Wake Me When Poem by Michael Ó Domhnaill

My jugular severed,

I settled in at the Tunisian cafe

I felt fatigued, yet rabid,

sanguine, yet morbid, through the day.


A joyless Westwend dusk wisped

anemic clouds Southward.

Mind flies to ornate red lampshades,

Sepia and flesh toned walls toward…


which are enacted, here in

a purgatorial sitting room

dolorous men and bored girls recline

on plush couches, languorous in their doom.


'My world ends at your breasts' I confessed,

to her whose eyes into mine were inclined to focus.

Her thighs, essential equine, though enrobed

in layers of silken river, to caress my cheeks

their emergent warmth a perfect contoured…


slivered existence, separated from my incited senses

by an absolute injustice inherent in, simply all.

She exerts a pre perceptual ploy- a pull-

As is in that moment before I wake something disquiets breath.


A veiled image quakes,


carouselling its affliction half down my spine

while I regret the consumption of such caterwauling rhyme.

I've quoted some forgotten shred of nerve for who knows whom.

Hollow halting handclaps echo through the empty room.