Drive dangerous; wear a seatbelt
slaps
crash like fast cars
over
country at night-time,
and
hard overtaking
on
blindspot-signed
corners
in cork. and we try
very
hard, but sometimes
they
happen when drinking,
and
after we neither
apologise.
it's not so important
and
nothing's been said
that
won't be forgiven
eventually.
love is secure,
but
the thing with security
is it
makes you
take
risks –
drive
dangerous;
wear a
seatbelt.
smoke
cigarettes,
drink
heavily and jog.
standing
by a wall:
all
brick, and the coolness
of bar-shadowed
alleys.
smoking
a cigarette.
incredibly
noir and good-
looking.
blowing up burn
at the
lights which burn
also,
but dimly, like it is
their
job. light like the texture
of
coins in gloved fingers. I remember
this.
loving it. being out
for a
moment. silence: the world
in the
bar and me out of it.
walls
with a waterstain –
a
broken-down gutter
above
me. black bricks:
their
dirt coloured
shadow
in moisture and moss
like
coaldust on palms,
under
fingernails.
moist
as the centre
of
rocks and of organs,
though
dry on the nights
I'm
remembering –
roads
parched as a salt-
bacon
sandwich. the bins
smelling
terribly.
and
cigarettes always.
enjoying
one – also
a beer
in my hand,
held
casually
in
calculated pose.
the
neck on the space
between
thumb
and my
forefinger. low
like a
sixgun. and
cigarettes.
one
foot
enbooted,
cocked
up on the wall.
The clothes you
used to wear
don't get me wrong,
you were a good fuck as well,
limber as a hunting tom cat
and warm as a long
morning shower,
but for some reason the thing
that was best
for me –
the thing that would be the painting
if I ever became a painter –
was when you would first take off your
coat;
peeling it like fruit
and revealing
whatever it was
you had chosen to wear that day.
I think that, perhaps,
was what I wanted to fuck;
that's what made this the best part.
the part of you that made those decisions,
that chose between a black skintight
turtleneck
and a light
denim-blue blouse,
grey jeans
on black pants.
somehow that was what got me then
and hell, the memory has got me now.
if you were somehow to turn up again
and ask me to lie down in a puddle for you
you know I'd do it.
you were sex, straight
as a river.
animals in headlights
were not as stuck
as me.
it
used to be easy
like
ripping off
sticking
plasters – perhaps
I've
got better. perhaps
I have
not.
girls on dutch bicycles –
fit and so wonderful –
looking like nothing
but girls riding bikes.
legs moving, bodies
tied lines like roped flagpoles
in skirts and in beautiful
trousers – and this kind, of course,
of overt lusty poetry
now is not fashionable
and, honestly, I don't
much like doing it –
but something’s
there anyway;
girls on their bikes
which skim low
like swallows
fresh
blackberry-
ripe,
and grown
in a
lay-by
while
you drive,
going
fast with the radio.
.JPG)
Diarmuid ó Maolalaí (DS Maolalai) - is a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and recently returned there after four years abroad in the UK and Canada. He has been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five or six years with some success. His writing has appeared in such publications as 4'33', Strange Bounce and Bong is Bard, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac's Dog, More Said Than Done, Star Tips, Myths Magazine, Ariadne's Thread, The Belleville Park Pages, Killing the Angel and Unrorean Broadsheet.
He has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden" (Encircle Press, 2016) and "Sad Havoc Among the Birds" (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, "Noble Rot" is scheduled for release in April 2022.
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