POSITIVE NEGATIVITY

I want to begin this essay in a negative space, my fathers death, when my father died he left me a gift, I began to write my truth and through my truth I began to see that I was looking at life back to front.  My fathers death took me years to get over because I was looking at it the wrong way round, one day alone I drove to hannstown graveyard, sat by his grave overlooking Belfast that brought happy and sad memories back, we had the greatest chat we ever had in our lives and I went away with a great poem and I still think today that its one of my best poems because its the words of truth.   For me its a tiny glimmer of light that woke me to the contentment of my Fathers death and from that day on I was to accept my Fathers death as part of life that I could live with.

The Light on the Stones

I retrace your final journey now in a blue car,

Not black, alone on the motorway.

Passing the Maze prison the stench of my engine

Overheating is like gunpowder, spent shells,

Lingering, your dream of Irish freedom.

I climbed the mountain graveyard

Above the violent divided the city,

Above the peace-line that stood between us

In the living -room.

Your plot all weeds,

And wild grass cries out for order.

The fallen wooden cross bears no name;

But you are there. Like a sculptor

With clay I reach inward, my hands

As delicate as salmon wings riding

The white water, struggling

The strong currents of grief.

I brush the soiled tears from your eyes

And you wake in me, swimming

And glistening in mine. My hands

Shape the clay moulding our wounded past,

Emerging in the light on the stones. 

 Me and my father never really got on in life, to me he was the biggest bastard in the world but i loved the olde fucker, he might always be the trouble in my life but he also gave me life love and happiness and that's magic because I'm able to think the right way around.  We have been taught by religion and the regimental education system to accept life as birth marriage and death and to toe the line and march through life like our great grandfathers and our Fathers Father's and it's that tradition that holds us back in life, my Father is interned by soil and death is his special powers act.   We've got to stop thinking of the past as a life of depression that hinders us from stepping into this world of magic peace.  Did you ever think you would been here in peace? I didn't, life was so difficult filled with death I couldn't see beyond the streets  I grew up in, North Belfast,  there was so much hatred instilled in me, we all have hurt within us but if we look at life as the song says the right way round through the death of us and our loved ones and celebrate their cause and our own to see life before the soil when they were wed to happiness before life became the only life we knew full of death and dying but our cause is life and love for our children to bloom.

If we look at life through death marriage and birth we see life from the perspective that delivers a package of happiness, like a bonus because you faced your own death

before it happened and the darkness isn't so bad or sad,  its your truth so face it and be

come reborn with a smile and a tear of reality, truth.  Laughing and crying are the same emotion a human mechanism that balances form, to keep us on the straight and narrow giving our minds a true direction of truth.  This is reality from my truth, there are no rainbows or peace doves or haloes here just truth.  I believe the day my Father died he gave me this gift of writing my truth and you dont have to believe it, just listen to the song and read these words.  lets stop thinking of death and dying as  a dark and depressing moment and take the gift of life from the dead and dying and let our children bloom.  Bertrand Russell the great humanist sceptic said:  'it could happen tomorrow, if man pursues his own happiness and not the misery of others.'

When I first began this gift of writing I was doing a reading in Sligo in a poetry cafe I had arranged on holiday there that summer.  I would read anywhere for anyone for nothing, I felt that poetry was like sunshine it was given to me free not for honours money or ego, for being true to me that balanced my mind to be true to you.  I stood up and began to read  'the light on the stones' but i was being heckled at a poetry reading, the girls at the back were shouting up when are you going to read your happy poems, I stopped and said sorry I lived in the real world these are my happy poems.

I never really understood the definition of happy and sad poems, I thought it was all poetry and it didn't seperate that which is defined.  I put my poems away and walked out leaving them to read silly poems that weren't even laughable about esat digi phones, i laughed and walked away smirking, maybe one day they'll get it, afterall we all have a father that will die some day but were brain washed not to talk about reality.

I walked out and felt sorry for the girls who lived in their middle class world of sadness,  at least they heard two stanzas so maybe my positive negativity is rubbing off into their silly sentimentality that is smothering our true selves.  My truth is helping me too see me in my truth,  ten years ago i took this stroke that has led me down this dark road, lying in a hospital bed thinking i was next to die, I didn't even think i had six weeks to live but look how far ive come, the brain is a wonderful organ

that can restore form and memory if you feed it truth.