APHANTASIA

 

Reading the master Carver again

He’s like a sculptor of words.

I find it so difficult to find a form

Of happiness. This was the last

aha moment.

 

Two magpies Greenlawn

By a red and yellow door

What more do you want?

 

That’s the last time I saw Sun.

Been in bed for almost a year

Hiding from sun covid 19 so

Thin-skinned almost translucent.

 

Behind these blackout curtains.

Just a few years ago I was dis-

Abled able to drive my wheel-

Chair car now bedsores have

Crippled me, no mind's eye

To link two beings in the sun.

 MY HEART GOES OUT TO YOU

 

Watching lava flow

The tragic beauty of it

pyroclastic

 

Blocked up my portal

Of poetry with brown boxes

Of P.P.E.

 

Hands, face protection

But what of inner me-

capability

THE GAP OF INSIGNIFICANCE

 https://gallerypress.com/authors/o-to-z/james-simmons-1933-2001/

 Tell it to your heart, please don’t be afraid

Said Lou Reed. My wife and children

Are locked in me, I have no hologram pro-

Jection but I know it happened like a ball

Of knitting un-ravelled for my mother un-

Approved and approved roads of Ireland

from Renvyle, Kerry, Cork to Skibbereen.

A quarter of a century locked away in me

Years of magic whatever they say, salmon

Of knowledge spawning in me. Good times

Were had by all, no memory recall but Irish

Energy flows in me, I’ll never forget to re-

 Member, ill force it through the Muckish gap

 THE NARROW DOOR

(NIETZSCHE HAMMER)

 

I am what I write

I can only look in

not out.

 

My hologram flow state

is dead and gone, this is-

my will-my art

 

Pessimistic poet's

Byron, Debussy, Puskin

Pessimistic composers

 

Anthology of woe

The world of will and idea

Will Durant

 

Schopenhauer

Pessimistic optimist

The land was raped

RELIGION AND EDUCATION 

DUMBS YOU DOWN

 

The school was much like religion shoved down your throat

I was a little English boy so I was ignored by teachers.

I formed an education through Green, blue books of poems

And prose and red books of Maths and spelling I learnt

From the alphabet on the walls.

 

Teachers rarely asked me what was in my head. My schooling

Was who I was going to fight at the break, I fought my way through

Grades. Once I learnt that their hardman brogue was just banter

I learned to kick back and the fights got fewer and my accent changed.

 

I hated school primary school was in a dunce class of boys who ate

Your pencil and rubbers and shit in their wellington boots, stank

Poor kids a pack of dirt birds these kids had mental health issues

But who was I knew nothing of Philosophy poets like Schopenhauer

who said two hundred years ago that education was making you dumb.

 

He said religion and education shouldn’t bespoke of until one was sixteen but

no one listened to a pessimist like him, to Alan watts and Nietzsche

were philosophy poets. The education was controlled by the church by crossdressers, 

men in robes.

 

No one rocked the boat, I had my own one way but who was going to listen to a kid

who should be seen and not heard but they would hear by the secondary school?

was dragged behind sandbags beat by the British army asked where was your father?

last night little did they know that I cried myself to sleep knowing my father was out there

In the gun battles.  They turned me into a delinquent, no one engaged my mind James Simmons

was the only one my school was the poets' house, Donegal. I was my mind Jimmy edited it.

my father of literature.

 

I hated school so much that I tried to burn it down and Got twelve on each hand

by the head we called the bat, his cane was razor-thin at the end I was on my knees crying so I broke

all their windows 24 and was expelled. Only for the troubles, I would have Been put in a home 

my mother said that’s where I was heading that way or dead on the streets.

 

  THE SON OF DELMORE SWARTZ

Lou Read is peeling of the wall

Coming unstuck mic and all.

Postered to give me strength

Life size trans my great.

 

A blue mask philosopher poet

The son of Delmore Swartz,

You are who you want to be

The King of New York City.

 

The father killed the son, a fabled

Pit and pendulum, Andy’s chest

Was in his heart the Raven had

Blood on his claws never never-

More he rooks above the open door

All this came down in one swoop

Like a great American wave. An Eco

Warrior brave, they’ll shit in

The river you know.

 

Like a tai-chi grace later a perfect

Day’s embrace. Lou’s so easy he

Is not gone his memory is a re-in

Car-nation, rock’n’roll song.

 

Like a graceful tai-

chi posture ill end this verse

in haiku leather lustre

 

Stick him back up to radiance.

Sweet Jane and Sally can dance.

