BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian D)  

each night
I would follow you
through the rituals

of what you had to do
being Daddy
I wanted to be Daddy too

Mimicking your gait
becoming an exact
copy of you

trailing along
in your footsteps
like a lone seagull

following in the wake
of some great ship
of state

watching the water
burn
'til it was all bubbles

then letting it calm down
before filling my mother's
hot water bottle

carrying it
to her side
like a lover's gift

I was
your little
shadow

she'd always
smile:
'Thank you Danny! '

'That's alright love
was always
the answer

these the ritualistic words
in the hot water bottle
ceremony

then he'd teach the clock
to ****
adjusting it with his hands

and wind up Time
so that it spit tick & tocks
all through the night

then go lock doors
turn keys draw bolts
'That's it, son! '

I used to imagine
being you
and now I am

my own man
winding up Time
bringing my missus

the gift of a hot water bottle
(the gift of me)    
both equally heart warming

'Thank you Dónall! '
she always
smiles

'That's all right love! '
I always
answer

me the man
I am
because of you

CHIPS AND LAUGHTER

the knife
is pulled out of
the back

the poison
is spat out and
the dead come back

they stand
before us
joyful

& our joy joins theirs
like waves
that crash

upon the sands
of our senses
& Time turns back

to the ordinary moment
we stand
& clap

these our actors
(which we see before us)
take their bow

soak up
the applause
& dash behind

the safety of the curtain
that has come down
between their world & ours

we enter into
the coldness of the night
our breaths like spirits

speaking for us
the actors' dreams
still clutched like flowers

in our hands
& wander on
drawn now

to the lovely laughter
of our Hamlet
eating chips with Ophelia


and so
our play
ends


*

Found the backstage antics more fascinating than the play itself...all the dramas that the human lives have to contain whilst sustaining being a Hamlet during the two hour traffic of the stage just to maintain the illusion of the story for us. Meanwhile back at the real human being...

DO THE MATH

the eternal triangle
she more equilateral
hubby more isosceles/lover really scalene

husband a right angle
she an acute
lover definitely a bit obtuse

she saw her men
as a better behaved
set of simultaneous equations

exponential emotions
quite easily done
the Q.E.D. of it all

MY EARLY LIFE AS A CHILD

when I was a child
I lived without time
never gave it second thought

I lived in the now
there was no before or after
I was merely me

being me
in an eternal
present

much like the cat
who never gave tomorrow
the time of day

it appeared that I
had always existed
and would forever do

just
to be
that was me

a piece of sunlight
tripping over a stone
a footstep left in mud

was world enough
to be going on with
just to be the miracle

time it seemed
had never owned me
I was just Planet Dónall

Dempsey-ing along
to my heart's content
laughter my only language

in love with
a world and the world
madly in love with me

CREATING THE WORLD

the sky was walking
around the world
the land trying to keep up

the weather can not
make its up its mind
what to be

"Whatever!"
the weather
thinks to itself

the sky was keeping
its clouds in order
whilst managing a sunset

the land was out of breath
becoming only a shadow
of its former self

the sky and the land
now the same dark
until the moon is turned on

*

Waking with my little one she suddenly came out with the fact that 'the sky was walking around the world' and so the rest of the words made themselves up on the spot. A poet should always carry his three year old for inspiration....she always seeing the world in her own image. Tilly creating the world.

TIME'S ARROW

so: once again
my time machine
fails to work

I curse
and now
my mobile is gone

missing
where ever
could it be

but unbeknownst to me
my mobile has been
transported

back into
the very distant
past

where Cleopatra
takes a selfie
and laughs

she even adopts
the selfie pout
loves her magic machine

takes pic after pic
does my nose look
too big in this

previous pics
depict her with
"Caesar babeee!"

and here she is
on a date eating dates
with that honey Anthony

the last
with an asp
as the battery dies

the mobile
now lost
in time

oh the things
my mobile has seen
you wouldn't believe

whilst here
I am
stuck in the present

failed scientist
crying into his beer
wondering where

it all went
wrong going over
his calculations yet again

and wondering
where oh where
can his mobile be

reading an article
about a sacred
Egyptian artefact

only recently
discovered
and well well

what do you know
if that isn't
my own i-phone...

THE ONLY EDEN

Granny unable to
see

would build me
touch by touch

with her blind fingertips
search for the face

she would create.

Here my cheekbone
coming into being

there an eyebrow
newly born

here an eye
there a philtrum

sculpted from sunlight
hewn from nothing

here blind seeing
fashioning me anew

her fingertips
butterflies

forming this
living portrait

of the face
I own.

Her fingers feeling
for each nuance...each tone

the music of me
plucked from thin air

one moment I am not
then I am

all there.

I made all the more
real.

More realer
that I could ever be

emerging from
her fingertips

as if I were
God's Adam

and this her tiny garden
the only Eden.