Poetry

GLUTTONY HAS GOT THE GOAT

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and this train cannot proceed
along its track,
interlopers interrupt on intercoms;
there are packages of suspicion
on the trail up ahead
and a goat in a lot
dancing round the cars.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
as a woman tells tales
in the seat behind me
to a girl with fingers
fixed on her insta-fame,
on Instagram,
while a goat
with shameful notoriety
throws shapes in the parking lot.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and a plane descending
like a sub into the sea
while a package has been placed
in positions of pedestrians
and a woman complains
to her daughter about her day
and her daughter captures it all
on Snapchat to ensure it exists
as a goat in a parking lot
continues to dance.

There is a goat
dancing in a parking lot
and this train has lost the thread
of its tracks
and in a synagogue
on the sabbath
in a state out of states,
someone opened fire
while the goat in the lot
continued dancing.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot,
trying to distract us
from the collisions
he can’t cover.

Winter is already here.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

IN THE PLACE OF THE FORMER PRINCE

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

I flew back to a day
no longer this day,
returning to the rubble
I had run from
to catch the last slab
being laid upon my childhood
buried under a concrete garden,
not even a root to latch on to.

I saw the permanence
of the pavement
pour over the past
no longer possible
from the next-door vantage point,
access no longer available
to my own old room
with its red walls and worries
for the former local
now unfamiliar foreigner
with footing bound
to a fondness to regress
but reality is no longer
the daydream we used to skip through
under the glorious sunlight
of the innocence
that blinded our youth.

Dreams are sometimes
rotten weeds to return to
after the dawn breaks
through the haze that once held hope,
our once great grounding
is not always as we left it.
We cannot fit into the clothes we once wore
nor the skin we since shed.

I saw my childhood today,
buried beneath the cold concrete;
the final closure on the kingdom
I thought I was the prince of.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A WHISPER IN THE FADING LIGHT

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I heard them marching through the streets of Madrid, at midnight, under the first floor moonlight as you sang me songs strung from their souls, men marching a million miles away, a million years away from the momentary memory we were making, your fingers stroking the strings I’d pulled too tight on the guitar now clutched to your chest like I had been, or you on mine (I recall only feeling with fleeting time, not the practicalities of posture or position).

I heard them marching upon the melody you were making, like the music we had just made that would never be bright enough to linger on into lyrics, but you brought them from your history into my home beneath a still shouldering moonlight straddled on the first floor; a shining witness to the totality of our all and nothing, to how much closer we were getting and how much more like strangers we had become.

I took your cigarettes to my lips and watched the smoke burn to a whisper in the fading light of our afterglow and wondered how your words (more meaty than meaningful after midnight) could stick so to the softening skin, like my sweat and your scent, afterwards, after we’d come and before you’d left me humming a song from streets I’d never known but could taste on the tip of my tongue like something familiar, once favoured, long since forgotten.

Might marches upon steaming streets,
melodies make moments beneath the moon,
memory is often all we can hope for.

ENTANGLEMENTS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

There is beauty
and there is decay,
they are gardeners of the same plot,
seeking sustenance from the same sun,
shade from the same soil,
one awaits the wonder of the weather,
the other;
weathered by her ticking thunder.

There is beauty
and there is decay,
they are inseparable,
one holding fast to its height,
the other;
falling fast through its fragility

and in between
their entanglements
is left life
until that, one day, leaves.

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

THE THAW

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

 

Blue is the breath,
blue is the earth,
morning, early,
the sky a clean canvas
of white and the earth; blue,
a bed of frozen blues
born from dawn’s breath,
a blanket of freshly fallen
slow snow, trembling
along the hairs of the land, caught
in the calm before the crunch,
before the footprints
mould into mud
all that is now a myriad of mystery.

There is beauty in blue,
there can be beauty in being broken,
in time being frozen,
in the breath baying.

I twist and tremble
between these sheets
still fresh upon these old shadows,
still crisp over this drying skin.
I twist and tremble
through this season to be unsure,
falling into blue,
into time, time is frozen
along with all that is born in this bed,
a blanket of fallen findings;
some things I thought to be more,
some things I hoped to mean less,
like loss, less loss,
less time, less breath, more blue,
the mystery is already moulding into mud.

Blue is the breath and slow,
soft as the early morning snow
so slow, awaiting nothing more
than the affirmation
of an approaching melt.

