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Showing posts from December, 2024

Hamlet am I

  Hamlet am I   Hamlet am I I’ve died too many times I am old Beyond my years I have lived too many lives I have wrung my heart dry Life is indeed “a sterile promontory” This is the worst I’ve ever known Because I value beauty But she disdains me & as I’ve learned She disdains herself & life Hamlet am I I have died too many times To have any faith In love & time     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

New Year's Day haiku

  New Year's Day haiku A new year’s day haiku must be for peace   -- Now there's work to be done -- We say something accidental yet are taken as candid, definite wrapped tightly with anxiety words squeak & squeal & blurt Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

America’s 20th Century

  America’s 20 th Century   So social realism Became de rigour during the Depression & the Big War Until the Cold War Then art turned abstract expressionist Was it fear of being blacklisted Or was it more fatigue With a style, a mode Or a combination of the 2 Outside a dog is barking loudly Is there fireworks somewhere After all it’s new year’s eve It’s a BIG continuous bark Like a fireworks display Thick & loud & dark & bright     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2025.

31st December 2024

  31 st December 2024   Tomorrow is haiku day The first day of the new year I feel overburdened by this long year It was ok But tiring without enough spiritual refreshment How loneliness drains us & warps us A year without love Is a bleak expanse Not enough cuddling & canoodling, in fact none Not enough dance Fate has conspired to make me a monk Not my choice, trust me But a sign of the times I just want a New Year’s kiss No I don’t I want a New Year’s fuck It does good things to the brain As we enter into the Kingdom of God     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.  

Why?

  Why?   He burned his life’s work When he started to lose his mind Or was it retirement that did it? That all those years The poetry served as a coping mechanism To work & home life & homesickness Processing his frustrations & grief An antidote to his struggles, hopes & darkness Was it finally making peace with Ireland & Australia His lot Which impacted his family all those years? It was very much my father A definite man To wipe the slate of a life’s work clean Or was it to do with what would happen to his poems After he was gone? All the heartache, the secrets revealed & so the only poems of my father’s I have access to Are the dedications to my mother In the books he gifted her At birthdays & Christmases Generally panty wetters or the pastoral Did he really believe these words Or were they maintenance works on his marriage Is that why he eliminated the darker more tormented part of the iceberg ...

At the market

  At the market   Particularly when HIGH The visions held with greater sensitivity & the reason why Rastas sacrament the sacred   Are the expressions of the pigs’ heads At the butchers Torture into trauma Have stayed with me & completely put me off my appetite   & anyway I’ve eaten too much meat Since my wife & I split To much loveless food   Time for an overhaul Time to be ital     -- It wasn’t just the pigs’ heads   It wasn’t just the tortured expressions on pigs’ heads’ faces that took away my appetite I just generally have a feeling of nausea As I wait to get ducks in a row Again at such a metaphor my nausea flares There’s a lot of things up in the air about my living shituation My loneliness & lack of tribe at Christmas time I feel remote, cut adrift from others Living a counter experience to them As my friends celebrate the holidays with family & me an or...

Talking with an Angel

  Talking with an Angel   I met a new born, an angel The conversation flowed As conversations can Twisting & turning But then it ebbed & I misstepped Immediately recoiling at my forgotten demon revealed It happened quite by accident & I wept The child counselled me “Fear not my man I too know light & darkness, as life contains both I found the conversation reassuring For I too am made of the same stuff”       Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

Solo Christmas Vacation 2024

  Solo Christmas Vacation 2024   ( Here are 10 poems I written on solo vacation in Cheltenham, from whence I hail. I swam at Black Rock, caught up with some friends, & spent Christmas Day alone.)   One (Christmas Eve Afternoon)   Checked In the suburb Pink & full folds Of Repeating tapas Breaking the dish Needed for Christmas Dinner Nuke it instead Just mass The priest’s crisis of faith Dreaming sheep Lost shepherd     Two   Paper spawn On a pond Of ultra smooth ink Tea cup umbrellas & giddy up Broken arrows wherewithal A sliver of orange In cloud dust An emu chick On the road Or thinking Is that what I think it is Or have I just not woken fully?     Three (Christmas Morning)   The wise water Slow & immediate Expanse On the beach Which feels Miles away A man With his knickers In a knot About an Off leash dog His back To...

A bird in the hand

  A bird in the hand   You were but then again It’s good that this came to pass The grand stage & all in preparation Waited with the appropriate anticipation But then again you were & I was just a yunno It was an early stage of development I had yet to face off against well them At the dark end of the street I can’t believe he ripped that off So brazenly & here I am awaiting judgement & not much in the way of that Will there be enough left & should I just wade in Or is it too early To be sure A bird in the hand Is worth two in the bush       Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.        

