HUNGARIAN PILLOWCASE

haikyou for P

Stamped in memory

Atilla Jozsef university, for-

get her name, not scent.

ALIEN-NATION

One day I will never forget even 

if I can't remember. Moon-landing on T.V. 

painted in red white and blue, green white 

and yellow. 

My brother took a snap-shot on a mickey mouse 

tin camera like  something out of a lucky bag, I blinked 

the shutter open/closed in my mind’s eye.

The painting lives on in peacetime,

A snipers bullet lodged in the frame behind 

my sister's head.

Can't get this image out like

the crack in the glass, shattered

for life.

 

Cherry Smyth Intro

 

 

In August 2004 Adrian Fox organised a Summer School 

for Writers at the Millennium Court Arts centre and invited myself 

and American poet Patricia Clark to come and lead workshops and

read from our work. Adrian is good at the job of getting others to write, 

to dig down into themselves and bring up treasure. He's a born teacher, 

an enthusiast for truth and passionate discovery (and recovery) through poetry. 

He's not interested in fancy techniques or shallow prettiness. Patricia and I soon 

realized that his regular students had been primed to expect the  toughest teaching 

there is where the teacher has to be direct, totally open and full of faith. 



 

One afternoon, in his office during the break, Adrian pointed something out to me, 

across the back lane behind the arts centre in Portadown. There was a boarded-up, 

disused building. One of the casement windows had been boarded up inside but 

a small windowpane lay open at the top. Pigeons had flown in and become trapped 

behind the glass. They had died in struggle and were collecting in a soft grey pile 

at the bottom of the window. We watched this horrible vitrine

 

for a few minutes. Then Adrian told me how he'd been over to the building 

and had thrown stones at the glass to try and smash it and release the birds. 



When Adrian suffered a huge almighty stroke in April 2005, he was unable

 to move or speak or swallow at first. I was haunted by that image of the trapped birds. 

Adrian demanded that visitors read him poetry and show him paintings and he began 

to write and paint. He used art to break the glass of his vastly different world.

 

 

A man sat in corridor in a wheelchair by a hospital stroke ward watching nature out there in the trees.

All the other brain injured patients were watching daytime T.V.  He was put out there because he

laughed too much at the other patients who sometimes thought they were mickey mouse or on other

days they were the president of the united states.  He was there at the window because that’s where

He wanted to be, trying to find memory that was taken from him during stroke.

His long-term memory was shot away, he couldn’t remember eighteen years of marriage or three sons  

being born he woke from the stroke like a new born being formed with only the word positive in his

brain.  He had what’s medically called locked in syndrome:  where a person has no form of

communication, he could only blink his eyes, one for yes two for no, paralyzed down the right side.

The consultant asked, ‘can you move your arms, can you speak’, he seen the word come from his

Mind, it was right there on the tip of his tongue, but it could not form to say hello.

He knew who his brother and sisters and his ex-wife even his girlfriend when they came in but

He couldn’t remember his own childhood.  All his limbs were intact, but he felt like he had, an accident

But couldn’t explain why he was paralyzed without speech unable to walk, it was surreal.

 

He thought that he would drift out in a wooden box, the people all around him were dropping dead.

The girl from speech and language and the occupational therapist kept him out of the dark telling him

what was happening because he hadn’t got a clue.  He stayed there for a year recovering speech, O.T.

and physio everyday learning how to brush his teeth and wipe his own ass.

At first, he thought the nurses were out to kill him because he had nothing in his mind, he couldn’t

comprehend emotion after a time he began to trust but at the beginning he couldn’t form any emotion

It was as if his hard drive was wiped clean.  Friends and family called and gave him back some sort of life

But he still couldn’t remember what he was about.  Before he took the stroke, he was a father and a

teacher but all he could remember was waking during some sort of hallucination, a man stood behind

the hospital bad cutting up bodies with a chainsaw and tossing the body parts in a skip.

They say he died in intensive care and woke just seconds later from a stroke/coma, he never put his life

spurt back to any divine intervention or miraculous awakening, he never seen no light that he was

drawn to, he reckons that his love and his love for his children was so strong and without hatred in his

heart that took him back into existence.

THE FOLLOWING WAS WRIT BEFORE MY STROKE, DOESN’T COME FROM MEMORY.

SO, I DON’T KNOW IF ITS TRUE OR FALSE.

 

I never felt the beat of my heart until 

I was six years old, if I felt it before then 

it was only a faint murmur so, I take it that my 

first years were spent in peaceful innocence.  

Mum said I was a laid-back child if my high chair 

was piled with food, dad said he was lazy needed, 

too much attention suppose I was somewhere 

between both.

My heart beat like never-before, it felt like my

 body was vibrating with fear, reluctantly 

I stumbled up the mobile staircase, mother’s 

strength tugging my arm as I stopped taking 

in the sight of the massive steel bird, aeroplane,

holding the rail, white knuckled like the branch of a tree when falling, a life saver.  On reaching the platform my mother turned to me and reassured him that everything would be alright.  Seeing the fright written on his grimaced face and the buildup of tears, she took him in her arms, he clung to her like a leech so close their heart’s entwined. 

 

This was his first time on an airplane, flying to Belfast of all places with his head stuck in a second sick bag, as if Ihe had been given a premonition of what the future had in store, as if I knew that this heart beat would be the norm for thirty years, the year was nineteen sixty-seven.

 

THE LIFE OF REILLY

 

by Adrian Fox

 

Mickey Reilly sat on his single bed looking out onto the busy road. The dark nights were slowly creeping in as the lights of the traffic flickered through the rain splattered window. His computer dimly lit up the tiny bed-sit behind him, his library of music was shuffling through the 722 songs he had downloaded and stored there. The raw bass of Damaged Goods by Gang of Four played imperceptibly at the back of his mind.

 

He was re-enacting a scene. He was walking through St Anne's park smoking a cigarette as he passed the band stand where the local acts played a free summer festival. He fixed the length of blue nylon rope—burnt at both ends to stop it fraying—around his neck and tucked the ends into his bomber jacket. He zipped it up to his neck.

 

It was a crisp winter’s night and the stars glowed clearly above him. As he walked through the arches of the rose gardens, he saw a puff of smoke rising from a figure seated at the bench. The man turned to look up, and Mickey noticed the white strip around his neck shining like a star.

 

"What about ya, father?” he said. “Lovely night.”

 

“Yeah it is, son. Been sitting here watching the stars and listening to the sea out there beyond the darkness. Come and sit down here son and listen,” he said, patting the seat beside him.

 

Mickey took a drag off his fag, looking at the old man for a second, then settled in beside him. He rested his arm across the back of the bench and shifted his right foot over his left knee, inching closer to the dark figure.

 

"Can I have one of your smokes, Father?” he asked.

 

“Have you no more smokes son?” asked the priest.

 

“No Father, I've got fifty pence to my name.” Mickey took the piece out his pocket and flicked into the air. It dropped dully in his palm.

 

"I could tell you a story about a fifty pence piece just like this one, Father.”

 

"I'm sure you could, son', said the priest handing him a cigarette. He dug a lighter out of his coat pocked and reached over to light Mick's cigarette. The flame illuminated the darkness between them. Looking deep into the priest’s eyes, Mickey pulled back on his right arm and let it collide like a hammer with the side of the priest’s head. He opened his jacket and pulled out the rope, found its centre and dragged it through the priest’s teeth from behind like a bit in a horse’s mouth. He crossed the end of the rope and laced it across his back to bind the priest’s hands and place him back on the bench. The priest began to come to he sat on the bench beside him, his arms wrapped tightly around him.

 

“Now Father, I want you to shut the fuck up so I can tell you a story about a fifty pence piece just like this one,” he said, flicking it through the air to land in his palm.

