Part I…

Everything comes and goes,

you can’t court without a spark
but nothing lasts as long
as that first light, that first night,
already fading before the morning
finds us fumbling, trying to get through,
to get on, to something shinier, to something more new.
Something more new.

Everything comes and goes

like those lines we never got to cross
though we prayed and paced ourselves
like panthers on the prey. ‘Stay time,’
we beg, ‘and I will bend to your will,
if you are willing,’ but it doesn’t and we can’t
get back to where we started, to that point where hope departed.
Where hope departed.

Everything comes and goes

and trains change tracks along the midway
and beauty is dying in the cut bouquet
as we change carriages for convenience
to be closer to connections, but touch, like time,
is temporary and every stop sees another petal
fall to the stoop, we are dying to be held but by death propelled.
By death propelled.

Everything comes and goes

and we are people parading in parks
in technological bubbles that bind us
to a common blindness, courting on computers,
arousals now viral and no virtual, thinking
time is to be trusted, trains will take us where we want
but time is not ours, lines get lost and petals continue to fall from the flowers.
Fall from the flowers.

Everything comes and goes

but I’ve become accustomed
to carrying carriages inside me
for the colours I’ve collected
and the connections now curated,
nothing I no longer leave as refuge on the road.

Even the lines I managed to miss have become moments I cannot dismiss…

 

Part II, The missing line…

Everything comes and goes;
a hot summer night long ago,
when my mind’s eye let my finger
linger on the line of hair that chased
a fleeting care along your chest
as the breeze blew bodies bare
and I was caught your smile
as you read my thoughts for a while.
 
You with your short dark hair
amid a season of bland blondes,
you, who I never kissed or lay with,
who I never undressed outside a dizzy dream
of sweat and steam. You, with your eyes
a subtle shade of blue in green. You,
in that red shirt and tight fitting jeans.
 
You were the first man I’d seen
in such a long time, having been lost for a while
in arms as harmless as they were hairless
while I cavorted about their baby soft skins
with a caress cornered in careless.
 
You looked like something rare
on that night as the setting sun sizzled
and breezes briefly blew that body bare.

That tremendous night
with the light already fading
when nothing really happened
except for the soft touch of that line
I never managed to upset and,
more importantly, never managed to forget.

Everything comes and goes…

All words and sketches by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud: