for Dennis
WRITE ON
The two-prong bulb sits
In the three-prong light upon
The write hemisphere.
Wow just a name lifted my spirit and inspired me to create this blog Aphantastic
APHANTASTIC
It’s Aphantastic to put a name on something
the very thing that drove me to suicide.
For the last eighteen years, I have been
writing blackhole poetry, my writing has
pulled me from the ledge, as John Berryman
called ‘The blind-brow.’
All those years spent in default mode, telling
doctors, nurses and psychiatric professionals.
Who had no clue about the blackness behind
my eyes, unable to conjure up images from
my mind's eye.
Unable to cling to images of my own sons,
my childhood and my family. It was as if
I was a blank shell of a man. At least now I’ve got
a name, a reason for my anxiety.
I flicked through YouTube as I stay away from adverts.
I watched a guy talking to a professor about
how he couldn’t hold the images of his dead mother
in his mind and thought he was going mad
and the professor said he had a condition
called Aphantasia.
I have been trying to form from a formless mind but
I knew I knew I was on to something, there was a method to my madness. The poems were feeding me hope,
even it was a dark hope.
Wow, just a name lifted my spirit and inspired
me to create this blog of hopeless
chimpanzee poetry.
Thursday, 2 September 2021
MICHAUX AND ME
CONSCIOUSNESS ATILLA JOSZEF STYLE
Armorous abstraction
I felt the cosmic
order gleam-the leaves like
tiny butterflies.
Build a bonfire,
a super-duper one
No arrows, stones
or guns just a sigh of beauty-
a train whistle blows.
MANTRA- HUMANITY
(Snobbery tripped up humanity)
Why do I mantra humanity over
And over in my mind like a circular
behind my eyes. Watching Tala-
Ban in Afghanistan, Covid 19
Surge children being vaccinated.
It helps me get to sleep, Climate-
Change is on my mind alone but
Feel so lucky, when I see refugee
Children and we do nothing?
just a mere poet, gripped. I took a massive
stroke in 2005, my left brain was erased
so I live on the write side so how come.
I understand the divided brain. I have been
writing for years on my sense that Raymond -
Carver and Patrick Kavanagh are here in
the realm of possibility. Me becoming poet
Both these poets have been trans-
mitting waves of humanity. I believe
that D.N.A. is sent to strands of D.N.A.
via waves of cryptochrome like
microwave signals.
My life and my poems have been about seeking
Feeling not meaning, we have been searching
For metre rhyme and meaning but the Portuguese
Poet Fernando Pessoa said ‘it is not necessary just
FORGOTTEN
for Allan Watts
Dao, Hinduism
Christianity let it
be humanity
THE PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE
IMAGINE THIS IS LEGAHORY CRAIGAVON
Revealing lush grass and earthly delights
Every tree bears a scar, each walked on
blade of grass. Even the black-bird has
a problem with the Robin scouring
the earth tossing aside yesterdays
rotting leaves to find food for survival.
Imagine this is Legahory, Craigavon
Northern Ireland and I’m sitting in the car
outside the health centre waiting for my wife
who will arrive any moment now with a pre-
scription that will help her through another
stage of life.
J.H.I.S.S
At the John Hewitt summer school. Memory doesn’t flicker
behind my eye but I feel the sense I was there, the sense of wonder
meeting people like Pat mc Cabe, Cherry Smyth, Dermot Seymour
and Alice, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson, Billy Collins, etc.
I’m not name-dropping, you know who you are? I miss you,
I really had a wonderful life driving around the country setting up
creative writing workshops. Megan Johnston this might be just a job
for you but for me, it was a part-full-time vocation, you can sack me over
and over for saying fuck you in an email to a friend, you will never get rid
Of me you didn’t sack me I fucked your triviality. I Know better.
Poetry like sunshine is free. My heart doesn’t belong to you, I was gonna say
‘BITCH’ but I won't stoop, I’ll swoon. Thank you all for the magic, for a year
Or so I set up the verbal arts in Portyup not down. For a time I linked Derry-
Dublin to Craigavon, Eden-avon Magic through poetry you live on in me.
A COLD SON OF A BITCH (amended)
YET WHY NOT SAY WHAT HAPPENED'
ROBERT LOWELL
John looked from the kitchen window,
the sink he stood by was like
the interior of a well-worn tea pot or
the inside of his lungs sucking
on yet another cigarette.
The street light threw a subtle pastel
glow on the still housing estate, the red
rusted Volkswagen beetle stood like
a monument to his life.
‘I’ll have to get stuck in and fix that car
tomorrow’, he thought dropping a sleeping
pill rinsing it down with a cold swig of tea.
‘I’ll have to clean this place’ he reminded
himself climbing the stairs.