 HERE SAY

https://soundcloud.com/rod-cordner/sets/violets

Schopehauer,  Neitzsche, Camus, Cioran and Alan

 Watts poets of philosophy, a pessimistic view

Of wonder. Religion censored their view even

 Greek mythology and the Stoics telling us about

Keats and Shakespeare negative capability. The

 internet has blown away the bullshit of religion

And negative capability is the true sense of

 humanity. Darkness within darkness has given me

A sense of belonging a realisation of hope within

 loss all those crusades and barbarism in the name

Of religion were futile. At long last have we come

 to the truth of humanity all we need now is for

All you traditional numskulls realise that we can

 only get peace by giving peace, stop this macho

revenge avenge in you a sense of humanity. We are

 not out of the dark woods yet, these so called

Men of the cloth are evildoers its up to us to show

 them that there is another way through dialogue.

I have been on seminars with people like Desmond

 Tutu Michael Stone, the brighton bomber through

 anne Gallaghers seeds of hope, created a C.D. with

 my friend Rodney Cordner called violets anagram

 of lost lives a tribute to that great book that pays

 homage to the people who paid the price for the

 peace we have today catholics, potestants,

 police,army all in one book together. I have been

 privileged to be around people like the sands

 family and friends, I really have the honour to be

 around that aroma of peace, we cant let this peace

 slid away like molten lava and evolve aother black

 hill of hatred. At the start of this peace on peace I

 was askig myself what right have I, a street kid

With a basic education but then I realised that

 peace gives me every right to write this.

Please please please don’t let it slip away. In 2005 

I took a stroke that almost killed me, iknow

I don’t have the mind capacity to teach creative

 writing as I have lost my long term memory but

You can remind me in a short term. Through this

 blog that acts as a minds eye as I suffer from

Aphantasia, the stroke has left me paralyzed down

 one side of my body ill never walk I know

All forty five years of memory are locked within

 my only way to live is to live in me,my only way

To find substance is in mei just hope that all this is

 true, I know it happened but I don’t have any

Hologram projection, I have no way of knowing.

 My life is hear say. I know I keep repeating this

Over and over for years but this is all I have im

 stuck to the momet of peace, I want to move but

I cant its like a brick wall you cant get over uder or

 around, I hope one day to sledge my way through

Until then I will mumble my way. For years I have

 writ the same theme in a different format.  Death

Is the only answer when will you righteous people

 ever understand that life goes on in death,

memory is reincarnation we cat move on until

 euthanasia is a common practise please let me die

with dignity and not to wake again crying in A & E

 ward please stop this. We have known through

aincient Indian hindiu sculptor the scientific way

 but religion has blocked our human intelligence

its as if we have been labotomised even the south

 American Indians knew of the old ways long

before religion uncivilised them. Plant life has

 been known as remedies long before science was

scorned upon but it was the way, religion has a lot

 to answer for, the philosopher poets knew

open the migration routes the global world belongs

 to every one, trust. Get off your high horse

of capitalism, why cant death be a positive force.

Theres only so many times i can do this, i have

 done this for twenty years please dont turn me

 out in a bitter frustrated vein let me die in

 positivity.

 

 DEAD-END

Along a long a

Fox looking at a fox by

A fox

Is this the beginning of the end, there will never be an end to humanity so this is where I sit to wheelchair stand. Beyond my parents lifetime is as far as I can go beyond that is hear say. Even my fathers lifetime is beyond me as he was one a bastard two a liar a deep secretive being buried now on the black hills above Belfast in a plotless grave, he lived as he died uknown. Anything I say about my father is hear say so lets not dwell on bullshit. They say he left Belfast aged fifteen got the boat to England where he joined the British army said he was seventeen was sent to a training camp where on he met a girl with set up home had two little girls was sent overseas to Korea I think after that was posted in London the woman and the little girls were cast aside, forgotten. He befriend a guy a lot older than he they forged their way through so they could not be found they began to use alias’s one night on theirmotor bikes his friend was killed in an accident.  For weeks he grieved his friend like a father figure they say he had no mum and dad left on a doorstep but I think that was a liars bullshit story he told to reel in girls. As I think what happened to a lying bastard is beyond me and you so let him be dead as he lived plotless. My mother was Margaret Patricia Keogh from Rathmines relative to the curran family in and around coollock. My grandfather died of tuberculosis buried in Glasnevin cemetery in a civil army uniform, they say Keogh was a cousin of kevin barry but that’s just hear say.

