THE STOLEN CAR

 Woe be gone, woe be 

tide, betide of woe 

begone inside.

Get off your high horse

of capitalism speak to

 me of humanity.

'finding yourself in a hole,at the bottom of a hole',in almost solitude, and discovering that only writing can save you.

        all 255 blogs........

 LET GREN-FELL RISE

walking along just kicking stones minding my own business

                                         

                                                                                   Steel pulse

Sparked by an updraught of memory-

Green-fields, red white and blue, so much

animosity what we gonna do? We've had

war and Peach (Blair) its time to reach

beyond our divide. 

 

You're not black, your not white, try

a human being standing, begin. No

prod no taige no rasta- far-I. Far-I

was a lament, near-I is our intent.

The kingdom fell, let the kingdom

rise, uprise. We are closer than we

have ever been, grasp that peace.

This is an Irish/British pome. stand

up for your right to be.

 Seg-re-peace-gate no more, raw-

war is over let humanity begin.

I was in Belfast 69' London 77'

Let me remember my past with-

out racial religious tension.

Flags not at half-mast. 

So much animmosity what we gonna do?

https://news.yahoo.com/uprising-history-behind-steve...https://news.yahoo.com/uprising-history-behind-steve...

                  C.R.A.I.C.       C.R.A.I.C.         C.R.A.I.C.

     Community relations activity in Craigavon

The idea of C.R.A.I.C. began life as a cross-community venture 20 years ago when I was an able-bodied person, I then worked for the community relations council based at Zion house in Lurgan, covering the whole remit of Craigavon area. I applied for funding to set up a creative writing class as I have a masters degree in creative writing, I am also a humanist so I wanted to set up a fun day for the kids and a music day at the front and back of zion house, The day for me was great there wasn't a swell of people but hundreds was good enough for me all free of charge. 

I got donations to help volunteers and the bands who would have done it for nothing but I believe you have to give to get in case I needed their help in future. we secured funding for the resident anthology, a book of short stories and poems.I was amazed at the standard so it was a great success all round zion,community relations, I was well chuffed with an idea formed in my mind came off so well, I put it all down to you have to give to get. Every venture you form is simply free.

  

                       A.FOX LOOKING

AT A FOX 

BY A.FOX

A boy at a half-door in Hack-

ballscross, a fox thought begins

to form a mile awaty from the town-

land of Mucker. Patrick Kavanaghs

birthplace, poetry is in the air.

A glowing red dawn one he has never 

saw before growing up in Belfast

and London. Something skulks in

the red dawn ditch. A fox hunkers up

to catch the little boys eye just like 

the thought fox caught Ted Hughes

imagination it skulked his realism.

A moment went by, timeless they

watched each other. Years went by

the boy couldn't fathom, happening.

He enrolled in Dundalk tech, hated

school is thrown into a dance class.

When his form teacher read extracts

 fromJulius Caesar or Guillevers travels

he fell l into a trance transformed to 

war-torn streets and his fathers gun-

running across the border that cottage

for him was freedom winds it took all his

Belfast hatred away encaptured en-

raptured for his ignorant father war.

The form teacher spoke to his parents

wanted him to stay on at school but

the boy ran away from home couldn't

wait to get away from his bigot father.

he walked out at the news of the narrow-

water bombing, sons and brothers killed

and he yelled like a world cup goal, 

He walked away in disgust, I can't stand 

it anymore- more, Age sixteen he beat 

his hardman father and ran to his aunts  

in London where he got into trouble 

arrested and deported back.

this time he went to live in Dublin, never

again did he live with his father. He had

three sons went to the poet's house Lan-

caster university became a creative 

writing tutor, 

A publised writer with eight collections

of poetry. Can you put your life down to

a moment, a fox looking at a fox?

                                 

 

 

    WHAT PATRICK KAVANAGH SAW

                (A disused cottage in County Louth)

 

Just up Duffy’s lane over the fields 

towards Mucker, Patrick Kavanagh's 

homeland, just a mile from Hack-balls- 

cross, through his poplars over his wodden- 

gate, lost in an old abandoned cottage.

It was as if the people had just walked 

out the door, like a film set of Patrick-

Kavanaghs catholic Ireland. Lost in 

a world of sacred hearts blood from 

thorns and sepia-toned pictures of Jesus.

Bloody icons littered every step I took 

It seems as if  I had walked into his 

poems in memory of his mother 

and father. All I knew was my brother 

had the jack of a car and I had the branch 

of a tree and we were out on manoeuvres

playing, war games. 

