Month: August 2019

SUMMER SUN IN THE MARSHES

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Three boys and a girl, coasting carelessly
from teens to twenties and coping lazily
with hangovers beneath the summer’s sun.
One blonde and three browns, laughing
amid golden rays that filled the most perfect
of squares in the once marshland of Le Marais
with its cobbled streets, men of elegance
and women who followed their trend.
We were setting no trends, the four of us,
but caught up in the richness and comedy of it all.
We were Irish and English and one of us French,
young, unknown, foolish and arrogant
to everything but ourselves and ignorant
to who it was that we were.
We were like the ground we sat on;
a once sinking mess belonging to a world
of daylight dreaming, where un-cautioned laughter
tickled our sleep though not our feet, but suddenly
we’d found potential in possibilities
seen through slumber-less eyes, far from dreaming.
I was laughing with one, blushing with the other
and was sleeping with the one so typically French.
I’d befriended the one I’d hoped to sleep with
and undressed with the one I should’ve remained
discreet with. I would later miss her, lose contact
with him and wonder how to stop sleeping
with the other. But that day, in that light, in that heat
of that summer, we’d found our way, heard our voices
and finally found what it meant to belong.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost of one of my older poems

THIS HISSING IN THE SUMMER

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

Summer
as the city
slips into slumber,
after last night’s thunder,
as skin slides from winter’s
shawls and shackles and pitches
itself proudly in parks where not even
dogs bark, where shadows have sunk
into sweaty
soil as feverish
fingers smooth skin
with soothing oil. Summer
in the city and temperatures
are oozing over bodies, all tease
and no breeze to appease. Summer
in the city and the music mellows as fellows
fold frowns
into bottom drawers
with winter wishes and curate
concerns toward sunset kisses. Summer
in the city and she unfurls her curls like foliage
finding form over greedy grass, and he goes green
with envy and furrows his frenzy as the fountain flows
with full force, unabashedly, and he grows as greedy as the grass
while her
curves caress
his consciousness
and he wilts in watchful
wantonness while I wait for kisses
caught on Spanish lips that creep along
the current of sweeping storms and sensual
shifts, we are ships crossing under starlight, snakes
slivering over sheets, I am not his, he is not mine, he is not
hers and still not mine, we cast concern into the ripples that sink in ocean
beds
too deep
to remember and
too cold for concern,
ripples that are arousing now
beneath these fountains now flowing,
in the park, in the sunlight, in the summer,
in the city. Summer in the city and babies are sleeping
in buggies buried under bushes while nannies’ doze and daddies
delight in their sweet blooming rose. Summer shines on the city and
streets slip
from worries
and rushes to brushes
with light and lazy, humming
hazy harmonies like he once strummed
upon my strings a serenade sweet enough
to sweep us to older days, other days, days of revolution
and voices that shone as bright as this burning sun, and on
to simpler days of lemonade and laughter. Remember laughter,
back before the pitter patter of drought and disaster? We are just people
passing
through parks,
looking for stars
in between the sunlight,
looking for fleeting kisses,
treats that are never free, saints
and snakes all hissing across lawns
in summer. Summer in the city but somewhere
out there, beyond the sleeping stars and the deep blue sky,
someone is probably crying and another, senselessly, about to die.

   

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a re post from a series of mine inspired by the artistry of Joni Mitchell

 

BEAUTY IN SPACES

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

There is a beauty within this space,
a creation considered
to compliment the concrete,
you can leave if you like
by the stairs or you can rest
for a while on the seat.

There is a soul within these veins,
a creation connected
to more than just the carcass,
you can leave if you like
by letting go or you can stay
for a time in the hold.

There are footprints upon this floor,
tracks that tingle
where others have thread,
weather will wither them
and winds will wear them
but they remain submerged, ingrained.

There are memories within this soul,
impressions that have permeated
and beats that have broken,
they are indivisible from flesh,
they are inseparable from spirit,

they are beauty within the space
of each and every person.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re post of one of my older poems

UP IN DUBLIN, KILMAINHAM GAOL

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

‘If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.’

Patrick H. Pearse, President of the Provisional Government of Irish Republic, Kilmainham Gaol, May 2nd 1916, later executed at 3.30am, 3rd May, by the gunshots of 12 soldiers. He was 36 years old. He left notes of goodbye for his family including his mother and brother Willie who was a teacher at St. Enda’s college which Patrick had established as a school to teach boys not only the English language but also their own Irish language. Patrick (or Padraic in Irish) had no idea that his brother was to be placed in the cell next to his own in Kilmainham to be be executed the following day.

 

Kilmainham Goal, opened in 1796 in Dublin, was to be the first reform prison in the Ireland, but later, during the famine it became overcrowded with dreadful conditions as people sought to be arrested so they could have a roof over their heads and the possibility of one meal a day. It later detained many of the leaders of the rebellions during the Irish fight for independence, most significantly after the Easter Rising of 1916 when 14 of its leaders were shot at dawn including James Connelly, Joseph Plunkett and Patrick Pearse. It closed its doors in 1924. It previously imprisoned Eamon DeValera, the 3rd president of the Republic of Ireland, who later came back to reopen the building as a museum.

