brave

THE MOON, 3 POEMS

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1

The Depth under the Moon

Moonlight
melts
languidly
on liquid lakes

like suds on dishes
like snow on windows

like thicker skin over age-old scars.

Moonlight
floats
momentarily
on rippling reflections

like the tingle after kisses
like the scent after sex

like the pain after parting.

Moonlight
flirts on the water

to divine
whether the depth

is worth the dive.

2

The Garden of the Moon

There is a shadow,
like a dream too delirious
to light with language,
whispering more of what swam away
than smears this still water
I trudge through
below a bitter moon
that’s made his garden
in this breast of man.

3

Being Bold

Beauty is raw
beneath this blood red sky
where we lie delirious,
licking at lazy, drunken ships
trudging through bitter beds,
frantic to find our way to smoother seas.
‘Man is but a whisper,’ the Shadows
sing to the Sun but I
want to milk the storm
before my summer sinks
beneath the shade.
The moon cannot be the only light
to cast its reflection upon these waters.
Surely we too can be as bright
as the night.

Beauty is raw
but bold can be breath-taking.

 

All poems by Damien B Donnelly

Painting entitled Clair de Lune, Pornic by Alexei Bogoliubov,  photographed at La Lune Exhibition, Grand Palais, Paris, 2019

 

All poems are older poems I am re posting.

DUALITY for Poetry Day Ireland

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It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This years theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Duality

And here is where we battle the truth;
east or west, the sun’s heat or the moon
that spies on our rest.
And here is where our paths divide;
the war to be won or the human
we are fighting to become.
And here the Indian draws the honour;
mild man stands in the boar’s breath
with integrity in hands.
And there in the east with helmet high;
fearless fighter bares the beast and blunders
into battle as bloody blighter.
Are we then of both moon and sun;
tied tightly to burning planet and that eye
watching nightly?
Can we be honest behind the armour;
can the blood we gorged be erased
by a single flood?
Can we be both brave and beast,
can we cry for the famine and still eat
at the feast?

Are we not confusions
caught between the confines,
are we not stars burning bright like the sun
but in the falling night?

Are we born to be beasts or born to brave the beast?

Let us be wild boars;

fearless in the face of our foe,
gregarious in our greed to grow.

   

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

SCARLET RISING

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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.

Eat the storms, Mother said,
but I didn’t hear it, at first.

It takes time to swallow the truth
and teach the tongue
to taste the refreshment of the rain.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Poem for Day 5 of National Poetry Writing Month