Phones
better
to take it from your pocket
and toss it
like a flat rock
skipping along
on water.
better
to turn it off
and lose it
somewhere
down a muddy hole.
in prison
if you kill someone
they confine you
somewhere
you can’t talk to people
and that’s not even the only benefit
to ignoring
the laws of man.
November
the masses elect
suddenly
to govern
with hysterical madness,
stark
illiterate
ezra pound ideas
hidden with hair and with fists on the dinner table
and at 4am the radios
stopped all their optimistic talk
and the papers came out at 5
about panic and rage and people sobbing and hugging in classrooms
and then the lazy afternoon bar where I read them
was packed full with dull-eyed twenty-two year olds
now convinced more than ever
they will be the last ones to ever walk around,
(just as I guess the last ones were)
and from over by the window I hear laughter
and “well, at least I guess music will get better now”
and I turn the page from politics to the culture section.
kid, if that’s what was worrying you
I think you’re going to be
alright.
Winter 2016
3 girls
all pretty,
suntanned,
drinking wine on the canal
bank,
sharing out cigarettes
and watching a barge
wallow
at an open lock.
they look satisfied.
more so
by far
than the people on the boat.
they get
the sun
and swans too,
after all,
and the wine,
and they didn’t have to pay
for the privilege.
and with them,
one guy
goofy and smiling
sitting
sprawled out
unable to believe
his luck.
The conman
you place youth,
fragile
as a boiled egg
in a cup,
and when it’s steady
you bring around
the spoon.
and she
is 18,
on the bed
naive,
and you
26
and pulling
her legs
apart,
like a child
torturing
spiders. this
is not love,
you think,
nor anything
prosaic,
just a good
and healthy fucking,
no more important
than drinking
a glass of milk.
you dirty
knowing animal,
plundering
the toffee barrel
on halloween,
choosing
to believe
for the moment
that your prey
is thinking
like you are.
Blackbirds
a decent shirt,
a bit of luck
and a haircut –
I found out today
my girlfriend
thinks I’m preppy
because
I dress
that way.
a shirt with a collar.
brown
leather shoes.
sometimes you
forget
that what other people see
is the shell you build around yourself
and really
nothing else – not your soul
or your bones
or any organs. the liver vibrates
and spleen spleens
the soul
screams
and nobody notices.
sometimes
even you don’t.
blackbirds
vanish in the night
and don’t even leave
their song
and the bats
and moths come out.
sometimes
I wonder
if bats
are night-time
blackbirds.
DS Maolalai is a poet from Ireland who has been writing and publishing poetry for almost 10 years. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press, and he has a second collection forthcoming from Turas Press in 2019. He has been nominated for Best of the Web and twice for the Pushcart Prize.
The Fiction Pool 