Six Poems by John Drudge

 

Illusions 

 

Conscious space-time 

Shaping reality 

An inherent awareness 

Intertwined 

With the fabric of creation  

Fundamental to the universe 

Unfolding with intent 

With wave functions  

Lapsing 

Into potentiality  

Where the act of observation 

Is to be observed 

In a feedback loop  

Of reality 

Permeable boundaries 

And participation 

In a vast entity of awareness 

Within the illusion  

Of randomness  

Where God is intrinsic 

And eternally replicated 

In the process 

Of everything

Morrison 

 

He walked like a wound  

Opened by thunder 

Barefoot on the tongue  

Of the void  

Screaming ungodly sermons  

To the night  

As whole cities  

Burned in his throat 

Lit by the fire  

Of unfiltered vision  

A shaman in leather  

And snakeskin  

Drunk and immediate 

He kissed the asphalt  

With poems  

And hissed at the end  

Of the wind 

Dragging shadows behind him  

Like lovers  

Untouched by time  

As Dionysus watched him blaze 

Across the sky 

Like a shooting star 

Too bright for silence

Loss 

 

That shadowed vale  

Where what was  

Lingers in mournful refrain 

Sitting heavy on the heart  

Like mist on the moor 

Weaving its shroud  

Over memories  

Sorrowful 

Tender and honed 

A star fallen  

Slipped from the sky’s  

Embrace  

Glistening old tears  

Like the sigh of the wind 

And the lament 

Of the sea  

And in the ache  

Of absence  

Days stretch dim  

And still  

Endlessly

Wine Gods

 

A tragic seed 

In the soil 

Of blood and sin 
Affirming life 
But never perishing 
And never giving in  
To myths or cults 
Embracing wisdom 

Instead 

In wine and discontent 

Enraptured 
Intoxicated  

By life’s promises 
At the feet of mad gods 
On the edge  

Of becoming  

Something beyond skin 
Beyond Zeus and Semele 
Beyond the torrents  

Of lightning from above 
Mortal yet divine 
To be twice-born 
In the ever-setting sun

Waiting  

 

Minutes  

Pool like water  

On the edges  

Of an instant  

As the air grows thick  

With anticipation 

And the clock’s ticking 

Is swallowed by the silence  

That gathers  

Like dust on a lampshade 

As the world continues 

On the edge of a breeze  

Tremulous 

And the light becomes sharper  

Revealing clearer lines  

To fill the hollowness 

Of desire 

Pressing inward  

And stretched  

Across the frame  

Of a moment

For Leonard Cohen 

 

Turning silence 

Into scripture  

A prophet of absence 

On the wire  

Between God and flesh  

With a suitcase of poems  

In one hand  

And a bottle of midnight  

In the other  

He wrote for the fallen 

And for those  

Who remember too much 

He sang not to be heard  

But to be forgiven  

Each lyric a slow knife  

Slipped  

Beneath the collar  

Of the soul  

He sifted songs  

From ashtrays  

And hotel drawers 

From beds still warm 

With strangers 

Where saints wept  

And the silence after sex  

Told the truth 

Like the long unravelling  

Of light  

From the body

 

 

 

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 seven books of poetry: “March” (2019), “The Seasons of Us” (2019), New Days (2020), Fragments (2021), A Long Walk (2023), A Curious Art (2024) and Sojourns (2024) . His work has appeared widely in 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.