And as they bit into the apple
they lost their right to the garden.

Hands are tipped now with guns,
now, instead of gold, instead
of gloves. Rage is the new ricochet
where once it was rock and roll;
bullets are the new Beatles.

Facebook has alerts, now, to say
you’re alive, now, after, after the breath
is stopped, after the blood is splattered.
It used to connect, now it just confirms.

Listen closely, for the loud sparks
are coming closer, closing in, sparks
like forest fires or that ripening fruit;
rage and temptation, heat and hunger.

We are the breath or the blood. We cannot
be both. Though we cannot exist without the other.

Leaders are born liars now, learning
earlier, leaning into lecherous, rights
are now redundant as the right rears
its rage over the left, ridiculous
are the rabble rousers, raising nothing
but their own cocks in their own hands,
tweeting about their own thickness.
Twitter was once 140, now it’s 280.
How much more space
do they need to spread their shit?

On Jeju, by a volcano, now sleeping,
now silent, some asked us, before
I lost breath and we lost the identity
of our Us, if barriers could be broken,
if divisions could be undone and I looked
back to the green covered mountain
and wondered how long it would take
before it became a monster once more?

Only then, only when the earth decides
to flatten all that we have taken,
only then, will the barriers be broken.

And as they bit into the apple they lost
their right to be governors of the garden.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Photograph taken on Jeju Island, at sunset, South Korea, July 2018. Before.