Poetry: Selections from David Hay

New Romantic

(To the Duke)

My dog is dying,

His legs have let

Him down and now he

Can't get up without help.

 

For Thirteen years

We have been brothers

Barking on the precipice

Of some sweet doom,

Mournful as Frank O'Hara

Shaking ash off our coats,

You with your Mark Bolan

Plume and tiny eyes filled

With your melancholic mystery,

Me kicking rocks

As petulantly as a child.

 

I try to picture how you used

To lie in the garden

Staring at the birds,

Barking at them when

You could be arsed;

A mockery of your deep-delved

Silence.

 

Oh brother, our mother has been

Bludgeoned into thoughtlessness

By an illness I have never heard of,

Which now defines the course

Of both our lives,

And our dad, well

What can you say about

A man trapped in the maze of

His own anxieties.

 

You're all I have

Of that old family life

And when you go,

In days, weeks

God make it months,

I will kiss you on the head,

Smoke deeply,

Let your last breaths

Stitch the last notes of your heart

To mine

And walk, alone,

Drinking coffee as memories

Cascade down from the peaks of

All my present thoughts.

Goodbye

Above monuments of ash,

Fermented leaves cascade down the sky

And eyes thick and buttery

View nameless landscapes

Made of shadowed dreams and blue-bottle wings

That create bridges in the sky,

Leading to regions unknown by vision or touch.

 

Magicians of the social shroud and strut,

Eyes smeared with futures comfortable and predictable

Whisper dark nothings to the heart of every star.

 

With my homeless stare,

And clothes styled on the dead,

I pick up a worm,

Raise it to the sun,

As if it symbolised all man’s fragility

Before tulips drenched in the orange blood of the sun

Erupt out of his eyes,

Its stems burned into the smoke of sorrow.

 

I breathed in my last childhood dreams

And coughed until my throat slicked with fire

Birthed from the devil’s first laugh

Spits out dust.

 

Eat the open wind I shout,

Madness kissing my eyelids

Until their like sardines dripping with autumn sadness.

 

Gone! The pigeon cries,

Notes clicking against the stars,

Fastened on the lightning,

Slicing through thunder

Until its fruitless rage is held in my bowels

And expelled until I see myself an old man,

Unable to discern the toilet from the sink.

 

The hours cannot contain my grief,

I get up, go to work, smile and pretend

My brain isn’t throwing up toxic fumes.

 

Oh lord, when did I become predictable,

Swifts pour down the black hole of the sky

Into my open mouth, becoming one with my blood

Cells within cells within cells.

 

Goodbye mum, goodbye forever.

Return

This morning the woman long-drenched

in my sweat and dreams

walked out and left the door open.

 

It will be open all night,

sentiment forbids its shutting.

 

A sad song makes its way through the opening

unhindered by language;

it speaks to me as much

as the flowers blooming in the eyes of the dying,

and the mouth once full of empty words

vomits not scripture but grass upon my naked frame.

 

Bodies too long arched in 9 to 5

become mountains

and the lonely shower masturbations with warm beer,

are the imaginings of an unloved mind and nothing more.

 

Our T.V is half-buried,

it props up the apple-tree

recently planted with our hands,

mine more feminine than yours.

 

The cats are sleeping in their self-designated places,

committed to thoughts unheralded by human tongue.

 

I think of your eyes as alcohol makes madness tangible

and the cold of the house emboldens thoughts

long anchored.

 

The morning opens,

I push my head through the window and angle my face upwards,

the horizon swallows me whole.

 

When she comes home the door will shut,

the cats will be pulled to the centre of her orbit

and my eyes smarting from a lack of sleep will blink

with the quiet return.

David Hay is an English Teacher in the Northwest of England. He has written poetry and prose since the age of 18 when he discovered Virginia Woolf's The Waves and the poetry of John Keats. These and other artists encouraged him to seek his own poetic voice. He has currently been accepted for publication in Dreich, Abridged, Acumen, The Honest Ulsterman, The Dawntreader, Versification, The Babel Tower Notice Board, The Stone of Madness Press, The Fortnightly Review, The Lake, Selcouth Station, GreenInk Poetry, Dodging the Rain, Seventh Quarry and Expat-Press. His debut publication is the Brexit-inspired prose-poem Doctor Lazarus published by Alien Buddha Press 2021.