1.

2.

3.

4.

Waiting for my care to and care and A

Sorted it out in just a minute, switched

the tv off and on by the plugged in my 

comp-utter as if I had no utterance all 

in silent utterance. 

To think that once

I was so independent now I'm like in-

Fant in a cot, I would be lost without

Homecare twenty-four I just wish there

Was a night shift helpline my bed

and t-shirt but I can smell it lingers

on your being like a lost and lonely

memory. Fading like a hollow-

gram that holds no weight.

 

The smell filled the room like

An abattoir, I was soaked for

Hours waiting for my morning

Call, care to call, and care.

Black is the color of me my

Tv comp u- piss, nothing else

It doesn’t rain but it fucking

Pours.

 

I could feel the creak in my neck

and the death rattle in my throat.

I am on a high-dose fentanyl patch

And liquid morphine and I still can't

fucking move. Two people have to

roll me.

 

I shove my boulder up the hill

to fall every 24 Deja Vu days 

on repetitive repeat. Imagine 

the myth of Sisyphus with 

a brain injury and aphasia. 

Aphantstic gives me hope to 

blog and deal with this trauma. 

Camus’ myth is so negatively 

cap-able like Nietzsche and his 

will to power or Schopenhauer's 

studies of will from a pessi-

mystical view. 

As Keats once said:

There is strength in their bleak view.

Think the right way and everything

will be sound.

I lay there in a black face mask

not even able to dream poems

like I used to. I wrote this poem

in my head, that’s my daydream

state, the mindset of the write

hemisphere my blog of life.

 

I love that line by Robert Lowell

‘yet why not say what happened

 

GET ME TO FUCK OUT OF HERE, PLEASE!

 

I leveled a virtual keyboard and docked 

it into a sphere I asked myself why did 

I just do that virtual organizing?

 Instinct, It takes me back to the beginning 

of life when I had to find order in my chaos 

being in that bubble of liquid, that tiny pocket 

of air. That’s where I found my level of life. 

In my mother and my children, I can't remember

 them but I hope they remember me?

 

I realized I built a wall around me, one of 

my first job was as a trainee bricklayer 

who went on to be a fabricator/welder, I was

 building myself up to be a molten force.

 

Back then there was a training Center like an

 Orwellian state, The Clash sang in the song 

career opportunities, anything they offer

you are to keep off the dole.

 I changed dock to dole to fit

my life style.

Pity there was no creative writing they wanted 

to keep in your place but I relished being a dole

 hopper-writer you had to dig down inside 

yourself to bring up the treasure. 

My time was my own

 

I didn’t live in a pension state, I lived on 

well-fare, your pride is priceless try not

to live on corporate greed. Maggie thatcher

the bitch turned me into a writer.

 

It backfired on the bitch and found my

inner worth. Once I found it

there was no looking back, it was

always in my inner being from a very

early age. 

Mentors like James simmons

took it out of me, I swore that I would 

give out the creative writing that jimmy 

gave to me.

 

All that leveling down gave me a leveling

up, all this from a square peg in a round-

hole. It was moot the Hoople that gave me 

that rebound cliche.

 

Writers/artists found her loophole, much

Like sanctions do today they backfire. 

Little do they know that they will never put 

us down.

 

Must be such a sorry state to be one of those

Politicians that ask for thousands an hour 

while I got £5: 90 a week, greed must be 

a sorry state, get me out of there!

 My name it is Matt hand-cock I am a celeb

Don’t you know, these tory toof’s have

Taken our very form of life and what makes

it worse were letting them, get me to fuck 

out of here, please.The will to find yourself 

is such a strong force it’s like the religion 

in you. 

You don’t need a cruci-fiction you have 

a cruci-fact and you can’t beat that truth, 

we're on a level playing field the level 

is in you, poetry like sunshine it's free.

 

vALTER-NATIVE

 

The stress we put our bodies under

Gladiators in the ring into stroke victim

on the slab in an I.C.U.  We smash human 

time frames but we have to get away from this cycle of violent warmongering we are 

pummeling our existence.

 

One hundred thousand watch two men

beat themselves around the ring. Millions

like me pay per you tube the super series.

I love a good scrap but we are beating ourselves to pulp stroke victims.

 

I grew up fighting 3 times a day and I took

a massive stroke. I don’t know the alter-

Native. We have been locked in blood begets 

blood for two thousand years what started it

Was a cruci-fiction. Just think what humanity 

has fighting can be a martial art defensive

like judo an art form not a deform.

 

Let us use man’s inner strength not 

future stroke victims. A man in a wheelchair paralyzed without memory in a crippled NHS.

Don’t be like me, life isnt just a dig in

The head injury now bedbound.

There’s not much hope for me but

Humanity rules ok.

 

 

 

I live on the write hemisphere

(a pome for Iain mc Gilchrist)

 

Some say that we need both

But my left brain was erased

Long-term memory loss. I think

They are divided for survival

From injuries like living with

one lung etc.…

 

The left brain of anger angst

Warmongering in the name

Of god this is dog nonsense.

I have survived my stroke

For twenty years living in hell-

Cell. How come I live on the right

No dog exists in here is a black hole

portal of poetry.

 

Where life is peace there is no-

Thing else. Marguerite Dumas’s

Said on the study of melancholy.

‘when you find yourself In a hole

at the bottom of a hole realizing

only writing can save you’.

 

Apfox1961.blogspot.com

The write hemisphere, I found

Myself in a black hole-hell cell.

Writing is my bleak way out.

Its bleak and black beautiful

This is all I have being sad but

Not being sad John Berryman’s

’ Blind brow’.

 

I found myself in blackhole after

 a massive stroke that erased my left

like my hard drive was wiped clean.

 

 Leaving me with aphasia, aphantasia

paralyzed down the right half of my body.

My world is black and bleak but so was

Dickens and the Irish-Russian literature.

 

People don’t realize that dog thought

And sentimentality without a dark

Side. Ying dances with yang, black

mingles white, sunyata, satori how

 do you explain that one?

 

BELFAST NEW YORK 72’

 

Etna drive, north Belfast

Was my shell-shock, just

Like your Creedmore

Mental health wealth.

 

When you find yourself

in a hole at the bottom

 of a hole realizing only

blackhole writing can

 save you.

Marguerite Dumas

 

Poe-t Lou Read is my hero -

In a blue mask-Street hassle

My Dirty Boulevard at the foot

Of black cave hills looking

Down but down-is-up, you

Said pale blue eyes.

 

Linger on, streetlights shot out

bullet machine gunfire dancing

at my feet but this my walk

on the wild side.

Brian Smyth

a memorial is etched into my mind.

 

The man who saved my life shot

dead like a rock ‘n’ roll animal.

Trauma rears its ugly head tossed

Over the hedge like going over

And over the top.

 

I’m glad I don’t picture this in

My no mind's eye. I feel like

It was yesterday, I’ll always

Remember his name. 

Lou Read

will always be my Riktar-

scale remembering not to forget.

APHANTASIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stole my father's coin collection, florins, and two bob bits he never

gave me pocket money. I loved to hate him, and vice versa, called me 

a filthy rat. My sister nicknamed me regal head like a punk without a fag. 

He left me for eight hours a day without a pick. I shared dog food 

with Mutttley my friend killed on Blaney road.

That was life in a cottage full of gunrunning across the border. 

One day he asked me to prime bomb, I looked him up and down

days later, Narrow water exploded. Haystacks were my British soldiers 

to me I was on a war game mission, on the run like him, the jack of a car

Was my toy gun. I don’t know where these memories are coming from.

I keep trying to run from these images but they are etched in my mind.

These words are like a full metal jacket reloading the jack of a car, spent-

Shell syllables litter-ra-ture my waste ground. The girl in picture is dead, 

now suicide Stephanie my sister. The lady in red, I heard on a black n white

TV that picked up police messages. I heard on an A.P.B. an all-points bulletin

that she was carrying the Armalite that killed the British soldier, maybe she

couldn't live with herself, we will never know. My mind is steeped in this

imagery and I can't get away, I have to reload, bullet-ridden syllables, writ

and splutter out of me.

 Relax, you bum! / You know the poems have

always come/ even your doubts when they’re

 from the heart/presage new terrifying works

  of art. The spirit of Port-muck-Muckish gap.

 

The poet’s house is alive and kicking, in me.

I had three mentors in my life, and he was one

Who took me from the streets of Belfast.

A trinity of them three moved in me.

I tried to give what he gave. A master's decree.

 

Setting up a creative link Belfast-Dublin-Derry-

Donegal-Portadown. Like him,
I took a massive stroke.

An-your-ism muck into a golden moment, a negative

capability awoke with this poem written between

sleep and awake knowing he will never

ever be dead in my no mind’s eye.

 

Alchemist of poetry through The Muckish gap.

His poetic language was like a sacred skimming stone.

I can’t picture him throwing the stone on the beach

with Ben his son but it’s felt rippling across the waves.