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Francie Lynch Mar 2015
Da
His drag-line pals
Called him Jemmy,
The little man
From Ireland.

Jemmy thought
Himself quite clever,
Cursed at us
With what you'd never
Call your own
Inside your home:
You're an ejit,
An egot, a clod,
A sod, a fool,
As useless as ****
On a bull.


When Jemmy got
Right roaring ******
(Something he would seldom miss),
He hissed:
Ya pissmire.
Eyes burning cold red fire.

Thus was Daddy
Endeared to us.

His wit was keen,
Quick as mean,
Evasive
As the charming fiend
Bellying out of Paradise.

His viscious,
Veracious
Flicking tongue,
Left not knowing
The damage done.
Anggita Oct 2013
Surrounded by serenity
Me, standing here
Watching the heroic you
With your wavy hair
And your sunglasses
You are very stunning

You sit there
So innocent
I go through your little eyes
Imagining your soft lips
Curiosities jemmy me
I am starting to be silly

I do chew the gums
You are still busy with your watch
Out of the blue the gums bite
Because you have to go with your wife
And I furiously lose one's heart
So, should I call it the precious havoc?
Donall Dempsey Aug 2016
RUNNING THROUGH HISTORY
( for Grandfather Sheedy )

I, a creature of flesh
& mud.

Mostly mud I
train...run...running

across Curragh
Plains...pain. . .pain.

School cross country
running is - not:

my forte.

I, being constantly told I
am not my grandfather.

Obviously.

I plod after grandfather's
famous footsteps

inheriting only his calf muscles
but not...his stamina.

I am all skin & bone
merely my mind keeping me going.

Grandfather Sheedy is
running on into history.

I, the clod forever
running after his fame

into many a Curragh
sunset.

I run back through
time.

"In the year of the world
4608. . "

The Annals of the Four Masters
a running commentary in my mind.

I run through
my mythological past

the ghosts of kings famous
before time began.

Cobhthack Gael is still
killing Laoghaire Lore.

He highfives me as I
stagger past.

St. Brigid casts her cloak
it covers the entire plain.

I greet and thank her
with a wordless nod.

The Curragh Camp of today
coalescing into being

thanks to the Crimean
Campaign.

I recite Tennyson to
startled furze bushes.

"Furze bushes to the left of me
furze bushes to the right of me. . ."

into my mind rides
the 17th Irish Lancers

leading the Balaclava Charge

their mascot terrier Jemmy
following close behind

barking at the Russian guns

surviving it all
to roam around where I am

raoming now.

My Uncle  Tossie's
familiar greeting

"How ya...howya...how ya
are ya winning...are ya winning!"

Grandfather and Uncle
Balaclava dog & mythological

kings and saints

all urging me on
claiming I can do it.

I can & I will
...come. . .last.

Me the non-runner runner

driven by
history
"Ar son Dé...faion spéir cá raibh tú?"

The Academy didn't do art so the only way I could do so was to go to the Convent on a Saturday. I did this for about 6 months before throwing in the paintbrush! I was always told there:  "You are not your sister June...are you Donall!"

Alas the mere me I was was good. . . for nothing! So I knew who I was not as good as but  - not what I was actually good at. Alas the story of my life!

Brother Laurence our Science teacher for some God forsaken reason introduced  cross country running all of a sudden!  He was lovely man with an energy that that almost burst out of his body as if he were a human dynamo. He always had a little smile just Mona Lisa'ing on him as if he were constantly amused at something or as if he had just told himself a very good joke in his head.
It was just as if it were an English school and we were good old chaps! It was like being in a boy's own story but it was really  "Hard cheese!"

When Brother Laurence got totally exasperated with my lack of prowess he( to not risk swearing )would step into the Irish.

"Ar son Dé...faion spéir cá raibh tú?"
( "For God's sake..in God's name where were you!" )

I not being good at the auld Irish would always answer: "Amuigh  faoin spéir!" which was the title of a well known nature programme at the time. It mean out under the sky!

