POARTRY LIKE SUNSHINE IS FREE
(skywalking)
Amended for Stacy, this piece goes back and
forth like me I have no cronology dates and
times mean nothing to me.
Memory is begining to filter back into my short
term memory due to Lions mane a food
supplement a memory and focus enhancer,
these words are for Stacey and my friend Andrew.
In 2005 I took a massive stroke that almost killed
me, they say I died for seconds in I.C.U. After they
declared me dead I sat bolt upright like an image
from the exorcist or a Steven King book.
The stroke erased my long term memory un-
able to remember my childhood, my family, three
children being born and my eighteen-year
marriage. It erased my left hemisphere, unable to
walk or talk it wiped clean my hard drive left me in
a wheelchair paralysed down the right side of my
body. Since then the Royal Victora done an
operation called falingoplast to repair my
damaged vocal cords but one side was damaged
beyond repair my voice began to recover enough
to communicate but my volume is very low any
background noise and you cant understand my
mumbling.
I was one of the first ever to recieve this
operation in Northern Ireland, before this I had
no voice so thanx.
I don't think my family realise just how
much of life I lost, they just think I'm a mumbling
dementia wheelchair being. People can't grasp
disability until they have to face it. I was one of
those beings who were never in hospital for
anything major, I hope they never see this side of
humanity. I have been amazed for twenty
years that I am still alive. I don't know of anyone
that survived a stroke for twenty years it blows my
mind literally.
People don't believe me when I say to top it all,
I have a degenerative spinal disease, so for two
years I have been bedridden due to pain and
hibernating away from covid 19 now my body is so
weak with bedsores that I cant sit in a wheelchair
or go out. I only see my son and four care
givers. I'm only alive due to my neice/daughter
STACEY I LOVE YOU THANX
I owe her so much, she gets my medication gets
my shopping and treats at weekends. Without her I
would be dead, She works has a family, has rods
in her back to counter her crumbling spinal cord.
I hold no memory of us but she says I was like
a father figure, I do fell her presence as if she is
mine. I attempted suicide twice and she
was one of my only visitors, I dedicate this piece
to my friend Andrew and Stacy the only people
who tried to understand that I didn't commit
suicide to die.
Positive Suicide
I woke in an A&E
ward sobbing
my heart out realizing
that people
around me cared.
I had reached rock
bottom,
I had nothing to live
for.
I was visited by the
psychiatric team,
two guys that held my
life in their hands.
I had on a velvet
underground t-shirt
The one from the Andy
Warhol album,
the one with the big
banana, my fav
Album of all time.
So, the conversation
began with their
love of the velvets. Then it got down
to
the nitty gritty, do you think
You’ll ever harm
yourself again
they asked.
Have you ever heard of
positive suicide,
I said, and both nodded
intrigued,
I didn’t try to kill myself I said,
I
committed suicide to live not to die.
Even when I was taking the tablets
I knew what I was
doing and why.
I had nothing to live
or die but to do
any of the two you I had to gamble,
gamble on life after-all life is a gamble.
I live a lonely existence and no one can help me
only me, through my writing I have found
a place where i can exist and be myself. I have been
to mental health sessions stroke groups etc, I had
to stop going. I enjoyed the social aspect but i cant
listen to thirty odd people who had a stroke there
was one lady who had nine strokes and you could
see it in her eyes. They all had family I had no one,
live alone and had to close that disabled door and
live with loneliness and those stories. It was
having the opposite effect, depressing me. I came
home after those sessions and cried so for my
own mental health I had to stop and dig deeper
into myself.
I think I have writ the pomes out of me, now I will
try to unravel the best of my blogs.
I am a poet of elegies I am sensitive to what I see
and hear, like this essay and all my writing is my
feeling of truth. Wasn't it Keats who said truth is
beauty and beauty is truth. I am compelled to
write my truth repitition-repitition, After all life is
habit forming it goes round and round
celebrating axe-mas, easter and new year over and
over. Memory is reincarnation, this is my
memory, Poartry: my pomes and paintings come
from the same place my inner being.
Alina Feld said in her study of melancholy, the self
knows it’s light only by knowing its
darkness”. My darkness it seems is projected from
within, I live within the state of melancholy, but I
hope this essay shines a little light in the dark.
