This is the illicit still of poetry <br />half hidden in the dry ditch beyond the hedge <br />firewater drunk from an old tin mug <br />it takes the skin off your throat <br />and drops it into your glowing stomach <br /> <br />and you don’t ask but maybe <br />wild crab-apples, turnips, <br />a handful of stolen barley, an old boot, <br />perhaps an incautious rat <br />who drowned in the middle of <br />drinking a wild dream <br />such as rat never had before <br /> <br />this the raw stuff <br />untaxed by rules <br />out here in the unfenced fields <br />not much spelling, punctuation, <br />vocabulary, grammar, <br />metre, euphony; if Emily <br />had been a prizefighter <br />she’d have breathed like this <br /> <br />but drunk, frozen breath steaming in the night air <br />seated on an old apple box <br />the stars never were so bright <br />the heart so near<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/0158-for-fjr-here-s-to-poetry/
