Author: deuxiemepeau

BROKEN BUT NOT BITTER

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I beat back the blues
by licking fingers
on this honeyed language
we spread over the dawn
of each dark day.
We can be drunk on symphonies
of sentences
that slip shadows into sleep,
I whisper of rain
and you twist another truth
through its tendrils
to tell of something drier,
warmer, more lasting
than a droplet of despair
dissolving in the air.
We can be drunk on the words
we sip slowly in the storms,
we take torrent thoughts
of thunderous terror
and turn them
into diaphanous diamonds;
everything is an experiment,
a reaction,
a chemical coming to terms
with its contemporary,
a dictionary is a sentence
awaiting a structure,
the moon is a callous clump of coal
until your eyes spark it
with suggestions of significance.
So much can be broken
and the rest appear so bitter
but I come willingly
to lick the dark chocolate
of these words
and see what structures we can build
together between all this
broken bitterness.

 

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

BLINDING LIGHT

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Blanket light,

blinding

in the back seat,

not all light is light,

the sun can burn through its beauty,

the mind can tear through its thoughts

as wheels will themselves

across these bridges,

feet too far from the ground

to feel its gravity,

we build our own graves

along these roadside reveries.

Blanket light,

burning

in the back seat,

leather licks skin,

we cannot wash away the dust,

we cannot break away

from that grey light

burning bright behind the sunlight,

we are desert bound or ocean open;

we either dry up or seek salvation

in the comfort the current creates.

Blanket light,

a burning blindness breaking

through the open window

on this back-seat taxi-taker.

Destination is not always the desire

when running from reason.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BLUE MOON

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

The moon was a blue whisper
and beauty a delirious ache
even the breath could not crush,
a sorrow born in summer
under a sky of shadows.

I picture you;
petrified over a pool of pulsing pain.

I run,
often to leave
before being left.
Like once I was left?
And the moon was a whisper in blue.

I run,
to get away quicker
this time.
Than that time?
When beauty was a delirious ache.

I outrun
not this skin,
not this being I have become
of years and tears and tensions,
but a feeling
that has festered
since I was fostered.
And somewhere still is a sky of shadows.

I leave
through the open door,
somehow left ajar
as if someone
might one day
return through it.
To release the breath that was crushed.

As if someone
might one day remember
what they had left behind
when summer gave birth
to sorrow for a season,
for some still unknown reason.

But what if,
in all that time,
in all that motion,
I have run
too far to be found?
And you remain
in that pulsing pool of pain.

I run
with little thought
to where I am going
but with every effort
to hide what I am too frightened
to find.

The moon was a blue whisper
and beauty a delirious ache
even the breath could not crush.
A sorrow born in summer
under a sky of shadows.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

GLUTTONY HAS GOT THE GOAT

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and this train cannot proceed
along its track,
interlopers interrupt on intercoms;
there are packages of suspicion
on the trail up ahead
and a goat in a lot
dancing round the cars.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
as a woman tells tales
in the seat behind me
to a girl with fingers
fixed on her insta-fame,
on Instagram,
while a goat
with shameful notoriety
throws shapes in the parking lot.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and a plane descending
like a sub into the sea
while a package has been placed
in positions of pedestrians
and a woman complains
to her daughter about her day
and her daughter captures it all
on Snapchat to ensure it exists
as a goat in a parking lot
continues to dance.

There is a goat
dancing in a parking lot
and this train has lost the thread
of its tracks
and in a synagogue
on the sabbath
in a state out of states,
someone opened fire
while the goat in the lot
continued dancing.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot,
trying to distract us
from the collisions
he can’t cover.

Winter is already here.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

IN THE PLACE OF THE FORMER PRINCE

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

I flew back to a day
no longer this day,
returning to the rubble
I had run from
to catch the last slab
being laid upon my childhood
buried under a concrete garden,
not even a root to latch on to.

I saw the permanence
of the pavement
pour over the past
no longer possible
from the next-door vantage point,
access no longer available
to my own old room
with its red walls and worries
for the former local
now unfamiliar foreigner
with footing bound
to a fondness to regress
but reality is no longer
the daydream we used to skip through
under the glorious sunlight
of the innocence
that blinded our youth.

Dreams are sometimes
rotten weeds to return to
after the dawn breaks
through the haze that once held hope,
our once great grounding
is not always as we left it.
We cannot fit into the clothes we once wore
nor the skin we since shed.

I saw my childhood today,
buried beneath the cold concrete;
the final closure on the kingdom
I thought I was the prince of.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly