Five Poems by John Doyle

 

Sound Techniques Studio, London : 1971

If he would have lived in the 17th Century, at the Elizabethan Court, together with composers like Dowland or William Byrd, he would have been alright

 

Robert Kirby

 

October's chilling lead-weight to his breasts,

October's milk-water nocturne starry-holes ale-brewed down northerly lines,

October's nothing-day spilled cold-tea dry-twig snapped-neck waltz,

October's doubt out of town dirt hung like outlaws on hourly-drugged strings,

October's heart badly tempered prayer for coal-shed sirens approximately,

October's tape rolling, him and St. John's analogue miracle, studio-roof cats,

October's simple submission, learning to love in 28 minutes ,

October has left us in love,

November's Rangoon rich

 

The Brothers Horwitz and Their Associate Mr. Feinberg

 

Joyless jackboot death-list hawk

seeks the Brothers Horwitz and their associate Mr. Feinberg

for questioning on the stance they’re presently taking.

 

Louis, Moses and Jerome respond by celluloid correspondence,

plugging tanks with creampie explosives

emasculating joyless jackboot hawk who seeks to make invisible the Tfutza.

 

Three blind mice it appear, last right up to the 1970s,

death-list hawk makes it as far as Berlin - before

his overture of eternal suffocation. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk...

 

 

A Stranger Animal

 

Old people are hardest hit

behind curtains

that paint falsehoods on black -

 

therefore I insisted my view was a non-neon

straight ahead; no ice, pour until

night drowns sundown,

 

all applauding

violet clouds' wingspan, hot-blooded flesh

after midnight;

 

the smell of trees, no horse-hooves close-by,

only disappearing iron-heels

tempers a sword physics locks with midnight's

 

falling ash,

rails brown as death in day,

ears and eyes that cower nearby

 

wondering if our beautiful boy will reign like rains again.

Gladys and Vernon say no,

let him fall from that tree, break his arm, be a man.

 

A stranger animal was that boy

who spent ten years pumping oil in a cortisone desert,

he gave me food, he gave me love, built a benzene blue-jean home

 

for Michelangelo’s tribes to take shelter from Satan in.

I knew the resurrection was coming, he’d plan to take sides with armies

he’d bet laundered Jersey cabbage against. I sat by the chapel until noon,

 

didn’t go in. I believe in God, that’s enough, no man of stinking easel

could tar and feather what they couldn’t take or leave.

But the man who turned runes to ruin, stone to blood from fire’s lustful water

 

walked by me, as I sat becoming metropolitan, an artisan, mortal iconography;

he ordered bagels, three black teas, carried a 1940s pamphlet from an iron-age

marked Socialismu. Was this the start of another broken age, a birthday card

 

burned like buffalo coming from flaccid wires to douse saltwater on his cage?

Like I said, a stranger animal - lips sewed to his tongue like a straightjacket bar-brawl

out of Memphis - Egypt that is, not Tennessee; nothing’s stranger than fiction

 

except that boy who chewed off his arm instead of breaking it,

wouldn’t let me find shelter for his dream,

or lift a curse that choked his mountain-side queen - half Stevie Nicks, half Lindsay Wagner

 

 

Song for Huzama Habayeb

 

If we sailed one by one knowing water was abundant

on a hidden sun,

if we were so small we could use our tribe’s border

to protect our shoeprints

from the mouth of the bloodied-wind,

if we danced so fast we could beat the song to the shelter at the extremes of the light,

then hold that thought and just breathe - does it all matter?

breathe first, the question need not argue with the answer

 

 

The Experiment

When MacLean meets wi’s freens in Springburn
a’ the roses and geans will turn tae bloom,
and a black boy frae yont Nyanga
dings the fell gallows o’ the burghers doon.

Hamish Henderson 1960

 

Men and women of the fields

untie the concrete shields from the wreckage

of the beast crash-landed on us carrying its payload

of sticks wrapped around sticks summoning

the power of death in the court of the single-tongued buffoon.

Unilaterally-speaking, this is not speech at all,

the European tongue did not quench its syllable's fire in one river

passing one house. The home we begin our experiment in

has windows that face north, south, west, and east. To burn the sticks

and provide warmth for the Winter months, we must face all vantage points

at the rising and the easing of the sun; The smoke that rises from the sticks

heads easterly in Spring, guides birds

from the southerly climes in June, the point of the beginning of man.

Other tribes will join, learning how to handle the scythe,

there are many tongues that give instruction, one tone, one voice is insufficient

for this experiment to work.

By the taming of the Roman wolf, Abyssinian sunrise sets to work,

the citizen of many tongues will burn the bundles down,

by the 30th day of April, we have cleansed the earth of remaining symbols -

the golden eagle wingless, rusted, the yolk and arrow snapped,

scattered listlessly across Europe’s peat bogs.

Across the wire speaking in tongues,

trans-global

international

experiment becomes an international norm.

Men and women of the fields lay down these scythes,

salute every colour of the sun. Conclusion: the experiment a success

 

Europe, November 2022

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.