A BRIEF HISTORY OF A 9 YEAR OLD BOY'S SECOND WORLD WAR

the evil drone of
Heinkels ...Messerschmitts
"Ack-ack-ack..!"

the darkness
answers back
fear & fascination

the small boy
plucking them out of a sky
in his mind's eye

identifying  their shapes
clocking their markings
"I AM DEATH!" they say

his auntie's house
nowhere to be seen
the next morning

being comforted
that she's in Heaven
God uneasy in His world

Daddy a pilot man
who stayed up in the sky
because he died

auntie and daddy
lost in the night
with all the Heinkels ...Messerschmitts

making up curse words
when he let in a goal
playing on bomb sites

"Focke-Wulf
Focke-Wulf
FOCKE-WULF!"

SINGING THE RIVER

Walking with my uncle was never
the ordinary process of of perambulation.

in order to get from pt. A to
pt. Z.

We would sing our way west into
the field as if to

tame it
soothe it with sound.

"On Carrigdhoun the heath is brown..."
we'd sing to it

"...the clouds are dark o'er Ard-na-Lee."

The grass listening with its thousand ears.

And the field would swoon
and fall down

to the river at its border
( which as it happened )

was the real life river
of the song

"...to kiss the slumbering Own na Buidhe."

As if we had sung it
into existence.

And we would roll ourselves down
over and over until

we arrived at its dizzy waters
dangling our toes

in pure song.

And now( with a quick uncle wink )
"Let's walk home....backwards!"

And backwards home we'd go
just for the laugh of it.

The yes of it!

Confusing cows
and a few scattered clouds.

Trees and hedges tiptoeing
away from us.

The five-bar gate with
the sweetest wildest strawberries at its feet

proclaiming: "Is it mad...
...y'are or....wot?"

And the next day off we'd go walking eyes closed
in a darkness of our own making

to sing its song
to the river

the river chuckling
over stones to itself.

And the next next day would be
backwards with eyes closed

led along by our own laughter
and the odd mystified moo.

"Farewell..." we'd tell
the sleepy river "...farewell!"

leaving it dreaming
in a sunset.

"Shhhhhh..." shushed our footsteps
shhhhhhs walking backwards,

"When Donal swore, aye o'er and o'er,
We'd part no more a stór mo chroidhe."

"shhhhhhhhhhhh.....shhhhhhhhhhhh!"
"shhhhhhhhhhhh....­.shhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"....shhhhhhhhhhhh!"

*

Oh now that sense of play would be down to my Uncle Mikey who taught me the world in his own inimitable way. I believed everything he told me which used to annoy the hell out of my Auntie Nellie( God love her )who then had to put up with the both of us. She'd always be saying: "For Christ's sake Michael will ya stop filling the child's head with such nonsense...can't ya see he thinks everything ya say is true!" And true it was 'cos...I did and in a way...still do! He was one of the heroes of my childhood...a treasure trove to a kid...one of the jewels of my life.

THE GHOST CLUB

It's THE GHOST CLUB
you hardly know
when you're dead

it's just
a different kind of
alive

I hang around my old shed
touch & not touch
my rusting tools

some of the other ghosts
hang out at the bandstand
but only when it rains

we call ourselves
THE GHOST CLUB
chat 'bout this 'n' that

that 'n' this
you know the little things
that make a life

we keep in touch
with the living
shadowing them

pretending to be their shadow
hidden in a sudden
slant of sun

we shout and shout but
our words are invisible
it's like living

in a parallel
dimension living
inside a snow dome

when turned up side down
the fake snow falling
mimicking the real snow

falling gently now outside
I'd love to cry
but I've forgotten how

and I don't know
if it's allowed
it's a life of sorts

somehow
I get by
( I miss my boy )

bye. . .
bye. . .
bye

*

An old negative who had never known a photo...found floating face down in the ruins of my uncle's cottage. It's impossible to tell who they were...are. But I thought they bring them back as an illustration for this poem. Long may they live even in this ghost world.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT

She switched off the moon.

Plucked out the stars.

A little dog barked
as her scream scrawled:

“This time life has gone...too far.”

She took an overdose of sleeping tablets
in her big bright red car.

The day withers
that was once in bloom.

Petals fall
in an empty room.

The moon wept.
The stars cried.

Life was for living... Life lied.

She actually survived this attempt as she went into the hills where nobody could save her but...she had counted on a lone one man and his dog out for a last stroll. Paddy the dog went to *** upon the back wheel of the beautiful red car and started to whine. Paddy the man saw what was happening and pulled her out in time. Beautiful red haired woman in a beautiful red dress in beautiful red sports car...how could she even think of doing such a thing. When he visited her in hospital she was so enraged at being saved she threw a vase of flowers at him!

THE BECOMING OF ME

I'd be the first to admit
I was present at

my own
birth.

As was everyone
at theirs.

But I attended mine
with full consciousness

even if it was
my mother's

who in the telling
and re-telling of the tale

making me experience it
as it happened

down to the tiniest details
and so it was I was

born again and again
in her voice

in the tale of me until
her memory become my own.

So there I am
watching myself being born.

The labour ward radio
singing Ce Sera, Sera

either to sooth or
to drown out the screams.

My mother pleading with Doc. Cahill
"Oh will it be a boy...please make it a boy!"

And the Doc. answering in the demotic:
"I don't *know Ita...whatever will *be...will be!"

Then I put out a toe
to test the world and

Doc. Cahill is able to tell her
it's a boy at least!

And here I come
all 2 lbs of me!

All energy.
Speedy.

Popping out fast
heading for the end of the table

only to be caught by
an even speedier nurse who. . .

"Got ya....ya
little divil ya!"

It was '56 and I had come
prepared to rock 'n' roll man

sideburns better than
the King himself.

Only to be sung into being
by Doris that day.

"Oh he's got such a little *** ***!"
my mother moans.

"Don't worry..!" smirks the nurse
with the big big hands.

"It will grow!"
As indeeds it does.

And so they myth of me
begins.

I a tiny pebble in the stream
of my mother's voice

giving me her memory
for me to see

the me
of me.

"What are ya gonna call
this little fella?"

I get the kiss
and the caress of the Irish

"He will be
a Dónall."

A big name
for the little fella.

And see how the Irish
elevates me.

I, now no longer
a nameless entity but

"World Mighty
Spear Power!



It was almost like being there for me even thought I of course can't remember it for myself but I became my mother's memory and lived it vividly. Every birthday I would call her up and thank her for having me. When push came to shove...all I did was arrive...and she did all the work. I was tiny and she lost so much blood and nearly died and I spent my first six months in hospital with her.

". . .THE WONDROUS ARCHITECTURE OF THE WORLDE. . . ."

