Feeling not meaning.

BBEFORE BASHO THERE WAS NO BASHO

A simple tree branches an active

imagination. I feel like someone

from the 12^th century bare, raped,

pillaged twisted and torn.

 

The computer is my insulted quill,

a blackbird visits me and two

Magpies touch and touch me

above the mini daffodils.

 

Is rhyme what I’m searching for?

I don’t think so. Before Basho

there was no Basho, beyond poetry

words have an inner rhyme. I seek

feeling not meaning.

Basho

Translated into my world, it’s as if he’s here saying if your verse has one or two more or less sounds you need not to worry, give them crucial scrutiny, make the sound syllable true.

                                                                                            

Butterfly Flutter

nature opens up and drifts

like time itself

Strong coffee, pipe-

Tobacco and Tao Te Ching

you can’t beat the way.              

Get off your high horse

of capitalism, speak

to me of humanity

I killed a wasp in 

the bathroom with seamus heaneys

electric light

ff

you can’t bureat the way.              

Matsuo Basho

             The master of mind

                              And disability

Genuine Touch

I killed a wasp in the bath-

Room with Seamus Heaney’s’

Electric Light.

The sound of yellow

And black squelching

Against the windowpane

And the soft-back cover

Like a sudden charge

Of blue.

The Dream

Snippets of silken shadow.

The dream it seems I've been

having all my life flickers

in the light of day.

A catalyst without ink to stain

undulating through silk screen

frames, images appear.

White on white, in sleep it was

a bomb-blast of colour, all that

remains is shadow, words

I stored for this poem

lie fragmented

on the page.

Genuine Touch

I killed a wasp in the bath-

Room with Seamus Heaney’s’

Electric Light.

The sound of yellow

And black squelching

Against the windowpane

And the soft-back cover

Like a sudden charge

Of blue.

The Dream

Snippets of silken shadow.

The dream it seems I've been

having all my life flickers

in the light of day.

A catalyst without ink to stain

undulating through silk screen

frames, images appear.

White on white, in sleep it was

a bomb-blast of colour, all that

remains is shadow, words

I stored for this poem 

lie fragmented

on the page.

Poetry helps me

                                                                                                 

to survive my poverty

                                                                                          

good for the soul

 

                                     

Surrounded by dis-

Ability, hand rails, piss

Pots and wheelchairs

A butterfly flutters

By out of beauty

On stroke ward.

A crow caws black

Through the trees

On a moon-shine day.

A sunshine day-

By myself, spooning

Porridge gruel.

BEHIND THE BLUE DIsABLED DOOR

A life in almost Haiku

        

Behind the blue dis-

abled door that opens automatic

to let in care –

my mother gave me

something to get something

humanity

my dad played cards

to pass away the long day

heart attack blues

The girl from housing

called and said: you shouldn’t

be living like this

Past went up in smoke.

From the kitchen to computer

that’s my day, writing

moment us pomes like

this today. Compelled to write

Black-hole pomes.

His memory began

in two thousand and five-

When he woke from stroke

Coma, paralyzed down

right side with no speech. He spent

a year in a re-hab

hospital learning

to be himself again-

A year of trying

to dress himself and make a cup of tea.

         Butterfly Flutter

nature opens up and drifts

like time itself

Strong coffee, pipe-

Tobacco and  Tao Te Ching

you can’t beat the way.

  

My old man is dust-man

 

My da was a hardman from north Belfast.

 Was trying not to write of trauma but this

 Is all iv’e got, my down is my up. My da

 Was not a nice man, it wasn’t nice under

 His skin. I cried for him each night he was

 Out in a gunbattle.

 

I wonder what he would make of me now.

 Rummaging through T-chests in the attic

 were magazines Of Japanese torture no-

 porn. Books on the secret army Michael

 Collins and mums books on Hollywood.

 What a mix a sadist and a humanist. Dublin-

 Belfast, he always said I was to sensitive. 

But that was my mum the poet in me

 

I wrote my first poem called bastard life

 on the hard- chair, I sat by his coffin

 for three nights. Abstained from drink

 on the third day when he was put in

 my emotions burst out.

 It was the first poem I had published.

 As if he gave me this gift of elegy-

Negative capability. He is buried up

the black mountain, plotless is how

he lived and died. I have to live under

his skin his tears in my eyes

  The philosophy

of poetic peace merged-

singularity

Aphantastic

 

Aphantastic   

finding your self in a hole at the bottom of a hole of solidude realising olny writing can save you.

  .

Aphantasia is the inability to visualize mental images, that is, not being able to picture something in one's mind. Many people with aphantasia are also unable to recall sounds, smells, or sensations of touch. Some also report prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained relativ

ely unstudied. 

Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter, which also coined the term aphantasia. Research on the condition is still scarce. The term aphantasia is derived from the Ancient Greek word phantasia (φᾰντᾰσῐ́ᾱ), which translates to 'imagination', and the prefix a- (ᾰ̓-), which means 'without'. Hyperphantasia, where mental imagery is unusually vivid, is the opposite to Aphansia.to

Wow just a name lifted my spirit and inspired me to create this blog  Aphantastic 

APHANTASTIC

It’s Aphantastic to put a name on something

the very thing that drove me to suicide. 

For the last eighteen years, I have been 

writing blackhole 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 hopeless hope.

         A PHILOSOPHY OF POETRY

 

Poetry for me is a way of life, for my masters degree

I wrote how Patrick Kavanagh and Raymond  Carver

showed me to the way to the philosophy of poetry.

