adrian fox <adrianpfox8@gmail.com>	Sat, Aug 24, 2:14 PM (2 days ago)
to me

I found a manuscript at the bottom

Of a box, brown and dog eared

With age. It gives me a sense

of I am-ness, even if you don’t care?

 POETRY M.A. THESIS

                   THE POET’S HOUSE

                              1997

                      ADRIAN FOX

         CRAIGAVON, CO, ARMAGH

                    

                        N,IRELAND

                          BT655AF

                      THE PAPER

   

   IRISH AND AMERICAN POETRY

PATRICK KAVANAGH AND

                                    RAYMOND CARVER

“WHERE WATER COME’S TOGETHER    

           WITH OTHER WATER”

In this thesis I hope to link the streams of

poetry from the Grand canal, Dublin and

the rivers that flow through Port Angelus,

Washington state, Carver and Kavanagh

country. Those last lines above from a Carver

poem, “where water comes together with

other water” for me depicts Patrick

Kavanagh’s Grand Canal Bank” and Raymond

Carver’s, A new path to the waterfall, as well

as showing me here, the real link on the

shores of their streams of poetry: loving them

all back to the source./ loving everything that

increases me.

Both these selections of poetry were written

in the last years of the poets lives, and as

Carver wife the poet Tess Gallagher says in

the introduction to, A new path to the

waterfall:  this is a last book and last things as

we learn, have rights of their own, they don’t

need us, but in our need of them  we

commemorate and make more real that

finality which  encircles us and draws again

into that central question, what is life for ?

TO BE CONTINUED.......

HACK-BALLS-CROSS

Rolled in and out bed, me

With a regal head, poetry

And poverty sit close by.

Poverty is good for the soul

Writ the green fool.

The cottage stood at the end

Of duffy’s lane, no electric

Heat, no toilet.  Like a day in

Patrick Kavanaghs day but 1974.

My Da was on the run from

the black north beyond those

black hills of Shancoduff.  He

knew nothing of poetry.

Ignorant thug, conned con man

Who thought the world owed him

Poor bastard and that’s the dogs

honest truth.  I roamed those

fields like a flea bitten street urchin

but the grass was always cool

round my ankles.  The bastard

didn’t know he had to give to get.

He didn’t know what real love was

I went for water and dug holes

What more did i want!

I wrote this in my negative capability between John Keats and Lou Reed to roll of my paralyzed mumbling tongue, between the flower and the bee, my bee maybe?

ODE TO U2

My self-pains, my paralyzed side reigns

My non-sense, as though a tab I took

or shot heroin up the dropper’s neck

better off than this un-walking dead.

Not to seek a happy lot but

To feel joy in this unhappy lot.

The golden leafed spirit of the tree

In some melancholic un-plot

Of color shadows, to sing a perfect day

in full throat ease.

Oh, for a glass of vino, that traps my nerve

And sends me off along a deep delved earth.

A sailor sailing off on a clipper ship, rushing

On my run and I feel just like Jesus’ son

Rose petal song and sunburst mirth.

Full of the true, blushful merlot with beaded

Bubbles bursting on my brim.  With purple stain

That I might leave this world unseen and fade

Away into the forest dim.  Fade away memory

dissolve, forget me not, when the blood begins

to flow, and shoots off a paralysis cerebral palsy

in the brain injury, a white-haired man stands shell

like clammed up.  where but to think is full of sorrow

dead eye despair, where beauty cannot keep, love

is gone beyond tomorrow, love can’t even see today.

Away! away! I wish that I could fly to thee

Chariot wheelchair not fucking mythology

Disabled wings of poetry.  The brain retards

In me, queen moon rise on my wheel-

chair throne.  Here there Is no light, only

breezes blown through gloom.

I cannot see flowers at my footplate twisted feet

Nor soft incense hanging boughs, embalmed

In darkness in darkness.   I don’t know where

I’m going, darkling I listen, for many a time

I’ve been in love with death called him hard names

in many a mused rhyme.  to take into air my quiet

breath now more than ever it seems rich to die

nullify, my high requiem become a sod.  Forlorn

Forlorn the very word rings like a bell

was it a vision or a waking dream?

