John W. Sexton



A Thought, Then Gone

by psychiatrist's couch ...
we disembark
at the menstruating shoe

               fingering the leader ...
               the likeness on the coin
               was suitably blunt

x-ray
of the bone China ... the dinner service
loses its striker

               climbed the ladder
               to the City of Thirty …
               an eclipse of the dice

peels the healed skin …
a doppelgänger formed
from his all-over wound

               the bulbul gals
               trill and shake ...
               we scatter oats oh-hey-ho

his words came
from somewhere deep ... the witch's tongue
finds the orifice

               FOR SALE
               fifteen blades
               of forest sunlight

inside its jug
the snail
initiates spill

               dead Putin sewn upright
               to a living horse ...
               yes will the steppes resound

a thought, then gone ...
the water guitar
seeps into her coat



To Lose Oneself

Dr Duzzalot's sharks
spoke sharply ... but blunt
on the subject of death

               snail’s frail snotbody
               and only one corridor
               to lose oneself in

disintegrated aeons gone ...
ancestries of grass
recorded us

               litmus ...
               Europa's ocean scarlet
               at the dip of our toes

the blind second-guessers …
next-ray envisioned
they discern clearly

               womb travellers …
               nascent fey daughters enrapture
               their to-be-fathers

once on that frictionless
glassy planet
there was no stopping us

               light from the hall …
               the gap under the door
               is the way to between

blind, blind with angels
… please do not remove
the pins from our eyes



A Stainless Future

compassion
without question ... rescuing
the clay pigeons

               does a rainbow
               cast a shadow?
               her fly agaric dress

grass burrs in the hare's ears ...
the mind of a shooting star
makes it to earth

               clang the heels
               of your iron shoes ...
               home inches down the hill

horrifying precision ...
the alarming clock
took dead batteries

               a stainless future ...
               to relieve the tedium
               I order a migraine




John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry, 2013). Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons Of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page