All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly, in Headford, Co Mayo, with thanks to Aisling and David for the delights of this dusk
Wordless Wednesday; Blues in the Night
colour
PAINTING PARADISE WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S COLOURS
We painted walls into the paradise we wanted
before I learned colour had its limits. Borders
had been beaten into our canvas long before
I touched the brush with borrowed thoughts.
We painted orange coloured stars and wild hopes
onto concrete walls and I trembled as she told me
the parrots, perfectly positioned in stuffed stillness,
pranced on their perches while I slipped to dream.
We’re taught what is truth, as children, not told
to truly think. He was tipped in black with no name,
a night sky forgotten by the moonlight and we-
impressionists, desireless to be outlined in darkness.
Children not the creators of fact but the little sheep
who come to submit to the not-so-subtle suggestions.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
WORDLESS WEDNESDAY- DELICATE DETAILS
All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
FINDING THE RIGHT COLOUR TO PAINT HOPE
Silly things
sabotaged for the case of creativity-
barren bark
becomes blank canvas
becomes blue
becomes oceanic
becomes bewitching monster of humour
and not hurt.
This is the crisis
of clearing out,
not shelving all that will come to know stale,
but for shedding.
Sheds are no longer for the simplicity of storage
but the new distributers
of distraction.
This is no hoax,
no harm, no hostage
but a painting of honour, perhaps
for all that’s been felled-
for all that we’ve cut down
and for all the rest-
that’s been taken from us
in these days
where we’ve slipped from being held
to a slim holding of hope,
to painting bare bark in the back garden
in order to smile.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
BRUSHING IT AWAY
Blue sky growing old,
sun sets into dusty pinks-
a hark for tomorrow
for today cannot be harboured any longer.
In this slow field
surrounded still by stilled life,
still the trees grow,
even daisies have returned after the mower’s menace
last Monday.
Single crow comes
to gather seeds
from once shadowed sections
of the garden I have only now revealed to the light.
Evening’s air is kissed
with today’s stagnation
but the sea is sweeping the shore
at the far end of the near lane where that dog barks next to buttery bush
that cannot concede its connection to the coconut.
And there, on the rock
once integral to the land,
I picture a mermaid, sitting,
combing the tide through her auburn hair in the hope that the current
can wash away the chaos
still carrying on
beneath the dusty pinks
of this ageing sky.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
BETWEEN THE SEAMS
We came for the cows-
sleek shiny skins to sew into seams and cents
but were caught in a contradistinctive cacophony-
silk sarees, careering through merging traffic
in colours more complex than considerations of the constellation,
on the backs of mopeds, motorbikes, motorcars, broken cars,
cars piled on top of cars, twisting and turning like my thoughts,
like shiny spun threads speeding through calescent carriageways
sweltering under the hustle of the crowd’s bustle,
horns and humans honking along the raw edges of overrun roadsides.
Curious eyes casting assumptions on the stiches I’d unpicked-
trying to see how they held it all together. Eyes smiling, seeing,
wondering on why I’d come and what I’d take away.
We’d come for the cows-
but slipped like silk over skin into the smooth symphony
of those streets where wild cows were prized idols
wandering freely through the masses, noting nothing
of our search for their hides that had slipped from being seductive
into being sacred, again. In the height of this mercurial madness,
a man, blind to all light, weaved his way through the carnival
like the weft goes through the warp, three sheep by his side
as if they’d always been with him- the silken worms to his weave
and I wondered, then, who was leading who;
the man, the sheep, this car or me.
Into every baste stitch, hand-made,
in Meluhha’s lining, was hidden a fine canvas
where letters spelling out the concept of freedom had been placed,
sealed beneath from the politics and the poverty, they’d sewn smiles
into each seam and it was I, in branded costume, who looked the fool-
traveling through, taking it in, thinking I was better off amid my laws
and rules and beds and baths and running water and walled in farms
that kept cows in containers too condensed to come close
to any considering of the constellation.
We came for the cows-
but discovered that this was no place
to search for that something sleekly-
for this was a city too silky for the stains of my synthetic skins.
Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
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 home appeared again, on the horizon.
(Vreemd, of misschien niet).
Later, decked in a fur coat of fine snowflakes
that clung to your form while they melted
off mine, you appeared as blank canvas
before a river to skate away on, like she sang,
once, in a city that was not this one. Funny,
what sinks in and what drowns, even light
can fade into the wrong water, even water
can remain on solid structures as icicles.
Some things cling on while others slip away.
(Vreemd, of misschien niet).
Round that red bricked bridge we rode,
a decade of being Dutch, (how long?
Ik weet het- vreemd, toch?), thinking
I was only stranger and the road my home,
but those were the days when the wheels
spun in circles around canals that turned
back on themselves. Maybe that’s how
we learn to come home- spinning in circles,
on roundabouts or her carousel of seasons
that went round and round.
She was called Éireann, even in Holland.
Maybe the answers to all I was looking for
were already there in her name.
Misschien wel!
Maybe some things take a cycle to sink in.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
WHEN THINGS EVENTUALLY GIVE WAY
We were waiting for the green man beneath the blue sky,
waiting on an open corner to cross over, do you remember?
A simple day of smiling sunshine, an easy lunch of eating
smiles and we were laughing, were laughing at everything
and nothing- at the osteopath and his cracking observations
and the sunshine in that blue sly and your belly getting bigger.
You were listening to me, looking at me telling some tale,
making it taller, I’m sure, but you didn’t see I was floating-
my feet off the ground on that silly day, on that sunny day
of simplistic observations on easy corners with their moments
and movements when I found myself laughing and my feet
no longer weighted- no longer ground down or in or under.
We were bouncy and breathy and your belly- unbreakable,
so delicately unbreakable beneath the blue sky at a crossing
while eating up those bright smiles and breathing in easy air
under all that yellow laughter and realising that the red man,
when given time, will eventually give way to the green.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
PAINTING
On comes the light
and I reach out for the taste of morning
in an orange orchid that unfolds a sash of summer’s stock
to tie its threads around the ears of anxious.
On comes the morning
and I stretch emerald strokes onto a light canvas
pulled out across grouchy grasses that cannot see hope
glimmering in far off fields.
On comes the light
and I strike rainbows into shivering streams
that take dreams off to open oceans where the breaths bays
just above the surface, waiting for us to dive back in, to the light.
All words and water colour painting by Damien B. Donnelly
Based on a Poetry Prompt from Cobh Readers and Writers on Twitter
ART ISN’T EASY
Colour
catches on canvas as we lean towards light,
a beam to break the boredom like a breath
above the water after diving up from darkness,
ripples run across the current,
ink spreads out like veins upon this page;
art isn’t easy, breathing isn’t any better-
both come up from down below,
rise through risk into life, into looking lively.
The texture of the wave is as temperamental
as the tone that sets itself out upon the page.
I dab the brush, horse hair taps connections
and colour comes at a gallop. It is clear-
control is not concerned with the creator.
This body needs air, runs broken, breathless-
breath and then less and less and less
and sometimes, sometimes I need to turn back
and teach the lungs how to draw. In.
Ink dries and petals stand, enchanting time
with their dismission of the word wilt.
Colour catches on canvas, clear and captured
and I lean in with the hope of drawing fresh
breath before the dive recalls me to paint
panic.
All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly
Damien B. Donnelly 