Denis Joe has lived in many parts of Britain over the years, but is now on Merseyside for the past ten years. He is active in the poetry scene there and is a member of the North Liverpool Writer's Group. He has been writing poetry for a couple of decades and is self taught. He would say that his biggest influeneces are 20th Century Americanm poets, particularly Louise Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams and Lorraine Niedecker.
Three Poems (September 20, 2010. Issue 21.)
Bin-bagged
When I did forget
that she wanted me no more;
she had rearranged
the chairs in the living room
and had put the seat
down on the lavatory.
She had moulded my
Rod Stewart lps into
soap dispensers for
a new exhibition at
the Tate Modern on
emancipation in the
phallic-centred world
of domestic drudgery.
Sometimes it takes more
than a private dialogue
to maintain relationships.
Chōka To An Asda Teapot
Three pound, ninety-nine.
Homely and unpretentious.
Functional like a
work of Henry Moore or a
light bulb. Snugly it
sits on my radiator
in winter. Stewing
my Earl Grey or Darjeeling
and leaving brown flakes
floating like dead lily pads,
that I filter through
my teeth before swallowing.
And Olympic ring
imprints on my table-top
represent the new
continents of old splashes.
The ease at which I
run my fingers over your
glaze, is like the pace of life.
Love belonged to the
ones who brought us together.
Love belonged to the
struggle that we would endure.
Love belonged to the
life that could offer us more.
Love belonged to the
faith in always and never.
Love belonged to the
music that we listened to.
Love belonged to the
words we spoke and books we read.
Love belonged to the
paths we followed and retread.
Love belonged to the
feelings I still have for you.
Once upon a time,
as we walked along sand dunes,
we knew love belonged elsewhere.
Three Poems (September 21, 2009. Issue 9.)
Roadside Wreath
It is not sadness that ignites
my anger, it is
the assumption that I should
waste my emotion.
My tears will keep
for those I love and
those who have touched
me and left.
This necronarcissism makes
graveyards of our parks
and intrudes on our pleasure
of what it is to live.
We are invited into rooms,
where the living should not go,
to be solicited by ghouls
who impose their lacking on us.
We are forced to our knees
to worship stupidity, impatience
and sheer bad luck
for those who died for nothing.
And for those who did nothing;
who fought no battles, nor held
no higher attachment
to life other than to exist.
It is not my anger
that put these words on this page.
The Ballad Of The Poor White Boys
O Fellowship called to the great supper
[Canto XXIV Dante Translated by C. H. Sissons]
The Streets here hunger for pedestrian soul
like Christ hungered death, amidst physical
and spiritual pain, to be whole:
to be one with life so abapical;
yet existing as well as one could do.
To open ones’ eyes to an evenfall
and painfulness inflicted by the blue
scum, yearning for the burning of Toxteth,
they’ll settle for this bloody rendezvous.
For you have been sentenced to civil death,
poor white boy, by pious middle classes,
before they cleansed you, before you drew breath
before cheers, before they raised their glasses,
they condemned you and your kind, poor white boy,
to emptiness where nothing surpasses.
Careful of the metaphor they employ
when writing letters to The Guardian.
élite the elitism, an alloy
made of one-part antediluvian
and blended well with copper-bottomed fear,
dispensed with wisdom and grace and élan.
These feigning lovers will not shed a tear
(they deem you undeserving of their care)
and no dirge they chant when you are not here.
The hearse carries you to the house of prayer,
to atone for sins against their reason,
as the body counters make you aware:
your soul belongs to them for the season.
Like this song, you will return to the street
where you’ll haunt them with a lack of vision.
You will not chalk up another whipping
for you cannot be ground down where you are.
A world that hates its young can never sing
of a future, for it can’t see that far.
Stations of the Cross
I must leave here, I cannot breath this warmth.
World-grey envelopes the quiet coldness
whilst the ground mirrors the sky and skyline;
sweet wrapper rustling with each hard step.
The mist takes on a smell of water paint:
swirling colours in a jam-jar, like vomit.
I stiffen knowing I will lose something
of a romance formed in cigarette smoke
from a butt, on a shore, smelling of sand,
making it hard to tell where land begins.