• 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: insight

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

30 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white

                … and yet I think I am so modest:
                      I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,

                      all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
                all the Big Issues I generously buy

                all the time given to Carol and the kids,
                      to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,

                      all the insights from comics and books, I think I
                know what’s what; I stand colossal

                      on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
                than the ants that circle across it,

                so much more, even, than the cat
                      that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand

                      human to the height of all achievement; all of this
                I have already destroyed

                      a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
                with even the most slight

                      annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
                the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed

                teeth and howls; when this dent,
                      this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from

                this axe from some other side) that
                      holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,

                      everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
                and isolated; I won’t

                      become human again for so long I’ll need
                another, far-future,

                flash of lightning
                      in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll

                ever get another chance
                      to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s

                ease out all these creases, let’s
                      polish all that chrome, before evening comes again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses

 

 

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

beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach

 

Advertisement

Rate this:

my / superpower

30 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

2011, ambiguity, Batman, Beast, Buddhanature, Daredevil, dilemma, disempowerment, distrust, Dr Strange, emptiness, Hulk, identity, ignominy, ingenuity, insight, Kryptonite, naïveté, poem, presence, prohibition, release, Spiderman, stealth, Superman, superpower, Thor, tragedy, wisdom

 

 

my superpower

 

                                               my
                                superpower

                I am not implacable like Superman
                                              which is both my own Kryptonite
                                and my own presence

                I am not grim like the Batman
                                              which is both my own Tragedy
                                and my own wisdom

                I am not angry like the Hulk
                                              which is both my own Ignominy
                                and my own stealth

                I am not strange like Stephen
                                              which is both my own Ambiguity
                                and my own naïveté

                I am not a human god like Thor
                                              which is both my own Dilemma
                                and my own ease

                I am not webbed in moral struggle like Spiderman
                                              which is both my own Disempowerment
                                and my own ingenuity

                I am not fore-sighted like Daredevil
                                              which is both my own Prohibition
                                and my own insight

                I am not mellifluent like the Beast
                                              which is both my own Distrust
                                and my own poem

                                no,

                                no

                                my super power
                                is far far greater
                                than all of these

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: early evening
Daredevil wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
disempowerment wormhole: tag cloud poem V – draft-ness
Dr Strange wormhole: Doctor Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
emptiness wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: need
naïveté wormhole: true nature
Superman wormhole: sit
superpower wormhole: exactly equal
Thor wormhole: song of irrelevance

 

Rate this:

‘my best writing happens …’

18 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2011, creativity, identity, insight, non-doing, writing

 

 

 

                                  my best writing happens
                when I have been looking the other way
                      and suddenly turn round

 

 

 

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

creativity wormhole: left alone
identity wormhole: crescendoeing cascade of chordage – poewieview #10
writing wormhole: dog bark

 

Rate this:

poessay X: soul love – poewieview #2

21 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2016, 7*, appearance, art, assimilation, asymmetry, Bowie, bread, butter, centrifugal, centripetal, chords, communication, defining, depression, dichotomy, eclectic, existence, gold, I, identity, illusion, inside, insight, leaves, liberation, living, love, meaning, music, naïveté, nose, octave, others, outside, piano, poessay, right & wrong, seeing, semantics, soul, superhero, syntax, warp, weft, words, world

                poessay X: soul love

                thin depression
                like butter over frozen bread
                when things go well, a shoulder tap,
                the superhero mask with no nose;

                somethings is not right
                outside or in, oneself aren’t what I thought, we
                just don’t co-ordinate as we should
                creating havoc with syntax; but there

                the gold, the outsight,
                that things isn’t quite right
                allows a cleaner, naïve sights of your leaves1 as long as ‘I don’t fit’
                doesn’t get in the way;

                maybe ‘things’ don’t exist as they appear (or,
                even, shouldn’t),
                that everything are wrong (with
                trans-dualistic semantic); where depression

                is trying to maintain an illusion in a world we did not create (‘wauuugh’),2            
                not proof that ‘we’ is wrong but insight
                to what ‘things’ truly is, and where
                art could be liberative,

                if communicative; which is why Bowie w/is
                important: no sense but the weft of asymmetry
                and the warp of dichotomy in … love
                for other/s-ness-eh city, where eclectic

                assimilation is the means of meaning, always
                far wider than defined, where chordings and octaves are
                centripuntal to word; or not …
                with damn good piano solo

 

1 this piece of work grew out of a conversation with Johnbalaya which we had over coffee and jam on toast one mornings in the pages of Powieviews; orange juice anyone?
2 an mlewisredford No-Prize if you can tell me which character’s strap-line this is; c’mon, c’mon …

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

 

 

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

Bowie & identity & naïveté wormhole: sixty four sixty five
communication wormhole: … the discipline of shamatha / the waft of vipashyana
depression & music wormhole: Poewieviews
gold & living & love wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
leaves wormhole: along
meaning & world wormhole: let the dreams / become the ghosts they / always were
others & piano wormhole: com- / mute
poessay wormhole: poessay IX – … just saying, is all II
seeing wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
superhero wormhole: sit
words wormhole: when writing // stay

 

Rate this:

irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage

23 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

2013, 4*, agenda, anxiety, career, creativity, doing, identity, insight, marriage, measure, obligation, schmuck, self-esteem, smile, teaching

 

 

 

                                                                                 irretrievable
                                                                                 breakdown
                                                                                 of marriage

                                                              the anxiety
                of proffering
                                what I have to do or say – born of
                                              leapt insight
                                                              and creativity –
                                                              and it being
                                courteously passed in the corridor with a slightly
                                              over-long smile
                or curtly skipped to the next item –
                                 nothing to contribute                     look it’s not on
                                              the agenda                        important things to do –
                                                              stupid stupid stupid

                                and the punishment of being
                                              obliged
                                              relied on
                                              measured
                                              appraised
                                              defined
                                              developed
                                to contribute nevertheless
                                                                                 schmuck

 

 

 

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

anxiety & doing & identity wormhole: reversing the polarity
creativity wormhole: poessay VIII: / educational behaviourism
obligation wormhole: The Future of Teaching: performance or capability (‘oh, not ‘teaching’ then?’)
smile wormhole: letters to Mum IV – healing comes in smiling
teaching wormhole: no exit

 

Rate this:

rhetorical inevitability inexorable in both immanent dissipation & implicit effulgence

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, 5*, attention, birdsong, doing, field, grass, groundlessness, identity, insight, sky, trees, wind

 

 

 

rhetorical inevitability inexorable in both immanent dissipation & implicit effulgence

                                          attention
                           is where and how I doing
                           pushed and buttoned and
                           lost as the particular
                           in a field so immense
                           that nothing happens and the
                                          wonders
                           I have doing them
                           the clicks cranks and whirrs
                           that make all the progress
                           m e a s u r a b l e but the

                                          insight
                           is neither the blades of grass
                                          pretty as they all may wave
                           or the considered trees leaning
                                          tall as a magnifying glass
                           nor even the birdsong
                                          differentiated all across the lay lie and sky …

 

 

 

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

attention wormhole: while
doing & field & trees & wind wormhole: … still waving!
identity wormhole: across the room / through the patio doors / through the conservatory windows / at the bottom of the garden / the still bifurcated trunk of / the oak / before the let-grown hair and fringes / of the fir tree / blown every lifetime in a while by the winter sun // actually
sky wormhole: bad sneakers

 

Rate this:

my current vague and pain

05 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2012, 4*, growth, insight, meaning, searching, words

 

 

 

                                                      my current vague & pain

                           I read my own words
                           only months old and
                           recognise them like a
                           track on a new album
                           which will become
                           one of my favourites
                           but which I cannot
                           quite remember yet

 

 

 

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

meaning wormhole: “rest your frontal lobe”
words wormhole: clouds
searching wormhole: swifts test the chasm of sky

 

Rate this:

but there …

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2012, 6*, anxiety, being, breathing, damson, depression, green, identity, insight, letting go, life, living, olive, Sunday

 

 

 

                                stuck in Sunday
                     build-up of olive-green and damson anxiety

                     lost the freshness of my next breath
                                stuck in a lifetime

                                of Sundays
                     lost the freshness of my own birth

                     but I have glimpsed
                                it isn’t like this

                                my whole life
                                              isn’t like this

                     but my whole life
                                is all I have

                                how can I let it
                                              all go

                                                              but there …
                                … I missed

                                my own birth
                                              again

 

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: sit stay heal
being & breathing & letting go wormholes: settling
depression wormhole: Sylvia
green wormhole: the bench / on the fourth sister from / Birling Gap before the / wind-brushed scrub and gorse / and the grey-blue sky / smoothed through the / fishtank-blue horizon to / grey-green sea
identity & life wormhole: dream / 140603
living wormhole: the pocket
olive wormhole: Birmingham / 030413
Sunday wormhole: the spectre

 

Rate this:

the last piece of pop

28 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2013, 7*, being, breathing, growth, insight, letting go, living, music, neck, shoulders, sitting, thinking

 

 

 

                                I can have an insight
during meditation
                (during anytime)

                                shoulders relax
I can breathe out deeper
                I can smile with my ears

                                but if I collect to recreate the insight
‘I like this, this is the way to be’
                next session next breath

                                my shoulders develop an epicenter with my neck
I breathe in and out in the rock pools and shallows
                and I grit my teeth trying to stop playing the last piece of pop I heard on the radio which I never liked in the first place but the ringing guitars and the chorus refrain just keep skipping and repeating without fade                                

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: muse
breathing wormhole: 0.42
letting go wormhole: emerging
living wormhole: chrysalissing
music wormhole: in the kitchen
sitting wormhole: open / window
thinking wormhole: here is a / whiney accumulation of / wisdom

 

Rate this:

‘of all the people …’

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 2010, 4*, compassion, insight, London, people, St Pancras, train

 

 

 

                                              of all the people
                                              passing by in the
                                              international
                                              train station
                                              not one of them
                                              had any self-nature

 

 

 

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

compassion wormhole: window
London wormhole: – 48
train wormhole: rose

 

Rate this:

… 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 …

  • fall
  • “…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

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

announcements awards embroidery poems poeviews reflectionary teaching

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

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,847 other subscribers

... just browsing

  • 50,513 what th'-s

I wander around after this lot a lot …

m’peeps who notice I exist

these things I liked …

A WordPress.com Website.

Ondy Willson

a UK-based, internationally-acclaimed mindfulness trainer, writer and Buddhist teacher.

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Classic Rock Review

The home of forgotten music...finding old reviews before they're lost....

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

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • mlewisredford
    • Join 1,847 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • mlewisredford
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...