• 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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mlewisredford

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

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: tragedy

the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament

14 Saturday May 2022

Posted by m lewis redford in embroidery, poems, reflectionary

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2022, 8*, action, architecture, balance, black, blindness, Boris Johnson, Bowie, cause and effect, cave, daughter, desert, Donald Trump, female, God, gods, heart, history, internet, invisible, king, land, lies, Life on Mars?, love, male, Manjushri, market, noise, notice, others, people, plateau, Plato, poem, power, prayer, proliferation, propaganda, quiet, resource, rhetorical interrogative, Russia, science, self, serendipity, slave, smile, soap, soap-opera, springs, stranger, sword, throat, time, tragedy, truth, Ukraine, value, Vladimir Putin, war, windows, wisdom

the simple prayer

may quiet springs of
value-in-other always disperse
the black and grimy history
of power-over-other
like soap



—~~~\\\ ” sp ” ///~~~—

                                                                      the tattered poem

                                                  may …

                                        over millennia
                                        between peppered millions
                                        at surprise times and sad

                                        across rolling lands
                                        and conserved desert
                                        and steppèd plateau

                                        quiet springs
                                        everywhere
                                        serendipitous

                                        hand-cupped chin, lipless
                                        smile, no-halt act, surge
                                        `tween heart and throat

                                        unnoticed invisible
                                        daughter stranger slave;
                                        the black and grime of

                                        history of power over other
                                        storeyed and high-
                                        windowed, cacophonous

                                        and market-squared
                                        rhetorically interrogative
                                        aside truth:

                    … may they disperse
                    this impossible tension
                    like soap

—~~~\\\ ” tp ” ///~~~—

the bitter lament

“may” is a petition – to a god, to God or to ‘let it be’, it doesn’t matter as long as it is beyond ‘self’ – a directing of hearts (the only armaments that don’t cost a nation), a massing of resource (as-yet untapped and unexploited), a manoeuvring of cause and effect (the only true use of science), a discernment of love like the sharpest of flaming swords; “other” is anything or anyone which is not “myself” and, like a tragic farce played out on the widest of stages, cast of a thousand-thousand “myself”-s (hurry – for one aeon only; apply for auditions here), proliferates inponentially to the power of blind-folded distinction; “history” – I don’t want to know the history that led up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it is a soap-opera that I have seen “ten times or more”, not sure if “I’ve wrote it ten times or more”, “it’s about to be writ again” and I’ve long since abandoned any hope that an original line is to be found anywhere in the entire web of the universe; “power” is male, but male woefully out of balance, to act, to control, to make, to command on the basis of a wobble-board, the king of the castle chanting empty rhymes, unbalanced with respect to “other” and with respect to what-is without blindfolds, a spoilt child who smirks what he wants, a Johnson who dares what he deceives, a Trump who deceives what he wants, a Putin deceived by empty rhymes, so involuted that even before they think to open their mouths have been lying for generations within centuries; “prayer”, “poem”, “lament” is “female”, which is never mentioned, it is “wisdom” (which is never used), it is the balance to male (which is never considered – ‘too impractical’), it is the reference to “other” and the reference to “what-is” (whether “what-is” is blind-folded or not), it is not the replacement of male (that would make it … male), it is the heart-surge of care empty of all self-reference which, unfortunately, has been left in a cave, somewhere, some say in chains, and entertained with flickering lights on the back-wall, for millennia …

 

 

 

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

architecture wormhole: despite all / depiction
balance wormhole: the balance necessary between
black wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
daughter wormhole: looking ahead
history & time & war wormhole: mirror
love wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets…’
others wormhole: ‘the practice &…’
power wormhole: eyes like petals
quiet wormhole: – creak –
resource wormhole: the Apple
smile wormhole: light of all interaction
windows wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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mirror

08 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2022, 6*, being, British Museum, enslavement, Greece, Have, history, identity, inner-self, mirror, outside, samsara, society, time, tragedy, war, woman

greek mirror

                                mirror

                        we lift
                whole armies of chariot, arm and thigh –
        scalloped handle either side –
                        to nichèd or columned view
                                asymmetrical
                                        grotesquery

                and for
        thousands of years now
                we see through eyes
                        polished and weighty above our heads
the extent of all our
                inwardly estate

 

I was struck by a caption by a mirror from the ancient Greek section of the British Museum which explained that rich women were not able to own any land, but that they could display their wealth in their own domestic environment and self-presentation

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

being & identity wormhole: ‘the practice …’
Have & samsara wormhole: travel // when I die
history wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
mirror wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
society wormhole: Candaka
time wormhole: ‘‘in my car I pass…’
war wormhole: riders of the night
woman wormhole: YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

