- John Paul Davies
Selected Poetry by John Paul Davies

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons
In-Flight
I see you from the airplane window,
waving across pitch plain,
stranded in some blank desert
I could cross and leave no sunken shape.
Where you’ve been hiding–
above the clouds,
just this side of darkness,
roused by the steady
blink of a wing light,
disappearing into the
burgeoning horizon.
Rio Instances
The shock of continents.
Film over the eye, the steam
of Rio De Janeiro.
Airport tannoy drips slow evil.
Currency on short loan.
Gringo in each clenched fist.
Cristo Redentor,
arms deadlocked scales-
good and evil in equal weight.
Copacabana crawls.
Carioca boy of eight
opens taxi doors,
heavy with the twisted
spire of his head;
broken-windowed,
limbs lopped trunks.
I offer Five Reals and no answer.
Eyes in a doorway,
his father had hoped higher.
After the Samba, carnival streets
black as gunpowder,
burning beef and rain-damp rice.
Carnival burns late.
The undead kiss in
back-room bars;
fog like tongues finds Botafogan graves.
The Skol-sellers coil in their shells,
hammock their bones on
Two Real notes.
Dream of coconut skinned green.
River washes its mountain dregs,
shanty bulbs pop like poor Christmas lights,
eyes put out one by one.
Rushed Neon
If you look hard enough
you find them,
in puddles and in headlights
you see the city
replaying its scenes.
It is years before we meet
before you let hair drape
like idle strands of sun sauntering
into lived in, life-full
looking-in rooms.
It is years before
so we pass cold-eyed,
each needing nothing from the other.
Or it is the thought of us harboured
in the red of the window.
The new people in our seats
may feel the air different,
a strange slant of light
if for a second
they pause in their pulse.
We are held in glass
like a river that never
broke into pieces,
like a river that never
broke its back in places.
In rushed neon,
a drawing down of lids to tears,
the city relives us.
On the park seat
between those worthy of
bronze words
and a dash between
two certain years–
where we never leave off,
watch our voices torture the air,
invent our own continuous season.
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Accountant
Poised like an unsprung briefcase
deep in his figures room,
occasional tea the
only human contact.
Let's talk of logarithms, Maths
and of grey never
being the new black.
Tidy order, all red-ticked
and accounted for.
Stationery aligned, the battle set.
Pen unsheathed- but no
spectator sport this.
No drumroll greeting the
whir of his till-roll.
No audience to enrapture
with the speed of his calculator.
Day drips as the ink dries
on each non-wavering column.
Eraser crackles in its cellophane,
white as new fallen snow
on a new unaccounted for day.
The Vanished Room
Walled-in disquiet, the window painted white
on the inside.
Overlooking the high street
like a malignant eye.
The room a hate-furnace:
inside a brandy barrel,
liquid dark divides,
begins to curdle.
No matter how often
the corridor paced,
where the room
should be is vanished.
What made the girl’s eyes roll white
threatens to seep out of the bilge,
the barrel to explode in shards
each time you gaze
up at the window,
looking back sightless.
Born in Birkenhead, UK, I've had work published in Rosebud, The Pedestal, Southword, Orbis, Footnote, QU Literary Magazine and Maine Review. Winner of the 2018 Letheon Prize, I've also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times.I co-run The Bull's Arse Writers Group based in Navan, Ireland (Twitter: @Bulls_Arse).
If you are interested in learning more about John Paul Davies, you can find him on Twitter at @johndavies1978