Poetry

THE LIGHT INSIDE THE BOOKS

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I found where they keep the light-
here, at the far end of the long road,
just up from childhood summers
near slip-away shores,
contained in a considered space
where books are bound to interest
and cosy corners tipped
in velveteen seductions of blue
that does anything but chill.
Funny,
to find this here, where once this structure
of simple stone held such complicated
conditioning, home once to a bigger book
you daren’t touch and a language
no one understood,
where they performed shows on Sundays
with their asses to the audience,
rattling off the auld Latin, the trail
of the Tridentine, without a single
Shakira shake.

Funny,
to find all this here, now,
this room of light and lending,
where knowledge can be found and held
and taken home and thought about
and brought back, without any penance
or concept of confession, for the next
and the next again.
Funny,
what you find when you let in the light.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

HEARTH

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The old walls have been walled in
by warmer ones
but their youth has nothing on the cracks
and secrets the originals would disclose
if you could still sit around that old fire
and watch the smoke rise up to the high ceilings
since brought down to a more manageable level
and yet I have seen that hidden height-
looking down from the upper attic-
and I know there are whispers trapped
in those forgotten few feet
just like the heat that must still linger
behind the fake wall and down below the soot
now gathered over the old hearth
where you all once gathered to hear the tales
of how life was tilled and turned and that shrill excitement
when someone first turned on a light,
indoors, in a wide-walled room with high ceilings
that kept the heat away from the feet,
a little room where once there was only darkness
just like the light that was turned on, out there,
in that Space where this world spins
while we know nothing of the whispers
that were once words,
echoing out from other planets that too evolved.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE FURNITURE MAKERS

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We build things- built things-
like shower rails and kitchen lights,
Keto dishes that died in the oven,
theories on converting Korea into forever
and not just a 3-week diversion from dysphoria.
Kisses, we built kisses out of thin air
and laughter, laughter we built as if
it was all we needed to feed our day.
I was the funny one and you laughed
at times like you’d never laughed before.
Sometimes we built bridges
to cross divides we didn’t always understand,
sometimes we built boats but forgot the oars.
Sometimes we built temporary positions
around sofas and shallow shows to balance
the shit we didn’t have the correct tools
to deal with.
Once, we built a language
to lock ourselves into while on the outside
where it could be cold and cutting and callous.
Sometimes we built walls
for the other to climb over-
sometimes we liked to test the other-
to tease, to taunt, to attract, to test
the recoil of the elastic.
We build things- we built things-
like shower rails and silly meals and signs
and languages and kisses to complete
and sometimes we built walls
though, in the end,
one was too high to get back over.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Photo from an art installation in Jeju, South Korea

BEFORE THE STILLNESS

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I sit, in stilled space,
trusting time and these proses
to act as forgivers
to all I cannot forget. I sit here,
in this stilled space,
taking trips that tease time with twists
and turns. I move not
in straight lines but articulate thought
through the acts
these tracks have taken, the un-regrettable
mistakes that brought me here
where I sit, in stillness,
in a space, not always my place,
a space grown damp since first stone
was first set
into place by hands I never knew, hands
ground down now
to nothing more than bone,
just like my bones
that will one day come to know the dampness
of all that has surrendered
its forgiveness to all that was not forgotten,
when the final lines
have been laid and I forgive time itself
for the finality of its stillness.

I sit and come to trust.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

FREEDOM IS A WISH ON THE WIND

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I steal
deep into space, in the far field-
inches are miles these days
and miles can hold worlds.
I kick
imaginary balls into empty posts
and run tracks that dig circles
around the turns I cannot take.
The eye spots
white specs, like snowflakes, dancing
on the far side of deep ditches-
daisies making their own chains
while
les dents de lion
cast their own wishes out
into a breeze that knows no boundary.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

WHAT LIES IN THE VALLEY

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Truth, lies, tall tales spread across the canyon
of our sighs. My hope, your hurt, my side,
your silence, nothing is distinguishable in this void,
I cannot even identity any let up from the winter
of this valley where the wind winds its way around
the silent subtleties of how you express your hurt
and how I hold my hope- foolishly, foolish, fool
or fooled. We are both breakable and some parts
dissolvable while riding horseback across this canyon
whose cracks are cavernous, two cowboys believing
more in disguise, in the delusions and so we sweep
into such deluge. Somewhere, in between this valley,
somewhere, down below this wind, still tangible,
there is a bridge that crosses the truth of our lies,
bashful and broken. But we don’t want to find it

anymore.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A SLING BACK TO SALLY. (MS. BOWLES, ONCE THE TOAST OF MAYFAIR ) AFTER ISHERWOOD.

