Connection

BITTER BRIDGES

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Clouds cross the skies and trains cross countries
while we cross each other only at jagged junctions
and obstinate intersections, cluttered with catastrophes
or below bitter bridges that bridge no boundaries,
basked only in blackness, always shadow, never light,
always almost, never right here, right now, right moment,
while clouds still cross skies and trains still trail onwards,
while distance is never denied to those on the right track.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re-post

DOWN THE DRAIN

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 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 was no more than scum
to be scrubbed.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a re-post

THE LIGHT IS TOO LIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 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

This is a re-post

THE CURRENT OF CREAMY COFFEE

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

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.

TAXI DRIVER, I CAME TO THE CITY

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

A constant darkness,
the future unfolds like the road;
route unknown, the past ever present
but kissed goodbye;

my lips still taste of yesterday,
my hips the heat of your caress
that has since slipped from these sheets.

I was always bound to restless,
to rest less and less, I am creature creative;
a constant recreation concerned more with shadow than light,
more with what I don’t yet know
than where I have already ready been.

I am taxi traveller,
I will take you with me, naked
under the sweating sun, tender under starlight
but you are only fair;
you are the hitchhiker along my highway,
a distraction on route to destination.

We are not destiny,
no two are designed alike,
every soul a single sojourn.

I am city when you are desert,
I am sand when you are stone,
I will have dried up before you learn to open up.

I will meet you under moonlight,
by the gaslight already flickering
in the morning light, only the stars will see us
burning bright, for we are stars; rising in the darkness,
this constant darkness,

I will drink you and then discard you
when the dawn calls me back to destination
before you break me, I will set off before you slow me,
before you show me who you want me to be.

I am everything and nothing in your eyes, all lies,
we are only reflections, projections of hope and hurt,

I cannot be all you want
when we don’t really know who we are.

We are starlight, like I said, already burning out
before begun, drawn to distraction
and drawing on our own dust.

But I am constant, now, to the calling,
am free to flight and fall,

I will love you
Forever and yet leave you
before you’ve even considered it
a compliment to concern yourself with who I am
because all we have learned
is to look for ourselves in each other.

And yet I am other. Another.
No other, bound to no body and everybody,
at home in hotels that hold me for hire,
every stop another station in the formation,
every sheet another burn as we twist and turn
and then, in twisting, we turn,

we are roads constantly crossing,
trying to get to the other side
to see if the darkness is lighter, brighter,

but this darkness, this constant darkness
is not a dark abyss, this constant darkness
can only be conquered at the check-out.

A constant darkness,

we are all travellers on a road,
making moments, making magic, making mistakes
believing the future is forever,
but I am not concerned or consoled by forever,

I am here now, running reckless
along these roads, seeking sustenance, seeking solace,
and occasionally a comfort from the cold that comes a calling,
(I will give you what I have willing if you promise
not to take it unevenly) seeking satisfaction
in things temporary, leaving a part of me
in everything I touch,

hoping it’s enough,
hoping you will remember
the scent of my skin though we were too thin
to be true, too fragile to be anything more
than a fickle tickle,

trying to understand the sweet sorrow,
the ebb and flow, the hope and the hurt.

Goodbye can be a greeting as warm as hello.
Good boy, I am trying to be a good boy
burning through this constant darkness
and smiling as I soar and sizzle.

A constant darkness
so we can gaze at the stars in their glory.

 

All words and pictures by Damien B. Donnelly

Based on a poetry series inspired by the albums of Joni Mitchell

COLOUR IS WAITING

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And still we will come to lick the honey
from the purple petal and still we will come
to root out the weeds of worthlessness in gardens
where others eat up all that is beautiful. Time turns
and we, in turn, follow its path, suns set and the moon
shows us its song, hold hands and then release,
hold hope and then move on, we only own the moment.
Mothers may still hand over their hearts to other mothers
waiting to be wanted, fathers may rise to be fearless
or choke on the root of their own fear, those black-cloaked
women pouring water from windows onto withered plants,
who’ve buried their living bodies in a bitterness
for all that life has lynched from them, will continue
to cry as flames flicker out along the Seine,
like their memory, revealing structure still standing
but soul no longer settled. They will still pour
their buckets of tears down the aging walls of a city
that cannot see beyond its past. If we cannot catch colour
then we too will be cremated in the concrete. But black
is only shadow until it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom. Eat the storms,
Mother said, remember? Boil the beds of bitter blackness
until the dream rips through the rain and translucent
turns them lighter, brighter. And still we will come
to that lake where language lingers, still we will sink
beneath its depths to slip ourselves from the reflections
we have once worn and now outgrown. Still we will sink
kisses onto our starved lips and still come back for more
after love catches hold of kisses cradled on other lips.
Catch the colour, catch the kisses, catch the life
racing by in taxis, on trains with crimson carriages
connecting moments waiting to be made magical.
The starry night can be a bright light waiting for us
to paint it. Behold how much there is to love, to let go of,
to learn from. Let us be the design and not just the destruction.
Eat the storms, she said, taste the refreshment in the bright
blue rain. Colour is waiting just beyond the clouds.

