Five Fabulous Poems by John Drudge

 

A Boy in Nassau

 

To be happy

Is to be simple

Running

From the porch

To the front wall

To the mango tree

Down to Mr. Edwards

At the Adastra Gardens

And over the hill

To the sea

Where the big fort

Keeps watch

For fragments from the past

For all eternity

Bubbles

 

Nothing great

Is ever accomplished alone

No bubble lasts forever

And the truth

Can hardly compete

With our fictions

But when it all

Cracks on the rocks

And sinks

To the bottom

Of another dark sea

Rats and the wise

Never look back

Because the big things

In life

Matter of course

But never as much

As the small things

In front of

Our eyes

Dream Time

 

Penetrating

The heart of darkness

And forging

In the fires of desire

I have seen

The other side

Of all dimensions

And connected

The fullness of time

To myself

Touching ultra-terrestrial

Entities of vision

In parallel space

While peeling back

The curtains of place

Entering doorways through

The centre of things

Travelling back

To now

Gleam

 

Cynical

Illuminations

Beneath the master’s

Corner stone

Mundane musings

Reborn

And new secrets

Locked

In darkened rooms

Moving deeper

Into chaos

Without external force

Level by level

Through old mysteries

Clever

As the owl flies

Le Bateau est Encore Ivre

 

The Café de la Mairie

Speaks loudest

In the mornings

With my thoughts disordered

By regret and fear

And history’s long heartache

Melting into my temples

Like liquid fire

The faint hum of madness

Swelling in the corners

My boat

Still drunk

From the night before

John Drudge is a social worker working in the field of disability management and holds degrees in social work, rehabilitation services, and psychology.  He is the author of three books of poetry: “March” and “The Seasons of Us” (both published in 2019) and New Days (published in 2020). His work has appeared widely in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies internationally. John is also a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee and lives in Caledon Ontario, Canada with his wife and two children.