Ocean of Souls: Six Minimalist Sequences, poems by John W Sexton
John W. Sexton was born in 1958 and is the author of five previous poetry collections: The Prince’s Brief Career, Foreword by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, (Cairn Mountain Press, 1995), Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, a book of haiku with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock (Doghouse, 2004), Vortex (Doghouse, 2005), Petit Mal (Revival Press 2009), and The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry 2013). He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTE radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes. His novels based on this series, The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed are both published by The O’Brien Press and have been translated into Italian and Serbian. Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His poem “In and Out of Their Heads”, from The Offspring of the Moon, was selected for The Forward Book of Poetry 2014. He is also the changeling-other of the blog-poet Jack Brae Curtingstall.
Face of Christ
stitched from snakeskin Mr Dolly-Devilpatch
red doors plot against the tyranny of threshold
winding the unharm clock the old grow young
after eating a flea infused with god he discovers fire
in 1969 Luna is proved a stone I’m eleven
moth at the oil lamp the face of Christ on its wings
Perfect Ifs
up ride a birch catkin to the moon’s eye
evaporated reigns the king made of steam
negatives count backwards Einstime machine
stuck in the 13th story Chef Zed’s toffeemen
towing Jerusalem by their hair swim midden east
the glassblowers breathe bulbs of perfect ifs
b mob ex plodes un does the car nage
A Molecule Free
time travel takes real time on the turf escalator
his paper crown ablaze he illuminates the exit
build your own universe a molecule free with every issue
snow queen a morphine glacier expands his mind
for the Prince of Emgión sunlight opens the petal doors
Gabriel 8 ten devilled X 4 T got 6 6 6 a parrot
House of Light
cargo humans in jars dreaming until the moonmine
grazing stone my shadow’s clothes never wear thin
then Mahoud held on to a cloud and escaped the city
before Yahweh, Onan claimed possession by glove puppets
Gallileo attaches the planets to the sun by his grey hair
Lilly pulled lilyturf until the ground screamed worms
under the Yangtze River Mr Chlang in his house of light
His Nephrite Suit
take one primal egg poach in steaming cosmos serve cooled
fraction of theory more than the negative gold in fort nix
in his nephrite suit Emperor Shao enters the ocean of souls
soft tissue scars from wars with dandelion swords
armageddon ice-cream machine makes bloodberry Mondays
shadows the only tenants in the castle of dust
Instruction on Centring
Jack Moonbeam your white sperm penetrates space
Jonah’s unused whaleway return ticket
woodworm generate thoughts in the colonel’s headboard
an instruction on centring from the stone angels
heron sections Siamese Buddhas from the salmon’s heart
granny dark’s brood all from the graves of the unbaptised
lord crow pecks the poisoned kumquat from her throat
© John W Sexton