Poems by Gary Cummiskey

Gary Cummiskey

Somebody Knows

Somebody's been reading your personal mail
Somebody's entered your private domain
Somebody's heard the midnight shrieking
Somebody's entered your innermost thoughts
Somebody's seen the piss stains and the mucous
Somebody's slipped between yourself and the mask
Somebody saw you fall into oblivion
Somebody saw the cat strangled by sunlight
Somebody's been floating inside your head
Somebody knows it
Somebody knows...

This is the Raw Reality

This is the raw reality
Of movers and shakers
All you need is millions
HELLO HELLO
Commission recommends
Dead men's columnist
But how would it seem
To the mercy of strangers
When things fall apart
And the red tape drunken reservist framework
Fucks a world awake
With the sanctity of massacre?
Final peace for weekend mysteries
'I will not paint a pretty picture of death
...everything seemed so unreal'
Press clippings call
For the shred of reason
Revolutionaries graze
In forests of jazz
Women at work
No manna from heaven
We lost our precious bogeyman
All we want is one hundred a month
Eradicate the invading machine
SEVENTEEN DAYS OF CONTINUOUS BOMBING!

Gary Cummiskey is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Secret Hour, Lost In A World, Visitations, River of Dreams, When Apollinaire Died, and Head(with Roy Blumenthal). He has also published a surrealist film scenario, Conspiracies of the Interior. He is the founder and editor of Dye Hard Press, which specialises in the publishing of South African poetry. He is widely published in local poetry journals and has performed his work publicly. He works as a publications manager in Johannesburg.