MEMORY LOST AND FOUND
THE DAY GOD DIED (AN ESSAY POME)
I hopped and skipped along to mass that morning
Armed with a fake plastic mother of pearl missal.
Around thirteen years old, I was going to see my
One true friend, I was going to confess
My innocent self.
Just as I began to climb the great steps that led
To the great doors that held mystery, humanity.
From behind me I heard machine gun fire.
When you live in troubled times you learn
To do things on the floor.
I was used to hitting
The deck when bombs or bullets went off.
I duked into the hedge and lay on the ground
And I saw a man spray three people dead at
His feet, raise his rifle to the sky, and said
This is for god and ulster!
I lay there thinking how could god let this
Happen, this man had just killed for god.
My young mind couldn’t comprehend this act.
God had taken my innocence and flushed it
Down the drain, I knew it wasn’t an act of god
And just a man acting as gods disciple but
My young mind could not understand how
Man could be so inhumane to man.
I looked up to the great doors, looked down at my missal
threw it away and ran home crying, in my lifetime
there has never been an answer to this. I can’t
stomach the fact of humanitarian war. God died
that day and he never rose again.
SON OF A GUN
February in this dank dark cell
This place may as well be a dungeon
I’m looking back, counting off your days.
The longest detainee in Ireland, 48 hours be-
Came nine months, a brit term. We didn’t
know if they threw you from a helicopter
or your cell was white noised, rumors
we’re flying, bailed we went on the run.
All I recall is gripping my mother’s hand.
Why did you tunnel underground not?
To recognize the court.
I think you were
A mole? How I didn’t become
an I.R.A.
man, only poetry knows.
All we got was
a handkerchief smuggled from the dungeons.
We were under British rule, they
Done just what they wanted.
Still do I live their welfare state but
I’m getting out of this hell cell.
Peace poetry is getting me out
Not bullets and bombs.
I cried and held my mother’s hand
You thought I would turn out like
I had higher hopes than you.
I never primed your bomb or held
Your gun. This pen
glides across
The page, is read across the border
Water, I am an English Irishman.
You cried for grief for war, I cried
For disability, between us their flows
a river of tears but we can see, write
through clear, we have faced our fear.
You look down on me, just as you
Did in life, your grief pours down on me
Looking back to those days when I was
the son of a gun-runner.
Now I can’t
recall detail but I know I was there.
You can’t look me in the eye and show
Remorse so I must live with that.
I will write my truth that you didn’t
have the balls to say.
2.
2.
Man cant look man in the eye and say liar!
He looks
on himelf, we look back in his image
Corrupt. Salvador dali
and picasso we live with their duende.
I remember you in overalls
Smelling of swarfega.
I spit
My syllables right back in
Your face, the stink of lies
Eminate frm you.
The waste of engine sump oil
Burnt out. A wolsey
and cam-
Bridge cars welded together
And they probably killed
Not that you cared.
I break your weld, cycle
Of violence and hope it
Doesn’t show in my kids.
All I can do is cry,
cry, cry. Just like
in the song.
A vessel beneath the bridge of tears.
When will man stop crying, when
You stop this crying shame
And face your fear.
A COLD SON OF A BITCH
‘yet why not say what happened’
Robert Lowell
Unmetered and unpunktuated to flow in its cold naturalness
1.
John looked from the
kitchen window
the sink he stood by
was like the interior
of a well worn tea pot
or the inside of his lungs
sucking on yet another
cigarette
The street light threw a subtle pastel glow
on the still housing
estate The red rusted
Volkswagen beetle
stood like a monument
I will have to get stuck
in and fix that car tomorrow
he thought dropping a
sleeping pill rinsed down
with a cold swig of
tea and I will have to clean this
place he reminded himself climbing the stairs.
He dreamed the usual sixty-year-old
dream
young ladies running
naked through summer meadows
When he woke it was
those abstract images of memory
that disturbed him and
lingered like a blunt saw through
his aching heart
It’s a suffering
fucking hell he told himself throwing
cold water
over his face as if
extinguishing the image in the mirror
and the reality of his
bald head and pointed features
The stench of his loss
lingered with every step he took down
those steps where once
walked the wife and mother of his dreams
He could almost see
her walking down those stairs to meet the day
with that Irish
strength that pushed the sore reality to the ground
He ejected the stale
teabags from the teapot and thought I must go
To the doctors today
and get that disability living allowance form filled in
try to get a mobility
allowance and have a new car instead of that un-
repairable rusted old
banger
He remembered how the
car looked in the night subtle pastel glow
and said god you’re a
bastard you and your cold light of
morning
2.
