• 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: despair

agreed termination without prejudice

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2016, 4*, bulb, communication, depression, despair, flower, growth, petals, retirement, stalk, teaching

                                how is the growth
                                from thorny stalk

                                to cuppèd bulb to
                                flowered petal made?

                agreed termination without prejudice

 

‘agreed termination without prejudice‘ is the phrase given when a teacher is too broken to try to return to work again for the seventh time in ten years, and both sides are so wearied of ‘the way things are‘ despite all the changes and accommodations made, other than what was actually needed; but I will snatch victory from the razor-sharp fog of defeat, I … shall not-ice

 

 

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

communication wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
depression wormhole: without any buffet at all
retirement & teaching wormhole: after all

 

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Infantino / district of Gotham

06 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

1960s, 2013, 5*, Batman, city, despair, Gotham City, horizon, Infantino, issue, light, patio, perspective, pose, rooftops, sky, society

                when issue mounts to despair
                people stand in theatre-pose

                                              on wide open patio with
                                              receding perspective

                                high above the city
                                amid rooftop and skylight

                                                              but then there is always
                                                              uptown on the horizon

in the Infantino
district of Gotham

 

in 1964 Carmine Infantino was brought in to give the Batman character a new look and Gotham became a city you could sit at a cafe terrace in – what, you mean …

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
city wormhole: lost and city ground
horizon wormhole: do I
Infantino wormhole: the warp and the plumbing
light wormhole: where else
rooftops wormhole: Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it
sky wormhole: prelude: // travel
society wormhole: Virginia

 

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

02 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

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

title-ah-oh-meanwhile-tha-ya-ta

 

ah

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

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

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

 

oh

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

 

meanwhile

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

 

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

 

tha-ya-ta

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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matter

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2013, 3*, despair, doing, identity, living, work

                     I do things I
                     don’t do things
                     sometimes they
                     are significant
                     sometimes they
                     are invisible it all really
                     doesn’t matter

 

a broken pencil …

 

 

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

doing wormhole: love and precision
identity wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
living wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
work wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times

 

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in desperation and worthless art

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

2015, Alan Moore, art, compromise, despair, Eddie Campbell, From Hell, life, London, others, skyline, smoke, society, streets

                                it’s only
                the guts and instinct worry us now,
                                parley of glimpse mostly inured to us, and
                only in desperation and worthless art do we follow them
                                to unravel the unholy mess a little
                (too much strain to untangle
                                              too much compromise to try)

                                the cab
                that took him away left
                                perfect receding lines by the kerbside
                out into the busy streets of London;
                                peoples’ lives are not so sacred now
                they twist and float
                                              like idle smoke
                                                                      from the settled skyline

 

askance from chapter twelve of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell

a little snippet from askance From Hell, askance from chapter ten of From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, gwn’n’avvalook

 

 

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

Alan Moore & compromise & life & society wormhole: the 20th century
London wormhole: step
others wormhole: under silent direction of architecture
skyline wormhole: ha ha ha
streets wormhole: the streets just fill with business

 

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OK

07 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2012, 5*, beauty, books, despair, identity, rain, sitting, talking to myself

 

 

 

                                     OK

            you got what you wanted
                      dark room
                      slight light
                      rain outside
                      books and
                      pictures
                      wrapped in a
                      blanket
            and you still haven’t found it
            running away from despair
                      in a hundred hopeful ways
                      and you can’t even sit still
                      for ten minutes rather

            I should sit and despair
                      a hundred times a minute
                      but slowly
                      slowly

            all the sweetness of first-written
                      of first scent of colour
                      of first rain in the cornfield
            let them all go
                      they are not the self
                      they are the first glimpse
            of a far far bigger
                      and more
                      beautiful
                      world
                      than you are

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: “write, let’s break / outta here!”
books wormhole: there
identity & talking to myself wormhole: walking
rain wormhole: morning
sitting wormhole: no more

 

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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
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • 'in my car I pass...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky

category sky

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tag skyline

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