• 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
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    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
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  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: iron

on facing the Have

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2018, 7*, being, block, blue, bone, cause and effect, change, choice, clothes, clouds, Darwin, death, depth, discipline, doing, dream, drifting, economics, emerald, extermination, faces, government, green, grey, hats, Have, head, hills, hinge, humanity, identity, iron, kiss, life, loss, making, mud, music, neck, peacock, photography, power, quotidian, river, roof, settlement, shadow, Shrewsbury, slow, society, statue, stone, streets, tectonic plates, time, trees, violence, walls, war, watching, water, woman, World War, writing

                bone to stone drifting
                catastrophic slow

                lee to face-ward drifting
                shadow to quotidian

                suggesting life
                only when settled

                under branch of roof;
                noticeable change

                comes at the price
                of sheild and pike:

                death-mask disciplined
                to the painted face

                open to the very depth
                of loss, later settled

                to economies of
                plea, barter and

                proliferation of fact
                artisaned superfluous

                to being – faces fixed
                in leer the rest of

                born days, where
                animals are skinned

                under abnegated face,
                where stone walls

                turn green, staining
                clothing and where the

                emerald poise of head
                and neck watches

                the peck of open flay, all
                “exterminated by

                 slow acting and still
                 existing causes …”

                … time begins
                to tick – well it had to

                start somewhere – and
                with time cometh writing

                and with writing the
                topography fades from

                hill-wide face to
                pock-mark street and settlement

                all fitted ingeniously
                with raised wall over arch,

                high to unresolved descant
                always left in minor;

                the woman bends
                to the laundry before

                the rush of water
                released from the mill:

                power is only explicit
                when blocked and

                channelled, tree to
                gable with date

                and signature, silk
                to valence with

                drape of repose and spreading peacock dream;
                so, is there choice

                of governance: cut
                through from neck to child;

                you stay unnatural-still
                your image will be caught,

                you turn, and your
                head will disappear,

                you climb the wall
                and stand still, you

                stay in the mud yard
                and stand still, … only

                hats stay constant, cast-
                iron flanges reach

                from cast-circular
                hinges, woven to corset,

                slave to youth; the
                memorial stone,

                painfully-carved,
                reflects the blue

                of grey cloud, under
                posts of wire

                the death-etched
                face stoops to kiss

                the face of
                wholly mud

 

291218 – spent the afternoon at the Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery to tread time from immemorial to the First World War; the quote is from “Thinking Path” by Shirley Chubb (2004), an exhibition that explores the life and legacy of Charles Darwin, an artwork and series of installations inspired by Darwin’s daily ritual of walking the same path at Down House; “Shadow Stories”, an animated short film by Samantha Moore is not directly referenced but weaves about the whole perambulation; references include the Roman conquest, medieval, Civil War, and industrial exhibits, up to the Open Art Exhibition commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War

 

 

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

being & clouds & doing & identity & power wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
blue & woman wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
change & streets wormhole: to let be
death wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
dream wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
economics & society & walls & war wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
faces wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
green & shadow & trees & writing wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
grey & time wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
Have wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
life wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
music wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams
river wormhole: quiet river
roof wormhole: breakfast
stone wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
water wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

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landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey

19 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2013, birth, black, breathing, clouds, England, green, grey, hope, iron, landscape, life, London, mauve, mist, park, pipes, pregnancy, publishing, shadow, streets, Sylvia Plath, Victorian houses, walking, writing

                soon after I was born
                to the rendered sides of
                talling Victorian terrace-ends
                with networks of iron black pipe
                and random small frosted window
                                Sylvia Plath

                arrived back in England
                pregnant with newhope and
                immanent with firstbook
                to breathe the alternating
                talling shadows of street
                and the misty greenmauve landscape
                                of park

                landscape of cloud over London
                with differing depths of grey

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
breathing & writing wormhole: the goldilocks stance
clouds & green & grey wormhole: municipal garden
life wormhole: garden
London wormhole: handsome
mauve & shadow & walking wormhole: walk from Castleton to Hope
mist wormhole: prelude: // travel
park wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
publishing wormhole: Granada holiday …
streets wormhole: Luton // couldn’t make a poem out of it
Sylvia Plath wormhole: Sylvia
Victorian houses wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34

