Skip to main content

New Poem by Todd Swift

I have been having terrible dreams of late; woke up last night at 5 am, and wrote this... it is a rougher draft (fourth this morning) but wanted to share it with you...



Night Mares

Each night I wake in sweat and fear
to sense my own godhead cruelly near.
The beasts and fates my chafing soul
breeds in Lethe let out of stables
foaming manticores no saddle brakes,
no bridle slows. We run a gamut

of gross nightish shows to bolt
in darkness crying for any light.
Our uncivil dreams prove the world
mad if unmade or made by us.
I lie down in peace and rise in fright
to recognise my mind a bad lover

to me in our bed, doubling terror
in one coupling head of woe.
No god would make worlds as lost
or wanton as my dreams become:
so close they are in feeling thought
to being thrown out far away from home.


new poem by Todd Swift; March 5, 2013.
Labels:

Comments

L. M. said…
Beautiful poem. You mention that it's still a draft. Have you tried playing with the form?
Maybe couplets?
Fri Mar 15, 08:24:00 pm 2013
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A  poem for my mother, July 15 When she was dying And I was in a different country I dreamt I was there with her Flying over the ocean very quickly, And arriving in the room like a dream And I was a dream, but the meaning was more Than a dream has – it was a moving over time And land, over water, to get love across Fast enough, to be there, before she died, To lean over the small, huddled figure, In the dark, and without bothering her Even with apologies, and be a kiss in the air, A dream of a kiss, or even less, the thought of one, And when I woke, none of this had happened, She was still far distant, and we had not spoken.
Post a Comment
Read more

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...
15 comments
Read more

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....
3 comments
Read more