World Loses Great Artist(For Janice) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

I remember it all
so well

can tell
every... little... detail

down to the
although

I can’t remember it
at all.

Told so often by my mother
that I can

recall it
all

her
memory of the memory
of me

until it is so
real
that I really feel
it for real.

They, leave me
a newly 2 yr. old

to play
in the garden

thrilled by the grass
between my toes

gazing cross-eyed
at the ladybird on my nose.

Somehow
(even then)

I have paper & pen
in hand

but soon tire
of scribbling masterpieces

that no one notices
(nothing changes)

& so
to relieve the boredom
(I suppose)

I take off
all my clothes

(nothing changes)

delighted with
my dangly bits

(nothing changes)

I take
the asaid fore-mentioned biro
in hand and

draw in
the creases

I can see
around my scrotum.

Pleased with my self
& its pretty patterns


until arrested
by the passing


Military Police
who

call my mother out

& inform her
(I suppose)

of some military
code

prohibiting the
drawing of rings ‘round

one’s
scrotum.

Thus, it was that
severely scolded, scoffed, mocked
& laughed at


I decided


not to become
a professional


artist.