July 19th new poem

FREEDOM DAY? - a nightmare

I almost died

But so did you

The story is old

Before it is true

And when it’s gone

It’s gone for bad

So put out the bunting

And try to be glad

The empire of song

Is dancing away

The vessels are sinking

The birds have gone grey

The squares are deserted

Or maybe obscene

The windows are breaking

The sea is Joyce-green;

It’s a time of regretting

And making new friends;

A time of denouncing

And making amends;

The words that go deeper

Are gasping for air;

The world that is better

Is not very fair;

What was impressive

Is now dinky and mean;

We’ve grown better whiskers

And eat to be lean;

Delivery is billions

And content is queen;

We live on the edge

Of extremes like two stars

Gaseous and distant

And brutally far;

I try to get closer

But truths cause a rift;

We’re adrift on what’s melting,

The soul train needs some more coal;

Brazil is burning

And the moon is awhirl;

The decade is coming, it may

Already have done, in which

Some of us are surviving

And the rest sell the guns;

Vast networks of vitriol

Spread leaves like a palm,

Some stand to attention,

Some use a knee,

But the plan is to transfer

What’s good from who’s not;

By means of napalm

In deed or in thought;

Afraid of the enemy, the bill

And the feds; the ones who

Chant slogans, the ones who deny

The pie in the sky, the tree

That’s on fire, money that’s bled:

I’m anxious with hawks, and with the reds.

A series of maxims enlarged by a trend:

California is burning, Death Valley is hot;

The weather is turning, it’s gone berserk!

Since mankind devised things, the train

And the piston, the Jenny that twerks!

We’re that part of history

Without bodily thirst;

Advances advance, AI gains its quantum

Momentum so rich brains never die

But persist in digitalised lubricant

On Jupiter's fringe;

It’s all going to happen, it already did;

Here's the finale, when you have binged -

Enjoy juvenescence, time's done its worst.

Comments

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

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?

"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...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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