He sat in the doctors
waiting room trying to remember good times like
his first born or his
wedding day but this annoying ugly kid kept shoving
leaflets in his face
about cancer of the bollocks and depression
Just as he was about
to smack the kid up the head he heard the broken
English voice of the
Pakistani doctor call his name on the tanoi like
a London conductor on
a bus. As the doctor filled in a section of the Dis
ability living allowance
form and wrote some prescriptions for depression
angina headaches and the general feeling that life
is a sick load of balls.
John was calling him a
black bastard in his mind because
he asked him exaggerate
his findings on the form and received
instead a lecture on
the ethics of medicine.
John was a bigot he
did not know how to be anything else
he hated blacks Pakis Chinese as well as all those beautiful
women he could not
have and especially that bitch
that left him after
thirty one years.
He walked home through
the maze of housing estates with his bag
of pills for every ill
but the aching black hole in his heart
Going past the
derelict houses full of grafitti he remembered
the night the police
man called their words would always be
on his mind no pills
could remove them
The shadow of black
cap was cast off and fell through the hall like
the black cloud of depression your daughters have been searching for you
screeched those words
to crash with a families laughter
Those words rang through his mind like the
word bastard the winds
of a harsh winter
reminding him that life can be a cold son of a bitch
He passed the old
decrepid bettle without an engine without much hope
of ever pumping fluid through
its rotten pipes He opened the front
door
and half expected his
wife to pass him and his children playing music
and busying around the
house Instead he was met by the grey
stench
of loneliness
He stood by the sink
steadying himself as those words pounded through his head
he washed down paracetamol
and an anti depressant
His head pounded
filled with anxiety he staggered into the living room
and threw himself on
the sofa putting his feet up on the coffee table between
the carbareatur and
the innards of a TV he was trying to fix.
He then stood up over
the hearth and placed a little blue tablet below his tongue
and his heart rate
began to fall and he was able to catch his breath and relax
He climbed the stairs
and threw himself on the single bed this is my bed I must
lie in it he told
himself and looked through the ceiling through the grey sky through
the galaxy of stars
burning in the darkness of his sight and crumpled up into a boy
I’m a loser he told
himself remembering but not remembering
an infant left in a
basket by a blood red door, doing time in Crumlin
road jail the longest detainee in Ireland nine months of hell
a single droplet of
salted tear fell from his hardened Belfast
exterior he
brushed it aside like the murdering bullet from
an armalite rifle no
point crying over spilt milk
he lay there and cried
himself to sleep.
He woke with the hope
of a thirty year old man bounded out of
bed
to tackle the
unbeatable day you cant beat a good cry he
told himself
throwing water about
his worn features. He brushed the hair from
the nape of his neck to
cover his bald patch and brought it to a point
on his forehead
He sang walking down
the stairs a song he sang to his children when they cried
you don’t have to
be a baaa-aaby to cry Opening a
cupboard in the hall
he dragged a filthy
pair of overalls from a pile of clothes on the floor
and stepped into them
tucked his hair into a tweed cap and lifted the toolbox
The morning was a
little cool but the sun was coming up strong above
the grey housing
estate This is gonna be a good day he thought sucking in the
almost fresh air Opening the passanger door of the car
creaking like a great sigh
reaching in he delved
between unsecured seating busted wings and an exhaust
hauling a jack from
the debris
He took the cross
shaped wheel brace and placed it on one of the four rusted nuts
before taking hold he
stooped and spat on his hands he gripped the brace and turned
with all his might and
tried to budge the nut as if it was the last task on earth.
He cursed the car and
gave it everything he had all a sixty year
old worn heart
could muster A heart like a prune without syrup dried and
left in
the searing desert of
hurt to long a red bastard ya german fucker ya useless heap
of shit mumbled as the sweat broke on his brow
He rested a while
leaning against his dream and took a cigarette from his top pocket lit
and sucked he licked the beads of sweat that fell
across his lips his tongue
once more they were
cold and grey he licked once more
unsure and tasted
death
On the morning of his
funeral a letter drifted through the letter box
one of his pallbearing four sons
opened it and it read
we are pleased to
inform you that you have
been awarded
motability
HARD-MAN (born to
write a wrong)
1.
I began writing seriously when my father died
When I felt that I was free to say what ever
I wanted as long as I hurt no one. My mother
Taught me right from wrong, humanitarianism.
I trusted no one especially not my father
I didn’t trust him as far as id throw him.
He was a dodgy secretive person, he is dead
But I still wake thinking his past will catch up
With and I want nothing to do with that.
In 2005 I took a stroke that erased my long term memory
So there is a lot I don’t recall, I get confused at times about
Whats true and whats not.
This is my truth that I know.
I began writing my negative capability a long time ago.
Long before my stroke, I never knew anyone else
That took my route, this is the road that I took.
For the first sixteen years I had to live under my fathers
rule
But he had nothing to do with my life.