 

He took the blank "Black n' Red" A4 notebook from the shelf above his bed between a small selection of books and CDs. A thin volume of Baudelaire's poems fell on the bed. As he lifted it to put it back on the shelf, his eye caught something on the page and he began to read it out loud. “To the Reader: stupidity, delusion, selfishness and lust torment our bodies and possess our minds.”

 

He discarded the book and opened the Black n’ Red notebook. He flicked it open to the first blank page, signed his name and the date. He looked at the page littered with lines until the lines began to merge into an image. He blinked his eyes like someone waking from a dream, not believing what they have seen and trying to capture it again. He lifted the pen and began to write.

 

The rain beat off the window outside like the rhythm of the pen, the ink catching a tiny glimmer of light moving across the page before it dried into reality. He was twelve in 1972. It was a Sunday. One of the gang said lets rob the egg factory. He couldn't remember if it was Hardbap or Haggis who suggested it but they sprang into action and got together a couple of giders and old prams and headed off to rob the place. They broke in through a back window, but had no way out through the smashed window with the boxes of eggs. With all the eggs they couldn't take they had a riot in the massive factory space.

 

Mickey unleashed the fork lift from its power point where it was charging and crashed it into ev

 

'finding yourself in a hole 

at the bottom of a hole', 

in almost solitude, 

and discovering that only 

writing can save you.

Marguirate Dumass

LOVE THIS PIC

14.

JUMP-SHIP (civil rights for civil wrongs)

1.

It is funny how a friend bought me a copy of the book 

'anam cara which means ‘soul friend in Irish.  

I just wrote ‘Chinese opera’ which tries to capture 

the same essence of light and dark.

CHINESE OPERA

The buddha, the easel, the TV on stand by

And the shapes drifting across my ceiling. 

I give them a voice from the beauty that I’ve seen. 

They shimmer and move casting shadows, on my 

very own Chinese opera.

The light of the moon and this mobile -

Phone is the only illumination

For my backdrop, even the itch on my neck

Creates a movement of life.

The pictures on my wall are the frame by

Frame animation, the flashing light of my 

Zip drive is the dance of a beautiful woman.

Waiting for the dawn to rise and cover my 

theatre in a blanket of light.

2.

Maybe we're on the same journey, I know my journey,

is to paint with words and images of my inner landscape.  

I think I'm flowing in the river of positive simplicity, 

touching on the same banks towards the sea that opens 

in brilliance.  No longer part of the rat race.  

I remember working on an assembly line 

and the supervisor looking over my shoulder,

I thought, felt ‘used’ is the right word for it, 

I'm putting together this vending machine,

and someone else is reaping the profits 

for that moment of thought, I felt like nothing. 

I've never liked the workplace, not because I'm lazy

I just don’t think its right that you do the work 

for a pittance wage and someone else gets the profit. 

 Ive always been an advocate for fair-play civil rights 

for civil wrongs justice and the underdog.   

I think we're caught in the circle of consumerism 

going round and round in the vertigo of hypnotism

Caught in the cycle of capitalism.  Ok they give you 

a few bobs every week to go on holiday or go down 

the pub but you're worth more than that.  

Tell the supervisor to tell the managing director to tell 

the director to tell the owner that you're not taking it any-

more.`Your not a sheep that follows the flock in his queue 

to the clock-in machine.  Don’t forget if you get £300

a week you're worth twice that.  

If your job description states, you get 400 hundred a week.

Then you're worth double that.  Ok, his profits go down, 

but he's the gambler, not you. He's willing to stake his claim, 

the economy needs to get out of this consumerist cycle, and take a 

spin on the crossbar of simplicity. 

People haven’t got time to be themselves, were becoming 

yet another American state fuelled by greed no wonder 

the therapists are on the big money.  Society is screaming 

for help and the politicians get his backhander and a little pat 

on the back because our economy is thriving, on what this 

bullshit.  

Let's jump ship while we can before it's too late.  

It seems we're on the rails to no-where heading 

towards the landslides of derailment.  Its time 

we found that reverse gear before its too late,

think of the next generation.  We are not here 

for long enough to leave them our worldly goods 

so lets give them something that costs nothing, 

the path of simplicity.  

Let's forget about this road of capitalism who 

wins not you because we live in such a negative 

society, the lottery is the poor man's tax reaping 

the rewards, sucking you dry. 

 

Lets get back on track towards respect. Respect 

for the earth the land and the sea respect others 

opinions agree to disagree respect your neighbours 

and don’t get caught  in tribalism and tear down 

the barricades of hate. Someone once said 

never hate your enemy it clouds your judgement.  

 

We desperately are in need of a new gentle light, 

the soul can shelter and reveal its ancient belongings. 

Meaning his spiritual wisdom from the Celtic world.  

Harness it and ride bareback through the fields, 

and gallop through nature in all its beauty.   

Two years ago I took a stroke all I could move 

was my eyes, I had a thing called locked- in-

syndrome I knew what was being said but 

I couldn’t communicate.   This feels like 

my second time around so im not taking it 

for granted, I know how quickly things can change.   

One minute I was reading a book the next 

I was on the floor, then in intensive care. 

I was in the hospital for a year and now I'm in a wheel-

chair.   I don’t care if it changes in the next five minutes, 

all I know is I'm gonna make this world better for my kids.  

Have respect for those you look down on, don’t forget  

Any minute now something will happen.

15

 A.FOX LOOKING AT A FOX BY A.FOX

For Jimmy and Janice 

 

I am lying in bed in 2021 trying to remember an incident in 1974 I know you heard bit’s

Of this before but every time I write, I remember a little bit more and this is all I’ve

Got to share with you, the stroke took my long term memory and mangled it.

I don’t remember the good times just the traumatic ones that are seared into your mind.

Don’t want to remember but this is me trying to build up me to give me purpose to belong

To this very strange world. Thanx.

The white vauxhall victor pulled up at the the white lined Irish border post.

The man in the long black coat handed my father his licence, looking across

At me in the passenger seat. I held my knees from shaking, the secret tore through

Me afraid the man would question me. I held muttley the dog by the collar 

growling at the man, he hated anyone in uniform, as he was beaten by the British 

army rifle buts that left him with one eye and thee legs. I feel a bit like that dog now 

paralysed in a wheelchairremembering the dogs honest truth .

 The man spoke with an alien tongue as they spoke about the weather and waved us on into no mans-land. Dad slapped the steering wheel like someone had scored a goal in a cup final on 

the car radio, as the car drove across the white line on the road. My father smiled a smile 

I rarely seen he even reached across and ran his hand through my hair, I almost 

burst with emotion. I think that was the only time he touched me. The only other times were 

When he beat me for stealing his coin collection or his cigarettes.

Before we drive off into no mans land I will have to let you know why we are there at that border post. My father was a bastard child left on a doorstep whether that’s know true or not doesn’t matter its a half truth. My father was a deep secretive man, so I will never know he took it to the grave. He wasn’t a nice man but people like his attitude little did they know they were being, I wouldn’t trust him he was a con man. I think that’s I was never a good liar,

He was one of the the longest detainees In Ireland detained for nine months released on bail so he skipped bail and went on  the run across the border taking me and the dog with him as I was a wild child on the streets of Belfast. The townland land of Mucker PatrickKavanagh country But I didn’t know,now I know I’m stepped in his wonder.

I would have done anything for his father, he if he treated me like a dog I knew there was something in him I would have died for his father who said he was to sensitive, needed a good kick in the ass, many a time I had my mothers humanity.. The car pulled Up at a shop at hakballscross crossroads asked directions and purchased a blue and orange plate and cutlery camping set, bacon, sausages, beans. Strange how I remember this detail and can’t remember my sons being born. The traumatic times stick to memory like glue. Thee lady who spoke in a strange accent, gave my dad directions to the cottage at ths end of duffies lane just a hundred yards past the garda station on the right.

We piled into the car and found it ok, Dad opened the half door with an ogres key and I took in the shopping. Two rooms a kitchen and bedroom no running water or electricity or toilet, theres a well close by we will find it tomorrow, he lit the parafin lamps in each room and went to the car and broke branches on the tree to make a fire in the old stove.

The sizzling warmth filled the room. His dad handed him a blue plastic plate and gave the dog half cooked sausages that were eaten in seconds. Muttley the dog was my best friend I would have lost without that dog. We lay in bed that night listening to the wild life, mostly foxes hopping from the hill behind and down onto our roof his father told him.

His dad had no more dungeon jail time he knew what his father was running from.

His mum took him to visit him in jail. He woke at five the next morning, opening the half door to a magical dawn, he had never seen before.

A fox came out of the glowin ditch stopped to look me straight in the eye.

As if I was under natures way, seemed ike I was allowed to be there. I will never forget that moment, since that moment, eye on eye fox on fox,stood there for a moment, we were 

beyond time. That fox has appeared in my painting pomes until this day.

He took that moment that moment to be like The fox thought in ted Hughes poem. Something else was alive rose in him, a fox thought.

My father left me there with a dog as he took a job in Dundalk. Days I was left so hungry me and the dog shared a tin of dog food we ran through the acre of land, he chased the cows as if in uniform and the cows chased me. It was like having a year of school, killing rats and rabbits. I hated school freedom winds I called this place as it took away all the bitterness of Belfast, this was my education. The whole world was nott at war just the north of Ireland, he missed his friends but he didn’t miss being beat behind the sand bags and asked where my father was the night before..

Mum my brothers came every few months to delouse me and the bed clothes, she said I was walking alive. How could you do this to your son,who said you leave him to share dog food, I’m making arrangement to live in Dundalk so you better rent a home not this barn. He cowered away like a little boy knowing she was right. She always found his sly truth.

The cottage would never be home it’s sole purpose at the was to run guns across the border

But I didn’t know that back then.

Me and the father hardly spoke, I always knew there was something about him but

It wasn’t clear in my mind we never made eye contact. At this time he never knew

His father was a bastard child, second in command of the I.R.A. I never knew this, like most 12 year old boys he only knew his father to be anything but an asshole who his ass kicked to do and shut up. There was no love or fatherly goodness in fact I felt sorry for him.I in his eyes a child should be seen and not. He knew I was like my mother a human being, he knew I knew something but we didn’t know what. When we were in room the family sensed the energy, you can imagine The energy in the cars space. He heard his mother say to his father from the scullery, take that boy with hes wild he’ll die on these streets.

Mum and family came down and we rented a house on the Dublin road beside new shopping centre was being built. I went to the local tech, met new friends but  I still had a wild streak in me as I fought nearly every day to make a name for myself, ended up I could hold my own but I wasn’t really a fighter. I had a few run ins with teachers like mr Crudden who used flick snots at me. One day he dragged me down two flights of stairs. I took him to Court and got him never to teach again as the whole,I really wound those muck savages, suppose they were saying the same of me.The whole school seen him rip the coat and flung those steps. Mr rice who was my maths teacher who tried to teach me logrythms when it came to maths I was deslexic he called me and punched me a big rugby culchee beat me at the blackboard, I broke a chair across his back and ran.

