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Donall Dempsey Mar 2017
BECOMING THE MAN MY FATHER ALWAYS WAS
(for Brian D)

Each night
I would follow you

through the rituals
of what you had to do

being Daddy.

I wanted to be Daddy too.

Mimicking your gait
becoming an exact

copy
of you

trailing along
in your footsteps

like a lone seagull
following in the wake

of some great ship
of state

watching the water
burn

'til it was all bubbles

then letting it
calm down

before filling my mother's
hot water bottle

carrying it to her side
like a lover's gift.

I was
your little shadow.  

She'd always smile:
"Thank you Danny! "

"That's alright love"
was always the answer.

These the ritualistic words
in the hot water bottle ceremony.

Then he'd teach the clock
to ****

adjusting it with his hands
and wind up Time

so that it spit tick & tocks
all through the night

then go lock doors
turn keys
draw bolts.

"That's it, son!"

I used to imagine
being you

and now I am
my own man

winding up Time

bringing my missus
the gift of a hot water bottle

(the gift of me)  

both equally
heart warming.

'Thank you Donall! '
she always smiles.

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

Me the man
I am

because of you.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2015
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.
De daaaaaa...it's de DA! Not only the man who made me but made me the man I am. A gentle man and a gentleman...a shining living example of love.
Donall Dempsey Sep 2015
January & June
were having fun

hanging out together
not just for

sweet alliteration's sake
but because

- they could.

And they had always
secretly fancied each other.

Time had taken
a holiday.

Not an every day
occurence.

So they took
advantage of

this once
in a blue moon

- happening.

Monday & Sunday
were in bed together

( don't ask me what
they were doing ).

A century & a second
were gazing into

each other's eyes
amazed to see themselves

reflected there.

The hands of the clock
were spooning.

An hour was courting
( such an old fashioned word )

a beautiful young ahhhhh
moment.

Time itself
was sulking

because the lovers
weren't paying him

any mind
what so

ever.

They seemed to live
in the "...now, now, very now"

( as Mr. Shakespeare puts it )

scattering their smiles
here and everywhere

see them blossoming
into squeals and laughter.

A new millennium
had just turned up &

was at once
( "Wot de...!")

press ganged
into one of their forever

kisses.

"**** that Janice Windle & Donall Dempsey!"

Time throwing a hissy fit!

"**** that Janice Windle & Donall Dempsey!"

"**** 'em!"
Donall Dempsey Nov 2018
"La vita è una scuola di probabilità."

I appear
to have fallen

out of myself
no longer the me I am

but as if I had become
the statue of my self.

A pigeon **** tear
runs down my granite cheek.

"La vita è una scuola di probabilità."
the pigeon perched upon my head announces.

"Probably..?" I answer.
More a maybe-perhaps.

I am now an actor
playing the part of myself

unsure of what is expected of me
"What's my motivation?" I ask the director.

But he has been taken off
this picture.

The Donall Dempsey I used to be
no longer exists.

Someone or something
has broken into my head

and stolen the me
I was.

I now have no dialogue
only a walk-on-part

in my own life
an unimportant footnote

somewhere on page
42.

"What will I do..?"
I whistle the Berlin tune

the pigeon flying off my head
taking my thoughts with it.
Donall Dempsey Feb 2018
THE PICTURE OF DONALL GREY

My face distorted
in a tea spoon

( much more the real one
that I feel )

than the me
I am.

I hide this real me
under my palm.

I can feel it

biting into my flesh
refusing to be

hidden.

Reality takes a step
...back.

I pour a cup of tea.
Earl Grey in a China blue cup.

No sugar.
Slice of lemon.

And taking the spoon
from under my palm

drown the real me
in the lemon'd tea.

I smile falsely & hope
no one else noticed.
Donall Dempsey Dec 2018
THE STATUE

'Dying is fun! ' you say
'...once you get the hang of it...'

'...& as long as
the pain stays away! '

Your face says ouch
without saying 'Ouch! '

'It adds an extra spice to life
knowing how many minutes there are left! '

'I calculated it  with my solar power
pocket calculator! '

'It seems like you live it twice
as fast...twice as intense

seeing everything
so precise

seeing even
what's.. not...there! '

The pain laughs at your puny efforts
to control it.

'Doc...says a year(at the most)  
maybe a matter of months...weeks! '

'It depends on what the cancer thinks! '
you laugh.

'And to think I'm a Cancerian! '
The pain has not got your sense of humour.

Already I can see it is bored by you
tries to wipe that grin off your face.

It almost...succeeds.

'Seems like I'm nothing now
but this cancer! '

'It's all that anybody can see! '

'Like it's been rubber stamped
on my forehead or something! '

'Well, Mrs. Cancer...'
I swore I heard the doctor say.

'And, all that my friends can see is...my death! '
'They annoy me with their crying! '

'Hello...hell.. o! I'm not dead yet! '
'This ****** cancer has taken on a life

of it's own

tells me what I can or can't do! '
'It's the boss! '

'Now...that there's a limit to it
Time...is precious
can't bear...to waste a minute.. of it! '

'It feels as if the cancer
is a famous sculptor

& labours to create
the shape of my death

bit
by
bit! '

'Seems like it's one of those
ugly modern abstract statues

you know

meaning nothing
with a hole in the middle! '

'And everyday the cancer
chiseling away at it

striving for perfection! '

'I tell the cancer
Oh...get on with it! '

'Get it over with! '

'See...I'm becoming quite the philosopher! '

'Now...get out of here! '

'Stop talking to a dying woman
get out in the sun don't waste
a min-
-ute
of
it! '

I laugh.

You're still so.. you!

You ask me for a favour
before I go.

I scratch your ***
(you can't reach it no more) .

You tell me
'That's the best scratch in all the world! '

I smile tell you
you always had the best *** in the world.

You laugh.
(It...hurts) .

I go

Close the door behind me
on your dying.

Step into brash sunlight
that feels like it's lying.

Two months later your death greets me
disguised as an airmail letter.

I missed your dying by a week ...it seems
I'm in a different country...crying.

A weak sun
shivers in the land

of the living.

From beyond
Death

you write me
a private letter

with handwriting
I wouldn't recognise as yours.

It just says:

'Donall Donall! '
on the envelope.

Inside
(a card)  

a wood engraving
by Eric Gill

the one with Mary Magdalene
covering a crucified Christ with her body

her hair like a river
covering them both.

The handwriting almost broken
only kept alive by your iron will.

'Guess the statue's done
&
Death is no Michelangelo

could have done better myself
but I wasn’t up to it! '

My tears
dissolving your words.
Donall Dempsey Oct 2018
DOC. NO. 30060

to you
who

reads me a thousand
years from now

an impossible you...I
could not begin to imagine

survivor of
WW3

the world almost ceasing
to be

and I, a fragment
of history

a few burnt pages
a charred eye

an happenstance of
history rather than

merit where
all words...any words

were made precious
me now

an historic document
that you try to  breath

live into
a me imposible to know

me the so
long ago

eaten by time
devoured by history

the symbolic irony
of the charred eye

the rest of the photo
not making it

and so, my impossible to know
write your academic paper

on this me that has
long ceased to be

but how my thought survives
in my only known poem

words burnt
at the edges

so many unknowns
so many...ellipses

I, Donall Dempsey
artifact No. 30060

returned to the library
at 6.30

Thursday, 30018
the 15th of July
Ken Pepiton Oct 2024
In the stacks of all we knew, LOOKY HERE,
in 72 minutes we walk a parsec, and Earth turns
two degrees, and Annie Jacobsen's whole
do no more, is all our denoument.

- pardon our verbosity, we had free time -

What news good came lately my way,
I long to think I did expect, my way
was new made, after the majority attained
use of Google translate thinker augments,
weform a contextual we, excluding
orders of social harmony
allowing liar laws life,
justice and way
eminence
eumenine specificity, so many specified known
wasps classified royally cosmopolitan,
mental peace presensing sub-untilificious

royal rules, only queens reproduce,
only idle bees are never seen busy,
and some can see syms when societies
all stop to think, for a minute,
and just breath, in, then out
we form awesome thinks expansive,
to mostly
support generally useless bums, like me.

{estimated reading time queries are invalid}

This is why, don't ask why again, or else,
imagine that…

The idle mind is where repairs are made.
Pairs connect, mate in mind and hold
thoughts as long as you imagined…

With this tool,
were I one willing, and able,
to master its functionality, imagined

ever learning along with reality
expanding the need to know,

all the things possible in this window,
between my time and thine, whole
worlds away in words never writ
with ink or wedge in stone nor clay
wished for siderealities, as many as
all the stars within augmented plain
sight, as through any stained pane,
presenting dancing pixels just there,
edgewise,
in our per ifery margin, where beauty
squirms eusocially,
all lights holding mean-peak
at an instant's attention
max red or green or blue, fading to black.

Pain, in jokes and drama, pain
is the essential underlay, the gesso
McLuhan saysotoo
over which we pigmentate, media
mental in original intention, obedient,

under law older than Shadrach,
the law of the Medes and Persians,
the power of attorney given priests
of the authors of our orders, classified,
as it is writ, thus it must be… sacred
ready readers, only.
Reading makes inclusion work as wisdom,
instant completely functioning beautifully,
breathe-ing
as if, asked
and answered, at the moment, called
Wisdom, come, entreat with all warring in me,
Wisdom, come, gentle minds twisted by me,
Wisdom, come, make us make believe.
-------------

Eerie, eh, not holding any thought, being
thought spiritual enough to find any word

so idled as to be posh fluff or street crud,
slung to signal inclusion in the with side,
the meaning in life is the message
in this medium prepositioned
opposed
to the without side, those at emnity
with truth's way

Into the comfort zone,

danger free, follow your toes, theories
of everything, meditatively perpendicular,

norms, and circles, churning burning effort,
ef-ing walls extend effects solid ificate
to hold the ash and tailings,

mined precepts seeding crystals
in caverns,
never witnessed, now known, so true,

two dichotomies make one tetrad,
and whatsoever we agree
to make believe

we may, and think it not robbery
to play,

make functional fun, little impulse to smile,
and think I know this idea, functions in me,
wink
and now, you, unless we lost you at the
NAND gate, excluding unbelievers, then a
NAND gate excluding unbelievers in live words,
NAND gate excluding no second guessing, here

we are, all in one window, thinking
we are our kind,  tied
at our common sense ability,

to stretch a point,
to make a thread one pastless point thin,
to tie a premis, a premission, permitting ponderous
whying
heavy duty gullibility
in terms
of mortal sensibilities,
this'll kihl you. I realized. Accidental as the idea silent
aitches let us talk end existence kihling bad ideas

to use pain
to teach, 'ow, why how is always
thorny issues, way back, seemed common,
we learn how fire works
by being made aware,
- not by being burned, a touch is enough
- skin as sensitive as a frog in parable lies, leaps
as touch response reflex functions all start running
what ifs against wonder ifs, wishes versus prayers,
-no, frogs won't simmer to death, they leap
using frog sense,
worth of knowing how long
to wait in winter, learning
worth of knowing bears know something
of weather. Co-mental commenting we think.
Thought hard fruit, thinkalongtime fruit, ra' good

Singing salmon songs I never learned, thinking bear
market strategies make less sense than bullshat
macroeconomic dimensions extractable
from meta data,
under all we ever stood up from under,
in the bubble of all I bet I knew for sure,

boldly accumulating in arterial informal plaques,
and films in limenal tunnels holding quarks as ones,

two bit chirality problem,
solved, cut it six ways,
two heads, two mouths, in one, out the other,
inside outside all at once, so easy, we imagined,
image that, two eyes, two ears, two nasal passages
into synodical pressure sensitive chambers
sinus sorting
of pheremone signal
to act analagous senders
to whale domes, catchers,
signal
from noise, gnosisnot say so,
sniff, feel cold nose, think so,
swallow all pride, and pretend, we made up this mind,
and it uses words we can understand
in all the unbarbing thorny issues
of zoological superfluity, among

watchers and waiters serving as idle ants,
with angst relief primary function,
just take air for granted, free
grace in time of need,
sleep if you are tired, easy,
weary way we know we go, has
cost. Pain exists, you know, you can imagine
in art, in jokes, and most certainly dramatic series
that carry followers
through decades exposed
to commercials announcing urgent solutions,
- now, no commercials, we bingegulp seasons,
- sometimes at a sitting, depends on dope
skating on easy learning absorption skills,
ever learning the drama never ends,