When I was a young boy I lived in Hacksballscross

just a mile from Kavanaghs birthplace Inniskeen

the townland of Mucker, meaning friend in Irish.

 

Carver and Kavanagh were miles apart and time-

lines apart. I was the catalyst doing my degree

at the poets house in Donegal, I sent them three

poems and was asked to go on a 2 week

poetry retreat.

 

I mucked in so well in Port muck, all the muck-

mucker-Portmuck under the tabletop

of muckish mountain. All the pagan placenames

pointing to a poet who wrote a poem called

pagan poet. The poetry of Kavanagh was every-

where in Hackballscross his poetry seeped into

my blood, when my teacher read his poetry

I was hypnotised into a trace.

 

The teacher went out to see my parents

to persuade them for me to stay on but

I hated school and wanted to stand on

my own two feet get away from my

fathers ogre like home rule regime

 

E

 

I went to work in Dublin and London started

reading up on poetry critique, creative writing.

I was reading all the classics like Yeats, Pound,

Eliot etc, I was going going right over my head.

I signed up for a creative writing further education

class at the local tech. I took with me a list

 A list of contemporary writer like the beat poets,

Plath, Sexton and Lowell’s life studies.

 

The tutor said I had to read Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare etc,

I walked out the door went to library Set up a desk

with the door of the box room for typewriter and books.

He told his wife he would work no more as he wanted

to be a writer said it might take two years to be published,

it took six.

 

A friend called him being the only person who spoke of literature

he lent him ‘Fires’ by Raymond Carver, he said I would get so much

from this writer, the blurb on the back said trailer park literature.

Sparked my attention an alco poet without the beer soaked pages

of hungover blues.

 

For ten years he wrote and rewrote and rewrote, read and reread

Carvers poetry Salmon Rushdie who said read every thing carver wrote

he was a great writer so I do.ne what I was told. He had his first  

poem a bastard life in an athology, he went to the library, told them

about his publication. And set up a creative writing class that began

with Carvers magic words, his oness as the Buddists say.

 

When his friend left he flicked through the book stopped at.

A poem for Karl Walenda aerial supreme he felt he was on

The sky walk tight rope holdig Carvers hand, was as if the poems

Were written for him,his language He was being published in small

press poetry mags. Then a chap book an intro with four other

writers. He went to work for the poets house, everything seemed

so right, Jimmy Janice simmons offered him a scholarship.

He levitated all the way from Donegal-

to Craigavon.

 

Out bullets and bombs while I blattered out peace pomes.

I worked for an arts center setting up workshops for adults

and children in schools and youth centres. I was so centred

on these workshops that took over my lifer, without being

clocked In or out. I think there for, I am.

 

My first collection ‘Splint’ was published on the blurb

on the back said. Imbued by the poetry

Of Raymond Carver, to be mentioned on in the same

sentence with Raymond Carver. This is A paragraph of wonder

that holds bombs and bullets, imbued in peace of wonder. I went all

Around the world Hungary, Germany, Dublin, Amsterdam Belfast

even produced a C.D. with a folk singer friend of mine Rodney Cordner

we even set up a series of workshops based on the C.D. Violets.

An anagram of lost lives. We toured all over Europe

and Ireland with Ann Gallaghers seeds of hope with talks on the peace

process on my return home I took a massive stroke and spent

A year in foster green, a rehab hospital losing all my long term memory

paralyzed down my right. Wheelchair bound I hope that this is true?

 No mind's eye aphasia

Aphantasia-

Dark vocal damage 

Tao-Andromedia

The sperm-like milky-way

Merge-consciousness

 

Something from nothing

I have been creating pomes

From erased memory

 

 CONSCIOUSNESS ATILLA JOSZEF STYLE

Armorous abstraction



I felt the cosmic

order gleam-the leaves like

tiny butterflies.



Build a bonfire,

 a super-duper one 

to warm everyone.



No arrows, stones

or guns just a sigh of beauty-

a train whistle blows.

  

 

CRYPT-TO-CHROME-CHIMPANZEE POETRY

 

Neuroscience states that the right brain

Is monkey Ville but I am far from

monkey man.

 

Let me start by saying I am not a scientist

Just a mere poet who is intrigued.

In the last few year’s I have been gripped

By Ian Mc Gilchrist’s awareness, his divided

Brain theory.

 

I took a massive stroke in 2005, my left brain

Was erased so, I live on the right side and its

Far from monkey Ville, how can you explain how

I can understand the divided brain.

 

I have been writing for years on my sense

That Raymond Carver and Patrick Kavanagh

Have been here with me in the realm of possibility.

Me becoming a poet accidentally on purpose.

 

Both these poets and others have been trans-

Mitting waves of humanity. I believe that D.N.A.

Is sent to strands of D.N.A. via waves of crypt-

To-chrome like microwave signals from a phone

Mast.

 

Ian Mc Gilchrist is probably the only person alive

That will know what I am talking about. I think

The lumps at back and front of the brain are 

transmitting humanity.

 

This might even be the answer to consciousness

The reason why we sense another being-being

There, waves of humanity are linking humans.

 

Is this plausible? if you go to cryptochrome

on YouTube and see how one strand of D.N.A.

Communicates with another, a signal of humanity.

 

My life and my poems have been about seeking

Feeling not meaning, we have been searching

For metre rhyme and meaning but the Portuguese

Poet Fernando Pessoa said ‘it is not necessary just

to live but to feel’.