I always had a problem with authority, no one could tell
Me what to do. I
defied my father, the education system
Every one around me was lost in sectarianism
So I had a free way to go.
My father never gave me nothing
He hated the very fact that I was alive. He never even gave
Me pocket money so I learned to rob and steal
From his pocket while he slept
I don’t write to be an ego writer, my name is Adrian
Fox and I was born to write a wrong. I write pomes
To be humane. My
father died of a heart attack
in nineteen eighty nine aged sixty one
I was born in England
in nineteen sixty one.
He died a bitter twisted lonely man, I know were all
Born and die alone but most men find a little
Tenderness. I can say
there wasn’t a tender bone
In his body and any there was he took It
To the grave, hard-man.
My father was born a bastard left on a doorstep
In Herbert street, North Belfast. I grew without
A role model father, from a very early age
I felt his hatred for me.
For a third of my life
I wanted to be like him until I wised up.
He ran away from home aged fifteen, said he
Was seventeen and joined the British army.
He leant how to be a lying bastard
Reinventing himself.
With my mother a Dublin woman he met
After the army, they moved back to Northern Ireland
In nineteen sixty seven, lived first at aunt Sarah’s
the only home he ever knew.
She was called aunt Sarah but she just a mill
Worker who reared my father.
We lived on an estate called Green Island In Northern Ireland
Because Sarah’s two up two down was to cramped
For a family of five and three adults.
Until my father bought a home and business premises
Just off the Crumlin rd.
Life was good there on a mixed
Street between the shankill road and the Ardoyne
Before troubled times.
Everything changed for everyone in Northern Ireland
We lost our home burnt to the ground like thousands
Of families forced to live on a school assembly hall.
No one could sit on the fence and float through
Religious green and orange, after a time we moved
Into a home on Etna drive in the nationalist Ardoyne.
It was strange at first being bullied as the little
English runt at a nationalist school but soon I learnt
The Ardoyne hard man brogue and began
To kick back, when I stood on my own two feet
And could handle myself they left me alone.
My father became a member of the I.R.A.
And we were locked in republicanism.
Everywhere he went he was a member of the I.R.A.
There was no Provo’s or stickie’s back then there
Was just men defending the surrounding oppression?
And then the British army who were put on the streets
To defend us.
Everywhere you went and everything you seen
Was the fight against poverty and oppression?
Watching TV at weekends amid gunfire and bombs
Up and down the street.
All that I was growing up to be
Was a R.A. man I was born into this wild environment?
And became a refugee child bussed out to the Curragh camp
In the republic and homes in limerick, Dublin and Kerry.
I was on the road to i.r.a.ville, my father was detained
Under the special powers act, my mother was in Armagh
Women’s prison and my older sister was in Middletown
Juvenile center. The
first years of my life was on the streets.
I know things happened back then and I seen some awful
things
But in two thousand and five I had a stroke and lost forty
five
Years of memory so my time on the streets of Ardoyne
Is just a blur. I can’t
really recall instances anymore because
I don’t know if they are true, I’ll just stick to bare
facts.
When my father was released from crumlin rd jail, he went
On the run across the border and my mother said I should go
To because I was wild and would end up dead.
Living in Dundalk I seen that the world was not at war
In Belfast I thought the war was a part of me
I seen nothing else, it was there I learned to live in peace
It took the bitter hatred out of me.
In nineteen seventy seven my father decided again
To move back north and took a job in the Goodyear
Tyre and Rubber Company in the new city of Craigavon.
I and my older brother decided that we were both
Working and able to live in dundalk and take on the mortgage
Payments on the house.
We kept up the payments for a few months but we
Both missed our mother and we were to young for that
Level of responsibility. I didn’t want to live with my
Regimental father but I had grown up without him
In my life, my mother taught me right from wrong.
He was a bastard and I was a bastards son, although
I loved him but we never seen eye to eye. From
The first day out of the high I felt his hatred of me
He was jealous because I was like my mother humane
And he was just a bastard child, a bigot who hated
Everyone he didn’t know how to be a real man.
It was a shame because mum was a beautiful
Strong woman and he wasn’t a strong man.
In dundalk in my teenage years I ran away
From home three or four times to get away
From and even living under his rule in northern
Ireland, I told mum I have to move to England
Or I would end up killing him.
We couldn’t even be in the same room
I hated him and he hated his son,
He said I took my mothers love but
Isn’t that the role of mother and son.
I ended up punching him to the floor and walking out
Catching the boat and train to London to stay
With my aunt peggy. I
moved to London to get away
From him and the violence but I hated London.
The year was nineteen seventy seven and the tribes
Were on the streets and everywhere I went I was
Picked on as a paddy and yet I was born in England.
My brother and I got a flat together in northern Ireland.
On my sixteenth birthday my father had no more say
In my life. I grew up
through the troubles thinking
I hated the other side but all the time I hated him.
He is dead now and also my mother, for thirty one
Years she was loyal to him but all he ever knew was
How to be a cunt, another family came up out of the blue
And split the family to the four winds.
I am alone now in a wheelchair without memory
Paralyzed down the right side of my body
But I know that I have never been a bastard
Thanx to the humanity of my mum.
2.
The state system we live in has created monsters
And my father was a bastard one of them.
The system is still putting hate into mens blood
Today to fight the Islamic crusade we fought
In the 14th century.
Since before world war one
we have been putting hate and war culture into
Mens blood to go out into the world and kill
The people who defy our regime but that is not
The way to create a humane state we have to train
Them to be moral human beings
The doomed youth scenerario is long dead.
Even today we come from a war mongering culture
but at least we are trying to think beyond a cycle
Of violence. He was a
walking contradiction
liar/ brit , I.R.A./ bastard, Jim john or sean?
So im a brit bastard’s- brit son.
It was not until I educated myself and gain a degree
In poetry that I understood that they are instilling
In us suicide killers.
If they gave me a gun and a uniform
Iwould shot myself.
My children wont ever be just their
Fooder of war mongering, I want to be a human being.
My father was born a bastard with regimental hate in
His heart, he killed for god and ulster,the brits and the
I.R.A.
I cant ever prove it but I think he was a british army mole
I would never trust him, either to stupid and confused
Or to smart for his own boots. His heart was written in
His eyes and I couldn’t trust him as far as id throw him.
My mother married him to turn him in to a human being.
Nanny Keogh knew she said don’t marry him he has shifty eyes
He will end up hurting you and he did the bastard.
Good on my mother she tried its strange how I remember
Us being huddled around the fire watching watching
The Frankenstein man made monster shuffle in black and white
across the screen but the monster was in the room.
Four of us ended up alcoholics one girl killed herself
It was said that he abused two, one died to live in a
wheelchair.
And the other two are far, far away in Canada and Europe.
I write this truth from the heart and yes it hurts but
It also gives me strength to be alive.
I live in hell but this is my humane hell.
THIS AND THAT
Going back to those days I don’t re-
Member my long-term memory was
Shot away, a statistic of the troubles.
Pushing my mind back to smell swar-
fega tear gas, burning buses
used as barricades.
All I recall is a bigot bastard, that
Was my childhood no detail, he
Stood outside me my father leaning
over the hood of a ford corsair like
a bat mobile. The bat
was my head-
master, he beat me with his thin cane.
So, I broke all his windows, the prods
And the taigs beat me, put me up
Against the wall asked me to say the hail
Mary, sing the sash my father wore.
I knew neither so they kicked me up
And down the road. I almost
re-
Member my mum getting all her
Teeth pulled, she was the bravest
person I knew, my father was a bigot
thug he beat me to so I stole all
the bastard’s money.
I got the taigs and the prods back too
I became a poet of peace funny
I remember that and can’t re-
member this.
FENCE, SHADY DEALS
1.
The fence posts are stained by rain
It looks like nature is looking in on
warped grain and knotted wood.
Better than any man-made resin
That says what it does on the tin.
This is true beauty, all it costs is
A look. We by pass it
everyday
And get caught up in what omits
From a forty-two-inch screen that
pumps garbage into your brain.
I won’t ever see a shade like
This again. Fenceposts are in-
Dividual and they see right
Through me and you.
2.
I woke before five, it was dark dis-
Orientating, still clutching a urinal
Undercover. The joys
of one hand
Pisisng, all groggy out of sorts.
Dreaming this pome as if it was
The last thing on earth.
Poetry is like that you must strike
When the memory is hot, at least
I do to write confessional poetry.
This pome is straight from the forge
My mind is red hot.
At the same time and with one hand
I gently maneuvered the urinal out
So as not to spill the liquid gold all
Over me. It got
caught in the bed-
Clothes and just then I needed to
Pis again so I shoved it back down.
Like two steps forward and one
Step back, such has been my dis-
Abled life for ten years.
I don’t know how I have got through
This with just one suicide attempt.
My brain was throbbing, I had to
Feel the pulse of each letter
To type as a multimedia text on
My mobile phone like braile as
I dropped my reading glases.
Some words have only one s
Etc, ill leave it like that to show
U its urgency, spelt wrongly.
As a boy, I was with my
father when
he made those shady deals and I must say
That’s what he was good at, he was
A con-man, he would have charmed
The queen.
I want to tell u this story before I remember
to forget, they said he had dealings
With the Kray twins, whether that’s true
I don’t know but he lived in the east end
Of London and was up to no good, they say
that’s why he left to do shady deals for the I.R.A.
