The Way Of All Flesh

The live fish twitched
shrugged its tail
and seemed to pale.

Just before it lost its head
the fish observed me
with a cold careless eye.

“Do your worse! ” it said
as if it were a British spy
being tortured by a cruel Gestapo.

Brutally decapitated
with a sudden twak

It became just a body
it’s head feasted upon by feral cats who had patiently
waited just for that.

It was now even more deader

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poem by Dónall Dempsey
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Dancing with Me Da! (For Linda)

As usual
the world
is threaded through me
through television

& right now
it's Jimmy Cagney.

I sit enthralled
engrossed in every move

...each gesture.

My Dad comes in
from the garden
as if he were Adam

toiling over
his vegetables.

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poem by Dónall Dempsey
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MO CAILIN ALAINN RUA(My Beautiful Red Haired Girl) /RED RIVER/WEARING HER HAIR - Sequence

MO CAILIN ALAINN RUA
(My Beautiful Red Haired Girl)

Your hair
taken by the wind

blown
into flame

a fiery red
Medussa

standing on
the edge

of this

mountain
a world

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poem by Dónall Dempsey
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KISS ME KATE! (for Helen)

A Blazon sonnet?

That’s the one an
Elizabethan lover

would turn his
Elizabethan Miss

into a
list

itemise her attributes
(hidden or otherwise)

& tick ‘em off
bit by bit

like a ledger clerk
closing an account.

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poem by Dónall Dempsey
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What... Watts's Cat!

IN THE HAND OF GOD

In & out
amongst

sunlight & shadows

the dead
come alive

as we speak
their names

make them real again
let them live in our voices

each tombstone
eager for us

to say them

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poem by Dónall Dempsey
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