Some time later I answered with: Ag Dia amháin atá a fhios!" which translates at "God only knows!" He laughed at this and said: "Ahhhh Dempsey...at least the running has taught you a bit more Irish than repeating television programme names to me!"


I was more interested in reading LP Hartley's THE GO BETWEEN. It was my mind that was running and covered not in mud but in glorious words. I ran shouting Gerard Manly Hopkins to the skies to comfort the agony of chest and legs and to soothe my poor troubled mind. Or the Wreck of the Deutschland: "Thou mastering me..."

All it did was make me more aware of my own history that was right on my doorstep. And it was the history I was more interested in than being a mud splattered waif. Oh I knew the loneliness of the long distance runner!

I was surrounded by Sheedys....Sheedys to the right of me....Sheedys to the left of me and I had before me that most lovely of men **** Sheedy whose kindness knows no bounds so Grandfather **** Sheedy lived on in our minds. I thought he deserved a poem so this is that...poem!

I adore the Four Masters' phrase: "...in the year of the world..."
Donall Dempsey Jan 2018
RUNNING THROUGH HISTORY( for Grandfather Sheedy )

I, a creature of flesh
& mud.

Mostly mud I
train...run...running

across Curragh
Plains...pain...pain.

School cross country
running is - not:

my forte.

I, being constantly told I
am not my grandfather.

Obviously.

I plod after grandfather's
famous footsteps

inheriting only his calf muscles
but not...his stamina.

I am all skin & bone
merely my mind keeping me going.

Grandfather Sheedy is
running on into history.

I, the clod forever
running after his fame

into many a Curragh
sunset.

I run back through
time.

'In the year of the world
4608.. '

The Annals of the Four Masters
a running commentary in my mind.

I run through
my mythological past

the ghosts of kings famous
before time began.

Cobhthack Gael is still
killing Laoghaire Lore.

He highfives me as I
stagger past.

St. Brigid casts her cloak
it covers the entire plain.

I greet and thank her
with a wordless nod.

The Curragh Camp of today
coalescing into being

thanks to the Crimean
Campaign.

I recite Tennyson to
startled furze bushes.

'Furze bushes to the left of me
furze bushes to the right of me...'

into my mind rides
the 17th Irish Lancers

leading the Balaclava Charge

their mascot terrier Jemmy
following close behind

barking at the Russian guns

surviving it all
to roam around where I am

raoming now.

My Uncle  Tossie's
familiar greeting

'How ya...howya...how ya
are ya winning...are ya winning! '

Grandfather and Uncle
Balaclava dog & mythological

kings and saints

all urging me on
claiming I can do it.

I can & I will
...come...last.

Me the non-runner runner

driven by
history
I spend my time in the graveyard of
St. Martin’s in the Fields,
Cleaning the moss off the headstones
Just to read what damp reveals,
The local vicar has let them go
And the graveyard’s overgrown,
As creepers cover the finer points
Of the lives now dead and gone.

And some of the stones have fallen down,
Some of them on their face,
Showing their stories to the ground
That wouldn’t reveal a trace,
I heave and jemmy them back upright
Under the noonday sun,
Then read the inscriptions in the light,
Long hidden from every one.

The work is slow and exhausting but
It gives of its own reward,
They say that it stops the haunting by
The ones that are being ignored,
The graveyard dips down into a dell
And spreads through the willow trees,
With some of the graves so covered up
I get to them on my knees.

And some of them have been there so long
That the tops have fallen in,
Opening up the coffin lids
To the skull’s unholy grin,
I sometimes cover the aging bones,
Then I sometimes leave them be,
It all depends if they made amends
Once I know each history.

But one I found in that shaded dell
Made the hairs crawl up my back,
I raised the stone when I was alone
When I should have called for Jack,
For there on the new raised frontage
Was a scene from a dream of hell,
A demon, wearing a flowing cloak
And with sharpened claws as well.

She stared from the stone of granite
Her horns stood out on her head,
Someone had carved her figure there
To give us a sense of dread,
Her teeth were those of a vampire bat
Protruding out of the mud,
And only once I had wiped them off
Could I see the signs of blood.

And then I read the inscription:
‘Here lies the Lady Vamp,
She lured her victims into the woods
Disguised as a willing *****,
Then once inside she would tear their throats,
It looked like a beast of prey,
So no-one thought to look for her till
She’d given herself away.’

‘A soldier came on her sleeping
While she was covered in blood,
Her victim’s throat was in keeping
With a vampire loose in the wood,
He sharpened a stake from a sapling
And stood for a moment, apart,
Then turned in a burst of fury,
Thrusting the stake through her heart.’

The top of her coffin had fallen in
I saw, with the creeper aside,
And there lay the vampire, staring at me
As if from the day that she died,
The stake was ****** in through the ribcage there
She’d helplessly reached with a claw,
And tried to remove, to seek a reprieve
From what she was dying for.

I’m not superstitious, I should be, I know,
And in that there lies my mistake,
I reached through that rotten, coffin lid so
I’d get a good grip on the stake,
I pulled it out swiftly, and gave it a twist,
A foul wind blew in, like a breeze,
And I was aware of a woman who watched,
Stood silently there by the trees.

David Lewis Paget
BEING IN THE WORLD

"I'm scared...!" she sobs
"Of what love?" I cuddle her
"Of being in the world!"

**

This was when she was only a tiny little thing in the world of long ago but her words ring truer now in this rogue world of ours.

Her granny had just died and this all too too solid world of forever didn't seem as forever as it had before.  She no longer trusted it if a granny could vanish...would she vanish too?

She cried and "wanted to go where ever Granny had goed!"

She was looking at a globe and asked me if she were in the world. And is Granny not in the world any more?  And when Granny finishes being dead then will she come back? And what good is the world if Granny isn't in it. She sat on my lap and listened to auld Jemmy the Joist reading from Finnegans Wake with his own voice. I asked her what did she think the man was saying and she asked "Did he lose his granny too?"
THROUGH VERY SHORT TIMES OF SPACE

red door of No.16
North Frederick Street
slams behind him as he

enters into this newly minted
morning
sunshine so thick

one feels like a fish
swimming through it
sunlight spangles

a tiny puddle
turning it into a jewel
that only the eye can cherish

Ahhhh "...the ineluctable
modality of
the visible."

he turns right
into Upper
Dorset Street

pulling an "Ahhh...howya!"
out of the man who makes
the false teeth

then turning left into Eccles Street
giving the nod to No. 7
Bloom's house in ULYSSES

here in its run down state
though still shining
in its fictionality

soon they will knock it down
and what will the tourists
do then poor things

sure some bright spark
will rescue it from its rubble
and the door

will live again
some streets
away again

ahhh...." the ineluctable
modality of
the visible."

I go to Quinn's gym
to get my Molly
(Philomena her name is)

a cottage cheese
with pineapple
on a Weetabix base

it is a 16th of June
somewhere
in the 80's

as I retrace
my own earlier
Joycean footsteps

rat-a-tat-tat
on Bloom's door
"Are ya there Leopold?"

but the bold Leopold
doesn't answer
the 16th of

forever I am
"...walking through it
howsomever."

the sun smirks
at such
Joyceisms

"I am, a stride of a time
very short space of time
through very short times of space."

a horse and cart as if
from the past
saunters by timelessly

ahhh "...the ineluctable
modality of
the audible."

my Molly
who is really
a Philomena

spoons the deliciousness
of the creamy dessert
into her

and yes she says
mmmm...yes....mmmm
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*

