TIME TEMPERED

12/07/201630/07/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Retrograde ripples
swim me back to days
when a certain light could cut
the shadows in a single movement,
when your touch was like cool water
poured over feverish flesh below orange
walls that watched us sinking onto a single soul.
Terracotta tempered
with summer shadows
as streets twist and turn,
as I twist and turn and burn,
even in the shade, with shadows
and shades of you and those days
now reduced to simply recessive ripples
slouching towards the bottom of a city sinking.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken in Venice, Italy

Audio version available on Soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/time-tempered

PRECAUTIONS

10/07/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Tides are treacherous
and sea strips sand from our shore,
man must learn to fly

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

BREAK

09/07/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

As the soul departs
on the last breath,
we,
with breath in bounty,
break

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

POCKETS OF TIME

08/07/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I have crossed many oceans and have known
few limits, I have travelled many roads
and have folded my favourites into pockets
of time, stored in a hundred boxes, marked
with a thousand names who have touched me,
sealed with a hundred souls who have moved me,
taped with a dozen men who may have loved me.
I have travelled many roads and I have packed
many boxes, I have folded so much of time,
and lost too many friends, but memories
cannot be stored in boxes and time cannot
be held in pockets, roads are only the beginning
and friends are never truly lost. Home is not
housed in bricks and mortar, home is like the ocean;
it knows no limits if the water is willing.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

VIRTUE OR VULTURE?

06/07/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Is love letting go or leaning on or leading on

Is love like a salmon swimming upstream, struggling against the tide, against the current,
against all nature

Is love like a room you redecorate on rotate, layers of new prints over old paper, frail and fragile and fading in corners too complicated to remove the clutter, long since left, from other lovers now departed

Is love like the copious copies of masterworks, artworks we hang in hallways far from any real light so as not to intimidate real life

Is love as subtle as the smile stroked on canvas across her face, impossible to trace if she is leaning towards love or lingering in loss

Is love like the riverbed, caressed and corrosive concurrently, currently leading towards lust or something that might last longer, that might run deeper than an ocean

Is love virtue or vulture?

All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken in Aldeburgh, England by the Benjamin Britten tribute sculpture

Audio Version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/virtue-or-vulture