IN DREAMS, day 23 of A Month with Yeats

23/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats is from ‘He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead’. ‘…your hair was bound and wound about the stars and moon and sun:’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s beautiful blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/23/a-month-with-yeats-day-twenty-three/

It’s been a challenging 24 hours but at least this poetry challenge has let me tune out to some of the chaos.

Today’s poem is called IN DREAMS

If to sleep, if to dream

was to live, was a part of life,

was left to the living

and not just the dreaming,

then how close we would be,

you and your smile of the summer,

you with those eyes, brighter

than all the stars,

you; no longer a dream

below the gentle moonlight,

so subtly deceptive,

but we live in a light

that is blinkered

and see our souls only

while sleeping neath the stars.

We are bound to dreams

that whisper wishes

we cannot always reach,

like stars we cannot touch,

like holds we cannot have.

I held you once, in a taxi

turning through time,

neither yours, never mine.

We were star crossed,

blazing a trail towards other sparks

we thought we needed more

than each other.

If to sleep was to live,

then in dreams we could be more

than life allows.

But no, we live in this blinkered light,

never quite seeing the whole picture,

never quite knowing

who is standing beside us

until they are gone.

We are sleeping stars,

sometimes we are bright,

sometimes we are no more than a blink.

all words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BUOYANT, Day 22 of A Month with Yeats

22/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

Day 22 of A Month with Yeats and the quote from Jane Dougherty is:

‘I wander by the edge of this desolate lake where wind cries in the sedge:’ —W.B. Yeats

My poem is: BUOYANT

Is it here where the tears

come to find peace

in this place of serenity?

I lay down this lake of loss,

hope for the soil

to soak up the sorrow,

by the side sedge

I wedge myself up from the waste

and bury all that turned base

at the bottom of this bed,

no longer sheets of cotton comfort

but sludge soon to be swept under,

asunder.

Is it here where reality

ripples into reflection,

the sinking illusion

of what I thought to be perfection?

An impression of light and shade,

now lighter, now shadier,

now just a remainder

waiting for time to submerge.

I lay down in this lake;

a lough of loss, locked, lost,

waiting for the tide

to wash over me,

waiting for the tears

to dissolve within me,

waiting for time

to refine me, re-find me

buoyant instead of beaten.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/buoyant

STILL STANDING, day 21 of A Month with Yeats

21/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Day 21 for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats and today’s quote is: ‘…by water among the trees the delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh’ —W.B. Yeats

My poem is called STILL STANDING

Stag standing

where the river

still ripples,

where the wind

still whips the waves,

where the trees

still twist and turn.

Stag standing

as his lady

lets slip a sigh.

Stag standing,

observing

all that man

once had at his feet.

Stag still standing,

in silent hommage

to the beauty

man once tried to beat.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

LISTEN, day 20 of A Month with Yeats

20/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

It’s day 20 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s quote is: ‘Out of the dark air over her head there came a murmur of soft words and meeting lips’

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/20/a-month-with-yeats-day-twenty/

My poem today is called: LISTEN

We cannot truly change that which

we are, we cannot really laugh louder,

be brighter, stay longer than our journey

has already jotted down in a journal

whose language is not our own.

We cannot truly change the air,

the ocean, the fire that forges its way

through us, leaving us inspired

or expired, hot or just overheated.

We cannot truly change much

but we can cast corrections

into the darkness caught in corners,

we can see sages that hover over heads

if we need to add meat to the monotony,

singing songs of stories never too old

to be retold, never too new to be anything

more than necessary.

We cannot truly change that which

we are, we cannot promise to hold

any longer than time allows us,

we are tied to the tension of the knot

that knows more than we do,

whose heart lays on a hinge

that hangs both the hope

and the hammer. We cannot truly

change much but we can learn to listen

to lips that have lingered, that have

laughed in the face of lies

and been nourished by the face

of the fortunate who found favor

with who they were and then substance

in the soft stream of steady words…

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SPELLING PEACE, day 19 of A Month with Yeats

19/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

It’s day 19 of Jane Dougherty’s brilliantly creative and challenging A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s quote is a second one from ‘The Valley of the Black Pig’: ‘We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore, the grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you, master of the still stars and of the flaming door.’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/a-month-with-yeats-day-nineteen/

My poem today is called SPELLING PEACE

And in between turns the tide,

in between the heavens on fire

and the heathens

freezing below, for hire,

I watch from this ticking tomb,

this dolman of deserved doubt,

forced to find footing here

on front of all this currish clout

as the sand’s siphoned

from the slithering shore,

greedy for the grains

human hands cannot hope to hold,

the sea ceaselessly

sucking more and more

from the less and less

that lunges listlessly

with the rest who hope and hoar,

souls for sale

as selfishly subservient civilians

seal another nail

in another box of beaten bones,

bruised with too many battles,

stones have warped on the waves

as time twists tongues into telling tattles;

we are no longer ripples;

buoyant in our beauty,

but grown greedy

as we dig the graves

we’ll one day drown in,

never quite trusting the fights

that came before,

the truths once worth the marching

of boots through the mud.

These are the days of the duds,

envy is the new enemy,

celebrity the sought-after salvation

as the hopeful fall to but a handful

on front of such talentless damnation.

Do the demons derive distraction

as we disappear

beneath our own destruction?

We no longer discern

the halo from the horn,

nor have time to stop and mourn,

the devil dances in the daylight

on main street’s prime time,

Disney has dipped below the darkness

and god is now a forgotten phony

once founded in faith,

now fated to be nothing

more than wraith.

And still we stand beneath the dolman,

dull men, trying to spell peace

with the wrong alphabets letters,

wondering if time’s tides will ever cease

and how many wrongs must we right

before we can come face to face

with our betters.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SLEEPING SEEDS, day 18 of A Month with Yeats

18/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Day 18 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month With Yeats Challenge and today’s quote is: ‘The dews drop slowly and dreams gather’ —W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/a-month-with-yeats-day-eighteen/

My poem is called: SLEEPING SEEDS

We are seeds in nesting

spread out over soil now slumbering,

still dreaming in the gentle light,

now resting under winter’s plight.

We are seeds in nesting

seeking solace from this winter solstice

under blade now balancing

the dancing dew. Seeds in nesting,

waiting to come through.

all words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT, day 17 of A Month with Yeats

17/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats comes from ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’. ‘The blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light,’ —W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/a-month-with-yeats-day-seventeen/

My poem is called HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT

And time finds them folded

between all that had been lost

and the hope of what yet might come.

And night finds them falling

between the dark clouds covering

and the hands that caress their bodies.

And the kiss finds them feeding

on a hunger they thought exhausted

beneath the truth the darkness can’t hide.

And in the half light,

half starved,

he fell beneath her dark cloths

cast in shadow

as if half forgotten,

half starved

for that blue light

once burning bright

in the dimming night.

And in the half light,

half jarred,

she sank beneath his old hold,

reborn in bold,

no longer

half accepting

that half starved

was the whole picture

as their hunger

pulled them tight.

And in the half light,

half scarred

from being alone but not alive

in this scrapyard,

they each half held

that half light,

half bright

and held each other

in a hope

below the night.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

REGARDING REFLECTIONS, day 16 of A Month with Yeats

16/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Day 16 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry Challenge and the quote today comes from ‘He Mourns for the Change That Has Come Upon Him and Longs for the End of the World’: ‘Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blogs is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/a-month-with-yeats-day-sixteen/

My poem today is called REGARDING REFLECTIONS

What follies the daylight

carries when then,

before the darkness,

a blindness banishes

the glitter we have

heaped onto our horns.

the night has no light

for lies and disguise.

Blood runs black

in the moonlight

and no one can

see your fear.

And there you stood,

somehow in the shade

of shadow, somewhat

in the mirror watching

and I, leaning on the light,

by the doorway, waiting

to enter your world,

your skin, your body,

and I saw your breath

as it billowed in the glass

all frosted, all fuzzy

and I took in your scent

there in the room

now vacant of all else

but you looking out

to see what the pale

reflection could offer

of the inside and me;

waiting for you

to come back from

that frosted reflection

within the mirror, darkly

shadowed by all that lay

unsolved, by all as yet

unresolved and then

we revolved and it was I

watching and you, my dear,

waiting for me to find you

and lead you back home.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on SoundCloud…

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/regarding-reflections

NORTH OF THE NOISE, day 15 of A Month with Yeats

15/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge is from the ‘The Rose of Battle’ by WB Yeats: ‘You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring the bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.’

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/a-month-with-yeats-day-fifteen/

My poem today, penned in Stockholm Arlanda airport, is called NORTH OF THE NOISE

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

BORDERED IN, day 14 of A Month with Yeats

14/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 16 Comments

It’s day 14 of A Month with Yeats coming to you from a wet, wild and rather wintery -2 degrees of Stockholm. Today’s quote from the genius of Jane Dougherty is: ‘That you, in the dim coming times, may know how my heart went with them after the red-rose-bordered hem.’ —W.B. Yeats.

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/a-month-with-yeats-day-fourteen/

My poem today is called: BORDERED IN

Rough round that rose bordered hem

we ran, regardless of where her skirts

did scurry, no fretting to the fraying

of her fringes, never noticing how

nimble had turned to not-so nifty

above that border of red roses, oh

so pretty, on those placid petticoats

until we laid her low, on a hill so high,

hemmed in forever by a border

of bright red roses, and only then