I’m beginning to get tired close my eyes and feel
for the pulse rhythm of each letter, syllable, word.
These are
my shady deals, just rain on a fence
I’m going back to sleep, my head is on fire
fenced out.
I’m going back to sleep, my head is on fire
fenced out.
NO MANS LAND
These memories were writ down so like
leaves on a tree whether you and I like it or not this was me? I can’t tell you about the beginning or the
end of my abyss I can only tell you of my journey. To tell you this I must dip into the abyss that
was writ down. As Leonard Cohen said there’s
a light a light in everything that’s how the light gets in, my journey starts
here, Kent England on the first of March 1961.
Through the maze of negativity zig zagging heaped
words over ramps and through barricades of an exploited, abused, pillaged
wasteland of my past. As I said in a
poem a long time ago I must go back to the dark recesses of my childhood to let
these words come out the other side, I don’t remember too much of England, a Wendy
house and being stuck in a lift on the Isle of dogs. A couple of flickers on my news reel that’s
grainy and black and white. Like a movie
of on the waterfront, light coming through the harbour warehouse of life and
breaking through, end of an era.
The first thing I don’t remember is being a
six-year-old and going to live in Belfast in 1967, the streets were grey and
dreary it was like going to another century.
The taxi fell from the hills of Antrim to civilisation along the crumbling
rd. and it turned left onto the cobbled streets of old Ardoyne where children
swung around gas lampposts now converted to electricity. Knelling on the back seat of that taxi was
like being on a H.G. Well’s time machine going back into a Dickensian world. I remember being bullied in a playground but there’s
only so much you can take until you start to kick back. I realised that the Belfast accent was harder
than most of the slobbers I had to kick into the gutter.
There was a river of them I had to show
face in the morning at break dinner time and after school until I found my own
space. I grew up on the hard streets but one thing kept me together while
around me was mayhem and madness. I had
respect and the love of my mother to fall back on. That day I stood there on flax street, I
picked up half a brick and watched it take to the air kite like swimming until
it crashed into the face of a black British soldier.
I’m sorry that someone got hurt that day
but somebody must, it’s how we learn. Something positive came from that negative
act. I’ve seen people in this country spend their whole lives looking at the
negative decaying bodies of their friends and family and still don’t come to
the realisation that there is no them and us we’re all in the same boat rowing
towards the same shore. I’ve seen people
in this country locked in tradition and wanting to kill this urge is so
strong. For god and Ulster and
republicanism they both have a lovely romantic view. So, I say to all you die hard republicans or
loyalists out there the war is over this is the time to build peace. Build a monument to all those innocent dead
who lost their lives for this peace. Stop bickering about who was right and who
was wrong were all losers nobody won or lost. When my mates patted me on the
back congratulating the fine shot I wanted to run through the streets crying
into my mother’s arms. There is one thing I learnt that day never to hurt
anyone again. Think of this as a long newsreel I was there at that time at that
place as if Scotty had tele ported me from my mother’s womb. Imagine a world an un –Goya landscape, the
weeping woman not standing over Guernica or the nightmare of the garden of
earthly delights or the magic of Vermeer’s light. Picture a world of Monet’s
lilies not the boulevard of broken dreams. I’m going through my world of karma
this is my kick in the teeth for all those acts of stupidity when I should have
been listening. That was then this is now,
I’m turning over a new page of sobriety without peer pressure. You’ve had a good laugh at me acting the
clown now it’s my turn to get something positive from this life before I kick
the bucket. I’m not taking chances with
this life again. Two years ago, this April
I was sitting on the bed minding my own business suddenly I was on the floor
crawling into my mother’s room. I woke
up in intensive care I took a massive stroke that nearly killed me. I thought I would leave this world in a
wooden box. I have spent the past years
in hospital and rehab I’m still getting over the ill ness. This is my second time around this beautiful
garden so I had plenty of time to think.
This is my conclusion.
Milan Kundera once said, we live only once
and have nothing to compare it with.
The life that existed before this seems
like a dream, the world without wheelchairs handrails bed pans and piss pots
seems like another world. But I was
there driving myself through it in the fifth gear of time. We rolled the white Vauxhall victor on the motorway
and drove on through the barricades of galvanised steel. At the majestic mourns we rolled into no man’s
land then the unapproved roads of the south until we stopped at a tiny cottage
in hack- balls-cross county Louth seven miles from the nearest town. Patrick Kavanagh’s
country I played in the fields and walked through his poetic poplars like a
green fool. The world of television was lost like the language of the clangers
we were now barbarians shot back in time with spears hunting rats and rabbits.
