THE CARETAKER

 

High on a hilltop, you climb above your age
and whisper the wisdom of your ancestors like its wealth
(hush, I say, to hear the humble)
worn words as woven into the earth as the roots
of the trembling trees standing to support those above it.

High on a hilltop, a former teacher caresses history
like a caretaker tends the glories growing in a garden he was given,
tales time would have tossed but his time mind still meditates over
while I wonder where I was a year, a month, an hour ago?

High on a hilltop, we lean into the comfort
to accept all that we have found indecipherable.

We take the right side at the entrance, as instructed,
and bow, thrice, and the empty space recalls the place of the emperor
who once took the central path while the guards, armed
with faith in the form of a dragon, harmony in the form of their music
and strength in the size of their sword, wards off the demons
and welcomes in the inner light.

There is light here, a gentle light, a subtle light to caress the skin,
to sink within as we mount and meditate on how we got here,
to this hill, to this land, to this life, to this breath.

High on the hilltop, we breathe in the simplicity of common incense
and sway as the chimes ring out to remind us
we are not one, alone, but one single part of the whole

and we bow again, thrice, and follow the stream that knows more
about its route than we will ever to understand about our own.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly. This is a reworking of an older poem for a week recalling travels in South Korea in 2018. 

DIFFERENCES

 

Nature is not alike;

red reigns over green,
browns bend to blend
and lilac leans,
perfect petals poised
over tiny tufts, trembling,

buds unfold from
stretching stars.

Nature is not alike.

Humanity could be harmonious
if we delighted in our differences

with dignity.

Nature is not alike. Why should we be?

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost

IN MOTHER’S GARDEN

 

Mother,
the path has been puzzling and there are patterns now,
penetrating patterns once thought impossible, entwined
around veins, like vines that vie for vittles’ on walls
already wavering, on buildings bare as if each brick
banished is a breath broken,
Mother,
I carry more now than before but fragments have flown,
not yet cremated but I’ve scattered ashes over mischievous
maestros who tussled tarnished tunes along my tissue,
who cut cords, crude and often crippling, who leeched
the lyrics from my limbs when I thought a relationship
meant relenting to the rhythm, when I thought love
was a note never ending,
Mother,
we’ve seen how sacrifice can separate mother
from her making, little girl blue you had to give up
and woman who had let me go, the root cut from rose,
adapting far from the garden of creation, but we adapted
to adoption as if it wasn’t an option, as it wasn’t a question,
for there was always a connection,
Mother,
I see you with the bud of your womb now returned to you
as woman, your vines reattaching as nature intended
while I rarely regard the roots of my own becoming,
still too busy looking up and over, looking always
for the next interchange, questioning every other connection
in a garden scattered with those ashes, the bush burning
as the blossom still blooms,
but Mother,
I’m more you than the woman who made me, I am
more product of the carer than sewer of the seed who
so long ago saw the sacrifice in her own soil
and replanted my life in your warm embrace,
Mother,
I’ve seen stars setting fires to skies in other lands
where other oceans wash over other sands, stars
that still fade, though they are far, sands that still sweep
into all-consuming currents while populations ponder
the same problems as stars flicker out and time slips
through our hands,
Mother,
I’ve seen money makers in plastic palaces following
white lines to narcotic nirvanas as if salvation
was snortable, I’ve seen wiser men, on the sojourn, in India,
blind to all light, perhaps shielded from the fight,
holding tight to a smile that has slipped from our grip
with eyes still able to trap the light, with hearts too hungry
for more of more of more, polluting once stubborn seas
as we rape other roads, take other fruit from other gardens,
while blind men begged for nothing and saw more
than I could ever imagine,
Mother,
the days are now shorter and even before night
falls there is less light that falls and people are crying
in the streets, the flowers are folding and retreating into
the dirt as if hell might be better, Mama, people are dying,
dying in discos and in diners and in school halls
where they should be learning to be better, not leaving blood
behind on broken desks and chalkboards with equations
that don’t add up because the book has been swapped
for the bomb,
Mama,
there are horrors happening now, not yearly, but daily,
one chaos no longer fills one book, but one chapter,
followed by another and another with no let up, no
intermission, our gardens becoming desert landscapes
as all that tries to exist is destroyed, as all that was once
deemed right is declared wrong, as all rights are removed
and all races viewed as radicals,
Mother,
they’ve mistaken the mask for the man and they can’t see
though those smiles I’ve staged to still the shadows that line
these lines, these lives played out upon my breaking breast,
pouring like riverbeds raging over banks, over blank pages,
drowning them with tales, twists and turns, loves and losses
that have taken up home below shivering skin,
mostly uninvited, like wild flowers in the garden, like weeds
we mistake to be worthy of their place till the thorns bear
their treachery,
but Mother,
amid the mayhem there are moments magic, there are babies
being heard with first breaths beating, there are skies
singing of the sunrise, there are still sunsets still sweeping
shores where lovers still linger, long after the first kiss,
there are words whispered on winds, glorious hymns
of hope and heroes and there is art, still filling walls
with light and life, there is music and there is, as always,
your smile
Mother,
life is a series of spirals, not just circles, for it elevates
on the turn, not just levitates, for I am back, again,
at the beginning, but frail are the things once thought
familiar in this once foreign land I fled and feared
never to return, in this land where nothing changes
while everything moves and the shadows I once knew
have up and vanished and grass is growing where once
there was concrete and concrete has crushed all
that was once green and grand and 40 is not as adventurous
as 20 but the questions still remain unanswered
so there is no turning back because, as I said,
the vines have entangled themselves around me,
in this garden I’ve grazed in, from a distance, for so long,
pulling across my chest, either aching or yearning,
they are drawing me down, down towards the ground,
down, at last, to regard the roots of where it all began,
so long ago, when I first dared to ask;

Mother,
Will we ever have all the answers?

All words by Damien B Donnelly

Main Photograph of Mum and I in her garden back in 22 July 2002 on her birthday.

ADA2EA65-BC8A-4681-AB0A-D9C9C7DDB242.jpg

And today, 22nd July 2019, still filling our garden with joy…

Happy Birthday Mum, Love Always

OVERTAKING

Today is the 2nd year anniversary of part 2 of my life in Paris. I moved here on July 17th 2015. I first moved here form Dublin when I was 22. At that point I knew as little about anyone in this city or the city itself as I did about myself. Two years later London called and I packed a few bags and moved. When Amsterdam called 6 years after that, the bags had become boxes and the identity of who I was, a little clearer. I’d already learned that you can’t hold on to everything, regardless of how hard you try. And then, almost 10 years later, I returned to the city that first captured my imagination and carved so much of itself into the lines now more visible on my features that I could barely distinguish the lines of the city and the lines of the self. Needless to say,  the bags were bigger this time and I don’t just mean the ones under my eyes. From 22 to a month away from 42, all now visible in the partially filled boxes around my feet. Somewhere within these collections, are hints at who I am on route to becoming, I guess…

 

Overtaking

Back to the boxes; finding things forgotten
in seams not yet sealed and finding no room
for other things since stuck with too much tape
that I cannot take any longer in this movement
along another midway, a mild change of track
through to midlife, making home at another station
amid the mayhem of the moment, making room
to make more moments that will momentarily
fill more boxes when another move meanders
my way. We are made of movements from major
to minor and back again; I am right, he has left,
she is nowhere and everywhere and not everyone
understands, they’ve turned back, I’ve carried on,
I can hold happy alongside these boxes; bruised
and battered but far from broken, I can hold it all,
I will hold all that has been left. Back to the boxes;
to the treasures I’ve taken to be true and the truths
that have lead me to the lies I’ve cast to the curbs
I have crawled over and then crossed off. I cannot
carefully wrap each and every delightfully deceptive
distraction that comes a calling, whether correctly
considered or coldly comfortless, I too was created
be cared for, I too need room to be made for me
without the waste of words, do I not deserve a space
to call my space within all space, within all this
fleeting space we are speeding through?

My next bed will spring from my liking as I plaster
my own skin with my own desires. I desire to be
distracted by dreams not too distant. I will not
be packed in a box like these belongings;
longing to be lifted to the light. I am too fond
of freedom to wait for life to find me. I am moving,
with boxes on my back and cartons crammed
into the cracks of my consciousness. I will not wait
for life to come to me; this is me, see me, overtaking it.

