POEMS BY DONALL DEMPSEY
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THE FOX, THE WHALE AND THE WARDROBE
I hide from the world. I hide from your death. Hide in my Auntie's wardrobe. Gather the darkness about me. Dissolve into the nothingness I have become. No one knows where I am. No one knows who I am. Not even me. My auntie's fox stole’s beady eyes alive with death. the old wardrobe still holding the clothes of the dead. Auntie’s Sunday best Uncle’s smartest suit rotten now eaten by time. ‘Ah, little boy you've come back?’ the fox stole whispers in my ear one eye missing the corset nothing but a bone and I cry for the death of summer I cry for the death of them all. The fox and the whale join him in this darkness they could not have ever envisaged. The little boy could never have imagined the man I have become. I come to comfort the nine year old I was. This 67 year old self trying to make amends for all the pain he had to endure crying to a heaven not willing to hear him. His tears my tears. I gather the darkness about us. (Title poem from THE FOX, THE WHALE AND THE WARDROBE, pub.2023) THE ONLY WAY OF LOOKING AT A BIRD
( for Glyn Pope ) she looked at the bird with all of her self as if by some alchemy of thought she flew into its shape as it became the air her mind opening its wings to the sky the house now a little blue egg far far below her her voice curving into a beak that flung its being into the song of self scrawled across a sky becoming sunset so that becoming human again was a grief that could only be expressed in birdsong. |
THE MAP OF THE MOMENT
I open the hole where the words come out but there is no sound to be seen. I check the mirror but it too is deaf. I shut the hole. The words fill up inside me. Only the silence has a voice. I search for a map of the next moment but there is none at hand and when I do acquire one the moment has passed. The map useless. |
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
( To Betty Patton ) The Old Year is nowhere to be seen. It had escaped out the back door when the bells went crazy. The bells! The bells! The New Year now but a moment old. It looked about itself. "Oh brave New World that has such creatures in it!" it Shakespeares. We all wondered what the New Year would do but it only wet itself. The rain came down Biblically. "Ah, I see Life is throwing a party!" I said to the other newly dead beside me. "What I can't stand is being haunted..." said the new ghost "...by the living!" "I just want to rest in peace if you please!" The New Year looked about it wondering what on earth it was going to do. |
I WEAR LONG SLEEVES EVEN IN SUMMER
Blue bruises bloom on my skin. I wear long sleeves even in summer. First, I lost my smile it somehow floated away. ( Blue bruises bloom on my skin. ) Next, I lost my flesh until I was nothing but skin and bone. My curves...my breasts vanished into themselves. "All...something...is...grass!" I quoted to myself. ( I wear long sleeves even in summer. ) The woman in the mirror who claims she's me isn't ...isn't! A stranger holds my eye. I...I looked away. Blue bruises bloom on my skin. I wear long sleeves even in summer. |