Christmas Carol 2024

  Christmas Carol 2024   There is a gk\lorious win who opened the can The special was super There are all kinds of things & who would appear thrice But who do you expect 3 kings for the reputed dance The feather was dipped as expected The tea was as the maker liked it & communication was clear Do you bring knives to Christmas? Or do you trust What for breakfast?   The bakery’s silent & salient There is a twin who plays a swan shaped guitar Head in the sand Or at least in the water like electric violin Test yourself with diamonds or volcano lovers You are so like yourself If you couldn’t be like this I would wonder about your shadow     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

An Ode to Annoyance

  An Ode to Annoyance   Filled with cortisol I need exercise But I’m injured So I’m fucked I can sing a bit That’s ok But poetry is tense Particularly with a blank screen Staring at you & so I use a notepad & scribble old skool But it’s just jibber jabber My house is the house of many boxes I don’t throw them out Coz I’ll be moving soon But a drunk struggles to get his shit together enough To bring a shopping bag with him & so he collects another box To put his groceries in See what I mean Jibber jabber & there’s always someone With a power tool I conjecture that they could make them A lot quieter But deliberately They make them louder To lend an air of importance to their labours I’ve done better today I cleaned the kitchen & did a load of washing All of it done in a bad temper Which is a sin I believe one should treat such work As a prayer Does the guy with the power tool See his wo...

The richness of colour of Rachmaninov

  The richness of colour of Rachmaninov   The richness of colour of Rachmaninov Fills my heart my eyes with golden lights There’s something about those Russians Bringing a balletic energy quite unlike Any other nation my favourite composers Anyway as I’ve already said I don’t want to worry about failure or success But just to write out therapeutically Desperation or fear are not emotions the poet Thrives under like chocolate frogs in jelly Let him fly & skate & swim & fire walk & grow a detachable nose like Gogol To smell the scent of fear or allure On the double decker omnibus No more second class citizens & a man hunting a kangaroo With a boomerang My room is not arranged it’s merely evolved I am a messy sod with a deliciously warm wheat bag At my back time for another tea If you can’t be arsed well I guess it’s up to me     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

Temperature adventures

  Temperature adventures   She spoke over you when she came over. She was like a wind up, just talked at you. She was attractive which had maybe let her get away with it. The ice cream was left out of the fridge & had gone runny when he dropped by, her new boyf, do they still call em that or is it ‘partner’ once they’ve been on more than 4 dates? & then you wrote over them because you had the casting vote. You wrote things up, you were Herodotus writing in invisible ink or just drawing with your finger in the sand. You enjoyed the benefits of the refrigerator despite the many negatives for the colonised from the invader. Ice blocks were like a miracle on a hot day. Just you rarely filled up the tray & the 2 or 3 cubes left from last summer tasted of meat vaguely. When she was a girl her mother tried to smother her with a pillow & later told her about it, thinking that was a good idea. He on the other hand was a bad sleeper. You’ve been told that women don’t...

24 hours later

  24 hours later   You were suggested by a friend to sit with your pain. The rage & disconsolation you felt when the divorce agreement was finally complete. The feeling of betrayal, of someone quitting. But you know people these days chop & change a lot. The illusion of choices. Anyway, you’re not going to go into it here. The pain is today’s focus. The pain was so bad that you drank & the drinking made it worse. & so you worked out it hurt less to be sober & sit with it. Take a nap if you need. Really the more you sat with it, the more it dissolved & became the act of writing to Mozart Piano Concertos & you found that not only was there an easing of pain, there was indeed pleasure. You started to write indifferent to its literary standing & wrote primarily as therapy. You remembered doing art therapy classes & you noticed how the artists struggled to benefit from the therapy because they were too concerned with aesthetics, where you as ...

Learning to fly

  Learning to fly   Somehow you learned to fly By lying to your friends You licked lizards & got high as a kite But then an ant Bit you on the foot & you hadn’t realized They were that kind of ant & so your feet ’d never Touch the ground again You’d be high as a kite For the rest of your life     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

The rage that rages

  The rage that rages   The rage that rages inside this tin thrown into the fire It’s best I stay at home else I get in a fight It’s best you give me a wide birth else I start laying into you My marriage became just another business deal My heart is rattling around like a headless chicken I am screaming inside yet my disciplined body Behaves as if it’s just another day I am well socialised to bottle things up The rage that rages inside knows no bounds So watch your step get out of my way Less you want to wind up a beaten mess Coz that’s how I am heart-broken a spastic organ & there is no hope of feeling right again     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.

Heaviest Christmas since I read Kafka’s The Trial back in the 90s

  Heaviest Christmas since I read Kafka’s The Trial back in the 90s   Blood   Blood geyser spraying the mountain fertilizing with death nature is greedy to be born again Human sacrifice Dog sacrifice Rat sacrifice Fairy wren sacrifice Breathe in     Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2024.   The Death of Liberty   It’s over all over your face written in sardines & oil the olives are prohibitively expensive & the sky & the sea expansive & yodels from Gödel would embarrass JS Bach for the course of his hurtling through the universe. You forgot why I am your dog your flea bitten boot hittin mutt you can relate better to the mute than one who debates you seek authoritarianism like the burger eaters. Undo your clothing tied in knots around a garrot to unicycle & clamber down the ladders of escape like Miro. & although a world war has not yet broken out many small ones link up. I scribble with my n...