p

NO

THE G WORD HEAR YE HEAR YE!

for GG 

Dharma bum, watching MOATS-mother 

of all talk shows. I felt GGsvibration,  

frustration ringing through me like 

a town crier crying forlornly of

 the Peterloo massacre, are we

going back there.? 

GG dont be offended this isn't about 

religion or holy war it is about humanity. 

And don't pick up that fucking gun, DE-

MILI-TARE-EYES. 

Life is peace there is nothing else. I know 

I have writ you before but your words were 

so true it rattled these words to flow like tears.

I have long-term memory loss, and can't cling

to memory. This is the anniversary of  lyrical 

ballads inspired by the French Revolution, 

France is on fire again. 

I have lived through a thirty-year war in N.I. 

Whatever happened to neutrality and a twenty-

year peace pro-cess-pool of bombed peace. 

My sister killed herself what waste 

a beautiful lass ravaged by war stop 

the paranoia and get help the world is

depressed don't deny it help us to help you. 

My family are shell shock victims alcos 

my mother had five strokes, I took 

a massive one that nearly killed me 

left me paralyzed in a wheelchair is this 

what you want. 

Just think what R.U.S.A.with China

we could end poverty, our water 

sewage is killing us by is this de-

mock racey, this will be norm? 

They say I  died for seconds in 

I.C.U.

I have lost all long-term memory 

cant remember my 3 kids being born 

or being married, lost all sensation

sense of humor a creative writing tutor 

jokes and litter-ature go right over 

my head. 

45 years of memory gone like a child 

in an adult body, no minds eye emotional 

engineering. I have writ some of this 

before no memory.

 

We went from an anti-war stance in 

a propaganda in-stance, to a pro-war 

this is an epidemic of global P.T.S.D.

Were shell shocked and bewildered 

at how greed and corruption has ate 

hate speech on its way into our system. 

For hear ye! news I watch: The Dive,

Redacted, Greyzone, Duran.

The mainstream media explodes like 

a Nord stream thunderous methane fart

and Greta says nothing about climate 

dam-busting, eco-ego-war-rior, that truth 

child is gone, and were left with the wonder 

woman NATOgirl to Biden his little girls.

I wonder who's pulling the tangled-strings 

puppet-tear cry me a dam burst stream 

of terrorist sabotage de-mock-racey is no 

longer a B.L.M.matter the world is on the street.

Europa were not working for a Yankee 

dollar sanctions have backfired the little 

soldier Shultz is running but there

is nowhere to hide from the satellite eye.

In-put the Russian doll breeds the Russian 

call for arms. That's all we need a perverted 

president.  Hard to get up in the morning 

with a Pinocchio erection a wooden liar war-

monger who loves little girls, we are in for it.

I am one of six children in a wheelchair

riddled by alcoholism and shell shock. 

This blood Begets blood has got to stop. 

from Jesus and the Crucifiction to Shake-

spearian, Orwellian fiction Dostoyevsky, 

Grief by Chekov, The dead Joyce. Graveyard 

matter talking to the dead gives us reason 

to live in negative capability.

Faction truth from fiction gives us truth 

and humanity will grow, war crimes 

and lies from a shallow state plundering 

and killing like mafia dons or vikings, my 

father came from this world but I want 

none of that, this is a slippery slope were on.

These stories all are ringing true Gulag 

death camps and Victor Frankil pulled 

us through with a stoic wonder you just 

can't beat the truth ringing, hear ye,

 hear ye!

Tragic comedy is back-to-front comedic 

tragedy black humor and the king of black 

humor Spike said we are 

so fucked!

This is a war of linguistics and propaganda 

Biden the hard-man is in high noon or Shane

 come back Shane,do you want Gunslinger 

Biden back, he's lawless. 

It's like wherein a film script Peter Sellers 

Dr Love strange is riding a new clear- bomb. 

There is no coming back from this one. 

