Poetry

To the East of Ignorance

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I had wanted to show you it all;

For you to revel

As much as I

In the magnificence I had seen

And felt.

Perhaps it was my fault-

In the extreme-

Maybe my blinkered view,

Like the race horse-

Seeing only the green of the track

And the glory of the win ahead

While missing the money hungry betters to the sides

And the jockey with whip behind.

But still,

The entire time your view

Saw only the concrete beneath your feet

As if you feared to place a step

Wrongly

And so lose your American footing.

You proved as cold

And impenetrable

As the surface upon which you walked,

Moved only by a metal banister

That you pleaded with me to photograph

Least your creativity

Failed to capture it.

Yet it was you who’d become captured;

Trapped in a foreign land

That you had longed to see

And yet failed-

So perfectly-

To look upon.

To create means more than just

Standing on the spot of inspiration.

You lolled about

Almost as inanimately

As the statues that surrounded us.

However,

Their shadows appeared to sway

In the sunshine

With so much more gusto than yours-

At least, until you fell needy

And your dull American twang

Rang out monotonously

To disrupt the ambience

And civility

That enchanted me

And washed over you

Like you were oil-based,

Cardboard cut-out,

Dull reflection

Of someone else-

Hardly remembered.

Alcohol loosened you

Along with athletic fumblings

In a beamed ceiling room

In Saint Paul,

But we were neither drunk

Nor naked

All the time,

Although it felt like I had stripped

Bare for you,

To show you my secret

Parisian life

That, malheurusement,

Over half the world shared.

In that tree-lined park

Below the radiant sunshine

I feigned sleep and watched you

Behind darkened shades

And wondered

Where you were.

You noted it strange how the boys played

Football

Instead of baseball

And I realized

That you had not even boarded the plane

Or removed yourself

From your ignorant States.

I chilled in the warmth,

Amid that sun-filled square,

On that Sunday afternoon

In July

As I watched you

Fall intrigued

By little boys at play

And your comic books

Became all the more

Disturbingly understandable.

photo-29

In search of a Still Shining, Fading Star

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I was once silent

Amid the noise,

Shadowing the world in stillness

While all else-

But I-

Found its motion.

I watched as dreams

Slipped swiftly

Through my fumbling hands-

Hands powerless to awaken my slumber to the realm of reality.

I’d been held

And felt nothing in that very touch-

Nothing but the visceral arousal of man

At his most primal.

I’d seen a lifetime of possibilities

With single glances

And built worlds in my mind

Before blinking them away.

I held a man’s hand

In a taxi

As we raced through a foreign city-

Once my home-

While my mind ran to thoughts

Of someone else

Before remembering a touch, from long before.

Once, I circled the globe and returned home

To find that home

Was but a word-

A word that wakes a memory

To plot a beginning,

As weightless

And mobile

As the drifting traveler.

I am-

Like you all-

No more than a burnt-out,

Used-to-be,

Fading star,

Sparkling in front of you

Although my future’s already faded

Somewhere

Light years away.

As I hurtle through this voyage

My eyes fall sleepy;

Looking for rest,

Looking- always-

For the rest of me.

I saw you in the midst of these feelings

Early one morning

While December raced towards fairy lights

And tinsel toe-

Snowflakes speckling you in white-

An untouched canvas of pure potential,

No longer revolting in your bureaucratic bundle

Of mass and confusion-

While scarf-clad, gloved-up,

Red-nosed,

Shoulder-shrugging Frenchmen

Tutted as they wedged their way

Through the Metro turnstiles

That my blonde haired friend had just disappeared through-

Journeying back to her beginning

To start anew

And leaving me with no more than the distant memory

Of her laughter

That swept off on a breeze

And swirled around trees

Whose branches bared down to their earthbound roots.

No more the sharing of days and nights,

Mixing cocktails to our own design,

Toasting birthdays in Chinatown

For April’s fairest fool

Or surprise visits from friends

To break the daily routine.

No more lunches at Lina’s

With sandwiches too big to finish,

Dinners in white wolfed restaurants-

Leaving notes on toilet mirrors

For cute boys

On far flung tables.

No more spinning of bottles

And tempting of firemen

And late night parties

With boy bands

And dart players.

