You
If Camus said so,
I'd leave my
fingertips in the furnace,
a mimic of my
pencil’s failure;
if Hemmingway said
so,
I'd arm wrestle
sharks and rattlesnakes,
and Arendt like a
devil on the dole-queue corner
saying sniff stardust, rye, and dead dogs’ ashes.
If Elvis Presley
said so,
I'd eat, drink
and be his final
footprints -
painted by a Mississippi
dusk burning soon after 1973.
Charles Manson
stood facing me;
I used his spleen
to hang him
as stallions came
home at dawn
to nihilists’
petticoat sermons.
But you couldn't,
could you?
waiting
by Dick Jordan’s
farm in a pick-up truck,
jagged and rusty,
still strumming your guitar.
Anton Chigurh Passed His
Driving Test
Absence of
identity or resemblance does not exist in the real; only a subject can perceive
it
Gilbert D. Chaitin
1988
The year is like a
skeleton,
the land an eager
compass
that takes you
miles off-course from your peace,
hiding underneath
its glassy dome;
the clock is like
a witch,
a boy who hides
inside a man,
a hole choked in
greasy-bones
each time we see
him driving off from this widowed motel.
That engine’s like
a broomstick,
the chassis like
an emptied Marylin Monroe,
that docket on his
dashboard
makes him a man, largely relatable.
County Cork, Summer 1994
This odd benevolence,
that wraps time around me,
shields me in space,
lets dusk and dream
moisten me -
always benevolent,
high-summer
and the fields a patchwork
of discarded railway lines
and corrugated circles
farm-life feeds from -
this odd benevolence
and its drowsy haze,
making a sharp turn for
Clonakilty
and Aerosmith softened on
the radio.
It’s not dark nor light,
lie nor truth,
it’s of itself, and comes
for me sometimes.
I give myself
willingly
and watch others dream.
I met a Sufi pilgrim today,
he gave me his clothes
when he gave me his heart.
John Doyle is from County Kildare in Ireland. He returned to writing poetry in February 2015 after a gap of nearly 7 years. Since then he's had 6 poetry collections published, with a 7th collection, "Isolated Incidents" due to be released by Pski's Porch in Summer 2021.
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