Poetry

CARRIED AWAY ON THE WATER

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-02-13 at 20.37.17

From the nightmare
we wake to the dream
before we open our eyes to reality

I fear I fret I freeze I forge I face I forget

I love you, he said
from the pages of the book
in her hand as she sat alone reading by the window

I am alone I am alive I am only I am everything I am enough

We yearn so much
be to adults as children
then perish ever after in the absence of youth

I want I wish I will I wasted I was I withered

We mourn so much
for what we’ve lost in death
because we ignored the chance to celebrate life

Too soon Too early Too busy Too far Too late

He kissed her lips
beneath the darkness
and remembered the light of another, long forgotten

I like I lust I love I lost I like I lust I love I linger in the longing

I walk out into the water             and the reflection
            that rises from the surface
is the face of a shadow                             now drowned
      a reflection               of what once was
a skin             long since shed
            a kiss                             long since settled
       a curiosity                 quieted
                        a loss                     let go of
    a fear                 long since faced
and folded                         and floated away
                   to wherever the water              runs to
           after it washes              towards me
                   through me                    and past me
          past

the past of me

IMG_4745

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photographs taken in Stockholm on a foggy morning walk around the islands.

HARD TO SWALLOW

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

I bowed on bended knee
on foreign shores             on silk cushions
where no one knew me
to an invisible deity.

Did you see me?
Did I exist for you?
Did you believe in me?
Did you exist within me truthfully, invisibly?

I bowed on bended knee
into the light that flooded the floor.

They told me once you liked floods,
you liked to send floods,
to send down your floods
I never saw it,             did anyone really see it?

But they told me,
they told me as if to flood me with fear,
a flood to frighten the faithful.

I bowed in that foreign land
as the dragon’s breath drew a veil upon the sky
as if to cover the heavens from curiosity,
from temptation,
funny what rhymes with salvation,
salvation from what,             from whom?

There is faith,
there is belief
and then man names it all religion.

I bowed on bended knee
within that temple             that foreign temple,
it was not my temple,
I don’t build temples,
I have palaces in my head,
private palaces             private places,
filled with my beliefs             private,
flooded with my teared steams             private,
flooded with my fate           private,
my faith is not called any religion.

I bowed on bended knee
where others knelt before me
while others knelt behind me

StrangersWorshipersBelieversFaithful

foolish?

In the invisible             we place our fate
in man             we place our control.

Can you see them?
Can you exist for them?
Can you believe in them?
Do you exist within them honestly, truthfully?

Do you exist             as I exist?

I bent and bowed             I lowered my eyes,
I followed the flock of faithful foreigners
I confess it was just to conform
so as not to confront or be confronted.
I was a sheep following the shepherds
who shuffled around me
who looked at me             unsure,
who wondered to themselves
if they were the sheep and I was the shepherd.
Seriously!

Seriously,
how did I end up there,
bowing on bended knee
feeling too fair and too foreign
in that place             within that facade
behind that face             my own facade

and I asked the light

ContritionConfessionCommunionConfirmation

Is it all a Con?

ConspireContaminateCondemnConfineConform

Connect,
remember,
I remember once…

I wore a white suit
at 8, at communion;
my first communion,
I took the white bread,
they told me it was his body;
white, light and pure.

It stuck to the roof of my mouth.

It was difficult to swallow

            even then.

I bowed on bended knee,
I did what I was told,
I did what they expected of me,

I saw what they told me to see,
this religion they called a community,

            no more.

I bow on bended knee
in my own palace
far from their atrocities.

I bow on bended knee
and the light is so much brighter

the light inside me
the light within.

We can be the light
we can always be the light             alone
with our faith             our fate
without the hate             without the fear
            far from the floods.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at a temple in China.

 

FREE AT SEA

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

He is as much the boat
as the water is the ocean

He is as cognate to the current
as the tides are to their motion

A simple man, a fisherman
with his home upon the sea
his only ties to an oar and cast,
he is freedom floating free

All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

RUINED

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

 

I see a tree,
the ruins of a tree

I see man,
bricks bearing the bones
of what man thought he could be

they are falling

before him
around him
on top of him

I hear him crumbling.