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

 

DARK LIGHT, PART 2; THE FALL

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I whisper into wakefulness,
the body stirs before the brain,
the blood before belief,
I curl into colder corners of the covers
to encourage skin to come round
as sound slips in just before the sight,
light pours into eyelids slowly opening,
toes slip out to inspect the season
but the soul knows the truth;
I bear every season in a single day,
a snowstorm in the stench of summer,
in moments overlapping;
burning flesh on ice cold streets
(Paris can perish you
behind its postcard perfection),
springs of hopeful holds
that fall to less likely,
there is an unbreakable blossom
in this heart that covers
the precious particles
like once perfect snowflakes
that have since been shattered,
strings that have been strung;
strung out, strung up,
turned to taunt,
I recall the harmony
but am a stranger to the words
we wound into songs,
stretched into surrenders.
Your calls now drown us both
from the far end of another ocean
I thought to be tempered with tepid time,
phone floods forage
where even distance cannot dissipate
the despair that settles
on the floor beside me,
a shallow pool of strangulation
after the hang-up that always feels
somehow lighter at your end.
So much falls away,
so much falls to the ground;
shattered shards no longer capturing
its distant promise.
I watch the snowflakes
catch the wind carefully,
glisten for a moment
before it’s beauty losses breath
on the trodden tracks
of these treadmills
that take us to nowhere
and back again
as the bluebird sings her song
and the moon, even in the bright sky,
still retains its shadow,
ever watchful, ever wondering
when we too will find our time
in this fall, to fall.

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available at Soundcloud: 

DARK LIGHT, PART 1: FAR FROM

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And slow falls the heaven’s breath,
drawing on those days of dawns;
dewy with that blanket white crispness
below the song of the bluebird
(do you see; beauty can be blue
even when the bird isn’t black)
soft thrills trembling through the forest
as fine folds of frosty fur
find its form in frozen
between branches blithely bending,
l picture violins, their strings
being strung in a honed harmony
to hush the moon
now bitter to be beckoned
back beyond the blue,
(always the blue, always the time falling
on showers of snowflakes
that find their form
in their fluttering flight).
For a moment,
far from the fury,
the morning sighs itself awake,
(I see a baby draw its breath
and consider the corner of a smile
before it crumbles to a cry)
roots stretch and buds break
through the soil
the slow snow is intent on freezing,
for a moment, all is possible
but the snowflakes
that found the light beyond the night
turn to cracked crystals
of inconsistency
as they tip the truth
of who we are in the dark light
of these dull days.
They were golden tears
for but a moment,
spun into perfection,
swirling southward,
before they found us, falling
over an earth too far
from heaven.

All words and collage by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

 

 

Barren Magazine, Issue 3

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

 

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to be one of the artists featured in the latest issue of Barren Magazine, entitled Birch Black, Bone White, curated by Jason Ramsey, found on Twitter at @barrenmagazine and @JasonDRamsey

Website link: https://barrenmagazine.com/

This literary Journal, now in its third issue, is a powerful testament to the talent out there today, a collection of voices and visionaries from all around the world.  The themes are dark and the subjects often kept in the shadows but the veil has been drawn and this journal exposes the beauty on the bruises and the strength behind the falls.

Quote from the editor: This issue is dark, but it is glorious and beautiful to the core. — Jason D. Ramsey, Editor

Please take a moment to check out this new astonishingly bare and beautiful literary Journal for artists and note that submissions are now being accepted for issue 4; short stories, poetry, essays and photography .

Don’t miss out, there is true beauty to be found here…

THE SWEPT AND THE SWEEPERS

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

Fragility falling
through fine flecks
of fair filigree,
perfect patterns
of individuality
speckled on
imperfect individuals.
Snowflakes melt
on steaming skin
thin on time,
too thick to break through,
you cannot always
sink below the surface
of an iceberg,
we cannot break through
all that lays beneath,
all the lies
below the surface,
it gets hotter
the closer you come
to the cold truth,
only in space
can a spec appear spotless.

Fragility falling
through the folds
of a snowstorm,
we are the swept
and the sweepers,
we must be swift,
icicles can injure,
perfection can pierce.
I can be broken,
I can be better,
I can be broken
but it takes time to rebuild.

I can be a snow-swept
filigree falling
through the perfection of time
and time, with all its perfection,
with its constant movement and minutes,
is as fragile as that snowflake.

 

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

EARLY AUTUMN

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

The sky is burning,
the last light
eclipsed by the night
and we stop and stare
like fools at its blaze,
not seeing within this gaze
possibility falling though our hands
like snowflakes in a season
that has kept captive the summer.
The sky is burning
while we travel in taxis,
all of us back-seat partakers
being driven down roads
we know not where they lead
as our minds run tattered threads
along all the tracks
we wanted to press with our own print
but we cannot choose a direction
like a snowflake cannot control its pattern.
The sky is burning
with a fine filigree
of fire and ice,
with thoughts we try to catch hold of
but flames are ever changing
and no snowflake is the same
and we take hold of other dreams
others dreamt of
in other beds
under other skies blazing
through futile snow storms
and we melt, like a snowflake
in the dry heat of an early autumn.

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud