• 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: friendship

September – silhouette of leaf // the / inside and the / outside

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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Tags

2015, 6*, ageing, Alan Moore, beach, cliffs, clouds, duty, Eddie Campbell, friendship, From Hell, honour, houses, leaf, meaning, others, passing, sea, secret, September, silhouette, sky, society, talking, time, twilight, walking, world

                September – silhouette of leaf

                                in time soon passed
                                men walk slowly
                                side by side out
                                from nowhere
                                talking shaping
                                the only portents
                                they knew
                                without guile or
                                ghastly duty
                                bonded by
                                aged to speak
                                safe ever if no one
                                hears of it
                                let it be be

                gathering cloud over clifftop sea and houses

                                tween them
                                and the world
                                the importance
                                of honour kept
                                where twilight
                                covers the
                                whole of sky
                                the balance of
                                importance – the
                                inside and the
                outside

 

askance from the prologue to 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________________________________|—–

beach wormhole: fully clothed
clouds & talking wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
houses 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
meaning wormhole: un … able
others & society wormhole: 1962
passing wormhole: ‘never a dull moment …’
sea wormhole: Vajrapani
silhouette wormhole: great underbelly to the rooftops
sky wormhole: ‘blades / articulate all the lonely height / of the sky’
time wormhole: relapse
twilight wormhole: city twilight
walking wormhole: step
world wormhole: Dr Strange VI – to hold my face to the world

 

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tag cloud poem VII – form new freedom:

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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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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letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love

16 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

1960s, 1999, 2014, 7*, bedroom, black, books, breathing, child, Christmas, comics, courage, crying, Dad, death, duty, Eglinton Hill, friendship, Genesta Road, heart, hospital, ideas, illness, kitchen, laughing, Lesnes Abbey, letter, life, living, love, morning, mother, Mum, Nan, orange, parent, parenting, Plumstead common, reading, rebirth, roads, sadness, Saturday, sharing, son, speech, streets, Sunday, talking, time, typewriter, white, Woolwich, work, writing, yellow

 

 

 

                                                                                    060399

Dear Mum,

it was a shock to see you in hospital, overstretched just
                                living at home
                                and still I hadn’t admitted just
                                              how ill you are
                                and the meet to make the final arrangements
                for whenever they become and seeing you face up to this yourself
                                              has shown me dealing with icing and marzipan
                                                              and not a lot much courage

                it is almost guaranteed that we will not say goodbye as we would like
                                I’d like to say all the things that a Grand Goodbye at the End of a Life
                                                              should
                                              through the choke and early mourning wisp of times
                                                              we grew together in Genesta Road
                                that will always remain

                                              that you are coming to the end of your life
                                is so definitely sad, you said that
                                              you don’t want us to be too upset
                but I am going to be anyway, and already am
                                I will be losing a dear parent
                                I will be losing a dear friend
                                              and I have to be sad about that
(with Nan I came through the crying by learning the times we spent together
                like a lesson, sharing and doing
                                I wish I had shared this with her)
                                              I will be sad losing you
                but I won’t be sad because I am losing our lives together
                                these things which have already happened
                                              which cannot be lost
                                even when you die
                                even when I die:

                your fight to bring us up after Dad left
                                the sacrifices moving down from Eglington Hill
                                              a posh meal only on Sundays
                you said to me one day that we were only a paper delivery away
                                              from the standard of living as when Dad was there
                                as we crossed a road doing shopping for here and there
                the happy stores we had in for Christmas
                                you having to go to work every day
and making the best of it coming home
                                              to the sparse meal to help with the diet
                                                                                    hundreds of times
                hundreds of times which I cannot remember and never experienced
but stay in my heart
                                              somewhere
                it wasn’t effort in vain
                it wasn’t not noticed
                it wasn’t not valued

