Month: May 2020

FRESH PERSPECTIVES AT THE MIDWAY MARK

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

I pulled a seat
up along the far side
of the first hill
of this midway through life’s climb
and sat myself towards country,
having been stripped
for so long
like bare bark by too many cities.

Green blood poured
upwards from your soil
onto my skin
until there was nothing left
to separate either of us
again

but for those ditches
that we would climb over
and perhaps leave the parts of ourselves
too ridged
for these winding lanes,
and those gentler hills
that we’d allow time to consider
while we considered nothing more
than what we had-

air, earth and this seat
on the far side of life’s hill
growing over time
with honesty.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

LENGTHS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Spring has left us shy.
We flirt like sheep- cute but clumsy,
forgetting what it was like to fold a summer
into forever. Words come but feel cumbersome-
you can only swallow so much of those ocean eyes
before drowning. Sheep don’t swim
and wool doesn’t do well in so much hot water.
Be careful with the laundry- no white flag yet in sight.
Spring has left us shy.
We never unfolded another summer to flock to the flirt.
You do or don’t- the tide isn’t ours to play with.
Sink, swim, shrink or drown. And I was never good
at lengths- length of time, length of hold,
length of hope.
Sheep need to be shepherded
or they lose their way. 

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

FINDING THE RIGHT COLOUR TO PAINT HOPE

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Silly things
sabotaged for the case of creativity-
barren bark
becomes blank canvas
becomes blue
becomes oceanic
becomes bewitching monster of humour
and not hurt.

This is the crisis
of clearing out,
not shelving all that will come to know stale,
but for shedding.
Sheds are no longer for the simplicity of storage
but the new distributers
of distraction.

This is no hoax,
no harm, no hostage
but a painting of honour, perhaps
for all that’s been felled-
for all that we’ve cut down
and for all the rest-
that’s been taken from us

in these days
where we’ve slipped from being held
to a slim holding of hope,
to painting bare bark in the back garden
in order to smile. 

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BY THE TIDE

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

There, by the water’s edge, where kids collect sand in pails as if a piece of plastic can save time, he watches docking ships report their findings- new worlds beyond the old waves he never managed to rise above. I had the urge for going, he recalls saying once, when he could run faster than those kids who cannot yet count time. There, by the edge of all that cannot be measured, old dreams dreamt in younger days float out on a wave that drowns the acrid air while he comes to regard the castles his grandkids have captured in the sinking sand.

The sand is to shore
as the ship is to the sea
dreams rest in between.

 

 All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BRUSHING IT AWAY

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Blue sky growing old,
sun sets into dusty pinks-
a hark for tomorrow

for today cannot be harboured any longer.

In this slow field
surrounded still by stilled life,
still the trees grow,

even daisies have returned after the mower’s menace
last Monday.

Single crow comes
to gather seeds
from once shadowed sections

of the garden I have only now revealed to the light.

Evening’s air is kissed
with today’s stagnation
but the sea is sweeping the shore

at the far end of the near lane where that dog barks next to buttery bush
that cannot concede its connection to the coconut.

And there, on the rock
once integral to the land,
I picture a mermaid, sitting,

combing the tide through her auburn hair in the hope that the current
can wash away the chaos

still carrying on
beneath the dusty pinks
of this ageing sky.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN GARDEN PONDS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Stars dance at the bottom of the back garden
where the rain waits in shallow ponds
for the earth to lick it dry.

Reflections are dependent on position-

you cannot catch the moon lying on the ground
from the front window where the sun lingered
a little longer today than the tear stained back
where stars tickle the empty earth we’d since weeded
while the moonlight’s absorbed by the shallows
never deep enough to hold the right answers
to the questions the imagination is too distracted
to decipher.

Breakable is dependent too on position and how we transition-

will the earth lick the stars from callous pond,
here, in the back garden while I sit trance-like,
in this window of the empty sky,
turning this piece of plastic over in my hands
to pacify panic, counting the intakes and holding…
one, two, three, four and then out… releasing
for a second longer like the sun that lingered earlier,
in the front, while I was out digging holes
in the earth at the back,

trying to get closer to the cure-

plunging pressured palms down into that hellish heat
to dry this pond of trapped starlight, allowing them
to rise again instead of dying out here,
on this empty earth.

