Poetry

BOOKENDS; WHEN THE BREATH COMES AFTER THE BREAK

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The lilt of the lavender that lingered for days,
long after, by the leaning, before the louvre,

the sweet consolation of candy floss cologne
that stayed on the pillow, after you had parted.

It is sometimes that simple; a scent to sail you back to me

as if I never left the garden,

as if I never left the comfort of your caress

though when it was there I could barely catch a breath.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly. 

This month is looking back at the scent that will stay with me before I leave Paris. The courtyard of the Louvre was filled with a lavender covered tent for a Dior Fashion show during the Paris fashion week a few years ago.

BOOKENDS; SLOW MOVING SORROW

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In the supermarket
on Saturday
in the 14th
on the 14th
in numb November
in Paris, their Paris,
our Paris, my Paris,
people push grief
in comfortless trolleys
down shadowed aisles
of silence, strangers
claiming their spaces
in solidarity, in queues
of slow-moving sorrow,
seeing shadow in places
where once there was light,
terror in crowds
where once there was music,
death in their streets
where once there was life.

In a supermarket
in the 14th
on the 14th,
as the numbers rise
on a Saturday morning,
there is nothing available
on a single shelf
to fill the void
of what we lost
in the night.

It’s not the whole world,
it’s not the end of the world
but it’s far too far from a perfect world.

 

All words by Damien B Donnelly

This poem was first featured in Nous Somme Paris, published by Eyewear Publishing to commemorate the Paris attacks of Friday 13th Nov, 2015.

BOOKENDS; BETTER BOTTLES

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In the shadows not yet departed
from former students, since departed,
in confined compartments the Polish left to the Irish,
red vinegar wine (as vulgar as the vultures
who drowned in its deluge) caught itself in corners
still not drunk by the blow-ins still bleating
about the burnt beef and sodden soil
as we made smoke chains in our simple chambres
to choke a distance between the homes we’d left
and those hands that hadn’t yet let us go.

We may have been from the same barrel born
but we had desires to be labelled in better bottles.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 This month is about looking back to move on, I started out living, for two months, in the residence of the Irish College, on rue des irlandais in 1997 where I met Mary, still dear friends, and we felt like the only two who wanted to live and breathe and taste Paris while all the other students, studying french history and language, missed the well cooked steaks and wild weather. We were outsiders from the outset.

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BOOKENDS; TO DARE TO REMEMBER

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Do you remember Paris on occasions when spring sweeps in
with its breath of those lost days, in that other life, before
we knew London together or what it would be like to part?

Do you, do you remember Paris, my little room, our lithe love
and the plans we painted onto canvases of comfort at night,
in a single bed, in a corner, before I lost my way and we lost us?

Those lazy days of hazy light that fell to nights at a water castle,
the name-deceptive metro, where kisses took us on to the dawn.

Do you remember the first spring of our song, how it warmed
its way into a summer of sipping wine by the old, new bridge
before we’d slumber in the shade, in the park, below that bridge,
on the first site of the city, while the waters ran away with time.

Remember the rainstorm, that Sunday morning, birds near broken,
I find it funny how I missed any warning in their fluttering?

Do you remember catching colour amid the concrete of la Jatte,
in the shadow of Seurat, on a Sunday morning, still sleeping,
when we stopped to make connections between balance and breath.

You sang of the dots within the water and the sky, on that ordinary day,
in a summer of simple, on a stroll on a Sunday, along an isolated island,
in a city where everything ordinary was suddenly so extraordinary.

Do you remember that silly single bed in the corner; I always woke up
stuck to the wall. The sofa, the table and the sunflowers of plastic;

so not what you’d imagined at all.

Do you dare to venture to those times departed, when not a minute
suggested what time would design or all that we’d have to let go?

Remember Paris, remember you,
remember me,

remember us.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

We had met one night in Dublin, when I was still living in Paris, an Englishman putting on Les Miserables in my hometown while I was walking on the footsteps of Val Jean and the pretty ladies and the gang. We explored every inch of Paris and its musicality until I moved over to London and we learned how to get to know each other. We didn’t find forever but we will always have Paris.

 

BOOKENDS; TO BE CAST IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN CONCRETE

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Would he cry now for the concrete
that has taken root in reality,
this was never what inspired his impression.

I shiver sometimes when I slip to the edge of this shore
where George saw more in suggestion
and Stephen gave names to the dots.

Balance and harmony are hopes, not foundations
but you wanted me to lay down in all you had built
before you even knew my name.

We are all artists; drawing, singing, writing,
directing, searching for our spotlight on the stage

or along the shore.

You wanted us to be a monument but I knew
the concrete would crush my concern for creation.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Georges Seurat painted on Sundays in 1884 on Ile de la Grande Jatte, an island on the edge of Paris. Before I left Paris in 1999, my boyfriend would come over from London on weekends where we would walk along this island looking for the light and balance Georges had painted in dots onto his canvas, while humming the tunes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George.

BOOKENDS; MINUTES MOVING

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There are but minutes now, minutes in motion on metros,
minutes moving in on me, on my identity, on my mark,
on my leaning, on my meaning, meaning I am moveable,
like a feast, as he said; A Moveable Feast, meaning I am
manageable malleable, maybe unremarkable, mistakable.

There are but minutes now, there are but minutes moving
in on my metamorphosis, on my undoing, on my unbecoming,
is it unbecoming? on my being misunderstood, misinterpreted,

misrepresented, missing.

I am famished, the feast has moved on, was moveable, mindless
to all those matters that manipulate me, mould me, remodel me.

