#PoetryDayIRL

TRUTH OR DARE, for Poetry Day Ireland

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This year’s theme is Truth or Dare and this final new poem recalls older days when this Irishman was still a growing boy on the streets of Paris…

 

Truth or Dare

At 22 we locked the bar at 2am
and turned empty bottles around
tittering tables, wishes weaving
into comrades’ ears of who to pick
and who to kiss; the ex-pats in Paris,
running an Irish bar like it was
their open bar, even when it was closed,
eager to acquire a taste for foreign desires,
no one ever wanted to know the truth,
we were too young to be serious
and too stupid to know that it mattered,
that taste didn’t lie on the tongue,
though it later laid lies on our lips. At 22
we closed the bar and dared each other
to dive into anything other than the truth.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly, except for the one below as that’s me pulling my last pint in the Irish bar in the 13th arrondissement of Paris.

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GPO, PAST POST, POETRY DAY IRL

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

A Poem about the GPO, Dublin’s iconic General Post Office

a site that’s seen more than just letters of love in its time…

for Poetry Day Ireland 27th April 2017

 

AnPostGPOwithbrassfittingsadded

1

Beneath the pillars 
of your past, 
I posted letters 
between your walls 
and wondered 
if they rubbed up against 
the souls of your saviours,
if they met with memories 
that were made and measured, 
bruised and battered,
between your bricks and mortar
before being buried in blood

2

How many letters of love, 
lined in lust and longing, 
have perfumed your pillars
working their way 
through your worthy walls
and haunted halls 
in search of hungry hearts 
to hold them,
to open them,
to hear them.

All Words by Damien B. Donnelly. Photograph borrowed from internet (I will give it back)