glancing up from the text / searching for ground …

Tags

2017, 5*, Bodhisattvacaryavatara, body, camouflage, emptiness, grey, ground, legs, profile, quiet, rooftops, sky, space, spider, study, telephone lines, vertical, windows, world

                glancing up from the text
                searching for ground ah,

                look at you and your little
                fat body standing side-on

                and vertical to the world
                with six legs pointy into

                space quite despite the two
                slightly divergent phone lines

                stretching quietly above
                the rooflines and before the

                wide grey sky in which is
                camouflaged … everything

 

chapter 9 of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara is both a simple and necessarily complicated teaching about the nature of reality: the simple bit is understanding that nothing exists as it appears; the complicated bits are what to do with this understanding at every turn of attention

 

 

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

emptiness wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
grey wormhole: … the underleaves show
quiet wormhole: oh, alright then
rooftops wormhole: cool / tiled flooring
sky wormhole: sreet
space wormhole: sharpened apex
study wormhole: two profiles
windows wormhole: ash leaves
world wormhole: letting them go

 

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letting them go

Tags

2017, 6*, attention, awareness, b/w, blues, branches, chords, comics, doors, guitar, identity, improvisation, laziness, letting go, life, living, morning, mouth, notice, passing, perspective, retirement, sound, talking to myself, twilight, world, writing

                I used to be lazy and cast wide
                with absently open mouth
                greedy to capture every
                snippet of notice to write:

                finding the secret doorway
                in the b/w reprint vista
                that will be the perspective
                with which I will return, noticed

                finding the lingering trill
                and the shifted-chord refrain
                across the neck of my guitar
                inexorable in-tangent flight

                finding new twilight between
                turning bare branches in which
                to pace the following
                mornings in strange new worlds;

                but it was a laziness difficult
                to maintain, this finding of access
                through letting them go …
                into awareness – much more alive

 

 

 

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

attention & identity wormhole: to arms, then;
awareness wormhole: loss
branches wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
comics & mouth wormhole: 1964
doors & life & retirement wormhole: lost the search
guitar wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
letting go wormhole: chuckling
living wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
morning wormhole: abandoned sound mirrors
passing & sound wormhole: cross-section
talking to myself & writing wormhole: oh, alright then
twilight wormhole: without any buffet at all
world wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

‘when travelling astrally …’

Tags

1964, 2016, 5*, black, clouds, Dr Strange, facade, faces, fingers, purple, sky, Strange Tales, texture, time, travelling, walls, white, windows, world

                when travelling astrally the
                eloquent fingers navigate the
                world which is flat white or
                receding black where the only
                elapse are the hands of time
                and the turn of windows in
                the facades of 3rd dimension
                and gargoyle faces bystand
                on walls; light leans between
                struts and the clouds texture
                the sky like purple worms

 

from Strange Tales #121, ‘Witchcraft in the Wax Museum’, June 1964; Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

black & Dr Strange & time & walls wormhole: coagulating
black & white wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
clouds wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
faces wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory
purple wormhole: with all love released
sky wormhole: between
travelling wormhole: travelling // arrival
windows & world wormhole: frame

 

frame

Tags

1964, 2016, 4*, Dr Strange, frame, hands, magic, movement, open, seeing, society, Steve Ditko, windows, world

                hands like open plates
                send the seed of
                miniature through
                opened windows

                in a world that
                fashioned windows to
                see all movement,
                requires the cross of

                frame

 

from Strange Tales #117, ‘The Many Traps of Baron Mordo’, February 1964; Lee & Ditko

 

 

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

1964 & Dr Strange & windows wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory
hands wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
open wormhole: for / the first time
seeing & society wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
world wormhole: circuitry

 

circuitry

Tags

2014, 6*, being, career, circuits, circular poem, communication, doing, echo, identity, lead, mind, silence, society, thinking, time, world

 

