World Doomed

And the News in Brief: World Doomed as carcinogenic immigrants float into our jobs in their millions on a tidal wave caused by global warming, a meteor strike, the moon exploding and Muslim extremists, the economic depression will mean your house is worth less than your life (which is worth nothing if you happen to live anywhere there is oil).

The world is cooling or heating or something like stopping or speeding up, somewhere between Tuesday and a billion years we’ll be engulfed by the Sun and the liberal media is behind it all (if only Jade and Diana were still alive!) Ants are taking over, crop circles are letters from aliens asking us to buy a timeshare

… and finally, on the lighter side, all food is poison, beer gives you AIDS and anything fun will make your genitals fall off

…. goodnight

Blast from the Past

Below are 3 poems from days gone by ... my first published poem 1991 and one from 1996 and 2001 ...enjoy

S.

Christmas at Christchurch (2001)

I feel translucent
a man of marble skin
as if dreaming my motions
every step a tread in water
each reach of my hand
a ghost grip touches
but nothing holds and yet
I clutch these stones and
iron spear barricades
as a sea-snail would the bedrock
for this is my folly
to hug close the masonry of charity

I feel nothing
no remorse runs down my arms
to my useless wrists
no rage
twists my mouth into rabid snarl
no pleasure lifts my face
from the footfalls
of those celestial beings
bustling above

not even a soaked black wall
on which I am a shadow
penetrates my deadened hide

I feel grotesque
I am a gargoyle of flesh and bone
sown into the fabric of these
towers with closed doorways
that form broken arch homes
for broken things
but

no longer am I broken
I have embraced
the cold and hunger
of my mouth and my soul
I am free of this place

Yet

here I am still
here for you to see
if you can stomach
to see me

Dear John 1991

I look away from the wall
away from your face
the blood is dripping from the table
and all the dishes are dirty
I try to picture your eyes
no one put out the bins
there’s a knife in the door
pinning the letter you wrote
I feel quite sentimental
about my photograph of you
even while it burns in the fire
I look back at the wall
and your face is there
your head on my pillow
and you body in my kitchen

The Ghost of Saint Anthony (1996)

Once I was a man like you

strong in the heart and mind

Now my spectre drifts the sands of Egypt these sixteen

centuries

across the tombs of Pharaohs

from Alexandria and the sea into the desert mountains

where only insects live and hermits come to die

No longer do I feel the burning Sun of Purgatory on my bare back

no longer does the word of God wet my dry lips

no more do I hope for resurrection

I only pray for eternal sleep to end my torment

My shade counts the sands of time

moving as parches water

through its fleshless fingers

the carrion have abandoned my bleached bones

a scorpion has nested in my eye socket

no answer echoes in my skull to the

frozen scream of my broken jaw

I am alone

the only ghost in a godless land

I pass through a stone crucifix and Sun Gods

on ancient plaster

neither have redeemed my soul

so I will walk the Breath of Egypt

until the end of the world

Greybell Wood and Beyond

Lapwing Publications and Gutter Bookshop cordially invite you to the launch of

Greybell Wood and Beyond a new collection of poems by Roger Hudson published by Lapwing Publications, Belfast. At Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin 8 on Tuesday 5^th October at 6pm. Roger Hudson will read from the collection. Refreshments.