Poetry

TYPES OF DOLLS

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They call them Russian dolls
but there was a shop that sold them
by the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam,
not far from those ruby lit windows
displaying Dutch dolls in de Wallen,
both of which provided excitement
for wet tourists under rain coats
in the soaked summer months
terrified of traffic and tram tracks
and serial cyclists ringing their bells
like they were shooting guns.

The Russian dolls within dolls
within dolls were higher in price
than those locals offerings
you couldn’t bring home with you
after the money was handed over.
I used to see them, in their windows,
in the mornings- reading the paper
with their crispy toast and mint teas
in G-strings and little else.

I find it funny how undressing
reveals even less of the person
than being fully clothed.
I wonder if those Russian dolls
hold more truths in their multiple layers-
building up into a whole
instead of stripping down for a price.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

MY THREE FATES

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I- The original

 

Water                            floods flesh

From carnal comes forth     creation

Washed in sin

and they watch. In judgement

Water releases               hold

Sign away the rights                to his name

 

II- The Second Coming

 

Tears flood                   drained desert

She will be  an ocean             once more

Blood             is not the only bond

Longing leans in                  with twice the light

while they watch. In judgement.

Her tears           taunt their dried lips.

 

III- The Journey

 

You are ocean endless   and I worry

about growing                tired.

Sides streets         hold songs.

Every cobble     a connection for collection

Born from one and raised                by another

Now the road    is the mother

Feet turn    on judgement.            I found the refuge

The final fate          is on the road.

 

All words by Damien B Donnelly

THE NEW NORMAL ROUTINE

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Input-
daily. Early morning.
Wake up to bird call and input ideas for the new day.

Run. Write. Weights. Wash.

Garden. Grass. Weeds. No Smoking.

More Chopping. Manic. Now move indoors.

Pottering.
Pacing. Painting and onto poetry.

Moving out again from bedroom.
Old room. Once far room. Cold room,
where someone died once, before I breathed.

Moving out into adjoining kitchen.
Baking time. Breaking time. Music. Movement.
Being allowed to be berserk.

Leave fears to bake in the oven. Maybe burn.

Let the lowering light have the moves.
The dance moves. In this kitchen.
Here, at the end of day.

Another day. And another day. After the input. The output.

The routine. The new routine. For the new normal.

Making moments count.
Because berserk
is only for the moves and not the mentality.

 

 All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

PAINTING PARADISE WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S COLOURS

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We painted walls into the paradise we wanted
before I learned colour had its limits. Borders
had been beaten into our canvas long before
I touched the brush with borrowed thoughts.

We painted orange coloured stars and wild hopes
onto concrete walls and I trembled as she told me
the parrots, perfectly positioned in stuffed stillness,
pranced on their perches while I slipped to dream.

We’re taught what is truth, as children, not told
to truly think. He was tipped in black with no name,
a night sky forgotten by the moonlight and we-
impressionists, desireless to be outlined in darkness.

Children not the creators of fact but the little sheep
who come to submit to the not-so-subtle suggestions.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

LIMITATION OF ROSES

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I had the biggest bedroom as a boy
but curiosity picked the box room
at the lighter end of the short corridor
for my summer’s sojourn.

I was always looking for other walls
that caught the shadows of other lives

being lived-

to touch the thought, at that time,
was tantamount to taking part.

The biggest room was back-side,
the garden view of rising roses
trying to escape the bordered beds
and their own threatening thorns,

but the box-room was front facing
for those teasing summer nights
where people passed and paused
and the paths were so portentous-

diversions to drive daydreams
further than those beds of roses
that never made it any further
than a dull brown glass vase
on the small sitting room table
where we rarely found time

to entertain.

 

 All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

 

YOU

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I hid
your name
in between a word,
I put this word into a line
crammed with so much content
where you’d disappear behind the syntax
and then, just in case, I tucked this line into a story
that unfolded over time into a tale that would tell of a book
that someone lost on a wrong beach while waiting for the right wave
to take them out to where there was nothing but the depth of that deep blue.
I hid you, in a word, in a line, in a story that told a tale in a book, I then placed you,

the
smallest
part
of
you

into a bigger whole, like I was reconstructing an onion, like I was resealing a Russian doll
inside all her bigger sisters and every now and then I steal moments while they sleep
and sink into a chair, into the book, behind the tale within the story until
I come across the line and reach around and find you there, still,
tucked in tight behind that word where I kept your name.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

CALLING

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Boys came calling after school,
sometime between six and eight,
before the summer- longer days
under the swell of frustration.

Boys came calling after school,
halting homework and hunting,
looking to come closer to a truth
but I held mine firm, in the door-
halfway, me half in, half confused
as to what they wanted, intrigued
as to who they thought I was.

Boys came calling after school,
before the summer- longer days,
stifling nights, sticky like glue-
like adhesive that never stuck
to the right surfaces as I beat
myself into a form I’d never fit.

I wanted to open the door,
to the boys who came calling,
to accept that some could be
sincere after so much shame
but I was afraid, at that time,

of who exactly might come out.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly

WHEN SEARCHING FOR WHO WE WILL BE, AFTERWARDS

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What if a rose grew on the far side of the moon,

now, after, later?

Would we spread out time to explore the space
between the bloom and the branch?

Nature is a construct, much like the moon-
we don’t always consider it when we cut its roots

or ignore its connection to the current.

Remove ourselves from obstruction and regard potential
from this far side of confined distance

that plants consideration.

See how far a single petal can travel without our interaction.

We cannot go back to before. Select assimilate

instead of annihilate.

There is a rose now, growing on the far side of the moon
and it didn’t need our manhandling to get there.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE BIRDSONG RECALLS WHAT ONCE HUNG UPON THE HAWTHORN

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Last month,
in the first breath of this coming season
of the sun’s light,
you crept in through the stillness
of the solitude that the birds had begun
to sing of
and spread out across the swaying branches
as we foraged for distractions beneath.
I climbed you, on occasion,
to release my feet
from the whispers that trembled
along the surface of the earth’s floor,
spiralling out
like panicked weeds whose roots
were as invisible as the dust
we cannot contain.
You’ve since fallen from sight, white tears
that only the birds recall in an evening song
that stirs the stillness
while we still hang to an invisible weight,
waiting to be told we can safely
let go.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

CLASSIFIED UNDER NO NAME

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Would I have kept you closer, longer, if you’d been a soft toy
that found my empty arms when the nights were endless instead
of your characteristically classy chaos the posters never chose
to optimize

or were we meant to be just chalk running into the deluge
of the rainstorm?

Should I have been less passionate and you more personable
or I more placid and you less proud?

We were stuffing, in the end, plucking feathers from our insides
out through skins that had neither thickened nor tendered enough
to survive those endless flooding nights together in that hold
we never named.

Un nom, c’est quoi, un nom- la tien, la mien, le nôtre ?

Un non est seulement une chose que tu donnes à quelque chose
quand tu le comprends.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly