morning
 
 
That archaic sack of diseases, that bag of bones
That gutter factotum, that reek of piss
That puke smeared sack for maggots
that bellowing beery fart of limbo
The sexpot, drugfiend, smackers adhered to
Dirty bottle, sucking the chunky dregs through
Disheveled, inebriated, gobfilled with wild oaths,
Cracked the arse of his hound with a toeless boot,
It was a dirty, flearidden boot that connected with
The arse, that skeletal estuary, upon the protruding
Toes the hound left his mark. A fine smear it was.
Old pisspot could not believe his watery orbs. A
Fine jerk upon the string he pulled. The widdy
Choked the hound. Dumbfounded were they.
The ejecta from the toothless gob was futile
The toes were stained.

- paul kavanagh


One of those anathemas we dread.

I sit let the mosquitoes suck the blood
Once in awhile I will trap one between
My fingers and crush my blood out.
Last night I watched Renee Falcontti
Those coruscating vitreous orbs
Produced a terrible nightmare. I am
In debt! to my eyeballs. The banks
Want my blood. They keep sending
Me red letters. They are going to
Take me to court. I once went to
Prison for two weeks for not paying
My poll tax. It was an epiphany. I
Have learnt nothing. I once lived
Ostentatiously. My kidneys failed me.
I was in a terrible mess. I let
Equilibrium slip and crawled into hunger.
Confession was my only conversation,
Logorrhea, verbosity, I was a dreadful bore.
I sit let the mosquitoes suck the blood
Once in awhile I will trap one between
My fingers and crush my blood out.
The heat produces perspiration. I write
Outside under the shadow of trees. I must
Say something erudite about love I feel.

- paul kavanagh


breakfast

Obsequious she was
To my eye coquettish
To others a sycophant for a dollar
Her affability was reciprocated by all
With alacrity she circumnavigated the table
It was with grace she poured icetea.
dirty coffeestains circled those sleepy eyes.
Eggs, bacon ashbrowns and toast.
The stars and stripes undulate
She had to pray before we started on the food,
The sign of the cross performed motherinlaw,
She had to tell us of cancer, gastric cancer,
Pancreatic cancer, heart attacks, cow disease,
Meningitis, Ebola, hepatitis, lupus, leukemia,
Peptic ulcers, lyme disease, melanoma,
Sexpots, the raping of a five year old, the beating
Of a war veteran, drug addiction, unformed
Babies lodged in wombs, the color of
Excreta that pullulates with the afterbirth,
I spoilt my egg and painted the pristine
I could only clean the plate with sloppy toast.

- paul kavanagh


Poem One

A suicide bomber always loses his appendages
They can be see rotating through the fuliginous air
It is ineffable the alacrity the appendages rotate
When they become inertial they are incongruous
Objects upon the road away from the violence.
The insides will splatter nearby walls like
An action painter inebriated on whiskey.
A leg here
An arm there
Sometimes the head pops off like a champagne cork.
The immolated integument reeks
Somebody has to shovel up the mess
Once I saw a child scrapping jelly off pebbles
But the scene was on television so I just drank me tea.
There were suicide bombers before there were bombs
An oxymoron I know.

- paul kavanagh


Poem Three

In a bar late one night I saw a man glass
Another man. The glass exploded into
A cornucopia of coruscating stars. Blood
Cascaded out of the impenetrable darkness
It reminded me of red wine poured from a
Sack, like the ones you see in spain.
The bar was filled with coquettish girls
That once they saw the blood was no longer
Coquettish but bags of exasperating screams.
Legged it he did before the police came
Like a fox chased by voracious hounds.
The hounds are voracious for they are
Subjected to inanition. When the hounds
Trap the fox sometimes they are too exhausted

- paul kavanagh


Poem Six

The bug man came today
He told that he had some new
Stuff. Powerful stuff. He said
The army was using the stuff
On ragheads. It causes hallucinations,
He said. In Brazil they put limestone in
Bags for it speeds up the suffocation.
The limestone and spit forms a wall at the
Back of the throat. It is a terrible death
He said, he stuck out his bloated licker
To illustrate, that’s how they clean the
Streets of urchins, gluestiffers, thieves,
The vermin, the outcasts, the beggars.
He told me that he would
Annihilate, obliterate all the bugs around
My house. He had croaked teeth,
Desiccated lips, he had a gut, and three chins,
But his ebullience, his joy, his love
Made me melancholy. I thought
Of Buddha, I thought of Jesus, but I
Also thought of the termites and the
Destruction with their ravenous
Masticating. The old bugger was
Full of glee, smirking he explained
How the bugs would pop like popcorn.
He laughed when he expectorated the pop.

- paul kavanagh


Poem Seven

What a pristine countenance he possessed
Dragged from the canaille he was empyreal
In that purple of monarchs he transcended the place we
He was on his way to be toasted
His immolated ashes would be scattered
And his belongings sold off and his aristeia forgotten.
A catalog of doxies he had known, wars he had fought,
A fulguration, dishonest, sly, filled with braggadolio.
After he had been anatomized, dichotomized,
Emptied and plugged, they gave him the smoothest
Shave he’d ever had but the suit was still second hand.
Anathema to my wife, a pariah, a gobshite, a legless buffoon.
I could not be lachrymose, tears do not ameliorate
But I thought of an epithet,
An epicedium, an encomium, an epideictic,
Not for the stone that would loom casting a tenebrous
Shadow for there would be no stone, the stonemasons
Would not labor for him. And so upon the wood I
Lacerated
Though, he is composed of sinews and blood
Never again will he generate wood.
Now, not worthy for a whore to sit upon.
Once though, a mighty erect priapic weapon.

- paul kavanagh