THE THINGS THAT LEAVE US COLD, PART 2

09/02/2016 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

If you missed Part 1 you can link on the link here:

https://deuxiemepeau.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/the-things-that-leave-us-cold-part-1/

The Things That Leave Us Cold

Part 2 of 4 (Audio version available to listen to; link at the end of page)

I didn’t go looking for him, if that’s what you’re thinking. It wasn’t like that, well, you know me. I’m not what you’d call the outgoing sort, as I’m sure you remember. It was you who’d found me all those years ago. God, it seems like a lifetime and not just a few years that have whittled away. You’d seen me while standing by the bar with your beer, perusing the evenings prey while I sat, tucked away at the back, blocked in by a group of lively fashionistas, a timid dog feeling older than I should have, trapped and probably terrified.
But you came to save me. You, with those blond curls. You, in that brown sweater. You, with those pale blue eyes. You, with that look, that brazened determination to push your way through the dimly lit bar, the crowded tables and floor filled tote bags. But you were never one to let anything stop you, you never minded being looked at, being seen, being heard. You remember that time on the metro, someone got on and sang a dreadful rendition of La Vie en Rose, the one song that every beggar, talented or not, thinks every tourist wants to hear and they’re probably right but do the rest of us, the ones who were born here or the ones, like me, who came here looking for a new life, need to hear it also, day in, day out? It was the fourth time we’d heard it that day and it was by far the worst attempt so you stood up and sang it, full voice, full force, trying your best to drown out the accompaniment, much to the applause of the tourists on our carriage and to the dismay and utter horror of every frenchman on board.

But that was so you, right there and then, just like it was you back then in that bar, The Open Cafe, mecca to all Parisian men of our persuasion. You, coming towards me, sipping your beer as if nothing stood in your way between you and I, and me, helpless to do anything but be mesmerised by your stare and then, as you came closer, your perfume, but again, it wasn’t the perfume you wore but the scent you oozed all by yourself.
I met him also in Le Marais, of course, where else do gay men go. I wasn’t looking for anyone, like I said. I wasn’t looking for anything lasting at all. I was looking for something that was nothing. Something that was temporary, no, shorter than that, minuscule, momentary, forgetful. It had been so long since anyone had touched me, caressed me, kissed me, that I was almost choking. Like I was becoming a frozen form of what used to be. A body deserted of all tenderness. I know what you’d say, I can hear you staying it, I’m skirting the issue, trying to make something dirty seem more romantic, less sexual, more visceral but acceptable. I know, I haven’t changed at all it would seem. I went looking for sex. Is that better, does that make you happy? Can that make you happy? I can’t even believe I am here telling you all this. I tell you I’ve come back for you and, in the next breath, I seem to be this sex starved old man willing to find whatever he needs under the cover of night.

Okay, anyway, I’m telling you what I’m telling you. He was there. This time he was in the back of the bar, another bar, that other seedier bar, with the staircase that I hadn’t been able to bring myself over to yet and if I’d had anymore to drink I probably wouldn’t have made it up those steps anyway, so it was probably a good thing that he touched my arm just as I took the first step and stopped me from going any further. He started to talk and tell me things about himself, I have no idea what it was at the time. I was thrown. I was touched, literally. His hand had not left my arm since that first touch and I realised that it was all I needed. Not just to be touched, as exciting and arousing as that was, but, more than that, I’d been seen. Someone had seen me. Do you know what I mean? Christ you have no idea what I mean, do you? You were never, not for a single day, never seen, not by me, not by anybody. Everyone saw you, no one could ever miss you or want to. But I wasn’t like that, ever. I was more a reflection at times than an actual living person. Not with you, of course, Jesus, not, never with you. But before you and certainly after you when friends stopped dropping by, at first just to give me space and then later it felt like they’d just forgotten that I existed. We had existed to them and then we stopped existing for them and then afterwards, well afterwards I think they put me into the non existent box too. But suddenly on the verge of finding a moment of nothingness, fast friction in a dark room, someone reached out and took my arm and I couldn’t move, could hardly breath in case it all disappeared too quickly. I wanted to remember the moment for as long as possible so I could recall it again when it had vanished.
I know he was speaking to me because I saw his lips move, lips a touch fuller than yours, eyes a shade of blue darker. He wasn’t blond though, dark hair, slightly receding which was surprising as he seemed so young. Your height, give or take, slimmer though, not that you were in any way fat, I just mean he was less built, less muscle, less gym I guess, a bit more of a bookworm, not geek but not far from it either. I think I suggested we go upstairs but he wanted to talk, I didn’t want to talk but I didn’t want him to take his hand away from my arm so I let him tell me what he wanted to but the words never sunk in, only the touch, only that tenderness he’d placed on my right arm until eventually I felt it leave me and I shivered, actually shivered. It was august, I’d been back in Paris for over a year, the entire city had taken its usual month long vacation and it was almost midnight and still 30 degrees and that was just outside the bar and yet, when he took his hand off my arm, I shivered. Funny that, the things that leave us cold in the middle of so much heat.

But he didn’t leave me. He came back with a drink, two drinks actually, one for him and one for me and suddenly I heard him speak for the very first time. And I listened and he asked me questions and I found myself replying and, as I spoke, he put his hand on my leg and I shivered again. It’s silly, I know, silly, trivial, tiny. I don’t think in all the time we spoke that first night that he had any idea what it meant when his body connected with mine, how beautiful it felt to be touched once again and how painful that it wasn’t you.

To be continued…

All Words and Photographs of Paris by Damien B. Donnelly

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/the-things-that-leave-us

THE THINGS THAT LEAVE US COLD, PART 1

08/02/2016 / deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

The Things That Leave Us Cold

Part 1 of 4 (Audio version available to listen to; link at the end of page)

I stood by the open window and watched and waited, surrounded on all sides by the wisteria that clung on as time passed by and forgave nothing. It felt like I was watching the seasons change as the leaves lost their gleam in the sunlight, found their darker shade as the early autumn encroached and finally fell to the ground and withered as winter wound its way onto the deserted street. Our quiet little street with the bench just beyond the gate where I’d watched you, from that same window, smoking outside so you wouldn’t aggravate my asthma, in the rain with a brolly, in the snow with your fur hat, one hand gloved and other taking heat from the cigarette you clasped between your fingers as tightly as I was wrapped around them. Our street which is now graced with a flow of cyclists, can you believe it? Paris, the new city of cyclists, which just gives Parisians, especially Parisian drivers, one more thing to complain about. We cycled together once, do you remember, not here of course, not back in those days. In Nice, I think it was, in a field covered in red poppies, you at the helm with your soft blond curls unravelling in the breeze and me on the back, with that silly beret you forced me to wear, legs akimbo and arms wrapped around your waist, carried away by the strength and charm of your laughter which was endless and the smell of lavender fabric softener from your t-shirt which I nestled my nose into as if there was nothing more pleasant in the world to inhale when, in fact, it was you I was inhaling, nothing more all encompassing than simply the scent of you with my head on your back and the world falling away behind us before we tumbled off the bike and tumbled over each other. You still had grass knotted in your hair when we got back to our hotel that night which, of course, left me embarrassed and you elated as the receptionist nonchalantly pointed it out. And so it was, with the memory of all that had once been so palpable, that I watched and waited, watched and waited, finding a certain hope in the sound of every approaching footstep and then disillusionment in the appearance of every human shadow I realised could not be yours.
And yet I’d known all along, from the very start, the foolishness of my folly, my frivolous foray into the past. But I’d convinced myself that it was fate that lead me back, not regret, not loneliness, not quite the truth I finally realised as the days became weeks before I folded up the months and packed them away with other, niggling, neurotic memorabilia in the closet, in the dark, in the past. It was brave though, at the beginning, going back up that staircase, those old timber steps which wound their way to that silly door with the stupid key I never got the hang of, not like you, in all your practicality, standing amused at all my clumsiness. It was audacious to open that door into what had become a marooned mausoleum in our absence. The years had only clustered cobwebs onto our acquisitions, trophies, treasures. I lifted dust laden sheets off the furniture as if undressing the room, as if I’d find you beneath them with that devilish smile of yours, laughing at my inability to find you like you did so often, all those years ago, when you’d hide in the shower, behind the armchair, beneath the bed, like a child at play at hide and seek. But you were nowhere to be found and yet you were everywhere at the same time. Your imprint was etched into your seat, your footstool, your side of the bed. It was brave, I’m not lying, simultaneously brave and hard and cruel to an ageing man seeking only a scent of what once was and finding only emptiness in three rooms, teasing me with everything we once believed to be all we would ever need in the world.

Then slowly life began to move on, as it does, necessities, chores, rendezvous, routines and somehow I found reasons to come away from the window without even realising, new paths that took me in opposite directions to the past which I had been seductively drawn to. At first I’d walked to Montsouris, that park, along the hill you’d always run up before me, because that was you, always ahead, always on front, always seeing where we were going before we actually got there or, at least, before I got there. You at the top cheering me on while I gasped for air and crawled and I did basically crawl up there, on hand and foot and in that tracksuit you’d bought for me because you knew I’d never have the guts to buy it myself. As usual you knew what suited me more than I did.

But distractions came their way and carried me from those painful apparitions, those streets we’d once claimed as our own, walking hand in hand in a time when nothing seemed to matter apart from the closeness we shared amid your humour and my desire, the intimacy we’d embraced in that back room with its red carpet while we entwined limbs, lust and love beneath the sheets of that bed we finally battered to death and the connection we created until we got so lost in each other that I managed to lose sight of who we once were individually.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I forgot you entirely, not at all. I’d come back for you, come back to find you, no matter how ridiculous that may sound after so long apart. But somehow it dawned on me that there was a difference between waiting and wishing, and actually living. Losing you had been my greatest waste, perhaps our greatest waste if I can still speak for us both, but I couldn’t let myself waste away anymore while waiting for you too. I hope you can understand that. It was I who’d come back, be it more or less in the shadows, but I wasn’t sure if the light of day would be forgiving to all that had fallen in between us. And yet, even in the bare light of day, your shadow still hung over me, shading me, sheltering me.

And then he came along.

To be continued…

All words and photographs of Paris by Damien B. Donnelly

Also available to listen to-the audio version of Part 1 from SoundCloud…

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/the-things-that-leave-us-cold

HARD TO SWALLOW

07/02/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

I bowed on bended knee
on foreign shores on silk cushions
where no one knew me
to an invisible deity.

Did you see me?
Did I exist for you?
Did you believe in me?
Did you exist within me truthfully, invisibly?

I bowed on bended knee
into the light that flooded the floor.

They told me once you liked floods,
you liked to send floods,
to send down your floods
I never saw it, did anyone really see it?

But they told me,
they told me as if to flood me with fear,
a flood to frighten the faithful.

I bowed in that foreign land
as the dragon’s breath drew a veil upon the sky
as if to cover the heavens from curiosity,
from temptation,
funny what rhymes with salvation,
salvation from what, from whom?

There is faith,
there is belief
and then man names it all religion.

I bowed on bended knee
within that temple that foreign temple,
it was not my temple,
I don’t build temples,
I have palaces in my head,
private palaces private places,
filled with my beliefs private,
flooded with my teared steams private,
flooded with my fate private,
my faith is not called any religion.

I bowed on bended knee
where others knelt before me
while others knelt behind me

StrangersWorshipersBelieversFaithful

foolish?

In the invisible we place our fate
in man we place our control.

Can you see them?
Can you exist for them?
Can you believe in them?
Do you exist within them honestly, truthfully?

Do you exist as I exist?

I bent and bowed I lowered my eyes,
I followed the flock of faithful foreigners
I confess it was just to conform
so as not to confront or be confronted.
I was a sheep following the shepherds
who shuffled around me
who looked at me unsure,
who wondered to themselves
if they were the sheep and I was the shepherd.
Seriously!

Seriously,
how did I end up there,
bowing on bended knee
feeling too fair and too foreign
in that place within that facade
behind that face my own facade

and I asked the light

ContritionConfessionCommunionConfirmation

Is it all a Con?

ConspireContaminateCondemnConfineConform

Connect,
remember,
I remember once…

I wore a white suit
at 8, at communion;
my first communion,
I took the white bread,
they told me it was his body;
white, light and pure.

It stuck to the roof of my mouth.

It was difficult to swallow

even then.

I bowed on bended knee,
I did what I was told,
I did what they expected of me,

I saw what they told me to see,
this religion they called a community,

no more.

I bow on bended knee
in my own palace
far from their atrocities.

I bow on bended knee
and the light is so much brighter

the light inside me
the light within.

We can be the light
we can always be the light alone
with our faith our fate
without the hate without the fear
far from the floods.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at a temple in China.

FREE AT SEA

06/02/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

He is as much the boat
as the water is the ocean

He is as cognate to the current
as the tides are to their motion

A simple man, a fisherman
with his home upon the sea
his only ties to an oar and cast,
he is freedom floating free

All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

RUINED

05/02/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

I see a tree,
the ruins of a tree

I see man,
bricks bearing the bones
of what man thought he could be

they are falling

before him
around him
on top of him

I hear him crumbling.

I see a tree,

another tree,

I see many trees,

a host of nature’s possibilities

all rising above the ruins of man
rising above what man has ruined

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photographs taken on the Caribbean island of Caracao

LANES OF LIFE

04/02/201631/07/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Time tears
through flesh and bone
as it moves towards us
through us past us
while we try to
linger longer
onto that fragile hold
we have on love

but we are just
cars and connections
caught up in the cacophony
trying to stand in the right lane
with the right person
at the right time
as the clock ticks on
like a heartbeat
like a time bomb

I captured you
on film in a photo
as they kissed and craved and smiled
while you moved toward them
while you cut through them
then swept past them

before they even saw you.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken in Hong Kong on a rainy night when two lovers held each other tight and life rushed past them.

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/lanes-of-life

BETWEEN DISTRACTIONS

02/02/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

Between
black and white
there are a thousand shades of grey

between
life and death
there are a million things to say

between
I love you
and I love you not

there is more than just hunger and hate

FeelFondFuckFancyFlameFavourFidelityForever
FallacyFuck-upForgetFloutFlingFadeFailingFlee

we are hungry
we eat (more than we should)
and then we hate

you smiled at me
in a sea of sadness I’d grown tired of
a blonde in a season of darker tones
and the distraction deluded me

from the truth

are we always alone,
even when we are together?

I held his hand in a taxi
while thinking of another
not yours, not his, but another

I lay in your arms at night
as you lied in mine, behind the light

between laying and lying
there exists a world of truth and disguise

we hate being alone
but devour each other when we are together

devour each other

to the bone

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph of ‘Monument aux morts’ in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

PERFUME

01/02/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Hungry again
to taste you
like candy
on my tongue
tingling
like sherbet
dips, dipping.
Longing
to be left
immersed
in your perfume
like I was in your arms
intoxicated
by the fumes
of our fever,
to be left
covered,
candy covered
with your essence
perfectly preserved
on my fingers
where I dipped,
on my shirt
which you ripped,
on my chest
still pounding,
on my lips
still burning.
Hungry again…

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

StrangersWorshipersBelieversFaithful

ContritionConfessionCommunionConfirmation

ConspireContaminateCondemnConfineConform

FeelFondFuckFancyFlameFavourFidelityForever FallacyFuck-upForgetFloutFlingFadeFailingFlee

FeelFondFuckFancyFlameFavourFidelityForever
FallacyFuck-upForgetFloutFlingFadeFailingFlee