Donall Dempsey

Donall Dempsey May 14

'SWEETNESSE READIE PENN'D'

The room is
flooded with time

like sunlight that has
gotten old

our faces...fishes
swimming in the shiny table.

I am totally absorbed
drawing intensely

Mandrake the Magician
Mighty Solver of Mysteries

gesturing hypnotically at
his evil twin brother Derek.

Lost in The Sinister World of
"8".

The nice lady
talks funny

like people do
in American movies.

I am told she is
my aunt from Chi-ga-go.

Well, whatya know?

She watches the lines
flow from my pen

to make the Magician
happen to the page.

"Now...that's magic!"
she says.

Her backlit hair
glows like a halo

holy as an angel
glimpsed on a Sunday.

"You're my little superhero!"
she confides in me.

She takes the first ever
colour photos of

...unbelievably us!

She even lets me
take her and the horse.

My pulse going click-
-click-click.

She can't get used to
the fact that

"...there are no toilets
either inside or out..."

The table is a brown pool
we fishing for thoughts.

We live in this
timeless mirrored moment

as if it is
all the time

that will ever
be.

We listen to the grass
growing.

After this I will never
ever see her again.

Now I stand
in the ruin of this house

as if time has
broken down

her voice all sunlight
and birds

"Gee, you
got curls

...just like a girl's!"

stroking my hair
over and over.

I wear her touch
even to this day

like a glorious
flower in my hair

her smile forever
turning into

a kiss.

*

I was dumbfounded to stand in that room where I drew and talked with Aunt Peggy. Nothing but a ruin now that nature is reclaiming and time is clawing back from the humans. I have very few moments of her but this was the one I remember so well and she was so kind and loving to me. I remember her trying to remember a line of poetry about love and sweetness. Of course now I know it is from George Herbert. So I wrote a poem about that( for me)timeless moment. She had brought me a treasure trove of comics and I was in comic heaven! My favourites MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN...DOCTOR STRANGE...THE PHANTOM.
She came in whilst I was drawing and just talked to me about everything and anything and watched as the drawings emerged. She was so gentle and kind and she smiled and smiled and her smile always turned into a kiss! She wore lovely dresses and talked funny and the lack of toilets was very disturbing to her as it was to me! We were both mortified!

She was amazed I could recite all of THE CREMATION OF SAM MAGEE and Hood's I REMEMBER I REMEMBER without breaking my stride in drawing. This was of course due to my Dad telling me them over and over again...he was my best book!

The quote she was trying to remember was from the last verse of Herbert's second JORDAN POEM from 1633. She made me discover George Herbert just like Nelly turned me on to Aldous Huxley's ISLAND. I just soaked them up like the process of osmosis and there they stay to this very day. I was always weaving "...myself into the sense" of who and why and what things were.

As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
So did I weave myself into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might hear a friend
Whisper, 'How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetness ready penned:
Copy out only that, and save expense.'

Flew over to Cork for three days to catch her daughter which was quite wonderful...a river of faces flowing through people. Saw cousins I hadn't seen for over 30 years! And there I was standing in the ruin of this cottage and the room where this tiny moment happened...it all came flooding back...I was drowning in time.

Donall Dempsey May 13

UP IN THE SKY( for W. W. )

UP IN THE SKY( for W. W. )

Daddy was a pilotman
went to work in the sky
where bombs came from

he went to bash the bad men
who mashed all the houses up
made big holes in the road

he told me not to be
frightened but I was and
so was teddy

I didn't like the war
it was too noisy and
kept on too long

the world shook
like an invisible giant
stomping on the ground

Mummy always said
never mind
it will be over soon

but it never was
I prayed it was
God wasn't listening

the black out
ate all the light]
teddy kept his eyes shut tight

next door went away
one morning it was
just not there

a milk bottle
stood on a doorstep
that has no house

Daddy went to work
high above the clouds
one day he never came back

Daddy had to stay
up in the sky
Mummy said he lost his way

I still think of him
living up in the sky dead
not able to come home

being dead means
you can't see someone
and they can't see you

the sky was too high
the ground was too low
so he is always up in the air

I was five
when the bombs fell
breaking the world

now I am 65
but the war still lives
on inside my head

I am older than
my daddy
could ever be

I still don't cry because
Daddy said I mustn't
I tell myself I mustn't

teddy doesn't cry because
he lost both his eyes
so he couldn't

that world now
only lives in photographs
Daddy always smiling

Donall Dempsey May 12

"ÇA PLANE POUR MOI!

"ÇA PLANE POUR MOI!

You
all that Paris is!

The myth...the magic
the music of being.

Sunlight sifting
through summer leaves.

The dazzled waters
of a morning.

A forgotten orange
on a cobbled street.

Chitter-chatter of
passing Parisians.

A flock of
human birds.

A look-alike Plastic Bertrand
busks Ça Plane Pour Moi!

A crumbling wall shouts
in a strong graffiti voice

"Laisse tomber
c'est pas grave!"

Et dans
Jardin les Tuileries

Madame's tone
scolds and cajoles

"Flick-flac...flick-flac
en dedans en dehors!

Suzanne..sous-sus
sous-sus Suzanne!"

Little children
the puppets of her voice

balance on
their too spindly legs.

Old man lost
in his Tai Chi

grasps sparrow's tail
smiles to his secret self.

These and so much more
grace notes to our loving.

We the present lovers
of lovers gone before

stretching back into time
the ghosts of kisses.

We embody all
that love has been.

I kiss you
in best Bogey style

"At least
we'ill always have

'Ça plane pour moi,
moi, moi, moi, moi,

ça plane pour moi
(Hou-hou-oou-oou!)'

. . .Paris!"

*

The title comes of course from the Plastic Bertrand faux punk hit back in the days of '77 and full of crazy lyrics and mad energy. it is a French idiomatic expression which is best translated as "everything's going well for me" (literally: "it is gliding/sliding for me") or indeed " I like it!".

"That's fine by me "/"Ça plane pour moi"

Donall Dempsey May 12

"AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?"

"AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?"

you exist in the space
between breath
and breath

the space between
second
and second

thought
and thought
the interstices of being

this is where
you live
since your dying

between time
and timelessness
between forever and now

hiding you
when Death
comes knocking

"And when did you
last see your father?"
Death demands

I hold my breath
like living underwater
I deny any sight of you

Death leaves as
it arrives
in a rage

claiming
that it
owns you

and so again
I breath you
back to life

live here father
between one second
and the next

between one thought
and the next
the interstices of being

I will not let
Death
own you

Donall Dempsey May 10

THE REVENANT

THE REVENANT

"Ha ha!" laughed the photo
in a black and white voice
with the very ghost of me

gazing at the future
I had
now become

it was hard to accept
that this young scallywag was
someone I used to be

indeed
he is a stranger
to the me of now

finding it difficult
to get back
into his head

he was eager
to talk but I wasn't
returning him to the book

he had fallen
out of after
he had been lost for years

Donall Dempsey May 10

THE CONSTELLATION OF THE GIRL FROM WALLA-WALLA

THE CONSTELLATION OF THE GIRL FROM WALLA-WALLA

I lick her lifeline
"Oh I can see you are
going to have a wet wet life!"

she watches the tip of
my tongue crawl along her heart line
"You will have many many kisses!"

she sips her fine wine
laughs...munches
sweet onions

all I say
comes true right away
guess I got it right

cute girl from
Walla-Wall sleeping
just up against the Pacific Ocean

"Shhhh..!" says the Pacific Ocean
as it watches over
her sleep

I place DayGlo stars
on all her extremities
she becomes her own constellation

the constellation of
the Girl From Walla-Walla
being looked after by a specific Ocean

"Walla-Walla!"
the waves call to her
but she's lost inside a dream

"Are you really a real Walla-Wallan?"
I ask of her
"Yep!" she grins "I'm the real thing!"

"The only Walla-Wallan
I knew before I knew you
was a girl in a book!"

I turn the snow-dome
up-side d-own
watch it snow forever

I remember her
letter telling me
of a snowstorm she once knew

"I took a little of the snowstorm
put it in the fridge so
it could melt in July."

"The snow storm had never met
a July before
so this was its big chance!"

"When the left-over snowstorm
finally got to meet its July
it cried itself into oblivion!"

"...here. . ." her letter
pauses for ever
outside snow falls now

*

Walla Walla is the largest city in and the county seat of Walla Walla County, Washington, United States.A Walla-Wallan is a person from Walla-Walla! You just don't often meet someone who comes from what appears to be a made-up name or a South Seas island. The sound of it is delicious in itself!

Or something a baby would say learning how to talk! Wanted to write it like a little movie excerpt and to play with time and go from remembered snowdome snow to real snow falling outside...from real time to letter time and mix them up like the way they happen in the mind. Probably only ended up confusing folks!

