Six Cracking Poems by John Doyle

In 23 Hours and 59 Minutes I'll Be Rid of This Day 

 

In minutes

judged by worried pencil, a clock breaks its two arms,

to say it loves us, nothing could be more foreign and ghastly than this truth,

 

dawn my executioner, crow-burst leveller, tractor’s foul stomach, diseased earth

and dusk an age-wined teetotaller 

softening their stony wreaths,

 

though, this moon that howls over Tuesday’s dead,

stands alone, smoke meaningless slowly weaving up,

tans rings around Saturn, leaves them bright-brown 

 

on a postman's squint, hours from this on a mohawk laneway,

neither in Meath, nor Kildare,

a tough stretch of night it was, last night,

 

smoke breaking rank as moon 

coughed and died,

the stars follicles to this outrageous black,

 

nowhere more so, 

than this clutter of orb-corpsed strangers

who pricked eternity from Danny Whitten's arm

To Be Here, That Is Enough

 

You were martyred by moon,

moon-spat Martha, who by chance, drove wild-winds to mountain's ills

clattering to town to fill rain-brightened tin, in gulps of milk,

 

moon-child Martha, martyr, egg-cracked sun

mistaking day for a place it could be loved, needed, settled-down,

a post-bag shivering of kittens you bumble cross your shoulder-blades

 

Jesus-like, gathering a perspective of Golgotha, for his memoirs,

that simple men from this complicated town wrote-down, some of its diction came from ink

some came from bourbon, some from stout that dribbled from the 

 

fatness of the moon, its own lips a violence you whipped across your

withered word.

The town's folk were angry, that I gathered,

 

the cats too, knocking trash can lids 

against the audience of the street

thinking Buddy Rich had been a concrete fossil - waiting to crack, a love-smitten rim-shot

 

The Sal Jefferson Quintet

The Sal Jefferson Quintet

were a figment that dwindled in and out of dreams

I stretched across my bed to clasp -

Only for the music to die, like a crow leaves the sky,

 

And few people see, or hear these things, as it’s dawn, and light is worried

How its day might just end up being.

If the Sal Jefferson Quintet were real,

First place they would be,

 

Would probably be BBC Radio 3 on a Wednesday night when Winter has died

And it’s early 1975, and I’m not real either, at least not yet, 

as I hide inside another life,

Being sustained by sounds from external proximities,

 

Just like Sal Jefferson and his quintet,

Stretched across empty beds

In places where light and dark

Just cannot be

 

 

The Ballad of Regina King and Rex McQueen

For Mike Zone

 

August 31st, eight months yesterday,

she watched me tend my first crop,

 

veins shocking my arms, railways to a bloody new world.

Corn that hid from me as a wallflower, grew so high

 

I swore Heaven might be closer than Hell,

last August, she wore a gingham dress, 

 

a table cloth she called it, didn’t smile,

I guess she meant it, those anecdotes hidden from me, her brother walking away, taller,

 

snarling, no sound otherwise dared escape his lip, the light in the square of a Gingham dress

sunlight shared its chatter with,

 

hidden from me in loud silence, the post-office dining room, forks as cymbals, plates as drums,

but I could just make my eyes find it, if it was Sunday, 

 

not quite August yet, August 31st, eight month previous,

so a song could be just a song

 

as it moaned and wailed along

dragging so much dust, flies were caught like astronauts, escaping asteroids,

 

she watching me nervously, both of us this time, 

laid out like 

 

servants when the master's away

on that tablecloth

 

8 months to the day, Sabbath Day,

August 31st last

Unexpectedly

 

As a supersonic satellite that took him

soaring into bedsits stinking the sun from an Algarve vista,

as a weekend sedated in these Sundays we get, when we leave home

to learn how sneaky rain can be, to follow us like a fox that follows moonlight,

as a man not known for reason or self, or being, as that rain, equally shapeless

and trance-like soaring over that Algarve blotch some of them called sunlight,

others called groovy and mystical -  but no-one thought calling a medic might help.

All these variables could hardly be expected.

And so it was

- Unexpectedly -

A page 8 adjective that limits damage heroin can do - to a pride of lions, 

known in discreet Sunday chatter - hoarding page 12 -

as this mudslide unexpectedly coursed through him, our dear little boy, 

his dear old patch of mud, bitter to a touch, sinking him deep in death,

this fox eager to tame its dear old moon

Railroad Tracks Edge Their Way Into the Forest

 

And stones lie in water like 

evil weighs down a priest,

and railroad tracks edge their way into the forest

like muck creeps up the legs of jeans,

and pages never open quite so fast

like curtains taking troubles from the wind,

and trains follow railroad tracks into the forest

and men sit at bars like nothing really happened,

their saw-milled knuckles making sure 

nothing ever will

 

 

Somewhere in North America

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.