Love / Hate [by Terence Winch]

Ed. note: I had just about exhausted every crime series available on Netflix when Terence Winch [pictured here with a friend at La Maison blanche] wrote to suggest that I check out Love/Hate, an Irish crime drama series broadcast on RTÉ Television. The show is irresistible, and I was especially drawn to Darren, a central character played by the compelling young actor Robert Sheehan. Just the other day, this poem appeared in my in-box. I love it! Thank you T.P. Winch for letting me share it here. He is pictured on the left talking to a friend at the Maison Blanche. -- sdh

Love/Hate

                        for stacey harwood

I will be upstairs in just a minute,

I promise you. But first I must

compose a long, complex symphony

dedicated to Duke Ellington, which

I have pieced together from riffs

and bits off old tinny 78s, scratched

with skips but full of musical

notes, like A, G, and E.

If I could get out of this chair,

I would. And I would ascend

then to the Throne of the

Angelic Mobsters of RTE

who are right this very moment

murdering each other on those

dark Dublin streets. It would be

a laugh and a half times two.

But I can’t get up. I am not

able to keep my promises.

The serenity prayer is a cruel

joke. Baudelaire was an alcoholic

and so’s your mother, and

that's a fact, revealed in the third

act, which I can’t stay around for.

Sorry, sorry. My bad. I’m sorry.

from the archive; first posted January 13, 2014

Comments

[Emily Fragos]

Baudelaire was an alcoholic/and so's your mother.
Good stuff!