All words and pictures by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

 

DAWN CHORUS

 

I wonder did
Brontosaurus
give as much thought
to the dawn chorus
as we do

  
or was he happy
merely surviving,
not constantly deriving
illusions to fulfill
our own delusions of grandeur.

All words and photograph by Damien B. Donnelly

Based on a Twitter poetry prompt from #ShapePoetry

THE RISE AND FALL OF FORM

Day 23 National Poetry Writing Month #NaPoWriMo

Decades by four
and one year more
have tempered time
to twisting root
beneath this ever
changing shore.

Lands by four
and to one returned
as curious caught
upon my boot
my bags now tipped
with lessons learned.

Summer fires
have blazed this land
flames that fired
forbidden fruit
that etched their mark
upon this sand.

Kisses that sank
beneath the grains
while others I thought
to be absolute
now wait for time
to shift their stains.

The sun has often
turned to storm
hearts were hot
then tears dilute
as I break and fall
and rise through form.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

PARISIAN PROTECTION

 

And there stands
reassurance
right on front of me
at the exits of metros
still moving behind me,
where men,
always black men,
always banlieue,
who I recognise
from the streets
yesterday begging for bread,
now search
for bombs in bags
so Parisians feel more protected.
Really Paris,
is this your position
or are you just trying
to reduce the homeless
by placing then closer
to possible blasts
and kill two birds
with the one bomb?
Unarmed, untrained
and unexplained
boys looking for
booby traps
that would only
make them collapse
if they found one.
These gullible gangstas
are no MacGyvers.
Appearances, it seems,
in Paris are still everything
while the streets
stink with rubbish
hiding the homeless
from the tourists,
the jobless, non-nationals,
uninsurable non-entities,
at least the ones
you haven’t yet picked
to reassure commuters
that dangers are being derailed
before style trends board trains.

 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

YOU CANNOT SEPARATE EVERYTHING

 

We can see paradise
We can see poverty.
They live in the same place
paradise and poverty.
They are neighbours.
They are related.
They cannot exist
without each other.

We can feel happiness.
We can feel sadness.
They live in the same body
happy and sad.
They are connected.
They are family.
One would not exist
without the other.

We can touch black.
We can touch white.
They live in the same skin
black and white.
They are not neighbours.
They are not family.
You cannot separate
that which is the same.

We can feel straight.
We can feel gay.
They live on the same street
straight and gay.
They are brother.
They are sister.
They cannot have hope
without the others help.

We can hold love.
We can hold hate.
They shelter in the same heart
love and hate.
They feed on our feelings.
They fester on our fears.
We can hate to love
but should never love to hate.

We can hear music.
We can hear silence.
They live in the same instrument
music and silence.
They create harmony.
They share equality.
You cannot hear the music
without respecting the silence.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio Version available on Soundcloud:

IN THE LIGHT OF LIES

 

Behind the darkness,
before the morning wakes,
I reach for you, one last time
and accept all that must fall away
in the light of our lies and mistakes.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph: Light flooding the Hato Caves on the Dutch caribbean island of Curacao 

COLD CONDITIONING OF THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST

Screen Shot 2015-11-20 at 21.14.56

They were conditioning,
conditioning attempts,
attempting to
condition them
under their conditions 
with stimuli, using stimulus 
trying to stimulate
his scrotum,
shock his scrotum,
to shock him,
shocking, 
shocking stimuli
of scrotums on screens
Slide after slide 
Shocking slides,
shoving more shocks
with each scrotum
into scrotums,
they called it
a mental disorder
order dismantled
ordered treatments
aversion,
aversive treatments
treat, treating
treacherous torture,
some transplanted testicles
giving gays boys

straight balls
to beef them
better then
push them
from being pansies
into to eating pussies,
they called them psychos
labeled them under
Psychosocial maladjustment 
social adjustment needed
psychos shocking society,
shocked into submission
stitched out of condition
Converting conditions
Conditioned converting 
Electroconvulsive converters
Causing convulsions
correcting characters
hunting the homo from the man
and hailing the new hetero
shocked, stunned,
silenced, desensitised,
submissive under stimulus
sectioned by stimulus
in days where we’ve still
to gain distance,
when being different
required medical assistance.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly