SOMETHING MORE

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If I asked you
would you sever the skin
from your body
            layer by layer
and blanket me
in your living flesh?

Maybe the nights would feel warmer.

If I asked you
would you bleed the blood
from your body
            value from veins
and feed me
with the liquor that lives in you?

Maybe the pain would taste different.

If I asked you
would you ease your eyes
from your body
            sight from sockets
so I that maybe
I could understand your vision?

Maybe the emptiness would look like less

and less
            endless
the end of less and less.

I never asked you
but you fucked me over
anyway

to pleasure your flesh
to boil your blood
to darken your eyes

I never asked you!

Maybe
I should have asked
            for something more!

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/something-more

 

PATTERNS

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Patterns
pick themselves together
on the ground
through the pitter patter
of rushing feet, wet feet,
feet wishing themselves
to be warm
as the rain
rings winter wet,
wetter,
not better
for shoppers
and strollers
and businessmen
with briefcases
briefly blowing smoke
up their own asses
while waiters
wait
to be commanded,
wait for orders
from others
while watching the rain
washing down windows,
wondering
when they can become
a part of other patterns
assembling into something
on the ground
just out of reach
just under foot,
under feet,
pitter patter,
patterns in puddles
patterns that have matter…

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

IN THE SHADE

 

There was a heart
like a plant
in a garden
watered
tended
in a garden
like a plant
growing
a heart
beating
under sunlight
and sometimes shade
a gentle shade.

A heart
nurtured
in a garden
a quiet garden
with a fence
a pretty picket fence
around a house
around a home
and that garden
tending to the heart
planted
like a flower
beating
under sun
and sometimes shade
the gentle shade.
A heart
blooming
in the garden
like a flower
till someone picked it

pulled down the fence
and picked it

still growing
still beating

and then dropped it
on the sidewalk
in the shadows
when they saw
across the street
something different
something else
something new.

There was once a heart
growing in a garden
but cut
like a flower
and now
no water
no waiting
no nurturing
no tending
can bring it back to life.

A heart once
growing in a garden

now only a hole
that never seems to fill

untended in the shade…

 

All Words and Paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/in-the-shade

THE GREEN BELT

 

Like bodies for burial, on belts
conveying commodities
to congested communities,
shrubs are shrouded
in sheets of plastic
that will not perish,
in weather
that can now only wither,
along concrete
too painful to penetrate,

as brick and beast
tower over twig and tree.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

FEATHERS IN FLIGHT

 

Falling
from new lows
cawing and flapping
through clouds of chaos
through crowds clambering
at connections now carelessly closed

Doves
let fly the doves
open the columbarium
souls have the right to flee
the broken have the right to be free

from this folly

Flapping
with frail feathers
the eagle’s eating itself
and the hawk grown hungry
see it feeding on the fragility

on the fears of the feeble

Doves
let fly the doves
free from the floods
from the lands they have lost
safe from saviours now savage
is there no refuge from the ravages

no end to the deluge?

Picasso
has departed
and La Colombe
has been pinned down
on postered walls for too long

who’ll pluck
the olive branch
from the promise
of paradise if it reappears?

Doves
let the doves fly
return them to the gods
were we ever ready to receive
ever worthy to watch wings unfold

Didn’t we know…

we were the tears
we were the flood
and the onlookers too
of the drowning dozens,
hundreds, thousands, millions,
billions, religions, refugees, righteous

all falling
on foreign soils
on broken wings
now turned away!

Now voted away!

These
are not
the days
of the righteous
for peace has fallen
and the doves departed

The doves…

all hail the hawk
shitting on humanity

Show me we are worth more?

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All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/feathers-in-flight