Minutes, there are but minutes multiplying in metros moving,
on me, in motion, minutes, mounting, minutes minus minutes.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This month is about looking back to move on, making sure I make the most out of the minutes left to me, minutes on metros, momentous minutes, minutes made of moments.

BOOKENDS; THIERRY’S LINE

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One ordinary, rather hot summer night, nothing special,
nothing different, in my mind I ran my finger down
the line of hair that ran from your chest before disappearing
beneath your shorts as the breeze blew open your shirt
and I caught the smile in your eye as you read thoughts.

You, with your short dark hair amid a season of blondes
I was tiring of, you, who I never kissed or lay with,
who I never undressed outside of that dizzy dream.

Later that night, while fuelled on cocktails, you brushed
my finger along that same hair line, nothing said,
nothing promised, just that fine line between you and I,

you, with your eyes which shone that breathless night
towards a blue side of green, black jeans, red shirt
and a tan to stop just short of where that line disappeared.

You seemed like the first man I’d seen in such a long time
having been lost for a while in a sea of bleached boys,
all as harmless as they were hairless while I cavorted
about their sweet skins with careless concern for complacency.

But you looked like something else on that fortuitous night
as the setting sun sizzled and breezes briefly blew bodies bare.

That tremendous night when nothing really happened
except for the soft touch of that line I never managed to cross
and, more importantly, never managed to forget.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

This month is about looking back and the life and lust of summer nights in Paris in order to move on. The bar was La Tropic, a gin fizz on the terrace, by Les Halles, the summer was 1998 but the location of both the line and the man are now a mystery only the summer stars can shine a light on.

BOOKENDS; WHERE WE CAN GO WHEN WE BECOME MASTERS OF WHO WE ARE

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Some scenes we are stuck with like that hand
in that taxi as we left the city I hadn’t said goodbye to.

Whose hand did you think you were holding,
didn’t you know what you’d found hadn’t yet been formed?

Some scents are forever tied to necks where we’ve left traces
of our lips, like you said, yesterday, when I found you
crossing over after so long on the other side
and the first thing you mentioned was my scent, still that scent.

Some places latch on like limbs and I wonder if you will twitch,
still, when I slip you from my spotlight as another taxi
carries me off without a single person to goad my direction.

Some things stay the same and other things we only learn
to master when we find out the right time to walk away.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

 

I first left Paris for London at 24, without a thought as to all I was leaving behind or whether or not I had found who I was. I held someone’s hand who knew who they were while I still had no real idea of myself. Falling in love is sometimes like falling off your own route and it takes time to find your feet afterwards. I will never not fall again, but at least I now know that there is learning in the rising.

BOOKENDS; STILL ME ON THE METRO

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It was this morning and yesterday, all at once,
a smell, a scent on the metro, in my nostrils,
a decent into memory, a reverie playing, replaying
while the Counting Crows played Round Here.

We sang our own song, once, but time, like the metro,
took us into different directions, with obligations
steered to other distractions; men and marriage,
movements and meanders, an Irish song we had sung,
you once sung, while I listened and then I left
for a while, while you stayed on, stayed on track.

But I came back and you were still there, still here,
Round Here, as the Crows sang, are still singing,
those Counting Crows; their words still ringing
in my ears, today, on the metro, with that scent
that opened a tunnel in time between yesterday
when we were young and today; wiser and wider.

All this motion, this morning, as my mind rushed
and passengers crushed onto carriages commuting,
lines crossing, junctions joining as I went to work
remembering who we were, I wore waistcoats even then
and you a brown coat that caressed your concerns.

I went to work, this morning, while traveling onwards,
along the same rails, in the same direction as before
but different too, some things old and some things new,
still me on the metro, still me and still, there’s you.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Mary (the one on the brown coat) and I met at the Irish College my first time around in Paris and then I left for London while she stayed round here till I returned and we sang again, together, poetry this time, while finding our place.

BOOKENDS; BOY SO BLUE

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Sitting in a park in Paris, France as kids
climb trees they’ll soon outgrow and birds busy
their feathers in a dance of freedom we’ll never know.

I fall through thoughts as someone tickles strings
on cords too distant to be discovered and wonder
where you sat; on the orange carpeted concerns
of the girl growing through her song of sorrow?
By the guy with the hat and harmony, probably,
the guy guarding his guitar from the bright light
of the, as yet, starless sky as if he knows already
how celebrity will one day cripple his creativity.

A blackbird bows before me, burrowing burdens
into the road, looking for crumbs since cast off,
for a little refuge, like you did, like we all do,
looking for a little distraction from the circling sun
and shining skins blustering under bland or blander.

Sitting in a park in Paris, France, as if in a trance
from 22 to 42, recalling how I first found favour
with following you; back room, no light, bedsit;
we were masters of the Marais, simple singletons,
senselessly sinking innocence into the marshes,
courting kisses of single sparks and rising over losses
we thought at the time to be insurmountable disasters.

But they were just dances, like these tiny birds
around me now, prances we perform, up and under,
over and through. We are all naked birds flirting
with honesty and invisibility under a sweltering sun,
sometimes recalled, sometimes forgotten before begun.

Sitting in a park in Paris, France, still trying
to understand the message in the melody
underlying and still trying to comprehend
the cords forged in the flesh of the boy so blue.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly. 

This month is about Paris and letting her go. This photo was taken at the garden on front of the Musee Picasso, in Paris where I lived in an apartment right next door at the end of the 1990’s with a young Irish girl who introduced me to the music of Joni Mitchell. On my return to life in Paris in my 40’s, I wrote a series of poems, while sitting in parks during the summer, based on the albums of Joni and this was a nod to the album Blue. Like tattoos and all things that stick.

This was the original self portrait I used when I first posted this poem as Joni painted or photographed all her album art…

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