There are times I want to quit this place, these concerns,
this kitchen, this garden, this land, this planet,
this moonlight and feel what it’s like to burn
through eternity and not just lay here,
waiting to be licked.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BLANK CANVASES

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Light can be ubiquitous, even in the darkness of youth
but it’s not always lucid- sometimes it twists shadows
into shapes that seem so much more sinister.

Innocence is a bright spark that can be knocked down
to stunted shadow by a thoughtless twist in the tale
or a pedestal pitched at an imperfect position.

Light is not always lucid when children are canvases-
blank boards where adults come to play at painting
a costly version of truth or dare upon fragile flesh.

I thought happiness was new paint on worn walls.

I thought he’d been derived from the devil.

I thought I was positively perfect.

Later, I discovered those last three lines where things
I’d been taught to think. Light can be ubiquitous
but in the darkness- teachings can trigger terrors.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BETWEEN THE SEAMS

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

We came for the cows-
sleek shiny skins to sew into seams and cents
but were caught in a contradistinctive cacophony-
silk sarees, careering through merging traffic
in colours more complex than considerations of the constellation,
on the backs of mopeds, motorbikes, motorcars, broken cars,
cars piled on top of cars, twisting and turning like my thoughts,
like shiny spun threads speeding through calescent carriageways
sweltering under the hustle of the crowd’s bustle,
horns and humans honking along the raw edges of overrun roadsides.
Curious eyes casting assumptions on the stiches I’d unpicked-
trying to see how they held it all together. Eyes smiling, seeing,
wondering on why I’d come and what I’d take away.

We’d come for the cows-
but slipped like silk over skin into the smooth symphony
of those streets where wild cows were prized idols
wandering freely through the masses, noting nothing
of our search for their hides that had slipped from being seductive
into being sacred, again. In the height of this mercurial madness,
a man, blind to all light, weaved his way through the carnival
like the weft goes through the warp, three sheep by his side
as if they’d always been with him- the silken worms to his weave
and I wondered, then, who was leading who;
the man, the sheep, this car or me.

Into every baste stitch, hand-made,
in Meluhha’s lining, was hidden a fine canvas
where letters spelling out the concept of freedom had been placed,
sealed beneath from the politics and the poverty, they’d sewn smiles
into each seam and it was I, in branded costume, who looked the fool-
traveling through, taking it in, thinking I was better off amid my laws
and rules and beds and baths and running water and walled in farms
that kept cows in containers too condensed to come close
to any considering of the constellation.

We came for the cows-
but discovered that this was no place
to search for that something sleekly-
for this was a city too silky for the stains of my synthetic skins.

 

 Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE RABBIT AND THE OXYMORON

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I am still so you can move

You twitch
when you think I’m about to turn

I view you as delight and you define me
as demonic

You glow of late
like the recently planted grass
in the side garden of sunlight that used to only sit
in shade

Coming closer to brave with every beat
you come out faithful to the evening’s song
when shadows are longer and stiller

and skip over blossoming blade

I make lists of where to walk and how to step
later, afterwards

so as not to thread over the freedom
you press upon that patch

of newly grown blades of soft grass.

Blades of soft grass. Movement amid all the stillness.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

ORIGINAL SONGS

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Here now, flown back to nest since moved in absence,
these streets hold no shadows of my former shyness,
they do not call me by nickname, or your name.
I was never open enough then to be called by your name,
their name, his name, back then when there was no him
and barely a me.
Here now, back to where they began, before me-
their nests, their streets, their lanes, their stories
I’ve since borrowed, not knowing much of my own,
those told before me.
Funny now, to be here, in this nest, perched on this position,
you say it’s home and there’s truth in those words
but it’s like saying we’re family- this was never my home
and our blood is not the same.
We look out at the same land, the same tree, the same leaf
but we do not perceive the same stars at night
when the garden is gone and the universe asks
where did you come from?
We are what we believe. We come back to what we know
regardless of where we’ve been, of who we’ve become.
Of where we started. Adoption can be a cold word
to begin with.
I came from a broken shot off cupid’s bow where a single tear
flooded the moonlight as a siren screamed and one other,
lost to her first song, called out for another chance to hold
a snowflake in her hands. We were both born to sing
in seasons different to our own.
I came back on a wing’s turn to question the concept
of a nest, of where feather first found flight, I came back
older, taller, wiser, to look at youth from this odd angle
of middle age, to look at connection from the perspective
of having already left the nest, to sit, here now, in this garden
freshly trimmed down and cast this bird’s eye view
over where the roots were first planted
and who laid the first twig.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly