With my hands,
I create something from nothing.
With my hands,
I reach out and touch you.
With my hands,
I find my way through the darkness
And, if needed, wipe away the tears.
In the light,
They shade my eyes so I can see what lies ahead.
In our love,
They are the touch that entwines two bodies in our bed.
My hands are my creativity,
My contact,
My compass
And my comfort.
I see in them the lines of my life-
I watch them change as I journey through time.
I awoke last night-
Still drowsy from dreaming-
To be enveloped instantly
By a surreal silence
As the darkness
Carried the weight of your absence
To the depths
Of its sulking shadows.
I sat there,
Alone and shaking-
Upright in the bed-
Blanketed
In an all too restrictive covering
Of icy cold, concrete-like blackness-
Unable to breath,
Too fearful to move-
For so long had I been with you
That without you
Was so much more
Than my being could possibly
Comprehend.
It was palpable
Your loss-
And I was un-comforted
By this dead air
That lingered
In the wake of your exodus.
The constant company
Of your companionship
Had been so normal,
So ordinary,
Such a daily acceptance
Of my waking life,
That to be deprived
Of all imaginable sound
Felt, last night,
In that newly prisoned room,
Like flesh ripped from bone,
Sight removed from eye,
Sense depleted from skin-
How powerfully your presence
Had domination over me
And how foolish I was
In my failure to notice.
I awoke last night
Distracted by a dis-ease
That slithered itself around me
Like a soiled serpent
As I fought my way
Through random reasons
Why you’d decided to dis-passionately desert me.
Fled fast- had you
After what you’d decided was our last act?
Had enough,
Had your fill,
Composed your composition upon me
And now
No more was I someone to muse over,
No more to play upon,
Practice upon,
Empress your tune upon.
Silence.
Was this more commonplace
Than I dared
Imagine
Or understand?
Had there been others before,
Others left behind,
Before me,
By you,
Left alone and abandoned
In the vicious vacuum
Of emptiness
That your departure creates?
I awoke last night-
But you being so far removed would have never known-
And all I could muster
Were tiny inaudible breaths
As my skin prickled over
In goose flesh
To amplify the remaining senses
While the hair rose high on the back of my neck.
For a moment,
I thought I detected your return
And darted from bed to window
To welcome you joyously-
Honestly and hole-heartedly
Yet it was all but hope
Highlighted by memory
Without a single footing in reality.
But I stood there,
In silence-
Standing still,-
Watching,
Wishing,
Waiting,
Willing you, silently
To show your head,
Sound the alarm,
An alarm, any alarm.
Re-claim your position at the top of the senses.
Re-claim me as your valued courter, customer, lover,
And above all-
Listener.
Leave me not like this;
Cast astray to only taste, touch and see.
Blast me once more into the wailing world,
Scream me into subservient submission.
Build for me an orchestra at the foot of my bed
To fill my sleepless days and wakeful nights
With stirring strings and operatic arias;
Cascading compilations of chaotic cacophonies.
Leave me not like this-
Not now
After so long-
After such a union was made-
Since eyes were first opened
And ears
First heard.
Name me not silently defeated,
Challenged,
Muted.
Blast me
Once more
With the full force
Of your symphonic soundings
And see how my ears shall tremble upon the tone.
Abandon me not to this stilted silence
Where nothing pains my ears more than this nothingness.
I awoke last night,
Still drowsy from dreaming-
Dreaming of you-
The only place where you still roar me to life.
I awoke last night
To what I have now truly learned is silence
And screamed in my head
For a nanosecond
Of noise.
I am of an age that is ageless,
The very essence that lingers somewhere
Between shadow and light;
That indescribable grey matter separating
All that aligns itself with black
From all that derives its purity from white.
I am the illusive thread
Which ties the journey together,
Twisting and twirllings of threads
Weaving together past, present and, as yet,
Briefly imagined future.
I am the force between that barely dreamt dream
Of what will be and that longing, lodged firm in the memory,
That leaves logic out to recall that single
Moment of magic from that day, long ago lived.
That room in the mind that holds so tightly
To that taste once passed over lips, ripe for the tasting,
I am the emphasis of purity in the remembrance of that very taste.
All else, long since, fallen by the wayside
Or lost out amid the uncertainty of what is remembered
And what was real.
I am the playfulness of the light
You see cast bright on your sky high towers
With their windows onto the world.
I am the linear contrast of urban lines,
Rising sharp and structured amid the chaos.
I am the smooth sleekness
Untwining myself from a frivolous mess.
I am the seduction salvaged from the superfluous.
I am the impression left on the skin long after I’ve parted,
The mark of what once was, what is and what will be.
I am what makes the melancholy magical,
Every mood a melody;
The manufacturer of the moments
The mind will muster.
I am the lines that will lead you on,
Latitudes to rise upon and longitudes to fill your form.
I am a city seen from above
With straights of sky-scraping streets;
Lean lines, lengthy and lasting,
Marching triumphantly forwards as if to herald mans rise
Out of confusing chaos and stake his claim to stand above,
Alone, assured and reassured,
Calm and confident,
Always exceptional, occasionally eccentric,
Uniquely independent and always individual.
Modern man made in a blend
Of what is both memory and what has yet to be.
I am everything you put on to be who you are.
Yesterday you dreamt of me,
Tomorrow you’ll remember me,
Today, you are me.
I had wanted to show you it all;
For you to revel
As much as I
In the magnificence I had seen
And felt.
Perhaps it was my fault-
In the extreme-
Maybe my blinkered view,
Like the race horse-
Seeing only the green of the track
And the glory of the win ahead
While missing the money hungry betters to the sides
And the jockey with whip behind.
But still,
The entire time your view
Saw only the concrete beneath your feet
As if you feared to place a step
Wrongly
And so lose your American footing.
You proved as cold
And impenetrable
As the surface upon which you walked,
Moved only by a metal banister
That you pleaded with me to photograph
Least your creativity
Failed to capture it.
Yet it was you who’d become captured;
Trapped in a foreign land
That you had longed to see
And yet failed-
So perfectly-
To look upon.
To create means more than just
Standing on the spot of inspiration.
You lolled about
Almost as inanimately
As the statues that surrounded us.
However,
Their shadows appeared to sway
In the sunshine
With so much more gusto than yours-
At least, until you fell needy
And your dull American twang
Rang out monotonously
To disrupt the ambience
And civility
That enchanted me
And washed over you
Like you were oil-based,
Cardboard cut-out,
Dull reflection
Of someone else-
Hardly remembered.
Alcohol loosened you
Along with athletic fumblings
In a beamed ceiling room
In Saint Paul,
But we were neither drunk
Nor naked
All the time,
Although it felt like I had stripped
Bare for you,
To show you my secret
Parisian life
That, malheurusement,
Over half the world shared.
In that tree-lined park
Below the radiant sunshine
I feigned sleep and watched you
Behind darkened shades
And wondered
Where you were.
You noted it strange how the boys played
Football
Instead of baseball
And I realized
That you had not even boarded the plane
Or removed yourself
From your ignorant States.
I chilled in the warmth,
Amid that sun-filled square,
On that Sunday afternoon
In July
As I watched you
Fall intrigued
By little boys at play
And your comic books
Became all the more
Disturbingly understandable.
I was once silent
Amid the noise,
Shadowing the world in stillness
While all else-
But I-
Found its motion.
I watched as dreams
Slipped swiftly
Through my fumbling hands-
Hands powerless to awaken my slumber to the realm of reality.
I’d been held
And felt nothing in that very touch-
Nothing but the visceral arousal of man
At his most primal.
I’d seen a lifetime of possibilities
With single glances
And built worlds in my mind
Before blinking them away.
I held a man’s hand
In a taxi
As we raced through a foreign city-
Once my home-
While my mind ran to thoughts
Of someone else
Before remembering a touch, from long before.
Once, I circled the globe and returned home
To find that home
Was but a word-
A word that wakes a memory
To plot a beginning,
As weightless
And mobile
As the drifting traveler.
I am-
Like you all-
No more than a burnt-out,
Used-to-be,
Fading star,
Sparkling in front of you
Although my future’s already faded
Somewhere
Light years away.
As I hurtle through this voyage
My eyes fall sleepy;
Looking for rest,
Looking- always-
For the rest of me.
I saw you in the midst of these feelings
Early one morning
While December raced towards fairy lights
And tinsel toe-
Snowflakes speckling you in white-
An untouched canvas of pure potential,
No longer revolting in your bureaucratic bundle
Of mass and confusion-
While scarf-clad, gloved-up,
Red-nosed,
Shoulder-shrugging Frenchmen
Tutted as they wedged their way
Through the Metro turnstiles
That my blonde haired friend had just disappeared through-
Journeying back to her beginning
To start anew
And leaving me with no more than the distant memory
Of her laughter
That swept off on a breeze
And swirled around trees
Whose branches bared down to their earthbound roots.
No more the sharing of days and nights,
Mixing cocktails to our own design,
Toasting birthdays in Chinatown
For April’s fairest fool
Or surprise visits from friends
To break the daily routine.
No more lunches at Lina’s
With sandwiches too big to finish,
Dinners in white wolfed restaurants-
Leaving notes on toilet mirrors
For cute boys
On far flung tables.
No more spinning of bottles
And tempting of firemen
And late night parties
With boy bands
And dart players.
No more the sound
Of her click-clacking heels
Heard in the distance
Long before her arrival
Into that bar where we worked
And thought of as that very word-
Home.
She’d been the small town girl
More grown up than her years
And yet still a child as white
As the snow now falling.
As I saw you like this-
My dear city-
I wondered
How much more
Would fall away from me
And what else would take its place
As swishing snows let teared icicles stream down my face
While icy crystals fell from your skies-
Washing to white those famed grey rooftops
And smokeless chimneys
That had ingrained themselves
So indelibly
On my mind,
All the while hiding from me your cobbled streets
Through which my feet had sailed,
Feet that now disappeared
Slowly in the snow-white earth,
Leaving me to question where I’d be
When spring uncovered me
And pushed me back-
Once more-
Into the noise
And motion
And storm
Which I’d stopped that day to watch
In stillness
While another fine friend
Fell away.
I had once been silent
Amid the noise
But on that morning-
Speckled in white,
All was silent but for my heart
That raced with the beat of life.
I will love you for a thousand years and a thousand years more
if only you’d ask and I would, you know, lock that love away
so it can’t be touched, tarnished or tampered with. I will hide it
so deep within my heart that every beat will be stronger for it.
I will love you for a thousand years though a thousand others
may come and go, to distract me, delight me, even deceive me
but you will remain, as always, the single force that lies within,
that assures me in the darkness you have been a guiding light,
that reminds me in happiness you made me smile. I will love you
for a thousand years as if we’d spent a thousand nights together,
as if I’d been kissed by your lips a million times, as if I’d dreamt
in your arms a hundred dreams, as if we’d always laid together
and I’d woken up to your gaze every morning since time began.
I’ll love you like this, I promise, for a thousand years and more
and will ignore what we really are, what we have always been
and will forever be. I will love you, truly, for a thousand years.
I will love you for a thousand years, behind shadows, in private,
you’ll be my sweetest secret, the hand never held, or lips kissed,
or arms ever wrapped in. I will love you for a thousand years
in that dream always dreamt, forever a dream, never to waken,
never to end. We were not meant for the harsh light of reality.
We were but briefly met, barely known and yet never forgotten.
We have become the stuff that dreams are made of, candy floss
and unicorns, fairytales and forever afters. We could never be
day-to-day, common place, product of routine, we’re the dream
of the dreamers, without beginning or end. We are the sweet
existence of slumber, you and I, sweet is the dream we share.
All words and graphics by Damien B. Donnelly
Fuck it!
Fuck it, I keep saying
To myself
In the place of
Bashing skull against wall.
Fuck it,
I stripped it all down for you,
Laid it physically
And mentally
Bare
And emptied myself
Of all my silly secrets
And petty principles
And all for this-
This insipid accomplishment of nothingness-
The fucking empty vacuum
Of the little you gave, offered, shared!
Are you greater for all you have stolen,
Am I reduced from all you have taken?
Was I but meat on the bone
To be scraped off,
Devoured,
Discarded?
Was there a thought,
Any thought,
A fucking single thought
Towards feeling
Or stand you sensorially deprived;
Incapable of consciously considering
The character of others?
Fuck it,
I say again,
Over and over,
As I sit here,
Fucked again
By the failure to forsee
The futile future
And yet, you stand there still
As if wounded,
As if innocent,
As if exempt
From all blame
While my blood drips slowly
From your tongue to toe.
Fuck you,
With your polished pristine pride
And mirrored glances
To catch but your own reflection.
You- with your caloused hands,
Chapped skin
And impenetrable heart
And that blood still falling
From tongue to toe-
Not yours, once mine.
I bled for you as you bore
Inside me,
As you bore me,
Frequently,
Over and over,
Bored me sensless
Until I found myself
With skull against wall
Looking for a door to open,
A handle to get a grip on,
Just something to latch onto
And pull me out.
Fuck this mess,
Fuck this situation,
Again and again,
All over again.
Fuck the promises you pissed away.
Fuck the potential that should have been.
Fuck those changes we talked about.
Fuck the Us that could have been We
While all along you only cherished
The Me that was You!
Fuck those fears I had
Of being alone,
Of missing you,
Of starting over-
Fuck it all away.
Days are passing now
And I have not shed a single tear,
Not one fucking tear for you.
Fuck you- no more!
Lost somewhere in love’s language
Between bonjour and au revoir.
How is it I have strayed so far
From what was once so important?
I have travelled land and sea
But with each step
A part of you approaches from the past,
Present and possible future
To remind me of your existence,
To recall how much of you
Is rooted deep within me
And to confirm how much of me
I left behind in you in that time we had
And shared and made;
On your banks, along your cobbled streets,
Within your bars, on the lips of your men
Whom I kissed and your ladies who I danced with
And behind that grey door
And up along that wide wooden staircase
Which spiralled its way to my first home
Nestled in the oldest part of you.
It was here where Joni Mitchell
Rang out in my ears for the first time
Through the angelic tones of the blonde creature
Who lulled me from laughter to chaos
On that old templed street-
A stones throw from my first hotel,
The scene of my first French kiss,
Tucked away behind my favoured park,
Resting under the watchful ghost of Picasso
Where I would soon burn to a crisp
As summer’s sun found Irish skin to roast on.
How we laughed in that living room
With its viewless windows
Letting in only the bare minimum of light
As my musical Nymph rehearsed
Endless Irish dirges that would pay the rent
While the spritely hippy
That hid beneath her voluptuous body,
In green velveteen bell-bottoms
And tasseled honeyed hair,
Begged her to let loose, break free and fly like a bird.
I remember that morning as spring arrived
And I opened the windows to find warm air
Perched on our sills before I read her
My first French penned poem;
The Traveler Lost;
A young man drowns amid foreigners
Without words to express himself.
She laughed till her eyes brimmed with tears
And I, almost unable to finish,
Sobbed in a likewise comic and uncontrollable state,
Indulging in the unconsciously humorous overkill
Of the self-indulgent prose of a 22 year old child
Dancing about in grown up shoes.
And yet, in that very fact;
In the acceptance of our naivety and innocence,
We laughed our way, amid childish ignorance,
Through the best of times and dared each other not to care.
And yet now, so far from that very home,
How close its infamous memory
Ventures to mock me
For the distance I have let slip in between.
In all my dreams of traveling and exploring,
How was I to know that my feet would fall
So fast in love with that first touch
Upon your cobbled streets?
I am the sparrow, lost to its nest,
Forever flying in ascending circles
And catching your scent on every other breeze,
Unsure of why it calls me still,
But hopeful to one day be flown home on your courant d’air.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
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