BETWEEN THE BONE AND THE BROKEN, PART 3; CLAW

08/05/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

I shift
in skin
that no longer
stretches
to meet movements
not always malleable.
I twist
and turn
through thoughts
in a mind
not always compliant
with concerns of control.
I claw like the crow;
doused in darkness,
fusty feathers flapping
through air
I can’t clasp,
in a body
I can’t bandage,
through these
thoughts
I cannot suppress.
Weightless now,
I weigh less now,
I wait less now,
am patient less.
I shift and stir
and twist and turn
in a coffined canister
of contraction,
distraction,
as I claw
through the miles
and those fading smiles
like feathers falling,
black breath billowing
over a body
that cannot cradle comfort.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud;

BETWEEN THE BONE AND THE BROKEN, PART 2; SHEDDING

07/05/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

When all the fuss has faded
like guilt that glides from gloss,
when I’ve pulled back the hair,
when I’ve crept from the clothes,
when my flesh is all that you see
and there is nothing left
to hide the parts of me
I never wanted to be,
Will you…? Will I…?
When my tears come like the floods
with no temperament to temper the tempest,
when there is no laughter to kneel neath,
when I bare no gift to beg you like me
and there is nothing left
of the roles I’ve roped myself into,
of the masks I’ve twisted my face around
to veil my own identity, Will you…? Will I…?
Will you be able to read
the life lived between the lines,
will you see the soul
that slipped within the shadow?

I wrote it down
but ink fades faster than these pains
that have patterned
themselves into permanent
beneath this skin
I’m now unseasonably
and unceremoniously shedding,
scars that parade now in the spotlight,
in the parts of the play
I have been permitted to perform.
But they are scattered
between the scenes,
broken into awkward acts.
When the curtain finally falls
and I cast off the costume, Will you…? Will I…?

Will you understand what it took to get here?
Will you look further than the festering flesh?

I am more than just skin on the bone.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

BETWEEN THE BONE AND BROKEN, PART 1; HEAVY. DUTY

06/05/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

Heavy. Duty.
Responsibility
is weighty.
Weighs on the burdens,
on the burdens that mount.
How the distance mounts over
the months. The years. The tears.
The fears. The identities.
The identities we partake in,
we personas we put on,
we pretend to,
we play with,
the personalities
we scrub away to start again.
Once again. Heavy. Duty.
The responsibility
of owning
the ownership
of always ending up
on our own. Heavy.
Shedding parts of ourselves
like snake skin, too thin to shake.
Thin are layers we’re left with,
the leachers leach their lot
and leave us with little.
Little are the layers now.
Lighter. But Heavy.
The Duty.
Responsibility is heavy
in the hands of just one.
In hearts not always held.

All Words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

PARIS IN PICTURES

01/05/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

After a month of eating, sleeping and drinking poetry (even toilet breaks were scheduled) I’ve decided to start May instead with some Parisian pictures from yesterday morning’s bike ride through this city that you think is unchangable but then you catch it in the still of light and suddenly you notice how the subtleties are shifting. (Even if the politics are falling back to a past best forgotten.)

#NaPoWriMo was a whirlwind of loves, lines, lives, lies, syncopated sentences and non sensical structures. The amount of talented writers here alone on WordPress is mind blowing and reading their creations every day inspired me to want to write better and better. And the support from everyone was incredible. You Three Graces, especially, you know who you are!!
And so a view from an adopted boy in his adopted city…

When you want to study architecture, you go here, Architecture School

I think Street Art like this brings this once grey and neglected district to vibrant life

A sculpture of boats, of course

A new Skyline taking shape in the 13th arrondissement

Architectural inspiration in the form of the Architecture School, of course!

Books needs paper and paper needs trees so here is the National Library and its garden

Above was a free gift from clothing store ‘Weekday’ when it opened its first Paris store!

Something old amid the new, l’Hôtel Salé now known as Musee Picasso in Le Marais

Self Portrait, Velo days

As for the future, it is, as yet, unclear…

(Elections next week- has anyone alerted Beyonce?)

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

RAPTURE, THERE ARE NO ENCORES

30/04/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 14 Comments

DAY 30 of NATIONAL POETRY WRITING MONTH; 30 POEMS IN 30 DAYS #NaPoWriMo

And down fell rapture, fell down, not up,
having claws now, clenched now
over the faithless who couldn’t fathom
what their lies and legions had begun,

and off flew the doves that once divined,
by his hand, (by whose hand exactly?)
that dry land where ships could stand.
They soar once more in search of other shores?

Worry not their weakening wings,
those precious things, make them not
our whores, have them listen not
to manmade myths once bound in books
by human hands, by hooks that humans
hang to, bare back brave bird, flap not
in fear, for hear this, here, this, this is it,
after rapture has turned to wrath,
after the columns have conceded,
there is only rubble to rummage through.

