• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: choice

on facing the Have

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

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stuck in lower realm

08 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2017, 6*, anatta, Bodhisattva Vow, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, buffalo, choice, identity, karma, lifetimes, morality, perfect human rebirth, perspective, rebirth, self, self-containment, snake, spontaneity, thought

                stuck in lower realm

                … OK

                when in woeful state
                I grunt like a buffalo
                and sting like a snake

                but when human
                I have the choice
                to exercise: I – won’t –

                do – that; except the
                swarm ‘oh, it doesn’t
                matter’ or the won’t-

                think-but-lunge-in-
                thrill-of-spontaneity;
                every time I acquiesce

                I create propensity to
                tip to wrong perspective,
                which predisposition

                magnifies as a whole
                realm of being after
                this human is done;

                but for a silent vow
                I made despite my-
                selves and which I

                keep despite myself
                to hold myself to check,
                is my only identity

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VII, 19

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

identity wormhole: growth
lifetimes wormhole: looking ahead
thought wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory

 

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Sandwich

28 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2015, 3*, being, cafe, choice, depression, living, sandwich, speech

                Sandwich

                in the busy café after yet
                another long lapse by stealth –

                “I have the white bread sandwich
                  and the wholemeal bread sandwich” –

                I think I should know better
                by now which I should want

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: looking back over the tack / and jibe of my life I / notice there is / a fetch // after all … / but certainly not / where I had planned / or where I thought / I’d been
depression & living wormhole: is this it // all the time
speech wormhole: Coleton Fishacre

 

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slow enough / to have love

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2013, adjustment, ageing, breakdown, choice, confusion, consistency, doing, freedom, land, living, love, Martin Luther King, mountain, option, presumption, quiet, recognition, saviour, secret, shame, streets, stumbling, true nature, wasteland, work

                I used to skip and side-step all the
                too-presumptive adjustments
                for consistency and do it all

                in my own sweet way
                secretly hoping for recognition
                shamefully thinking to be the saviour

                now I’m confused and made old
                stumbling and doddering by the
                too-many prescriptive options to

                exercise the choice I am offered
                so I continue to do it all in my
                own sweet way, quiet enough

                to be effective, ignored enough
                to have scope and slow enough
                to have love; I have come to

                the top of the mountain and I have
                escaped a promised land
                four times injured to within

                an inch of my own true nature
                and I roam the streets and wastelands
                now, free at last, free at last

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

breakdown wormhole: strain
doing 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
living wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
love wormhole: handsome
quiet wormhole: open window
recognition wormhole: not / the Catcher
streets wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
work wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

 

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fresh destiny

19 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1963, 2016, 4*, buildings, choice, Dr Strange, echo, freedom, glass, green, karma, Nightmare, rain, realisation, society, soul, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Strange Tales, windows

                the effect of other
                hangs like water down a single pane
                over the soul: free it

                from bricks and mortar
                transport it across
                all the empty chasms of nightmare

                where there is no
                echo; there is always
                choice to realise within the green thickness

                of glass, there is
                always the turn of
                fresh destiny

 

dripped from “Dr. Strange Master of Black Magic!”, 1st appearance of Dr Strange in Strange Tales #110, July 1963 by Lee & Ditko

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

buildings wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
Dr Strange wormhole: coagulating
echo wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
glass wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
green & society wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
rain wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
windows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home

 

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a crack of lightning / in the dark of night

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2016, 7*, arc, architecture, axle, beach, belly, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, buoyancy, centre, choice, connection, dark, emptiness, eyes, gesture, high, lightning, mind, mouth, night, opening, pattern, phantom, pillars, porticos, posture, samsara, shadow, shallow, shame, Shantideva, show, silence, sky, speech, true nature, twilight, uncaused, universe, waves, world

                                a crack of lightning
                                in the dark of night

                                the world casts eyes
                                downwards bullied

                                by the dirty phantoms
                                of obligèd choice with

                                pillars and porticos
                                deep and high across

                                the silent sky like an
                                end of age crepuscule

                                gathering ténèbres,
                                all while the mind revolves,

                                empty to the universe about,
                                empty at the centre of

                                the mighty axle of
                                uncaused leave to turn,

                                when through the merest
                                gesture of pouvoir, an

                                imperturbable shift of
                                posture, a disclosure, is

                                opened and cracks
                                across the sky – the

                                phantoms cannot dully
                                sustain their buoyant

                                suspension – they arc
                                and connect in frantic

                                pattern showing
                                everything like bellies

                                of incestual shame and
                                mouths too small to think

                                to talk; “no more” they
                                wail, leaning into their

                                true nature like shallow
                                waves on a long beach

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Shantideva, chapter one, verse five

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

architecture & mind & sky wormhole: reaching branchbeach wormhole: development
Bodhichitta wormhole: – sigh! –
emptiness wormhole: the policies came to nothing
eyes wormhole: 1964
mouth wormhole: too late:
night wormhole: work
posture wormhole: impressionism
samsara wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
shadow wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
silence & speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
twilight wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
waves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
world wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

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start where you are I

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 2014, 5*, Amsterdam, being, canal, Carol, choice, city, library, poetry, river, trees, writing

 

 

 

                                   start where you are I

                                   “where do you want to sit …”
                                   on six floors of choice in the
                                   city on river and fan of canal
                                   and new trees along the quays
                                   above spreading ripple in all
                                   direction on the river’s bend
                                   and junction “… to write your poem?”

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: gently straighten
Carol wormhole: step
city wormhole: Woolwich Central – making life better II
poetry wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
trees wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
writing wormhole: un … able

 

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1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

10*, 1959, 1960s, 2012, 2015, 99/1, abandonment, air, airport, America, anxiety, apricot, art deco, avenue, beauty, bedroom, birdsong, blossom, blue, books, branches, breathing, buildings, business, Carol, Central Park, charcoal, childhood, choice, clothes, clouds, coffee, coffee shop, compromise, crane, Dad, divorce, dog, dream, Eglinton Hill, evening, eyebrow, eyes, falling, fashion, floodlights, Ford Anglia, freedom, furniture, ghosts, glamour, Glasgow, green, grey, haiku, hair, Have, history, horizon, hotel, identity, life, lifetimes, light, lilac, living, London, looking, love, magazine, Manhattan, marble, Mini, mist, money, morning, Mum, music, New York, obligation, pastel, people, phone, pink, plane, posture, radar, reaching, reading, roads, sadness, sidewalk, sitting, sky, smile, society, sound, space, sparrows, speech, spotlights, Steely Dan, streetlight, sun, sunlight, talking, taxi, terrace, texting, time, traffic, traffic lights, train, travelling, trees, uniform, waiting, walking, walls, walnut, white, wind, windows, work, years, yellow

                                          1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012

                                straight out from school to Heathrow on the M25
                                a network of lonely roads going nowhere, then;
                                waiting, studying coffee highlights in the green
                                lobby with blue spotlights and pillared space for

                                phones to pace up and down and talk it still is,
                                loudly; at the next hotel we wait with more spot-
                                lights in our eyes no matter where we sit; furniture
                                deco-curved and just off right-angle, held together,

                                material to wood, for decades with check-
                                pattern and slight stain; there is a locked-in-
                                ness in our world on all sides which only our
                                future eyes – that never look directly – betray

                                in their gaze; early flight tomorrow; in the
                                morning-effect light shifting, the mist hanging
                                around the base of the sky, land spread with
                                low buildings always on the horizon, flat and

                                matt, before the sun flanks their edges into 3D,
                                radar-spinning, floodlights turn off, arms of
                                cranes hold their reach, and … the control
                                tower; 3567 miles and I didn’t bring enough

                                books (you can never bring enough books);
                                I travelled for lifetimes to arrive in New York,
                                still the same person: roads scraped and pock-
                                marked, trees still reach and lean in front of the

                                sky, people still live city life breathing in and
                                out the power of my money, lights still go on
                                in the evening and in between traffic shoals
                                the sparrows bicker in the trees; in room 506

                                over Central Park, already I am familiar with
                                the lore of the branch, the places-to-go apricot
                                street lights, the white path lights, the traffic
                                lights and the ‘cheeps’ bounced off building wall

                                between the lmmmdmda-lmmmdmda – laersssh
                                through the rain-dusty windows, under grey-sky
                                steel-clouds and the slowly shifting charcoal; but
                                then there is always the next day, the ever-waiting

                                gulp-open and blue-chip sorry of impressionistic
                                sidewalk, the walnut marble frontages walking
                                south up into downtown in cold air between
                                buildings and didn’t bring enough clothes (I never

                                know what clothes to bring) – by Radio City ‘with a
                                transistor and a large sum of money to spend’;
                                everything created for living beyond subsistence
                                everything produced at cost through labour

                                everything earned through labour if you can get it
                                everything obtained at price and compromise
                                everything experienced at cost through trademark
                                everything Had, but no one left to have it …