Had a run in with fr mc Shane who thought I was a hurt little boy from Belfast, asked to

stay after class taken to his store like a little alter he took his chair round beside 

Put his hand on my knee and got a dig in the head and I ran. So I had no science,  maths

Or religious class which suited me being a non believer. I was put in with dunces for

Free periods, I had no interest in school. Mr o Donahue was my form teacher when he read poems or prose like julius Cesar. The plays were like the life in Belfast, I can’t explain but when he read the works and even took us to the cinema to see julious Cesar, when he read I went into a trans to this day I can’t explain. I liked my art class. Mr o Donahue came to my home to persuade me to stay on but I couldn’t wait to leave and stand on my own to feet.  For my group cert you needed both maths and english, for my maths exam I wrote my name and walked out and they gave me 4% for my English they me an a for a project on aboriginal

Life and my work the romantics julius Cesar and Guillivers travels and animal farm.

I now have a Masters degree in creative writing from Lancaster university and the poets house

Donegal,I was taught by the late great James Simmons who was like a father to me. I done my thesis on Patrick Kavanagh and Raymond Carver who are in me now. I ended up like Jimmy teaching creative writing. Some of my pupils have gone on to publish their own work.

I’ll never forget what Jimmy and Janice done for me, I write this for you.

16

 PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE

Adrianfox.org

My father was a republican hard -man

From North Belfast. My Mother was

A humanist from Dublin, her Father died

In the civil army uniform aged just 27.

My family is steeped in the blood of Ire-

Land. I am a so called Catholic who

doesn’t want to be so called, born

In England living in Ardoyne.

For sixteen years my father told me

Where to go and what to do, aged

Sixteen I hit him a dig in the head

and ran away to London. 

Priests, Teachers, police and army got

A dig in the head too, I was an angry 

young man , we have to run away

From this regime, we have got to break

This cycle of violence and hatred that

Runs through our veins. 

We have to tare down the peace walls 

In our minds and just h ave peace. 

The walls are hemming us in, I can’t breath, 

I can’t breath, please my name may as well

Be George Floyd, this is a Lives Matter.

If we don’t tare down the walls in our minds

were on another brutal crusade. I’m Irish-

English writing unwritten graffiti,. I’m dis-

Abled trying so hard to get through this life.

The walls are in our mindset, break free.

17

THE GAP OF INSIGNIFICANCE

 https://gallerypress.com/authors/o-to-z/james-simmons-1933-2001/

 Tell it to your heart, please don’t be afraid

Said Lou Reed. My wife and children

Are locked in me, I have no hologram pro-

Jection but I know it happened like a ball

Of knitting un-ravelled for my mother un-

Approved and approved roads of Ireland

from Renvyle, Kerry, Cork to Skibbereen.

A quarter of a century locked away in me

Years of magic whatever they say, salmon

Of knowledge spawning in me. Good times

Were had by all, no memory recall but Irish

Energy flows in me, I’ll never forget to re-

 Member, ill force it through the Muckish gap.

18

A FLOW STATE

Browsing poetry archive, I realized 

I’m out on a limb, a paralyzed one.

I don’t even have a voice for my

Verse if that’s what you call it.

I cant find my voice among the verses.

Will you gift to me your voice so I can

Lilt a rhyming song and not have a flat

Hyphenated broken word, without

Rise and fall.

I cant even remember how my words

Worked in you, all ego now is egoless.

I need a little bit of hope, for my words

To pick me up and warble a warbler’s

birdsong, full-throated joy.

Let my words rise in you, to roll

Them of your tongue like going

Into a flow state, non-being

Realm of possibility. 

19

 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.

20

I'M-POET-TENT (Impotent)

Living without stimulation

hell-cell abomination, urge

has no drive, how can you

explain Aphantasia: No-

thing behind my eyes,

no-minds-eye.

Darkness within dark-

ness. Even my taste

buds have left me like 

my long-term memory.

It's hard to put this in- 

to words when you

can't even get a hard-

on, life is beyond me.

Camping out in my

tent but this is no

holiday, the wheel-

chair is my sense of

freedom that i cant

sit-in. How can one

explain this to an

able-bodied person

when I can't even

under   -   stand

My     -    self.