Issue 10: June 2005
Luke Heeley | Alan Jenkins | Barbara Marsh | Niall O'Sullivan | Eamonn Shanahan | Jean Sprackland | Todd Swift
TODD SWIFT
Poetry 1985-2005
When I was younger I drove
through some strange towns.
A man or a woman would
show me a cactus or a shovel
in their private desert; or
a signed confession, a motel sign.
So what if it wasn't good?
It was a human thing, and small,
which, given the passion
and the industry, I found worth
keeping. Now that I am wiser,
I see how all they made
and showed me was worthless.
I drive out to the end
of the city, and drop their photos,
objets and letters down
into the deep far gulley below,
as if removing a body
from my person, as if leaving
nothing shoddy behind.
Charity
(For Kevin Higgins)
By the time you have opened the relic
binned in Oxfam
and noted the inscription
to daughter or lover,
he'll be as gone as Barry Goldwater
or Manilow, but peppy words
of love and dedication, in felt-tip ink,
will have lingered, like saliva-traces
they use to catch mad bombers,
filling you with nothing so much
as dull-witted longing, like the ache
too much Easter candy
invades the heart's abscess with,
bursting any designs on infamy you'd had,
for, if only as a warning, his signature
is a sure sign of time's lack of interest
in How To Invest books from 1977,
anything heavier than pennies from Heaven.
Comedian C
Know this now: I long ago gave up my belief in Rapture.
I rise on pins and spit the pips, Hugo.
Prenuptials must not include
Recourse to jelly donuts.
Not this time. I am no one's Ivanhoe.
I too despise, abhor, deny, and denigrate prose poetry.
This here is an ode to language itself, which writes us.
It doesn't write me a cheque, though.
Drive me like a Porsche.
Somebody better call the cops, kiddo.
Poetry should not exculpate: it sings, buddy. Got that?
I am in. In luck, intemperate, room at the Holiday Inn.
All men will be millers then, so that they will eat pain.
Egghead marries hourglass.
Four-eyes weds egg-timer.
Old-timer shacks up with Dish.
Creep gets world famous chick.
Tut Tut McGinty Said. He said this with much relish.
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