Three Superb Poems by John Doyle

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.