CARVER, KAVANAGH,

                        LOU REED AND ME

Where do I begin? 

I have always had a problem with authority 

my father,priests, teachers,police

soldiers tried to tell me what to do but 

I was having none of it. 

They say I'm from the Keogh clan 

related to the rebel Kevin Barry whether 

true makes no odds I have a rebel heart, 

a Keogh like my mother not 

that bastard father of mine.

Aged sixteen I beat my father to the ground, for sixteen years he told me what to do. I was on the dole living carear opportunities, like Lou Reed

my father never gave me shit. On my sixtenth birthday I toked on a fag and walked into the house

my father said put that out and go to your room.

I looked him in the eye, blew smoke in his and beat him to the ground. Days before I had spoke to my mother I  had to get out or I would kill my father,

when we were in the same room you could feel the tension it was affecting the family, she arranged for me to go to london to her sister Peggy so I beat him

and ran. I had run away three times before to get away from him but then I felt a man. my father was a military man I wanted none of that what more do I have to tell you apart from him being a cunt.

This was a time of punk, a new wave flowed through every kid this was a time to get up stand up stand up for your rights. Being in London in seventy seven was like being in a mad max movie.

london was magic but I hated all the violence, I left Northern I reland to get away from my father

and the violent troubles but in London everywhere I

went I was the big cunt in the corner, everyone wanted a piece of me but i wanted none of it, I had lived through the troubles as I said in a poem this was war and I was sick to death of it. My punk attitude was in me along the inspiration of Lou Reed, Raymond Carver and Patrick Kavanagh their words rose in me I was beyond.I couldnt handle the angst the police deported me back to Ireland, to beat their fine I  went to dublin. I lived in a bedsit on the Howth rd, I bluffed my way was a metal polisher/welder, I was standing on my own to feet, i didnt set out to be a poet, Lou Reed was my man, wanted to write lyrics like heroin from his dirty boulevarde I wanted Belfast to be my New York.

I didnt want to be a disco dick my form of entertainment was buying a Lou Reed album and a box of wine and turntabling it over and over. 

I swam in his lyrics,my first scribbling lyrics from my life. After a few I  went back up north, truth be told I  missed my mothers sense of humanity.

I never lived with the bastard ever again, got a job

and rented a house with my brother. A friend lent

me a book by Raymond Carver and it blew my mind, Lou Reed Kavanagh and Carver they moved me. My father died and I felt his grief but never regreted in hating to love him he was a cunt from his time I was a cunt from mine, today I dont talk to my own kids so this is the norm. The first poem I  had published was called Bastard life about my father since then I  have had seven books published became a creative writing tutor teaching kids like me who have went on to publish their words,

I was on a current sea of poetry, poetry was like sushine it was free and it saved me. These are my words to them. I realise that all my words are influenced by them, heres to you from me.

RAY RIVER

For Jimmy and Janice

 

Although I’m here in Donegal and not Yakima,

Washington state or in Dublin reclining

On the banks of the Grand Canal.

 

I feel a sense that Raymond Carver

And Patrick Kavanagh is here with me

Following the Ray River to the sea

of this poem. The winds sway the reeds

reflected on the rippling water, on a bend,

a stream flows into the Ray, cascading

on the rocks.

 

I love the music of this place, the silent

Harmonies of the source, the spring

Falling from high on Muckish mountain

To where I sit translating nature to poetry.

Further on another stream flows in, ever

So quiet secretly subtle, like the clarity

Of wonder in the undercurrents.

 

I’m here at the sea, the reservoir.

Tory island looms black, remote above

The wild white waves, poetry echoing

Across the golden strand.

 

The colors of a rainbow rise from the sea.

The intangible essence that lingers here,

THE blending colors fade to blue

And I feel a slight tingle on my fingers.

 

I look down to see a multicolored spider

Crawling across my hand and the open

Pages of this notebook as if that

Was its only purpose.

 

 

  READ LOU

Lou Reed gave me the essence 

and all his strength, blue mask-

sad song a curl of 

his lip a look in his eye 

take no prisoners 

Look inside, a rock n roll 

animal-legendary 

heart goes out not with 

scotch tape, not with 

glue the gel of street-level 

humanity, adhere 

to an uncertain 

probability rushing 

on my run-

a radiance of strength 

to sustain in me another 

breath. 

American poet 

washed up on 

my shore you 

tore down my barricades.

Based on a Joseph Brodsky poem for John Donne

 THE EXILED WORDS OF JOSEPH BRODSKY

 

Raymond carver has sunk in sleep, all things 

beside are sleeping too: the brass swan paper-

 weight sleeps on Hebrew translations. 

Butts in the ashtray asleep in ash, Chekhov's

foreboding, the lapdog, and the wicker chair

Sleep in the intricate of willow weave like 

the exiled words of Joseph Brodsky. 

Tess sleeps in a bed of hummingbirds, photo-

graphs and the pins that hold them sleep

In the cork the penetrate. His unpublished 

words sleep piled high in the bunks of America,

 Belfast and Sligo.