Four Poems by John Doyle

 

Ain't No Lifeguard at the Lake of Fire

After Rev. Gary Davis and Bessie Jones

Four horses turning wild and rider-less tell you sir, there ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire,

outlaw boys painting horses white whistling their blackened prayers

tell you sir, sitting near a cracking river,

there ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire, sir, no, ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire,

all those tins of paint in New York City, all those atoms blindfolded eternally, 

all those white collars fluttering at the Hamptons they'll all tell you sir, 

ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire, ain't no glory be to God 

from no White House cosplay, sir,

no, there ain't no glory be to God from no White House cosplay Sir;

If you brought your life back from the precipice of the city's growling speedometer,

you still won't be slurping Pepsi Cola by the lake of fire sir,  

you won't be slurping Pepsi Cola by the lake of fire,

the felons drowned in evil and dirty love and the hanging branches of cackling trees

will raise their screaming fingers and tell you Donny, there ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire,

no there ain't no church-house in no suburb to ease your boiling bones, sir, 

nowhere left on Earth or left in Hell to dishonor the lamb;

no sir, there ain't no lifeguard at the lake of fire.

Poem # 29431 - The Heat Cools Off Around 8pm

Otherwise it feels like Daytona, garbage-smoke thorny cloud, 

the breaking danger cheated in the raspy rain

before tonight harms my muscles - 

I watch these things pretend they fear me, I'm smarter than many things - 

ex-dreamers, ex-wives, ex-brothers, 

wizards and winos, none of you are reasonable assassins downtown, 

the garbage steals what noise it can, 

my television's my favourite kind of music, soft, in control, 

chewing alibis through its voltage - the television was hiding somewhere else 

last time we saw this movie. I know what intuition means, 

I heard Howie say that word in The Fall Guy in my motel room at 3am,

I bet that moon's been there too, as your dreams become desert blue, 

cool as tufts of jazz, wordless window,

winter's not a stranger in this town, cobalt rising.

Homing in on the creepy wrath of electricity

they married richer men than their daddies were to their own lovers, 

this sour morning's bedroom hopes that television would turn that dream away, 

waiting for the farmer's markets to stay undead, the orange juice at cuatro pesatas por favor, 

knowing I was a prisoner in many more poems, 

dirty sexy city, underwater when no witness would drown. 

The woman with the hairless head is colder than the city's broken sun, 

but her smile is cheaper than a hitman, 

holy nuclear taxi stealing her years from an unpainted masterpiece. 

I've been lucky to know these patrons of sunrise, 

praying to their coffee in their laundered language

I've decided I'll no longer travel through time, 

lest it be at the rate of one second per second. 

I have a wife and family now, two beautiful dogs, 

there's water here, and a view of the sierra 

that stretches until the human eye goes limp in awe,

I dream of France and cover my sleep in an oddness of magnolia.

Harry Dean Stanton, Michael Ironside, Lance Henrikson, Jonathan Banks -

have all been at one time occupiers of that same clutch of atoms floating around, 

that's where my loves and I choose to settle, smoke-dark refrain soft like jazz.

Gestapo 2.0

The wind inside a skeleton

warns of greater evil

than an ice-cold machine can do kick-started by 500 morning chin-ups -

this is an odd truth, seen as lesser life removes its fear

to splatter winter's cackle on a wrought-tongued press-conference play;

I've mentioned this, as blame is miniscule, death is dumb and furious 

as a drunken horse - uniforms are visual noise -

they have nothing to bring us 

except a need to create weird ghoulish poetry 

from ice around their lips

squelching lesser-life in these master-race snowfalls.

Fertile earth soon soothes the skeleton

who spent its previous life shielding elements of being - 

in these lives heartbeats gain meaning, fingers wound by plants drawn from soil,

water carried from holes where sand is king, and machines pumped on venom

stare down from that whitewashed grimace of wall -

I'm a swarm of wasps

who let utopia fuel the city's horror.

These are the bones from which dreams wrap their icicles around,

Gregory's drooling pension plan, Jonathan nursing phantom wounds - all wrapped in that tattered truth they stood before, Stars and Stripes ragged on that white frozen-breeze.

The Time the Good Lord Saved My Ass Crossing 5th Into Main

Stammering dream on this flinching surface

I lost touch with, years before my mouth mounted

another wicked moon

further from these vaults, where vision snared terrestrial fox and deaths of cowboys,

where beers on Friday and technicolour funerals

knelt down to wrap their blankets round me, 

shallow and shivering

in my shadow's blotted horizons,

where I held a pistol if it was a rose between my teeth, 

bloated as a man called Rodrigo Dominguez

in a 19th century duel

avenging another dream I drowned outside church,

fingerprints clasping at a witchery of time,

all of these prayers I prayed

'til water laughed upon my knee,

a poet who drove his Chevrolet

to the cackles of the desert,

where I dropped my knees

in opposite gods’ alchemy,

knowing somehow that dog who followed me 

through a dump in County Meath as I shystered folk with home security scams

was God almighty himself,

thumbing a ride home. 

I sat beside him in that Chevrolet, hair corresponding to our nearest October breeze.

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.