—
Breezes are back in bloom
and I am caught
by the curl of the curtain
as it catches
in the courant d’air
now coming in
with questions
for all that has slipped
into a sleepy silence.
—
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
Author: deuxiemepeau
ESCAPING THE CITY; SEA, SAND AND SUNSETS IN SAINT MALO AND LE MONT SAINT MICHEL, BRETAGNE, FRANCE
Weekend break from the Parisian heat in Bretagne, France…
By the Breakers at Saint Malo
Patterns on la plage (the beach)
Sunset over the former pirate seas of Saint Malo
Big Bear at Le Grand Hotel des Thermes, Saint Malo
The Seagull sweep
Striking a pose
Le Mont Saint Michel
Tide’s out
Sunset beneath Le Mont Saint Michel
Within the Abbey at Le Mont Saint Michel
All photography by Damien B. Donnelly
CYCLE
Start. Stop.
Repeat.
Start. Stop.
Return. Rerun.
We are movement broken down
Into stages,
On stages
Persons performing their pieces
In spaces,
Persons in pieces
Often in the wrong places.
Start. Stop.
Release.
Start. Stop.
Rethink. Reread.
We are short stories bound in books
Looking for readers,
Looking for worship,
Looking for our worth,
We are sentences unseen.
Start. Forget. Remember. Forget. Stop.
I was a hand being held
In hope,
In haste,
I held a hand while thinking of another
Since forgotten.
Then remembered.
Now lost.
I remember more
Of what didn’t happen
Than I do of what did,
Subconscious is subversive,
Conscious does not always question.
Stop. Start.
Lay down.
We are the truth of our lies,
We lay lie between what we believe
And what we know to be reality.
Stop. Start.
Throw out.
We are clothes cut and cluttered,
We have forgotten to be sustainable,
To be recyclable,
We have been pressured into polyester.
Start. Stop.
Repeat.
Not retrain. Not relearn.
We are beings bound to repetition
We take foolish steps
Into fallen footprints
we haven’t understood,
we haven’t forgiven,
Be become the ghosts
That cloaked our childhood.
We have not been thought to think.
Stop. Start.
Rely.
Repeat.
All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly
BASKETS OF BLASPHEMY
The always inspiring Liz at Exploring Colour
https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/
introduced me this week to this beautiful drawing by Jean Mackay of Drawn In,
a sketch revolving around the various stages in the basket making process. Liz hinted there could be tales uncovered within the shadow and light of the sketch and, after an initial look this week qnd finding a certain nostalgia mixed in amid the delicate pencil strokes, this is the story that unfolded for me…
Before they break the bread they make the baskets,
hands twisting like roots turning, finding the source
beneath the soil; finding the form between the fingers
fixing, wondering if knots can hold, if what is born
can bind and hoping that what they make might mend.
__
And she saw the fine filigree of her grandmother wave
from within the weave, remembered how it felt to be
entwined into a hold that held so much heart, the smell
of those hands now her smell, her scent, her hands
finding form as the circle turned into something greater,
broader; wider, darker, not all twists can be unturned,
wicker bends and leans in as if to whisper and falls away
and under and she wondered how it might find its way
back as the other laughed, the giggling girls with their long
skirts over skin already stained, looking for ways to twist
out of their own tales, platted into tatters too soon.
__
Maura gave birth to a Saint Bridgits Cross that day,
wove her worries into a fallen belief, soaking her swollen
aches with the reeds in the water that would never warm.
Brenda bore her basket like a baby, fragile folds
and tucks and wrapped the rim carefully like covering
a blanket neath the chin of a child she would never forget.
__
Before they broke the bread they made the baskets
the babies would be placed in, each reed drowned
in a river that ran from their fears, ties never attached,
hope never to be held while behind them, resplendent
after lashings and splicings, the black winged women
cawed over the faithful feathers they wore as robes
as their beaded hands prayed for the sinners now
servants for the so-called stains of their skin.
__
And she watched, as she weaved wicker through
the wicked world, in a convent grown cold,
in a kitchen to clean, those witnesses of judgement,
the untouched sisters of seeming servitude, religious
reeds never bent by other hands, folding only
to an unseen force, foreign to the feeling of other flesh,
twisting their rosary around their faultless fingers
as she turned the reeds around the coming regret
of being born and borne away to never come back.
__
Before they broke the bread they made the baskets,
before they broke their hearts, they buried all hope in their broken waters.
Audio version available on Soundcloud;
https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/baskets-of-blasphemy
All words by Damien B. Donnelly
Artword by Jean Mackay of Drawn In, https://jeanmackayart.com/
Encouragement by Liz at Exploring Colour
IMPRESSIONS
Gentle breath
All as yet an impression
Morning yawns with uncertainty
Thoughts flicker on skin
Hairs rise to signal the day
My body stirs to the stillness
Feathers flap
Cracks are caught in the concrete
Roads are not the only route
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
TRIGGERS
We still taste the scent
of semi lucid laughter
edging over apples
being skinned and sweated
on extra ordinary Saturdays
of sweeping and stews,
still taste the crisp coating
of confusion beneath smiles
barely swimming over tears
there was not enough threat to trace.
We still trace, still blindfolded,
those outlines of imagination
now fading on distant walls
when dreams were seductive serpents
sucking the deafening dullness
out of roast Sundays
seasoned with unsensational rain
falling like the granulated gravy
that drowned our plates
as we looked to escape
the smell of a fear we couldn’t
pull the trigger on.
—
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
UNDER CONCRETE
We seek shelter from the sudden sun
within this city of concrete class,
everything here is concreted,
change is considered
but takes centuries to occur.
I have been asked for fax numbers,
offered cheque books and been told
that fibre is only forming and would dial-up not do?!
We seek shelter from the storms
here in this city that sites class and culture
above the chaos that is corrupting.
Everything here is cornered in concrete.
Shadows have been whitewashed
and the pigeons sprayed
in a shade of peace
the seers cannot swallow
I watch the streets be swept clean
of history, locals reopening in boroughs
they’ve been blighted to,
to Hell or to Connaught
we were once told in Ireland,
from Paris to the peripherique
is the new phase as designers dig up
the bones of the barely dead,
so our city can look chicer, sweeter, safer.
I seek the only thing time has taken.
The past gets further while the shadows get stronger.
We seek shelter
under palaces still being prized
for their no longer pristine polish.
A second star does not a paradise make.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
STEALING SCENTS
I steal scents from strangers,
skins skirting a sense of someone else
like flowers sent to the wrong address
and thoughts lean towards intense,
fragrances on the less familiar
that feel more personal
than these perfumed impostors
pilfering my past, more a fancy to my form
than a complete composition of theirs,
I can tell a dahlia from a daisy.
I slip through these scents
on these skins of strangers
through moments on metros moving
and slide suddenly
into arms once wrapped in
and sheets once strangled by,
the prick of every rose
that can one day rot,
(one must remember to change
the water in the vase!)
all memories of muscle and muddles
that have since slipped from this lined skin,
like veins vying on leaves that have caught
themselves onto the branches of other trees.
Stale tales on the scents of new strangers.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
DREAMS AND DRAGONS
Liz from the wonderful blog here at WordPress Exploring Colour: https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/snow-dragon asked us recently to find inspiration between a stunning photograph taken by Pete Hillman from his blog Ghosts In The Weir and the concept of a Snow Dragon. The request was to write a poem or draw a Snow Dragon. I went for the poem and then, inspired by the photograph, made a little pastel sketch as an accompaniment
et voila… a little audio version first…
I stepped into the storm
and took the path between the pines,
I curved along the bank
of which the river bed defines.
I watched the falling snow
bequeath a blanket on the bark,
the water formed a wave
and then that wave became an arc.
I noticed how the birds
had all since taken from the trees,
and that the current held no caution
and the arc held no appease.
I stopped within the storm
among the silent pillared pines,
and held a breath by the bank
as aberrant arc unfurled its spine.
I watched the wave turn wing
and saw the tide become a tail
while onward came the snow
on the wind now a wail.
I’d stepped into the storm
between the pines along the path,
but by the bank that cut a curve
I feared that myth had met with wrath.
A tarragon arose,
had drawn breath upon the rivers,
a dragon of the snow
and my skin awash with shivers.
I wondered if the birds
had since foreseen in the future
this dragon from the tide
find its form as snow-capped creature.
I tried to turn and run
from this basilisk of the snow
until its eyes fell open
and I sensed this was no foe.
I stood upon my tracks
and felt my foolish fear descend,
no fire this beast did bare
and no danger his snout distend.
This dragon of fair flakes,
this mammoth mythos flushed in white,
no monster of the dawn
and neither demon of the night.
I stepped into the storm
and found my fate transform from snow;
for this vision from the water
did bring a tale for me to show.
I’d fallen from the magic
and had been jolted out of joy,
had grown to be a man
who’d lost the dreams he’d held as boy.
But there, in the clearing,
I finally watched my youth take flight,
from a ripple on the river
as this snow-capped dragon slayed the night.
All words and sketches by Damien B. Donnelly
Heartfelt thanks to Liz at Exploring Colour for the challenge (link to her blog above).
Photograph inspiration by Pete Hillman (link to his blog above):
TO COME CURIOUS
We take slow steps into the sweet water, watch the current
caress the dark rock, the volcanic roar no longer rupturing,
its rage now rocked to slumber by this single shore. I lose
my shirt to time’s tide and this shimmering sand, I lift it up
and feel the weight that washed over it as you turn to face
the vast ocean and wonder what the next wave will bring
upon us. We have crossed currents, trained through towns
and cut across mountains, we have laughed at sadness
and cried over cocktails, we have come so far to wade out
into these waters as locals watch us with questions of how
and why. We have come curious to this country, we creep
along its coast like this tide, rummaging over these rocks,
wondering what happened to the heat it once ran with
when man was more forgiving and the mountain more daunting.
We climb the dormant mount, once maker of molten menace,
to watch the sun swim up from the sea and we count minutes
till the darkness will be disregarded as if time is all that’s needed
to destroy depression, decay, dysphoria. This mountain, once
a monster the sea could not settle and land could not control,
this country, once more than a division of north and south,
of emperors and conquers, Confucians and Catholics, devout
and deserted. We were once more than single souls searching
for the way back. We are tides, coming and going along
these beds we find shelter in, arms wrapped around us
like seaweed we equally fight off and hold down, we are lava,
trailing tunnels through our own thoughts, destroying
what we think to be too much but never quite knowing
how to fill the hollowness that’s left behind. We take steps
down into the open earth, adding sweaters to our short sleeves
and I wonder why it grows colder the closer we get to the core.
Isn’t the inferno on fire any more? Dante will be disappointed.
We look like ants crawling over cobbled rock as we curve
through these corridors created in centuries now cemented
into time and caress these walls and catch our breath
under cathedral ceilings created by no creature but by nature’s
creation. Deeper and deeper still and the silliness is replaced
by a silence, a stillness in this place where the waters drip
from porous rock and we look smaller, less special, not so strong
in this cave carved by once molten rock, lines of luscious lava
that laughed as its lungs opened and its power poured. Later,
back at the beach, the tide again tickles our feet as we stand
upon the rock that once before roared. We are equal parts
creator and equal parts responsible for all that we corrupt.
We have come curious to this country but find ourselves
asking more questions about ourselves than of this coast
that will still be counted long after we have been smashed
upon our own current. We take slower steps through
the sweetness and my heart beats louder, longer, lighter.
At the end of our holiday in South Korea we crossed over onto the Island of Jeju, UNESCO world heritage site and walked down into the Manjanggul lava tubes, underground caves dug out by lava while Trump and Kim had their summit. We waded out into blue waters lined with the remains of volcanic rock as the locals wondered how we’d gotten there and then climbed Seongsan (now dormant) volcano to watch the sun rise at 4.30am. The sun rose at 5.22am although the clouds arrived at 5.10am. This is why I offer a picture I took of the sunset the night before. You can’t have a sunset like this and still expect more, even if you hiked in the darkness.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
Audio version available on Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/to-come-curious
Damien B. Donnelly 