We collected water from the well as there
was no running water electricity and we lit the place with paraffin lamps. If
you needed to go to the toilet there was a Porta- loo in the shed for
emergencies and the girls pride otherwise you dug a hole in the earth. Memories
that really stick in my mind are playing time machine with my brothers my
younger brother believing even with the roar of traffic that he really did go
back to 1874 just by the writing on a stone and innocence even I almost
believed it. Walking to BlackRock which was seven miles away for a five-minute
swim out and walk home again. It wasn’t
getting there but the craic of the journey that was so good. I remember paddy Quinn
who was nineteen and he wanted to play cowboys and Indians my eldest brother
was fifteen and bored with it. That really was the age of innocence I remember
my brother and I playing in the fields with a stick and a car jack thinking we
were members of the Irish republican border patrol then irbp and we were doing
a mission for our country. Your
imagination just flies away without tv. Soon we were back in civilisation in a
house beside Marion park and coxs demesne in Dundalk. Although we were still
steeped in my father’s republicanism having been interned in the maze and crumbling
road and being friends with martin Meehan and the maze escapee Francis mc
guigan. As the republican romanticism went out the window in came David bowie,
moot the hoople and marc Boland and eventually the punk philosophy of Eddie and
the hot rods, do anything you want to do. The old hat philosophy of my fathers
went out with the button boots as my mother used to say. We had grown through the bullshit well most
of us my sister still holds the archaic ideals of yesterday. My brothers and I moved on with
multiculturalism and the philosophy that came with the music of the time.
Next thing I knew I was on the streets of
London 1977. like an extra from a mad max movie with all the other gangs of
young men who roamed the streets looking for a release of testosterone. We found ours on the factory floor of jack
roses shoes in stokenewing ton. The police
officers caught us with boxes of winkle pickers with brass toe tips. I
was in the police cell for the whole weekend because I told them that my parents
had a nervous disposition and they’d be better off not knowing I was nicked.
I went to London to get away from the
violence and I walked straight into it.
London was like a fusion of punk skinhead’s soul boy’s reggae and teds
mix them all together and you’ve got London 1977. no wonder there was a punk revolution it had
to blow somewhere. The nights of
violence for no reason seemed to follow me. It’s as if they smelt that I was
the green white and gold fool, with an air of stubborn Irish stupidity. Although
I spent the night being chased through the streets of London because my cousin
was dancing too fast or sitting in a party and being asked outside only to end
up in a gang war and held over a railway bridge, talking to a young guy, only end
up unconscious in a skip because of his glitter socks. Everywhere I went the
bullshit seemed to follow.
I came back to Ireland and ended up on the
streets of Dublin. I was looking for someplace to lay my hat although I had fun
in Dublin it was to dear to live there keep a flat and a car have a social life
and visit the north once a month it just couldn’t be done unless you won the
lottery but that really was a pipe dream.
I moved back up north met kitty and got lost in domestic bliss. I had fun growing up with my three beautiful
boys.
For eighteen years, I got lost in domestic
bliss. It was magic while it lasted I always had itchy feet we split up for
eight months and I lived in reading. maybe I should have stayed there but after
seeing my son appear before my eyes like a hologram I returned to Northern
Ireland, we had we Kern a beautiful child so I have no regrets. I knew that I would leave when my kids were
old enough to understand, my wife will tell you her story its hers and she’s sticking
to it. It’s like the troubles who’s
right and who’s wrong. No one is were
all losers it’s called life deal with it. There’s no such thing as a smooth
ride there’s always hidden dips along the way.
This brings me full circle back to where I started. I could colour this past.
I could add a little more but what’s
the point, from all this negativity I want to live in a positive world where
people don’t hark on about the past I started with a quote with a quote by Leonard Cohen so
ill finish with a quote by the great American writer Raymond Carver of pure
clarity don’t forget it’s no one’s fault think positive be like two streams
like water coming together with other water.
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.
A COLD SON OF A BITCH
‘yet why not say what happened’
Robert Lowell
John looked from the
kitchen window, the sink he stood by was like the interior of a
Well-worn tea pot or
the inside of his lungs sucking on yet another cigarette.
He ejected the stale
teabags from the teapot he thought I must go to the doctors today
and get that
disability living allowance form filled in and get a mobility allowance
and have a new car
instead of that almost unrepairable rusted old banger. He remembered how
the car looked in the night’s
subtle pastel glow, and said god you’re a bastard you and
your cold light of
morning.
Opening a cupboard in
the hall he dragged a filthy pair of overalls from a pile of
clothes on the floor
and stepped into them tucked his hair into a tweed cap and lifted
the toolbox. The
morning was a little cool but the sun was coming up strong above
the grey housing
estate, ‘this is going to be a good day’, he thought sucking in the
almost fresh
air. Opening the passenger door of the car creaking like a great sigh
reaching in he delved
between unsecured seating, busted wings and an exhaust
hauling a jack from
the debris. He took the cross shaped wheel brace and placed it on
one of the four rusted
nuts before taking hold he stooped and spat on his hands gripped
the brace and turned
with all his might and tried to budge the nut as if it
was his last task on earth?
He cursed the car and gave it everything he had, all a sixty
year old worn heart
could muster. A heart like a prune without syrup dried and left in
the searing desert of
hurt too long,’ ya red bastard, ya German fucker, ya useless heap
of shit,
He mumbled as the
sweat broke on his brow. He rested a while leaning, took a cigarette
from his top pocket
lit and sucked, he licked the beads of sweat that fell across his lips
he ran his tongue
across his lips once more they were cold and grey he licked once
more unsure and tasted
death.
On the morning of his
funeral a letter drifted through the letter box, one of his pallbearer
four sons opened it
and it read, we are pleased to inform you that you have
been awarded motability.
8.5 THE BLUE BAG BRIGADE
Lost in a sad song moment, I remember that fate-
ful day when I picked you up black and blue off the road
told you I loved you, If you don’t sort, I will
be carrying your coffin along this dirty road.
Three weeks later I walked past that very spot
like a lightweight hologram now, trapped within
these sad moments that keep me going on,
You can’t beat the truth but the truth has beat
me up and down this road.
Look at me now beaten, in a fucking wheel-
chair paralyzed, I can take a beating but
like you I’m black and blue, you pick me up
each day from a blue bag brigade, I salute you.
We walk the alcoholic route my brothers and sisters
Whether they like it or not, pallbearers inclined.
You can’t get through the past alive, live
With the truth.
Two thought They got away but this is
The sad truth, we walk this bastard road
The bastard. Republican loyalism
Don’t make us look through eyes of hate.
My paralyzed hatred, she was not afraid to die
This is what Stephanie says.
This was Belfast in sixty-seven
like going into another century
A Dickensian state. Where children
Swung around gas lights now converted.
I woke each morn to a lonely play-
Ground a barren expanse of land.
Holy cross school surrounded
By rusted barbed wire. That’s
Where I was bullied for being
A little English boy, but little
Did they know to mess with?
Me I kicked back right in their
hard man jewels.
Looking up always looking up
A temporary mattress on a Lino
Floor up to the sacred heart
Of Jesus saturated in blood.
There was no T.V. mickey mouse
In this house. Sarah’s
two up
Two down, my fathers so called
Mother, a mill worker with three
Digits missing to prove it.
She prayed wept each day to her lord
And savior. Awaiting him to grace
Her door but the only men who came
Were B’-Specials looking for a man
On the run. All this
killing was
Done in the name of god, what-
ever happened to man’s humanity to man.
She scrubbed that step on her knees
praying awaiting. I
went to mass under
a hail of bullets and even watched
people killed to die.
I wake to much the same now, locked in
Fenced in by a stroke that locks me in
or out. I remember
that man that scene
nailed to wood under a crown
of barbed wire.
We are raised on fear, my kids never
Seen this or that, thank fuck.
Pomes’, memories appear accidently
On purpose, they come right out
Of the blue.
How can I live what I forget!
1.
How can I give what has not set!
The past was stroked away on
April 2005 Saturday, a living
Hell dis-ability. Paralyzed
flat
On my back without memory.
Born the son of a bastard son
In Kent 1961, my writing told
Me so, my past was all writ down.
I don’t even know my name, Foxy
Was ere. The beginning
not the end
This may seem old hat to you but
For me it’s a new day, half dead
And half alive. Now I
have to find
A form that will suit today.
I am not
a liar but my father was, this will go
from pome to prose and essay back.
Just write it how it is was!.
2.
Like an athletic high diver, he twisted and turned naturally
without a care.
Her face grimaced and her eye lids squeezed tightly together
as if under
Intense pain, her eye lids smoothed like the picture in her
mind dis-
Appeared but it had only slowed in motion. Jimmy Keogh lay on hard
Concrete, blood seeped from his nose and mouth. He wore his leather
Soled shoes, a shammy and bucket fell with a splat beside him
like
Jimmies body being sucked to earth by an unknown force.
Tears fell across her cheeks, it was always going to be a
hard grief just like
Her father who stood tall in her mind, just twenty-seven
when he died also.
The picture of sorrow fell from her mind and her young son
stood there
Asking for a piece of bread and jam, ‘are you ok mum’ he
said and brushed
The sore memory away like a priests blessing.
The sore memory away like a priests blessing.
Did this really happen?
His dad lay in the coffin
on his death bed, he sat
looking into the bruise on
his Fathers face as if
he was telling him
something.
he was telling him
something.
The swallows were a gang of misfits, an uneducated group of renegades with swallows tattooed on their necks. I came across a member of the swallows who was working at a slaughter house at the back of a butchers where I worked, he was recruited on peace work
Paid by the head of a pig or a slaughtered
cow from the local kill house.
Mad Mick as he was known around town took
his belt of throwing knives buckled it around his waist outside the pig skin
apron and walked into the pig pen. The
poor sow had twelve knives sticking from every part of its body before the bolt
was released into its head and its throat cut and the squeal (the blood clot)
dragged from its throat. The swallows
were made up of mute, deaf and dumb, gypsies, and anyone who fell into that
lower class of nutter category. There
was Paddy o and Nailie Ward, Sammy the mute Mad Mick who had sex with dead pigs
while he cut out their innards. I seen
him one day fucking a dead pig, saying they are great fucks silent and dead ,
he said..
I saw him throw his cousin into a vat of
blood while we were curing black pudding made of pig’s blood fat and spices, he
looked like something pulled from the film Carrie.
I seen him another day throw his fifteen
year old brother into a skip of animal skin and bone and his brother swam through
a sea of maggots. Mad Mick was nuts you
didn’t know what he would do next. He locked me in the freezer one day for
hours with the carcasses of dead animals.
His mind and the minds of all the swallows worked in a different way to
me and you. They chased me with machetes
one night for beating a young brother.
They threw my disabled friend through a shop window. During the day they blended into society but
at night especially at weekends they came alive and wreaked havoc on the border
town. When the swallows were beating the shit out of everything in sight you
didn’t want to get caught in their way.
Even the local garda stayed out of their way. The town was like a miniature stab city you
had the I.R.A. men on the run from the troubles in the north you had the gypos
and the Irish army camp where its soldiers were let out drinking at the
weekends.
We followed bands for the music and the
craic, I was just too young but I was always there in the back ground. The pubs
and clubs didn’t have an age limit on the door.
I got into that gang through my brother and his friend, I was only
fifteen but that was the days before under-age drinking ID.
Back to the night the brew of mayhem. It all began in a dive we called slaughter
house bar. It was the sort of dive with sawdust on the floor, a local joint for
the swallows to meet have a drink and off load a week in the kill house. Paddy and the boys sat around the top table.
They talked about who lost a finger and their insanity this week in the mad
house they worked in. The band sound checked amid shouts of orders of pints and
chasers. When the Provo’s arrived and sat at their table as if they owned the
place, you knew that all hell would break loose, they eyed their beady eyes and
got drunk like gangs of sheep to the slaughter house blues. Then the Irish army came dressed as if they
were going to a funeral with dark ties, the swallows were well oiled at this stage
stumbling along the stage into the men’s room covered in graffiti, the stench
of urine hummed from the urinals. The lead singer ranted on through the mic, the
accent of his Dublin street charm went straight into his set creating a lively
atmosphere and the swallows and the Provo’s and the army seemed to wallow in.
Everybody enjoyed the craic and the banter through the mic.
As the roof lifted to the rocked up version
of the fields of athenrey and the and the swallows the Provo’s and the army
bopped to whiskey in the jar and dirty old town the night began to mellow into
madness. The place resembled that of a place
where a bomb had hit.
Sammy the mute got up and bounced along the
front of the stage and stood over the urinals, cock in hand he steadied himself
on the wall and looked to his right at the weedy guy with a black suit white
shirt and a pencil thin black tie and hat. He reached across and gripped him by
the tie took took the trilby hat from his head finished his piss and turned to
look at himself in the mirror. Uttering
some incomprehensible mutter the weedy guy took an empty pint glass from the
top of the urinal put it down to his cock filled it with piss and turned and
handed it to the mute who downed it half way before spitting it out then
realising it was a pint of piss and pulled a flick knife on the weedy guy and
stabbed him in the leg. He stumbled through the door and fell at the stage. The mute stood over the body with a face like
thunder kicking his head, the Provo’s broke glasses and bottles and went at the
swallows.
When the realisation of what happened ran
along the front of the stage all hell broke loose. The tables and chairs went
flying into the ra men and the Irish army, the swallows organised themselves around
Sammy the mute by the toilet door armed with knives knuckle dusters and broken glasses
and bottles they stuck into any thing that came near them. Mad mick grabbed a
bloke by the hair pulled him into the toilet stuck his head in the urinal and
slit his throat like an animal. Even the
cops who were called on the radio wouldn’t venture into the madness. By this
stage the band had left the stage and were tossing the drum kit and guitars
into the van and getting out of dodge. As I walked home along the black path
through the railway bridges the stench of stale hops from the brewery thinking
this was my apprenticeship to butchery, it was then I knew I wanted to be a
writer.