Connection

CATCHING THE RECALL

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

They come and go,
playing tag with the tide,
swimming in to touch
but the ocean is an elastic

to recall.

We came here once,
a love of youth’s illusions,
dipping our skinnies
before I lost you on a breath

without recall.

It comes and goes;
that tide, his touch, this time,
so many currents
congregating under clouds

that can’t be caught.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE WHOLE

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Remembering Nana Frances on Nollaig na mban (Women’s Little Christmas)

Evolution 13. The Whole

My grandmother, whose name was Frances and not Nana
as I used to think, started baking cakes for Sunday’s tea
on a Monday morning, slow and steady was her process
like her concentration while waiting for pennies to drop
from slot machines on summer Sundays after train rides
all the way from Lusk to Bray. She was never that tall
but grew down towards us all so she could slip treats
into pockets or kisses onto cheeks. She married Pop,
whose name, I later discovered, was actually Bernard,
but I never remember them together, he died before
I started collecting memories of her comfortable cardigans
and flat feet and that coat she kept for Sunday mass
and the soft evening light pouring in through the narrow
window as she sat by the table ironing my underwear
of an evening, the same table we crowded round on Sundays
for her high tea when we’d devour the cakes she’d started
to prepare for us on Mondays, in her kitchen, at the back,
off the station road in the countryside she hated at first
until she met Bernard and never left. Frances and Bernard.

Nana and Pop. Nana who I knew better and longer,
Nana who we buried with a bottle of Tweed perfume
in her coffin because that was her smell though I recall
more the fresh bread from the oven, in the morning,
as she sat on her stool in the kitchen, waiting and watching
things coming and going. It’s not the finished product
but the collection of ingredients that makes up the whole.

 

All words by Damien B Donnelly 

WHEN WHITE FALLS BLUE

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Snow falls and the darkness drowns in silence,
a hush from the heavens falling, so slowly,
even crystals cry. Are these the tears
of angels weeping who’ve watched us, falling,
like this slow snow, like their tears, trembling?

Snow falls and there’s a stillness and still
all this silence between us. Bruises covered
in this cold cotton candy coating of fragility,
every day more freezing, more frozen,
just not enough to numb. Snow falls
and all paths disappear, I thought our tracks
ran deeper, like this winter, like this weight,
like this waiting, behind the window, behind
this glass I can’t see through, beyond the storm
falling, slowly. Snow falls and the sorrow
slips in, cold where there used to be comfort.

What happens to my tears, who will watch them
with wonderment like I look out now at the snow,
slowly falling, and think of angels?

Wasn’t I once your angel?

Are you watching at some slow distance
as these snowflakes cover my confusion?

In time, this too shall melt and be no more than memory,
even snowflakes fall for but a season. Snow,
falling, slow. Already wishing it was spring.

Even white is blue in the falling light.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE THAW

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Blue is the breath,
blue is the earth, morning, early,
the sky a clean canvas of white and the earth; blue,

a bed of frozen blues born from dawn’s breath,

a blanket of freshly fallen slow snow,
trembling along the hairs of the land, caught
in the calm before the crunch, before the footprints
mould into mud all that is now a myriad of mystery.

There is beauty in blue,
there can be beauty in being broken,
in time being frozen, in the breath baying.

I twist and tremble between these sheets
still fresh upon these old shadows, still crisp
over this drying skin. I twist and tremble through this season
to be unsure, falling into blue, into time, time is frozen

along with all that is born in this bed,
a blanket of fallen findings; some things
I thought to be more, some things
I hoped to mean less,

like loss; less loss,
less time, less breath, more blue,
the mystery is already moulding into mud.

Blue is the breath and slow,
soft as the early morning snow
so slow, awaiting nothing more than
the affirmation of an approaching melt.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

 

EARLY AUTUMN

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

The sky is burning,

the last light eclipsed by the night
and we stop and stare like fools at its blaze,
not seeing within this gaze possibility falling
though our hands like snowflakes in a season
that has kept captive the summer.

The sky is burning

while we travel in taxis, all of us
back-seat partakers being driven down roads
we know not where they lead as our minds run
tattered threads along all the tracks we wanted to press
with our own print but we cannot choose a direction
like a snowflake cannot control its pattern.

The sky is burning
with a fine filigree of fire and ice,
with thoughts we try to catch hold of but flames
are ever changing as no snowflake is ever the same
and we take hold of other dreams others dreamt of
in other beds, under other skies blazing
through futile snowstorms and we melt,

like a snowflake
in the dry heat of an early autumn.

 

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

BOOKENDS; ALL THE WATER CARRIES OFF WITH IT

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

There will always be a part of me
standing by the water’s edge,
watching how much of us
got washed away and wondering

how much more sunk so deep
below the surface that it is now
a captive more to your careful concrete
than that ever coldly cutting current.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

This has been a month of saying goodbye to Living with Paris in order to move on. And so Stephen Sondheim comes to mind and the lyrics of the song Move On from the musical Sunday in the Park with George, based on Georges Seurat…

‘Stop worrying where you’re going, move on…
look at what you want, not at where you are,
not at what you’ll be…

I want to move on, I want to explore the light
I want to know how to get through, through to something new,
something of my own, move on…’

 

Here’s to getting through to the light and the newness and moving on. See you all on the other side… 

Dami xx

BOOKENDS; TO DARE TO REMEMBER

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

Do you remember Paris on occasions when spring sweeps in
with its breath of those lost days, in that other life, before
we knew London together or what it would be like to part?