                                everything that is uneasy in the modern day
                                was manufactured behind the half-closed blinds
                                of America – home of the Potential and Slave –
                                and yet … it is so sad-beautiful: the space sculpted

                                by façades of apartment blocks giant arm-widths
                                apart, communities of single window – italicised
                                nib–scratches – stepped upwards and backwards
                                the Avenues of Uprise reaching higher and

                                lower again and again and again; America has
                                so much condensed history since it braved the
                                conceit and responsibility, of choice: cleansed
                                by ethnically assimilating, pledged by conforming

                                allegiance; Someone had to make a stand against
                                all this equivocation and by God Almighty We
                                Made   that   Stand; `made continental infrastructure
                                out of it, far bigger far more reaching even than

                                law and democracy … … but there is such
                                width in your sadness – lilac blossom before
                                marble façade; such height in your sadness –
                                giddy out on the balconies looking eight floors more

                                above; such blank in your sadness – when you
                                skip my English joke and call ‘you’re welcome’
                                from the till; such sadness when you ask for
                                change outside Starbucks; even the trees through

                                the hotel window, even the wide sidewalk cleaned
                                for strolling and not curbing, even the smiling
                                doorman in brown suit … all Had; all kept
                                in place by gigantitude, everything kept in place

                                by gigantitude, (when I was young an image
                                of a building so many floors high pinnacling to a
                                turret roof on the pink cover on the blue cover
                                of the insurance policies that my Mum kept;

                                my mother is now dead the policies came to
                                nothing); 99: “for all the freedom and choice to
                                be Had, life is hard when you pay with your work
                                and no time left and no money to choose

                                leaves you tired with no sense of humour”;
                                1: “for all the freedom and choice to be Had
                                life is anxiety where you pay for with your
                                history and obligation, never stopped still-

                                enough to choose, leaves you always with
                                dyed hair; look, only on the fifth floor of the
                                Eldorado, a man at the window canary short-
                                sleeve shirt turns back into the room, traffic light

                                booms out on a long arm swinging slightly taxis
                                u-turn as the sun comes up from behind; women’s
                                magazines, waiting for Mum at the hairdresser’s
                                in the mid-sixties, illustrations, young tree avenues,

                                blossoming handbags, little dogs on leash, promise
                                of love, promise of life, promise of man’s jaw in
                                boardroom where cologne cinches the deal, slight
                                smile signs the papers: maybe later some chinos

                                and open collar on the terrace; there was a calendar
                                brought home from work (“not needed … we work
                                in London”) – buildings of Manhattan, can decorate
                                my room, make my world, all the stepped down

                                walls of windows up which b-e-y-o-n-d myself
                                giddy and beautiful, I cannot look up or down but
                                keep them high on the wall; going out in the
                                evening Daddy ‘have to’ ‘to do with work’ ‘can’t be

                                helped’ white shirt bow-tie, clean-cut neck cologne
                                ‘good for contacts’ ‘if I can, just’ ‘business’; there
                                was a new white Mini, a new white Anglia parked
                                outside on the hill over London, Matchbox models

                                to match for the boys, going into ‘business’ ‘make
                                a go’ Dennis & Dennis, home, evening drinks, meet
                                the family, the boys play Dennis G and Dennis P
                                for years after; ‘… Daddy is leaving, he will not be

                                coming back’; I had thought it was all pastel-blue-
                                and-grey beautiful but the glamour got to him first
                                and now I dream of falling off balconies and ledges,
                                (do I fall up or down); evening: ghouls from the

                                subway gaining and pushing but the top trees-only
                                gently leaning, hybrids swashing yellow down the
                                tarmac in schools while the thunder of a plane
                                descends; morning: eyebrows raise like coving, the

                                reggae lingers      then kicks in; a neat rhombus of
                                sunlight unconcerned across her cheek, a blind rolls
                                down, ‘I’ll just read a chapter’-fixed lashes, the
                                rhombus travelling now across collar bones between

                                her white collars; Carol reads far better than me,
                                she reads history as it happens, she is the ‘captain-
                                speaking’, she knows what time it is      in other
                                countries, she knows there is no airport in Glasgow

                                (she also bullshits when cornered); now I miss all of
                                this, I see only peoples’ posture contrary to their
                                eyes, and little else; I came to Manhattan and saw
                                your avenues of strange displacement your streets

                                of darkness and morning-side; I found I was there
                                a lifetime ago, but you left me and I have moved on
                                now and I shall not be back, there is no need;
                                I shall celebrate your strange beauty from afar;

