Six counties are we, we 

came through civil wars 

to get here. This is a not 

a green and orange up-

           rising but our 

                creation-nation.

 FLIMSY HOLLOW-GRAM

   (UNDERSTAND EMOTIONAL ENGINEERING)

So strange how I can talk of times

 without memory. A surreal strange 

thing occurred when I woke up from 

a massive stroke. 

We aren't supernatural we are naturally

 super. We have so much potential if 

only we believed in ourselves. 

There I was in a brain injury ward trying 

to focus on a pinpoint direction to go in 

my new-found damaged life. 

I was like an infant child my hard drive 

was wiped clean of all long-term memory. 

I even thought the nurses were out 

to kill me. It took me days to realize 

that they were here to help, .care

I had no concept of fantasy/reality 

and felt so alone but I knew the 

only one to help me was me. 

I was emotionally engineering my mind

but that I did not know. It was uncanny

self-determination is such a natural 

equilibrium balance of life and death. 

Only in hindsight can I know of circadian 

rhythms and a Hertz ripple of humanity 

back then I had nothing on my mind.

I didn't know if I was here or there in 

between life/death. I was just a piece 

of grey ashen dust on death's doorstep 

with no purpose now I know different. 

The consultants insulted me by looking 

down their nose at me like some form 

of elephant man but I am my own being 

my mother taught me that. 

Then I was paranoid and not with it, 

I might have a little boy's mind infantile.

Felt like I was back at school told when 

to sit-stand-kneel-pray. 

I don't sit on anyone's pew, I knew my-

self and my broken mind. In-die-vid- 

you-ual-reality. 

I understood every word they spoke un-

slotting me into their ethics of medicine like 

a child being told what to do. 

Can you lift your hand can you walk-talk?.

They asked, i saw words come water falling

from my mind but no utterance came of my 

tongue, the rght side of my body was paralyzed.

unable to walk or talk, no memoy in my mind but

i knew my sons brother, i still cant fathom where

my memory comes ihave no long-term memory

but i can function on the right hemisphere.

the stroke erased wiped my left brain and broke

sinew/tendons, my right-brain survived the way

you can live with one lung. the world i live in

is dark and very bleak, i cant recall my sons

being born 20 year marriage, must surreal for

them having a father with no temotional ties

to them with memory. i can only recall bleak

imagery like near death experiences being saved

from a gunbattle and almost drowning at sea.

moments that are seared into my x-mas birthday

joy erased from. i find itinerary 

you do not want to hear what was in my like 

mind they shoutinglmost shouting orders to 

a deaf person.

Why don't you fuck off was my unsaid 

answer. I have always lived my own life 

in my Mum's humane one golden rule

humanity.

It was like that line by Milan Kundera 

inthe unbearable lightness of being I had 

nothing to compare it to. Living in a locked-

in syndrome. 

For days I lay in a limbo-like a hunk of grey 

ashen a flimsy hologram. I was tripping 

on the drugs that were keeping me alive

surreal images, there was nothing on my 

mind.  

A barren landscape like waiting for Godot.

the stroke boost was keeping me alive like 

an adrenaline shot, my pulp fiction.

I saw my reflection in my sons eye leaning 

over the bed in I.C.U. to kiss me goodbye. 

That's the last image I remember, like 

an extra in the walking dead. 

Woke bolt upright from a stroke coma.

I was keeping me alive making me 

hallucinate. They say I died for seconds.

I gripped the blankets 

and took the white-knuckled ride 

in a cold sweat through the Steven King 

nightmare hospital ward.

I dropped acid and m.d.m.a. before but 

this was tripping on another die-vision 

a Jackal and hide trip hallucination, like 

nothing was even seen on a tv screen

My PS4 silent hill.

I focused the little greenman above 

the exit door. I told myself if I see 

the greenman again, he was my 

parameter to life.

I had nothing else to cling to pin-

point like a fixed point of long-lat.

So alone and the person as I do not

believe in a higher being.

I believein myself in out was me 

and my self determination he was 

my / reality.

He was my magic, how can the mind 

find a fixed point to recover this was 

my death's door an exit back in. 

I told no one they would think me mad. 

For twenty years I clung to that self-

preservation and I'm here writing this like 

a life study.

Confessional poetry of Robert Lowell Im-

perfection is the language of art. This poem

is an imperfection he said a poem can never be

finished, he worked on them after publication.

Alan-Watts the spiritual guru talks about 

the warp and the weave his mother taught

him that like my mum taught me.

