Connection

BETTER THAN NOTHING

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

We ate horse, once, at a corner table
in a candlelit basement at Juuri’s-
everything difficult to distinguish,
in a trend filled restaurant
where I’d blagged us a table
with what you called my Irish charms
that your French ones lacked in buckets.
Earlier, we’d flown across the water
on a large ferry to a small island
where the wind blew everything off us
that was unnecessary as if Helsinki
was surgeon and we- patients
coming into the theatre of life
and learning what it takes to eat a horse
that we thought was a bear.
But nothing is ever what it appears,
under a flame or over the wave.
I sit now in another land,
at another table, lighting another candle
and seeing glimpses, in the flickering light
of who we were, of what we tasted
and what that wind swept off our shoulders
that we hadn’t even named.

We ate horse once, in a dimly lit basement,
all fantastic flesh without a single trace of fat
that we devoured while drawing tales
of more than 100 things we’d do together.
I think we possibly made it past 30.

 

All words and photographs. by Damien B Donnelly

BOUND

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

You draw my attention from pondering path
like thoughts collected in a well-worn carpet
and make me wonder, as with love and hate,
which came first- bark almost buried to blind
or the sweet lie of this lichen grown around
your years as if you where

the whole to its being, the breath to its lungs,
the furrow to its field, the ground to its grass,
the comfort to its carpet,

the last shout of its happiness.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

YOU

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

I hid
your name
in between a word,
I put this word into a line
crammed with so much content
where you’d disappear behind the syntax
and then, just in case, I tucked this line into a story
that unfolded over time into a tale that would tell of a book
that someone lost on a wrong beach while waiting for the right wave
to take them out to where there was nothing but the depth of that deep blue.
I hid you, in a word, in a line, in a story that told a tale in a book, I then placed you,

the
smallest
part
of
you

into a bigger whole, like I was reconstructing an onion, like I was resealing a Russian doll
inside all her bigger sisters and every now and then I steal moments while they sleep
and sink into a chair, into the book, behind the tale within the story until
I come across the line and reach around and find you there, still,
tucked in tight behind that word where I kept your name.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE PRICE OF BEING WILD

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Sometimes morning breaks
before the hold has found the frost.

We wake dizzy-
flung into field where dawn’s breath
corners all that has been fearless
but will soon fall to fragile-

breath becomes touch becomes dew becomes done

running down the blade of grass regardless
of how much it will cut.

Sometimes morning breaks
and I am off already, running

through the long grass, twisting around all that lies uncertain

I feel the blades stab skin
that has just been cradled.

Buds of blood come to cloth
like colour cast into cotton fields,
in this early light of twists and truths
they look like roses but come close

and see how quickly they slip down the side of each blade.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly.

 

Photograph from the wonderful Liz Cowburn at https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/

LENGTHS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Spring has left us shy.
We flirt like sheep- cute but clumsy,
forgetting what it was like to fold a summer
into forever. Words come but feel cumbersome-
you can only swallow so much of those ocean eyes
before drowning. Sheep don’t swim
and wool doesn’t do well in so much hot water.
Be careful with the laundry- no white flag yet in sight.
Spring has left us shy.
We never unfolded another summer to flock to the flirt.
You do or don’t- the tide isn’t ours to play with.
Sink, swim, shrink or drown. And I was never good
at lengths- length of time, length of hold,
length of hope.
Sheep need to be shepherded
or they lose their way. 

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

WHEN IT WAS THE TIME FOR GROWING OUT

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

We took the train, one day,
a Sunday that a photograph
suggests was set in summer,

I remember how the wind
wound whimsically round
the wilderness of our youth
as we watched waves crash
currents upon crushed cliff

as we came closer to watch
those tides slip out further,
pulling from us the laughter
we’d not learned to control

and carrying it on to places
we didn’t know to imagine,

each of us an island uncharted
yet to pin our point on a map.

Three cousins, coming closer
to the shore of those decisions
and a mother, watching us
laughing, learning, growing,

swimming and moving. Out.

IMG_8304  

All words and some of the photographs by Damien B Donnelly

AFDRUKKEN

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

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
you once housed that formed words, that gave way
to structured sentences that someone then pressed
and printed and someone else, sitting far away,
read and wondered

or does it all fall away, natuurlijk

when we ourselves slip from the canal that held
a barge, that housed a home where a letter press
rested against the port wall and I wondered
what it once held.

Weet je? Natuurlijk niet!

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE FURNITURE MAKERS

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

We build things- built things-
like shower rails and kitchen lights,
Keto dishes that died in the oven,
theories on converting Korea into forever
and not just a 3-week diversion from dysphoria.
Kisses, we built kisses out of thin air
and laughter, laughter we built as if
it was all we needed to feed our day.
I was the funny one and you laughed
at times like you’d never laughed before.
Sometimes we built bridges
to cross divides we didn’t always understand,
sometimes we built boats but forgot the oars.
Sometimes we built temporary positions
around sofas and shallow shows to balance
the shit we didn’t have the correct tools
to deal with.
Once, we built a language
to lock ourselves into while on the outside
where it could be cold and cutting and callous.
Sometimes we built walls
for the other to climb over-
sometimes we liked to test the other-
to tease, to taunt, to attract, to test
the recoil of the elastic.
We build things- we built things-
like shower rails and silly meals and signs
and languages and kisses to complete
and sometimes we built walls
though, in the end,
one was too high to get back over.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Photo from an art installation in Jeju, South Korea

BEFORE THE STILLNESS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I sit, in stilled space,
trusting time and these proses
to act as forgivers
to all I cannot forget. I sit here,
in this stilled space,
taking trips that tease time with twists
and turns. I move not
in straight lines but articulate thought
through the acts
these tracks have taken, the un-regrettable
mistakes that brought me here
where I sit, in stillness,
in a space, not always my place,
a space grown damp since first stone
was first set
into place by hands I never knew, hands
ground down now
to nothing more than bone,
just like my bones
that will one day come to know the dampness
of all that has surrendered
its forgiveness to all that was not forgotten,
when the final lines
have been laid and I forgive time itself
for the finality of its stillness.

I sit and come to trust.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

WHAT LIES IN THE VALLEY

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Truth, lies, tall tales spread across the canyon
of our sighs. My hope, your hurt, my side,
your silence, nothing is distinguishable in this void,
I cannot even identity any let up from the winter
of this valley where the wind winds its way around
the silent subtleties of how you express your hurt
and how I hold my hope- foolishly, foolish, fool
or fooled. We are both breakable and some parts
dissolvable while riding horseback across this canyon
whose cracks are cavernous, two cowboys believing
more in disguise, in the delusions and so we sweep
into such deluge. Somewhere, in between this valley,
somewhere, down below this wind, still tangible,
there is a bridge that crosses the truth of our lies,
bashful and broken. But we don’t want to find it

anymore.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly