Skip to main content

The Ballad Of A Raging Man



Three nights or seven by the river
Under the earth and out to forage
No one loves me, I have no Dad
But I am the raging man of my age

The taker, not the giver –
A blam-blam in the brainpain
Of the blindsided copper
And flowers for Himmler

Who had no balls
Fuck Rooney and Co.
I have no woman and no flag
Am a pumped up anti-fag

Who’ll kick at pricks, cunts and wogs
And lie down with dogs
When the infrared lines my sleep
Like a mother’s arm

To reveal my head dreaming
If not the dreams I keep
You can’t Rambo this away
Or lie about being a pig

If you work for them it’s not for me
And these days every man for himself
Really means fuck the poor and the North
What’s a working Dad worth

When the club closes and the music fades?
So I killed her a bit and hid
In woods I knew as well as my palm as a kid
And made the bastards hunt me like a stag

But they caught me, finally they did
And no one alive loves me now
Or loved me then
Except the ones who rushed to my side

During the stand-off, kept back
For their own safety, so they didn’t say to me
We love you, we love you at all
Out of remote control again

Breaking out like a fist into a face
I found a hard place and made it mine
And a trigger is a devil’s trident
Bent into an angel’s grace.

They killed me where they found me
By the stream in the pissing rain
A rat to them, a husband in name
A killer and blinder and wounder.

My blood was forgotten in a small river.
For a second before or after
I felt myself fill with a quiver
Then was just chip shop’s newspaper.

poem by Todd Swift
Labels:

Comments

puthwuth said…
'I have no woman and no flag
Am a pumped up anti-fag


Who’ll kick at pricks, cunts and wogs'

What did this man's rage have to do with homophobia and racism? Am I missing something here?
Tue Jul 13, 11:59:00 am 2010
EYEWEAR said…
Dear David, good question. I had not intended this poem to be a photographically identical picture of an actual individual person or case - but rather, first, a poem - a ballad - with all the artifice that entails; secondly, a poem that presents a portrait of a mental landscape that some men, of all nations and classes, tend to inhabit - one that rages against various perceived threats and enemies. This sort of "raging man" (R.M. in my title) - if you will - projects violence outwards, reacting against a society that has apparently devalued them ("no one loves me"). Homophobia, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and any number of bugbears bedevil such men (and some such women). They are the ones who vote for the marginal parties of hate, the ones that lash out at foreigners. You get the picture. Had I been attempting an accurate picture of one real person, or even offering an elegy, I would agree - in the case of Mr Moat, no homophobia or racism has been mentioned in the press. Instead, my poem is a composite, fictional, imagining of a kind of character. As such, I will change the title accordingly, to help make that clear.
Tue Jul 13, 02:23:00 pm 2010
martine said…
I thought it a very powerful poem, pain and desperation in there with the rage.
thanks for sharing
martine
Tue Jul 13, 08:22:00 pm 2010
Janet Vickers said…
A very powerful poem. I hope it gets distributed widely.
Tue Jul 13, 11:09:00 pm 2010
Unknown said…
Great poem, Todd. And I have no problem with it being a composite. No need for a title change.
Also, I agree with you about Polanski. He should have faced justice, but actually didn't, really. I don't dismiss him as a 100% despicable human being, yet, somehow, he has gotten off scot-free for things which most people who have done the same things, would be branded and stigmatized. He should be punished. When the punishment is not equal, then neither can forgiveness.
I don't agree with you about Cameron/Clegg and smaller government, though. I used to be a liberal (in Canada, in a universal sense, or more of a leftist even). But the newly bred conservative in me judges smaller government - the disappearance of ID cards, and greater roles given to people in the nation instead of artificially, through government - all of these are good things.
Wed Jul 14, 01:46:00 pm 2010
Mark granier said…
I think the 'problem' with this being 'a composite' is obvious. It is apparently a 'ballad', which is a specific form (and at a glance the shape on the page does suggest something like a ballad, as does its topical heroic/anti-heroic content, ventriloquising, etc.). Nothing wrong with making free with a ballad (or any other form), but The Ballad Of A Raging Man does not suggest, to me anyway, anything other than an attempt at precisely that. So David Wheatley made a perfectly valid point. Because I also wondered if 'Mr Moat' was known to be racist and homophobic. If this 'ballad' were publicised widely or even put to music I imagine someone might have a perfectly valid libel case, though that possibility is really beside the point, unlike questions of ethics, maturity, tact and judgement. Once a writer chooses a publicly recognisable figure for a 'character' in a poem/play/novel, etc. he/she should at least try to refrain from grafting additional traits/prejudices onto the fictitious figure since it is, as it were, ghosting a real one. Otherwise it really is 'fair game' for absolutely everyone.
Thu Jul 15, 02:08:00 pm 2010
EYEWEAR said…
Mark, are we lawyers, poets, or both? Your concerns with libel seems a bit preposterous. Firstly, and famously, one cannot libel the dead. Secondly, it is usually impossible to settle for libel when the accusation is less than the actual crime - i.e., to claim that Charles Manson is a bad cook would not be a very impressive libel given that he is a multiple murderer. In this instance, you suggest that questions of ethics, maturity, tact and judgement come into play - I hope so. They should be in play for all poems. Though poems hopefully can sometimes be unethical, immature, tactless and ill-judged, too. Much of Dada and Surrealism is, so is much of Rimbaud, the Beats, some of Blake, Dylan Thomas, and lots of poets worth enjoying. As for a fictitious figure ghosting a real one - well, no - as I said, the persona of the poem (as poets we really should know this by now) is always a composite of the poet (me), and any number of sources, real and imaginary. In this case, I had Grendel in mind, and other famous "outsider figures", not least Heathcliff, Byron, and various bandits and outlaws. My own shadow self is there, too - and nay number of angry people who project hate with a gun, and fight the law. That's part of the punk spirit, the clash against societal norms, that appeals but appals. As for Mr Moat, he was seeking mental health assistance and was sadly denied it. He seemed to be trying to get better. His darker side won in the end. A terrible tragedy for his victims, and for him. My ballad neither condones or explains - nor is it, as I have said earlier, specifically about him - and many of the details apply to other cases (hence the opening line which introduces radical instability, in terms of three or seven). At the end of the poem the poetic figure, the persona, becomes yesterday's news - shabby history of crime, forgotten by many, and passes into infamy or oblivion. They also become available to artists. If the family or friends of Moat were to request I take this post down, however, I would - not for legal reasons, but out of respect. It is my assumption they have better things to do than to read poetry blogs.
Thu Jul 15, 04:06:00 pm 2010
Mark Granier said…
'Your concerns with libel seems a bit preposterous.'

