Five Poems by John Doyle

 

The Church of the Rolling Stone

Some 1980s Glam-Metal guy

suggested Kurt Cobain should've "changed his name to Jones,

hung low for a few months,

then he'd still be here now."

The option of walls pebble-dashed in brain matter

doesn't look a superior option

to everyone assuming

the body and the blood 

of the garbage-can messiah

is an offspring

of someone three doors down who lies 

about being the descendent of Mr Smith's partner in crime -

me just putting some dandelions

on the grave of an old school teacher.

I didn’t like the old doc that much, in fact I hated his guts.

I know I wouldn’t have told him to change his name

and ride past the Rio Grande before sundown though,

I had better things to offer men who sinned less than me,

offering alms made from shrapnel

at the boarded-up doors

of the church of the rolling stone

Saturday 

Sunshine arrives without warning,

is there anything I can do to stop it? Nothing

but clutch my breasts, make sudden gestures

that swell Field-Marshal's egos, make blood turn to water

to quicken their retreats -

all alone,

as it casts itself upon me.

Sun made me reach for stars 

that died a trillion years ago, sun stood back

to mock me, gave my shadow its confessor

via headmaster's strap or school-yard shakedown,

that fiery eye of celestial judgment, taking the devil's shillings -

who burned every calendar for this,

clatter on muffled hooves from from the glens

into my village, my homestead, and friary - where light does not

enlighten - it betrays.

Saturday;

dominion of this searing spotlight.

Thursday's homely tongue

tattoos skies in colours no-one knows,

in feline algebra all down my 

bolt of lightning spine -

Saturday morning sun,

fading heart 

that punctures itself with thorns -

no crown of thorns from infidels,

this wicked necklace the devils

make, to deflate a smoking shadow

Black Pill Hog Swill (An Entitlement-Complex Incel Foresees His Death)

That no-one's fingertips soften scripture 

stabbed into oak,

that no man's sunrise roll-call siphoned spite from his ear,

that no swear word broke in half a heart no different to his rib,

that no song hung on water's skin washed an apocalypse from a cheerleader's teeth,

that no town dangling from a cobweb on a clock repented from his sins,

that hope a father, a mother and an ankle-high crop had

wandered to dust from womb's shivering alms...

swallow sorrow, 

swallow lust, 

swallow spit begotten of a curse,

go backward and be conquered,

for thine is the desert, 

the weakness 

and the failure

The Nightingale of Lancashire

Newspaper article from June 1925, about the accidental electrocution of a nightingale and other creatures in a field near St. Helens

It must be that I am not made to be a dead man, but these places and this discussion seem like a dream, and not a dream dreamed by me but by someone else still to be born

Jorge Luis Borges

On a malfunctioned road in systems of skulls

my letterbox kisses the lips of the angel who brings death;

electricity has done worse I'm sure they think,

poets are off at wars, dying in their gentrified scourge,

songs of innocence dressed in bonnets,

or rowdy men sipping stout who draw your song with harmonicas -

the nightingale's song gone forever,

scored in stumps of mice laid swollen with death beside it,

a lark, gone as well, trembling in your muted coda.

They forget - those lords and masters of death, and noose-tightened despair,

that I shake and shiver inside time, around it, 

and I do not switch on death's illuminations, death beware -

the nightingale is music, and eternity is a song,

the nightingale's song I loosen my letterbox with;

and now that you are immortal, little one and friends,

I'm setting you free to soften angels of death

who dangle from wires

where no music softens their fall

The Queue

Pour Monsieur Baptiste Martin, Angers, Bretagne : Août 2023

What we see here are people and things and shapes of life's desire 

to be anything it can or cannot be. 

That sounds deep, doesn't it? 

Kids back in Thebes used words like deep when sitting on walls 

pondering if someone might ever invent things like skateboards or harness electricity.

The only deep I knew was endless, fathomless, 

could crush God and Satan, 

could end us all. 

When I look around us, I see people and things and shapes 

that make me believe we could end this tyranny that threatens dry land: 

Basque language tennis club jerseys, 

the Labate family checking in for their flight to Ontario, 

fat people, 

sickly people, taxis fighting each other like gladiators 

near that sidewalk over to the church.

I met you at the church, your cases worldly with promise, 

missing tennis racquet and illicit potato chips alone, 

most other things you need were shaped in air-pockets beside you :

the word of the Lord tattooed on clouds,

people, things, animals, and breath;

for with those last four, there is hope,

a lot of hope, a lot of speech and things that uncrush God, 

carve Satan in antiquity.

Bonne chance, we say,

knowing your shapes and your things are shatterproof as shadows,

warm as nations

made from dwindling airport queues

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 7 poetry collections published. His 7th collection, "Isolated Incidents" was published by Pski's Porch in Summer 2021.