One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve shots rang out
at dawn
with
the hope
a rising
would be done.

Twelve shots rang out
but all they could spill
was blood
not spirit.

 

Damien B. Donnelly

Kids
scrape their names
into the concrete
thinking
that’s what makes
legends

meanwhile

the silence screams
with the sound
of your smashed soul
within the stillness
of these cells

‘…I would have brought you royal gifts, and I have brought you
Sorrow and tears: and yet, it may be
That I have brought you something else besides-
The memory of my deed and my name
A splendid thing which will not pass away
When men speak of me, in praise and in dispraise,
You will not heed, but treasure your own memory
Of your first son.’

 

A poem by P. H. Pearse entitled To My Mother, written just before he was executed.

Did she hold thereafter,
that Mother gifted of sorrows,
that splendid thing to her heart
as the rifles ripped the remains
of both her sons
across the helpless walls.

 

Damien B. Donnelly.

Joseph Mary Plunkett was married to Grace Gifford (a protestant who’d converted to catholicism) on the night of 3rd May, 1916 in the prison chapel surrounded by soldiers in a brief ceremony where they only spoke their vows. In the early hours of the following morning Grace was brought to her new husband’s cell. They were given 10 minutes to say their goodbyes. It is said they stood together in silence. Joseph was executed at dawn at the age of 28, less than 9 hours after being married.

The cell of Eamon De Valera, 3rd President of the Republic of Ireland

The list of those executed after the Easter Rising 1916

By the morning of May 12th 1916, James Connelly had already been shot twice while trying to hold the GPO (Dublin’s General Post Office and the main scene of the rising from Easter Monday up to their surrender the following Saturday 29th April) and was already dying from those wounds. He could not stand or walk and so was carried into the yard on a stretcher and had to be secured to a chair so the 12 soldiers could execute him.

Sometimes
the nearest light
feels the furthest from reach.

 

Damien B. Donnelly

Entering
Into the shadow
Of a cold cell
There is only one choice
Trust in the coming light
Or be blown out.

 

Damien B. Donnelly

 

All photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Words by me unless otherwise stated.

WHITE STARLIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

White starlight,
light and lucent,
springs from
the ailing earth,
in quite corners
of tended borders
so fine and fair,
fragility unfolding
precious petals,
perhaps to soften
the edges
of darker days
that have set
shadows upon
so many sunsets.

White starlight
cradles beauty,
a bold beacon
blooming amid
these burdens
that bind us
to broken branches,
she’s taking chances
ripe and rare
like subtle silk,
like flowing milk,
so bright and brave
to dare to bloom
amidst these months
of doom and gloom.

White starlight
in broad daylight,
a wonder witnessed
among this world
of weeds
and tangled vines
that strangle
the timid
and the truth.

White starlight.
Fear not fragility
for she was
born to fight.

   

This poem is a re post.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

UP IN DUBLIN, LITERARY GHOSTS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

The door from 7 Ecceles street which Joyce made into a home for Leopold Bloom in his novel Ulysses 

Haiku poetry based on Ulysses 

James Joyce

Sweny Druggist in Dublin, featured in the novel Ulysses

Exterior of Blooms Hotel, Dublin 

The Dublin Writers Museum 

Beckett, Shaw, Wilde, Joyce, Behan, Yeats, Kavanagh, O’Brien…

Samuel Beckett

Bram Stoker 

Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square

WB Yeats exhibition in The National Library 

Yeats’ love and muse who rejected him for the wild streets of the rebellion, Maud Gonne

Lady Gregory, co-founder of The Abbey Theatre with Yeats

No Second Troy, Yeats and his poem for Maud

All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

CAPTURE BEAUTY

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

Beauty is breathtaking

where breath is less
and beauty is all.

Beauty is breathtaking
before it’s been taken from you,
then we are no longer bound to blind
and breath is less and less and less.

We breathe in beauty
in excess
as if it were endless,
as if we were never bound to be less and less and less.

We are chalk
marked for a rainstorm.

We breathe beauty with every breath,
with every kiss caught from lip’s press,
we press beauty into flesh,
flesh fresh on beauty that is fleeting.

Kiss him back,
Kiss her again

before it’s gone.

‘Kiss me,’ she whispers with eyes eager
and he kisses her eyes
and her lips grow eager
to feel the beauty that is breathless,

that draws in each breath, less and less and less.

We are not bound to be endless,

we are chalk
marked for the rain storming in the distance.

And so we press more and more and more

falling into the fragile fold
that holds beauty as it is falling,

for we are falling
into life,
into lust,
into love,
into loss,
into all that will fade
when the rainstorm has fallen,

for we all are fragile.

Capture beauty
before the breath grows less and less and…

   

All words and collage by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re post from my series based on the albums of Joni Mitchell

BITTER BRIDGES

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Clouds cross the skies and trains cross countries
while we cross each other only at jagged junctions
and obstinate intersections, cluttered with catastrophes
or below bitter bridges that bridge no boundaries,
basked only in blackness, always shadow, never light,
always almost, never right here, right now, right moment,
while clouds still cross skies and trains still trail onwards,
while distance is never denied to those on the right track.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re-post