Lost Stranger

Headphones and earring:
a model of youth on one
pushing into his fourth decade.

Prides his hair, all teased spikes
and shave grades, with extensive
sideburns that defy his jawline.

Perhaps that high-pitched giggle
from down the alley is at his expense.
He’ll never know, beer and ignorance.

Muscle tone, I will give him that.
His frame gets away with shirt tucked
into tight fit jeans. Now, his foot on the bench,

with his groin at head level to his mate;
I will never know if this is unintentional
or some kind of desperate suggestion.

They drink up and disappear,
and I have no desire to round the corner,
to run and see what might happen next.



 
Consensual

You found me bleeding,
a wound of childlike wonder
cut against the world.

	I mistook your laceration
	for a smile, the smoke
	and mirror of childhood games.

Who could imagine
a sad child? I dry my tears
on your hair and nestle there.

	Am I to play hide-and-seek
	with you? Tell me a truth.
	Shock me. I won’t give in.



 
A Purpose for Ice
after Giorgio Morandi's Still Life (1955)


Funnels and tunnels robbed of steam,
networking into solid block:
contention found in uniformity,
uniqueness blanketed by fellowship.

Vessels landlocked, iced over,
time seeing fit to pin their wings
down into this grey light of shadows

as one might stare at their own mirrored sculpture
and witness disbelief in the skull's
ageing process.

There, you question your own notion of breath,
lean helplessly towards an ending.

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Colin Dardis is a poet, editor, and sound artist. His work has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA, and shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize, Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Award, amongst others. Previous collections include Endless Flower (Rancid Idols Productions, 2021) The Dogs of Humanity (Fly on the Wall Press, 2019, shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet, Saboteur Awards 2020), the x of y (Eyewear, 2018), Post-Truth Blues (Locofo Chaps, 2017) and Dōji: A Blunder (Lapwing, 2013). Twitter: @purelypoetry

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