Thank you.   I was aware

                                from quite early that
                                I was one of very few children
                                whose parent had left them in the 1960s
                your bringing me up is one of the most treasured things in my life
                                              you taught me this
                                although I still haven’t mastered
                or even learnt it very well: carrying on in duty and love
                                you have had much to be bitter about
                                but I have seen you – visibly – emerge
                                like a Phoenix “come on, this is no good …”
                (I am a depressive and a self – indulger and “aren’t you ever going to smile again …?”
                                              that child still does it – far too serious when there is anything to do
                                with him) and I treasure the laughs we had when younger
                                              I will learn to have them in my own family
                because I will miss you when you go
                                and every time I miss you I will have silly time with them
                I remember aching stomach at times
                                I remember you squealing with laughter
                                              I remember Nan’s joy at seeing you laugh so much when you did;
                                I know you hadn’t perfected it yourself
                                I know I only remember the times when it just happened
                                              but it is a valuable lesson
                                                              nevertheless

                the magic of Eglington Hill
                                with its many rooms, its endless floors
                                              become a symbol
of possibilities of life, the ‘scene’ of your providing and care
                the magic of Genesta Road
                                where I grew to learn how to see
                                the bedroom decorated orange and yellow
                                then black and white because you asked us
                with shelves to put my comics and books
                                the kitchen to study with the smell of meal
                                              the lounge to book and write and type …
                                                              flavours of my life
                my development now the space which you clothed me in
                                you are those flavours and
                                as I ‘develop’ into the future
                                you are always here
                                              (you always started from what I was
                                               and letting me do what I needed whether you liked it or not
                I try the same with my own kids
                but only remember when I fail
                                yet another lesson, Mum,
                                you have been so wise
                                              and neither you nor I have
                                              fully appreciated it)

                                the magic of reading:
                                the mere presence of books
                                the unfold of opening paper
                                the rocky uphill of snatched syntax
                the scent of travel the pride of cover
                                I try to have the same for my kids
                so that even if they never read them
                                              they will line their walls with book
                (Joe has satire and sci-fi and atlas
                                Jon has earth and struggle and revolution
                                              Charlotte has stacks and stacks of comic)
                                I will be satisfied with that and I hope you had a similar hope
                                              and yes, Mum, it worked
                                                              and it was valuable
                                                                                    another job well done, I think

                                invigoration of sheets over ourselves and haunting the Common one morning
                putting all the milk bottles from the street on the doorstep of one house a few doors down
                                              planning the front room when you won some money, allowing ourselves gift of ideas on wheels
                letting me go hitch – hiking when I suddenly said I needed to go – I still don’t know how you did that
                                friendship of strolling the park, the ruined Abbey, wandering Woolwich on a Saturday morning
                                                              Mother and Son strolling

                and yes, I can agree with you, you have had a good life
                wherever you go we will meet again in some way
                and these specks of our lives will intrigue us
                                              in some form familiar but unrecognisable
I am very sad to be losing you but comforted with what we have shared
                it is probably only now that I realise how much I love you
                                              and how closely we lived

                I shall miss the Mum who taught me a life
                                but I shall always be breathing the lesson

love from,

 

Mum died 20th March 1999; I wrote this letter but hesitated sending it – a regret of my life; I ‘send’ it now hoping she’ll read it somewhere.   Having marked her would-be 81st birthday the day before yesterday, I thought it high time …

 

 

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

part of the ongoing life and page of … Mum
bedroom wormhole: sitting up in bed s i m u l t a n e o u s l y
black wormhole: capes flying
books wormhole: Tulips by Sylvia Plath – How Far To Step Before You Raise The Other Foot
breathing wormhole: whirlpool
child & Christmas & Dad & Eglinton Hill & Genesta Road & mother & Mum & talking wormhole: letters to Mum IV – healing comes in smiling
comics wormhole: introducing / the stranger
death wormhole: we’re born // to die
kitchen wormhole: sounds // suddenly / stop
life wormhole & writing time: no exit
living wormhole: letters to Mum III – ongoing-term // eventually
love wormhole: a cup of tea, gov
morning & streets wormhole: oh-pen too
Nan & work wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
orange wormhole: the precision // the gentleness // and / the letting go
reading wormhole: stuck free to move within
roads wormhole: I could step / more open
Saturday wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
speech wormhole: we’re all the same age really
Sunday wormhole: zazen in everyday life
white wormhole: Bat-Shadow
Woolwich wormhole: ‘like a piece of ice on a hot stove / the poem must ride on its own melting’
yellow wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge

 

