Jason Morgan: ‘Raising a toast’, ‘Dreaming’ ‘Drunk’, ‘What memory tells me’, ‘Suburbia’

Raising a toast

To Vanity I drink and cheap hotels
within whose doors I pleasured my sad loins,
and heard the mattress creak beneath me with
sly laughter as dawn coloured those sad walls.

Dreaming

From death men rise like ripples on the sea.
So rose the poet from tranquility,
to see castles on the blue horizon,
where lured sailors sleep their perfect sleep.

Before the calm morn goes out with soft wings,
and sunlight flames the temples of first light,
vision flashed past his enshrined eyes, breathing
life’s flame into his cadaverous clay.

Here may I leap, love and die with prudence,
for in this inside space all is drama,
and so may pass real as the primal world,
pierced with the pains waiting for me at dawn.

What memory tells me

We talked about the past,
the eccentrics,
the normal ones now drunk
with the light of God,
the wild children
with stars in their hair,
and the old town,
both alive and dead
in the shrine of history
where dreams do kiss our eyes.

Father said, “Your…