• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
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    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
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    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
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    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
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    • Eglinton Hill
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    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: fate

to arms, then;

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1907, 2017, 8*, attention, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, body, carelessness, eyes, fate, fields, fire, focus, hell, ideals, identity, inner-self, karma, kleshas, laziness, Louis de la Vallee Poussin, mind, mindlessness, monster, mother sentient beings, narcissism, opportunity, over-reaching, phantom, practice, rebirth, resolve, smoke, staying, suffering, superhero, surprise, talking to myself, torture, translation, war, Warrior

                but there are plenty of opportunities
                to shave off indolence

                there are too many surprises
                to meet-off heedlessness, and stay;

                no use wailing and whimpering
                enfeebled by narcissism,

                when being unremittingly tortured
                of body and mind

                it’ll be way too late,
                I shall have nothing left but bad fate;

                the thing is, they don’t plot, they don’t
                manoeuvre and they

                hardly ever show
                themselves, so how is it I walk eyes-

                wide-open into each of their snare and
                realm; there, monsters

                slavering astride horizon cower me to
                craven identity, fires

                hot to match all my defences, afflicting
                me without notice

                or even much effort
                fires of the sun, fires of the atom, I’ll be

                engulfed but not
                consumed to blessed oblivion … oh, give me

                a break! – I’m
                ongoingly consumed even now, as long as I

                continue endlessly playing
                this solitaire, hitting the ‘new game’ button

                again and again
                until I … stop; but the cleverer I get

                with them the cleverer they already are,
                like shadow-boxing –

                these ancient enemies
                of mine; … to arms, then; not super-

                heroically, trying all the more better
                than I only am and

                then finding myself (on acrid fields –
                the smoke of fallen

                ideals and bombed aims) wanting, but
                inwardly, with

                attention and focus, the Way of the
                Steely Warrior; I shall

                be `ard with suffering, I can take it,
                I shall wear my

                oozed bowels and fallen head like medals
                in this, the War

                to End All Wars, not Mr Redfordman
                who is or isn’t

                good enough, but the wish and drive to fight,
                as long-suffering as mothers …

                … nothing to do with Mark Redford;
                ‘Je ne garde qu’une

                passion: celle de détruire les passions!’,
                these phantoms

                that stir the entire world; ‘dépouille-toi donc’
                the best translation prescribed

 

Bodhisattvacaryavatara IV, 43, French translation by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Introduction à la Pratique des Futurs Bouddhas, 1907

 

 

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

attention wormhole: travelling // arrival
eyes wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
identity wormhole: stuck in lower realm
mind wormhole: circuitry
practice & talking to myself wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
superhero wormhole: the quiet whale
war wormhole: looking ahead

 

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:

21 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 1783, 2016, 8*, balloon, beginning, Bois de Boulnogne, breathing, circle, clouds, colour, creativity, dark, death, distance, earth, end, Eternity, eyes, fate, glass, gourds, green, growth, heart, humanity, identity, letter, life, light, line, machine, Mars, meadow, Milky Way, name, now, numbers, oak, orange, pattern, questioning, shape, silence, solar system, song, space, speech, speed, stars, table, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, toad, uncle, universe, windows, wood, yellow

 

 

 

a bowl of gourds on the dark-wood table
before the window before the paddock to the
piggery, unadorned, and cultivated through
chance and heel, forgotten beside the trellis;

a bowl of colour and varied shape: Bishop’s
Mitre, Red Turk’s Cap; one looks like the
old orange toad who lives behind the
water butt and likes to be called Bebe;

but the Montgolfiere balloon of yellow
and green took me up through slated
cloud in 1783 from the Bois de Boulogne,
so came the silence on the way to the stars

such a time away at ions of eyes per hour,
rivulets in tributary down the inside of the
flask by letter and equation far beyond my
jiggery and pokery, round ticket through

time …   I breathed in back from the mass
so distant that its light would never return,
back in through milky way and system,
faster than any quantum of backward light,

back past giants and Mars, back into
Earth’s sweet atmosphere and the waiting
bowl brimming with the circles and undulate
trajectory of every plot surmised beyond

my paned windows; where meadow fescue
curves like blackened oak and manual
labour, abhorrent of vacuum and straightened
line (those harbingers of discontinuance):

they almost screamed at me, “This is now,
this is NOW;” mind confined by time grades
eternity by linear thought which always
misses the soft canticle of the gourds:

                                                                      “So man, upon his world so great
                                                                      Has always wanted to create
                                                                      Machines which, started once will never
                                                                      Cease but carry on for ever.