 

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London Park in Greenwich town – poewieview #5

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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Tags

1966, 2016, boundary, Bowie, death, earth, Greenwich Park, history, iron, leaves, London, lost, love, oak, sycamore, time, walls

                London Park in Greenwich town

                somewhere under oak
                amid drifts of fallen sycamore

                lay the boundaries of iron and tumult of
                leaning wall historically

                drawing the mounds of centurely death bevelling
                the crowded times when

                lost was almost love
                and love was almost possible

                needlessly

 

Rubber Band, 1966; ‘I hope you break yer baton’

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

 

 

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

Bowie & London wormhole: London Hearts – poewieview #4
death & walls wormhole: development
Greenwich Park wormhole: school uniform
history wormhole: finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915
leaves & love wormhole: poessay X: soul love – poewieview #2

oak wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
time wormhole: sixty four sixty five – poewieview #1

 

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finding my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 190915

18 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2015, advertising, afterlife, alignment, alley, angel, apartment, architecture, ash tree, Ashlar Place, balcony, baptism, bay window, beech, belief, Beresford Square, Bloomfield Road, boundary, brick, brown, building, buildings, bus, cars, change, childhood, church, compassion, crane, daughter, death, decades, Eglinton Hill, family, glass, God, gold, grass, grey, gurdwara, halo, hedge, hill, history, houses, identity, iron, jet plane, John, khanda, Lee Rigby, leylandii, life, lime, living, London, loneliness, looking, love, memory, mother, Mum, Nan, passing, photograph, pipes, Plumstead, rain, red, rooftops, sandstone, shadow, shop, sky, smile, society, sound, stone, streetlight, streets, suitcase, sun, the British Empire, time, traffic, travelling, trees, true nature, walls, wind, Woolwich, Woolwich New Road, writing

            looking for my own true nature – Plumstead, Woolwich, 1909151

            these times of being cut loose are more usual than comfortable
            the buzz of contact and identity more potential than actual

            I go up to London to find bits of my true nature somewhere
            deep inside the forty four miles of time that has elapsed,

            past the same street boards advertising new plastic on trend,
            in even more colourful lime but now un-im-bleach-able;

            where grand gable and architrave stand cleanly revealed in all
            of their time from behind trimmed hedge, but window bay and

            fanned lintel remain obscured behind opportune ash (and
            where crickets rasp in raised lawn to ear level off the hill); on

            the hill2 a crack in the front wall sinking century-ly downhill
            under sounds of jet somewhere in the sky hidden by dampening

            of leylandii; did I get baptised at All Saints Shooters Hill3,
            or did my brother, when the church was still young, its

            thousand panes held individual by lead, reflecting the
            cubist street, I don’t remember now – fractured memory;

            where sandstone is shaped short in modest Empire-control: in
            niche and ledge and decorative finial, during all the wind of

            cold streets, withstanding the new redbrick of decades; I
            cannot draw the line of brick at the corner of Bloomfield

            Road, true neither to hill nor sky nor shadowed underledge
            to the proud cornice (boundaries to distant-impossible crane)

            or even the sharp roofs clipped to lead-clad valley, let alone the
            ample iron downpipe … but I have learnt to write the architecture

            of odd alignment and cut-through alley; perched now against
            Ashlar Place at just the right angle between sun-wipe and shadow

            (shiny haloes in the indents on the page as I write Gurdwara
             Sahib Ramgarhia Temple
4 in biro), the architecture of

            eternal Empire highlighted in gold with khandas blowing
            in the wind … still cannot obscure the luxury apartments in

            constant construct: -ING IS BELIEVING;5 buses come and
            buses go all along Woolwich New Road before the clapping

            troup of ‘Time for God’ angels and their families stood around,
            full of God’s immanent voices, in and out of sight and chant,

            (I have an old photo: a man crossing the road from Beresford
             Square6 with box suitcase in grey [and suggested brown] after

            apparent rain … when the retired newsagent passed by adding
            that he had run that shop opposite for thirty years, how –

            much – it – has – changed); perched, now, on the Metropolitan
            Drinking Fountain & Cattle Trough, oiled and crust stone

            from hide-breath and redundant exhaust; a mother and slinky
            daughter watch the marching bands pass from their third floor

            balcony, height of streetlight, defined before the upright
            sea of tarp covering the next block of the Royal Arsenal

