May 2020
SURE THERE'S NOTHING TO THIS DYING!
It's a young ghost I am.
New to this game.
I hear the living
talk of the dead.
And it's my name
they're saying.
"Donall Dempsey is.."
( Jaysus I never even
felt myself going )
. . .DEAD!"
Voices that
when I was alive
never had a good word
to say about me.
I blow their umbrellas
inside out.
Throw their hats
into the open grave.
"Dead!" they said and
isn't it all always
the same and I
the last one to be knowing.
"And what did the poor auld cratur
die of...if I might ask?"
Some sincere insincerity
added with great aplomb.
"Too much poetry
in the head it is said!"
an old rival snickers who
hated "my stuff" from the first.
"Ahhh the auld words will
always get ya in the end!"
This from someone who wouldn't
know a poem if it bit him on the ***.
"Ahhh sure...didn't I know him well!"
cries another who I never saw before.
Jumping on
the band wagon of my death.
"He was a gentleman
a real gentleman!"
They are really sticking
to the formula.
"A nicer man there never was!"
some mourner from another funeral weeps.
"Ahhh 'tis true
to be sure...to be sure!"
proclaims one who weeps
and eats the cold meats.
Only here for the beer
and the free feed.
"We'll never see his like again!"
someone snivels and then adds
"Thanks be
to God!"
And these tears?
Only their own fears!
"Sure amn't I only
the same age as himself?"
They too scared
their sell by date is due.
Death snickers . . ."I'll be
coming after you and you and you!"
"I got a ( cough cough)
the same old( cough cough)he had!"
"Was it that that took him!"
Someone trying to save going to the doctors.
"No, knocked down he was
and he outside his own front door!"
The blood still to be seen
outside No. 64.
Never saw Mr. Death coming
listening to the poem
that was inside
himself growing.
It's getting used I am
to the ghost I've become.
I whisper words
into the auld deaf priest's ear.
"Well, I think I can speak
for all of us when I say
he's dead and gone and
good riddance to bad *******!"
He adds with fervour
"Praise be...praise be!"
The congregation laugh nervously.
It's exactly what they were thinking.
They stare about them as if
I might suddenly appear.
"Will you all rise now and
we'll sing hymn No. 63!"
But I have become the wind
running naked through a wheat field.
Tossing birds like words
up in the air.
I becoming
the poem of myself.
It's a young ghost I am.
New to this game.
I hear the living
talk of the dead.
And it's my name
they're saying.
"Donall Dempsey is.."
( Jaysus I never even
felt myself going )
. . .DEAD!"
Voices that
when I was alive
never had a good word
to say about me.
I blow their umbrellas
inside out.
Throw their hats
into the open grave.
"Dead!" they said and
isn't it all always
the same and I
the last one to be knowing.
"And what did the poor auld cratur
die of...if I might ask?"
Some sincere insincerity
added with great aplomb.
"Too much poetry
in the head it is said!"
an old rival snickers who
hated "my stuff" from the first.
"Ahhh the auld words will
always get ya in the end!"
This from someone who wouldn't
know a poem if it bit him on the ***.
"Ahhh sure...didn't I know him well!"
cries another who I never saw before.
Jumping on
the band wagon of my death.
"He was a gentleman
a real gentleman!"
They are really sticking
to the formula.
"A nicer man there never was!"
some mourner from another funeral weeps.
"Ahhh 'tis true
to be sure...to be sure!"
proclaims one who weeps
and eats the cold meats.
Only here for the beer
and the free feed.
"We'll never see his like again!"
someone snivels and then adds
"Thanks be
to God!"
And these tears?
Only their own fears!
"Sure amn't I only
the same age as himself?"
They too scared
their sell by date is due.
Death snickers . . ."I'll be
coming after you and you and you!"
"I got a ( cough cough)
the same old( cough cough)he had!"
"Was it that that took him!"
Someone trying to save going to the doctors.
"No, knocked down he was
and he outside his own front door!"
The blood still to be seen
outside No. 64.
Never saw Mr. Death coming
listening to the poem
that was inside
himself growing.
It's getting used I am
to the ghost I've become.
I whisper words
into the auld deaf priest's ear.
"Well, I think I can speak
for all of us when I say
he's dead and gone and
good riddance to bad *******!"
He adds with fervour
"Praise be...praise be!"
The congregation laugh nervously.
It's exactly what they were thinking.
They stare about them as if
I might suddenly appear.
"Will you all rise now and
we'll sing hymn No. 63!"
But I have become the wind
running naked through a wheat field.
Tossing birds like words
up in the air.
I becoming
the poem of myself.