We are on a Tarantino script it goes to the 

core of humanity's strange love. Someone 

tell them it's a nuclear black fucking joke, 

now so close to the bone it's reality, a flimsy 

hollow gram.

Even Noam Chomsky the main man 

of linguistics with a bloodline of immigrants

 Russian/Ukraine is lost for words. He doesn't

do hate lingo. Forget the labels and borders, 

get off your high horse of capitalism lets talk 

of snobbery tripping up humanity.

Tear up the script like the peace declaration 

Bojo the clown threw in the bin and we 

are arresting Trump. These people walk 

freely down billionaire boulevard with their 

friends Andrew, Epstein and co while humanity 

whistle-blower Assange rots in jail for 

the crime of humanity.

People we have been blinkered 

and the Australian government 

feel no shame. Revolt, revolt, 

revolt this is Peterloo day the

 peasant's revolt. 

I went on a warmonger podcast 

to see their so-called bigger 

picture and heard words that once 

were poetic like nomenclature,

un-due-late, nonchalant, hate 

speech flowed to bomb peace.

I felt sick and violated, pixelated 

so much for the big picture, these 

words for me were like stand-

alone poetry they bombed to

 smithereens, poems within poems.

 

and like Northern Ireland they tore 

the lost lives book up in your face like 

a sacred text. commemorating

the fallen, taigs, prods, I.R.A. UVF

Soldiers and police.

Blood begets blood means blood-

shed will follow. The fucks are not 

bad language its the cluster of hate

 speech.I come from the streets of

 Belfast a spade is a fucking spade.

My words will do you no harm, 

l don't have an agenda.I might 

live in a disabled hell cell but 

I'm a poet in love with life even 

if its a dark hope, poetry like 

sunshine is free. 

I said to a born-again guy once 

my so-called bad language is

just four-letter words that are 

in the dictionary like love rose 

they hold no malice.

It's the hate speech said by so-

called righteous people I am a

 wordsmith, they are part of me 

   like god is part of you. 

Ok said I and spat on my palm 

and held it out, l'll stop saying 

the f word if you stop saying 

the G word. 

My mother from Dublin, 

Rathmines, the Dodder, 

used to say 'It's not hard 

to be civil'.

 

BACK TO FRONT

A salutation for Jose Rizal

'Whoever does not sometimes give full consent, and a joyous consent, to the dreadfulness of life, can never possess the utterable richness and power of existence'.

                                                                  

                                                          Rainer Maria Rilke

As if Rainer Maria Rilke and John Keats 

were alive in these challenging times of economic 

gloom, spinning their web of negative capability.  

Holding us in a protective balm against the sentimental 

manufactured culture and our greed for consumerism 

in a throw-away nonsense society. 

These are the days when we must face the 'waking 

dream' and wake to the world of human frailty 

and stop hiding behind the hem of Christianity.  

I am not out to offend or blaspheme anyone 

because I know we all need spirituality and a god-

like existence. Let's fill the cathedrals with music, art and poetry.

Christianity was a great cloak against evil in 

the Middle Ages, but there is something flawed 

about worshipping a man in a dress floating 

around in mobile when there are people 

struggling to get the mobility of a wheelchair 

and access to get them to the street corner.  

Let's bail out Christianity and save it anymore 

sex scandals or holy war embarrassments, going 

against the grain of society, we can't have 

the spirituality of today clashes with the 

spirituality of humanity tomorrow.  

I apologize if anyone is offended by these comments 

but as Tom Waits said in the song 'Get Down of the Cross', 

we need the wood to build an infrastructure that creates 

a path of access that helps people who were not building 

them and us judgmental society in a dog-eat-dog 

world.

'It is a flaw in happiness, to see beyond our bourn-it forces us in 

summer skies to mourn, it spoils the singing of the

nightingale'.

                                         John Keats

In 2005, I had a stroke that almost killed me; I spent 

a year in hospital on my back waiting for someone's 

help after my exhausting days in rehab therapy. I met 

a very caring girl on the Internet, after months of Yahooing 

by computer, I decided to go to the Philippines and meet her.

 After speaking to my son, I decided to find a little happiness 

after that rough year of waking from a stroke/coma on the brink 

of death, good food, and the warmth of a good, caring woman 

was just the ticket I needed.

Playing the journey back and forth in my head, arranging 

my friend to take me to the airport and my girl to pick me

up on the other side, I went for it. I lived with my girl, and her 

family and embraced their Philippine lifestyle so

different from ours.

I never felt a difference in language 

or skin tone. After a time, I thought they were family. I loved their 

caring attitude and even embraced their Christian way.

Every day, I had a massage and walked between two bamboo 

poles on the balcony.  

 I loved their caring attitude so much that I decided to 

stay and get married. They took me to Fort Santiago, where 

Jose Rizal was imprisoned and shot by firing squad and also to 

traditional cabins by the seaside and under a trained therapist's

care, I was buried waist-deep in therapeutical sands.

After those days of near-death experience, it felt like I was in 

heaven, I took potions and herbal remedies, I swam in natural 

springs thinking one day I would walk, I even tried to embrace 

their Christian ways, any light at the end of any tunnel was 

a good light.  

One day, we went to a beautiful cathedral; on the way in, I 

noticed it was decorated with colourful stations of the cross and 

biblical scenes, I saw every statue was covered by glass cages

like a gaming machine, and you had to put money in to light a 

candle that dropped like a jackpot.

I couldn't help but think that the church had some sort of monopoly 

on suffering, and we were paying for the right to grieve. The mass 

began, and I sat there beside my future wife. And I asked what was

happening; the massive doors were closed, and the poor people and 

beggars were locked outside; shouldn't it be the other

way around, I thought. 

Shouldn't all the well-dressed people be out and the poor people in.

I began to feel that hypocrisy rises in me, that the church had got 

it all back to front. Wasn't the church formed to help needy people, 

I felt violated and exploited. I wanted to go up in my wheelchair and

tear the robes from the upper-class priest and throw the challis

out the door, but I sat through the charade.  

The doors were opened again after communion; I asked the girl 

and all her family for their change, thinking I would put on 

the collection, but I asked to leave and was pushed out among 

the beggars and thieves, homeless and limbless people.  

Created by their corruption and hypocrisy, took all the money 

I had notes and all and threw it into the air and went home

disgusted never again to set foot in these hypocritical temples.

I Told my girl I would never be part of organized religions back to 

frontness. 

JOSE RIZAL died for this hypocrisy, and the beautiful poor

people of this beautiful land were raped and plundered. I decided

to leave this corrupt state; I couldn't live in this corruption.

My marriage has now been annulled because British immigration 

said she couldn't come here to look after me because I am disabled 

and can't work to support the manageress of a company.

British law states you can't use a D.L.A. living allowance to get some-

one into the country with more hypocrisy. Ireland is a church, but

no one tells me what to do. So much for Jose Rizal being a hero 

of the people. He lived and died by firing squad, and the church 

and state gripped the people.

All my life, I have had to live under this christ-hypocrisy that has raped

and pillaged this land, I have since been told that I'll never walk or 

talk properly, and the paralyzed side of my body has got no better.

 I might only have one hand, but I've got my poems and essays 

and paintings of spiritual energy, and I feel alive, do you? 

Now I know what Jose Rizal died for; I salute you. Let's stop this

 hypocrisy before it stops us. I miss the wonderful, caring people.

                    KAVANAGH'S DITCH

CONNEMARA QUEEN

The buzz of the tent's zip opens the day,
a skylark, toss of the sea. I move down
from the hills of Connemara down with
the shifting light, I move down through
black rock veined in white marble.

My shadow on the shore of Renvyle, like
an island the ocean reveals to me, a stone
thrown up from the bile of the sea.
I move down to see her formed in stone
among the rockpools.

Her breast swells the ocean left behind,
and one weeps into a pool. I move further
down into the deep ravine, where
the sound of children on the beach falls
silent. I'm alone with her, the elegant con-
tours of her flesh formed by the sea.

Her torso falls away beneath the pool
of salted water. Her bodily fluids seep
from the pink encrustations of her womb
to the broken shells. Her head is enormous,
holding secrets and she cries white marble tears.

She knows violence and speaks with 
a barnacled tongue, like something 
created by Picasso or Henry Moore. She's
my Connemara queen! I gently stroke her
thighs, her quim. I hold myself dripping
on the contours of her flesh and leave for
her master will be here to wash over me.

I climbed the mountain graveyard

Above the violent, divided city,

Above the peace line that stood between us

In the living -room.

 

Your plot, all weeds and wild grass, cries 

out for order.

The fallen wooden cross bears no name;

But you are there. Like a sculptor

With clay, I reach inward, my hands

As delicate as salmon wings riding

The white water, struggling

The strong currents of grief.

 

I brush the soiled tears from your eyes

And you wake in me, swimming

And glistening in mine. My hands

Shape the clay moulding our wounded past.

 

          POETRY LIKE SUNSHINE IS FREE

4. The heavens opened and flooded

down on us through a summer sky but

not a sinner moved.

The sound I would love to hear reading

My poems, but there are no ego trips here

And no praise for the man upstairs; this is

Just the earth, the sea, and the sky paying

homage, a standing ovation.

RECAPTURING MEMORY

Did I grip the mobile staircase and my
mother's hand, looking up at the massive 
steel bird, asking myself how it would stay up?
Shaking with fear, she heard and felt me.
she held me, our minds and hearts en-
twinned. My mother and I had a special
bond to this day that I can't explain. 

Two sick bags later, the plane taxied, and I was 
kneeling on the back seat of a taxi, watching 
he hills of Antrim. The poem has fallen just like 
the plane and taxied on this runway into its 
own form, so it must be proper, the words merged 

To find this form like a poem within a poem.

NOTHING TO DECLARE

Drifting into a daydream 

I can't dream visual holo-

grams, lots of my poetry 

came from my book of 

dreams below my pillow. 

I wrote down dreamscapes

before my feet hit the floor 

and I started to need to remember.

I miss that magic of trying

to merge two worlds.

That could be what poetry is.

A checkpoint Charley Border-

post. A man in a black coat 

tips his hat, waving you into 

no man's land. Now, I need help  

even with drawing a blank.

the qwerty number letters un-

focus on the screen keyboard

like a philosopher stone-

hieroglyph.

Time doesn't grey matter in 

my world, It holds no weight. 

One day, I was at that checkpoint 

now it's a wordplay cryptic cross

word puzzle without a clue.

INTRODUCTION

I OPENED THE HALF DOOR OF THE COTTAGE 

IN HACKBALLSCROSS IN CO LOUTH. A GLOWING 

RED DAWN SHOT THROUGH THE DITCH. 

WE WERE JUST A STONES THROW AWAY 

FROM PATRICK KAVANAGH'S

TOWNLAND OF MUCKER. 

FROM THE DAWN DITCH CAME MY POWER

ANIMAL, A FOX SKULKED OUT TO  GLARE INTO ME.

EVER SINCE THAT DAY WHEN I WAS JUST FOURTEEN.

I NEVER SAW A DAWN IT, BEING FROM THE INNER 

THE CITY OF LONDON BELFAST. MY HEART BEAT WILD. I CAN'T 

RECALL I JUST KNOW I WAS THERE JUST FEET FROM 

A WILD ANIMAL, AFTER MOMENTS, HE WENT ON 

AS IF ACCEPTING ME INTO HIS NATURE.

NATURE AND POETRY WERE IN THE AIR. I SEEN

LIFE FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE.

I KNEW NOTHING BUT BOMBS BULLETS

I SEEN LIFE WAS ALL AT WAR; IT FLIPPED MY WAY

OF THINKING.