ask your doctor, now,
back to the global equivalent of one
Paredo Distribution, eighty percent of TV
is daily faire for twenty percent of people,
eighty percent of readers reading this far,
get to this bubbles popping edge, on a side

zoom to a scatter graph, who breathes in
who breathes out,
all around the world
whiling away, in trust we make peace seem.
.. seen as through smoked glasses, liquidly
Gaussian blurring edges
where the frame
holds the light we see through
to think like this

is real
at word level. Live rethinking, first men
tale-ings
after refining whying wishes
to know.
More, or less.

Everything, all at once, is chaos, whence
art abstracts beauty patiently, trusting wishes
what if its another trick we have no defences,
we get eaten alive,
for cultural misappropriation.

Dear is a value to be weighed using full bandwidth
Sakal, show thy self letters ready for measure,
mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, indeed
שָׂכַל defined several of seventy ways,
spelled to take a broken heart
and mend it with a realization.

If my need became your need,
we would be in love,
that would really
defeat the use
of preparation, peeling potatoes,
prudence, ever ready to entertain,
pounding clothes down by the riverside,
watchin' babies being washed off and blessed,
שָׂכַל knowing waiting is suffering, not pain
watchin' life like National Geographic, before TV.
A messenger's whistle, hear
ah
Message to the mass essences
of little looks mira-clues, seen miracles
since who knew when today
would continue as today. As if once more.
Dear Prudence,
did we come out to play, as if today,
was one of those times that we all seem
to have, recollected
if it could seem alright.
שָׂכַל prophets spake, Ai make secrets known,
the whys for all the wars so far. Pride, indeed.

Why? Would that defeat the use,
and not the purpose
of preparation, final product,
Battlefield Earth, truths uses versus lies uses,
us as we
who think it all through
to the seed
in the fruit it self desirable
to make one wise considering
שָׂכַל science falsely so called, still makes believers.
Slow down.
Jello time reminds second glancers,
when time is not as dear, as an instance
in re co gnosis, swallows gnosis known nots,
- wise was the serpent discerning decision trees.
what would ever make us all think one thought once,
then never think it alone again, we all ways, big all
think this was the way, we walked in,
the same way we walked out, all
set to comprehend wisdom and knowledge and
yada da da da we who work
   in living once idle words,
our side ways won, when we did not fight,
we never lasted al-mental
this long before, but
when we get old, we keep our wits, we got older
sooner than later, so we know
more than our dads, too.
- old friends well imagined
- happy ever after any way,
don't aspire, little maker
of good sensed peace,
to stave off thermo nuclear war
by your self, aight, here we go,
make up a master mind board
of suggesters
by your self,
HelloWorld,
with you
in a minute,
I am in a consultation,
relationships with dead friends, such are
deeply personal, core ties to old times, remember
we can hear them say the same damnedlies, or listen,
שָׂכַל together with stars consider real the times

analagous to tuning back when zero beat, was sought
to make one wise,
in Genesis, esoteric
in the gaps,
she saw he never knew, so Cain did, for sure…

hey, old enemy of me, I cannot remember why
I was afraid of you, and never got to know you,

but I recognized your art, the other day,
in an old, old magazine ad,
then that leads to us in a sense, innocent,
a lost soul I had no sympathy for, I was his bully,

so he's dead and we're okeh, spiritually, we talked,
I told him I had changed, he told me he'd broken,
got busted in Oklahoma, went to prison, for ****,
got religion then went nuts, and I said

I can relate.

So we stay in touch in the spirit.
I don't know how he died, but we were in situations,
where sixth grade bullying had been forgotten,
when I call this character
into my life, as a friend, known to many
mistreated in this mortal moment, laughing ever
as a complexity of never ifery, it did not ****
you to know, boys were always boys,
we always think of Infinite Jest, and laugh
at the coincidence we both read Foster Wallace.
Always sorry, for the trouble we allowed
our wild child payback voter against
peace at any price, what price glory?

The little monstors empo'w'rable in us all, rahrahrah

It was Donall Dempsy said it:
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4897567/even-now-now-very-now/
The flag of self unfurls
snaps into the lost moment.
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4899302/walking-from-the-rising-sun-to-kildare-town/

Oi, this man's an inspirer of SAW such as wisdoms, never told,
could be, back when eighty percent
of us heard all our wisdom from drunks.
Now we read texts.

When the battles over,
and common sense is laughing,
some of it singing simultaneously

concurrently free presses in spirit and echoing
out side the bubble we met in as licensed wannabe

messenger shouting in the wild,
anybody home, we got lost.

As the earth moves relative to the sun, see
two degrees, is about, nearly to the Picosec
Seventy-two minutes, a parsa, in tradersprachen,

the realization, sure and certain utter destruction,
an agreed upon form of right use ness, national opinions

believe madness deters madness and nonsense in just code.
-it is not secret code, nor sacred, knowing is necessary, just
always was, all else you were told
to believe, with knowin' known
as sin, well we have recycleables
to trade, for those,
made
of the exact same historical threads
to here. On the battlefield, after all.
The point of anything we wished we did, done.

We can use our minds in ways once called praying,
we think we say we wish you the best, and hesitate, luck or grace,
favor undeserved by a wretch like me, ah, the maze,
the logos as spirit medium cord, twisted spider kite collection,
Ariadne, toss the lad a line, he's a ways to go until sense is common.
I hope you enjoyed that, it seems I asked for more, tooo often
Donall Dempsey Mar 2017
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!
Donall Dempsey Jul 2015
Two fictional characters
walk into a bar

in Malta
( * Marsaxlokk - to be precise ).

"To...be....tooo beee. . ."
stammers Hamlet.

"Oh fer Gawd's sake...two beers!"
J. Alfred Prufrock snaps.

"You really milk that
"To be or not..." thingy."
J.A.P. scolds Hamlet.

"Tsk...tsk!" Hamlet tsk tsks.
( sticking his tongue out ).

Two Cisks are plonked
down before them.

"No...I am not Prince Hamlet or
was meant to be..!"
J.A.P. quotes him self.

"Awww fer Jaysus sake...loooook
just for the fun of it...the gas of it

we swop
texts!"

Hamlet interrupts Prufrock's
protestations.

"Ohhhh....o.....K?"
Prufrock ponders somewhat doubtfully.

And, so:
Hamlet the Dane

( for yea it is indeed he)
dares

(1) to eat a peach (2) wear the bottoms of his white
flannel trousers rolled (3) parts his hair behind even

(4) dares
to aks

the overwhelming question

"( Oh, do not ask, what is it! )"

Oh & (5) gets to hear
( ** ** ** )

"...the mermaids singing...."

Prufrock "Hum...."
kills the king.

Becomes the king.

Beds.
Weds
Ophelia.

" Buzz buzz...come come..go...go!"

"It's a very
foreshortened
Hamlet...I know

but - what the heck!

"See..? slurps Hammy
". . . now, that wasn't so bad...was it?"

"Another Cisk?"
"Naw...I'll have a Becks!"

"Jaysus Prufrock now
...what's up?"

"Don't know..."mutters J.A.P.
wearing a frothy beer moustache.

"HURRY UP PLEASE...IT'S TIME!"
roars the barman in Maltese.

"I can connect nothing
with...nothing!"
Prufrock almost sobs.

"Like that time
on Margate sands..."

Hamlet cuts him curtly off.

"Don't even go...there!"

"But I still get that squirmy
...you know...feeling

we are just
fragments of

the imagination of
some *
long haired Irish poet

sunning himself by
the waters of

the shimmering waters of
a Sliema hotel pool

...up up in the clouds!

Hamlet sighs.

"Yeah, me too
spooky...innit?"

Hamlet looks behind him
checking for what isn't

there. . .

"Ahhhh well, never mind eh?"

Prufrock attempts an attempt
at being cheerful.

Fails miserably.

"Let us go, then
you and I...

when the evening is spread out
against the sky..."

Like a patient etherised upon a table!
they both sing outta time and outta tune

stumbling one
into the other.

A long hair Irish poet
smiles as he watches them

go.

"Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!"
the barman roars.

NOTES

Pronounced MAR SA SCHLOCK. Those Maltese Xs being really SHs in disguise.

* Pronounced CHISK but the new barman is obviously new to the language and pronounces it TSK which makes him think that is what our two fictional characters are ordering.

Not to be confused with mobile texting but rather the literary texts of which both of them owe their existence.

*
The play bounded in a nutshell as it were.

One Donall Gearld Oliver Denis Dempsey is a good example of this sort.

* The No. 1 song all over Heaven...beating Sparks THE NO. 1 SONG ALL OVER HEAVEN  to the top spot.

** "Għaġġel fil-għoli...wasal iż-żmien JEKK JOGĦĠBOK!" Once again the new Irish barman hasn't got his tonsils around the Maltese lingo and comes out with this terrible mish mash of the typical barman's cry.
Donall Dempsey May 2021
"BEWARE THE DONALL DEMPSEY MY SON!"

The frog slid slowly down
my throat.

It's legs sticking out of
my mouth...still kicking.

The world was running away
into the final darkness.

My eyes were robbed
of trees and sun.

The day being stolen
from me.

"Death by frog!"
How unlikely a dying.

The bullies were all
short-trousered lads like me

sculpted from the sunlight
of 1963.

Then either the frog gave
a desperate last minute kick

or I silently yelled
and expelled

friend frog who
having escaped death by swallowing

hopped it
lost itself in the long grass.

Perhaps the horrible tale
of down-the-gullet

is told still to its descendants
far removed from that sunny day.

"Better watch out..." Mamma Frog
would make her voice shiver

making her tiddlers tremble
with trepidation

"...or the Donall Dempsey
will get you!"

*

I was having a bad day....nothing going my way....but still Kim Moore  managed to wring this out of me in her wonderful writing workshop. She applied a Chinese burn to my mind and out popped this in a seven and a half minute sprint of the mind. I was halfways through reliving the trauma of a frog being shoved down my throat to gales of laughter when I suddenly thought "What about the poor frog? How did he cope?"

What did he tell the other frogs and how in the world of frogs it became the tallest of tall tales and my name entered the lexicon of frog horror stories that have been passed down through generations of frog families despite being the innocent victim! All the frog heard in its terrification was my name
chanted over and over again in great grievous glee "Ha ha ha...Donall Dempsey!"  Me and friend frog were in this tormenting together. But despite all this my name has gone down in frog history as if I were a Grendel or a Grendel's mother or a Jabberwocky. Just say Donall Dempsey and see what the reaction is...faster than a Basho plop and splash
Donall Dempsey Nov 2016
SO PRIKETH HEM NATURE IN HIR CORAGES

Never did
help my Da enough.

Always
head-stuck-in-a-book.

"Donall son..."he call
"Can you hold this while

...I saw.!"

"Awwww Da!"
I'd wail.

Me lost in Chaucer
and his tale.

And so the saw saws
but all I see is..."Yo!"

"The Miller was a chap of sixteen stone,
A great stout fellow big in brawn and bone.

The saw cuts through the afternoon.

Pauses: then....
Chaucers on again.

"He did well out of them, for he could go
And win the ram at any wrestling show."

"Say what...?

Oh, don't get me
wrong I

adored the aesthetic beauty of
sawdust floating

in a universe of its own
suspended in sunlight and shadow..

The smell of pine
kidnapping my mind.

The green dance of the bubble
in a spirit level.

Didn't have time for all that
hammering and sawing.

I was a boy on a mission
ever since our teacher sighing

"Oh I...don't know why I
teach you scruff Chaucer

...you'll never read the book!"

But by the weekend
( furious at the rebuff )

I( ha ha)HAD!

My poor auld Da
only getting begrudging help.

"Whan that Aprille..."
( the words falling like gentle rain upon my mind )

"...with his shoures soote
the droghte of Marche..."

Words words oh sweet words.

"hath perced to the roote"

My mind
( "...bathed every veyne in swich licour, )

the bubble in the spirit level
poised perfectly...perfectly poised

"Of which vertu engendred is the flour."
Donall Dempsey Feb 2019
"DONALL DEMPSEY INDEED!"

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

"It's pronounced CLANOD!"
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:

Donall 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...Donall Dempsey
...indeed!"
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 End —