English villages are the same...the most amazing combination of names or sounds. And sounds...I love. Together the villages of Over Wallop, Middle Wallop and Nether Wallop are known as The Wallops and run in a line roughly North to South following the line of the Wallop Brook, which has its source in Over Wallop.

Acock’s Green, Worcestershire, UK
Babes Well, Durham, UK
Bachelors Bump, Essex, UK
Backside Lane, Oxfordshire
***** Green, Kent, England
***** Cross, WestSussex
Bareleg Hill, Staffordshire, UK
Barking, Essex
****** Close, Surrey
Bedlam Bottom, Hampshire, UK
Beef Lane, Oxfordshire
Beer, Devon, UK
Beggars Bush, Sussex passed her prime
Bell End near Lickey End
Bishops Itchington, Staffs, UK
Bitchfield, Lincolnshire
Boggy Bottom, Abbots Langley, Herts, UK
***** Lane, NorthYorkshire
Bottoms Fold, Lancashire
Broadbottom, Cheshire, UK
Brown *****, Cornwall,UK
Bushygap, Northumberland, UK
Catholes, Cumbria
Catsgore, Somerset, UK
Charles Bottom, Devon, UK
Clap Hill, village in Kent, UK
Clay Bottom, Bristol, UK
**** Alley, Calow, UK
**** Bridge, Hope, Derbyshire, UK
**** Green, nr Braintree
**** Lane, Tutts Clump, Berkshire, UK
**** Law, Northumberland, UK
**** and Bell Lane, Suffolk
Cockermouth, Cumbria
Cockernhoe, nr Luton, UK
Cocking, Midhurst, West Sussex, UK
Cockintake, Staffordshire, UK
Cockpit Hill, Derbyshire, UK
Cockplay, Northumberland, UK
*****, Cornwall
Cockshoot Close, Oxfordshire
Cockshot, Northumberland, UK
Cockshutt Wood, Sheffield, UK
Cockup Lake District, Cumbria. UK
Coldwind, Cornwall, UK
Crackington Haven, Cornwall, UK
Crackpot, North Yorkshire, UK
Crapstone, Devon
Crotch Crescent, Oxford
Deans Bottom, Kent, UK
Devil’s Lapful, Northumberland, UK
***** Mount, Suffolk
Drinkstone, Suffolk, UK
******, Northumberland, UK
***** Barks, Durham, UK
***** Avenue, Derbyshire
***** Hands Lane, Lincolnshire
Feltham Close, Hampshire
Feltwell, Norfolk
Fingringhoe, Essex
Flesh Shank, Northumberland, UK
Friars Entry, Oxfordshire
Fruitfall Cove, Cornwall, UK
Fudgepack upon Humber, Humberside
Gay Street, Sussex. UK
Gays Hill, Cornwall, UK
Giggleswick, Staincliffe, Nth. Yorkshire, UK
Golden *****, Oxfordshire, UK
Gravelly Bottom Road, nr Langley Heath, Kent, UK
Great Cockup & Little Cockup, hills in The Lake District, UK
Great Horwood, Bucks, UK
Great Tosson, Northumberland
***** Lane, Shropshire
Hampton Gay, Oxfordshire, UK
Happy Bottom, Dorset
Helstone, Cornwall, UK
Hole Bottom, Yorkshire, UK
Hole of Horcum, North Yorkshire
Holly Bush, Ledbury, Herefordshire, UK
Honey **** Hill, Wiltshire
Honeypot Lane, Leicestershire
****** Road, Norwich
Horncastle, Linconshire
Horneyman, Kent, UK
Hornyold Road, Malvern Wells, UK
Horwood, Devon, UK
Jeffries Passage, Surrey
Jolly’s Bottom, Cornwall, UK
***** Close, EastSussex
Knockerdown, Derbyshire, UK
Letch Lane, Bourton-on-the-Water, The Cotswolds, UK
Lickar Moor, Northumberland, UK
Lickers Lane, Merseyside
Lickey End, Worcestershire, UK
Lickfold, West Sussex
Little Horwood, Bucks, UK
Little Bushey Lane, Hertfordshire
Long Lover Lane, Halifax
Lower Swell, Gloucestershire
Menlove Avenue, Liverpool
***** Lane, Worcestershire
Moisty Lane, Staffordshire
Nether Wallop, Hampshire
*** End, South Lancashire, UK
Nork Rise, Surrey
North Piddle, Worcestershire
Ogle Close, Merseyside
Old Sodbury, Gloucestershire
Old ***** Lane, Wiltshire
Over Peover, Cheshire, UK
Pant, Shropshire
Penistone, Sth Yorkshire, UK
Piddle River, Dorset, UK
Pork Lane, Essex
Pratt’s Bottom, Kent
Prickwillow, Cambridgeshire
Pump Alley, Middlesex
Ram Alley, Wiltshire, UK
Ramsbottom, Lancs, UK
Rimswell, East Riding of Yorkshire
Sandy *****, Hampshire
Scratchy Bottom, Dorset, UK
Shaggs, Dorset, UK
Shingaycum Wendy, Buckinghamshire
Shitlingthorpe, Yorkshire, UK
Shitterton, Dorset
Shittington,, Bedfordshire, UK
Six Mile Bottom, Cambridge, UK
Slackbottom, Yorkshire, UK
**** Lane, Merseyside
Slip End, Beds, UK
Slippery Lane, Staffordshire
Snatchup, Hertfordshire
Spanker Lane, Derbyshire.
Spitalin the Street, Lincolnshire
Splatt, Cornwall, UK
Staines, Surrey
Stow *** Quy, Cambridgeshire, UK
Swell, Somerset
The Blind Fiddler, Cornwall, UK
The Bush, Buckinghamshire
The Furry, Cornwall
The ****, Oxfordshire
Thong, Kent
Tinkerbush Lane, Oxfordshire
Titcomb, near Inkpen, Berkshire, UK
Titlington Mount, Northumberland
***** Hill, Sussex, UK
***** **, Northamptonshire
Tosside, Lancashire
Turkey **** Lane, Colchester, Essex, UK
Ugley, Essex
Upper Bleeding, Sussex, UK
Upper Chute, Hampshire, UK
Upper Dicker & Lower Dicker, East Sussex, UK
Upperthong, West Riding, Yorkshire, UK
Wash ****, Norfolk, UK
Weedon Lois, Northampton
Weedon, in the Parish of Hardwick, Buckinghamshire, UK
Weeford, Staffordshire, UK
Wet Rain, Yorkshire, UK
Wetwang, East Yorkshire
WhamBottomLane, Lancashire
Wideopen, Newcastle, UK
Willey, Warwickshire
Winkle Street, Southampton
Wormegay, Norfolk, UK

Donall Dempsey May 9

BEAUTY O'ERSNOW'D AND BARENESS EVERY WHERE

BEAUTY O'ERSNOW'D AND BARENESS EVERY WHERE

A Christmas
with the Thames

almost freezing, then
thawing & then again

the London of 1598
asleep

under a quietness
of snow

that hides the world
from itself

as some Elizabetheans
go to steal

a theatre
silent now for a brace of years

frozen by bitter
dispute.

The playhouse dismantled
bit by bit

so that when it rises
it will become in time

The Globe
this wooden O.

Will turns his face
up to the stars

laughs
at this theatre theft

snowflakes settling
upon his eyelids

remembering when
he was all of 7

and the Christian tales
told in stained glass

are shattered
for their sins

now only white light
is to be

let in

picking up a shard
of the ****** Mary

here a fragment of
St. George.

He sticks out his tongue
tastes the snow

knows that
all things change to

begin again.

He laughs.

The ****** Mary's smile
still clasped in his hand.

*

Inspired by JAMES SHAPIRO'S COMPELLING 1599 - A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

The 'theft" of their former theatre,The Theatre, which dismantled would become the famous wooden O. And Will watching( possibly ) when all of seven. . .the stained glass windows of his 'right goodly chapel" been smashed by a glazier who was paid 23 shillings and 8 pence for his smashing. These two images are what burned on in my mind.

I have often stood in that chapel and seen what remains of the whitewashed paintings now brought back to life. His dad had to order this whitewashing months before Will was born but by 7 Will could have been witness to the death of the coloured glass and all that was to be beheld there.

So this Midsummer's Day madness of 1571 really stated with me and forced the poem upon me.

"Popery may creep in at a glass window as well as at a door" as one William Prynne put it. The English Reformation going about its daily task to the dismay of the common folk who had to put up with the religion changing hands and changing hands yet again all in the little time of just over a quarter of a century.

Being a great lover of stained glass and its beauty this was what got me the most!

The title is from Will's Sonnet no. 5:

Those Hours that with gentle work did frame

"Beauty o'er --snowed, and bareness everywhere.
Then were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, "