Poetry time

I am one of the growing number of Autistics like Wendy Lawson and Donna Williams, who dares to proclaim that poetry is not alien to the autistic persona.

My works have never been formally published (nobody makes a living as a poet I have been told) but I am generally free with permission to reproduce so long as I am asked first.

You can actually here me composing poetry live, on camera on public transport here :) as I said once before

"It is meant to be spoken in a West Midlands (specifically) Coventry accent, no R.P. or West Coast, but you dear reader can't help that. "

I am also available to perform my poetry, my contact details are available on my home page

I stand on the threshold of newbuilt dreams
Foundation of the ruined tower rebuilding
Shearing off the shoring of my memrys fragments
Figments of my minds descent and falling off of fury
I will fly again, sky ride the circuit of my own despair.
But where will it lead ?
And who shall reap the harvest of my seed ?

I will never run with the herd
From my own mind be deterred
I am my own very self
One item alone on the shelf
Above all things divergent thinker
From the well of Autism, a drinker
So go on, say what you will say
I will go on in my way.

Before the ending of the day
I am and I will go my way
I don't care what the others say
Their silly rules I can't obey

And there is only one of me
Strange visions of the world I see
A stranger in a strange country
Oh when will I be ever free?

Contortions of my unique mind
No peace on earth I'll ever find
My singleness is too defined
Oh am I really humankind?

(features on my film in progress - "Terra Incognita")

Petrus sum, insula sum....

I am a rock, I am an Island,
and my literal thinking brain tells me a rock is a hard thing to be.
I am grown craggy from all the pieces that people have chipped out of me.
I am grown weary from the constant lapping of the ocean of humanity around
my shores.

The world would change, me, make me like they are.
I would change the world to be like me.

Will the sea submerge me? if it cannot smooth my edges then it will drown
them, flowing effortlessly over the top so I exist only like some reef to
shipwreck the unwary.

Can the rock, turn back the tide?
Is the answer suicide?

(features on my film in progress - "Terra Incognita")

Terra Incognita

Towards the unknown land
With Terror hand in hand

And whither we all journey
with hurtling haste or turtle tardy
It awaits us on the oceans other side

So am I summoned
That I should rush headlong
Or shall I circle back
Bearing an excuse or exeat
To take the long way round ?

Who knows what will be found
On the far shores of the unknown land ?

(features on my film in progress - "Terra Incognita")

Words inside inherently are weak
Wherein without them how would I speak?

Scatter the splatter, the tongue spews forth
spitting first, then choking, throttling back, the throat.

If I could make meaning manifest,
Sans sound biting back the bytes,

I would transmit modem madly
At some speed I see the thoughts occuring.
Ringing out the change of circumstance.
Alliterating literate allusion, as illusion shone -
Torched out to my brains internal clock
Blown and burnt out circuitry in symetry
To the metaphor.

Self I am and king of that domain
My universe where my rules reign

Who else would have these things I be.
Could chose the way these things I see.

I am not loss for I was never more
I'm simply me, at least of that I'm sure

And if you want the word in Greek
Autistic is the name you speak

To weird to think your way,
Why would I?
Have my own head - inside it is read
Not with words.
Screening signs and images
Pictographic grappling
Shining symbols bright with meaning
The world not writ but painted
Dreamtime train of thought cannot be taught
Remade in words to sound out
Envisaged inside insight.
That is where I come from, confront the fear
And fry your brain to think my way.

They are there, the others
In the world I am unsure of.
Cabal communicating in their ignorance
Of my existence, let them keep their distance.
Mutual mistrust, the terms of our acquaintance

Awash in a sea of everything
Where ends the world and who and what and where am I?
In the midst of a meeting, who speaks with whom, what should I say
My muddled minds thought processor
Compiles in concepts wordless non sequential out of time
And downloads to a voice which I cannot control.
The flow unfinished interrupted as ......

In the I'ness of I, I  am alone
In the high'ness of I
I float above an uncaring world
Stumbling, stunned, and shunning socialites.
Shunned by sundry, seeming like a parasite
Uncertain in my body and my mind
I seek the solace of my own kind.

If ever in the world, there was another One
Who'd share the burden and could co-depend
Against the gates of malice, and defend
Our fortress from the onslaught
That were a fantasy

Not one comes close, and closest as they come, I cannot.
For whomsoever enters in will flee my Island fastness,
Fearing cold and cleaving to convention
Find such as would please her fickle fancy

For the closeness of bodies I cannot endure.
The subtle signalling I cannot reciprocate.
The shallow symbols of romance,
A dance of dullness on my part.

