Poem
Mark Waldron
All my Poems Are Advertisements for Me
All my Poems Are Advertisements for Me
All my Poems Are Advertisements for Me
When I was young there was nothing exactly stupidabout the world; In fact, in the good ol’ days
there was the thump and the tug of it, the way it heaved itself
like a stone, yanked so to speak in glory;
the way it fell up, crushed up, and then crushed up again,
getting newer and newer, louder and sweeter;
the way it watched its own face fall between its fingers
as though its face were a handful of gold coins.
I think I might have known the whole drag of everything
going upwards, a tide that pulled me with it.
Actually, I know I did. (You were part of all this by the way.)
And the sky, well, where to begin?
The sky was so adult, not imbecilic or thin or so-so or girlish.
Did I outgrow it?
Did I drink it, shoot it, find a way round it?
Did I get inside it and drive off in it?
Forgive me, but on my way to work this morning,
even though the sun was on fire and the trees were up,
I was in the apocalypse. Death is not what you think it is.
It’s actually what I think it is.
Mark Waldron
(United States of America, 1960)
Called ‘the most striking and unusual new voice’ in contemporary British poetry’ by John Stammers, Mark Waldron brings us a world at once real and unreal, familiar and strange. His self-reflexive poems break the fourth wall and then give the fourth wall a personality. He is pursued by a cast of recurring characters who seem to rebel against their creator. Original, accessible and fantastical, W...
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Poems of Mark Waldron
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All my Poems Are Advertisements for Me
When I was young there was nothing exactly stupidabout the world; In fact, in the good ol’ days
there was the thump and the tug of it, the way it heaved itself
like a stone, yanked so to speak in glory;
the way it fell up, crushed up, and then crushed up again,
getting newer and newer, louder and sweeter;
the way it watched its own face fall between its fingers
as though its face were a handful of gold coins.
I think I might have known the whole drag of everything
going upwards, a tide that pulled me with it.
Actually, I know I did. (You were part of all this by the way.)
And the sky, well, where to begin?
The sky was so adult, not imbecilic or thin or so-so or girlish.
Did I outgrow it?
Did I drink it, shoot it, find a way round it?
Did I get inside it and drive off in it?
Forgive me, but on my way to work this morning,
even though the sun was on fire and the trees were up,
I was in the apocalypse. Death is not what you think it is.
It’s actually what I think it is.
All my Poems Are Advertisements for Me
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