can only get better; can only get better’ and they did, all the way up through the Black Days, the changes of government, all the Wars and Springs, even after the passing of the Witch (who’d have thought?); it’s true – look at the schools, education gets better and better: FACT, the numbers keep going up …
There Will Be Blood (2007): director: Paul Thomas Anderson; actors: Daniel Day-Lewis
there will be ovations: from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI – verse 43-44: [43] Here is a brandished weapon, and here is my body ready and presented, both of them the causes of my eventual suffering. My attacker has laid hold of his stick (tena śastraṃ), and I both wear and brandish my body. With what should I get angry? [44] It is I who have obtained and hold on to this boil, this pressured blister of a human body – sack of suffering – which cannot even bear to be touched and, moreover, it is I who am blind-sided through my own attachment to it, so that when the pain comes and the ‘boil’ bursts, with whom should I get angry?
they find their life growing together –: the tentative mutual encroachments of a new relationship
Thich Nhat Hanh: you can see this for yourself on Youtube – Israeli-Palestinian Retreat teaching on peace – as quiet as snow
thick thick fog: the landscape of effect horizon
‘thinking things through …’: I don’t think I’ve everhad my finger on any pulse
thinking wide enough: the eternal struggle with the bonds I insist on being immaculately knotted
thirst? / hunger?: a daily need
this aching // and spacious dichotomy: written sitting in the Cathedral in Granada – no speaking please; the second line right-angles the “I AM WHO I AM” given to Moses from the Burning Bush when Moses asked ‘who shall I say sent me?’ … unqualified existence, self-am-ing existence, made cathedral; also posted the morning when Donald Trump was elected President …
this is not / a poem: or rather a poem about the difficulty of trying to write a poem for the sake of writing a poem rather than writing a poem because it is a poem; the aggregates are the ‘bits’ that coagulate to define ‘me’ surplus to being: body, feelings, discernment (I-other), thoughts, consciousness
this is not my poem / although I found it nevertheless: from a letter from Master Morya to AP Sinnett, 2nd October 1881
this sodden land: written before booth Brexit and Trump but only becoming boggy since …
this time: if only
this time: fields turn
this whale: I have to admit it, this is one of my best poems – it makes me weep when I stumble across it by surprise. True to form it will probably languish in obscurity because of this. Sequel to tragedy and any number of other pieces which gnash their teeth and tear their hair
Thomas Street: a morningal, a street which is meant for busi-ness which has not yet come to life for the day
thought: Batman #183, ‘Batman’s Baffling Turnabout!’; written: Gardner Fox; artist: Sheldon Moldoff, August 1966
three musicians: from ‘Of One Heart’ by Cornelis Kruseman, 1830
threshold to behold: 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 …
‘through …’: Batman running, in a costume, anywhere, was the sign that anything was possible
through: actually, I don’t and I didn’t since I wrote this, and I am not all too sure that I will be able to continue much longer since I let go the hand and sniffed around for the Recognition, because … that certainly weren’t coming anytime soon; it’s still a nice ideal to work with, though, but I suspect there needs to be a whole lot of softening before that is even practicable: Wisdom of the Child sure don’t grow on trees, and certainly not on trees of education, that’s for sure; especially in this climate of neo-conservative warming
through a cracked glass greenly: I wrote this, then forgot about it – lost it – for four months while I got through my job; then I found it again – joy, jubilation, someone understands what it’s like! – but I’ll go back to work on Monday, cracked, green and strangely nostalgic
‘through the open window …’: relaxed tension
through the pane – poewieview #34: peered through Eight Line Poem & Changes, 1971, after January 10th 2016
through the window: the pass-the-baton ricochet of looking
through / the window: looking out through the window in
through the window // it doesn’t matter: … it just doesn’t matter although it is everything
thy will be done: I am so tired and defeated I’ll just hang around and see what happens
thy will be done: how long the aftermist of young quest can linger
tiered: when it does go well, it goes very well
‘til death do us part: whatusayiswhatyouget
tiling: Ironbridge
time: weird how you can have such different experiences with different friends. Even if you have never actually met them
time: is fluid when young, poured when old, and then it drips … dry
time: “… you missed the starting gun”: {guitar solo} boorwheal biHre-bigher baher-rohl bearall bay-yoor …
time: `went up to London, and what did I see; a crack in the sky and a hand reaching down for me
time: if I but paid attention
time proceeds: what is the wake left as you age through decades?
