The Mouth in the Sky

By Dominic Kirwan

'This is a vast collection of meaty poetry, and it traverses diverse topics with irreverent wordplay and dirty-hearted love. To be truthful and self-expressive under the vicious hail of mental illness is not easy. There are so many repeatable quips, but I quote here lines about Andy, who was my always partner: "It spoke at him constantly / Rattl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9781761094996

Book preview

The Mouth in the Sky

THE MOUTH IN THE SKY

DOMINIC KIRWAN

Ginninderra Press

The Mouth in the Sky

ISBN 978 1 76109 499 6

Copyright © text Dominic Kirwan 2023

Cover image: Overdose, an original work by Dominic Kirwan

All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

First published 2023 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

CONTENTS

Preface

The Mouth in the Sky

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my best friend, Andrew David Coote, 1970–2021

R.I.P.

I would like to thank my beautiful, kind-hearted mother, Barbara, for sticking by me through what seemed to be impossible odds, for loving me despite all my shortcomings and my relentless mental illness. Her indomitable spirit guided me through a hell I would not have survived alone. Without her support, this book would not exist.

I would like to thank Bridget Kirwan for her creative assistance with the cover.

‘I am a cage, in search of a bird.’

Franz Kafka

THE MOUTH IN THE SKY

Andy

The voices are silent now.

They cannot hurt you any more.

But I can still love you,

My sweet, wonderful friend

And I always will.

The Flaccid Return of the People’s Champion

The road home is paved with appropriate clichés

You take your demons with you

Just to cast them out

Just to start all over again

In the same place that ruined you

Have I written this all before?

Have I snorted these same lines a million times?

I’m scratching at the abdomen of a deadly spider

As if it were a bemused pet

Headphones and silence blaring loud

An answering

A calling

A ringing

Fingers in my ears

The never-ending echoes of new neighbours

The strangled cries of a panicked ambulance

Walks in a city where my nature left me

Loneliness and independence

Startled procedures and simpleton suicides

Stepped on syringes, bleeding black river milk

Benign cancers blossoming into flowers

with unpronounceable names

The road home is paved with patented inventions

Old bed

Old fan

Old darkness

Old haunt

New me

Different me

I don’t know where else I can belong

Wondering about shallow used-to-bees

The buzzing

The stinging

The swarming

Unfamiliar comfort and dishes clattering in an old sink

I pray to a god I don’t believe in

I pray to a god who doesn’t believe in me

I pray to psychosocial experiments gone awry

I pray to mental institutions filled with actors

I pray to a fiend

I pray to public transport and a fraying blue mask

I pray to fluorescent, bleached supermarket faces in hiding

I pray to the pulsating, forlorn city

I pray to the medication that lobotomises me

I pray to serpentine bone trains and panic stations

I pray to covid, so the virus won’t catch a case of me

I pray to the Uber

I pray to clumsy laughter and an absentee wit

I pray to Death Metal’s twitching Carcass

I pray to surround sound speakers and encroaching head shrinkers

I pray to life, in all its unmitigated horror

I pray to the friends I have left

Every misstep is incalculable

Every numb, brain rattling breath a lesson

Every drug addled, whimpering limp is a falsity

The camera lens expands for the Masters

And I step back

and back and back and back

Caught, like the most violent karma,

In the