Five Poems by John Drudge

 

In the End

 

Monstrous eyes

And wild beings

A madness of nymphs

And maenads

Churned by spirits

In the summer sun

And torn apart

By wild beasts

In an excess of rapture

Enraged by a thirst

For bruising and blemishes

And dancing

In the wilderness

With the flesh of children

In our teeth

Blood thirsty

In the death of time

And the end

Of true belief

Lizards on the Coast

 

I’m a cold-hearted soul

There’s no mistaking it

I warm in the heat

When I can

And I’ve never been one

For closeness

Though I long

For its echo

When the sun rises

Somewhere

Over the Hollywood sign

Ruins

 

Trespassing

In the land of trees

Confident idols

Gazing down

In mockery

Of our hubris

With great towers

Of lost wisdom

Reaching

Toward the sun

Through tall skies

To the forbidden

And forgotten symbols

Of our history

In the old forest

Before time began

When Heaven Cries

 

The visage

Of gods and the world

Cosmos and tragedy

The death of heroes

And the fragments

Of Heraclitus

A tether to the future

But too fine to be seen

Beyond the destruction

Of ambivalence

And the dying

Of suffering contrasts

Ecstasy and terror

And the good

The true and beautiful

Inseparable

From tomorrow’s tears

In an affirmation

Of life

Wine Gods

 

A tragic disposition

In the soil

Of blood and sin

Affirming life

In nullity

But never perishing

And never giving in

To myths and cults

While embracing

True wisdom

In wine and discontent

Enraptured

By intoxication

And the affirmation

Of life

At the feet of mad gods

On the edge of becoming

Something

Beyond the skin

Beyond Zeus and Semele

And the torrents of lightening

From above

Mortal and divine

To be twice born

In the ever-setting sun

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.