• 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: presumption

I turn to wake up

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2014, 7*, authority, breakdown, Carol, determination, doors, dream, Emily, future, heart, Hillside, home, humiliation, identity, innocence, life, managerialism, neglect, power, presumption, pupils, responsibility, sound, streets, teachers, teaching, time, toilet, uniform, waking

the e-mail that clanked dank in my heart
                the report I hadn’t written
                                for so long, for Emily
[her future all depends on it, poor Emily, she is so innocent and so pretty she deserves all the future she can get and You are neglecting her of it with your own languid longevity] but I will

                                NOT be responsible for future lives
                when I am ill from the presumption which doesn’t let me
even crap in private outside my own backdoor pan-in-the-yard
                they have called for me at my front door
                                with the brusqueness of a uniform
                                                with the presumption of amoral (sic)
                                                                even here
                                                the uniform and the outside toilet in my own house:                
                the humiliation could not be more complete so
I pull the hood of my dressing gown over my head
                and sink out of the dream

                                This Will Not Be

                                                I rouse Carol from
                                                                her own dream
                                                and drift somewhat back to …
                                … pupils all around the street
                                                they
                                                should
                                                not be
                                                there but only I
                of all the teachers in my front room
go out to front and tell them –
                command of my righteousness –
                                that they should not be there they should be BEHIND the house
                                                behind the house
                                but they turn languid
                and run round the corner down the street, they know
they don’t have to listen to me and
                I am powerless because
                                I am ill

                                I am so fed up with this
                                                I turn myself to wake up
                                                                I turn to wake up

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: slow enough / to have love
Carol wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”
doors & life wormhole: every step I take
dream wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
Hillside wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: dear Lucy
managerialism wormhole: ‘let them slide off …’
power wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
sound & streets wormhole: while
teaching wormhole: dream I // dream II
time wormhole: this time

 

Rate this:

slow enough / to have love

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2013, adjustment, ageing, breakdown, choice, confusion, consistency, doing, freedom, land, living, love, Martin Luther King, mountain, option, presumption, quiet, recognition, saviour, secret, shame, streets, stumbling, true nature, wasteland, work

                I used to skip and side-step all the
                too-presumptive adjustments
                for consistency and do it all

                in my own sweet way
                secretly hoping for recognition
                shamefully thinking to be the saviour

                now I’m confused and made old
                stumbling and doddering by the
                too-many prescriptive options to

                exercise the choice I am offered
                so I continue to do it all in my
                own sweet way, quiet enough

                to be effective, ignored enough
                to have scope and slow enough
                to have love; I have come to

                the top of the mountain and I have
                escaped a promised land
                four times injured to within

                an inch of my own true nature
                and I roam the streets and wastelands
                now, free at last, free at last

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: strain
doing wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
living wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
love wormhole: handsome
quiet wormhole: open window
recognition wormhole: not / the Catcher
streets wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
work wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

 

Rate this:

con / sum / mate

11 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2014, 7*, awareness, being, defensive, funny, identity, line, openness, page, palimpsest, presumption, seeing, skin, space, sparrows, vulnerable, white, writing

                onto the white space
                between the lines

                who is writing
                why is writing

                not loose because defensive
                not inspired because presumed

                (palimpsest from the previous page
                 provides grip from prequel (funny –

                 a sparrow tries to land on the bonnet
                 but cannot grip to stop flapping)) but

                there needs to be a cut-through
                down there, between the lines,

                to find the sense of writing about
                something

                other than just filling space,
                a plain seeing pared

                from between skin and pith
                vulnerable and recognised

                in all its citric fragrance
                that opens eye wide

                to test the membrane
                to taste the flesh run

                                con
                                sum
                                mate

 

how to ‘hold your seat’ (Pema Chodron) when driving a pen

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: returning home handsome
being & writing wormhole: … swap round
identity wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
openness wormhole: magnificent salad
seeing wormhole: travel
space wormhole: Clea
sparrows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Snow
white wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow

 

Rate this:

the both passive and transitive / non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being

05 Thursday May 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2014, being, cognisance, conception, courage, creativity, depression, doing, emptiness, equanimity, event, flow, heart, heartbeat, hesitancy, honour, key, life, line, meaning, no big deal, nothing, openness, page, passive, pointlessness, presumption, sitting, striving, suffering, thought, time, transcendent, transitive, words, writing

 

 

 

                                the both passive and transitive
                non-presumptive pre-conceptualist attenuation of being

                                anxiety across the open page unsure,
                perched on the open line

                                ‘what if I put pen to paper and nothing happens?’
                ‘what if there is nothing but empty page and feint line?’ does not trust

                                that I am alive and cognisant to the heart
                of every beat if I had but the courage to face it,

                                all down through the endless steps of line
                whether there are words on the line

