Young Poets

Gabriel’s Harley

Your old Harley rusts next to a broken ATM,

gum-tacked mirror smashed in by the church’s poker iron,

your fingers bloody and buried inside me,

before dawn daubed its collared black puff

over your thick, stained-glass lids.

x

I want you to know that I’ve made it real far,

but I won’t tell you how,

not over a cigarette in your barren backyard,

the pond’s filtration system clogged with Christ,

cause I fear that if you knew the truth,

you’d never sleep a wink again.

x

I’ve never been the pious type, darlin’,

not like you, a sinner now in Gabriel’s glad rags,

but when you got to your knees,

kneeled before me on those

hot, silver-silken evenings,

I hope God was watching.

Dog Teeth

You came walking that day,

past the house of dog teeth,

canine picket white fence, sewn with

human floss and Prussian blue cuffs.

x

Your limp quickened; hope burnt

out to a prayer’s wick, the shoreline

littered with cigarette ends.

x

It faltered eventually, snuffed out,

It will never be you. You will never come

back home

x

to that lonely four-walled woman.

They Asked For One More Day

Time chased them underneath a thousand suns,

missing nothing with her mindful eye,

pocket watch a tall and grand fellow, embalmed

in white-hot iron. Neither fought the dying of

the clement afternoon, for the darkness of dusk

was not feared as long as they dreamt in

colours of vermillion, scarlet, oleander red

in the moon’s pale underbelly. 

Anecdote

I’d like to have her laugh / Which erupts like a broken hose / Fixing at the wrong time, or his shoulders / Which people love to lay their head on. (from The Party by Sinéad O’Reilly)

In dizzy rooms awash with eyes of green,

The air is smoke, the water something pink,

And I whose shoulder people love to lean

Their heads on might not be what they think.

My silken hair is wrought with curls of fire,

Will promise bliss for those who catch my eye,

For rumours single touches drive desire

Wild, they’re true, it’s true I make them cry.

They hover drunk in swarms towards my scent

(Chanel, almost) to lap from fountains gold

Which feed my font of honeyed truth, and lent

As if by Gods, or Lucifer, to whom I sold my soul.

I see myself in cigarettes and yearn.

Oh God, oh Christ, oh fuck, oh fuck, I burn.

Raconteur

The truth finds me, the truth loves me. Pilgrim,

You haven’t the gold for the truths I’ve told,

Couldn’t handle that which hides behind lies of old.

x

The grass unloads its griefs upon my feet

As if I am God, its prickling a prayer. Not

God but O gold-winged messenger of mighty Gods.

x

My fables float towards the gates of heav’n.

Saint Pete panics, unsure of what to make

Of me, he who knows more of worlds than deity.

x

Thunder follows lustrous footprints in my wake,

For I have awoken the malevolent king, I,

Teller of tales, I, the Creator’s greatest mistake.

O God-Drop

I crave, kill pain, gift faith to soulless sentience.

This fleshy stack of muscles, veins, and nerves

Will praise your healing works, your little miracles.

x

O plastic capsule, globule, God-orb, God-ball

Who’s eucharistic in the act of feigning lifelessness,

I beg, I pray to you to numb the burning nerves.

x

And while you wield a lethal dynamism

Disguised beneath benevolent guise,

I know, I know, I cannot help but think,

x

Be haunted by the years before your birth,

Before Asclepius, his snakes in extremis,

When all there was was hurt and hurt breathed.