My American Poet Friends Sure Don't Smile That Way
Nope. nor should they.
Because it's hard to smile broken-nosed three days after
fighting barflies over Thistledown's fallen steeds,
a superintendent hunting rent, bringing muscle
fresh from dishonourable discharge again,
hard to advertise summer school lectures online
when your mugshot is live on C.H.P. bulletins
saying approach this man with caution,
angeldust might be hidden on his person.
The cats I know wouldn’t dare smile that way
when mom brings them round for Sunday supper,
hand covering face driving past Barry Barickza,
giving D.U.I citations from here to Monterrey -
“Place a bet for me at Leopardstown” I ask ******* ****,
(remaining shameless to protect the guilty),
he blanks me, busy smiling for a Leaving Cert bio,
he rides off to Hell on his Arabian pure-bred,
leaves me trackside in Saratoga
waiting for C.H.P. to come
and weld those tingling cuffs,
like icicles choking my wrists.
Beauparc Level Crossing, County Meath, July 6th, 2023
Immediately what strikes you
is how clean, organised, everything is.
After death, you except symbols of horror -
a contorted face, tooth-stabbed limbs;
death, I feel, was equally as surprised, stalking battlefields,
slitting throats for gaslamp streets to mourn,
death too, swallows hard, eye to eye with
ghosts of iron, ghosts of zinc, ghosts of screeching wheels,
miles down a clean, perfectly peaceful track.
Shit just got real, my poet-in-arms told me
about a time he made it from the badlands, dragging what remained of his life.
Shit just got real,
in lands where orchards
could return to me, a voice of priests and nephews
photographing fearless 071s
The Low Days
The low days come down that valley
where uncles who remained free of sin or bloodied by silence
lived for a year or two, then moved on to Spain or France
or anywhere else they could take up Roger Waters' offer to sit on that beach
alone, dying from that smoker's disease.
These are how the low days congregate,
axle grease for a calendar stuck in second gear,
October welded on a wall last wall-papered when Nixon was Gangster-in-Chief.
These are the lowest of the low days,
war-time warnings kill my radio’s rosy-red cheeks,
my ration-book is all but a novelty
from a time when wars meant summers swimming with cousins in a joyful mountainside brook
Donnie James, Rio
A cooler fan yaps its alphabets away from sunsets on the bar,
like the one that got framed for taking out Fr Louis
when the feds were outside
putting bad karma on the fuse box.
I quit the job, Tuesday, 4:21pm - hours after claiming from the man free tropical fever shots,
I told them they could go fuck their dental plans,
no one needs teeth in Hell or even Heaven,
I knew how to stick it to the man
taking bulging bags of complementary soap
hanging open as I left the conference hotel -
screaming white hot murder
at fifth-gear taxis - no-one wanted to arrest me,
I was a toothless vampire
in a town that fell in love with Prohibition.
He's the first guy born after moustaches died to look good wearing one -
kid in the corner, Wednesday night, Jimmy Page sweaty shirt, Knebworth town,
going new-wave
on the swinging necks of those Beaujolais-drowned radio stars. Oh how they loved
to paddle-boat their way down the Swanee,
how they loved to put their hands in my pocket
and show me Baron Samedi sitting at the front of the locomotive
every time they’d broken the test-pattern’s heart.
The dollar bill was so fresh it had rigor mortis
six hours from Diablo City,
I looked like a Swiss heart surgeon with these sunglasses;
Theodore said so, using matchsticks to kick-start to the cool cool-breeze,
the mountain got itself one more story to take it to number eight,
I added another two to make it an even number,
putting everything else on a horse my true love and I
brought back from monsoon seasons a whole handbreak turn
after summer's boredom had ceased -
the rook ascending into Heaven,
folks who keep the Sabbath Day holy
praying for the passing of the funk.
I couldn't get them to fire me no matter how hard I tried,
the moon damned our glistened bodies
as I drove three blocks
from there,
worried my greasy tax-returns might catch fire
from fall-out parts of that neighbourhood were well used to by then;
each house said its prayers a long time before midnight,
but come every tomorrow those TV stations closed down, and it was all bets off.
I watched from three blocks away as Miguel and that woman from San Juan
walked upstairs holding hands,
that was as far as they got
after moonlight damned everyone else
still watching in technicolour,
rather than let something not yet written in the Bible
do their bounty-hunting for them.
There was the engineer's daughter,
her clown smiling like a nihilist, spine-wardly down in its grave,
there was Chief Sitting Bull
concrete-faced
in a crossword puzzle,
smelling a shakedown from 12 miles beyond the state-line,
there was a loose-lipped ex-marine called Nancy Dupree
who had a toy monkey banging cymbals together
she liked to call her up when she wasn't calling it her pet.
Donnie James (from Rio) was an electrician
who drank here a few times before, his bar-tab getting higher
everytime he forgot which way to close a swinging door - which way
to open a portal in a psychedelic black-hole -
he saved Theodore's life tonight,
telling him matchsticks only work on T.V.,
funnily enough when we switched the T.V. off
Sitting Bull was home from his tour of duty,
holding the engineer's daughter’s head in his fist,
praying for forgiveness.
Even the nihilist smiling in its grave
learned to forgive him, it should have learned to forgive itself -
golf, s’n’m, and cyclists’ rights advocates crushed his spirit before he’d met
Donnie James from Rio in the bar after Judgement Day -
after learning the rich and bountiful life that came from reading the bible,
he decided to at least try to learn about golf.
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