            Riverside in construct (surprise!); ah, Lee Rigby,7 under height
            of Elliston House, these cars pass far too quick to get

            to their traffic, those beech trees opposite have grown to
            lean downhill for fifty years and more; I looked at every

            plaque, Mum, found plenty of Jeans and Margarets (and
            even Gladyss) but no Redfords, I can’t think I would have

            missed you sixteen years into other existences … I don’t
            know: I smiled at some of the plaques as I looked for you,

            I shall smile at everyone now that I haven’t found you

 

1 this peice follows my last visit to London: walking downhill from Plumstead to Woolwich and around and back, driving to Eltham to where my mother (Jean Marguerite Redford 1933-1999, daughter of Gladys Charlotte Conlay 1906-1989) was cremated
2 Eglinton Hill, early childhood home
3 All Saints Shooters Hill
4 Woolwich Gurdwara
5 woolwich new road and buildings
6 true nature II
7 Lee Rigby tributes in front of Elliston House

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
brown & love & red wormhole: when in Belgium do as the chocolates do
buildings & life & streets wormhole: gotcha
bus & sun wormhole: Christmas lights / around the lamp post
cars wormhole: portrait: / two pigeons
change & gold & Woolwich wormhole: ING IS BELIEVING
childhood & Nan wormhole: new garden
church wormhole: you can only smell the candles / when they have been snuffed out
compassion wormhole: [s]
crane wormhole: com- / mute
daughter wormhole: the retriever the daughter and the mother
death & writing wormhole: Poewieviews
Eglinton Hill & London wormhole: the breath of London
family wormhole: let’s have some ice creams
glass wormhole: ‘in clear oil air …’
grey & identity & time & trees & walls wormhole: walking through Lewes
hedge wormhole: the continental stride of trains
history & Mum wormhole: sit
lime & sky & stone wormhole: David Bowie – Iris
living wormhole: currency: / assent for statement – / ‘smakin’alivvin’
loneliness wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
looking wormhole: Office at Night, 1940
mother wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?
passing wormhole: clouds
Plumstead wormhole: dream 260815
rain wormhole: “walking …”
rooftops & smile & streetlight wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
shadow wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
society wormhole: the Growing Man
sound & wind wormhole: the open window
travelling wormhole: Compartment C, Car 193, 1938

 

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dream 260713

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2013, alley, black, breakfast, Carol, cars, chips, coffee, dark, dream, eating, iron, kitchen, life, lunch, pancake, pink, pupils, searching, sky, snow, Spring, streets, talking, walking, water

 

 

 

                      dream 260713

                      I went for breakfast
                      away doing something
                      in some town somewhere

                      in a small restaurant serving
                      a traditional breakfast but
                      I didn’t know what to expect

                      I was served a thin pancake
                      size of a plate and coffee poured
                      onto a black galvanised iron plate

                      which flowed down onto another
                      plate then flowed down to the floor
                      spreading wide and diluting in the

                      clean water from the kitchen and
                      washing down a drainage hole
                      like a shower but I don’t remember

                      eating; I was joined by Carol for
                      lunch, chopped vegetable salad in
                      thin pancakes but I can’t remember

                      eating; we talked about something
                      with a little tension; we were given
                      wedge chips with a white sauce and

                      we left to walk the pedestrian streets
                      a light snow-dusting was all around
                      under an early Spring sky; I offered

                      a summary to the discussion to
                      break the silence but she turned off
                      into a dark alley and wandered off

                      before I finished talking; I realise
                      we hadn’t paid in the restaurant and
                      wandered the streets trying to find it

                      I couldn’t, but pupils who I didn’t know
                      gave me a friendly hello and climbed
                      into the boot of a waiting pink car

 

 

 

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

black wormhole: purpose
Carol wormhole: start where you are I
cars wormhole: dawn
coffee & pink wormhole: 1959 –– MANHATTAN –– 2012
dark wormhole: darkness
dream wormhole: bottom of Herbert Road to the / foot of Eglinton Hill dream
kitchen wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
life wormhole: ‘a spark from the empty light socket …’
searching wormhole: this is not my poem / although I found it nevertheless
sky wormhole: the streets just fill with business
snow wormhole: Christmas
Spring wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
streets wormhole: the lines are not that straight / after all
talking wormhole: gold wedding band
walking wormhole: what heavy and cantilevered structure
water wormhole: St. Ludwigskirche

