Kilcock : Mid-Winter, 4:48pm By John Doyle

Guess what; Clarabelle’s right : there was a telegraph pole still standing -

it sneaks beside a shotgun rider freewheeling that bridge

I can't say much about for now, 

for my poem may not be as careless with its decisions as this guy reversing his tail into me, 

town holding me like a babe smeared by grey, dark already I see, 

train lights brighter than a blizzard mooching the breeze.

If I was someone else I'd hate them even more, 

that's just how logic works. 

Failure's overrated. 

Archimedes knew, a summer night's worth more with skulls scattered in the bush, 

than that sweaty boy who tugged at my hand saying let's go bitch.

War's part of our landscape now, the new breed of policeman's coming. 

My coffee had been cold about a year if I’d learned to count in old money,

and my florins fell harder to the taboo-shattered floor - than her heels 

had screeched across my chrome-mothered desert,

oh boy, nothing’s big in the cinemas no more, 

the hospitals are begging the dead to set their electricians free and when they do 

I'll arrive, egg down a shirt I've hardly worn more than twice,

my briefcase carrying absolution 

for those wicked dreams of Manhattan.

They say the collar matches the cuffs if the boy taunts his saviours with Sagittarius, 

it didn't please me to say I'd hated him so much murder would've been a breach of contract.

I'll say this much, Key Largo's real beautiful when its weather's playing dumb,

the raining shines on two-lane black tops, yellows and reds smudged through

a home in a dark Pollock, Picasso may turn less feral for;

I guess my left hook’s as weary as the jab from my right, nothing much was there to begin with, 

to drag my shadow home to what the wolves knew as the day and the night, 

Sonny Liston weeping down the wires, 

turpentine puddles -

those soot-breathing sisters of the apocalypse, so many, sadly so few -

gathering their pearls they hum eerie melodies, 

white light grabbing dresses they fill intentions with;

for when I see them I'll sing a sweet adieu, to a sailor who warned me about the evils of happiness, 

for a strand of hair I tugged from a muddy dirt-road, I'd intended to rebuild all again from, 

moon shining slippery smiles of soot-breathing sisters, hunting in packs of elsewhere's sorrow.

Daddy eats his gravy, got his shotgun by his knee, 

grabbing chunks of darkness with his fists, 

he begs Muddy Waters not to die -

hearing Belton Sutherland pure as the rust on the river, 

think I'll stop my wheels and listen, start a conversation with the moon,

the Devil is lonelier than the shit on my shoe

I hear almighty Jesus holler through the delta, the devil is lonelier than the shit on my shoe…

Half man, half creature of very odd habit, John Doyle dabbles in poetry when other forms of alchemy and whatnot just don't meet his creative needs. From County Kildare in Ireland, he is (let's just politely say) closer to 50 than 21.