Poetry

Do you believe in ‘Gosh’

Gee, mister,
      That pang of the pan-sexualised medium has drawn my tween heart-box in twain
What is ‘gosh!’ if not in the cleft of my hope and the turbulent theft of my pain
The hat of that brain
that left my eyes slain
the appeasing aesthetic re-fashioned insane

Wow, Sir,

I was taught of the help we must give,
the reaping of paper and grain-
I learnt to point fingers to any that linger:
For God’s and the morals we feign

Gosh golly gee,

It can’t only be me that was told to respect the arcane,
our Father’s impression:
Thou art a profession!
And yes, I learnt just the same—
but can you believe
in the morbid reprieve of
My! How shallow thy shame. 

I remember his eyes
and the pitch of his cries
more than I remember his name,
but that’s all that he is,
not the burden of his,
not the synaptic stints in his brain.

You never taught ‘Wow!’
or ‘I wonder how…’
and I’ve not learnt the price of our game-
the rules of affection
or loss in rejection
or the appeal of Kingdom and claim

Whether it tea, PCP
or the calm of the sea
that leaves our synapse awash-
I take from the books
of the cad and his crooks
as the grappling hooks
to the heights that the haggard would floss

I read in the strife
and exhaustion of life
and bathe in the horrors of ‘gosh’.

Liam Atterbury