SOMETHING MORE

26/02/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

If I asked you
would you sever the skin
from your body
layer by layer
and blanket me
in your living flesh?

Maybe the nights would feel warmer.

If I asked you
would you bleed the blood
from your body
value from veins
and feed me
with the liquor that lives in you?

Maybe the pain would taste different.

If I asked you
would you ease your eyes
from your body
sight from sockets
so I that maybe
I could understand your vision?

Maybe the emptiness would look like less

and less
endless
the end of less and less.

I never asked you
but you fucked me over
anyway

to pleasure your flesh
to boil your blood
to darken your eyes

I never asked you!

Maybe
I should have asked
for something more!

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/something-more

PARTICLES

22/01/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

Particles of what once was
whisper on the wind
Hush and listen!
See it dance in the light
faint though familiar
fragile but fading

As if to say goodbye
particles of what once was
caress my cheek
stop and feel it
as they catch the wind
and like wings take flight
and darker falls the night

To shine on other sands
to rain down on other skins
hear it falling
while on mine, I see lines,
indelible lines etched over time
the precious particles of what once was…

All Words and Photographs by Dami en B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

DOWN THE DRAIN

06/11/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

My body

my body has a memory
my body has a memory of you
my body has a memory of your skin.

My body

my body remembers
my body remembers how it bent
my body remembers how it bent to your beckoning.

And yet

my mind
my mind has washed itself
my mind has washed itself of your name

like it were no more than scum
to be scrubbed.

All Words by Damien B. Donnelly

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

03/10/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Remember when we spun promises
on golden threads,
as if they were webs,
as if they could catch us
falling,
as if we ourselves
were promises spinning,
forms of filigree
laying silken lines
on subtle skins
like veins entwined;
limbs on lust
and fingers on flesh
to feverishly fondle.

Remember when your breath
was my everything,
as if you were oxygen
and I the earth, starving,
falling
through that fragile filigree
of lace
catching light,
catching crocheted kisses
that swept over us
and blotted out
the existence
of the rising storms
in the distance.

Remember when things got tricky
as the web wound its way
to sticky,
as it wove through our wants
and we turned
from spinning spiders,
spinning promises,
into fooled flies
trapped in the tight twists
that staggered and strangled,
the web now trapping us
instead of catching us
in the failing filigree
through which we fell,
no longer spinning,
no longer
falling.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE CURRENT OF CREAMY COFFEE

28/09/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

I sink beneath your skin
like sea
sweeping over sand,
you, a thousand grains
glistening
while I wash over you
in warm waves,
your salty sweat

sweet

below my current.

I slip between your lips
like cream
coming into coffee,
our senses fired
like frothed fluid
as we pound passion
into fragile
flesh

once fresh,
now feverish,
once timid,

now tasted

once begun,
we can never go back

You are now the sea
and I the sand,
upon your back,

I am now the coffee
and you have taken

to the cream.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

LIGHT IS TOO LIGHT

03/09/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Light leaks
like water
dripping from the faucet

You called me baby
before you really knew me
and stopped calling
at all, afterwards

Drip…
Drip…
Nothing.

Light lingers
in quite corners
like memories that refuse to flicker,
not acknowledging
that the night
has fallen.

We pour over each other
like liquid
on a perched desert,
sucking sustenance from substance,
leaching life
from any length

Dryer…
Dryer…
Death.

I dived deep down
to the bottom
and found only a drought
drowning on the ocean floor.

Were you the desert
or the drought?

Was I the ocean
or merely drowning?

Bubble…
Bubble…
Nothing.

Light lifts
the illusions
we sleep upon
beneath the darkness,
when everything is possible
and no one ever parts.

i am not one part us,
i am not one part you,
i am not one or the other,
I am the I that was your baby.

Remember?

I was light, you said
in the midst of so much weight
but you remained
light on love
regardless.

Light leaks
like dripping water from a faucet

Drip…
Drip…

onto the broken plates
and half eaten hopes
that cannot be either
washed or erased.

Light
is too light
to lift the stains
from the remains
of what began with the words

I want to drown in your eyes…

Light frequently floods
the flaccid lies we feed ourselves
just so we can get from day to night.

All Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

DAWN II

19/08/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 22 Comments

Another dawn… They keep coming!

This is my second attempt at a ghazal for Jane Dougherty’s challenge:

https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/poetry-challenge-44-ghazal/

My first attempt fell toward folly rather than regarding the principles of form so I’m back again, same picture, same theme, leaning more on the rules this time- I think.

So a Ghazal is a love poem, made up of a collection of uneven couplets with a refrain at the end of each couplet, although the first and second lines rhyme too! The refrain should be no more than 1 to 3 words- I accept that I have a refrain of 4! I am a deviant! What can I say!

Along with this, which I completely missed on my first attempt, there is another rhyme which immediately proceeds each refrain making an internal rhyme! Good lord!

Now, come on everyone, give it a try and, if you fall like me, keep trying like me too! Remember it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
My first attempt was penned in a Paris airport, this second attempt at home in Dublin, maybe my Irish ancestors will accelerate success…

Dawn. A Ghazal

I saw her lean into the light
saw Ushas try to still the night,

though she art Dawn, for two she slew,
a sorrowed sigh to still the night,

for fell thee fair, thou rarest gift
a kiss come by to still the night,

yet we no more than passing ships
must beg or buy to still the night,

but Time, born but to bitter brood,
would not comply to still the night,

so, rise dear Dawn, adieu sweet Love,
I make to die, too still the night.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

DAWN ARRIVED

18/08/201616/03/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

And so light leaned in as we had done
though not for fever, though not for fun,

although we had found and we had felt
that rarest gift which cannot be shun;

on one fair night a love alighted
when two from far took their breath as one,

yet Time, being so when love slips in,
seeks all connections to come undone,

when the dawn arrived, shrouded in shame,
born to tear apart what had begun,

she pleaded with the light unfolding
but hearts lost hold for the day had won.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

A TRILUNE; THREE MOONS

14/08/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 15 Comments

This poem is in response to Jane Dougherty’s Trilune challenge from http://www.janedougherty.wordpress.com. So check out her beautiful blog and join in…

A trilune is a poem of three stanzas of three lines of 3×3 syllables each (that’s 9 in case you were wondering), circling a central theme. The rhyme is on the third line of each stanza so you get a pattern of abc dec fgc.

Here’s my attempt:

One man promised to catch her the moon
to pull it down from the sky at night
but she feared that the stars would then die.

One man told her he’d buy her the moon
that money was never a problem
but she found out that this was a lie.

The last man never spoke of the moon
but held her as if she were the stars
so to him she never said goodbye.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/three-moons-a-trilune