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letter 080514

08 Thursday May 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1960s, 2014, 8*, ageing, beauty, breakdown, breathing, Canada, clouds, Dionne Warwick, Dylan, emptiness, friendship, identity, Jeff Beck, Joni Mitchell, letter, life, love, meaning, music, pointlessness, school, sun, thinking, time, tonglen

 

 

 

                                                                                    letter 080514

                                I haven’t forgotten you
                                even though six months
                                suddenly seem to have gone

                I hope you are still healing
                                I am reminded to send healing
                I will do this NOW while breathing …
                                at 11:05 am local time (you will have had got this early this morning
                                              it will help with the sic-ness)

                thoughts of you bubbled up
                                when I caught an interview with Joni Mitchell
                                as she talked a little about Saskatchewan –
                she is so beautiful
                she has embraced growing old:
                                she cannot sing now – phht – she accepts it
                                she paints (she said of Dylan that he has
                                disappeared behind his mask
                (I may be slow about this – I’ve never really ‘got’ Dylan
                but it is such a relief – somehow – to know this))
                she still – still! – smokes, she accepts it
                she still stops
                                and gazes away a little when answering a new question not having thought
                everything she needs to ‘in her time’; I do love that woman
                                I wish I lived round the corner from her
                                I could drop in and see her
                                when I’ve lost my way
                (you can tell I have never been to Canada
                                and have no idea what I am talking about)

                I am still wafting around emptiness as if I was a cloud
                I have been back at school for almost a year now
                                but I keep ‘crashing’ (“… in the same car … hotel garage
                                … must have been touching close to 94” now
                                              c’mon, where does this one come from?)
I have odd days
                                where I cannot get out of the door
                                (all dressed up and packed lunch)
                I wish I could just step off the clouds
                                but I think they are solid and I’d fall
                                              (a pity
                I could have such fun being a cloud
                                if I didn’t take it all so solidly)
                                              (where’s that sun when you need it most?)

                still, there is always … Jeff Beck:
                                I have been noticing his odd stabs and curves
                                shaft through the clouds
                                every once in a while
                                              and then there is always … Dionne Warwick
                octave-ing as she steps
                                breathless and lingering
                                              through the early morning of the sixties

                I must remember all of this
I tend to forget it all when the clouds get too dark …

                … thanks for listening; oh, Paddy, I think I’ve found my way

                vibes,

                mlewis

 

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: my life is not your market
breakdown & life & pointlessness wormhole: silent crash // … / after all
clouds wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1966
emptiness wormhole: poessay VII: // true revolution
identity & love wormhole: the pocket
Joni Mitchell wormhole: Joni Mitchell
meaning wormhole: words
music wormhole: someone called Frank
school wormhole: just saying, is all – III
sun wormhole: a splash of fresh water
thinking wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
time wormhole: the straight line of stones marking the geometry / of death / settle all their own levels over time to make / a new rhythm

 

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Birmingham / 030413

04 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2013, 7*, architecture, awareness, being, Birmingham, blue, compassion, earth, eyes, field, friendship, green, Have, heaven, identity, industry, lemon, life, lifetimes, living, mauve, olive, orange, people, portrait, roads, settling, sleep, society, streets, time, wind

                                                                                 Birmingham
                                                                                          030413

                                          long sleep

            I played with awareness going to sleep
                                                              in sleep
                           a new endeavour
                           new fields to play
                       in new fields to play in everywhere
                       in the very plainness of my life
                       in the very and every ordinariness
                                          of my compromised-‘round
                                                              life
            which I can greet now
                           with lapis highlight
                           with olive horizontal with lemon uprights

                                          ~~O~~

                           met Elizabeth after twenty years
                           hugged her held her face for long seconds
                                          in eye contact … blink
            taken through windy landscapes new architecture
                           flagged stilted overhanging built-in built over
                           experience of everything
                                          packed into one unit
            a lift that choraled ascent to heaven
                           then return to basso profundo
                           and walks under
                                          roads and rail lines and
                           brick raised artful in dustrial legacy
                                          the grip sufficient to turn the world
            passing slowly by acute-angle edges of new-office build
                           high redbrick sides of factory crumbled down
                                          from the top and day-speckled
                                                              with no insides

