• 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: desert

the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

14 Saturday May 2022

Posted by m lewis redford in embroidery, poems, reflectionary

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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all // are // none

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2017, 8*, arrival, being, billow, Buddhas, creation, desert, doing, end, everything, gargantuan, journey, light, love, mountains, night, quote, reaching, samsara, start, suffering, true nature, tuning, waft, waiting, waves

                                all

                that Enlightened beings do
                is be, but without
                flinch, reach or

                conjuration; a wave-
                length with neither
                start nor end which

                tunes the few to their
                own true nature
                with neither start

                nor end, the basis
                both from and to
                which they might

                both journey and
                arrive; external light
                that caps the peaks

                of mountainous
                night lost in waft
                and billow;

                                are

                they on the edge of
                everything gargantuan
                and frightening in all

                their detailed beneficence,
                are they everything that
                gives me the nod and

                wink waiting for me
                to get it, are they in
                amongst us suffering

                the arrows that we
                sling all about in outrageous
                discontent, are they

                la porte etroite or the
                desert of love, are they
                always there for us,

                are they never there;
                they are none of these,
                they are all of these

                that we make them
                to be – light neither
                emanating nor pervading

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
doing wormhole: I
light wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
love wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
night wormhole: transferring
samsara wormhole: inner / hegemony
waiting wormhole: Bexhill 140215
waves wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

 

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1967

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1967, 2014, 5*, Burt Bacharach, desert, Dionne Warwick, evening, London, mauve, orange, prayer, purple, rock, sand, smell, sound, white

                                1967

                                one early
                                evening
                                in London
                                amid the
                                fug of
                                cabbage
                                and the
                                clack of
                                cleared
                                plates

                the deep orange sand was turning purple
                and the piled rocks remained white and mauve

                                in the
                                desert

 

reaching both from within, and through: I say a little prayer by Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach

 

 

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

Burt Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1964
evening wormhole: beepbeep
London & smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Follow Your Nose
mauve wormhole: hello, luvvey, do you want a cup of tea?
orange wormhole: magnificent salad
purple wormhole: the 19th century
sound wormhole: embodying
white wormhole: con / sum / mate

 

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being in love – poewieview #26

14 Saturday May 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'scape, 1971, 2016, bardo, birth, blues, Bowie, clouds, desert, emptiness, family, green, grey, home, horizon, ineffable, lemon, life, lifetimes, love, mauve, mist, mountain, orange, rebirth, roots, sky, smoke, sound, speech, steel, travelling, voices, whisper

                                the wide wide landscape and the family tree
                                are just the same when found through mist;

                                blues rising from the homestead chimney
                                in the grey and green glade of, everwhere;

                                then everything stepped up over the far
                                mountains mauve of orange horizon

                                filled the sky to cross the desert in a
                                single bound; whispered sweet nothing

                                into my ear with heightened register as
                                the clouds pointed unutterably across

                                the lemon-steel sky, far too wide and grey
                                and blue to close my mouth, over;

                                I’ll have to levitate, ascend above the roots
                                of no return – tug-snapping, pull-holding snap –

                                you could see, there then, that this was not
                                about love this was all about being in love

 

just close your eyes: Lightning Frightening, 1971; Moonage Daydream, 1971

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

1971 & Bowie wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25
clouds wormhole: nothing to say
emptiness & lifetimes & sky & speech wormhole: too late:
family wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
green & grey & horizon & life wormhole: furl-reach
lemon wormhole: ‘went up to London and what did I see; …’ – poewieview #7
love wormhole: true nature
mauve wormhole: mauve
mist wormhole: fine droplets / across the glass
orange wormhole: like ink – poewieview #23
sound wormhole: fine
travelling wormhole: the sounds of 1969 // [would have] seemed that way – poewieview #13
voices wormhole: 1965

 

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my life / of others

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, Allen Ginsberg, allowing, America, awkward, being, bittersweet, breathing, community, decades, desert, doing, echo, eyes, family, fog, giving, gravity, horizon, identity, inclusion, ink, life, lifetimes, listening, loneliness, love, management, marble, mauve, meaning, others, planet, pointlessness, purpose, radiation, relationship, secret, silence, sitting, society, talking to myself, time, twilight

