reading // unstirred

Tags

2011, 6*, dissolving, growth, homoeopathy, letting go, reading, study, teaching, university, words, world

reading

haven’t got the energy to study anymore
university and teaching knocked that out of me
feels unwholesome now
over-eating
over-chewing

                far better now
                to read without trace without
                wholesale shopping and let the worlds*
                flavour my mind homoeopathically the way
                I would always have preferred but that now
                I can just let dissolve like cordial in water

                                                                                 unstirred

 

* sic

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

letting go 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
reading wormhole: Granada and other poems … continued
study wormhole: ashramas
teaching wormhole: while
university wormhole: Grizedale College
words & world wormhole: south horizon

 

south horizon

Tags

1959, 1967, 1979, 1993, 1999, 2011, 2012, 7*, abandonment, anger, Bowie, childhood, Dad, discovery, divorce, drum, evening, experience, horizon, light, London, Margaret Thatcher, memory, Mum, Nan, pain, parents, perspective, purple, rhythm, river, saxophone, shift, Shooters Hill, south, texture, Thames, travelling, words, world

                south horizon

                out on the river
                the purple is shifting

                but in the evening-bulb light
                the world-shaping words

                of grown ups
                is shifting uncontrollably

                but,          no; it’s OK          look
                there is rhythm, there is

                a saxophone, a hi-hat – shflpt –
                in the crack there

                where words sift
                where worlds shift

 

I submitted this to an online magazine; they didn’t want it; I’ll publish it here again with the copy that supported it:

about the poem: on my eighth birthday (in 1967) my Dad arrived home late from work; my parents had one of their last arguments; my Dad left home that night; I couldn’t remember much of what happened that night – what was said, how much I heard, how much I understood – but I realised that worlds could change quite quickly that night; years later, in 1993, David Bowie recorded ‘south horizon’ on his ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ album, but I didn’t really get to know the piece until 2011; hearing it etched that experience back into my memory – bevelled it up, almost – but it also supplied textures and chord changes to the memory that allowed me a perspective that held me from being just angry or hurt; (‘the river’ is the river Thames; we lived on Shooters Hill in SE London from where we could hear and breathe the river)

author bio: Mark Redford was born in 1959 and grew up in South East London until he bolted to university (like a bat out of hell) in 1979, hot from Margaret Thatcher’s election victory; London was never the same every time he returned back; his mother, who had brought him up with her mother (his Grandmother), died in 1999; since then he has travelled back to London frequently to find the previous 40 years, but only seems to find them when he writes down what he saw; you can see what he sees (possibly better than he can) at: https://mlewisredford.wordpress.com/; if you bump into him there, give him some directions would you?

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

abandonment wormhole: monument to vainglory
Bowie wormhole: new-found love – poewieview #36
childhood & Thames wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
Dad & divorce wormhole: beepbeep
evening wormhole: alighted
horozon wormhole: 1966
light wormhole: so pleased to see you again
London wormhole: 1967
Mum wormhole: 1967
Nan wormhole: work
purple & river wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
travelling wormhole: traffic lights and broad avenue
words wormhole: breathing out
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show

 

breathing out

Tags

2014, 4*, ambition, breathing, daily, emptiness, non-doing, openness, self-compassion, sitting, talking to myself, time, words, writing

                I must take
                the time

                to sit with
                an empty page

                each day

                without guile
                or ambition

                completely
                and openly

                and let

                the words write
                themselves

                with compassion
                as if I were

                breathing out

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

breathing wormhole: writing: // in turn
emptiness wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
openness wormhole: con / sum / mate
sitting wormhole: pocket
talking to myself & writing wormhole: No
time wormhole: open window
words wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …

 

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

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

 

 
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!”

 

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

 

 
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 –

 

 

 
                      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

 

just saying, is all VI: // accountable / for my own outbreath / …

Tags

2013, 2016, 6*, accountability, air, breathing, broken, career, dialectic, encounter, experience, fantasy, oxymoronic, pavement, practice, Principal, recognition, results-led education, sidelined, skill, slogans, staring, talking, teaching, time, voices, words

                just saying, is all VI

                agh; the Principal
                walking this way
                can’t avoid it have
                to talk to him; ‘how

                ARE you?’; and to
                my reclacitrant ‘OK’
                he tells me my
                experience and skill

                count for a lot and
                I walk away staring
                at the edge of the
                pavement trying to

                fit the words to
                decades of sideline;
                why didn’t I just
                scream in his face

                that his word and
                his breathing are
                oxymoronic to each
                other as I so often

                fantasise doing; but
                I am broken by this
                place in which these
                OK-spores are air,

                I have no leverage
                of dialectic from
                which to speak, so
                easy to evade my lob

                and practice by
                referring the Briefings:
                ‘a little precious’, ‘not
                a team player’, ‘ask him

                about his children’,
                ‘doesn’t affect results’,
                ‘doesn’t make sense’;
                smile and shift-agenda,

                endear by using his
                own name, slip in a
                Slogan and, there,
                a free and frank

                exchange which
                has left me accountable
                for my own outbreath
                …

 

as of September 2016 I am retired early from teaching – without prejudice – because I could no longer find any more inbreaths to keep practising; the encounter happened about three years previously, the humanomanagerialasphyxia virus took hold about 2001 beginning an odyssey with no resolve; now I teach myself to breathe again by embracing … no resolve; the next ‘just saying, is all’ will be about life inside the plastic bag over my head, I know it, I’ve written in, I’ve breathed it

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air & teaching wormhole: this aching // and spacious dichotomy
breathing wormhole: sleep now
career wormhole: travel
practice & time wormhole: interim
recognition wormhole: happen//ing
results-led education wormhole: teached / in the ass
talking wormhole: familiasyncopation
voices wormhole: did I get old?
words wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya

 

Prajnaparamita // Maitreya

Tags

2013, 7*, acceptance, anxiety, being, claim, dust, embracing, emptiness, Enlightenment, envelope, fear, labyrinth, leaves, letting go, life, light, living, loss, Maitreya, myth, pointlessness, Prajnaparamita, shadow, smile, stage, true nature, words

                                                                                Prajnaparamita

                                                                acknowledge
                                                                accept
                                                                embrace
                                                the pointlessness all around
                                                there is nothing to claim
                                there is nothing to gain
                                there is not even anything to lose
                deep within the fear and anxiety
                                cast adrift
                                                soha

                                                                                Maitreya

                                                                enfold
                                                                enhabit
                                                                ennoble
                                                the props all around
                                in the light in the shadows
                                even the dust and the leaves
                                and smile the tentative labyrinthine myth
                deep within the words and stage sufficient
                                unto itself
                                                soha

 

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!’, where ‘gate’ means ‘gone’ – it originates from the Heart Sutra wherein Avalokitshvara has just systematically taught that nothing exists intrinsically (including the means to realise this), but not that nothing exists which is why it is possible to attain Enlightenment (‘bodhi’); Maitreya’s mantra is om maitri maitri maha maitri arya maitri soha, wherein ‘maitri’ means ‘loving kindness’; the Prajnaparamita image I found in http://meditationincheshire.org/courses-events/special-events/prajnaparamita-empowerment-saturday-14th-november-2015/; the Maitreya image I found from http://www.alanpeto.com/buddhism/back-to-the-future-buddha/; the poems are mine, trying to make sense of a thousand lives

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

anxiety wormhole: listen willya
accpetance wormhole: magnificent salad
being wormhole: I
emptiness wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
leaves wormhole: the too big moon
letting go wormhole: time
life & light & pointlessness wormhole: beepbeep
living wormhole: even / a second
shadow wormhole: was there a moon / on the alleyway wall / confused in front of / the city skyline?
smile wormhole: passersby
words wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35

 

cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35

Tags

1971, 2016, 6*, becoming, being, Bowie, creation, death, dress, found, hidden, history, identity, life, possibility, quotidian, searching, society, story, thread, time, voices, wardrobe, words, writing

            cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread

            in all ongoing history, queasy quotidian iteration,
            of all the plaited threads, this particular will always

            splay without of the weave; strangely aligned with
            aquiline possibility ‘leave them alone and they’ll

            come home’ transgressive tales behind them,
            all dressed-up in words with open collars throaty

            upon a time improbable, hidden in plane site,
            hiding in plain sight but easiest found in wardrobes

 

outertextual in The Bewlay Brothers from 1971; there are more from here, but not now …

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

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & identity wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
Bowie & death wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
history & voices wormhole: and smile / like a bud
life & society wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – … as the new town marches in
searching wormhole: chartless …
time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – A Sign of the Times
words wormhole: poessay III: jijimuge
writing wormhole: AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

 

poessay III: jijimuge

Tags

2011, 7*, agenda, allegiance, choreography, communication, democracy, discussion, facet, gas, glass, inclusion, interdependent origination, jijimuge, knowledge, manipulation, power, reference, relative, semantics, society, understanding, value, words

                poessay III: jijimuge

                to allow any knowledge
                to accumulate
                it must be valued
                as        relative

                therefore       a-valuable
                so that it cannot render
                understanding;
                you cannot find a Way

                with accumulated knowledge
                you become anodyne
                to discussion and open
                to hijack and manipulation of the agenda

                communication becomes a wrestle –
                thrown grunted slammed –
                but nevertheless loosely
                choreographed

                words become the stock of the exchange
                but not the value
                each word just a nickel or a dime
                the value of words today

                is as means to exercise
                power              through allegiance
                to the notion of a freedom
                inherent in democracy

                I would rather look through
                a perfect glass stone
                look through one facet and see
                all other facets either near or distant

                but all related
                and then another facet
                still allincluded but interrelatedly interreferenced intervaluably intersemantically
                not dispersed            like gas

 

The world of ji: one in one, when one is taken-in by all, one enters into all.   The world of ri: one in all, when all is taken-in by one, all enters into one.   The world of ri and ji perfectly interfused: all in one, when one is taken-in by one, one enters into one.   The world where each individual ji is seen as interfused with every other: all in all, when all is taken-in by all, all enters into all.   This last one, jiji muge hokkai, is said to be the highest world of Enlightenment.

adapted from the words found in: http://www.taichido.com/chi/newbud/sato3.htm

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

communication wormhole: lonely and free
glass & society wormhole: fresh destiny
knowledge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
power wormhole: the purple mist between
understanding wormhole: listen willya
words wormhole: 1967

 

1967

Tags

1967, 1970s, 2014, Burt Bacharach, Dionne Warwick, divorce, green, hill, mist, Mum, parent, sound, voices, words

 

 

 

                                                                1967
                                                a holocaust
                                                happened

                                                quietly
                                despite all the ultimatums and final words rising crescendos and                
                                                muffled maybe

                                                                like a settled mist –
                                                houndstooth sound –
                                heavy on her back

                                                from which
                                she slowly rose like a hill dewy and scrub-plant green
                                                both clean
                                                and clear
what she had to do for the next decade

 

(theme from) the Valley of the Dolls: sung: Dionne Warwick, written: Burt Bacharach & Hal David; in 1967 my father left; in 1969 the decree nisi finally came through; somehow my Mum survived and brought us up during the 1970s

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

[Burt] Bacharach & Dionne Warwick wormhole: 1964
divorce wormhole: 1968
green wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Simon Upon The Downs
mist wormhole: one day / in 1956
Mum wormhole: the policies came to nothing
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] by Mark L. Redford – mmpph’
voices wormhole: constant hummm
words wormhole: Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions

 

Doctor Strange III – the needs of billions

Tags

2012, 5*, black, canyon, Clea, Dormammu, Dr Strange, father, generation, growth, Have, humanity, life, mother, nuclear, power, reaching, society, son, Steely Dan, unstable, veins, walls, words, world, yellow

 

 

 

                                a colossus
strides effortless across canyons and generation
                fed by the needs of billions
                                engorged enough to consume itself nucleic
                                it speaks with flaming head
                                              unstable
                                too much
                                              too much that it will disperse itself even as it reaches,
                the needs of billions
                                              flooded through a world of veins like
                                                                        pumped
                                                                        yellow
                                                                        fat
                                the mother is bound the father is blind
                                              and only all the words of worlds
                                                                        will speak
                                              while Strange and Devotion
                                                                        expand through dimensions
                                grown alarmingly through the stages of their lives
                                              quickly for to get there

                                                                        wanting
                                                                        it      all
                                                                        the son
                                              sits ‘by the blackened wall
                                                                        he does it all, he thinks he’s died        
                                                                                            and gone to heaven’*

 

* from The Royal Scam, The Royal Scam, 1976, Steely Dan

have you seen the second trailer for the coming Doctor Strange movie – you see: it’s coming, expanding through the dimensions –

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

black wormhole: El Palacio, 1946
Dr Strange & Have & power & society & world wormhole: Doctor Strange II – … things are the same again
father & mother wormhole: Elektra
life wormhole: ‘hope for things to come’
walls & yellow wormhole: what life went on
words wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Olly