Month: April 2020

MOBILIS IN MOBILI

/ deuxiemepeau / 14 Comments

 

Happy Poetry Day Ireland. There will be Time.

Back story- Orla Grant-Donoghue originally invited 16 poets to create 16 new poems based on their favourite books and we were going to read these poems at Alan Hanna’s Bookshop in Rathmines Dublin, today. Of course, due to current events, all that was cancelled but it still took place today online on Twitter… 

IMG_862EFC3DDD91-1

You can read all the poems and discover all the artists in one place because Eoin from BlueFoot Books kindly put it all together for us. This is the link to the site…

https://bluefoot.ie/poetry-time-2020/

The book I chose was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne and here, with my 1st attempt at using Clips and my almost octogenarian mother as Camera Woman extraordinaire, is my Short Film to showcase the poem. Welcome to the Nautilus, Captain Nemo and his fellow passengers are waiting. It’s Time …

 

 

Mobilis in Mobili

Behold
the monster-
metal made, making movements
under waves.
Air trembles. Earth rocks.
The sea is a desert.
Immense. Without Master.
But with mineral, vegetable, animal.
Man can be the beast on land- despots, destroyers.
Land and Mr. Land who can’t swallow water.
Down below, beneath the glass.
Glass is breakable, like man, but can be of service
like Conseil- glass is capable of offering resistance.
Considerable. And He comes to resist.
Resist man and land and service.
But he takes the Other down, leagues below the darkness
to where there’s light, to admire this liquid light
through which they sail,
his electric thread of connection,
there, in that place which is far off
and exceedingly deep, away from those despots,
his own aquatic flock below the wave,
his own folly to float through the fathoms.
Fathoms. One comes to fathom who can find it out,
how man can flee, can float on his own hope,
his own pride, his own position. Opposition.
Defence. Defender. Here below,
where there are no masters.
But one. And it isn’t always
the sea.

Although
the sea is everything.
The globe began with the sea
and may end that way too.
He is the Sea and must defend himself.
And Man? The sea is an immense desert
where man is never lonely. Though man is on his own.
Not being Mineral. Or Vegetable.
Or always animal.

Darkness is deceiving,
regardless of its liquid light.
Behold the maelstrom! The Nautilus is no narwhal.
A can of unquestionable character can also be a coffin.
Man can make his own. His own house.
His own home. His own tomb. To float. In the water.
Through the light. Leagues below the sunlight.
Where light is electric, that fine thread.
Finely Snapped.
I recognise no masters here,
he said. I am free, here, he said.
God Almighty!
And the Other blinked, for a moment
and took hold of Land and his Conseil.
And then looked back
to behold the monster.
Some are drawn to the deep,
to the current, to the curiosity
of the perpendicularity, to the leagues
of light at the far end of the black water,
where there are no other men
murdering to be masters.
Behold. Enough.
Enough.

 

The Cast…

 

Damien B. Donnelly

With huge thanks to Orla, Eoin at BlueFoot, Alan Hanna’s and my fellow poets and you, for tuning in xx

POETRY DAY IRELAND

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Tomorrow is Poetry day Ireland but as we can’t go out and do our thing, we are staying in and doing our thing anyway.

Poetry time at Alan Hanna’s Bookshop in Dublin will be online and celebrating from 11am onwards on Thursday. Catch us on twitter and instagram and Facebook and anywhere we can make a post and share of poetry. And it’s all about our favourite books.

There will even be poems and links and videos and maybe a mini movie. So don’t sleep through the day- come join in the fun…

I’ll be the one dressed like this…

A SINGLE DAY IN THREE PARTS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Part 1

Morning
comes with birdsong these days
instead of street cars and sirens,
Blue Tit and Yellow Hammer
next to daisy, daffodil and dandelion
as the garden springs like never before.
Part 2

Afternoon
is found at the far end of the near field
because distance is dearer now as we take
slow steps around all we once overlooked
to see what this unsettling light can reveal
along those old paths life lost time for.

 

Part 3

Night
comes with gentle lights that dance
in windows, flames reaching out further
than the stretch of our arms, to touch
other souls at the far end of other fields
recalling old paths while wondering
what tomorrow’s birdsong will bring.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

SHINY HAPPY PERSON

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

I do not play chess.
I grew bored of board games at an early age, as an only child
who lived in his head where fairies were magical and not mauled.
I guess I had enough make believe on my shoulder, already.
I was ultra-shy as a kid,
I guess I didn’t understand who I was and tried not to get tied up
in conversations that consisted of ruminations of who I wanted
to become. Identity was difficult to determine on a blank canvas
that already had sections sinking below the surface.
We had a cherry blossom tree
in the front garden that rained pink petals onto the lawns
in late spring, I remember standing under them in a white suit,
new holder of the holy spirit and wondering if it would make it
any easier and what is the weight of a knot.
I would slay dragons for you.
I remember saying that over and over, I’d heard it once, in a movie
when I was too young to know how many people I’d say it too
and how few would slay even a tame dog in return.
I know who I am, now
since those quiet days under the fall of the cherry when rainy days
meant silly games and the coming of the spirit didn’t have as much
effect on my soul as it did on my wallet.
I have tasted more, too-
beauty, bounty, boys, bitches, sunsets and saints, gods and clowns,
serpents that tasted sweet and a certain kind of cute
that gave venomous a new name. I too have found the bitter side
of who I can be, they’d put me on a pedestal at a young age
and left me there, perishing alone, at that height and since then my knees
have always trembled at the sight of stairs.
I’ve climbed right down since then
and managed to make my way out of the gutter while putting together
my own idea of what it takes to embrace the darkness while shining
like a fucking star.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

SUPERMARKET RECIPE

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

We come considered, now, congestion side-lined
by concern, far from those racing rats
who reigned over the old normal, the old days,
the old ways. It’s not about choice anymore
but proximity- a courgette in place of an aubergine,
some Cheddar instead of Stilton, potatoes again
instead of that other, sexier, sweeter variety,
like those snowmen I built on the beach,
out of sand, back in half drowned summers
when I didn’t have a bucket to cast a castle.

Do you wanna build a… well, we make do.

We move, now, on the far sides of odd aisles
where no one overtakes, where we all stop
to let people pass by, first, before, before coming
too close- a new return to old graces highways
could do with heeding. This is how we move,
down familiarly strange aisles, planning recipes
to avoid disasters under masks, under gloves,
under pressure to keep our distance,
to keep going on, through this new normal.

Do you wanna build a… well, safer world?

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SOUTH CIRCULAR ROAD, DUBLIN 1995

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

I slipped recently onto an old road
that had circled back onto my diverted path
to find myself at first flat, basement floor,
25 years grown between us like the weeds
in the forgotten garden where I looked to see
if the cobbles still recalled my sole
before remembering how, on winter nights
that seemed bluer than black,
in hallowed hallway, I’d sit by the payphone,
juggling coins in jars of naivety and watch the lights
from the traffic flood the darkness like a fanfare
through the curved window above the door
and dream of how it would feel to slip, finally,
from streets that simply circled.

I slipped recently onto an old road,
happy to discover that even diverted paths
know how to accept circles as something to grow
to love, like certain weeds that complement
the cobbles where I found a part of my soul, sitting.
Waiting for me to call back.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE LIGHT INSIDE THE BOOKS

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

I found where they keep the light-
here, at the far end of the long road,
just up from childhood summers
near slip-away shores,
contained in a considered space
where books are bound to interest
and cosy corners tipped
in velveteen seductions of blue
that does anything but chill.
Funny,
to find this here, where once this structure
of simple stone held such complicated
conditioning, home once to a bigger book
you daren’t touch and a language
no one understood,
where they performed shows on Sundays
with their asses to the audience,
rattling off the auld Latin, the trail
of the Tridentine, without a single
Shakira shake.

Funny,
to find all this here, now,
this room of light and lending,
where knowledge can be found and held
and taken home and thought about
and brought back, without any penance
or concept of confession, for the next
and the next again.
Funny,
what you find when you let in the light.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

HEARTH

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

The old walls have been walled in
by warmer ones
but their youth has nothing on the cracks
and secrets the originals would disclose
if you could still sit around that old fire
and watch the smoke rise up to the high ceilings
since brought down to a more manageable level
and yet I have seen that hidden height-
looking down from the upper attic-
and I know there are whispers trapped
in those forgotten few feet
just like the heat that must still linger
behind the fake wall and down below the soot
now gathered over the old hearth
where you all once gathered to hear the tales
of how life was tilled and turned and that shrill excitement
when someone first turned on a light,
indoors, in a wide-walled room with high ceilings
that kept the heat away from the feet,
a little room where once there was only darkness
just like the light that was turned on, out there,
in that Space where this world spins
while we know nothing of the whispers
that were once words,
echoing out from other planets that too evolved.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE FURNITURE MAKERS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

We build things- built things-
like shower rails and kitchen lights,
Keto dishes that died in the oven,
theories on converting Korea into forever
and not just a 3-week diversion from dysphoria.
Kisses, we built kisses out of thin air
and laughter, laughter we built as if
it was all we needed to feed our day.
I was the funny one and you laughed
at times like you’d never laughed before.
Sometimes we built bridges
to cross divides we didn’t always understand,
sometimes we built boats but forgot the oars.
Sometimes we built temporary positions
around sofas and shallow shows to balance
the shit we didn’t have the correct tools
to deal with.
Once, we built a language
to lock ourselves into while on the outside
where it could be cold and cutting and callous.
Sometimes we built walls
for the other to climb over-
sometimes we liked to test the other-
to tease, to taunt, to attract, to test
the recoil of the elastic.
We build things- we built things-
like shower rails and silly meals and signs
and languages and kisses to complete
and sometimes we built walls
though, in the end,
one was too high to get back over.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Photo from an art installation in Jeju, South Korea

BEFORE THE STILLNESS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I sit, in stilled space,
trusting time and these proses
to act as forgivers
to all I cannot forget. I sit here,
in this stilled space,
taking trips that tease time with twists
and turns. I move not
in straight lines but articulate thought
through the acts
these tracks have taken, the un-regrettable
mistakes that brought me here
where I sit, in stillness,
in a space, not always my place,
a space grown damp since first stone
was first set
into place by hands I never knew, hands
ground down now
to nothing more than bone,
just like my bones
that will one day come to know the dampness
of all that has surrendered
its forgiveness to all that was not forgotten,
when the final lines
have been laid and I forgive time itself
for the finality of its stillness.

I sit and come to trust.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly