A MAN WOKE IN A HOSPITAL BED WITHOUT ANY MEMORY
BUT HE FOUND THIS WRIT.

1967

Pat looked from the third-floor window of the block of council flats.

They stood with a modernised version. 

of a round tower protruding from the front 
with a stairwell and rubbish chute 
that led to each landing.  

The doors and window frames were painted 

the same blood red, adding to 

the melancholic look blending 

with red brick.  

She watched in the distance 

as the rusted bridge parted 

and ascended into a grey sky

separating like the jaws of a giant 

swallowing a cargo ship flowing 

along the dark Thames.

While watching the typical dismal London view

as if in a trance, she wrapped an ornamental figurine, unaware

that she was twisting the newspaper so tightly it was tearing.

'Am I doing the right thing?', she asked herself

'I will miss my family, ' she said in an almost silent whisper.

A look of sadness came across her face

on those usually smiling Irish eyes, with

the painful hurt within.

It's best for the children, she told her-
self shaking her head as if awakening 
from a hypnotic trance. She wrapped 

the figurine in another sheet of news-
paper and placed it in the half-
filled t-chest.  

The pictures were removed from the walls like 

Unstained stamps of approval to vacate 

the premises.  While waiting for the tea-

pot on the glowing flame to brew, her hands 

delved into the sink of dishes.  Without drying, 

she returned to the almost bare room, relaxing 

on the sofa, and she placed her hot cuppa 

on the mantle above the cold fire.

She shot forward as if struck by sudden pain 
her backside clung to the edge of the seat 
trying not to think of the grief of her
Brother was just 27 when he fell to his death, her sisters 
and her widowed mother.

She would leave them all behind. My children are the ones that matter, no, John is right, we can't raise them in this country, at least in Ireland, they will keep their innocence a little longer.

     The memory of her childhood in Dublin came flooding back.


Dressed in a drab tunic with pigtails in her hair and a glowing smile on her face.  Little Jimmy skipped and jumped beside her along the Dodder River that ran through Rathmines, south of the city.

They rested on one of the benches just feet from the river's edge. A wild, majestic white swan went by, and wild little Jimmy jumped in and grabbed it by its feet. He was so quick that both she and the great bird were startled.

In a frantic state, the great bird tried to free itself from the boy’s grip, honking, hissing madly, flapping its outstretched wings.  With great effort,t the bird took off from the water with little Jimmy hanging from it.  Pat stood on the verge yelling, ng Jimmy, let go, please let go. Jimmy was a wild care carefree little boy without fear in his bones. He shouted Patty, look at me, I’m flying, let the bird go and splashed into the water, smiling beyond its city grime.

His voice echoed through her mind as he fell through childhood, teenage years with a constant smile and that thick mop of naturally curly hair rolled into a teddy boy quiff, just twenty-seven, he lay on the ground at the foot of the ladder propped up against the office building.  A leather shammy lay beside him. He wore a brand new pair of leather-soled winkle picker shoes, dressed for the part.

In a pin-striped sharp suit, he planned to hit the city and bop the night away with his friends.

The memory of her father came blurred in a free-state army uniform, who also died aged twenty-seven.  I miss you two she spoke aloud, her total concentration absorbed in the memories of the past. Sobbing, wiping the tears from her eyes, she remembered those days after their death; these they clung to her mind.  Written on her poor Mothers face, mixed with the hardship 

of trying to make ends meet on a

pittance army pension and a measly 

wage for cleaning the houses of the rich. 

She remembered what her mother said, soaking 

her fluid-filled tired feet in a basin 

of water and mustard powder

‘If I stay, my sons will end up 

in trouble with the poli’.

Worn down on the path of reality, filled with the grief of losing a husband and son, hauling their memory through her aching heart.  The days of hardship drove them to these shores, and the days of Ireland growing into a nation of independence, thereby rendering life extremely difficult for the poor.

The news of England carried across the Irish sea, where you could earn three times what Ireland. "Why do we always remember the hard times she thought, I’m going back to where I came and looked down into her empty cup, reading tea leaves like her mother, looking for hope.

 BASTARD TOWN

Pat sat softly sobbing

holding her head in her hands.  Peter, her youngest, left his bedroom where he played dreamily, feeling. 

His mother's sadness, he ran his fingers through her hair and held her, saying I love you, mum,  holding each other in a true embrace.  Peter's statement broke the silence and brought her back to earth, with a smile 'Can I have a piece of bread and jam, he said.   

Peter's father entered the flat 

and changed the room's atmosphere.  

Peter knew his father hated him 

He felt it, he said Peter was too sensitive 

and needed too much attention, but 

He was just true, and his father 

who lived a lie couldn't handle the truth.

Everything is sorted said John on entering the room

With his eldest brother. Pat scurried into the scullery

And busied with jam, cheese constructing sandwiches.

John removed his coat and threw it over the chair

What's wrong with your mother? he asked. Peter just

Raised his shoulders and eyebrows in answer to his father.

His father stamped noisily across the bare floor

And entered the kitchen, everything is sorted.

The removals will be here first thing on Tuesday

And you and the kids are booked on a flight.

You'll get there a day before Michael and me.
Will go with the removals.

‘Don’t worry, everything will be ok. ’.

He reached her shoulder and squeezed.

Brushing his hand along her back.

‘I know you are worried about your family

I will make sure you get back to see them

I promise, yeah, I know your empty promises.

‘If Birmingham or Coventry or Kent, only miles

From my family and your car, only worked when

you needed to go somewhere, she said

In a harsh Dublin tone.  She knew it would

It will be a long time before she sees her family again.

‘It will be different in Ireland, you'll see’, said John
And slid out of the kitchen.

COMING OR GOING?

John sat on the armchair smoking a Senior Service cigarette, the smoke wafted contentment into the air, a scene came fuzzy at first, then focused in the almost bare room where a stranger would not be sure if they were coming or going.  He would be back among his own people or the nearest thing he found to his own people.  As he relaxed into the chair he searched his mind for a picture of the past, he was a bastard boy from the bastard town or so he called it, he saw himself a young lad leaving the bastard town standing on a platform waiting for a train to take him to England where no one knew of him and he didn’t hear the word bastard on everyones lips, he was young then and immature it will be different he thought with a wife and family.  He mellowed with the aid of the cigarette, a memory of his bastard past came to mind, his creased, worn look contorted into a frown and his dark, lonely past that he couldn’t escape reeled like the teeth of a blunt saw through his mind.

For reasons that are unclear but un-
understandable considering the time 
and place in a land filled with 
religious doctrine.
John was an illegitimate child left 
to be brought up by Aunt Sarah 
That’s all that was known 
and all we would ever know
They were deep, secretive people.  

He recalled the cruel cries from boys at school
‘Johnny has left his ma and da and doesn’t know where 
to find them. Leave the bastard alone, and he will go home 
wagging his tail behind him. ’ A bunch of scruffy hard hard-looking boys marched around him.  He sat by a stagnant pond on waste ground.
 The boys threw rocks into the stagnant pond and splashed him in the oil-like substance that reeked. Bicycle wheels and old frames emerged from the water like the devil's unwanted playthings.  An old, mangled clothes mangle stood upright on the bank like a statue or memorial, and the rear end of an old cart emerged from the centre, rusting and rotting.

The boys formed a line and marched right up to his face like a regimental troop chanting like a choir of cruelty and hate, by the left, by the left, Johnny has no Ma or Da, by the right, by the right, they fucked off on Saturday night.  They laughed a sick, evil laugh and ran off, echoing the word bastard across waste ground. John shook from his thoughts of the past and began wrapping ornaments into a half-filled t-chest that stood in the centre of the room.  A penny for your thoughts said Pat, and all the children laughed at
John is coming back to reality.
He laughed also, but deep 
Dow helt rotten.

BEYOND BANSHEE

What a rush of relief was felt

As the aircraft taxied the run-

Way, and we were in a taxi

Falling through the lush green

Fields of Antrim like a day-

Dream of my mother’s Ireland.

Then we fell into my father’s

Bastard town, through Ligoneil

And the Crumlin road, we turned

Left into another century.  Through

Rows of red brick, cobblestones

Children swinging around the gas

Lamp-posts now converted.

Scruffy boys played football in

The street, a Dickensian view.

Holy Cross School playground

Loomed empty remote within

A spiked gate and a red brick

The wall is topped off with three rows

of rusted barbed wire beyond 

the outside loo, the steel bath

hanging.

 THE PAD

I was a blow-in

at the local flax mill, where she lost

three fingers and all her pride.  Sarah was a drab woman who scrubbed her doorstep every day as if awaiting a man of a miracle to enter her two-up-down home.  In 7' just before

‘the pad’, as my dad

Called, it was besieged

by violence.

He never knew his parent.s 
Sarah, who was a mill worker,  when she wasn't home, she was at the holy cross church praying to the miracle man that never came.

The people of Ardoyne became my friends and family, I live in County Armagh now butI still call Ardoyne home, It was like living in one big home, I could go anywhere in the district and I felt so safe and secure, everyone knew me as their son, to this day I have never met a tighter community of people.  When I first went there, it was like 

stepping back into another time.


I HAVE NO MEMORY OF ALL THIS, BUT HERE IS A PHOTO/POE-ART TRY BUT UNEMOTIONAL

ENGINEERING APHANTRAU

a verbal memory, I only remember

but because like a muscle memory

No images came to mind.
TO SAY THAT I WAS THERE!