                                                                    so much
                    unless there were                         overrule and overlay
             can not respond to                                   forming ad hoc
                my silent mind                                         circuitry
    gathering echoes that                                           both clipped
                 demands like                                             and split
 in a vacuous world that                                           through junction
             to make the play                                          and relay
             choice is bypassed                                    massed in
           so thick over time that                         cable over lead
                                          clumped

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: holiday
career wormhole: breathing through hypnagogia
circular poem wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell
communication wormhole: just saying, is all VIII: keeping up toxic appearences
doing & thinking wormhole: place
echo & society wormhole: divergent // direction
identity wormhole: concordance
mind wormhole: jump start
silence wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
time wormhole: lime crocs
world wormhole: I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

 

I keep / waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

Tags

2013, 5*, anticipation, belonging, books, cleaning, courage, identity, letting go, living, lost, recognition, sitting, space, voices, waiting, world

                I wanted to clean out the meditation room
                to help clear my sitting of voices

                I wanted to bring my books into the house
                to integrate myself into living

                the snag was, and always is, to think
                that there is space in the world for my voices to belong

                rather than the courage to let them all go: I keep
                waiting to be discovered and get lost in anticipation

 

 

 

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

books 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”
identity & sitting wormhole: time
letting go & living wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
recognition wormhole: slow enough / to have love
space wormhole: so pleased to see you again
voices wormhole: municipal garden
waiting wormhole: St. Edmund’s / Parish Church / Castleton
world wormhole: stone

 

stone

Tags

2017, 7*, acceptance, afterlife, barrow, breath, death, girl, hair, life, lost, parent, place, settlement, sky, speech, stone, time, world

courtesy of https://historicengland.org.uk – hope she doesn’t mind

                                there was
                                just out
                                and hunt
                                and gather

                                and then
                                we stopped
                                to keep
                                and found

                the whole world wider than the sky

                                that we
                                got lost
                                to where
                                we were

                                and time
                                which came
                                to late
                                and so we

                                hauled
                                the stones
                                to fix
                                place

                                and dis
                                covered
                                in …
                                and life

                                and death
                                the smell of
                                deepness
                                the breath

                                of stone
                “you know what they were talking about
                                in class …
                                Kirsty …”

                                scampering
                                sideways
                                down the
                                slope untied

                                hair waving
                                all over
                                the place
                “… they were talking about barrows, burial

                                chambers;
                                we’re standing
                                on them
                                now – ”

                                all over
                                the place;
                                I’ve come
                                from the

                                ground I’ll
                                go back to
                                the ground
                                when time

 

perspective; read the whole sequence as it treads sideways down through time: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
breath & hair & life wormhole: brown corduroy shirt / and dark redwine tie
death wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
girl wormhole: neither nude nor / descending a staircase
sky wormhole: ssreet chak-chak
speech wormhole: retirement
stone & time & world wormhole: weight

 

weight

Tags

2017, 8*, anatta, April, beauty, breeze, career, circle, clouds, countryside, identity, lesson planning, right angle, seeing, stone, stone circles, teaching, thought, time, view, work, world

                                                              April clouds are stone
                                              foreboding over the countryside
                                                                                   placed in circles across the land
                                                                                              over millennia

 

 

                I had wanted
                to follow thought and view

                at right-angle
                to all the world

                to find it beautiful
                in all its stark

                to lose my weight
                in perfect shifting breeze

                but had to work
                and plan the bend

                and case the sight
                and lost my sight

                (and gained some weight)
                I … had to work

 

retirement #8: when you slip out of a career and look back on what was achieved, there is only a quiet and drifting cloud to contemplate although the experience of working through it was of unworkable stone which you knew all the time shouldn’t be the case, but it was, it was; read the whole sequence as it drifts across the skies: in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: Sylvia
breeze wormhole: 1968
career & identity wormhole: strain
clouds wormhole: the // orange rose
seeing wormhole: Day Out
stone wormhole: reprieve
teaching wormhole: seen but not heard
thought wormhole: handsome
time wormhole: time travel
work wormhole: holiday
world wormhole: reading // unstirred

 

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 & texture 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