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tragic and archival

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

'scape, 2013, 4*, driving, history, months, moving, practice, progress, sitting, time, tragedy, travelling, years

                      so

                      after months,
                      even years

                      of sitting
                      and feeling

                      I have achieved
                      some coagulation

                      set and
                      solid-enough

                      to make along
                      a country road

                      I can still
                      get caught

                      by the ‘tut’
                      to a wrong turn

                      tragic and archival
                      which takes

                      the best part
                      of fifty miles

                      and a change
                      of scene to

                      stand down
                      and move on

 

 

 

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

history wormhole: wakeoutofadream
sitting wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation
time wormhole: time
travelling wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
years wormhole: 1968

 

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ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

02 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2016, 8*, being, breathing, child, clothes, colour, comics, despair, Dorian Gray, emperor, exclamation, exposed, flowers, Granada, hope, identity, inspiration, light, love, mantra, model, phrase, portrait, Prajnaparamita, rain, rainbow, realisation, retirement, secret, seeing, self, self-containment, self-image, speech, step, thread, tragedy, vanity, wandering, words, world

title-ah-oh-meanwhile-tha-ya-ta

 

ah

 
le mot just
the piquant phrase
                                         the simple model rising magnificent
                                         from cavalcades
                                         of stoic tumbling

                                         threads through like
                                         weave which clothes me
                                         presentable to the world …

                                         but no one sees the
                                         emperor’s clothes of
                                         such fine thread it cannot
                                         be seen, no wise child
                                         to point and exclaim
                                         the hang and drape
                                         to put an end to all step –
                                         “look, mummy, that man
                                           is not an emperor!”

 

oh

 
less than naked
I am seen right through
                                         adrift of discourse
                                         I step with stubborn countenance,
                                         all the better to
                                         stare myself into existence,

 

meanwhile

 
awkward and
hidden away in some attic
                                         lest I lose [what I haven’t
                                         got] self-contained in trembling
                                         vanity, secretive in hope
                                         of things to come, desparate
                                         in tragedy that my grimy
                                         portrait might be seen …

 

 
wander, wander
around the flowers, smell
                                         their colour, breathe their
                                         light and let the light rain
                                         fall in shards of rainbow,
                                         cleansing with love –

 

tha-ya-ta

 

 
                      om     ga – te     ga – te
                                      pa – ra – ga – te
                                                      pa – ra – sam – ga – te
                                                                      bo – dhi     so – ha

 

retirement #3 when in Granada … visit the Alhambra, and visit the Generalife gardens … [if you have booked up to three months ahead]; on the walk up to the palaces are trees and shrubs which are plenty-watered by sprinklers, in the morning sun the sprays will often catch a rainbow at their edge; the bordered captions in the poem are comic-conjunctives, there is a beginning, middle and end being told here, folks; the mantra: thaya tha om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi soha, is the mantra of Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom; it can be somewhat semantically translated as “it’s like this: [everything is] gone, gone, completely gone, completely and perfectly gone with no loss, enlightened [dispersed, dispelled] all-right!”; but what’s ‘gone’: “the slings and arrows of outrageous romance” … of one’s self and the whole world positioned awkward to placate its mewling little story, as stolen by Joni Mitchell, who was talking too much at the time, from ‘Willy the Shake’;

 

 

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

being wormhole: pocket
breathing wormhole: within
child & light wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
comics wormhole: chartless …
identity wormhole: not / the Catcher
love wormhole: love and precision
rain wormhole: monument to vainglory
realisation wormhole: passing below
seeing wormhole: con / sum / mate
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – snow
words wormhole: just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …
world wormhole: the skyline

 

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familiasyncopation

13 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2016, 7*, apartment, baby, breeze, brother, cactus, children, cotton, family, father, Granada, laughing, meal, passing, portrait, running, sound, streets, sun, Sunday, talking, tragedy, uncle, walls

                                familiasyncopation

                                down
down in the narrow streetways of the Gran Realjo of always sunny Granada

                                                                clak
                                                vacuum clak whines
                                quickly clak scrapescrape around
                the ap – clak – ment

                light cotton cloth hangs
                                back into the room
                                                hangs
                                                relents
                                                hangs                hangs

                family
                                sits
                                                variably
                                                                for the
                                                                                meal
                father’s sentence – chairscrape –
                                ri – co – ch – e – t – s
                                                around four walls
                                                                in warm and all-inclusive statemental embrace                
                                                                                and continues – despite interruptions – all the while                

                children lament a chasing game
                                of plakplak sandals
                                with surprising tragedy
                                                in the street below an uncle

                pushing the baby
                                half on the pebbles                from time to time
                                                “ahahahaha … herrr”
                                                                talks staccato with his brother

                light cotton cloth
                                billowing out, not quite
                                                          not quite
                                                snagging
                                on the cactus

                leans back into the room

 

the title runs together the Spanish word for family (which ends in the useful prefix ‘a’ which links) with syncopation to provide a gloriously arrhythmic portrait of a family meeting for midday dinner on a Sunday through the wide open windows of the apartiemento; I’m not even sure if all the noises I heard were from the same family, but that doesn’t matter, they were, they were;

