The Only Ones

On the inside the party's

in full flow. Smiles are swapping,

wine is guzzling. People stand proud

in their shorts and shirts, bottles raised

for toasting.

But they don't see us

milling around outside, trying to

summon enough pride

not to press our noses to the glass,

or surrender and walk inside;

become a football on a field

everyone kicks but no one

takes home. So estranged from

any sense of being alive

we even step back from

each other, taking it in turn

to claw at the glass as though

it's a skin we might tear,

a chrysalis we might break through.

But we are stillborn here:

always the afterbirth, never

the afterparty. Ghosting the street

where the party's been swinging forever,

tipping our hats to the new crowd

until closing time is called:

always the first to walk away.

Ian Mullins

They Fall As Angels

She loves him. You can
see it in the way she flexes
against the silk he’s bound
her with, the silver gleam
in her eyes when he splashes

hot wax over her tight breasts,
clamps her nipples up

another notch.

Her faith in the pain he offers her

as others offer roses
doesn’t rest in the safe word,
the simple knots she pulls against

as a yacht pulls against its anchor,

but in the man himself,

the steel warmth of the bullwhip
he proves himself master of
by lashing her only with its tip,

where a crack faster than the speed

of sound doubles back

upon them both as lightning strikes

again and again –her slave
and master. Trusting him

to hang her from the precipice
by the avalanche of her fingertips

until she rises as the goddess
Frankenstein gifted his son to,
the beautiful bride in an angel

-winged dress, stained with

its creator’s blood.

See the man-god on his knees,

baptising her with her own blood.

He hangs her from the cross,

but it’s he who bears the thorns.

Ian Mullins

Pass It On

It could have been

anyone, but I'll always

remember the red-faced man

blowing his nose as I

passed him on the street:

if I'd left one minute earlier

I'd have avoided

the virus completely,

or maybe missed out

on passing it to him.

Yes him

he'll say, waiting at the gates

of Hell

as I collect my burnt

and blackened wings;

he's the one

who killed me.

Ian Mullins

Man Up

It’s only natural, folks say;
nothing to be frightened
of son, but soon you’ll find out
why older guys
sit under the staircase
and lock the bathroom door.

But they don’t know
what I seen, they don’t know
what I done. I thought
he was just Davey Boy
@good.old.boys.com
but he had grey hairs on his chest
a black smell in his pants
and I ain’t going there again.

I got me a knife
and maybe a few more
tree-climbing days
but come the day
daddy says it’s time
mommy says she’ll do me proud,
I ain’t going to be a boy no more

I’ll cut the blood,
I’ll carve the tree. Strip me downand search me Sir; you ain’t

going to find no man in me.

Ian Mullins

Song Of Innocence

I hope to go mad when I'm old:

a daily dose of dementia

would suit me fine. I'll sit,

or be sat, in an old chair

cradling a stuffed cat,

purring loud enough

to drown the silly voices

telling me I once dreamt

of strange lands, but crashed

on dangerous rocks

– so when death comes

it will feel no stranger than

being bathed, or having

my hair combed. Dreams will seem

no different from death,

and death just another country

that like William Blake, I've waited

all my life to visit. They say

that on his deathbed

he broke out into song.

Ian Mullins

Downbeat

Never a whole tune,

just a coda, a memory,
the middle eight
or a lost chord
no-one plays anymore.
A scratch on a 45,

a cigarette burn
on a wooden neck.
Just notes and shapes
scattered like bread
for hungry birds
to peck from the floor.

This is all you have
left to play. Staves
and signatures, blue notes
grace notes
and flattened fifths.
Who needs tunes
anyway?

Ian Mullins