The back and front of lifes tapestry, weave

 the warp the same difference. He said 

spirituality doesn't need religion I find it 

so hard to cling-on, my mind is damaged 

in a half-life.

Just knowing the difference between fantasy 

gave me a reason for living. I started to come 

to I was tripping on life/death like a Keatsian 

swoon it gave me the mental strength to focus 

on moving objects. 

I was retraining my broken mind 

the stroke the consultant insultants

didn't seem to know where I fitted into

their way of ethical medical one way.

I knew then that I had to help myself, that 

little green made me see beyond myself

he was my Paddy inside, he gave me

blackhole hope.

Knew where I fitted in recovery was 

up to my determination, I say my words

coming through my mind but wouldn't

roll of my tongue. 

I was an unwalking untalking paralyzed 

down half my body but for the half-life 

of me with no long-term 

memory was not sure of my purpose.

Why am I still alive or alive still not able 

unable to remember my childhood, marriage 

or three sons being born.

How can one live without emotional

engineering a blackness in mind?

It has taken twenty years in limbo

recovery to write and I am still

knocking at the exit door.

But it wasn't a sinister evil darkness

when I asked what it was consultants

looked at me as if I had horns.  

Aphantasia, I found out I had 

it on youtube.

One day a nurse opened the exit door 

for a breath of fresh air. I felt it in my-

self-like surge of energy, I could smell 

the grass and trees like a waft of nature

waking my mind from death's door.

A map opened in my mind like an a-z. 

I could see the tarmac road that led up 

to lylo on the bluestone road where my 

sister and mum are buried as if there was

a compass in my mind, emotional-

engineering.

I knew where I was, at the back of

 Craigavon hospital. They shipped 

me off to rehab in Belfast but that 

map was in my head downloaded.

I knew where I was, that map found

my north-south-east and west.

I would never again get lost 

   at the exits-tense door.

I have said some of this before but it 

blows my broken mind. The brain is such

 an organ that adopts to having a brain

 injury, I think that's why it's divided.

like the lungs, we can live with one.

after having a lung removed he said

he became a poet and wrote canal 

bank walk. 

Poetry is more than words bouncing off 

others, they possess an inner strength. 

They are my life beyond meter-

form or meaning words, for me they are

feeling, they have a rhythm all their own.

Poetry like sunshine is free, poetry

is what poetry does, like sunshine it

is a linguist form like tools to a monkey-

man.

My inner sense is so strong it's un-

believable. To show you its strength 

I'll tell you a tale from 2006 my book

Splint and other poems. I was reading 

to a brain injury group who said they 

had difficulty reading just one line.

I read a poem from the book and then passed 

around for them to read, I was amazed they

 caught the rhythm and my truth in the words

of wonder, poetry is beyond me and you.

The stanzas rolled off their tongue to this day 

I can't explain it, I was lost for words just as 

Robert Frost said how creative writing 

can be used as tool for brain injury recovery.  

Any disability, the ability to form a negative-

capability. Art therapy and poe-artry saved 

my being, why is not being used? 

In the words of Robert Frost the sound 

of sense should be positive, as well as proactive, 

and should resemble everyday speech.

Fernando pessoa said  life to feel

in the dream of being alive.

I felt alive knocking on the exit door.

 I was a grey ashen dust flimsy hollow-

gram hunk of flesh, a shadow of my

former self. Is poetry just fiction.?

from a cruci-fiction? 

Poetry is the sound of sense it mends 

its own walls in the words of Robert Frost. 

Poetry is for me a life-saving energy like 

the blood in my veins, I was like

 something from the walking dead.

Frost coined the phrase the sound of sense 

to emphasize the poetic diction, or word 

choice, used throughout his work. According 

to letters he wrote in 1913 and 1914, the sound 

of sense should be positive, as well as proactive, 

and should resemble everyday speech.

I saw my reflection in my sons eye

in the I.C.U. when they declared me

dean and seconds later I woke upright.

There's something in our inner being

A religion in our region don’t you think

it is very strange that the entity of god

Doesn’t exist in my brain-injured being.

Seems I live in the write hemisphere 

the left holds anger angst and religion

and there's no god in here. the left brain

is angst-ridden with revengeful anger.

 

I am not here to blaspheme, I just want

To dig deeper, don’t why do we believe

in a being that’s beyond us. 

This is my write side the story and I 

am clinging to it. To my write hemisphere.

