BOOKENDS; KISSED BY SOMEONE ELSE’S KING AT CHRISTMAS

25/11/201930/10/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

Lights danced on shivering trees dressed
in a blanket of snow while a tale was told

of a boy, born to be king, to never know choice.

I kissed Christmas in someone else’s shadow
and we whispered in the absence of his voice.

I dreamt of a crib where a kid had kept faith
for a while, as a child, while you watched me

sleeping, naked on a bed still fresh from his folds.

You wished for us longer than a festive fumbling
of flesh in the emptiness of his ephemeral flight

but our fate was like my faith; not as tightly nailed
to a cross as the kid who was crucified as a king.

I waked away from the tinsel toe and your touch

and left you

to smooth out the stains we screwed upon his folds.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This month is about looking back at Paris to acknowledge all that has slipped away, like the lips once kissed, the snowflakes since melted and the faith, since fallen. As a kid I wanted to believe in Santa for longer than my age allowed because I didn’t want to let the magic end, I grew up in the church and tried so hard to see the truth in what I was being taught that it took a long time to see how closely they were wrapped in lies. When I first came to Paris at 22, I had my first kiss on Christmas night. I was alone and living in a hotel and everyone I knew had gone back to Ireland and I wanted to find the magic again, even if it came in the form of three nights in the arms of a man who wasn’t mine, who was lonely because his boyfriend had gone off to see his family for the holidays.

Sometimes we try to find the magic wherever we can and do our best to ignore faith, fate, the fates or the folds we didn’t make.

A SLIP AWAY FROM BLUE

12/10/201912/10/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Eyes a slip of grey from blue in a city not known as home,
on a mountainside to shelter a temple,
she is as welcome as the wind is warm,
she was there before us and we were caught before we knew it.

She carves life, carefully, like the Buddha etched into stone,
the chisel is the compliment to the rock and not the ruin,
an outer expression of inner contentment,
a monastic monk on a meditative mountain and I fall
between the stillness that rests behind each word.

Did her mouth smile
or just her eyes that shade of grey a brush away from blue
as she takes us to her temporary temple of wood and wonder
and shares with us a simple feast on a sweltering day
a treat along the trail, a rest upon the journey,
a moment to bear witness; not to be greater than the Buddha,
not to rise higher but to reflect on what we can become.

We climb over rock and broken earth,
diverge through dead ends that still deliver more light than loss,
we thirst and tire and then take in another treat; another temple, another tree,
a smile from the locals who look and laugh
and wonder why we came and what we will take back.

We travel on and place our tired feet into holds others once held to
as we witness wonders so many others may never see.
We have sat and shared joy like food, laughter like it was love
and coffee like it was an elixir to let us in on the light that lingers over life
and the eyes of the gentle light from Lithuania,
a slip of grey from a sea of blue
seeing the simple synchronicity in all that is true.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s theme is South Korea and recalling the travels though it and the faces found along the way.

FANTASTIC FLUTTERINGS

21/09/201916/09/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

On dull days
when the sun
absconds from sky,
when grey grinds
gloom into gutters
and mothers utter
‘stay inside’,
children’s minds
flutter to unfold
like umbrellas opening;
colours cascading
over concrete clutter
like candy to calm
a calamity.

In the midst
of the mundane
and the murky,
inspiration catches
on the canvas of creation
like wings willing
to cut through clouds
and gain the grace
of the sun.

Children’s minds,
so magnificent,
hold matter so magical
that ordinary moments
can become such
extraordinary miracles.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repot for a week of colourful imagination.

COLOURS IN THOUGHT

18/09/201916/09/2019 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Colours flap in the wind, colours catch
the feeling of freedom at daybreak
like thoughts taking flight in dreams
under blankets, mounding over molecules,
making matter meaningful. Dawn’s dew
delights in seeds now stirring under soil
just as stars shine significance on a mind,
on a pillow, at play. There is movement
beyond the trees and the run of the riverbed
if you can catch it. There is movement
in the dreamer beneath the blankets
and the shuttered eyes if you can wake it
to the colour, to the moment of possibility
in flight…

like colour on concrete,
like a bare bench in the waiting park,
like trees attending to shooting buds,
like a river of thought that cannot be abated.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of colourful imagination. Photo from Ile Saint Germain, Paris.

