• 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: shame

in deed

13 Monday May 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2019, 8*, Arya Lalitavistara, austerity, being, birth, black, Buddha, children, consumerism, death, doing, ears, fear, grin, hate, identity, infrastructure, investment, karma, letting go, lifetimes, love, mother, nirmanakaya, nose, samadhi, shame, skeleton, society, son, thought, war, womb, world

                                I

                gave birth to you, I
                held you deep within my very womb,
                the very kernel of all the labour of all my life’s beings and I

                gave you up to being
                with all the love of whole investment
                placed in care of self in state, you cannot,

                                just
                                die

                                __O—

                … she addressed her son

                who sat unmoved
                to the whole world’s reach
                that only his bones leaned together
                dry and upright

                who sat unconsumed
                to the whole world’s glut
                that to feel his stomach
                was to grasp his spine

                who sat unloved
                to the whole world’s reflection that
                children poked grass in his ear ‘till it
                came out his nose

                who sat unknown
                to the whole world’s shame
                that he was dust-black as a
                tree stump hideously grinning

                                __O—

                and know, mother, I do not die;
                I embroiled with the world to show
                the terrible wake of uncoupling
                her greasy mechinations,

                                in deed

 


honnnnnnnned like the string from a lute, not too tight not too loose, from chapter 17 of the Arya Lalitavistara Sutra in which the Prince’s mother (who had died and gone to heaven) came to see her son after he had been practising austerities for six years and was on the point of dying; she feared he was taking his quest to extremes, but he calmly told her that (the point of the whole Sutra being called ‘Lalita’, a ‘play’) that he had to show, in human form, what the two extremes of living in life were, in order to then show the way between to two extremes to liberation

 

 

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

being & war wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
black wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: the old man;
death wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
doing wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
identity wormhole: threshold to behold
letting go wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
love wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
society & thought wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: on facing the Have

 

Advertisement

Rate this:

A Solitude by Denise Levertov

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1961, 7*, air, anxiety, being, blindness, breeze, children, Denise Levertov, doors, exit, face, hands, image, journey, joy, light, movement, nowhere, passing, people, presence, quiet, right, seeing, shame, smile, solitude, sound, speech, stairs, staring, station, stranger, streets, sunlight, thought, train, water, way, world

                                A Solitude

                A blind man. I can stare at him
                ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it?
                No, he is in a great solitude.

                O, strange joy,
                to gaze my fill at a stranger’s face.
                No, my thirst is greater than before.

                In this world he is speaking
                almost aloud. His lips move.
                Anxiety plays about them. And now joy

                of some sort trembles into a smile.
                A breeze I can’t feel
                crosses that face as if it crossed water.

                The train moves uptown, pulls in and
                pulls out of the local stops. Within its loud
                jarring movement a quiet,

                the quiet of people not speaking,
                some of them eyeing the blind man,
                only a moment though, not thirsty like me,

                and within that quiet his
                different quiet, not quiet at all, a tumult
                of images, but what are his images,

                he is blind? He doesn’t care
                that he looks strange, showing
                his thoughts on his face like designs of light

                flickering on water, for hedoesn’t know
                what look is.
                I see he has never seen.

                And now he rises, he stands at the door ready,
                knowing his station is next. Was he counting?
                No, that was not his need.

                When he gets out I get out.
                ‘Can I help you towards the exit?’
                ‘Oh, alright.’ An indifference.

                But instantly, even as he speaks,
                even as I hear indifference, his hand
                goes out, waiting for me to take it,

                and now we hold hands like children.
                His hand is warm and not sweaty,
                the grip firm, it feels good.

                And when we have passed through the turnstile,
                he going first, his hand at once
                waits for mine again.

                ‘Here are the steps. And here we turn
                to the right. More stairs now.’ We go
                up into sunlight. He feels that,

                the soft air. ‘A nice day,
                isn’t it?’ says the blind man. Solitude
                walks with me, walks

                beside me, he is not with me, he continues
                his thoughts alone. But his hand and mine
                know one another,

                it’s as if my hand were gone forth
                on its own journey. I see him
                across the street, the blind man,

                and now he says he can find his way. He knows
                where he is going, it is nowhere, it is filled
                with presences. He says, I am.

 

how to be in another’s head about being in another’s head: this is a wonderful example of Whalen’s ‘graph of the mind’ – the reach and score of effervent; there is a wonderful clarity and excise about these words such that the encounter is ours as much as just reported; thank you Denise Levertov, as she touches her throat lightly to feel the vibrations as she listens

 

 

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

air wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
anxiety wormhole: anxiety
being & water wormhole: `whappn’d!
breeze & hands wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
doors wormhole: letting them go
light wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
passing wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: tram
quiet wormhole: new blue porsche
seeing wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
smile wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
thought wormhole: presence
train wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
world wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content

 

Rate this:

“I need help”

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2015, 4*, career, dream, fear, letting go, passing, shame, speech, stairs, teacher, teaching

                vulnerable and stuck
                on the way to first lesson

                taking the short-cut over
                the main stairwell, narrow

                foot-ledge, I cannot
                continue, don’t look down,

                I cannot go back, “I need
                help, get a teacher” and

                I am not ashamed to
                call out loud, no one

                does, I cannot go back,
                a teacher passes, I

                cannot remember her
                name “I need help”;

                I realise there is a balcony-
                corridor behind the ledge,

                safety partition is loose,
                I can lean back into it,

                break the screen, fall
                back, no more fear

 

 

 

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

career wormhole: circuitry
dream wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
letting go wormhole: place
passing wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
speech wormhole: Sandwich
stairs wormhole: is this it // all the time
teaching wormhole: I turn to wake up

 

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:

Elektra

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1986, 2015, architecture, being, Bill Sienkiewicz, blue, breeze, creation, Elektra, fall, father, Frank Miller, green, grey, grin, growth, guru, identity, infrastructure, inheritance, institution, life, mother, shame, skin, slate, smile, sound, thought, woman, world

                                                                                    Elektra

                                spidery fronds shidder in the
                                green breeze; the father is shot

                                impotent on his own boat the
                                mother is shot to birth; this is

                                important; looking strangely
                                like my creator I inherit the

                                shame of the father’s life, I
                                inherit the life of my mother;

                                responsible to neither, formed
                                by both; I have inherited

                                nothing, grown to reconcile
                                in a hundred different ways

                we

                                are institutionalised to the
                                very skin of our being by

                                the grin of care that keeps
                                us innocent and pure; that

                                paternal smile that gives no
                                light or warmth, rictus-like

                                everywhere in the infrastructure
                                and architecture (you took care

                                out from me, poppa,
                                and I never really spoke again)

                                stuck in the slate-grey
                                world of green and sickly

                                blue; I learn that I need to grow
                                and I find someone who

                                beats the father and the
                                mother from me with a stick –

                                it hurts, but it finally breaks me
                                when I learn to just
                                                         fall
                                                         by
                                                         my
                                                         self
                                                         with
                                                         no
                                                         safe
                                                         ty, no
                                                         iden
                                                         tity

 

from the 1st issue of Elektra: Assassin, 1986, by Frank Miller & Bill Sienkiewicz

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: inbreath
being wormhole: substance
blue & grey wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
breeze & green & mother & sound & thought wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – moment
father wormhole: 1968
identity wormhole: ashramas
life wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
smile wormhole: between thoughts
woman wormhole: Hotel Room, 1931
world wormhole: the / bright yellow / world

 

Rate this:

a crack of lightning / in the dark of night

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2016, 7*, arc, architecture, axle, beach, belly, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, buoyancy, centre, choice, connection, dark, emptiness, eyes, gesture, high, lightning, mind, mouth, night, opening, pattern, phantom, pillars, porticos, posture, samsara, shadow, shallow, shame, Shantideva, show, silence, sky, speech, true nature, twilight, uncaused, universe, waves, world

                                a crack of lightning
                                in the dark of night

                                the world casts eyes
                                downwards bullied

                                by the dirty phantoms
                                of obligèd choice with

                                pillars and porticos
                                deep and high across

                                the silent sky like an
                                end of age crepuscule

                                gathering ténèbres,
                                all while the mind revolves,

                                empty to the universe about,
                                empty at the centre of

                                the mighty axle of
                                uncaused leave to turn,

                                when through the merest
                                gesture of pouvoir, an

                                imperturbable shift of
                                posture, a disclosure, is

                                opened and cracks
                                across the sky – the

                                phantoms cannot dully
                                sustain their buoyant

                                suspension – they arc
                                and connect in frantic

                                pattern showing
                                everything like bellies

                                of incestual shame and
                                mouths too small to think

                                to talk; “no more” they
                                wail, leaning into their

                                true nature like shallow
                                waves on a long beach

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Shantideva, chapter one, verse five

 

 

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

architecture & mind & sky wormhole: reaching branchbeach wormhole: development
Bodhichitta wormhole: – sigh! –
emptiness wormhole: the policies came to nothing
eyes wormhole: 1964
mouth wormhole: too late:
night wormhole: work
posture wormhole: impressionism
samsara wormhole: my // shell – poewieview #19
shadow wormhole: Drug Store, 1927
silence & speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
twilight wormhole: ‘the hour before dinner – / the empire of dusk’ – poewieview #6
waves wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – introdepthion
world wormhole: words tumble like / boulders – poewieview #25

 

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 …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

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

category sky

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

  • 49,977 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.

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

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 1,847 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...