 

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Kirby’s landscapes

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2014, 6*, bridge, buildings, fashion, gold, haiku, hair, head, iron, Jack Kirby, Manhattan, pavement, people, reaching, river, roads, rooftops, seeing, shadow, sky, stone, streets, trees, vertical

 

 

 

                                  Kirby’s landscapes

                                 among the street trees
                           and trouser shadows people
                              struggle with fashion

                                           but few look to the
                           rooftops where the reach of arm
                                can span neighbourhoods

                              and monuments, stacked
                           to pinnacle bricked to stand,
                              the lens is mistrust-

                                         worthy – the shift of
                           golden hair – between the streets
                                and blocks of façade

                            where bridges raise the
                           access, lower the canyon
                            to the river that

                                        knows no busy-ness
                           ranged wide along its banks and
                               harbours, failure to

                            see this tips buildings
                           beyond the vertical, you
                            cannot have angle

                                  on a pavement on
                           a road, elegant stonework
                              curling ironwork

                                     won’t allow it while
                           the hats of heads vie with sky
                              line, you see, billboards

                                           and water towers
                           have been made redundant but
                                they had class and style

 

most of the images for this were reaped and harvested from The Fantastic Four #95, February 1970; plot: Stan Lee; art and storytelling: Jack Kirby; it was only after I put the finishing touches to the ‘billboards’ and ‘water towers’ in the last stanza that I realised it was all ABOUT Jack Kirby; have a lookit: this; and, maybe, also … this:

 

ff95pg8

 

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

bridge wormhole: dream / 150599
buildings & sky wormhole: Dr Strange V – all the words of all the times of all the worlds speak
gold wormhole: Christmas
haiku(esque) wormhole: ‘the blues shifted …’
hair wormhole: knees
Manhattan wormhole: introducing / the stranger
people wormhole: smiling
river & shadow & streets wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
roads wormhole: bass and piano
rooftops wormhole: never there
seeing wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
stone wormhole: the precision // the gentleness // and / the letting go
trees wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

 

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Christmas

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

'scape, 1979, 6*, Batman, carlights, childhood, Christmas, eyes, gold, green, Herbert Road, iron, orange, puddle, snow, streetlight, time, wind

 

 

 

                                   Christmas

                                   short eyes: orange
                                   street lamps
                                   iron puddles

                                   soon eyes:
                                   winking
                                   car lights 4:30

                                   smart eyes:
                                   papers
                                   brush the ankles

                                   crown eyes:
                                   golden paper and
                                   green eyes

                                   arching eyes:
                                   reindeer’s eyes
                                   Batman’s eyes

                                   coat of snow
                                   crate of sharp eyes
                                   cradle

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: never there
childhood wormhole: glass
Christmas wormhole: yet another sprain / of ‘Jingle Bells’ straining / to propagate yet another / tired Christmas spirit – … / ‘sanner clawsis coming t’ taunn – yeah’ in a / coffee shop with condensation / running off the snowflake transfers / and the iphone at the next table / talking how 50 means 900 a month – not worth / the drive (left his scarf behind – / collateral) … about my age
eyes & time wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 290508 – / the breath of London
gold 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
green wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
Herbert Road wormhole: still there?
orange wormhole: Luisenplatz
snow wormhole: bass and piano
streetlight wormhole: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations
wind wormhole: no cars / no planes

 

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Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

1970s, 2014, 8*, anxiety, architecture, art deco, ash tree, bay window, bench, Beresford Square, blue, breathing, brown, buddleia, buildings, Canary Wharf, cars, change, clothes, clouds, communication, compassion, Dallin Road, demolition, dream, Eglinton Hill, empire, Europe, eyes, feet, fence, Genesta Road, ghosts, glass, glasses, grass, growth, handshake, head, house, identity, iron, keys, language, leaves, library, light, living, London, looking, love, music, passing, pavement, people, petrol, piano, pigeons, plane, plastic, Plumstead, purple, rain, rainbow, roads, rooftops, school, schoolgirl, shadow, Shard, singing, sky, smile, sound, speech, step, streetlight, streets, sun, swifts, talking, tarmac, Thames, time, travelling, trees, tv, vow, walking, walls, windows, Woolwich, yellow