time proceeds: “Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth / You pull on your finger, then another finger, then your
cigarette / The wall-to-wall is calling, it lingers, then you forget / … you’re a rock ‘n’ roll suicide” (Ziggy Stardust)
time travel: the constancy of chimneys
tired: and beat
tired: sometimes (actually most of the time) you cannot always be on top of your game, and this is as beautiful as when you are with all the loving attention you can afford in the circumtance
tired: and still beat
tired – diptych: the further exciting adventures of … mark redford
titanic: if you haven’t, and you could, go and see the titanic Exhibition in Southampton
to allow / passage: event
‘to all the film-makers today …’: ‘never fails, put more money in and you lose your eyes
to arms, then;: Bodhisattvacaryavatara IV, 43, French translation by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Introduction à la Pratique des Futurs Bouddhas, 1907
TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams: 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;
tobacco pouch: another lesson bequethed me by my paternal grandfather who I hardly met before he died
to be Have: a proposition which I don’t have
to be or to / Have been // that is the / question: in a world too full of abundance and choice that either way it makes no difference?
to let be: I left this one for a long time before I stopped trying to make it something else …
to live with: not to run away from
To my Mum: part of the long meditation on her living since her death
To my Mum: To my Mum, who died 20th March 1999, far too early to realise the extent of her own patience and the width of her generosity; who typed up invoices for cargo ships in and out of London and taught me to leave three spaces after a full stop, which I honour to this day.
tong // len: ‘tong’ is a Tibetan word meaning ‘taking’ (the pain, fate and tragedy, of myself and others, in the form of gastric-oily bile [whatever], into your heart, where it is cleansed and purified by your naïve and blatant care); ‘len’ means ‘giving’ (back, to yourself and others, the care and release that you have generated [at their instigation and encounter] with gratitude); done both with mind while sitting [meditation], and with body while doing [breathing]; until the roles of self and other are reversed like a tight glove taken off inside-out
tonglen doing: when my wife was a child she used the phrase ‘longlen doing’ as a clarion call to spring into action – when being playful she still says it. Tonglen is a Tibetan word meaning, literally, ‘taking, giving’ to describe a meditation (and therefore a being) practice of breathing ‘in’ the sufferings and difficulties of the world, and breathing ‘out’ happiness and calm
tong len / the inauguration of another – timely – butter fly effect / taking and giving: something to be read and remembered whenever I feel like crap
tonight: and, of course, I couldn’t get to sleep; but it didn’t matter because there was possibility, there was adrenalin, there was the night
too: the widening and widest embrace
the too big moon: unnoticed every year
too cold to sit outside / and write flowers of / individual poems: too much looking, so little time
too greedy: someone get him down from the ceiling
the nature of samsara is that it’s always … too late:
too much in arrival: too little in being
‘to one side …’: it might not seem like much but this was all there is
top table: seen amid the rising wallpaper of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011); Directed: Tomas Alfredson; starring: Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Mark Strong
to rescue something: quite naturally, but unforseeably, this was written quite considerably, and apocryphally, after: green-wine, but then everything knits together eventually
to share: to the refined sax lilt and the resigned demeanour of UB40’s ‘Tyler’, the quiet electricity of a newly-held hand
Totnes: short break from work over a bank holiday, to Totnes in Devon with Carol to see Elizabeth – the medicine of travel
to write: … now what shall I …?