USED (SIC)

What am I to do, kill my-

Self again? How many

Time’s have I to write

The dog’s honest truth?

When there is no love

No hate and no belief

emotional memory

Was all erased, crippled

Wheelchaired killing time.

I’m not blue, nothing on

My mind, nowhere to go

Only my own suicide, like

A new-born without

The trauma of life.

I live in my own suicide

I can’t even get high

All I get is my due end.

The only way out is in.

BEING IN BETWEEN

My life is such a bore!

Birds migrate north.

Give me something

To live for?

All that matter is the pome

I’ve said all this before.

My purpose, negative-

Capability between

The flower and the bee.

PAST-TIME

I can hear fire-works

on the twelth of October

In the morning, sounds like

the twelth of July but

those exploding days are over.

Rockets shoot off into sky

and flare up daylight.

Is this a pyro-maniac or

just a kid playing at being man?

We had thirty years of that

and look where it got us.

Green and orange needs day-

light, white. Two opposing sides

at two opposing times, like

a mythological beat is looking

for a present rhythm.

I hear a fire craic open the portal

Of time, running away laughing but

Nothing will happen, people are

Reminded of yesterday.

Stop clowning around!

THE GREAT CARVER
For Tess

Without hope, with despair- this is not an intro but a untro.
In the words of Raymond Carver my hero. ‘Did you get 
what you wanted, I did’, to follow his spiritual current
in the clarity of his under-current of poetry, flowing
secretly subtle through my mind.

Given the book ‘Fires’ by a friend with the latest American Music
Club C.D, I read the poem for Karl Wallenda and it blew me away.
I was on that high wire walking the thin line of Carvers words
all over the world, this poem caught my breath and a poem never
done that before. I grew up reading books on the Secret Army
and Hollywood dreams, they were the only books in our home
his words held me up there on that high wire, wow magic.

This was the magic and loss that Lou Reed talked about
the music I loved and lived for transformed into words on a page
words from the street that took no prisoner’s.
Raymond Carver and Patrick Kavanagh are two writers who matter
Deeply in my world, although a lot of writers have inspired
me these two writer’s words were a part of how I walked and talked
I finished my M.A. thesis with a poem on these two writers.

RAY RIVER

Although I’m here in Donegal and not Yakima
Washington state, or in Dublin reclining
On the banks of the grand canal.
I feel a sense that Raymond Carver
And Patrick Kavanagh are here with me
Following the Ray River to the sea
Of this poem.

In the words of Lao Tzu, darkness within darkness, the gateway
To all understanding. My poetry is dark and very deep
Most by passed my work as depressing but this is the world I
Lived, awakening on a hospital bed just seconds after I was de-
Clared dead, paralyzed down my right side unable to speak.

I lived for ten years beyond the massive stroke that would have
killed a horse. Everyday I told the world what it was like to live
in that hell even if they didn’t like it, my words kept me sane, without
the power of memory and dream. The poems I wrote witnessed
the hell I endured, my poems come from a dead part of me like
a stipple of blackness, I seen almost every day
my darkness was within, most only see this
darkness if they survive a massive blow to the head or
witness their own passing.

It’s not your fault and I don’t blame you, my words are so honest
And true somedays I can’t take it but as I said in a poem
The dog’s honest truth has stuck in my throat
I don’t want to be here but I have no choice.
Like Carver who ate wheat in the poem “Prosser”, I know
I will never come close to the great Carver but
just to feel his presence is good enough for me.

Companionable.

       A single rose emerges

       plants its indelible mark

       on the corner of my eye.

        I want to cut you off place 
          you on the surface of my 
              dreams caress your 

              stem and smell the 
               fragrance that 
                   secretes.

                     I have 
                      you

                   here

            on the 
              bed

              ex- 
             tracting

      leaves marked

                 like freckles

       on your back. 

              There 
                upon

         The fresh

                clean space

     is your little

              hill

              blushing.

     Your quint
             essential

           silk

        on my 
         lips

       drop-lets

           of summer

              rain

             fall from

               The petals. 

Iplace you in a glass on my window-

sill. The young thorn pricks my finger 

inserts beneath the skin reminding me 

how  to hold   you  honestly,   tenderly.

I know your vibrant colour wont  last 

    but beside it on the stem is an-

          other bud to bloom.

RE-

Resuscitated, raised again

For what, I do not know.

To give you my words

Of humanity? That’s all

I can think off, I don’t know

Why I am still here, I didn’t

Think I‘d make it past thirty.

Here I am almost double that

I must be doing something

Wrong/right, I live a happy

Sadness, you can have all

I have got.  We are spinning

Out of control.  We reach

For a God/money and find

Ourselves deflated not in-

Flated, we are our own

Worst enemy.

In us there is a placebo-

Effect but we are blind

Believing a savior

Will come.  You are

The savior and your

Words are the sun.

So rise again and think

that you are one.

Die-verse-if-I-cation

The black shape of crow falls across the page

                                                                       Peter Porter

Crow is one of the first things you hear.

I wouldn’t even attempt to spell that sound

It’s the sound of poetry.  Die-verse-if-I-cation

Die-verse-if-I-nation that wants to move on

through a so-called unstable peace process. 

We have all lived these hard-times of

Austerity and cut backs.  We are beyond

Millionaire politics, we’ve got to

Reach inward, give to get humanity.

We have all seen images of death

And destruction but we have to face

Truth and accept it, it’s not nice but

It’s someone’s truth an every-

day occurrence.  Let’s stop this

Them and us blame-game.

When will you see my shadow

When I’m dead and gone?

New wave

Jet streams are feinting the sky

Making my day, preparing

The page for memory

That pops into my head.

I was talking to my carer

And this image came to mind.

New wave, wearing a Bowie suit

And winkle picker shoes, being

Stoned and called a queer

By a gang of kids.  Walking down

Edward Street to catch

The 47a home, returning from

London, 1978.

This book of poems by Attila Jozesf

Is all I have left from my Hungarian visit?

The ashtray I took from the bar

Where I ran creative writing classes

Was broke.  The lines of my life

Are vapor fueled, taking me

to paradise.

A CARER

for Fiona

Alone walking the black paths

a carer going to care for a man who 

doesn't care?

Lost in a world of dark roads

and grey gutters. Even the sun-

shine is no good to him.

I ponder the key-pad and steady

myself, entering a world I don’t know

'Morning', I can't even say 'good morning',

'what good is it he answers'.

I got him showered and dressed and left him

looking into the world beyond the break-

fast table, looking into the clear blue sky 

to see darkness, darkness is his hope.

I left him to see from his

wheelchair, went on to

the next call on my rota.

wishing he were dead, I think?

BLOGGER PROBLEM AGAIN SORRY

A FOX THOUGHT

For Ray

Trying hard to recall a day in the cottage

in Hackballscross 1973-74’.

I watched a documentary on Ted Hughes

called: 'Stronger than death'

Put up on Facebook by a friend and it

Threw up another memory.

I woke that morning in a human

And paraffin stench.

The cottage had no electricity

No running water or toilet.

You went for a walk over

A field with a spade.

Seven miles from Dundalk deep

Deep in Kavanagh country.

Mucker was just over the fields

I lived like the green fool

For that year but it was heaven.

Beyond those black hills

Of shancoduff, beyond the war-

torn streets of Belfast.

When I opened the half-door

The dawn shot through like

A bullet from a snipers rifle.

Then I remembered this

Wasn’t Belfast.

I clenched my eye lids tight

Like wishing on a star

And I smelt the sudden hot-

Stink of fox.  I opened

My eyes adjusting to the sun-

Burst glare and the wild animal

Staring at me just beyond

The door.

As if it came from the page

Of the fox thought, staring

For what seemed like seconds.

Then it just turned and walked

Away.  Memory was like that

Dawn light, I remembered when

I was fourteen in the cottage.

I lost forty five years of memory

During a stroke in 2005, wow

The power of poetry, thanx Ted

Ray Givans and I can’t forget

Patrick Kavanagh.

This is beyond words, this

Just appeared on the page.