I laugh
the road over the Hog's Back
closed because....it melted

was the sun ever so
back in your day
eh Kit?

and what do I read
Mr. Marlowe?
why words, Kit, words

that word magician
Dr. Burgess he presumes
to bring you back

to life again
and so it seems
I see your blood Kit

streaming in the firmament
nay only a Deptford sunset
dragged screaming from memory

your blood upon the page Kit...
mere cherry juice it
stains the words

and so to Deptford I
do go
thanks to Madame Remembrance

I a poor
purveyor of poetry
clutching at words

and here
a great reckoning
not  in a little room

but on a lost street
staining the scene
a sickly yellow

and so enough
of Prologue...
Act 1 begins

a smiling ruffian
see his knife smiles too
the blade eager for blood

alas I
in so much pain I
have no fear of death

indeed would welcome
the flicked knife
if it would release me

from my life
a man prepared
to die if it be so

"Come live with me and be
my love..." I doth quote
in my best Passionate Shepard

"Wot?" he wots
scared of my insouciance
the ghost of Marlowe by my side

ahhh he the very villain
a scar from eye to smile
he aims to do the same to me

"Where rogue did
they get thee?" I mock
"VILLAINS 'R' US?"

Marlowe's ghost laughs
"Aye lad...ay lad
to him!"

"Only one of us..."
I warn my hellhound
"....will come out of this alive!"

I pause for effect
"And I'm afraid
it won't be( hee hee ) thee!"

I take a determined step
towards my would-be
now trembling killer

who all this wordage
being too much for him
he flees

ahhh the glint of words
defeats the glint of steel
he my Ortygius

"What sort of Feend,, or spirit of the earth,
Or Monster turned to manly shape
Or of what world or melted he be made...?"

I declaim to an audience
of cats and cans and
other streetly filth

I...I. . .unable to
find the next line
and so I etc., etc., etc.

and once more
I am of Guildford yet again
30 years or more away

and there melts a road
upon the Hog's Back
and I laugh to be alive

"Doth teach vs all to have aspiring mindes:
Our soules, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the worlde.."

**

Ha ha spent all this morning writing this after Jan came in and told me about the melting road! On the hottest longest day of the year for 40 years I was reading Anthony Burgess A Dead Man in Deptford and remember one of only my two visits there. Of course this is where Marlowe was killed/assassinated.

For seven years after a head injury I was in immense pain and would have been grateful to be taken out of it...so my poor villain had met a man who didn't mind dying....hence all the verbiage and wordage.

BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian )

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 Donall! '
she always smiles.

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

Me the man
I am

because of you.

OH PHOTOGRAPHIC YOU!

you...yes...you
wearing the latest
cloud upon your head

living your life
in Kodachrome
leaving your B&W world

and see here
a tree in full bloom
growing out of your head

and see there you
with only half a head
in Polaroid Land

now you no longer
here or there
I love the photographic you

even all these
badly taken snaps
a treasure trove of you

all these awkward moments
tears that bring
laughter

now you gone for ever
but these holy relics
possess your smile

I shove them to
the back of a drawer
unable to look at them

but knowing I will
again and again when
pain bites through the soul

...AND I WAVE BACK

Outside the hatch
he turns slowly

and talks
but I can't make out
the words he says

they fall from his lips
dangle and float in space

outside the backyard fence
a hill grabs the moon

and then slowly
lets it go again

the moon floating just
out of reach

laughs; 'Go on...do that again! '

the hill smiles: 'Just you wait... just you wait! '
the moon beams
as a little bird

gingerly(as if at first unsure)
steps out into space

and then finds flight
take hold of it as if

it had only discovered it that minute
and absconds with it

the darkness
barks

and falls
into silence

and then another part
of the darkness

barks back

held in a gentleness
a leaf tiptoes down the breeze

as if descending
a spiral staircase.

Time holds its breath

outside the hatch
flat on his back

the earth a little blue ball he has let go of

the astronaut
slowly turns and waves

& I
wave back.

"MINÄ RAKASTAN
SINUA PALJON PALJON!"
( "I love you very much!" )

the sky
full of stars
as if suddenly

as if billions of stars
had been ordered
and crammed into place

he realised he
had become lost
in the silence

these were Finnish stars
and the silence too
was very very Finnish

he turned on his heel
and then turned
again and again

"Hello!" said the snow
only in Finnish
of course

"Hei itse!"
I answered it
as if we were friends

after an hour
the way home
finally found me

that night
curled up
in his life

he watched with his wife
Hiroshima Mon Amour
with Finnish subtitles

she translating
it into English
for his benefit

"...and then one day
my love you came
out of eternity..."

both of them
not realising they
had become pregnant

SCHRöDINGER'S SOCKS & THE REVENGE OF THE CAT

Schrödinger's cat
failed to see just what

all the fuss was
about?

It was all such
a reductive absurdum.

The cat couldn't understand
collapsing wave functions

decoherence
entanglement or whether

reality was really
quantum

to save its life.

It was aware of
one thing & one thing

only
. . .the diabolic device. . .

Cat in a metal box
with a Geiger counter

with a radioactive substance
blah blah de ****** blah

an atom decaying or something or
other &

releasing a hammer to smash
a phial of hydrocyanic acid.

Wot!

"I do not like thee Dr. Fell!"
thought the cat.

It was a very literary cat.

So all this palaver
about a cat( me? how! )

being both dead or alive or
neither dead or alive or

. . .wot!

So this is to be my great
to-be-or-not-to-be!

Welllll excuse me!
Say...doesn't the cat have his say?

So, I( clever cat that I am)
merely claw my way to the top &

disengage the device
by taking out the hammer.

So no cat was harmed
in the making of this

thought experiment.

It almost drove Schrödinger
out of his tiny little mind!

And he( hee hee )
never did discover

what ever
happened to his socks.

I forever stealing
one sock from a pair

from the open
washing machine.

Leaving him to ponder
just where socks go?

The other side of the Universe?
Oh come on Erwin...it's not

rocket science!

Now, to get back to
describing the behaviour of

a quantum entity.

"Mmmmm......mmmmmm?"

"Naw....I still don't get it!"

"Say ya couldn't see yer way
to giving me a scratch...could ya?"

"Up a bit....upabit....yeah...yeah
. . .there...just...there!"

A WOMAN IS CRYING

in the next room
a woman is
crying

a moon
perches upon
an hotel sign

unmoved
as a new millennium
dawns as bright as neon

the woman
still crying
her unknown despair

shifting silently
from one century
to another

human grief
unchanged
from age to age

a woman
is crying
crying

*

New York with one century becoming another and in this one moment on the threshold of a new age...a woman cries her own private grief...a sorrow that has no name but seems to be the grief of all ages now and to come. I never discovered the reason for such sorrow and the neon coloured it blue and yellow and then red.

JOLLY GOOD SHOW

All day
stuck up this ****** tree

in the middle of ****** nowhere.

All the landscape
shrunk to this crossroads

like the cross-hairs
on a rifle sight

brings the distance
into focus.

“****** Nora! ”
He swears to himself and laughs.

His mother’s name was Nora.

Always thought it was hilarious
to swear by her.

Remembers one time as a boy
swearing at her:

“And eh by gum
she didn’t half hit me hard! ”

“Blood seeping through the gum
still taste the taste of it on my tongue
****** ‘orrible it was!

Hated her ever since.”

“Now, look whatcha made me done! ”
she hollered at him.

“Yes…sorry our Mum! ”

He didn’t dare cry
‘cos she’d hit for crying!

“She was a hard one…our Mum!
Had to be with us ****** lot!

She were fun though when she were happy! ”

He hoped to God
that his man would come

so he could **** him
and be done.

Didn’t know him
from Adam

(leader of the insurgents
capable of getting men around him) .

“Dangerously charismatic! ”

Better dead
to keep the British peace alive

as the Empire lay dying.

The sun setting
dying him a golden brown.

“If he don’t come soon
I won’t have the light to **** him.”

“Remembering shooting game with our Dad
rabbit…pheasant...up ‘eath in sunlight

. . .such as this.”

The dangly ****** rabbit
turning into next night’s stew

eating a celebration
of what you can do

- do well...****.

How he came to be here
up a ****** gum tree

rifle in hand…staring
waiting for a man to ****.

Same ****** thing.
Simple ****** plan!

Waiting 3 days now
and no man.

“Keep your position ...over.”
“Maintain radio silence.”

“Report in when job done.”
“Roger ok that...over & out.”

“Eager to get job done so I can go ****** ‘ome!”

“Didn’t believe it myself
until I seed it! ”

Dot in the distance
translating itself into a man.

Just enough light left
for killing.

“And now, put out the light
...put out the light! ”

He muttered to himself.

****** Othello!
The only Shakespeare he knew.

“A lass I once knew
A real brain & chatter box! ”

“I only ever wanted to get into her knickers
& the only way to do so was to listen…so I listened.”

“Trying to teach ****** me Proper English
and she ****** well Scottish!

****** cheek!
...och aye...but nooo! ”

The crossroads funnel him into
the killing spot

“Trot trot trot trot!
like THE HIGHWAYMAN!

Noyes! No...yes!

Why think of
Marjorie Wallace and her ****** poetry now!

No poetry in killing
just plain ****** prose.

Dead is dead is dead.

A blown rose
fading on the periphery of his vision.

The cross-hairs
come to rest

like a deadly spider
on the rider’s face.

He’s ****** grinning.

The man doesn’t even know
he’s already dead!

Won’t even know what’***** him!

(Probably thinking of a sweetheart
and getting her into ****** bed)

Just like I am.

Just the gentlest of squeezes

like stroking a lassie’s ****
(Oh Marjorie ****** Wallace!)

Then - that’s it!
The rifle spits and speaks

in the language of the dead

and only one man understands
what’s said.

And where there was a head
there is now no head.

You see it only
for the briefest of seconds

and can’t really believe it!
How the head blossoms!

Like a sudden flower
and then fades

in that
instant.

Mindless now...

he plucks the faded rose
(or whatever it is it’s called around here)

reminds him of
England.

Pops it into
an amo pocket.

Good clean ****.
Head shot – one shot.

Tries to pretend...
but it always hits him hard

taking a closer look
at his handiwork.

Kicks the body:
“You poor stupid ****** ******! ”

“A man no less a man
than I am...”

Faceless.

Lying there in the dirt
as he were only having a kip.

Becoming dirt.

Breaks radio silence:
“Come and ****** well pick me up! ”

“Jolly well done! ”
The radio cackles back.

“Jolly good show! ”

*

Brian was the gentlest and nicest man...he had a great sense of humour and always greeted me with a big sweary hello. He was always delighted to see me and I him. He was a delight to be with. I knew he had been in the army but didn't know the where and when of it. One evening as we sat in his room with the sun bathing us in gold he suddenly came out with all of this...inside this lovely man was the practical let's-get-on-with-it killer....a job to be done no more. I've tried to keep his voice and his telling and the sense of self...letting him tell the story as he did that day without any comment.

THIS MAN WHO IS NOT MY FATHER IS MY FATHER

This man
who is not

my father

is

my
father.

The others laugh:

“It’s not your turn but
he calls only for you! ”

And so I go
& clean him up

his skeleton thin body
splashed with ***** & sh.

I laugh & joke
with him.

He chuckles
as I tell him:

“Johnny....you used to be
so full of crap
but sh...now you’re not! ”

Lucky
our Irish sense of humour

extends this far

say anything with love and
it becomes so.

It is a tired old joke
but like a child he

pounces on its nuances
relishing each pause and stupid syllable!

I bathe
him

this man
who is not my father

gently as if he were

my child.

I sing
to him
all the old songs

I learned
at my father’s hands

as he bathed me.

“...why does my poor heart keep following you...”

We sing together
softly as I bathe him

dress him
anew

in the memory
of my father.

This man
who is not

my father

becomes
my father

as my hands learn
to care for him.

I settle
a pillow

behind
his head

wipe sweat
from his forehead

stroke
his hair

until  his sleep
is full

of dreams

...dreams.

*

He was only skin and bone and very weak...one could imagine Death standing by. He was always amazed that "How does a young fella like you know that" or as I would bathe him when he soiled himself I would sing the "Old Refrain" and again he would  say "But how does a young fella like you know a song like that!?" And the answer was always the same "My Da would always sing it to me when I was small and he was bathing me!" Or my Da would suddenly recite to me when tying my shoelaces or combing my hair "Jenny kiss'd me!" Or sing to me as he worked in his plot...'Liverpool  Lou.' And so the love of these would be passed from my Da to me and so to him. We all loved these things in a line stretching all the way back to my Da's young days in the 1920's. Love never goes away it just changes into another person  and an old poem and an old song would be the means to carry that love.

OH FRABJOUS DAY!

“Well well!”
chortled the Jabberwock
rising to greet me

“If it isn’t Donall
of the Dempseys
to be sure to be sure!”

I beamed
at the Irishism and
gave him a great big hug

he took an enormous
fob watch out of
his waistcoat pocket

“Is that the time?”
smirked the Jabberwock
“We haven’t met since…”

“…I967!” I answered
“From ’67 to now
that makes you 67!”

“Were you scared
of me way back then”
snickered the Jabberwock

“Naw…I knew you were
just a load of nonsense
fun with sounds and words!”

he put down
his vorpal knife and fork
said he had to fly

another reader
had opened the book
and he had to jump

into his Tenniel
illustration
and play his part

“But dear boy…dear boy
how wonderful it was
to see you after all this time!”

he smiled
over his shoulder
"Oh and tell Alice...

I was asking for her!"
and he was gone
flying off into my imagination

DRESS WITHOUT A WOMAN

dress without a woman
high heel without a foot
ring without a finger

who you were
reduced down to
items in a second-hand shop

death erases you
( memory tries to... )
death erases you

a palimpsest of selves
I try to make you
exist

my fingertip
writes your name upon
a frosted window pane

CRÚISCÍN...CÍSTÍN BAISE
(LITTLE JUG...LITTLE PALM CAKE)

Auntie Mary’s
currant cake & blackberry jam

“Mmmmmmmm”

The jewels in the crown
of our forever summer

holiday

precious Corkonian objects
brought back to the lowly lowlands of the Curragh.

All the blackberries
that ever were

bursting with sunshine
& childhood

Jumping into
the jar for her
as if it were
an honour.

They & I
transformed by her

love
& lovely laughter

cake baked
with smiles & chuckles

winks & singings.

Me on her knee...tiny
being kissed to bits

Me being devoured
by an enormous hug

smothered in bosoms
many many yellow flowers on her purple pinny.

Her blowing my curls
out of the way

so that her smile
could kiss me

more &
more...er!

Me unable to
comprehend anything

of her
Cork accent.

Me saying “Yes..? ” & “No..? ”
in all the wrong hilarious places

(to my great embarrassment
& her great amusement)

her breath
tickling my cheek

telling me
she loved me
...loved me...

& that I looked
so good

she could
“...ate me! ”

*

( Homely little terms! A little jug of milk and a little cake in the palm of your hand.)

A cístín baise is a little cake made on the side of the griddle especially for the child...eh...“helping” with the baking.

This was written for my Aunt Mary who passed away recently leaving me with nothing but the memory of her love...her all abiding love...that not even her death can diminish. I simply adored her.

The Cork accent is like fast fluent French cross pollinated with sing- song Welsh...almost impossible to understand unless you are immersed in it for a couple of months! But of course she would also play with me and make up a whole lot of what they call in Cork... “glig glag”...silly talk.

She was so easy to love.

A child’s delight!

DANNY DEMPSEY'S SON

my name
floated free
from me

like a child's ballon
taken prisoner
by a sky

here at the Old Head
of Kinsale where
my father had been born

I had become
"Ahhh Danny Dempsey's son!"
"Ahhh Danny Dempsey's boy!"

my Donall-self lost
in their delight of my father
"Where's my name gone?"

"He's the spit of ya!"
"The very echo of ya!"
"Hasn't he stole yer face!"

everyone having an opinion
of who it was
I was

and wasn't I only
delighted to be
" Ahhh Danny Dempsey's son!"

*

It was the first and only time I had been taken to my father's birthplace. And despite being long away from here he was instantly  
known by strangers who could tell him by just the look of him. And it turned out everyone was a second or seventh cousin. They delighted in him...sheer happiness to be in his presence as in the wild sky generation after generation linked together in the cry of the gulls.

The lighthouse was too dangerous to go up in so we stood at its base with a storm rearing its head. It was odd that nobody referred to me by my name only as "Danny Dempsey's son!" I wore this naming like a medal...always delighted to be his child.

On my first Holy Communion I was taken to Dublin for the great day. We were walking down Moore Street with the women selling their fruit and vegetables in full voice. A babble of voices....crazy as gulls.
When they saw us the whole street as one stopped and smiled with glee. One after another they declaimed: "Ahhh sure if it isn't Danny with his little fella!"  I was petted and patted and hair ruffled and oooh'd and ahhh'ed over.Money and fruit...fruit and money were ****** into our hands despite our protestations.

I thought it was the Cork effect happening all over again. It was like my Da was The Beatles but they had simply mistaken him for someone else. And the more he tried to tell him who he was...didn't they laugh and say: "Ahh sure isn't it a terrible man y'are altogether...always the joker.!"

We tried to give the money back but they wouldn't be having it. I whispered to my Da: "Who are they...do you know them?" He gulped; "Know them? No!" I gulped: "What do we do?" He told me" "We take the money and run!"

And so we did...dropping oranges and apples as we made our escape. The stall women shouting after us:.."Don't forget to come back!" I still wonder what happened when their Danny turned up!

FESTINE LENTE FESTINE LENTE

Up the Green Road
under an arch of sunlight & leaves

I travel through Time & Space
mastering speed.

Balance still a little odd
as I try to...cycle faster...keep up with my Dad

who is forever far ahead
calling: “Come on, Donall – that’s the lad! ”

All that time I am
that eternal summer

always

struggling to learn

how to do

7 x Tables
(tie my shoe)
master bicycles.

Down the Green Road
under an arch of Time & Autumn

I cycle faster with the wind
behind me...calling to the man

who languishes forever
far behind me:

“Come on, Dad...”

“Take it easy, Donal lad! ”


Festine Lente is the Latin for Hurry Slowly!



The man who made me...the man I am.

THE LONG HELLO

I left
my memory
in a run-down hotel

all damp patches
peeling
plaster

who am I?
wish
I knew!

maybe I'm a salesman
travelling
in lady's underwear

naw...that don't seem right
I looked into the blur
that formed & unformed

before me
constructing in my mind's eye
a Hollywood smile

that's all stage set
nothing behind it
but...fakely real

she had an Art Deco heart
she wore on her sleeve
bit frayed 'round the edges

and a laugh
that lingered
like perfume

'Hi, Petal! '
her lopsided grin
was all femme fatale

she spoke
in Film Noir
I knew the lingo

'Remember me? '
she sighed softly
as if caressing herself

remembering
me
caressing her

sure wish I remembered it
in intimate detail
I'm a stickler for detail.

this broad was slim
but with curves
in all the right places

if ya get my drift
if ya know
what I mean

her laugh was all
lightness and lavender.
'Good...good! ' she cooed

'I see your ******* is
at least listening! '
I involuntary

covered my crotch
with both hands
as if I was naked

I wish she was
her curves flowed
like very runny honey

over the back of a spoon
trickling on to the tip
of a tongue

she was strictly
yum as in YUM!
then she went

all Cubist on me
as if she'd been badly drawn
by that Picasso dude

I felt like a 2-D drawing
as she approached me
in 3-D

my conscience found
its voice(down behind
the back of the couch)

it wheezed
and wheedled
like it was Peter Lore

'Ouch! ' I ouched.
'Ok...ok! '
I announced

in a too loud voice
'I believe I know...
....who done it! '

'It was...' I stammered
'It was...' I stuttered
"It was...'

'Cut it...Cutes! '
she snapped
like knicker elastic

'I guess we both know the score.'
she somehow contrived
allowed her dress to fall

to the floor
where it pooled at her feet
like a green silk puddle

'Hey has anybody told you
you look just like *** a chelli's
Birth(I burp) of Venus! '

'Cut the wise cracks Jack...
it was the drink
...done it! '

'You just had one
bottle of Baileys
too many! '

'But now...it's finished...
ya hear
...finished! '

she threw the bottle
over
her naked shoulder

I listened to her
in glorious
Technicolour hangover

she poured her body
all around me
like jelly in a mould

'Hung over sure...but
I think I got the cure! '
her kiss was like
the last page

of a **** good Who
...dun it!
finally falling

into place
I kissed her
lovely face

YOU WITH YOUR FRESH THOUGHTS CARE FOR...
(for Amandip)

The tree
undresses itself

shyly sheds its leaves

stands naked
in the setting sun

its golden clothes
about its feet.

She cries
for what she sees

as the death
of the tree.

I put her
on my knee.

Kiss her
sobbing head

whisper words
of comfort

into her tangle
of golden curls.

Later, from the table
the sellotape dispenser

appears to have gone
missing

leaving behind an emptiness
where it should have been.

I smile to see
each golden leaf

returned to
the lower branches of the tree

clumbisly sellotaped
back in place.

'Tree better now! '
she seriously tells me

as starlings
swoop & sweep

across a sky.

*

I guess this is my modern updat of Fr. Hopkins's SPRING AND FALL: TO A YOUNG CHILD which I have loved ever since I first encountered it as...a child. Little did I think then that I would live my own version of it years later with my little girl. I used to say this poem to her to make her go to sleep...she didn't understand the words but loved the tone and the fall of the words.