traffic lights and broad avenue: not surprised by the camber of “The Demon’s Disciple!” by Lee & Ditko in Strange Tales#128, January 1965
tragedy: do they listen, do they bloody listen? Companion in frustration to ‘just because you do not understand …’
tragic and archival: the more you travel the deeper you stay where you are
train: some things move very slowly at 125 mph
train: having a plan while the journey is happening
training: a meticulousal
training the mind: so how come I still carry a paunch …?
train journey: ‘Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it’s true’ – Paul Simon
train journey // like a branch: the quietest detail
train // line: we move as we sit, we grow as we sit still
train journey: staying and moving
tram: so there I was, sitting in a bed and breakfast bedroom off a main road in the centre of Rome, wondering what to do first of all, but beguiled by the rumbling underground and through the walls which I’m sure I’ve noticed several times already …
transferring: mostly a palimpsest of season 1 from 1990
transition: without notice or place
transmuted: Bodhisattacharyavatara by Shantideva, chapter I verse 10:nothing lost, everything gained; nothing gained, everything lost
travel: the further you see, the closer you get to the back of your own head …
travel brow-raise lip-pout: ‘it’s not what you Have, it’s the way that you Have it …’
‘travelled a long time …’: temporalconcatenation the more you move the more you stay where you are, prequel to room 506 / Central Park
travelling: what it means to move
travelling: what it means to stay still
travelling,: travelling north through the midlands to Cumbria back through 32 years of time …
travelling // arrival: 9*; one of my favourite pieces; it has everything that I usually keep banging on about, but seamlessly, and with no hold-ups
travelling / back: went to visit my daughter in the midlands, then travelled home
travelling is fresh: the more you travel the more you stay where you are; the less you travel the more you become distracted and lost; the more you sit the better
travel // when I die: train trip; East Sussex to London to Lancaster to Ulverston, Cumbria; where we lived for three years and started a family; stay at Swarthmore Hall; visited Conishead Priory where we lived for 18 months after marriage and graduation; notes and observations on the journey, sense of bridging 32 years of lifetime(s); notes > (maybe) two poems, but two which could nevertheless not be separate, although distinct, like train tracks; three years retired, still processing if I achieved anything in this capitalist and samsaric world …; London centuries old, still processing …; architecture as the stage-scenary of endeavour; the ‘here’ in the 9th stanza is definitely (sic); this is, positive, I tells’ya
treasure: like finding a tiny jewel in a garbage heap, as Shantideva would say
‘a tree …’: a thin tree but still over a hundred years old
TREES by William Carlos Williams: a lot of these poems were some of the first poems I read with intent and an open, clean mind that had no precursor of what to see or find; and their reading imprinted deep, even when I didn’t read that well or attentively or learnedly; and, much later, when I attempted to re-ignite my writing, the language emerged like tramlines, there to follow, but fresh, utterly fresh; and utterly mine – which would never have been but for reading WCW
trellis / and wisteria – poewieview #29: trellised and wisteriad through Song for Bob Dylan, 1971
tremule: Bodhisattvacharyavatara, I, 6 (tr. Batchelor): Hence virtue is perpetually feeble, / the great strength of evil being extremely intense, / and except for a Fully Awakening Mind / by what other virtue will it be overcome?
trinary: yes yes yes
Trinity Arts: stuck in a rut … and then you die
tripping up to / London town: “All’s well / But I have not been to Oxford Town/ All’s well / But I have not been to Oxford Town” – Bowie
truck: driving into Woolwich, driving out of Woolwich, it’s all the same
true to life: a noble life
true nature: there it is, I’ve been looking all over for that
truly invisible: … wh-…!, there doesn’t seem to be anything here
trying to focus / on walking: travelling by standing still
truly invisible: “There are places I remember / All my life though some have changed / Some forever not for better / Some have gone and some remain / All these places have their moments / With lovers and friends I still can recall / Some are dead and some are living / In my life I’ve loved them all // But of all these friends and lovers / There is no one compares with you / And these memories lose their meaning / When I think of love as something new / Though I know I’ll never lose affection / For people and things that went before / I know I’ll often stop and think about them / In my life I love you more // In my life I love you more” – Lennon–McCartney
Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot: I read this with a big stupid smile on a long flight from Gran Canaria. It is the third or fourth time I have read it. Some poems open like pockets when read additionally, enfoldingly. And make you smile, stupidly, because you hadn’t realised how much there ever is in the very same journey being made in the reading. How much more beautiful can something become: I am beginning to understand why Seymour Glass suffered from the utter-ness of beauty – how beauty can demand your respective and perspective extinction in its unfoldment if you are not too careful. And Seymour Glass and Sylvia Plath were not too careful – what beauty they saw, how shocking (for us) to behold … if we are not careful.