 

y’know; sometimes you’ve just got to have a rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me, pathetic, awkward (don’t forget the ‘awkward’), poor-me whiiine to realise just how rambling, indulgent, pig-headed, why-is-no-one-listening-to-me-ie, pathetic, and awkward you can be; sigh – but there’s still some poetry in it, so I’ll share the self-pity about (caution: this is quite a high-pitched whiiine; it is strongly urged that you wear ear-protection – or at least stick your fingers in your ear reciting la-la-la – if you undertake to read this; you have been warned)

 

 

                my life
                                of others

                                how long has this been going on
                how long this has been going on

demands in their eyes pull me to them like a planet
                pull on me to contain them
                                pull deep in me through the latest casual orbit

                                I give because I can
                learnt silently over decades
                                              I have lived to allow ever wider
                                in order to include
                                              to neutralise my gravity in order to listen
                and let them breathe enough
                                              to find their own solution –
decades of leaning a hundred awkward ways
                                              to be with others
                                decades of privately finding ways
                to re-collect my own gravity –
                                                              shiny marbles with petrified ink –
                                              and decades having to let them go
                                                              one by one
                                              tearfully
                                eventually

                                              all under the great broad horizon
                                lost before the hills on the great broad horizon
                the beautiful-twilight mauve desert
                                              and the radiation presence of another close planet they
                cannot do the same for me
                                                              they will not do the same for me:

                                the squalls and foreclosures,
                                              they are of my own making
                an audience extends only so far as to conclude that it is all my own awkwardness – all I have to do is fit –
                                              before I have even finished explaining
                usually I don’t bother to finish
                                or even start
                                              the solution is ready-made
                                                              (with a few ‘hmm’s to make it look kindly)
                or just kept to themself
                                echoing loudly behind their eyes

                                              like sharing secrets with the fog
                                                              I find myself alone
                each one of them was the last person I could turn to in the world
                                but they all uncannily agree with each other
                                              they are the Company Man

                                I have done my bit for the family
                                I have done my bit for the team
                                I have done my bit for the community
                                                              all by not being there
                                              all by not getting in the way
                I cried when I was acknowledged once
                                                                                 it never happened again

                                I suppose
                                it’s just
                                              they need to keep from shattering in a thousand pieces
                they need to hold the whole damn thing together
so I give because I can
                                because it is right
                                                              but cannot expect return
                                                              they cannot give
                                                              what they expect
                                                              in return
                                for sure things are done things may be organised
                                                              (sometimes even when I want them)
                                              but for some greater good
                                                              for some greater career
                                                              for some greater legacy
                                                                                 not mine
                                              certainly not mine (‘America I have given you all
                                                              and now I am nothing’)

                                              when I work it is all about them
                when I stop it is all about how they performed
                                all that I do and don’t do
                                              is how it sits as support or burden
                                                              to them
                                conclusion: it is only them who do the work
                                              the thinking the organising
                                                              I seem to do nothing
                                                              really
                and do it annoyingly and awkwardly and thinkingly – roll of eyes – I
                                have to be managed to be of any competence
                                              (that’s meant affectionately) I
                                              am just the recipient of their
                                                              good work
                                                              (what do they call them these days – ‘clients’)
                                              my value
                                              my contribution
                                              what I am
                                                              are the price I pay to receive

                so I don’t say anything much – what’s the point?
                                I’ll put a few things out
                                              tentatively
                                (where I might be patronised at best – if I’m lucky,
                                                                                 if the planets are lined up right)
                                                              told it’s cute
                                              or individual
                                or much too clever to understand
                or it’s not what was needed
                                              or sorry, Mark, did you say something
                                                              and the audience will move deftly on
                                to what it wanted to talk about anyway
                or what it wanted to be doing
                                              all along

                                I mostly keep it to myself
                                                              here
                                              in the place I claim
                                              each day – time to myself bittersweet
                                                              (at siege from service and compliance)
                to ‘indulge’ myself ‘stay up too late’ ‘contemplate my navel’
                                                              otherwise I get ‘grumpy’
                                              I talk to
                                              myself
                                                              I am not the Company Man
                                                                                 no one
                                                                                 to share
                                                                                 me with
                no one beyond the managed obliged corporate return
                                              oh yes I return to myself
                                                              find my own meaningpurposeaudiencelove
                                              safe in the fifty year relationship
                                which is good for only one

                                decades whittled away
                                              here and there
                                                              chips and shavings on the floor
                                leaving a petrified face
                eyes wide mouth open
                                              bas-relief out from being

 

 

 