 

 

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

breeze wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
family wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
father wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions
passing wormhole: industrial estate
sound wormhole: … swap round
streets & walls wormhole: passersby
sun wormhole: woven-through
Sunday wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly
talking wormhole: sleep now
uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – from arm to nature, doing nothing

 

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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

 

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practice

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2013, awareness, doing, emptiness, practice, self-love, simplicity, tragedy, vindication

 

 

 

                                              practice

                                to simply
                do things, simple things,
                                simply

                                by touching the vindication
                                              the betrayal
                                the plaint the tragedy
                as rainbow and see-through as they may be –
                                there

                each one
                                of them both
                                              pretty and
                                                              nothing

 

 

 

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

awareness wormhole: sitting
doing wormhole: CV
emptiness wormhole: nothing // matters
practice wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
vindication wormhole: prayer to my self

 

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The Godfather III: // AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …

19 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2014, blood, cog, decades, film, Francis Ford Coppola, hair, Have, identity, loss, mother, mouth, naked, power, sound, The Godfather, tragedy, ugly

 

 

 

                                                                 The Godfather III:

                                                                           long
                                                                 silent         cry
                                   mouth open ugly naked
                                                 power gone

                   and every cog of every decade caught
                   on the same piece of rag coiled around each tooth
                   limp bloody and hair-fallen in her mother’s arms

                                                                                              … … …

                                                         … … …

                … … …

                AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHH …

 

 

 

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

film wormhole: I need to keep my eyes open / in meditation
hair wormhole: the tangles fall apart
Have wormhole: the lines are not that straight / after all
identity wormhole: dream 230315
mother wormhole: sight / seeing
mouth wormhole: sitting
power wormhole: the Conqueror
sound wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting

 

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it is complete

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2013, acceptance, beauty, career, doubt, duty, giving, hierarchy, identity, others, talking to myself, tragedy

 

 

 

                it is complete
                I can listen to all the pain
                                all the doubt and all the diminish
                                where the Venn diagrams
                                              overlap rather than merge
                                              convening a local hierarchy
                                                              always inverse to the myriad
                                                              always averse to the area left
                                              uncovered and unknown but
                                              I cannot expect the same from others
                                I can give            and become wide but
                                it will not be reciprocated
                up down or sideways
                and that is my duty

                                (and that is my beauty)
                                but not my tragedy
                                and not my failure

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: nothing // matters
beauty wormhole: my beauty
giving wormhole: truly invisible
identity wormhole: I can say / that I do all sorts of dance
others & talking to myself wormhole: prayer to my self

 

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prayer to my self

04 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2010, adjustment, anger, breath, care, career, dedication, discovery, dream, injustice, legacy, letting go, life, light, listening, moon, others, prayer, reputation, self, space, talking to myself, tragedy, vindication, work

 

 

 

                                prayer to my self

                                I had my stab at life – obdurate and rarefied –
                                I glimpsed the moon and captured its light
                                but nobody wanted it

                                let the tragedy go, let the injustice go
                                let the anger and indignation go
                                they are not the self

                                let the devastating ripostes before whole crowds go
                                let the overlooking and insignificance go
                                they are not the self

                                let the secret work and its Discovery – the Legacy – go
                                let the live-on-with-open-wounds-and-dejection go
                                let the career and the reputation go
                                they are all not the self

                                let there be the space from where all of this came
                                to let go and adjust, let there be the breath for new dreams
                                and the listening to declare, the pause for resolution
                                and the care to let go

 

 

 

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

breath wormhole: the Conqueror
career wormhole: the stance of Buscema // qualitatively
dedication wormhole: dedication
dream wormhole: dream 260713
letting go wormhole: lo
life wormhole: the endless acts of life
light wormhole: of a sudden // all the time
listening & talking to myself wormhole: the / very gradual art of sitting
moon wormhole: up here
others wormhole: good looking
space wormhole: fall
vindication wormhole: multifarious: the Dark Knight Returns (1986)
work wormhole: I do

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

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  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
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