He dreamed the cold sweat dream
and woke to images of the dungeon
cell of the Crum (Crumlin road Gaol)
white-noise torture ringing in his ears.
One of the longest detainees
in Ireland detained for nine months
he skipped bail and went
on the run to run guns
across the border.
These were the nightmares he couldn't
speak of they tore through his mind.
When he woke it was those abstract
images of memory that disturbed him
and tore through him like
a blunt saw.
It’s a suffering fucking hell he said,
throwing cold water over his face
as if extinguishing the image in the mirror
and the reality of his bald head
and pointed features.
The stench of his loss lingered
with every step he took down the stairs.
Where once walked the wife
and mother of his dreams.
He could almost see her walking
down to meet the day with that Dublin
strength that pushed the sore
reality to the ground.
He ejected the stale teabags
from the teapot and thought
I have to go the doctors and get
that disability living allowance
form filled in. He look out at the
almost unrepairable
rusted old banger.
He remembered how the car looked
in the nights subtle pastel glow.
He sat in the doctors waiting room
trying to remember good times but
this annoying kid kept shoving leaflets
in his face about cancer and depression.
Just as he was about to smack the kid
up the head he heard the broken
English voice of the Pakistani doctor
call his name on the tanoi like
a conductor on a 50's London bus.
As the doctor filled in a section
of the Disability living allowance form
and wrote some prescriptions
for depression angina, headaches
and the general feeling that his life
was a sick load of balls.
John was calling him a black bastard
in his mind because he asked
him exaggerate his findings
and received instead a lecture
on the ethics of medicine.
John was a bigot he didn’t know how
to be anything else, born a bastard.
His life was filled with hate, he hated Blacks,
Packies, Chinese Brits although he was once
a member of the British armed forces.
He became a brit killer, I.R.A. man
as well as all those beautiful women
he couldn't have and hated especially
that bitch that left him after thirty-
one years. and six children.
He had no loyalty to no one not even
his wife who stood by him, after thirty-
one years, two daughters and a dead
wife appeared out of the blue.
How can you live with so much hate
in your heart? He walked home through
the maze of housing estates with his bag
of pills for every ill but the aching
black hole in his heart.
Going past the derelict houses full
of graffiti he remembered the night
the police man called. The shadow
of his black cap was cast off and fell
through the hall like the black cloud
of Depression,
‘your daughters have been searching for you
for years’ screeched like rusted brakes
crashing with a families’ laughter.
Those words rang through his mind like
the word bastard, the winds of a harsh winter
reminding him that life can be
a cold son of a bitch.
He passed the old decrepit beetle without
an engine without much hope of ever
pumping fluid through its rotten pipes.
He opened the front door and half expected
his wife to pass him and his children
playing music and busying around
the house, instead he was met
by the grey stench of loneliness.
He stood by the sink steadying himself
as those words pounded through his head
he washed down paracetamol
and an anti-depressant.
His head pounded filled with anxiety
he staggered into the living room and threw
himself on the sofa putting his feet up
on the coffee table between the carburetor.
and the innards of a TV set
he was trying to fix.
He stood up held the hearth
and placed a little blue tablet below
his tongue and his heart rate began to fall
and he was able to catch
his breath and relax.
He climbed the stairs and threw himself
on the single bed this is my bed, he said
I must lie in it he told himself and looked
through the ceiling through the grey sky
through the galaxy of stars burning
in the darkness of his sight.
Crumpled up into a little boy and cried
himself to sleep. I’m a loser he told himself
remembering but not remembering
an infant left in a basket by a blood red
door, doing time, a single droplet
of salted tear fell from his hardened Belfast
exterior he brushed it aside like
the murdering bullet from an armalite rifle
no point crying over spilt milk, he told him-
self he lay there and cried
himself to sleep.
He woke with the hope of a thirty-
year-old man in debt, he bounded
out of bed to tackle the unbeatable
day, ‘you can’t beat a good cry’,
he told himself throwing water
about his worn features.
He brushed the hair from the nape
of his neck to cover his bald patch and
brought it to a point on his forehead.
He sang walking down the stairs
a song he sang to his children
when they cried, ‘you don’t have to be
a baby to cry’.
Opening a cupboard in the hall he dragged
out a filthy pair of overalls from a pile of
clothes on the floor and stepped into them
tucked his hair into a tweed cap
and lifted the toolbox.
The morning was a little cool but
the sun was coming up strong above
the grey housing estate, ‘this is going
to be a good day’, he thought
sucking in the almost fresh air.
Opening the passenger door of the car
creaking like a great sigh reaching in
he delved between unsecured seating
busted wings and an exhaust
hauling a jack from the debris.