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

Allen Ginsberg & giving wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
allowing & loneliness wormhole: letters to Mum VI – Years / after you have gone. Still.
being & breathing & sitting wormhole: the art of sit and follow
doing & identity wormhole: my beauty
echo wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
eyes & time wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
family wormhole: sometimes
fog homework: tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:
horizon wormhole: To my Mum
life & love wormhole: I love with all the history and lack of perfections at our command
lifetimes & others & pointlessness & society wormhole: Totnes
listening wormhole: before // writing?
management wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
mauve wormhole: ‘green post …’
meaning & talking to myself wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
twilight wormhole: the four whores of the apocalypse

 

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tag cloud poem V – draft-ness

22 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

1960s, 1970s, 2*, 2014, abandonment, America, being, Dad, dancing, Daredevil, dark, daughter, dawn, death, dedication, defeat, democracy, depression, desert, dialectic, discipline, disempowerment, distraction, divorce, dog, doing, doors, doubt, dream, dress, drips, dust, dwelling, identity, individualism, love, politics, poverty, tag cloud poem, wind, world

 

 

 

                                                                                                                Dad dancing daredevil
                                                                                                dark daughter dawn
                                                                                                                           DC death dedication

 

                                                                                 defeat democracy depression
                                                                                 desert dialectic discipline
                           disempowerment distraction divorce

 

dog doing        doors
                                                                              doubt dream dress
                                                                                              drips dust dwelling

 

 

 

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

abandonment & Dad wormhole: the sounds the difficulty and the long long strands of liquorice
being & identity & wind wormhole: the en-gentled / end of a wan / writing retreat
dancing wormhole: Do Nothing Usually / Take Everything Regularly / Consider It All Clearly / And Step Aside It Waltzingly
Daredvil wormhole: Daredevil: Born Again (1987)
daughter wormhole: t w e n t y f i r s t c e n t u r y l i f e
dawn wormhole: the library, / you know …
dedication wormhole: let
depression wormhole: really
disempowerment wormhole: I don’t think I could do it anymore
distraction wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
divorce wormhole: what to do
dog wormhole: … still waving!
doing wormhole: ‘til death do us part
doors wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
doubt wormhole: transition
dream wormhole: the edges of my reach
love & politics wormhole: just saying, is all – III
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
world wormhole: my life is not your market

 

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“…he paced about the bricks with / empty glasses…”

18 Sunday Dec 2011

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

1980, 6*, beach, blue, breeze, cars, Cluster & Eno, desert, desertion, eyes, father, music, portrait, puddle, review, sky, speech, streets, tears, water, yellow

“Wehrmut” by Cluster & Eno, from the album ‘Cluster & Eno’ (1977)

 

 

 

                           “…he paced about the bricks with
                           empty glasses…”

                you could see the dust around his
                shining car
                driving into the desert

                           (he was driving through water he was
                            going away
                            he was drowning).

                In the rooftop restaurant
                I could barely see his eyes under
                the reflection of building and sky

                           (on the street we
                            walked past the deep-blue sky poster
                            for cigarettes)

                when he walked
                the air rippled through his head
                like worms, he said,

                           “…I felt the clear emotion
                             of the sky
                             I…”

                “…crumpled inside
                  felt like wallowing yellow
                  like ribbed yellow…”

                           “…in my chest in
                             whapple, lapple, lapping, lopping…”
                           he laughed, dead serious.

                He told me once
                he smiled on the beach, the puddles
                smarted his eyes

                           cut them:
                           real yellow tears
                           real yellow tears
                           real yellow tears

 

 

 

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

beach wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
blue sky wormhole: morning in / Shrewsbury Park / reading POW comics
breeze wormhole: ‘hovering …’
cars & music wormhole: To my Mum
eyes wormhole: the VERY THINGS
sky wormhole: grey sky
speech & streets wormhole: Rue de Provence
water wormhole: summertime
yellow wormhole: ‘in the summer-morning sun …’

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • 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
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • 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
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

recent leaks …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'in my car I pass...'
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky

category sky

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tag skyline

'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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A Reading Writer

I write because I read. I read because I write.

Buddhism in Daily Life

Buddhist meditation applied to our everyday lives...

Laughter Over Tears

Where books, movies, anger, confusion and musing live together in sin.

Sunra Rainz

Poetry. Art. Photography. Musings.

A girl seeking joy and serenity

Silver Birch Press

Poetry & Prose...from Prompts

whimsy~mimsy

a few words spewing from my soul...

naïve haircuts

The daily addict

The daily life of an addict in recovery

The Sixpence at Her Feet

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