NaPoWriMo

COLOUR IS WAITING

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And still we will come to lick the honey
from the purple petal and still we will come
to root out the weeds of worthlessness in gardens
where others eat up all that is beautiful. Time turns
and we, in turn, follow its path, suns set and the moon
shows us its song, hold hands and then release,
hold hope and then move on, we only own the moment.
Mothers may still hand over their hearts to other mothers
waiting to be wanted, fathers may rise to be fearless
or choke on the root of their own fear, those black-cloaked
women pouring water from windows onto withered plants,
who’ve buried their living bodies in a bitterness
for all that life has lynched from them, will continue
to cry as flames flicker out along the Seine,
like their memory, revealing structure still standing
but soul no longer settled. They will still pour
their buckets of tears down the aging walls of a city
that cannot see beyond its past. If we cannot catch colour
then we too will be cremated in the concrete. But black
is only shadow until it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom. Eat the storms,
Mother said, remember? Boil the beds of bitter blackness
until the dream rips through the rain and translucent
turns them lighter, brighter. And still we will come
to that lake where language lingers, still we will sink
beneath its depths to slip ourselves from the reflections
we have once worn and now outgrown. Still we will sink
kisses onto our starved lips and still come back for more
after love catches hold of kisses cradled on other lips.
Catch the colour, catch the kisses, catch the life
racing by in taxis, on trains with crimson carriages
connecting moments waiting to be made magical.
The starry night can be a bright light waiting for us
to paint it. Behold how much there is to love, to let go of,
to learn from. Let us be the design and not just the destruction.
Eat the storms, she said, taste the refreshment in the bright
blue rain. Colour is waiting just beyond the clouds.

  EBA745D1-36E2-45EB-B84C-61914EAEAF30

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

30th and final poem for National Poetry Writing Month 2019

AT THE SETTING OF THE YELLOW LIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 18 Comments

 

I held your hand
in a taxi, once,
while thinking of another
as you whispered into my ear,
a sound I no longer remember,
a scent now a breath away from touchable.

I cannot hold everything anymore,
not everything nor everyone.

I recall the yellow light
yearning to hold its own innocence
stretching through the window
burning hands still holding onto a truth
that had turned away from white,
I remember the highway
that hurried us out of the city
as I wondered if I’d packed enough hope
for us both.

But I cannot hold everything, anymore,
no more. The elastic cannot be recalled,
the weight was too wearisome
for just one heart.
I hope now to hold clarity, to hold happy,
happy to be free. Happy me,
now lighter, brighter

reaching out for that plant pot
with its purple petal planted, long ago,
in a garden I am returning to.

A garden where I will sit
and watch the dance of the dandelions
till the yellow sun has descended,
where I will empty all the jam jars
of their collected lies
and draw the sound of the moon, at last.

   

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

Penultimate poem for National Poetry Writing Month

TRIMMING THOUGHTS LIKE PURPLE THORNS

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

 

I take
this thistle
like I take these words,
I trim the thorns at times for desire
to be softer, sweeter, so lines can be calmer,
cleaner. I seek out the heart of the whole, for now,
for here, for this moment, for the sentiment of this song
that comes for but a season. I seek not branch nor stem, but the life
that lingers where flavour is found, where thoughts flow freer upon the page,
no longer rooted under rock, no longer locked under fear. I pierce through firm flesh
like this pen plots it’s point into the page, holding out not for the green flesh pleading for a place in purple but for the truth buried beneath the skin we have learnt to thicken,

toughen.

I cut away
at words wasteful
and suck the substance
of the tale from the source

below the scale.

