Three Poems by John Doyle

 

Adultery in the Gardens of Towns a Minefield's Walk From Paris

And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep

Kurt Vonnegut

Birds teach cinematography

to their starving young, it's warm and water-blue at dusk

when they mimic dust's voices crawling across a cinema screen,

something I don't see, I was Hollywood's biggest disappointment

gas station girl tells me, she says she'll start again at midnight, go to 

college out west,

she giggles and kills her lollipop,

It means a lot to me.

I say "hello handsome" to my Mustang's ignition and Brownsville Girl

explodes

inventing new electrics in wolves’ wonderful eyes,

I've got Kelly on the wire,

a small town graveyard near my hip where headstones lie flat

so God knows their names before they get there.

God is a good guy.

There's lots of bugs in different sizes that spend a lot of time

saying little in the sand,

put together they've turned into a lizard's horoscope,

the lizard's winnings look good this Thursday, just don't let C.H.P.

see who's behind the wheel, brothers.

I've turned my car around 

making a Holy Ghost effigy in a solar system of dust,

man, I swore I saw James Drury taking a leak in that gas station can,

a bus was stalling on great patience 

outside that diner where that gas station 

knew its limits, a guy, about yay high, 

signing autographs for a mother and her daughter - he wasn't James Drury.

Maybe I should wash my hands, 

it's coming up that time of year

I file my taxes, make myself clean. 

A motorcycle takes off to seek its fame,

its engine’s its only evidence any of us exist,

getting rich on heaven's coffee colour

mocking men who talk of blue 

being the way night-time feels when it's shot by Jack Palance 

and contemplating dying. Zimmerman's roadie told me how to change a tyre 

without seeing stars from coming back up too fast. 

I looked for my feet slower than I should

missing Jesus driving Bob to a thanksgiving supper.

I'm sad it wasn't James Drury pissing in that can,

dude knew how to deal with things nature throws us,

maybe I'll see Violet D. Hernandez

heading off to college,

I had no idea how many buses pass by here.

Sleeping under stars

it's still too hot to take my vest off,

I'm worried the weather may send someone to kill me, sunglasses, a pork pie hat,

a pro going legit 

who's only regret 

is that he'll soon be murdered by cancer.

It seems impolite not to let him get his shot,

I'll drift off learning how to read and write,

for the latter maybe some songs floating around on fireflies' hoods and bonnets,

for the former there's a book I bought in a pharmacy when I needed penicillin more than I needed

the validation of my peers,

something about the bourgeois and their ways of getting down 

and depraved in an age

I guess is creeping up on me,

something 791 pages long about adultery 

in the gardens of towns a minefield's walk from Paris.

Depth of a Ladies Man

January 16th, 2026, somewhere near midnight

I never said he was beautiful, I said he’s sexy -

this appears to be an invite for me to walk back in, join friends I don't have,

hello riches of tomorrow; 

lights loom down into my bones

and above me swells a brave and hollow witness 

to midnight's flowers and Dante's ugliest music,

dogs' barks tearing open a wound in heaven I can forgive them for;

this gives me my decoy and I hop on the boxcar and cross the border,

at a town full of leeches in jars and boys with faces lemonade sickly.

Rain Sweeping in From Mount Fuji, October 24th, 1976

The blue light, Helvetica’s confession, rainy lamps electrocuting the surfaces of truth, 

from this dark-mouthed visage

I take an exit to evening's drizzly comedown,

I have been someone today, a fleshy form of evidence that occupies my name

given to me by law and love and the spirit in the holy water

chilling the alibis of the sacred neon.

It was coming, the rapture, cigarette smoke hiding us from its loose-cut fangs, 

cars neatly parked behind its grocery store's dreaming eyes, 

where even if I'd been dreaming I’d have had to walk away.

Even in a dream I have to walk away 

passing the dark music of the tiny river, its flies dangling on thin evening water.

Rain sweeps in upon me, my clothes, the alphabet of my name,

like rain sweeping in from Mount Fuji, October 24th, 1976, 

when Hunt and Lauda knew Gods from ghouls;

my electric animals have no place in a war-zone like this,

my electric flesh can do my hunting for me, 

night making night more than dark, more than lucent.

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.