No more the sound

Of her click-clacking heels

Heard in the distance

Long before her arrival

Into that bar where we worked

And thought of as that very word-

Home.

She’d been the small town girl

More grown up than her years

And yet still a child as white

As the snow now falling.

As I saw you like this-

My dear city-

I wondered

How much more

Would fall away from me

And what else would take its place

As swishing snows let teared icicles stream down my face

While icy crystals fell from your skies-

Washing to white those famed grey rooftops

And smokeless chimneys

That had ingrained themselves

So indelibly

On my mind,

All the while hiding from me your cobbled streets

Through which my feet had sailed,

Feet that now disappeared

Slowly in the snow-white earth,

Leaving me to question where I’d be

When spring uncovered me

And pushed me back-

Once more-

Into the noise

And motion

And storm

Which I’d stopped that day to watch

In stillness

While another fine friend

Fell away.

I had once been silent

Amid the noise

But on that morning-

Speckled in white,

All was silent but for my heart

That raced with the beat of life.

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A Thousand Sweet Dreams

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I will love you for a thousand years and a thousand years more
if only you’d ask and I would, you know, lock that love away
so it can’t be touched, tarnished or tampered with. I will hide it
so deep within my heart that every beat will be stronger for it.
I will love you for a thousand years though a thousand others
may come and go, to distract me, delight me, even deceive me
but you will remain, as always, the single force that lies within,
that assures me in the darkness you have been a guiding light,
that reminds me in happiness you made me smile. I will love you
for a thousand years as if we’d spent a thousand nights together,
as if I’d been kissed by your lips a million times, as if I’d dreamt
in your arms a hundred dreams, as if we’d always laid together
and I’d woken up to your gaze every morning since time began.
I’ll love you like this, I promise, for a thousand years and more
and will ignore what we really are, what we have always been
and will forever be. I will love you, truly, for a thousand years.
I will love you for a thousand years, behind shadows, in private,
you’ll be my sweetest secret, the hand never held, or lips kissed,
or arms ever wrapped in. I will love you for a thousand years
in that dream always dreamt, forever a dream, never to waken,
never to end. We were not meant for the harsh light of reality.
We were but briefly met, barely known and yet never forgotten.
We have become the stuff that dreams are made of, candy floss
and unicorns, fairytales and forever afters. We could never be
day-to-day, common place, product of routine, we’re the dream
of the dreamers, without beginning or end. We are the sweet
existence of slumber, you and I, sweet is the dream we share.

photo-27

All words and graphics by Damien B. Donnelly

Not One Fucking Tear

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Fuck it!

Fuck it, I keep saying

To myself

In the place of

Bashing skull against wall.

Fuck it,

I stripped it all down for you,

Laid it physically

And mentally

Bare

And emptied myself

Of all my silly secrets

And petty principles

And all for this-

This insipid accomplishment of nothingness-

The fucking empty vacuum

Of the little you gave, offered, shared!

Are you greater for all you have stolen,

Am I reduced from all you have taken?

Was I but meat on the bone

To be scraped off,

Devoured,

Discarded?

Was there a thought,

Any thought,

A fucking single thought

Towards feeling

Or stand you sensorially deprived;

Incapable of consciously considering

The character of others?

Fuck it,

I say again,

Over and over,

As I sit here,

Fucked again

By the failure to forsee

The futile future

And yet, you stand there still

As if wounded,

As if innocent,

As if exempt

From all blame

While my blood drips slowly

From your tongue to toe.

Fuck you,

With your polished pristine pride

And mirrored glances

To catch but your own reflection.

You- with your caloused hands,

Chapped skin

And impenetrable heart

And that blood still falling

From tongue to toe-

Not yours, once mine.

I bled for you as you bore

Inside me,

As you bore me,

Frequently,

Over and over,

Bored me sensless

Until I found myself

With skull against wall

Looking for a door to open,

A handle to get a grip on,

Just something to latch onto

And pull me out.

Fuck this mess,

Fuck this situation,

Again and again,

All over again.

Fuck the promises you pissed away.

Fuck the potential that should have been.

Fuck those changes we talked about.

Fuck the Us that could have been We

While all along you only cherished

The Me that was You!

