Donal Mahoney Poems

Dubville used to be
a quiet town, not that much
was going on. The young would
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I have a new email address.
Old one may work for awhile but
like life, it can stop at any time.
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Fuzzy wasn't my cat although I fed him every morning at four o'clock for 10 years.

He was my wife's cat, loved to sit on her lap, be petted, jump down and rub his head against her feet.
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Some folks have a problem with authority,
legitimate and otherwise, and I have spent
a lifetime festering in that group.
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Fred brought his old comic books
and some hard candy to a food pantry
and didn't think much about it.
Just a different kind of donation.
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Jesse was a common man
he never made a lot of money
he had a troubled marriage.
...

I can't speak for other men but as I grow older I have found listening to my wife makes life easier.

So when she said we should move to a retirement community while we're still in reasonably good health, I balked at first but then wised up and said okay.
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His cardiologist says
Fred's doing well
for a man of 80.
It won't be his heart
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Bill's been seeing
a therapist for years
trying to get his life on track
but all he talks about is
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That my parents were Irish immigrants is probably the most significant factor in my writing life. The English expelled my father from Ireland around 1920 at age 18 or so for running guns for the IRA. My mother was an illegal immigrant who somehow got on a different ship around the same time and ended up in Harlem. Nice people took her to her cousin's place elsewhere in New York. She too was 18. The year may have been 1924. Hunger motivated her to leave.

Words were everything in the home I was raised in. Words flew around the house at times like butterflies; other times like missiles. My father launched most of them. My mother said little.
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