Do you, do you remember Paris, my little room, our lithe love
and the plans we painted onto canvases of comfort at night,
in a single bed, in a corner, before I lost my way and we lost us?

Those lazy days of hazy light that fell to nights at a water castle,
the name-deceptive metro, where kisses took us on to the dawn.

Do you remember the first spring of our song, how it warmed
its way into a summer of sipping wine by the old, new bridge
before we’d slumber in the shade, in the park, below that bridge,
on the first site of the city, while the waters ran away with time.

Remember the rainstorm, that Sunday morning, birds near broken,
I find it funny how I missed any warning in their fluttering?

Do you remember catching colour amid the concrete of la Jatte,
in the shadow of Seurat, on a Sunday morning, still sleeping,
when we stopped to make connections between balance and breath.

You sang of the dots within the water and the sky, on that ordinary day,
in a summer of simple, on a stroll on a Sunday, along an isolated island,
in a city where everything ordinary was suddenly so extraordinary.

Do you remember that silly single bed in the corner; I always woke up
stuck to the wall. The sofa, the table and the sunflowers of plastic;

so not what you’d imagined at all.

Do you dare to venture to those times departed, when not a minute
suggested what time would design or all that we’d have to let go?

Remember Paris, remember you,
remember me,

remember us.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

We had met one night in Dublin, when I was still living in Paris, an Englishman putting on Les Miserables in my hometown while I was walking on the footsteps of Val Jean and the pretty ladies and the gang. We explored every inch of Paris and its musicality until I moved over to London and we learned how to get to know each other. We didn’t find forever but we will always have Paris.

 

BOOKENDS; TO BE CAST IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN CONCRETE

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Would he cry now for the concrete
that has taken root in reality,
this was never what inspired his impression.

I shiver sometimes when I slip to the edge of this shore
where George saw more in suggestion
and Stephen gave names to the dots.

Balance and harmony are hopes, not foundations
but you wanted me to lay down in all you had built
before you even knew my name.

We are all artists; drawing, singing, writing,
directing, searching for our spotlight on the stage

or along the shore.

You wanted us to be a monument but I knew
the concrete would crush my concern for creation.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Georges Seurat painted on Sundays in 1884 on Ile de la Grande Jatte, an island on the edge of Paris. Before I left Paris in 1999, my boyfriend would come over from London on weekends where we would walk along this island looking for the light and balance Georges had painted in dots onto his canvas, while humming the tunes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George.

BOOKENDS; THIERRY’S LINE

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

One ordinary, rather hot summer night, nothing special,
nothing different, in my mind I ran my finger down
the line of hair that ran from your chest before disappearing
beneath your shorts as the breeze blew open your shirt
and I caught the smile in your eye as you read thoughts.

You, with your short dark hair amid a season of blondes
I was tiring of, you, who I never kissed or lay with,
who I never undressed outside of that dizzy dream.

Later that night, while fuelled on cocktails, you brushed
my finger along that same hair line, nothing said,
nothing promised, just that fine line between you and I,

you, with your eyes which shone that breathless night
towards a blue side of green, black jeans, red shirt
and a tan to stop just short of where that line disappeared.

You seemed like the first man I’d seen in such a long time
having been lost for a while in a sea of bleached boys,
all as harmless as they were hairless while I cavorted
about their sweet skins with careless concern for complacency.

But you looked like something else on that fortuitous night
as the setting sun sizzled and breezes briefly blew bodies bare.

That tremendous night when nothing really happened
except for the soft touch of that line I never managed to cross
and, more importantly, never managed to forget.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

This month is about looking back and the life and lust of summer nights in Paris in order to move on. The bar was La Tropic, a gin fizz on the terrace, by Les Halles, the summer was 1998 but the location of both the line and the man are now a mystery only the summer stars can shine a light on.

BOOKENDS; WHERE WE CAN GO WHEN WE BECOME MASTERS OF WHO WE ARE

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Some scenes we are stuck with like that hand
in that taxi as we left the city I hadn’t said goodbye to.

Whose hand did you think you were holding,
didn’t you know what you’d found hadn’t yet been formed?

Some scents are forever tied to necks where we’ve left traces
of our lips, like you said, yesterday, when I found you
crossing over after so long on the other side
and the first thing you mentioned was my scent, still that scent.

Some places latch on like limbs and I wonder if you will twitch,
still, when I slip you from my spotlight as another taxi
carries me off without a single person to goad my direction.

Some things stay the same and other things we only learn
to master when we find out the right time to walk away.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

 

I first left Paris for London at 24, without a thought as to all I was leaving behind or whether or not I had found who I was. I held someone’s hand who knew who they were while I still had no real idea of myself. Falling in love is sometimes like falling off your own route and it takes time to find your feet afterwards. I will never not fall again, but at least I now know that there is learning in the rising.