I picked up an ebony and ivory walking-

stick that I was going to use as a gun.  

Don’t,  said my brother who was two years 

older and wiser. That’s the devils 

plaything, after all he was a smart guy.

He could count to ten in German 

and watch, Match of the day

At the same time.

I threw it away as if the plague was carved

into it, I went upstairs looked out the window

And saw what Patrick Kavanagh saw. 

I considered the grass growing cool about my ankles 

on a July day running home through the fields 

with my brother and a one eyed three legged 

dog armed with the branch of a tree.

Snobbery has tripped up humanity 

I have paid for my own funeral.

I have no life insurance, my son's

will grow to be men, to sail 

through life as I did without 

in-here-I-tense. 

To stand on their own two feet. 

I hope to die a pauper and leave 

this life as I came, without a shilling 

in my skyrocket wow, sky-rocket, 

I'll go off with a bang, will you? 

Break the cycle of in-here-I-tense.

Feeling not wrong spelling.

You can be a bastard but don't ever be a cunt

DOING MY FATHERS TIME 

He was one of the longest detainees in Ireland.

A member of the British army in the 50s.

Detention is 48 hours he was detained for

nine months under the special powers act.

An I.R.A man, a bastard literally. Coin collector, 

I stole every rare penny he had

bigamist bastard, I laughed in his face

when he beat me.

As a boy, I found Japanese torture mags in the attic, not porn.

Some say he was an abuser, I have no proof of that. 

I wouldn't put anything past him, he was rotten to the core, 

he knew that I knew something in him was wrong, 

He couldn't look me in the eye, we never spoke.

my life was full without that bastard.

i ran away from home four times age 16 I beat him to the ground 

and ran to London. My mother gave me all I needed

it was i him from, her humanity, he wanted m being.

I became a creative writing tutor.

Some of my students went on to be published poet my mothers

humanity was inside, to think he asked me to prime a case bomb.

imagine asking your son to kill. He ordered my sister to carry a gun under a red coat, I was asked to burn that coat little.

He told me to listen to police messages, they sent out an A. P. B.

for a girl in a red coat, I burnt the coat, that was the early seventies

You done what you were told I never told him I heard it on the radio.

She spent six in Midleton juvenile center for girls

imagine doing that to your own daughter.

Mum was in armagh womens prison, my sister 

was in Midletown

my father was in the Crumlin road jail

I was left to run the streets, mitched school for six months

tried to burn the school, broke 24 windows

one for every slap with the black-jack, expelled.

My was released on bail, he went on the run

to a cottage in hackballscross, just mile from Mucker

Patrick Kavanagh country. I didn't know then what poetry was

I called that time freedom winds all the world was not at war

it was then I started to question republicanism. I grew up reading the secret army and Micheal   Collins were the only books in my home and my mothers encyclopedia of Hollywood.

So I grew with swashbuckling Errol Flynn in an Irish army uniform.

Little did I know that cottage with no running water

no electricity parrfiin lamps and no toilet was

used to run guns across the border.

when men called I was sent to the shed with a chemical

toilet that stand of jeyes like fluid and a dog with three legs and one

eye beaten by British army rifle butts nearly dead.

He was my companion, he followed me everywhere

He kept me sane they called him the O. C. of dogs.

He took a job as mechanic sprayer/panel beater

rented a house and we became normal.

My year off school had ended

to be like him a negat,

I was a little

put it

 

 I took a stroke lost all long-term memory.

Snippets flicker back but I cant cling  on partial locked-in-syndrome so these pomes are my memory. I remember a boy in my mothers hand visiting him in crumlin road jail like dungeon

                           

Die-verted die-verse-

sions took you round and round to

fall foul of the dead-end.

Die-verted die-verse-

sions took you round and round to

fall foul of the dead-end.

 I don't remember, don't recall.

 OUT OF HAND AND MIND 

 

All sensation was torn from my mind but  

I don’t care anymore. The stroke cleared

the dreadful childhood traumatic years I had.  

I have been trying to remember a past that’s 

dead and gone, I am still stuck in poet peace 

mode, there but there erased, 

I must change my tense. Become a second-

hand person trying to write what's right.

Stop time drifting away into a sci-fi state. 

He couldn't even if he tried, no fiction just 

the fact a Phantasia no mind's eye.  

I was always a real sort of guy, my down is 

up living in-side-out. The red, red, rose, 

is in his heart frozen like a glass that wouldn't

break, petals would not shatter. The thorn 

my will, will not penetrate the brain-stem 

matters matter.