I CAN'T REMEMBER JUST WHAT I FELT THAT DAY

 I JUST KNOW IT WAS MAGIC. I HAD A STROKE

AND LOST ALL LONG-TERM MEMORY. I CAN'T EVEN 

REMEMBER MY CHILDREN MY CHILDHOOD 

AND TWENTY YEARS OF  MARRIAGE.

SINCE THAT DAY, THE FOX HAS APPEARED IN MY PLACE-

ART IS THE VERY REASON I AM A WRITER.

THIS MIGHT BE A SHAM-MANIC BLOG, BUT EVEN IF IT

DOES JOG MY MEMORY. I PUT TOGETHER A YOUTUBE

 VIDEO OF HOW MANY  TIMES THE FOX HAS 

APPEARED IN MY ART AND POEMS. I THINK THERE 

HAS ALWAYS BEEN A SHAMANIC BODHRAN BEAT 

TO MY POEMS. A FOX THOUGHT HAS 

BEEN LOCKED IN ME.N

GO TO TOTEM-

BRYO ON YOUTUBE

THE FOX HAS BEEN COMING UP FOR YEARS

EVEN IF I HAVE NO MEMORY.

FIREWEED

The mist moves over Islandmagee, and blue horizons are no longer seen. 

I'm here at The Poets House, locked 

in a poetry workshop: "Invasion".

As the mist begins to clear, I see

purple, the head of Thistledown.

I reach to touch the colour green, my skin welts with nettling pain.

I move inland along climbing narrow

twisting lanes, smugglers' paths.

The blemished earth of invading

armies from other defeated shores.

The nettle stings have disappeared

but the gulls cry in my heart; I move

inland like fireweed on this burnt

encrusted land.

A FOX THOUGHT

For Ted Hughes

I imagine the landscape of your poems:

A sacred wood, a pagan burial ground

Where the eyes of wild lifeblood red

devour prey.  

Surrounded by the darkness

of gothic tales. Cold moons fall on

a perpetual November sky.

Winter soil on your chalk-white flesh

Deep in the womb of your savage earth.

The nonchalant delight of your toil, free

from the vulva noose.  

That something else is alive, unseen, black

 velvet feathers oiled in crude sway within 

black rainbows and peck your birds-eye 

tomb vision.

TRAGIC-BEAUTY

For Janice x

Waiting for the Tory Island ferry.

We sat on the concrete steps.

Leading down to the sea.

Looking into its depth was like

Seeing through a concave glass.

Piles of distorted dogfish, heaped

On the ocean floor, huddled

together in the oblong shape

Of the plastic trays that littered

The harbour. Large black crab

Scurried across their limp under-

Bellies. It all seemed like a waste.

Below is the spillage of diesel on

Water. James Simmons, my men-

Tor sat beside me. Somehow,

I knew that the sight of that dog-

Fish conjured images of his daughter.

Crushed by a horse somewhere in

Denmark. The scent of fish and drying

Blood lingered in my nostrils, reflecting.

A melancholy aroma. The gangplank

Went out, and we scurried aboard.

I was glad to leave the harbour behind.

Although the waste twisted me

Through the craggy inlets of Donegal.

The sun beat down on Tory, on the tiny.

Islands or our exposed skin. The children

Played freely on the dust road, the bar-

Man hosed down. There was a tragic-beauty

In the cliff face, I remembered from Donegal.

It was a shame to leave Tory behind, good.

Guinness, the Irish language, like I've never

Heard before, and the small wonderful.

Sense of the island's freedom.

The Fox {after Rilke's Panther)

 

Back and forth he goes between

The kitchen and the main room.

 His gaze behind vertical blinds

 It is like the bars of a caged animal.

 

So, exhausted, it doesn't hold

a thing with no memory behind

a thousand bars and behind

the bars, no world.

 

He wheelchairs the space over

and over the movement of his

the powerful chair is like a ritual

dander around which his will

is paralyzed.

 

Only at times do his pupils rise

Rushes down through the intense

muscles plunge into the heart

and mind becomes a pome.

 

 

.