APHANTASTIC

 While the world opens up beyond

my blue disabled door, life goes on

I'm left here in limbo, don't get me 

wrong I can handle solitary con-

finement, I've done it for years.

I know that I will never walk, wheel-

chair no use on sand or grass but

my mind is good for one thing.

Words flow out of me like rivers

to the sea, lost once more in under-

currents like when I was a boy.

I think the year was sixty-nine.

The year that changed everything

for everyone in Northern Ireland.

Felt so good to be away from tear gas

and rubber bullets, crates of petrol

bombs at every corner pavements

torn up from the streets, you would

think the world erupted. Buses 

burning on every street.

I wish I had another view but this is it. 

Like it or lump it's mine alone. I'm not

romantically minded, would you be. 

Unable to walk, talk, paralyzed unlike 

Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth. 

I'm lonely there are no daffodils, iCloud

is all I've got. I  have no mind's eye.

1. Aphasia, 2. Aphantasia;  Broken cords.

The inability to form mental images of 

objects that are not present.

Can you smell the stench of the street that's

as good as it gets? Grass and sand are text-

tures that I will never know. Locked away

in a syndrome, I will write my way home.

 OUT OF MY BLUE

How come I remember this and not re-

member that, vivid killings on the street

children un-born. My long-term 

memory erased left here torn.

 Not coming not going, forlornly

forlorn. I wish I could remember you

emerging from the womb, hair as

black, black can be oxygenated blond. 

These words are a basic form.

Words at least I can remember but 

not the grammar, words plucked 

words out of the stem to sit out here 

in limbo.

Morphogenetic poetry, it came

out of my blue, it rests in 

repetitive repetition on a feed-

back loop, going round and round

like a roundabout living hell.

Pessimism is all I've got, you righteous

lot won't ever understand. I'm under

and I can't stand it.

 

Amy-g-dala

AMY-G-DALA SAYS

Lou Read is looking down on me

In a state of ecstatic agony, come

Walk on my wild side. I can't re-

Member what left its water mark 

Waterboy.

What took hold when you hit me

With a flower.. Your shock- therapy 

Was in my blood, ruined pages.

All I ever wanted was to write 

a good lyric in your vein.

Shoot up on the run feel like a cruci-

Fiction son but this word play is not

A game this is magic and loss

The science of Lou Read.

The bed sit in Dublin was miles

From  New York but you trans-

formed me into be a published poet. 

This is my gift to you, feel the energy 

of ecstasy and agony activate 

negative to positive emotion.

Amygdala was giving good head

On a bed while the world waited

down on the Street Hassle.

He gave me what no pop group could

An agony and ecstatic, thought to ex-

Pression, touch my positive implosion 

Needle me on your black vinyl.

I"m-poet-tent, Remasteraed, tomography.

Adrianfox.org

W

Stephan B Hamann 1, Timothy D Ely, John M Hoffman, Clinton D Kilts

Affiliations expand

PMID: 11933997

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00425

Full text linksCite

AbstractPubMedPMID

Abstract

Considerable evidence indicates that the amygdala plays a critical role in negative, aversive human emotions. Although researchers have speculated that the amygdala plays a role in positive emotion, little relevant evidence exists. We examined the neural correlates of positive and negative emotion using positron emission tomography (PET), focusing on the amygdala. Participants viewed positive and negative photographs, as well as interesting and uninteresting neutral photographs, during PET scanning. The left amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex were activated during positive emotion, and bilateral amygdala activation occurred during negative emotion. High-interest, unusual photographs also elicited left-amygdala activation, a finding consistent with suggestions that the amygdala is involved in vigilance reactions to associatively ambiguous stimuli. The current results constitute the first neuroimaging evidence for a role of the amygdala in positive emotional reactions elicited by visual stimuli. Although the amygdala appears to play a more extensive role in negative emotion, it is involved in positive emotion as well.

Northwest passage in memory: Michael Hartnett

 FAIRY WATER

Rise little blackbird

To the top of the tree

Your song is witness

To pain and joy.

The sky was like a turner
painting, a dusky pink hue
hanging melancholy.

I’m planning to drive to Donegal
And listen to the Lambchop C.D.
This music still drifts me in and out
Of reality. Driving down the motor-
Way behind a horse box as if
The horses head came from
a painting into my imagination.

Galloping bareback through the Bann
and the Blackwater. Below a bridge
Where children wave.

Across the Sperrins past the raised ruins
And the raised to the ground ruins of history
On the north west passage through the fairy
Water into another world embroidered

In memory, thatched into time.

 THIS A BLOG POST OF INSPIRATION

Listening to spectator online,a century 

of Robert lowell, Jonathan Raben spoke 

Of receiving a post card from Robert Lowell, 

Thinking this a prank by his friend Ian-

Hamilton, all this reminded me of a poem 

I wrote twenty years ago about Robert-

NUCELLA

Imperfection is the language of art

                                                   Robert Lowell

I was reading your biography by Ian Hamilton, 

during the 15th chapter I discarded the bookmark

A post card I bought in Galway, the title 

was happy Dogwelk ( Nucella).

A finger the pale shade of marine

Life, blending with starfish, seaweed

Pointing to the seabed. 

Now I know where I stand in your intricate 

hard water.

I sit here at the dining-room table, filled

With whiskey, beer and poetry.

I look up into a mirror that shows

My way upstairs into the first day of March.

Cal's birthdate and mine. If I dare move

From this spot and chance my way into

The reflection of that first day, then 

only then will I descend the stair-

Well of my youth.

'Dolphin-

My eyes have seen what my hand did'.

I wish I had known you,

Even to say hello in the street.

To know why I cry on your words

To know why I cry. Full stop.

I had forgotten I wrote this?

THIS A BLOG POST OF INSPIRATION

Listening to spectator online,a century 

of Robert lowell, Jonathan Raben spoke 

Of receiving a post card from Robert Lowell, 

Thinking this a prank by his friend Ian-

Hamilton, all this reminded me of a poem 

I wrote twenty years ago about Robert-

NUCELLA

Imperfection is the language of art

                                                   Robert Lowell

I was reading your biography by Ian Hamilton, 

during the 15th chapter I discarded the bookmark

A post card I bought in Galway, the title 

was happy Dogwelk ( Nucella).

A finger the pale shade of marine

Life, blending with starfish, seaweed

Pointing to the seabed. 

Now I know where I stand in your intricate 

hard water.

I sit here at the dining-room table, filled

With whiskey, beer and poetry.

I look up into a mirror that shows

My way upstairs into the first day of March.

Cal's birthdate and mine. If I dare move

From this spot and chance my way into

The reflection of that first day, then 

only then will I descend the stair-

Well of my youth.

'Dolphin-

My eyes have seen what my hand did'.

I wish I had known you,

Even to say hello in the street.

To know why I cry on your words

To know why I cry. Full stop.

 

'finding yourself in a hole 

at the bottom of a hole', 

in almost solitude, 

and discovering that only 

writing can save you.

Marguirate Dumass