Five Poems by John Doyle

 

Eric

The moon's angry tears

drizzle down several years in a district of his face

 

 falling to calm his serpents

 as it could not yield to children of its own.

 

 He picks litter from a haunted street this morning

 and none of us believe this wild lightning and mystery soaked word

 he tries to explain

 the other words he stole from the clouds with

Vulnerable

“Let me be on my own/Let me rock/Let me roll”

R.B.S.

I thought about how vulnerable I could be sleeping on my neck 

when it's cold in some rejected car some reject of life's rules and regulations

took home with him after taking pity on some salesman 

rejected by his wife and child

who forgot why they'd entered this world of lilting neon shades 

melted by a song the angel of death

wept upon hearing and swore never to be so vulnerable again. I asked

why did the chicken cross the road 

because nothing was left to present new and strange young things to him 

underneath that street-corner sign written in Helvetica

that hadn't tried to murder him. 

He slept that night alone in that car, 

his neck entombed in a world unknown,

hours after rock n'roll music was an intergalactic 

dream he'd been left so vulnerable and naked

wandering around in

Song for Augusto Pinochet

Your lyrics can be strung from shards of Jara's hands maybe?

a keening lament from wind-swept friends

whose intestines

feed creatures of the sewers?

Maybe an arrangement bold and true from artillery casings

the villagers mark their path to armageddon with?

an orchestra clad in officers' garbs 

you serenade Satan with, on a perpetual stateless visit?

Maybe too, if time and eternity's willing,

you and Maggie can return and waltz across your own graves,

maybe watch as no-one sees you,

your footsteps haunted by the song-less silence

which fades to your fatal coda,

withering the lights from your face?

Let Limache untune your guitars,

strip its strings, stable your guilt to your bones,

let Colina rupture the keys in your piano,

make Frankenstein relics of your soul

from their splinters,

let Santa Cruz turn off all its light

so darkness shines like molasses

on your rock-laden blues.

Let every song of Chile and every song of sky-bound devotion

become a song that brings living to the silence,

maybe a note of dissonance too,

that remembers to deafen each moment

you believed

you could grasp at your slumber

Song for Frank Kitson 

Do all men kill the things they do not love?

William Shakespeare

Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond/Frightened the reign of Chaos and old Night

John Milton

My dreams - all classified today; on waking, crown secrets remain crown's shame -

these startled sheets

which cleanse scowling clocks a mausoleum you might say, 

where Godliness sails on rural ponds and

dawn's native birds nibble Mau Mau testicles on Saintlyshire's bowling lawns,

invisible from my stiff-upper lipped glare,

I thank them, white-chested and summer-lunged, 

making songs

my kith and kin establish Sundays from, gospel-jawed

baked-beans boy-scouts

removed from beastly urges - 

standing tall, erect. I thank them all, future V.C. holders, 

a little piss dribbling down their shorts. 

I salute these bleeding Sabbaths,

dreams withdrawn from active service

who tried to breach this loyal and steadfast outpost

when I pray. I know the Lord will spare these memories from me, 

shellshock dreams declassified, 

thundering through my wicked casket,

though mum, I must say,

it ain’t half hot down here, down in this fiendish layer

“They Are the Glue That Holds Us All Together…”

Nowhere in the sparkles of my thoughts 

did I seek your love

or build a road you'd judge strangers' jellied bodies on,

apart from insect-shapes of shadows' days

people who fell from your stomach

gave darkness a chance to steal their passports from,

centuries whispered in your teeth

I've, quite recently, brought my dangling hours back from -

rewinding and rewinding,

I find the speech that sparked the sulphur

that made me peer into the fires,

where you and your rifle-stench matrimonial garbs

still pray you'll get closure from,

weaving stolen wedding gowns

in the grooves of your sucklings' 

shallow majesties.

You are the glue that holds this empire together,

rabbit-tooth Queen Victoria,

hunting for your Bertie's whereabouts

around the crunching sod of the moon-bleached backwoods,

stench of shotgun smoke

and waft of pornographic liquor,

and boys you combed through hairs of gold

preaching to distant kin

of stop-signs

at leaf-drooping crossroads - alphabets’ angry little Judas, stiff as bells of death

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.