   

All words and photography By Damien B. Donnelly

28th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

Lunch today was homemade mayonnaise and steamed artichokes and so came the poem

GRAINS OF SAND BENEATH CERULEAN SKIES

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Faith
is fragile,
courage
is not always conclusive
until called,
we do not command the waves
nor comprehend the clouds.
I tell you this sand
will be swept into the sea by night fall,
this baying breath of cyan
neath the stretch of those cerulean skies.
This smooth, salt-licked land
was forged from fire
before you were born,
when vultures had feathers
instead of hands and knives,
when volcanos were all there was to fear.
Faith is fragile,
we cannot see what once was
or what will come to be.
We are not the fire nor the future,
we lie somewhere
below the caelum
searching for a shred of security
on a spot of shore
before the tides return
and we, in turn,
become a grain of sand
that some being will one day look upon
and try to see what is no longer there.
It is ours to be the basalt
or to be
something
better.

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All words and photographs (taken on Jeju Island, South Korea) by Damien B. Donnelly

27th Poem for National Poetry Writing Month

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BLACK THREADS

/ deuxiemepeau / 22 Comments

 

Worthy.
Are we worthy? Are you?
I am not worthy to receive you.
I am not worthy.

These are not the words
of any wizard, of any wonder,
of any wonderful god.

Wonderful does not whip us with worthless.
Wonderful does not teach worthless words.

Worthy.
I am not worthy…
These are the words of men
dressed in robes; black threads
woven over winged capes (not that dark knight bearing light)
not dressed as plain men,
preachers married to invisible faiths,
not married to people,
not knowing true love
or what remains after its loss.

Worthy.
Are we worthy, Are you?
Lord, they are not worthy
to speak for me, not in my name
and not, either, in yours.

Worthy.
Were they not worthy,
those wards your black winged women
washed away in the water?
Where is the worth in the world?
I thought laundries
were meant to clean clothes
not suffocate babies in sewers
beneath the shadows.
Was it worth it?
All that worry washed away with the waste.

Worthy?
Lord, here is my worth.
I place it, next to their judgement,
by your feet
and you can decide what has worth
and whose words are worthless
as I reteach myself the value of that single word
in this complicated world,
as I build my own words to be a witness
to losing the less and seeing the more,
I will be my own critic
keeping the Christian and shaking the ‘anity’
that lingers too close to insanity.

Worthy.
I hear only the devil in my head
whispering of worthless.
Surely the right man should be brighter,
lighter?

Worthy.
Here is my worth…

thread carefully upon it,
not like the prints the pious
already pressed into it
from their proud position
behind the pulpit.

I live in the wild world, not privy to any protection.

Worthy.
Are they worthy to receive me?
I profess this belief, to you.
Alone.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

26th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

THE IRISES OF OUR EYES

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

Crazed caught on canvas, caught in colour,
thought tempered in sweeping strokes,
we can be carried away in seas of grass,
coral greens awash in the garden,
catch the canvas before its fold finds favour
in other fields the mind has yet to fathom,
we can be crazy. Quick comes the crow
upon the harvest, bleak beacons,
art is not always to be understood
nor the artist always allowed the freedom
to express; we want cream walls
and canvases to comfort the canapé,
expression doesn’t always please the pattern.
Crazed comes to life on canvas, see
how he called to us; potato faced pickers
pealing in broken browns, aged in ochre,
acrylic is not a cover up, the canvas is not
a vision of vanity, even the sun flowers wilt
before the irises of our eyes. Fields, fields,
far flung fields of amber grain, far from home,
far from fame, trying to catch the elusive light
bearing down on the bails of honeyed hay
before the black wings hanging in the horizon,
painting eyes, other’s eyes for us to learn from,
to weep for the long loss after the colour
no longer connects. Quick, catch creation
before it catches fire, before it ricochets in a bed
in Anvers-sur-Oise, electricity only illuminated
the intensity, insanity is not always sedated
after the shock. Colour cannot be captured
by constraints in a brass bed with brown
leather straps. Colour is conveyed on canvas,
in connections, in the bend the brush makes
to blend, in the waves the stars twist
into that night sky, in the lines of letters
to brothers who know us to be better
than the light sometimes allows.
He was a captive to the colour,
a captive to the canvas, to the voices
dark and distant, cut it off and the voices
still come a calling. Capture colour
before they caption you as crazy.