Raped were the fine forests
with ferocious flames, with claims
to conquests and conquerors
and contractors of condos,
and ashes are the only monuments
to the woods now, so no Arc, now!

Hark now, how the angles weep
over drought, and the shadow of doubt
over mankind, man now drained of kind,
no more the floods, (gone, just like those
woods) as oil is sucked from starving soil,
from sacred sands once known as native lands

And down fell rapture, not up, fell down,
crashed into oceans cast with cadavers
of the countless who’d been cast out,
cast off, caught in the current of a concern
that we couldn’t seem to cope with, refuge
reduced a raft we couldn’t keep afloat,

pain has purged paradise and all pleasure
plucked out by those pinched claws,
gripped jaws, savage with selfish
sensationalism, fallen too far
to the right to ever be truly right.

See me, it sings, serve me, and it slivers,
before the ravenous roar of wronged
rapture itself is swept from the stage.

In the end, there are no encores.

Rapture. No Rapture. A new rapture!

A deathly departure!

Down with the darkness it dives,
deep down, and with it ignorance
and arrogance, deaf ears and blind eyes,
and mouths that eat their own tongues
for no more is there need for words.

The war has been won and rapture
has fallen down, is done.

And no one stands in wait for us.
The Coming they prophesied
has properly been and gone.

But then wake did I
from darkening dream
and turn did I
to open window
where light was cast
in joyous beam

and thought did I
on entering day
that sights from dreams
in day don’t stay,
but slumber still
behind closed eye,
and tucked down tight
neath blankets sigh

and so walk did I
and work did I
and laugh did I
and hope did I
and eat did I
and smile did I

and the sun retired
and the stars stretched out
and I thought
there is not a single doubt
as I stared upon
the heavens gesture
and thought not man
can this vision fracture

III

then turn did I towards end of day
and hear did I, though in the distance,
a wing in flight, a fear now calling,

no dream this time,

but that rapture falling.

All Words and Sketches by Damien B. Donnelly

Congratulations to everyone who took part in #NaPoWriMo2017! Now Breathe!

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

THE NEW LOOK

29/04/201714/04/2017 / deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

Day 29; National Poetry Writing Month 30 Days/30 Poems #NaPoWriMo

I am
that fine line
that divides
what is feminine
from what is
futuristic.
That fine line
that flushes
the fabulous
out of the fickle.
The reflection
of what once was
incased
in something else
and might
one day
be called
another new look.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at the Fashion Forward exhibition, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris 2016

A SHADOW IN SPRING

28/04/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Day 28: National Poetry Writing Month #30 Poems, 3 days #NaPoWriMo

There
on a bench
where they both sat down
in a far away field
in a stranger’s town
where
on a Sunday
when the flowers were waiting
they had no idea
of what fate was planting.
There
on the edge
of a changing sky
a seed was strumming
the strings of goodbye,
there
by the bark
and pressed into bench
two lives unaware
of the encroaching trench.
There
at the dawn
of a spring yet to bloom
they saw not the blossom
that shadowed their doom,
there
in the hook
of a bench and bark
a promise still whispers
of hope that missed the mark.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

MILES OF AISLES

27/04/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

DAY 27; NATIONAL POETRY WRITING MONTH #NaPoWriMo

There’s a lady with a leek,
on the metro, next to me,
a vegetable, vegetating
while she’s reading a book,
and that leek, next to me,
moving through the miles,
like vegetables, on shopping aisles,
vegetating, waiting be cut,
to be cooked, killing time;
twisting, stopping, starting.
There’s a leek, on the lap
of the lady next to me
with the book that holds
no answers in the turned pages
as we move on the metro,
this morning, leek playing dead
so she won’t cut of its head
at home, later on, not here
on the metro, not here
with a knife (that wouldn’t be right)
not a lady with a knife
on the metro moving
cause there are checks now,
at the stations, you know,
so the homeless now
can have a job, don’t you know?
Funny things when you travel
on the metro, when you think
on the metro, next to ladies
with leeks, scouring cook books
for something to eat, something
to get us out of this state,
on metros moving through aisles
and dodging the missiles
that are coming increasingly now
more than just once in a while!

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
.

GPO, PAST POST, POETRY DAY IRL

27/04/201724/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

A Poem about the GPO, Dublin’s iconic General Post Office

a site that’s seen more than just letters of love in its time…

for Poetry Day Ireland 27th April 2017

AnPostGPOwithbrassfittingsadded

Beneath the pillars
of your past,
I posted letters
between your walls
and wondered
if they rubbed up against
the souls of your saviours,
if they met with memories
that were made and measured,
bruised and battered,
between your bricks and mortar
before being buried in blood

How many letters of love,
lined in lust and longing,
have perfumed your pillars
working their way
through your worthy walls
and haunted halls
in search of hungry hearts
to hold them,
to open them,
to hear them.