St. Blaise Taught Me How To Sing the Blues
The house-band's name suggests support act - eternally;
I heard it's an urban myth worms become two separate beings
when chopped in half, maybe Walt Whitman said that,
maybe it was Dorothy Parker.
"I did little on the Sabbath" I told my boss on Monday -
"held up Wells Fargo, shot that Bannerman leaving church,
made Marcus Aurelius question everything he'd learned", little else, I told him;
I see him slumped in a fugue state at the water-cooler,
Sunday means not that much to me.
There's a stallion weeping in subterranean seasons,
what he keeps me alive for I don't know,
Lord, oh mighty Lord, I am low on temperance and good cheer today.
There's a body in this house un-built, rusting, blood turning to steamy potions;
top on Frank Lloyd Wright's diary entry
for the year of our Lord, whenever - is this house might come to life -
there's a dream tomorrow night
of me sleeping with a cactus-tree for a friend,
it's Friday night's movie show that shapes bricks without mortar
in an angel's flint and sulfer head,
there's a box outside a general store in 19th century badlands,
inside the box lies a body, a sign says "killers beware",
inside the head of the body in the box are dreams of houses built,
children on faraway hills, faceless - faceless but fast and moving.
That stallion stopped weeping when he'd seen me
learning to read and write
with a blind-man's lonely and depraved daughter,
the stallion knew Aurelius had something,
something they could bottle and take in their wagons to Kansas.
The sky looks mostly like it was
when I was a millionaire - Levis blue, lazy, content -
as sometimes I watched Alan Ladd from yearly paces,
how he crushed through crispy pine
becoming man at the corpse-chilled hissing stream,
no creature's tenure short nor lost of meaning.
I watched him weave like a wizard, leaving his wallet -
made from the skin of Satan - on that rock of ages
in the curtained loom of weakened smoke, that man of chiming centuries.
Fatso with a sawn-off appeared from behind to blast me away,
I saw his numerous chins ripple on that breeze,
I finished his epitaph cousin Samuel started typing in 1891,
a dead man's face seeping tomorrow from my fingers.
It didn't bother him for many years
that every man was called his brother, every sister was his brother too,
his mother was his brother when jury duty came a-knockin,
his father was nothing to him though, watching B-Movies murder A-Movie stars
and touching himself inappropriately
as Grizzly wrestled mom for a dollar’s worth of garbage - oh! how his lover laughed…
It didn’t bother me
that for many years I was a coward; setting crickets free
from boxes at the general store was until then
my one achievement travelling writers took note of.
Leaving my carriage, I see her kind face and honest eyes and say goodbye.
Alexandria told me her lover had shaved off all he had,
this upset her, so she left his dowry and unkindness behind.
Alexandria's kind face and honest eyes -
how could any man do that to her?
Her family will purchase a plot of land, she said,
they plan to build a new hotel,
bring something to this town that may please the almighty,
something mentioned on page twenty-six
in the book of Saint Blaise
who taught me how (and when)
to sing the blues. I holler back to Alexandria
as I jump from the moving carriage,
I tell her I can sing the blues,
that I’m pretty sharp these days on the upright piano…
Mise-en-scène
"And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers/But all that lives is born to die"
Led Zeppelin "That's the Way", 1970
I saddled up outside the lounge,
saw a slaphead from behind,
thought it was Rosewall Hensley -
I slithered into the bar,
surprised I was still fastest on the draw;
another soldier wept there, hammered like a nail
sleeping underneath a train,
I almost went over to re-introduce myself, then Hensley walked in -
it was the wrong slaphead I'd incriminated
sitting in the lounge.
Real Joe Mannix shit, this is turning out to be.
The slaphead I'd be firing blanks at,
sits beside Maria Ramirez
the local queen of jitterbugs and Fall-Time roses,
telling her every reason never to think about winning an Oscar, for every script
she misquotes from - he seems like a pleasant fellow, maybe a tad curt.
I'll get a dream out of this
if I ever teach myself the wicked sin of sleep,
my Tai Chi guru's pulling out his hair
from a window upstairs somewhere,
squeezing blood from the broken-shouldered moon,
a man, who for many years to come
will burn his trigger finger
on luke-warm and clueless light bulbs
The Smoke, The Moon, The Soft Soft Rain
Clanranald Road and Clanawley Road, Dublin.
March, 3rd, 2023
Hollywood connections
lock shut - lives who
fade soon
as camera pans away,
not smoke,
not moon,
not soft soft rain, all of these sparks to my senses,
alphabets that speak of stolen angels, hidden in dusk-dusted blues;
Friday's flight to Saturday's lights
shields this sidewalk -
look at me -
holding out, camera still suspicious;
everyday I sets myself a few simple tasks -
get that hairy ass outside kid,
do some shopping,
grab some coffee, French bread-rolls hot from the oven,
returning from the track
a week before the plagues of lighting struck,
lying low in Nice and Cannes,
writing-paper curling at its sides.
When the cheque arrived in Grace and Rainier's second-favourite bar
he said, "let's go halves", I went full and damned his eyes,
those green lizard eyes which said so much and meant so little;
he texted later to say we had nothing in common.
I didn't argue -
his twitchy fear of all-things warm
like a post office-clerk or serial killer
evading everything in this life except
those fingerprints God gave him in 1978.
I met a girl called Miss Amanda Jones soon after,
by 1969 Hell's Angels
were muscling round her boss's
turf as well,
collar deep in the devil's hymn-sheet.
I never seen Amanda or her maid
Miss Tiffany again, after her Bugatti broke down fleeing the Guardia Civil,
she flashed her legs and the Hell's Angels
came and she hopped on, Amanda waiting behind
to accept her faithlessness. She called me long-distance,
said "grab a shovel and dig deep as Hell at that Joshua Tree."
Today I read of her swinging light-bulb from a cracked ceiling scenario,
milkmen prowl streets shrouded in the end of days.
Dancing days will soon be here again,
I look at the railway tracks, the sun is rising in 15 hours time,
Nilfisk flasks ebbing tea in the avalanche of dirty white vans
like sea bullies harbour
in the mold of wild-child
and the pigeons in the park.
Days run shorter - don’t I know - when Summer grows;
It's a tragedy too, how much love comes through our windows
in the morning, breathtaking blues of fading faces
in cafes, in Montmartre - Summer like that old man
face-first on the pavement,
ambulance neatly tucked in behind him
on the sun’s stomach so heavy
it could never rise again with any meaning -
buried by the dirge of evening,
stealing angel's names from my dog and me.
No-one steals even a shilling this evening -
from the smoke, the moon,
especially the soft, soft rain.
I think that's what's stands us apart
from the salesmen
and from the murderers -
no-one steals nothing
in a concrete palace blessed by the blues,
they reach their palms to the dreams of cedars,
drink their water from the cups of the Lily. This is everything we need - no more
Østerbro
I wish I’d bummed-out more often,
left showering and shaving as something
for people in the army to concern themselves with. I wish I'd left a simple tribute,
a smile or the meaningless milage of the sparest of spare change
down on the finite stop-signs of pool table and bastard-hard bar counter.
I wish I'd played that game more often, killed her lover,
left her behind when she expected me to push her in the bonnet.
This isn't 1974 I told her, I'd rather wear slacks than jeans.
The morning's more bummed out than me
it's nice to see. No, it's not nice to see,
me and this city's mornings could've been real real close
if my heart was soft like a maid’s
John Doyle - I like to write poems about Atletico Madrid, freight trains, and Roger Moore. Sometimes other stuff too.
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