                                Newark Airport: everybody here / is talking all
                                the time to / someone somewhere else; the control
                                room sits            overhanging on the concrete stem,
                                fingers of cloud float nonchalantly by, with no delays

                                today, two girls study magazines, swap articles,
                                a third texts constantly with fixed smirk; but you,
                                you are so beautiful with hennaed hair braided
                                neatly back because you are in uniform, you are

                                taking a break, ID and equipment around your
                                neck, clear dark skin, grey shirt and St. John’s
                                badge eating a bag     of crisps with eyebrows sharp
                                and eyes so white looking, not talking     looking

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

abandonment & streetlight wormhole: dawn
air wormhole: just
anxiety & Carol & crane & Have & lifetimes & London & love & pink & sky & train & travelling & white & work wormhole: new year’s eve 2014; train up to London to / walk the bridges across the Thames, and / listen to the voices say it is, and was, like, / but get back home before the fireworks / obliterate it all in the emptying twilight
apricot wormhole: only
beauty wormhole: smiling
bedroom wormhole: sunny morning
blossom & branches & waiting wormhole: I could step / more open
blue & grey & mist & trees & walking wormhole: right to be
books wormhole: a light rosé
breathing & life & speech wormhole: living mystery / murder theatre
buildings & identity & society & space & windows wormhole: where the real action // always is
childhood & dream & Eglinton Hill & ghosts & green & looking & morning & time wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
clouds & light & posture wormhole: Buddha Amitabha
coffee wormhole: poised patiently for / hours
coffee shop wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
compromise wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
Dad & traffic lights & yellow wormhole: ‘“Never,” said the Sandman; / he blinked …’
dog wormhole: silence
evening wormhole: lobby
eyes wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
haiku(esque) & hair & Manhattan & people & roads wormhole: Kirby’s landscapes
history wormhole: 20th century / schzoid man
horizon wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
hotel wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
lilac wormhole: Herbert Road diptych
living & sitting & sound & sun wormhole: crumpled / notebooks / at the end of a gentle retreat
money wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
Mum wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
music & reading wormhole: sometimes
obligation wormhole: scattered
smile wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
sparrows wormhole: zazen in everyday life
spotlights wormhole: ‘the dining room …’
talking wormhole: – sigh! –
walls wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114
wind wormhole: Christmas

 

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I could step / more open

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2014, 6*, balcony, being, blossom, blue, branches, budding, buildings, buying, child, choice, Eastbourne, education, faces, green, happenstance, Have, identity, journey, language, letting go, life, looking, nonsense, notebook, openness, pavement, promenade, red, roads, sandwich, seagull, seeing, sky, space, statue, sun, syllable, thinking, time, traffic, travelling, trees, voices, waiting, writing

 

 

 

                                it’s all just nonsense
                the things to buy the things to wear
                                the schools to teach
                                the roads to drive
                the born to life the choices to make
                                the faces to set
                                against the sun

                                but two things:
                there is a tree with deep-wine blossom
                next to the red-brick apartments with balconies
                and the sky hangs indifferent and only
                changes when you think about it afterwards

                                I could step
                                more open
                                through all of this
                noticing the space and treasuring the happenstance
                and not caring about the gain or the journey
                                until I think
                                about it afterwards

                                              -o~~~-

                                                              OK …
                                              … sandwich
                                pausing to get out my notebook
                a seagull alighted on the promenade lamp
                                and waited
                                flew off

                                              -~~~o-

                the statue of an Elder
                cast in rolls and folds of overcoat
                stares disconsolately roadward
                and blooms green over the years
                ignoring the traffic passing and indicating
                and all the while beside and behind
                the pollarded tree out of the pavement
                branches all the same length now
                                              budding

                                              -|o____

                by the cobalt-blue railing
                on the lower promenade
                passes a child-voice reciting
                high – slightly complaining –
                cascading downwards with
                each syllable in a language
                which I cannot understand

                                              —o|||

                                                                                 but
                                                              you don’t look to see
                                              otherwise too many thoughts crowd your eyes
                                rather you let enter to observe
                so that the disparate can be made

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being wormhole: this is not my poem / although I found it nevertheless
blossom wormhole: Manhattan 2012
blue & Have & sky wormhole: Maidstone
branches wormhole: ‘“ruddy crows!” / said my Dad …’
buildings wormhole: introducing / the stranger
child & faces & green & identity & life & red & seagull & thinking & time wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
letting go wormhole: letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually
looking & seeing & sun wormhole: !
looking wormhole: open window
promenade wormhole: 1963
roads wormhole: the Buddha head in an antique shop
space wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
travelling wormhole: sniff
trees wormhole: no hat
voices wormhole: connections
waiting wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
writing wormhole: the precision // the gentleness // and / the letting go

