WHEEL-CHAIR ART

THE SON OF A BASTARD SON

PART 2

I loved my father but he was the biggest

Bastard in my world.  So began the fight

Of a life time that still goes on to this day.

He started my anti- authoritarian attitude

we were fighting for the love of the same

woman, my Mother.  He made my life hell

but it wasn’t his fault, I was abandoned in

childhood just like he was left at a door.

It all began when I came out of the high-

Chair and freedom of speech became my

Barricade, I was going to fight for my prize.

He said I was a spoilt brat who needed to

Much attention but I was just a boy an you

Were just a mum.  He found his mother in

You, I don’t want to knit pick but he was

A bastard but that wasn’t my fault.

He’s dead now but I’ll never forgive the old

Bastard for making me look down at the floor.

I was forced down from the day I was born

All because I love my mother.  Pity he couldn’t

See that she was the best thing that happened.

I was the son and he came down on me.  He doesn’t

Have to fight no more, he’s in the earth with

Mother earth.  When I was sixteen I said no more

And hit him a dig in the head and he found the floor.

Mum I’ll have to go before I kill, the bastard.

THE SHELL-SHOCK SHELL

Do I wear a shell-shock, shell that

 guards me from the horrors of

Humanity like a Dickensian cloak

of optimism?

I don’t do that silly angelic sentiment

That makes the world a nice place

To live in.  I live in the horrors of hu-

Manity everyday as if I’m doing my

Fathers bastard life time, this is my

White noise.

I’m in the helicopter being flung out

But I’m only six inches of the ground

With a sack over my head, my foot-

Plates still get stuck on the ramps.

Being beaten with rubber hoses

This is inhumane.  We live on a land

Of peace now.  Gone are the days

When I visited my father in the crum

With my mum.

A shy little boy holding his mothers

Hand.  Outside there was war on

The streets.  This waiting around

To die is a suffering fucking hell

In this suffering fucking cell.

We have survived the first second

World war the holocaust and

The troubles, we haven’t had one

Day’s peace on this earth ever?

I face life, head on.  I live in honesty

And truth.  We’ve been through

the rope, the guillotine and the gun

lets not go back  to the middle ages

now let’s live in peace.

This is Inhumane

THE RAVEN

My right hand like a talon

Up turned, a dead bird.

A raven, these are my cries

Of Lenor.  Forever perched

Upon this wheelchair, once

I watched from the ramp-

Arts.  Looking down at

The barricades, I now live

In peace time.  No longer

On Edgar Allen Poe’s wing.

I’ve seen war and darkness

Bearing down on me.

The wheelchair repair man called

From somewhere up there on

the east, I’m down here on upper

Bann like a dead bird waiting to fly

fly away from this dirty boulevard.

Fly on the wing of Lou Reed, I am

His raven at heart.

RAISED TO THE GROUND

Words cling to life like the hinges of negative

 space carrying a poem.  Waking up in an-

other dimension, the trauma of death

almost catching you up.  We come from dark-

ness and go to darkness, a formless being

being formed.  An infant in an adult shell

shock, without language to take you along

the rails.  Dark then light, light then dark,

then there is nothing but light, time travelling.

Life is there in the rubble of time but debris

Is hard to build, begin anew.  Death hasn’t got

the best of you yet, build it back up to fall in

the ruins.  Raised to the ground in a shell shock

mind, doing  time..

BEING HUMAN

When life is desperate

We create a negative-

Capability within us.

When we can’t find

A way out or into life.

At this time of need we

All need a spiritual centre.

We dig deep to find a dharma

Or god that ejects us from

Despair and takes us to that

Higher ground where we

Can settle and almost be free.

 

THE INTERIOR CASTLE

After Rilke

This is my un-adopted castle

The world exists within me.

The external slowed in motion

Where once stood a house

A family, a Mother, Father

And a god, now images take

Their place.  To flow through

Imagination from the well of

Life, time transmits an energy.

We no longer worship in temples

The energy omits an old way

Where we can be secretly saved.

I am the king of this un-adopted

Castle, this is an expression from

Within that needed pillars, statues

And a throne but I’ve got a wheel-

Chair a brain and a left hand, home.