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Guiltless, work less, here in this deep end, in this sling back
to the not-so-selective slung back, this slum, this time
of rebounds, of reverberations, KitKats and ghettos.

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome…

to the deep end, where the guilt is less, less selective,
less to depend on, more flexible, less to wear, less of the weary
where we dive deeper, beneath the covers, below the uniform
while they march overhead, over the deep end
where we dived, dive, down to this dive

where the fingernails have grown green, decadence is divine

before death.

Where we say no…
no to depending on, no to marching, no to understanding,
no to guilt, no to work, more sex, more pineapples, Cliff, Chris?

Always something sweet before the shaft, before being shafted

here, in this deeper end, this sling back, slung, no slip to support
but this time (comes gullible) this time around. Maybe this time

I’ll be lucky, maybe this time… let’s see…

Life is Cabaret, old chum.
Life is a party, in bomb shelter, where we bring our own bondages.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

WHEN I DREAM OF WHO WE WERE

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We used to hold hands, a quiver
along the skin
at touch,                     do you remember?

You handled me like I was food,
to be prepared pealed back,
to find the taste within.

I was advised not to- but I had hungered,
had grown ill                      without.

A cold cut cannot survive without the fold

of the fridge.

Or were you the oil and I                     the onion?
Having already been cut,

sliced before being found. Remember?

But we’d been spared                     the tears.
We tasted of a thousand nights
that had never known                     any stars

and then we wanted to taste                     it all.

Do you remember? No,
you don’t.                        I forgot.

We only held hands in my head
in that room I shared

with the one                     I shared the tears with.

Still slicing.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SEA AND SAND

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Sand slips under foot like memory into mind,
waves wash up along a country lane leading down
into a secreted sea, past a thistle that pricks not;

so much beauty cannot bear a beast.

There is breath in these back fields I recall
on the curve of this spiral game, returning like these tides
that tickle the familiarity that floats on the foam
of the waves I once forged freedom on,

getting far enough out just to find my way back in.

Home is not something you recognise until you return,
like the smell of this sea stretching out to islands
that look in on me, as if trying to find a way to connect,
home is not something you miss until you swim out,

not something you recognise until the tide takes you back in
to that secreted sea, stashed away down a country lane
and you recall

how the sand once felt under foot.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE MOTION OF GOING SOUTH

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I’ve only been to Cork once,
to a funny place they called The Other Place
which I thought was like the Scottish play
with the name you’re never supposed to say.

In another place, beforehand, we’d sat
on beer kegs in a girl’s bar called Loafers
and I giggled at all the comfy shoes
in astonishment and thought that sitting
on a keg felt more like a punishment.

I’d only been to Cork once, when I was 20,
a year since I’d had my first kiss, with a boy,
behind a sofa, at a party.
You catch on quick, I heard him murmur
and so I dropped the tongue in further.

That drive down to Cork in the 90’s
felt like operation transportation-
5 sisters of Dorothy all crammed in the car
singing Liza and Barbara in proud
polychrome while inside I was thinking
this was certainly no place like home.

We slipped out of Loafers
and their shoes that had absorbed me
and headed to that no name place
that was actually called The Other Place.

A disco it was with lads against the wall
and I thought you’re man in the white socks-
I won’t be snogging him at all.

They opened up a back room, in Cork,
halfway through the Whitney medley
which caused a run for the big buns on sale-

fruity scones sausage rolls,
fondant fancies and fairy cakes,

in Cork, at the disco,
in The Other Place,

when all the gays still ate sugar
and some grandmother’s doily
was the only bit of fecking lace.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly