John Doyle

9173, 1803, 0094

by John Doyle

9173 was my ID code for work,

instead of typing in my name, I'd type in this number,

get paid, be this unrustable machine.

Patrick McGoohan would've been so proud.

1803 was the alarm code for some shithole I lived in,

it was south of the city,

junkies, arguments,

takeaway smells upstairs.

People told me romantic tales of the southside of the city,

women were called "Penelope" there,

smelled like Milan,

men drove Porsches, wore white collars and yellow cuffs.

From my window I saw a guy drive past—

looked just like King Carlos of Spain.

Fancy that.

0094 is some random number

I just wrote down.

It could also be a number someone's throat

gets slashed for

in 4-minutes time.

The clock is ticking—

is it you,

do you even have time to read

this next poem?

Postfontaine

by John Doyle

Oregon, Saturday May 31, 1975

A casket is immediate on this curve,

stone-chipped finish,

distinct from gold—

a quartet of spinning wheels

mark a blood-red descent towards town;

night is mysterious and heavy,

short of breath; its stopwatch

beats to a rhythm of worn-out eyes,

signals getting

slower and slower—

Montreal is,

Montreal was,

Montreal

will never be.

The wheels stop spinning, eyes go out—no action replays

Conclusions

i.m. Kevin Moran (1930 - 2020)

by John Doyle

A few coffee mugs

cease clinking, stains curdle their yearly snowfall—

ABBA rehearsing supper's encore since 1978,

Derby County - League Champions 1974/1975—

game abandoned due to deaths, taxes—the usual.

Cats reason with me,

a few hardened sausages land their way—

life being its hard callow-self, hands like raisins, coffee-stained,

elderly mugs too, in mourning—

seeping glory;

Six bottles of stout a glassy ghoulish-brown

will keep his head above water, until my return—

Derby County and ABBA mugs, starving cats

who must reason with me—

things he doesn't remember

enough to forget

Phillip

by John Doyle

Phillip’s sage Frankie tunes us in to Kurt the Cunt,

funny way to grace Sundays, south Dublin witnessing Copenhagen’s dark descents. Phillip’s upstairs making strange noise

accompanied by his wife—your sister sometimes—when she’s not making you crash your car

tuned into passive-aggressive phone calls.

Hoochie—such a placid dog—trots half-moon shapes

on middle-class Dublin’s eighth most desired garden—

according to your dad,

carrying a hand grenade in his chest that soon will make redundant your civil wars.

Phillip’s still upstairs.

All I need to know is what those noises are. Intercourse is the last thing a din like that gives birth to.

Feed me with this knowledge. Then I can leave—eternally—

go back to wonderful Copenhagen,

take up where we never left off,

save the smack-head youth from the clutches of

Kurt the Cunt. When Pisces defiles Gemini I’ll return

on Sheriff Calhoun’s horse, a horse so beautiful the Bible forbids its death, I’ll find out if Phillip’s still upstairs,

ask your sister what this all meant,

if it gets that perverse and twisted

The Indiscretion

by John Doyle

I.F.I. Dublin, March 2017

My seat was a pink-elbowed virgin,

a bait scarved-snipers Dublin draws

this time of the willing equinox;

you settle into your book-club novel,

heron returned to shore having pierced stupid waters,

like invader,

like cascading WW2 bomber—

like something that un-knows harmony and takes all its leviathan days

shaking them from its soaking gob—

across the couch where you took my throne and sat there

like that witch who’d bitch-slap Charlie Brown as if it were her birthright,

as if it were the predetermined route of life.

Could you pity lukewarm coffee

screaming down a plughole as you hide behind your book-club excuses, knowing,

suitably silent?

That was my seat, life was beautiful there

and through the skylight the stars for once

called me by my name—

What name do you ride your mule by—Judas, Raffles, Rizzo?

Not Stella or Nightingale, that I can safely say.

What shames me more is Iscariot’s son—at the door, telling me nothing—and I smile meekly

The Sadness and Beauty of Car Boot Sales

by John Doyle

Straffan, August Saturdays, sunshine immortal

though sad lately at dreams of its own demise

which none of us are aware of,

handling a tatty Evening Press dated

3rd May 1972 when Les Harvey

dedicated eternity to that sun.

Sadness and beauty are hard to decipher on days like these,

sad like a French cult-classic that needs just yellow softness to tell us

something bad will soon happen in Europe, after slim-boating jacket man leaves punt lakeside,

doesn't wish Sweet Marie good night;

beautiful like my dog easily loved by the most cynical face suddenly turning that face away,

canine damp, though grin wider

than from here to that former station

some miles up the road.

Wise soul's money says beautiful nearly every weekend

Bird in Flight, Nullarbor Plain, 1967

by John Doyle

Photograph taken by an unknown person from a passing train

There's a sky crippled to a world behind it,

there's a colour unknown to Christ and Satan

mortals refuse to divulge,

there's a stone weeping in a river so no one sees how soft it is,

a blade of glass rippling in dreams of clothes tried on

in supermarket aisles they left behind after all;

there's a bird too, taking off somewhere.

I hope it's God who tells me where it went

when I share that colour with that lilting lens

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 6 collections released, including Leaving Henderson County, in 2020. He is writing his first novel at present and works as a journalist.