A Few Hours Later
The Virgin Mary strangled Ted Bundy
soon after Jefferson broke my pool cue
right across my back.
Nothing meant that much that night
after I’d turned around,
Old Roscoe snapped in quarters
on the shamrock velvet.
Cop car lights chased a Mustang back to Nazareth,
me holding my dreams in four divorced shards -
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, I now called them -
like Bundy's neck missing from his spine - life separate
from itself. I called up to Jefferson a few hours later,
what was the fucking point?
his brother - as usual - more drunk as a sad old man
sitting by the reservation,
just looked out the window -
told me go park somewhere else, this is poppa’s space -
then he grumbled and sneezed,
as Jefferson somewhere deep inside
turned wine into water
Angel in Garadice : 8:24 P.M.
I’ve become an Angel in Garadice, 8:24pm,
headlight boys hunting me from all sides - Coole, Agher,
some like dive-bombers
from Summerhill;
strange they know nothing about Bruce Springsteen,
roaming the flat and cobalt horizons,
exact replicas from his V8 plots.
I am the Angel of Garadice, 8:24 p.m.
ascending to a layby
to write this scripture.
At Kilcock I turn down a dead-end street
so I can arise from death,
I see skeletons on their knees,
I’m disappointed.
This road is long and lonely,
these boys are shooting stars
who fade in scissored sequence
on my split-screen mirror - boys are grit crumbled on a lay-by
Mexican Stand-Off : A Northern Variation
There's an earth so flat
a song and a dance began sprouting like t'maytoes on it,
Sunday's child in a fugue state stray cats neglected to take advantage of.
There's a recognition of an entity’s sense of self,
that Lacan slapped me across my locked-tight jawbone
thrice to edge on home, before cows came for milking,
before Charlie Parker lay on a sweaty bed with a strap
numbing his arm. A wheel that spun like falling coins
rained down slicing planets in half -
Henry - all 2 miles and 58 tons of him - looked out
from his bedroom window -
it's late Henry, no-one hears those screams
said Henry's mom,
clawing down towards Australia a wooden window frame.
Henry?
Hello?
Burt Bacharach Sunshine Soundscape : Autumn Mode
I filled-up Emily's gas-tank,
as far as the good lord would let me.
Hell,
let's be honest,
a little more I poured just for the road,
for the blues-men who let the home-team down
by somehow being alive.
I put a pretty penny through that tank
leaving for County Kilkenny before sunshine
got bored, twiddled its thumbs, and dropped its holster,
leaving my lawyer to fill me in.
He told me Hannibal Heyes had a grandma
from County Kilkenny, I said that's swell Mr. Smith,
now tell Cousin Jedidiah I know who he really is.
This was October; If I'd forgotten
that sad terrain October was -
brown as barbed-wire
in the latter years of its life -
then Emily wasn't letting me forget,
singing another song about surfing,
how summer was on the way in Australia
two-hundred thousand light-years from here.
I clung to the left-hand side of my saddle
listening to Bacharach
pour his coffee, as his orange juice went flat.
In the back-seat of her French-made car
I held the fetal position long enough
to make her notice
how flat those fields were
with tractors hiding on their sides like horses,
a harvest lost in time this year,
stuck in Swedish speaking homesteads
circa 1870; Emily never really left Stockholm,
I was not going to be another of her syndromes,
thumbing
on the side of the road just like Malcolm,
mixing a voodoo potion
to ooze forgiveness from his wife.
Just like a golfer comes home
one day
to a heart attack and divorce,
a pair of grifters head south
instead of down - down to Australia.
Emily, she sure did rip that clutch a new one
trying to get us there;
County Kilkenny, hon?
Nah, let’s just never speak
to each other again...
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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