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  Apr 2021 TomDoubty
ju
Your bird-spine curves to the roof of my mouth, confetti-skull sticks to the back of my teeth. Your wet heart beats on my tongue, small lungs press in for sleep.

In silence, I carry you. In words, I carry you. I hear you breathe. Feel your dreams furl and unfurl, fern-like to term - and I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

In pieces, I carry you. In love, I carry you. I feel shame. Not for letting you go - for letting it in. I know what happens to children like you, with fathers like him.
  Apr 2021 TomDoubty
Evan Stephens
We built a little night
but you emptied it.

Your Dublin beachhead
is all undertow.

Dead menus blow from
one gutter to the next.

Westward parks
fill with fever.

A gibbeted sun
hangs ignored.

O darling...
I'm not this way,

I'm not this way -
remember what I am.
TomDoubty Apr 2021
I wake reciting lines
mouthing syllables
I thought were gone

Coldly raging
at the same hollow loss
on the edge of my dreams
you are turning away

How does it feel?

It feels like my child-dreams
the soundless screaming descent
into bottle-green dark
as the light recedes to a halo
I know I am dying

I wake drenched in this
my thoughts turn you over
and over and I ask
Could I ever have read you?

I leafed through you, yes
then put you aside
left your pages fluttering


27/12/20
TomDoubty Apr 2021
Rhythmic
Tearing
Cow on grass
Settling rooks
Cross sky
All around
Sound playing
Scent
On wind
Descending
Sun
Gold leafing
The horizon
Obscuration
Veiling arc
And furrow
Crop
And shadow
Poplar lined
Fields below
Quiet here
Above
A moment
Passes
Contrast sharpens
Trees recede
Into darkness
Sun bleeds
Into Earth
  Apr 2021 TomDoubty
Evan Stephens
When I ate with you
in Merrion Square,

flicking rain
from my eyes

as it wandered down
from the jailing trees,

had you already decided
to leave me?

There I sat, thinking
I was Orpheus,

come to Dublin
to return my lover

to my world,
not looking back

at what she did,
not ever looking back.

There you sat, knowing
I was Eurydice -

to be given one last longing look
before I was pulled

from Merrion Square,
from Dublin, raked over

the sea changes,
until all I had was the dark,

the jilted dark
of the bedroom

that doubled
as a hell.
TomDoubty Apr 2021
Is this what writers do?
Conjure the worst then set you there, contorting
to listen for the beauty that sings in suffering?
Your boiling body fights, trembling
and next to you in darkness, brooding
I see the struggling and the worst
and imagine  your beauty

as a memory that enters a room
full of mourners-
sunlit breeze captured
in billowing fabric
which turning and holding
there for a moment
lets you go
as the tears and the chatter
go on

Jan 2021
TomDoubty Apr 2021
We don’t have winds like this
Here in the shire
Right now the world is screaming
Squirming on its axis
'I am here!' it shouts
However much you **** me

A deafening rush
The trees could crush me
The battling branches break, fell me
The low clouds lumbar onwards
Indifferent, closing down
The last sneak of blue

The west-south-westerly whips
All grass and grain flat
Against dark earth
Freshly turned by the blade
Autumn comes abruptly this year
The leaves are torn to the ground

The path ahead a boil of branches
Lashing at me
The dry-gold giant Hogweed
Oscillates with insanity
The tall beeches mope and weep above
The wind an inferno
Its sound like steam is cleansing

The earth is separate today
It says '*******!'
The wind can hear me
It Shrieks at me
My heart beats a little faster
Once again that thought of oblivion
Curls up like the sea
Now I am diving under waves

26/8/20
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