The Liminal Figures
For John Compton
A solitary man occupies the mirror-ball
on Friday nights, shattered like Lacan's infant jigsaws,
his moral aspects perched exact centre -
like a student from France who gatecrashes eyes
halfway through the news,
peacefully protesting armageddon
while a cop halfway up the ranks bashes his head open with little fear
of anything else
but further commendation -
time, being, feeling, exact centre like that blackboard
on trade-test transmissions where those two creepy fucks
serve some purpose
more so than freaking out
six year olds with homework on one side,
the psychedelic Seventh Seal, 1967-style, peering from the other.
No-one told me any of this, I was the centre of someone's world,
I did not fight, I did not hunt, I didn't light fires to ward off ice and snow
and the horrors of death's dream within me.
I was the centre of the universe and it made me nothing
when I stood in the centre of the street outside,
expecting all and everything
to stop
and notice.
I was graced that cops were so polite this side of town
Inertia 101
A mattress wedged on skirting board
like iron-lungs,
a moonlit sneer
three of them
lined like smoked mackerel
in a jagged tin
are emphasized by -
Ulick's car parked outside
as if little happened,
except weed, ash-end packed cans of supermarket booze,
a chase across rain-sodden fields doing things
students do on nights like these,
nothing in-between
soggy socks, the stinking inertia
of the inevitable rites of passage
I move my soul to the corner of this bedsit from.
Bridget wakes up early,
tells everyone how she likes to dance,
it was Pan who gave her these gifts,
how she will heal the universe through her art.
These are not the days of wine, Sweet Jehovah,
nor are these the days of roses
Love Song for the Year 2019
i.m. Ronnie, Michael, Joan, Eileen
We've surfed asteroids before -
no crystals ever sparkled like these;
We’ve strayed from astral spectrums before -
no planets spun like these.
Down, under that boardwalk,
music eases water's chills,
above us airplanes hanging like seeds
that flowers give
to reignite, to coat secondary roads in something
like that stadium shivered
from its lungs in 1978,
Argentina arriving to become immortals,
like now,
trains taking some of this into their own aether,
caramel wind and sand-grain truths
that I bring back to the archangels
at a desk minute-soaked and loitering
with tomorrow's Le Monde;
oh, how I wish for anything
but the knowing rain,
the rain that cannot be silent and grazing in its song
when that ewe
gave birth,
and we gathered round, electric in our music
Jesus Christ, Mr. Dubois,
and Those Dreams of Voodoo
For Conor Alexander Lynnott
Squally showers
bring gossip from tobacco plants,
young still, though rooted in original sin;
a farmer called Dubois checks his stock
like snakes shining under studio-lights
move through plastic skulls in horror movies
or representations of New Orleans voodoo
maybe 200 hundred or so miles
from these dreams I keep having
where tobacco plants look down on me
and all I see overhead are the dreams of Jesus
as he sits on a connection from L.A. Ex to Mexico
wondering about men named Dubois
and the strangest dreams that voodoo priests,
steam-punk writers, and quarter-backs laid-off with broken legs sometimes have
John Doyle - I like to write poems about Atletico Madrid, freight trains, and Roger Moore. Sometimes other stuff too.
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