Fuck those fears I had

Of being alone,

Of missing you,

Of starting over-

Fuck it all away.

Days are passing now

And I have not shed a single tear,

Not one fucking tear for you.

Fuck you- no more!

photo-26

Courant d’Air

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Lost somewhere in love’s language

Between bonjour and au revoir.

How is it I have strayed so far

From what was once so important?

I have travelled land and sea

But with each step

A part of you approaches from the past,

Present and possible future

To remind me of your existence,

To recall how much of you

Is rooted deep within me

And to confirm how much of me

I left behind in you in that time we had

And shared and made;

On your banks, along your cobbled streets,

Within your bars, on the lips of your men

Whom I kissed and your ladies who I danced with

And behind that grey door

And up along that wide wooden staircase

Which spiralled its way to my first home

Nestled in the oldest part of you.

It was here where Joni Mitchell

Rang out in my ears for the first time

Through the angelic tones of the blonde creature

Who lulled me from laughter to chaos

On that old templed street-

A stones throw from my first hotel,

The scene of my first French kiss,

Tucked away behind my favoured park,

Resting under the watchful ghost of Picasso

Where I would soon burn to a crisp

As summer’s sun found Irish skin to roast on.

How we laughed in that living room

With its viewless windows

Letting in only the bare minimum of light

As my musical Nymph rehearsed

Endless Irish dirges that would pay the rent

While the spritely hippy

That hid beneath her voluptuous body,

In green velveteen bell-bottoms

And tasseled honeyed hair,

Begged her to let loose, break free and fly like a bird.

I remember that morning as spring arrived

And I opened the windows to find warm air

Perched on our sills before I read her

My first French penned poem;

The Traveler Lost;

A young man drowns amid foreigners

Without words to express himself.

She laughed till her eyes brimmed with tears

And I, almost unable to finish,

Sobbed in a likewise comic and uncontrollable state,

Indulging in the unconsciously humorous overkill

Of the self-indulgent prose of a 22 year old child

Dancing about in grown up shoes.

And yet, in that very fact;

In the acceptance of our naivety and innocence,

We laughed our way, amid childish ignorance,

Through the best of times and dared each other not to care.

And yet now, so far from that very home,

How close its infamous memory

Ventures to mock me

For the distance I have let slip in between.

In all my dreams of traveling and exploring,

How was I to know that my feet would fall

So fast in love with that first touch

Upon your cobbled streets?

I am the sparrow, lost to its nest,

Forever flying in ascending circles

And catching your scent on every other breeze,

Unsure of why it calls me still,

But hopeful to one day be flown home on your courant d’air.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From Myth to Man in 37 Years

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily,

When I was 20 I thought I knew you,

As I fall toward 40 I’m not sure we’ve ever met,

But I’ve loved you, you know, since childhood;

Since I saw what it meant to hold someone’s hand

And understood what that touch could bring.

I’ve spoken to you, daily, not sure if you ever heard,

But I’ve told you, over and over,

The plans I’ve made for us in my head,

All alone, though sometimes I spoke to you silently

As I lay in the wrong arms, in the wrong bed,

Having fallen upon a path that wasn’t mine.

I’ve married you, again and again,

In fairy tales and formal attire,

In far off castles and on sun kissed shores.

I’ve made love to you, moved in with you,

Moved the world for you and yet,

Although we’ve never met, you’ve changed a lot

Over time, with each day, along each year,

Through the ages that I’ve dreamt you in.

You are no more the God I once dreamt you to be

With chiseled jaw and perfect pose.

No, you are now to me, at last,

more man than myth; more meaningful than mystical,

More substance than surface.

I too am now man, having grown older and wiser

And learned to distinguish all that is necessary

From all that is but noise.

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily,

One bounteous bodily being of beauty,

But now, all is different, I have seen the world

Beyond dreams, and have felt life pulsing through my waking hands.

Now, with eyes open, I see part of you in many and none of you in some

but I’m thinking that I’ll never find all of you in one.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Break-Up Afters

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

It meant nothing and everything-

All at once.

It was filled with what you did not say

And every tale you eyes still told.

Was it too warm

Or too cold?

I remember shivering.

Were you the first

To light my cigarette-

Like you did so long before-

When everything was natural

And comforting?

