Six Poems by John Drudge

 

Damned

 

Although

I’m a different person now

There’s no going back

To forgiveness

There’s no dance

To be had

To make the rain

There’s nothing but sand

On the box

Most things are best

Left buried and forgotten

In the filtered memories

Of the damned

Long Roads

 

When blinded by ideology

The truth becomes illusive

Compassion

Spirals down narrow holes

Where rivers run black

With hate and hubris

Clipped at the knees

Behind enemy lines

By totems of fetish

From the backwoods

Hope and unity

Sniped by mistrust

As the long road

Grows longer still

No Hate

 

I do not hate

The rich or the poor

I do not hate

The right or the left

I do not hate others

For what they have

Or have not

I do not hate you

For whom you love

Or need to be

I do not hate

It’s as simple

As that

Gone

 

The entire thing

Is fragmented now

There’s no putting it

Back to together

There’s no sense to be made

From the pieces

There are no reflections

Of the whole

There’s nothing to be seen here

It’s gone

Originally published in Dissident Voice 2023

Misfire

 

Poetry is philosophy

A way of looking at life

A respite

From our new prisons

Of misbelief

Over flood plains of fascism

Controlling the senses

Where they anthropomorphize

God

And miss the point

Racing

 

We’re racing toward disasters

We know how to avoid

We’re bearing headlong

Into winds of darkness

From the ghettos

To the camps

Enemies of the state

“Not the right sort

Not the right thoughts”

A warning to others

Cleansing strains

Plant science and lexicology

We’ve seen it all before

And there’s still time

To turn back

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.