'finding yourself in a hole at the bottom of a hole', in almost solitude, and discovering that only 

writing can save 

you.

Margareitte Dumas

STROKE EVOLUTION 

EARTH MIRACLE

AT 21 : 21
I COULD MOVE MY-
PARALYZED LEGS.

IN-CARE-NATION

Memory isn’t stored in the brain.

This pome is a gut reaction, my sons

Are down here with me, I’ll sense

Them sometime soon I hope. It takes

two to tango, placebo-effect.

In-care-nation is here and now, beaut-

I full moment us moment pome.

New-year I feel the heat of the sun, strange

Climate but what of others in this world

 just watched Australia burning, we have

                                    got to give to get.



SIGNUS-X1

X-ray source, black-hole.

We split into two, a world

Within a world. A particle

Anti-part, holon-graphic

Memory, a weightless holo-

gram.

Happy new year loneliness

I wish you all the best.

LOU SAYS

In the first moment-us moments

Of 20/20, my father never gave

Me shit, this isn't revenge it's re-

Morse code.

Dot-dash-dash-dot, fuck this and fuck

That, I am fucking coming back

From the brink.

Earthling earth thing, circulation flows

Through my bare feet, I woke up this

Morning, I woke up this morning,

Feeling sad but not being.

I accept the new found man

And set the twilight reeling.


REPERATION

Who is apologizing to whom?

Is this a Jim Crowe, civil war

Irish/English problem, it’s not

Hard to be civil, civil rights

For civil wrongs.

Is this just down to the dollar

Bill, are we going up political

Hill. Are you a holocaust survivor

Or are you an Eichmann Jew.

FOOTFALL

1.

Tram-oh-doll is taking me down

Can’t live with or without, burns

My very skin.

I can see twenty, twenty like

A map stating you are here

With an earthing sheet that

Grounds me, circulation flow.

Lifted my leg lifted my mood

Can’t get better than this down

Here where poetry knows.

Even Basho would be proud, his

Footprint in snow left his mark.

2.

Five hundred years ago or

There about he walked

The earth from hut to hut.

The clothes on his back to

Warm his solitude, poverty

Was his wealth. Today we

Can’t match his words worth

Spellbound, we live a different

Mindset, I can’t slow down my meta-

Bulisum equilibrium to watch melons

Grow.

3.

Beautiful bird so

Wild and free, flies up to mate

Black and white in tree.

Magpie, magpie where

Did you go, the tree is bare

Lonely like me.

 You have found your branch

Like poem swaying in

Wind, hold firm pome.

A REEDIAN SLANT

Lou, Lou, Lou-I miss you.

There's no one left to write

A negative/positive charge.

A creed more surge that gives

us hope, Mr no personality

they killed your sons.

You wrote life from a de-

Fault stage and I will never

Forgot that, in my surge

Stroke down blues.

This poem attempts to walk

your talk. Your sad, sad song

will reach a Reedian slant like

that of a romantic poets

negative capability.

There will never again Be-rlin.

Left off leftfield and left again

New York will never be the same

But you are still the king.

A-DRAIN

‘The sun-comprehending glass, and beyond it,

the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is

Nowhere, and is endless’.       PHILIP LARKIN

In the blackness behind my eyes

A shadow walks across my mind

Ten times a day like: some one

Walks  over  my grave.

The shadow wants to appear

Into a band of light, how can

One draw it out into to me.

to  open up the crack .

I have been waiting for  over

Ten years, for me to show my

Face. From zom-me empathy

Show me my face.

I cant keep writing bland pomes:

x-mas eve, watching loneliness

a paper shade moon, reading Basho.

Urinal- piss-pot-bed-rail- monkey-

Pole. Lost in a feedback loop, de-

Fault mode equilibrium. How long

Can this syl-labelling go on? both syl-

labels

C.B. FREQUENCY

Being a bland frequency being.

My back starts to get sore a-

round four. Living in uncaring care,

living a wheelchair ten to four good

buddy, my handle is wheelchair poet

on a footplate highway.

C.B.D. will set you free, at least help

you get there, so, ease down your motor-

way without a un-care. My care-plan for

got my lunch today but I remembered 

C.B. radio, a blast from the past, lost
memory ten-four good buddy.

DISABILITY
LIKE NATURE SPRINGS
FROM MY MIND

AGAPE 

This is my person-

all kairos metanoia

godlike agape, known

to unknowing

gnosis.

A FLOW STATE

Browsing poetry archive, I realized

I’m out on a limb, a paralyzed one.

I don’t even have a voice for my

Verse if that’s what you call it.

I cant find my voice among the verses.

Will you gift to me your voice so I can

Lilt a rhyming song and not have a flat

Hyphenated broken word, without

Rise and fall.

I cant even remember how my words

Worked in you, all ego now is egoless.

I need a little bit of hope, for my words

To pick me up and warble a warbler’s
birdsong, full-throated joy.

Let my words rise in you, to roll

Them of your tongue like going

Into a flow state, non-being

Realm of possibility.

Amended:

THE LAST STRAW, WONDER
1.

               Sitting on a disabled toilet

with not much to lose. Re-

reading the queens of suicide:

Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

I don’t want to fuel superstition

this is not an old wives tale.
It's just me here on a toilet.

Suicide isn’t a romantic place,

it's dark and it's very lonely, you

don’t want to go there.

I live there I don’t have a choice.

Isn’t it interesting that suicide is

the opposite to poetry Anne sexton

says and I have been writing Pomes

for years trying to find the link

to pull me back into life.

Is this a poetic pome or am

I just kidding myself? I have

always called them pomes be-

cause everyday I die for them

it is post-partum depression.

This is a poem I wrote

back then thinking of those two.

Do you know Just how much cou-

rage it takes to try to kill yourself?

2.

YOU TOOK MY BREATH AWAY

Role models of the nineteen fifties,

Blemished acceptance of it all. 

Existing for animal to breed cold 

breasts for children to feed, 

warmth when the animal fondles, 

dreaming the brilliance of death.

Preserving the elegant cloak un-
Hooded, the poet has nothing,

is nothing. The creation of words

is the greatest gift, lone-
Self, this couch is fine therapeutically. 

Regressing back to the nineteen twenties.

Living of self indul-
Gent well to do ghosts

of the past.

Abandoned in the hell of American dream.

A post part them depression, surviving dis-

eased afterbirth. The red roses melt, blotching water,  spurting from the wrong house.

3.

Do you know how much courage
It takes to try to kill yourself?
Every sinew and tendon, right
Down to the bone. All they
Ever wanted was the soup of
Humanity and you treat them
Like cowardly dogs. 

They are from your broken lot, they
Have just been through hell.

You must give to get, this
Is the dog’s honest truth?
You can’t see past your own
Nose, give them credit where
Credit is duende. 

You gave me life, now this is my reason to
Live and I throw it back in
Your face.

ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE

13-SYLLABLES

syl·la·bling.

spirit, matter, I

am-ness yugen

space mind

quantum mechanics

uni-verse splitter

hell-cell

you can be a bas-

tard but don't ever

be a cunt

musicality 

cars, lorries go by

washing machine

playing rubber-

 water bottle like 

a bass beat

I'm going into

a flow state, non-

being realm

Woke with an image

in my head-a candle

wrapped in barbed wire.

MENTAL WEALTH

I have been reading Fraud 

and Jungian dream analysis 

and the conclusion, I've come 

to is that I dream darkness.

In the past ten years, I've woke 
with images in my head but 
I wouldn't call them dreams 
more like stills, from these two 
great minds. 

I went to the present day 
and Ian Mc Gilchrists work 
on the divided brain lateralisation 
but I can't see my shadow appear 
or disappear, its as if I don't fit.

I know its just my hologram state 
that's locked in but just show me 
a crack, Leonard Cohen said there's 
a crack a crack in everything that's 
how the light gets in.

I so want to understand this state 
of non-being. I am not a kill-joy, 
joy was killed in me, my dreams 
used to be a way in or out 
of my poems.

I have only dreamed four times 
in over ten years and I have come 
away with stilled images so, 

I wouldn't call them dreams.
Ever since I woke in a stroke-
 ward with a butterfly effect. 
Even these words aren't a revelation, 
repetition seems to be the editor, 
how many times can I recycle life. 

This blog is the nearest thing 
I'll ever get to desire so ill blog on.

Delmore Swartz wrote a story called 
in dreams begin desire. I seem to want 
what I can't have. I used to caress things, 
I think I don't think I abused my position. 

Its as if a little slant of life got through 
to produce these stills, a morsel of hope 
I hope. I have to be realistic to stay 
in equilibrium to de-rise my desire.

SENTIMENTALTALITY

Red berries, green fern in

A white worn wicker basket.

Supplants x-mas, puts me in

My place among merry

Evolution. I’m happy-sad just

Being, I don’t relish sent-

Time-mentality, ego isn’t

Lego you build on.

ECSTATIC TRUTH

How can I find myself within myself?

I’m diving into a locked-in-syndrome.

This is my event horizon, where I put

Things keepsakes. I need to find sub-

Stance, so much of my life is locked.

How can I find what I don’t know,

Know what I have, ecstatic truth

Is what I seek, a place in the uni-

Verse.

A FOX LOOKING AT A FOX 
BY A FOX

TRYING NOT TO FORGET

writ before my stroke:

A white Vauxhall victor pulled up at the white-line of the old irish border post in 1974. The man in the long black coat handed the driver his licence, looking across at the boy on the passenger side, he held a growling dog trying to hold his knees from shaking with fear like a chill it got right down to his bones.

He knew how much this meant to his father, his father was the 
longest detainee in Ireland held for nine months under the special powers act. the boy knew the dungeon facilities his father had to live under as he visited with his mother and heard stories of white noise, putting a sack over their heads and tossing them out of a helicopter thinking they were miles up in the air. I was a republican child then.

The man waved the car into no man's land. Dad slapped the steering wheel like someone scored in the cup final on the radio. We did it! he smiled a smile the boy rarely seen, reached across and run his hand through the boy's hair who almost burst with emotion.

Almost getting lost they pulled in just before Dundalk town, look for a sign that says Castleblaney road said his dad. they drove for miles then saw a shop at Hackballscross crossroads.
dont forget say as little as possible. dad got some food and took it to the counter, with a blue and orange camping set
of plates, cutlery and cups.

It was like being in a shop in an alien world, everything looked new exciting even the woman's strange accent giving directions to my father. 200 yards along the road past the garda station on the right before duffles lane like a song. Do you want a chocolate bar, his dad said, it all looked good he pointed to a bag of eclairs, will you be staying long she said, dad never answered if the shop is shut just knock on the door next door, dad paid took two bags and left.

we piled in and after seconds we piled out and muttley chased cars on the road. Dad opened the cottage door
with an ogres key, two rooms a kitchen and a bedroom,
dad said there was no water electricity or toilet but there 
is a well along the road we will find, we will be alright here away from the madness, i took in the bags while he lit the parafin lamps in each room, went to the car for the newspaper muttley lay on and broke branches from the tree to light the stove.

soon bacon and sausages were sizzling warmth through the room. dad fed muttley two sausages and bacon who scoffed them down and wanted more. his dad handed him a blue plastic plate of beans sausage egg bacon all half cooked but he didnt care dad had an orange plate and blue cutlery
and drank milk from an orange cup, they laughed.

they took in their clothes and other pots and kettle etc and tried to make a home livable. made the beds and lay there listening to wildlife go across the roof from the field behind
at the same level, mostly foxes said dad no need to be scared. it was good to be away from tanks and gunbattles
although he missed his family and friends. he lay there with the dog at his feet remembering: the troubles, drifted off.

he woke early, the cold emptiness chilled the rooms of the cottage, he opened the half door and watched a beautiful dawn he had never seen before, as if some poetic thing had entered and he would never ever be the same again. a fox came out of the bushes just feet in front watched him watching him. we stayed like that for a minute
then he went on his way, wow what a moment he could almost smell the hot stink of fox. that murdering time he later would call freedom winds in a poem, he didnt know then who patrick kavanagh was but he went on to be a published poet who felt kavanaghs poetic presence. i wish i could leave it at that but this is the truth and you cant beat the truth no matter how sore.

the man and boy were driving to a cottage in hackballscross, the man was the longest detainee
in ireland let out on bail after nine months. he was jumping bail to go on the run with his son

the cottage they drove to was owned by the I.R.A.
to run guns across the border but the boy at the time didnt know. 

The mist moves in over Islandmagee

blue horizons 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 color 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.

DRIFTWOOD

Its been raining for days. 

I sit in the tent trying to 

figure out what this 

sound reminds me of. 

It's like having the answer

on the tip of your tongue.

Then it struck me, drift-

wood crackling in a fire.

That's what poems do

lull us into a false sense. 

Intense heat when its cold

bone dry when wet. My wife 

and son sleep soundly.

It's supposed to be summer 

in Sligo, Rosses Point, July

twenty-something but it could be 

October, I'm nor sure anymore. 

It could be El-Ninio?

The boat masts in the harbor

clatter like a herd of livestock 

lost in the ocean. 

GRACE
for Jeff Buckley

"Its a cold and it's a broken halleujah"
                                          Leonard Cohen

When I was a boy, I fell into a Labyrinth
I was lost in the beauty of seaweed 
and aquamarine, in freezing cold water
I felt the warmth of the stones.

I haven't been in this room in two days.
I couldn't remember writing the first  
stanza of this poem, I was drunk. 
Drinking your words!

I shift some pages and your face appears
in monochrome, below the photograph, 
it says, Buckley: shocking honesty 
and beside it is a quote:

"don't be like me and burn your books 
of poetry. I have a destructive nature, 
sometimes I have this impulse to destroy 
things, usually having to do with me".

On one of those sheets of paper, I wrote: 
I walked out into the water and felt 
the warmth of the stones. 

The pebbles I threw as a boy are the pillows 
you rest your head upon in the bed 
of the Mississippi.

The salmon gnawed your flesh on their way
to the spawning ground. I heard your voice
and it moved in me.

Hallelujah, Mississippi, hallelujah.

A PARCHED LANDSCAPE 

Emerging from the depths of darkness.

The ocean's empty sorrow. Your eyes 

wells of salted tears rubbed raw 

in the wounds of sight.

The light of morning evaporates the pools of sorrow, names lost in arid dreams,

a parched landscape.

CRYPT-TO-CHROME-CHIMPANZEE POETRY 

neuroscience says the right brain

is chimpanzee mind, monkey-man.

Let me start by saying I am not a scientist 

Just a mere poet who is intrigued. 

In the last few years, 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 monkeyville, how can you explain how 

I can understand the divided brain. 

I have been writing for years on my sense 

That Ray Carver and Pat Kavanagh have 

Been here with me in the realm of possibility. 

Me becoming a poet was 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- 

Tochrome like microwave signals from a phone 

Mast. 

Ian Mc Gilchrist is probably the only person alive 

That will know what I am talking about. Ian, I think 

The lumps at back and front of the brain are trans- 

Mitting humanity. This might even be the answer to consciousness the reason why we sense another being-

being there, waves of humanity are linking humans. 

I believe Ian is right on. Is this plausible? 

If you go to cryptochrome on utube 

and see how one strand of D.N.A.  comm-

unicates with another, a signal of humanity. 

My life and my poems have been about seeking 

Feeling not meaning, we have been searching 

For meter rhyme and meaning but the Portuguese 

Poet Fernando Pessoa said ‘it is not necessary just  

to live but to feel’. 

LOU READ LITTERATURE

We met at the bin sheds of Moylinn estate.
A new-city dream of clean streets and I was 
on the frontline given a donkey jacket with 
C.B.C. on the back felt like a punk of society, 
toe capped boots, overalls and a litter picker, helping hand.

Today I still use a helping hand due to being

Paralyzed. Back then I was a Lou Read litter

Ature armed with black nail varnish, black bin liner.

The guy working with me and kinger killed

His ma they used to flick butts at him, he must

Have felt worthless like the litter we were

picking up. Probably the best job I  ever had,

Worthless poor guy.

Fernando Pessoa said 'It's not necessary

only to live but to feel'.

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.

Paul Dirac the theoretical physicist said  

‘The aim of science is to make difficult

things understandable in a simpler way,

the aim of poetry is to state simple things
incomprehensible'.

In this blog, I hope to show science to be 

the poetry of reality.

TWILTY (nice memory)

For Ann-drea

Spiders wearing clothes came out

of my drawers. Reminding me of

being stoned out of my mind. Maybe

I’m coming out of myself.

I can almost see Anne’s vision. 

Vaporised memory of acid-ecstasy-

Vicks inhaler inhaled levitation. 

The Bettys town sand beneath

my toes like fossil remains.

Only half the people knew I was out of it, 

the other half stag weekenders knew that 

I was never straight, I floated along to But-

lins holiday camp, I wasn’t paranoid of three

hundred people at the bar, my friend

said what do you want, I said

I didn’t care.?  

For that five mile walk it felt like I never

put one foot in front of the other.

Telomeres, we are
drowning in information
while starving wisdom.

the singular I 

amness conscious re-

incarnation-

ANTI-MATTER

Nothing is everywhere 

in the luminous ether, 

we have been fleeced 

of empty space.

The quantum mechanics 

of commonsense, the quantum

weirdness of everything.

A fluctuation of time
the Dirac equation
matter poem.

ψ = ψ(x, t)

     

                     INGOT 

I can’t remember what I was like 

before I took the massive stroke. 

I have no long-term memory no 

longer, all I got is poetry. 

This is my rhyme,  my reason,

I’m alive, that’s the main thing 

This is my way of verse-sing.  

Give to get a little happiness 

so said the poet of essential 

loneliness. I used to love 

the way I taught, I think? 

Aphasia phased in me, 

I will praise you, I hope, 

I have a little in-forgot.

Sci-fi-verse

Just moments before the next big bang

Caused by climate change, this is a sci-fi

verse a crus=I- fiction?

A dark matter tale from a vast dark

Emptiness and from that black matter

Comes a being with only the right side

of his brain.

His left side was damaged during a stroke

that almost killed him and left him confined

to a wheelchair, paralyzed.

Lifeless without a realm of metaphysical be-

Ing, don’t we have to get lost to get found?

Through poetry he got lost and found said

The man in a wheelchair speaking

Spiritual intelligence. We are broken

human beings but we don’t have to be.

This has the rules of hidden un-

known grammar like a sensory

spectrum of rainbow spiritualism.

WE ARE ALL JUST PRISONERS HERE

OF OUR OWN DESIRE

                                           LOU REED

 The fabric of life in Jacquard silk.

Electricity thrust humanity forward like

A captain beefheart howl, re- verb-

erating from men who think things

And women who care and think people.

Information emanated like bending energy

With laser particle accuracy. We are just a

speck in the multiverse, a star of all stars

A super-nova in the night sky. A god star

Two thousand years ago, we use our minds

To make an interstellar leap of faith.

I can see the paralex method, double image

Right and left eye optic, a trillion light years away, reaching my eye in an island uni-verse

A TAO INTERPRETATION INTRO:

Return to the uncarved block, infancy.

My words are easy to understand

It acts without a name, flowing like

Water, following your own nature

Deep, deep, deep to the gateway

Of subtle illumination.

Don’t cling to your body’s woes, crippled

Becomes whole.  Egoless ego cultivates end-

Less energy to rise fall and stand

Beyond dark wonder.

Nature’s way moves on through dark

Vision, what was will be and what will

Be was, opposites attract.  Gold can’t

Be guarded, fulfill within, wars famine

Great victory is a funeral, the bright road

Seems dark in wreathed smiles, clay is

The word and clay is the flesh.

Empty words go back to nothing, magnificent scenery remains still, drop drops like stone. Good words leave no trace in the intangible essence, know when to stop, hold your ground.

Empty vessels and blunt weapons fade

away. A violent man does not die a natural

death. Held loss harms nothing, stand by

your word No more sorrow, no self.

BUDDAHAPPY

1.

Last night I watched the barefoot –

Doctor give a talk on Taoism and Ken

Wilber spoke of a recurring dream

he had as a boy that sparked in me

a recurring dream that I had of a rabid

slobbering dog that chased me

through a corridor in dreamscape.

I always wondered why my shadow

Was so dark in my poetry. I never

Realized that it was the anger of

The beast.

Nirvana, samsara, nirvana, samsara

Repeated like a mantra, for a moment

the wheels of samsara suffering came

off  and left me in the realm of possibility.

2.

I had transcended the troubles

And the special powers act

Through my poetry into my

true self.

Me and my shadow, nirvana, sam-

Sara. My spiritual intelligence, a par-

alell-a-verse, My head injury was cris-

Crossing my divided brain. Neurons

Were firing in my mind like thoughts

I hadn’t used during my stroke.

Being, consciousness flowed like shadows

In Plato’s cave, Heraclitus flow, super genius

A morphogenetic field of measured matter

Individuation, my humanity lives forever

In my pomes, trans-my-great, it’s a bloody

Mystery said Wilber satori, satori, satori.

WAR FODDER

NOBODY

1.

Raw war is over let humanity begin.

We have been war fodder for hundreds

of years, red, white or blue coats with green

and orange mindsets. Worthless beings

massacred on the banks of the Boyne of

1690.

William of orange and King James drew swords

that mirrored the far-shore of the Boyne,

James surrendered off among the bloody army

of both sides.

The date of that battle was seared beneath our flesh for generations to come. Neither men or man in pools of blood held any grief for the fallen, dead. As James Joyce said history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.

No wonder he exiled himself from Ireland. Ever since then we have been sword and cannon fodder for king and country.

16901969

These are my holy war

Lottery numbers, I don’t

Do the lottery or hate.

I’m just the son of a bastards

Son, living him on the run.

Republicanism cut me down

To his narrow water vision.

Eng-ire-land I saw beyond

You and me, catholic/pro-

Testant kill one another.

How many more holy wars

Do we have to endure, are

We just barbarians let out

On a Good Friday agreement.

It’s just a matter of time un-

Less matter really matters

Scientifically.

The big hand in the sky is

Pointing at you, Yes you!

I hope these numbers

Don’t come up again?

2.

In nineteen seventy-one I hopped and skipped

Along, my  father was in Crumlin Road jail, so,

there was just me and god going to a mock

confirmation mass, I was going to see my best

friend.

On my way up the steps to the great doors, I

heard gunfire behind me on the Crumlin road.

 I ducked into the bushes to see a man in a

Balaclava shoot three people dead raised his

Rifle to the sky and said this is for god and

Ulster. Only I hid in the bushes he would have

Killed me as I was only feet away.

To this day I still can’t fathom why he imbued

to let this happen I looked down at the cheap

plastic innocent mother of pearl missal looked

up to the great doors and threw the missal

away and wept running all the way home.

My mother held me and asked what happened,

how could he let this happen , mum?  We never

spoke of it after that but until then my mother

was a devout catholic a sacred heart child but

she chose to be cremated.

3.

We have only got rid of slavery in a serious way,

One hundred and fifty years ago. Between

seventeen seventy and eighteen hundred both

Buddist and Christian monasteries had slaves

Armies were raised and razed to fall like shell-

shocked corpses, nobody figured out that one

person owning another was wrong, a bad way

to treat someone.

Life was so cheap in Ireland, for hundreds of

years we have been just sword and canon

fodder right up to this day, really what worth

Is it to be a human being. I know who I am, do

You, all for king and country.

          ISNT IT ABOUT TIME WE EVOLVED!

The shadow of disability

The shadow of disability

Fills my urinal to the brim.

This is not a piss-take.

I saw it fill up in my mind

Like an Isla Negra, a rich

Chilean wine, stroke un-

Corked to bleed out on

The floor, the residue, due-

Ende, like a full-bodied

Chianti but there is no such

word as can’t, can't I sit down in

A wheelchair protest that

Gets me write out of my head.


LIFE POETRY, PARA-

LYZED

Someone once said that science

Truths are as valid as poetry but

Poetry became my life when

My life (HOLOGRAM STATE)

was stroked away in 2005.

So, where do I stand or sit-in

My wheelchair, paralyzed

By this thought?

I didn’t just write a pome with-

In a pome but I wrote a pome

Within a pome in me.

Bret Weinstein an evolution bio-

Ologist said that his mathematical

Mentor said, ‘math is the formula

We resort to when we are wrong’.

This is my verbal argument

Poetic biology.

A POPPY IN THE WILDERNESS
A SINGLE TEAR ON THE SOIL

The rain on the window magnifies the trees

con-cave dryad, I tell myself I’m free?

Every mourning I get images in my head

Branches warp, splinter like shell-shock

 in the air.

Splintered wood from a wood in world war one

Where stood Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.

We are one under the sun, I give them a voice,

they stand tall and straight and bend and hold

the future like a veil.

I am only free because they are a part of me

Exploding cut down to the stump of tree.

This is what I see out of my window, his-

Story tells myself I’m free, they are free in me.

This pome is the alpha male, my wooden wand

But this is not a fairytale it comes from

the land. I know not what this pome makes

of me, I who was cut down to make poetic

sound.

A sapling growth out of the past from

 a dead mound we tread the earth, but

you are there deep underground.

BUDDAHAPPY

1.

Last night I watched the barefoot –

Doctor give a talk on Taoism and Ken

Wilber spoke of a recurring dream

he had as a boy that sparked in me

a recurring dream that I had of a rabid

slobbering dog that chased me

through a corridor in dreamscape.

I always wondered why my shadow

Was so dark in my poetry. I never

Realized that it was the anger of

The beast.

Nirvana, samsara, nirvana, samsara

Repeated like a mantra, for a moment

the wheels of samsara suffering came

off  and left me in the realm of possibility.

2.

I had transcended the troubles

And the special powers act

Through my poetry into my

true self.

Me and my shadow, nirvana, sam-

Sara. My spiritual intelligence, a par-

alell-a-verse, My head injury was cris-

Crossing my divided brain. Neurons

Were firing in my mind like thoughts

I hadn’t used during my stroke.

Being, consciousness flowed like shadows

In Plato’s cave, Hericlitus flow, super genius

A morphogenetic field of measured matter

Individuation, my humanity lives forever

In my pomes, trans-my-great, it’s a bloody

Mystery said Wilber satori, satori, satori.

WELL BEING

I’m at the breakfast, dinner, lunch table

With the usual early morning stuff

Poetry scrambled egg and coffee.

The bench is bolted to the wall

For wheelchair access.

The trees outside are almost bare but

that’s enough of them, I must go in to go out.

The piles of books on my radiator

Add warmth, act as my comfort blanket

its snug and cozy here but

it lacks just one thing

Memory.

An active imagination won’t bring it back but

It gives me a sense of artistic meaning

And that’s half the battle.

WABI SABI

Imperfection is the language of art

                                        Robert Lowell

Broken down by evolution

A chip on lifes glaze.

My mother is there in

The spirit of the tree

Watching over me.

Red hue street-

Light infiltrates

And warms my

Lonely Inner glow.

WHEELCHAIR DOLE BOY

I can’t do right by doing wrong.

Emotion rebounds back into me

Shell-shocked, I don’t have no mem-

ory but I know I was there like a rubber

bullet thud, in a mist of tear-gas tears

I was brought up on my knees in Belfast

but I never went on a killing spree cause

I saw peace in front of me. 

Received £5:90 on the dole, living in a green

red home, living the Craigavon dream-Good-

year, failure my scene.  I wrote my unwritten

graffiti, Fuck Paisley and Fuck the Pope, Violets

(Lost lives) a homage to hope un-

naturally rules ok!

VALENTINA

Valentina, stands in front of the church

In the place where statues stood.

Her nightmare began.

‘All Tutsi’s will die

Slowly, slowly like rats.

When you kill rats

You start with the babies first’

They sang herding them into the church.

As the light begins to fade, here.

The blackbirds swoop down and peck

On the scraps of yesterday’s meal.

I read an article on a Rwandan girl

Valentina, who survived the genocide.

Just thirteen and no tears left to cry.

WINTER POLLEN

       This place is beginning

      To sap my soul Literature

     and music can’t find a home

            I don’t think

  I’ve been this far down
          My life is beginning

         I’m starting to drown.

I haven’t had a shower now in 5 months
The house is un-adopted and I live like a mouse

I’m starting to burrow

Into my own black                                                                                           hole
Creating a void as cold and lonely as the poles.

There’s a riot going on again at the end of my road
They’re burning buses again or so I’ve been told.

Poetry is the only thing that keeps me alive
And ill create nectar from this negative hive.

TRUE MAN

We are locked in 1959, in cold blood

Truman Capote went out the front door

And Perry smith went out the back.

Two worlds collided that night

We have never seen the same since.

What happened that night is beyond us

But true man Capote seen and felt it.

Compassion before that wasn’t seen

And will never be seen again.

TOLERANCE

All you want in life is to wake

In the morning and bed at night.

My care package, leave a man

With a full urinal and not a pot

To piss in.  Untrained to remove

My footplates, I have to be tolerant

Of these people. A man left in

A state of undignified disability.

I’m being tolerant no more

I cant live an uncaring way

THE SKIN REMEMBERS

For Andrea

I’m tingling, downloading Hungary

The way her spring erect warmth

Embraced and licked my skin

Remembering.

Holds me through the window of a bus

And plane journey to Budapest.

Bursting free like an erect nipple

A sap trickling along a bark.

A virgin awakening from rotting

By the buds of spring opening free

Like a drifting cloud that captures

Her moist embrace.

The full moon drifts, she sleeps soundly

Now, beside me. I cast back into the shadows

And almost touch the silhouettes of leaves

And her budding youth.

I found these words written on a Hungarian

Airline pouch, she sleeps soundly beside me

Wrapped in her herself. Her skin remembering

Every wonderful touch.

She opens those beautiful eyes as they did

Back then in Augher, Clogher or Five-mile-town.

Just a glance that knows I love her. So, I won’t have

To say that, anyway our skin will never forget.

THINGY-MA-JIG

The monkey-pole takes shape becomes my lover

a Picasso thingy-ma-jig.  You can see in her eye

her features of strap, she’s smiling.

My fingers fold around the hand grip like

Waves on the ocean, as if caressing inner you.

I know it’s just a monkey-pole, I haven’t gone

Doo-lally.

Looking up, makes me think of a time

When art was free, someone, something.

The bare light bulb is her neckline, her love

Feeds me memory I thought was lost?

I’m at a creative writing class in Armagh

The poet/tutor asks for a word from every-

One to create a sonnet.  My word is fuck

Can I use the word love instead, she said.

 No I said, there is no alternative to that word.

I live in a time gone by, I still don’t under-

Stand why a world renowned poet wont

Use a word that’s in the dictionary, it still

Bafell’s me to this day but she just went

Ahead and created a love poem.

What’s so wrong with fuck and love?

Isn’t that the purpose of life?  I’ve been

Expelled, beat up, sacked, my sons don’t

Even talk to me for using a four-letter word.

Are we are hiding from truth?

THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE

My Dad walked down to the red river bed

Near the wall that leads to the rich red water.

Beneath the water on the ragged rock

Lies a dead salmon of knowledge.

The walk, for exercise turned into

A walk of adventure, full of mossy rocks.

I slipped on my ass, landing in a puddle

But I didn’t care because I was happily

Walking the shores of the Shannon

With my family.

By DEAN FOX

THE WAVE

The strength of the waves

of the ocean. White, white water

on the rocks below washing in me

your eternal tide, hough I hear your

melancholy lament always rising

to my spirit level from the shivering

bed of sea.

Flow, flow, unpredictable wave

Forever spew your eternal cries.

In you, I hear the sorrow of heart

And the roaring sadness of life.

