Fevered Louise Poem by Michael Ó Domhnaill

My room is a dog's coffin.

My head is a vibrating slaughterhouse.

Blood boiling,

My thoughts are formed

then murdered at fever pitch-

global toned

ocean wound-

Everything tastes salt.

This is the beginning of my journey.

This is the rubout of recollection.


My past was drawn in pencil

on an iced over puddle.

I wipe in the freeze - I smudge the

image of mocking many- death denizens.


Louise rolled the ball away.

I gashed her shins at end of day.

We really couldn't make it 'play';

Couldn't touch,

Too reticent to talk

Too throttled to scream

Too lobotomized to criticize

Too bowlegged she walked

Too bloody lame to dream

Too selfish-sound to victimize

Too thistle-tied to trivialize,

Louise nibbled through my cheekbones.

She caressed my sinuses with an

absent tongue.

I collided with vicious fruits and

all my day's sorrows,

dazed and cooked over.


She plugged my death thoughts in

and trussed my brain in clover.

She left toeholes in my hollow gut

and flushed hot and moist all over.


In an evening wakened flutter,

my eyes flicked the sand away.

The sheets enrobing us

are an arid lagoon-

an evaporated gutter.

For some reason, I believe her name is Louise,

although I've never known a Louise.

She has a tattoo on her heel.

It says '12'.

I've got a shrunken left ball;

It cries in the night!

It cries for Louise

and her tongue of absence.

I'd like to untangle my intertwined brain Apraxia

And eat angel eye lucidity

with Louise.


We discuss the second decade of the millennium

We are only ghosts.

We are the downfall of machine learning.

We will fill the intangibles

with warm dry soul.

We ride bicycles down suburban streets.

When you see us

silence consumes all.

When you see us

silence consumes all.

The weight of the universe falls down.

It falls on us all.

It falls in a fever.

The crush is our redeemer.

We are all the same.

We all sweat beads of blood during dreams of absent crush.

We are the new leaden beings:

Beings unable to bear being

Lucid souled-

Souls that bare being


The weight that falls unexpected-

The weight flattens the fevered soul.

The flash of nothing in

The overburdened

overbared

Mind:


Call that God.

Call it what you will; this is a fever poem,

make of it what you wish.

Make your

fevered wish

come true.