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.

 

 

.

 

UNEMOTIONAL ENGINEERING

For Lapwing-Lagan thanx for all your hope.

 

 A fox thought lives locked in me, I want to be 

positive but I can't summon up the spirit of the fox

on Bodhran beat, my rhythmic sense is gone. Back

then in the other world when I saw the fox in nature

it flipped my mindset from war to peace. 

It made me see all the world was not at war, I knew 

nothing else but bombs and bullets. I saw life from 

another perspective it wasn't just that eureka moment 

but that was the evolution of A Fox thought. A street kid 

to become a published writer it all stem cell from that.

Shame I don't remember but I know the magic people 

and places just can't visualize pen-see. I want to relive 

that magic moment but I don't remember. Lately, I can't 

find the positivity to turn my muck into gold. 

This is my study of my pessimism, I am not writing 

to depress you. I have nothing else to say but tell you 

the dog's honest truth, my life is a suffering fucking hell. 

Nietzche like me took a stroke at 45, he has my will

to power.

I live outside humanity looking in.  

All my body sensation has gone and left me impotent in 

mental capacity. To think once 

a creative writing tutor now my 

mind is blank-black.

 

I can’t even use a touchscreen phone or iPad there is

no sensation in my fingertip that I can’t put my 

finger on. I live in a dis-able bubble that imploded like

a hadron collider reaction. No one out there seems 

to know me or care to know myself and I. Don’t even 

know myself. I am 1,2,3 persons with no past or future tense.

 

Creating pomes of moment us pomements without memory.

For twenty years I have searched for positivity through Taoism-

 shamanic-active nihilism, individuation and I can't find hope 

these words are my only hope from my blemished acceptance.

 Even Alan Watts wisdom (my hero) a backward law is back-

wards. 

I live without substance I create my own substance.

half of my body is paralyzed impotent mind and body even 

the spirit of the fox is lost locked in. I want to be positive 

but I can't summon up the spirit of the fox in a Bodhran beat. 

My rhythmic sham-manic sense is gone. Back then in the other 

life when I saw the fox in nature.

 

It flipped my mindset from war to peace, made me see 

all the world was not at war. I knew nothing else but bombs 

and bullets I saw life from another perspective.

 

It wasn't just a eureka moment but that was the start 

of A Fox thought evolution. A Republican street kid 

to a degree published writer. i must have saw felt some-

thing i will never know.

 

I want to relive that magic moment butI don't remember. 

Lately, I can't find the positivity to turn my muck into gold. 

 Seems like a sham-manic symbol. I dont remember 

I don’t recall I got no memory of anything at all. 

                                                                 Peter Gabriel.

 

Music, sports and film do nothing, I have lost 

my competitive edge my sense of humor I don’t 

know what else to do, all I know is poe-artry.

I am compelled to write this down-up. I don’t 

even remember my family no emotional

 engineering like a child in an adult body. 

Impoetent living bed-bound constipation, prescribed 

an enema each week, and pissed myself every day.

Three blue stripes of fentanyl patch on my shoulder 

and liquid morphine every four hours for a broken body 

and mind. That's been through war shell-shock-man-

shell. As if I hold rank in my unadopted kingdom.

I know I have said some of this but I'll do it again 

until the day die. I want to be remembered not as aphasia-

aphantasia mumbling paralyzed fool with no memory 

or the ability to cling on. I don’t hibernate from life 

it hibernates from me. In-humanity in humanity 

purposeless purpose. Dogrell Cynism.