POETRY SHOWCASE: JOHN DOYLE (APRIL 2023)

Bio:

John Doyle is originally from County Kildare in Ireland, now based in Dublin. He works as a magazine reporter, and has had eight collections of poetry released since 2017. He hopes to have his first novel released this year. His favorite word is “fink”, and his favorite phrase is “we’ll head them off at the creek, you saddle up some fresh horses”.

I am like a drop of water on a rock…
Rigoberta Menchú

Belfast’s middle-classes control a section of highway that remains steadfastly neutral,
football stadium roofs remain isolated from words, 
thoughts, sinful deeds that may send us a time-capsule 
we formed a human-chain to keep buried -
in perpetuity.
Working-classes check messages on mobile phones, on railway lines 
clicking their purpose into jigsaw-pieces of city-scape
mountain-side used to keep under lock and key,
messages that tell them illness has passed, illness has come,
messages yet to be seen in cars 
that pass on roads that know better than iron-horse relics,
swimming in the sonic sermons of evening’s promise,
on waves and waves 
the skeleton dug into the mountain proclaims.
Everyone in Belfast knows this, me a stranger who listens from purgatory,
not too pushed about that green, orange, and stoic-red 
that slows me into all their collages

To Be in Japan

Wednesday : 11:39pm, a day hands
profundity, peace, on its way to forever. NHK documentary features a man of many ages
living many times in many aeons, cycling bootcut streets to his rewards -
obedient dog, galactic radio-wave inquiries, rest, solitude.
If men lesser than time and space 
stood outside their dutiful wisdoms,
if men greater than howling clocks and vicious asteroids stood beside him
in prayer - dowsing sunsets, then I believe we may not have these times at all,
to make it on the path to midnight, make other worlds, 
other days of erudite tornados, foolish drownings. 
Something else made its way up bootcut streets, something time
hands over to forever, sealed like state-secrets, 
forbidden to generations.
The ledge measuring all and more he hands me as I drift on Thursday's galactic psalms,
mourning closedown does not occur to me -
closedown slipped away on a kind, grinning asteroid

Rory
23rd birthdays are seen as miracles now, 
seeing this great disease 
catch the breath of Mother Earth.

Another disease re-appears - from the breadth
of a once-roaring bear. Mother Earth, 
your boy of fluent tongues

hears it too -
that you are bleeding.
Making 23 summers 

seemed like little to us,
music we'd die for back then
leaves us little but shame,

but then - 
we have at least 24 more to reflect back,
remembering when - and which ears were to blame.

Rory’s songs are shrapnel chords
shredding down the scales
of flat and heartbroken towns,

Heartbreak Hotel boarded-up 
and War Pigs suckling 
from Volga's festered nipple.

Long past 23 we’ll sit Tolka-side,
watching sun's resurrection
make his song

Mother Earth’s eternal ripple;
the breadth of her ceaseless lungs 
widened - by the misneach from his…

Violet

The true militant suffragette is an epitome of the determination of women to possess their own souls
Emily Davison

St. Andrew kindly handles
lonely soil after poor John Clare
forgot where he’d left his pen,

though poor Violet we're told
had something rotting in her soul,
not something Mother Earth had implanted,

no-one knew where, no-one knew when.
When that window smashed, nothing was left but a gash 
our brave-brave men cowered as an ill Duke's

powers granted mercies to our Violet there and then.
Oh how grateful we are, her hysteria won't spread near and far,
give her to St. Andrew's loving arms -

who’d nourished poor John
when he left the farm -
St. Andrew vows to keep Violet safe - from further harm;

that silly girl who brought shame and alarm,
means Europe must show some pride and 
lock-up those from far and wide - 

those different ones
the master-race
must now seek to hide. Silly silly little girl.

Ben

It’s a wonder that you still know how to breathe
Bob Dylan, 1975

Barbie's beautiful lover-boy bleaches everywhere 
south of the border,

Yul Brynner's missing manhood sits on top, 
conquest complete, 

Barbie's not feeling herself today,
loverboy's fingertips sawn in half by magicians hired by the mob.

Ben's to blame, who'll stand up, who'll call him out?
Ben's a big-talker, sidewalk-stalker, 

Ben inside his New Hampshire nest hands you diamond rings, hands you potions and spells,
when all you wanted from Ben was to know someday you’d be loved.

You ever wonder if he noticed -
that now he blows so hard, the smoke's coming out of his own ass?

Barbie's down at the post-office
writing people she wants to dislocate,

Barbie's sent a telegram to Ben,
telling him to send that alimony alibi

in crypo-currency
instead of sending it twenty years too late -

Ben’s on his knees
cleaning that smashed-up priceless vase,

it’s from the William McGonigall Dynasty
he says, another potential client burning smoke on their heels