The fire within burns fierce, outside my flames are ice.
And all my thoughts are inexpressible in tongues.

If I was the world
When the world left me wondering
In blindness and blundering,
Bending not. Bleeding for what?
Well, will the power left me.
Of point or purpose bereft me.
Wandering, will-less insignificance,
Living in a vacuum on
The edge of vacation.
An insubstantiality of existence.

So much sadness, in my mind its madness.
Not so neat to dwell on death,
But celebrate instead my life’s breath
Build on what I am, would be.
Even if I am not free.
To furnish my own future
From the crumbs they feed me.

Time will tell what is to come
Only if we dwell on what will be told.
What will occur as we grow old
Weary of waiting, anticipating another age
When all will be well, well only time will tell

(this has been illustrated by a painting)

What will the world wreak tomorrow?
Tonight I have no care, and only am.
One now, one never moving instant instinct.
Continue time to turn, throw over what I feel
Return the terror, trample my delight.
For burns in my mind, memory of the light.
Outside, the blackness, shadows of the night.
Inside my soul, shines celebration of the light.

The weary worms come out the can
Struggling in comprehension of
Who canned ‘em up
You, or I or some also ran
Canned up the worms
Can we then come to terms
With the lowly weary worms ?

Suppressed, my mind crushed?
Risperdal delineation of neuronal function
For what? For happiness inhibited?
Normality delimited?
Decline the confine of my wilder mind
My motivation motor, over activity
And anti social incivility
For which I cast off care.

I will not walk in your track.
If you scold me I will answer back

Waiting for my turn.
Knowledge I will spurn
Want it now, not in indeterminate
Time not comprehended of

Speak to me? no speak to you.
I will not do as you want me to.
Break the bonds of your unreason
Substitute my own sense for your non sense.

Mould me in your model, if you would.
I don't think you ever could
I'd crack in the cast
Defiant fighting to the last

I will not walk in your track.
If you scold me I will answer back.

A sea of changes, shifting sands
Transition time, turning round
Rings rolling in rings
Falling off a cliff of circumstance
To seek new certainties.
An illusion of induction.
Leading, led, knowing not what.

A time without rhyme,
An arrow of entropy,
Appropriating properties of the forecast runes.
Ruination of the present
A cracking of the concrete now.
A Chrysalis reshaping
Borne on winds to who knows where.

Well I will not have it.
I am my own centre, and centred on my I'ness
I shall shape the substance
And influence the dice to fall on sixes.
My path  as straight as ancient tracks
Sighted on a star of destiny.

I claim a cloud of clustered clockwork words
Whirled, wilted, withered, weeded,
Writhing wreathed and written,
Welded tight to tune down out of purpose,
Plastered plastic analgesic logic.
So shakes the storm throughout my brain,
In analytic catalexic rain
A Snow-scene sealed in bottles breakable, my skull.
The sense is there if only you would seek it, strain...
The sounds, the speech, provides it plain.

A scattering and a smattering
Dys functional, Dys inherited and Dys intered a buried belief in self.
Self shattered, Dys illusioned and on the road to Dys struction.
Dys is de way it is
A co-morbid taste for bones thrown out to tchew on
Cry havoc and let slip us dogs of war
Worn out by words and words worth jobs worth teachers in traditional mold
Moulding in an antiquated image of what education is
Keeping us in cages, virtual and literal.
Dys lexic/practic prisoners of convenience and consciense
"Asperge mea"

And who hath wrought this watchers work ?
Why I have held the camera and encaptured all
Enraptured souls and shone the torch to tell of visions
Made material and strongly built withall

Behold!
The shining City,
Set in splendour,
Sunlit landscape,
Scar on Earth,
Arising.

(features on an unfinished documentary originally made as a college project)

A letter to a speculative developer

To:
The golden owner
Of the glorious suburb,
A six mile stretch of
Superb semi, pseudo-ornamented madness.
May you prosper in your
Purple prickled, hedge bound
Brickhouse.

For Marcus, a Coleridge fan

Near Gasworks Two did Vulgar man
A stately plastic gnome decree,
Where empty coal-trains sometimes ran,
For reasons still unknown to man
Despite the N.C.B.

1. (NCB. National Coal Board)

The local

Like clockwork, come.
Claw open closed doors.
Sit down, down drink, then depart
With no import imparted,
Any to all and otherwise round,
Wind up wound-down.

With a strong staff in his hand
The resurrection rider righted, to set the sun straight
The Broad backed bear broke the last link,
Land-line, link, knot, chain.
The tall tower, axis of the Earth
Still staring out across an open plain,
The Grail land dirtied, tied to temporality will resist,
With a strong staff in my hand.