Maggie Keogh and her five young children found Ireland growing into a republic was poverty stricken Maggie was a cleaning lady and the uoffical midwife in Rathmines my granfathers death left a void in the family and maggie found it hard to survive the news of England was rumoured to be a new start. Maggie who was very indepenant booked them against the family blessing on a cattle boat as they called them as you had to live like a pig. Maggie had two sons who were going down the wrong path so she decided for the sake of her children to go for it and board the boat never to see her family again. They docked in Coventry and found rented rooms and signs of no blacks no dogs no irish pat maggies daughter found work spraying parts for black taxis is was there my father worked

As a paelbeater sprayer a trade he worked at in the army now a disserter using alias’s mixing with shady conmen dealing in second hand stolen cars used as getaways for gangs. He met my mother and reeled her in as she very nieve but had a very natural way about way an irish humanity.

My father reeled her in with his bullshit doorstep story of a street kid, she was caught hookline and sinker the tight irish family could see through his bullshit but patty was beyond their care and fell into his trap the family were planig to move on to London where the building and construction.

John joseph sean Irvine fox followed his prize hen to London and lose himself again stealing selling cars and generally up to no good her older brothers tried to find out who he really was but got lost in his lies he was somebody else john joseph fox who asked patty Keogh for her hand and  this is where I come in one of six children.   I don’t recall too much osf England a block of flats with a rubbish shute on each floor that stank, I cant fathom how I can remember my childhood from a pram view were these memories planted in my head by my mother but it was as if I could sense her forboding as if i could sense her being to leave her family and journey to my fathers home of Belfast Northern Ireland. Strange how he left London for northern Ireland in 1967 at the beginning of the troubles was he a British army mole or was it coincidence, I heard he had worked for the Kray twins in the east end of London, that would explain why he ran you dont mess with them gangsters

All my life and six children each born in a different English town we were always running from his past and northern Ireland was out of anyones view. The family flew to Ireland ad my father and older brother would meet us with the removals lorry in aunt sarahs in  belfastj. The aeroplane taxied

On the runway and two sick bags later I was kneeling o n the back seat of a taxi watching the antrim countryside disappear as the taxi fell through ligoneil. The rest is said and done, I am writing this as sixty year old disabled man with no long term memory. I hear you say how can I recall this is because before I took a stroke that almost killed me,  I was a creative writing tutor so I wrote this down before my memory loss. Some very strange this have happened to me that I will never explain.

Now with memory loss I find it harder to piece this together truth has a funy way of unravelling this is all beyond me and you this is the evolution of my time frame believe it or not, my life is like a jigsaw puzzle, puzzle. i loved and hated my father i sensed the lying brute within and he knew it he could never look me ithe eye we hardly ever spoke i ran away from home three times util aged sixteen i had taken enough of his regimental drill sargeant home rule. when we were together you could cut the air with a kniffe i told my mum who phoned her sister peggy, i lit a cigarette he told me to put it out blew it in his face beat the ira hardman to the ground and ran away to london. on the bus to the ferry i cried as adreneline was still flowing thorough. i felt sorry for the weak little man at my feet wanted him to stop the bus and take me home but that wouldnt happen i felt like a man wiped the tear away ad watched another chapter disappear just like the little boy in the taxi.

 

VOWEL HARMONY

Cadence nor assonance 

can pick up natural rhythm 

roll them off your tongue

Nature is poetry

I can’t see you feel you fall

Disability

Something will break through

The syndrome of memory

From truth comes beauty

 

 Darkness within dark-

ness so much hope in loss

Aphantastic

ODE TO THE DAY MY INNER DIED

FOR PAULA X

                                                                                                               

Saturday April two thousand and seven.

I stood by the bedroom, in my mothers

Home. A divorced creative writing tutor,

plucked a red rose from the back

garden to remind me off her she said

she was  going to a teacher conference

in Slovina, I had no reason not to believe

her I never knew her not to lie, I think

I know truth now but that’s beyond me

only she can ever know.

 

I knew one day she would leave me

Love is rarely balanced, hard to find

a true soul mate on the thorns was

another bud to bloom. I put the bloom

in a glass read a poem by Raymond Carver

my knees buckled beneath like a karate chop

to the back of my knees. This falls into place

so matter of fact because it was so matter

of fact, that was the day my inner died.

I live now in this hell-cell, shell shock memory

is gone like a matter of fact.

 

 

ECSTATIC AGONY

We need a booster shot of wonder

To get us through covid dayze, our

Stunted creativity, shoot me up on

My run. The death of a ladies man

And Read lous leather lustre.

 

I woke to that post as if they both

Were alive on the razors edge.

This might be the future, dirty blvd

But take the negative capability

And shoot it up inside. The estatic

Agony will walk on your wild side.