tune up // baton taptaptap: needless to say, the timpani had had a thorough warm up on the conservatory roof already
tuning fork: I wish I’d kept my early writings. If you are young and think that throwing your childhood stuff away is the way to grow up you are wrong wrong wrong. Listen to me now …
turned backs of saddened victory: from the Dr Strange story, Strange Tales #116, ‘Return to the Nightmare World’, January 1964; Lee & Ditko
‘Turning into …’: down that side street was the menace of a Captain Scarlet alley, but I was able to walk on by
‘turning right …’: guiding me home
‘turning ’round …’: actually I wonder if this should be titled all of a sudden
the turtle and the yoke: from … Human Life is Extremely Hard to Find, by Geshe Sonam Rinchen; full article found: HERE A blind turtle lives on the ocean bed and surfaces just once every hundred years. A golden yoke floats on the vast ocean, blown here and there by the wind. What are the chances of the turtle surfacing at just the right time and in just the right place to be able to put its head through the yoke? Our chances of gaining a life of freedom and fortune are just as improbable. You may think it couldn’t possibly be so difficult, but cyclic existence is like a vast and stormy ocean and we are like the turtle that spends most of its time in the depths and only surfaces very occasionally. For most of our lives we have been in bad rebirths and it happens only very rarely that we emerge from these into a good rebirth. / The yoke is made of gold and is therefore heavy, so it often sinks and is invisible. The yoke symbolizes the teachings of an enlightened one. An age of illumination is a period during which an enlightened one has taught in the world and those teachings are still extant, but there are much longer dark periods of time when the world is without such teachings. / Sea off SicilyThe yoke does not remain in one place but is blown here and there by the wind. Similarly the teachings first flourish in one country and then in another. They thrive where people take an interest in practicing them and die out when they cease to be alive in people’s hearts. Sometimes the turtle comes up to the surface but in a place where there is no golden yoke. This is like taking a good rebirth but having no access to the teachings. / The turtle must actually put its head into the yoke, which signifies that the only way into the teachings is by taking refuge in the Three Jewels. Our lack of interest in the teachings and our reluctance to engage with them is due to our lack of intelligence, which is like the turtle’s blindness. No matter what good circumstances we enjoy, our life is not truly fortunate and free from obstacles if we have no interest in the Buddha’s teachings.
TV programme: thoughts and emotions played in ritual camerawork like a well-constructed song
‘twelve years since Mum died …’: peoples’ lives and peoples’ deaths are never just their own alone
t w e n t y f i r s t c e n t u r y l i f e: a intense, high-rise patchwork
twenty five / year career: you need to get down and dirty and mud-spattered to make some realisations in life, especially the ones you have been sitting astride all along
twice: you know when you suddenly have a good idea about doing something …?
twilight: syntonicity
twilight / and parasols down / within minutes: swarm
twisted / pulled / and chipped: a sudden true occurance, a lingering realisation
two fat ladies / chk klak klip // all the while: an integrated diptych
two profiles: I can’t remember the people involved, but I have the words
two year / pre-cursor / flashing / on | off … // (… to 121212): as inevitable as calendars
‘typewriting by the …’: a brother to ‘writing again by …’
mlewisredford 