I see a tree,

another tree,

I see many trees,

a host of nature’s possibilities

all rising above the ruins of man
rising above what man has ruined

ruin 2

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photographs taken on the Caribbean island of Caracao  

LANES OF LIFE

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-02-04 at 11.55.38

Time tears
through flesh and bone
as it moves towards us
through us             past us
while we try to
linger longer
onto that fragile hold
we have on love

but we are just
cars and connections
caught up in the cacophony
trying to stand in the right lane
with the right person
at the right time
as the clock ticks on
like a heartbeat
like a time bomb

I captured you
on film             in a photo
as they kissed and craved and smiled
while you moved toward them
while you cut through them
then swept past them

before they even saw you.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken in Hong Kong on a rainy night when two lovers held each other tight and life rushed past them.

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/lanes-of-life

BETWEEN DISTRACTIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Between
black and white
there are a thousand shades of grey

between
life and death
there are a million things to say

between
I love you
and I love you not

there is more than just hunger and hate

FeelFondFuckFancyFlameFavourFidelityForever
FallacyFuck-upForgetFloutFlingFadeFailingFlee

we are hungry
we eat (more than we should)
and then we hate

you smiled at me
in a sea of sadness I’d grown tired of
a blonde in a season of darker tones
and the distraction deluded me

                            from the truth

are we always alone,
even when we are together?

I held his hand in a taxi
while thinking of another
not yours, not his, but another

I lay in your arms at night
as you lied in mine, behind the light

between laying and lying
there exists a world of truth and disguise

we hate being alone
but devour each other when we are together

devour each other

            to the bone

 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph of ‘Monument aux morts’ in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France.

PERFUME

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

Hungry again                          
                              to taste you
like candy                      
                                on my tongue
tingling                  
                              like sherbet
dips, dipping.                          
                         Longing
to be left                  
                           immersed
in your perfume                                    
                                                    like I was in your arms
intoxicated                         
                                by the fumes
of our fever,                        
                       to be left
covered,                 
                                   candy covered
with your essence                                     
                                           perfectly preserved
on my fingers                               
                                   where I dipped,
on my shirt                             
                                      which you ripped,
on my chest                            
                                still pounding,
on my lips                        
                            still burning.
Hungry again…

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

NOT QUITE RIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

You swept into the shadows
of all that once was, last night,
like a blur upon the light,
not quite right,
not quite.
I’d slept beneath his covers
after he’d taken off, one night
and you’d caught me in your sight
hoping that I might
well, quite.
You’d found me in a rainstorm
as Christmas day became christmas night
and I the gift that you could bite
as anybody might
and you were right.
I fucked you in his absence
as if to be alone would not be right
and who was I to fight
the stranger in the night,
all right.
You watched me as I slumbered
tangled up beside you, that night
as if you’d somehow seen the light
of all that wasn’t right,
well, not quite.
I left you in the morning
before attachments grew too tight,
before the morning shed its light
on all that wasn’t right,
not quite right.
I left you in the morning
but wondered what occurred that night
when he was back in your embrace, behind the light,
I wondered if you made it back to right,
like you’d felt with me that night
when everything seemed right,
well, not quite.

All Words and Drawing by Damien B. Donnelly

UNDER, ONWARDS & OVER

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

under onwards colour

Washed over
in whiskey and rum
and falling, on a street,
by a bridge in the lamplight
as the river rushed under us
onwards and out of sight,
falling into each other
in foreign lands
into foreign hands
sliding along foreign bodies,
lean and slender,
twists and thrusts
of bodies curious
to what they’d not yet tasted.
You danced around me
on stages, in my head
in stages, on my bed
above the water
that never stopped moving
under us, onwards and off.
Falling into you,
our own echoes
reverberating into a dance
we were generating,
a tale of three acts;
the fall,
the fairytale
and the future unfolding
more fierce than we’d foreseen
and those hours,
always the hours,
slipping in between,
splitting the space around us
like the water that night
beneath the bridge where we kissed
rushing under us, onwards and over us,
dissolving us without consideration
a gradual obliteration
and yet my lip still tingles 
from all we thought we were
in the moment the movement made us,
falling through time, through a space we couldn’t name, 
stretching skin and bending bone into a structure unstable, insubstantial,
kissing and courting and covering up the parts that could never be,
trying to be what we never were and ignoring the bits that we didn’t want to see. 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph of the Blauwbrug bridge on the Amstel Canal in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

CONNECTIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Water
Silent
Stillness
Reflection . Connection
Make the connection
Elements
Water Earth Air
I can be fire
The fire

I walk on water
I dream I walk on water
I see stillness
I dream I walk on the stillness of the water
I hear the silence
I am the silence dreaming of the stillness that walks on the water
I am the reflection
I am the silent reflection of the dream that once walked on the stillness of the water.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly