If This Was The Wonder Years Or Happy Days
Proof aliens have already landed
is laid out
salted like fish in a 20c download an author called Sirius
gave me for 19, as I was 1 cent short - in reality I was 19 short,
but he felt sorry for me as I pretended the illuminati had gotten to me - already.
But, not to digress
there’s an old coot near me who looks like he called Koreans the *G WORD*
that rhymes with the *S WORD*
he called black guys who saved his life in Da Nang,
and his coffee and grandson are all he has left this day, today.
If this were The Wonder Years or Happy Days
I guess he'd die at the end of the episode and leave the Chevrolet he restored to his grandson
instead of his grandson’s dad.
But it’s not.
The illuminati
have him in their claws already
as he looks in the gutter behind me,
the water rattling like a snake
in the sand-brown
song of
sadness and rust.
The Velvet Underground
(1) The Velvet Underground are taller than me.
(2) The Velvet Underground escape under unclosed window sills in our happy little town to wreak havoc after radio stations close down.
(3) John is not me, although he shares a name with me, there is nothing else there to connect us. John talks of the Velvet Underground, there is no connection, sorry John, the fraudsters know a fraud. They'll hang you out to dry. Your name is bloody, muddy, a word that rhymes.
(4) Curtains, oh those curtains. She wears something no-one else knows of, behind those curtains, a song behind those curtains no-one else knows of. Her name is Katie, Katie's 15 foot tall, not a song, not anything, there are no curtains in Velvet Underground songs, so I stitched them myself.
(5) Aufmerksamkeit. Das Fahrrad ist gefährlich. Du bist gefährlich. Du warst lange Zeit gefährlich für dich selbst. Aufmerksamkeit. Die Insel ist warm und Sie denken nicht für sich selbst.
(6) The Velvet Underground are smaller than me. I have under-estimated how tall I climb underneath the windows where the imaginary curtains hang, hang like a prison warder, his coat heavier than a sin, his evening sadder than a song that couldn't wait until midnight.
(7) Teh Vletev Nuredgorndu looks Slavic. Is another way to spell the wild wild west coming for us, coming around the corners of 1967, then I remembered. They don’t want to kill the Commies, they want to kill the enemies within
(8) The Don’t Give a Shit Blues. The juvenile delinquents. THE HOLIDAYS THEY JUST RETURNED FROM TO FIND EVERYTHING A MESS. oh my goodness. They’re SO skinny, THOSE boys and girls need FEEDING. Those BOYS AND GURLS need feeding.
Elijah McCready and Sons, Wine and Spirits Merchant, Est. 1903
It's electric blue sirens for supper
following death by Pawnee
or whoever old whitey fucked around in America
on celluloid today. That's fine Elijah, pour me just a single malt.
Oh those yesteryears Elijah,
they take my collar-bone love songs
for a jaunt along dream-stricken boulevards,
oh, that lonely girl walking that thing that used to be a dog.
What's it like living in that shadow? the shadow of sons leaving college
stuck behind sun-smeared wood,
pouring whiskey for loggers, killers, circle-shouldered fishermen,
pale and sour-milk moon hiding so far up in that sky?
The restaurants are vampires, Elijah.
Waiters hide behind trees carrying torches,
hunters carry fire, the beauty of a woman who trickles
past us in Paris-scented streaks
fills my guts up to my collar, and again I am born, free to slide
into these boulevards/sidewalks/or Els Carrers bleached
into Sunday by their Moroccan odours.
So it's electric blue that skims the borderline across the taxi's smile,
coming in like the cavalry
to rent out my life for poets to un-stitch,
BIG LONELY LEMON LIGHTS
coming in... coming in...
hovering over the Friday shows,
bingo for the sick and the lame,
murder for the grease-clawed motorbikes,
the Lone Ranger, Chris and me flattened on to Diputachio
at the address of a Count dying from lung cancer who needed that last laugh.
We drove the hired car back to the station, took a train to France,
hiding out by the beach, we slept there for seven nights and eight less days.
By day number four there was no-one I loved more, that could be you Elijah
or whoever this skeleton is
claiming your name and silver,
Thursday’s child full of shame
in hand-me-down tales of battle
Disco Music Will Someday Die
(1)
I’ve counted raindrops since moonfall,
nearly seventeen I conclude, a displaced chatter
of opaque pearls
with each trickling, windows
blinding every madman’s eye like butchers and failed surgeons
history keeps your lips tightened around.
(2)
Windows give us this solid precise silence,
yes, it's a front, visuals mean so much to an auteur, European from the late 1950s,
who, coated in wrinkles and cancer, stands close to 19 year-old stick insect blondes,
In ballet pumps, aloof.
Lest we forget, the internationals they trampled into a congress floor,
the universals encased in smoke from scorched and blazing forests -
how the animals ran for cover, how the water soaked and sparkled on the leaves.
(3)
The 11 a.m. sun arrives, hours late for parade,
no-one complains, its easiness
sleeps on my cherry-glazed floor, priests wish they were in exile
three doors away - Rotterdam had its museums, Rome had its wine -
Beautiful. Trouble’s gone, for today. Begin again.
That boy next door still talks to himself though,
four days running,
every sundown creeping home, head drowned in the delta blues.
(4)
The sun was so kind this evening, actually Uncle Todd, it smiled at me,
everything around it, on fire; should it have apologised for that forest blaze?
We find it easy to blame sun and moon, earth, fire, and water don’t we,
when we open our mouths, air drowns, light slumps unconsciousness,
the water burning like your raven’s soul, taken from the rib-cages of the moon
Let’s Drive, She Said
Look out from your office window, what do you see?
pale, teal, ultramarine, someone's soul passing high,
a carwash/baptism abrupt as still-standing staircases;
after this, demolished tower-blocks bow before their spines
from your office window, a soul that stops, looks down like the Prince of Monaco
inspecting guards on parade. What did our fair prince see? Except you,
so close to your desk you could touch it, had it still been there,
1971 long gone, the souls of rubble
on London wasteland, Salisbury Tower's hermit gathering reed, twig,
soggy, effete hereafter. Staircases remain. Trees shaved of their leaves.
It's a priest who hears a sin for every day, wonders how many years it takes to fill Hell
to its guts - the Padre got an abacus for Christmas, the nuns silently proud,
not that gifts are a mark of character, or of charity, not much use either way when you're
up to your hips in the slime of Hell.
A raincloud sometimes closes in on holy water, it's a chase Ford, Hawks, and Huston
knew so often they threw a silver dollar up at Heaven, watched it turn to a thousand raindrops
before Duke had reached bright and clear waters.
No-one is fooled into thinking it comes close, Zeus keeps score, nothing is more real
than that cool cool water, sticking like razor blades to your white cotton t-shirt
changing that flat-tyre along the highway.
Let's drive, she said, that was hours ago, she's nowhere to be seen
except in a dream, where silver dollars came chiming down from Heaven
making a stiletto thud on staircase wood on urban wastelands
God, 1961
God bless you O'Hara
as God blesses short order chefs, God blesses busboys
making footprints puddles do not conquer;
God bless bums on San Francisco sidewalks and listen up Mr. God this isn't even 11:21 pm.
fits in baseball,
God listens to John Coltrane and because God can be God everyday it can be 1961
God knows that splinters in picket fences
look at those hands Chad, someone who died for you
looked just like you,
he was the King of the Hill,
one thousand, nine hundred and sixty one years ago
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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