My heart sinks like a pebble

From the rocks, waves of sorrow

The grief flows forever within me.

THE RECYCLED BIN

I woke up with words embedded

On my psyche, on the right side

Of my brain. I always hoped

That I was up the left but

That was stroked away.

Now I’m like a butterfly

Fluttering by so, these

Are the right words

In the wrong order.

My past and future tense

Sits in a wheelchair, locked

Into himself, looking for

A morsel of nectar.

Nature opens up the door

And drifts like time itself.

Is this my door into the dark?

The recycled bin. I don’t want

Your sentimental slush.

I don’t live in tin-sell out  town

I’m turning muck into art.

A POPPY IN THE WILDERNESS, A SINGLE TEAR ON THE SOIL

The rain on the window magnifies the trees

con-cave dryad, I tell myself I’m free?

Every morning I get images in my head

Branches warp, splinter like shell-shock

 in the air.

Splintered wood from a wood in world war one

Where stood Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon.

We are one under the sun, I give them a voice,

they stand tall and straight and bend and hold

the future like a veil.

I am only free because they are a part of me

Exploding cut down to the stump of tree.

This is what I see out of my window, his-

Story tells myself I’m free, they are free in me.

This pome is the alpha male, my wooden wand

But this is not a fairytale it comes from

the land. I know not what this pome makes

of me, I who was cut down to make poetic

sound.

A sapling growth out of the past from

 a dead mound we tread the earth, but

you are there deep underground.

Belfast city blues



That’s what happens at 
times like this, you get lost-
 Jack Kerouac said


write as if you’re 
the only person left on-
earth, yesterday I 

may as well have been 
on a weather station-
 watching out for forest 

fires in the middle

of nowhere flames licking  
clouds of haiku

I'm a dharma bum.

These are my are my Belfast 

city blues.

A FOX THOUGHT

For Ted Hughes

I imagine a landscape of your poems:

A sacred wood, a pagan burial ground

Where the eyes of wild lifeblood red

devour prey.  Surrounded by 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 vulvitis noose.  

That something else is alive unseen, 

black velvet feathers oiled in crude sway 

within black rainbows and peck 

your birds-eye tomb vision.

Rain from a broken gutter spout, your poems

Gush with cold delight, the purification

Of a stagnant well.

ZEBRA MUSSELS

I.M.Ray Carver

I read a lot of poetry and books on

poetic criticism but I always go

Back to the master its as if he could

Write in a supermarket and make it

Poetic, he's one of the only writers

who writes my tongue. 

I know in the poetry world I'm trailer

park trash, I'm proud to be. I sit

here by the Blackwater our spot

by the river in a wheelchair watching

water comes together with other water. 

It's September and the autumn leaves

are falling beside the discarded Buck-

fast bottle and a sign that says:

Zebra mussels, where am I, I ask myself?

I was twelve when I fell paralytic

Outside my aunt's back door and was carried

home unconscious, I've been around drink

all my life.

When I was 45 I blacked out and woke para-

lyzed in a hospital bed unable to walk or talk 

sucking oxygen.  My sister died from alcoholism 

and my brothers a reformed alcho, so, he says, 

I never understood the term 

re-formed.

I don't want to be a nice poet I want to be 

a real poet.  I drive around with music all day 

the groove dictates my every move. 

It and poetry is my life, If I closed my eyes 

I would be lost at Washing bay, I nudge 

myself awake and have lunch at a motor-

way café, fingering silence.

GOD IS DEAD

I smoked the pipe for Lou Reed

and the smoke went up in smoke.

His spirit climbed the walls like

The sword of Damocles', Blue

I know where I was when I heard.

I got a phone call from my ex-wife

saying it said on the news Lou Reed

was dead, I was writing a poem called

with-in listening to a Lou reed song

called the day John Kennedy died

I stopped and cried.  I woke this

morning raw eyed, maybe I dreamt

there was a point to life and human

race. 

A shadow shimmered like smoke

on the wall, a new day as if a dark 

shadow was lifted from me, I can't 

explain but I felt good in me, I could 

hear music playing in my head.

Like me he loved reality, the autumn 
leaves fell outside, I know what 
I want to do, play Lou.

HYPERION 2

I dreamed I dropped a cigarette
And there was nothing I could do,
Only lay there paralysed and watch
The place go up in smoke.

My right side is lifeless listless dead.
I lay and watched the carpet burn like
A picture on the screen. I watched

The things in front of me slowly dis-
Appear like the light was taken from
My eyes, like Keats watching

his own death.

Two hundred years back before me
And I just watch it burn, I had to find
A way in for our words to burn, I live
Out here in yesterday but its today I fear.

His old right hand lay nerveless listless

Dead, shadows of the magic hand of chance.
Why should I open my melancholy eyes?
Blazing Hyperion in his orbed fire,

darkened place.

Dreams of death and darkness death

and darkness monstrous forms, effigies

of pain. There are a thousand signs of purer

life, receive the truth and let it be your balm.

NAMELESS POME

In this hell-cell, I have created some-

Thing of purpose. Basho once said

‘My solitude shall be my company,

And my poverty my wealth’.

I have juxtaposed my mad room,

kitchen I am-ness, mantelpiece.

Into one black-hole, event horizon.

A place free from the claims of

Poetry, as Cheszlaw Milosz put

It a more spacious form. I have

Woke these last few days with

A feeling that there is something

Out there like a touchable dream.

The portal of poetry is wobbly open

The sense of Ezra Pound like a wave

Of energy gone wrong, these are

The best words in the best order,

darkness within darkness accidently

on purpose.

ATILLA JOZEFS BONFIRE

I want to sit by Atilla Jozsefs bonfire

A super duper one, that warms

the entire population. A tired man

a lonely castaway that lives in

a great mans words. The memory

of you and szeged is far away but

your sullen catacombs are here.

I am your statue park, where

Water meets other water

The river of your pure heart.

POETOLOGY

A hacked human, living in

the hand side of his brain.

No past, no future tense

A shell-shock cul-de-sac.

You can’t go back if

There’s nothing to go

Back too. This is a poem

Within a poem.

POETA NASCITUR, NON FIT

for J.C.

Long ditch, more

like a prison than

a human dwelling.

MARK

Red house painters.

Walking down the hill

Knowing why, making love

In time, in time, in time

The pain caused musical

Emotion. Alone without

Family, more than you had

Hope only with karma

Bleeding quietly.

Your life amounts to

The full medicine bottle.

Red lead paint on

The cold stone floor.

Subduing loss and loneliness

Applying serious mystery.

Written on first hearing grace cathedral park.

KARMIC SEED

For Lou Reed

Trans-my-great

Two persons

In one, sip-

Da bardo.

This pome moves

In 49 steps, the con-

Tinual bardo.

Suspended between

Magic and loss, thought

And expression like

Sanskrit being read

To a pony.

Transcript of Antarabhava

Key Terms Antarabhava: The existence in an interval. 

The period between death and rebirth. Analysis of the Buddhist 

juis suis personne

Fernando Pessoa takes me

to a higher complete state

of inner self.

From someone to nobody

And back again, a persona

juis we personne.

I am him and he is me from

All sides.  Vacant of memory.

‘I HAD NO PERSONALITY’

A black and white bird

Blue on and blue off

My fence shimmering

A back ground of green.

I scan the books for lines

To jump off the page but

Everything has memory.

Lou Reed said between

Thought and expression.

Kill your sons:  Every-TIme

You tried to read a book

You couldn’t get to page 17.

A library of books and one

Line jumps of the page

Shimmering blue.

Haiku memory, stand alone poetry

Teargas and rubber

Bullets ttthhh-uuu-mmmp

When the queen says no.

Rioting, Flax street mill

A black british soldier stood up

From behind sand-bags.

The bastards have shot

My only son, she wept, I had

To step over-blood.

Based on Michael Hartnetts, A Gaeltacht face.

THE ULSTER FACE

Yes, these are the rocks

From the ruins of violence.

I know this place like

The back of my hand.

Blood on the stones

Absorbed into the soil.

Pools full of dead creatures

A bird as black as hatred is.

Yes, these are the old hills

Now made of bandaged lint.

I know this stained ulster well

I who am a stranger!

Yes, these are the sullen faces

With their suspicious glare.

Cold weather beaten faces

Full of despair and little hope.

Hills, faces, headstones up-thrust

Each crack explodes in dust.

From fear, an everlasting frost

This hatred lingers on.

Whether the cold earth endures

A certain face will live with me.

Though stars not see, wind not

Sound, this face will follow me

Underground, the cold heart

Of its beauty that violence de-

voured.

AMELIA EARHART

Amelia Earhart never went down

She crash-landed on the Marshall

Islands, held by Japanese military rule

And died a prisoner on Saipan.

The much-touted new evidence shows

A photo found by a federal agent.

The U.S. government covered It up

But Earhart is clearly seen with

The plane in the back ground, ashore.

They promised us transparency

And this is what we got.

LOVING VINCENT

A picture of Van Gogh is in front of me

painted on a piece of kitchen roll.

This is the poetics of space

to find his inner me.  I know

the tears you shed were shed by me.

The picture isn’t any-where near

Your master pieces but this is

My only way in.  The paper creases

Are like winter trees, they bare your soul

Vines that distort your eye on me.

I can feel your presence from way back then

As if it was only yesterday, painted on kitchen-

Roll in my kitchen, a yellow background view.

I know this is only a sketch, but you perforate

My world, giving me a little hope for tomorrow.

Painted like a child you are what isn’t there

You can see through me.  A penetrated stare

The arc of your blind brow.  The blue sky of dusk

And the bare winter tree stands like it was

Seen by Vincent Van-Gogh, so, so long ago.

‘Futureless wanderings’. Your mother said

I do not put on your show I couldn’t even if I tried.

All I want is humanity the humanity you didn’t

Know.  The blue and yellow golden hue

and the shining-perspective, you. 

I light my pipe and the smoke wafts

You black white and grey. 

Your look says it all.

A NEW TERRIFYING WORK OF ART

What started it all was the phone

ringing in the middle of the night

stirring the whole house. At first,

he thought it was a phone ringing

in his dream as if the volume

was slowly increased and the tone

of sleep turned down.

By the time he got halfway down

the stairs and reached down into

the dining-room and took the phone

from the wall, the female recorded

voice said ‘the caller with held

their number’.

He climbed back into bed and began

to drift off thinking it was probably

his brother in Canada he’s the only one

it could be as he usually rang him late

at night what with the time difference

and him having a drink and getting

an inkling for home.

His wife Catherine lay still beside him

with her eyes closed saying a prayer into

her self for her parents hoping they were ok.

Just as the house began to settle back into

silence the phone rang like a siren, he piled

out of bed with his worst fears and Catherine

sat up in the bed ’ Oh, fuck no’, she heard him

say and her heart skipped a beat.

She heard him set the phone down, but every-

thing fell silent as the names of her family

and his flashed through her mind. She watched

him enter and cross the room and noticed that

even his cock lay unusually limp without emotion 

expressing how he felt.

“It’s Jimmy”, he said, he’s had a brain aneurysm,

“oh no” , “What happened she said it took four

hours for the ambulance to arrive they took him 

to Letterkenny hospital then rushed him to Dublin

with a Garda escort. “Poor Janice and Ben they’ll

be lost without Jimmy, you’ll have to go down,

yeah I know in the morning let’s get some sleep.

He closed his eyes trying not to think of Jimmy

but a storm blew wild outside like his fight for

survival.  He remembered him tossing the plastic

furniture around the garden, conjuring images

of summer outside the Poets House at the foot

of Muckish Mountain and Jimmy just being him-

self.

He tossed and turned for what seemed like hours

before he got up and went to his study and took

Jimmy’s latest collection of poetry.

The Company of children from the shelf.

He wasn’t a religious man but him sitting reading

aloud the first poem in the book Night Song

from a Previous Life, sounded like a prayer

or a spiritual chant: These are my golden times,

at night/at the kitchen desk with the table light/

with Bush at my elbow and a bottle of stout/

the family in bed and the cat put out/a contented

island of concentration/that the muse might visit

with inspiration/And what if I turn aside to read?

Fiction is food you always need/And what if I pick

at my old guitar? / Maybe a singer is what you are?

The piano seldom inveigles me/ That noise would

waken the family/So light up another fag and brood/

on the peace and sweetness of solitude/ Don't get

nervous. 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.

BUBBLE CHAMBER

                         

EMPTY SPACE IS VITAL 

                                                 Lawrence Krauss

A pome anti-pome, negative

Capability,  a  prison cell of

the mind. The light from my

window shadows jail cell bars

it starts off like a blues song

with just little hope.  Science

and the blues go hand in hand.

Porridge is the texture of brain

Who is eating who? The hard-on

misspelt hadron collider goes

round and round ,  the after-

Glow of the big bang theory

( stroke ). Spike Milligan said

‘We are fucked’, accidently

On purpose, physics, poetry,

Cosmology, a poetic quantum

Wave like an infinite stanza

In a multi-verse, the poetry

of reality is the portal of poetry.

This is an anti-particle that

Hasn’t been discovered yet.

BASED ON JOSEPH BRODSKY ELEGY FOR JOHN DONNE 

ELEGY FOR RAYMOND CARVER 

Raymond Carver has sunk in sleep...All things beside 

Are sleeping too: The brass swan paperweight sleeps 

On Hebrew translations, Butts in the ashtray sleep with 

Ash, Chekhov, the lapdog and the wicker chair sleep 

In the intricate weave of willow-like the exiled words of 

Joseph Brodsky. Tess sleeps in a bed of hummingbirds 

The photographs and the pins that hold them sleep in 

The cork they penetrate. His unpublished words sleep 

Piled high in the bunks of America. Belfast and Sligo 

Sleep even the doctor sleeps in a handshake of blue 

Sea and sails. 

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE IRISH

Tree hero by Mairitin O' Direain blogger: sorry

MAN OF POEMS  (HAIKU)

                     

Save your sub-
stance for captured 
moments, grip the words

Immerse them in sap.

Be one with the tree

erupting from each
veined leaf pulsing 
white roots in the dark-

ness, cries of soiled 
wonder fall from ashen

Eye of poet-tree hero.

The sprouting buds of

Light looks down on you
eyes of the wise owl 
in the thick black night- 
let words take root, 
ejaculate a poem 

into the cavern 

of life

An peaca (the sin) by SEAN O’ Riordain

TAILS (YOU LOSE)

The moon fell from the sky like

a well worn coin out of circulation.

Like an injured swan fighting to

Grasp the flight path of night.

She struggled to hold her head up-

right above the lake of her soul but

she fell like a tragic poem into

the swan song of poetry.

The screech of sinners echoed the night

like war tearing at flesh and I thought

I saw the busted corpses piled like

a heap of shit.

I looked at the finished poem again

seeing the fiction and the truth

and I look to the moon plummeting

through the morals of heads and tails.

 Deagoir ag Driftail by Cathal O’ Searcaigh

BROWSING WITH THE BEATS

1.

On a filthy platform of Euston station I writhe

on my hold-all of dreams. The train screeches

away tearing cold tracks, my open wounds of

loneliness, erupting steam exhaling like a sigh

of smoke. I turned on the gap of the street

the sun washed in cascading into my heart.

2.

Sitting here on a bench among the blooms

of Finchley, a slight warm breeze raises

the skirts of wild Iris. I watch a handsome

young  soldier among the poppies, his

gestures and the swaying stems of his

stride more to my delight than the girl

by his side nestling a child to her breasts.

He stoops elegantly picks a poppy and turns

to fade from my view, without as much

as a glance, without a care for me. Oh, how

foolish the heart is that runs away in the eyes

of a stranger.  Oh, how miserable my fantasies

are that are not made to live. My futility bleeds

the red drops of longing while Lupin’s dance erect

in the earth, exposing their seeping stems to

the pansies while me and the damned girl fidgets

on the bench, the child asleep in her arms,

dressing cupids arrow its hard tip drawn

from the flowerbed.

3.

I came here from hills and bogs from the prim

and proper parishes of their norm, talking them-

selves out of poverty without the means  to accept

me and my way. To escape the walls of their routine,

I want to fly from the roots of their past. Let them

dig the damp earth for myths and pick at the fibres

of legend, seeking the Dolmens treasure to nourish

their souls in the dark dank depths of winter.

The awful stench of tradition makes me sick,

the skulls of my ances5tors, the dripping leaves

of disgust on my family tree.  I’m too young

to let them hang over me.

4.

The decaying streets heave in stifling air

Clambering concretes city sickness,

Through Dollis hill with a burdened fever

Above the flights of washing lines.

Dripping sweat between its thighs

and breasts, the oozing puss of building

sites. Festering like V.D. on its anguished

expression, the foul stench of disease

lingering in my nostrils. I run from its

sick sight and jump on a bus to

Cricklewood Broadway.

5.

The voices of all Ireland echo here amongst

The accents of the world, the twang and slur

Of their slang is moist like the sea and mist

In Irelands air. I see them here my brothers

From all the crags of the coast, cliff-faced

With the Herons stride like barnacles’

Wretched from the shoreline seeping

to grip the cities concrete. I hear them in

The bell and crown, the wild men, impulse

Of the tribe. You  Bastard! You Cunt!

They yell at themselves as the whisky

Sours hope. I don’t want my youth

to drown In the gutter or corrode alone

in a bedsit in Kilburn or Tufnel park in

Walthamstow or Holoway, Cricklewood,

Camden Town or an Archway. I have no

desire to be lost and alone here with

not a soul visiting my heart. In my hands

I have sorrow a razor blade and death but

I want to lay a table of joy to dress every-

day I live in the robes of delight.

6.

I browse in the bookshops of Charing cross

lost among the beatniks, those that have

voodoo in their vibes of verses, the Haiku

of concrete life. Like good grass I Feel

the buzz of everyday living thing in tune

with here and after. Tingling my way to

the Strand and Drury Lane with my flesh

on fire, the beat poetry flows like Buddah

divine stepping through drunks, bag ladies.

The sweltering sun beats down like a pick-

pocket fleeing shadows from the street

and the panting take cover in the pubs

hiding behind closed doors. I take refuge

in a fast food café the waitress throws me

a glistening glance, all of a sudden the blood

rushes within me London is solid rocking,

in her laugh, erupting nipples the tingling

of her thighs.

7.

By the urinals of Piccadilly a young boy speaks

To me, his eyes soft and gentle, not like I ex-

pected a rent boy to be, nesting in the branches

Of my laugh. In the queer that bind us together

like the wind and the rain. His tongue lapped

and licked my quivering flesh with  the forest

of his breath leaving a sap of jewels sparkling

in my eyes red faced in the night, he left me

and my senses tingling.

8.

I  feel sorrow here in Berkeley Square with

The burnt stars in the sky. The nightingale

is no longer heard but my three are with me.

Lifting my depression from the night,

the throbbing pulse of Ginsberg, Corso

and Ferlingetti. So, if I don’t find a bed for

the night they will color the dark, while

I snuggle into the blanket of my dreams

Safe in the light of the moon.