 

{Every year and a while I travel 40 miles up to Woolwich, where I grew up, to check that the journey I make started off in the write direction (HA!); while wandering I write, leaning on peoples’ front walls and making a coffee last in a cafe (and every once in a while I treat myself to an afternoon bench); I haven’t been up there for awhile, certainly since the echoing tragedy of Lee Rigby’s death on 22nd May last year; I wrote snatches of life as usual and came home; I realised that the snatches patch-worked together and worked them into a whole landscape which they had ever were in the first place; I know it’s a long piece but please pursue it for the sake of Woolwich; I realise now that my previous visits’ writings need some rendering due-ly …}

 

 

                      Plumstead – Woolwich 121114

                      all fractured now, slightly misshapen, still
                      holding together, the grubby art deco window that
                      coloured the stairwells bracing two rooms
                      maybe three now, don’t know why they used coloured

                      glass, the bay windows still looking up the street looking
                      down, occasional five-finger buddleias like Empire
                      plaques on the wall above top floor windows
                      scud clouds above the coping

                      then flights of step up and up and straddling and down
                      the storeys of irregular variegated plastic cladding
                      upwards upwards for to breathe free and live while people
                      pass on the wet street with small steps and quiet slippers

                      I had a dream once something anxious and dreadful
                      followed me going into and out of Polytechnic Street
                      from Wellington along by the stacked flanks of seventies
                      double-glaze all screened and blinded from the street

                      cannot see in cannot see out, people walk awkward
                      on the tiles flexing metatarsals under the slight over
                      hang of the library from the colding rain while, look,
                      a rainbow arches hidden down the side-street turning

                      the bricks and glazing purple, no one looks up
                      arranging bank loans, arranging brunch, after noon
                      the sun divides streets in half, the buildings too
                      dark to see the shop fronts too dazzled to walk into

                      the sun favours ambitious plants between torn-down
                      building and upright support, plays along the side
                      of preserved plots – flanged shadow from pipework and
                      signage across circular windows – eye to the sky – under

                      hand-brow, too bright even for tinted glasses;
                      so many of my people generations poor in the sun
                      from Empires and Union under the Royal Arsenal
                      Gatehouse; each passing step collapsed and proud knot

                      in kneed of any support, thank you: their shadows reach me
                      down the Square’s access channel long before their pain
                      walks by: I don’t know any of you now with your plastic ID
                      badges with your back-pat handshakes and bent-heads

                      sincere-talk, grouped and scattered by the public toilets
                      your drunk over-emphases your ways like pigeons – where are
                      all the pigeons? – and your beautiful language aged as
                      public benches; dark clothes to wear, light clothes to buy

                      and you don’t know me – lost son haunting the streets – but
                      I love you all constant as the windows proud above roofline
                      between turrets looking onto the Square; I long ago made
                      my vow to you at a time when borders seemed important
                      I know, I know I am slow but I return again and again to see you
                      and you break my heart each time I learn to smile again

                      out towards Plumstead on the lower road (I cannot find
                      the tree I found before through all my travelling) new trees
                      and tapered posts with lights for the road and lights for the
                      pavement and posts just waiting, reaching into the blue blue sky

                      you have been done up many times, Genesta*, so
                      I only notice now what hasn’t changed, for the first time:
                      unassuming tapered pillars between the windows and bays
                      of my youth that reflect the blue sky now (yellow leaves

                      highlight the paving and tarmac wet like petrol) only noticed
                      when a swift skeeks across one pane, not the other;
                      up Dallin Road, she’s got through another day
                      she’s survived the juddering divided walls of ‘have to’

                      the way things are these days, with music in hand
                      she makes rewarded way along the steely street where
                      the sun has slipped below the higher roofline, singing her
                      do-do-do’s to the endless chorus ‘why do we do it;

                      how do we do it?’, and looking for her house keys
                      under metal clouds; the long grass grows rosettes around
                      yellow leaves, brown leaves, by the leaning iron fence the
                      steep tarmac cracks and the shorter grass takes over; past the

