First

first lover

is better than

first friend

is better than

first enemy

is better than

first battle

is better than

first war

is better than

another

© Peter Doyle 2014

The naming of farts

(with apologies to Henry Reed)

The duvet rippler, sinus crippler

the paint peeler, room clearer,

the stink, the stench, the phew, the pong,

the blame the dog, I’ve done nothing wrong.

The dump gas, the trump blast,

the clap your hands on your arse and run fast.

The whiff, the niff, the hum, the Ninja,

the can’t believe you had that in yer.

Cabbage and onions, beans and lentils

Parfum de pruneau, bouquet de Bruxelles,

the one when you wish you’d stronger cheek muscles.

The fumer, the fouler, the auld reeker,

a week old kipper would smell sweeter,

the industrial strength Odoreater eater

that ranks eleven on the olfactometer.

The eggs gone rotten, the flobbery bottom,                                                                

the ones where you’d swear your pants were ripping,

the ones caused by a danger to shipping.

The bog breaker, tree shaker, dead waker,

the global warmer, the three minute warner,

the mile long stench of a night soil barge

and worst of all the Nigel Farage. 

© Peter Doyle 2014

The Spoils

Look at the house on the hill, shining bright

as a lie, haloed in black. A man could scrape out

a lifetime on the docks and never get a sniff

of something like this. He could be first in the pen

every morning, shovel carbon to the arse end

of every shift, make himself a negative.

He could suck down deep soot spores until

his lungs were a nest of black salamanders

thieving every breath. He could do all that and

this house would always be on another man’s hill.

Look at the white face in the dark; my father

lost in his reflection, the whole coach sombre

as a hearse. Players listless in the creamy glow,

their cards untouched.  Directors in black conclave,

counting coppers for cod and chips. Whispering.

Should they fork out for a fish supper? Kiss the extra tenner

for a new centre forward and his brass necked missus

goodbye. It’s not the last nail that kills belief,

it’s the first. No salvation; just the long road home,

keeping company with defeat.

Look at the house on the hill, light spilling

like hope in this orphaned hour.

My mother sits at the kitchen table, waiting.

She knows the score. My father stands outside,

looking up at the house; the spoils of the game

you might say. He’s thinking about the wife

and kids. Four moves in as many years

and the plaster not yet dry for a coat of paint

on this one. Compared to the docks, this is a doddle.

Still, he lingers, not ready to come home yet.

This poem was first published in Lyrical Beats, an anthology by Rhythm and Muse

© Peter Doyle 2014

Magpies

There was an apple tree scored, carbon black,

on the sprawling prairie of winter sky.

Squinting at the pale disc of low slung sun

I caught the semaphore flicker, flick-flack.

Chequerboard glitter in a woodcut of jet

and a vast fragile blue, signaled a debut

of high-wire clowns; rowdy magpies arrayed

like sight gags in a comedy market.

Carnal-eyed, juice dripping from stabbing beaks,

they guzzled the last fermenting fruits,

rubies and garnets, fat as Christmas puddings,

and boozily performed their narrow squeaks.

I imagined a small god of gravity

stifling a guffaw at the imminent

pratfalls, and that each jab of a squiffy bird

must end in a crash of feathered debris.

I wish you’d seen how like Charlie Chaplin

they hoicked themselves from catastrophe’s brink,

flinging out a wing or tail for a cane,

swaying and woozy on twigs artery thin.

You’d have loved them for their comic bravery.

We might have laughed enough to let our past

slip quietly windblown into the dead grass,

but you were somewhere in the world, and lost to me.

This poem was first published by Aesthetica

© Peter Doyle 2014