     

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

34th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

OCHRE DANCING

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Porcelain
plant pot
plots
the delicious decay
of decadence
once eyed as ochre
dancing
next to dandelions
in the dawn’s dew.
Pretty
painted picture
of plants
in a porcelain pot
plays with the presence
of past
and present
under the preservation
of pressed paint.
Gold garnered
by the grace
of the sun,
amber’s earthiness
on route
to autumn’s rust,
careful creation
caught
on canvas,
a fragile folly
frozen
before
the fall.

   

Words and oil painting by Damien B, Donnelly

23rd poem for National Poetry Writing Month

BLACK IS ONLY SHADOW

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Winter has grey wings,
feathers of sodden soot
that come from concrete clouds
too dense to discern any light beyond.
Winter spawns grey wings
but spring is an architect of possibility
by a canal of colour that sweeps in
after the fright of the frost
and baths us in a blithe breath
that blows across a chest once in chains.

Round the red bricked bridge we ride,
each pedal pushing past the storms
that rained rivers through our winters.
Follow the river, she sings,
seasons are short but the earth is a sphere
turning towards the light,
dark doors open often into hopeful,
the river recalls its route
regardless of the water,
blue can be a bright beacon to bathe in,
black is only shadow
before it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom.

We can be the water or the bridge,
the natural path or the paved plot,
the route is bright beyond the chains,
the greyest night is but a sleep behind
the colours waiting beyond the bend.

    

All words and water colours by Damien B. Donnelly

22nd poem for National Poetry Writing Month

GOLD TAINTED GRASSES

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Corners come crawling from the fine folds
of memory when the lavender was long
with laughter beyond the bridge
where the lazy water twisted her sky’s blues
through rough rock and tufts of gold tainted
grasses that I captured on canvas
and you kept in glass cases crowded
with curated curiosities and empty wine bottles.
We were in your Queen’s country; Balmoral
and all her bounty without a breath
of any Brexit. They had a tin can
of baked beans in her local store
and a couple of packets of butter biscuits
in a coating of plastic tartan and I wondered
who had the midnight nibbles
after the summer’s sun had settled
over the north that so wanted to snap
from the south. We’d sat in a church
with the Ma’am herself and all the family,
a tiny little thing (both monument
and monarch) cut into ragged rock
on the turn of a heather hewn hill, clinging
to its own existence like the family
and the faith and the kingdom. Later,
we gathered with giggles in a glen
as little Miss Sydney crippled us
with comedy and the Ling heathers
bloomed in the buoyancy of her laughter,
a daughter of the Commonwealth
now no longer common. All things come
and go, like the scent of cut lavender,
culled and so peacefully plain, its colour
now lighter, now longer able to be amethyst.
Memory too folds and fades like the colour
of each encounter, like the bloom and
the border, the lavender and the laughter,
the freedom and the procession, the family
and the faith, the country and the conqueror,
like all entrances and all their unexpected exits.

   

All words and water colour by Damien B. Donnelly

21st poem for National Poetry Writing Month

CATCH THE COLOUR

/ deuxiemepeau / 23 Comments

 

Sun sets and then rises and in between
we kiss, catch the kisses that come
upon the current, catch the kiss,
the continent is not always ours
to conquer. Tides come and tides
retreat, touch is temporary, flesh
is polished pink below the sensuous sky
but falls from fold like sands in the
glass that hoards the hours, like clouds
that can never be caged. Sun sets
and we blaze our orange blossoms
into passing nights, the night’s gale
calls of connections in the passing,
passion is precious until it too passes.
Sun rises and then falls, catch light;
catch the fire before it drowns
on the water, catch the colours to paint
the coming of the grey, to keep afloat
until the next kiss. Catch colour,
catch kisses before the sun sets,
let worry waste upon the wave,
tomorrow’s light will be blue enough.

    

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

20th poem for National Poetry Writing Month