William. By John Doyle

Summer and winter became siblings
last-time I went to Minnesota -

up-staging
each other -

me with my shopping-bag face
muzzling tattoos through the infant light

in squeaking shower-door glass,
hoping my fever would hit 99,

that Gabriel would take me -
boiling hot in cold water,

freezing cold in boiling water,
waiting for the slipped-disc click letterbox

to send me something
that acknowledged the big boss man was looking out for me,

that I was one week overdue.
The floor was a scrunching mass

of shivering insects unable to open their eyes,
squirming as I crushed the very ink beneath me.

The greatest American novel
written by monkeys with typewriters

I sold them last time
I made a full-week on door to door sales

before the cooties
shot me down, left me motionless like F.D.R.

A call came and caught me by surprise,
I grumbled something

that should've been a lot more profane,
but cusswords fell-out with me over a race

in Saratoga,
as I licked my bloody-lip and let the razor

splat back into the butchered-sink,
the out-stretched beast

laid comatose in thieving sea-shore rock,
though everyone's horror lay in its silence, its nothingness

jumping from cosmos to cosmos -
mother's serene morning milk

kept its bargain - storms descending;
6am - celebrity chef tv shows fart and belch

a horror that opposes
all we previously loved,

all we knew.
This beast, today.

I guess I should
open-up this bill,

I've had so many this week,
I address them as William

John Doyle became a Mod again in the summer of 2017 to fight off his impending mid-life crisis; whether this has been a success remains to be seen. He has has two collections published to date, A Stirring at Dusk in 2017, and Songs for Boys Called Wendell Gomez in 2018, both on PSKI's Porch.