Five Poems by John Drudge

 

Across the Bank

 

My Paris includes

Intemperance and darkness

On the nights

That scream at the moon

From across the river

To the other bank

Where we once shared

Our hearts

With the shadows

At the Ritz

And waltzed

Across the glitz

Of eager anticipation

Before tripping

On the narrow

Stone streets

Of our bleeding  

Aftermath

Around Town

 

Below our apartment

In the worn

Part of town

With our dreams

Drowned out

By the sound of the train

On the hour

Every hour

And the rhythm

Of the buses

And the cars on the street

With all the same people

Saying all the same things

And everything tight

Like a snare

In the places

Where our hearts broke

And we lost friends

Along the way

Falling

Into one more groove

Around the block

Doing our best

To survive the strain

As the sensations

Of our surroundings

Settle in

As Tears Glisten

 

Sick and torn

On the faded horizon

Of a dream

With a calloused soul

Worn by wind

And the songs

Of beaten hearts

Wandering lost

Down broken dusty roads

At the end of a story

As the sun rolls long

And high

On a warm country breeze

And tears glisten

In a thousand

Rearview

Mirrors

Moving On

 

To stare

Into the abyss

Is to be taken over

By mistakes

Too ugly to be forgiven

Drunken reactivity

In a synchronization

Of slick moments

Miscalculations of Karma

Wormholes

And excavations at midnight

In the boneyard

Behind the main house

Raw images

Of the unconscious

Slipping

Into a subversiveness

Of mood

Feeding the blood-gods

Of obsession and lust

Trapping

The last rain drop

From a broken sky

And moving along

A collapsed vein

Of self-belief

Beyond the tatters

Of lost penitence

And ever dimming

Relief

Night’s Lament

 

Chewing on rage

With the immediacy

Of night upon me

Threadbare

And unhinged

As the echo

Of something

Slips by

Into the darkness

With a misery

Deep inside

Like a hard stone

And a tongue

Full of Yesterdays

And nothing

More

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 four books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), and Fragments (2021). 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.