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    The Mouth in the Sky
    The Mouth in the Sky
    The Mouth in the Sky
    Ebook101 pages43 minutes

    The Mouth in the Sky

    By Dominic Kirwan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    '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

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGinninderra Press
    Release dateMar 23, 2023
    ISBN9781761094996
    The Mouth in the Sky

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      Book preview

      The Mouth in the Sky - Dominic Kirwan

      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

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