                                that I write in flow, or hesitancy, or not
                and whether they make sense or not

                                and whether my sitting was transcendent
                or not, or not done at all

                                and whether I concave at the pointlessness of activity
                or create the key to all strife and striving, or fail, or get depressed

                                I will continue eventful to evenness
                affording honour to is, and ‘no big deal’ to what is not

 

 

 

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

being & doing & life & sitting wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
creativity & pointlessness wormhole: the writing’s on the wall
depression wormhole: Teaching career: much like Monet’s ‘Impression: soleil levant’ or, in the long run, de Chirico’s ‘The Red Tower’
emptiness wormhole: my / superpower
meaning & thought & time & writing wormhole: B le tch l ey P ark
openness wormhole: dash
words wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

Rate this:

up here

18 Monday May 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

'scape, 1970, 1972, 2015, architecture, birds, buildings, cars, city, clouds, eyes, Gil Kane, identity, John Romita, knowledge, life, light, moon, people, perspective, presumption, rooftops, Roy Thomas, searching, seeing, shops, sky, skyline, society, sound, speech, Spiderman, Stan Lee, step, streets, thinking, time, venetian blinds, vertical, walking, walls, windows, years

                                deep down
                in the streets light can only be noticed
                between step and event all the while slogans
                are shouting high and huddled to the
                                              receding
                                              rooftops

                                but the streets
                can be taken sideways (from third floor up) with
                panned vista of skyline for all to see; me, I crouch at right angles
                to the depth-rise of sky-plummet
                                              searching
                                              for the

                                (pinnacles
                amid stacks of façade discerned by ledge and cornice
                sheer sides with no purchase beautiful for all their …
                                              stark
                                              knowledge)

                                I find ways in,
                over rather than through, the vertical line
                that makes architecture wide such that up can only reach higher
                                              the better
                                              for me
                                              to arc

                                impossible
                through all manner of event
                and despite all presumption – birds flattering in all
                                              direction –

                                up here
                among the sooty stacks
                I know my footing up sides of wall
                while those below stand scattered about the ground
                                              pointing

                                up here
                                on the stack
                birds make their way in occasional formation despite cloud
                and measure, where on the ground there is no parking despite time
                                              from
                                              high

                                up here
                people walk the streets like filings
                still warm from the splinter but magnetised in damaged clumps
                they let the lonely antennae do all the
                                              tensile
                                              thinking

                                thinking
                                thoughts
                are best done above the storeyline, clung to the outside, lean and breathtaken
                (otherwise they get flabby) the angle always far better
                                              as nadir

                                rooftops
                higher than most are perspectives in which to dress
                that allow vault and flagpole-spring to one façade or another
                whilst people stand around at parties, their backs to the windows, unaware
                                              of their own
                                              identities

                                I will walk
                up to the window below, cars parked variously on the street,
                stacks of elegant housing ignore the open-air caught and struggle with
                                              venetian
                                              eyes

                                the up-
                                rumble
                of the city may be constant but only noticeable
                when strangled, oh, where is the moon waiting below rooftops
                to make shop fronts blind and apartments
                                              contemplative?

 

plucked in passing overhead from the pages of Spider-Man #90-113 (November 1970 – October 1972), written by Stan Lee & Roy Thomas; drawn by Gil Kane and John Romita

 

 

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

architecture & buildings & people & seeing & sky wormhole: Brugges April 2015 – looking lost
1972 wormhole: 1972
birds wormhole: purpose
cars & walking wormhole: “King …”
city wormhole: events happen / through all measure of name
clouds wormhole: hot summer / morning
eyes & sound & walls & windows wormhole: Jackie’s slight smile
identity & thinking & time wormhole: [start where you are III] – delve
knowledge wormhole: the Apple
life & speech wormhole: out side of the writing / lodge
moon wormhole: tag cloud poem VIII – growth
rooftops wormhole: sight / seeing
searching & streets wormhole: Dionne Warwick
shops & society & years wormhole: 1959
skyline wormhole: gazing at the night / as my eyes passed the jagged hole / my head disappeared
venetian blids wormhole: 1963

 

Rate this:

writing

06 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2*, 2011, allowing, being, growth, presumption, writing

 

 

 

                           writing

                should not be
                pre-trod
                presumed
                pre-empted            (pre-emptied!   HA!)

                it should tread
                it should see
                it should arrive

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: living
writing wormhole: writing

 

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 …

  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’
  • Journey
  • ‘the practice …’
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky
  • sweet chestnut

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 1,848 other followers

... just browsing

  • 48,327 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.

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.

Kadampa Life

Buddhist meditation applied to our everyday lives...

Laughter Over Tears

Where books, movies, anger, confusion and musing live together in sin.

Poetry Fluff

No-Fear Poetry

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

The Sixpence at Her Feet

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 1,848 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