 Like me the brain is die-vided, it is 

a die vision. To show the other side

of the fence to live in peace.

Even the arab states are livin a s-hite

Suni peace who were at eachothers

Throats for centuries.

I just hope it lasts, are we moving away

from religion and warmongering we had 

that for 800 years.

I knew that for years now my children's 

children are your cannon fodder for

another 2000 years, an endless war

and stop this barbarism.

Cruc-I-fiction, I live in my disabled

truth-my cruc-I-fact. We have to live 

within ourselves go around the world 

back and tear down peace walls 

all over the world. 

I know that is asking for too much but

we've got to live in peace and that’s 

my yardstick my barometer on the ruler.

Stop this blood beget blood your making 

life so cheap, warmongering.

Live with one golden rule, humanity.

 Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world

 without paranoia, life is peace there is

 nothing else. Me-ma used to say:

      ’ it's not hard to be civil’

   
 

APHAN-

TASTIC

  ISM

     Painted in red white 

and blue-green     white gold. 

            My childhood but

 for the half-life 

of me.

I can’t see past my long-term memory loss

Trying to remember a scene, yet I know

the scene so well as if it was yesterday.

 My blind imagination, aphantasia on top

of not seeing a vision in my mind, I know

a snipers bullet, lodged in the metal window

frame behind my sister's head, crack went

shattered glass through my broken mind

remembering to forget.

    How can I see through the torn fabric of life

Juxtaposing the in and outer self like a back-

wards law of rising not to fall inhale ex-

       Haling and floating up to the top.

 

The moon landing was on tv and a line of

tanks entered the street like the aliens

Had landed. My brother took a picture, one

Of the best war footage photos I had ever

seen on the tin-like camera that was like

something from a lucky bag, cheap.

 

Don’t forget this was 69’, the swinging sixties

Was a world away this wasn’t Carnaby Street

this was Etna drive at the foot of cave hill

napoleons nose. 2023 remembering to forget. 

The street went right up to Crumlin Road 

and over the moon. I can only talk

 about this trauma my sister now

 is dead she killed her-

 

Self because of this phoenix rising romantic

Irish nonsense. This is the terrible beauty

that is born in the words of W.B. seen through 

a cracked glass-like peering into reality my

 sister's forlorn. I am dis-

able to spout this from my

 broken gutterance.

 

Aphantasia distances grief from my no mind's

eye, and my traumatic memory was erased 

thank fuck. I don’t think my broken mind is strong

 enough for these bullet syllables to ricochet 

of my road. 

Words find a rat-ta-tat rhythm 

a lambeg-borhan beat of the bleeding street 

in my mother's' Dublin tongue. Lost an anagram

of lost- lives-violets. 

I lay these words by your grave, a virtual homage

 hold this grief of words in a negative capability. 

I brush the soiled tears from your eyes and you

 wake in me swimming and glistening in mine.

These words are from Light on Stone's first poem 

I had published was for you. Laylow this is

  my remembrance to you, Stephanie, lylo out 

there on the bluestone road the olde smuggler's

 route , keep your head down. Love A x see you

   soon in plotted land R.I.P.  

Beside a Quaker 

graveyard where 

Anne fox the

 daughter of George fox

 founder of Quakerism 

no headstone just a simple

 mound of earth if only

Stephanie fox uttered art though.

        Poe-artry for me is like a therapeutic session.

Talking trauma in a poetic form. Writ for

Robert Lowell who said: ‘Yet why not say

                                                    What happened.’

 

 

 

          MORAL MANGLE HYPOCHRISTY 

Really, truth be told my humanity 

has been put through a moral mangle 

for twenty years in this loop that isn’t 

humane humanity.

We have got to stop thinking of this

Christian narrow view.

We have to start to think humanity. 

I'm not here to blaspheme God

or in my case dog, he doesn't live

in my write hemisphere.

The left brain it seems is anger

angst religion, living in N.I.

For god and Ulster in a crusade

I have known war for half a life-

time. I just want to live in peace.

We have to bomb the shit 

out of each other to get 

peace my damaged mind 

can't comprehend this just

don't pick up that fucking gun.

We have hid behind the veil of 

christianity for so long, we are

stalling human evolution. We

cant get out so we have to put

up with living a twisted 

and demented life of hurt.

Fooder for yet another war

for our children's children.

I am not out to tell not to 

believe our minds are warped

with one world sugar sweet

and two loads the gun. 

How can we live in that world 

and not be a LIAR to ourselves.

