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Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
YOUR NAME YOUR NAME

you play hide & seek
within my heart
I search for your name

you run in my veins
I thrill myself with you
you kick my bellybutton out

just the shadow of you
growing into
the person you will be

I long to tie you down
to syllables...sound
you escape yet another name

your name now
pins you to the world
you inescapable you

now you are here
I say you
over & over
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
MY LITTLE RAY OF SUNSHINE

my little ray of sunshine
waiting on my desk
for my hand to write words

my little ray of sunshine
points to pen & paper
"Ok...ok!" I say

today no ray
my desk empty
of sunshine & words

my little ray of sunshine
playing upon my desk
searching for words

my little ray of sunshine
scolds me
my lack of words

I turn
my little ray of sunshine
into words

my little ray of sunshine
looks at itself in words
smiles
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
REMEMBERING COLERIDGE

"Ok! Can we have..."
my mind shouts

from its directorial chair
megaphone in hand.

"A MIRACLE OF RARE DEVICE
over here!"

BUT OH! THAT DEEP ROMANTIC CHASM
is still in her caravan.

"Ok...cue camera No. 2 &
where...

where are the SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
can someone please. . .

. . .get the ****** SUNNY PLEASURE DOMES WITH CAVES OF ICE
please!

"We've got a Coleridge
moment

coming up on his next
footstep!"

"Are all you brain cells
following me!"

Memory goes through wardrobe
dressing each thought

in perfect Kubla Khan
costumes.

"Ok...cue footstep 2000 &
waitforitwaitforit....2!"

"Ok people..!" shouts my mind
"...he's going to remember the

Coleridge any second
. .    .nOW!"

"Cut to...OH STILL UNRAVISHED BRIDE OF QUIETNESS!
wot...wot....cut CUT!"

"Ok...who pressed the Keats button!"

And so it is that a Keatsian personified urn
of Greek extraction

finds itself in Xanadu

as I cross the road
and almost get knocked down

by a ****** big No. 69

and a cursing cyclist
in spangled blue latex.


What it is like inside my brain as I try to remember the bits and bobs of Coleridge that bob up and down in the stream of my thought as I try to cross a busy road. The mind is more interested in salvaging the lines of the poem rather than coordinating the feet in order to cross the road still in possession of my life. I survived to tell the tale but...only just.

I guess I was remembering the old comic strip THE NUMBSKULLS that tinkled my pink when I was a young fella me lad and both comics and poems jumbled around in that little mind like so much bric-a-brac or emotional flotsam and jetsam. And so the lines like shipwreck sailors get washed up on the shores of my consciousness.

Our "myriad-minded Shakespeare" as Sammy said of Will and could have been said of me in this poem but not as successfully as either Shakespeare or Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Numskulls is a comic strip in The Beano, and previously in The Beezer and The Dandy – UK comics owned by D.C Thomson. The strip is about a team of tiny human-like technicians who live inside the heads of various people, running and maintaining their bodies and minds.

The comic strip first appeared in The Beezer in 1962 and was drawn by Malcolm Judge. In this version they lived inside a man's head rather than a boy's head. The man was never named, but the Numskulls referred to him as "our Man". There were six Numskulls during this time. The 'Mouth Department' was home to two Numskulls, named Alf and Fred. Luggy (Radar) looked a lot like Cruncher, Snitch looked like Cruncher as well except Snitch wore orange, Brainy had no glasses and had no hair apart from around his ears and wore black, Blinky looked the same except he was bald and Alf and Fred had two hairs on their head and wore black and yellow.
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
JOURNEY

Wearing a thick fog
the mountain ventured

into a nearby valley
as suddenly and silently

as a mountain could
if it so choose.

The night also aided
and abetted its efforts.

It splashed through a wide river
and over a geographical border

to the next country
without anyone being anything

the wiser.

It saw towns
and more humans

than it had ever
seen in its life.

The noise and activity
troubled its thoughts

and it turned and returned
before the new day dawned.

It decided to stay
in the place where it was

born
clutching a morning to itself

winking at me

telling me to tell
nobody

of what I had seen
of its wandering

or the thoughts
that lay sleeping

in its great
granite mind.
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
ODD ANGEL OUT

Fallen angel
on the run

hunted down
by the Host

and an ever wrathful
Almighty

gone to ground
in my Da's shed

amongst a million things
that are of no use no more

but may be
someday you never know

huddled beside a paraffin can
a bottle of turpentine...the smell of pine

camouflaged as a shaft
of sunlight

its voice a dancing
of dust motes.

All because it longed
to be human.

Finding sanctuary
in my Da's shed

'cos if anybody can
show  him

what to be
human is

only my Da
can.

I take the angel's hand in mine
(feels as if there is nothing there )

the shed lit
in a Carol Reedish way.

My Da's whistling
nearing the door

that opens with
a creak of thought

"See..?" I say "...see!"
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
ME MAM’S MIND
(in memory of my mother Ita)

“If you fall
off that wall

& break both
your legs

...don’t come
running to me! ”

Could never understand
my Mam’s mind

& how it
worked.

One moment
she 'had half a mind

to come up there
&' get me off that wall.

Then she 'was in two minds
about' whether to tell me to stop.

“Go ahead...go ahead
& **** yourself

...see if I care! ”

“I’m warning you child
if you fall off that wall

& ****
yourself

I’ll personally
come up there

& **** ya myself
so I will! ”

I used to watch the words
climbing out of her mouth

& fly around the room

looking for a place to land
in my mind.

Never cared
whether she gave out.

I just loved
everything she said

the music of her
& how

she made the words
behave.

I came down
and kissed her

kissed her worry away.

'I'm sorry Mam'
I told her.

And she cried.
Donall Dempsey Jan 2019
THE DANGERS OF READING FLAUBERT....AL FRESCO!
( for Ray )

"Souvent la chaleur d’un beau jour..."

he reads, stops:
kisses her.

" ...Fait rêver fillette à l’amour."

she completes the words
kisses...kisses him.

Dining al fresco
feeling somewhat frisky

they throw caution
to the wind

soon all too soon
Flaubert forgotten

Madame Bovary
discarded on the grass

soon all too soon
even the food forgotten

clothing of both
male and female attire

discarded on the grass
now nothing but gasps

they each
the other's feast

the wind idly turning
Bovary's pages

skipping to the end then
beginning again

until one last ***** gusty
breeze interrupts their play

chasing their clothes
that run away

his boxers hang now
upon the bough

her pink camiknickers..pale pink bra
making a run for it

laughingly they chase
their clothes

this Adam and his Eve

bra floating ****-up
in a pond

the camiknickers never
alas to be found.

And here now on their
50th

they share the same smile
when asked how it was

they came together

remembering their love making
in windy weather

shyly slyly blame
Flaubert

" Il souffla bien fort ce jour-là,
Et le jupon court s’envola."
***

From the Italian, literally translated as 'in the fresh'. In English, used to mean either 'in the open air' or, where specifically related to mural painting, 'on fresh plaster'.

Almost always, it is used in relation to dining alfresco, that is, eating outdoors.

Both meanings have been in use in English since at least the late 18th century; for example, in Mrs. Eliza Haywood's History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 1753:

"It was good for her ladyship's health to be thus alfresco."

The lines quoted are from the end of Madame Bovary who expires as the Blind Man sings them in a raucous voice. They are from a  Restive de la Bretonne poem from his"The Year of the National Ladies" way back in 1791. He who was so much into women's shoes  that his very name became as one with this particular peculiar fetish..Retifism

"Souvent la chaleur d’un beau jour
Fait rêver fillette à l’amour.

Il souffla bien fort ce jour-là,
Et le jupon court s’envola."

"Maids in the warmth of a summer day,
Dream of love, and of love always. . ."

"The wind is strong this summer day
Her petticoat has flown away."
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