 

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multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

1930s, 2014, 9*, age, Allen Ginsberg, architecture, avenue, Batman, being, birds, buildings, choice, city, collective unconscious, consumerism, death, doing, doors, earrings, emptiness, faces, Frank Miller, giving, grey, Have, identity, Joker, letting go, life, lightning, lime, magazine, mother of pearl, night, olive, option, red, Shantideva, silhouette, sky, society, sound, space, speech, statue, steam, Superman, talking, talking to myself, thunder, topaz, tv, vindication, walls, wisdom

 

The Dark Knight Returns (1986); writer: Frank Miller; artist: Frank Miller & Lynn Varley

 

 

 

                earrings: left then right
                static square and upright obelisk

                steam across every avenue
                before the silhouette architecture with grizzly coat of ornamentation

                earrings: lime-olive horizontal
                and block full-stop

                the rabbit-chase fall below
                is sudden guttural and city-wide

RMMBL
                ‘a flash of lightning in the dark of night’*
                                                                                 KRAKK

                all the effortless intelligence beyond the door
                beyond the wall        with bat-darts

                earrings: mother of pearl
                pause and equals

and there he is jumping taller than a building across the only spaces left now:
                the sky and the ante-room before preconception (a cowardly and superstitious lot)

                the spires stand clean
                in the grey-wash sky

                where gothic statues acknowledge
                the impossible pinion and swing

                “… I have to know”**
                and stone manes splay when he sees “a reflection”***

                earrings: topaz pennies
                one and three-dangling

                and while the gently-cornered squares
                talk the Worm the Bluff and the Dribble

                others take the space down in the dump
                where a position cannot be found

                where the position cannot be resisted
                no matter how young you are

                no matter how strong you are in the realistic world
                in all the floorboard rooms the TVs and magazines

                stack positions on shelves and in refrigerators
                and in wrappers multifarious in choice and option

                any space here
                would make everything all the more ugly

                no
                no

                the move needs to come from
space of no choice and it can never be obvious it can never be choice

                Bat-signal
                bright on the side of Moloch****

                stone birds from the 1930s
                earrings: gone

                ah, but the world grows [not] up
                rather it folds over itself and regenerates

                with billowed ruffles
                atop old buildings

                “so many smiles / so many faces / all the same”*****
                “every year they grow smaller”******

                earrings: vampyre’s teeth soaked
                serious faces        all the same

                when you break too many of the important rules
                you’ve acted to define yourself vindicated

                you haven’t given    anything
                it doesn’t count

                death happens by itself without design
                all you have to do is let it all go –

                the purpose and the self –
                and you could live clean for a hundred years

 

* Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 5, Shantideva (translated Stephen Batchelor): ‘Just as a flash of lightning on a dark, cloudy night / For an instant brightly illuminates all, / Likewise in this world, through the might of Buddha, / A wholesome thought rarely and briefly appears’
** Book I, P.43 & 45
*** Book I, P.47
**** Howl
***** Book III, P.25
****** Book III, P.25

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Allen Ginsberg wormhole: poetry
architecture wormhole: stranger / if we met
Batman wormhole: tag cloud poem III – the journey to BEING and back again
being & vindication wormhole: heavy load
birds & talking wormhole: sunny day
buildings wormhole: the edges of my reach
city wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
death & life & night & sky wormhole: … sshhh
doing wormhole: the meaning is the moment all day long
doors wormhole: walking / right into the side of the very door left / open for me
emptiness & space wormhole: wha’
faces wormhole: quest in brown
giving wormhole: practise what you doing / give what you having / breathe what you remember
grey & lime & olive wormhole: Hever
Have wormhole: shared anxiety
identity wormhole: prologue
letting go & talking to myself wormhole: … and
lightning wormhole: jagged panel
red wormhole: that’s me / in the corner that’s me in the spot light / losing my religion*
Shantideva wormhole: walking
silhouette wormhole: clouds
society wormhole: the sounds the difficulty and the long long strands of liquorice
sound wormhole: someone called Frank
speech wormhole: mlewisredford introductory complete life audit confessional
Superman wormhole: inverse superhero
tv wormhole: Love Me Do
walls wormhole: Knapps

 

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