Nature is not alike;
red reigns over green,
browns bend to blend
and lilac leans,
perfect petals poised
over tiny tufts, trembling,
buds unfold from
stretching stars.
Nature is not alike.
Humanity could be harmonious
if we delighted in our differences
with dignity.
Nature is not alike. Why should we be?
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost
I am 44 today. I found this poem I wrote when I was about 17…
Another Exodus
Being born
we die from the life before we lived,
that existence within our maker
but time transcends
and towards the light we fall,
swept along with an ignorance of the future
and a tire of the past.
The exodus arrives
and the tunnel ends.
Hands engulf
drawing us into a plebeian existence
where breeds an ignorance of the past,
a fancy for the future
and an enduring of the present,
but crawling,
our path is towards another plain,
another existence,
another light in a radiant tunnel.
Another exodus.
Just over 3 months left until the next exodus; leaving France and moving to Ireland. It’s gonna be an action-packed year and I cannot wait to see how it all unfolds. Here’s to finding the light! Thanks to everyone for coming by and reading and commenting and inspiring, I appreciate all your comments and support so much, Dami XX
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
Beat and blow
and bare away,
let not blood rip beauty black.
We watch,
we want.
“I want hot peaches, honey,” you said.
“No music for me,
no sun”
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This is a repost as I am busy baking birthday cakes for myself and co workers
And so I come north
where the air cuts colder,
where daylight is a breath
that barely bays, night
a blanket bound to days.
I am not here to stay but
on a sway through ticking
time, to see what rests
where the light is less,
where day finds end before
being truly bent, where life
harks to harder as the day
hangs darker, dreams now are
the comings and goings,
the stuffing out of hours
before a bitter blanket of
blinkered blindness. Sad hearts
grow sadder, they say, grow
seasonal into sombre, into
the shadow of a city standing
still, waiting for the will. Days
fall short, are gone before
they can be caught, like hours,
like time, like the hand in that taxi
I once held, like all we cannot
hold, like all that ticks onwards,
all that moves off with the light
while I come here to the land
which time has left behind it.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
From the poetry series A Month With Yeats
And as you dove through distant dreams
just beside me, you left to my centre,
I woke to the night sky splitting above me,
the stars were burning, bleeding through
the darkness as the heavens opened,
their gates no longer golden as the
rooks took flight, soaring into my fright
here in this cold night as you tossed
through thoughts and I watched mine
beating, beaten with feathers on fire,
the disparate darkness drawing delight
in my downfall, in my blindness, and you
turned in sweeping motions, your back
to me as I should have done, as I could not
and I wondered where you had wandered
as I was culled into consciousness, frozen
by the flames and shivering, were you
moving through memories we made
or making room for more to come
in other beds, in other arms, and then
befell the bodies, bound, in chains locked,
in flames crying, cursing, trying to pull
apart bonds that should have broken,
and you turned again and your arm
came over my chest and the vision
was smashed in contact, reverie
retreating but the burning continued…
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
From the poetry series A Month with Yeats
Photograph taken at La Lune exhibition at Grand Palais, Paris
And down fell the sun
and drowned within the sea
and rough raged the wreckage
as the sailors tried to flee.
And down fell the sun
as a storm claimed the skies
and water stole the rafters
and silence crushed the cries.
And down fell the sun
as the sirens swam to shore
and laid down the bodies
of the lives that were no more.
And down fell the sun
and a sorrow filled the air
as the sirens sang their song
combing cords through golden hair.
And down fell the sun
as their tears flowed like waves
and they kissed the fallen sailors
on the sand, now their graves.
And down fell the sun
as the sirens said goodbye
to the men mortal men who loved them;
the sea’s sad sirens who cannot die.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a poem from the A Month with Yeats Series
We are land birds,
bound birds,
we have made homes
in twisted trees
growing hallow,
growing hard.
We are land birds,
ground birds,
we have been deluded
by illusions
growing careless,
growing cold.
We are land birds,
drowned birds,
in a dying desert
growing doubtful,
going dry.
If only
we had been sea birds,
crowned birds
in a current caressing,
wings wild
at the will of the waves,
weightless instead of weighty,
free falling
on a bed of floating foam,
flexible instead of friable.
If only…
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
From the series A Month With Yeats
Photographs from Barbie exhibition at Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 2016, Paris
And when they danced
she would hold him, her
perfume by his face, his
hands as her strength
as they waltzed through
their current as the tides
swept the shore, through
love and labour, to the first born,
still born, through the twins
who stopped the tears
and the girls who tied
the bows as the sands slipped
through time and the pace
became a quick step, through
the hands that held and those
hips that swayed through
the melody they were making
as they danced through
waves of washing houses
into homes, children into
strangers; rarely calling
and barely remembering
but on they danced as red
locks swept into silver strands,
as full head turned to bald head
on an older head as they turned
to the music now made
in the memory, till she left him,
finally, one morning in May,
as he rose to the sunlight but
she had lost to the moonlight
and so he built her an alter
of sea shells and sentiments
and now he turns, alone, across
the sands still slipping,
as the stars plot a path for him
to reach her in eternity.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
From the poetry series A Month with Yeats
Oh child, sweet child, sleeping so
beneath these big shoes and ties
knotted to a life of change and choice,
but we had to run, had to keep going,
didn’t we have grow up so quickly;
stand up, show up, give up, pay up.
Oh child, sleeping child, so sweet
beneath this bitter battle we must wade
through, the waves come not solely
on the current, not timely like the tides
but in the solitude, in the silence
we thought to be a comfort, I feel you
twist through the dreams you still dream,
that I have lost hold of, that I have let
slip from a grasp now older, less bolder.
But you, dear child, sweetly sleeping
as I make movements meant to be manly,
meaning to be mature, how I hear
your voice, amid the louder, broader,
vulgar tones beyond the preying
playgrounds of concrete corporations
and communal conformity, yours
so soft and gentle amid the riots
and the roars, yours so soothing
amid all that is smothering. I see you
too sometimes, in the mirror, briefly,
a spark of what was once a projection, now
but a reflection; wide eyed
and hearty of hope, I see you, laughing
at my troubles, calling me to come play,
to see the adventure in the danger,
to see the impermanence of these little
interruptions that come a calling.
Oh child, sweet child who painted
pictures to make the grey days
more grand, who penned poems
to let the pain find its place to perish
on the page instead of in the person.
Oh child, sleeping child of my youth,
how much I still have to learn from you.
All words by Damien B Donnelly. School photo aged possibly 5.
From the series A Month With Yeats
A starlit day,
on a distant shore,
as if summer had sent it
swarming like a snowflake;
silken wings to summon the sunset,
a white moth to raise a sweet soul
departing.
And there,
as a star was added,
the bright moon was kissed
in berry blush as the sun settled
beneath the lake where the lost trout
turned through tresses of silver dancing
and he smiled at his love, since lost,
now glimmering
in eternity.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is from the series A Month with Yeats
Poems, Poetry, Poets
Some lays of the Fianna, translated from the Irish by Annraoi de Paor with illustrations by Tim Halpin
A small press
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Damien B. Donnelly 