 Daniel Walsh Poetry | sitemap | log in
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SONNET
I should have expected it, that’s for sure
since sweet-natured kids never feel secure
till the ogre smiles, and the jester sings.
Oozing innocence, you were just too bright,
too quick on the uptake. You sensed pain
around the corner like shepherds sense rain;
damp eyes and silence glumly eloquent.
So the sleet birled on the galloping wind;
my heart screamed as the mad Arctic battered
the spinning town and resentment clattered
about in my head like a bad scotch half.
By dusk, a pissed express had dragged me
out of your life; hailstones jigged on the roof.
(Published in Quantum Leap magazine, February 2008)
HANNIBAL’S TALE
We attacked the guarding willows
and toward us the vineyards rushed,
the purple-skinned grapes the masters
of this low-Alps landscape.
Big-boned oxen relieved their thirst
with bloodstained Trebian water,
while soldiers, tribunes, made a stand
and perplexed tall negroes.
A forest of painted spears grew
when they thumped into Roman flesh;
whipped, our elephants trumpeted
and trampled the masters.
(Published in Quantum Leap magazine, August 2008)
UNWANTED BABIES
dimitte nobis debita nostra
Since sixty-seven
six point five million
robbed of the first necessity
six point five million
who didn’t feel
the sting of a midwife’s slap
six point five million
who didn’t suck
the milk from a natal breast
six point five million
who didn’t catch
the glint of a father’s love.
Since sixty-seven
six point five million
trashed in a bio-garbage bin.
THE MOVIE MAKERS
They’re at it again next door.
I mean I can feel
the weight of movements
vibrating through the floor,
thump th-thump thump.
I could say to you
‘just can’t imagine
what they get up to’
but that would be a lie -
I can picture only too well
exactly what they get up to
in poxyscope,
in poxycolor.
He’s a big fella - 16 stone
at a rough guess,
and the women? Well
a protagonist
of his dimensions
shouldn’t find it too hard
to keep their starstruck faces
swathed in blissful grin,
right the way through
a long night’s screentest.
SQUEAL
As a boy I saw daffodils spat upon
by the old farts in Washington DC
trampled by pedlars of laissez faire
I saw the Zimmerman kid
pointing with his petulant pen
ranting in the half-light
against the full-frontal crudity of America
but nobody was listening
they were afraid of the Russians
the Chinese the Roswell visitors
every black guy who looked hip
so the Vietcong kept on fighting
the fire-bombs kept on falling
big-bucks businessmen
slapped patents on the moon’s dust
now the bona fide wars are American
wars – yeup – it’s back to the stone age
for wicked terrorist nations.
A perfunctory concept
can never scapegoat pain
Jesus Christ sweated blood
drops of blood actuate
this ticking universe. True
salt tears petition
heartaches may supplicate
but to bring a sceptic
on board every prophet
needs to raise up the dead
the flesh of his teaching
should always be found
wrapped around the bones
of unselfconscious love.
(from the poetry pamphlet Another Eden, 2009)
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