'finding yourself in a hole, at the bottom of a hole'
in almost solitude, and discovering that only
writing can save you.
Woe be gone, woe be
tide, betide of woe
begone inside.
a fox
For a few weeks now i have been taking a
mushroom food supplement that helps memory
and this essay is the result. I cant picture these
images in my head but I know I was there, go to
Paul Stammer.com a food suppltment that helps
memory and focus. I couldnt have written this
essay weeks ago. It gives me hope to cling on
by the skin of my teeth. I recommend this to
anyone with memory loss.
Lions Mane Mushroom 2000mg Super High Strength 5:1 Extract (90 Vegan Capsules) Cognitive Focus & Immune Support Product for Men and Women.
I have quarintined myself I can no longer
mingle with the world, its like being in a hell
cell without parole or a good friday agreement.
Beyond my blue disabled automatic door
is like the film Martian with Matt Damon.
I cried when watching, he lived better on Mars
than I do on earth. Now I have to get a boost for
omicron and that's not all I suffer from.
Aphantasia:
The inability to form mental images of
objects that are not present: Its black behind my
eyes, I cant cling to an image of my mother, sister
sons and brother where one does not possess a
functioning mind's eye and cannot voluntarily
visualize imagery. this is why I recycle images
my blogs are my minds eye.
Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create
mental images in one's mind.
The phenomenon was first described by Francis
Galton in 1880 but has since remained relatively
unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed
after the publication of a study in 2015
conducted team led by Professor Adam Zeman
of the University of Exeter.
wikipedia.org
I grew up in a harsh world of I.R.A.
men Martin Meehan and Francie Mc Guigan
were like uncles to me, we even visited Sean
Mc Stefoin, poetry was not their forte, war was
their game. My father asked me aged
fifteen to prime a bomb I looked him up down
in disgust that he should ask such a thing, and
wallked away saying I cant kill. I think he wanted
me to be like him a lying murdering bastard.
It was around the time of the narrow water
bombing. On that day we sat at the dinner table
watching the news we called the shooting results
read out like football scores.
The newsreader said soldiers were killed by a
bomb at narrow water, my father jumped up
of his seat like a goal scored at a cup final, I threw
my plate of food and walked saying you were once
a British soldier they were sons and brothers. I sat
in a near by field and cried, I cried for years after
that thirty years of tears.
Poetry is the essence of wonder in me, I began
listening to my form teacher when he read poetry
Shakespeare and Guillivers travels at Dundalk
technical college. I hated school but when he read
you could feel his passion of great words
I fell into his trance I looked around the class
noone was interested he even took the
dunce class to the cinema to see Julius Cesar.
It was then I knew and didnt know I wanted
to be a writer. He came to my home to convince
my parents to stay on at school he knew I seen
what he read, but I couldnt wait to get away from
my father. School was like a cadet school everthing
was militarily drilled into you, I wasnt drilled by
anyone. I was a poet of peace not war. I just didnt
know then but eventually came from instinct you
become what you want to be if you dig deep
enough into yourself. People depend to much
on religion to be themselves follow your own
route though the drill sargeant's bullshit (my father,
police, headmasters,priests) .
I ran away from home four times at age sixteen
went to my aunt Peggy in London until the police
deported me back to Ireland for robbing a shoe
factory, I was a bad boy but I had fun gathering
life to write about and to beat my commmunity
service fine I skipped to live in Dublin.
Its been a rough ride to publication but life was my
education you have to take the rough with the
smooth. I dont believe in the education system,
they fill your head with useless business orientated
bullshit thats stops the creative process. I got my
master degree taught at the poets house
Falcarragh, Donegal. It didnt feel like studying
with Jimmy Janice and family it felt like home
from home. I believe you have to read to write
but you have to live and learn by your mistakes.
Its not necessary just to live but to feel said the
Portugese Fernando Pessoa.
I began by jotting down lyrics listening to Lou
Reed in a tiny bedsit in Dublin creating my dirty
boulevard. Etna drive in Belfast, living my fathers
gunrunning, he skipped bail and went on the run
in 74' and my mother said he had to take me as I
was a wild street kid with no fear who would end
up dead on the streets. I wrote a blog called a fox
looking at afox by a fox on this blog, like me you
have to dig.
