FLIMSY HOLLOW-GRAM

   (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.

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 deaths doorstep 

with no purpose now I know differently. 

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 any ones 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? 

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’

 DUENDE    

'found death in life, may find life in death'

                                        Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A residue of darkness

lives within us.  I wrote

about the womb dream

and the blotches of dark

long before my stroke.

Caused by deep trauma

in birth or being lost with-

in yourself during stroke etc.

There must be millions of us

walking around unable to talk

about our darkness, this is not

evil or sinister only to much light

can warp the dark.  When I wake

from a deep sleep my room is

stippled in dark but there is

always the dawn breaking through

my sight.  We live in a world of

light and dark and society can't

always be right because it shifts

back and forth.

For example Keats and Coleridge

lived loved in life with death and

in their sight were right.  I'm trying

to live with my darkness and that's

good enough for me, to see.

NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

 

 

If it’s good enough for Keat’s 

then Its good enough for me. 

Cockneypoet with negative 

capability, he knew his lot.

Stroke, Aphantasia is a hurdle 

and a half-paralyzed aphasia

A poet without a voice.

 

I am stating facts of cold grey matter.

I’m-poet-tent in a wheelchair under

Their tree with vibes of the Buddha.

These men are incomparable to any-

One else. Old age sickness and death.

Suffering is the truth, way of the world.

 

Harmony, Sentimentaliity is a blasphemy

reac out for a touchable dream.

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 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. 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 conditioncalled Aphantasia.Wow, just a name lifted my spirit and inspired me to create this blog of hope.

 It’s Aphantastic to put a name on some-

thing the very thing that drove me to suicide.

 For the last eighteen years, I have been 

writing black-hole 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 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. 

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.

Wow, just a name lifted my spirit 

and inspired me to create this 

blog of hope.

 

I live on the write hemisphere

(a pome for Iain mc Gilchrist)

 

Some say that we need both

But my left brain was erased

Long-term memory loss. I think

They are divided for survival

From injuries like living with

one lung etc.…

 

The left brain of anger angst

Warmongering in the name

Of god this is dog nonsense.

I have survived my stroke

For twenty years living in hell-

Cell. How come I live on the right

No dog exists in here is a black hole

portal of poetry.

 

Where life is peace there is no-

Thing else. Marguerite Dumas’s

Said on the study of melancholy.

‘when you find yourself In a hole

at the bottom of a hole realizing

only writing can save you’.

 

Apfox1961.blogspot.com

The write hemisphere, I found

Myself in a black hole-hell cell.

Writing is my bleak way out.

Its bleak and black beautiful

This is all I have being sad but

Not being sad John Berryman’s

’ Blind brow’.

 

I found myself in blackhole after

 a massive stroke that erased my left

like my hard drive was wiped clean.

 

 Leaving me with aphasia, aphantasia

paralyzed down the right half of my body.

My world is black and bleak but so was

Dickens and the Irish-Russian literature.

 

People don’t realize that dog thought

And sentimentality without a dark

Side. Ying dances with yang, black

mingles white, sunyata, satori how

 do you explain that one?