Was it you

Who suggested

We should go

Or I who said

We should leave?

And then, there we were-

Naked,

So suddently-

I barely remembered the journey,

How we ended up there;

Not mine,

No longer ours-

But yours.

Creating the first soils

On your shiny sheets,

Pressing into them

That already soured scent

Of a past- recently thought expired.

All this within an apartment

So new

That the dust had barely settled

And so far removed

From everything renowned

As us,

That it was unrecognizable

As you.

You blindly found your way

Around my body-

Beneath a darkness

We both felt safe in-

Better than you found your way

To your own light switch;

So new was the home to you

Inhabitating it

And yet so familiar my every curve-

Even the ones gained in your absence;

Those sweet chocolatey replacements.

We’d messaged,

Met, made out, made love,

Measured up a home,

Merged, mortgaged, meandered,

Drifted, dived downwards,

Derailed, deceived, divided,

Divorced,

Forsaken, forgiven, forgotten,

Replaced the physical-

Temporarily and necessarily,

To scratch the itch

Until we resigned,

Released, refreshed, rebooted,

Before ridiculously tempting faith

And each other

And our restraint

With a little calling,

Uncalled for smiling,

A period of careful planning,

A suggestion of a drink-

Casual,

Quick,

Uncomplicated-

In rememberance.

And then,

In the blink of an eye,

We removed the past from our minds

And the clothes from our bodies-

Like all those years before-

But with so much more

Lying between us

Than just our salty skins-

Bollocking our way through break-up sex.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Time, Long rested

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I would have laid in your arms,

Tonight,

Right there and then-

Did you know that,

Could you feel that?

Not for the kick of it,

The thrill of it,

Nor for just the fuck of it.

But for that tiny time

We shared in the past

Now set firm in photos,

Misty in the memory

But tingly on the tongue.

I would have kissed you,

Tonight,

There and then,

On the sofa,

In the light-

With the curtains open

And the houselights on.

I would have run my tongue,

So gently,

Along your lower lip

Before sliding it inside you,

To tempt you,

To taste you.

Not because it would be easy,

Not because I have missed it

But because, once, it was mine,

Once,

When you were the smell on my body,

Once,

When you were the warmth beside me.

I would have undressed you,

Tonight,

In the hallway,

Between the rooms-

Along that casual route

From sofa to bed

Where I would have laid you,

Watched you,

Rose for you,

Before I climbed in beside you

And slid myself on top of you

And felt myself beneath you.

Not just to be horny,

Not just to be cheap,

Not to belittle you just to sex,

But to remember

Back to a time

Which was ours,

And to remember-

In this time-

That touch we shared.

I would have wrapped my body

Around you,

Then and there,

Behind the shadows of a time,

Long rested

And nakedly

I would have spooned you

In the sweet, salty, sweaty afterglow

That tickled along our bodies,

Entwined,

As the night found us

And slowly slept us

And then daybreak-

When morning would find us

And I would open my eyes and smile

At you,

And gently,

I would kiss you-

Goodbye

And let you go,

Shut the door,

Drink my tea

And smell you,

Sweetly,

All over me.

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Fool’s Kingdom

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I am frequently fool:

Folly of fearful affection,

Fading fast behind a closed door

With key in hand-

My own hand.

Unseen,

Untouched,

Craving to be held,

But afraid to be found,

Figured out,

As failure, freak, fanatic fool.

I am boy grown man,

Growing old, going grey-

Recedingly so-

And all in the blink of my eye.

Am I really

That unrecognized reflection

In the mirror,

Staring back at me-

Questioningly?

Skipping, slipping, sliding,

Fidgeting,

Foolishly falling forward

Into a future-

Though of what?

I’ve been Dublin born,

Bullied and bored;

The bashful boy

Who never understood why the big boys pushed him,

The artistic child

Who painted a world where everyone loved him,

The boy child

Who never saw the streets as fair as the songs all painted,

Who only saw the limits and restrictions of an island-

Isolated.

The growing boy-

Who finally fell distracted by the body of man

And the feel of it’s touch,

Mostly mistaking momentary fumblings

To be romantic ever-afters,

But they were mainly misjudged minutes of madness-

More ‘Always Ending’ than ‘Everlasting’-

Learning curves,

Bathing pools,

Energetic experiments

And sweaty seductions

After too much booze

And mixed with pocketfuls

Of inexperienced,

Overly enthused

Disney-like

Naivety.

I remember laughing the first time he undressed me,

Crying the first time I came,

And settling in when I should have been leaving.

I thought me broken hearted-

But it was not so,

Could not,

Never have been-

You need to know the heart

Before it can break

And this man child had yet to meet

The beat that bleed him.

And so,

It was the first full stop,

Dublin Done.

Moving on…

Amid cobbled streets

And Marais magic

The boy became truly man-

Removed, replaced,

Relocated,

Refreshed- alone,

No longer island bound

No longer thought to be ‘Known’ by the common crowd.

A new kingdom- to find freedom in-

Lay await at my feet

And there I was,

Suddenly,

In the middle of it all

And-

Drowning,

Mistaking myself

to be Ardent Adventurer!

Explorer Extraordinaire!

How I’d convinced myself that

Fly on the wall, watching, dictating, reporting

Was so much more important to an aspiring artist

Than a dived in, soaked up, part of it all, competitor!

And then time, slowly,

Unbeknownst to me,

Drew me out,

Pulled me in,

Lessened my wide-eyed glare,

Cleaned my cumbersome and clumsy character

And left me

Grown,

As we do,

Totally unaware

Not able to pinpoint the very moment,

Or time,

Or place

That it happened-

It was just there-

I could feel it,

I caught it in my own reflection

Within the eyes of other men-

Bigger men,

Older men,

Grown men,

Who now seemed not so different any more,

And in that reflection

I fell surprised,

Shocked

Because nothing had changed in that person that stared back at me

But somehow,

Inexpressibly,

Everything was different.

There have been, of course,

Other lands,

Other men,

Many moments of madness,

Sadness,

Gladness.

Touches and tendernesses.

Lovers I’ve left and

Friends that I’ve lost

But they are, so often,

Like time- all fleeting,

They do not stay for long-

Forever is not for everyone.

But in my heart-

Which is now known

And heard

And occasionally understood-

There is the place for those

Who indeed have proved

Irreplaceable-

The pillars upon which I gaze

And markers toward that life

I wish to lead.

They are crowning

A new King, today

In this foreign City

That somehow,

Over time,

Has found its way to be familiar-

And I think somewhere

Amid it’s watery streets

Lies my future in waiting.

And, as I dress by the mirror,

On April’s last dawning,

I wonder to myself

As I catch that reflection-

Still so familiarly different-

When next will I feel

More King

In me

Than fool.

photo-21

The War Of the Worlds

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How did it feel to hang

By nails

And wait for a death

You were born to endure?

Created by The Father

As a symbol

Of His power

To save

A crumbling humanity.

He gave you life

For it to be ripped from your body.

No saving grace for you,

No end to the pain,

No Lord to help you.

The Father,

The Protector,

The Divine Creator

Silently watching

As your human pain

Pours

From your human body.

Did you suffer a lifetime

For every second

That you remained

In that earthly body,

Punctured by earthly hands,

Jeered by earthly voices,

Cried for by earthly women?

Did Mary know the gift

Weaned upon her bosom

Would depart this world so heinously?

Did She trust

In the promise of Heaven,

Did She believe

In the prophecy of Angels-

Even at the end

When your screams

Shuck the Heavens?

Did you question your Father’s promise

Of a seat by His side

While the cold nails

Split your flesh

And the shimmering blade

Slaughtered your sides?

A Jew hated by Jews,

A Jew betrayed by Jews.

Did you foresee

On the cross

How the world would shake

In your aftermath?

Your Father sacrificed you

For the salvation of humanity

But ever since

That salvation

Has waged wars

In his name.

He first split the Earth

From the Heavens

And then he let man

Split the Earth in two.

Did you die in vain

Or did you die to show that the innocent must suffer?

But what is lost most through suffering

Is innocence.

Eye lids stitched open

So no pain goes unseen,

Voices raised

So we hear each and every scream.

Today

The crosses around our necks

Are adorned with jewels and pearls,

That day-

On the cross,

As you rose from humanity,

Did you foresee

The war of the worlds?

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