COLOURING THE WORLD.

Auntie Peggy...
gave us the world.

We held it tentatively
between finger and thumb.

Hardly able to believe
what we could see.

There we were( & she )
trapped  in the first ever

colour photo we
had ever seen.

And so we saw
that grass was green

as were Uncle Michael's
corduroys.

We looked and looked
again to confirm

that the photo had got it
exactly right.

Somehow that world
was lost by us

and we can only see it
through the eyes of

Auntie Peggy's photos.
where everything remains

just so.

And redder and bluer and greener
than anyone could know

"BALLEA...BALLEA...BALLEA!"
( for Mary Forde )

"Ahhhh howya!" says the sun
looking pleased with the world
it has just constructed

I throw off sleep
& run into the light
the world blossoming into being

here was my favourite tree
that the night had swallowed
& had tried to swallow me

here was a bird
I didn't know
trying to talk to me

I admit I am not
very good
at the bird language

but I catch its drift
get the jist
"Open your eyes...open your eyes!"

the river had somehow
been put back just
in time for the morning

and although the cow
had eaten so much grass
there seemed to be so much more

"Greeeeeen!" sang the grass
at the sky's "Blueeeeeeeee!"
the sky laughs with birds

this my uncle's farm
newly minted out of morning
it sings its song

"Ballea...Ballea...Ballea!"
we chant its name
running out to play

*

Ahhh beloved of places....this is heaven to Curragh Dempseys! This is where the soul will return to if me is still me. This is it on its last legs but Granny's nasturtiums were still blooming and feral cats slunk about the place as if they owned it.

FOLLOW THE LEADER

she is the creator
of worlds
she being 3

does not know how
a world
can be

a world
is only
how she makes it

daily she
creates it
in her own image

music is a thing
that dances
in the blood.

a butterfly is a miracle
she is just as yet
unaccustomed to

a flower
is a piece
of living magic

her dolls
speak to her
( in her own voice)

ten tulips
bow to her
she bows to them

a daddy is
a somebody
who knows nothing

who has to be
taught
everything.

she knows
there is nothing
that can not be

facts are replaced
by imagination
...the art of seeing

a purple sun
shines
in a yellow yellow world

see she has
drawn it so
and so it is so

and I her disciple
follow the little leader
as she teaches me

how to be
the world that she
can see

( half invention
  half discovery )
as she leads

me back to
the land
of childhood

I believed I had
long ago
lost forever

*

She was my teacher...making me in her own image...showing me how I could live in the world without dying into adulthood. I became as a little child and she gave me the gift of the world she created.

"DÓNALL DEMPSEY INDEED!"

'LLANÓD YESPMED?"
he squinted at my driver's licence.

"It's pronounced CLANÓD!"
I said with extreme exasperation.

"Y'are not from these here parts
. . .are ya fella?"
he drawled dryly

squinting closer firstly at me then
back again to my !D.

"I'm of Welsh/Turkish extraction
but I was born on Venus!"

I explained as if to
a little kid.

"Ha ha...haha!" he snorted
a tiny trickle of snot

yo-yoing up and down
his hairy left nostril.

"Ha ha...if you were to
spell yer name backwards
it would spell:

Dónall Dempsey!"

I was not amused.

"Ya know...that crazy hairy
Irish earthling poet dude!"

"I'm not him!"
I fumed.

"Alright...alright...keep yer
antenas on...geeeez!"

He handed me back
my Id ID.

Tipped his hat.
Wiped his nose across his sleeve.

"Welcome to Mars.
You drive carefully now!"

I stepped on the rocket boosters.

Left him eating my stardust.

"****** customs!"
I yelled to myself.

"Huh...Dónall Dempsey
...indeed!"

*

To make taking the roll call more interesting I got them to write their names backwards and they loved this indea and wouldn't let go. Then I got them to write stories about this new character they had become. I of course did the same excerise as they did and I thought my backwards name sounded like a Welsh/Turkish/Venusian who was a future space trucker who was having a bad day and was being held up by a redneck customs man with disgusting nostril hygiene.


Without any intro I would tell a class to take a blank piece of paper and exactly and neatly write their name in the very middle of the page. Then I would go around to look at them and go "No...no...no!" They would look at me in great surmise. "I meant...backwards!" So painfully as if it were a hard maths question they would backward themselves and ask me how to pronounce themselves. And then with their new "selves" I would get them to invent who they "now" were. They went at this with great gusto and characters born purely form pure sound would be created right in front of me> They're "I" had changed into a hee hee hee "HE" and suddenly there were all these different people running around in their minds. They even drew these new "thems" and the playground resounded to the new sounding Nairbs and Yrams who had sloughed off their usual monikers to be born anew as an inventive character.

I would never not do what I would tell the kids to do...so I became this LLANOD YESPMED who had problems with a border guard somewhere in the 25th century.

THE MAKER OF WORLDS

"Who made the world?"
and the cane
and the chanting

did their work
"God
made the world."

the church's Catechism
teaching him
by force...by rote

he smiles now at this
the only scrap
he can remember

"Good God...
it was I
who made my world.!"

here
at the centre of
my tiny universe

my thoughts
made the world
out of nothing

that tree was my tree
that nobody else
could see

the same
as I saw it
I a creator of my self

now
that Death
comes to visit him

he talks
to himself
Death sitting silently

the pain eats him up
from the inside
gnaws at him

as if he were a bone
***** the marrow
out of him

the world fading
to a bicycle bell and
children's skip rope laughter

he hears his voice
questioning
"Who made ***** tonk angels?"

the sacred
and the profane
a mash up in his brain

Kitty Wells voice
swims back to him
cutting through seas of time

"It wasn't God who made
***** tonk angels
as you said in the words of your song

too many times
married men
think they're still single

and that's caused
many a good girl
to go wrong!"

but now
the time has come
that is no time

he has abandoned
God
he sees the world

falling
out of his hand
he walks towards the light

*

A friend of mine who suffered a heart attack but survived to tell the tale...saved just in time by his friend the milkman who always came in for a cuppa. He found him fallen underneath a dark glass table and did the necessary to keep him with us and called an ambulance. He told me that as the heart attack had laid him low he was gazing through this table like a glass darkly! He asked me if I knew any of the Cathy( what we kids called the church's question and answer indoctrination)and I said only that first question. He said me too and that then dovetailed into one of his favourite Kitty Wells song! It made a good funny story he said but by God it hurt like hell.

My poor mother would sometimes burst into this song( no ***** tonk angel she)when she was doing the mountain of ironing that having 10 kids had brought into being. So to me too it had a loving memory and would invade my mind anytime I did my ironing. We drank a drink to not being dead and sang IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE ***** TONK ANGELS loudly and with great gusto. It is always good to cheat Mr. Death even if we knew he would come back knocking one fine day.

THAT KIND OF NOTHING

it was that nothing kind of day
her ghost walked away thinking
"So this is what it's like to be dead?"

she sits inside her self
her body nothing but
borrowed badly fitting clothes

she makes her mouth
do talking
the ventriloquist of her self

her face in the mirror
just a painting
from some long long ago

she does dishes
like a robot learning
how to be human

can't tell you
what it is
only what it isn't

a sad shy smile
holding the whole lot of her
together...some...how. . .  

*

My friend lost her husband..these are just some of the ways she tried to break through her grief with words but mostly all was a numb silence where even tears were banished. I remember her laughing hysterically and saying he would be so ******* that he was dead and would refuse point blank to believe in his own death and that he was beside her and the only place to could meet was in their shared silence.

'I AM INFINITAS!"

here is
our wooden
O

it is
our zero
yellow

there is a 7
...but
it is missing

the puppy's
chewing
an orange 2

"Puppy...
. . .puppy
noooo!!!!"

the admonished
puppy
looks astonished

"This is a good
chew this orange 2."
it whimpers

she her self is four
and
...a little bit more

"When will I be
this one?"
"That's an eight!" I tell her

"It will take you four more years...
...of being you
to be it!"

The 8 has fallen
shhhh on its side asleep
...become an infinity

"Ahhh...infinitas!"
my little infant this
is what...you really are.

this unboundedness
of you
an infinity of you

forever after when
asked what age she is
she'd always answer

with a hearty laugh.
'I AM
INFINITAS!"

*

She had danced and sung and sung and danced. Now she was tired she retired to her favourite place...climbing up on my lap and treadling like a kitten she settled down to watch Kirk Douglas with me. Kirk was being Spartacus and everyone was claiming to be him at this juncture. She had heard the famous line as "I AM SPARK PLUGS!" and now rested from her exertions of watching and trying to make sense of a Hollywood movie...she ran around all over again dancing and singing: "I'M SPARK PLUGS...NO I'M SPAR K PLUGS!"

I used to teach her her letters and her numbers by means of a peashooter and wooden coloured alphabet and gaudy colourful numbers. Rather like Sir Thomas Moore teaching his daughters their letters by means of archery. The 8 lying down and having a rest and becoming an infinity symbol led to her next great statement which she always loved to proclaim as her little self identity..."I....AM...INFINITAS!"