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Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
BABY! I WAS BLOWING WITH YA ALL THE WAY!

Daddy's sax
croons to the baby
only thing that sends her to sleep

Daddy's sax
unplayed for years
given to the newspaper boy

Daddy's sax
alive again
in the hands of the newspaper boy

God that newspaper boy
can make that sax talk
"Swing it daddy...swing it!"

newspaper boy
becomes sax player
Daddy's sax in heaven

Daddy's sax
making the young girls
cry

Daddy's sax
its long journey
a litany of notes

*

Famous sax player came backstage after Billie Whitelaw's riveting performance in Sam Beckett's NOT I and said: "BABY I WAS BLOWING WITH YA ALL THE WAY!" I was looking after a little old lady and she used to play all these jazz records endlessly w
hich is where the story of the journey of her Dad's sax emerges from the darkness of time and glows in my mind like a glorious sax solo.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
LET SLEEPING PTERODACTYLS LIE

rusted scythe
perched on a nail
high up on a wall

a sleeping pterodactyl
I can't stop myself touching
it to see if it is - real

smacks its lips
laps up my blood
from my foolish fingertip

deceived by shadows
it's grin glinting
the smile come alive

the ghost of a horse
whinnies in the stable
that's gone long gone

the then
merging into
the now

or maybe
Mr. Death
too tired to go on

hangs up
the instrument of his trade
time to retire the old bones

“No way
to make a living!”
I hear him say

I back slowly away
blinded by the sunlight
that screams. . ."Run!"
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
SOUL OF THE AGE

Now, is the summer
of this. . .our content

made glorious
by love

the sunlight
kiss of leaves

yet through a glass
darkly

I am tolled by old
St. Saviour’s bell

back to
a December’d day

a Thames frozen
from Westminster to London Bridge

where Will
buries brother

young Edmund Shakespeare
on this the last day

of the year
1607.

I stand on the same
flagstones

as the King’s Men
gathered in black

rub shoulders with
Burbage

a Hamlet come
to life

a summer of tourists
walking through us

as the order
from the Book of the Dead

solemnly intoned

as his younger brother
is lowered

into an unmarked
grave.

Ferrymen call
from across the centuries

“Eastward **. . .
. . .Westward **!”

as Time slips
loose of its moorings

mastiffs strain
at the leash

await the bear
to be baited.

Methinks I see
the great Globe itself

flag unfurled
upon an horizon

“the forenoon knell
of the great bell”

as I return
to my self

and Shakespeare
stares at a wall

in Silver
Street.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
SISSONNE EN AVANT

Parc Du Champ De Mars
little girls practice their ballet steps
old man his T'ai-Chi

old man
frozen into
Carry Head Push Mountain

Time melts
old man flows into
Wild Horse Spreads Mane

"et maintenant...allongé ..allongé. . !"
dit Maman
the little dog rolls on the grass

the little dog growls
at the frozen man
little girl a statue in arabesque

little girl her
head in the clouds
old man...cloud hands

my moment
passes their moments
lost now in time

"... et maintenant
fermée, ouverte, développée,
en avant, en arrière, à la seconde."

*

From the old man shape shifting into his different positions of self to the tiny tiny dancers being put through their paces this was a wonderful moment of Paris that seemed to be part of a movie we had stepped into...a little piece of wonder.

A ballet student usually first learns how to do a sissone at an intermediate level and at young ages. This is to ensure the dancer has enough basic strength and comfort with basic steps like plie and saute.

From there, a student will learn variations such as jumping and landing on one foot in attitude or arabesque (sissonne en avant) or other positions. The step can also be done petit in variations or in petite allegro combinations.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
TRYING TO EXPLAIN HUMAN
LONELINESS TO INANIMATE THINGS

stares at the wall &
cries & cries & cries:
the wall doesn't understand

lonely  basement flat
the 5 o'clock train rattles
the broken teacup

apple on table
your smile bitten into it
you...no longer...there
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
"AHHHHH...IS IT...YER SELF THAT'S...IN IT?

here I am
thin now fat then
thin again

here the hair
short now long then long
in the long long ago

the same features
scattered across time
sticky-out ears...bulgy eyes...

curly hair
only the eyes change
( and remain the same ).


still the sad shy smile
flickers across
the ages

here I am
almost
handsome

her I am
my usual not
always the same laugh

the photographs
play with me
change and amend me

shuffle me through years
tears...different me's
me's I never knew I'd be

I smile my
by now
characteristic smile

laugh my laugh
that is my own
and no others

I've a feeling that
the photographs
haven't yet

finished with me
that there will be
lots more me to come

I close the album
put myself back
on the shelf

get on with the
business of being
my self


*

Being punctuated is a fierce painful business altogher...I remembered being full stopped and clare ta God but wasn't I in a coma for weeks on end. I was then locked up in brackets for another week and all my quotation marks taken away from me so I could hardly speak at all. Then I was given a life sentence to be my self for the rest of my life.

Too many Dónalls spoil the broth of a boy...joining the dots of me...painting by numbers the me of I.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2024
THE BELL GOES FOR THE END OF HISTORY

her head all algebra
trigonometry and Heaney
and...boys...boys...boys

her mind crept
nearer & nearer...him
longing just to touch his...

she watched a trickle of sweat
make its way down his neck
imagined herself licki..ing...it...off

it is the end of WW1
thank heaven for that
she watches him....mmmm...stretch...yawn

his name surrounded
by doodled hearts and flowers
her first poem....ahem...HYMN TO HIM

she had eyes only for him
he had eyes only for Siobhan Winterson
she hated Siobhan Winterson

oh my God oh my God oh
he just looked. . .
. . .past me

oh please oh please oh please
look at me
he doesn't give her a second look

she cries herself asleep
dreams of him
requiting her unrequited love

years years later
two kids and a divorce later
HYMN TO HIM in a battered shoebox

she reads her
13 year old self
sobs her heart out
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