Poetry by DS Maolalai

My friend, the geologist

this is not science. this
is poetry. this placing
of the line
in sequence
as if the sequence
of the line
really made it
mean
anything. I mean
I would rather it were science. the this and the
this and the these of knowing
that such a thing happens
because some other thing has happened
and that
is why everything else happens. the knowledge
that once you know some basic rules
everything
can be extrapolated
to millions of miles outwards and that
can be extrapolated further. for instance
my friend aodhain
is a geologist
(that's
rock science, not rockets)
and he is teaching me to think
in terms of time
beyond life
and he explains to me
that chalk comes
from animals
crushed under the weight
of their life's own death
rain under water
like sugar
piled on a cake. drizzles come down
like snow
on a mountain
and the mountain
in spite of what we call it
is a mountain, not rocks. that the scape around the roadrunner
is dolomite
stacked in slabs
like a weddingcake. I say
that would make a good poem. the pursuit,
love and the pointless runaround,
surrounded by rock,
ringed
with dry weddings. he
doesn't say anything
so crass
as to tell me
it doesn't need to be a poem. it
is a thing that is.
that
is poetry. aodhain
knows more about everything
than I do. I write down poems
but I could
go back to college, beg
at the gates, ask them on my knees to let me learn about animals
or the way stars form among the crashing attraction of gases. there is a light
that forms
when things breathe out.
that
is science talking. that
is the way things are
whether we know it
or not. knowing
that,
or not knowing it,
that
is poetry.

​


I take the hand of night

I turn on the radio
move the dial around
to find something
without any words in it,
settle as usual
classical music,
and I open a bottle slowly
and enjoy the first pouring
into a glass
like lifeblood from my brother's heart
and I take again the hand of night.
A woman where I work
keeps talking about
how her mother is dying
slowly
of some wasting disease
and
scientists
are saying
the earth has thirty good
years left - rats are creeping up
out of the winecellars
fat and sated
with the blood of lost children
taken from their homes
and the crows are rejoicing
with a world
returning unto death
and all I can think of
when I am here at night
is that my goldfish are still in their tank
and that the buses are running
like salmon in the spring
to their boltholes.
I cannot help the world to cure itself
and that woman cannot
even help one person
who might as well be the world.
Nobody can help anyone
and most of us have already stopped trying.



​
Friday nights in the maintenance room

I tap at the computer
and the order goes through:
- replacement lightbulb on level 2
in the breast cancer ward
- back order til monday
because it's friday night
and the electricians are specialists
and dont have to be here
out drinking beers on patios
or fucking their wives in their bedrooms.
"Thank you for calling
that will be taken care of as soon as possible."
Tap in some more lines:
- non-urgent
- 7 day turn around
- fuck this job
and ashton
the other guy
is playing with a frisbee
tossing it across the room
and waiting for me to get off the phone.
He's married,
doesn't care about friday nights;
wise man to get married early
if he knew he'd end up here.
This is our friday night:
playing catch in a basement
while above us the whole town burns
with life and people drinking yellow beer
in blue light.
I hope a bus crashes
into every bar I would have been at.
I hope there's an outbreak of food poisoning
brought on by unclean glasses.
I hope I die down here
tapping the computer keyboard
for new chairs for fat nurses
while everyone else
dies up there.

​

Bio: DS Maolalai recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working for a medical supply company and his nights drinking wine. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.