But I’ve got a wheelchair

A brain a left hand, home.

THE RHYTHMIC CREATURES

I thought the whole point of poetry was to reach beyond that egoless ego

And reach beyond snobbery, I’m just a spineless confessional poet.

                                                                                                                     Adrian fox

Poetry is in the air, were bombarded by words.

We are the catalyst, the rhythmic creatures

That find form in these words, labelled signs

And un-labelled signs like street, cars, house,

Road, tree, me, words are in our blood with-

In our D.N.A.  Whether you’re creating a novel

A short story or a play it must be poetic.  Even

Art is a poetic image of what you want to re-

Present, it’s up to us to make sense of this

World even that name is created by words

World is made up of word, this is a pome

Created by the world we live in:

The sun shadows the street, the cars go by

in style.  I’m within this waking dream of me

and you’re within this waking dream of us

so let’s start  waking to the dream. 

I have to put the break-

Fast dishes away

and make room

for my day.

                                       Adrian Fox does odes:

ODE TO KEATS

My heart aches a numb and lonely pain

as though a sad elixir were shot through.

A pale faced melancholy rises evaporating

rivers of sentimental happiness.

The winged leaves of nature sing

the notes of spring, summer, autumn

And winter.  It’s as if at birth I was

given a dose of negative capability

and even in this death of life

my poetic mind is tinged with a glimmer.

Flying in this moment on wheel-chaired

Chariots, I feel the flowers at my feet

and the rains upon my brow

embalmed in un-adopted darkness

within this waking dream.

ODE TO TRUTH
 
' beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all
ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
 
John Keats died for humanity
it came to me like a bolt from blue
it galloped right out of a dream
as if he was speaking his blue true.
The truth of his negative capability 
is walking around in you, do you 
want the truth of the stable-boy 
do you want what's living and true.
he died from disease, his dis-
ease was his truth and the truth
is better than fiction and that's all 
you need to know.

SWOON

1.

I cannot swoon at nature be-

cause it cannot swoon at me.

I’m coming and going against

The grain of life.  Plain-ed

And ground down by time, I can-

Not find my absent mind.  My

Paralysed hands can’t even hold

This pome down in a pen.  This

Is my syn-drome, my cadence?

And my assonance of un-sound.

My head coming to a head,

The light within me.

2.

The blossom on the tree

Hangs like raindrops

On the sky. Through an-

Other window it looks

Like he is going by. Leaves

Are his nose and eyes

He’s the horseman riding-

Drifting by, the poet of all

Poets in a Keatsian sky.

Nature hangs there off

The branch, his mood

Changes like the hanging

Wind that contours every-

One.  He is the man of each

And every season, he tells

Me that summer is

The reason.  Why the blossom

Rains in June and fruits are so

Pleasing, life is so true says he

Beauty is there in winters-

Freezing, the bare tree in-

Ticing twigs are knitting

Nests of hope for us

To cope, gems of light

And wonder.

COLOURFUL BLACK BLOOMS

For Franky

I woke this morning to cold water music trick-

Ling my room full of black full stop blooms.

That’s what i‘ve surfaced to every morning for ten years

 a symmetry of black full stop blooms to start my day, like

womb dreams blotches before my eyes.

I heard yesterday my friend Frankie died, Frankie

Was in my stroke group, I remember that smile behind

his roll-later handing me a cup of tea and sitting beside

me and the woman who took nine strokes that

you saw in her eyes just like the colour of

iris’s blooming in my head.  I had to stop going 

it was so depressing when those friends began

to work my mind when I closed my blue door a-

lone, that place wasn’t a nice place, I woke to that

symmetry of un-colour everyday like the colourful wall-

paper of my youth.  Why is life so harsh, we

have to have a release mechanism to

let our friends go. 

I always remember those blooms from my child-

hood like a wreath for Frankie.

I’m there in spirit mate.  The cold water music sounds like

a cortege, why is life such a sad son of a bitch.

I’ll always remember them blooms those colourful black

Embers of life, my funeral pyre, his smile will trip you in

The long grass.