                                                                      Yet all the time O foolish man,
                                                                      You’re merely part of that great plan,
                                                                      A tiny part, hast thou not seen
                                                                      This wondrous universe machine?

                                                                      This motion so perpetual
                                                                      Is the universe and all
                                                                      That lies beyond in time and space,
                                                                      E’en down to us, the human race.

                                                                      There’ll be no end, there was no start,
                                                                      There is no shape therefore no heart.
                                                                      And to create it doth aspire
                                                                      To use the debris of its ire.

                                                                      Poor mortal look deep in your heart
                                                                      And realise that you’re just a part
                                                                      Of that which knows no boundaries,
                                                                      Heeds not your trivial quandaries.

                                                                      Servants of the cosmos vow
                                                                      To play your part and take your bow,
                                                                      Or servants you will always be –
                                                                      Until you die, ‘tis then you’re free.”

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to : The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds

 

 

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

breathing wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Contents
clouds & creativity & green & life & oak & orange & silence & space & stars & thought & uncle & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
death & windows wormhole: the policies came to nothing
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
glass wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
identity & light & time wormhole: tired
speech wormhole: constant hummm
wood wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych

 

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the Conqueror

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2015, Avengers, awareness, breath, eyes, faces, fate, identity, lost, mask, mouth, nose, power, society

 

 

 

                                   there is a mask
                                   tight over the face
                                   of the Conqueror

                                   clung into cheekbone
                                   taught over flattened
                                   nose where no breath

                                   is possible; only eyes,
                                   that linger a second
                                   while the mouth

                                   languidly grims the
                                   only fate not strategically
                                   precluded, showing

 

 

 

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

awareness & breath wormhole: on walking through walls
eyes wormhole: Exceat to Cuckmere Haven
faces wormhole: out side of the writing / lodge
identity wormhole: the tangles fall apart
mouth wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
power & society wormhole: Bodiam Castle

 

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tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2014, 4*, faces, faith, fall, family, fate, fence, field, film, flagpole, floodlights, floorboards, flow, flowers, flying, fog, Folkestone, footsteps, forest, form, freedom, friendship, frustration, funding, furniture, future, life, tag cloud poem, trees

 

 

 

faces of all faith
                           fall like a family

                           the fate of a father in fear
                           feeling the fence around the field

                           the film, finding fir, lingers over treetops
                           the fire takes the flagpole; the floodlights take the floorboards;

                           flow often  flowers when flying through fog
                           while Folkestone listens to footsteps of distant forest

                                                      form new freedom:

                                                                                 friendship out from frustration
                                                                                 funding all the furniture of future life

 

 

 

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

faces wormhole: I could step / more open
family wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
father wormhole: Sylvia
film wormhole: the fingers
fir wormhole: the straight line of stones marking the geometry / of death / settle all their own levels over time to make / a new rhythm
flow wormhole: no quota too empty / no fate to fulfil
fog wormhole: 0.42
life wormhole: breathe it all / in
tag cloud poem wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
trees wormhole: sunny morning

 

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doing

17 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2012, 4*, being, breathing, doing, fate, future, Lo Jong, now, prophecy, time, tonglen, writing

 

 

 

I should offer the victory and accept the defeat
                in everything that I

                                doing

                                              not when the time is right
                not when the time accords with what is written like some prophecy
                                                              or fate
                                              not in any future time either

                                                              but by my nature now as I breathe
                                                                                 and in my nature now as I write

 

 

 

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

being & time wormhole: vagued
breathing wormhole: “I think I’ll have a nice sandwich”
doing wormhole: achieving good-enough living
writing wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared

 

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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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