I guess(I am doing a lot of guessing!)    that I had in mind also....one of the first haiku I ever fell in love with....Moritake's beautiful little peice of real magic as the fallen flower floats back to the branch.

The poem is dedicated to Amandip because of her constant kindenesses and her smile which lights up even the darkest corner.

Spring and Fall: To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

*

Moritake's most famous poem:

    The falling flower
    I saw drift back to the branch
    was a butterfly

THE FOREVER FLOWER

she hands me a stalk
"The flower's dress
fell off!"

"Fix it!" she cries
I by sleight of hand
fix her flower but with a different colour

"It's a different colour!"
"The flower..." I tell her
". . .changed its dress!"

this flower
with its dress fallen off
I hold forever

*

This is my little Tilly from long long ago and that flower or non-flower by the time I got it...is the only treasure I could wish to have. It's just one of those tiny moments that get lost in the flux of time. At the time I didn't write so I was delighted when it just popped back into my mind. It's like an emotional Polaroid.

IN XANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

NOLI TIMERE

to how small
he was
back then

the big barking dog
appears
a monster

a Grendel and
a Grendel's mother
put together

just as in
the telling
of the tale

his sister's voice
weaving a Beowulf
along the journey

every atom
of him
totally frightened

"Don't be afraid..."
she whispers to him
"Here...hold my hand!"

she stares the creature
straight in the eye
"Hello...Mr. Dog!"

and the creature shrinks
back into
someone's favourite pet

we walk on
into our future
without looking back

now here
at your death
I can still feel

your hand
in my hand
even

in a world
without you
I tremble

with
the loss
of you

and Death shrinks
before this great love
the tiniest of touches

"Don't be afraid..."
you whisper to me
"Here...hold my hand!"

IS THIS. . ?

Is this the face
that ate
a thousand chips?

Is this the fez
...that launched
a thousand quips?

Is this the vice
that launched
a thousand whips?

Is this the vine
that launched
a thousand sips?

AFTER THE ROW

built an over large
snowman
on your front doorstep

&
hid behind it
rang your doorbell

until you were
annoyed
by it

“Yes...yes! ”
you flung open the door
to be confronted

with a snowman
telling you
he loved you

until slowly
your heart
began to melt

HAVING THE TIME

my first Dutch disco
clinging to the wall
your cliched wallflower

a beautiful blonde
enquires of me
"Have you got the time?"

"Yes it's just about
midnight"
she looks nonplused

"No no!" she smiles
you have the time
...yes?"

only realise
she's asking
me to dance

we hit the floor
she a whirling dervish
a tornado on legs

"What..!" she yells
above Blondie's
"Rip her to shreds!"

"...is your name please?"
"Donall!" I yell back
she looks aghast

slaps me hard
across the face
storms off

just then JE T'AIME
is spun by the DJ
just for fun

"Oh, my love
Like the undecided wave
You’re the wave, me the naked island"

couples clinch
and smooch
I do the walk of shame

her had imprinted
on my burning cheek
cling to the wall

trying to disappear
into its pattern
of flowers


"Come, let me sing into your ear;
Those dancing days are gone,"
Yeats whispers in my ear

"Leave it out, W.B."
I snap at the dead
poet's ghost

Yeats laughs dances off
"I carry the sun in a golden cup,
The moon in a silver bag."

for ever after
I ask Dutch friends
"Now don't get mad but..."

I take a step back
"What does Donall
mean in Dutch?"

"Why...nothing?" they answer
"Nothing!" I say
"Yes...nothing!" they affirm

and so the mystery remains
I still feel the sting of her
slap all these years after

HIDE AND GO SEEK

"You know...
Granny's dead?"

"Yes. . ?"

"How long is she gong to be
dead for?"

"Well. . ?"

I think she
senses I

don't know
the answers.

She walks away
holding her dolly by the hand.

"It's just...Dolly misses her."

She throws the words
casually over her shoulder

then steps away into
a doorway

filled with the morning's
sunlight.

Granny smiles
from her photograph

trapped behind
the glass.

"...99...100. . !"
floats on the summer air.

My daughter's voice
sing-songing

"Here I come..."
( the hide and seek of )

"...ready or not. . . "
(life).

SUCH GENTLE VIOLENCE

unseen
a shoal of fishes
turn &...turns again

above them
a moon covers her nakedness
with a passing cloud

the lovers make love
with such a gentle
violence

the waves argue
insistently with the shore
"Shhhh,,,!" says the shore "...shhhh!"

a noise stops
and becomes
a mouse

mouse
stops
gazes into an owl's eyes

its shriek lost
in the faraway barking
of a little brown dog

the lovers at long last
asleep
turn and turn again in the heat

a small breeze
whispers its secrets
to the warm dark

unseen
a shoal of fishes turn &
turn again

CENTAUR

Hiding in the hay
me a terrified little boy
& my uncle like a terrified little boy

the voices in his head telling him to be afraid
of all strangers...changes.

He’s been like this
since the day his Dad(my unknown grandfather)
died.

My Aunt’s voice
searching for us...searching us out.

Her shouts like bloodhounds
hunting us down

her words angry & cruel.

Her angry voice slurring us into:
“DonallSeanie! ”

as if we had fused into one being
a metamorphosis of us.

The hay cooks us
and we swelter in our hidey hole

A chicken sits on top
of my uncle’s cap

as if his mind had
materialised into this shape.

He rocks himself
and rocks me.

“Shhhh...boy...shhhh! ”
comforting both him & me.

“Don’t leave me! ”
he clucks

the words scattered around him
like newly laid eggs.

I settle into his silence.

My Aunt’s threats freezing us
in this terrible heat.

His chest hair
tickles my nose.

The cut on my left big toe
throbs through the open sandal.

My uncle cries in fear.

I wipe away the tear
with the ***** edge of my sleeve.

We escape to
the West field

me riding his shoulders

transformed into
a legendary creature

that only exists in myths
fleeing from the realness

...of reality.

THE FOREVER KISS

between this second &
the next...Time somehow
goes astray: here - the kiss

the camera captures us
with its black & white click
we all shadows and sunlight

the camera perched
upon a rugged rock
proud to have taken it by itself

us now
this "that" framed photo
kissed every morning by the sun

I watch us as
the photograph comes alive &
we step out into the wallpaper

we run amongst
the Paisley patterned paper
like a giant surreal field

here by the light switch
would have run the river
we cross it on a sunbeam

and where the mountain stood
now stands an overflowing bookcase
we scamper amongst its tomes

we our younger selves
arrive at the French window
where our town should be

our little animated us
so black & white & tiny
passing through the darkening glass

the sunlight of this today
newly beginning to
fade away

this sunset now
an unimaginable
40 years away

I let them run
escape their photographic fate
caught in the aspic of youth not age

this photograph we
unaware of death and that now
there is only...me

between this second &
the next: Time somehow
goes astray: here...the forever kiss.

OPENINGS
(for Onelia)

The openings of famous novels
follow me around

for days on end

or just lounge around
waiting for me to say them.

The opening of MOBY ****
has gone for a ***.

The opening of A TALE OF
TWO CITIES

has fallen asleep
by the radiator.

