ON THE JOYS AND SORROWS
They say that blessings pour down
on your head
when they do. Blessings, I’ve had
a few. I feel
thrilled with being less than
dead, which is here-I-am
collaborating with the physical
agents on the wild
run of things, slip-sliding
away. Days go, sunrise.
This is the document in which I
will nailgun your heart
to my heart and together we’ll
slide like yippies
all the way into toy town,
rioting in joyousness.
This is the loudest testament I
can afford to jolt
you with using script. Now twist and shout too –
you’re embroiled in my love, as
the poem relies
on your recognition. Canonise me, love, glorify
the shiver of decoration
overcoming my soul qua soul,
and all the raw feels that
decipher themselves as codes.
Break, dash, dot and squall –
fling off your nakedness
and dress like a dashing guard in
a prison of Godliness,
perhaps a naval officer with a
handlebar, a hat.
The university where I work does
not value me, boo-hoo,
as much as the rain, the dew, the
petals, the lapwings do.
Ecology is a madhouse of
intentions exploring itself
forever for no reason but
decaying exploits, the planet
is a nut’s cage we celebrate at
our own peril, best to fled.
Fleeing is what I seek, who came
to live among yobs
and loons, and the flesh of
adorable girls named Eunice,
Theodora and Miss Coq au
Vin. I was Jesus back then,
rise as Barabbas, hairy and
pledged to guilt as a badge
of stapled disgrace. I grow sex like a prank on my face.
This is a big splash on the
poetry scene, it makes a call
for you to confront your imago
and go berserk for art,
which is all we have of Arvo
Part, and of season Seven.
So go Coastal, boast and strum
your mandolins, rejoice!
The corner with the hapless poet
is clear, take your place.
Angels and dreamers ignore all
that you have done, why
should they appreciate a jotting
of their own monologues?
No, you are lustrous ephemera, a
hacking cough, phlegm
on the sleeve of a commandant who
holds bitter reigns;
judges, critics, deans, inquisitors,
and those who run archives
have better lives than do those
who bolt past bounds;
merely immortal, you wait,
love-delayed, for old fate
to overtake you; the direct train
to Waterloo blasting its drive.
Only then, once dead, will you be
read – if even then.
Mostly, rise and sing, strip down
to your tremulous knees
and knock on the door marked
Forget About It.
The sheer delight is to know your
detractors also rot
and when they do, they do so
without Beauty’s tit
suckling them in the tomb. Grass grows across my lips
which makes me spit. I stick my fist out of the loam and shout
to the guy with the shovel to
come running like Hercules.
Together, we shall dance upon the
opening that was my loss,
the berth that was my death. Stood up again I am not lonely
now. I have in tow an ill-bred witness to how
nothing ends
that begins in verse and hurtles out
on its own ceaseless lust.
May 24, Maida Vale, 2013
copyright Todd Swift
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