Song (Budapest :1889) by. John Doyle

Switching off Mahler feels like murder - he tells me;

He's another functional dipso, culture gives these dipsos a kind of faux-gravitas,

murder usually doesn't stink

if the wicked winds of sorrow and wet towels on empty beds invade its spatial etiquette.

I look square within this mirror, I want it to know who exactly it’s dealing with - at least 37 of my 42 years respond in kind,

I'll forget those first five, maybe that's when things happened that made me who I am right now -

body parts re-attached in its dour concrete reflections, foreign objects cursed in tribal customs. I was a useless witch doctor.

I've switched the radio off - I am alone and I stink, the sun does not love me nor does it hate me; that's not its job.

I am alone and I've murdered Fred Chopin, these days my greatest sin is listening to everything he tells me, his laughter

sandpaper-tuned, that one last ream coarse and vicious to its touch.

The gulg gulg gulg is the only language he can master, it’s crude, but gets its job done,

and my ears perched like two hummingbirds aware they’ll be shot beneath the cedar trees at the perch of dawn -

their bubbling music gushing symphonic blood. It hurts me to leave a ballroom in the middle of these rhapsodies, like it’s Budapest in 1889,

and I’m about to drink brandy for the first time with a secret Hapsberg

John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch. 

He is based in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. All he asks is that you leave your guns at the door and tie up your horses before your enter.