                      bronze age tumulus it’s clear, London’s grown up a lot
                      since I watched Francis Chichester sail up the river
                      from the window up on Eglinton Hill – something he did –
                      now there are Shards and Wharfs and stacking planes

                      and significant lights denoting all manner of whey and access but
                      still my nose is running and I need to have a wee; I suppose
                      I need to get home now the light is fading slow and fast
                      at 52 – the ash has only lost its upper leaves by the roof

                      at 48 there is afternoon tv after electric piano practise is done
                      at 44 – the estate agent climbs awkward into her clean soft-top with
                      high clip heels; at 36 – a lantern shines arched in the porch while
                      sirens circle the borough and there’s nothing left here now outside 46

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: Batman#175
bench 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
blue & leaves & sun wormhole: Jean Miller kissed Salinger
breathing wormhole: born again
brown wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
buddleia wormhole: (Little by Little)
buildings & travelling wormhole: I could step / more open
cars & roads wormhole: the long road
change & time wormhole: Dr Strange II – … things are the same again
clouds wormhole: the utter beauty of giving when receiving
communication wormhole: Maidstone
compassion & feet & love & speech & talking wormhole: there are patient listeners
dream wormhole: we’re born // to die
Eglinton Hill & Woolwich & yellow wormhole: letters to Mum V – carrying on in duty and love
eyes & looking & shadow wormhole: a maturity
Genesta Road & rooftops wormhole: corroboration
ghosts wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
glass & light & streetlight wormhole: oh-pen
glasses wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
house wormhole: day off
identity wormhole: that
living wormhole: scattered
London wormhole: letters to Mum I – a walk / and talk
music wormhole: no exit
passing & sound & walking & windows wormhole: Matildenplatz / & Luisen
people & rain & sky wormhole: Luisenplatz
piano wormhole: … walking down the street
pigeons wormhole: tune up // baton taptaptap
purple wormhole: consturnation …? // consternation
school wormhole: tag cloud poem VI – anyone’s eyes
smile wormhole: irretrievable / breakdown / of marriage
streets & trees wormhole: Dr Strange I – the trashcan tilted the better to see now the street
Thames wormhole: letters to mum II – family // like a grate
tv wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
walls wormhole: stuck free to move within

 

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cold wind

11 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

'scape, 2013, 4*, car park, cars, Crowborough, green, iron, leaf, rust, seeing, town, wind

 

 

 

                                   what
                                   is there
                                   to see in a
                                   small town
                                   back street car
                                   park before a bolted
                                   galvanised railing with
                                   rust just breaking through
                                   behind the smooth bottle-green lines
                                   of a Volvo

                                                     but between
                                   the single curled leaf of a
                                   weed shaking in the cold wind

 

 

 

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

cars wormhole: open window
Crowborough wormhole: tag cloud poem IV – C
green & wind wormhole: on sitting / in front of / a hedge
seeing wormhole: ‘I can hear it raining / but cannot see it …’

 

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titanic

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1912, 2014, 20th century, 5*, architecture, border, children, clothes, eyes, faces, iron, life, looking, passing, people, perspective, photograph, quay, ship, society, Southampton, streets, talking, time, Titanic, vision, walking, windows

     toddlers stand
by iron railings squinting at the streets

     faces peer
from head-to-toe costume of all station for to talk sincere to each other

     faces caught
in crowds all around in the streets or behind railing at the quay
     eyes look
all uncomprehended at the small-box-world that defines their photograph

     written boards
and pipework discern heights of window in the stepped architecture

     lines and staves
the borders between vision and boundary

     a tool
for each and every level of function at each and every station
     of life

deck and perspective wider than a lifetime down which only
     one strolls

and each chain link that holds the ship titanic as a child’s torso

 

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: tag cloud poem I – numbers
architecture & passing wormhole: they find their life growing together –
children wormhole: Eglinton Hill
eyes 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
faces wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
life & looking & society & time wormhole: first a mishap then clear vision
people & walking wormhole: the chiropodist
streets wormhole: only the Batman realises that he is dead
talking wormhole: plethora: the Dark Knight Strikes Again (2002)
walking wormhole: 1963

 

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