The opening of PRIDE
& PREJUCIDE
is sipping a cup of Earl Grey
tea.

“Call me Ishmael...Call me Ishmael! ”
pleads the opening
of MOBY ****
returning from the loo.

“Have you washed your hands? ”
I ask it.

“It was the best of the worst of times...”
declaims the Dickens
confused upon awakening.

“Say me...say me! ”
they all clamour...crowding around me.

I just stare
at them in silence

wondering how
I got into this.

MEETING W.B. YEATS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Curled up in a cuddle

fused into
the one telling the one listening

my big sister
recites Yeats

She whispers:

“Come away o human child...”

as the thunderstorm breaks outside
“...to the waters and the wild...”

as the night breaks open
over the poem

“...to a world more full of weeping...”

the lightning illuminates each line
“...than you will ever understand...”

I cry into her body great heaving sobs
And she says: “Shhh...shhh.. it’s alright! ”

and I only half believe her
her death etched into my mind.

THE SOUL GOES FOR A STROLL

My Uncle sleeps with pursed lips
as if kissed by a dream.

Perched upon this kiss
a butterfly sits

as if an Uncle's lips were the most natural
place for a butterfly to rest

or as if it were an illustration
of the soul (a symbol)

in a magical book
that explained such things.

Outside the trees breathe gently
inhaling & exhaling a soft whisper of wind.

Bees carve a map out of the air
for other bees to see.

Out on a limb
two birds sit & chit chat.

A fox(unseen)passes by
as if it had never been.

A big big bug topples off the top
of a tiny stone onto its back

wriggling its arms & legs
as if it were trying to swim

through the currents of its fear.

One of the gossiping birds
sees him as a tasty treat.

Eats him.

Inside the house's
El Greco shadows

a kitten exploring the newness
of the world it finds itself in

jumps onto the sleeping statue
of an Uncle

with a butterfly
perched upon its lips.

Kitten tumbles ooops
into my Uncle's crotch

before climbing the mountain side
that is his chest.

Takes a swipe at the soul
pretending to be a butterfly

just as my Uncle
awakens to this reality

& his soul flits just
out of reach

between the fireplace
& the mantle piece.

AS IS

mountain tired
of its human name
throws off the words

like so much
tattered clothes
walks naked

into a sunset
becoming its own
"I am"

rain too
pays no attention to
the human sounds

reinvents  itself
every time it falls
"I the ever becoming!"

the sky laughs
as words stuck upon it
fall off

"I the great un-nameable!"
pinned down
by a puny words

the moon disdains
all attempts to trap
her in human language

she
"the great she
who is"

who do these
humans
think they are

humans gasp
as the map
unfolds

the mountain has left
of its own accord
the rain falls no more

and the sky
doesn't even
want to know

the map now
a blank
piece of paper

BIG SISTER IS TELLING LITTLE BROTHER A POEM

kisses
like Japanese paper flowers
opening upon

touching water
blossoming into amazement
to bloom for ever in imagination

your breath
(lace curtains dancing
in the breeze)

carries carefully each word
letting it break fragile as a bubble
gently against my skin

your voice settling and unsettling my hair
the poem rising and falling
borne upon your breathing

like petals upon a stream
cuddled into you
a dream of a dream

forever you telling poem upon poem
your heart beating preciously
against my heart

I understanding completely
your mind...
is my home

MUMONKAN(GATELESS PASS)
( for Junie )

Here, now
sister mine

lost
in time

dead to this world

I offer you

my eyes
my ears

so that you can see...can hear
without fear of Death

always interrupting you.

Take this breath & live again.
I can see enough for two.

*

MYOJU(THE END OF LIFE)

After the bus crash her soul walked home
limping awkwardly now

leaving a trail of footprints
leaking time like blood.

*

KAEI(THE SHADOWS OF FLOWERS)

Often, I visit this moment
long gone

(that has never ceased to exist) .

I go to find my sister
calling her name

lost as she is in the middle
of this vast field

her blue dress a flower

at the very centre of it.

Here, Death
does not know her

name
only I call her.

She carries me home
in a piggyback.

I fascinated with the freckle
under the shadow of a curl

where shoulder
meets neck.

I lost in her laughter.

Both of us escaping
Her Death.

*

AME NO UTA(SONGS OF RAIN)

Here, Death
itemises her.

The bruised breast.
The torn spleen.
The broken ribs.
The hemorrhaging.

Death, leaving
his mark

on this
human being.

Familiar with her.
Owning her.

Memory tiptoes
into Death's great palace

& steals back
a freckle

lost behind
a curl

between
shoulder
& neck.

Death
has no need

for it.



RING THE BELLS
( for Junie )

I want to ring the bells
backwards into silence
un-weave Time itself

like some God I
create & re-create
your lost face

I construct your smile
see it rise again from
the scaffolding of memory

even your voice fades
flees before me
sunset scattered leaves

I un-make your dying
cry you
into being

Death laughs at my efforts
this you
made of words and tears

the bells advance
stride upon the air
Time re-asserts itself

I want to ring the bells
backwards into silence
un-weave even Death itself



Made a mad dash from Paris to Rouen and its cathedral bells and great horlogue inscribed this poem into my head.

*


ENOUGH TO MAKE A MOON LAUGH

old piano
in the tumbledown
shed

cobwebs
stretch from
note to note

I laugh to see
a kitten
on its keys

composing
a spooky music
all its own

even the moon
gets the joke
and laughs

at its reflection
in a lopsided
rusty rain barrel

Time is only
the wind
in the trees

I remember
your hand
on these keys

a bright sunny day
that seemed forever
light years away from here

your fingers
calling music
into being

some sad unseen
that seemed to sense
a future time

where cobwebs
would hold
the music captive

spiders spinning
from note
to note

weaving
what is to come
...what is...past

now only
this frisky kitty
make music

with its every move
startling itself
with incredulity

that every step is a note
completely baffled
by its new found musicality

it's enough
to make a moon laugh
I cry

SHOWING SOME ENTERPRISE DURING
DOUBLE MATHS CLASS IN 1969

"Look, Kirk..!" I stab at the map
"Yes, the Barzan Wormhole is unstable but~
it's our only hope!"

Kirk's face blanches
Spock tries to show no emotion
"Highly illogical, yet. . ?"

Now, 70,000 light years away
"My God, Capt. Dempsey.."" Kirk smirks
"...it worked...it...worked. . !"

"Worked...of course it worked!"
I bluff and bluster
Spock's tight lipped smile

"Ahhh...Mr. Dempsey..."
Sir's voice gruffly Klingon
beaming me back up to Reality

"...seems to be in
another universe entirely..."
snickers as he reaches for the cane

"So..." Kirk smiles
"The square on the hypotenuse is equal to...
"Shut it Kirk..!" I snap "...just shut it!"

I watch the parabola of the cane
"Warp Factor 9...now...quick!"
I order Mr. Sulu

*

OH THOSE DE LA SALLE DAYS! MY CANNED HANDS STILL REMEMBER MR. FINNEGAN...ALL TOO....AGGHHHHHHH....WELL!

THE IDIOT

“Isn’t that…”
I asked myself
“Dostoevsky?”

he and I
flâneuring
about Haymarket

“Hey Dosty
my main man
is that really you?”

and yeah
it really was
the great man himself

it was early July
1862-ish so
he was startled

to be hailed
by a voice from
a century not his own

and also that
he could understand me
and I he

I told him
I had my time machine
parked just around the corner

that it had a language decoder
that came with it
as an extra feature

“I didn’t know you
were in London?”
said he was just passing through

“Hey man…just been reading
your ‘Idiot’ as it happens
and no you wouldn’t know it

‘cos you haven’t
written it
as yet!”

asked him to come
for a drink in The Marquis
might even bump into Charlie

“You mean… Dickens?”
“Huh huh…” I said
“…he sometimes hangs out there!”

said I’d teach him
How to drink a Guinness
In 15 seconds flat

that convinced him
but of all the rotten luck
Charlie never turned up

probably out
on one of his
endless midnight walks

he said he had to
go see his friend
Herren

“Hear now
permit it
do not restrain me!”

I let him go
making my own excuses
parking is up on my time machine

“English girls
are something else!”
he smirked

“Yeah…” I answered
“…married one
myself!”

“I have me
a keepsake
of their faces.”

then he vanished
into the fog
a real peasouper

should have asked him
to sign my copy of
“Crime and Punishment.”

but of course
he hadn’t wrote
that one yet either

“Ahh hell!” I stuttered
”My time machine’s
got a parking ticket!”  

*

“I almost do not exist now and I know it; God knows what lives in me in place of me.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

GHOSTS IN THE WARDROBE

there's ghosts in the wardrobe
a flotilla of dresses
that stare at my crying

frock after frock
skirt after skirt
they mock me with your absence

your presence
now
only in this absence

this dress
remembers that
picnic

this skirt
the kiss...that kiss
falling at your feet

the so many yous
hung on hangers
float behind plastic

here your perfume
still clings
trying to outface Death

Death smirks
stares back
it doesn't blink

all the different people you could be
blue and yellow and
I slam the door on them

between finger and thumb
I pinch out the candlelight
the dark crowds around me

*

I was sleeping in my mother's room before her funeral and there were all the dresses I knew and the different personalities they allowed her to be. The clothes seemed to be lost without her and the shoes seemed to suggest that she was hiding behind them and would suddenly pop out and tell me that her death was just a joke. I gazed at them all night without sleep and saw her everywhere and in everything.

REPORT

The liver
it should be said

was conspicuously
the worse for wear

whereas the brain
had remained curiously

young at heart
whereas

the same could not be
said for the heart

mostly eaten up
by the past.

There was no time
left in the body.

The soul could not
be found

which does not
necessarily mean

the dead poet
was soulless.

There remained one tear
not yet fallen

that had crystallised  
around a single memory.

The memory now
much decayed.

The body was
without truth.

There were dreams
to be found.

Wishes had congealed
around hope

and had calcified
on not being used.

There were still some
scattered thought

but it could not
be read.

The body showed
no signs of poems.

But the scar tissue
of writing

was more than
evident.

There were slight tears
perhaps caused by love

but this can only be
guesswork

as they were riddled
by perhapses and maybes,

These poet types
are highly susceptible to such.

Signed:

LLanod Yespmed

*

LLanod Yespmed is of course myself only backwards. The double L is pronounced in the Welsh way and the Yespmed is of course of Venusian extraction.
It seems so easy to die these days so I am writing my own death.

THE ALMOST EXACTLY OF YOU

My mind and I
stood at almost exactly

53.1474 Latitude
-6.83 Longitude

Time itself
seemed to have ceased

or its works
seized up.

The minutes and hours of a day
what were they to me...

The clock had flown
out the window

landing with a fearful clang
and just missing a white chicken.

What was reality anyway?

A moment in the sun and then
gone?

Death had taken the citadel.
The self had fallen.

I tried to remember
the latitude and longitude

of who you had been
but you had become the past

and were fading fast.

Already I had forgotten
the exact colour of your eyes

but not the moment
you had died.

I tried to forgive myself
but found I couldn't.

I wanted to steal you
back from death

but know
I can't.

TRAVELLING ACROSS THE HOURS OF DAYLIGHT

the sea
herding its flock of islands
through a sunset

I fall to sleep
with a warm breeze for a blanket
a cloud for a pillow

a cloud
balanced on the tightrope
of an horizon

clouds
form their own mountains
above the mountains

a crescent moon chats
to the sleepy hill
a bird eavesdrops

the sun
bleeding into
a river

I travel across
the hours of daylight
to meet a harvest moon

moon and I
both arrive at the mountain
at the same time

moon rests
on the mountain's shoulder
I lie at their feet

birds
***** a barrier of song
". . .this space is mine...mine. . .mine. . ."

we march into town
the Present & I
the Past lumbering behind

RIEN NE PESE TANT QUE UN SECRET

asleep she
looks like a photograph
of her self

her expression
the weather of her face
evaporates

lipstick smudges her pillow
a false eyelash
flutters to the floor

she sleeps like a statue
as if centuries
mean nothing to her

an awed moon
gazes in upon
her dreaming

a silk lilac *******
like a little animal
caught crawling across the carpet

a rather fetching
matching bra
dangles from a candlestick

impossibly high stilettos
stand still
pretending to be an art installation

a silk stocking
hangs
from a doorknob

a new millennium
enters the room
a clock ticks loudly

*

Rien ne pese tant que un secret. [Nothing weighs more than a secret.] ~ La Fontaine

The secret being that she has conceived...only her body knows this secret and keeps it so for a while! When she counts backwards she realises that this was the night of nights. The poem doesn't let on either except for its title! The poem only observes and doesn't comment...just sees her and the state of the room for what it is...the new millennium cometh and makes her a lady in waiting.

The poem insists on keeping its mystery....it is not necessary for it to give it up! The explanation lives amongst the comments with the little afterglow of knowing if one wants a little more insight into what was going on....although one does not have to know that!

LOOK! IF THE DOG SAID HE SAW IT, THEN....HE SAW IT! OK?

The dog said
he saw it.

The cat said
she saw it too.

Now, that cat hadn't
seen nothin', but...

wishing she had
she pretended she had.

That cat was
a notorious liar.

One couldn't believe
a meow

she had to say.

And yes, a passing parrot
seen it( or so it was said )

but, having just escaped
a cage

had paid no attention
whatsoever to it.

Parrot was greedy for
that blue stuff

folks called
the sky.

Fly away into its forever.

Truth to tell
there wasn't

a human to be seen.

So, that left only
the dog & the dog's

shadow
panting in the sun.

An old umbrella
lay abandoned &

had nothing
whatsoever to do

with it.

A baby's shoe
lay shipwrecked

amongst a sea
of *******.

It was a golden yellow
with a bright scarlet stripe.

The dog was thinking
about food.

That dog was always thinking
'bout food.

The dog snapped
at a flea that was

bitting it's
right buttock.



"What...was it?"
I hear you say.

"What...was...it!"

Well, now - I guess
you'd have to

ask the dog that. . .


This was an empty street in Malta so whatever was happening or had happened was...neither here or there. We were looking for the house Jan lived in when she was only a barefooted little urchin beside the bomb crater and the lemon trees. Crater and trees all gone now but the house( hemmed in now by newer modes of habitation)was still there. It was even too hot for the locals and I was busying expiring from such extreme heat but Jan was living in her memories and felt nothing but the glow of remembrances. When we got to the centre there was nothing but us and this here dog who woke up and woofed: “Wot?” Even the streets couldn’t take the heat and acted as if even they wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t there. Everyone had just vanished as if they had never been or been ****** up in an alien craft for experimentation.  A science fiction spaghetti western. So this was my attempt to write about the nothing of it all so I pressganged the dog into the telling of the tale in order to make something of a nothing. Never did find out what it was all about…dog gone it.

THE CAT'S COMMUNION  

oh my head
splits open..spills
my memories on the floor

all these
little Donalls
running here and there

curiously
mostly me
at age 7

making my Holy Communion
and just taking
the Host upon my tongue

when Charles
our champion mouser
pounces upon my little self

at this very
holy moment
"Holy Mother of God!"

now our cat
who is normally
a nice chap

swallows me
down in one
big gulp

I wonder if this
constitutes a cat's
Holy Communion

but I am sicked up
slimy as slimy can be
a slicked fur ball

after that
all the many memories
I am

manage to somehow
pull themselves together
make it back into my head

well I wasn't
going to do that again
in a hurry

the cat eyes me
nervously now
looking very very holy

as if a Voice from
up above declaims
"This is my beloved

cat in whom I am
well pleased
...feed ye him!"

JESUS CHRIST IS ALIVE AND WELL

She is thoroughly soaked
through & through

as if  a someone(I don’t know who)  
had upended over her a bucket of water.

( The rain holds
a conversation with itself. )

“Where’s your new coat? ”
we incredulously ask her

as she continues to drip at us.

( The rain is laughing
at something it has told itself.)

“A poor woman hadn’t one...
...so I gave her mine.”

She explains as to a child
whilst we her children stare at her

hair plastered to her skull
a large drip at the end of her nose.

My mother could be kind
in an almost Biblical New Testament way

as if she were Jesus Christ
before he had gotten himself crucified

and was alive and well and living in her.

KNOWING EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

"How much does
my shadow weigh?"
I have to think about this

"As much..." I answer
"as the thought that
thought it!"

she scratches her head
displaces a butterfly bow
perched upon her curls

"Is that heavy?" she asks
"Heavy!" I say
"I say it is!"

"See!" she scolds her dolls
"I told you he'd know
he knows everything!"

the dolls stare at me
incredulously
I pray they don't give me away

PLAYING IN THE MUD WITH CHRIST

Memory shapes that summer
in its own image

the long days of sun
forgetting the rainy ones.

My little one asking
again and again

for "the puddle poem"
and so Christ

rising from the 7th Century
old Irish words

stands like her
barely five.

Blesses the puddles
He had made.

She blesses them the same
with great childish show.

Watches amazed as He
creates birds out of mud.

Sees  them fly away
at the touch of his voice.

This her excuse
for the scattering of mud.

She sees herself
a Christ

and how words
can create birds

made of the mind
that fly beyond time.

*

If I was listening to Joyce she would come and listen to his Finnegans Wake with me...not the least put out by the difficulty and dexterity but the dance of sound even without meaning.

So that summer and I reading old Irish poems from a long ago that had long vanished she would pick up on that...loving the seventh century THE BOYHOOD OF CHRIST and how Christ and her could be the same grand age of barely five. And when she looked into the reflections in a mud puddle she could reenact the poem in her mind and be at one with Him in something she could understand. A Christ in a mud puddle...now there was the Christ for her to be be a playmate with.

She also liked the baise fri tóin( slap on the ***)epigram AN INSULT from the ninth century amazed that there could be someone called anonymous and how some words could win you horses and some words win you...cows!

I hear
he won't give horses for poems.
He gives what his style allows:
cows.

But her great favourite was Pangur Bán with the cat and the monk getting along famously and to be content with each other and the work they had to do...the one chasing down words...the other...mice.

She also was a one for modern Irish-isms such as "Are ya stuck in a shuck( stuck in a ditch )purely for the sound of it and appreciated the sardonic phrase "I will...yea!" meaning "I won't no!"

And the phrase " Ahhh it will take donkey's years to do that" she always heard as "donkey's ears" and made her howl with laughter.

THE BOYHOOD OF CHRIST

When He was barely five
Jesus, the Son of God,
blessed twelve water puddles
He moulded out of clay.

He made a dozen birds
-the kind we call the sparrow-
He made them on the Sabbath,
perfect, out of clay.

A Jew there criticized Him
-Jesus, the Son of God-
and to His father Joseph
took Him by the hand.

"Joseph, correct your son,
he has committed wrong.
He made clay shapes of birds
upon the Sabbath day.

Jesus clapped His palms,
His little voice was heard.
Before their eyes -a miracle-
the little birds flew off.

The sweet, beloved voice was heard
from the mouth of Jesus pure:
"So they will know who made you
off with you to your homes."

A man who was there told everyone
the wonderful affair
and overheard they all could hear
the singing of the birds.

DEARLY BELOVED WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY

The death has been announced
of Dónall Dempsey

after he had fallen
into an anagram machine.

Our hearts go out
to all the poems he left behind

and to those poems
he had yet to write.

It is claimed that his last words
were "Wow...the surreal is so real!"

Now that he has shock off
his mortal coil

he has become a nice man
and beloved by all

despite this not being
the situation when

he was amongst
the living.

Strange what
a little death can do.

He has said from
beyond the grave

that he intends to
continue to write

using an anagram
as his nom de plume

And so the poet
Desmond Palely

was born to
the world of words.

Critics have complained
that his more recent work

smacks of Dadaism
and has a strong Surrealist streak

not obvious in
his previous work.

Dempsey's debt to
Addy Nell poems -obvious.

This is his first
dead poem.

DAMPENED LYSOL

by Desmond Paley
( the artist formerly known
as Dónall Dempsey)

Deny molds leap!
Deny mold pleas!
Deny.... old sample.

Dolmens played
"Do!" Emlyn pleads.

Addy Nell poems
MODELLED *****

Del madly opens
"Almonds deeply...almonds... yelped!

"EMPLOYED LANDS
- dense Lloyd map

LEMONY PADDLES
Demons LP -Delay!

Doll Mandy...pees.
Many dolls... peed.

Doll's ependyma
dopa end smelly.

Monday spelled -
medleys Poland

"**** Polly seed!"
DNA mopeds yell.

Doped man yells
"Many doped ells!"

Famous poet and critic Ray Pool
observes candidly

"This new nonsense makes
utter nonsense of his old nonsense!"

Heather Moulson is quick
to point out

"Now that he is dead, Dempsey's
interest in a doll's neuroregeneration

may result in many dolls
coming to life and enjoying

normal humans pastimes
like peeing and buying

the Demons long awaited
long playing 45."

But wait...breaking news!
Dempsey has been spat out

of the fatal
anagram machine.

And is now as alive
as he ever was!

We now take back
all the nice things we said

about him
in his obit.