How many times, can I keep going round

and round editing what I edited yesterday. 

I truly live in a roundabout city, it’s like vertigo.

I come from a no-go-area, for years and years, 

I wrote and rewrote like an O.C.D. obsession as if 

I knew this stroke would happen. 

Prophetic poetry, there’s something to this

Don’t know what and don't want to know.

It's magic like me becoming a writer 

accidentally on purpose. 

For years and years like a fledgling writer 

regurgitating these words of I-am-ness. 

I felt compelled to put them down as if

I knew there was more to these words. 

I was on death's door, my words 

and the love of my children 

pulled me back. 

I dig deep into my locked-in self.  A trilogy

         of poets head-stoned beside me, Raymond 

      Carver, James Simmons, Patrick Kavanagh 

      to name but a few. Their intangible essence 

      seeped into me and the wonderful people

      I met through poetry, through you I touched

Humanity, a street kid from North Belfast.

 

really doe’s rule ok, 

mythology is made of stone

we are made of flesh. 

Why can't we throw the stones away and live in peace.

Why do we hark back to the past. 

When I get there, I forget to remember.

 

I flap my wings t along the way.and fall head-long into the under-

world like Orpheus or Lazerous

A mythological figure, I roll the boulder

More like sysifus, I’m on a roll. We have

Almost drained the blood from the stone. Mythos is just a stone’s throw away  from humanity. Peace.

 How many times can I go around

and around editing what I edited

yesterday. I truly live in a roundabout-

city, it’s like vertigo. I come from a no-

go-area, for year and years I wrote

and rewrote like an O.C.D. obsession

as if I knew this stroke would happen.

 

Prophetic, there’s something to this,

don’t want to know like me becoming

a writer. Accidently on purpose. Years

like a fledgling writer regurgitating

moating words of I-am-ness.

 

I was on deaths door, my words and the love

Of my children pulled me back. I dig deep into

my locked-in self.  A trilogy of poets head-stoned beside me, Raymond Carver, James Simmons, Patrick Kavanagh to name but a few.

 

Their intangible essence seeped into me and the wonderful people friends I met along the way.

Humanity really doe’s rule ok, mythology is made of stone, we are made of flesh. Why cant we throw the stones away and live in peace, why do we hark back to the past. When I get there, I forget to remember.

 

I flap my wings and fall head-long into the underworld like Orpheus or Lazerous

A mythological figure, I roll the boulder

More like sysifus, I’m on a roll. We have

Almost drained the blood from the stone.                                                   

Mythos is just a stone’s throw away from

humanity. Mould no more death-masks.

Wrote this as a critique before my stroke, I must have been a pretty good tutor, no memories of those times. I have amended it as a poem think it works better wish I could write like this today?

 

THE POETS ESSENTIAL LONELINESS

“I think the artist, feels lonely. 

Perhaps his recourse to art,

in any form, comes from his 

essential loneliness.

                                              William Carlos Williams

You have got to give a poem something of your-

self and a little time and respect before you can 

wear the poem like the scales of Elizabeth Bishop's 

"Fish" or William Stafford's "Dark", to kick it over 

the edge and listen to the wilderness, finding a way 

into a poem so that it expresses a truth, finding 

the poem essential loneliness.

 

I think it’s very respectful how the American 

writers pay homage to their favourite writers 

before they begin to read a word of their own. 

We need to learn from that and give thanks 

to the writers who inspired us. Poetry is like 

the spokes of my wheelchairs spoken word

turning through life at a different 

motion, language.

All words are dis-abled and need the care 

to appear on the page but then it’s time to 

share the poem. Too much emphasis for me 

is put on plagiarism and I think we have 

to learn to trust each other.

Poets aren't marched into a stanza like 

a regimental troop, ok we pay homage 

to the soldier war poets but we are also

breaking away from that regimental con-

formity that corals us into nice neat stanzas.

The road to poetry isn't along the road of war upon 

war, we have got to break free of old regimes 

and follow the beat poets or the poets of the day 

into the new refreshing poems of tomorrow. 

We are being cloned by the past, but we are moving 

forward with a captive mind into what Chezslaw Milosz 

called 'a more spacious form' only with men like him 

are we free of old regimental way's that feed our poetry 

and our education into a dog-eat-dog system.

Only with our darkness and negativity of the past can 

we turn this muck into gold and break the shackles 

of the past and step into the enlightened future that 

awards people without the foot-stomping circus act.

We are not a pack of performing animals we are 

a group of civilised people called humanity without 

the brain-washed divides of war. 

It's time to share things freely, honour and respect 

doesn't come down to how much money you have 

in your pocket. We have to live in a consumerist 

society but don't let greed rule the day, ok we need 

a little to get by but it’s getting out of hand. 

