The Leader We Have

by

Peter Cowlam

Those nominated before me megaphoned
Everything, and sounded important enough,
Not that I braced myself to listen – ever.
The grain is rough coarse matter, an insistence,
And always the same. The division of self;
Its afflatus and assertion; the many
Sanctions in the justification of it.
Ridiculous to follow.

These high winds on a first public holiday
Since I took the call – they’re here to stay. I can
Tell you one thing more about leading, or me:
It’s an isolated peak, in a bad sky,
And, you should know, I always desert my friends.

Peter Cowlam is a poet and novelist. He has won the Quagga Prize for Literary Fiction twice, most recently in 2018 for his novel New King Palmers, which is at the intersection of old, crumbling empires and new, digital agglomerates. His last published book of poems is Addendum Manifesto, with a foreword by Kathryn Kopple. Addendum Manifesto is aimed as a counter-blast at the political and financial institutions complicit in the deceptions of our master-slave society, wage slaves exhorted to fund a debt economy, and by that heavy price remain obedient citizens. His latest ebook (Kindle) is his novella A Forgotten Poet, which follows the fortunes of diffident and reluctant man of letters Harold Humber, from his early life in the English Midlands, through his post-war career as economist, jazz aficionado, expert in industrial architecture, and, in the final reckoning, author of four slim volumes of popular verse.

A Forgotten Poet is available at Kindle USA and Kindle UK.