AMSTERDAM – Deuxiemepeau Poetry by Damien B. Donnelly

TYPES OF DOLLS

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 […]

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VREEMD OF MISSCHIEN NIET (STRANGE OR MAYBE NOT)

She was called Éireann, even in Holland, (misschien vreemd, ik weet het) though she was greener than I ever was, back then, with the mud of the land still caked into her guards while I was off and running, ever forward, adding guards to my guards till I saw the earth was round when […]

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SOME THINGS ARE NONSENSE AND FOR ALL ELSE THERE ARE DISTRACTIONS

I was tall, when I was a small child, but stopped later, somewhere in between adolescence and giraffe. A giraffe would be impossible to sit behind at the cinema. In the cinema, in Amsterdam, people talked like it was a cafe with an incredibly large background TV and didn’t seem to nonsense from the […]

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AFDRUKKEN

I found you in Amsterdam, weet je nog? Natuurlijk! Somewhere on the Overtoom, in the summer of my slow 30’s when home was a broad barge on a narrow gracht. Lijnsbaansgracht it was. Weet je nog? Natuurlijk! I wonder how deep the things we’ve held are carved into our core- like all those letters […]

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WORDLESS WEDNESDAY; IK BEN JE NIET VERGETEN

All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

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TIPS FOR CLEANING UP

I saw a jellyfish once, just beyond the tide, a tick away from time’s reach where it couldn’t sting. On the same beach, once, though years later, as we dipped our desires below the moonlight, I lost your ring. A week later I found your sting was laying in other beds. I thought love […]

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WATER FLAMES

We moved, once, and habitual was your foot to my follow, in debt my blush to your concern like we were the oxygen of the other, at either ends of the water. We swam, once, to the other, in crossed currents, in avoidance of those cold-blooded fish dipping their blond hairs into clotted canals […]

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WORDLESS WEDNESDAY; HELLO HOLLAND

All photographs by Damien B Donnelly Today we are recalling the colours of my previous home town as yesterday a Dutch shipping company came along to move my belongings from my 5th floor/no-lift Paris apartment and start directing them towards Dublin. One Dutch man, one flams man, and me, the irishman, in Paris, speaking […]

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WORDLESS WEDNESDAY part 1, CATCH THE COLOUR

Colour caught on the lens… All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

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WORDLESS WEDNESDAY; ONDER DE VOLKEN, UNDER THE CLOUDS, THE NETHERLANDS

All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. All photographs taken in the Netherlands.