You are right of course; the possibility is not 'beside the point' (as I said) but non-existent, as we 'cannot libel the dead.' My apologies.

'As for a fictitious figure ghosting a real one - well, no - as I said, the persona of the poem (as poets we really should know this by now) is always a composite of the poet (me), and any number of sources, real and imaginary.'

This seems a bit disingenuous to me Todd. Of course all personae are composites in that sense, but the leading man of your ballad does not have to be a 'photographically identical picture' to qualify as a recognisable figure, which by your own admission is Moat. If your ballad were more obviously a composite of (besides with your own raging persona) 'Grendel, Heathcliff, Byron and other famous "outsider figures"' it would be an entirely different poem: I wouldn't have commented, and there would have been no cause to ask that 'good question' in the first place.
Thu Jul 15, 08:12:00 pm 2010
EYEWEAR said…
Mark, what exactly is your point, then? If the poem isn't libellous, what is it? Unethical, immature? You say there is a problem, but I am not sure, is the problem aesthetic, or extraneous to the literary aspects of the text? In short, are you concerned that it might be read as suggesting that a particular murderer was a homophobic racist when he might not have been? That's very good of you to be so concerned with Mr Moat's posthumous reputation. However, my poem was suggested by a crime spree in the public domain, widely publicised. I don't need permission to use that event as a lifting off point for my own poetic exploration of fugitives, justice, rage, and Britain - and of course, Derek Bird is also part of it, too. It is not disingenuous at all, my reply - it is essential, as a poet, to defend the right to speak to current events without fear of being held accountable, as if a journalist, by fact-checking. Further, does In Cold Blood leave you equally concerned? That work of non-fiction-novel form took more liberties than my modest poem.
Thu Jul 15, 08:27:00 pm 2010
Mark Granier said…
The main problem for me is that it seems gratuitously misleading; I have already said why. The tabloid timing doesn't help, since, so close to the event, the poem appears, in places, to be reporting undigested 'facts'.

'- it is essential, as a poet, to defend the right to speak to current events without fear of being held accountable, as if a journalist...'

You have the right to do as you please Todd. But if one enters topical, journalistic territory I believe this calls for 'accountable' journalistic caution. That of course is merely my opinion, my aesthetic, which are no doubt radically different to yours.

Regarding 'In Cold Blood', I have mixed feelings about it, and about Capote too. Mailer's Executioner's Song is probably a better book (about a similar subject) and Badlands is a far better movie. Many films/novels/ballads rework the more lurid news stories. Some of them do this brilliantly and some are downright grotesque; I believe Paul Durcan is one of the few poets who managed to make extraordinary tragic/comic poetry out of current news stories. It's a VERY difficult thing to pull off, which is just one reason why I rarely attempt it.
Fri Jul 16, 09:48:00 am 2010
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?
3 comments
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise
1 comment
Read more