TODD SWIFT

Untitled: Five Poems

because I am not famous I am insufferably jostling for that sliver of self-delusion passing for the next best thing - power or riches or whatever - looks, maybe even (god forbid) artistry but really not art or poetry, that’s Skid Row stuff more  or less - what the useless do; and I am worthless - compared to a Marvel muscle bro, his side chick, her lassoed bit; the pain only breathes when I hurt, so every scroll click minute, of every subhuman day in other-words.

as far as i can tell everything has been taken from someone by someone else and there is a fossil fish thirty-eight million years long gone that had a small perfect heart - ancestor to our monarchs, oddballs and those in peril at sea; and it too went about taking stuff from other cetaceans at will; there’s no hook to be let off of. Awful tip to tail, from the get-go; the land moral is disconcerting, genealogy of mouthful rough.

despite the textbook being mostly 800 pages of science, there is poetry in the cardiology that’s more than rhetorical, but some of that leaks in too - because naming and words happen, and compensate, like the total artificial heart at the heart of the study, your best ‘next best thing buddy’, doing its beating with style and aesthetic flare; but is it real enough to care or cure? That is art’s ventricle asking asking, as only always may or can or does or will.

Why claim comforting for poems that can come cruel out of wind like a snowstorm cold as razors; life strikes like a midnight clock, often hurting like an ice storm; why say poetry is kind, is wreck of ship on rock a healing event? My widow friend is cloaked full in what she calls darkness; she no longer reads poems; why should we be bereft and lie that simile is a resurrection? Find a finer cut word for living maybe, like barely making hay? I can write some words in a line but they never alter heart-health except in metaphor or rhyme; poor cousin to a needle cure. Death needs a smaller word, one made for each of us alone, our own name for season’s end, the weather ripple on the lake surface with all the summer stories changing to autumn going on its darkening cold face.

Crucifixum docet veritatem

I am there now, the place where I can say to you directly What the tricks of language Can hinder or form, I know that to keep it interesting Is the price of attention, you go Variously across the field, It’s a show, and a tell, but the main fact Is talking, some sharing, a gesture Out to another, maybe a friend Who is not even real, yet, An apparition of apprehension, Expected attendee at the imaginary Reading in the heaven of elsewhere, That place without pornography, Alcohol, violence, pills, and screaming; That ice palace of peace, unlike any Genuine mind, I am on the boil, A lobster reddening, on ferocious Pain attention, it’s all apart now,  Not yours, not mine, just a body with soul Tied to it, as they say in poems; I am the messenger, do not spare me; Show the crowds your un-empathy; It’s strong to be empty and immediate, I am pierced daily by Memory and experience; epistemology Proves that the facts are solid, and sharp; Lie on the gurney and leak Into the bucket like a butchered animal Grateful for love; I am the message and I come to say You’ve been petty; You’re scared, but cut it out, we see through The fear, the protecting ranking of the sickly canon; You kill the art that you feed on; Go home and consider your positions. My sheet lightning will light the way.

Todd Swift is a Canadian-British poet, editor, and publisher, with a PhD in modern poetic style, from the University of East Anglia. He has edited several anthologies, and was the Pembroke college, Cambridge, poet-in-residence for the year 2017-18. His poems have appeared in Poetry London, Poetry magazine (USA), and The Guardian (UK) among many other outlets. His own work has appeared in a Selected Poems from Salmon Ireland and in the USA from Marick Press.