Only when you give, do get your poems back 

in a new fresh-eyed perspective that takes 

onboard the criticism and turns your writing 

into a shared poem of trust.

Good honest writing will always find a way through 

the bullshit metre we can see a lie a mile off. 

Raymond Carver in the book 'fires' says no tricks. 

We’ve got to be able to trust people and just like 

giving and receiving a poem we've got to give 

and receive trust with the magic of truth. 

There are no tricks in writing you can read all the self-

help books you want and steal other writer's thunder 

but that won’t make you into a writer, not until you stop 

kidding yourself. There is only one truth and that's 

your truth, write the poet's essential loneliness 

and that essential loneliness will come back 

and make you less lonely.

                 POETRY IS LIKE SUNSHINE IT'S FREE

 TWO MINDS

Were always in two minds doing this

feeling that. Poetry for me is a left-

Right hemisphere thing. My right

Brain is lived in, things are beautiful-

bad. My leftw as damaged, No meta-

physical mumbo-jumbo in here. 

 

 It helps me to understand. I’ve always

Had an inner substance my mother gave

me that, it’s in us all if we just wake-

up and smell the coffee of humanity.

The two minds ponder, find a pome’s 

Wonder, by the balancing lakes.

 

 

 Hell-cell ( black-hole poetry )

for Gerald Dawe

Today I was in agony with constipation

I writhed and writhed on the bed, literally

shit a brick my jailer/caregiver relieved me.

I love Schopenhauers pessimism but

I have owned and groaned my suffering

find hope in blackhole poetry. If it's not

a dead leg then its bedsores on my tailbone.

If it's not that its finding hope in a broken

the mind of memory loss, let's not get into that.

I'm blue in the face and you are bluer too.


Thank you for sticking with me, I almost gave

Up twice that was before the name Aphantasia

 

was uttered, these pome blogs are my mind's eye 

Schopenhauer can stick it where the sun don’t shine.

  SCHOPENHAUER'S WILL TO LIFE.

Light creep’s in the side of my

blackout curtain like shadowed

pages of a book, Accordion.

The sun affects my tender thin

Skin the road  affects my de-

generative spinal cord dis-ease.

At least I’m good at one thing-

whinging pomes of para-

lyzed long-term memory loss.

 

Churning out feeling not

meaning stuff.

                        beyond the blue automatic dis-

                                 abled door. Bed-sores 

                                        keep me bed-ridden.

Ghastly things, I hear you say.

You're missing out on Schopenhauers

Pessimistic/optommism, Religon

held a genius back but he’s more

relevant today, no murder, greed

                          got in his way, the real blue true thing.

Living just isn't living anymore.

It affects my well being on thin-

skin almost translucent.

I hope you have a ball, 

a Schopenhauer one.

 

MY HOUSE OUR HOUSE

 

Living- room is piled up high, My Lou

Reed boxset has go to take second best,

 Another delivery of P.P.E. will see me

unable to get into the living room.

A brown box room.

You couldn’t cat a swing

 In there. The blue mask 

sounds like a ship lost at sea. 

Lou is in my house

 makes everything perfect,

 boxed-in remastered, 

a gift from Lou to me, my house 

our house.

        The spirit of pure poetry.

 

Enlightenment

Don’t know what it is?

                           Van Morrison

 

Catholic/protestant, miracles

Are absurd non-sense. There

Is no god, were on ockames

Razorblade, universal

Principle, blind faith.

 

Oscar Wilde had to get a degree

In theology, he thought this

a joke, hilarious laughter. Get

rid of bad kings and parliaments.

Were children of the enlightenment

God still rules ok, inhumanity.

 

What is the scientific revolution?

Hume, Locke, a revolution with-

Out bloodshed. The white/black

Swan, we can't see into shadows

Of wonder. Religion closed

The drapes on us, money murder

And god is a god-given right.

 

The earth goes around the sun.

Science doesn't care if you close

the drapes, who is this guy 

jesus the wrong eyed jesus.

Religiosity never backed-up

climate change, deniers.

Scien

 

THE DOG'S HONEST TRUTH

 

I don't have a mind that’s capable

of lying, its damaged. The more

I thought, I realised my care-givers

Left me in the chair for over three

Hours, knowing my skin was so thin

my body could only tolerate

two hours.

 

The bedsores broke on my rear end like 

the skin was torn from my flesh but 

I’m now on my side on tramadol again.

I thought I kicked that habit but here 

I am again taking twenty tablets a day 

that’s not including, joy rides.

 

Joy rides what a joke, you cant beat 

the truth but it is surely beating me. 

After over three hours I was in agony.

 

All this for a doctors appointment

I hope it was worth it. Nurses change

my wounds three times a week 

my care come four times a day 

lying on my side in this shell-cell limbo,

my wounds are throbbing.