I have received 

hundreds of thousands of pounds from 

an ethical medical stance.

I am very grateful for my well fare state but 

don’t you think it would be better spent 

on tomorrow's infrastructure not a wasted 

human nonbeing. Let's be real I know 

we need parameters this is my parameter.

I live with a real truth, not a bull story.

 What is the point, I don’t want to die but 

what a waste of resources this is. 

We need to be investing in a decent society 

for tomorrow. I have done my job been 

a father poet teaching creative writing 

my mind no longer has the capacity. 

I am damaged goods live with that truth 

I have to live in your nonsensical state. 

Every day for 20 years, it gets a bit tiring 

my sons and poeartry is out there. 

I have to live in your shadows and watch 

our world crumble away. All because 

of your narrow vision of hypochristy. 

Climate, cost of living transport, nursing 

education  and a -rainhousing crisis, we are going 

to end up sleeping or protesting on the streets. 

Boris bow down and get out the party-

 gate is padlocked.

 He should be arrested and slammed up 

with trump, imagine bojo-trump 

In the same cell that would be dark humor. 

Fixing their hair in the shower the rest is 

up to the imagination. 

He doesn’t even feel embarrassed and 

you are letting him off Scott free. 

Ok UK-rain is just another U.S. state 

when will you stand up for yourself. 

To humanity what is my point, purpose

 keeping me alive is breaking the system. 

I don’t add to this society, l just don’t 

                              see your point.

 

Wouldn’t I be better as someone who died 

for humanity, as Keats said there is a flaw 

in happiness he accepted his lot 

why cant you!

 Sentimentality will kill humanity, you should 

have calculated that I live without 

long-term memory. 

This has been living in a hell cell, I just 

don’t see your logic of keeping me alive 

to break the system, we have created suicide. 

John Berryman was right we live in a blind- 

brow, this is my daydream song 

of my reality, everyone should have 

the choice to live or die. 

You decided  my life in hell and your ok 

with your moral mangle what about me.

This world isn’t very humane. I don’t 

want your cheap life that is not worth living.  

We find hope in a stoic pessimism will 

and the will to power but you don’t hold 

weight to negative capability. 

I have been bedbound for three years 

my body has broken but must watch 

a six-foot man with legs like tree trunks 

wasting away. I don’t see your point 

this isn’t very nice,  humane.

you're stuck in your Christian view in 

a Plato cave. You and your waste of life 

forced me down the road to wake in 

the hospital crying my eyes out, I 

have to resort to that to find care 

and humanity in suicidal tendencies.

Thats a bit drastic it's your way or high-

way where do I fit into your bullshit.

 Give people the right to die, were 

big boys and girls aren't we? 

Give me the dignity to live to die. 

You made your decision now I have 

to live with that one but it takes two to

tango your giving me no choice, I have 

to go down your road to nowhere.

 

You are making existence cheap in an end-

less war live and by the sword.

I didn’t attempt suicide twice to die 

I did it to live, think of positive suicide 

stick your suicide tendencies. I gambled 

life and death it made my decision.

 Your bullshit value put me in a sad 

and rotten way. You belong to a nasty blood 

be gets bloodthirsty and warmongering.

 

 Jesus didn’t mean this way of life, living 

a holy 2000-year crusade In gods name. 

I want none of that, you disgust me. 

It's not ok to take a life in anybody’s 

name.

Snobbery has tripped up humanity 

and we are falling to the ground. 

There is only one way out for me but 

you can turn this around 

for the sake of humanity. 

Just like gambling on life, I gambled death.

 you put me in that position I didn’t see much 

point to life. Let me live to die, I was a poet/

father let me be remembered as that not 

a wasting lump of flesh waiting around to die. 

Give me hope not a cruel, cruel world 

living in a hopeless hope the only

 to find hope was gambling, I had 

to find even if that meant suicide.

 

My life how can you consult insult my life 

to live with half a brain, I haven’t

lived one second better than I did

before the stroke. I exist in this repetitive 

repeat a moment for twenty years 

do you think that’s fair? 

Think the right way round and everything will 

be sound recorded just before my stroke who by 

I cant remember.

 

As Peter Gabriel said ‘I can’t remember don’t 

recall I got no memory of anything at all’. 

Don’t get me a false hopes in these words

                  think of humanity.

If you find yourself in a black hole 

at the bottom of a black hole 

realizing only writing can save 

you.

 wrote marguerite dumass 

on her studies on melancholy.

 I found myself in that dark.