  EBA745D1-36E2-45EB-B84C-61914EAEAF30

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

30th and final poem for National Poetry Writing Month 2019

SHADES OF BLUE FEATURED ON EXPLORING COLOUR

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

Today my poem Shades of Blue is featured on Exploring Colour, the beautiful and inspiring blog from Liz Cowburn; https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/04/25/shades-of-blue-2/

It is featured alongside a powerful poem of loss and being found from Kay McKenzie Cooke entitled Found. Kay’s blog is https://kaymckenziecooke.com/

and a stunning water-colour painting of blue irises by Jodi McKinney from the blog https://lifeinbetween.me/

Liz has curated this little collection exploring the positivity of the colour blue while sharing two sides of the adoption spectrum with the help of photography from her husband Nigel.

Please take a moment to visit the blogs and explore the beauty and colour of painting, pictures, poetry and precious voices…

 

Dami X

 

THE IRISES OF OUR EYES

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

Crazed caught on canvas, caught in colour,
thought tempered in sweeping strokes,
we can be carried away in seas of grass,
coral greens awash in the garden,
catch the canvas before its fold finds favour
in other fields the mind has yet to fathom,
we can be crazy. Quick comes the crow
upon the harvest, bleak beacons,
art is not always to be understood
nor the artist always allowed the freedom
to express; we want cream walls
and canvases to comfort the canapé,
expression doesn’t always please the pattern.
Crazed comes to life on canvas, see
how he called to us; potato faced pickers
pealing in broken browns, aged in ochre,
acrylic is not a cover up, the canvas is not
a vision of vanity, even the sun flowers wilt
before the irises of our eyes. Fields, fields,
far flung fields of amber grain, far from home,
far from fame, trying to catch the elusive light
bearing down on the bails of honeyed hay
before the black wings hanging in the horizon,
painting eyes, other’s eyes for us to learn from,
to weep for the long loss after the colour
no longer connects. Quick, catch creation
before it catches fire, before it ricochets in a bed
in Anvers-sur-Oise, electricity only illuminated
the intensity, insanity is not always sedated
after the shock. Colour cannot be captured
by constraints in a brass bed with brown
leather straps. Colour is conveyed on canvas,
in connections, in the bend the brush makes
to blend, in the waves the stars twist
into that night sky, in the lines of letters
to brothers who know us to be better
than the light sometimes allows.
He was a captive to the colour,
a captive to the canvas, to the voices
dark and distant, cut it off and the voices
still come a calling. Capture colour
before they caption you as crazy.

     

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

34th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

GOLD TAINTED GRASSES

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Corners come crawling from the fine folds
of memory when the lavender was long
with laughter beyond the bridge
where the lazy water twisted her sky’s blues
through rough rock and tufts of gold tainted
grasses that I captured on canvas
and you kept in glass cases crowded
with curated curiosities and empty wine bottles.
We were in your Queen’s country; Balmoral
and all her bounty without a breath
of any Brexit. They had a tin can
of baked beans in her local store
and a couple of packets of butter biscuits
in a coating of plastic tartan and I wondered
who had the midnight nibbles
after the summer’s sun had settled
over the north that so wanted to snap
from the south. We’d sat in a church
with the Ma’am herself and all the family,
a tiny little thing (both monument
and monarch) cut into ragged rock
on the turn of a heather hewn hill, clinging
to its own existence like the family
and the faith and the kingdom. Later,
we gathered with giggles in a glen
as little Miss Sydney crippled us
with comedy and the Ling heathers
bloomed in the buoyancy of her laughter,
a daughter of the Commonwealth
now no longer common. All things come
and go, like the scent of cut lavender,
culled and so peacefully plain, its colour
now lighter, now longer able to be amethyst.
Memory too folds and fades like the colour
of each encounter, like the bloom and
the border, the lavender and the laughter,
the freedom and the procession, the family
and the faith, the country and the conqueror,
like all entrances and all their unexpected exits.

   

All words and water colour by Damien B. Donnelly

21st poem for National Poetry Writing Month