Fo­r Jemmy de Joist whose day the 16th always us and the words give him their gifts. This is my little bit of living in his moment and walking the streets he walked.
Muse, Fée Ensorceleuse,
Lucinda Darling !
Ce matin je me suis réveillé
Castrat
Enlacéré
Strephon et Philander
Avec un air sur l'oreiller
Ton parfum libertin qui dansait baroque
Au milieu d'une jungle d'alto, violoncelles,
Violons et contrebasse.
Entre couplets et refrain
Cet air pour soprano
Cette douce suite incidentale
M'a envahi dès la première mesure de l'été
Tu étais Aphra. J'étais Jemmy
Et en même temps Maure,
Abdelazer défiguré
Et toi Lucinda, transfigurée par Purcell,
Tu fredonnais en anglais
"Lucinda is bewitching fair
All o'er engaging is her Air
In ev'ry song Lucinda's fam'd
She is the Queen of Love proclaim'd "
THE DANGERS OF READING FLAUBERT....AL FRESCO!
( for Ray )

"Souvent la chaleur d’un beau jour..."

he reads, stops:
kisses her.

" ...Fait rêver fillette à l’amour."

she completes the words
kisses...kisses him.

Dining al fresco
feeling somewhat frisky

they throw caution
to the wind

soon all too soon
Flaubert forgotten

Madame Bovary
discarded on the grass

soon all too soon
even the food forgotten

clothing of both
male and female attire

discarded on the grass
now nothing but gasps

they each
the other's feast

the wind idly turning
Bovary's pages

skipping to the end then
beginning again

until one last ***** gusty
breeze interrupts their play

chasing their clothes
that run away

his boxers hang now
upon the bough

her pink camiknickers..pale pink bra
making a run for it

laughingly they chase
their clothes

this Adam and his Eve

bra floating ****-up
in a pond

the camiknickers never
alas to be found.

And here now on their
50th

they share the same smile
when asked how it was

they came together

remembering their love making
in windy weather

shyly slyly blame
Flaubert

" Il souffla bien fort ce jour-là,
Et le jupon court s’envola."

*

From the Italian, literally translated as 'in the fresh'. In English, used to mean either 'in the open air' or, where specifically related to mural painting, 'on fresh plaster'.

Almost always, it is used in relation to dining alfresco, that is, eating outdoors.

Both meanings have been in use in English since at least the late 18th century; for example, in Mrs. Eliza Haywood's History of Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, 1753:

"It was good for her ladyship's health to be thus alfresco."

The lines quoted are from the end of Madame Bovary who expires as the Blind Man sings them in a raucous voice. They are from a  Restive de la Bretonne poem from his"The Year of the National Ladies" way back in 1791. He who was so much into women's shoes  that his very name became as one with this particular peculiar fetish..Retifism

"Souvent la chaleur d’un beau jour
Fait rêver fillette à l’amour.

Il souffla bien fort ce jour-là,
Et le jupon court s’envola."

"Maids in the warmth of a summer day,
Dream of love, and of love always. . ."

"The wind is strong this summer day
Her petticoat has flown away."
neth jones Mar 2020
here is no resume
never was a pause heart
just a dear heart
stringing along
slowing leafily
an idleness is part of movement
to tap out
engage
sup or team
or bead out crying
mortifying in your sleep

jemmy

dream #1
crop
world feasts its red eyes
'who will feed my teeth in war ?'
life scoring decline

turn over in my sleep

dream #2
o
    o
        o
rotation-rotation-rotation
a centrifugal kite

wake up feeling sick and thirsty

i go to the bathroom to refill my glass
i worry on the way
there are not enough disciplines in peace

in the water closet
look through the gaper glass and
re-meet my creature
here i am taking the night to the knife
and keeping my body from the fight
tend to life

i fend my bathroom visit
and turn back for the bedroom

soon i sleep and dream again

dream#3
zoo of fur
the feature beasts scale to freedom
they make for the moors
and become cowed un-exotic by the damp

i'll feel this sad till the morning

— The End —