Lou Reeds creative writing through rock and roll,
there was no one like him. I set about trying to
write a short story like The Gift on second V.U.
album. His feeling of words gripped me, I wanted
to do what he done in Ireland using harsh language
when needed. There is no alternative to fuck cunt
and bastard you dont have to use all the time only
when to reflect disgust and I lived through plenty
of that. His creative writing inspired me like him,
I wrote what the world people didnt want to hear
and ended up like him with a degree in creative.
In his world he was mentored by Delmore Swartz
his literature father, I had the poet James Simmons.
Our lives mirrored eachother, he wrote I'll be
your mirror reflect what you are, like Raymond
Carver it spoke to me.
I began to write seriously putting it into a poetic
prose form and sending out for publication.
Trying to piece together my fathers life, he was a
deep secritive man. Like Lou Reed I say my father
never gave me shit but I was gripped ever since
my father died. It was as if he gave me the gift of
these words trying to put words to his
sad Bastard life. We hardly ever spoke it was as if
I felt his hurt twisting into him, we had a love hate
thing.That was the title of my first poem I had
published from his life and the first jimmy
Simmons edited in my first collection
by Lagan press.
The Light on the Stones
I retrace your final journey now in a blue car,
Not black, alone on the motorway.
Passing the Maze prison the stench of my engine
Overheating is like gunpowder, spent shells,
Lingering, your dream of Irish freedom.
I climbed the mountain graveyard
Above the violent divided the city,
Above the peace-line that stood between us
In the living -room.
Your plot all weeds,
And wild grass cries out for order.
The fallen wooden cross bears no name;
But you are there. Like a sculptor
With clay I reach inward, my hands
As delicate as salmon wings riding
The white water, struggling
The strong currents of grief.
I brush the soiled tears from your eyes
And you wake in me, swimming
And glistening in mine. My hands
Shape the clay moulding our wounded past
I wrote our lives over and over again, i didnt want
to be another great writer, a demented drunk with
millions I didnt do it for book sales I gave my
books away for free, I knew my subject was in
me. For ten years i went about reliving the dark
past of my father and me spent in war torn belfast.
I enroled for a class at the technical college
and brought along a list of writers
I wanted to read: Bukowski, the beat poets
Lowell, Hubert Selby, Keats, Shelly, Coldridge.
a mixture of classic of classic contemporary
I gave the list to my tutor now friend Grainne
Tobin who said sorry the course states we have
to study Virgil, Shakespeare etc but i done them
at secondary school I told her and walked out
went to the library got my books went home
built a desk from the the box room door for
typewriter etc made a little office and went there
every day when my wife watched soaps.
I was writing my own soaps, I dont remember
but I do recall my desk was cluttered in poetry.
W.B yeats, Kavanagh, R.Lowell Keats,
i read but it was all above me.
For ten years before I got my M.A in
creative writing, I read and reread writ and rewrit.
A friend called to lend me an album by American
Music Club and a book called Fires by Raymond
Carver he was one of my only friends to talk
literature. When my friend left I flicked through
the book stopping at the poem for Karl Walenda
aerialist supreme, wow I was gripped to the poem
like I was skywalking holding the poets hand
when the poem finished, imagine that wire.
It took my breath away just like my teacher and
Lou Reed, i knew then i was on the right track.
Poartry came to me accidently on purpose,
a singer from New York and a poet from
the mid west of America spoke my tongue.
To this day i cant explain what all the people
have given a sense of wonder feeling their words.
As Ray Carver said in one of my favourite poems:
What the doctor said
These men who have given me something no
one else on earth had ever given me.
He took my breath away, I gasped the same
gasp he did when he created that poem.
I've read that book umpteen times and still
find its wonder as Salman Rushie said read
everthing carver wrote. A poet in midwest
America touched me like no other here
in Ireland, I skywalked I'm still skywalking.
His poem scarred my inner being. You dont
read his poems you feel them:
Lovin them all the way back to the source, loving everything that increases me.
Raymond Carver
Master o' Donohue, Raymond Carver, Lou Reed and James Simmons not forgetting my father.
'IMAGINE THAT WIRE'