He took the cross shaped wheel brace
and placed it on one of the four nuts,
before taking hold he stooped
and spat on his hands taking hold
he gripped the brace and turned
with all his might and tried to budge
the nut as if it was his last task
on earth? He cursed the car
and gave it all he had, all a sixty
year old worn heart could muster.
A heart like a prune without syrup
dried and left in the searing desert
of hurt too long,’ ya red bastard,
ya German fucker, ya useless
heap of shit, he mumbled as
the sweat broke on his brow.
He rested a while leaning against
his dream and took a cigarette
from his top pocket lit and sucked.
he licked the beads of sweat that fell
across his lips he ran his tongue
across his lips once more they were cold
and grey he licked once more
unsure and tasted death.
On the morning of his funeral
a letter drifted through the letter box,
one of his pallbearing four sons
opened it and it read, we are pleased
to inform you that you have been
awarded mot-ability.
Pl
PLACEBO EFFECT
I believe that Patrick Kavanagh and Raymond Carver
gave me a poetic energy. In nineteen seventy-four my father
was released from nine months of detainment in Crumlin road jail
and the maze prison. The longest detainee in Ireland, he went on
the run and we lived in a little cottage with no electricity or running
water seven miles from Dundalk, Hackballscross, just a mile from
Kavanagh country, Mucker.
He truly was my mucker, I ran in the fields he walked in with
my trusted Companion Muttley the dog, he chased cattle like
he used to chase British soldiers. With only one eye and three legs,
beaten by the butts of British army rifles.
It was the first time in my life that I felt that all the world was not at war,
before that day I felt this war was a part of me and I a part of it.
Now we have peace and all those gun-running days are over. Years later
a friend lent me a book by Raymond Carver book and it blew my mind
and stirred my active imagination, turned me from a street urchin into
a published poet. Through him, I said yes! I can do this, and my poetic
voice was found, my inner active imagination.
My father died in 1989 but he gave me something, he passed on to me
the same poetic energy that Carver and Kavanagh gave to me, an active
imagination. I believe that the Irish conflict has sapped us of creativity
and only an active imagination can get that back, by piecing together
our dreams, that’s what my pomes are snippets of my active imagination.
What follows in this blog really happened, I think, I have no memory now,
but I have been touched by my Father Kavanagh and Carver. This has
nothing at all to do with creation, I believe that god is the anti-Christ
he has sapped out all our self-esteem and worthiness and in this time
of peace, It’s up to us to retrieve it. I’m not putting religion down,
I’m just saying we don’t need it, it doesn’t belong in my world.
I find inner hope in words if only I could make you see what I see.
I feel your inner self, but you are putting your energy out instead of in.
Carl Jung spoke of the inner active imagination back in the 1960s when
we were trying to free ourselves from oppression, the troubles. Now that
we live in peacetime we can piece together our dreams and have an active
imagination again and be poets of the heart if not the mind.
These are my dreams, pomes, paintings, stories, and essays pieced back together, to form an active imagination.
RAY RIVER
Although I’m here in Donegal, 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 are here with me
Following the Ray River to the sea
Of this poem.
The winds sway the reeds reflecting
On the rippling water, on a bend a stream
Flows in, 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 a 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 wild
White waves, poetry echoing across
Golden strand. The colours of a rain-
Bow rise from the sea, the intangible essence
That lingers here.
The blending colours fade to blue.
I look down to see a multi-coloured spider
Crawling across my hand and the open
Pages of this notebook, as if that
Were its only purpose.
I find it very hard these days to focus on positivity, Alina Feld
said in her study on melancholy, “the self knows its 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. I am not coming to this
essay trying to shove something down your throat. I have searched
and searched for the answer, but even in my hours of near-death,
I found the same answers as you.
I believe I have been given a second chance for a reason but
I'm not asking you to believe in something that fundamentally
contradicts itself. I believe what I believe, it’s just that I call mine
Poartry, you have another name for this mystery, let’s leave it at that,
a mystery. Mysteries are named so because they want to be left alone;
if we find out what the mystery is then that's the end. Like poetry,
you get something from it, then leave the rest alone for another day.
You will receive something else from the same thing don't bury it and kill
the mystery. It’s about you and how you feel today, everything you receive
depends on your mood, how positive and negative you are. You have
the power to change your life for the better but it’s up to you. The power
of positive thought is an amazing determination; tell yourself you can do it.
At the minute I'm reading the book “Purpose Driven, What on Earth am
I here for? “I’m looking for the answers like everyone else, but no self-help
book will give me the answers. At the end of the day they are Rick Warren's
(author) words, it’s the name he places on it, it’s his answer but who are you,
what's your name and most importantly what's your answer? It’s in you,
look at yourself!
When I was in the embrace of death there were always questions I needed to
answer. I remember waking up one night in a cold sweat from a dream.
There was a crowd of doctors around me administering drugs. I thought
I had died and this was my hell, but I came to realize that heaven and hell
are the same place it’s how we think of them, they both exist in your mind
but it’s up to you how you paint them, positive or negative.
I remember, many years ago, being kicked to the ground in Lurgan one
night with seven around me and a beer bottle in my hand. I thought
of smashing it over the ring-leaders head but instead I threw it away,
I rolled up into a ball and took the beating. If I had smashed that bottle
over his head I would be dead, not here now writing this essay. It’s up
to you, your life says what lane it takes. As Robert Frost said, “Always
take the road less traveled by.” Life can be affirming. It’s up to you
and what you bring to it, so paint your picture with a beautiful sunrise
or sunset and you can’t go wrong.
A good friend asked me to write this essay. A searcher like me, she
and her son has, along with others has been instrumental in my life
since the stroke. They are the ‘road less traveled by,' they are the sun-
rise and sunset of my life, they are my positive thoughts. I wouldn't
be here without those people, they were there for me. It's at times like this
you realize who your friends are. Without them I would have become
negative; instead with their power and my own determination, I pulled
through. Alright, I'll never be 100% the person I was, but I'm alive.
I have someone to thank for that, even if it's me, my friends and family.
I believe in them and they believe in me; that's what I call the power
of healing the positive force within me. The beauty is not to ask people
to believe in what you believe in. Whatever happened to diversity?
Believe in whatever you want to, it’s your right. If it paints your day
so be it, that's your positive force.
These past years has been the worst I have ever encountered. As well
as recovering from a stroke that almost killed me. The stroke came without
warning. I was on the edge of the bed, then I was on the floor shaking. I didn't
know what was happening. I crawled into my mother's room and asked her
what was happening; she told me I was taking a stroke. She phoned the doctor.
All I can remember is being rushed to Intensive Care. I had ‘locked in Syndrome.
I knew what to say but hadn't the power to communicate.
I was flat on my back and could only move my eyes I was so afraid
it was uncanny. I thought everyone was out to get me, without the power
to resist. I really did believe I would go out in a wooden box.
I remembered an experience from childhood. I was running along a pier
when I slipped on seaweed and fell into the water. I was trying to get
out of there. I feared I would die but when I looked around it was beautiful
in there; the seaweed was dancing and for a second it was magical.
An American tourist dived in, pulled me out and pumped the water from
my lungs. Since that day I have never met him but thank you.
It felt like that during my stroke, I was lost walking around in a field of nothing,
then I woke up with friends around me. I don't let on to know the answers
to life, I am just like you, a searcher of the truth and lying there in that hospital
bed I realized that there is no great light that I'm drawn towards, just the people
who loved me for their own reasons not mine.
Someone once said, ‘Never judge your enemy, it clouds your judgment.'
The power of positive thought is everywhere, it’s what they see in you.
These are the positive thoughts I have produced. I'm not looking
for sympathy or pity you can keep it. All I ask is that you read this
and determine your own answers, not one that's shoved down your throat,
I hope this is your placebo effect.
IMMY KEOGH R.I.P.
Strange how I remember a story from
my mother’s mouth, yet I can’t remember
my children being born. She stepped out
along Rathmines Dodder Dublin’s Grand
canal with her friend Pam Mason little Jimmy
her brother Maggie my nan was delivering
a baby, she was the unofficial midwife.
Poverty was rife and many couldn’t afford health-
care, so Maggie was called upon, Patty didn’t mind
looking after five-year-old Jimmy she loved him
very much and knew her mum was widowed, her husband/
father died of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-seven
a civil soldier buried at Glasnevin cemetery. Grief left an
aching hole in her and her family’s hearts.
Patty and Pam sat on the bench flicking through Pattie's
autograph book, little jimmy was throwing stones
scaring the swans. They stopped at Kate o Hara’s scribble
it looks like little jimmy wrote it said Pam and they giggled.
Patty said I met her in Woolworths with her daughter she had
flowing black hair, ha, ha caught ya said Pam she has ginger
hair jumping up and down pointing she had black hair for
the movie she was starring in, pam sat looked at the scribble
beside orange peel.
Rinty the bell boy at the Gresham told me she was staying
there with her daughter and she dyed her hair black.
I waited for hours and followed her into Woolworths
and asked for her autograph.
She lowered her sunglasses and asked how I knew, I told her
Mum was a fifty-year-old stroke victim who ad five strokes but
her mind was still sharp to remember, as she was telling me this
story. In my mind, Jimmy fell from the ladder to his death like
his father just twenty-seven beside his winkle picker new leather-
soled shoes, the leather shammy fell splat to the ground.
THE STROKE DIARIES
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