WILLING TO BE WONKA

16/09/201916/09/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

Up and through, through colour to brighter,
better, perhaps. I’m next, she says, up
and over, following underfoot the man
with the hat who’s had enough. Off with hats,
top hats and hard hats, happy heads float
through colour, dissolve, he says, into columns
of colour, preconceptions passing now,
no longer cornered by constricting contraptions,
sink into that which was once solid, release
the routine with the briefcase, the blindness
and the budget and slip swiftly into a world
of hope on a wall, on a roof, there is no ceiling,
no limit, imagination has no holding in flat,
in all that seems futile, gone are the grey days,
grey ways, grey suits that ground down, freedom
is but a jump up, sideways, over and under,
this is just a waiting room, close your eyes, feel
the weight shift, slip, feel the worry ware away
between suggestions someone else has painted
on that which was once static, which was once
only a support, imagination is a jump up
and through, pink can be your sky if you rise
above those who tell you it’s blue, the sea can be
your heaven if you can get through the clouds.
Up and through, through all that binds you, bonds
are only walls waiting to be splashed with colour.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of colourful imagination. Street art from Parc Belleville, Paris.

BLACK THREADS

26/04/201926/04/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 22 Comments

Worthy.
Are we worthy? Are you?
I am not worthy to receive you.
I am not worthy.

These are not the words
of any wizard, of any wonder,
of any wonderful god.

Wonderful does not whip us with worthless.
Wonderful does not teach worthless words.

Worthy.
I am not worthy…
These are the words of men
dressed in robes; black threads
woven over winged capes (not that dark knight bearing light)
not dressed as plain men,
preachers married to invisible faiths,
not married to people,
not knowing true love
or what remains after its loss.

Worthy.
Are we worthy, Are you?
Lord, they are not worthy
to speak for me, not in my name
and not, either, in yours.

Worthy.
Were they not worthy,
those wards your black winged women
washed away in the water?
Where is the worth in the world?
I thought laundries
were meant to clean clothes
not suffocate babies in sewers
beneath the shadows.
Was it worth it?
All that worry washed away with the waste.

Worthy?
Lord, here is my worth.
I place it, next to their judgement,
by your feet
and you can decide what has worth
and whose words are worthless
as I reteach myself the value of that single word
in this complicated world,
as I build my own words to be a witness
to losing the less and seeing the more,
I will be my own critic
keeping the Christian and shaking the ‘anity’
that lingers too close to insanity.

Worthy.
I hear only the devil in my head
whispering of worthless.
Surely the right man should be brighter,
lighter?

Worthy.
Here is my worth…

thread carefully upon it,
not like the prints the pious
already pressed into it
from their proud position
behind the pulpit.

I live in the wild world, not privy to any protection.

Worthy.
Are they worthy to receive me?
I profess this belief, to you.
Alone.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

26th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

ORANGE COLOURED SKIRTS

10/04/201907/04/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 17 Comments

‘And there can be days like this,’
and the boy smiled and sausages
swam past him in shorts and shades
and in the sky dogs with Madonna mikes
flew over kittens in orange coloured skirts
and Beyoncé in their boogie.
‘And there can be days like this,’
his mother said as she painted
pictures of cows in caps and snakes
in sarongs shopping in stores
for shoes to put on. ‘Put on what,’
he asked, ‘they have no feet?’
‘But still,’ she carried on,
‘there can be days like this
all wonder and magic.’
‘But how,’ he asked as he sat
on her bed, as the machine
kept beeping, as the white coats
kept creeping, ‘just close your eyes
and see with your heart
what your sight can no longer see.’

There can be days like this.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Poem for Day 10 of National Poetry Writing Month

SCARLET RISING

05/04/201905/04/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Eat the storms, Mother said,
boil these beds of bitter blackness
until the dream rips through the rain
and translucent turns to trust,
even a diamond must ache
in the darkness until compression
can no longer compound its shine.
Eat the storms, Mother said,
slip the shivering skin out
under shimmering sky until touch
recalls the sweet music of scarlet rising
caught below the lick of leaf lost
to the shadow of the shade,
even the petal must rise above the thorn
before its fragility can dance in the light.