Donal Mahoney Poems

Let me be a star
and shine in places
darkness dwells or
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I was just a boy
but I remember Hitler
at the start
...

It's the last day
at the Taj Mahal Indian Buffet
with chicken tandoori
steaming on a silver tray
...

Never a man to dawdle
Gramps got around,
he reminded his Emma,
until gout told his foot
...

Over the years
I have found the best way
to watch political debates
...

When candidates stop
applauding themselves
I decide which one
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I first heard about
the Seven Deadly Sins
in grammar school
back when kids
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Being a “rewrite man” on a newspaper was a terrific job back in the Sixties if you liked “improving” other people’s work more than writing your own copy.

The rewrite man was like a midwife between the reporter who wrote the first draft and the editor who would say it was ready to be set in type. I don’t know that such a job still exists today. But reporters did not like the rewrite man unless they were phoning in a story and had no way to write it themselves in a world before computers.
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After writing nothing for 35 years, I returned to writing in 2008, concentrating on poetry and then branching out into fiction and nonfiction. The long hiatus was caused, I rationalized, by demanding jobs, mostly as an editor of other people's copy. Work left me without interest or energy to work on my own writing.

But when I retired my wife bought me a computer and showed me where in the basement my cardboard boxes full of unfinished poems had been lying dusty in storage all those years. More importantly, she later told me, in a kind way, that reading a poem of mine was often like 'looking through a kaleidoscope while listening to harpsichord.”
...

Sonya was Ronald's sixth wife. It was no secret that like his wives before her, Sonya had married him for his money. Most of them, like her, had emigrated to the United States from Europe. It seemed European women had greater tolerance for living with Ronald, thought by many to be a boorish American billionaire At least three of his wives bore him children before divorcing him and acquiring a big settlement and alimony for life. One of those women never called him anything but “The Ronald, ” which name became public over the years and was used occasionally to mock him in the press.

“I have no idea why she called me that, ” he once told a reporter. “But it has a nice ring to it, don’tcha think? '
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