                                          ~~O~~

                                          looking
                           at all the people crossing
            and talking to themselves or their phones
                           to those who misstep and those called to help
                           to those who play with sex like a possession
            and those who practise dance steps by the kerbside concrete balls
                           to those who wear beauty like a halo
            and those who nose-spit on the ground
                                          like a right
                           to those who wear their years like a jawline
            and those who talk to the
                                          corners they sit in
                                          to those who
                           smile upwards with trademarked timelines
                           and all those who do not walk the streets today
                                          there is nothing
            nothing to gain no ideal to realise in all there is to Have
                           but the acceptance of what we all feign
                           to complete ourselves oblivious
                                          to our true nature

                           olive-green and mauve
                           with orange-strip sandwich filling
                           and lemon highlight décor
                           over darkest deep blue wall

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: in a / single / lifetime / sitting
architecture wormhole: Victorian bays / right angles and eaves
being & eyes & settling & streets wormhole: a few reflections on / keeping your cow / in a large meadow / while walking round / the streets of Horsham
blue wormhole: session
compassion wormhole: returning home
earth wormhole: ‘a walk up the path …’
field wormhole: alighting
green wormhole: school uniform
Have & society wormhole: dropped ’till you’ve shopped
identity & living wormhole: ‘I can write …’
lemon wormhole: sat
life wormhole: ‘set the controls / for the heart of the sun’
olive wormhole: thirst? / hunger?
lifetimes & time wormhole: grammar
mauve wormhole: “I / am Spartacus”
orange wormhole: write / by the / night / of the / lamp
people & sleep wormhole: tired – diptych
roads wormhole: the end
wind wormhole: morning

 

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… someone’s back

10 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

2013, blogging, career, friendship, ghosts, identity, listening, society, teaching

 

 

 

… I think; nothing’s solved, there is only fore-shortened outcome as the Mechanism rolls out its Procedure of Care trying to track down that ghost;

I am in ‘wither’ with the school I have worked in for the last twenty five years; every so often, and quite despite my unrelenting stubborness to continue on disregarded, I collapse; the most recent collapse was even more lost and frightened than I am used to and I don’t think I can platitude my way back out of this one (see obituary … if you have the stomach);

I thougt to cut down my activity to return myself to myself, but I couldn’t find him anywere, only the pain and lost-bearing which have haunted him all along anyway; I had a dream last night which I posted this morning – it feigns to hold the answer although I can’t quite breathe what it is yet; but then I had posted it, instinctively; so I gave myself a slap but my hand passed straight through: there is only the activity that makes any sense of the machine beng here in the first place; it is not wrong, but it is, after all, only levers and pivots; I must continue on acting, invisible and occasionally chain-rattling, otherwise all those girders and diagonals will look ridiculous standing there, windswept and wailing;

so maybe returning back to blogging is the first step to returning back to living … thank you so much to all the good voices that whispered over my shoulder ‘remember that we are here’, you all left an echo that I could navigate by

 

 

 

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

career & identity & teaching wormhole: dream 100213
ghosts wormhole: chrysalissing
listening wormhole: listening

 

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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 …

  • ‘the practice …’
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut
  • ‘she shook the sweets …’
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • meanwhile
  • a far grander / Sangha
  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 8; reflectionary
  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 7; reflectionary
  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VII, Joyous Effort – verse 6; reflectionary & verses 3-6 embroidery

Uncanny Tops

  • Moebius strip
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Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

a poem each day

Buddhist Quote for the day

Nirvana Is The Highest Bliss - Buddha

Dechen Foundation Books

Print and eBooks for Tibetan Buddhism

Unquiet World

Things from an unquiet mind

Sprach-Musik-Kunst

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

DHARMA

Om Ah Hung

Word Play

Poems by Holly Lofgreen

Buddha Within

The Teachings of Lama Shenpen Hookham

popcultureocd.wordpress.com/

AMPTON

Tintin, essays, and a hearty helping of criticism

Amitabha Path

Inspiration on the Vajrayana Path (if words too small, set browser to magnify to 125%)

blogabydotcom

Snapshots of remarkably unremarkable things and other discoveries.

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